Where Eagles Dare

Two hundred yards from the tent, after having stopped twice and changed direction twice, Smith knelt with his back--and the rubber ground-sheet--to the drifting snow. He extended a fourteen feet telescopic aerial, adjusted a preselected call-up and cranked a handle. Four times he cranked the handle and on the fifth he got results. Someone was keeping a very close radio watch indeed.

'This is Danny Boy,' the set speaker crackled. The signal was faint and intermittent, but just comprehensible. 'Danny Boy replying to you. Over.'

Smith spoke into the mouth microphone. "This is Broadsword. Can I speak to Father Machree or Mother Machree? Over.'

'Sorry. Unavailable. Over.'

'Code,' Smith said. 'Over.'

'Ready.'

Smith extracted the paper from his pocket and shone his torch on it. There were two lines containing meaningless jumbles of letters and, below that, the plain language translation, which read: 'SAFE LANDING HARROD DEAD WEATHER FINE PLEASE AWAIT MESSAGE O8OO G.M.T. Smith read off the corresponding code figures and finished off: 'Have that delivered to Father Machree by 0700. Without fail.'

Torrance-Smythe looked up at Smith's return.

'Not a chance,' Smith said disgustedly. 'Too many bloody mountains around.'

'Didn't try for very long, did you?'

'Two and a half minutes.' It was Smith's turn to look surprised. 'Surely you know that's the safe maximum?'

'You think there may be radio monitoring stations hereabouts?'

'Oh, no, not at all.' Smith's voice was heavy with sarcasm. 'You wouldn't expect to find radio monitors in the Schloss Adler, would you now?'

"Well, now.' Torrance-Smythe smiled tiredly. 'I believe someone did mention it was the southern H.Q. of the German Secret Service. Sorry, Major. It's not that I'm growing old, though there's that, too. It's just that what passes for my mind is so gummed up by cold and lack of sleep that I think it's stopped altogether.'

Smith pulled off his boots and snow-suit, climbed into his sleeping bag and pulled the radio close to him.

'Then it's time you had some sleep. My explosives expert is going to be no good to me if he can't tell a detonator from a door-knob. Go on. Turn in. I'll keep watch.'

'But we had arranged--'

'Arguments, arguments,' Smith sighed. 'Insubordination on every hand.' He smiled. 'Straight up, Smithy, I'm wide awake. I know I won't sleep tonight."

The pre-dawn greyness was in the sky. Smith and his men had broken camp. Tent and sleeping bags were stored away and the cooking utensils--after a very sketchy breakfast scarcely deserving of the name--were being thrust into haversacks. There was no conversation, none at all: it wasn't a morning for speaking. All of them, Smith thought, looked more drawn, more exhausted, than they had done three hours ago: he wondered how he himself, who had had no sleep at all, must look. It was as well, he reflected, that mirrors were not part of their commando equipment. He looked at his watch.

'We'll leave in ten minutes,' he announced. 'Should give us plenty of time to be down in the tree line before sun-up. Assuming there are no more cliffs. Back in a moment. Visibility is improving and I think I'll go recce along the cliff edge. With any luck, maybe I can see the best way down.'

'And if you haven't any luck?' Carraciola asked sourly.

'We've still that thousand feet of nylon rope,' Smith -said shortly.

He pulled on his snow-suit and left, angling off in the direction of the cliff. As'' soon as he was beyond the belt of the scrub pines and out of sight of the camp he changed direction uphill and broke into a run.

A single eye appeared under a lifted corner of snow-covered canvas as Mary Ellison heard the soft crunch of running footsteps in the snow. She heard the first two bars of a tuneless whistling of 'Lorelei', unzipped her sleeping bag and sat up. Smith was standing above her.

'Not already!' she said protestingly.

'Yes already. Come on. Up!'

'Neither have I. I've been watching that damned radio all night--and watching to check that no somnambulists took a stroll in this direction.'

'You kept awake. You did that for me?'

'I kept awake. We're off. Start in five minutes. Leave your tent and kit-bag here, you won't be requiring them again. Take some food, something to drink, that's all. And for God's sake, don't get too close to us.' He glanced at his watch. 'We'll stop at7 a.m. Check your watch. Exactly7 a.m. And don't bump into us.'

'What do you think I am?' But Smith didn't tell her what he thought she was. He had already gone.

A thousand feet farther down the side of the Weissspitze the trees were something worth calling trees, towering conifers that soared sixty and seventy feet up into the sky. Into the dear sky, for the snow had stopped falling now. It was dawn.