Then he saw no more. He struggled for a moment, though: the wild, reflex struggle of an organism already fatally wounded, going through the motions of self-defence, to the limit of its dying strength.
Mallory was not prepared for it. The knife had gone in hard and deep, and he had expected the man to collapse. Instead he found the dagger torn from his hand and the man’s tunic rent away from his fingers as the spasming muscles jerked the man out of his grip and away, over the parapet.
And the ledge was an empty slice of rock, with a steel door concreted into the cliff at its back.
‘Carstairs,’ said Mallory, low-voiced.
Carstairs hauled himself over the parapet. He sat down, and let his head hang, and said, ‘What the hell happened?’
‘You tried to commit suicide,’ said Mallory, cold. ‘You nearly succeeded.’
‘Wha?’ said Carstairs, uncomprehending. ‘Oh, I see. Joke.’ He fumbled in his breast pocket. ‘Cigarette? Virginian this side, Turkish tha – Oh, God. Lost me case.’
‘Here,’ said Mallory, and gave it to him. ‘No smoking.’
‘Oh, I say,’ said Carstairs, frowning. His brain was not working. ‘Sentry’s gone. Relax, eh? Nobody knows we’re here.’
Mallory shook his head. He walked over to the steel door, and shoved it open. ‘They will,’ he said. ‘They will.’
Private Otto Schultz weighed eighteen stone, and this evening every single ounce of him was completely fed up. Some fool had crashed a locomotive, and Schultz had spent a miserably sweaty hour with winches and levers and NCOs screaming at him. Then he had gone for his dinner, and half-way through his fourth sausage all the aerials (someone had said it was the aerials, anyway) had been bombed or shot up, nobody knew which, so they had all had to go and sit in the shelters. And then, before he had had time to finish his food, he had been told to report for duty in the guardhouse with two of those Sonderkommando thugs. They had spent the last half-hour reminiscing about some place called Treblinka, about which Schultz had no desire to hear. Then one of them, Putzi he seemed to be called, had beaten Schultz at chess. Schultz was pretty sure Putzi had cheated, but that was not the sort of thing you accused a Sonderkommando man of, if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders. Putzi had high cheekbones and hard blue eyes and a smile that never faltered. But sitting there across the table from Schultz, you could see he was just a piece of vicious scum, like all the rest of them. Schultz had been a mathematics teacher, and he did not enjoy being trounced at chess by thugs.
‘Your move,’ said Putzi, as if Schultz did not already know. Schultz moved. Putzi’s grin became more scornful. He moved his bishop. ‘Checkmate, fatso.’
‘Rubbish,’ said Schultz. But Putzi was right. He opened his mouth to concede.
But he never said it.
There was a crash like a bomb going off. Something fell on to Putzi from the sky, and he vanished, the table with him. Splinters of wood flew around the guardhouse. Schultz leaped to his feet and hit the red general alarm button.
Sigmund, the other Sonderkommando man, was bending over the mess on the floor. ‘Dead,’ he said.
Schultz gave the subject ponderous but methodical thought, and arrived at an understanding. A human body, by its uniform a member of the Wehrmacht, had fallen through the asbestos roof of the guardhouse with enough force not only to kill Putzi but to drive his corpse some distance into the floorboards. This implied that he had fallen from a considerable height – one of the lookouts on the cliff face above, no doubt. A tragic accident. Schultz wagged his head on its great rolls of neck.
Then Sigmund rolled the sentry’s jellified body off the crushed corpse of Putzi. It was at that point that Schultz sat down heavily, and started to shake.
For there was no part of Schultz’s imagination that could explain what kind of accident it was that had sent a Wehrmacht private plummeting out of the heavens with a British Special Forces-issue dagger driven to the hilt in its right eye.
When the charges on the aerials went off and the air-raid klaxon began to sound, Miller and Andrea had a short discussion. Men were still strolling in the corridor, unmoved by the moaning of the alarm. Presumably, they were far enough into the mountain to be safe from bombs. So they walked briskly down the steel staging to the sentry box in front of the elevator, and came to attention in front of the guardhouse. There was a Feldwebel and a private behind an armoured-glass window, wearing camouflage uniforms. They looked at Andrea. The Feldwebel’s eyes flicked from his dark Mediterranean features to his badges of rank. Miller saw the man start to frown, then deliberately smooth his face out. There was a fixed number of huge SS Leutnants on Kynthos. It looked as if this might be a Feldwebel with eyes and a memory. Look out, he thought: trouble.
Andrea said, ‘I want to look at your records.’
The Sergeant said, ‘Records, Herr Leutnant?’
‘The pass records. There may have been a breach of security.’
The Sergeant stiffened. ‘I can assure the Herr Leutnant that –’
‘Let us in.’
‘The Herr Leutnant will excuse me,’ said the sergeant. His hand went for the telephone.
Miller started to cough. He coughed very badly, doubling up, out of the vision of the men in the guard hut. He had his knife out, and as he doubled up he hooked the blade under a cable that ran out of the hut and away down the tunnel, and cut.
Inside the hut, the sergeant jiggled the cradle furiously.
‘Let me in,’ said Andrea, low and dangerous.
The sergeant was looking ruffled now. ‘But I do not … that is, I am not acquainted with the Herr Leutnant’s face.’
‘This is of no interest to me,’ said Andrea. ‘You will however remember the Hauptmann Wolf, with whom you will renew your acquaintance very speedily unless you open up as instructed, immediately.’
At the mention of Wolf’s name, the sergeant’s face turned a nasty grey, and his memory apparently lost its influence. ‘Open the door,’ he said to the private. The door opened. Andrea walked in. ‘The books,’ he said.
The sergeant handed over a large ledger. Andrea put it on the desk, leafed through the pages. ‘Excuse me,’ said the sergeant. ‘The telephone is kaput. I must arrange for repairs. Schmidt –’ he looked at the private ‘– fetch a maintenance crew.’
Andrea slammed the book. ‘All seems to be in order,’ he said. ‘But Schmidt, stay here. There is a general alert. Maximum vigilance. Now, give me the key.’
The sergeant snapped to attention. ‘Herr Leutnant?’
The key,’ said Andrea. ‘To the lift.’
‘The Herr Leutnant’s pass?’
Andrea said, patiently, ‘My pass is being renewed. Now my duty takes me into that lift.’
The sergeant’s face turned to stone. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘No pass, you cannot. It is not permitted.’
‘I am sorry too,’ said Andrea, in a low, dangerous rumble. ‘And you will be sorrier, I promise you.’
The sergeant stared straight ahead of him, the impassive stare of the German NCO who knows he is obeying orders, that the chain of command is complete, that his position is unassailable and his duty done.
Two engineers stopped at the window. ‘Carry on,’ said Andrea. The engineers signed their names and the time in the book. ‘You will please report this telephone out of order,’ said Andrea to the engineers. The private escorted them to the lift door. One of them opened it with his key, pulled back the inner door, slid the outer door into place. The lift machinery hummed.
‘Very good,’ said Andrea. ‘You have made a note, Herr Doktor Muller?’
‘I shall get my notebook,’ said Miller. ‘One moment.’ He crouched, opened the pack he had been carrying. The sergeant moved suddenly, and looked over the lid and inside. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped, and he raised the Schmeisser in his hands.
But Miller had a hand of his own, and in it was a Browning automatic with a long cylindrical snout. The snout coughed flame. The wall
behind the Feldwebel turned red. He slammed backwards into the wall, eyes blank, a new eye in the middle of his forehead. The private ran out of the shed and started to run, unlimbering his own Schmeisser as he went. Miller went after him. The man turned. Miller raised the Browning two-handed. The private went down.
‘Hide the bodies,’ said Andrea, dragging the Feldwebel out of the shed and round to the back.
Miller nodded. He looked whitish in the face, and his hands were shaking. As he hauled the private back to the shed, the man’s heels clattered on the grating. Andrea bent, and retrieved a key from the ring on the man’s belt.
‘Signature,’ said Andrea, pushing the book at Miller. Both men signed the register. ‘Key,’ said Miller.
Once you had turned the key in the lock, it was a lift like any other lift. The motor hummed. Outside the concertina inner door the wall went by, a rough-hewn shaft that seemed to go on for ever, with iron step-rungs inset. It was an unpleasant sensation, Miller found, standing in this lattice-sided can with rock all around you, two bodies by the downstairs exit, God knew what waiting upstairs –
The lift stopped.
It did not stop at a floor. It stopped between floors. There was nothing to see except the walls, and the steps, and Andrea. ‘I am afraid,’ said Andrea, ‘that someone has found some bodies.’
‘The steps,’ said Miller. He hated this elevator. He wanted out as fast as possible.
‘They will be expecting that,’ said Andrea. ‘We will stay here, my friend. More or less.’
Well, thought Miller, what can you do, Andrea being a colonel and all, God damn it.
‘Up,’ said Andrea, and pointed to the escape hatch in the roof.
Oh, no, thought Miller. Not again. Not standing around waiting to be torn apart by machinery again. Nor waiting for a wire rope to break and the plummeting to start –
But by this time his head and shoulders were already through the trap door, and Andrea was shoving hard from below. Miller found himself standing in darkness on top of the lift, next to an oily cable. Andrea shoved up the pack, then came up himself, and sat on the trap door.
There was a jerk. The lift started upwards. It went up a long way. Miller could hear the engine. He started to sweat. To distract himself he examined as much of the machinery as he could. ‘This is a piece of cheap Kraut rubbish,’ he said, ‘not an Otis.’
‘What?’
‘Nothing,’ said Miller, rummaging in the pack.
Then Andrea said, ‘Quiet.’
They froze. The sound of the machinery was very close above. Out of the corner of his eye, Miller could see a streak of light gleaming on the flange of a huge wheel spinning in the obscurity above. The streak of light from the upper door.
The lift rose past the streak, and stopped. The machinery was close overhead; close enough to touch. Many boots crashed into the car. ‘The ceiling,’ said a German voice. There was a grunting, as if someone was trying to push. Andrea stood on the door, braced against the axle of the winding drum above his head. ‘Help me,’ said the voice below.
Someone presumably helped him. Tall men, they must be, and big. Sweat rolled down Andrea’s face, and the veins in his neck stood out like hawsers. ‘Some fool’s welded it shut,’ said a voice from below. ‘Some bloody Greek.’
Which was not, thought Miller, as he worked at what was in his hand, so far off the mark.
‘No good,’ said a voice with the bark of authority in it. ‘They must be on the steps down below.’
Under Miller’s feet, the lift lurched, and started downwards. Miller and Andrea just had time to grab the axle overhead. It was turning, the axle, but it was greasy. The lift dropped away below, leaving a shaft like a well. Andrea heaved himself over to the wall and hung on to the first of the steps. Miller reached a hand towards Andrea. The big Greek caught him just as his fingers let go. Miller slammed into the ladder, grabbing the cold metal. ‘Out,’ he said.
‘There’ll be a guard –’
‘Out. There’s no safety lock.’
Andrea heard real urgency in his voice. He did not know what Miller was talking about. But he had worked with Miller long enough to trust his instincts.
Miller was right. The door slid open. Andrea and Miller stepped on to the threshold, blinking in the sudden light.
The eight Wehrmacht soldiers outside raised their Schmeissers to belly height. ‘Hände hoch,’ said the officer in charge. ‘Ausweis, bitte.’
‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Miller, in his excellent German. ‘It’s one or the other.’
‘Hände hoch,’ said the officer. He had an efficient look that Miller disliked intensely. The lift was in a sort of lobby, shielded by concrete walls from whatever took place beyond. Andrea and Miller separated, standing one on either side of the door. The officer started rummaging in Miller’s pockets. It was evident to Miller, with four Schmeissers trained upon him, that he and Andrea were in big trouble. But then again, the only thing that really amazed him was that they had got this far.
Andrea had a look of great stupidity on his face. He rolled his eyes towards the empty door of the lift shaft, and gave Miller a wink cunningly judged to be both conspiratorial and obvious. ‘You bloody idiot,’ said Miller, with venom. ‘They’ve had it now.’
The German officer frowned. He said, ‘Cover me,’ to his men. Four of them went to the lift door, and peered down the shaft.
‘Nobody,’ said the officer.
Miller glanced at his watch. ‘Now, boys!’ he said.
From the lift shaft there came the sound of a large, hollow boom, followed by a twang of breaking cable, screams, and a crash. The men at the door were blown backwards by a blast of hot gas. The men covering Andrea and Miller clapped their hands to their scalded eyes. One of them fell into Andrea, who heaved him down the shaft.
Miller felt quietly proud. It was not everyone, he considered, who would, under the kind of pressure he and Andrea had suffered on the lift roof, have noticed that it was a device with neither a safety wire nor a shaft brake. Nor would it have been just anybody who would have taken the time to wrap half a pound of plastique round the cable, with a five-minute time pencil.
Miller flattered himself that it had all gone rather well.
But he did not waste time feeling smug. He pulled a fire extinguisher out of its clips, smashed the button in, and started spraying the men staggering about by the lift gate. ‘Hilfe!’ he yelled. ‘Feuer!’
When the first reinforcements came round the corner, they found a huge SS man and a lanky engineer in a cloud of evil-smelling smoke, dousing the fuming lift shaft and half-a-dozen smouldering soldiers with foam. The reinforcements started yelling as only German reinforcements can yell. More fire extinguishers started going off. And nobody paid any attention when the SS man hefted his pack and vanished into the workshops, accompanied by the engineer.
NINE
Thursday 2300–Friday 0300
Herr Doktor Doktor Professor Gunther Helm was a neat man. His brown overall was sharply pressed, his black shoes polished to a mirror-like sheen, and his dark, narrow moustache trimmed with mathematical exactness below his long, mobile nose. Helm was a specialist in inertial guidance systems. It had been bad enough to be removed from his comfortably ancient rooms above the river at Heidelberg University to a shed on a Baltic sand-flat at Peenemunde. This place, this hideous warren of black rock and bare cable and improvised factory space, was unpleasant. Worse, it was untidy.
Boots were crashing in the tunnel ahead. They belonged (Helm saw, as they rounded the corner) to two SS men. To two of the untidiest SS men he had ever seen. For one thing, neither of them seemed to have shaved for at least twenty-four hours. For another they were filthy dirty, smeared with white clay and blood, and unless he was gravely mistaken, wearing non-regulation boots. In addition, one of them had a moustache not unlike his own, but (Herr Doktor Doktor Professor Helm was compelled in all frankness to admit) considerably blonder and more lustrous. They had a wild lo
ok, as if they had been outdoors. They took up more room than seemed necessary. Frankly, Helm found them intimidating.
‘Where’s the hospital?’ said the one without the moustache.
‘The hospital,’ said Helm, flustered. ‘You proceed down this corridor. You will see three fire extinguishers on the wall, then a steel staircase. Ignore this. Proceed until you see a sign saying Ausgang – no, I am wrong; Eintritt, it says –’
‘What level?’ said the SS man, who was Mallory.
Helm was notoriously a hard man to stop, but there was enough violence in the voice to stop him. ‘Third level,’ said Helm, and found himself flung back against the wall by the breeze of their passing. Breathing heavily, he returned to his desk, picked up his slide rule, and re-entered the calm, ordered world of numbers. Somewhere at the periphery of his attention, he heard the klaxons going again. The klaxons were always going in the factory. It was part of the general untidiness. Since there was no way of controlling it, it was in the view of Herr Doktor Doktor Professor Helm best ignored.
He therefore ignored it.
The klaxons started as Mallory and Carstairs clattered down a steep set of spiral stairs. There was the distant crash of steel doors slamming, the bang of running feet. A squad of men ran up the stairs. Mallory braced himself. The squad ran past. Mallory started running again, full-pelt, down the endless latticed-steel corkscrew of the stairs. Endless stairs, in a vertical tube through the solid rock –
Carstairs was right behind Mallory now. Uniform or no uniform, thought Mallory, it was a nasty naked feeling to be inside this hollow mountain, knowing that one look at your papers –
Something hit him in the small of the back. A boot, he had time to think: whose boot?
Then Mallory was down, off balance, diving forwards, his shoulder driving into the sharp steel edge of the step, steel helmet (thank God for the helmet) ringing like a gong against the stair treads. Mallory bunched up and rolled, the way he had been taught to roll in his parachute training, tucking in his hands, protecting his fingers and his elbows and knees from the hammer of acute-edged metal. He went down twenty steps before he hit the wall. He lay there, ears ringing, winded. Carstairs ran past. Carstairs pushed me, he realized. Carstairs wanted time on his own. What for? To find the survivor of the shipwreck. Mallory remembered the grenade, pin out, above the ambulance in the gorge. Not to debrief the survivor. To do something more final than that …
The Complete Navarone Page 97