The Athens Assignment

by David Boyle

  She would wait there for daylight and then she would seek out the priest in the confessional, and ask for guidance, geographical as well as spiritual.

  *

  The dark streets were completely deserted. It was nearly midnight. There were shadows of people slipping around silently, and she could see them once her eyes adjusted a little to the gloom. There were no signs of the crowds of revellers from the night of the raid. She knew which way to go, if only she could find it in the dark. But she was beginning to feel limp and helpless now that the adrenalin of the evening had dissipated.

  If she really had been betrayed, then she had precious little time to get under cover where she would not be found. The first turning she took seemed completely unfamiliar. Fighting back the panic, Xanthe retraced her steps and tried again.

  This time, looming out of the dark were the arches of the great cathedral.

  She peered through the gloom in all directions and made a dash up the steps. There was an ancient iron handle on the door. Desperately, she pushed it down, and to her astonishment, the door swung open. In a moment, she was inside and in complete blackness.

  She stood quite still and could see, up ahead, a single candle. It illuminated the transept where she had gone before, where she knew the confessionals were.

  Very slowly, she made her way over, gingerly stepping around the chairs. Her hopes were beginning to rise. She appeared to be totally alone.

  She slipped into the first confessional and peered through the grill. There was nobody there.

  A tiny shifting sound caught her attention. It was so tempting to risk going back outside to see. She slipped out and into the next confessional. She drew the curtain aside and knelt down.

  To her surprise, a young woman’s voice spoke to her quietly in Greek. Was this really a confessional? She was nervously unfamiliar with the rituals and rules of the Orthodox church.

  “Sorry,” she said, very quietly. “I don’t speak the language.”

  “Shirley? Is that you? It’s Daphne. Why are you here?”

  “I lost my nerve. What’s your excuse? How did you get here before me?”

  “Speak quietly. We have an arrangement with the priest. He signals to me if there is someone asking for help and I skip in here. Sometimes I’m here all night. I try not to think about the ghosts.”

  “So you didn’t see me coming or something?”

  Paranoia was beginning to weigh her down.

  “Is everything all right? Listen carefully. I have the information I needed. There is a yacht leaving a small harbour north of Rafina tomorrow night, at dusk. You will need to walk there, and it will take five or six hours, so even if you wait until daylight, you should still get there. But it will be tough and hot, and you have not been looking that well, I am sorry to have to tell you. So you need to decide. Can you manage it?”

  Xanthe’s heart sank.

  “I think so. I have to really. Where is the yacht going?”

  “It will take you to Egypt, along with some RAF people and a couple of Anzacs left behind. But look, Shirley, the difficulty is that you will be a woman alone, and you will need to dress Greek and be able to speak the language if you are stopped by anyone unfriendly. So, I am sending someone with you.”

  “Really? Sorry to sound so pathetic.”

  “You don’t, of course. Now, if you are sure, we need to put you somewhere safe for the night, and it so happens that your guide for tomorrow is quite close. So, when you’re sure nobody can see you, I want you to go and pray in the chapel of Our Lady, and I will come there in a moment and introduce you.”

  *

  “Where are we going?” said Xanthe in a whisper, as she was led down some ancient steps, blackened with age, below the cathedral. Then again down an old brick passage and into what seemed like a cavern.

  It was freezing cold and damp. Daphne carried an electric torch. She swung it around.

  “We are heading towards the ancient river which used to flow through Athens in classical times and now goes underground. It also provides us with a safe passage under the city, and we are going to wrap you up down here for the night.”

  Xanthe shivered involuntarily. It wasn’t so much the temperature. It was that the wraiths of Athens past seemed to live here already. She felt lonely and somewhat spooked.

  “Don’t worry, Shirley. We have many blankets. You should rest here for a few hours and then Giorgios will lead you to the yacht. And I will leave you with the torch. There is a lamp also. Why did you leave Betty’s house?”

  “I suddenly didn’t feel safe. I don’t know really. I was being silly, I’m sure.”

  “Did something happen?”

  “No,” Xanthe lied.

  “Because if something happened, however small, I need to know about it.”

  She took a deep breath.

  “I just got nervous that Betty and that blonde man were talking about me. I don’t have any doubts about Betty, honestly. I’d trust her with anything. Really, I shouldn’t have panicked.”

  In the darkness, Daphne grew silent.

  “Very sensible precaution,” she said. “Now, here is Giorgios and he has another torch and a spare battery, as I do, and a small lamp.”

  Strange, thought Xanthe. Why did Daphne not ask more about it? Was she so certain that Betty was safe and straight? Perhaps she was. Perhaps – no, that was to let in the madness…

  Meanwhile, the shape of a young man stood in their path. The light flicked in his face and he gave her a big grin.

  “Giorgios – I’m so glad it’s you!”

  “I am also glad,” he said.

  Daphne handed over the torch, fished out another and gave her an unexpected kiss. Then she turned to go.

  “Wrap her up warm, Giorgios. And very good luck!”

  *

  Somewhere on the Atlantic, five thousand miles or more away, the Bismarck was cutting through the waves, heading perhaps back around Iceland, perhaps to France.

  Somewhere, a desperate British fleet was searching, propping their eyes open with their binoculars, sweeping the horizon for a giveaway flash. Somewhere, perhaps even then, the signals office at Luftwaffe headquarters was sending a message to the German admiralty, asking for an answer to General Jeschonnek’s question. Perhaps at that very moment, perhaps not yet, the reply was speeding through the ether, picked up in Athens to the consternation of Jeschonnek’s staff and intercepted by one of the listening stations in England on a short-wave receiver. Then it would pop out of the teleprinter in Hut 6, ready for decoding.

  8

  Athens, May 1941

  Xanthe could not sleep. She was cold and could see her breath in the pale torchlight. She was wondering about her own emotional resilience, let alone her physical resilience for the long walk. She was, she felt, quite unnecessarily delighted at seeing Giorgios again. She felt absurdly safe with him.

  He was not sleeping either and kept on looking over to her pile of blankets with concern. He could see she was in pain, even if it had probably not occurred to him that it was the aftermath of giving birth.

  “Miss Shirley,” he said, with great seriousness, sitting up. “You are cold; I am warm. I invite you to share my blankets and heat.”

  It was not an invitation she would normally entertain, especially not from a man some years younger than herself. But these were not normal times. In a moment, she was across the cavern and, in the pale lamplight, lying warmer in his arms.

  The tension dissolved and she found herself sobbing there quietly. He kissed her gently but insistently on the lips. Despite herself, she found she was kissing him back. His stubble tickled. It felt rough and even a little exciting.

  “No!” she kept telling him as his hand crept around. “No, Giorgios, sorry.”

  “I may? I promised to love you,” he said finally.

  “You promised what?” She thought of Neville Chamberlain’s famous line: No such undertaking has been received. “Sorry, Giorgios. I like you, but I ca
n’t.”

  “Ah well,” said Giorgios. Then he fell asleep.

  *

  She woke feeling cold and damp. It was still pitch black.

  A whole army of “what-ifs” began to float through her mind. What if Daphne and Betty were both agents for the Nazis? What if they were working together? What if Daphne had been killed and had led them both down to this dank spot to die? What if nobody showed them the way out and she never got home to Indigo? What, in fact, if she had misjudged the whole thing, come to Greece ill-prepared, had messed up the message and the Bismarck was still at large in the Atlantic?

  For goodness sake, she told herself. You are a foreign agent and a foreign correspondent. You might expect this kind of emotional turmoil – but you can also deal with it. She struggled to sit up, letting the blanket fall to the stone floor, and breathed deeply three times. Giorgios was stirring next to her. She was in with more than a chance if she kept her head and kept going.

  Then she prayed for a little more strength of mind and body, and began to feel better. Yes, she really was feeling a little stronger.

  Giorgios was dressed and on his feet above her.

  “Miss Shirley. We must go. I can only find you a few plums, they are the best I can do. Are you ready to come?”

  “Thank you, Giorgios,” she said, as she walked slowly on his arm along the stone passage towards the sunlit patch ahead. “I am so grateful to you and Daphne. I was just feeling sorry for myself.”

  “You should also feel sorry for us. You can go home. We are here for many years of starvation and tyranny, I fear. For how many years? God knows.”

  “I know. I am so grateful. Honestly.”

  “I do not mean that. Do you not think we are also grateful to you for coming to our country to tell the world what is happening? Or whatever you came here for…”

  Xanthe ignored the hint. They were now back in the cathedral, and in a moment she was outside in the early morning brightness, blinking, as if seeing it for the first time.

  “And now we must walk,” said Giorgios. “For maybe five hours, if you can manage it.”

  “I can manage. What do you mean ‘we’?”

  “Because I come with you.”

  Xanthe was suddenly overwhelmed with relief. She felt tears, unbidden and unwelcome, pricking the back of her eyes.

  “Thank you, Giorgios.”

  He looked embarrassed and reached into his pocket. Then he unfolded a canvas bag.

  “I have brought you this. So you can look… real. As if you go to market. And this hat.”

  More relief. She badly needed a hat.

  “And if you are asked things, you don’t answer,” he said. “I will talk.”

  *

  The opportunity arose all too soon.

  They were walking out of the outskirts of the city, full of overgrown market gardens and empty fields, when a German patrol marched out of a corner. “Halt!” said the officer. Giorgios and Xanthe stopped. The soldiers at the back leered excitedly.

  “Wohin gehst du?”

  Xanthe pretended not to understand. The soldier looked around at his colleagues.

  “I go with my sister to our aunt’s farm. She is not well,” said Giorgios in German. Then he continued at length in Greek.

  The officer waved them on. Xanthe breathed again.

  “That wasn’t too bad. What did you tell him?”

  “I told him my life story, starting with our journey to visit the farm of my aunt today, and going back from there. It seemed to bore them.”

  “I can’t think why…”

  Although this little escape was a relief, Xanthe was aware she was flagging. Her scar ached. The sun was swelteringly hot and high in the sky, and they seemed barely to have left Athens. Could she do it? Or was she anyway destined for some kind of swoop by the secret police? If Betty had really informed on her, she could expect to be picked up any time now. Or worse than picked up.

  “Quick! Off the road!” shouted Giorgios. “Something’s coming.”

  Using her remaining reserves of strength, Xanthe sprinted after her friend and into a small cleft in the wall where she slid down, light-headed, onto the ground.

  An ancient lorry was moving slowly up the hill, spluttering and wheezing. The driver appeared to be looking for someone.

  Was this it? Was this what betrayal looked like, she wondered, peering out? Why had she trusted anyone?

  Xanthe was aware that one leg was showing, and possibly more of her. Sure enough, the driver stopped close to them and stared. He stuck an swarthy face out of the window and shouted something including the word “patrótis”.

  “He is asking: are you patriots?” explained Giorgios, pressed close against her. “Yes,” he said, emerging brazenly from their cleft, “are you?”

  “Come on,” he hissed to Xanthe. “This is our lift…”

  “But how do you know?”

  They climbed up and squeezed gratefully into the cab. The driver put out an unsavoury, hairy hand.

  “How do you do,” he said. “Betty sent me. I am to drive you where you want to go.”

  A great sense of relief flooded through Xanthe, and, for the first time that day and despite her exhaustion, she felt the welcome breeze in her dyed dark hair. So Betty had been true to her. Of course she had. Betty was a brick and a courageous one. And, as the old lorry rumbled over the broken road, there, glinting in the distance, through the ubiquitous scrub and mountains, was the sea.

  “You know what, Miss Shirley?” said Giorgios, affectionately. “You are even beginning to smell like one of us.”

  Xanthe began to laugh, and soon they were all three roaring with laughter.

  Then they passed a peasant who made a sign with his hand and the lorry screeched to a halt.

  “My friends, you must get out,” said the driver. “There is a checkpoint ahead. My friend here will conduct you over the mountain.”

  “So near and yet so far,” said Xanthe. “Look Giorgios, you leave me here and go back in the lorry. I’ll be safe enough.”

  “No, Miss Shirley. Not leaving.”

  The sun was lower in the sky as they finally picked their way through the scrub and olive trees into the harbour from the north. Xanthe and Giorgios seemed an unlikely couple. He unshaven; she in a strange hat, but looking for all the world like an adopted Londoner on a hike, lagging behind in the heat and dust, almost overwhelmed with exhaustion and pain.

  Ahead, the peasant kept a sharp lookout. But although he looked like a man of the soil, he spoke near perfect English.

  “Hold her hand,” he instructed Giorgios. “Betty has told me to look after Miss Shirley no matter what.”

  Tears began running down Xanthe’s cheeks. These were clearly the hot coals heaped on her head that St Paul promised the faithless. Once more she had failed to judge someone correctly. It was all too difficult. Why had she ever suspected Betty and her friends? How could she have got it so wrong? This one really had to be her final trip. There was no way she would ever go into the field again, she promised herself.

  A short while later, there was the harbour, and for a moment, the war dropped away, with the remaining sun glinting on the water and the small yacht, rigged for fishing, beside the wharf. It was invisible from the surrounding area, a tiny port, more like a fishing village, and she could see immediately why it was an excellent place for a clandestine departure.

  “You wait here,” said Giorgios, “and I must go. When they hoist the Greek flag, it is a signal that it is safe for you to go aboard. Now, Miss Shirley, I kiss you goodbye. I don’t know who you are, but I wish you safe home. May we meet again.”

  She kissed him, tears rolling down her cheeks, for herself, for Greece and its trauma, for her own shattered heart. She watched him go. A minute or so later, he and the peasant had disappeared.

  There was not long to wait. She must have cut it fine because only fifteen minutes later, she looked up to see the blue and white Greek flag fluttering in the breez
e. She looked around and walked, still in pain, as quickly as she could, to the dockside. As she did so, she was aware of two men, in tattered British battledress, making their way in the same direction.

  Two crewmen emerged from deep inside the boat, took Xanthe’s arm and helped her below. She was led through a small hole cut in the cabin wall.

  “Do not worry. There is little air, but it should not be for long,” she was told. “Just until we are at sea.”

  She curled up on a couple of sacks. The soldiers were clearly being led elsewhere. The door was shut behind her and she was once more in darkness, with the little waves lapping against the side of the boat and shouts from above.

  9

  Alexandria, June 1941

  “Miss Schneider? My name is Sub-Lieutenant Patterson, and I am here to conduct you to the airfield.”

  A slightly crumpled young man in white naval uniform saluted her.

  “Well, heaven be praised. Recognition at last,” said her friend Frank, the executive officer of HM submarine Rorqual, which had taken her from the yacht, together with two British soldiers and three airmen, and ferried them to Alexandria.

  Xanthe had been escorted to the submarine rendezvous, just outside Turkish territorial waters, by the consul there, who appeared to be running his own informal navy.

  Alexandria had been extraordinary. For all her involvement with the Royal Navy over the previous year, she had never visited a British dockyard – though she had been to Kiel, of course. There was the bustle of men coming ashore, and she could see the dark grey shapes of an old cruiser or two, lying at anchor next to the ancient walls and stones. But the welcome had left something to be desired. Nobody seemed to have expected her. Nobody knew who she was when she and Frank had gone from office to office to arrange her air transport back to London. They were met with blank faces – sometimes downright rude ones.

  “I suppose it’s the heat,” said Xanthe apologetically.