Beneath the Cypress Tree

by Margaret Pemberton

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Helmut was in an agony of despair, both for his country and for himself. Hitler and his crazy anti-Semitism were a monster that had plunged Germany and the rest of Europe into a hell, the like of which the world had never known. The British were bombing German cities day and night. His grandparents’ home city of Danzig had been pulverized. Düsseldorf had been reduced to rubble. Bremen had suffered more than a hundred raids. In North Africa, General Rommel had been halted at El Alamein. In Russia, thousands upon thousands of his fellow countrymen had died and were still dying, trying to bring Russia to her knees. And then nine months ago, with catastrophic failure staring him in the face in the east, Hitler had, for no reason anyone could think of, turned his attention to the west and declared war upon America, the mightiest industrial nation in the world.

  It had been the act of a madman. Hitler needed assassinating and, much as he yearned to carry out the deed, he couldn’t do so. Not when Hitler rarely left the Wolf’s Lair, his headquarters in East Prussia, or the Berghof, his home in the Bavarian Alps, and he, Helmut, was in Crete.

  He groaned, burying his head in his hands. How, in the name of all that was holy, had he ended up part of the occupying power in a country he loved – an enemy to people who had been his friends? It was the last thing on earth he had wanted. Even a winter in the frozen wastes of Russia and, at present, house-to-house fighting in Stalingrad would have been preferable.

  He hadn’t been part of the paramilitary invasion force of Crete, thank God. His battalion had been amongst the fresh troops sent in a year after the island’s surrender. ‘Let me be based somewhere there will be no Cretans I know,’ he’d prayed in the noisy belly of the Junkers 52 as it flew over the Mediterranean. ‘Let me be based in Canea, or if not in Canea, then in Réthymnon; anywhere – absolutely anywhere – but not Heraklion. Please, dear God, not Heraklion.’

  Fate, of course, had kicked him in the teeth.

  He had been stationed in Heraklion.

  This time horrific bomb damage on a city he loved had been caused not by British bombers, but by German ones. When he walked the streets in the uniform of a German officer, a pistol at his hip, he no longer met the hospitable friendliness he had once met: instead, people looked at him with malevolent hatred.

  It was hatred that was justified.

  At the time of the invasion the Cretans had fought to defend their homes and island with every weapon they could lay their hands on – with axes and spades as well as knives – and consequently numberless paratroopers had not been killed by a bullet, but had been hacked or bludgeoned to death. After the surrender, when the island was in Nazi hands, reprisals on the civilian population who’d had the temerity to fight for what was theirs had been swift and savage. That he hadn’t been on Crete then, left with no alternative but to take part in those reprisals, was something Helmut knew he would be eternally grateful for.

  He lifted his head from his hands and looked around him. He was sitting on the steps of the Palace of Minos’s South Propylaeum. It wasn’t long after dawn and the sky was still a soft rose-pink. He pushed his officer’s cap to the back of his head, knowing that he shouldn’t have come. For one thing, the memories were too raw, too painful; for another, the Korakis family home was far too near. There was a risk of running into Kostas or Eleni, and no way was he prepared for seeing hatred and contempt in their eyes. The Palace of Minos was also far too close to the Villa Ariadne where General Müller, the divisional commander of Crete, had taken up residence.

  He had never been a regular guest at the Villa, as Lewis and Kit had been, but Helmut had several times had drinks there and once, on a day of strong Cretan sunlight, had partnered Lewis against Kit and the Squire in a tennis match. General Müller, a man known for his brutal attitude towards the Cretans and a man Helmut despised, was now in residence at the Villa. That was an obscenity he’d no wish to be reminded of.

  As he watched a butterfly flutter over a clump of golden cinquefoil that had self-seeded at the foot of the steps, he wondered where Lewis, Kit and the Squire were now. Lewis, he knew, would be fighting, but where? He couldn’t imagine Lewis being anywhere but under a hot sun, and his gut feeling was that he was with the Eighth Army in North Africa. He couldn’t imagine Kit or the Squire in North Africa – or the Squire in anything other than a staff job behind a desk.

  Wearily Helmut rose to his feet. Indulging in thoughts of the past, when Crete had been a very different place and all memories had been happy ones, was a waste of time. The days he had known then were not days that would ever return. He had to get to grips with the hideous reality, and the hideous reality was that he was due to lead the search of a village in the foothills of the mountains where an informant had said a wireless transmitter was being hidden.

  He walked past the bronze bust of Sir Arthur Evans and on to the road where he’d left his motorcycle, hoping beyond hope that the search would prove to be void, for if it didn’t, it would mean further searches in that area; searches higher up in the mountains; searches perilously close to Kalamata.

  Ella was feeding the cafeneion’s hens. It was a task she enjoyed. Even though she was now pregnant again, Andre and Agata had refused to hear of her living anywhere else but with them. Apollonia, too, had a lodger again, this time a female one. Nikoleta’s cover, and the cover of Villa Ariadne’s delivery boy, had been blown. Both of them had been lucky to escape arrest and execution. The delivery boy had hightailed it to his grandparents’ village on the Lasithi Plain, and Nikoleta had hightailed it to Kalamata, bringing with her every last bit of information she had been able to glean from General Müller’s desk.

  If she had wanted to, she could have shared the former mayor’s unused family house with Kate. When Nikoleta had arrived in Kalamata, it was something Kate had immediately suggested to her, but Nikoleta had politely declined the offer, saying she would prefer to share a room at the cafeneion with Ella and Kostas Alfred, who were, after all, family.

  With the hens’ food all scattered, Ella rested her hands on her tummy. The baby wasn’t due for another six months, and as yet she hadn’t begun to show. Christos, of course, was hoping for another boy. She didn’t mind what sex the baby was, as long as it was healthy and had the right number of fingers and toes. If it was a girl, though, she was going to name her Alice, after her mother.

  It was early morning and the light was a soft, shimmering mother-of-pearl. She never got tired of how jewelled the light at Kalamata always was. At dusk it would be the colour of amethysts – and this evening would be the second evening running that Christos would spend with her.

  Sometimes, for weeks on end, she didn’t know where he was. The network of partisan groups that Lewis constantly kept in touch with covered a huge region, all of it mountainous, all of which had to be traversed on foot; and, as his second-in-command, Christos invariably travelled with him. Evenings when he and Lewis were in Kalamata were red-letter evenings.

  She’d once asked Lewis why it was so necessary that, once a group was organized, he had to keep in such regular contact with it.

  ‘I wish to God I didn’t,’ he’d said with deep feeling, ‘but you have to understand the social system in the mountains, Ella. It’s very like the social system in the Highlands of Scotland – and, being a Scot, I understand it.’

  ‘You mean that it’s a clan system?’

  He’d nodded. ‘And it comes with all the advantages and disadvantages of a clan system. On the plus side, it means family loyalty and honour are paramount, and that no member of a clan whose chief is a resistance leader will ever betray it. Another plus is that where the chief gives his loyalty, the clan automatically follows. The downside is that for centuries clans have rustled each other’s cattle, abducted each other’s womenfolk and pursued feuds and vendettas that have sometimes lasted for generations. Working together in trusting cooperation – something that is now essential – is as foreign to them as flying to the moon.’

  Someth
ing that Lewis hadn’t said was that sometimes Cretans took risks that could bring danger to their villages. Word had come late yesterday evening that a small group of partisans had travelled from the Messara Plain in order to attend a family wedding at Leskla, a village in the foothills of the mountain chain that hid Kalamata. The Germans rarely ventured into the high mountains, but the foothills were different – and if an enemy patrol found partisans in the village, the entire village would suffer.

  Lewis, Christos, Yanni and Nico had set off for Leskla just before dawn, in order to speak with the partisans and emphasize to them the danger they were bringing to Leskla and other nearby villages. By tomorrow, Lewis and Christos would be off on another long trek, shepherding Illingworth and other servicemen who had missed out on the evacuation to the south coast, where they would rendezvous with a Royal Navy submarine and be taken to Egypt to be reunited with their units.

  What – and where – Christos’s next assignment might be was anyone’s guess. All Ella knew was that he was going to be spending tonight with her, and that knowledge was enough to quicken her pulses and make her day a golden one.

  They didn’t take the usual track down the mountain from Kalamata’s plateau. Instead, with Tinker at their heels, they left from the opposite edge of the plateau, cutting across the mountain’s flank in the direction of the pass that linked it to the next mountain, in the chain of mountains that extended all the way to Mount Ida and beyond.

  It was a perfect September day, the sun hot, but – unlike high summer – pleasantly so. After a couple of hours, white rocky escarpments and ravines were left behind them and they entered chestnut woods, Christos, Yanni and Nico carrying their rifles across their shoulders like yokes, the way the shepherds carried their crooks.

  The way led still steeply downhill and then, with surprising suddenness, the woods petered out and the men were on the edge of open hillside. At its foot was a narrow belt of trees, and beyond the trees there was a distant glimpse of Leskla village.

  An elderly shepherd eyed them with interest. ‘Are you going to Leskla?’ he asked them.

  ‘Yes,’ Lewis said easily. ‘We have come for the wedding.’

  ‘Then you may be in time for the wedding, but you have missed all the fun.’

  ‘And what fun was that?’

  ‘The Germans.’ He spat, as if to clear his mouth out after saying the word. ‘The devils have been, and the devils have gone.’

  ‘And did they find what they were looking for?’

  The shepherd’s eyes narrowed. ‘They found nothing. What would there be for them to find?’ He adjusted the rifle, which he would no more have been without than he would his crook, adding slyly, ‘And if you and your friends don’t continue into Leskla, you will be late for the wedding ceremony.’

  It was Yanni who first saw the German step out of the belt of trees at the bottom of the hill.

  He laid a hand on Lewis’s arm, giving a nod of his head in the German’s direction.

  ‘I thought you said they had all left the area,’ Lewis said to the shepherd, as they all swiftly stepped back under cover of the trees.

  ‘I said they had all left the village,’ the old man responded. ‘And he is on his own. Earlier there were at least thirty of them.’

  The German – wearing the peaked cap of an officer – certainly appeared to be on his own, which was odd, for even in Heraklion no German ever walked anywhere alone. Even odder was the manner in which he was making his way up the lower slopes of the hill. Every now and again he came to a halt, shading his eyes from the sun and looking upwards, not to where they were standing, but way over to the east and high, very high.

  Christos, Yanni and Nico swung their rifles from their shoulders and Lewis stretched a hand towards them restrainingly. ‘He isn’t a threat – and no harm has apparently been done to any villagers.’

  He reached into his sakouli for his binoculars.

  As he lifted them to his eyes, the shepherd, a step behind him and a yard to his left, raised his rifle.

  In the split second that Lewis focused the glasses and uttered a disbelieving ‘Jesus God!’, the shepherd fired. Lewis spun round, knocking the rifle out of his hands, shouting as he did so, ‘Don’t let him fire again!’ And then he was sprinting down the seemingly endless hillside to where Helmut lay inert, his blood staining the grass an ugly crimson.

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  With Christos, Yanni, Nico and the shepherd hard on his heels, Lewis half fell to the ground beside Helmut. The bullet had entered the right side of Helmut’s chest and he was semiconscious with pain and shock. Seeing only what appeared to be Leskla villagers surrounding him and, he thought, about to deliver the coup de grâce, Helmut struggled vainly for his pistol.

  The shepherd was trying to wrench his rifle out of Nico’s possession, dancing up and down in demented fury, shouting, ‘Hun-lovers, traitors and collaborators! Pigs and dogs! Let me get at him and I’ll show you how we deal with Germans in Leskla.’

  With warning pressure, Lewis grasped hold of one of Helmut’s wrists and, whipping his head round to the shepherd, snarled, ‘Shut up, you fool! He’s not a German. He’s a British Liaison officer, as I am. We came here to meet him. It’s why he was behaving as he was. He was waiting for us and looking for us.’

  Praying that Helmut would say and do nothing that would ruin the cover he was giving him, Lewis began ripping off his shirt, saying urgently to Christos, ‘Your shirt as well, Christos. And yours, Nico. We have to staunch the blood. Yanni, go into the village and bring back a mule.’ To Helmut he said fiercely in English, ‘Only speak English. Do you understand?’

  Helmut’s response was a feeble, dazed nod.

  The shepherd, terrified that if Helmut died he would be held responsible for the death of a brave Greek ally, said pathetically, ‘I didn’t mean it, Kyrie. How was I to know? I thought you were a Cretan. You look like a Cretan and speak like a Cretan, and you said you were here for the wedding. How was I to know differently?’

  Lewis didn’t answer him. He was too busy helping Christos try to stem the blood seeping from Helmut’s chest.

  ‘What are we to do with him, Lewis?’ Christos asked urgently. ‘We can’t leave him in Leskla. When his absence is realized, Leskla is the first place that will be searched and when he’s found – and when it’s known he was shot by a Leskla shepherd – reprisal executions will follow.’

  ‘We take him back with us.’

  ‘But his transport? Whatever his reason for doubling back here alone after this morning’s search, he can’t have walked here. He must either have arrived on a motorbike or in a car. And whichever it was, when a search is mounted for him, it will be found and innocent villagers will die because of it.’

  It was then that, for the first time, Helmut showed that he was taking in what was being said.

  ‘Motorbike,’ he whispered, adding so faintly and with such difficulty he could scarcely be heard, ‘Réthymnon. Expected there.’

  The shirts they were using as pressure compresses were already wet with blood, their hands slippery with it. Now Nico’s shirt was added to the padding and Lewis used his waist-sash to bind it in place. For how much longer Helmut could survive was doubtful to all three of them, but with Helmut registering what was being said, no one put their fear into words.

  Lewis, aware that a search centred on Réthymnon would buy enough time for the men of Leskla to deal with the bike, said to the shepherd, ‘The motorbike this British officer came on from Heraklion must be found and hidden. The Germans will not look here first, but when they don’t find this officer elsewhere, they will return – and there must be no trace this officer was ever here. Do you understand?’

  The shepherd nodded vigorously, more than eager to see that no trace of a British officer was found in his village.

  There came the sound of Yanni leading a mule through the belt of trees at a brisk trot.

  ‘Thanks be to the Holy Virgin and all the Saints,’ Chri
stos said devoutly. ‘Now all we have to do is to get him on the animal’s back.’

  When it came to doing so, Helmut was in so much pain that he lost consciousness completely. If Lewis could have thought of any other course of action other than the one they were taking, he would have opted for it – but without bringing death and destruction down on Leskla, there wasn’t one.

  The shepherd gave them his bed roll to help prop Helmut in the wooden saddle and then Christos began leading the animal up the hill in the direction of the chestnut trees, with Yanni and Nico walking at either side of the mule ready to catch Helmut if, in either direction, he slid off it.

  Lewis hesitated before following in their wake. He was standing in the spot Helmut had been standing in when he’d been shot. He looked in the direction Helmut had been looking, curious to see what it was that had so held his attention; and whether it would give a clue as to why he’d returned alone to Leskla and, once there, had stood at the foot of the hill, gazing at the view as if in another world.

  It was certainly a stunning view, with mountain peak after mountain peak cresting away into the far distance. But the peak that held his attention was one Lewis knew well; one he knew like the back of his hand. It was the peak above Kalamata.

  With his throat tight with emotion, he began striding up the hill in the wake of the mule. Helmut’s last thoughts before being shot had been of Kalamata and, with every fibre of his being, he hoped Helmut would live to reach it – and, if he did, that he wouldn’t die there.

  Over the years Lewis had walked hundreds of miles of Crete’s perilously rugged mountain landscape, first as an archaeologist and then in his military capacity. With members of what had once been his archaeological team, he had fought his way out of confrontations with German patrols; had shepherded many parties of what were referred to as ‘stragglers’ – men like Illingworth – across the nail-biting heights of the White Mountains to the south coast, where caiques or submarines had been waiting for them; had travelled the length and breadth of the island, liaising with its clan chieftains. On no journey he had ever undertaken had he been as fraught with tension as on the reasonably straightforward journey from Leskla to Kalamata.