Mallory stared down at the burn on the back of his hand, thought of the truck they had set on fire and grinned wryly to himself. Setting the truck on fire had been his only contribution to the night's performance so far. All the other credit went to either Andrea or Miller. It was Andrea who had seen in this house on the west side of the square — one of several adjoining houses used as officers' billets — the only possible answer to their problem. It was Miller, now lacking all time-fuses, clockwork, generator and every other source of electric power who had suddenly stated that he must have a battery, and again it was Andrea, hearing the distant approach of a truck, who had blocked the entrance to the long driveway to the keep with heavy stones from the flanking pillars, forcing the soldiers to abandon their truck at the gates and run up the drive towards their house. To overcome the driver and his mate and bundle them senseless into a ditch had taken seconds only, scarcely more time than it had taken Miller to unscrew the terminals of the heavy battery, find the inevitable jerrican below the tailboard and pour the contents over engine, cab and body. The truck had gone up in a roar and whoosh of flames: as Louki had said earlier in the night, setting petrol-soaked vehicles on fire was not without its dangers — the charred patch on his hand stung painfully — but, again as Louki had said, it had burned magnificently. A pity, in a way — it had attracted attention to their escape sooner than was necessary-- but it had been vital to destroy the evidence, the fact that a battery was missing. Mallory had too much experience of and respect for the Germans ever to underrate them: they could put two and two together better than most.
He felt Miller tug at his ankle, started, twisted round quickly. The American was pointing beyond him, and he turned again and saw Andrea signalling to him from the raised trap in the far corner: he had been so engrossed in his thinking, the giant Greek so catlike in his silence, that he had completely failed to notice his arrival. Mallory shook his head, momentarily angered at his own abstraction, took the battery from Miller, whispered to him to. get the others, then edged slowly across the roof, as noiselessly as possible. The sheer deadweight of the battery was astonishing, it felt as if it weighed a ton, but Andrea plucked it from his hands, lifted it over the trap coaming, tucked it under one arm and nimbly descended the stairs to the tiny hail-way as if it weighed nothing at all…
Andrea moved out through the open doorway to the covered balcony that ovetlooked the darkened harbour, almost a hundred vertical feet beneath. Mallory, following close behind, touched him on the shoulder as he lowered the battery gently to the ground.
«Any trouble?» he asked softly.
«None at all, my Keith.» Andrea straightened. «The house is empty. I was so surprised that I went over it all, twice, Just to make sure.»
«Fine! Wonderful! I suppose the whole bunch of them are out scouring the country for us — interesting to know what they would say if they were told we were sitting in their front parlour?»
«They would never believe it,» Andrea said without hesitation. «This is the last place they would ever think to look for us.»
«I've never hoped so much that you're right!» Mallory murmured fervently. He moved across to the latticed railing that enclosed the balcony, gazed down into the blackness beneath his feet and shivered. A long long drop and it was very cold; that sluicing, vertical rain chilled one to the bone… . He stepped back, shook the railing.
«This thing strong enough, do you think?» he whispered.
«I don't know, my Keith, I don't know at all.» Andrea shrugged. «I hope so.»
«I hope so,» Mallory echoed. «It doesn't really matter. This is how it has to be.» Again he leaned far out over the railing, twisted his head to the right and upwards. In the rain-filled gloom of the night he could just faintly make out the still darker gloom of the mouth of the cave housing the two great guns, perhaps forty feet away from where he stood, at least thirty feet higher — and all vertical cliff-face between. As far as accessibility went, the cave mouth could have been on the moon.
He drew back, turned round as he heard Brown limping on to the balcony.
«Go to the front of the house and stay there, Casey, will you? Stay by the window. Leave the frontt door unlocked. If we have any visitors, let them in.»
«Club 'em, knife 'em, no guns,» Brown murmured. «Is that it, sir?»
«That's it, Casey.» .
«Just leave this little thing to me,» Brown said grimly. He hobbled away through the doorway.
Mallory turned to Andrea. «I make it twenty-three minutes.»
«I, too. Twenty-three minutes to nine.»
«Good luck,» Mallory murmured. He grinned at Miller. «Come on, Dusty. Opening time.»
Five minutes later, Mallory and Miller were seated in a taverna just off the south side of the town square. Despite the garish blue paint with which the tavernaris had covered everything in sight — walls, tables, chairs, shelves all in the same execrably vivid colour (blue and red for the wine shops, green for the sweetmeats shops was the almost invariable rule throughout the islands)--it was a gloomy, ill-lit place, as gloomy almost as the stern, righteous, magnificently-moustached heroes of the Wars of Independence whose dark, burning eyes glared down at them from a dozen faded prints scattered at eye-level along the walls. Between each pair of portraits was a brightly-coloured wail advertisement for Fix's beer: the effect of the decor, taken as a whole, was indescribable, and Mallory shuddered to think what it would have been like had the tavernaris had at his disposal any illumination more powerful than the two smoking oil lamps placed on the counter before him.
As it was, the gloom suited him well. Their dark clothes, braided jackets, tsantas and jackboots looked genuine enough, Mallory knew, and the black-fringed turbans Louki had mysteriously obtained for them looked as they ought to look in a tavern where every islander there — about eight of them — wore nothing else on their heads. Their clothes had been good enough to pass muster with the tavernaris--but then even the keeper of a wine shop could hardly be expected to know every man in a town of five thousand, and a patriotic Greek, as Louki had declared this man to be, wasn't going to lift even a faintly suspicious eyebrow as long as there were German soldiers present. And there were Germans present — four of them, sitting round a table near the counter. Which was why Mallory had been glad of the semi-darkness. Not, he was certain, that he and Dusty Miller had any reason to be physically afraid of these men. Louki had dismissed them contemptuously as a bunch of old women — headquarters clerks, Mallory guessed — who came to this tavern every night of the week. But there was no point in sticking out their necks unnecessarily.
Miller lit one of the pungent, evil-smelling local cigarettes, wrinkling his nose in distaste.
«Damn' funny smell in this joint, boss.»
«Put your cigarette out,» Mallory suggested.
«You wouldn't believe it, but the smell I'm smelling is a damn' sight worse than that.»
«Hashish,» Mallory said briefly. «The curse of these island ports.» He nodded over towards a dark corner. «The lads of the village over there will be at it every night in life. It's all they live for.»
«Do they have to make that gawddamned awful racket when they're at it?» Miller asked peevishly. «Toscanini should see this lot!»
Mallory looked at the small group in the corner, clustered round the young man playing a bouzouko--a long-necked mandolin — and singing the haunting, nostalgic rembetika songs of the hashish smokers of the Piraeus. He supposed the music did have a certain melancholy, lotus-land attraction, but right then it jarred on him. One had to be in a certain twi-lit, untroubled mood to appreciate that sort of thing; and he had never felt less untroubled in his life.
«I suppose it is a bit grim,» he admitted. «But at least it lets us talk together, which we couldn't do if they all packed up and went home.»
«I wish to hell they would,» Miller said morosely. «I'd gladly keep my mouth shut.» He picked distastefully at the meze--a mixture of chopped olives, liver, c
heese and apples — on the plate before him; as a good American and a bourbon drinker of long standing he disapproved strongly of the invariable Greek custom of eating when drinking. Suddenly he looked up and crushed his cigarette against the table top. «For Gawd's sake, boss, how much longer?»
Mallory looked at him, then looked away. He knew exactly how Dusty Miller felt, for he felt that way himself — tense, keyed-up, every nerve strung to the tautest pitch of efficiency. So much depended on the next few minutes; whether all their labour and their suffering had been necessary, whether the men on Kheros would live or die, whether Andy Stevens had lived and died in vain. Mallory looked at Miller again, saw the nervous hands, the deepened wrinkles round the eyes, the tightly compressed mouth, white at the outer corners, saw all these signs of strain, noted them and discounted them. Excepting Andrea alone, of all the men he had ever known he would have picked the lean, morose American to be his companion that night. Or maybe even including Andrea. «The finest saboteur in southern Europe» Captain Jensen had called him back in Alexandria. Miller had come a long way from Alexandria, and he had come for this alone. To-night was Miller's night.
Mallory looked at his watch.
«Curfew in fifteen minutes,» he said quietly. «The balloon goes up in twelve minutes. For us, another four minutes to go.»
Miller nodded, but said nothing. He filled his glass again from the beaker in the middle of the table, lit a cigarette. Mallory could see a nerve twitching high up in his temple and wondered dryly how many twitching nerves Miller could see in his own face. He wondered, too, how the crippled Casey Brown was getting on in the house they had just left. In many ways he had the most responsible job of all — and at the critical moment he would have to leave the door unguarded, move back to the balcony. One slip up there… . He saw Miller look strangely at him and grinned crookedly. This had to come off, it just had to: he thought of what must surely happen if he failed, then shied away from the thought. It wasn't good to think of these things, not now, not at this time.
He wondered if the other two were at their posts, unmolested; they should be, the search party had long passed through the upper part of the town; but you never knew what could go wrong, there was so much that could go wrong, and so easily. Mallory looked at his watch again: he had never seen a second hand move so slowly. He lit a last cigarette, poured a final glass of wine, listened without really hearing to the weird, keening threnody of the rembetika song in the corner. And then the song of the hashish singers died plaintively away, the glasses were empty and Mallory was on his feet.
«Time bringeth all things,» he murmured. «Here we go again.»
He sauntered easily towards the door, calling good night to the tavernaris. Just at the doorway he paused, began to search impatiently through his pockets as if he had lost something: it was a windless night, and it was raining, he saw, raining heavily, the lances of rain bouncing inches off the cobbled street — and the street itself was deserted as far as he could see in either direction. Satisfied, Mallory swung round with a curse, forehead furrowed in exasperation, started to walk back towards the table he had just left, right hand now delving into the capacious inner pocket of his jacket. He saw without seeming to that Dusty Miller was pushing his chair back, rising to his feet. And then Mallory bad halted, his face clearing and his hands no longer searching. He was exactly three feet from the table where the four Germans were sitting.
«Keep quite still!» He spoke in German, his voice low but as steady, as menacing, as the Navy Colt .455 balanced in his right hand. «We are desperate men. If you move we will kill you.»
For a full, three seconds the soldiers sat immobile, expressionless except for the shocked widening of their eyes. And then there was a quick flicker of the eyelids from the man sitting nearest the counter, a twitching of the shoulder and then a grunt of agonyas the .32 bullet smashed into his upper arm. The soft thud of Miller's silenced automatic couldn't have been heard beyond the doorway.
«Sorry, boss,» Miller apologised. «Mebbe be's only sufferin' from St. Vitus' Dance.» He looked with interest at the pain-twisted face, the blood welling darkly be.. tween the fingers clasped tightly over the wound. «But he looks kinda cured to me.»
«He is cured,» Mallory said grimly. He turned to the inn-keeper, a tall, melancholy man with a thin face and mandarin moustache that drooped forlornly over either corner of his mouth, spoke to him in the quick, colloquial speech of the islands. «Do these men speak Greek?»
The tavernaris shook his head. Completely unruffled and unimpressed, he seemed to regard armed hold-ups in his tavern as the rule rather than the exception.
«Not them!» he said contemptuously. «English a little, I think — I am sure. But not our language. That I do know.»
«Good. I am a British Intelligence officer. Have you a place where I can hide these men?»
«You shouldn't have done this,» the tavernaris protested mildly. «I will surely die for this.»
«Oh, no, you Won't.» Mallory had slid across the counter, his pistol boring into the man's midriff. No one could doubt that the man was being threatened — and violently threatened — no one, that is, who couldn't see the broad wink that Mallory had given the inn-keeper. «I'm going to tie you up with them. All right?»
«All right. There is a trap-door at the end of the counter here. Steps lead down to the cellar.»
«Good enough. I'll find it by accident.» Mallory gave him a vicious and all too convincing shove that sent the man staggering, vaulted back across the counter, walked over to the rembetika singers at the far corner of the room.
«Go home,» he said quickly. «It is almost curfew time anyway. Go out the back way, and remember — you have seen nothing, no one. You understand?»
«We understand.» It was the young bouzouko player who spoke. He jerked his thumb at his companions and grinned. «Bad men — but good Greeks. Can we help you?»
«No!» Mallory was emphatic. «Think of your families — these soldiers have recognised you. They must know you weli — you and they are here most nights, is that not so?»
The young man nodded.
«Off you go, then. Thank you all the same.»
A minute later, in the dim, candle-lit cellar, Miller prodded the soldier nearest him — the one most like himself in height and build. «Take your clothes off!» he ordered.
«English pig!» the German snarled.
«Not English,» Miller protested. «I'll give you thirty seconds to get your coat and pants off.»
The man swore at him, viciously, but made no move to obey. Miller sighed. The German had guts, but time was running out. He took a careful bead on the soldier's hand and pulled the trigger. Again the soft plop and the man was staring down stupidly at the hole torn in the heel of his left hand.
«Mustn't spoil the nice uniforms, must we?» Miller asked conversationally. He lifted the automatic until the soldier was staring down the barrel of the gun. «The next goes between the eyes.» The casual drawl carried complete conviction. «It won't take me long to undress you, I guess.» But the man had already started to tear his uniform off, sobbing with anger and the pain of his wounded hand.
Less than another five minutes had passed when Mallory, clad like Miller in German uniform, unlocked the front door of the tavern and peered cautiously out. The rain, if anything, was heavier than ever — and there wasn't a soul in sight. Mallory beckoned Miller to follow and locked the door behind him. Together the two men walked up the middle of the street, making no attempt to seek either shelter or shadows. Fifty yards took them into the town square, then left along the east side, not breaking step as they passed the old house where they had hidden earlier in the evening, not even as Louki's hand appeared mysteriously behind the partly opened door, a hand weighted down with two German Army rucksacks — rucksacks packed with rope, fuses, wire and high explosive. A few yards farther on they stopped suddenly, crouched down behind a couple of huge wine barrels outside a barber's shop, gazed at the two armed g
uards in the arched gateway, less than a hundred feet away, as they shrugged into their packs and waited for their cue.
They had only moments to wait — the timing had been split-second throughout. Mallory was just tightening the waist-belt of his rucksack when a series of explosions shook the centre of the town, not three hundred yards away, explosions followed by the vicious rattle of a machine-gun, then by further explosions. Andrea was doing his stuff magnificently with his grenades and home-made bombs.
Both men suddenly shrank back as a broad, white beam of light stabbed out from a platform high above the gateway, a beam that paralleled the top of the wall to the east, showed up every hooked spike and strand of barbed wire as clearly as sunlight. Mallory and Miller looked at each other for a fleeting moment, their faces grim. Panayis hadn't missed a thing: they would have been pinned on these strands like flies on flypaper and cut to ribbons by machine-guns.
Mallory waited another half-minute, touched Miller's arm, rose to his feet and started running madly across the square, the long hooked bamboo pressed close to his. side, the American pounding behind him. In a few seeonds they had reached the gates of the fortress, the startled guards running the last few feet to meet them.
«Every man to the Street of Steps!» Mallory shouted. «Those damned English saboteurs are trapped in a house dawn there! We've got to have some mortars. Hurry, man, hurry, in the name of God!»
«But the gate!» one of the two guards protested. «We cannot leave the gate!» The man had no suspidons, none at all: in the circumstances — the near darkness, the pouring rain, the German-clad soldier speaking perfect German, the obvious truth that there was a gunbattle being fought near-hand — it would have been remarkable had he shown any signs of doubt
«Idiot!» Mallory screamed at him. «Dummkopf! What is there to guard against here? The English swine are in the Street of Steps. They must be destroyed! For God's sake, hurry!» he shouted desperately. «If they escape again it'll be the Russian Front for all of us!»
The guns of Navaronne Page 27