He took a deep breath as they left the porch. He kept their pace normal, although his first inclination was to run. “Talk normally,” he whispered. “About anything. Laugh too, if you can.” He shifted his grip from her hand to her arm, drawing her closer to him. We made it, he thought again, as they reached the gate. But why? His story had just managed to pass, but then that blasted servant appeared to have a close look at him; and there had been some trouble with Veronica, too. She had been scared and angry, almost reaching the fine Celtic pitch of being fighting mad. Yes, there had been bad trouble upstairs. So why had they been allowed to walk out like this, as if nothing was at stake?
The answer came to him as he closed the gate behind them. A dove cooed twice, and then twice more, from the hillside shadows; a dove answered gently from the road below. So we didn’t make it, he thought. They only wanted us clear of the house, far enough away to cause it no trouble. He pulled Veronica quickly in front of him, his own back against the wall near the gate. “Just for a minute,” he told her. “Put your arms around my waist. Make it look good. Someone is watching us from the trees down by the road. That’s the way. Just give me a chance to see where we’ll move next.”
“Then there is danger,” she said softly. She put her hands lightly around him, leaned her cheek against his breast.
“Yes.” He looked over her head, down the rough track to the main road. His eyes picked out the scraps of possible cover: an outcrop of rock, a few bushes, another of those long retaining walls that terraced the hillside, the thin group of trees at the sharp turn into the road. Not much. Not much at all.
“In a way, I’m glad,” Veronica was saying. “I thought I was going just a little crazy. They locked my door, you know. If you hadn’t come, I’d have been kept there all night. The woman pretended it had only stuck when she came to tell me you were downstairs. But it was locked all right.” But why? But why?... She said nothing more, waited, feeling the strong steady heartbeat against her cheek.
He said at last, “They expect us to head for town. So we take the opposite direction. We’ll go half-way down this trail, walking normally. We reach the bushes, dump your case, keep low, and run like hell along the shelter of the stone wall that leads north beyond the headland. There’s another bay there, a big one—” He tried to remember the details of his map. “There’s a road edging it, too, part of the way at least—”
“I know the bay—it’s just a continuation of this small one—or is it the other way round? I went exploring for a place to swim there.”
“What’s it like?” he asked quickly.
“Cliffs, caves, coves with little beaches. Stony hillside, a few scattered houses, mostly closed until summer. Lonely.”
“Good. Let’s head that way. Find a nice comfortable wall. And sit it out until dawn comes up.” He felt the fleece of her blue coat, warm and soft to his touch; she wouldn’t freeze, thank heaven for that.
“Won’t they still be searching for us then?” And why, she wondered again, why?...
“I don’t think so.” We may not even have to wait until dawn, he was thinking. If Maritta’s panic had any meaning, the end of all waiting should be nearer than that. He remembered, too, the feeling of calm expectancy in the house on the hill: dinner over, everything cleared for action, nothing to do but play bridge until the Stefanie unloaded her cargo; and the dovecote, empty, ready for its prisoner. “Zero hour is too close.” He turned her head gently to look downhill. “See where we are going. The bushes—the wall—and then straight north. Got it?”
“Yes.”
“Once we leave this trail, move quietly. Keep your head well down. If I drop on my face, you fall flat too. All right—here goes!” They left the garden wall and started down the rough path. He walked slowly, his arm around her waist. He looked at her. She had lost her fear; her eyes were wide, her face alert, but the strain had gone. “No questions?” he asked softly.
“Later,” she said, and smiled.
She really believes I can get her out of this, he thought, and felt strangely more confident. Later... A very encouraging word, tonight. It implied a future.
* * *
From behind the shelter of the thin trees at the fork in the road, a man in rough clothes, as dark as the shadows around him, watched the couple leave the wall. They had stopped their love-making at last, and were now walking slowly down towards the main road. “They’ll be here in five minutes at this rate,” he told the man who had slipped down through the fields to join him. “What instructions? Hit and hold?”
“Eliminate. Both could be dangerous. They are on their way back to town.”
“Dangerous?” They look harmless enough to me, he thought. Still, that wasn’t for him to decide.
“We can take no chances with them—not at this hour. Now, let’s see—the path is too open. We’ll wait for them as they turn this corner to reach the harbour road.” For a brief instant, he looked up the hillside. The couple, arms linked, were almost half-way down the trail. “Get in position. Let’s see how the shadows lie.” He led the way carefully from tree to tree, over the rough ground. There was not much cover to work on. But he had begun their retreat just in time: the couple were still far enough away not to be warned by any movement. “We’ll have to stand down there,” he decided as the tree ended and the ground fell away steeply in a bank of bare rock to reach the road. “As near the corner as possible. Then they won’t notice us until they come around the turn.”
“They won’t notice anything. They didn’t even see you come down off the hill.”
“I didn’t intend them to see me,” the other answered curtly. He slipped down on to the road. “Quiet!” he warned, as his companion’s heel scraped against the rock. “No firing, remember! A shot from here could be heard clear across the harbour.”
“I know, I know. Hit hard. And then?” There was no shelter here at all. The first man looked worriedly along the road to town that stretched around the harbour. No one there, Gott sei Dank; everyone indoors, eating.
“Hit very hard. Then we carry them. To the cliff over there. And drop them. A romantic walk—dangerous by night. What better?”
“It’s a fifteen-minute haul up that headland.”
“And five minutes back. That leaves us plenty of time to get into position again.”
“It won’t be so easy,” said the man in the rough clothes. He disliked wearing them as much as taking orders from this jumped-up Czech colonel.
“You take the girl, then.” The other was contemptuous. “These were the orders from the house. No suspicions of any kind to be directed towards it.”
And that was that. “Zu Befehl.”
“Quiet! They should soon be here.”
“Pity that we had to lose sight of them.”
“If we could see them, they could see us. Keep silent! Listen!”
A minute passed. Almost two. The man who had been giving the orders cursed under his breath. He moved back from the corner—he dared not risk looking around it—and scrambled quietly up the rock face of the bank, his big and powerful body moving lightly, cautiously. He advanced carefully through the trees, stood very still. He cursed aloud. The other came after him. “But where are they?” he asked, his eyes searching the empty trail up to the house.
“They have taken a short cut over the fields back to town. But it’s too rough for the girl. They’ll have to get down to the main road by the path behind the large hotel. Come!”
“But we can’t get them there—”
“We can get them before they reach it.” Quickly, he turned and jumped down the bank, started running lightly along the road in the direction of town. In two minutes, even less, he could branch up one of those straggling mule paths before he was near the hotel. He could intercept them there, near the little graveyard’s wall. “We’ll get them,” he told the other, who was loping swiftly by his side. He believed it.
* * *
“Someone,” Craig had said softly to Veronica as t
hey came down the rough path from the house, “has just snaked down that hillside on our left. Keep looking at me. That’s the way.” So there would be two men down by the corner of the road, two sweet-cooing doves. “You’re doing fine,” he told her, and shifted his arm from her waist to let him clasp her hand. They were half-way to the road, almost at the clump of bushes he had chosen for their turn-off point. He could feel Veronica’s hand tighten in his, making sure of her grip as she prepared to run. They kept the same steady pace, slow, nonchalant, for those last twenty yards.
Abruptly he pulled her off the path, dropping her case among the bushes, raced for the long stone wall and its dark band of heavy shadow. Shoulders bent, heads down, they kept on going. The earth under their feet was soft and loose, easier than he had judged. Then the field ended, and the rougher ground began. He pulled her down into the shadow of the wall. He put a finger gently to her lips. Together, unmoving, they sat with legs pulled up under them, well within the sheltering band of blackness.
Now it was the time to wait. They had only been running for a full minute, not much more. They were still too near the path for safety, yet the ground had become too difficult, too deceiving, to take at such a speed. Better to stake everything on remaining hidden from eyes that start scanning the open hillside, he thought, than on placing distance between the waiting men and us. So we wait; and we’ll soon know if we manage to baffle them. They had to take cover from us down on the road. I saw a movement in the trees, and then nothing. How much time will they give us to appear around that corner? And when we don’t? Well, we’ll wait. And see.
He placed an arm around Veronica’s shoulder and drew her close to him. They sat very still, keeping their silence. His eyes were fixed on the little group of trees down by the main road. Strange thing, this rising moonlight. It both hid and revealed unexpectedly. From a distance, roughness and smoothness could hardly be accurately judged; a dark shadow could be a hole or a sharp-edged rock. But there was one real piece of luck for them: the bay of Mykonos faced westward. So these long, retaining walls over the hillside all faced west, too. At this time of night, with the moon coming up behind them, the shadows were just right; a few hours later, the moon would be overhead, and these shadows would be gone. Luck? Heinrich Berg would share the same luck, but he would be contemptuous of that word. Why else had he chosen such and such a time, and such and such a place, if he did not make use of all the help both time and place could give him? Berg, or Insarov—there he sits peacefully in his quiet house, thought Craig, a man who likes his comfort and a game of cards with amiable friends. He has planned every move his agents make, every action. He had planned for months. And when someone unforeseen, like Sussman or Duclos, threatens the perfection of those plans, he is dealt with quickly, summarily, without benefit of hesitation.
Craig glanced at Veronica. She was watching him. Her blue eyes would be large with questions, if he could only see them clearly. He tightened his grip on her shoulders reassuringly, and looked back at the trees. Were we about to be dealt with in just that way? he wondered. As Sussman was? And Duclos? He wouldn’t like to put that question to the test. Evasive action along this hillside seemed a more comfortable answer, even if the earth was cold and the stone wall hard. His back stiffened as he heard a distant voice. From the trees. A short phrase. Perhaps some kind of oath? He hadn’t caught the language—perhaps it was one he couldn’t understand. He thought he heard a scramble of feet over rocks. But he could see nothing. He took a deep breath. Waited. And then signed to Veronica that they were moving on, over the rough flank of hill stretching northward. Let’s get as far away from that house as possible, he was thinking; as far away from that road into town, too.
He helped her rise, pushed her head down with a grin to remind her to keep as low as possible, and took the lead. They moved with caution. The need was for quietness, not haste.
Following the wall, the terraced fields falling away on their left, they passed the small headland and could see the beginning curve of the large bay. A deserted coast it seemed, with neither village nor hamlet in sight; rough and dangerous, perhaps, with cloud shadows chasing over a gun-metal sea and the far-off islands. Bare, bleak, empty.
“We’ve come far enough,” he said, looking back. The house on the hill was no longer visible. Carefully, he selected an outcrop of rock ahead of them that looked as if it might give better protection than any wall. “Down there,” he told her, pointing. It would give them a good view of the narrow road (his map had been right) that followed the shore. At least, he thought thankfully, when the time comes to get back to Mykonos we can walk on a strip of hard-packed earth instead of scrambling over a hillside from shadow to shadow. As they drew nearer the outcrop of rock, it looked better and better. Its bulge and jut would shelter them completely from the house they had left behind them and from the rising moon.
He led her, quietly, around the prow of weathered rock, steadying her over the rough fragments underfoot. Then, suddenly, he heard a rustle. He turned to see two black shadows break off from the darkness of the wall of stone, reached for his knife, snapped it open. A strong hand gripped his wrist, a hard body turned his weight and threw him. He tried to twist free, to strike out. A knee pressed firmly down on his chest, a tight grasp was on his throat. He looked up and saw Partridge.
21
Blankly, Craig and Partridge stared at each other.
“Well,” said Partridge softly, rising and letting Craig breathe again, “you do get around, don’t you?”
“And where the hell did you come from?” Craig asked angrily, picking up the knife that had been smashed out of his grip. He rubbed his wrist, easing its numbness, and looked for Veronica. She had stopped struggling in the firm hold of a small lean character who had caught her from behind, around waist and shoulders. Like Partridge, he was dressed in black, an invisible shadow once he drew back against the sheltering strata of rock. There was a third man, also dark-clothed, crouching over a radio set. He was now cancelling the alarm he had sent out about two prowlers who had come down the hillside.
At least, thought Craig, his anger beginning to subside into annoyance with himself at the way he had been so nearly ambushed, at least we seem to have got organised around here. And he felt better. “Are you all right?” he asked Veronica as they followed Partridge into the shelter of the outcropping rock. She took a deep breath and nodded.
“I took your advice,” Partridge was saying, “and hired a submarine.” He grinned and pointed to the bay beneath them. “Landed half an hour ago by way of a small rubber boat. Chris knows all about such gadgets.” He nodded to the man who held Veronica so effectively. “Colonel Holland, to be precise.”
“Takes me back twenty years,” Chris said, sucking the heel of his hand. “Used to pop in and out of Crete like that, right under the Nazis’ guns.” He spoke nostalgically, with a definite English accent. “No strain.” He looked at his hand, still slightly bleeding, and then at Veronica. “And what on earth is a girl doing here?” he asked very quietly.
“I haven’t the faintest idea,” Veronica said with a touch of sharpness. “I just go where John pulls me.”
Craig said quickly, “Veronica was being held at the house. I had to get her out before the balloon went up. They’re expecting the Stefanie any minute now. So—well, I got her out. Our road back to town was blocked by two men. I thought it wiser to get as far away as possible from them. This seemed the safest direction.”
Partridge and Holland had exchanged a long glance. Partridge asked, “And how did you get her out of that house?”
“No trouble there. We walked out. Politely.”
“Explain.”
Craig explained. “Okay?” he asked worriedly as he ended. Partridge looked at him blankly, checked a laugh. Okay? It could have been very far from that. Amateurs walked in where professionals would hesitate; and walked out, too. Politely. This one had also produced useful verification of a puzzled report: it had actually been Insarov h
imself who walked quite openly over the hillside to that house at dusk this evening. But if Craig had been held and questioned, if there had been time for Insarov to go to work on him? Partridge repressed his anger. “Okay,” he said quietly. He looked at Veronica. “How much does she know about all this?”
“Nothing.”
Holland looked disbelieving. He cleared his throat. His comment was quite clear.
“Nothing,” Veronica said sharply. “I warn you I have a lot of questions. But I’ll ask them when I feel sure I’ll get some honest answers. In this last week, I’ve become very tired of lies.” She drew the collar of her coat more closely around her neck, chose the flattest stone, and sat down.
Chris Holland watched her thoughtfully. This was not the time for light relief and pretty females. She was a complete nuisance on this hillside, but she knew it. He relaxed visibly. “Discreet,” he admitted in frank surprise. She stared out at the dark fields falling away beneath them. He added, “You bite very nicely, too.” She had to smile, then, and he could turn back to Partridge and Craig.
Partridge had been doing some very quick explaining: Elias had left Mykonos and circled widely over the hillside to join some of his men stationed along this bay, while Bannerman had been instructed to stay in Mykonos in charge of radio contacts. (Partridge did not specify it, but Craig made his own guesses. There had to be direct links with the various groups on the hill as well as lines of communication with Athens, Smyrna, if not Paris.) But when it came to a report on the enemy operations, Partridge was more expansive. The Stefanie, lights out, had anchored briefly off a lonely stretch of shore farther north. She had unloaded two men and a large sack into a small boat, and then slipped out to sea under sail, lights beginning to show as land was left behind, a pretty picture of happy innocence. The small boat had brought its cargo safely into a cove where a man, a boy and a mule were waiting. “They have loaded the mule and left the cove. They’re coming down that road,” Partridge said, pointing towards the shoreline. “The boy and man are with the mule; the two men from the ship are following close behind. According to our reports, we’ll sight them in ten minutes or so.”