Where Eagles Dare
Alistair Maclean
HarperCollinsPublisbers Ltd. 1 London Bridge Street, London SE1 9GF
Previously published in paperback by HarperCollins 1994 and by Fontana 1969
First published in Great Britain by Collins 1967
Copyright © Devoran Trustees Ltd. 1967
Alistair MacLean asserts the moral right to be identified as the author of this work
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Source ISBN: 9780006158042
Ebook Edition © OCTOBER 2009 ISBN: 9780007289486
Version: 2020-09-03
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To Geoff and Gina
Contents
The vibrating clangour from the four great piston engines set teeth on edge and made an intolerable assault on cringing ear-drums. The decibel-level, Smith calculated, must have been about that found in a boiler factory, and one, moreover, that was working on overtime rates, while the shaking cold in that cramped, instrument-crowded flight-deck was positively Siberian. On balance, he reflected, he would have gone for the Siberian boiler factory any time because, whatever its drawbacks, it wasn’t liable to fall out of the sky or crash into a mountainside which, in his present circumstances, seemed a likely enough, if not imminent contingency for all that the pilot of their Lancaster bomber appeared to care to the contrary. Smith looked away from the darkly opaque world beyond the windscreens where the wipers fought a useless battle with the driving snow and looked again at the man in the left-hand captain’s seat.
Wing Commander Cecil Carpenter was as completely at home in his environment as the most contented oyster in his shell in Whitstable Bay. Any comparison with a Siberian boiler factory he would have regarded as the ravings of an unhinged mind. Quite clearly, he found the shuddering vibration as soothing as the ministrations of the gentlest of masseurs, the roar of the engines positively soporific and the ambient temperature just right for a man of his leisured literary tastes. Before him, at a comfortable reading distance, a book rested on a hinged contraption which he had swung out from the cabin’s side. From what little Smith could occasionally see of the lurid cover, depicting a blood-stained knife plunged into the back of a girl who didn’t seem to have any clothes on, the Wing Commander held the more serious contemporary novelists in a fine contempt. He turned a page.
‘Magnificent,’ he said admiringly. He puffed deeply on an ancient briar that smelt like a fumigating plant. ‘By heavens, this feller can write. Banned, of course, young Tremayne’—this to the fresh-faced youngster in the co-pilot’s seat—‘so I can’t let you have it till you grow up.’ He broke off, fanned the smoke-laden air to improve the visibility, and peered accusingly at his co-pilot. ‘Flying Officer Tremayne, you have that look of pained apprehension on your face again.’
‘Yes, sir. That’s to say, no, sir.’
‘Part of the malaise of our time,’ Carpenter said sorrowfully. ‘The young lack so many things, like appreciation of a fine pipe