So Andrea and Mallory moved from the cave towards the ruined hut, keeping in cover, stopping to snipe at the matchhead-sized helmets that popped over the skyline, but never stopping in the same place twice. The sun was moving across the sky, but it was still hot.
At four thirty-one, there was a pause in the firing on the ridge opposite the cave. Mallory and Andrea were only ten yards apart. They looked at each other, then at the ridge opposite. Nothing moved. For a moment, birds sang, and the breeze blew, and there might have been no war at all. Then something a long way away made a small, flat explosion, and Mallory and Andrea grovelled on the ground, because they knew what that meant.
High in the air, a fleeting black dot came into being, hung for a moment, and fell to the ground thirty yards in front of them. There was a sharp, ear-damaging crump, and shattered stone flew past their ears. Mortar. When Mallory ran between two rocks, a gun opened up with a low, heavy clatter. They had brought up a mortar and re-manned the Spandau, and they were both on the other side of the ridge.
Mallory wiped away the blood that the stinging chips of stone had brought to his forehead. The idea of fighting a pitched battle against a numerically superior enemy with mortars and heavy machine guns was not appealing. But fight they must, to give the rest of the party time to get clear. He crawled to the other end of his line of rocks and fired. The machine gun opened up again. Under cover of its sheet of lead, five field-grey figures bounced out of cover, scuttled across five yards of open ground, and dived out of sight. Another mortar round pitched into the rocks, closer this time.
Andrea shouted. ‘Going, my Keith!’ he roared. It could have been a cry of pain: but Mallory knew it was precisely the opposite. Andrea was out to even the odds.
Andrea went up and over the ridge behind Mallory’s position, ran along it in dead ground for two hundred yards, recrossed the spine, and began to worm his way across the valley floor like a giant lizard. He heard firing and explosions up to his right; Schmeisser fire from Mallory now, the sound of battle, several defenders working hard; or of one man, moving around, making noise and fuss. They were a team, Andrea and Keith Mallory. So far, it was all satisfactory.
The ground had begun to slope uphill. There would be men posted to protect the flanks. Andrea lay still as a stone, moving his head up inch by inch.
Twenty feet to his right, a German soldier was sitting behind a stone, scanning the rocks down the valley.
Andrea allowed his head to sink away. He moved over the ground like a giant shadow, seeking the strips of darkness along the sides of bushes, the lee of small stones. He moved not like a man moving over ground, but like a huge ripple of the ground itself. In four steady minutes, he completed a semicircle. He was looking at the back of a helmet, a tunic with a leather harness, corrugated canisters at the waist, tense shoulders …
Andrea moved forward, silent as a shadow, knife in front of him. There was a brief struggle, without sound. The German made a sharp exhalation. No inhalation followed. Andrea laid the body in the dust, wiped his knife on its tunic, and went with great caution forward over the ridge.
Here he crouched behind a boulder and waited. He heard the whap of the mortar, the explosion on the other side of the valley. He saw the heads of the men around the mortar, the gleam of the sun on the tube of the weapon. And further up, in a nest of rocks on the reverse slope of the ridge, the machine-gunners. He noticed that the arc of fire from the Spandau pit was ahead only, and that apart from the man he had killed, there was nobody protecting the flanks. This must be a hastily-assembled squad, sent up the cliffs in hot pursuit, undermanned and under-equipped …
All this went through his mind in the blink of an eye. During this blink he had wormed through the rocks to the machine-gun pit. The gunner fired a burst at the hill opposite. In Andrea’s mind, the field-grey figures facing Mallory got up, ran forward, flopped down again: advancing.
From cover, Andrea threw three grenades into the mortar pit. Then he unslung his Schmeisser and stood up.
Mallory knew he was in trouble. The Sonderkommando were in Schmeisser range now. The mortar fire had ceased, presumably for fear of scoring own goals. He had laid aside the rifle, and was trying to look three ways at once. Under cover of the last burst of machine-gun fire, the enemy had come within a hundred and twenty feet. He had seen one scuttling away to the right, and up to the left he thought he had seen movement, though he could not swear to it. He was going to find out, though. He settled himself grimly behind the rock, and waited for the Spandau to open up: short burst, to get his head down and signal to the men. Then the longer bursts, the blizzard of metal that would keep his head down while the Sonderkommando swarmed aboard –
The Spandau burped; the short burp. Then there was a huge explosion: bigger than a grenade. It sounded like a lot of mortar bombs going off at once. Hot on the heels of the explosion was a long burst of Schmeisser fire, with screams.
In the silence that followed, he sighted through the crack in the stone wall. He saw the grey helmets rise, squeezed a short burst over the rock. Then the machine gun opened up again, and through the crack he saw the men rise from cover. He waited for the metal rain to start pelting around his ears. The machine gun started its deadly hammer. But the rain did not come.
He put his eye to the sighting cranny.
Down below him, the field-grey figures were up and advancing, but not under a curtain of friendly fire. They had risen into the open at the first burst of the machine gun. And the second burst had whipped not over their heads, but into the thick of them. The rocks below Mallory were strewn with field-grey corpses. To the right, a man was groaning. To the left, movement caught Mallory’s eye. He turned. A camouflage uniform, much stained with new blood, was lurching at him through the rocks. He put a short Schmeisser burst into the helmet. The man went over with a crash.
On the far side of the valley, a figure stood up. Acting on reflex, Mallory went for the rifle. Then he stopped.
It was Andrea.
Andrea walked quickly across the valley and up to the cave. By the time he got there, Mallory had his feet up on a rock and was smoking a cigarette. ‘That was useful,’ he said.
Andrea nodded. He was a superlative craftsman in the art of war, and he had done his job. Mallory gave him a cigarette. He lit it, shouldered his pack, and loped off up the hill. Mallory went after him.
At the top, he looked back at the valley where thirty men had died or run away. The shadows were lengthening towards evening. Evening of the first day. There was nothing to feel good about. The Germans knew there was a British force in the mountains. They did not know it contained two wounded sailors and a man who did not know how to obey orders. They would come looking, and soon.
What had happened in the valley had been a victory. But it had been only one battle in what looked like a very long campaign.
FIVE
Wednesday 1800–Thursday 0300
After the field of stones, the path led on and up. It was not much of a path: more a strip of bare mountainside, marked with stones placed one on another like the little men children put up on beaches to knock down with more stones. As they passed the markers, Mallory kicked them down. It was six o’clock, and the sun was heading for the rock-masses of the western horizon when they reached the top of the slope and found themselves at the base of a cliff.
‘What are we,’ said Andrea. ‘Flies?’
Mallory shook his head. He took a mouthful from his water bottle, and cast left into deep shadow, to a place where the cliff seemed less than vertical. At the base of the slope was one of Clytemnestra’s little stone men.
The slope was not a hill. It was more like the leading edge of the dorsal fin of a fish – a dorsal fin a thousand feet high and three feet wide, made of rotten rock, tapering away into the far distance. Mallory pointed at the map.
‘It’s a ramp,’ he said. ‘A stepladder. Up there, it gets wider.’
‘And then,’ said Andrea, sighing, ‘it gets narrowe
r again.’
He had a point. But the sun was sinking, and this was no time for debates.
They went up.
It was easy climbing. Andrea plodded away, keeping his eyes in front of him, not thinking about the void on either side of the blade of rock – keeping his mind on the far side of the mountains; on the marshes, the Acropolis, how to cross the one and get into the other …
The path was broadening. It became a sort of plateau. Mallory came up behind him, and went ahead to reconnoitre.
From somewhere far away there came a small, remote buzzing.
Andrea found himself a ledge with a bush growing off it, squeezed himself in, and watched, cursing, as evening fell over his beloved country.
To the west, the island fell ridge on ridge to the mottled blue sheet of the sea. The valleys below were blurred with veils of haze, veils tinged faintly with flame-colour and blood-colour, prophesying the sunset. And above it all, flying out from the high blind cliffs ahead, gleaming silver in that low sun, was an aeroplane.
Mallory watched that plane, too. Ahead of him the ridge threaded across to a maze of cliffs and canyons, cliffs piled on cliffs, and above them the summit of Mount Skaphos. And above the summit cliffs a sky of purest blue, and in that blue the aeroplane. A Fieseler Storch; a slow-flying aeroplane, with an observer. Looking for them.
The Storch banked gently, and began to spiral downwards. It came lower and lower, until from his position in the rocks Mallory could see the pilot’s head, catch the glint of binoculars in the observer’s seat …
He turned his face to the ground, and hoped the bloody thing would go away.
On the mountain shoulder at the far end of the ridge, Miller heard the engines, too. The rendezvous map reference was a cave – no more than an overhang of the cliff, really. Clytemnestra was dozing, Wills muttering in a half-sleep, Nelson sitting with his back against the cliff, hugging his slashed arm, staring bug-eyed at a boulder, as if it was showing him a film about things he did not find pleasing. As for Carstairs, he was in a clump of bushes in front of the cave, unarmed still, watching the ridge and the valley below.
‘What’s that?’ said Nelson.
‘Plane.’
‘What do they want?’
‘If I was a bird, I’d ask them.’
Nelson shook his head, an odd, feverish shake. Miller reckoned he was a nasty mixture of ill and frightened. Miller was a demolition man, not a nursemaid. But his good nature made him say, reassuring, ‘We’ll keep still and not show our faces, and we’ll be fine.’ And then what? he thought. All the way over the mountains to storm some huge Goddamned bunker, and we say, listen, you wounded and you crazy, hang loose in the mountains till you hear a great big bang, and then Poppa will make sure you get home …
Sure.
He took out a cigarette and stuck it in his mouth. He did not light it: on an evening like this, a spotter plane could see the flash of a buckle, the white of an eye, a puff of cigarette smoke.
In the back of the cave, Wills said in a loud, definite voice, ‘Henry!’
There were no Henries. ‘Back to sleep,’ said Miller. ‘There’s a good lootenant.’
‘Damned plane’s late,’ said Wills. ‘Got to be in Paris for lunch. Camilla’s waiting.’ He got to his feet, stood swaying. ‘For God’s sake,’ he said.
‘Sit down,’ said Miller, alarmed now.
‘You,’ said Wills. ‘You, that man. Siddown and shaddup.’ He came to the front of the cave. Miller stood up, to stop him going out on to the ledge. ‘Honestly,’ said Wills.
‘Please,’ said Miller. ‘Sir.’ The Storch was at the outer edge of its spiral, turning back towards them.
Wills said, ‘Stand away. She’s my fiancée y’know. We’re lunching in Paris. Top-hole. Special treat.’ His eyes were glassy, looking at things in a different world; customs at Croydon aerodrome, perhaps. He rummaged in the pocket of his filthy, sweat-stained jacket. ‘Here y’are.’ He might have thought he was pulling out his passport.
What he actually pulled out was his cigarette case. His silver cigarette case, highly polished. He waved it in Miller’s face.
‘Put it away,’ said Miller.
But Wills kept waving it. A flash of westering sun bounced off it and into Miller’s eyes. Horrified, Miller grabbed it out of his hand.
Behind them, the Storch’s engine-note changed from a drone to an angry buzz. The pilot opened the throttle wide, banked steeply, and flew straight as an arrow over Mount Skaphos, heading east.
It looked very much as if the pilot had seen it too.
Mallory watched the change of course, heard a second later the new roar of the engine. He knew what it meant, and so, judging by the way he came loping across the rocks, did Andrea.
They hit the ridge at a dead run, pebbles scattering under their feet and looping out and into the void below. Ten minutes later they were climbing a steep, near-invisible path among genista bushes, and Miller was materializing out of the rock face ahead.
‘Moving out,’ said Mallory. ‘Where’s Carstairs?’
Carstairs stood up in his bush. ‘Cigarette?’ he said, producing his case. ‘Turkish this side, Virginian that.’
‘Put it away,’ said Andrea. ‘Captain Carstairs, I have something to say to you. Atten-shun!’
Carstairs dropped his cigarette and came to attention. His face was like the face of a man who, walking down the street in the dark, has just realized that what he has trodden on is not a paving stone but an open manhole.
‘Captain Carstairs,’ said Mallory. ‘I am changing our operational basis.’ His voice quiet and level, as always. But there was a cold power to it that made the hair rise on Carstairs’ scalp. ‘For the remainder of this operation you will consider yourself under my command and the command of Colonel Andrea. When the occasion presents, you will face court martial for desertion in the face of the enemy. Is that clear?’
Carstairs said, white-lipped, ‘That is not –’
‘Any complaints should be set out in writing and submitted after the conclusion of the operation,’ said Mallory. ‘Meanwhile continue to consider yourself under arrest. Your conduct under arrest will be taken into your account at your court martial.’
There was a silence. Carstairs stood pale and numb. The penalty for desertion in the face of the enemy was death. The message was clear and simple: behave or die.
Andrea said, ‘Corporal, return this man’s weapons.’
‘Pleasure,’ said Miller.
Carstairs found himself sweating. For a moment, this loose array of bandits had turned into a sharp, formal military unit. Carstairs realized that he had underestimated them; underestimated them badly.
From now on, he would have to use new tactics.
Mallory said, ‘Clytemnestra. We’ll need to go on into the mountains. Hide till dawn.’
‘Of course.’
Mallory drank water, shouldered his pack. ‘We’ll move out,’ he said. Clytemnestra took the lead. He walked beside her. ‘What are the chances of the Germans getting ahead of us?’ he said. ‘Cutting us off?’
‘Not tonight,’ she said. ‘The other sides of the island are very steep. It is bad country up there.’
Miller was trudging behind them, cigarette hanging out of his mouth. ‘You wanna know what I’d do?’ he said. ‘I’d put some guys in a plane, maybe two lots, one ahead of us, one behind. And I’d fly them up here and I’d make them jump out, and they could chase us the hell and gone and their legs wouldn’t even ache.’
They toiled on up the thread of a path that zigzagged towards the summit of the steep slope above the cave. The breath rasped loud in Mallory’s ears. He was tired, but not yet tired enough for Benzedrine. There was a strange buzzing in his head …
There was a strange buzzing in the air. It grew, became a drone, then a roar.
He looked up.
Three aeroplanes rumbled across the sky: Tante Jus, Junkers Trimotors, lit gold by the sun like squat, ungainly millionair
es’ toys. The doors in their sides were open.
Not toys.
Mallory’s head felt dry and empty, filled with the sound of his breathing. He made himself walk more quickly.
The rest of the group knew death when they heard the beating of its wings. They began to walk more quickly too.
Under Wills’ nose, the Gieves sheepskin-lined seaboots went trudge, trudge in the shale. It seemed to Wills that he had been walking for ever; up and up and up, with his feet boiling and his brain banging around in his skull like a turnip in a dixie. It hurt like hell, he would grant it that. It hurt like hell and tasted blue and smelt like aluminium and it felt sad as velvet. But he could remember his own name, now, so he supposed he was getting better. He also remembered that at some point in some world or other he had had a ship, and there had been a bang, and now he had no ship any more.
There was a slope up, and after the slope some rocks. And now there was a wall on his port-hand shoulder and to starboard a great deep swoop of nothing, and in his head the roaring, whining, zinging hum of blood, or aeroplanes, or something. He looked to the right, out over the void, even though the sun hurt his eyes. It was red, the sun, blood-colour. It shone on sea and land and jellyfish.
Jellyfish? Jellyfish in the sky, floating down into the deep shadows of the ground.
Something wrong with the above statement. Check details.
Details of what?
Under Wills’ nose, the Gieves sheepskin-lined seaboots went trudge, trudge in the shale.
Down below, the white silk parachutes of the Sonderkommando drifted earthward, each one pink as a baby’s fingernail in the warm glow of the sunset, on to the flat patch at the foot of the steep ridge Andrea and Mallory had climbed after their defence of the cave.