‘Boss?’ This with an apprehensive glance through the window.
‘huh-huh?’
‘Boss, has it occurred to you that Colonel Weissner probably knows all about this cache by this time? What I mean is, we may have company soon.’
‘We may indeed,’ Smith admitted. ‘Surprised if we don’t have. That’s why I’ve cut this itsy-bitsy piece of rope off the big coil and why I’m taking the explosives and grenades only from my rucksack and yours. It’s a very big coil–and no one knows what’s inside our rucksacks. So it’s unlikely that anything will be missed.’
‘But the radio–‘
‘If we broadcast from here we might be caught in the act. If we take it away and they find it gone they’ll know that that car at the bottom of the Blau See is empty. Is that it?’
‘More or less.’
‘So we compromise. We remove it, but we return it here after we’ve broadcast from a safe place.’
‘What do you mean “safe place”,’ Schaffer demanded plaintively. The darkly saturnine face was unhappy. ‘There isn’t a safe place in Bavaria.’
‘There’s one not twenty yards away. Last place they’d look.’ He tossed Schaffer a bunch of skeleton keys. ‘Ever been inside a Bavarian ladies’ cloakroom?’
Schaffer fielded the keys, stared at Smith, shook his head and left. Quickly he moved down the tracks, his torch flashing briefly on and off. Finally his torch settled on a doorway with, above it, the legend DAMEN.
Schaffer looked at it, pursed his lips, shrugged his shoulders and got to work on the lock.
Slowly, with apparently infinite labour, the cable-car completed the last few feet of its ascent and passed in under the roof of the Schloss Adler header station. It juddered to a halt, the front door opened and the passengers disembarked. They moved from the header station–built into the north-west base of the castle–up through a steeply-climbing twenty-five foot tunnel which had heavy iron doors and guards at either end. Passing the top gateway, they emerged into the courtyard, the entrance of which was (sealed off by a massively-barred iron gate guarded by heavily armed soldiers and Dobermann pinchers. The courtyard itself was brightly illuminated by the light of dozens of uncurtained interior windows. In the very centre of the courtyard stood the helicopter which had that morning brought Reichsmarschall Rosemeyer to the Schloss Adler. Under the cover of a heavy tarpaulin — momentarily unnecessary because of the cessation of the snow — a dungareed figure, possibly the pilot, worked on the helicopter engine with the aid of a small but powerful arc-lamp.
Mary turned to von Brauchitsch, still holding a proprietary grip on her arm, and smiled ruefully.
‘So many soldiers. So many men — and, I’m sure, so few women. What happens if I want to escape from the licentious soldiery?’
‘Easy.’ Von Brauchitsch really did have, Mary thought dully, a most charming smile. ‘Just jump from your bedroom window. One hundred metres straight down and there you are. Free!’
The ladies’ cloakroom in the station was a superlatively nondescript place, bleakly furnished with hard-backed benches, chairs, deal tables and a sagging wooden floor. The Spartans would have turned up their noses at it, in its sheer lack of decorative inspiration it could have been surpassed only by its counterpart in England. The expiring remains of a fire burnt dully in a black enamel stove.
Smith was seated by the central table, radio beside him, consulting a small book by the light of a hooded pencil-flash and writing on a slip of paper. He checked what he had written, straightened and handed the book to Schaffer.
‘Burn it. Page by page.’
‘Page by page? All?’ Surprise in the saturnine face. ‘You won’t be requiring this any more?’
Smith shook his head and began to crank the radio handle.
There was a very much better fire in the Operations Room in Whitehall, a pine-log fire with a healthy crackle and flames of a respectable size. But the two men sitting on either side of the fire were a great deal less alert than the two men sitting by the dying embers of the fire in the Bavarian Alps. Admiral Rolland and Colonel Wyatt-Turner were frankly dozing, eyes shut, more asleep than awake. But they came to full wakeful-ness, jerking upright, almost instantly, when the long-awaited call-sign came through on the big transceiver manned by the civilian operator at the far end of the room. They glanced at each other, heaved themselves out of their deep arm-chairs.
‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy.’ The voice on the radio was faint but clear. ‘Broadsword calling Danny Boy. You hear me? Over.’
The civilian operator spoke into his microphone, ‘We hear you. Over.’
‘Code. Ready? Over.’
‘Ready. Over.’
Rolland and Wyatt-Turner were by the operator’s shoulder now, his eyes fixed on his pencil as he began to make an instantaneous transcription of the meaningless jumble of letters beginning to come over the radio. Swiftly the message was spelt Out : TORRANCE-SMYTHE MURDERED. THOMAS CHRISTIANSEN AND CARRACIOLA CAPTURED.
As if triggered by an unheard signal, the eyes of Rolland and Wyatt-Turner lifted and met. Their faces were strained and grim. Their eyes returned to the flickering pencil.
ENEMY BELIEVE SCHAFFER AND SELF DEAD, the message continued. EFFECTING ENTRY INSIDE THE HOUR. PLEASE HAVE TRANSPORT STANDING BY NINETY MINUTES. OVER.
Admiral Rolland seized the microphone from the operator.
‘Broadsword! Broadsword! Do you know who I am, Broadsword?’
‘I know who you are, sir. Over.’
‘Pull out, Broadsword. Pull out now. Save yourselves. Over.’
‘You — must — be — joking.’ The words were spoken in slow motion, a perceptible pause between each pair. ‘Over.’
‘You heard me.’ Rolland’s voice was almost as slow and distinct. ‘You heard me. That was an order, Broadsword.’
‘Mary is already inside. Over and out.’
The transceiver went dead.
‘He’s gone, sir,’ the operator said quietly.
‘He’s gone,’ Rolland repeated mechanically. ‘Dear God, he’s gone.’
Colonel Wyatt-Turner moved away and sat down heavily in his chair by the fire. For such a big, burly man he appeared curiously huddled and shrunken. He looked up dully as Admiral Holland sank into the opposite chair.
It’s all my fault.’ The Colonel’s voice was barely distinguishable. ‘All my fault.’
‘We did what we had to do. All our fault, Colonel. It was my idea.’ He gazed into the fire. ‘Now this — this on top of everything else.’
‘Our worst day,’ Wyatt-Turner agreed heavily. ‘Our worst day ever. Maybe I’m too old.’
‘Maybe we’re all too old.’ With his right forefinger Holland began to tick off the fingers of his left hand. ‘H.Q. Commander-in-Chief, Portsmouth. Secret alarm triggered. Nothing missing.’
‘Nothing taken,’ Wyatt-Turner agreed wearily. ‘But the vigil emulsion plates show photostat copies taken.’
‘Two. Southampton. Barge-movement duplicates missing. Three, Plymouth. Time-lock in the naval H.Q. inoperative. We don’t know what this means.’
‘We can guess.’
‘We can guess. Dover. Copy of a section of the Mulberry Harbour plans missing. An error? Carelessness? We’ll never know. Five, Bradley’s H.Q. guard sergeant missing. Could mean anything.’
‘Could mean everything. All the troop movements for Overlord’s Omaha beach are there.’
‘Lastly, seven OS reports today. France, Belgium, Netherlands. Four demonstrably false. Other three unverifiable.’
For long moments there was a heavy, a defeated silence, finally broken by Wyatt-Turner.
‘If there was ever any doubt, there’s none now.’ He spoke without looking up, his eyes gazing emptily into the fire. “The Germans have almost total penetration here — and we have almost none on the continent. And now this — Smith and his men, I mean.’
‘Smith and his men,’ Holland echoed. ‘Smith and his men. We can write them off.’
Wyatt-Turner dropped his voice, speaking so softly that the radio operator couldn’t overhear.
‘And Operation Overlord,, sir?’
‘Operation Overlord,’ Holland murmured. ‘Yes, we can write that off, too.’
‘Intelligence is the first arm of modern warfare,’ Wyatt-Turner said bitterly. ‘Or has someone said that before?’
‘No intelligence, no war.’ Admiral Holland pressed an intercom button. ‘Have my car brought round. Coming, Colonel? To the airfield?’
‘And a lot farther than that. If I have your permission, sir.’
‘We’ve discussed it.’ Admiral Holland shrugged. ‘I understand how you feel. Kill yourself if you must.’
‘I’ve no intention.’ Wyatt-Turner crossed to a cupboard and took out a Sten gun, turned to Holland and smiled: ‘We may encounter hostiles, sir.’
‘You may indeed.’ There was no answering smile on the Admiral’s face.
‘You heard what the man said?’ Smith switched off the transmitter, telescoped the aerial and glanced across at Schaffer. ‘We can pull out now.’
‘Pull out now? Pull out now?’ Schaffer was outraged. ‘Don’t you realise that if we do they’ll get to Mary inside twelve hours.’ He paused significantly, making sure he had all Smith’s attention. ‘And if they get to her they’re bound to get to Heidi ten minutes later.’
‘Come off it, Lieutenant,’ Smith said protestingly. ‘You’ve only seen her once, for five minutes.’
‘So?’ Schaffer was looking positively belligerent. ‘How often did Paris see Helen of Troy? How often did Antony see Cleopatra. How often did Romeo — ‘ He broke off then went on defiantly: ‘And I don’t care if she is a traitor spying on her own people.’