“I don't think so.” Admiral Rolland spoke gently and for the first time, moving from the wall-map to join the group. 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. He was a short, grey-haired man, with a deeply trenched face and an air of immense authority. “No,” he repeated, “I don't think so. Nor do I think that your grasp of the realities of the situation is any match for your total ruthlessness. The captured man, Lieutenant General Carnaby, is an American. If we were to destroy him General Eisenhower would probably launch his Second Front against us instead of against the Germans.” He smiled deprecatingly, as though to remove rebuke from his voice. “There are certain—um—niceties to be observed in our relationship with our Allies. Wouldn't you agree?”
Carraciola didn't agree or disagree. He had, apparently, nothing to say. Neither did anyone else. Colonel Wyatt-Turner cleared his throat.
“That's it then, gentlemen. Ten o'clock tonight at the airfield. No more questions, I take it?”
“Yes, sir, there bloody well is, begging the Colonel's pardon, sir.” Sergeant George Harrod not only sounded heated, he looked it, too. “What's all this about? Why's this geezer so bloody important? Why the hell do we have to risk our necks—”
“That'll do, Sergeant.” Wyatt-Turner's voice was sharp, authoritative. “You know all you require to know —”
“If we're sending a man to what may be his death, Colonel, I think he has the tight to know why,” Admiral Rolland interrupted gently, almost apologetically. “The rest know. He should too. It's painfully simple, Sergeant. General Carnaby is the overall co-ordinator of planning for the exercise known as Operation Overlord—the Second Front. It would be absolutely true to say that he knows more about the Allied preparations for the Second Front than any man alive.”
“He set off last night to meet his opposite numbers in the Middle East,Russia and the Italian Front to co- ordinate final plans for the invasion of Europe. The rendezvous was in Crete—the only meeting point the Russians would accept. They haven't a plane fast enough to out-run the German fighters. The British Mosquito can—but it didn't last night.”
Silence lay heavy in the austere operations room. Harrod rubbed his hand across his eyes, then shook his head slowly, as if to clear it. When he spoke again all the truculence, all the anger had vanished from his voice. His words came very slowly.
“And if the General talks—”
“He'll talk,” Rolland said. The voice was soft, but it carried total conviction. “As Mr. Thomas has just said, they all talk. He won't be able to help himself. A mixture of mescalin and scopolamine.”
“And he'll tell them all the plans for the Second Front.” The words came as from a man in a dream. “When, where, how—Good God, sir, we'll have to call the whole thing off!”
“Precisely. We call it off. No Second Front this year. Another nine months on the war, another million lives needlessly lost. You understand the urgency, Sergeant, the sheer desperate urgency of it all?”
“I understand, sir. Now I understand.” Harrod turned to Wyatt-Turner. “Sorry I spoke like that, sir. I'm afraid—well, I'm a bit edgy, sir.”
“We're all a bit edgy, Sergeant. Well, the airfield at ten o'clock and we'll check the equipment.” He smiled without humour. “I'm afraid the uniforms may not fit too well. This is early closing day in Savile Row.”
Sergeant Harrod huddled more closely into his bucket seat, beat freezing hands against freezing shoulders, morosely surveyed his uniform, wrinkled like an elephant's legs and about three sizes too big for him, then raised his voice above the clamour of the Lancaster's engines.
“Well,” he said bitterly, “he was right about the bloody uniforms, anyway.”
“And wrong about everything else,” Carraciola said heavily. “I still say we should have sent in the Lancaster's.”
Smith, still standing against the starboard fuselage, lit a cigarette and eyed him speculatively. He opened his mouth to speak when it occurred to him that he had seen men in more receptive mood. He looked away without saying anything.
In the flight-deck, now slid so impossibly far forward in his seat that the back of his head rested on the back of his seat, Wing Commander Carpenter was still deeply and contentedly pre-occupied with pipe, coffee and literature. Beside him, Flying Officer Tremayne was obviously failing to share his mood of pleasurable relaxation. He was, in fact, keeping a most anxious watch, his eyes constantly shifting from the instrument panel to the opaque darkness beyond the windscreen to the recumbent figure of his superior officer who appeared to be in danger of dropping off to sleep at any moment. Suddenly Tremayne sat far forward in his seat, stared for long seconds through the windscreen ahead of him then turned excitedly to Carpenter.
“There's Schaffhausen down there, sir!”
Carpenter groaned heavily, closed his book, swung back the hinged book-rest, finished his coffee, levered himself upright with another groan, slid open his side-screen and made an elaborate pretence of examining the loom of light far below, without, however, actually going to the lengths of exposing his face to the wind and the driving snow outside. He closed the screen and looked at Tremayne.
“By heavens,” he said admiringly, “I believe you're right. It's a great comfort to have you along, my boy, a great comfort.” He switched on the intercom while Tremayne looked suitably abashed. “Major Smith? Yes. Thirty minutes to go.” He switched off and turned again to Tremayne. “Right. South-east down the old Bodensee. And for God's sake keep to the Swiss side.”
Smith hung up the headphones and looked quizzically at the six seated men.
“That's it, then. Half an hour. Let's hope it's warmer down there than it is up here.”
No one had any comment to make on that. No one seemed to have any hope either. Soundlessly, wordlessly, they looked without expression at one another, then pulled themselves stiffly to their frozen feet. Then very slowly, very awkwardly, their numbed hands and cramped conditions making things almost impossibly awkward for them, they prepared themselves for the drop. They helped each other strap loads on their backs, beneath the high- mounted parachutes, then struggled into their white waterproof snow trousers. Sergeant Harrod went one better. He pulled a voluminous snow smock over his head, zipped it up with difficulty and drew the hood over his head. He turned round questioningly as a hand tapped the hummocked outline below his white smock.
“I hardly like to say this,” Schaffer said diffidently, “but I really don't reckon your radio is going to stand the shock of landing, Sergeant.”
“Why not?” Harrod looked more lugubrious than ever. “It's been done before.”
“Not by you, it hasn't. By my reckoning you're going to hit the ground with a terminal velocity of a hundred and eighty miles an hour. Not to put too fine a point on it, I think you're going to experience some difficulty in opening your chute.”
Harrod looked at him, looked at his other five smockless companions, then nodded slowly and touched his own smock.
“You mean I put this on after we reach the ground?”
“Well,” Schaffer said consideringly, “I really think it would help.” He grinned at Harrod, who grinned back almost cheerfully. Even Carraciola's lips twitched in the beginnings of a smile. The release of tension within that frozen fuselage was almost palpable.
“Well, well, time I earned my wing-commander's pay while you stripling pilots sit and gaze in rapt admiration.” Carpenter studied his watch. “Two fifteen. Time we changed places.”
Both men unhooked their safety belts and awkwardly changed over. Carpenter fastidiously adjusted the right-hand seat's back rest until it was exactly right for him, manoeuvred his parachute to its position of maximum comfort, fastened his seat-belt, unhooked and adjusted on his head a combined earphones and microphone set and made a switch.
“Sergeant Johnson?” Carpenter never bothered with the regulation call-up formalities. “Are you awake?”
Back in the navigator's tiny and extremely uncomfortable recess, Sergeant Johnson was very much awake. He had been awake for hours. He was bent over a glowing greenish radar screen, his eyes leaving it only to make rapid reference to the charts, an Ordnance map, a picture and a duplicate compass, altimeter and air-speed indicator. He reached for the switch by his side.
“I'm awake, sir.”
“If you fly us into the side of the Weissspitze,” Carpenter said threateningly, “I'll have you reduced to
