Partisans

by Alistair MacLean

  ‘Objection,’ Giacomo said. ‘If your friend Cipriano is the man behind this, he already knows the description of the truck. So what’s the point in destroying the truck?’

  ‘Giacomo, you sadden me. We don’t know that Cipriano is the man behind this but if he is he wouldn’t want to leave any clue that would point a finger at him in connection with the abduction. Remember that, officially, he and the Colonel are sworn allies, faithful unto death.’

  Voices came from up front, a door banged, the engine started again and the truck moved off. ‘That must be the way of it,’ Giacomo said to no-one in particular. ‘Pity about the truck, though.’

  They jolted on through the snow-filled night, torch beams and barrels still pointed at them, until suddenly Harrison said: ‘At last. Civilization. It’s a long time since I’ve seen city lights.’

  Harrison, as was his custom, was exaggerating to a considerable extent. A few dim lights appeared occasionally through the opened back of the truck but hardly enough to lend the impression that they were driving through a metropolis. By and by the truck pulled off on to a side road, climbed briefly, then stopped. The guards apparently knew where they were and did not wait for orders. They jumped down, lined up torches and guns as before and were joined by Crni.

  ‘Down,’ he said. ‘This is as far as we go tonight.’

  They lowered themselves to the ground and looked around them. As far as could be judged from the light of the beams, the building before them appeared to be standing alone and seemed, vaguely, to be shaped like a chalet. But, in the darkness and the snow it could have been just any building.

  Crni led the way inside. The hallway presented a pleasant contrast to the swirling cold of the wintry night outside. The furnishings were sparse enough, just a table, a few chairs and a dresser, but it was warm – a small log fire burned in a low hearth – and warmly if not brightly lit: electric power had not yet reached this part of Jablanica and suspended oil lamps were the norm.

  ‘Door to the left is a bathroom,’ Crni said. ‘Can be used anytime. There will, of course,’ he added unnecessarily, ‘be a guard in the hall all the time. The other door to the left leads to the main quarters of the house and does not concern you. Neither do those stairs.’ He led the way to an opened door on the far right and ushered them inside. ‘Your quarters for the night.’

  The room was unmistakably such as one would only find in a chalet. It was long, wide and low, with beamed ceiling, knotted pine walls and an oak parquet floor. Cushioned benches ran both sides of the room, there was a table, several armchairs, a very commodious dresser, some cupboards and shelves and, best of all, a rather splendid log fire several times the size of the one in the hallway. The only immediately incongruous note was struck by some canvas cots, blankets and pillows stacked neatly in one corner. It was George, inevitably, who discovered the second and not so immediately incongruous note. He pulled back the curtains covering one of the two windows and examined with interest the massive bars on the outside.

  ‘It is part of the general malaise of our times,’ he said sadly. ‘With the onset of war, the deterioration of standards is as immediate as it is inevitable. The rules of honour, decency and common law go by default and moral degeneracy rears its ugly head.’ He let fall the curtains. ‘A wise precaution, very wise. One feels sure that the streets of Jablanica are infested by burglars, house-breakers, footpads and other criminals of that ilk.’

  Crni ignored him and looked at Petersen who was inspecting the bedding. ‘Yes, Major, I can count, too. Only six cots. We have a room upstairs for the two young ladies.’

  ‘Considerate. You were very sure of yourself, weren’t you, Captain Crni?’

  ‘Oh, no, he wasn’t,’ George said disgustedly. ‘A blind man could drive a coach and four with bells on through Mihajlovi’s perimeter.’ For a second time Crni ignored him. He had probably come to the conclusion that this was the only way to treat him.

  ‘We may or may not move on tomorrow. It certainly won’t be early. Depends entirely on the weather. From now on our travel will be mainly on foot. Should you be hungry, there’s food in that cupboard there. The contents of that high dresser will be of more interest to the professor.’

  ‘Ah!’ George opened the doors and looked appreciatively at what was, in effect, a comprehensively stocked miniature bar. ‘The window bars are superfluous, Captain Crni. I shall not be moving on tonight.’

  ‘Even if you could, where would you go? When you ladies want to sleep, let the guard know and I’ll show you your room. I may or may not wish to interrogate you later, it depends on a call I have to make.’

  ‘You surprise me,’ Petersen said. ‘I thought the phone system had ceased to work.’

  ‘Radio, of course. We do have one. In fact, we have four, the other three being yours and those two very modern sets belonging to the von Karajans. I expect the code books will also prove to be useful.’

  He left behind him a profound and fairly lengthy silence interrupted only by the sound of a cork being extracted from a bottle. Michael was the first to speak.

  ‘Radios,’ he said bitterly. ‘Code books.’ He looked accusingly at Petersen. ‘You know what this means, don’t you?’

  ‘Yes. Nothing. Crni was amusing himself. All it means is that we will be put to the trouble of getting ourselves a new code. What else do you think they’ll do after they discover the books are missing? They will do this, of course, not to protect themselves against their enemies but against their friends. The Germans have twice broken the code that we use among ourselves.’ He looked at Harrison, who had seated himself, cross-legged, in an arm-chair before the fire and was contemplating a glass of wine that George had just handed him. ‘For a man who has just been driven from house and home, Jamie, or snatched from it, which comes to the same thing, you don’t look all that downcast to me.’

  ‘I’m not,’ Harrison said comfortably. ‘No reason to be. I never thought I’d find quarters better than my last one but I was wrong, I mean, look, a real log fire. Carpe diem, as the man says. What, Peter, do you think the future holds for us?’

  ‘I wouldn’t know how to use a crystal ball.’

  ‘Pity. It would have been nice to think that I might see the white cliffs of Dover again.’

  ‘I don’t see why not. No one’s after your blood. I mean, you haven’t been up to anything, have you, Jamie? Such as sending clandestine radio messages, in codes unknown to us, to parties also unknown to us?’

  ‘Certainly not.’ Harrison was unruffled. ‘I’m not that kind of person, I don’t have any secrets and I’m useless with a radio anyway. So you think I might see the white cliffs again. Do you think I’ll be seeing the old homestead on Mount Prenj again?’

  ‘I should think it highly unlikely.’

  ‘Well now. A fairly confident prediction and without a crystal ball.’

  ‘For that, I don’t need a crystal ball. A person who has occupied the – ah – delicate position you have done will never again be employed in that capacity after he’s been captured by the enemy. Torturing, brain-washing, reconversion to a double-agent, that sort of thing. Standard practice. You’d never be trusted again.’

  ‘I say, that’s a bit thick, isn’t it? A blameless, stainless reputation. It’s hardly my fault that I’ve been captured. It wouldn’t have happened if you people had looked after me a bit better. Thank you, George, I will have a little more. Now that I’m happily out of that place, I’ve no intention of ever returning to it, not unless I’m dragged forcibly back to it, kicking and screaming in the accepted fashion.’ He raised his glass. ‘Your health, Peter.’

  ‘You have taken an aversion to the people, the etniks, the Colonel, myself?’

  ‘A profound aversion. Well, not to you, although I must admit I don’t care overmuch for what might be called your military politics. You’re a total enigma to me, Peter, but I’d rather have you on my side than against me. As for the rest, I despise them. An extraordinary position for an al
ly to find himself in, is it not?’

  ‘I think I’ll have some wine, too, George, if I may. Well, yes, Jamie, it’s true, you have made your discontent – I might even say displeasure – rather guardedly evident from time to time but I thought you were doing no more than exercising every soldier’s inalienable right to complain loudly and at length about every conceivable aspect of army life.’ He sipped his wine thoughtfully. ‘One gathers there was something a little more to it than that?’

  ‘A little more? There was a great deal more.’ Harrison sipped his wine and gazed at the burning logs, a man relaxed, at peace with himself. ‘In spite of the fact that the future looks somewhat uncertain, in some ways I owe our Captain Crni a favour. He’s done no more than to pre-empt my decision, my intention, to leave Mount Prenj and its miserable inhabitants at the first convenient opportunity. Had it not been for the unexpected happening of the past couple of hours, you’d have discovered that I’d already made an official request for an official recall. But, of course, as matters stood before the appearance of Captain Crni, I wouldn’t have made any such disclosures anyway.’

  ‘I could have misjudged you, Jamie.’

  ‘Indeed you could.’ He looked around the room to see if there was anyone else misjudging him, but there was no-one thinking along those lines: a magnet to the iron filings, he had the undivided attention of every person in the room.

  ‘So you didn’t – don’t – like us?’

  ‘I should have thought that I had made that abundantly clear. I may be no soldier, and the good Lord knows that I’m not, but I’m no clown either, all appearances to the contrary. I’m educated after a fashion: in practically any intellectual field that matters the average soldier is a virtual illiterate.

  I’m not educated in the way George is, I don’t float around in cloud-cuckoo-land or wander among the groves of academe.’ George looked profoundly hurt and reached for the wine bottle. ‘I have been educated in a more practical fashion. Wouldn’t you agree, Lorraine?’

  ‘I would.’ She smiled and said as if by rote: ‘B.Sc., M.Sc., A.M.I.E.E., A.M.I.Mech.E. Oh, he’s educated, all right. I used to be James’s secretary.’

  ‘Well, well, well,’ Petersen said. ‘The world grows even smaller.’ Giacomo covered his face with his hand.

  ‘Bachelor of Science, Master of Science we understand,’ George said. ‘As for the rest, it sounds as if he was coming down with a terminal illness.’

  ‘Associate Member of the Institute of Electrical Engineers,’ Lorraine said. ‘Associate Member of the Institute of Mechanical Engineers.’

  ‘It’s unimportant.’ Harrison was impatient. ‘Point is I’ve been trained to observe, evaluate and analyze. I’ve been out here less than two months but I can tell you it took only a fraction of that time and a minimum of observation, evaluation and analysis to realize that Britain was backing the wrong horse in the Yugoslav stakes.

  ‘I speak as a British officer. I don’t want to sound overly dramatic, but Britain is locked, literally, in mortal combat with Germany. How do we defeat the Germans – by fighting them and killing them. How should we judge our allies or potential allies, what yardstick should we use? One. Only one. Are they fighting and killing Germans? Is Mihajlovi? Is he hell. He’s fighting with the Germans, alongside the Germans. Tito? Every German soldier caught in the sights of a Partisan rifle is a dead man. Yet those fools and dolts and idiots in London keep sending supplies to Mihajlovi, a man who is in effect their sworn enemy. I am ashamed for my own people. The only possible reason for this – God knows it’s no excuse – is that Britain’s war, as far as the Balkans is concerned, is being run by politicians and soldiers, and politicians are almost as naïve and illiterate as soldiers.’

  George said: ‘You speak harsh words about your own people, James.’

  ‘Shut up! No, sorry, George, I didn’t mean that, but in spite or maybe because of your vast education you’re just as naïve and illiterate as any of them. Harsh but true. How does this extraordinary situation come about? Mihajlovi is a near Machiavellian genius in international diplomacy: Tito is too busy killing Germans to have any time for any such thing.

  ‘As far back as September 1941 Mihajlovi and his Cetniks, instead of fighting the Germans, were busy establishing contacts with your precious Royalist government in London. Yes, Peter Petersen, precious I said and precious I did not mean. They don’t give a damn about the unimaginable sufferings of the Yugoslav people, all they want to do is to regain royal power and if it’s over the bodies of one or two millions of their countrymen, so much the worse for their countrymen. And, of course, Mihajlovi, when contacting King Peter and his so-called advisers could hardly help contacting the British government as well. What a bonus! And naturally, at the same time, he contacted the British forces in the Middle East. For all I know the dunderheaded brasshats in Cairo may still regard the Colonel as the great white hope for Yugoslavia.’ He gestured towards Sarina and Michael. ‘In fact, the dunderheads unquestionably still do. Look at this gullible young couple here, specially trained by the British to come to the aid and comfort of the gallant etniks.’

  ‘We’re not gullible!’ Sarina’s voice was strained, her hands twisted together and she could have been close to either anger or tears. ‘We weren’t trained by the British, we were trained by the Americans. And we didn’t come to give aid and comfort to the etniks.’

  ‘There are no American radio operator schools in Cairo. Only British. If you received American training it was because the British wanted it that way.’ Harrison’s tone was as cool and discouraging as his face. ‘I think you’re gullible, I think you tell lies and I believe you came to help the etniks. I also think you’re a fine actress.’

  ‘Good for you, Jamie,’ Petersen said approvingly. ‘You got one thing right there. She is a fine actress. But she’s not gullible, she doesn’t tell lies – well, maybe one or two little white ones – and she didn’t come to help us.’

  Both Harrison and Sarina stared at him in astonishment. Harrison said: ‘How on earth can you say that?’

  ‘Intuition.’

  ‘Intuition!’ Harrison, was, for Harrison, being heavily sardonic. ‘If your intuition is on a par with your judgment you can mothball the two of them together. And don’t try to side-track me. Hasn’t it struck you as ironic that when you and your precious etniks’ – Harrison was very fond of the word ‘precious’ and used it, always in its most derogatory sense, with telling effect – ’were receiving arms and payments from the Germans, Italians and Nedi’s quisling Serb régime, that you were simultaneously receiving arms and payments from the western allies – this, mark you, at a time when you were fighting along with the Germans, Italians and Ustaša in an attempt to destroy the Partisans, Britain’s only real allies in Yugoslavia?’

  ‘Have some more wine, Jamie.’

  ‘Thank you, George.’ Harrison shook his head. ‘I confess myself to being totally baffled and, when I say that, I mean baffled all round. By you etniks and by my own people. Can it really be that there are none so blind as will not see? Are you so gagged and blinkered by your all-consuming and wholly misguided sense of patriotism, by your blind allegiance to a discredited royalty that your myopic eyes are so reduced to a ten-degree field of tunnel vision that you have no concept of the three hundred and fifty degree of peripheral vision that lies beyond? Are my people in London similarly affected? They have to be, they have to be, for what else could explain the inexplicable, the incomprehensible idiocy of keeping on sending supplies to Mihajlovi when they have before them incontrovertible evidence that he is actively collaborating with the Germans.’

  ‘I’ll bet you couldn’t say that again,’ Petersen said admiringly. ‘All the big words, I mean. As you say, Jamie, it’s all probably reduced to a factor of vision, what lies in the eye of the beholder.’ He rose, crossed over to the fireplace and sat down beside Sarina. ‘This is not really a switch, we’re talking about the same thing. How did you enjoy your tête-à-tête w
ith the Colonel this morning?’

  ‘Tête-à-tête? I didn’t have any tête-à-tête with him. Michael and I just reported to him. You told us to. Or have you forgotten?’

  ‘I’ve forgotten nothing. But I think you have. Walls have ears. Not original, but still true.’

  She glanced quickly at Michael then back again. ‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

  ‘Walls also have eyes.’

  ‘Stop brow-beating my sister!’ Michael shouted.

  ‘Brow-beating? Asking a simple question is brow-beating? If that’s what you call browbeating maybe I should start beating you about the brow. You were there, too, of course. You got anything to tell me? You have, you know. I already know what your answer should be. Your truthful answer.’

  ‘I’ve got nothing to tell you! Nothing! Nothing at all!’

  ‘You’re a lousy actor. Also, you’re too vehement by half.’

  ‘I’ve had enough of you, Petersen!’ Michael was breathing quickly and shallowly. ‘Enough of your bullying my sister and me.’ He jumped to his feet. ‘If you think I’m going to stand –’

  ‘You’re not going to stand, Michael.’ George had come up behind Michael and laid his hands on his shoulders. ‘You’re going to sit.’ Michael sat. ‘If you can’t keep quiet I’ll have to tie and gag you. Major Petersen is asking questions.’

  ‘Good Lord!’ Harrison was or seemed outraged. ‘This is a bit thick, George. A bit high-handed, I must say. Peter, I don’t think you’re any longer in a position to –’

  ‘And if you don’t keep quiet,’ George said with a trace of weariness in his voice, ‘I’ll do the same thing to you.’

  ‘To me!’ No question, this time the outrage was genuine. ‘Me? An officer? A Captain in the British Army! By God! Giacomo, you’re an Englishman. I appeal to you –’

  ‘Appeal is denied. I wouldn’t hurt an officer’s feelings by telling him to shut up, but I think the Major is trying to establish something. You may not like his military philosophy but at least you should keep an open mind. And I think Sarina should too. I think you’re both being foolish.’