The glass shattered and there was a momentary tongue of flame as the brandy ignited. “That's how I drink the health of double agents.”
Schaffer leaned across the passage-way and whispered: “I thought you said he couldn't act?”
“Nobody's ever paid him twenty-five thousand bucks a night before,” Smith said sardonically.
“Tut, tut, General. Best Venetian glass.” Kramer shook his head deprecatingly then smiled. “But an understandable fit of pique. When your heroic rescuers turn out to be, well, birds of a different feather—”
“Double agents!” In his contempt, Jones almost spat out the words.
Kramer smiled again, tolerantly, and turned to the three men on the couch.
“And the return trip, gentlemen? As well organised as your outward journey?”
“That's about the one thing the close-mouthed so-and-so told us,” Carraciola said with some bitterness. “A Mosquito bomber is to come to pick us up. Salen, a little village north of Frauenfeld in Switzerland. There's a little civilian airfield just to the north of Salen.”
Schaffer bent across the passage again and said in an admiring whisper: “You really are a fearful liar.”
“So Salen it is,” Kramer was saying. “We know all about it. The Swiss are very good at looking the wrong way when it suits them: but for reasons of our own we find it convenient not to protest too much. Odd things happen at Salen ... However. A little message to London. Arrange pick-up times and so forth. Then a helicopter to the border—so much easier than walking, gentlemen—a rubber dinghy for the Rhine and then a short walk. You'll be back in Whitehall, reporting General Carnaby's transfer to Berlin, before you know it.”
“Back in London?” Thomas shook his head in slow emphasis. “Not on your nelly, Colonel. With Smith and that Yank still at large? What happens if they find out what's really happening? What happens if they remain at large? What happens if they get a message through to London—”
“What do you take us for?” Kramer said tiredly. “You will also, of course, be reporting the unfortunate demise of your leader. As soon as we located that still-warm radio set in the left luggage office we put on bloodhounds from the barracks. Your precious Major Smith was the last man to handle that set and he left a pretty clear trail. The hounds traced him along the east side of the village as far as a garage and then up to the lower station of the Luftseilbahn.”
“The cable-car?” Thomas was frankly disbelieving.
“The cable-car. Our Major Smith is either a very foolhardy or a very dangerous man—I must confess I know nothing of him. And there, at the lower station, the hounds completely lost the scent. The handlers circled the station with the hounds and then brought them into the cable-car itself. But the trail was cold. Our quarry appeared to have vanished into thin air.”
“It was then that one of the searchers had the original idea of examining the thin air, so to speak. He climbed up and examined the roof of the lower station. Surprise, surprise, unmistakable signs in the snow and ice that two men had been up there before him. From that it was only a logical step to examine the roof of the cable- car itself, and sure enough—”
“They're inside!” Christiansen exclaimed.
“And won't get out again.” Colonel Kramer leaned back comfortably in his chair. “Have no fear, gentlemen. Every exit is blocked—including the header station. We've doubled the guards outside and the rest have just begun to carry out a floor to floor search.”
In the gloom of the minstrels' gallery Smith and Schaffer exchanged thoughtful glances.
“I don't know,” Thomas said uneasily. “He's a resourceful devil—”
Kramer held up a hand.
“Fifteen minutes. I guarantee it.” He shifted his glance to Jones. “I don't pretend to look forward to this, General, but shall we get on with your—ah—medication?”
Jones glared at Carraciola, Christiansen and Thomas and said, very slowly and distinctly: “You—bloody— swine!”
“Against all my principles, General Carnaby,” Rosemeyer said uncomfortably. “But if we could only dispense with force—”
“Principles? You make me sick!” Jones stood up and made a strangled noise in his throat. “The hell with you all! The Hague Conventions! Principles! Officers and gentlemen of the Third Woody Reich!” He stripped off his uniform jacket, rolled up a sleeve and sat down again.
There was a brief and uncomfortable silence, then Kramer nodded to Anne-Marie who put down her glass and moved off to a side door leading off the gold drawing-room. It was obvious to everyone that Anne-Marie wasn't feeling in the least uncomfortable: the half-smile on her face was as near to that of pleasurable anticipation as she could permit herself in the presence of Rosemeyer and Kramer.
Again Smith and Schaffer exchanged glances, no longer thoughtful glances, but the glances of men who know what they have to do and are committed to doing it. Carefully, silently, they eased themselves up from the choir-stalls, adjusted the straps of their shoulder-slung Schmeissers until the machine-pistols were in the horizontal position then started slowly down the stairs, well apart and as close as possible to their respective banisters, to minimise the danger of creaking treads.
They were half-day down, just beginning to emerge from the dark gloom of the gallery, when Anne-Marie re-entered the room. She was carrying a small stainless steel tray: on the tray were a glass beaker, a phial containing some colourless liquid and a hypodermic syringe. She set the tray down on an occasional table close to Jones and broke the phial into the narrow beaker.
Smith and Schaffer had reached the foot of the stairs and were now advancing towards the group round the fire-place. They had now completely emerged from the shadows, and were in full view of anyone who cared to turn his head. But no one cared to turn his head, every seated person in the drawing-room was engrossed in the scene before him, watching in varying degrees of willing or unwilling fascination as Anne-Marie carefully filled the hypodermic syringe and held it up to the light to examine it. Smith and Schaffer continued to advance, their footfalls soundless on the luxuriously deep pile of the gold carpet.
Carefully, professionally, but with the trace of the smile still on her lips, Anne-Marie swabbed an area of Jones's forearm with cotton wool soaked in alcohol and then, as the watchers unconsciously bent forward in their seats, picked up Jones's wrist in one hand and the hypodermic in the other. The hypodermic hovered over the swabbed area as she located the vein she wanted.
“Just a waste of good scopolamine, my dear,” Smith said. “You won't get anything out of him.”
There was a moment's frozen and incredulous stillness, the hypodermic syringe fell soundlessly to the floor, then everyone whirled round to stare at the two advancing figures, carbines moving gently from side to side. Predictably, Colonel Kramer was the first to recover and react. Almost imperceptibly, his hand began to drift to a button on a panel beside his chair.
“That button, Colonel,” Smith said conversationally.
Slowly, reluctantly, Kramer's hand retreated from the button.
“On the other hand,” Smith went on cordially, “why not? By all means, if you wish.”
Kramer glanced at him in narrow-eyed and puzzled suspicion.
“You will notice, Colonel,” Smith continued by way of explanation, “that my gun is not pointing at you. It is pointed at him”—he swung his gun to cover Carraciola—“at him,”—the gun moved to Thomas—“at him,”—it covered Christiansen—“and at him!” Smith swung round abruptly and ground the muzzle of the Schmeisser into Schaffer's ribs. “Drop that gun! Now!”
“Drop the gun?” Schaffer stared at him in shock and baffled consternation. “What in the name of God —”
Smith stepped swiftly forward and, without altering his grip on his gun, lifted the barrel sharply upwards and drove the butt of the Schmeisser into Schaffer's stomach. Schaffer grunted in agony, doubled forward with both hands clutched over his midriff, then, seconds later, obviously in great pain, began to straighten slowly. Glaring at Smith, the dark eyes mad in his face, he slipped the shoulder strap and the Schmeisser fell to the carpet.
“Sit there.” With the muzzle of his gun Smith gestured to a chair half-way between Rosemeyer's and the couch where the three men were sitting.
Schaffer said slowly, painfully: “You goddamned lousy, dirty, double-crossing—”
“That's what they all say. You're not even original.” The contempt in Smith's voice gave way to menace. “That chair, Schaffer.”
Schaffer lowered himself with difficulty into his chair, rubbed his solar plexus and said, “You ———. If I live
