Where Eagles Dare

“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 Hitler quite well.”

“Well, I'll be damned.” 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 assumed that Rolland 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,” Rolland 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 Rolland 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,” Rolland 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 circumstances 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 circumstances that even you can't conceive of.”

“Yes, that's so.” He looked directly at Rolland. “What do you reckon his chances are, sir?”

“Chances?” Rolland's eyes were remote, unseeing. “What do you mean, chances? He doesn't have any.”