Horizon by Helen MacInnes

the town at the river’s edge. To reach it, they would have either to pass the station, which certainly had been in German control this afternoon, or to make a detour through the centre of the town.) Perhaps, Johann suggested with a smile, the barracks had even already been emptied of its arms and ammunition. The man at Bozen would know.
    The colonel said nothing. But when Johann stopped in the shadow of some trees just where a rough track, emerging darkly from a small wood, joined the road they had followed Lennox could almost feel the colonel’s unwillingness to leave the lorry guarded by the four other men. His plan, like most bright ideas, seemingly excellent at the moment of discovery, was beginning to tarnish with each minute of delay. The colonel had started worrying again. The barracks were his chief objective: he disliked having them made into secondary importance.
    “If anyone starts asking questions just remember to keep talking German,” he said to the men. “Your story is that the lorry has broken down on your way back to the station afterdelivering the officers to the prison camp. Don’t shoot, unless you are desperate. Get rid of any curious stranger quietly.” The colonel looked round him. The countryside was peaceful, the isolated houses were dark and seemingly asleep even at this early hour. The lights in Bozen itself were scattered and dim: there were no shots, no shouts, to break through the deep silence of the night. The lorry was swallowed up in the trees’ shadows. Anyone passing along the road wouldn’t even notice it. All was well, so far. And yet his worry grew.
    The colonel looked at the faint green numbering on his watch. “We’ve taken exactly six minutes to reach this point from the prison courtyard,” he said. “If Lennox and I aren’t back at the lorry in fifteen minutes flat, return to the camp. Remember to signal with your headlights as you approach it so that our guards will recognise you at once. Lieutenant Simmins, check the time.” The two officers compared their wrist-watches. There was a tightening in the faces of the waiting men.
    Johann moved impatiently, and the colonel slowly left the lorry’s shadow. Lennox, at a sign, followed with equal reluctance. Johann was leading them into the wood by a well-marked path, so carefully cleared of trees and branches that Lennox realised it was as well-used as it was marked. It was only the black blanket of night, smothering recognisable shapes and distorting them into ominous shadows, which made this small wood seem so mysterious and dangerous. In daylight it would probably seem a very simple and innocent place.
    When they had travelled less than a hundred yards (at first slowly, then more surely as their eyes became accustomed to the depths of shadows around them) and found themselves in a clearing Lennox knew his guess had been accurate enough.The path had been merely the entrance to a beer-garden. For in the clearing before him were wooden tables and benches, and beyond these lay a two-storeyed wooden house built in the Tyrolese manner with broad eaves overshadowing its side walls. An inn. That’s what it would be: a nice, woodland place for a picnic or a family reunion.
    A family reunion. Lennox’s lips tightened, and he stared at the chalet, still and shuttered, lit only by the clear stars which shone so brightly above the clearing.
    The colonel had halted too, but he was watching Johann. “Is this the place?” he asked.
    Johann nodded. He was already walking over the stretch of soft, fine grass towards the house. He motioned impatiently with his hand for them to follow.
    “Stay here,” the colonel said quietly, grasping Lennox suddenly by the arm. “Keep in the shadows. I’ll do the bargaining. I think I’m getting the hang of the boy’s dialect now. If I need you I’ll call you. If I meet trouble I’ll fire a shot. Then you will get back to the lorry and tell them to make for the camp at once. All quite