The guns of Navaronne
Page 4
Miller let out a long breath, half-sigh, half-whistle.
«Well, now,» he murmured, «I guess mebbe Andrea has done that sort of thing before?»
«I guess maybe he has,» Mallory mimicked. «Let's have a closer look at exhibit A, Andrea.»
Andrea brought his prisoner close up to the table, well within the circle of light. He stood there sullenly before them, a thin, ferret-faced man, black eyes dulled In pain and fear, left hand cradling his crushed wrist.
«How long do you reckon this fellow's been outside, Andrea?» Mallory asked.
Andrea ran a massive hand through his thick, dark, curling hair, heavily streaked with grey above the temples.
«I cannot be sure, Captain. I imagined I heard a noise — a kind of shuffle — about ten minutes ago, but r thought my ears were playing tricks. Then I heard the same sound a minute ago. So I am afraid—»
«Ten minutes, eh?» Mallory nodded thoughtfully, then looked at the prisoner. «What's your name?» he asked sharply. «What are you doing here?»
There was no reply. There were only the sullen eyes, the sullen silence — a silence that gave way to a sudden yelp of pain as Andrea cuffed the side of his head.
«The Captain is asking you a question,» Andrea said reproachfully. He cuffed him again, harder this time. «Answer the Captain.»
The stranger broke into rapid, excitable speech, gesticulating wildly with both hands. The words were quite unintelligible. Andrea sighed, shut off the torrent by the simple expedient of almost encircling the scrawny throat with his left hand.
Mallory looked questioningly at Andrea. The giant shook his head.
«Kurdistan or Armenian, Captain, I think. But I don't understand it.»
«I certainly don't,» Mallory admitted. «Do you speak English?» he asked suddenly.
Black, hate-filled eyes glared back at him in silence. Andrea cuffed him again.
«Do you speak English?» Mallory repeatea relentlessly.
«Eenglish? Eenglish?» Shoulders and upturned palms lifted in the age-old gesture of incomprehension. «Ka Eenglish!»
«He says he don't speak English,» Miller drawled.
«Maybe he doesn't and maybe he does,» Mallory said evenly. «All we know is that he has been listening and that we can't take any chances. There are far too many lives at stake.» His voice suddenly hardened, the eyes were grim and pitiless. «Andrea!»
«Captain?»
«You have the knife. Make it clean and quick. Between the shoulder blades!»
Stevens cried out in horror, sent his chair crashing back as be leapt to his feet.
«Good God, sir, you can't—»
He broke off and stared in amazement at the sight of the prisoner catapulting himself bodily across the room to crash into a distant corner, one arm up-curved in rigid defence, stark, unreasoning panic limned in every feature of his face. Slowly Stevens looked away, saw the triumphant grin on Andrea's face, the dawning comprehension in Brown's and Miller's. Suddenly he felt a complete fool Characteristically, Miller was the first to speak.
«Waal, waal, whaddya know! Mebbe he does speaka da Eenglish after all.»
«Maybe he does,» Mallory admitted. «A man doesn't spend ten minutes with his ear glued to a keyhole if he doesn't understand a word that's being said… . Give Matthews a call, will you, Brown?»
The sentry appeared in the doorway a few seconds later.
«Get Captain Briggs here, will you, Matthews?» he asked. «At once, please.»
The soldier hesitated.
«Captain Briggs has gone to bed, sir. He left strict orders that he wasn't to be disturbed.»
«My heart bleeds for Captain Briggs and his broken slumbers,» Mallory said acidly. «He's had more sleep in a day than I've had in the past week.» He glanced at his watch and the heavy brows came down in a straight line over the tired, brown eyes. «We've no time to waste. Get him here at once. Understand? At once!»
Matthews saluted and hurried away. Miller cleared his throat and clucked his tongue sadly.
«These hotels are all the same. The goin's-on — you'd never believe your eyes. Remember once I was at a convention in Cincinnati—»
Mallory shook his head wearily.
«You have a fixation about hotels, Corporal. This is a military establishment and these are army officers' billets.»
Miller made to speak but changed his mind. The American was a shrewd judge of people. There were those who could be ribbed and those who could not be ribbed. An almost hopeless mission, Miller was quietly aware, and as vital as it was, in his opinion, suicidal; but he was beginning to understand why they'd picked this tough, sunburnt New Zealander to lead it.
They sat in silence for the next five minutes, then looked up as the door opened. Captain Briggs was hatless and wore a white silk muffler round his throat in place of the usual collar and tie. The white contrasted oddly with the puffed red of the heavy neck and face above. These had been red enough when Mallory had first seen them in the Colonel's office — high blood pressure and even higher living, Mallory had supposed: the extra deeper shades of red and purple now present probably sprung from a misplaced sense of righteous indignation. A glance at the choleric eyes, gleaming lightblue prawns afloat in a sea of vermilion, was quite enough to confirm the obvious.
«I think this is a bit much, Captain Mallory!» The voice was high pitched in anger, more nasal than ever. «I'm not the duty errand-boy, you know. I've had a damned hard day and—»
«Save it for your biography,» Mallory said curtly, «and take a gander at this character in the corner.»
Briggs's face turned an even deeper hue. He stepped into the room, fists balled in anger, then stopped in his tracks as his eye lit on the crumpled, dishevelled flgure still crouched in the corner of the room.
«Good God!» he ejaculated. «Nicolai!»
«You know him.» It was a statement, not a question.
«Of course I know him!» Briggs snorted. «Everybody knows him. Nicolal. Our laundry-boy.»
«Your laundry-boy! Do his duties entail snooping around the corridors at night, listening at keyholes?»
«What do you mean?»
«What I say.» Mallory was very patient. «We caught him listening outside the door.»
«Nicolai? I don't believe it!»
«Watch it, mister,» Miller growled. «Careful who you call a liar. We all saw him.»
Briggs stared in fascination at the black muzzle of the automatic waving negligently in his direction, gulped, looked hastily away.
«Well, what if you did?» He forced a smile. «Nicolai can't speak a word of English.»
«Maybe not,» Mallory agreed dryly. «But he understands it well enough.» He raised his hand. «I've no desire to argue all night and I certainly haven't the time. Will you please have this man placed under arrest, kept in solitary confinement and incommunicado for the next week at least. It's vital. Whether he's a spy or just too damned nosy, he knows far too much. After that, do what you like. My advice is to kick him out of Castelrosso.»
«_Your_ advice, indeed!» Briggs's colour returned, and with it his courage. «Who the hell are you to give me advice or to give me orders, Captain Mallory?» There was a heavy emphasis on the word «captain.»
«Then I'm asking it as a favour,» Mallory pleaded wearily. «I can't explain, but it's terribly important. There are hundreds of lives»
«Hundreds of lives!» Briggs sneered. «Melodramatic stuff and nonsense!» He smiled unpleasantly. «I suggest you keep that for your cloak-and-dagger biography, Captain Mallory.»
Mallory rose, walked round the table, stopped a foot away from Briggs. The brown eyes were still and very cold.
«I could go and see your Colonel, I suppose. But I'm tired of arguing. You'll do exactly as I say or I'll go straight to Naval H.Q. and get on the radio-telephone to Cairo. And if I do,» Mallory went on, «I swear to you that you'll be on the next ship home to England — and on the troop-deck, at that.»
His last words
seemed to echo in the little room for an interminable time: the stillness was intense. And then, as suddenly as it had arisen, the tension was gone and Briggs's face, a now curiously mottled white and red, was slack and sullen in defeat.
«All right, all right,» he said. «No need for all these damned stupid threats — not if it means all that much to you.» The attempt to bluster, to patch up the shredded rags of his dignity, was pathetic in its transparency. «Matthews — call out the guard.»
The torpedo-boat, great engines throttled back half speed, pitched and lifted, pitched and lifted with monotonous regularity as it thrust its way into the long, gentle swell from the W.N.W. For the hundredth time that night Mallory looked at his watch.
«Running behind time, sir?» Stevens suggested.
Mallory nodded.
«We should have stepped straight into this thing from the Sunderland — there was a hold-up.»
Brown grunted. «Engine trouble, for a flyer.» The aydeside accent was very heavy.
«Yes, that's right.» Mallory looked up, surprised. «How did you know?»
«Always the same with these blasted M.T.B. engines,» Brown growled. «Temperamental as a film star.»
There was silence for a time in the tiny blacked-out cabin, a silence broken only by the occasional clink of a glass. The Navy was living up to its traditional hospitality.
«If we're late,» Miller observed at last, «why doesn't the skipper open her up? They tell me these crates can do forty to fifty knots.»
«You look green enough already,» Stevens said tactlessly. «Obviously, you've never been in an M.T.B. full out in a heavy sea.»
Miller fell silent a moment. Clearly, he was trying to take his mind off his internal troubles. «Captain?»
«Yes, what is it?» Mallory answered sleepily. He was stretched full length on a narrow settee, an almost empty glass in his fingers.
«None of my business, I know, boss, but — would you have carried out that threat you made to Captain Briggs?»
Mallory laughed.
«It is none of your business, but — well, no, Corporal, I wouldn't. I wouldn't because I couldn't. I haven't all that much authority invested in me — and I didn't even know whether there was a radio-telephone in Castelrosso.»
«Yeah. Yeah, do you know, I kinda suspected that.» Corporal Miller rubbed a stubbled chin. «If he'd called your bluff, what would you have done, boss?»
«I'd have shot Nicolai,» Mallory said quietly. «If the colonel had failed me, I'd have had no choice left.»
«I knew that too. I really believe you would. For the first time I'm beginning to believe we've got a chance.… But I kinda wish you had shot him — and little Lord Fauntleroy. I didn't like the expression on old Briggs' face when you went out that door. Mean wasn't the word. He coulda killed you then. You trampled right over his pride, boss — and to a phoney like that nothin' else in the world matters.»
Mallory made no reply. He was already sound asleep, his empty glass fallen from his hand. Not even the banshee clamour of the great engines opening full out as they entered the sheltered calm of the Rhodes channel could plumb his bottomless abyss of sleep.
CHAPTER 3
Monday
07:00--17:00
«My dear fellow, you make me feel dreadfully embarrassed.» Moodily the officer switched his ivory-handled fly-swat against an immaculately trousered leg, pointed a contemptuous but gleaming toecap at the ancient caique, broad-beamed and two-masted, moored stern on to the even older and more dilapidated wooden pier on which they were standing. «I am positively ashamed. The clients of Rutledge and Company, I assure you, are accustomed only to the best.»
Mallory smothered a smile. Major Rutledge of the Buffs, Eton and Sandhurst as to intonation, millimetrically tooth-brushed as to moustache, Savile Row as to the quite dazzling sartorial perfection of his khaki drill, was so magnificently out of place in the wild beauty of the rocky, tree-lined bluffs of that winding creek that his presence there seemed inevitable. Such was the Major's casual assurance, so dominating his majestic unconcern, that it was the creek, if anything, that seemed slightly out of place.
«It does look as if it has seen better days,» Mallory admitted. «Nevertheless, sir, it's exactly what we want.»
«Can't understand it, I really can't understand it.» With an irritable but well-timed swipe the Major brought down a harmless passing fly. «I've been providing chaps with everything during the past eight or nine months — caiques, launches, yachts, fishing boats, everything — but no one has ever yet specified the oldest, most dilapidated derelict I could lay hands on. Quite a job laying hands on it, too, I tell you.» A pained expression crossed his face. «The chaps know I don't usually deal in this line of stuff.»
«What chaps?» Mallory asked curiously.
«Oh, up the islands, you know.» Rutledge gestured vaguely to the north and west.
«But — but those are enemy held—»
«So's this one. Chap's got to have his H.Q. somewhere.» Rutledge explained patiently. Suddenly his expression brightened. «I say, old boy, I know just the thing for you. A boat to escape observation and investigation — that was what Cairo insisted I get. How about a German E-boat, absolutely perfect condition, one careful owner. Could get ten thou. for her at home. Thirtysix hours. Pal of mine over in Bodrum—»
«Bodrum?» Mallory questioned. «Bodrum? But — but that's in Turkey, isn't it?»
«Turkey? Well, yes, actually, I believe it is,» Rutledge admitted. «Chap has to get his supplies from somewhere, you know,» he added defensively.
«Thanks all the same»--Mallory smiled--«but this is exactly what we want. We can't wait, anyway.»
«On your own heads be it!» Rutledge threw up his hands in admission of defeat. «I'll have a couple of my men shove your stuff aboard.»
«I'd rather we did it ourselves, sir, It's — well, it's a very special cargo.»
«Right you are,» the Major acknowledged. «No questions Rutledge, they call me. Leaving soon?»
Mallory looked at his watch.
«Half an hour, sir.»
«Bacon, eggs and coffee in ten minutes?»
«Thanks very much.» Mallory grinned. «That's one offer we'll be very glad to accept.»
He turned away, walked slowly down to the end of the pier. He breathed deeply, savouring the heady, herb-scented air of an Aegean dawn. The salt tang of the sea, the drowsily sweet perfume of honeysuckle, the more delicate, sharper fragrance of mint all subtly merged into an intoxicating whole, indefinable, unforgettable. On either side, the steep slopes, still brilliantly green with pine and walnut and holly, stretched far up to the moorland pastures above, and from these, faintly borne on the perfumed breeze, came the distant, melodic tinkling of goats' bells, a haunting, a nostalgic music, true symbol of the leisured peace the Aegean no longer knew.
Unconsciously almost, Mallory shook his head and walked more quickly to the end of the pier. The others were still sitting where the torpedo boat had landed them just before dawn. Miller, inevitably, was stretched his full length, hat tilted against the golden, level rays of the rising sun.
«Sorry to disturb you and all that, but we're leaving In half an hour; breakfast in ten minutes. Let's get the stuff aboard.» He turned to Brown. «Maybe you'd like to have a look at the engine?» he suggested.
Brown heaved himself to his feet, looked down unenthusiastically at the weather-beaten, paint-peeled caique.
«Right you are, sir. But if the engine is on a par with this bloody wreck.…» He shook his head in prophetic gloom and swung nimbly over the side of the pier.
Mallory and Andrea followed him, reaching up for the equipment as the other two passed it down. First they stowed away a sackful of old clothes, then the food, pressure stove and fuel, the heavy boots, spikes, mallets, rock axes and coils of wire-centred rope to be used for climbing, then, more carefully, the combined radio receiver and transmitter and the firing generator fitted with the old-fashioned plunge handle.
Next came the guns — two Schmeissers, two Brens, a Mauser and a Colt — then a case containing a weird but carefully selected hodge-podge of torches, mirrors, two sets of identity papers and, incredibly, bottles of Hock, Moselie, ouzo and retsima.
Finally, and with exaggerated care, they stowed away for'ard in the forepeak two wooden boxes, one green in colour, medium sized and bound in brass, the other small and black. The green box held high explosive-- TN.T., amatol and a few standard sticks of dynamite, together with grenades, gun-cotton primers and canvas hosing; in one corner of the box was a bag of emery dust, another of ground glass, and a sealed jar of potassium, these last three items having been included against the possibility of Dusty Miller's finding an opportunity to exercise his unique talents as a saboteur. The black box held only detonators, percussion and electrical, detonators with fulminates so unstable that their exposed powder could be triggered off by the impact of a falling feather.
The last box had been stowed away when Casey Brown's head appeared above the engine hatch. Slowly he examined the mainmast reaching up above his head, as slowly turned for'ard to look at the foremast. His face carefully expressionless, he looked at Mallory.
«Have we got sails for these things, sir?»
«I suppose so. Why?»
«Because God only knows we're going to need them!» Brown said bitterly. «Have a look at the engine-room, you said. This isn't an engine-room. It's a bloody scrapyard. And the biggest, most rusted bit of scrap down there is attached to the propeller shaft. And what do you think it is? An old Kelvin two-cylinder job built more or less on my own doorstep — about thirty years ago.» Brown shook his head in despair, his face as stricken as only a Clydeside engineer's can be at the abuse of a beloved machine. «And it's been falling to bits for years, sir. Place is littered with discarded bits and spares. I've seen junk heaps off the Gallowgate that were palaces compared to this.»