The Complete Navarone

by Alistair MacLean

  As long as you did not mind being off a rocky shore in tides of unknown strength, not knowing where you were going.

  FIVE

  Tuesday

  0500–2300

  The sun rolled up, a blood-coloured disc above the ramparts of vapour. From somewhere – astern, possibly, it was hard to tell – heavy explosions thumped across the water. They sounded to Mallory like blasting charges.

  Andrea said, ‘Wallace was a good man, my Keith.’

  Mallory nodded. His eyes hurt with peering into the fog. Wallace had done his duty; more than his duty. Now he was another offering on the altar of war. Unlike most such offerings, his death had not been in vain. Mallory felt sadness, and gratitude.

  And puzzlement.

  Wallace had not had any high explosives with him. It was unlikely the Germans would have used such explosives to winkle one man out of a hayloft.

  It must be Cendrars and his men. They must have got their hands on some quarry explosive, and be slugging it out with the Germans. Mallory profoundly hoped that he was wrong. A pitched battle between the Germans and the heroes of the Marne would only bring down horrors on the civilian population. But he turned his face resolutely away from such speculations. What mattered was what lay ahead, in San Eusebio.

  The light grew. They wrapped Guy in a tarpaulin and weighted his feet with a chunk of old scrap iron from the Stella Maris’ noxious bilges. Jaime took off his beret and said a couple of Basque prayers. Hugues said, ‘Vive la France!’ The body pierced the black surface of the sea with scarcely a ripple, and was gone.

  The sea was getting to Mallory. In the globe of fog it was quiet, and grey, and solitary: an oasis in the desert of battle and violence that he wandered like a Tuareg. But Mallory disliked the peace of the sea in the same way a Tuareg might find an oasis cloying. It produced in him a nervous sickness, the sickness that the Tuareg might feel under green palms among people he did not know, as he watered his camels and longed to return to the real life of furnace winds and red-hot sands. Mallory experienced a moment of longing for the rock and ice of mountains: hard mountains whose habits he understood. Mountains in which he was not the hunter and the destroyer; mountains in which the only enemies were the failure of finger and foot to cling to hold, or human will to continue upwards.

  He looked down at Andrea. The Greek was lying by the wheelhouse, smoking, watching the oily heave of the sea. He felt Mallory’s eyes on him. He looked up. ‘This is a most disgusting ocean,’ he said.

  Mallory nodded.

  ‘These tides,’ said Andrea. They are a thing of barbarians. How can men make ideas when the world they inhabit is being dragged here and there by the moon? It is for this that you are so restless, you of the North.’

  Mallory laughed. They had escaped from a burning village and were on their way to attack a fortified rock. And Andrea was complaining about the tides.

  But when he looked again at Andrea’s face, he saw something that stopped his laughing. Despite his claims to the contrary, Andrea was not afraid of men or bullets, night or war. But unless Mallory was very much mistaken, Andrea was afraid of the cold black waters of the Atlantic.

  He lit a cigarette. There was a breeze now, enough to whip the smoke away. The sun had gone, and the sky was a leaden grey. Mallory wedged himself into the corner of the wheelhouse. Twelve hours, he thought. He took inventory.

  The Stella Maris was forty-five feet long. She had a tall mast at the front end and a short mast at the back end, which probably made her a ketch. There were what looked like sails on the booms, which Mallory devoutly hoped they would not have to use. There was a big fish-hold amidships, a dirty little fo’c’sle, and an engine room abaft the wheelhouse. The engine was a single-cylinder Bolander hot-bulb diesel, with a rust-caked flywheel the size and weight of a millstone. In the bullet-shattered wheelhouse was a compass of unknown accuracy, and the bloodstained Admiralty chart Guy had spread on his kitchen table all those weeks – hours – ago. The Stella Maris was thumping southwest through the fog at something like five knots, Mallory estimated. They should have moved out of French waters into Spanish. There would be patrol boats.

  He offered a cigarette to Andrea. Andrea took it and lit it, scowling from under his black brows at the grey and sunless sea. ‘A cold hell,’ he said. He began to rummage restlessly in lockers. He found a new bottle of brandy, sniffed it, took a swig, and passed it to Mallory. One of the lockers was full of flags. He pulled out a yellow one. ‘Quarantine,’ he said. ‘For when you have disease on board.’ His white teeth showed in his black and bristly jaw. ‘Or when you have goods to declare. This flag has never been used, I think.’

  He’s beaten it, thought Mallory. Andrea was not one to let irrational fears occupy space more profitably reserved for rational fears, like fear of failure in the face of the enemy. ‘Guy said there was a Spanish flag,’ he said.

  Andrea rummaged some more, and came up with a red-and-yellow ensign. It was big, for easy visibility, and looked as if it had done long, solid service. Mallory gave Andrea the wheel, walked out of the wheelhouse and ran the ensign up to the top of the mizzen mast.

  So now the Stella Maris was a Spanish boat, and all they had to worry about was motoring full ahead into the cliffs of Northern Spain.

  The wind was definitely freshening. Ahead, the fog was becoming pale and ragged, and the slow Atlantic heave of the waves was taking on a sharper, more urgent feel.

  Behind the wheelhouse, Miller stirred and opened his eyes. He lay for a moment, watching the Spanish flag snapping in the crisp breeze. Then he sat up and lit a cigarette. ‘Buenos dias,’ he said. ‘Coffee?’

  ‘If you please,’ said Mallory.

  Miller stumbled down a flight of steps into the grease-varnished galley. From its door there emerged the smell first of paraffin, and then of coffee. He brought Mallory and Andrea mugs, well dosed with condensed milk and brandy. ‘Nice as this is,’ said Miller, eyeing the sea with scorn and dislike, ‘how long does it last?’

  ‘At least till nightfall.’

  The Stella Maris thumped on, rolling heavily in the swell from the west. The fog was thinning in the breeze, piling into banks. One particularly heavy bank hung to the south, a heap of grey vapour that should, if Mallory’s dead reckoning was right, hide the land. Miller drank another cup of coffee and smoked two cigarettes in quick succession. His bony face, already pale with exhaustion, was turning greenish under the eyes. Mallory said to Andrea, ‘Better let him steer,’ and lay down on the bench at the back of the wheelhouse.

  Sleep came immediately, deep as a lake. It all went: the submarines, fog, the approaching cliffs of Spain.

  It was a peaceful sleep: not the two-inches-below-the-surface doze of action, but a deep, heavy coma, a sleep of the interregnum between the confusions of the Pyrenees and the task waiting on the Cabo de la Calavera. Watching him, Andrea saw the broad forehead smoothed of the tensions of the last three days, saw the knots at the hinges of the jaw relax. Rest well, my Keith, he thought. You have brought us a long way, but you have only brought us to the beginning.

  Mallory dreamed. He dreamed he was in a place in the mountains, in a valley of grey stone through which a glacier inched. He dreamed that there were great birds wheeling in the sky that were not birds, but aeroplanes: Stukas. The Stukas were diving, dropping their bombs, which were bursting around him in red flowers of flame. But Mallory felt nothing, heard nothing, because he was separate from it all. A voice told him, ‘You are in the ice.’ Wallace’s voice. And Mallory realised that it was true. He was encased in a huge block of clear ice, which was saving him from the bombs. But at the same time it was preventing him from feeling anything, and that was bad –

  Then someone was shaking him, and he was coming up out of that ice, his mind clicking into awareness that something had changed. The engine was still panting, the boat still rolling. But he seemed to be wet, and there was a new sound: a shrill wailing, an ululation, the sound of the Stukas –

&nb
sp; He swung his feet to the deck, eyes searching the sky. There were no Stukas. There were only clouds, arranged in long squalls, their bellies trailing rain. Against them, the Stella Maris’ masts described jerky loops. Her stub nose rose and fell like a blunt wooden hammer, walloping the troughs into spray that came back down the deck in bucketfuls. The wailing was the wind in the rigging.

  ‘Land, er, ho,’ said Miller.

  As Mallory stood up he saw the fog bank, smaller and lighter now, shift and writhe. Then a great hand of air seemed to grab it and wrench it aside.

  Five miles away, across a grey and gnarled sea, the black cliffs of Spain stood high and clear. Through his glasses Mallory could see a bay, with a cluster of grey houses, and on one of the headlands, the ruins of what might have been a fortress. He took a bearing and checked the chart. ‘Forty miles to go,’ he said. Miller nodded, without enthusiasm. Miller did not like the sea. As far as he was concerned, four miles would have been better; a lot better, even if there were two SS regiments at the end of it. ‘Get Jaime on deck,’ said Mallory.

  Miller went below. Mallory kept the boat’s head to the sea, blinking the spray out of his eyes. It had almost been better in the fog. He felt horribly exposed, out here in the clear grey breeze. And by the feel of it, they would be here all day; the Stella Maris was making four knots at best, labouring over these humpbacked seas like a weak-hearted charwoman climbing a flight of stairs.

  Jaime appeared on deck, bleary-eyed. He squinted around him, said, ‘That’s Cabo del Lobo. Long way to go.’

  ‘What about patrol boats?’ said Mallory.

  Jaime shrugged. ‘They make big trouble on the border. This far down the coast, maybe they don’t bother. Either way, they like money.’

  ‘Stay on deck,’ said Mallory.

  Jaime nodded. He said, ‘One thing. If you stay out here, people will be suspicious. You’re a fishing boat. So we go in under the cliffs, no? That way, you are fishing. And nobody can see you from the land. And if we do get a problem, we throw some lobster pots in the sea.’

  Mallory said, ‘You know a lot about this.’

  Jaime grinned, the grin of a man in his element. ‘Frontiers are my business,’ he said.

  Mallory nodded. Without Jaime, they would not have found the Chemin des Anges, or the cave system. Without Jaime, they would have been dead.

  The Stella Maris closed the shore. Across two hundred yards of grey and lumpy sea the cliffs reared three hundred feet into the grubby sky swept by the white motes of innumerable seabirds. Miller did not like the look of them at all. At least when their caïque had blown into the south cliff at Navarone it had been decently dark. If Miller was going to get smashed to bits, he would rather not get smashed to bits in broad daylight.

  Hugues was on deck, looking as nervous as Miller felt. ‘Is okay,’ said Lisette, showing her white teeth. ‘Jaime has sailed this route many times.’

  ‘I didn’t know you were a fisherman,’ said Miller.

  Jaime grinned, his dark eyes glinting under his beret. ‘There are many people in the cigarette fishery,’ he said. ‘Sometimes you fish from a mule, sometimes from a boat.’

  ‘It is not only lobsters you find in the pots here,’ said Lisette.

  Through the horrid queasiness of his belly, Miller thought that he saw in her something new, a confidence that she had not had in France. Of course, getting away from the Gestapo and into neutral territory would tend to improve your confidence, particularly if your guide in neutral territory was Jaime.

  A sharp-crested hill of water swept under the Stella Maris’ bow and dropped her into a trough. For a moment, Miller was once again weightless. To seaward a great hole had appeared in the sea, floored with weedy rock. ‘Caja del Muerto,’ said Jaime. ‘Dead man’s chest.’ The waters closed over the rock with a boom, sending a depth-charge burst of ice-white spray a hundred feet into the wind.

  For the next two hours the Stella Maris ground on down the inshore channel, invisible from the land. Mallory began to regain confidence. He went to Miller, who was lying in the scuppers alongside the wheelhouse, and said, ‘Four hours’ sleep. Then check your gear, and I’ll brief the team.’

  Miller groaned and dragged himself to the fo’c’sle, where Hugues was snoring on his bunk. He rolled into the bunk underneath, and passed out.

  Mallory leaned against the wheelhouse, apparently watching the gulls on the cliffs. He had been thinking about Guy’s chart of the Cabo de la Calavera and the harbour of San Eusebio. The approach was from the town quay, across the harbour, through the beach defences onto the Cape and into the U-boat repair docks. That was obvious.

  Far too obvious.

  The tide would be low, just after dark. The beach would be exposed and easy.

  Far too easy.

  Mallory lit a cigarette, and rested his head against the wheelhouse doorpost. There were features of the San Eusebio chart that had been making him think hard about cliffs; particularly if, as seemed likely, the wind fixed itself in the west.

  ‘Capitaine,’ said Jaime in a new, sharp voice, and pointed.

  Mallory followed his finger.

  Halfway to the horizon was the silhouette of a grey launch. As Mallory watched, the silhouette foreshortened until he could see the moustache of foam on either side of the bow.

  He felt the muscles of his stomach clench and become rigid. San Eusebio seemed suddenly a long way away.

  ‘Well,’ he said, calm as a goldfish pond. ‘I suppose it’s time we hauled the pots.’

  El Teniente Diego Menendez y Zurbaran was in a vile mood. It was not being posted to this wet green corner of Spain; he had fought hard for the Nationalists in the Civil War, so he had no objection to the sight of Basque towns in ruins and Basque children starving. It was worse than rain and Basques. A week ago, he had been told in an unpleasant interview with Almirante Juan de Sanlucar, his cousin and commanding officer, that he was to double his patrols and increase his vigilance generally. The Teniente had pointed out that his vigilance was as always at maximum, and that the patrol boat, known to its crew as the Cacafuego, was operating all the hours its ancient engine and weary rivets could stand. Sanlucar had assumed a dour, bellicose look, and told him that instructions from above did not take account of such objections. It was the will of … someone very exalted (here Sanlucar’s lips framed the words el Caudillo) that patrols on the stretch of coast for which the Teniente was responsible should be greatly increased.

  At the framing of the Dictator’s august title, never lightly spoken aloud, the Teniente’s heart had started to bang nastily in his chest. At first he had interpreted it as a general rebuke for his laxity; the pay of a Naval officer was scarcely a living wage in this dreary province of surly people and expensive food, so he had fallen into the habit of accepting the voluntary contributions of the smuggling fraternity. But he realised that there was more to it than that after a conversation with Jorge, his bosun. Jorge had observed military activity on the Cabo de la Calavera, and had approached the sentries on the gate, who were dressed in the uniforms of the First Zaragoza Regiment, to offer them the services of certain Basque women he maintained in the Calle Brujo in Bilbao. The soldiers had chased Jorge away, cursing him in a language that was not Spanish. Jorge had expressed to the Teniente the opinion, based on certain military vehicles and black uniforms he had half-glimpsed through the heavily-fortified gate that cut off the neck of the peninsula, that the garrison on the Cabo de la Calavera was German.

  And thirty-six hours ago, just before this patrol, the Teniente had been notified that his bow gun crew was to be replaced, as were the port and starboard machine gunners. When the replacements had turned up, they had been German.

  The Teniente had nothing against Germans. He disliked them only insofar as he disliked everyone except himself. But their presence on Cabo de la Calavera made him nervous, and their presence at his guns insulted his pride. He valued Spain’s neutrality, because it meant his life was not in danger. He needed hi
s bribes. And he had not taken kindly to standing on that worn patch of carpet in front of the Almirante’s desk in Santander, being subjected by the Almirante to a diatribe on the importance of duty under the cold grey eyes of an obvious homosexual from the German Embassy in Madrid. This coast was the Teniente’s personal patch. The fact that his superior officers’ new jumpiness was obviously German-inspired made him feel, insofar as such a feeling was possible for a Fascist, frankly bolshy.

  So it was with no great sense of mission that he bore down on the familiar black hull of the Stella Maris, hauling lobster pots under the cliff.

  He paused a hundred feet away, snarling at Paco the coxswain to keep the boat steady. The Stella Maris was head to wind, fat and black as ever. There were a couple of unfamiliar faces: two men who might have been northern Portuguese or even German, tall and lean, wearing singlets despite the cut of the west wind. They lurched uneasily on the Stella Maris’ splintery deck; it looked to the Teniente as if they were not used to hauling lobster pots. But they were hauling all right. And back in the wheelhouse – it looked as if something had happened to the wheelhouse – Jaime Baragwanath was waving and grinning from under his beret. There seemed to be a woman with him.

  The Teniente knew Jaime of old, as a fixer and a smuggler. He brought coffee out of Spain to France, and in the other direction the wines of Bordeaux, to alleviate the suffering caused by vino negro. If Jaime was personally on board the Stella, she would be carrying a high bulk, high value cargo, like wine.

  The Teniente was partial to a few bottles of claret of an evening. Normally, he would have taken his cut at the landing. But he saw in the Stella Maris a way to impress his new gunners – and thus, he suspected, the Almirante – with his zeal.

  The Teniente lit a thin black cigar and tilted his cap rakishly over his right eye. Plucking the brass megaphone from its clips on the bridge, he put its oxide-green business end to his mouth. ‘Halt,’ he shouted. ‘I am boarding you.’ On the foredeck, the crew of the 75-mm gun swivelled their piece to cover the Stella.