Where Eagles Dare

“No need, Colonel.” Heidi had come round from behind the bar and now stood before Weissner, hands clasped respectfully behind her back. “I know the man you're after. The ringleader.”

“Ah!” Colonel Weissner smiled. “The charming—”

“Heidi, Herr Colonel. I have waited table on you up in the Schloss Adler.”

Weissner bowed gallantly. “As if one could ever forget.”

“That one.” Her face full of a combination of righteous indignation and devotion to duty, Heidi pointed a dramatically accusing finger at Smith. “That's the one, Herr Colonel. He—he pinched me!”

“My dear Heidi!” Colonel Weissner smiled indulgently. “If we were to convict every man who ever harboured thoughts of—”

“Not that, Herr Colonel. He asked me what I knew or had heard about a man called General Cannabee—I think.”

“General Carnaby!” Colonel Weissner was no longer smiling. He glanced at Smith, motioned guards to close in on him, then glanced back at Heidi. “What did you tell him?”

“Herr Colonel!” Heidi was stiff with outraged dignity. “I hope I am a good German. And I value my engagements at the Schloss Adler.” She half-turned and pointed across the room. “Captain von Brauchitsch of the Gestapo will vouch for me.”

“No need. We will not forget this, my dear child.” He patted her affectionately on the cheek, then turned to Smith, the temperature of his voice dropping from warm to subzero. “Your accomplices, sir, and at once.”

“At once, my dear Colonel?” The look he gave Heidi was as glacial as the Colonel's voice. “Surely not. Let's get our priorities straight. First, her thirty pieces of silver. Then us.”

“You talk like a fool,” Colonel Weissner said contemptuously. “Heidi is a true patriot.”

“I'm sure she is,” Smith said bitterly.

Mary, her face still and shocked, stared down from the uncurtained crack in Heidi's dark room as Smith and the four others were led out of the front door of “Zum Wilden Hirsch” and marched off down the road under heavy escort to where several command cars were parked on the far side of the street. Brusquely, efficiently, the prisoners were bundled into two of the cars, engines started up and within a minute both cars were lost to sight round a bend in the road. For almost a minute afterwards Mary stood there, staring out unseeingly on the swirling snow, then pulled the curtains together and turned back towards the darkened room.

She said in a whisper: “How did it happen?”

A match scratched as Heidi lit and turned up the flame of the oil lamp.

“I can't guess.” Heidi shrugged. “Someone, I don't know who, must have tipped Colonel Weissner off. But I put a finger on him.”

Mary stared at her. “You—you—”

“He'd have been found out in another minute anyway. They were strangers. But it strengthens our hand. I—and you—are now above suspicion.”

“Above suspicion!” Mary looked at her in disbelief then went on, almost wildly: “But there's no point in going ahead now!”

“Is there not?” Heidi said thoughtfully. “Somehow, I feel sorrier for Colonel Weissner than I do for Major Smith. Is not our Major Smith a man of resource? Or do our employers in Whitehall lie to us? When they told me he was coming here, they told me not to worry, to trust him implicitly. A man of infinite resource—those were their exact words—who can extricate himself from positions of utmost difficulty. They have a funny way of talking in Whitehall. But already I trust him. Don't you?”

There was no reply. Mary stared at the floor, her eyes bright with unshed tears. Heidi touched her arm and said softly, “You love him as much as that?”

Mary nodded in silence.

“And does he love you?”

“I don't know. I just don't know. He's been too long in this business—even if he did know,” she said bitterly, “he probably wouldn't tell himself.”

Heidi looked at her for a moment, shook her head and said: “They should never have sent you. How can you hope to—” She broke off, shook her head again, and went on: “It's too late now. Come on. We mustn't keep von Brauchitsch waiting.”

“But—but if he doesn't come? If he can't escape—and how can he escape?” She gestured despairingly at the papers lying on the bed. “They're bound to check with Dusseldorf first thing in the morning about those forged references.”

Heidi said without any particular expression in her voice: “I don't think he'd let you down, Mary.”

“No,” Mary said dolefully. “I don't suppose he would.”