“Shut up, Doctor,” snapped a familiar voice.
McConnell’s eyes focused slowly on the figure crouched against the castle wall. There was a leather bag beside him.
Stern.
McConnell squatted down. “Is this it?”
“I heard Smith’s plane land a little while ago,” Stern said.
McConnell felt his heartbeat quicken. He realized he was clutching the swatch of Cameron tartan in his hand. As the cold rain ran down into his collar, he noticed that the hut village in the meadow across the drive looked empty. No campfires, no singing.
“Where is everybody?”
“Night Assault,” Stern replied.
“What’s that?”
“The colonel’s graduation exercise,” said the orderly. “Closest thing in the world to real combat. The Frenchies are rowing across the loch now.”
McConnell heard a low rumble in the dark. An engine. A canvas-backed army truck slowly ground its way up the drive and stopped by the main entrance of the castle. Over its tailgate climbed three men who looked as if they could barely walk. McConnell caught his breath when they stepped into the glow of the bulb over the door.
One of the men was Sergeant Ian McShane.
Stern jumped up and ran toward the truck. McConnell followed, but before they reached it the castle door opened and Brigadier Smith stepped out into the rain. No tweed coat and stalker’s cap tonight — he was wearing his army uniform. Two orderlies behind him carried McConnell’s heavy suitcases and two large duffel bags.
“Load them into the lorry,” Smith barked. He caught sight of Stern and McConnell. “Into the truck, you two. You’ll find new clothes in those bags. Put them on.”
In the shuffle at the tailgate, McConnell looked into the eyes of Sergeant McShane. What he saw stunned him: fatigue, anger, the remnants of shock. When he touched the sergeant’s arm, McShane jerked suddenly, as if in pain. McConnell saw then that his inner arms had been scraped raw and scabbed over, as if he had skidded fifty yards on cement.
“Where the hell have you been, Sergeant?” he asked.
“Where you’re going, Doctor.”
Suddenly Brigadier Smith was between them. “Into the castle, Sergeant. Whisky and fire. You’ve earned it.”
McShane, flanked by John Lewis and Alick Cochrane, said nothing. Glancing over Smith’s shoulder, McConnell saw that Lewis and Cochrane looked worse than McShane. McShane started to say something, but before he could Brigadier Smith said:
“Carry on, Sergeant.”
Cochrane and Lewis moved toward the door, but McShane stepped around the brigadier and laid a finger on Stern’s chest.
“You mind how you go, over there,” he said. “Look after the doctor here, right? You might be findin’ a warmer welcome than you’ve been led to expect.”
The Highlander looked Brigadier Smith dead in the eye, then turned and trudged into the castle.
“What’s he talking about?” Stern asked.
“They lost a man,” the brigadier said. “That’s all. You’ve lost a few yourself, haven’t you? It was Colin Munro, the weapons instructor. They hauled his body fifteen miles overland to the pickup point. Now, get on with it, eh? We’ve got to be in Sweden by three A.M. Germany by dawn.”
Stern pulled McConnell toward the truck. “Nothing we can do,” he said.
Inside his duffel bag McConnell found not only dry civilian clothes — with proper German tags inside them — but also a neatly pressed and folded military uniform of field gray winter wool. He saw the silver SS runes and the Death’s Head badge on his captain’s cap and felt a chill. Stern’s uniform was gray-green, with the feared green piping and sleeve patch of the SD. On the breast was an Iron Cross First Class and a Wound Badge. The left collar patch indicated that its wearer was a colonel —
“The civvies or the uniforms?” McConnell asked.
“The uniforms,” said Stern.
McConnell was still dressing when the truck began to roll. Stern bent over the suitcase that contained McConnell’s anti-gas suits and began rummaging beneath them.
“What are you doing?” McConnell asked.
“That bicycle’s not the only thing I stole at the castle,” Stern said over the rumble of the truck. “Smith is crazy if he thinks I’m going into Nazi Germany with nothing but a Schmeisser and a pistol.”
McConnell knelt down and looked into the case. He saw several hand grenades, a small box, and a package wrapped in brown paper.
“What is all that stuff?”
“Plastic explosive. Time pencil detonators. Grenades.”
“Where did you get it?”
“Vaughan’s private arsenal. Thank God those orderlies didn’t search your suitcases.”
“They still might.”
“No. From now on, you and I carry these bags every step of the way.”
Three minutes later the truck stopped. Brigadier Smith appeared at the tailgate.
“At the double,” he said. “No time to lose.”
McConnell dropped to the ground. They had stopped beside an airplane, but no ordinary airplane. It was a high-wing monoplane painted matte black. From fifty yards away it would be totally invisible. Smith’s pilot had put the ominous-looking craft down in a wet field that didn’t look long enough for a flock of geese to land in. Stern bumped past McConnell with the suitcases. Then suddenly the night was shattered by a thunder of guns like a summer storm sweeping across Georgia.
“Christ!” McConnell yelled. “What the hell is that?”
“Into the plane!” the brigadier shouted. “If we hurry we’ll see the best of it!”
McConnell squeezed the duffel bags into the plane, and before he could even catch his breath the grumbling Lysander was climbing the crest of a hill with scant yards to spare. On Smith’s order, the pilot banked over Loch Lochy for a sightseeing run. McConnell had never seen anything like the spectacle below him. Tracer fire arced through the night like something from an H. G. Wells novel. Flares exploded around the plane, illuminating a dozen or so dinghies on the loch below like ducks in a shooting gallery.
“Those Frogs are scared out of their wits right now!” Smith shouted. “Charles’s lads are firing real bullets inches from their arses!”
Smith told the pilot to swing around and head for “checkers,” whatever that meant. As the Lysander swept along the beach, just a hundred feet above exploding mortar shells, McConnell saw an ambulance parked with its headlights on high. Standing in the wet glow of the twin beams was a barrel-chested figure with his hands clasped behind his back. He raised his right arm in farewell as the Lysander buzzed past him, waggling its wings.
“Look at him!” Brigadier Smith shouted. “Standing there like C. B. DeMille himself. What a show! The War Office says Charlie Vaughan uses more ordnance for his Night Assault than Monty used at Alamein!”
The pilot banked into the worst of the storm. It was all McConnell could manage to hold down the contents of his stomach. He tried to take his mind off the nausea by questioning Smith, but the brigadier ignored him. Rain slapped steadily against the perspex windows. The pilot was only the back of a leather cap, Stern a silhouette in the darkness close beside him.
For the first time since David’s death, he realized how irrevocable it all was. He was adrift in a black airplane under a starless sky, droning over an island that had shown no lights to heaven since 1939. The idea that there was a worldwide war going on, perhaps for the soul of mankind, had never seemed more real than it did now.
Were these the smells David had known? The duck-blind smell of rainsoaked wool and leather? The bite of aviation fuel and oil? The scent of anticipation emanating from Stern, a sweaty tang of the hunter at first light? And of course the metallic odor McConnell fancied he smelled on himself—
The smell of fear.
For the first time, the reality of his destination entered into him. Nazi Germany. There was a square yard of
