“Leerzeichen,” von Eisen sneered. “Keine kugeln.”
“Blanks,” Schellenberg translated. “No bullets. Your reputation is deserved, Fräulein Colline, and I knew you would eventually outwit the guards and escape from that room, although I had no idea how.”
He paused as von Eisen took the Luger from her and held his own gun to her temple. “I do know that you are much smarter than all three of the guards put together and would find your way out, so I didn’t want you to escape with one of their weapons. I had them loaded with blanks, the Leerzeichen.”
Caitrin felt Riefenstahl’s eyes on her. She looked amused, and perhaps a little impressed.
“Von Eisen, take our escape artist down to the cellar and lock her up. Remove all the light bulbs first, and let no one in. Perhaps sitting in total darkness will blunt her abilities.”
“Warum nicht einfach auf sie schießen?” von Eisen said.
“No.” Schellenberg gave him a tired smile. “Because we are trying to build a bridge with our English brethren. Shooting Fräulein Colline would not help that. Take her away.”
Von Eisen grabbed her arm, and Adolf took the other. She glanced at Riefenstahl as they crossed. “Don’t like your pictures much, Leni. Too much oompah and no sense of humor. Then again, you are German.”
Von Eisen directed her down spiral stone stairs, opened the cellar door, and shoved her inside. He held his gun to her head while Adolf scurried around unscrewing light bulbs. Caitrin stayed still; she was not scared but wanted to commit her surroundings to memory before it all went black. There was a row of large barrels against the far wall, another wall filled with wine bottles, and assorted furniture covered in dustcovers. A hard push sent her staggering to the floor, the door slammed shut, and she was alone. It was completely dark.
39
Caitrin sat on the top of the four steps that led down to the cellar floor and leaned back against the door. She had closed her eyes for five minutes, mentally counting off the seconds, until her pupils fully dilated. When she opened them, the cellar was not quite so dark. The faintest of lights bled through the gap at the bottom of the door, and a thin green stripe glimmered at the far end. Tiny curves revealed the location of the row of barrels on the far wall, and minuscule glints of glass showed the racks of wine bottles to the left. An edge or two marked the furniture in the center. So far, though, there was nothing she could use to combat a couple of SS soldiers armed with Mausers guarding the door. But she had to find an asset.
First, a careful assessment of her surroundings. Heel to toe, she measured the cellar: sixty-eight paces deep and forty-nine wide. The barrels were too big to have come down the spiral staircase, and that meant somewhere there must be a larger opening, a delivery trapdoor. Which perhaps explained the green stripe. She moved toward it and tripped on the bottom of a ramp. So there was another entrance. This is where the barrels were lowered down into the cellar.
She edged up the ramp until her head bumped on a surface that flexed: the door. Closer now, she could see a thin line of green light, the gap between two delivery doors no doubt covered over with moss and vegetation. She pushed, and it moved. Here was the asset, the way out. In the center of the stripe was a dark horizontal line, which her fingers discovered was a bolt. It was padlocked, but the wood around it was rotten, and if she pushed hard, it might well break away. She could escape. That would be a start.
She stiffened her fingers and rammed them into the wood. It dented, and she rammed them again and again until the soft wood separated. Her fingers wriggled through the gap to grip the wood, and she screamed in pain as a jackboot slammed onto her fingers and a voice outside shouted, “Nein!”
She fell back into the darkness, eyes tear-filled, wringing her hand to ease the pain. It was not a start.
* * *
There was still some light left in the sky when Hector entered the conservatory to find James sitting in shadow at the Jewels table. He ignored the guards standing around the room perimeter and sat next to him. “You look unhappy, James.”
In reply, James picked out a golden orb and held it up. The diamonds flared in the failing light. “The Sovereign’s Orb. It was made in 1661 and has been used in every coronation since. And that little beauty there,” he gestured to a small crown, “is Victoria’s Small Diamond Crown. Small it may well be, but it’s covered with a thousand diamonds.”
Hector had never seen James look so sad. “You are having second thoughts?”
“I do sometimes and think I’m being a traitor to England, but then I imagine what will happen if Churchill is too proud to sign an armistice. I saw the Wehrmacht in action in France, Hector. The SS are cruel men. And you know what the last war did to your family. If the drunken old fool just signs the agreement, they will leave England alone.”
“Do you really think so?”
“Yes, I do.” The light was gone now, and James was a silhouette as he continued, “If the Germans are not allowed to turn away from us and then lose to the Russians, we will have socialists and communists taking over England. Every man will be wanting his little acre from our estates. They shot the tsar and all his family, and they will come for us. This antic with the Crown Jewels may not be the most . . . most tasteful way to do things, but it needs to be done. I cannot see any other way.”
Hector patted James’s knee. “Cheer up. I’m walking down to the village to see if they have decent cigarettes. Want to come with me?”
“No, I’ll stay. Thank you, Hector.”
” For what?” Hector said as he stood.
“For being a good friend.”
“It’s not difficult. Chin up. We’ll get through this debacle together.” He patted James’s arm and left.
Two soldiers guarded the closed front gates, and one stepped forward to block Hector as he approached, saying, “Not to go.”
Hector released an irritated sigh. “I speak German.”
“No one is allowed to leave,” the soldier said in German.
“Why not?”
“Because I said so.” Schellenberg’s voice turned Hector’s attention away from the gate. As he approached, Schellenberg smiled, shrugged, and spread his hands. “I’m afraid it applies to all of us, old boy.”
Hector would readily admit Schellenberg’s English was far better than his own German, but using the vernacular—old boy, chum, beastly, darling—always seemed odd, as though he didn’t quite understand what they meant but said them anyway. “I was thinking of wandering down to the village to see if they had any decent cigarettes.”
“You don’t like Trommler?”
Trommler were the cheapest, and nastiest, of German cigarettes. And the most popular. “I think they make them out of Göring’s old underwear.”
Schellenberg grimaced. “That is the most unpleasant image, and I think if Göring’s underwear were to help the war effort, they would be best used as parachutes.”
Hector laughed. Schellenberg was one of the few Germans he had met who could laugh at the corpulent Herman Göring, at least outside Germany.
“Trommler only cost three and a half pfennigs, so what do you expect? I have Neue Front if you want. They’re a little better.”
“I was rather hoping for Craven A or Senior Service.”
“Sorry, chum. After Monday I promise you can have all the Craven A you like.” Schellenberg had turned to leave when Hector stopped him and pointed to the hill above them.
