Andrea and Louki returned less than five minutes later, and Miller and Panayis were almost at their heels. They could hear Miller coming some distance away, slipping, falling and swearing almost continuously as he struggled up the gully under a large and awkward load. He practically fell across the threshold of the cave and collapsed wearily by the fire. He gave the impression of a man who had been through a very great deal indeed. Mallory grinned sympathetically at him.
‘Well, Dusty, how did it go? Hope Panayis here didn’t slow you up too much.’
Miller didn’t seem to hear him. He was gazing incredulously at the fire, lantern jaw drooping open as its significance slowly dawned on him.
‘Hell’s teeth! Would you look at that!’ He swore bitterly. ‘Here I spend half the gawddamned night climbing up a gawddamned mountain with a stove and enough kerosene to bath a bloody elephant. And what do I find?’ He took a deep breath to tell them what he found, then subsided into a strangled, seething silence.
‘A man your age should watch his blood pressure,’ Mallory advised him. ‘How did the rest of it go?’
‘Okay, I guess.’ Miller had a mug of ouzo in his hand and was beginning to brighten up again. ‘We got the beddin’, the medicine kit –’
‘If you’ll give me the bedding I will get our young friend into it now,’ Andrea interrupted.
‘And food?’ Mallory asked.
‘Yeah. We got the grub, boss. Stacks of it. This guy Panayis is a wonder. Bread, wine, goat-cheese, garlic sausages, rice – everything.’
‘Rice?’ It was Mallory’s turn to be incredulous. ‘But you can’t get the stuff in the islands nowadays, Dusty.’
‘Panayis can.’ Miller was enjoying himself hugely now. ‘He got it from the German commandant’s kitchen. Guy by the name of Skoda.’
‘The German commandant’s – you’re joking!’
‘So help me, boss, that’s Gospel truth.’ Miller drained half the ouzo at a gulp and expelled his breath in a long, gusty sigh of satisfaction. ‘Little ol’ Miller hangs around the back door, knees knockin’ like Carmen Miranda’s castanets, ready for a smart take off in any direction while Junior here goes in and cracks the joint. Back home in the States he’d make a fortune as a cat-burglar. Comes back in about ten minutes, luggin’ that damned suitcase there.’ Miller indicated it with a casual wave of his hand. ‘Not only cleans out the commandant’s pantry, but also borrows his satchel to carry the stuff in. I tell you, boss, associatin’ with this character gives me heart attacks.’
‘But – but how about guards, about sentries?’
‘Taken the night off, I guess, boss. Old Panayis is like a clam – never says a word, and even then I can’t understand him. My guess is that everybody’s out lookin’ for us.’
‘There and back and you didn’t meet a soul.’ Mallory filled him with a mug of wine. ‘Nice going, Dusty.’
‘Panayis’s doin’, not mine. I just tagged along. Besides, we did run into a couple of Panayis’s pals – he hunted them up rather. Musta given him the tip-off about somethin’. He was hoppin’ with excitement just afterwards, tried to tell me all about it.’ Miller shrugged his shoulders sadly. ‘We weren’t operatin’ on the same wave-length, boss.’
Mallory nodded across the cave. Louki and Panayis were close together, Louki doing all the listening, while Panayis talked rapidly in a low voice, gesticulating with both hands.
‘He’s still pretty worked up about something,’ Mallory said thoughtfully. He raised his voice. ‘What’s the matter, Louki?’
‘Matter enough, Major.’ Louki tugged ferociously at the end of his moustache. ‘We will have to be leaving soon – Panayis wants to go right away. He has heard that the German garrison is going to make a house-to-house check in our village during the night – about four o’clock, Panayis was told.’
‘Not a routine check, I take it?’ Mallory asked.
‘This has not happened for many months. They must think that you have slipped their patrols and are hiding in the village.’ Louki chuckled. ‘If you ask me, I don’t think they know what to think. It is nothing to you, of course. You will not be there – and even if you were they would not find you: and it will make it all the safer for you to come to Margaritha afterwards. But Panayis and I – we must not be found out of our beds. Things would go hard with us.’
‘Of course, of course. We must take no risks. But there is plenty of time. You will go down in an hour. But first, the fortress.’ He dug into his breast pocket, brought out the map Eugene Vlachos had drawn for him, turned to Panayis and slipped easily into the island Greek. ‘Come, Panayis. I hear you know the fortress as Louki here knows his own vegetable patch. I already know much, but I want you to tell me everything about it – the layout, guns, magazines, power rooms, barracks, sentries, guard routine, exits, alarm systems, even where the shadows are deep and the others less deep – just everything. No matter how tiny and insignificant the details may seem to you, nevertheless you must tell me. If a door opens outwards instead of inwards, you must tell me: that could save a thousand lives.’
‘And how does the Major mean to get inside?’ Louki asked.
‘I don’t know yet. I cannot decide until I have seen the fortress.’ Mallory was aware of Andrea looking sharply at him, then looking away. They had made their plans on the MTB for entering the fortress. But it was the keystone upon which everything depended, and Mallory felt that this knowledge should be confined to the fewest number possible.
For almost half an hour Mallory and the three Greeks huddled over the chart in the light of the flames, Mallory checking on what he had been told, meticulously pencilling in all the fresh information that Panayis had to give him – and Panayis had a very great deal to tell. It seemed almost impossible that a man could have assimilated so much in two brief visits to the fortress – and clandestine visits in the darkness, at that. He had an incredible eye and capacity for detail; and it was a burning hatred of the Germans, Mallory felt certain, that had imprinted these details on an all but photographic memory. Mallory could feel his hopes rising with every second that passed.
Casey Brown was awake again. Tired though he was, the babble of voices had cut through an uneasy sleep. He crossed over to where Andy Stevens, half-awake now, lay propped against the wall, talking rationally at times, incoherently at others. There was nothing for him to do there, Brown saw: Miller, cleaning, dusting and rebandaging the wounds had had all the help he needed – and very efficient help at that – from Andrea. He moved over to the mouth of the cave, listened blankly to the four men talking in Greek, moved out past the screen for a breath of the cold, clean night air. With seven people inside the cave and the fire burning continuously, the lack of almost all ventilation had made it uncomfortably warm.
He was back in the cave in thirty seconds, drawing the screen tightly shut behind him.
‘Quiet, everybody!’ he whispered softly. He gestured behind him. ‘There’s something moving out there, down the slope a bit. I heard it twice, sir.’
Panayis swore softly, twisted to his feet like a wild cat. A foot-long, two-edged throwing knife gleamed evilly in his hand and he had vanished through the canvas screen before anyone could speak. Andrea made to follow him, but Mallory stretched out his hand.
‘Stay where you are, Andrea. Our friend Panayis is just that little bit too precipitate,’ he said softly. ‘There may be nothing – or it might be some diversionary move … Oh, damn!’ Stevens had just started babbling to himself in a loud voice. ‘He would start talking now. Can’t you do something …’
But Andrea was already bent over the sick boy, holding his hand in his own, smoothing the hot forehead and hair with his free hand and talking to him soothingly, softly, continuously. At first he paid no attention, kept on talking in a rambling, inconsequential fashion about nothing in particular, gradually, however, the hypnotic effect of the stroking hand, the gentle caressing murmur took effect, and the babbling died away to a barely audible muttering, ceased
altogether. Suddenly his eyes opened and he was awake and quite rational.
‘What is it, Andrea? Why are you –?’
‘Shh!’ Mallory held up his hand. ‘I can hear someone –’
‘It’s Panayis, sir.’ Brown had his eye at a crack in the curtain. ‘Just moving up the gully.’
Seconds later, Panayis was inside the cave, squatting down by the fire. He looked thoroughly disgusted.
‘There is no one there,’ he reported. ‘Some goats I saw, down the hill, but that was all.’ Mallory translated to the others.
‘Didn’t sound like goats to me,’ Brown said doggedly. ‘Different kind of sound altogether.’
‘I will take a look,’ Andrea volunteered. ‘Just to make sure. But I do not think the dark one would make a mistake.’ Before Mallory could say anything he was gone, as quickly and silently as Panayis. He was back in three minutes, shaking his head. ‘Panayis is right. There is no one. I did not even see the goats.’
‘And that’s what it must have been, Casey,’ Mallory said. ‘Still, I don’t like it. Snow almost stopped, wind dropping and the valley probably swarming with German patrols – I think it’s time you two were away. For God’s sake, be careful. If anyone tries to stop you, shoot to kill. They’ll blame it on us anyway.’
‘Shoot to kill!’ Louki laughed dryly. ‘Unnecessary advice, Major, when the dark one is with us. He never shoots any other way.’
‘Right, away you go. Damned sorry you’ve got yourselves mixed up in all this – but now that you are, a thousand thanks for all you’ve done. See you at half-past six.’
‘Half-past six,’ Louki echoed. ‘The olive grove on the bank of the stream, south of the village. We will be waiting there.’
Two minutes later they were lost to sight and sound and all was still inside the cave again, except for the faint crackling of the embers of the dying fire. Brown had moved out on guard, and Stevens had already fallen into a restless, pain-filled sleep. Miller bent over him for a moment or two, then moved softly across the cave to Mallory. His right hand held a crumpled heap of bloodstained bandages. He held them out towards Mallory.
‘Take a sniff at that, boss,’ he asked quietly. ‘Easy does it.’
Mallory bent forward, drew away sharply, his nose wrinkled in immediate disgust.
‘Good lord, Dusty! That’s vile!’ He paused, paused in sure, sick certainty. He knew the answer before he spoke. ‘What on earth is it?’
‘Gangrene.’ Miller sat down heavily by his side, threw the bandages into the fire. All at once he sounded tired, defeated. ‘Gas gangrene. Spreadin’ like a forest fire – and he would have died anyway. I’m just wastin’ my time.’
TEN
Tuesday Night
0400–0600
The Germans took them just after four o’clock in the morning, while they were still asleep. Bonetired and deep-drugged with this sleep as they were, they had no chance, not the slightest hope of offering any resistance. The conception, timing and execution of the coup were immaculate. Surprise was complete.
Andrea was the first awake. Some alien whisper of sound had reached deep down to that part of him that never slept, and he twisted round and elbowed himself off the ground with the same noiseless speed as his hand reached out for his ready-cocked and loaded Mauser. But the white beam of the powerful torch lancing through the blackness of the cave had blinded him, frozen his stretching hand even before the clipped bite of command from the man who held the torch.
‘Still! All of you!’ Faultless English, with barely a trace of accent, and the voice glacial in its menace. ‘You move, and you die!’ Another torch switched on, a third, and the cave was flooded with light. Wide awake, now, and motionless Mallory squinted painfully into the dazzling beams: in the back-wash of reflected light, he could just discern the vague, formless shapes crouched in the mouth of the cave, bent over the dulled barrels of automatic rifles.
‘Hands clasped above the heads and backs to the wall!’ A certainty, an assured competence in the voice that made for instant obedience. ‘Take a good look at them, Sergeant.’ Almost conversational now, the tone, but neither torch nor gun barrel had wavered a fraction. ‘No shadow of expression in their faces, not even a flicker of the eyes. Dangerous men, Sergeant. The English choose their killers well!’
Mallory felt the grey bitterness of defeat wash through him in an almost tangible wave, he could taste the sourness of it in the back of his mouth. For a brief, heart-sickening second he allowed himself to think of what must now inevitably happen and as soon as the thought had come he thrust it savagely away. Everything, every action, every thought, every breath must be on the present. Hope was gone, but not irrecoverably gone: not so long as Andrea lived. He wondered if Casey Brown had seen or heard them coming, and what had happened to him: he made to ask, checked himself just in time. Maybe he was still at large.
‘How did you manage to find us?’ Mallory asked quietly.
‘Only fools burn juniper wood,’ the officer said contemptuously. ‘We have been on Kostos all day and most of the night. A dead man could have smelt it.’
‘On Kostos?’ Miller shook his head. ‘How could –?’
‘Enough!’ The officer turned to someone behind him. ‘Tear down that screen,’ he ordered in German, ‘and keep us covered on either side.’ He looked back into the cave, gestured almost imperceptibly with his torch. ‘All right, you three. Outside – and you had better be careful. Please believe me that my men are praying for an excuse to shoot you down, you murdering swine!’ The venomous hatred in his voice carried utter conviction.
Slowly, hands still clasped above their heads, the three men stumbled to their feet. Mallory had taken only one step when the whip-lash of the German’s voice brought him up short.
‘Stop!’ He stabbed the beam of his torch down at the unconscious Stevens, gestured abruptly at Andrea. ‘One side, you! Who is this?’
‘You need not fear from him,’ Mallory said quietly. ‘He is one of us but he is terribly injured. He is dying.’
‘We will see,’ the officer said tightly. ‘Move to the back of the cave!’ He waited until the three men had stepped over Stevens, changed his automatic rifle for a pistol, dropped to his knees and advanced slowly, torch in one hand, gun in the other, well below the line of fire of the two soldiers who advanced unbidden at his heels. There was an inevitability, a cold professionalism about it all that made Mallory’s heart sink.
Abruptly the officer reached out his gun-hand, tore the covers off the boy. A shuddering tremor shook the whole body, his head rolled from side to side as he moaned in unconscious agony. The officer bent quickly over him, the hard, clean lines of the face, the fair hair beneath the hood high-lit in the beam of his own torch. A quick look at Stevens’s pain-twisted, emaciated features, a glance at the shattered leg, a brief, distasteful wrinkling of the nose as he caught the foul stench of the gangrene, and he had hunched back on his heels, gently replacing the covers over the sick boy.
‘You speak the truth,’ he said softly. ‘We are not barbarians. I have no quarrel with a dying man. Leave him there.’ He rose to his feet, walked slowly backwards. ‘The rest of you outside.’
The snow had stopped altogether, Mallory saw, and stars were beginning to twinkle in the clearing sky. The wind, too, had fallen away and was perceptibly warmer. Most of the snow would be gone by midday, Mallory guessed.
Carelessly, incuriously, he looked around him. There was no sign of Casey Brown. Inevitably Mallory’s hopes began to rise. Petty Officer Brown’s recommendation for this operation had come from the very top. Two rows of ribbons to which he was entitled but never wore bespoke his gallantry, he had a formidable reputation as a guerrilla fighter – and he had had an automatic rifle in his hand. If he were somewhere out there … Almost as if he had divined his hopes, the German smashed them at a word.
‘You wonder where your sentry is, perhaps?’ he asked mockingly. ‘Never fear, Englishman, he is not far from here, asleep a
t his post. Very sound asleep, I’m afraid.’
‘You’ve killed him?’ Mallory’s hands clenched until his palms ached.
The other shrugged his shoulder in vast indifference.
‘I really couldn’t say. It was all too easy. One of my men lay in the gully and moaned. A masterly performance – really pitiable – he almost had me convinced. Like a fool your man came to investigate. I had another man waiting above, the barrel of his rifle in his hand. A very effective club, I assure you …’
Slowly Mallory unclenched his fists and stared bleakly down the gully. Of course Casey would fall for that, he was bound to after what had happened earlier in the night. He wasn’t going to make a fool of himself again, cry ‘wolf’ twice in succession: inevitably, he had gone to check first. Suddenly the thought occurred to Mallory that maybe Casey Brown had heard something earlier on, but the thought vanished as soon as it had come. Panayis did not look like the man to make a mistake: and Andrea never made a mistake; Mallory turned back to the officer again.
‘Well, where do we go from here?’
‘Margaritha, and very shortly. But one thing first.’ The German, his own height to an inch, stood squarely in front of him, levelled revolver at waist height, switched-off torch dangling loosely from his right hand. ‘Just a little thing, Englishman. Where are the explosives?’ He almost spat the words out.
‘Explosives?’ Mallory furrowed his brows in perplexity. ‘What explosives?’ he asked blankly, then staggered and fell to the ground as the heavy torch swept round in a vicious half-circle, caught him flush on the side of the face. Dizzily he shook his head and climbed slowly to his feet again.