‘But it’s all over now. We expect the plane -‘ Vis glanced at his watch – ‘in exactly eight minutes. We have a bearing surface for it and there should be no difficulty in landing and taking off provided it doesn’t hang around too long. You have done all that you came to do and achieved it magnificently. Luck has been on your side.’
‘Say that in a few hours,’ Mallory repeated.
‘I’m sorry.’ Vis could not conceal his puzzlement ‘You expect something to happen to the plane?’
‘I don’t expect anything to happen to the plane But what’s gone, what’s past, is – was, rather – only the prologue.’
The – the prologue?’
‘Let me explain.’
Neufeld, Droshny and Sergeant Baer left their ponies tethered inside the woodline and walked up the slight eminence before them, Sergeant Baer making heavy weather of their uphill struggle through the snow because of the weight of the large portable transceiver strapped to his back. Near the summit they dropped to their hands and knees and crawled forward till they were within a few feet of the edge of the cliff overlooking the Ivenici plateau. Neufeld unslung his binoculars and then replaced them: the moon had just moved from behind a dark barred cloud highlighting every aspect of the scene below: the intensely sharp contrast afforded by black shadow and snow so deeply and gleamingly white as to be almost phosphorescent made the use of binoculars superfluous.
Clearly visible and to the right were Vis’s command tents and, near by, some hastily erected soup kitchens Outside the smallest of the tents could be seen a group of perhaps a dozen people, obviously, even at that distance, engaged in close conversation. Directly beneath where they lay, the three men could see the phalanx turning round at one end of the runway and beginning to trudge back slowly, so terribly slowly, so terribly tiredly, along the wide path already tramped out. As Mallory and his men had been, Neufeld, Droshny and Baer were momentarily caught and held by the weird and other-worldly dark grandeur of the spectacle below. Only by a conscious act of will could Neufeld bring himself to look away and return to the world of normality and reality. ‘How very kind,’ he murmured, ‘of our Yugoslav friends to go to such lengths on our behalf.’ He turned to Baer and indicated the transceiver. ‘Get through to the General, will you?’ Baer unslung his transceiver, settled it firmly in the snow, extended the telescopic aerial, pre-set the frequency and cranked the handle. He made contact almost at once, talked briefly then handed the microphone and head-piece to Neufeld, who fitted on the phones and gazed down, still half mesmerized, at the thousand men and women moving ant like across the plain below. The head-phones cracked suddenly in his ears and the spell was broken. ‘Herr General?’
‘Ah. Hauptmann Neufeld.’ In the ear-phones the General’s voice was faint but very clear, completely free from distortion or static. ‘Now then. About my psychological assessment of the English mind?’
‘You have mistaken your profession, Herr General. Everything has happened exactly as you forecast. You will be interested to know, sir, that the Royal Air Force is launching a saturation bombing attack on the Zenica Gap at precisely 1.30 a.m. this morning.’
‘Well, well, well,’ Zimmermann said thoughtfully that is interesting. But hardly surprising.’
‘No, sir.’ Neufeld looked up as Droshny touched him on the shoulder and pointed to the north. ‘One moment, sir.’
Neufeld removed the ear-phones and cocked his head in the direction of Droshny’s pointing arm He lifted his binoculars but there was nothing to be seen. But unquestionably there was something to be heard – the distant clamour of aircraft engines, closing Neufeld readjusted the ear-phones.
‘We have to give the English full marks for punctuality, sir. The plane is coming in now.’
‘Excellent, excellent. Keep me informed.’ Neufeld eased off one ear-phone and gazed to the north. Still nothing to be seen, the moon was now temporarily behind a cloud, but the sound of the aircraft engines was unmistakably closer. Suddenly, somewhere down on the plateau, came three sharp blasts on a whistle. Immediately, the marching phalanx broke up, men and women stumbling off the runway into the deep snow on the eastern side of the plateau, leaving behind them, obviously by pre-arrangement, about eighty men who spaced themselves out on either side of the runway.
‘They’re organized, I’ll say that for them,’ Neufeld said admiringly.
Droshny smiled his wolf’s smile. ‘All the better for us, eh?’
‘Everybody seems to be doing their best to help us tonight,’ Neufeld agreed.
Overhead, the dark and obscuring band of cloud drifted away to the south and the white light of the moon raced across the plateau. Neufeld could immediately see the plane, less than half a mile away, its camouflaged shape sharply etched in the brilliant moonlight as it sank down towards the end of the runway. Another sharp blast of the whistle and at once the men lining both sides of the runway switched on hand lamps – a superfluity, really, in those almost light as day perfect landing conditions, but essential id the moon been hidden behind cloud.
‘Touching down now,’ Neufeld said into the micro-phone. ‘It’s a Wellington bomber.’
‘Let’s hope it makes a safe landing,’ Zimmermann said.
‘Let’s hope so indeed, sir.’
The Wellington made a safe landing, a perfect landing considering the extremely difficult conditions. It slowed down quickly, then steadied its speed as it headed towards the end of the runway.
Neufeld said into the microphone: ‘Safely down, herr General, and rolling to rest.’
‘Why doesn’t it stop?’ Droshny wondered. ‘You can’t accelerate a plane over snow as you can over a concrete runway,’ Neufeld said. ‘They’ll require every yard of the runway for the take-off.’
Quite obviously, the pilot of the Wellington was of the same opinion. He was about fifty yards from the end of the runway when two groups of people broke from the hundreds lining the edge of the runway, one group heading for the already opened door in the side of the bomber, the other heading for the tail of the plane. Both groups reached the plane just it rolled to a stop at the very end of the runway, a dozen men at once flinging themselves upon the tail unit and beginning to turn the Wellington through 180 degrees.
Droshny was impressed. ‘By heavens, they’re not wasting much time, are they?’
They can’t afford to. If the plane stays there anytime at all it’ll start sinking in the snow.’ Neufeld lifted his binoculars and spoke into the microphone.
‘They’re boarding now, Herr General. One, two, three … seven, eight, nine. Nine it is.’ Neufeld sighed in relief and at the relief of tension. ‘My warmest congratulations, Herr General. Nine it is, indeed.’
The plane was already facing the way it had come The pilot stood on the brakes, revved the engines up to a crescendo, then twenty seconds after it had come to ;i halt the Wellington was on its way again, accelerating down the runway. The pilot took no chances, he waited till the very far end of the airstrip before lifting the Wellington off, but when he did it rose cleanly and easily and climbed steadily into the night sky.
‘Airborne, Herr General,’ Neufeld reported. ‘Every thing perfectly according to plan.’ He covered the microphone, looking after the disappearing plane, then smiled at Droshny. ‘I think we should wish them bon voyage, don’t you?’
Mallory, one of the hundreds lining the perimeter of the airstrip, lowered his binoculars. ‘And a very pleasant journey to them all.’
Colonel Vis shook his head sadly. ‘All this work just to send five of my men on a holiday to Italy.’
‘I dare say they needed a break,’ Mallory said.
‘The hell with them. How about us?’ Reynolds demanded. In spite of the words, his face showed no anger, just a dazed and total bafflement. ‘We should have been aboard that damned plane.’
‘Ah. Well. I changed my mind.’
‘Like hell you changed your mind,’ Reynolds said bitterly.
Inside the fuselage of the Wellington, the moustached major surveyed his three fellow-escapees and the five Partisan soldiers, shook his head in disbelief and turned to the captain by his side.
‘A rum do, what?’
‘Very rum, indeed, sir,’ said the captain. He looked curiously at the papers the major held in his hand.
‘What have you there?’
‘A map and papers that I’m to give to some bearded naval type when we land back in Italy. Odd fellow, that Mallory, what?’
‘Very odd indeed, sir,’ the captain agreed.
Mallory and his men, together with Vis and Vlanovich, I detached themselves from the crowd and were now standing outside Vis’s command tent. Mallory said to Vis: ‘You have arranged for the ropes? We must leave at once.’
‘What’s all the desperate hurry, sir?’ Groves asked.
Like Reynolds, much of his resentment seemed to have gone to be replaced by a helpless bewilderment.