‘Warmth! Dry clothing!’ Mallory interrupted incredulously. He looked down at the unconscious boy, remembering how Stevens had lost them the stove and all the fuel, and his mouth twisted in bitterness. His own executioner … ‘Where in God’s name are we going to find them?’
‘I don’t know, boss,’ Miller said simply. ‘But we gotta find them. And not just to lessen shock. With a leg like this and soaked to the skin, he’s bound to get pneumonia. And then as much sulfa as that bloody great hole in his leg will take – one touch of sepsis in the state this kid’s in …’ His voice trailed away into silence.
Mallory rose to his feet.
‘I reckon you’re the boss.’ It was a very creditable imitation of the American’s drawl, and Miller looked up quickly, surprise melting into a tired smile, then looked away again. Mallory could hear the chatter of his teeth as he bent over Stevens, and sensed rather than saw that he was shivering violently, continuously, but oblivious to it all in his complete concentration on the job in hand. Miller’s clothes, Mallory remembered again, were completely saturated: not for the first time, Mallory wondered how he had managed to get himself into such a state with a waterproof covering him.
‘You fix him up. I’ll find a place.’ Mallory wasn’t as confident as he felt: still, on the scree-strewn, volcanic slopes of these hills behind, there ought to be a fair chance of finding a rock shelter, if not a cave. Or there would have been in day-light: as it was they would just have to trust to luck to stumble on one … He saw that Casey Brown, grey-faced with exhaustion and illness – the after-effects of carbon monoxide poisoning are slow to disappear – had risen unsteadily to his feet and was making for a gap between the rocks.
‘Where are you going, Chief?’
‘Back for the rest of the stuff, sir.’
‘Are you sure you can manage?’ Mallory peered at him closely. ‘You don’t look any too fit to me.’
‘I don’t feel it either,’ Brown said frankly. He looked at Mallory. ‘But with all respects, sir, I don’t think you’ve seen yourself recently.’
‘You have a point,’ Mallory acknowledged. ‘All right then, come on. I’ll go with you.’
For the next ten minutes there was silence in the tiny clearing, a silence broken only by the murmurs of Miller and Andrea working over the shattered leg, and the moans of the injured man as he twisted and struggled feebly in his dark abyss of pain: then gradually the morphine took effect and the struggling lessened and died away altogether, and Miller was able to work rapidly, without fear of interruption. Andrea had an oilskin outstretched above them. It served a double purpose – it curtained off the sleet that swept round them from time to time and blanketed the pinpoint light of the rubber torch he held in his free hand. And then the leg was set and bandaged and as heavily splinted as possible and Miller was on his feet, straightening his aching back.
‘Thank Gawd that’s done,’ he said wearily. He gestured at Stevens. ‘I feel just the way that kid looks.’ Suddenly he stiffened, stretched out a warning arm. ‘I can hear something, Andrea,’ he whispered.
Andrea laughed. ‘It’s only Brown coming back, my friend. He’s been coming this way for over a minute now.’
‘How do you know it’s Brown?’ Miller challenged. He felt vaguely annoyed with himself and unobtrusively shoved his ready automatic back into his pocket.
‘Brown is a good man among rocks,’ Andrea said gently; ‘but he is tired. But Captain Mallory …’ He shrugged. ‘People call me “the big cat” I know, but among the mountains and rocks the captain is more than a cat. He is a ghost, and that was how men called him in Crete. You will know he is here when he touches you on the shoulder.’
Miller shivered in a sudden icy gust of sleet.
‘I wish you people wouldn’t creep around so much,’ he complained. He looked up as Brown came round the corner of a boulder, slow with the shambling, stumbling gait of an exhausted man. ‘Hi, there, Casey. How are things goin’?’
‘Not too bad.’ Brown murmured his thanks as Andrea took the box of explosives off his shoulder and lowered it easily to the ground. ‘This is the last of the gear. Captain sent me back with it. We heard voices some way along the cliff. He’s staying behind to see what they say when they find Stevens gone.’ Wearily he sat down on top of the box. ‘Maybe he’ll get some idea of what they’re going to do next, if anything.’
‘Seems to me he could have left you there and carried that damned box back himself,’ Miller growled. Disappointment in Mallory made him more outspoken than he’d meant to be. ‘He’s much better off than you are right now, and I think it’s a bit bloody much …’ He broke off and gasped in pain as Andrea’s fingers caught his arm like giant steel pincers.
‘It is not fair to talk like that, my friend,’ Andrea said reproachfully. ‘You forget, perhaps, that Brown here cannot talk or understand a word of German?’
Miller rubbed his bruised arm tenderly, shaking his head in slow self-anger and condemnation.
‘Me and my big mouth,’ he said ruefully. ‘Always talkin’ outa turn Miller, they call me. Your pardon, one and all … And what is next on the agenda, gentlemen?’
‘Captain says we’re to go straight on into the rocks and up the right shoulder of this hill here.’ Brown jerked a thumb in the direction of the vague mass, dark and strangely foreboding, that towered above and beyond them. ‘He’ll catch us up within fifteen minutes or so.’ He grinned tiredly at Miller. ‘And we’re to leave this box and a rucksack for him to carry.’
‘Spare me,’ Miller pleaded. ‘I feel only six inches tall as it is.’ He looked down at Stevens, lying quietly under the darkly gleaming wetness of the oilskins, then up at Andrea. ‘I’m afraid, Andrea –’
‘Of course, of course!’ Andrea stooped quickly, wrapped the oilskins round the unconscious boy and rose to his feet, as effortlessly as if the oilskins had been empty.
‘I’ll lead the way,’ Miller volunteered. ‘Mebbe I can pick an easy path for you and young Stevens.’ He swung generator and rucksacks on to his shoulder, staggering under the sudden weight; he hadn’t realised he was so weak. ‘At first, that is,’ he amended. ‘Later on, you’ll have to carry us both.’
Mallory had badly miscalculated the time it would require to overtake the others; over an hour had elapsed since Brown had left him, and still there were no signs of the others. And with seventy pounds on his back, he wasn’t making such good time himself.
It wasn’t all his fault. The returning German patrol, after the first shock of discovery, had searched the cliff-top again, methodically and with exasperating slowness. Mallory had waited tensely for someone to suggest descending and examining the chimney – the gouge-marks of the spikes on the rock would have been a dead giveaway – but nobody even mentioned it. With the guard obviously fallen to his death, it would have been a pointless thing to do anyway. After an unrewarding search, they had debated for an unconscionable time as to what they should do next. Finally they had done nothing. A replacement guard was left, and the rest made off along the cliff, carrying their rescue equipment with them.
The three men ahead had made surprisingly good time, although the conditions, admittedly, were now much easier. The heavy fall of boulders at the foot of the slope had petered out after another fifty yards, giving way to broken scree and rain-washed rubble. Possibly he had passed them, but it seemed unlikely: in the intervals between these driving sleet showers – it was more like hail now – he was able to scan the bare shoulder of the hill, and nothing moved. Besides, he knew that Andrea wouldn’t stop until he reached what promised at least a bare minimum of shelter, and as yet these exposed windswept slopes had offered nothing that even remotely approached that.
In the end, Mallory almost literally stumbled upon both men and shelter. He was negotiating a narrow, longitudinal spine of rock, had just crossed its razor-back, when he heard the murmur of voices beneath him and saw a tiny glimmer of light behind the canvas stretching down from the overhang of
the far wall of the tiny ravine at his feet.
Miller started violently and swung round as he felt the hand on his shoulder, the automatic was half-way out of his pocket before he saw who it was and sank back heavily on the rock behind him.
‘Come, come, now! Trigger-happy.’ Thankfully Mallory slid his burden from his aching shoulders and looked across at the softly laughing Andrea. ‘What’s so funny?’
‘Our friend here.’ Andrea grinned again. ‘I told him that the first thing he would know of your arrival would be when you touched him on the shoulder. I don’t think he believed me.’
‘You might have coughed or somethin’,’ Miller said defensively. ‘It’s my nerves, boss,’ he added plaintively. ‘They’re not what they were forty-eight hours ago.’
Mallory looked at him disbelievingly, made to speak, then stopped short as he caught sight of the pale blur of a face propped up against a rucksack. Beneath the white swathe of a bandaged forehead the eyes were open, looking steadily at him. Mallory took a step forward, sank down on one knee.
‘So you’ve come round at last!’ He smiled into the sunken parchment face and Stevens smiled back, the bloodless lips whiter than the face itself. He looked ghastly. ‘How do you feel, Andy?’
‘Not too bad, sir. Really I’m not.’ The bloodshot eyes were dark and filled with pain. His gaze fell and he looked down vacantly at his bandaged leg, looked up again, smiled uncertainly at Mallory. ‘I’m terribly sorry about all this, sir. What a bloody stupid thing to do.’
‘It wasn’t a stupid thing.’ Mallory spoke with slow, heavy emphasis. ‘It was criminal folly.’ He knew everyone was watching them, but knew, also, that Stevens had eyes for him alone. ‘Criminal, unforgivable folly,’ he went on quietly, ‘and I’m the man in the dock. I’d suspected you’d lost a lot of blood on the boat, but I didn’t know you had these big gashes on your forehead. I should have made it my business to find out.’ He smiled wryly. ‘You should have heard what these two insubordinate characters had to say to me about it when they got to the top … And they were right. You should never had been asked to bring up the rear in the state you were in. It was madness.’ He grinned again. ‘You should have been hauled up like a sack of coals like the intrepid mountaineering team of Miller and Brown … God knows how you ever made it – I’m sure you’ll never know.’ He leaned forward, touched Stevens’s sound knee. ‘Forgive me, Andy. I honestly didn’t realise how far through you were.’
Stevens stirred uncomfortably, but the dead pallor of the high-boned cheeks was stained with embarrassed pleasure.
‘Please, sir,’ he pleaded. ‘Don’t talk like that. It was just one of these things.’ He paused, eyes screwed shut and indrawn breath hissing sharply through his teeth as a wave of pain washed up from his shattered leg. Then he looked at Mallory again. ‘And there’s no credit due to me for the climb,’ he went on quietly. ‘I hardly remember a thing about it.’
Mallory looked at him without speaking, eyebrows arched in mild interrogation.
‘I was scared to death every step of the way up,’ Stevens said simply. He was conscious of no surprise, no wonder that he was saying the thing he would have died rather than say. ‘I’ve never been so scared in all my life.’
Mallory shook his head slowly from side to side, stubbled chin rasping in his cupped palm. He seemed genuinely puzzled. Then he looked down at Stevens and smiled quizzically.
‘Now I know you are new to this game, Andy.’ He smiled again. ‘Maybe you think I was laughing and singing all the way up that cliff? Maybe you think I wasn’t scared?’ He lit a cigarette and gazed at Stevens through a cloud of drifting smoke. ‘Well, I wasn’t. “Scared” isn’t the word – I was bloody well terrified. So was Andrea here. We knew too much not to be scared.’
‘Andrea!’ Stevens laughed, then cried out as the movement triggered off a crepitant agony in his bone-shattered leg. For a moment Mallory thought he had lost consciousness, but almost at once he spoke again, his voice husky with pain. ‘Andrea!’ he whispered. ‘Scared! I don’t believe it.’
‘Andrea was afraid.’ The big Greek’s voice was very gentle. ‘Andrea is afraid. Andrea is always afraid. That is why I have lived so long.’ He stared down at his great hands. ‘And why so many have died. They were not so afraid as I. They were not afraid of everything a man could be afraid of, there was always something they forgot to fear, to guard against. But Andrea was afraid of everything – and he forgot nothing. It is as simple as that.’
He looked across at Stevens and smiled.
‘There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die – that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough. We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he, too, is brave and afraid like all the rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer. Or sometimes ten minutes, or twenty minutes – or the time it takes a man sick and bleeding and afraid to climb a cliff.’
Stevens said nothing. His head was sunk on his chest, and his face was hidden. He had seldom felt so happy, seldom so at peace with himself. He had known that he could not hide things from men like Andrea and Mallory, but he had not known that it would not matter. He felt he should say something, but he could not think what and he was deathly tired. He knew, deep down, that Andrea was speaking the truth, but not the whole truth; but he was too tired to care, to try to work things out.
Miller cleared his throat noisily.
‘No more talkin’, Lieutenant,’ he said firmly. ‘You gotta lie down, get yourself some sleep.’
Stevens looked at him, then at Mallory in puzzled inquiry.
‘Better do what you’re told, Andy.’ Mallory smiled. ‘Your surgeon and medical adviser talking. He fixed your leg.’
‘Oh! I didn’t know. Thanks, Dusty. Was it very – difficult?’
Miller waved a deprecatory hand.
‘Not for a man of my experience. Just a simple break,’ he lied easily. ‘Almost let one of the others do it … Give him a hand to lie down, will you, Andrea?’ He jerked his head towards Mallory. ‘Boss?’
The two men moved outside, turning their backs to the icy wind.
‘We gotta get a fire, dry clothing, for that kid,’ Miller said urgently. ‘His pulse is about 140, temperature 103. He’s runnin’ a fever, and he’s losin’ ground all the time.’
‘I know, I know,’ Mallory said worriedly. ‘And there’s not a hope of getting any fuel on this damned mountain. Let’s go in and see how much dried clothing we can muster between us.’
He lifted the edge of the canvas and stepped inside. Stevens was still awake, Brown and Andrea on either side of him. Miller was on his heels.
‘We’re going to stay here for the night,’ Mallory announced, ‘so let’s make things as snug as possible. Mind you,’ he admitted, ‘we’re a bit too near the cliff for comfort, but old Jerry hasn’t a clue we’re on the island, and we’re out of sight of the coast. Might as well make ourselves comfortable.’
‘Boss …’ Miller made to speak, then fell silent again. Mallory looked at him in surprise, saw that he, Brown and Stevens were looking at one another, uncertainty, then doubt and a dawning, sick comprehension in their eyes. A sudden anxiety, the sure knowledge that something was far wrong, struck at Mallory like a blow.
‘What’s up?’ he demanded, sharply. ‘What is it?’
‘We have bad news for you, boss,’ Miller said carefully. ‘We should have told you right away. Guess we all thought that one of the others would have told you … Remember that sentry you and Andrea shoved over the side?’
Mallory nodded, sombrely. He knew what was coming.
‘He fell on top of that reef twenty-thirty feet or so from the cliff,’ Miller went on. ‘Wasn’t much of him left, I guess, but what was was jammed between two rocks. He was really stuck good and fast.’
‘I see,’ Mallory murmured. ‘I’ve been wondering all night how you managed to get so wet under
your rubber cape.’
‘I tried four times, boss,’ Miller said quietly. ‘The others had a rope round me.’ He shrugged his shoulders. ‘Not a chance. Them gawddamned waves just flung me back against the cliff every time.’
‘It will be light in three or four hours,’ Mallory murmured. ‘In four hours they will know we are on the island. They will see him as soon as it’s dawn and send a boat to investigate.’
‘Does it really matter, sir,’ Stevens suggested. ‘He could still have fallen.’
Mallory eased the canvas aside and looked out into the night. It was bitterly cold and the snow was beginning to fall all around them. He dropped the canvas again.
‘Five minutes,’ he said absently. ‘We will leave in five minutes.’ He looked at Stevens and smiled faintly. ‘We are forgetful too. We should have told you. Andrea stabbed the sentry through the heart.’
The hours that followed were hours plucked from the darkest nightmare, endless, numbing hours of stumbling and tripping and falling and getting up again, of racked bodies and aching, tortured muscles, of dropped loads and frantic pawing around in the deepening snow, of hunger and thirst and all-encompassing exhaustion.
They had retraced their steps now, were heading WNW back across the shoulder of the mountain – almost certainly the Germans would think they had gone due north, heading for the centre of the island. Without compass, stars or moon to guide, Mallory had nothing to orientate them but the feel of the slope of the mountain and the memory of the map Vlachos had shown them in Alexandria. But by and by he was reasonably certain that they had rounded the mountain and were pushing up some narrow gorge into the interior.
The snow was the deadly enemy. Heavy, wet and feathery, it swirled all around them in a blanketing curtain of grey, sifted down their necks and jackboots, worked its insidious way under their clothes and up their sleeves, blocked their eyes and ears and mouths, pierced and then anaesthetised exposed faces, and turned gloveless hands into leaden lumps of ice, benumbed and all but powerless. All suffered, and suffered badly, but Stevens most of all. He had lost consciousness again within minutes of leaving the cave and clad in clinging, sodden clothes as he was, he now lacked even the saving warmth generated by physical activity. Twice Andrea had stopped and felt for the beating of the heart, for he thought that the boy had died: but he could feel nothing for there was no feeling left in his hands, and he could only wonder and stumble on again.