Where Eagles Dare

“Kinda forgot this, didn't you?” Schaffer had returned and was bearing with him the large CO2 cylinder. He crossed to the window. “Gardyloo or mind your heads or whatever the saying is.”

The cylinder disappeared through the open window. The room was already so furiously ablaze that Schaffer had difficulty in finding his way back to the door again. As he stumbled out, his clothes and hair singed and face smoke-blackened, a deep-toned bell far down in the depths of the Schloss Adler began to ring with a strident urgency. “For God's sake, what next,” Schaffer said in despair. “The fire brigade?”

“Just about,” Smith said bitterly. “Damn it, why couldn't I have checked first? Now they know where we are.”

“A heat-sensing device linked to an indicator?”

“What else? Come on.”

They ran along the central passage-way, driving the prisoners in front of them, dropped down a central flight of stairs and were making for the next when they heard the shouting of voices and the clattering of feet on treads as soldiers came running up from the castle courtyard.

“Quickly! In behind there!” Smith pointed to a curtained alcove. “Hurry up! Oh, God—I've forgotten something!” He turned and ran back the way he had come.

“Where the hell has he—” Schaffer broke off as he realised the approaching men were almost upon them, whirled and jabbed the nearest prisoner painfully with the muzzle of his Schmeisser. “In that alcove. Fast.” In the dim light behind the curtains he changed his machine-pistol for the silenced Luger. “Don't even think of touching those curtains. With the racket that bell's making, they won't even hear you die.”

Nobody touched the curtains. Jack-booted men, gasping heavily for breath, passed by within feet of them. They clattered furiously up the next flight of stairs, the one Smith and the others had just descended, and then the footsteps stopped abruptly. From the next shouted words it was obvious that they had just caught sight of the fire and had abruptly and for the first time realised the magnitude of the task they had to cope with.

“Emergency! Sergeant, get on that phone!” It was the voice of the Oberleutnant who had led the break-in to the radio room. “Fire detail at the double! Hoses, more CO2 cylinders. Where in God's name is Colonel Kramer. Corporal! Find Colonel Kramer at once.”

The corporal didn't answer, the sound of jutting heels striking the treads as he raced down the stairs was answer enough. He ran by the alcove and ran down the next flight of stairs until the sound of his footfalls was lost in the metallic clamour of the alarm bell. Schaffer risked a peep through a crack in the curtains just as Smith came running up on tiptoe.

“Where the hell have you been?” Schaffer's voice was low and fierce.

“Come on, come on! Out of it!” Smith said urgently. “No, Jones, not down that flight of stairs, you want to meet a whole regiment of Alpenkorps coming up it? Along the passage to the west wing. We'll use the side stairs. For God's sake, hurry. This place will be like Piccadilly Circus in a matter of seconds.”

Schaffer pounded along the passage beside Smith and when he spoke again the anxiety-born fierceness of tone had a certain plaintive equality to it. “Well, where the bloody hell have you been?”

“The man we left tied up in the room beside the telephone exchange. The Records Office is directly above. I just remembered. I cut him free and dragged him out to the passage. He'd have burnt to death.”

“You did that, did you?” Schaffer said wonderingly. “You do think of the most goddamned unimportant things, don't you?”

“It's a point of view. Our friend lying in the passage back there wouldn't share your sentiments. Right, down those stairs and straight ahead. Mary, you know the door.”

Mary knew the door. Fifteen paces from the foot of the stairs she stopped. Smith spared a glance through the passage window on his left. Already smoke and flame were snowing through the windows and embrasures in the north-east tower of the castle. In the courtyard below, dozens of soldiers were running around, most of them without what appeared to be any great sense of purpose or direction. One man there wasn't running. He was the overalled helicopter pilot and he was standing very still indeed, bent low over the engine. As Smith watched he slowly straightened, lifted his right arm and shook his fist in the direction of the burning tower.

Smith turned away and said to Mary: “Sure this is the room? Two stories below the window we came in?”

Mary nodded. “No question. This is it.”

Smith tried the door handle: the room was locked. The time for skeleton keys and such-like finesse was gone: he placed the barrel of his Luger against the lock.