Colin Forbes - The Leader And The Damned

'Stay here,' he warned. 'Under no circumstances leave this room until I get back. Where is your case? Behind that cupboard? You leave it there for the moment. If I'm caught and they find you, say you couldn't sleep and were going out for a walk..'

The marble-floored entrance hall was still deserted and eerily silent as Lindsay padded across to the entrance. Standing by the great door he listened, his head cocked on one side. He waited three minutes by the second hand on his watch. If there was anyone about they couldn't remain still for that period if they were watching.

An intake of breath, the squeak of a shoe brought on by a cramped leg, there had to be some tiny, betraying sound. Finally, Lindsay was convinced he was alone. He opened the door and stepped out into the snow.

The surface was solid, crisp and he moved with long strides to the side of the Mercedes. Who was it waiting for? With his hand on the front passenger door handle he paused. Suddenly he looked at the upper floors overlooking the car, searching for any sign of sudden movement – a shadow stepping back from a window, the twitch of a curtain.

Nothing.

It was uncanny. Had they struck lucky? It did happen – especially in wartime. Then you didn't waste a moment. You moved – so maybe Christa was right. He turned the handle and the unlocked door opened. Unlocked? A lousy kind of security they operated in this neck of the woods.

Leaning inside he checked the gauge. The petrol tank was full. There was even a pile of road maps on the passenger seat. And on the – back seat lay a Schmeisser machine-pistol with a loaded magazine. He closed the door without touching anything.

Before returning to the Berghof he smeared his isolated footprints, carefully leaving intact the faint imprint of the two SS men who had pushed the car to this point. And Christa was right. The merest shove, with the brake released and the gear in neutral, would propel the Mercedes down the sloping road to where it curved round the mountain and disappeared in the distance.

He returned to the entrance hall, his hands frozen. He heard the sound as he perched against the closed door to slap snow off his boots with a handkerchief. A faint grinding sound like the creak of a slowly- approaching tank track.

He grabbed for the door handle and glanced over his shoulder. In the far distance across the valley a puff of white showed where massive snow had slipped. Spring was on the way. He went inside. Christa would be waiting, keyed up for their great gamble.

Colonel Jaeger stood behind the open barracks window, a pair of binoculars pressed to his eyes. The lenses were focused on the point where the road descending from the Berghof curved in a wild hairpin before disappearing behind a mountain wall.

Beside him stood his deputy, Alfred Schmidt, a tall, thin man with an intellectual appearance who wore rimless glasses. Schmidt moved his feet restlessly, grinding a heel into the floor. With an irritable gesture Jaeger lowered the glasses and let them dangle from the loop round his neck.

`Well, Schmidt, what is it?' he demanded.

`I'm worried the Englishman may never even see the car. If we had moved it a few metres further he would have looked straight down on to it from that window in the corridor..'

'Which would have been bloody obvious,' Jaeger snapped.

'If he is anxious to escape he will grab the first chance which comes to hand.

'You have not spoken with him. I have!' Jaeger rapped harshly. 'Make it too obvious and he will smell a trap. It is always a mistake to underestimate your opponent.'

'Well, if he does take the bait, he won't get far,' Schmidt observed.

He looked outside the window where a file of two motorcyclists and a further back-up of two motorcycles and side-cars waited with armed SS in position. The passengers in the side-cars held their machinepistols at the ready.

'If!' Jaeger exploded. 'You worry like an old woman…'

'I still think we should be in a position to observe what is going on at the front of the Berghof,' Schmidt persisted. 'We could have placed a man in one of the upper rooms overlooking the exit doors..

'Everything depends on our target feeling sure he is not observed. When the car reaches that bend we take off. Now shut up and let me concentrate, for Christ's sake!'

'We take that car! We leave within ten minutes..'

Inside the large anteroom Lindsay and Christa were in the middle of a ferocious argument. The Englishman made no reply to what she had just said as she fought to drive him into a decision. She had been alternately pleading and berating. Now she grasped both his lapels, stood up on her toes so their faces were level and tugged hard as she went on speaking.

'Listen to me! Did you see anyone while you were outside?'

'No

'Did you look to see if anyone was watching the car?'

'Yes, but..'

'No "buts", for God's sake! That file on me Gruber has sent to Berlin for will reach here any day now. Do you want me to end up in a concentration camp?'

Gently he took hold of both her wrists and released himself from her grasp. Still holding on, he pushed her into a chair, motioned to her to stay put.

'It's all too easy and convenient,' he said. 'No one about inside the place, no one outside..

'It's Sunday…!'

It was so bloody tempting, Lindsay thought. The timing was right. If they got away today, tomorrow was Monday – the day for contacting Paco. And with luck Christa – with her local knowledge – could get them through to Munich from Salzburg. He began thinking aloud.

'Having met Jaeger I have some idea of what makes him tick. If he were setting a trap he'd do it something like this..'

'He'd at least have parked the car where you could see it from the corridor window upstairs. You said you couldn't see it.

'I couldn't..'

'Well then!'

'If I were Jaeger,' Lindsay persisted, 'I wouldn't make it that obvious. And I wouldn't post watchers where they could be seen, I'd stay back and wait…'

'Wait! Wait! Wait! That's all you can think of!'

'I remember when I met Hitler before the war. We had a very long conversation. He told me that in any crisis he always waited until events developed, until something gave him a sign as to which was the direction he should move in. I'm a bit like Hitler.

'You lack his resolution,' she retorted bitterly.

'I've noticed there's a big laundry truck which arrives daily – to collect dirty linen and deliver fresh. The guards have become used to that truck. I've watched them from my corridor window. What I don't know is does it call on Sunday?'

'How should I know?' she asked sulkily. 'I'm kept occupied the other side of the Berghof. Why are you wasting time on this truck?'

'It arrives each day with commendable Teutonic promptness at the same time – exactly eleven o'clock in the morning.' Lindsay was walking slowly backwards and forwards while Christa fidgeted on the chair. 'There is only one man with that truck, no guards, just the driver, a short, fat man in overalls who heaves inside great bales of fresh laundry. Then he takes out the dirty stuff in white sacks, dumps them in the back, hauls down the door and drives off. There's the name of some firm in Salzburg on the side. Salzburg is where we want to go…'

'Where do we go from there?' she asked.

'Later..'

He was determined not to reveal their destination until the last minute. 'That laundry truck could be our transport to freedom,' he continued. 'When the door is up I can see inside from that window. There's a whole load of stuff that isn't unloaded here we could hide under. And my guess is the checkpoints are so used to the truck by now they won't search it, just so long as the alarm hasn't been raised here. Where are you supposed to be at eleven this morning? And while I remember it, have you any idea how long the truck should take to get back to Salzburg, assuming it has no more calls?'