A barrel of salted herrings lasts a year;

caught clearly the dull, sickening crack as his right leg fractured cleanly in two, snapping like a rotten bough. CHAPTER 6 02000600 The German patrol was everything that Mallory had fearedefficient, thorough and very, very painstaking. It even had imagination, in the person of its young and competent sergeant, and that was more dangerous still. There were only four of them, in high boots, helmets and green, grey and brown mottled capes. First of all they located the telephone and reported to base. Then the young sergeant sent two men to search another hundred yards or so along the cliff, while he and the fourth soldier probed among the rocks that paralleled the cliff. The search was slow and careful, but the two men did not penetrate very far into the rocks. To Mallory, the sergeant's, reasoning was obvious and logical. If the sentry had gone to sleep or taken ill, it was unlikely that he would have gone far in among that confused jumble of boulders. Mallory and the others were safely back beyond their reach. And then came what Mallory had fearedan organised, methodical inspection of the cliff-top itself: worse stifi, it began with a search along the very edge. Securely held by his three men with interlinked armsthe last with a hand hooked round his beltthe sergeant walked slowly along the rim, probing every inch with the spotlit beam of a powerful torch. Suddenly he stopped short, exclaimed suddenly and stooped, torch and face only inches from the ground. There was no question as to what he had foundthe deep gouge made in the soft, crumbling soil by the climbing rope that had been belayed round the boulder and gone over to the edge of the cliff. . . . Softly, silently, Mallory and his three companions straightened to their knees or to their feet, gun barrels lining along the tops of boulders or peering out between cracks in the rocks. There was no doubt in any of their minds that Stevens was lying there helplessly in the crutch of the chimney, seriously injured or dead. It needed only one German carbine to point down that cliff face, however carelessly, and these four men would die. They would have to die. The sergeant was stretched out his length now, two men holding his legs. His head and shoulders were over the edge of the cliff, the beam from his torch stabbing down the chimney. For ten, perhaps fifteen seconds, there was no sound on the cliff-top, no sound at all, only the high, keening moan of the wind and the swish of the rain digital point and shot camera case in the stunted grass. And then the sergeant had wriggled back and risen to his feet, slowly shaking his head. Mallory gestured to the others to sink down behind the boulders again, but even so the sergeant's soft Bavarian voice carried clearly in the wind. "It's Ehrich all right, poor fellow." Compassion and anger blended curiously in the voice. "I warned him often enough about his carelessness, about going too near the edge of that cliff. It is very treacherous." Instinctively the sergeant stepped back a couple of feet and looked again at the gouge in the soft earth. "That's where his heel slippedor 'maybe the butt of his carbine. Not that it matters now." "Is he dead, do you think, Sergeant?" The speaker was only a boy, nervous and unhappy. "It's hard to say.. . . Look for yourself." Gingerly the youth lay down on the cliff-top, peering cautiously over the lip of the rock. The other soldiers were talking among themselves, in short staccato sentences, when Mallory turned to Miller, cupped his hands to his mouth and the American's ear. He could contain his puzzlement no longer. "Was Stevens wearing his dark suit when you left him?" he whispered. "Yeah," Miller whispered back. "Yeah, I think he was." A pause. "No, thmmit, I'm wrong. We both put on our rubber camouflage capes about the same time." Mallory nodded. The waterproofs of the Germans were almost identical with their own: and the sentry's hair, Mallory remembered, had been jet blackthe same colour as Stevens's dyed hair. Probably all that was visible from above was a crumpled, cape-shrouded figure and a dark head. The sergeant's mistake in identity was more than understandable: it was inevitable. The young soldier eased himself back from the edge of the cliff and hoisted himself carefully to his feet. "You're right, Sergeant. It is Ebrich." The boy's voice was unsteady. "He's alive, I think. I saw his cape move, just a little. It wasn't the wind, I'm sure of that." Mallory felt Andrea's massive hand squeezing his arm, felt the quick surge of relief, then elation, wash through him. So Stevens was alive! Thank God for that! They'd save the boy yet. He heard Andrea whispering the news to the others, then grinned wryly to himself, ironic at his own gladness. Jensen definitely would not have approved of this jubilation. Stevens had already done his