houses. No traffic on the road. No sign of McConnell. No castle.
Then he saw the bicycle.
McConnell reached the top of the switchback road that led to Achnacarry Castle exactly sixty minutes after he started running. The steep hills combined with the thrashing wind and rain had nearly beaten him. But he’d made it. The outlines of a great baronial house emerged from the darkness. Warm yellow light glowed in one upper window. He slowed to a walk and made for the building. Down the shallow slope below the castle, the gleaming tin roofs of prefabricated Nissen huts made a strange contrast to the medieval landscape he had seen so far.
As he neared the castle, something else caught his eye. It was a row of graves. The graves followed the line of the drive. Each was marked by a white cross and a board which bore a name, rank, and brief epitaph. The first one McConnell stooped over read:
As he stood puzzling over the inscriptions, he heard a slow creak. Then a familiar voice called out of the darkness: “The dead dinna mind the rain, Mr. Wilkes!”
Sergeant McShane.
“But I’d advise the livin’ to get indoors!”
McConnell jogged up to the great wooden door, wiped his muddy shoes, and squeezed past McShane’s broad body. He found himself in a spacious entrance hall which had been stripped of all furniture.
“Where’s your friend, then?” McShane asked. “Mr. Butler.”
McConnell shrugged. “Back out there somewhere, I guess.”
The Highlander eyed him with new interest. “I’m not surprised. You must have set a cracking pace to make it that quickly.”
“I’ve done a little running.”
“Have you now? Well. That’s a handy thing to have done if you’re required to spend any time at Achnacarry, Mr. Wilkes. There’s many a man who wished he’d done more of it. I’ve seen university distance runners fall flat in these hills.” The Scot’s lips cracked into a tight smile. “’Course, eighty pounds of gear on their backs doesna help much.”
Suddenly the front door was shoved open from outside. McConnell turned and saw Jonas Stern standing in the doorway with a satisfied smile on his face. He was wet to the skin, but didn’t look at all winded.
Before McConnell or Sergeant McShane could speak, he said, “Butler reporting for duty, Sergeant.”
McConnell looked at the sergeant with bewilderment, but the dour Scot was an old hand at appearing unflappable. “You made good time, Mr. Butler,” he said. “I was about to lock the door.”
“Go ahead.”
McShane did, then led them through a hall dark with wainscoting and turned up a wide staircase. “You’ll stay in the castle until further notice,” he said. “You’ll see hundreds of men coming and going in all manner of kit, speaking several languages. They’re commando trainees. You leave them be, they’ll do the same. Some will be instructors. They’re not marked as such, but you won’t have any trouble tellin’ who they are.”
“Remember,” the Scotsman said, “you’re Mr. Wilkes and Mr. Butler. Dinna be givin’ those names unless you’re asked. The C.O. of the depot is Colonel Vaughan. You two may not be military, but you’d better snap to if he comes near. The MacVaughan doesna suffer fools gladly.”
They stopped in a dim passage with heavy wooden doors on either side. McShane pointed to the second door on the right. Stern pushed it open. Inside the small, square room were two cots, a paraffin lamp which had been burning for some time, and a bare clothes rack.
“Bath’s up the passage,” McShane said. “No hot water in this part of the castle.” He put his forefinger between Stern’s shoulder blades and shoved him into the room.
McConnell quickly followed, so as to stop any overreaction on Stern’s part.
“You two must be important,” the sergeant mused. “You’re the first civilians I know of to pass through Achnacarry.”
McConnell bent over one of the cots and picked up a horsehair rope about four feet long, with a permanent loop at one end and a straight wooden handle about six inches long attached to the other. An identical rope lay on the other cot.
“What’s this?” he asked.
“Toggle rope,” McShane said. “Every commando carries one at all times. You’ll soon see why. I dinna want to see you without it. That’s it then. I’ll see you at breakfast. Six a.m.”
He turned and started back toward the staircase.
McConnell went after him and called, “Is a Brigadier Duff Smith staying in the castle tonight, Sergeant?”
McShane didn’t break stride. “I canna charge my memory about that just now, Mr. Wilkes.”
Realizing he would learn nothing else until morning, McConnell went back to the room and began taking off his wet clothes. He stripped to the skin, as his shorts were soaked through, then climbed into bed. Stern paced the hall for a few moments, then did the same. McConnell thought it odd that Stern turned off the lamp before removing his clothes. It was almost as if he were trying to hide his body.
McConnell lay silent in the dark for some time. But he could not go to sleep without asking one question. “How’d you make it up here so fast?” he said finally. “You found someone to give you a ride?”
Stern answered in English, giving a fair rendition of McConnell’s Georgia drawl. “None of your business, is it, Mr. Wilkes?”
McConnell took the barb in silence. He wondered if Stern realized that their code names had been taken from Margaret Mitchell’s
He was nearly asleep when Stern’s disembodied voice said: “Did you see those grave markers?”
McConnell blinked in the chilly darkness. “I saw them.”
“Nothing but dirt under those crosses.”
“What do you mean? The graves are empty?”
“Right.”
“How do you know?”
“I know the British Army. Fought with them in Africa. On their side, if you can believe it. Those graves are typical of their crap. They put those crosses there to scare recruits. ‘Showed himself on a ridge line.’ What rot. The British Army’s just like those graves.”
McConnell saw nothing to be gained by arguing with Stern about the British. “I guess we’ll find out tomorrow,” he said.
Stern grunted contemptuously in the darkness. “Sweet dreams, Mr. Wilkes,” he said in German. “Come morning, I’ll show those limey bastards commando training.”
17
McConnell kicked Stern out of bed at nine a.m. After a quick trip to the toilet at the end of the hall, he dressed in the clothes McShane had provided: army denims, gaiters, and a heavy green cotton smock. Last, he put on the “toggle” rope, with its loop at one end and short handle at the other. He coiled it around his hand, then clipped the coil to the web belt he found in the clothes bag.
Stern was already dressed and standing by the door.
“You don’t have your toggle rope,” McConnell reminded him.
“I don’t need it.”
McConnell shrugged and led the way to the first floor of the castle. They met Sergeant McShane in the entrance hall. The Highlander wore his green beret, but he had forgone his kilt in favor of denims, a khaki shirt, and camouflaged rain smock.
