by Leta Serafim
The last gift was a heavy cape made of goatskin bestowed on O’Malley by Dane’s father.
“Shepherds wear them,” he said. “Put it on.”
The cape had a peaked hood and reached almost to the floor. A good disguise, it was big enough to hide his weapons under, his pale Irish self. As for the rest, his face and hair, well, he’d deal with them later.
Standing there in the kitchen in the cape, he felt a little like the girl in the story, the one in the red riding hood who set off to visit her granny and almost got eaten by the wolf.
A man named Wolff was now second-in-command of the SS, a coincidence not lost on O’Malley.
Chapter 8
Danae quickly retraced the route she had followed when she brought O’Malley from the cave, walking beneath the girders of the railroad bridge. As a soldier, he would have preferred high ground, but deferred to her. She would know better where the Germans had positioned themselves, possible sites for an ambush. The river was running high, and garbage clung to the wet grass along its banks—rusting tin cans and potato sacks, a headless doll. He saw a dead cat spinning in the shallows, its teeth exposed in a rictus of death.
Spume was rising and beads of water clung to O’Malley’s cloak. The other three were well back, herding the sheep along the muddy banks of the river.
“Dye’s washed off,” he told her, looking down at his hands. “All your aunt’s handiwork. They catch me now, they’ll know I’m not Greek.”
“No matter.”
“How will you explain my coloring?” He stroked his cheek, larking about, overjoyed to have her near him. “The fairness of my complexion?”
“I’ll say you’re an albino.”
“One of those white rabbits? The kind with the red eyes?”
“Yes, a rabbit.”
In case he missed the point, she put her hands on her head and wiggled them. “Big rabbit.”
It was quiet under the bridge. There was no sign of the German patrols Danae’s father had spoken of, but that didn’t mean anything. They could be anywhere.
A donkey was pastured in a nearby field, watching them with its slanted eyes. It ambled off peacefully a moment later and disappeared into the brush.
O’Malley hung back when they reached the bare rocks above the town, worried about the empty stretch of earth that lay ahead. Once they started across it, they’d have no cover for more than two hundred yards. It wasn’t a long distance, but it would be enough. If anyone was watching, they’d spot them. They’d be totally exposed.
Danae’s father was evidently thinking the same thing. “Should we run?” he asked.
“Might be better to walk. Act like we belong here.”
“Only if we go as a group. Otherwise, they’ll think we’re partisans, heading back to camp.”
They ended up tackling the mountain from a different angle, scaling immense walls of rock, heart-stopping in their bleakness. The aunt quit a few minutes later, saying she’d sprained her ankle and could go no farther. They were in a stretch of meadow, thick with grass, and the sheep quickly spread out to graze.
O’Malley guessed they were about a half mile from the cave. He searched for signs of military activity, the glint of metal in the trees or telltale trail of dust, but saw nothing. Aunt should be all right. Given the steepness of the slope and the weight of their weapons, the big howitzers and Sig 33s, no Germans would venture here.
* * *
O’Malley helped Stefanos and Danae up the last few yards to the cave. In the end, the father had stayed back with his sister, who didn’t want to be left alone, and the three of them had gone on ahead. The cave was as he remembered it—a hole whittled out of rock, as empty as the tomb in the scriptures the day the angel rolled back the stone. Exhausted from the journey, Stefanos collapsed on the ground and quickly fell asleep. O’Malley sat down next to him and motioned for Danae to join him.
He wasn’t inclined to romance, not today, not suited up as he was in war paint and dye, the kid sleeping underfoot. Sopping wet, his cloak reeked of its goatish origins. Perhaps Pan could get away with it, have his way with the girls as a goat, but O’Malley doubted he could. Besides he didn’t feel much like Pan. No, standing there in his animal hide, soaked to the skin and foul-smelling, if he felt like anyone, it was John the Baptist.
Also, there were the grenades. He’d been warned off sex as a boy, told fornication would lead straight to hell. Given the grenades, it very well might. Best not to chance the arms.
Besides, Danae was no scrubber. She was a good girl and deserved something better than a quick tumble.
Inching over, he bent down and kissed her gently on the lips. She grabbed his hand and pressed it against her face. It was covered in dye and left an impression on her cheek, a tattoo of sorts.
He moved to wipe it off, but she shook her head. “No, no.”
Getting to his feet, he gathered her up in his arms, holding her as close as he dared given the grenades, and danced her around the cave. He sang as he danced, bending her low the way he’d seen men do in the movies, fancy folk in tuxedos and slicked back hair.
He kissed her a second time. A sad kiss, this last. A kiss of farewell. “I’ll be back for you. I’ll not be letting you go.”
She touched his cheek again with her hand. Standing there in her shawl, she looked like she’d stepped out of a Renaissance painting.
“O Theos mazi sou,” she whispered. Go with God.
* * *
“A man with boots does not have to worry where to put his feet,” they said in Ireland. Aye, boots were the thing. Unlacing his boots, O’Malley pulled them off, stretched out next to Stefanos, and tried to sleep. He kept thinking he heard Danae coming back up the path. But there was nothing.
Her father had cautioned him not to make a fire, saying the smell of wood smoke would draw the Germans, but it was so cold, his bones ached. Venturing down the path, he gathered up an armful of twigs, brought them into the cave and lit them. He relaxed a little as the air warmed, wished like a caveman he had a big bloody rib to gnaw on.
He didn’t know how they’d done it, those first humans. Chasing woolly beasts four times their size, sleeping in caves like this one. Given the choice, he’d go with the church’s teaching. Adam, he’d be, living it up in the Garden of Eden. At least it’d be warm there, fruit for the taking. Eve beside him, stark naked and willing, at least until she fell in with the snake, bollixed up everything. Yes, indeed, he’d take the Bible version of the thing if it were up to him. The start of it all.
He’d reviewed his supplies and taken stock. If he was careful, he and Stefanos had enough food to last out the week. After that, he didn’t know what they’d do. Hopefully, the partisans would come by then. Otherwise, he’d have to do like the cavemen and hunt for their supper.
He longed for a human voice, any sound save this, the mournful drone of the wind.
Chapter 9
O’Malley was curled up close to the dying ashes of the fire when he heard footsteps outside the cave. Grabbing his rifle, he hid himself in the shadows. “Ela, Angle,” a man called.
Fearing a trap, he kept silent.
The man called again. “Ela, O’Malley.”
“In here,” he answered in Greek.
“Show yourself.”
Revolver in hand, he cautioned Stefanos to keep quiet and left the cave. Three men were standing there in the darkness waiting for him. Two were wearing civilian clothes, the third, a military jacket with epaulettes. Unshaven and grubby, they were close to O’Malley in age and held their guns with easy familiarity. Veterans, same as him.
“Fere to paidi kai akolouthise,” one of the men said. Bring the child and follow.
When O’Malley didn’t respond, he repeated the order in heavily accented English. “Hurry. It will be light soon.”
Climbing steadily, the four of them crossed over the wind-swept summit of the mountain and headed down into the trees on the other side. Ahead, O’Malley saw horses past
ured in a meadow, a second group of men resting in the grass nearby. Unlike the clean-shaven youths who’d rousted them from the cave, these men were heavily bearded and far older. One was dressed in a uniform from another age, white leggings and a black foustanella, the skirt barely reaching his knees. Bristling with weapons, the men had bandoliers crisscrossed over their chests and curved daggers stuck in their belts.
Brigands, O’Malley thought, one of the outlaw bands he’d heard were operating in the region, men who took advantage of the war to loot and pillage. They watched him come toward them with undisguised hostility, as ferocious a group as O’Malley had ever seen.
One of the men seemed to be expecting him, and he got up and lumbered over to where O’Malley was waiting. Unlike the others, he wore a greasy khaki uniform. “Why are you here?” he asked O’Malley in English.
“British Command in Cairo sent me. We’re supposed to build an airstrip together, so they can fly in supplies.” He nodded to the landscape. “Seems they forgot about the mountains.” O’Malley let a little contempt show in his voice, his low opinion of the officers who had ordered him here.
“Guns?” the same man asked.
O’Malley studied the rifle the man was carrying. A Carcanos carbine, it was Italian and dated from the beginning of the war. The weapons the other men were cradling were far older. Single bolt rifles from the turn of the century, most of them. They probably had been passed down from father to son. Aye, the men needed guns, all right.
“I can try and get you weapons,” he said, seeking to win them over. “Maybe a howitzer.”
“Man said you were Irish.”
He was careful, O’Malley noted. Didn’t use names when he referred to someone.
“Aye. I’m Irish, all right. Born and raised in Cork.”
“And yet you serve the British.”
O’Malley had anticipated this and rehearsed his answer. “I was a foolhardy lad of twenty-four when I enlisted, determined to save the world from the Nazi menace. Been struggling to stay alive ever since.”
“Where’d you fight?” He lit a cigarette, watched him through the smoke.
“I served in Athens. Got wounded in the retreat, stranded to the south of here. Farmers shuffled me about, got me to Egypt. Been with the British Command in Cairo ever since, fought in Crete, North Africa. They’re the ones sent me here, arranged with the Americans for the drop.” O’Malley’s smile was grim. “Been warring forever, so I have.”
“Where in Crete?”
“Chania, Souda. I kept moving. Had to.”
The man seemed to relax. “You ride?”
“A little. I’ll not win a steeplechase, but I can hold my own on a horse.”
The horse proved to be a mule, an arthritic slow-moving animal with a mind of its own.
O’Malley hoisted himself up in the saddle and pulled Stefanos up after him. Putting his feet in the stirrups, he gave the beast a kick. It took two steps, laid its ears back and stopped dead in its tracks. Smirking, the Greeks stood around and watched as he tried to propel it forward.
Stefanos kept yelling to go faster, which added to the humiliation. “Pame! Pame!”
O’Malley slapped the mule on the rump with his reins, but it stayed where it was, posed with its head up as if listening to something, some far off mulish song only it could hear. A true tinker’s mule, it was, full of naught but piss and wind.
The Greek who’d questioned him was on a proper horse, a magnificent bay, and he galloped around O’Malley, yelling instructions while the others catcalled and laughed. Still the mule refused to move. Finally, the man reached over and grabbed the reins and led it away like a pack animal. More derisive laughter followed. O’Malley wondered if he’d been set up. If the mule had been an initiation of sorts, a ritual humiliation.
* * *
The mule was so bony, O’Malley could feel its ribs moving beneath him and hear its labored breath. Judging by the moss on the trees, they were heading north, into the desolate mountains O’Malley had wanted no part of.
Ahead lay the same shadowy gorge he and Danae had passed through. Vouraikos, she said it was called. In ancient times, there’d been a waterfall deep within the gorge, a magnificent waterfall that reached all the way to Hades. He’d made a joke of it, telling her if it was all the same to her, he’d rather not go that way, and yet here he was, riding toward it like Don Quixote with his own little Sancho Panza—Stefanos—asleep in his arms. Be hard pressed to say who was the bigger fool.
The ravine was pleasant at first, the banks of the river thick with poplar trees, their yellowing leaves rippling in the wind, but then it narrowed, walls of rock rising on either side and blocking out the sun. Heavy with sediment, the river too became a thing of shadows, the water collecting in deep pools, a faint mist clouding the air above them.
He saw a group of stone buildings in the distance. Chiseled out of limestone, they ran up the side of the gorge.
“Mega Spileon,” the Greek told him, pointing to the distant walls. “Paleo monasteri.”
O’Malley quickly translated the words. Old monastery.
His mule was flecked with sweat, and he worried it would give out on him and die, but it kept ambling along at its own pace, stopping now and then to eat grass. It seemed to know its way.
The Greek urged his horse forward, heading for a small chapel in the distance. It was less than a quarter of a mile from the monastery, so close O’Malley wondered if it was part of the same complex. The walls of the canyon were less steep here and heavily forested. The Greek skirted around the church and galloped up into the trees. Hidden in a thicket of pines was a path.
They rode up the path single file, climbing steadily toward a massive band of limestone at the top of the cliff. Far below, O’Malley could see the river winding through the gorge, coiling and uncoiling like a serpent. He spied a man with a rifle watching them. They must be getting close.
They rode a few hundred feet farther, crossing up over the limestone crown and down the other side. Beyond it lay a slight depression in the earth. Arching slightly, the limestone formed a ledge above it, a kind of natural roof. The camp was secreted there.
Dismounting, the Greek led his horse to the far side of the hollow, then helped O’Malley and Stefanos down from the mule.
The mule gave O’Malley a baleful look, then lowered its head and began to scrounge around in the dirt, pulling up tufts of grass and chewing them. A thousand years old, the thing must be, O’Malley thought as he watched it work its mouth, its hideous yellow teeth. Charlemagne might have ridden it. It didn’t bode well for the Greeks if this was their cavalry.
Shielded by the rocks, the camp was impressively sited, difficult to spot from the air, and given the mountains behind it, nearly impossible to bomb. Aye, they’d be safe here, he and Stefanos. A frontal assault would be suicide.
A group of thirty-five to forty men were standing around, waiting for them. “Leonidas!” they cried, welcoming the man who’d brought him here “Kalos orisate.”
Stefanos relaxed when he heard the Greek. “Patrides,” he told O’Malley. Countrymen.
The man called Leonidas quickly introduced O’Malley to the rest. As before, he only used first names: Fotis, Lakis, Haralambos. No rank was given, nothing that could identify them to the enemy. The assembled men were dressed in a mix of military and civilian clothes from a variety of sources—including Italian and German, judging by the cut of the jackets. The same held true of their weaponry, which ranged from German Mauser C96s and American Thompsons to antiquated World War I stock and flintlock muskets dating from the last century.
Curious, O’Malley asked if they were ELAS—Communists.
“What’s it to you?” Leonidas asked.
The men studied him with guarded expressions, uncomfortable in his presence.
“Going to kill me, are you?”
“Might,” one said.
A battered radio pack was set up on a table, various wires and tools laid out ar
ound it. O’Malley recognized it as a Paraset transceiver, the kind the British supplied their field agents with. “Where’d you get that?”
“Got passed along,” Leonidas said. “Same as you.” They were watching him closely now. “You know how to use it?” asked Leonidas.
“Never had cause to use one in the field. Always had a radio operator traveling with me who worked the thing.”
Leonidas pushed the radio toward him. “Try,” he said.
Like the mule, another challenge.
Opening the pack of the radio, O’Malley inspected the three tubes. All appeared to be in order. He put on the headset and jiggled the toggle switch. Given the mountains, he doubted he’d be able to reach Cairo, but perhaps he could contact another British agent operating in the region. Before he’d left, he’d been given the code name Barabbas by the British major. The Greeks were taking a risk. If the Wehrmacht was listening, it wouldn’t matter what name he used. They’d know he wasn’t German.
He got into it immediately with the British Liaison Officer on the other end, the man asking him where he’d been all this time, why it had taken him so long to make contact. “A spotty performance, Barabbas. Entirely second rate.”
Fighting not to lose his temper, O’Malley described what had befallen him, the gangrene in his shoulders. He left out his capture by Danae, his being led away by children.
He spoke quickly, not wanting to give the Germans time to track his signal.
One of the Greeks understood English and quickly translated for the rest. The men looked at O’Malley with sympathy. It was an old fight they were listening to, the enlisted man versus the officer, a poor man versus his betters. A fight they understood well.
“Oi Angloi,” Leonidas spat. The English.
The officer continued to berate O’Malley, reiterating his orders and suggesting ‘he’d do well to follow them,’ condescending to him with every word.