Where Eagles Dare

'At once, my dear Colonel?' The look he gave Heidi was as glacial as the Colonel's voice. 'Surely not. Let's get our priorities straight. First, her thirty pieces of silver. Then us.'

'You talk like a fool,' Colonel Weissner said contemptuously. 'Heidi is a true patriot.'

'I'm sure she is,' Smith said bitterly.

Mary, her face still and shocked, stared down from the uncurtained crack in Heidi's dark room as Smith and the four others were led out of the front door of 'Zum Wilden Hirsch' and marched off down the road under heavy escort to where several command cars were parked on the far side of the street. Brusquely, efficiently, the prisoners were bundled into two of the cars, engines started up and within a minute both cars were lost to sight round a bend in the road. For almost a minute afterwards Mary stood there, staring out unseeingly on the swirling snow, then pulled the curtains together and turned back

She said in a whisper: 'How did it happen?'

A match scratched as Heidi lit and turned up the flame of the oil lamp.

'I can't guess.' Heidi shrugged. 'Someone, I don't know

Where Eagles Dare

who, must have tipped Colonel Weissner off. But I put i- finger on him."

Mary stared at her. 'You--you--'

'He'd have been found out in another minute anyway. They were strangers. But it strengthens our hand. I--and you--are now above suspicion.'

'Above suspicion!' Mary looked at her in disbelief then went on, almost wildly: 'But there's no point in going ahead now!'

'Is there not?' Heidi said thoughtfully. 'Somehow, I feel sorrier for Colonel Weissner than I do for Major Smith. Is not our Major Smith a man of resource? Or do our employers in Whitehall lie to us? When they told me he was coming here, they told me not to worry, to trust him implicitly. A man of infinite resource--those were their exact words--who can extricate himself from positions of utmost difficulty. They have a funny way of talking in Whitehall. But already I trust him. Don't you?'

There was no reply. Mary stared at the floor, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Heidi touched her arm and said softly, 'You love him as much as that?'

'And does he love you?'

'I don't know. I just don't know. He's been too long in this business--even if he did know,' she said bitterly, 'he probably wouldn't tell himself.'

Heidi looked at her for a moment, shook her head and said: "They should never have sent you. How can you hope to--' She broke off, shook her head again, and went on: 'It's too late now. Come on. We mustn't keep von Brauchitsch waiting.'

'But--but if he doesn't come? If he can't escape--and how can he escape?' She gestured despairingly at the papers lying on the bed. They're bound to check with Dusseldorf first thing in the morning about those forged references.'

Heidi said without any particular expression in her voice: 'I don't think he'd let you down, Mary.'

'No,' Mary said dolefully. 'I don't suppose he would.'

The big black Mercedes command car swept along the snow packed road that paralleled the Blau See, the windscreen wipers just coping with the thickly-swirling snow that rushed greyly back at the windscreen through powerful headlight beams. It was an expensive car and a very comfortable one, but neither Schaffer up front nor Smith in the rear seat experienced any degree of comfort whatsoever, either mental or physical. On the mental side there was the bitter prospect of the inevitable firing squad and the knowledge that their mission was over even before it had properly begun: on the physical side they were cramped in the middle of their seats, Schaffer flanked by driver and guard, Smith by Colonel Weissner and guard, and both Smith and Schaffer were suffering from pain in the lower ribs: the owners of the Schmeisser machine-pistols, the muzzles of which were grinding into the captives' sides, had no compunction about letting their presence be known.

They were now, Smith estimated, half-way between village and barracks. Another thirty seconds and they would be through the barrack gates. Thirty seconds. No more.

Colonel Weissner, startled, turned and stared at him. Smith ignored him completely. His face reflected an intensely frowning concentration, a thin-lipped anger barely under control, the face of a man to whom the thought of disobedience of his curt instruction was unthinkable: most certainly not the face of a man going to captivity and death. Weissner hesitated, but only fractionally. He gave an order and the big car began to slow.

'You oaf! You utter idiot!' Smith's tone, shaking with anger, was low and vicious, so low that only Weissner could hear it. 'You've almost certainly ruined everything and, by God, if you have, Weissner, you'll be without a regiment tomorrow !'

The car pulled into the roadside and stopped. Ahead, the red tail lights of the command car in front vanished into a snow-filled darkness. Weissner said brusquely, but with a barely perceptible tremor of agitation in his voice: 'What the devil are you talking about?'