While in the next door valley, stealthy preparations continued to build up Marshal Konev’s very real divisions to assault strength, preparations that would go unseen now, thanks to him.
He looked down at his chest and saw the Order of Lenin, which was surely his just reward now, swinging from his tunic. To Malenkoy, the vision was as real as the maskirovka would appear when the Luftwaffe arrived at dawn.
The moonlit lake at Achensee was iced over from shore to shore, just as Fleming had said it would be. Kruze looked down and saw a sparkling, frosted pane of glass lying unbroken in a basin between the mountain peaks, some two thousand five hundred metres above sea-level. As they flew around it, the Auster’s engines throttled right back, he was relieved to see that there was no sign of habitation on its banks, but beyond them it was hard to tell. Below the tree-line, the landscape was covered by an immense blanket of thick pine forest, a light layer of snow on the tops of its trees.
A thousand feet above the ground, the pilot picked out an imaginary runway on the ice and banked the Auster around a pinnacle of rock at the far end of the three-sided valley to line himself up for the approach. Throughout the half-hour journey no one had spoken, but Kruze did not have to question the young flight lieutenant to know that this was by no means his first trip behind enemy lines.
With jagged rocks behind them and more peaks stretching up into the night sky on either side of the Auster’s wing tips, the pilot cut the engine and began side-slipping the little aeroplane, losing height in careful, measured steps, until they soared silently below the treetops and out over the lake.
It crossed Kruze’s mind that the ice might not be able to sustain the weight of the aircraft. If the ice began to crack up below the Auster’s skids — and with the option to put on power closed to them — it would all be over in a second.
They came in to a dead-stick landing, the skids brushing the frozen surface in a perfect three-pointer. Over the diminishing noise of the slipstream and the swish of the skids, Kruze asked the pilot to try to position them at the far end of the lake where, a few moments before, he and Herries had spotted the white water of the mountain stream trickling down towards the valley below. There, they would pick up the road that would eventually lead them into Munich; provided Herries could get transport.
The Auster slid to a stop a hundred yards from the shoreline. Kruze moved fast, scrabbling out of the front seat, Herries seconds behind him. They sprinted for the trees, slipping and sliding on the ice, the Rhodesian looking back only once across the luminous silence to catch the wave of the pilot, whose name he had never known. In a few minutes, after they had had time to slip into the vast expanse of the forest, the Auster’s Lycoming would be gunned into life and the pilot would coax the aircraft into the night sky, back to the safety of the Allied lines.
They found the stream, neither of them speaking, for every step, every movement seemed to crash in their ears beside the lightly burbling waters that rippled the silence of the night. Kruze kept on telling himself that his mind exaggerated the sound, that his imagination had conjured up the whispers, snapping twigs and the crunch of snow under boots that seemed to emanate from every corner of the forest.
Herries led the way down the slope, always keeping the brook just a little way to his left. Kruze looked at the new SOE-issue Swiss watch given to him by Fleming earlier that afternoon. The luminous face told him they had only been on the Reich’s soil for a few minutes, but already it seemed like a lifetime. Even the slow-motion world of aerial combat, in which a pilot might engage a score of enemy fighters in a tenth of the time, seemed like sanctuary to him at that moment. Here he was a stranger, vulnerable, out of his element, with only Herries to help him.
It was already coming up to half-past one. Taking his eyes off Herries for a split second, he sought out the star-speckled inkiness of the night sky between the trees. In just under five hours dawn would be upon them. They had to be out of the wood long before then for Herries to find the means to get them into the city. He remembered the vast area of trees he had seen from the aircraft and began to doubt that they would ever make the valley floor in time.
The cold stung his throat each time he drew in gulps of air to feed his aching limbs as he bounded down the mountainside. Herries was like a mountain goat; it was all he could do to keep his eyes on the stark outline of his Obersturmführer’s uniform, silhouetted against the snow. He stumbled on a root, lurking unseen beneath the white carpet, and fell headlong at Herries’ heels.
He lay there, his cheek smarting from the thousands of razor-sharp ice particles that pierced his skin, gasping for breath. Further movement seemed impossible.
Then a new sound, a new smell. Herries’ breath close to his face, the condensation mingling with his own. The voice, when it came, was a hoarse whisper in his ear.
“Get up, flyboy. This is no moment to rest.”
“No, we stay here for a minute,” he panted.
Herries grabbed his shoulder and rolled him over. “In the forest, I’m king,” he said. “Now move.”
A sudden noise, like a buzz-saw, split the night. Kruze saw Herries go into a tense crouch, his fingers clawing at his holster; a moment later, the Luger was in his hand.
“It’s only the Auster taking off,” Kruze said.
“All the more reason to put a bit of distance between us and the lake,” the traitor hissed. “If there are any troops in the area, they’ll find the landing point and our trail in no time. We’ve got to get lower down, below the snowline; that way, we’re virtually impossible to track.”
Herries’ thin face seemed to glow green in the moonlight that filtered between the branches as the Auster droned off into the distance. He prodded Kruze in the ribs with the barrel of the gun. “You heard me, let’s go.”
In a sudden, fluid motion Kruze was on his feet and Herries was without his gun.
“I don’t know who you are, or where you’ve come from,” the Rhodesian snarled, “but never, ever pull your gun on me again, do you understand?”
“So you can move fast,” Herries smiled. “I’m impressed.”
Herries snatched the weapon back and slipped it into his holster, his eyes remaining fixed on Kruze’s face. For a moment, they stood there, two dark shadows in the vastness of the forest, shoulders square to each other, scarcely a foot between them, then Herries moved off, twisting between the trees down the mountainside.
Kruze loped after him, settling into a mechanical rhythm after a while, enabling him to think about the man in front. Fleming’s hasty warning had confirmed his own suspicions about Herries and in a strange way, it made him feel better.
They carried on at an unrelenting pace down the steep slope, pausing to rest one minute in every fifteen, until the snow began to give way to a rocky, stick-strewn forest floor. Herries appeared to relax. They had been going for about three hours; the mountain had to bottom out soon.
Ahead, Herries had stopped running and was moving towards the stream. Kruze joined him by the bubbling water. The rushing filled his ears. It sounded good, invigorating, a long way from the war.
“Drink,” Herries said, “even if you’re not thirsty.”
To Kruze, the order was superfluous. He took long, deep gulps of the crisp mountain water cupped in his hands and then splashed more over his face and neck, allowing the cold rivulets to run down his chest and back, cooling his sweat-stained body.
He looked over to the Obersturmführer, who was on his haunches, leaning against a rock. Every now and again he sipped water, bird-like, and then threw some onto the back of his neck.