‘Yes,’ Neufeld’s voice crackled metallically over the loudspeaker. ‘They’ve asked to be flown to sanctuary. Deep behind our lines, even to Germany. They feel – ah – unsafe here.’
‘Well, well, well. Is that how they feel.’ Zimmermann paused, considered, then continued. ‘You are fully informed of the situation, Hauptmann Neufeld? You are aware of the delicate balance of – um – niceties involved?’
‘Yes, Herr General.’
‘This calls for a moment’s thought. Wait.’
Zimmermann swung idly to and fro in his swivel chair as he pondered his decision. He gazed thoughtfully but almost unseeingly to the north, across the meadows bordering the south bank of the Neretva, the river spanned by the iron bridge, then the meadows on the far side rising steeply to the rocky redoubt which served as the first line of defence for Colonel Lazlo’s Partisan defenders. To the east, as he turned, he could look up the green-white rushing waters of the Neretva, the meadows on either side of it narrowing until, curving north, they disappeared suddenly at the mouth of the cliff-sided gorge from which the Neretva emerged. Another quarter turn and he was gazing into the pine forest to the south, a pine forest which at first seemed innocuous enough and empty of life – until, that was, one’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom and scores of large rectangular shapes, effectively screened from both observation from the air and from the northern bank of the Neretva by camouflage canvas, camouflage nets and huge piles of dead branches. The sight of those camouflaged spearheads of his two Panzer divisions somehow helped Zimmermann to make up his mind. He picked up the microphone.
‘Hauptmann Neufeld? I have decided on a course of action and you will please carry out the following instructions precisely …’
Droshny removed the duplicate pair of earphones that he had been wearing and said doubtfully to Neufeld: ‘Isn’t the General asking rather a lot of us?’
Neufeld shook his head reassuringly. ‘General Zimmermann always knows what he is doing. His psychological assessment of the Captain Mallorys of this world is invariably a hundred per cent right.’
‘I hope so.’ Droshny was unconvinced. ‘For our sakes, I hope so.’
They left the hut. Neufeld said to the radio operator: ‘Captain Mallory in my office, please. And Sergeant Baer.’
Mallory arrived in the office to find Neufeld, Droshny and Baer already there. Neufeld was brief and businesslike.
‘We’ve decided on a ski-plane to fly you out – they’re the only planes that can land in those damned mountains. You’ll have time for a few hours’ sleep – we don’t leave till four. Any questions?’
‘Where’s the landing-strip?’
‘A clearing. A kilometre from here. Anything else?’
‘Nothing. Just get us out of here, that’s all.’
‘You need have no worry on that score,’ Neufeld said emphatically. ‘My one ambition is to see you safely on your way. Frankly, Mallory, you’re just an embarrassment to me and the sooner you’re on your way the better.’
Mallory nodded and left. Neufeld turned to Baer and said: ‘I have a little task for you, Sergeant Baer. Little but very important. Listen carefully.’
Mallory left Neufeld’s hut, his face pensive, and walked slowly across the compound. As he approached the guest hut, Andrea emerged and passed wordlessly by, wreathed in cigar smoke and scowling. Mallory entered the hut where Petar was again playing the Yugoslavian version of ‘The girl I left behind me’. It seemed to be his favourite song. Mallory glanced at Maria, Reynolds and Groves, all sitting silently by, then at Miller who was reclining in his sleeping-bag with his volume of poetry.
Mallory nodded towards the doorway. ‘Something’s upset our friend.’
Miller grinned and nodded in turn towards Petar. ‘He’s playing Andrea’s tune again.’
Mallory smiled briefly and turned to Maria. ‘Tell him to stop playing. We’re pulling out late this afternoon and we all need all the sleep we can get.’
‘We can sleep in the plane,’ Reynolds said sullenly. ‘We can sleep when we arrive at our destination – wherever that may be.’
‘No, sleep now.’
‘Why now?’
‘Why now?’ Mallory’s unfocused eyes gazed into the far distance. He said in a quiet voice: ‘For now is all the time there may be.’
Reynolds looked at him strangely. For the first time that day his face was empty of hostility and suspicion. There was puzzled speculation in his eyes, and wonder and the first faint beginnings of understanding.
On the Ivenici plateau, the phalanx moved on, but they moved no more like human beings. They stumbled along now in the advanced stages of exhaustion, automatons, no more, zombies resurrected from the dead, their faces twisted with pain and unimaginable fatigue, their limbs on fire and their minds benumbed. Every few seconds someone stumbled and fell and could not get up again and had to be carried to join scores of others already lying in an almost comatose condition by the side of the primitive runway, where partisankas did their best to revive their frozen and exhausted bodies with mugs of hot soup and liberal doses of raki.
Captain Vlanovich turned to Colonel Vis. His face was distressed, his voice low and deeply earnest.
‘This is madness. Colonel, madness! It’s – it’s impossible, you can see it’s impossible. We’ll never – look, sir, two hundred and fifty dropped out in the first two hours. The altitude, the cold, sheer physical exhaustion. It’s madness.’
‘All war is madness,’ Vis said calmly. ‘Get on the radio. We require five hundred more men.’
EIGHT
Friday
1500–2115
Now it had come, Mallory knew. He looked at Andrea and Miller and Reynolds and Groves and knew that they knew it too. In their faces he could see very clearly reflected what lay at the very surface of his own mind, the explosive tension, the hair-trigger alertness straining to be translated into equally explosive action. Always it came, this moment of truth that stripped men bare and showed them for what they were. He wondered how Reynolds and Groves would be: he suspected they might acquit themselves well. It never occurred to him to wonder about Miller and Andrea, for he knew them too well: Miller, when all seemed lost, was a man above himself, while the normally easy-going, almost lethargic Andrea was transformed into an unrecognizable human being, an impossible combination of an icily calculating mind and berserker fighting machine entirely without the remotest parallel in Mallory’s knowledge or experience. When Mallory spoke his voice was as calmly impersonal as ever.
‘We’re due to leave at four. It’s now three. With any luck we’ll catch them napping. Is everything clear?’
Reynolds said wonderingly, almost unbelievingly: ‘You mean if anything goes wrong we’re to shoot our way out?’
‘You’re to shoot and shoot to kill. That, Sergeant, is an order.’
‘Honest to God,’ Reynolds said, ‘I just don’t know what’s going on.’ The expression on his face clearly indicated that he had given up all attempts to understand what was going on.
Mallory and Andrea left the hut and walked casually across the compound towards Neufeld’s hut. Mallory said: ‘They’re on to us, you know.’
‘I know. Where are Petar and Maria?’
‘Asleep, perhaps? They left the hut a couple of hours ago. We’ll collect them later.’
‘Later may be too late … They are in great peril, my Keith.’
‘What can a man do, Andrea? I’ve thought of nothing else in the past ten hours. It’s a crucifying risk to have to take, but I have to take it. They are expendable, Andrea. You know what it would mean if I showed my hand now.’
‘I know what it would mean,’ Andrea said heavily. ‘The end of everything.’
They entered Neufeld’s hut without benefit of knocking. Neufeld, sitting behind his desk with Droshny by his side, looked up in irritated surprise and glanced at his watch.
He said curtly: ‘Four o’clock, I said, not three.’
‘Ou
r mistake,’ Mallory apologized. He closed the door. ‘Please do not be foolish.’
Neufeld and Droshny were not foolish, few people would have been while staring down the muzzles of two Lugers with perforated silencers screwed to the end: they just sat there, immobile, the shock slowly draining from their faces. There was a long pause then Neufeld spoke, the words coming almost haltingly.
‘I have been seriously guilty of underestimating –’
‘Be quiet. Broznik’s spies have discovered the whereabouts of the four captured Allied agents. We know roughly where they are. You know precisely where they are. You will take us there. Now.’
‘You’re mad,’ Neufeld said with conviction.
‘We don’t require you to tell us that.’ Andrea walked round behind Neufeld and Droshny, removed their pistols from their holsters, ejected the shells and replaced the pistols. He then crossed to a corner of the hut, picked up two Schmeisser machine-pistols, emptied them, walked back round to the front of the table and placed the Schmeissers on its top, one in front of Neufeld, one in front of Droshny.
‘There you are, gentlemen,’ Andrea said affably. ‘Armed to the teeth.’
Droshny said viciously: ‘Suppose we decide not to come with you?’
Andrea’s affability vanished. He walked unhurriedly round the table and rammed the Luger’s silencer with such force against Droshny’s teeth that he gasped in pain. ‘Please –’ Andrea’s voice was almost beseeching – ‘please don’t tempt me.’
Droshny didn’t tempt him. Mallory moved to the window and peered out over the compound. There were, he saw, at least a dozen Cetniks within thirty feet of Neufeld’s hut, all of them armed. Across the other side of the compound he could see that the door to the stables was open indicating that Miller and the two sergeants were in position.
‘You will walk across the compound to the stables,’ Mallory said. ‘You will talk to nobody, warn nobody, make no signals. We will follow about ten yards behind.’
‘Ten yards behind. What’s to prevent us making a break for it? You wouldn’t dare hold a gun on us out there.’
‘That’s so,’ Mallory agreed. ‘From the moment you open this door you’ll be covered by three Schmeissers from the stables. If you try anything – anything – you’ll be cut to pieces. That’s why we’re keeping well behind you – we don’t want to be cut to pieces too.’
At a gesture from Andrea, Neufeld and Droshny slung their empty Schmeissers in angry silence. Mallory looked at them consideringly and said: ‘I think you’d better do something about your expressions. They’re a dead giveaway that something is wrong. If you open that door with faces like that, Miller will cut you down before you reach the bottom step. Please try to believe me.’
They believed him and by the time Mallory opened the door had managed to arrange their features into a near enough imitation of normality. They went down the steps and set off across the compound to the stables. When they had reached halfway Andrea and Mallory left Neufeld’s hut and followed them. One or two glances of idle curiosity came their way, but clearly no one suspected that anything was amiss. The crossing to the stables was completely uneventful.
So also, two minutes later, was their departure from the camp. Neufeld and Droshny, as would have been proper and expected, rode together in the lead, Droshny in particular looking very warlike with his Schmeisser, pistol and the wickedly-curved knives at his waist. Behind them rode Andrea, who appeared to be having some trouble with the action of his Schmeisser, for he had it in his hands and was examining it closely: he certainly wasn’t looking at either Droshny or Neufeld and the fact that the gun barrel, which Andrea had sensibly pointed towards the ground, had only to be lifted a foot and the trigger pressed to riddle the two men ahead was a preposterous idea that would not have occurred to even the most suspicious. Behind Andrea, Mallory and Miller rode abreast: like Andrea, they appeared unconcerned, even slightly bored. Reynolds and Groves brought up the rear, almost but not quite attaining the degree of nonchalance of the other three: their still faces and restlessly darting eyes betrayed the strain they were under. But their anxiety was needless for all seven passed from the camp not only unmolested but without as much as even an enquiring glance being cast in their direction.
They rode for over two and a half hours, climbing nearly all the time, and a blood-red sun was setting among the thinning pines to the west when they came across a clearing set on, for once, a level stretch of ground. Neufeld and Droshny halted their ponies and waited until the others came up with them. Mallory reined in and gazed at the building in the middle of the clearing, a low, squat, immensely strong-looking block-house, with narrow, heavily barred windows and two chimneys, from one of which smoke was coming.
‘This is the place?’ Mallory asked.
‘Hardly a necessary question.’ Neufeld’s voice was dry, but the underlying resentment and anger unmistakable. ‘You think I spent all this time leading you to the wrong place?’
‘I wouldn’t put it past you,’ Mallory said. He examined the building more closely. ‘A hospitable-looking place.’
‘Yugoslav Army ammunition dumps were never intended as first-class hotels.’
‘I dare say not,’ Mallory agreed. At a signal from him they urged their ponies forward into the clearing, and as they did so two metal strips in the facing wall of the block-house slid back to reveal a pair of embrasures with machine-pistols protruding. Exposed as they were, the seven mounted men were completely at the mercy of those menacing muzzles.
‘Your men keep a good watch,’ Mallory acknowledged to Neufeld. ‘You wouldn’t require many men to guard and hold a place like this. How many are there?’
‘Six,’ Neufeld said reluctantly.
‘Seven and you’re a dead man,’ Andrea warned.
‘Six.’
As they approached, the guns – almost certainly because the men behind them had identified Neufeld and Droshny – were withdrawn, the embrasures closed, the heavy metal front door opened. A sergeant appeared in the doorway and saluted respectfully, his face registering a certain surprise.
‘An unexpected pleasure, Hauptmann Neufeld,’ the sergeant said. ‘We had no radio message informing us of your arrival.’
‘It’s out of action for the moment.’ Neufeld waved them inside but Andrea gallantly insisted on the German officer taking precedence, reinforcing his courtesy with a threatening hitch of his Schmeisser. Neufeld entered, followed by Droshny and the other five men.
The windows were so narrow that the burning oil lamps were obviously a necessity, the illumination they afforded being almost doubled by a large log fire blazing in the hearth. Nothing could ever overcome the bleakness created by four rough-cut stone walls, but the room itself was surprisingly well furnished with a table, chairs, two armchairs and a sofa: there were even some pieces of carpet. Three doors led off from the room, one heavily barred. Including the sergeant who had welcomed them, there were three armed soldiers in the room. Mallory glanced at Neufeld who nodded, his face tight in suppressed anger.
Neufeld said to one of the guards: ‘Bring out the prisoners.’ The guard nodded, lifted a heavy key from the wall and headed for the barred door. The sergeant and the other guard were sliding the metal screens back across the embrasures. Andrea walked casually towards the nearest guard, then suddenly and violently shoved him against the sergeant. Both men cannoned into the guard who had just inserted the key into the door. The third man fell heavily to the ground: the other two, though staggering wildly, managed to retain a semblance of balance or at least remain on their feet. All three twisted round to stare at Andrea, anger and startled incomprehension in their faces, and all three remained very still, and wisely so. Faced with a Schmeisser machine-pistol at three paces, the wise man always remains still.
Mallory said to the sergeant: ‘There are three other men. Where are they?’
There was no reply: the guard glared at him in defiance. Mallory repeated the question, this time in fluent
German: the guard ignored him and looked questioningly at Neufeld, whose lips were tight-shut in a mask of stone.
‘Are you mad?’ Neufeld demanded of the sergeant. ‘Can’t you see those men are killers? Tell him.’
‘The night guards. They’re asleep.’ The sergeant pointed to a door. ‘That one.’
‘Open it. Tell them to walk out. Backwards and with their hands clasped behind their necks.’
‘Do exactly as you’re told,’ Neufeld ordered.
The sergeant did exactly what he was told and so did the three guards who had been resting in the inner room, who walked out as they had been instructed, with obviously no thought of any resistance in their minds. Mallory turned to the guard with the key who had by this time picked himself up somewhat shakily from the floor, and nodded to the barred door.
‘Open it.’
The guard opened it and pushed the door wide. Four British officers moved out slowly and uncertainly into the outer room. Long confinement indoors had made them very pale, but apart from this prison pallor and the fact that they were rather thin they were obviously unharmed. The man in the lead, with a major’s insignia and a Sandhurst moustache – and, when he spoke, a Sandhurst accent – stopped abruptly and stared in disbelief at Mallory and his men.
‘Good God above! What on earth are you chaps –’
‘Please.’ Mallory cut him short. ‘I’m sorry, but later. Collect your coats, whatever warm gear you have, and wait outside.’
‘But – but where are you taking us?’
‘Home. Italy. Tonight. Please hurry!’
‘Italy. You’re talking –’
‘Hurry!’ Mallory glanced in some exasperation at his watch. ‘We’re late already.’
As quickly as their dazed condition would allow, the four officers collected what warm clothing they had and filed outside. Mallory turned to the sergeant again. ‘You must have ponies here, a stable.’