The Eagle Has Landed by Jack Higgins Read Free Book Online Page B

because of this, the feeling that some much deeper motivation is involved.'
     
     
'Herr Oberst?' Hofer said politely.
     
     
Take this affair. The Fuhrer, whom heaven protect naturally, has a brainstorm and comes up with the comical and absurd suggestion that we should emulate Skorzeny's exploit at Gran Sasso by getting Churchill, although whether alive or dead has not been specified. And the synchronicity rears its ugly head in a routine Abwehr report. A brief mention that Churchill will be spending a week-end no more than seven or eight miles from the coast at a remote country house in as quiet a part of the country as one could wish. You take my meaning? At any other time that report of Mrs. Grey's would have meant nothing.'
     
     
'So we do proceed then, Herr Oberst?'
     
     
'It would appear that fate has taken a hand, Karl,' Radl said. 'How long did you say Mrs. Grey's reports take to come in through the Spanish diplomatic bag?'
     
     
Three days, Herr Oberst, if someone is waiting in Madrid to collect. No more than a week, even if circumstances are difficult.'
     
     
'And when is her next radio contact time?'
     
     
'This evening, Herr Oberst.'
     
     
'Good - send her this message.' Radl looked up at the ceiling again, thinking hard, trying to compress his thoughts. 'Very interested in your visitor of sixth November. Like to drop some friends in to meet him in the hope that they might persuade him to come back with them. Your early comments looked for by usual route with all relevant information.'
     
     
'Is that all, Herr Oberst?'
     
     
'I think so.'
     
     
.
     
     
That was Wednesday and it was raining in Berlin, but the following morning when Father Philip Vereker limped out through the lychgate of St Mary's and All the Saints, Studley Constable, and walked down through the village, the sun was shining and it was that most beautiful of all things, a perfect autumn day.
     
     
At that time, Philip Vereker was a tall, gaunt young man of thirty, the gauntness emphasized even more by the black cassock. His face was strained and twisted with pain as he limped along, leaning heavily on his stick. He had only been discharged from a military hospital four months earlier.
     
     
The younger son of a Harley Street surgeon, he had been a brilliant scholar who at Cambridge had shown every sign of an outstanding future. Then, to his family's dismay, he had decided to train for the priesthood, had gone to the English College in Rome and joined the Society of Jesus.
     
     
He had entered the army as a padre in 1940 and had finally been assigned to the Parachute Regiment and had seen action only once in November, 1942, in Tunisia when he had jumped with units of the First Parachute Brigade with orders to seize the airfield at Oudna, ten miles from Tunis. In the end, they had been compelled to make a fighting retreat over fifty miles of open country, strafed from the air every yard of the way and under constant attack from ground forces.
     
     
One hundred and eighty made it to safety. Two hundred and sixty didn't. Vereker was one of the lucky ones, in spite of a bullet which had passed straight through his left ankle, chipping bone. By the time he reached a field hospital, sepsis had set in. His left foot was amputated and he was invalided out.
     
     
Vereker found it difficult to look pleasant these days. The pain was constant and would not go away, and yet he did manage a smile as he approached Park Cottage and saw Joanna Grey emerge pushing her bicycle, her retriever at her heels.
     
     
'How are you, Philip?' she said. 'I haven't seen you for several days.'
     
     
She wore a tweed skirt, polo-necked sweater underneath a yellow oilskin coat and a silk scarf was tied around her white hair. She really did look very charming with that South African tan of hers that she never really lost.
     
     
'Oh. I'm all right,' Vereker said. 'Dying by inches of boredom more than anything else. One piece of news since I last