"Number one," Schaffer said with satisfaction. "Bang goes a bowl of Dresden fruit -- or a Dresden bowl of fruit. I do hope," he added anxiously, "that there"s n.o.body using the toilet next door to where that bang just went off."
Smith opened his mouth to make impatient comment but Schaffer was already gone. Fifteen feet only and he was standing on the roof of the header station. Smith eased himself awkwardly over the sill, wrapped the rope round his right forearm, took the strain with his left hand and looked at Mary. She gave him an encouraging smile, but there was nothing encouraging about her expression when she transferred her gaze back to the three men who were lined up facing a wall, their hands clasped behind their necks. Carnaby-Jones was also covering them but, in his case, he held the gun as if it might turn and bite him at any moment.
Smith joined Schaffer on the roof of the header station.
Both men crouched low to minimise the chances of being spotted from below. For the first ten feet out from the wall the roof was quite flat then dropped away sharply at an angle of thirty degrees. Smith thoughtfully regarded this steep slope and said: "We don"t want a repeat performance of what happened to us last time we were out there. We could do with a good piton to hammer into the castle wall here. Or the roof. Some sort of belay for our rope."
"Pitons we don"t need. Look at this." With his bare hands Schaffer sc.r.a.ped at the snow-encrusted roof of the header station to reveal a fine wire netting and, below that, iron bars covering a pane of plate gla.s.s perhaps two feet by one. "Skylights, I believe they"re called. Those bars look pretty firm to me."
He laid both hands on one of the bars and tugged firmly. It remained secure. Smith laid his left hand on the same bar and they pulled together. It still remained secure. Schaffer grinned in satisfaction, pa.s.sed the rope round the bar and made no mistake about the knot he tied. Smith sat down on the roof and put his hand to the rope. Schaffer caught his wrist and firmly broke Smith"s grip.
"No, you don"t." Schaffer lifted Smith"s right hand: the thick wrapping of bandages were already sodden, saturated with blood. "You can win your VC next time out. This time, you"d never make it. This one is on me." He paused and shook his head in wonder. "My G.o.d, Schaffer, you don"t know what you"re saying."
He removed the kit-bag he"d been carrying round his neck, crawled to the break in the roof, gripped the rope and slid smoothly down the sloping surface. As he approached the roof edge he turned round with infinite care until he was pointing head downwards. Slowly, inch by almost imperceptible inch, the rope above him caught securely between his feet, he lowered himself still farther until his head was projecting over the edge of the roof. He peered downwards.
He was, he discovered, directly above one of the cables. Two hundred feet below, but to his left, this time, guards and Doberman"s were floundering uphill through the deep snow at the best speed they could make, heading for the main entrance, to the castle courtyard. The word had gone out, Schaffer realised, and every available man was being pulled in either to fight the fire or to help in the search for the men who had started the fire. Which meant, Schaffer concluded, that some of the garrison must have checked the state of the ground beneath the radio room window and found there nothing but virgin and undisturbed snow...
He twisted his head and looked upwards. There was no sign of any guard patrolling the battlements, which was what he would have expected: there was no point in keeping a posted lookout for an enemy without when every indication pointed to the fact that the enemy was still within.
Schaffer eased himself downwards another perilous six inches till head and shoulders were over the edge of the roof. Only two things mattered now: was there a winch attendant or guard inside the header station and, if there were, could he, Schaffer, hold on to the rope with one hand while with the other he wriggled his Luger free and shot the guard? Schaffer doubted it. His OSS training had been wide-ranging and intensive but no one had ever thought it necessary that they should master the techniques of a high-wire circus acrobat. His mouth very dry and his heart pounding so heavily as to threaten to dislodge his precarious hand- and toe-holds, Schaffer craned his head and looked inside.
There was neither guard nor winch attendant inside: or, if there were any such, he was so well concealed that Schaffer couldn"t see him. But logic said that no one would be hiding there for there was no conceivable reason why anyone should be hiding: logic also said that any person who might have been there would, like the patrolling guards below and the sentry on the battlements, have been called inside the castle to help fight fire and enemy. All Schaffer could see was a cable-car, heavy winching machinery and heavy banks of lead-acid batteries: he was soon convinced that that was all that there was to see. No cause for concern.
But what he did see, something that did dismay him considerably, was that there was only one way for him to get into the station. There was no possibility of his sliding down the rope on to the floor of the station for the excellent reason that the roof of the station, in typically Alpine eaves fashion, overhung the floor by at least six feet. The only way in was by dropping down on to the Lujfseilbabn"s heavy steel cable then over-handing himself up inside the station.. Schaffer wasted no time in considering whether this was physically possible. It had to be possible. There was no other way in.
Carefully and with no little difficulty Schaffer inched himself back up the rope and the slope of the roof until he was about three feet clear of the edge. He eased his foot-grip on the rope and swung round through 180- until he was once more facing up the slope with his legs now dangling over the edge. He looked up. The crouched figure of Smith showed tension in every line although the face was as expressionless as ever. Schaffer lifted one hand, made a circle with thumb and forefinger, then eased himself over the edge until his searching feet found the cable.
He eased himself farther until he was sitting astride the cable, transferred his grip to the cable and swung down until he was suspended by hands and feet and looked up towards the moon. As a view, Schaffer reflected, it was vastly preferable to contemplating that two hundred foot drop down into the valley below. He started to climb.
He almost failed to make it. For every six inches he made up the cable, he slid back five. The cable was covered by a diabolically slippery coating of oil and sheath ice and only by clenching his fists till his forearms ached could he make any kind of progress at all and the fact that the cable stretched up at forty-five degrees made the difficult the well-night impossible. Such a means of locomotion would have been suicidal for the virtually one-handed Smith and quite impossible for either Mary or Carnaby-Jones. Once, after he had made about twelve feet, Schaffer looked down to gauge his chances if he let go and dropped down to the floor beneath, and rapidly concluded that the chances were either that he would break both legs or, if he landed at all awkwardly, would pitch out two hundred feet down to the valley below. As Schaffer later recounted it, this last possibility combined with the vertiginous view of the long long way to the floor of the valley, did him more good than an extra pair of arms. Ten seconds later, sweating and gasping like a long distance runner and very close to the last stages of exhaustion, he hauled himself on to the roof of the cable-car.
He lay there for a full minute until the trembling in his arms eased and pulse and breathing rates returned to not more than a man in a high fever might expect to have, lowered himself quietly and wearily to the floor, took out his Luger, slid the safety catch and began to make a quick check that the header station really was empty of the enemy, a superfluous precaution, reason told him, any concealed person would have been bound both to see and hear his entry, but instinct and training went deeper than reason. There was no one there. He looked behind winches, electric motors and batteries. He had the place to himself.
The next thing was to ensure that he continued to have the place to himself. At the lower end of the sloping archway leading up to the castle courtyard, the heavy iron door stood wide. He pa.s.sed through this doorway and padded softly up the cobbled pathway until he came to the courtyard exit. Here, too, was another iron gate, as wide open as the other. Schaffer moved as far forward as the shadowing safety of the tunnel"s overhang permitted and looked cautiously around the scene before him.
There was certainly, he had to admit, plenty to be seen and under more auspicious circ.u.mstances it would have done his heart good. The courtyard scene was as frenzied as the earlier glimpse they had had from the pa.s.sage, but this time the action was much more purposive and controlled. Shouting, gesticulating figures were supervising the unrolling of hoses, the coupling-up of hydrants, the relays of men carrying extinguishers and buckets of sand. The main gates stood open and unguarded, even the sentries must have been pressed into action: not that the unguarded doors offered any warmly beckoning escape route. Only a suicide would have tried making his escape through a courtyard crowded with sixty or seventy scurrying Alpenkorps troops.
Over to his left the helicopter still stood forlorn and useless. There was no sign of the pilot. Suddenly a loud flat explosion echoed inside the confining walls of the square.
Schaffer lifted his head to locate its source, saw fresh clouds of smoke billowing from an upper window in the east wing and briefly wondered which of his diversionary explosives that might be. But only for a brief moment. Some instinct made him glance to his right and his face went very still. The men he"d seen floundering up the slope outside, guards with the Dobermann pinchers, were coming through the main gate, the clouds of frozen breath trailing in the air behind them evidence enough of their exhausting run uphill through that knee-high snow. Schaffer backed away slowly and silently: German soldiers he could cope with or avoid but Doberman"s were out of his cla.s.s. He swung the heavy iron door to, careful not to make the least whisper of sound, slid home two heavy bolts, ran quickly down the arched pa.s.sage-way, closed and padlocked the lower door and put the key in his pocket.
He looked up, startled, at a loud crashing of gla.s.s and the subsequent tinkle as the shattered fragments tinkled to the floor. Automatically, the barrel of his Luger followed his glance.-
"Put that cannon away," Smith said irritably. Schaffer could clearly see his face now, pressed close to the iron bars. "Who do you think is up here -- Kramer and company?"
"It"s my nerves," Schaffer explained coldly. "You haven"t been through what Lieutenant Schaffer"s just been through. How are things up there?"
"Carraciola and friends are face down on the roof, freezing to death in the snow and Mary has the Schmeisser on them. Jones is still up there. Won"t even put his head outside. Says he"s no head for heights. I"ve given up arguing with him. How are things your end?"
"Quiet. If anyone is having any pa.s.sing thoughts about the cable-car, there are no signs of it. Both doors to the courtyard are locked. They"re iron and even if someone does start having suspicious thoughts, they should hold them for a while. And, boss, the way I came in is strictly for the birds. And I mean strictly. What you need is wings. Your hand the way it is you could never make it. Mary and the old boy couldn"t try it. Carraciola and the rest -- well, who cares about Carraciola and the rest."
"What winch controls are there?" Smith asked.
"Well, now." Schaffer approached the winch. "A small lever marked "Normal" and "Notfall" -- "
"Are there batteries down there?" Smith interrupted.
"Yeah. Any amount."
"Put the lever to "Notfall" -- "Emergency." They could cut off the main power from inside the castle."
"O.K., it"s done. Then there are Start and Stop b.u.t.tons, a big mechanical handbrake and a gear lever affair marked "Forwards" and "Backwards". With a neutral position."
"Start the motor," Smith ordered. Schaffer pressed the "Start" b.u.t.ton and a generator whined into life, building up to its maximum revolutions after perhaps ten seconds. "Now release the brake and select forward gear. If it works, stop the car and try the other gear."
Schaffer released the brake and engaged gear, sliding the gear handle progressively over successive stops. The car moved forward, gently at first, but gathering speed until it was clear of the header station roof. After a few more feet Schaffer stopped the car, engaged reverse gear and brought the car back up into its original position. He looked up at Smith. "Smooth, huh?"
"Lower it down till it"s half-way past the edge of the roof. We"ll slide down the rope on to the top of the cable-car then you can bring us up inside."
"Must be all the fish you eat," Schaffer said admiringly. He set the car in motion.
"I"m sending Carraciola, Thomas and Christiansen down first," Smith said. "I wouldn"t care for any of us to be on the top of the same cable-car as that lot. Think you can hold them till we get down?"
"You don"t improve morale by being insulting to subordinate officers," Schaffer said coldly.
"I didn"t know you"d any left. While you"re doing that I"ll have another go at persuading Juliet up there to come and join us." He prodded Carraciola with a far from gentle toe. "You first. Down that rope and on to the top of the cable-car."
Carraciola straightened until he was kneeling, glanced down the slope of the roof to the depths of the valley beyond.
"You"re not getting me on that lot. Not ever." He shook his head in finality, then stared up at Smith, his black eyes implacable in their hate. "Go on, shoot me. Kill me now."
"I"ll kill you if you ever try to escape," Smith said. "Don"t you know that, Carraciola?"
"Sure I know it. But you won"t kill me in cold blood, just standing here. You"re a man of principle, aren"t you, Major? Ethics, that"s the word. The kind of n.o.ble sucker who risks his life to free an enemy soldier who might burn to death. Why don"t you shoot, Major?"
"Because I don"t have to." With his left hand Smith grabbed Carradolia"s hair and jerked his head back till Carraciola, gasping with the pain of it, was staring skywards, while he reversed the grip on his Luger and raised it high. Nausea and pain flooded through him as the ends of the broken finger-bone grated together, but none of this showed in his face. "I just knock you out, tie a rope round your waist and lower you down over the edge, maybe eight or ten feet. Schaffer eases out the car till it touches you, then he climbs in the back door, goes to the front door and hauls you inside. You can see my right hand"s not too good, maybe I won"t be able to tie a secure enough knot round you, maybe I won"t be able to hold you, maybe Schaffer might let you go when he"s hauling you inside. I don"t much care, Carraciola."
"You double-dealing b.a.s.t.a.r.d!" Tears of pain filled Carraciola"s eyes and his voice was low and venomous. "I swear to G.o.d I"ll live to make you wish you"d never met me."
"Too late." Smith thrust him away contemptuously and Carraciola had to grab wildly at the rope to prevent himself from sliding over the break of the roof. I"ve been wishing that ever since I found out who and what you really are. Vermin soil my hands. Move now or I d.a.m.n well will shoot you. Why the h.e.l.l should I bother taking you back to England?"
Carraciola believed him. He slid down the rope until first his feet then his hands found the security of the supporting bracket of the cable-car. Smith gestured with his gun towards Thomas. Thomas went without a word. Ten seconds later Christiansen followed him. Smith watched the cable-car begin to move up inside the station, then looked upwards to the window from which the rope dangled.
"Mr. Jones?"
"I"m still here." Carnaby-Jones"s voice had a quaver to it and he didn"t as much as venture to risk a glance over the window-sill.
"Not for much longer, I hope," Smith said seriously. "They"ll be coming for you, Mr. Jones. They"ll be coming any moment now. I hate to say this, but I must. It is my duty to warn you what will happen to you, an enemy spy. You"ll be tortured, Mr. Jones -- not simply everyday tortures like pulling out your teeth and toe-nails, but unspeakable tortures I can"t mention with Miss Ellison here -- and then you"ll finish in the gas chambers. If you"re still alive."