From where they lay they could see that the belt of pines in which they lay hidden extended almost all the way down to the lake. Getting down there un.o.bserved would be no problem at all. An almost exactly matching line of pines swept down the opposite--the eastern--side of the valley. From the lake those two long sweeps of pines, climbing steadily upwards as they marched to the" south, must have appeared like a pair of great curving horns almost meeting at the top of the lower of the two cliff-faces on the Weissspitze.
A small village lay at the head of the lake. Basically it consisted of a single wide street, perhaps two hundred yards in length, a railway station, two inevitable churches perched on two inevitable knolls and a thin scattering of houses climbing up the steep slopes on either side of the village. From the southern end of the village a road curved up the far side of the valley till it reached the ridge-back to the south of the castle : this ridge-back it ascended by a series of hairpin bends, the last of which led to the great doors guarding the forecourt at the back of the castle. The road, just then, was completely blocked by snow and sole access to the castle was obviously by means of the Lujtseittiahn, an aerial cableway. Two cables stretched from the village straight up to the castle, crossing three supporting pylons en route. Even as they watched, a cable-car was completing the last section of its journey up to the castle. At a distance of not much more than a hundred feet from the glittering walls of the Schloss Adler it appeared to be climbing almost vertically.
On the Blau See, about a mile beyond the village, lay a very large group of regularly s.p.a.ced huts, arranged in rectangular patterns. It bore an uncommonly dose resemblance to a military encampment.
"Well, I"ll be d.a.m.ned!" With an almost physical effort of will, Schaffer forced himself to look away and Smith could see the wonder reflected in his eyes. "Is this for real, boss?"
It wasn"t a question that called for an answer. Schaffer had summed up their collective feeling pretty well and there was nothing that anyone could add that wouldn"t seem and sound superfluous. p.r.o.ne in the snow, they watched in silence as the cable-car climbed agonisingly slowly up the last fifty feet towards the castle. It seemed as if it would never make it and Smith could almost palpably sense the empathy of his companions and himself as they willed that little car on the last few feet of its journey. But make it it did and it disappeared from sight under the roof of the cable header station that has been built into the western foot of the castle. The tension relaxed and Schaffer cleared his throat.
"Boss," he said diffidently, "there are a couple of minor points that occur to me. Requiring elucidation, one might say. First of all, if I didn"t know better I"d say that was a military barracks down by that little old lake there."
"You don"t know better. That is a military barracks down by that little old lake there. And no ordinary military barracks either, I might say. That"s the training H.Q. of the Jager battalions of the Wehrmacht"s Alpenkorps."
"Oh, my gosh! The Alpine Corps! If I"d known this I"d never have come along. The Alpine Corps! Why didn"t someone tell Ma Schaffer"s nearest and dearest?"
"I thought you knew," Smith said mildly. "Why do you think we"re not dressed as German sailors or Red Cross nurses?"
Schaffer unzipped his snow-smock, minutely examined his Alpenkorps uniform as if seeing it for the first time, then zipped it up again. He said carefully: "You mean to say we"re going to mingle, careless like, with the German Army." He paused, looked wide-eyed at Smith"s smiling nod, then went on incredulously : "But--but we"ll be recognised as strangers!"
Training troops come and go all the time," Smith said offhandedly. "What"s six new faces among six hundred new faces?"
"This is terrible," Schaffer said gloomily.
"Worse than horses?" Smith smiled. "After all, the Alpenkorps don"t buck and trample all over you."
"Horses don"t carry machine-guns," Schaffer said morosely.
"And your second point?"
"Ah, yes. The second point. There"s the little matter of the old Schloss itself. Kinda forgotten our helicopter, haven"t we? How do we get in?"
"A good point," Smith conceded. "We"ll have to think about it. But I"ll tell you this. If Colonel Wyatt-Turner can penetrate the German High Command and, more important, get away again, this should be a piece of cake for us."
"He did what?" Schaffer demanded.
"Didn"t you know?"
"How should I know?" Schaffer was irritated. "Never met the guy till yesterday."
"He spent the years "40 to "43 inside Germany. Served in the Wehrmacht for part of the time. Ended up in the G.H.Q. in Berlin. Says he knows. .h.i.tler quite well."
"Well, I"ll be d.a.m.ned." Schaffer paused for a long moment, finally arrived at a conclusion. "The guy," he said moodily, "must be nuts."
"Maybe. But if he can do it, we can. We"ll figure a way. Let"s get back among the trees."
They inched their way back into cover, leaving Christiansen behind with Smith"s telescope to keep watch. After they"d made a temporary camp, heated and drunk some coffee, Smith announced his intention of trying to contact London again.
He unpacked the radio and sat down on a kit-bag a few feet distant from the others. The switch that cut in the transmitter circuit was on the left hand side of the radio, the side remote from where the other four men were sitting. Smith switched on with a loud positive click, cranked the call-up handle with his left hand. With the very first crank his left hand moved the transmitting switch from "On" to "Off", the whirring of the call-up blanketing the sound. Smith cranked away diligently at intervals, stopping from time to time to make minute adjustments to the controls, then finally gave up and sat back, shaking his head in disgust.
"You"ll never make it with all those trees around," Torrance-Smythe observed.
That must be it," Smith agreed. "I"ll try the other side of the wood. Might have better luck there."
He slung the transmitter over his shoulder and trudged off through the deep snow, cutting straight across to the other side of the belt of pines. When he thought he was safely out of eyeshot of the men at the camp, he checked with a quick look over his shoulder. They were out of sight. He turned more than ninety degrees left and hurried up the hill until he cut the tracks that he and his men had made on the way down. He followed the tracks uphill, whistling "Lorelei", but whistling softly: in that frosty air, sound travelled dangerously far. He stopped whistling when Mary appeared from where she had been hiding behind a fallen pine.
"Hallo, darling," she said brightly.
"We"ll have less of the "darlings"," Smith said briskly. "It"s 8 a.m. Father Machree awaits. And keep your voice down."
He sat on the fallen tree, cranked the handle and established contact almost immediately. The transmission from London was still very faint but clearer than it had been in the earlier hours of the morning.
"Father Machree is waiting," the radio crackled. "Hold. Hold."
Smith held and the unmistakable voice of Admiral Rolland took over from the London operator.
"Position please, Broadsword."
Smith consulted the piece of paper in his hand, again in code and plain language. The message read : WOODS DUE WEST CASTLE DESCENDING W.H. THIS EVENING. Smith read out the corresponding code letters.
There was a pause, presumably while Rolland was having the message decoded, then his voice came again.
"Understood. Proceed. Harrod killed accidentally?"
"No. Over."
"By the enemy? Over."
"No. What is the weather report? Over."
"Deteriorating. Freshening winds, strong later. Snow. Over."
Smith looked up at the still and cloudless sky above. He a.s.sumed that Holland hadn"t got his forecasts mixed up. He said: "Time of next broadcast uncertain. Can you stand by? Over."
"Am remaining H.Q. until operation complete," Holland said. "Good luck. Good-bye."
Smith closed up the radio and said thoughtfully to Mary: "I didn"t much care for the way he said good-bye there."
In the Naval Operations room in Whitehall, Admiral Holland and Colonel Wyatt-Turner, one on either side of the radio operator manning a huge transceiver, looked at each other with heavy faces.
"So the poor devil was murdered," Wyatt-Turner said flatly.
"A high price to pay for confirmation that we were right," Holland said sombrely. "Poor devil, as you say. The moment we gave him that radio to carry we signed a death-warrant. I wonder who"s next. Smith himself?"
"Not Smith." Wyatt-Turner shook his head positively. "Some people have a sixth sense. Smith has a seventh, eighth and ninth and a built-in radar set for danger. Smith can survive under any circ.u.mstances I can conceive of. I didn"t pick him with a pin, sir. He"s the best agent in Europe."
"Except possibly yourself. And don"t forget, Colonel, there may possibly be circ.u.mstances that even you can"t conceive of."
"Yes, that"s so." He looked directly at Holland. "What do you reckon his chances are, sir?"