Where Eagles Dare

by Alistair MacLean

On balance, he reflected, he would have gone for the Siberian boiler factory any time because, whatever its drawbacks, it wasn’t liable to fall out of the sky or crash into a mountainside which, in his present circumstances, seemed a likely enough, if not imminent contingency for all that the pilot of their Lancaster bomber appeared to care to the contrary.

‘It is no small thing, Major, to be lost in a blizzard in the night skies over war-torn Europe.’ ‘Not again, sir,’ Tremayne said protestingly. ‘No man is infallible, my son.’ Smith smiled politely. ‘You mean you don’t know where we are, sir?’ ‘How should I?’ Carpenter slid down in his seat, half-closed his eyes and yawned vastly. ‘I’m only the driver. We have a navigator and the navigator has a radar set and I’ve no faith in either of them.’

A second glance at his watch and a heavy frown. ‘Flying Officer Tremayne, your gross dereliction of duty is endangering the entire mission.’ ‘Sir?’ An even deeper apprehension in Tremayne’s face. ‘I should have had my coffee exactly three minutes ago.’ ‘Yes, sir. Right away, sir.’

‘I see,’ Smith said weakly. ‘But—but don’t the Swiss object?’ ‘Frequently, sir. Their complaints always seem to coincide with the nights we’re around those parts. Wing Commander Carpenter claims it’s some ill-intentioned Luftwaffe pilot trying to discredit him.’

The Lancaster lurched as it hit an infrequent air pocket, Smith grabbed a rail to steady himself and Lieutenant Morris Schaffer, of the American Office of Strategic Services and Smith’s second-in-command, cursed fluently as the better part of a cup of scalding coffee emptied itself over his thigh. ‘That’s all I need,’ he said bitterly. ‘I’ve no morale left. I wish to God we would crash-land in Switzerland. Think of all those lovely Wiener-schnitzels and Apfelstrudels. After a couple of years living among you Limeys, Spam and powdered eggs and an ounce of margarine a day, that’s what Mama Schaffer’s little boy requires. Building up.’

‘Or take George here.’ Carraciola jerked a thumb in the direction of the last member of the party, George Harrod, a stocky army sergeant radio-operator with an expression of profound resignation on his face. ‘I’ll bet he’s never as much as made a parachute jump in his life before.’ ‘I have news for you,’ Harrod said stoically. ‘I’ve never even been in a plane before.’

‘You’ll have to get fit fast, won’t you?’ Wyatt-Turner said coldly. ‘Besides, what matters most is, that with the exception of Major Smith, you all have an extensive knowledge of Western Europe. You all speak fluent German. You’ll find your combat training—on the level you’ll be engaged in—as relevant today as it was five years ago. You are men with exceptional records of resourcefulness, ability and ingenuity. If anyone has a chance, you have. You’re all volunteers, of course.’

Admiral Rolland always spoke gently. When you wielded the almost incredible range of power that he did, you didn’t have to talk loudly to make yourself heard.

Inside the fuselage, the red lamp still burned. The sergeant air-gunner’s hand fell on Harrod’s shoulder in an encouraging gesture. It took Harrod all of three seconds to free himself from his thrall-like fixation with that starboard wing-tip and take a half step back inside. He reached up and firmly removed the sergeant’s hand. ‘Don’t shove, mate.’ He had to shout to make himself heard. ‘If I’m to commit suicide, let me do it in the old-fashioned way. By my own hand.’ He again took up position by the open door.

‘That’s the trouble with you Celts,’ Schaffer said reprovingly. ‘No faith in anyone. There is no cause for alarm. Your life is in the safe hands of Schaffer and Christiansen. Not to worry.’ ‘What else do you think I’m worrying about?’ ‘If we all start sliding,’ Schaffer said encouragingly, ’we won’t let you go until the last possible minute.’

‘Wait till you try his coffee,’ Smith advised, ‘and you’ll be wondering what you were complaining about.’

‘What now?’ In spite of herself Mary was watching again, in reluctant and horrified fascination. ‘What are you looking for now?’ ‘A rock,’ Smith said briefly. There was a cold edge to the words and although Mary knew it wasn’t intended for her, it was an effective discouragement to any further questioning.

‘Then it’s time you had some sleep. My explosives expert is going to be no good to me if he can’t tell a detonator from a door-knob. Go on. Turn in. I’ll keep watch.’ ‘But we had arranged—’ ‘Arguments, arguments,’ Smith sighed. ‘Insubordination on every hand.’ He smiled. ‘Straight up, Smithy, I’m wide awake. I know I won’t sleep tonight.’ One downright lie, Smith thought, and one statement of incontrovertible truth. He wasn’t wide awake, he was physically and mentally exhausted and on the slightest relaxation of will-power oblivion would have overtaken him in seconds. But that he wouldn’t sleep that night was beyond doubt: no power on earth would have let him sleep that night but, in the circumstances, it was perhaps wiser not to say so to Torrance-Smythe.

The castle itself was another dream, the dream of the apotheosis of medievalism. This dream, Smith was aware, was as illusory as the golden age of its setting. It wasn’t medieval at all, it had been built as late as the mid-nineteenth century to the express order of one of the madder of the Bavarian monarchs who had suffered from a comprehensive list of delusions, of which grandeur had not been the least. But, delusions or not, he had had, as the deluded so often have—to the dismay and consternation of their allegedly saner brethren—impeccable taste. The castle was perfect for the valley, the valley for the castle. Any other combination would have been inconceivable.

‘Boss,’ he said diffidently, ‘there are a couple of minor points that occur to me. Requiring elucidation, one might say. First of all, if I didn’t know better I’d say that was a military barracks down by that little old lake there.’ ‘You don’t know better. That is a military barracks down by that little old lake there. And no ordinary military barracks either, I might say. That’s the training HQ of the Jäger battalions of the Wehrmacht’s Alpenkorps.’ ‘Oh, my gosh! The Alpine Corps! If I’d known this I’d never have come along. The Alpine Corps! Why didn’t someone tell Ma Schaffer’s nearest and dearest?’ ‘I thought you knew,’ Smith said mildly. ‘Why do you think we’re not dressed as German sailors or Red Cross nurses?’ Schaffer unzipped his snow-smock, minutely examined his Alpenkorps uniform as if seeing it for the first time, then zipped it up again. He said carefully: ‘You mean to say we’re going to mingle, careless like, with the German Army.’ He paused, looked wide-eyed at Smith’s smiling nod, then went on incredulously: ‘But—but we’ll be recognized as strangers!’

‘This is terrible,’ Schaffer said, gloomily. ‘Worse than horses?’ Smith smiled. ‘After all, the Alpenkorps don’t buck and trample all over you.’ ‘Horses don’t carry machine-guns,’ Schaffer said morosely.

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

‘My, my,’ Smith murmured thoughtfully. ‘I see what you mean.’ ‘Those are Doberman pinschers, boss.’ ‘Well, they aren’t toy poodles and that’s a fact,’ Smith agreed.

‘And a dinky little fence.’ ‘Fences,’ Schaffer said pontifically, ‘are made to be cut or climbed.’ ‘You try cutting or climbing this one, laddie, and you’ll be cooked to a turn in nothing flat. A standard design, using a standard current of 2,300 volt, single-phase, 60 cycle AC. All the best electric chairs have it.’ Schaffer shook his head. ‘Amazing the lengths some folks will go to protect their privacy.’ ‘Fences, floods and Dobermans,’ Smith said. ‘I don’t think that combination will stop us, do you, Lieutenant?’ ‘Of course not. Stop us? Of course not!’

As the others followed, Schaffer paused in the doorway as Christiansen took his arm and said wonderingly: ‘You think he thinks this isn’t packed?’ ‘They must,’ Schaffer conceded, ‘have had them packed six deep in the other joints.’

Women are rare at any time in a high Alpine Gasthaus, unaccompanied young women even rarer and beautiful young women on their own virtually unknown.

‘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?’

‘You love him as much as that?’ Mary nodded in silence. ‘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.’

Schaffer, from his hiding-place behind the bole of a pine, looked thoughtfully at Smith. ‘I have to concede a point, boss, it’s perhaps as well we didn’t go straight back to the village. Cunning old devil, isn’t he?’ ‘And what does that make me?’ Smith murmured. ‘Okay, okay. I’ll concede that point, too.’

‘Not even a footprint, Herr Colonel.’ Weissner straightened and turned. ‘There wouldn’t be,’ he said sombrely. ‘I’ve just seen a hat floating in the water. A squalid end for such brave men, Sergeant. A squalid end.’

‘Never.’ Von Brauchitsch was reassurance itself. ‘Just hang on to me and you’ll be all right.’ ‘That’s what he used to say to me,’ Heidi said coldly. ‘Fräulein,’ von Brauchitsch explained patiently, ‘I am gifted beyond the average, but I haven’t yet managed to grow a third arm. Guests first.’

‘Oh God!’ Schaffer moaned. ‘Why can’t they leave us alone?’

‘This won’t look so good in my obituary,’ Schaffer said dolefully. There was a perceptible edge of strain under the lightly-spoken words. ‘What won’t?’ ‘Gave his life for his country in a ladies’ lavatory in Upper Bavaria. How can a man RIP with that on his mind?…What’s our friend outside saying?’ ‘If you shut up we might hear.’

Schaffer said: ‘They’re not going to be very pleased.’ ‘I shouldn’t think so.’ ‘What I mean is, they’re really going to go after us now. With everything they have. They’ve Doberman pinschers up at the castle and I’ve no doubt they have them at the camp too. They’ve only to bring them to the station, sniff our gear, have them circle the station, pick up our scent and that’s it. Smith and Schaffer torn to shreds. I’ll take on the Alpenkorps by numbers, but I draw the line at Doberman pinschers, boss.’ ‘I thought it was horses you were scared of?’ Smith said mildly. ‘Horses, Doberman pinschers, you name it, I’m scared of it. All it’s got to have is four feet.’ He looked gloomily at the burning station. ‘I’d make a rotten vet.’

The flames from the blazing station were now licking thirty, forty feet up in the air. ‘You gone and ruined a perfectly good station, you know that?’ ‘As you would say yourself,’ Smith reminded him, ‘it wasn’t our station to start with.

‘You heard?’ Mary said emptily. Her face was as drained of life as her voice. ‘I heard—and I don’t believe it.’ ‘Why should they lie?’ ‘They believe it.’ Heidi’s tone was impatient, almost rough. ‘It’s time you stopped loving and started thinking. The Major Smiths of this world don’t drive over cliff edges.’

‘The Major Smiths of this world don’t drive off cliff-tops,’ she said calmly. She paused, then stepped forward suddenly and gave each man a quick hug and kiss on the cheek. ‘But you had me a little worried there.’ ‘You just keep on worrying like that,’ Schaffer said. ‘No need to worry about him, though.’

‘Are you responsible for this?’ she asked. ‘It was a mistake,’ Smith explained. ‘Yeah. His hand slipped,’ Schaffer added. ‘You two should audition for a turn on vaudeville,’ Heidi said dryly.

‘You’re whistling in the dark, Lieutenant. And one last thing: your friends are being brought up to the castle any time now.’ ‘For interrogation?’ Smith asked. ‘I don’t expect they’ve been asked up for tea,’ she said acidly. ‘Fair enough,’ Smith nodded. ‘We’ll go up with them.’ ‘In the same car?’ The words didn’t question Smith’s sanity, but the tone and expression did. ‘Not “in”. With.’ Smith peered at his watch. ‘The post-bus in Sulz’s garage. Be there in eighty minutes. And oh!—bring a couple of crates of empty beer bottles.’ ‘Bring a couple of—oh, all right.’ She shook her head in conviction. ‘You’re both mad.’ ‘Shines through in our every word and gesture,’ Schaffer agreed, then, suddenly serious, added: ‘Say a prayer for us, honey.

‘There goes the future Mrs Schaffer,’ he announced. ‘Bit tetchy and snappy, perhaps.’ He pondered. ‘But funny, I thought she was near crying at the end there.’ ‘Maybe you’d be tetchy and snappy and tearful if you’d been through what she’s been in the past two and a half years,’ Smith said sourly. ‘Maybe she’d be less tetchy and tearful if she knew a bit more about what’s going on.’ ‘I haven’t the time to explain everything to everybody.’ ‘You can say that again. Devious, boss. That’s the word for you.’

Smith’s own thoughts were much more pragmatic and concerned solely with the immediate future.

When no other option offered there was no point in figuring the percentages,

He twisted his head upwards, but that was no improvement; the lights of the Schloss Adler careened wildly through the same dizzy arc: it was like being on a combination of a roller-coaster, big dipper and runaway Ferris wheel with the notable exception, Schaffer thought bleakly, that the coaster, dipper and Ferris wheel were provided with safety belts and other securing devices designed to prevent the occupant from parting company with his machine.

Schaffer looked away, screwed his eyes shut, lowered his head between his outstretched arms and moaned. ‘Still think the horse the world’s worst form of transport?’ Smith asked. His lips were close to Schaffer’s ear. ‘Give me my boots and saddle,’ Schaffer said, then, even more despairingly, ‘Oh, no! Not again!’

Indifference was a quality that was conspicuously lacking on top of the cable-car.

‘This is a knife I have, not an ice-axe,’ Smith said hoarsely. ‘Won’t take much more of this. Have you another knife?’ Schaffer shook his head. Momentarily, speech was beyond him. ‘Piton?’ The same shake of the head. ‘Your torch?’

‘Can I make it?’ Schaffer tested both knife and torch and smiled, a pretty strained effort, but his first for some time. ‘After what I’ve been through—well, ever seen a monkey go up a coconut palm tree?’

Schaffer, although the temperature was far below freezing, wiped his brow like a man in a heat-wave. ‘Brother!’ He mopped his brow some more. ‘If I can ever do you a favour, like lending you a carfare—’

Schaffer had never before gunned down an unsuspecting man, but he coldly prepared to do so now. He lined up the luminous sight on the man’s breast-bone and began to squeeze the trigger. The moon went behind a cloud. Slowly, stiffly, Schaffer lowered his gun. Schaffer, once again, wiped sweat from his forehead. He had the feeling that he wasn’t through with brow-mopping for the night.

She was still clinging to him, silent now, when Lieutenant Schaffer made his appearance, dragging himself wearily over the sill and collapsing on the iron bedstead. He was breathing very heavily indeed and had about him the air of one who has suffered much. ‘Have they no elevators in this dump?’ he demanded. It took him two breaths to get the words out.

Get the rope in then pull the curtains.’ ‘This is the way they treated them in the Roman galleys,’ Schaffer said bitterly. But he had the rope inside and the curtains closed in ten seconds.

‘There’s that. How are you on immobilizing helicopters, Lieutenant Schaffer? Your report states that you were an up-and-coming racing driver and a very competent mechanic before they scraped the bottom of the barrel and dragged you in.’ ‘I volunteered,’ Schaffer said with dignity. ‘About the competence, I dunno. But give me a four-pound hammer and I’ll sure as little fishes immobilize anything from a bull-dozerto a bicycle.’ ‘And without the four-pounder? This is not a boilermakers’ convention.’ ‘I have been known to use finesse.’

‘We’ll think of something,’ Smith said soothingly. ‘I’ll bet you think of something,’ Schaffer said moodily. ‘That’s what I’m afraid of.’

‘The lad working on the chopper there. About your size, wouldn’t you say?’ ‘I wouldn’t know,’ Schaffer said. ‘And if you’ve got in mind what I think you have in mind, then I don’t want to know, either.’ Smith drew the shutters, crossed to the door and switched on the overhead light. ‘You got any better ideas?’ ‘Give me time,’ he complained. ‘I can’t give you what we haven’t got. Take your jacket off and keep your Luger lined up on that door. I’ll be back in a minute.’

The overall was hardly a perfect fit for Schaffer, but, then, overalls are rarely a perfect fit for anybody.