‘You are right,’ said Clytemnestra, soothingly, without impatience. ‘Tell me more about this man, in whom I must tell you I do not believe.’
‘He has curly hair and a thin moustache, so thin, like a worm on his lip. He carries a rifle, many grenades. When he saw me I thought he would shoot. But he vanished only, into the dark, like a ghost.’
‘Perhaps he is a ghost.’
Ladas scowled so that his mighty eyebrows nearly met his mighty moustache. He did not look like a man who believed in ghosts. ‘You know this town,’ he said. ‘It is full of spies. If a spy says to this German pig, “I have seen a ghost”, this German pig will kill people until the ghost comes to life. What can we do?’
‘Watch and pray until the ghost goes away.’
‘How can you know?’
‘This can only be a ghost. This is the way you deal with ghosts.’
There was a silence. The man with Ladas had a heavy, stupid face with small, suspicious eyes. He looked like a man who might believe in ghosts. He said, ‘She is wearing her clothes.’
‘Yes,’ said Ladas. ‘You are wearing your clothes.’
Clytemnestra looked drawn and weary. ‘When you have no man in the house,’ she said, ‘you must take the sheep to the mountain yourself. And it will soon be dawn. Now back to your beds. Some of us have work to do, even if you want to run around in the dark squeaking of ghosts.’
They left.
Clytemnestra opened the stairs door. ‘What is this?’ she said. ‘Who is in the village?’
‘Hard to say,’ said Mallory. But he knew. It was Carstairs, of course. There were things he needed to say to Carstairs. ‘It will soon be light,’ he said.
Outside, the air smelt sharp and fresh. The sky over the mountains was still deep blue and thick with stars, but low down, towards the peaks, the blue was paling.
‘This man,’ said Andrea to Clytemnestra. ‘He is one of our people.’
She walked fast through a maze of paths that wound among the gardens. ‘Then you should control him,’ she said. ‘Why is he wandering in the village like a madman? He will get people killed.’ They walked on in silence.
Something was worrying Mallory. ‘And you,’ he said. ‘You shouldn’t be with us. We are soldiers, in uniform. We have no connection with you. There will be no reprisals. But if they find you with us –’
‘If I don’t come with you, how will you find your way across the mountains?’
‘We have maps.’
She laughed, a large, scornful laugh that sent a couple of doves flapping from their roost. ‘Use them to roll cigarettes,’ she said. ‘If you use the tracks you will see on them, the Germans will find you. They have the same maps –’
‘Hush,’ said Mallory.
They were on the road through the dunes, approaching the southern end of the beach.
‘Down!’ said Andrea. A figure stood suddenly outlined against the paling sky. Its head was blocky with a coal-scuttle helmet, its shoulders tense over its rifle. ‘Wer da?’ it said.
Mallory’s breath was loud in his ears as he lay face down in the dunes. Andrea was at his side. Mallory knew what he would be thinking, because he was thinking it himself. The pre-dawn was quiet. The cocking lever of the Schmeisser would sound like a train crash. One shot, and it would all be over …
Clytemnestra walked forward, hips swaying insolently. ‘Who wants to know?’ she said, in Greek. ‘What murdering son of a whore comes to my home and gets between me and my work?’
‘Vas?’ said the soldier.
‘I looking for my sheeps,’ said Clytemnestra, in terrible German.
The soldier stood undecided. Mallory could not work out whether he had seen them. Beside him, Andrea sighted on the place under the man’s left shoulder blade where he would drive the knife. He put one mighty palm on the gritty soil, tensed his legs to spring –
‘Go on, then,’ said the soldier.
‘I evacuate my bowels on your mother’s grave,’ said Clytemnestra, in Greek. ‘I dig up her remains and feed them to my pigs, who vomit.’
‘Nice meeting you,’ said the German, in German, and stamped back down the beach.
Mallory took his hand away from the cocking lever. The palm was wet with sweat. He and Andrea rose from cover. After that, they marched in silence.
As they turned up the track behind the beach, Andrea said, ‘Wait.’
They waited.
Ahead, over the noise of the cicadas, there came the sound of a stone rolling under a boot.
‘Three minutes,’ said Andrea’s huge, purring whisper by Mallory’s ear. Then, silent as a shadow, he was gone.
The path unreeled under Andrea’s boots as he ran. He could feel the blood taking the power around his body, the thing that made him not a man in the grey pre-dawn, but a hunting animal closing with its prey. He saw the figure ahead, clambering up the path. He was alone, moving probably quite fast, but to Andrea slow and clumsy.
Andrea looked around him with that special radar of his. He sensed the town, Mallory and Clytemnestra behind him, the German soldiers on the beach, the two corpses in the surf, the little party ahead.
He sprang.
A great hard hand went over the mouth. The other hand went to the nape of the neck. He began the pull sideways to dislocate the vertebrae.
It was the smell that stopped him.
It was the smell of hair oil; a hair oil that Andrea had smelt before, on the MTB, in the dinghy, tonight. A powerful smell, sickly even by Greek standards. Expensive.
The smell of Captain Carstairs.
Andrea decided not to break the neck, after all. Instead he kept a hand over the mouth, and said, ‘No noise, or you die.’ Then he waited for Mallory.
So Miller lay with his eyes closed, devoting himself to analysis of the night sounds.
He heard Carstairs coming up the path, and rolled to his feet, Schmeisser in hand. Then he heard Andrea’s attack. After the brief scuffle came the brief bleep of a Scops owl. Mallory’s signal. Miller let out a long breath as three dark figures arrived in the camp.
‘All right,’ said Mallory’s voice. ‘Moving out.’
‘Where to?’ said Miller.
‘Germans on the beach,’ said Mallory. ‘Silence.’
Wills was already upright. Nelson’s cut had stiffened, and he needed some persuading. ‘Hurts,’ he said, whining.
‘Up,’ said Wills. ‘Show a leg.’
Grumbling, Nelson got up. Then they were slinging packs and weapons, starting up a steep, stony path among the bushes. And very soon the path was so steep that there was no spare energy even for wondering, or indeed doing anything except keeping the feet moving and the breath rasping and the heart beating. All the time, the sky in the east grew lighter.
FOUR
Wednesday 0600–1800
Just after six o’clock, the sun hauled itself over the mountain. ‘Stop now,’ said Clytemnestra. ‘We eat.’
They slumped to the hot, stony ground and started fumbling for cigarettes and chocolate. They were on a ledge, a bare shelf of rock made by a crack that ran across a great cliff that seemed to rise sheer from the sea. Nelson said, ‘Water.’ Miller passed him his canteen. The seaman drank avidly, water spilling down his face and on to his shirt. Miller twitched the water bottle out of his hand.
‘Sod that,’ said Nelson. ‘I’ve got a mouf like a bleeding lime kiln.’
‘We all have,’ said Miller. He pulled a cigarette from his packet and lit it with a Zippo. He had been a Long Range Desert Group man, doing damage behind enemy lines in the Western Desert. Water was more important than petrol, which was more important than motherhood, religion and the gold standard. ‘You drink in the morning and at night. Drink in the day, you just sweat it right out again. Now let’s have a look at your arm.’
Nelson would not let him. His face was bluish and hostile under his sweat-matted red hair. ‘’S all right,’ he said, and fell back into a sullen silence.
Wills said,
in his odd, marble-mouthed voice, ‘Pull yourself together, man.’ But Nelson would not meet his eye.
In daylight, Wills was a mess. He had no eyebrows, and no hair on the front part of his head. His skin shone with tannic acid jelly, and there was a great bruise on his right temple. As he looked out over the blue void of the sea, his eyes were glassy and his hand trembled. Mallory guessed that he was thinking about his ship. He offered him a slab of chocolate and a wedge of the bread they had brought from Mavrocordato Street. Wills shook his head.
‘Sorry about your ship,’ said Mallory.
Wills made a face that made him look ridiculously young. ‘Poor chaps,’ he said.
‘First command?’ said Mallory.
Wills nodded. There were tears in his eyes.
‘Can you go on?’
‘Of course.’
‘Good man.’
‘Don’t worry about Nelson,’ said Wills. ‘Top-hole chap.’
Mallory nodded. Loyalty to your men was a good thing. He just hoped that it was a two-way process.
Carstairs was sitting off to one side, by himself. There was dust in his greasy curls, and his eyebrow moustache was distorted by a wet red graze. ‘How are you doing?’ said Mallory.
‘Fine,’ he said, very curt.
‘I want you to stay close,’ said Mallory. ‘You could get hurt.’
‘Now you look here,’ said Carstairs, as if he was talking to a taxi driver who had taken him to the wrong street in Mayfair. ‘This is not the first time I’ve been behind enemy lines. Believe it or not, I am capable of looking after myself. And if you have any worries on that score, I suggest you cast your mind back to Admiral Dixon and the briefing. It is none of your damn business whether I get hurt or not.’
Mallory smiled, a peaceful white smile. ‘How’s your neck?’ he said.
Carstairs’ face filled with sullen blood.
‘Listen,’ said Mallory, ‘it’s my job to look after my men, and avoid reprisals against the islanders. So any time you want to do a little freelance snooping around the civilian population, I should be grateful if you would talk to me first.’
‘Ask your permission?’ he said. ‘Go to hell.’
‘Liaise,’ said Mallory.
‘Go to hell.’
Mallory was not smiling any more. He said, ‘Admiral Dixon is a long way away. You nearly had a nasty accident with Colonel Andrea. You are lucky to be alive. Think about it.’
Carstairs thought about it. ‘Where is Andrea?’ he said.
‘Sentry duty,’ said Mallory.
‘A colonel’s work is never done,’ said Carstairs, and smiled a superior smile.
‘So what were you doing in the village?’
‘I was looking for transport,’ said Carstairs. ‘Not that it’s any affair of yours.’
‘Transport where?’
‘To the Acropolis.’
Mallory pointed to his boots. ‘You’re looking at it.’
‘Sorry?’
‘The partisans blew up the road.’
‘Fine,’ said Carstairs. He grinned, suddenly. ‘I should have asked. Saved myself a stiff neck.’
Mallory nodded. It was nearly an apology. ‘All comes out in the wash,’ he said, getting to his feet. ‘Five more minutes, gentlemen. Make the most of them.’
The ledge where they had paused was in dead ground. But from Andrea’s vantage point above and to the side, he could see the beach where they had landed, and the bay of Parmatia, and the white town spread out like a map below.
Things were happening down there.
As he watched, three field-grey lorries moved out of the town and along the road behind the bay. For a moment they were hidden from view. When they came out, there were only two lorries. They halted at the landing beach. Ant-like figures spilled out, clotted into groups at the waterside.
It looked very much as if someone had found the bodies of Dawkins and the sentry. And the third lorryload of soldiers might have stopped to look for seashells.
Then again, they might have decided to start up the track into the mountains.
That might or might not be dangerous. As an army the Wehrmacht were fine soldiers. As individuals, a lot of them were conscripts, and a lot of them were going through the motions, waiting till it was time to go home, win or lose.
The Sonderkommando were different. The Wehrmacht felt a sort of horrified scorn for Dieter Wolf and his men. They were volunteers, hand-picked for fitness, ruthlessness and cunning – soldiers who loved killing for killing’s sake, particularly when it was seasoned with plenty of rape, loot and torture. Dieter Wolf was the nearest thing the Nazis had to a special forces leader. He was a known intimate of the lengendary Otto Skorzeny. The presence of his Sonderkommando on the island meant two things.
One, the Germans had no desire to be interrupted in whatever they were doing in the Acropolis.
And two, these mountains would soon be swarming with soldiers.
When Andrea went back to the ledge, the rest of the party was already upright. Wills put out a hand to steady himself, missed the rock, and sprawled in the dust. Carstairs raised an eyebrow. Miller helped him back on to his feet. His eyes seemed to be looking in different directions. ‘Sorry,’ he said, in that voice that sounded as if there were marbles in his mouth. Concussion, thought Miller. How would you understand an Englishman with concussion?
‘Up,’ said Clytemnestra. She kicked her boot-toe on to a small ledge, hoisted herself upwards and disappeared. The party followed; all except Nelson.
Nelson stayed at the bottom, shaking his head, shoulders bowed. He had a mop of red hair, white skin, a face flushed and sulky. Andrea, the rearguard, said, ‘You want help?’
‘My arm hurts,’ said Nelson.
‘Everybody hurts,’ said Andrea. ‘If we don’t walk, we get hurt worse.’
‘I’m not a commando,’ said Nelson. ‘I’m a bleeding matlow. What am I doing running around on cliffs like a poxy goat?’
‘Your duty,’ said Andrea. Gentle as a mother with a child he picked him up, and put him on the first step of the path. Nelson looked white-faced over his shoulder and downwards. Then he started climbing, using both feet and both hands. It struck Andrea that a man who could climb with such vigour might not have very much wrong with his arm at all.
All morning they climbed, at first on steep sea-cliffs, and then in a tangle of ridges and small valleys grown with scrub. By eleven o’clock they were five thousand feet above sea level, in a little valley of juniper and holm oak. Goats wandered among the boulders, their bells clonking mournfully. The men walked heavily, mouths parched, tormented by the small gurgle of the stream in the valley’s bed. Too hot,’ said Clytemnestra, wiping sweat from her forehead. ‘We’ll rest here three hours.’ She led them on to a ledge overlooking the valley, and pushed aside a huge old rosemary bush. Behind the bush was the dark entrance of a cave.
Mallory was impatient to be pushing on. But he could see that Wills was just about done up. All of them could do with a rest: eight hours, never mind three.
Patience.
Carstairs had the map out. The mountains here formed ridges that spread from the central plateau like the fingers of a right hand.
They had climbed from the beach between the first and second fingers, and crossed the ridge to the valley between the second and the ring fingers. Beyond the next ridge, between the ring finger and the little finger, the road ran. It was here (Clytemnestra said, pointing) that the partisans had blown the cliff down on to the road and blocked it solid.
Carstairs offered to stand sentry. Mallory settled down in the corner of the cave next to Miller and lit a cigarette to drive off the stink of goat dung.
‘Nice place,’ said Miller. ‘Reminds me of a boarding house I used to use in San Francisco.’
‘The carpet, you mean?’ said Mallory.
‘That and the fleas.’ Mallory’s eyes were closing. ‘I’ll do it,’ said Miller.
‘Yes.’ Mallory was asleep.
They both knew that what Miller had been talking about was keeping an eye on Carstairs.
So Miller sat and smoked. Andrea and Mallory snored, Wills fell into a sort of twitching stupor, and Nelson curled into a ball. As for Clytemnestra, she had gone into another compartment of the cave, and it was impossible to tell whether she was asleep or awake, though now he came to think of it, Miller could not imagine her asleep.
After about half an hour, Miller got quietly to his feet and crept to the mouth of the cave.
Carstairs had taken up position in the ruined walls of a hut further up the ledge, commanding a view of the entrance to the valley and the ridge opposite. It was a good place to see without being seen. Miller walked up to it quietly. The valley shimmered in the heat, and a lizard scuttled away over a stone. Inside the shadows of the ruin, Carstairs made no sound. Miller went to the door, and looked in.
Carstairs was gone.
Miller stood quite still, thinking. There could be reasons. Went behind a rock, Miller told himself; call of nature. But even as he had those thoughts his binoculars were out, and he was scanning the valley, rocks, trees, a goat dragging at a branch with its teeth –
There.
High on the ridge opposite, a small, khaki figure was toiling towards the crest, rifle over its shoulder. Miller lowered the glasses. For a moment he considered giving chase. But the ridge was steep, and God knew what lay beyond, and Miller was no mountaineer.
He went back to the cave and pressed Mallory’s hand. The New Zealander’s eyes snapped open.
‘Sorry, sir,’ said Miller. ‘Carstairs gone.’
Mallory said, ‘Take guard.’ Then he slung over his shoulder his Schmeisser and a coil of silk rope, and went out at a fast lope.
Miller watched the rangy khaki figure jog into the bottom of the valley, step from boulder to rickety boulder with the casual stride of a man taking a morning stroll. A speck in the air caught Miller’s eye; an eagle soaring on a column of hot air. He watched it idly for a minute or so. When his eye returned to Mallory, he was surprised to see him already at the far side of the valley. Miller put the glasses on him, saw him come to the bottom of a cliff that anyone short of a fly would have walked around. But Mallory put his hands on it and went up it without fuss or difficulty, as if lighter than air. Miller propped himself against a rock, checked his weapon and lit a cigarette. As befits one who understands demolition, beneath his leathery exterior he was a sensitive man. He felt a sort of distant pity for anyone on the wrong end of that pursuit.