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'Yes. Let's say that drawbridge falls and the gates blow, what happens then?'

'They'll come in at full speed in those halftracks, I should imagine.'

'Exactly. Armoured troop carriers and we don't even have anything capable of blowing off a track unless someone gets lucky and close enough with one of your stick grenades.'

'True, but you have some sort of solution, I think, or you would not be raising the matter.'

'We've been together too long, Max.'

Canning smiled. 'Okay - that cannon in the centre of the square. Big Bertha.'

Hesser said. 'She hasn't been fired since the Franco-Prussian War.'

'I know, but she could still have one good belt left in her. Get Schneider on the job. You can soon make up some sort of charge. Prise open a few cartridges to make touch powder. Stoke the barrel up with old metal, chain, anything you can find, then have the men haul her down to the tunnel. Say twenty or thirty yards from the entrance. It could knock hell out of the first vehicle to come out of there.'

'Or simply explode in the face of whoever puts a light to the touch-hole.'

'Well, that's me,' Canning told him. 'I thought of it, so I'll stick with it.'

Hesser sighed. 'Very well, Herr General, you command here, not I,' and he went out.

13

Jackson went down the rear staircase quickly and paused at the bottom, staying well back in the shadows, but his caution was unnecessary for the hall was quite deserted. He opened the door on his left, slipped inside and switched on the light.

As Claire de Beauville had indicated, it was a cloakroom, and there was an assortment of coats and caps hanging on the pegs - even a couple of helmets. He hesitated, debating, then selected a field cap and heavy officer's greatcoat. He and Hesser were, after all, the same build, and it was a reasonable assumption that in the darkness he would be mistaken for the colonel by anyone who saw him.

When he opened the front door, snow filtered through. He moved out quickly and paused at the top of the steps to get his bearings. Most of the courtyard was in darkness, but in the centre a group of German soldiers, supervised by Howard and Sergeant Hoover, worked in the light of a storm lantern on Big Bertha.

Jackson went down the steps to the left and moved into the protecting dark, following the line of the wall towards the main gate. He paused at the end of the tunnel. It was very quiet except for an occasional murmur of voices from the men in the middle of the courtyard, and a sudden, small wind dashed snow in his face.

It was as if he was listening for something, waiting, he wasn't sure what for, and he felt a shiver of loneliness. Suddenly, in one of those instant flashes of recall, he was once again the fifteen-year-old minister's son, standing in a Michigan snowstorm at one o'clock in the morning, despair in his heart. Home late and the door locked against him for the last time.

And from that to Arlberg - so much in between and yet in some ways so little. He smiled wryly, moved into the tunnel. First door on the left, Claire de Beauville had said. He held the Schmeisser ready and tried the handle of the iron-bound door. It opened gently, he pushed it wide and stepped inside.

The place was lit by a single bulb. Gunther Voss, Gaillard's ertswhile guard, sat in helmet and greatcoat on a stool by a small woodstove, back towards the door, reading a magazine.

'Is that you, Hans?' he demanded without turning round. 'About time.'

Jackson pushed the door shut with a very definite click. Voss glanced over his shoulder, his mouth gaped in astonishment.

'Just do as you're told,' Jackson said, 'and everything will be fine.'

He stepped lightly across the room, picked up Voss's Mauser rifle and tossed it on top of one of the bunks, out of the way.

'What are you going to do?' Voss asked hoarsely. He was absolutely terrified, sweat on his face.

'You've got it wrong, my friend. It's what you're going to do that counts.'

A cold breeze touched Jackson on the back