Where Eagles Dare Part 28

'I know how to deal with cheap little spies like her!' She turned to Mary and said: 'I'm afraid they don't like watching how I get results. In there!'

She caught Mary by the hair, pulled her to the side door, opened it and pushed her violently inside. The sound of her body crashing to the floor and another gasp of pain came together. Anne-Marie closed the door behind them.

For the next ten seconds or so there could be clearly heard the sound of blows and m.u.f.fled cries of pain. Von Brauchitsch waved Smith and Schaffer back with his gun, advanced, hitched a seat on the edge of one of the big arm-chairs, winced as he listened to the sound of the struggle and said to Kramer dryly: 'I somehow think the young lady would have preferred me to search her. There's a limit to the value of false modesty.'

'I'm afraid Anne-Marie sometimes lets her enthusiasm carry her away,' Kramer conceded. His mouth was wrinkled in distaste.

'Sometimes?' Von Brauchitsch winced again as more sounds filtered through the door, the crash of a body against a wall, a shriek of pain, low sobbing moans, then silence. 'Always. When the other girl is as young and beautiful as herself.'

'It's over now,' Kramer sighed. 'It's all over now.' He looked at Smith and Schaffer. 'We'll fix that hand first, then -- well, one thing about the Schloss Adler, there are no shortage of dungeons.' He broke off, the fractional widening of his eyes matching a similar slumping of his shoulders, and he said carefully to von Brauchitsch: 'You are far too good a man to lose, Captain. It would seem that we were wasting our sympathy on the wrong person. There's a gun four feet from you pointing at the middle of your back.'

Von Brauchitsch, his gun-hand resting helplessly on his thigh, turned slowly round and looked over his shoulder. There was indeed a gun pointing at the middle of his back, a Lilliput.21 automatic, and the hand that held it was disconcertingly steady, the dark eyes cool and very watchful. Apart from the small trickle of blood from her cut lip and rather dishevelled hair, Mary looked singularly little the worse for wear.

'It's every parent's duty,' Schaffer said pontifically, 'to encourage his daughter to take up Judo.' He took the gun from von Brauchitsch's unresisting hand, retrieved his own Schmeisser, walked across to the main door and locked it. 'Far too many folk coming in here without knocking.' On his way back he looked through the opened door of the room, whistled, grinned and said to Mary: 'It's a good job I have my thoughts set on someone else. I wouldn't like to be married to you if you lost your temper. That's a regular sickbay dispensary in there. Fix the Major's hand as best you can. I'll watch them.' He hoisted his Schmeisser and smiled almost blissfully: 'Oh, brother, how I'll watch them.'

And he watched them. While Mary attended to Smith's injured hand in the small room where Anne-Marie had so lately met her Waterloo, Schaffer herded his six charges into one of the ma.s.sive couches, took up position by the mantelpiece, poured himself some brandy, sipped it delicately and gave the prisoners an encouraging smile from time to time. There were no answering smiles. For all Schaffer's nonchalance and light-hearted banter there was about him not only a coldly discouraging competence with the weapon in his hand but also the unmistakable air of one who would, when the need arose and without a second's hesitation, squeeze the trigger and keep on squeezing it. Being at the wrong end of a Schmeisser machine-pistol does not make for an easy cordiality in relationships.

Smith and Mary emerged from the side room, the latter carrying a cloth-covered tray. Smith was pale and had his right hand heavily bandaged. Schaffer looked at the hand then lifted an enquiring eyebrow to Mary.

'Not so good.' She looked a little pale herself. 'Forefinger and thumb are both smashed. I've patched it as best I can but I'm afraid it's a job for a surgeon.'

'If I can survive Mary's first aid,' Smith said philosophically, 'I can survive anything. We have a more immediate little problem here.' He tapped his tunic. 'Those names and addresses here. Might be an hour or two before we get them through to England and then another hour or two before those men can be rounded up.' He looked at the men seated on the couch. 'You could get through to them in a lot less than that and warn them. So we have to ensure your silence for a few hours.'

'We could ensure it for ever, boss,' Schaffer said carelessly.

"That won't be necessary. As you said yourself, it's a regular little dispensary in there.' He removed the tray cloth to show bottles and hypodermic syringes. He held up a bottle in his left hand. 'Nembutal. You'll hardly feel the p.r.i.c.k.' Kramer stared at him. 'Nembutal? I'll be d.a.m.ned if I do.' Smith said in a tone of utter conviction: 'You'll be dead if you don't.'

Smith halted outside the door marked RADIO RAUM, held up his hand for silence, looked at the three scowling captives and said: 'Don't even think of tipping anyone off or raising the alarm. I'm not all that keen on taking you back to England. Lieutenant Schaffer, I think we might immobilise those men a bit more.'

'We might at that,' Schaffer agreed. He went behind each of the three men in turn, ripped open the top b.u.t.tons on their tunics and pulled the tunics down their backs until their sleeves reached their elbows and said in the same soft voice: 'That'll keep' their hands out of trouble for a little.'

'But not their feet. Don't let them come anywhere near you,' Smith said to Mary. "They've nothing to lose. Right, Lieutenant, when you're ready.'

'Ready now.' Carefully, silently, Schaffer eased open the door of the radio room. It was a large, well-lit, but very bleak room, the two main items of furniture being a ma.s.sive table by the window on the far wall and, on the table, an almost equally ma.s.sive transceiver in gleaming metal: apart from two chairs and a filing cabinet the room held nothing else, not even as much as a carpet to cover the floorboards.

Perhaps it was the lack of a carpet that betrayed them. For the first half of Schaffer's stealthy advance across the room the operator, his back to them, sat smoking a cigarette in idle unconcern, listening to soft Austrian Schrammel music coming in over his big machine: suddenly, alerted either by the faintest whisper of sound from a creaking floorboard or just by some sixth sense, he whirled round and jumped to his feet. And he thought as quickly as he moved. Even as he raised his arms high in apparently eager surrender, he appeared to move slightly to his right, shifting the position of his right foot. There came the sudden strident clamour of an alarm bell ringing in the pa.s.sage outside, Schaffer leapt forward, his Schmeisser swinging, and the operator staggered back against his transceiver then slid unconscious to the floor. But Schaffer was too late. The bell rang and kept on ringing.

"That's all I need!' Smith swore bitterly. "That's all I b.l.o.o.d.y well need.' He ran through the radio room door out into the pa.s.sage, located the gla.s.s-cased alarm bell some feet away and struck it viciously with the b.u.t.t of his Schmeisser. The shattered gla.s.s tinkled to the floor and the clangour abruptly ceased.

'Inside!' Smith gestured to the open doorway of the radio room. 'All of you. Quickly.' He ushered them all inside, looked around, saw a side door leading off to the right and said to Mary: "Quickly. What's in there? Schaffer!'

'Horatio hold the bridge,' Schaffer murmured. He moved across and took up position at the radio room door. 'We could have done without this, boss.'

'We could do without a lot of things in this world,' Smith said wearily. He glanced at Mary. 'Well?'

'Storage rooms for radio spares, looks like.'

'You and Jones take those three in there. If they breathe, kill them.'

Jones looked down at the gun held gingerly in his hand and said: 'I am not a serviceman, sir.'

'I have news for you," Smith said. 'Neither am I.'

He crossed hurriedly to the transceiver, sat down and studied the confusing array of dials, k.n.o.bs and switches. For fully twenty seconds he sat there, just looking.

Schaffer said from the doorway: 'Know how to work it, boss?'

'A fine time to ask me,' Smith said. 'We'll soon find out, won't we?' He switched the machine to 'Send', selected the ultra short wave band and lined up his transmitting frequency. He opened another switch and picked up a microphone.

'Broadsword calling Danny Boy,' he said. 'Broadsword calling Danny Boy. Can you hear me? Can you hear me?'

n.o.body heard him or gave indication of hearing him. Smith altered the transmitting frequency fractionally and tried again. And again. And again. After the sixth or seventh repet.i.tion, Smith started as a crash of machine-pistol fire came from the doorway. He twisted round. Schaffer was stretched full length on the floor, smoke wisping from the barrel of his Schmeisser.

'We got callers, boss,' Schaffer said apologetically. 'Don't think I got any but I sure as h.e.l.l started their adrenalin moving around.'

'Broadsword calling Danny Boy,' Smith said urgently, insistently. 'Broadsword calling Danny Boy. For G.o.d's sake, why don't they answer?'

'They can't come round the corner of the pa.s.sage without being sawn in half.' Schaffer spoke comfortably from his uncomfortable horizontal position on the floor. 'I can hold them off to Christmas. So what's the hurry?'

'Broadsword calling Danny Boy. Broadsword calling Danny Boy. How long do you think it's going to be before someone cuts the electricity?'

'For G.o.d's sake, Danny Boy,' Schaffer implored. 'Why don't you answer? Why don't you answer?'

'Danny Boy calling Broadsword.' The voice on the radio was calm and loud and clear, so free from interference that it might have come from next door. 'Danny Boy -- '

'One hour, Danny Boy,' Smith interrupted. 'One hour. Understood? Over.'

'Understood. You have it, Broadsword?' The voice was unmistakably that of Admiral Holland's. 'Over.'

'I have it,' Smith said. 'I have it all.'

'All sins are forgiven. Mother Machree coming to meet you. Leaving now.'

There came another staccato crash of sound as Schaffer loosed.off another burst from his Schmeisser. Admiral Holland's voice on the radio said: 'What was that?'

'Static,' Smith said. He didn't bother to switch off. He rose, took three paces back and fired a two-second burst from his machine-pistol, his face twisting in pain as the recoil slammed into his shattered hand. No one would ever use that particular radio again. He, glanced briefly at Schaffer, but only briefly: the American's face, though thoughtful, was calm and unworried: there were those who might require helpful words, encouragement and rea.s.surance, but Schaffer was not one of them. Smith moved swiftly across to the window and lifted the lower sash with his left hand.

The moon was almost obscured behind some darkly drifting cloud. A thin weak light filtered down into the half-seen obscurity of the valley below. Once again the snow was beginning to fall, gently. The air was taut, brittle, in the intensity of its coldness, an Arctic chill that bit to the bone. The icy wind that gusted through the room could have come off the polar ice-cap. ,

They were on the east side of the castle, Smith realised, the side remote from the cable-car header station. The base of the volcanic plug was shrouded in a gloom so deep that it was impossible to be sure whether or not the guards and Dobermanns were patrolling down there: and, for the purposes of present survival, it didn't really matter. Smith withdrew from the window, pulled the nylon from the kit-bag, tied one end securely to the metal leg of the radio table, threw the remainder of the rope out into the night then, with his left hand, thoroughly scuffed and rubbed away the frozen encrusted snow on both the window-sill and for two or three feet beneath it: it would, he thought, have to be a hypercritical eye that didn't immediately register the impression that u there had been fairly heavy and recent traffic over the sill. He wondered, vaguely, whether the rope reached as far as the ground and dismissed the thought as soon as it had occurred to him: again, it didn't really matter.

He crossed the room to where Schaffer lay spread-eagled in the doorway. The key was in the lock on the inside of the door and the lock, he observed with satisfaction, was on the same ma.s.sive scale as everything else in the Schloss Adler. He said to Schaffer: 'Time to close the door.'

'Let's wait till they show face again then discourage them some more,' Schaffer suggested. 'It's been a couple of minutes since the last lad peeked his head round the corner there.

Another peek, another salvo from Schaffer and it might give us another couple of minutes' grace -- enough time to make it feasible for us to have shinned down that little rope there and made our getaway.'

'I should have thought of that.' An icy snow-laden gust of wind blew across the room, from open window through open door, and Smith shivered. 'My G.o.d, it's bitter!'