Miller was watching Mallory. The New Zealander’s face was still and mild, but he was watching Carstairs closely. ‘You wanted to talk to this … survivor,’ said Mallory.
‘That’s it.’
‘And how were you planning to do that?’
‘I told you,’ said Carstairs, with the exasperation of a teacher repeating a lesson to a small child. ‘It was a recce. I wanted to see if the road was open. How am I meant to talk to an unconscious man in a military ambulance?’
Mallory said, ‘Why do you need to debrief this man?’
Carstairs smiled, all teeth and superiority. ‘Sorry, old boy,’ he said. ‘Love to help. But, well, Admiral’s orders. No can do.’
Silence fell, except for Wills’ snores and the bluster of the wind in the tomb’s entrance.
Finally, Mallory said, ‘He’s got a point.’
Miller said, ‘Has he hell.’
Andrea’s black eyes snapped at him. ‘Thank you, Corporal,’ he said. That will be enough.’ The Schmeisser moved away from Carstairs’ eye. ‘Captain Carstairs, you are a member of this force, and will in future communicate your operational intentions to its field commander. The record will show that you have been reprimanded without loss of pay.’
Carstairs nodded, as if at a waiter who had brought him his change. He said, ‘I knew you’d see sense. Now if you’ll excuse me, I’ll get forty winks.’
Mallory took first watch, sitting outside the tomb under the thick mat of the stars. The night was quiet, except for the sigh and bluster of the breeze in the rocks.
There was a faint movement at his side. When he looked round, he saw Andrea, blotting out a sizeable patch of sky.
‘What do you think?’ said Andrea.
‘Jensen says he’s okay.’
‘Jensen’s in England.’
‘Quite.’
There was a silence. Andrea and Mallory had worked together for a year; the kind of year that contains more than most lifetimes. They knew each other well. ‘So,’ said Andrea. ‘There is a problem, my Keith?’
Mallory lit a cigarette. ‘He says he was on a recce,’ he said. ‘So when I caught up with him, he was standing on the cliff directly above the ambulance, with a grenade in his hand and the pin out. And I thought, strange kind of recce. That’s the problem.’
‘I see,’ said Andrea. ‘Truly, I see.’ There was another pause. ‘But we must keep this man, because these are the orders of Jensen. Mouth shut and eyes open, I think.’
‘Of course,’ said Mallory. Andrea was right. But it was the last thing you needed, on an operation like this.
‘I’ll do the dawn patrol,’ said Mallory. Andrea nodded, and went in to sleep.
SIX
Thursday
0300–1200
Miller woke Mallory three hours after midnight. He tumbled out thumping-headed, dry-mouthed, to stand his guard. It came hard to some soldiers, this wakefulness in the dead time before dawn, when the metabolism was at its slowest. But Mallory was used to early mornings. He had spent his life in mountains where you could not climb after eleven a.m. because of the deadly rain of rock let go by melting ice fields. So he lay a second, his eyes wide open. Then he put his hand to where he knew his weapon would be, swung on his pack and went out into the air.
The stars still hung in the sky. He went up a slope of rocks and stationed himself above the tomb entrance, in a niche of the boulders. There was nothing but the rock, and the stars, and the clean night air. His mind flew back to other mornings on the shoulders of Mount Cook, the white peaks of the Southern Alps all around, waiting in frozen stillness for the first pink touch of the sun.
He pulled out a slab of chocolate and a round of flat Greek bread, ate until he did not want to eat any more, then kept on eating. It was going to be the sort of day when a body needed all the fuel that could be crammed into it.
He analysed the possibilities. The two sailors would have to be parked somewhere; here, perhaps. Must ask Clytemnestra. There was Clytemnestra herself. Clytemnestra needed to be kept out of sight, or there would be reprisals.
And Carstairs. Carstairs was a climber. Carstairs could fight. But Carstairs was the most dangerous of the lot. Mallory had never seen the Greek as angry as he had been last night. The Schmeisserpoint court martial might have looked theatrical, but Carstairs had been within seconds of having his brains on the tomb roof –
Mallory stiffened.
The sky was lightening now, turning a darker-than-battleship-grey that cast the jagged peaks around him into sharp relief. But that was not what had made Mallory sit up and very quietly work the cocking lever of his machine pistol.
Down among the ravines and gulches they had travelled the night before, he had heard the short, sharp yip of a hunting dog.
He got up, and slid down the slope and into the tomb. It smelt of sleep. He passed among the supine forms like a cold wind, Miller and Andrea first, then Carstairs and Clytemnestra. ‘They’ve got bloodhounds,’ he said. ‘We must leave.’
‘We go on,’ said Clytemnestra. ‘It is downhill. Not so difficult.’
Mallory left her to wake the others, and tumbled outside again. He, Miller and Andrea faded into the rocks. The dog yipped again, very close. Five men in SS camouflage smocks came round the corner. The one in the middle had a lead in his hand. On the end of the lead, straining, was a black-and-tan dog. A Doberman, actually, thought Mallory, with the inconsequence that comes of extreme stress. Not a bloodhound.
The dog started a continuous strangled baying, and turned up the hill towards the tomb mouth. Mallory put his Schmeisser to his shoulder and opened fire.
Nelson had slept badly. It was more like a coma than a sleep, a sort of delirium in which the dreams writhed below the surface like maggots in a wound. Everything was burning: the terraced house in Coventry where he had been brought up, the BSA motor bike he rode to work, the house where he had gone to rescue the woman in the housecoat, the MTB’s bow gun crew: all solid and living one minute, the next stripped by the flames to rafter and bone, brick and tile and flesh melting away like wax. And the noise: the throbbing of his arm like an engine in the armpit, across to the heart, and with every heartbeat the engine accelerating in the horror of the dream, until the noise was continuous and Nelson knew he could not stand any more of this –
Then the real noise started, and Nelson slammed awake.
The roof was flickering with a hard blue-white light, and it was difficult to breathe because the tomb was full of fumes; the fumes of gunsmoke. In the blue-white flicker bodies were moving, made jerky by the flashes. There was the American running towards the door, and the big Greek in the entrance itself, rolling over and over, rising on one knee to squirt bullets into the dark, then rolling on and out beyond the light. Even Wills was up, dazed-looking, fumbling with the bolt of a big rifle.
Nelson hugged his arm, thirsty, head bloated with fever. He understood that there was nothing he could do. He could not shoot. He could not run. All that remained was to sit here and wait for the Germans to come barrelling in through the entrance – there would be a lot of them, he was sure of that, and the skipper and the Greek and the rest of them would be flattened by sheer weight of numbers. And when the Germans came in they would first look him in the eye and then blow him into little bits.
Nelson cringed at the thought.
Then he had an idea.
He was no good for fighting, not in this state. He was no bloody good to anyone. He would get himself out of the way, nice and safe.
Suddenly everything seemed radiantly simple.
But Nelson was leaving one thing out of account. In his veins there ran not only blood, and the throb of his wound, but also a considerable amount of morphine.
Andrea and Miller had had the same idea as Mallory. The rocks chattered with gunfire. The five Germans rolled over and were still. The dog, his handler dead, slunk whining into the boulders. Mallory lowered his gun.
Twenty-five more Germans came round th
e corner.
Mallory slammed a new clip into his Schmeisser and cursed. The new men were not in formation, like their late comrades in the dog squad. They had heard the gunfire. They were spread out among the boulders, bad targets for the Mauser, too distant for the Schmeissers. Normally, Andrea and Mallory and Miller would have faded into the landscape. But Clytemnestra and Carstairs and the sailors were still inside the cave.
Mallory began to sweat. This was the guerrilla’s nightmare: an assault by superior enemy forces on a fixed position. Either you faded, or the operation was finished. It was an evil decision to have to make.
Then all thoughts of the decision went out of his mind, and he was frozen by a strange and terrible sight.
A figure had walked out of the tomb; a strange figure, dressed in rags, with a blue-white face and red hair in a halo round his head. Nelson. Nelson with his good hand in the air, and his bad hand in its sling, and his eyes spinning in his head with terror and morphine. ‘Oi!’ he yelled in a high, cracked voice. ‘Me sailor. Me not soldier. Me non-combatant, prisoner of war, you savvy, cock? You no shoot, got that?’ He stumbled down the little path towards the rocks where the Germans lay hidden. The silence was so intense that Mallory could hear the squinch of a pebble under his foot.
There is a German behind that rock, thought Mallory, as Nelson approached a tall, pyramid-shaped slab. And I can’t cover Nelson because he won’t know what to do if I open fire …
Nelson was nearly at the pyramid rock, still waving his good arm and yelling. As he passed the rock, a camouflaged arm shot out and grabbed his collar, and a black boot kicked him behind the knees so they collapsed and he was suddenly kneeling on the path, sideways-on to the observers above the tomb. As Mallory watched, a hand with a Luger came out and dug into the nape of Nelson’s neck. The dull whap of the shot floated up the hill.
Nelson smashed forward on to his face and lay twitching.
Mallory had seen a lot of life, and a lot of death, too. But this cold assassination of an unarmed man in the process of surrender froze him to the spot. And that split second he stood frozen he heard a soft, metallic sound, and a voice behind him said in heavily-accented English, ‘Drop your gun.’
He dropped it. There was no chance of doing anything else. The order had only been an order, but the sound had been a rifle bolt. He waited for the bullet in the back of the neck, his mind clear of thoughts, his eyes on the mountains, rank on serried rank under the pink dawn sky.
The shot did not come.
The voice behind him said, ‘Marsch.’
Mallory marched.
He saw Miller walking towards him, a rifle at his nape. He saw the tomb mouth full of camouflage smocks, heard shouting, saw Carstairs come out, hands in the air, Wills, stumbling, eyes screwed up against the painful light of dawn.
A German strutted up to Miller, a Leutnant, sharp-faced under a grey peaked cap. ‘Is this all?’ he said, in English.
‘All what?’ said Miller.
‘All your people,’ said the German.
‘Nope,’ said Miller.
Mallory’s eyes rested on him with some curiosity. He trusted Miller. But he trusted Andrea too. And Andrea had disappeared, and so had Clytemnestra. He and his fellow-prisoners might be in considerable danger. But with Andrea on the loose, so were the Germans. What was Miller playing at?
‘Where are they?’ said the German.
‘As a citizen of the United States of America,’ said Miller, ‘I see all people as my people. Like it says, “Bring me your poor, your huddled millions” –’
‘Masses,’ said Mallory.
‘I thought it was millions,’ said Miller.
‘Silence!’ yelled the Leutnant, ‘Kneel!’
Miller looked at him, then at Mallory. They knelt.
‘What is your mission on Kynthos?’ snapped the Leutnant.
‘Name, rank and number,’ said Mallory. ‘I will give them to your superior officer.’
The Germans behind the rocks were coming out of cover, drifting towards them, curious now they had caught up with their quarry. Bunch up, said Mallory in his head. That’s good.
‘Together,’ said Wills, who sounded stronger and more definite, ‘with an official protest. How dare you.’ He was angry to the point of incoherence. ‘How dare you in contravention of the Geneva Convention summarily execute one of my –’
The Leutnant’s jackboot sent him sprawling among the rocks.
‘Now,’ said the Leutnant. ‘Tell me now, or I will shoot you, this man first.’ Mallory could hear the shuffle of boots on rock as the men gathered round. Sonderkommando behaviour, he thought. Not Wehrmacht. Wehrmacht were soldiers. This lot were murderers.
‘Noo!’ cried Miller. ‘Please!’ He cast himself on the ground. Mallory cast himself down too, abasing himself.
And incidentally taking cover.
A sleet of lead blasted out of the rocks and the tomb mouth. The Leutnant screamed and fell across Mallory. Mallory grabbed the man’s Schmeisser. A German saw him move and brought his machine pistol round. Mallory saw the muzzle flash, felt the officer’s body shake as the rounds meant for him thumped into the Leutnant’s torso. Then his own Schmeisser was hammering, and the German’s machine pistol was firing in a great arc in the sky as his dead finger tightened on the trigger.
After that everything was quiet, except for a voice, shouting. At first it shouted in German. ‘Hands up!’ it said. ‘You are covered!’
The three Germans left standing raised their hands. ‘Keep hidden!’ roared the voice, in Greek. Talking to Clytemnestra. Mallory climbed to his feet. Miller was already up.
Somewhere, a radio said, in German, ‘A Force, A Force, come in.’
Mallory found the set under a body, rolled it aside, lifted the mike to his mouth. ‘A Force,’ he said. ‘Mission complete.’
‘Please give me a code word with that,’ said the voice.
Mallory took his thumb off the transmit switch. ‘What is the code word?’ he said to the nearest living German.
‘Schultz, Feldwebel 175609 –’
Something moved at the corner of Mallory’s eye. It was Carstairs, with a Luger. He knocked the German to the ground with the barrel and jammed it into the man’s mouth. Mallory heard the pop as a tooth broke. ‘The man said, code word,’ said Carstairs. He pulled the gun out of the man’s mouth. ‘One. Two –’
The German had no way of telling whether Carstairs was going to count to three or fifty, but with a gun muzzle half an inch from his eye socket he was not going to hang around to find out. ‘Wild Hunt,’ he said.
Mallory thumbed the transmit switch. ‘Wild Hunt,’ he said, and released it.
The set hissed an empty wash of static. There was no reply.
The German with no front teeth laughed. ‘You are out of time. They are looking for you already.’
‘Bastard,’ said Carstairs, and cocked the Luger. The German turned grey. Sweat stood on his forehead as he stared at death.
‘Leave him,’ said Mallory.
Carstairs raised an eyebrow.
Mallory said, ‘Take their clothes.’
‘Clothes?’ said Carstairs, looking down at his own immaculately-tailored tunic. ‘They won’t fit.’
‘Best-dressed corpse in the mountains, right?’ said Miller, who was already taking off his trousers. ‘Change everything but your boots.’
‘Why?’
‘So your feet don’t get sore,’ said Miller, struggling into the camouflage smock and hanging the radio on his belt. ‘Move it.’ He grinned at Carstairs, a grin not at all sincere. ‘Pardon me. Move it, Captain.’
Carstairs moved it.
They rolled the bodies over a cliff. They took away weapons and ammunition, and the survivors’ boots and socks. Then they bound and blindfolded them, and left them barefoot and helpless in a field of razor-edged lava rock. Nelson they buried as best they could. Then they resumed the march, Mallory first, Wills after him, then Carstairs and Clytemnestra,
with Andrea bringing up the rear.
They were on a sort of plateau now, a high, windswept place without cover, still cold with the morning chill, but brilliantly lit by the low sun. They marched on, towing long shadows from their boot heels, squinting against the sun in their eyes. Mallory hoped nobody would put any aeroplanes up. It was a forlorn hope, he was pretty sure. German uniforms or no German uniforms, German radio procedures were cast in stone. A dud procedure meant trouble. And these were not the kind of people who closed their eyes to trouble –
Someone stumbled into Mallory’s back. He looked round in time to see Wills plough off to the right, trip over a stone and fall flat on his face.
‘Leave him,’ said Carstairs.
Mallory ignored him. He went and crouched beside Wills. For the first time, he saw the damage the Leutnant’s boot had done. The man’s face was a mask of blood, the bruise on his temple the colour of blue-black ink.
‘Leave me,’ mumbled Wills.
Miller came up, squatted and took out the first-aid kit. He said, ‘Hold up,’ and trickled drinking water between his cracked lips. ‘Think you can walk?’
‘Course,’ croaked Wills. ‘Dizzy spell.’ He got half-way to his feet, then toppled sideways in the dust.
Andrea said, ‘Come.’ He lifted Wills like a child, and hauled him on to his back. ‘We’ll find some shade.’
‘Quickly.’ Clytemnestra was chewing her lower lip. ‘We must cross this part. Then the ground is broken. Safer –’
Mallory held up his hand.
The breeze sighed in the rocks. Above the breeze, another sound: the small, faint drone of an aeroplane’s engine.
It was the Storch again; the same Storch. It saw them straight away, circled lazily in the deep blue morning.
‘Wave,’ said Mallory.
They all waved, even Wills, on Andrea’s back, raised a lethargic hand: a patrol of Waffen-SS saluting their comrades in the wilderness.