Where Eagles Dare

The cable-car swayed more alarmingly than ever. It had now entered upon the last near-vertical lap of its journey. With von Brauchitsch's arm still around her shoulders, with her face still pressed against the front windows of the car, Mary stared up at the towering battlements, white as the driving snow, and thought that they reached up almost to the clouds themselves. As she watched, a break came in the wisping clouds and the whole fairy-tale castle was bathed in bright moonlight. Fear touched her eyes, she moistened her lips and gave an involuntary shiver. Nothing escaped von Brauchitsch's acute perception. He gave her shoulders another reassuring squeeze, perhaps the twentieth in that brief journey. “Not to worry, Fraulein. It will be all right.” “I hope so.” Her voice was the ghost of a whisper.

The same unexpected moonlight almost caught Smith and Schaffer. They had just crossed the station tracks and were moving stealthily along towards the left luggage office when the moon broke through. But they were still in the shadows of the over-hanging station roof. They pressed back into those shadows and peered along the tracks, past the hydraulic bumpers which marked the end of the line. Clearly now, sharply-limned as if in full daylight, red etched against the white, they could see one cable-car approaching the lower station, the other climbing the last few vertical feet towards the header station and, above that, the dazzling outline of the Schloss Adler glittering under the bright moon.

“That helps,” Schaffer said bitterly. “That helps a lot.”

“Sky's still full of clouds,” Smith said mildly. He bent to the keyhole of the left luggage office, used his skeleton keys and moved inside. Schaffer followed, closing the door.

Smith located their rucksacks, cut a length of rope from the nylon, wrapped it round his waist and began stuffing some hand grenades and plastic explosives into a canvas bag. He raised his head as Schaffer diffidently cleared his throat.

“Boss?” This with an apprehensive glance through the window.

“huh-huh?”

“Boss, has it occurred to you that Colonel Weissner probably knows all about this cache by this time? What I mean is, we may have company soon.”

“We may indeed,” Smith admitted. “Surprised if we don't have. That's why I've cut this itsy-bitsy piece of rope off the big coil and why I'm taking the explosives and grenades only from my rucksack and yours. It's a very big coil—and no one knows what's inside our rucksacks. So it's unlikely that anything will be missed.”

“But the radio—”

“If we broadcast from here we might be caught in the act. If we take it away and they find it gone they'll know that that car at the bottom of the Blau See is empty. Is that it?”

“More or less.”

“So we compromise. We remove it, but we return it here after we've broadcast from a safe place.”

“What do you mean ‘safe place’,” Schaffer demanded plaintively. The darkly saturnine face was unhappy. “There isn't a safe place in Bavaria.”

“There's one not twenty yards away. Last place they'd look.” He tossed Schaffer a bunch of skeleton keys. “Ever been inside a Bavarian ladies' cloakroom?”

Schaffer fielded the keys, stared at Smith, shook his head and left. Quickly he moved down the tracks, his torch flashing briefly on and off. Finally his torch settled on a doorway with, above it, the legend DAMEN.

Schaffer looked at it, pursed his lips, shrugged his shoulders and got to work on the lock.

Slowly, with apparently infinite labour, the cable-car completed the last few feet of its ascent and passed in under the roof of the Schloss Adler header station. It juddered to a halt, the front door opened and the passengers disembarked. They moved from the header station—built into the north-west base of the castle—up through a steeply-climbing twenty-five foot tunnel which had heavy iron doors and guards at either end. Passing the top gateway, they emerged into the courtyard, the entrance of which was sealed off by a massively-barred iron gate guarded by heavily armed soldiers and Doberman pinchers. The courtyard itself was brightly illuminated by the light of dozens of uncurtained interior windows. In the very centre of the courtyard stood the helicopter which had that morning brought Reichsmarschall Rosemeyer to the Schloss Adler. Under the cover of a heavy tarpaulin—momentarily unnecessary because of the cessation of the snow—a dungareed figure, possibly the pilot, worked on the helicopter engine with the aid of a small but powerful arc-lamp.

Mary turned to von Brauchitsch, still holding a proprietary grip on her arm, and smiled ruefully.

“So many soldiers. So many men—and, I'm sure, so few women. What happens if I want to escape from the licentious soldiery?”

“Easy.” Von Brauchitsch really did have, Mary thought dully, a most charming smile. “Just jump from your bedroom window. One hundred metres straight down and there you are. Free!”