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‘That was quick,’ Smith said approvingly. ‘Fear lent him wings, as the saying goes,’ Schaffer said sourly. ‘I’m always quick when I’m nervous. Did you see the size of the teeth in that great slavering monster out there?’ He held up the piece of equipment for inspection, dropped it to the floor and brought his heel down on it. ‘Distributor cap. I’ll bet they haven’t another in Bavaria. Not for that engine. And now, I suppose, you want me to go and impersonate the telephone operator.’ ‘No. We don’t want to exhaust all your Thespian stamina.’ ‘My what?’ Schaffer asked suspiciously. ‘That sounds
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‘If you live to be a hundred you’ll do nothing,’ Smith said contemptuously. ‘In your own idiom, Schaffer, you’re a punk and a pretty second-rate one at that.’ He settled himself comfortably in a chair beside Colonel Kramer. ‘A simple-minded American,’ he explained carelessly. ‘Had him along for local colour.’
The von Brauchitschs of this world didn’t just suddenly remember anything for the excellent reason that they never forgot it in the first place.
Kramer’s moment of utter incomprehension vanished. The bitter chagrin of total understanding flooded his face. His hand stretched out towards the alarm button. ‘Uh-uh! Not the buzzer, Mac!’ The blow that had struck down the guard had held no more whiplash than the biting urgency in Schaffer’s voice. He was stretched his length on the floor where he’d dived to retrieve the Schmeisser now trained, rock steady, on Kramer’s heart. For the second time that night, Kramer’s hand withdrew from the alarm button.
‘Sorry. We’re going.’ ‘In fact, we’re off,’ Schaffer said. ‘Read all about it in the post-war memoirs of Pimpernel Schaffer—’ He broke off as the door opened wide. Mary stood framed in the doorway and the Mauser was very steady in her hand. She let it fall to her side with a sigh of relief. ‘Took your time about getting here, didn’t you?’ Smith said severely. ‘We were beginning to get a little worried about you.’
‘Boss,’ Schaffer said unhappily. ‘Far be it for me to rush you—’ ‘Coming now,’ Smith smiled at Rosemeyer.
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.’
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.
‘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.
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 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 reassurance, but Schaffer was not one of them.
No one made any move to approach the door handle or lock: the machine-like efficiency with which they broached that door without risk to themselves was clearly the result of a well-drilled procedure for handling situations of precisely this nature.
‘It’s going to take them even less time to discover that this rope is gone.’ Swiftly, ignoring the stabbing pain in his right hand, Smith hauled the nylon in through the window. ‘We’re going to need it. And we’re going to need some distractions.’ ‘I’m distracted enough as it is,’ Schaffer said.
‘Distractions coming up.’ Schaffer extracted some plastic explosives from the kit-bag, cut the slow-burning RDX fuses off to varying lengths, crimped on the chemical igniters, said, ‘Consider it already done,’ and left.
Smith gave her a half-smile, the way his hand hurt he felt he couldn’t afford the other half, and tried the handle of a door beside the low platform, a door lettered AKTEN RAUM—Records Office. Such a door, inevitably, was locked. He took the Luger in his left hand, placed it against the lock, squeezed the trigger and went inside.
‘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.’
Schaffer pounded along the passage beside Smith and when he spoke again the anxiety-born fierceness of tone had a certain plaintive quality to it. ‘Well, where the bloody hell have you been?’
He lay there for a full minute until the trembling in his arms eased and pulse and breathing rates returned to not more than a man in a high fever might expect to have, lowered himself quietly and wearily to the floor, took out his Luger, slid the safety catch and began to make a quick check that the header station really was empty of the enemy, a superfluous precaution, reason told him, any concealed person would have been bound both to see and hear his entry, but instinct and training went deeper than reason.
Mary said, admiringly: ‘You really are the most fearful liar ever.’ ‘Schaffer keeps telling me the same thing,’ Smith admitted. ‘You can’t all be wrong.’
‘Right here, boss.’ Mid-west accent, Schaffer to the life. Smith’s radar-scope went into high and had it been geared to warning bells he’d have been deafened for life.
With luck, his own cable-car might be the first to arrive at the central pylon. With luck. Not, of course, that the question of luck entered into it any more: he had no options or alternatives left, he had to do what he had to do and luck was the last factor to be taken into consideration.
He shook his head to clear it and this was a mistake for the top of his head fell off. Or so it felt to Schaffer as the blinding coruscation of multi-coloured lights before his eyes arranged themselves into oddly kaleidoscopic patterns.
‘Are you—are you all right?’ Mary asked. Schaffer considered this ridiculous question carefully. ‘I expect I shall be,’ he said with great restraint. ‘What happened?’ ‘They hit you with your own gun.’ ‘That’s right.’ Schaffer nodded and immediately wished he hadn’t.
The roof of the cable-car cleared the level of the floor of the header station and Smith sagged in relief as he saw the figure standing by the controls of the winch. Schaffer. A rather battered and bent Schaffer, it was true, an unsteady Schaffer, a Schaffer with one side of his face masked in blood, a Schaffer who from his peering and screwed-up expression had obviously some difficulty in focusing his gaze. But undoubtedly Schaffer and as nearly a going concern as made no odds. Smith felt energy flow back into him, he hadn’t realized just how heavily he had come to depend on the American:
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‘It’s all right,’ she said. ‘I’ve counted ten. In the circumstances, it was the only argument to use.’ She paused and the smile faded. ‘I thought you were gone then.’ ‘You weren’t the only one. After this I retire. I’ve used up a lifetime’s luck in the past fifteen minutes. You’re not looking so bright yourself.’ ‘I’m not feeling so bright.’ Her face was pale and strained as she braced herself against the wild lurching of the cable-car. ‘If you want to know, I’m seasick. I don’t go much on this form of travel.’
Jones smiled shakily. ‘Somehow, I don’t really think I’m cut out to be a hero.’ ‘Neither am I, brother, neither am I,’ Schaffer said mournfully.
‘Home and dry,’ Schaffer said bitterly. ‘Wait till I have that Savoy Grill menu in my hand. Then I’ll be home and dry.’ ‘Some people are always thinking of their stomachs,’ Smith observed.
‘All out!’ Smith shouted. ‘All out!’ ‘There speaks the eternal shop steward,’ Schaffer said. ‘Stand back, I’ve got two good hands.’
Smith was beside him. He had fished out a plastic explosive from the bag on his back and torn off the friction fuse. He handed the package to Schaffer and said: ‘You have a good right arm.’ ‘I have a good right arm. Horses, no. Baseball, yes.’ Schaffer took aim and lobbed the explosive neatly through the doorway of the disappearing cable-car. ‘Like that?’ ‘Like that. Come on.’
Carpenter was giving a ground-level performance of some spectacular note, skimming across fields, brushing tree-tops, skirting small hills that stood in his way, and Wyatt-Turner didn’t like any of it one little bit.
‘Well, aren’t you glad to see me?’ Schaffer demanded. ‘I’ve had a terrible time up there. Good God, girl, I might have been killed.’ ‘Not as handsome as you were two hours ago.’ She smiled, gently touched his face where Carraciola’s handiwork with the Schmeisser had left its bloody mark, and added over her shoulder as she climbed into the bus: ‘And that’s as long as you’ve known me.’ ‘Two hours! I’ve aged twenty years tonight. And that, lady, is one helluva long courtship. Oh, God!’ He watched in wearily resigned despair as Smith climbed into the driver’s seat and switched on the ignition.
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In the mountains, the Alpine post-bus has absolute priority over every other vehicle in the road and its penetrating and stentorian three-toned post-horn is the symbol of its total authority, of its unquestioned right to complete priority at all times.
A magic wand might have made a better job of clearing that village street, but not all that much better; vehicles and pedestrians alike pressed into the sides of the street as if some powerful magnetic affinity had just been developed between them and the walls of the houses.
‘Don’t you know any other tunes?’ Schaffer asked irritably. He shivered in the icy blast from the smashed front window, and sat on the floor to get what little shelter he could. ‘Give me a call when you require my services. A mile from now, I’d say.’ ‘What do you mean, a mile from now?’ ‘The barrack gates. That guy in the command car had a radio phone.’ ‘He had, had he?’ Smith spared him a brief glance. ‘Why didn’t you shoot him?’ ‘I’m a changed man, boss.’ Schaffer sighed. ‘Something splendid has just come into my life.’ ‘Besides, you didn’t have a chance.’ ‘Besides, as you say, I didn’t have
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‘No.’ Smith glanced in the rear-view mirror and steadied the wildly swaying bus up on a steadier course. ‘Never thought I’d be glad to see a few carloads or truck-loads of Alpenkorps coming after me.’ He changed into top gear and pushed the accelerator to the floor. ‘I’m happy to make an exception this time.’
‘Happy isn’t the word for it. Me, I’m ecstatic. Tiger tanks are one thing but little itsy-bitsy trucks are another.’ Schaffer strode rapidly down the central aisle, passing by Mary, Heidi and Carnaby-Jones, all of whom were struggling rather shakily to their feet, and looked at the crates stacked in the rear seats. ‘Six crates!’ he said to Heidi. ‘And we asked for only two. Honey, you’re going to make me the happiest man alive.’
It was not, Smith thought, a bridge he would have chosen to have crossed with a bicycle, much less a six ton bus. Had it been a bridge crossing some gently meandering stream, then, yes, possibly: but not a bridge such as this one was, a fifty-foot bridge surfaced with untied railway sleepers, spanning a ravine two hundred feet in depth and supported by trestles, very ancient wooden trestles which, from what little he could see of them from his acute angle of approach, he wouldn’t have trusted to support the tables at the vicar’s garden party.
Smith hit this elderly and decrepit edifice at forty miles per hour. A more cautious and understandable approach might have been to crawl over it at less than walking pace but Smith’s conviction that the less time he spent on each ancient sleeper the better was as instantaneous as it was complete.
Colonel Wyatt-Turner glanced through the side-screen and breathed with relief as, for the first time that night, the ground fell away sharply beneath the Mosquito. He said sarcastically: ‘Losing your nerve, Wing Commander?’ ‘I lost that September 3rd, 1939,’ Carpenter said cheerfully. ‘Got to climb. Can’t expect to see any recognition signals down among the bushes there.’
‘Explosives or boxes of ammunition going up, I’d say,’ Carpenter said pensively. ‘That’s the Schloss Adler, of course. Were any of your boys carrying matches?’ ‘They must have been.’ Wyatt-Turner stared impassively at the distant blaze. ‘It’s quite a sight.’
‘Now then,’ Smith went on, deliberately brisk-voiced as he took her hand. ‘You realize what this means, don’t you?’ ‘Do I realize what what means?’ She was still ashen-faced. ‘You and I are all washed up,’ Smith explained patiently. ‘Finished. In Italy, in north-west Europe. I won’t even be allowed to fight as a soldier because if I were captured I’d still be shot as a spy.’ ‘So?’ ‘So, for us, the war is over. For the first time we can think of ourselves. OK?’ He squeezed her hand and she smiled shakily in reply. ‘OK Wing Commander, may I use your radio?’
‘I want to get married,’ Smith explained slowly and patiently. ‘To Miss Mary Ellison.’ ‘But you can’t,’ Rolland protested. ‘This morning! Impossible! There are such things as banns, permits, the registrar’s office will be shut today—’ ‘After all I’ve done for you,’ Smith interrupted reproachfully. ‘Blackmail, sir! You play on an old man’s gratitude. Downright blackmail!’ Rolland banged down the phone, smiled tiredly and picked up another phone. ‘Operator? Put me through to the Forgery Section.’
‘Aberdeen-Angus!’ Heidi looked at him in amusement. ‘Forgotten the war, haven’t you? Forgotten rationing? More like a sirloin of horse meat.’ ‘Honey.’ Schaffer took her hands and spoke severely and earnestly. ‘Honey, don’t ever again mention that word to me. I’m allergic to horses.’ ‘You eat them?’ Heidi gazed at him in astonishment. ‘In Montana?’ ‘I fall off them,’ Schaffer said moodily. ‘Everywhere.’
