He put the leather-bound albums back in their case and went to sleep thinking over what he had just about decided to do--the final decision to be made after talking it over with Ferniany and whoever London sent in to command the team.
Ferniany would be here tomorrow, probably around noon. He would have with him two of his people, Hungarians he had recruited, and the signal panels, and the radio, and the Sten gun Captain Hughson had loaned him just before he left Vis. Canidy would be glad to have that back. There was plenty of room in the Lodge to put Ferniany and his men up for however long it took London to get off its ass and send him the team, and the worst possible scenario for that was five days.
Von Heurten-Mitnitz and the Countess would return to Budapest tomorrow.
Canidy saw no problem with that. He didn't need the Countess now: She had told her servants they were to do what he asked. And he didn't think there would be any suspicion directed toward the Countess and von HeurtenMitnitz for having been in Pecs several days before the prisoners had escaped from St. Gertrud's. Or several days before an unexplained explosion had destroyed a mine shaft in the Batthyany coal mine.
It would be a coincidence, nothing more, that His Excellency had been enjoying the overnight hospitality of the Countess at the Countess's rustic love nest ten or so miles away.
The most serious potential problem, Canidy had gone to sleep thinking, was not how to get Eric and the professor out of the hands of Hungarians, but how to do it without calling a hell of a lot of attention to the operation. He had been disturbed by Standartenfuhrer Muller's report that the SS not only had not grown bored with looking for Fulmar and the professor, but quite the reverse, had intensified the examination.
St. Gertrud's prison would be swarming with SS and Gestapo just as soon as word got out that two prisoners had not only escaped but had been rescued by what it would take them about five minutes to figure out was a highly skilled team under the hands of either the SOE or the
OSS.
When he woke up smelling like a Hungarian courtesan, Canidy rested on his back in the dark for several minutes in the hope that, as sometimes happened, his subconscious had been working on the problem while he slept and that there would be new solutions, or new questions, or both.
But none came.
He fumbled for the bedside lamp, turned it on, then got out of bed and got dressed in the hunting clothes he had worn the day before. If nothing else, he decided, he would walk back through the woods to the drop zone and see for himself what it looked like at dawn.
Then he would come back to the house and see about something to eat.
He sensed, when he entered the main room of the lodge, that there was someone there, someone watching him.
The room was lit now only by embers in the huge fireplace before which in happier times the aristocracy had staged their little tableaux vivants. He looked around, but he saw nothing.
Then Alois, the chief hunter, rose out of a huge upholstered chair near the fireplace. Its bulk and high sides had hidden him. He was fully dressed and had
apparently slept overnight in the chair as a sort of guard. He was wearing a heavy poncho like garment of gray wool, and he had his shotgun.
"Good morning," Canidy said, smiling.
Alois grunted.
"I need a flashlight," Canidy said.
There was confusion on Alois's face.
Canidy mimed a flashlight, and lighting a path with one.
Alois grunted again and left the room. He returned with two flashlights, a square light with a handle, and a tiny two-cell that looked like a child's toy. He extended both to Canidy, offering him his choice.
Canidy took the larger light and walked to the door. Alois didn't move, but by the time Canidy had unlatched the chains and dead bolts, he became aware that Alois had moved soundlessly across the room and was standing behind him.
Somewhere, far off, there was the sound of aircraft engines.
The beam of his light picked out their footsteps in the snow from the day before, and Canidy, with Alois following him, walked away from the lodge toward the forest and the meadow beyond it.
Concentrating on not losing the path or his footing in the dark, Canidy didn't pay much attention to the sound of the aircraft engines far away--until they suddenly seemed much closer.
He looked up into the sky.
Jesus! Those sound like Twin Wasps!
He broke into a trot, slipping and sliding on the frozen snow.
When he reached the meadow, it was light enough to see the meadow and the area beyond. But there was no aircraft in sight, and it was only when he strained his ears that he could convince himself that he could just barely hear the sound of faraway engines.