Panayis said nothing. His left hand clutching his torn right arm, trying to stem the blood, he stood there motionless, the dark, evil face masked in hate, the lips still drawn back in that less than human snarl. There was no fear in him, none at all, and Mallory tensed himself for the last, despairing attempt for life that Panayis must surely make, and then he had looked at Miller and knew there would be no attempt, because there was a strange sureness and inevitability about the American, an utter immobility of hand and eye that somehow precluded even the thought, far less the possibility, of escape.
‘The prisoner has nothin’ to say.’ Miller sounded very tired. ‘I suppose I should say somethin’. I suppose I should give out with a long spiel about me bein’ the judge, the jury and the executioner, but I don’t think I’ll bother myself. Dead men make poor witnesses … Mebbe it’s not your fault, Panayis, mebbe there’s an awful good reason why you came to be what you are. Gawd only knows. I don’t, and I don’t much care. There are too many dead men. I’m goin’ to kill you, Panayis, and I’m goin’ to kill you now.’ Miller dropped his cigarette, ground it into the floor of the hut. ‘Nothin’ at all to say?’
And he had nothing at all to say, the hate, the malignity of the black eyes said it all for him and Miller nodded, just once, as if in secret understanding. Carefully, accurately, he shot Panayis through the heart, twice, blew out the candles, turned his back and was half-way towards the door before the dead man had crashed to the ground.
‘I am afraid I cannot do it, Andrea.’ Louki sat back wearily, shook his head in despair. ‘I am very sorry, Andrea. The knots are too tight.’
‘No matter.’ Andrea rolled over from his side to a sitting position, tried to ease his tightly-bound legs and wrists. ‘They are cunning, these Germans, and wet cords can only be cut.’ Characteristically, he made no mention of the fact that only a couple of minutes previously he had twisted round to reach the cords on Louki’s wrist and undone them with half a dozen tugs of his steel-trap fingers. ‘We will think of something else.’
He looked away from Louki, glanced across the room in the faint light of the smoking oil-lamp that stood by the grille door, a light so yellow, so dim that Casey Brown, trussed like a barnyard fowl and loosely secured, like himself, by a length of rope to the iron hooks suspended from the roof, was no more than a shapeless blur in the opposite corner of the stone-flagged room. Andrea smiled to himself, without mirth. Taken prisoner again, and for the second time that day – and with the same ease and surprise that gave no chance at all of resistance: completely unsuspecting, they had been captured in an upper room, seconds after Casey had finished talking to Cairo. The patrol had known exactly where to find them – and with their leader’s assurance that it was all over, with his gloating explanation of the part Panayis had played, the unexpectedness, the success of the coup was all too easy to understand. And it was difficult not to believe his assurance that neither Mallory nor Miller had a chance. But the thought of ultimate defeat never occurred to Andrea.
His gaze left Casey Brown, wandered round the room, took in what he could see of the stone walls and floor, the hooks, the ventilation ducts, the heavy grille door. A dungeon, a torture dungeon, one would have thought, but Andrea had seen such places before. A castle, they called this place, but it was really only an old keep, no more than a manor house built round the crenellated towers. And the long-dead Frankish nobles who had built these keeps had lived well. No dungeon this, Andrea knew, but simply the larder where they had hung their meat and game, and done without windows and light for the sake of …
The light! Andrea twisted round, looking at the smoking oil-lamp, his eyes narrowing.
‘Louki!’ he called softly. The little Greek turned round to look at him.
‘Can you reach the lamp?’
‘I think so … Yes, I can.’
‘Take the glass off,’ Andrea whispered. ‘Use a cloth – it will be hot. Then wrap it in the cloth, hit it on the floor – gently. The glass is thick – you can cut me loose in a minute or two.’
Louki stared at him for an uncomprehending moment, then nodded in understanding. He shuffled across the floor – his legs were still bound – reached out, then halted his hand abruptly, only inches from the glass. The peremptory, metallic clang had been only feet away, and he raised his head slowly to see what had caused it.
He could have stretched out his hand, touched the barrel of the Mauser that protruded threateningly through the bars of the grille door. Again the guard rattled the rifle angrily between the bars, shouted something he didn’t understand.
‘Leave it alone, Louki,’ Andrea said quietly. His voice was tranquil, unshadowed by disappointment. ‘Come back here. Our friend outside is not too pleased.’ Obediently Louki moved back, heard the guttural voice again, rapid and alarmed this time, the rattle as the guard withdrew his rifle quickly from the bars of the door, the urgent pounding of his feet on the flagstones outside as he raced up the passage.
‘What’s the matter with our little friend?’ Casey Brown was as lugubrious, as weary as ever. ‘He seems upset.’
‘He is upset.’ Andrea smiled. ‘He’s just realised that Louki’s hands are untied.’
‘Well, why doesn’t he tie them up again?’
‘Slow in the head he may be, but he is no fool,’ Andrea explained. ‘This could be a trap and he’s gone for his friends.’
Almost at once they heard a thud, like the closing of a distant door, the sound of more than one pair of feet running down the passage, the tinny rattling of keys on a ring, the rasp of a key against the lock, a sharp click, the squeal of rusty hinges and then two soldiers were in the room, dark and menacing with their jackboots and ready guns. Two or three seconds elapsed while they looked around them, accustoming their eyes to the gloom, then the man nearest the door spoke.
‘A terrible thing, boss, nothin’ short of deplorable! Leave ’em alone for a couple of minutes and see what happens? The whole damn bunch tied up like Houdini on an off night!’
There was a brief, incredulous silence, then all three were sitting upright, staring at them. Brown recovered first.
‘High time, too,’ he complained. ‘Thought you were never going to get here.’
‘What he means is that he thought we were never going to see you again,’ Andrea said quietly. ‘Neither did I. But here you are, safe and sound.’
‘Yes,’ Mallory nodded. ‘Thanks to Dusty and his nasty suspicious mind that cottoned on to Panayis while all the rest of us were asleep.’
‘Where is he?’ Louki asked.
‘Panayis?’ Miller waved a negligent hand. ‘We left him behind – he met with a sorta accident.’ He was across at the other side of the room now, carefully cutting the cords that pinioned Brown’s injured leg, whistling tunelessly as he sawed away with his sheath knife. Mallory, too, was busy, slicing through Andrea’s bonds, explaining rapidly what had happened, listening to the big Greek’s equally concise account of what had befallen the other in the keep. And then Andrea was on his feet, massaging his numbed hands, looking across at Miller.
‘That whistling, my Captain. It sounds terrible and, what is worse, it is very loud. The guards –’
‘No worry there,’ Mallory said grimly. ‘They never expected to see Dusty and myself again … They kept a poor watch.’ He turned round to look at Brown, now hobbling across the floor.
‘How’s the leg, Casey?’
‘Fine, sir.’ Brown brushed it aside as of no importance. ‘I got through to Cairo, tonight, sir. The report –’
‘It’ll have to wait, Casey. We must get out as fast as we can. You all right, Louki?’
‘I am heart-broken, Major Mallory. That a countryman of mine – a trusted friend –’
‘That too, will have to wait. Come on!’
‘You are in a great hurry,’ Andrea protested mildly. They were already out in the passage, stepping over the cell guard lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. ‘Surely if they’re all like our
friend here –’
‘No danger from this quarter,’ Mallory interrupted impatiently. ‘The soldiers in the town – they’re bound to know by now that we’ve either missed Panayis or disposed of him. In either case they’ll know that we’re certain to come hot-footing out here. Work it out for yourself. They’re probably half-way here already, and if they do come …’ He broke off, stared at the smashed generator and the ruins of Casey Brown’s transmitter set lying in one corner of the entrance hall. ‘Done a pretty good job on those, haven’t they?’ he said bitterly.
‘Thank the Lord,’ Miller said piously. ‘All the less to tote around, is what I say. If you could only see the state of my back with that damned generator –’
‘Sir!’ Brown had caught Mallory’s arm, an action so foreign to the usually punctilious petty officer that Mallory halted in surprise. ‘Sir, it’s terribly important – the report, I mean. You must listen, sir!’
The action, the deadly earnestness, caught and held Mallory’s full attention. He turned to face Brown with a smile.
‘OK, Casey, let’s have it,’ he said quietly. ‘Things can’t possibly be any worse than they are now.’
‘They can, sir.’ There was something tired, defeated about Casey Brown, and the great, stone hall seemed strangely chill. ‘I’m afraid they can, sir. I got through tonight. First-class reception. Captain Jensen himself, and he was hopping mad. Been waiting all day for us to come on the air. Asked how things were, and I told him that you were outside the fortress just then, and hoped to be inside the magazine in an hour or so.’
‘Go on.’
‘He said that was the best news he’d ever had. He said his information had been wrong, he’d been fooled, that the invasion fleet didn’t hole up overnight in the Cyclades, that they had come straight through under the heaviest air and E-boat escort ever seen in the Med, and are due to hit the beaches on Kheros some time before dawn tomorrow. He said our destroyers had been waiting to the south all day, moved up at dusk and were waiting word from him to see whether they would attempt the passage of the Maidos Straits. I told him maybe something could go wrong, but he said not with Captain Mallory and Miller inside and besides he wasn’t – he couldn’t risk the lives of twelve hundred men on Kheros just on the off chance that he might be wrong.’ Brown broke off suddenly and looked down miserably at his feet. No one else in the hall moved or made any sound at all.
‘Go on,’ Mallory repeated in a whisper. His face was very pale.
‘That’s all, sir. That’s all there is. The destroyers are coming through the Straits at midnight.’ Brown looked down at his luminous watch. ‘Midnight. Four hours to go.’
‘Oh, God! Midnight!’ Mallory was stricken, his eyes for the moment unseeing, ivory-knuckled hands clenched in futility and despair. ‘They’re coming through at midnight! God help them! God help them all now!’
FIFTEEN
Wednesday Night
2000–2115
Eight-thirty, his watch said. Eight-thirty. Exactly half an hour to curfew. Mallory flattened himself on the roof, pressed himself as closely as possible against the low retaining wall that almost touched the great, sheering sides of the fortress, swore softly to himself. It only required one man with a torch in his hand to look over the top of the fortress wall – a cat-walk ran the whole length of the inside of the wall, four feet from the top – and it would be the end of them all. The wandering beam of a torch and they were bound to be seen, it was impossible not to be seen: he and Dusty Miller – the American was stretched out behind him and clutching the big truck battery in his arms – were wide open to the view of anyone who happened to glance down that way. Perhaps they should have stayed with the others a couple of roofs away, with Casey and Louki, the one busy tying spaced knots in a rope, the other busy splicing a bent wire hook on to a long bamboo they had torn from a bamboo hedge just outside the town, where they had hurriedly taken shelter as a convoy of three trucks had roared past them heading for the castle Vygos.
Eight thirty-two. What the devil was Andrea doing down there, Mallory wondered irritably and at once regretted his irritation. Andrea wouldn’t waste an unnecessary second. Speed was vital, haste fatal. It seemed unlikely that there would be any officers inside – from what they had seen, practically half the garrison were combing either the town or the countryside out in the direction of Vygos – but if there were and even one gave a cry it would be the end.
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 jerry-can 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 hall-way as if it weighed nothing at all.
Andrea moved out through the open doorway to the covered balcony that overlooked 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 front 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 sweetmeat 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 wall advertisement for Fix’s beer: the effect of the décor, 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.
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