by Tom Harper
“Go to hell,” said Grant.
The car nosed into the copse of trees and rolled to a halt. Its headlights threw a pool of yellow light round the clearing, illuminating a battered Humber truck with its canvas sides rolled down. A group of young men in mismatched combat uniforms lounged against it, smoking and checking their guns. They made a terrifying sight—but if the occupants of the car were worried they didn’t show it. No one got out. In the back of the car a handle squeaked as the passenger wound down the rear window.
One of the men walked over and stooped to look inside. The night was warm, but nevertheless he wore an overcoat and a black beret jammed down over his close-shaved gray hair. He carried a machine pistol.
“Are you ready?” The tip of a cigarette glowed in the back seat, but the face behind it was invisible in the shadows. “You found what you needed?”
The man in the beret nodded. “It was in the truck—as you promised. We are ready.”
“Then don’t cock it up. And make sure he gets out alive.”
They took Grant back to his cell, a vaulted cellar from the crusader castle crammed with three wooden bunks. In the utter darkness he had to feel his way to his bed. He flopped on to the mattress, not even bothering to take off his shoes.
A match flared, illuminating a young face with floppy dark hair and olive skin on the bunk beside him. He lit the two cigarettes pursed between his lips, passed one to Grant and blew out the match before it burned his fingers.
Grant took the gift gratefully. “Thanks, Ephraim.”
“Did they beat you?” The boy couldn’t have been more than fifteen or sixteen, but his voice was matter-of-fact. And why not? Grant thought. Ephraim had been in the prison far longer than he had, almost three months now, sentenced for throwing rocks at a British policeman in Haifa.
“They didn’t beat me.”
“Did they want to know where they can find Begin?”
“No.” Grant lay back, arms behind his head, and blew smoke at the ceiling. “It wasn’t the usual goons. Some spook from London. Wasn’t interested in the Irgun—just wanted to dig up some ancient history.”
“Did you tell him?”
“I . . .”
Even through the meter-thick walls they felt the explosion. The bunks rocked and dust rained down from the ceiling. Grant swung round and leaped to the floor, pulling the boy Ephraim with him. They crouched in the darkness. Shots rang out—first panicked and sporadic, then methodical and constant as the Bren guns started up.
“They’re getting closer.” Holding Ephraim’s shoulder, Grant led him across the room until his hand felt the cold metal of the door—still locked. Flattening himself against the wall, he pushed Ephraim to the opposite side of the door frame.
“Get ready—someone’s coming.”
Lieutenant Cargill returned to his office and poured a long drink from the bottle he kept in his desk. He had met plenty of disagreeable men during the war, and afterward here in Palestine, but few who exuded the same calculated unpleasantness as his nameless visitor.
A knock sounded at the door. Whisky slopped over the rim of the glass. Had the visitor forgotten something?
“Engineer, sir. Come to repair the generator.”
Cargill sighed with relief. “Come in.”
The engineer was a small man, with wire-rimmed spectacles and an ill-fitting uniform that looked as though it had been cut down from a larger size.
“Rather late to be mending the generator, isn’t it?” Cargill dabbed at the spilt whisky with his handkerchief. “Wouldn’t it be easier to wait for daylight?”
The engineer shrugged. He seemed to be sweating profusely. “Orders, sir.” He was still walking toward Cargill, a holdall clutched in his left hand. “Now, sir, if you’ll just give me your keys.”
“You don’t need my keys to get to the generator. You’ll find it . . .”
Cargill looked up, to see the muzzle of a Luger hovering six inches from his nose. “What the hell?”
“Your keys.”
As the man stretched out his hand, the sleeve of his ill-fitting shirt rode up. Tattooed on his wrist, in a bruise-purple color that would never fade, ran a row of tiny numbers.
“You will not be the first man I have watched die. Give me the keys.”
Followed every inch of the way by the Luger, Cargill unclipped the ring of keys from his belt and laid them on the table. Then the engineer—the Jew, Cargill corrected himself—took a length of electrical wire from his holdall and tied Cargill’s wrists to the back of his chair and his ankles to the legs of the desk. Cargill bore the humiliations in stoic silence.
“Those keys might unlock the cells, but they won’t get you through the front gates. You won’t just walk out with all your Irgun gangster friends trailing behind you.”
“We will find a way.”
The words were hardly out of his mouth when a massive explosion shook the castle to its very foundations. It must have been close by. Cargill rocked on his chair, couldn’t keep his balance and toppled over with a yelp of pain, his legs still tied to the desk. Through the dust and smoke that swirled around the room, he saw the Jew snatch the keys, then touch his cap in farewell.
“Shalom.”
The footsteps were closer now. There was a definite rhythm to them: approach, pause, approach, pause. With each pause, Grant could hear shouts and the clink of metal. Another burst of machine-gun fire from outside drowned the sounds for a moment; when it stopped there were keys jangling right outside the door. Grant tensed in the darkness. There was no handle on the inside—all he could do was wait as the key slid into the lock, turned, clicked . . .
“Rak kakh.”
The door swung in, but the squeak of the hinges was drowned out by the squeal of delight from Ephraim. “Rak kakh!” he shouted back, repeating the Irgun slogan. “Rak kakh. Praise God you came.”
“Praise God when we get out of here,” muttered Grant.
Their rescuer had already moved on to the next cell by the time they stepped out, but the corridor was teeming with freed prisoners. At the far end an Irgun commando was standing by the exit doling out small arms from a sack.
“Like a bloody Hebrew Father Christmas,” said Grant.
Ephraim looked at him in confusion. “Who’s Father Christmas?”
They pushed their way down the corridor, past the commando—who had run out of guns—and into the main castle courtyard. Eight hundred years had raised the ground almost a meter above the original foundations and a trench had been dug along the front of the building to allow access. Now it was filled with the ex-prisoners and their rescuers, engaged in a furious firefight with the English garrison by the gatehouse. On the far side of the courtyard a pile of smoking rubble and a massive hole showed where the Irgun had blown their way through the castle wall.
“Who’s in charge?”
He had to bellow it in the ear of the nearest fighter, a lean young man blasting away with what looked like a First World War carbine. In the time it took him to jerk back the bolt, slot it home again and aim, he somehow managed to indicate a tall figure in a black beret and overcoat, halfway down the trench. Grant crawled across.
“Where’s your escape route? Through the breach?”
The Irgun commander shook his head. “That’s how we came in,” he said in English. “We go out the back door.” He nodded to his left, where the western wall pushed out into the sea. As Grant stared, he could see a file of men creeping along the shadows at its base, invisible to the British soldiers who were concentrating all their fire on the prison block.
“Do we swim?”
“Not if you hurry.”
Grant glanced back to the gatehouse. From the top of the tower the lightning muzzle flash of a Bren gun burst through the ancient arrow loops. While they were in the trench they were safe, but the moment they abandoned their position they’d make easy pickings in open ground.
“You’ll need to shut that up before we go.”
&nb
sp; The commander looked at him. “Are you volunteering?”
“Why not?”
Lieutenant Cargill’s night had been going to hell ever since the mysterious visitor arrived. His ankle ached where it had twisted when he fell, but that was nothing against the agony of having to lie on the floor, tied to the office furniture, and listen impotently as the battle raged outside. He couldn’t even tell who was winning. Nor was he under any illusion that things would improve when it was over.
The door burst open. Trapped behind his desk, Cargill saw a pair of worn brown boots pound across the room. He craned his neck up, just in time to see a motley, unshaven face peering over the desk in surprise. A plea for help died stillborn on Cargill’s lips.
“You’re the gun-runner.” A horrible thought crossed his mind. “This isn’t to do with your visitor, is it?”
Grant didn’t answer: he was pulling the drawers from Cargill’s desk and turning them out on the tabletop. He lifted a brown leather holster from the bottom drawer. The walnut handle of a Webley revolver jutted from under the flap. Grant pulled it out and checked the chamber.
Helpless and defenseless, Cargill nonetheless put on a brave face. “Are you going to shoot me in cold blood?”
Grant shook his head. “No point. I’ll leave it to the army, when they find out what a balls-up you’ve made of this.” He thought for a moment. “What’s your hat size?”
Outside Cargill’s office a worn flight of stairs climbed to the ramparts. Grant took them two at a time and ran along the wall toward the gatehouse tower. In the confusion no one had remembered to lock the door. Grant slipped inside. This part of the tower had been gutted, except for four steel pillars supporting the gun platform on the roof. They gleamed in the darkness, flickering with the reflections of light from the battle outside, while the drafty chamber echoed like a drum with the thump of the Bren gun above. Grant jammed Cargill’s peaked cap over his tousled hair, touched the Webley that was now buckled securely round his waist, then shinned up the wooden ladder bolted to the wall.
The gunner on the roof could hardly have heard Grant, but he must have noticed the movement out of the corner of his eye. He eased off the trigger and glanced round.
“What the hell do you think you’re doing?” Grant bellowed, in his best regimental English. “Keep those Yids pinned down.”
The voice, and the familiar silhouette of the officer’s cap, was all the reassurance the gunner needed. He couched the Bren gun against his shoulder and let off another furious volley. It gave Grant all the time he needed. He crossed the roof and with one well-aimed kick sent the gunner rolling across the wooden floor in agony. Two more deft punches and the hapless gunner lay sprawled out, unconscious.
Grant pulled off the man’s belt and used it to tie his wrists behind his back. That done, he returned to the Bren gun, shifted it round and loosed a long stream of bullets in the vague direction of the British troops. He grinned as he saw confusion overwhelm them. Some of the more alert soldiers sent a few shots back toward him, cracking splinters off the stone battlements, but most of them seemed in complete disarray. Over by the prison block, meanwhile, the shooting was tailing off as the Irgun used the distraction to make good their escape.
Grant squeezed off a final burst, then picked up the Bren gun—taking care to avoid touching the scalding barrel—and staggered across to the far wall. He heaved it into the dry moat. By the time anyone found it there, Grant hoped he’d be long gone.
There were only half a dozen fighters left in the trench. A couple more lay dead on the ground, but most seemed to have escaped. Grant made his way to the black-bereted commander. “Just in time,” he grunted. He broke off to slap another magazine into his machine pistol. “We need to get to the boat.” He turned to his right and handed the gun to the fighter beside him. “Keep those English pinned down until we’re over the wall.”
The fighter’s arms sagged as he took the weight, but the determination in his young face was unbending.
Grant’s eyes widened. “Ephraim?”
The boy hoisted the gun on to the earthen parapet and squinted down the barrel with fierce concentration. Grant turned to the commander. “You can’t leave him here.”
“We need someone to hold off the British until we’re away.”
“I’ll do it,” Grant said, without even thinking.
The commander shrugged. “Do what you want, English. They hang you if you stay.”
“They’ll hang the boy if I go.”
Ephraim shook his head and gave a white-toothed grin. “They cannot—I am too young. By the time I am old enough to hang, Israel will be free.”
“You’d better hope so.”
Grant looked down at the boy, his floppy hair and his bright eyes shining with a desire to strike at the hated colonizers. Maybe Grant had looked the same at that age, the day he stepped on to the quay at Port Elizabeth with nothing but a suitcase to his name. Part of him—the young man who had run away to South Africa—wanted to stay with the boy and live his heroic dreams. But another, colder part knew what he had to do.
Grant reached out and ruffled Ephraim’s hair. “Keep moving around,” he told him. “It’ll make them think there’s more of you.”
Ephraim smiled, then leaned over the weapon and squeezed the trigger. The gun almost leaped out of his hands, before he slowly wrestled it under control.
The Irgun commander tugged Grant’s sleeve. “We have to go.”
They ran along the base of the wall. Grant felt horribly exposed, but Ephraim’s ragged bursts of gunfire were still keeping the garrison distracted. At the bottom of the furthest tower he found a rope ladder. With a quick scramble he was up it, standing on the rampart and looking out on a moonlit sea. Just off the rocks, where the wall met the waves, thirty men sat huddled in a motor launch.
“Down we go.” A rope dangled from one of the ancient battlements. Grant took hold of it, swung himself out and slid down—so fast he burned his palms on the coarse rope. Two steps on the slippery rock and he was looking down into the boat. Another step and an almost headlong plunge, and he was sprawled in the bilge. He heard a thud from nearby as the Irgun commander jumped down. Then the big engine opened up and Grant was tipped back as the launch gathered speed over the calm sea. No one spoke. Every man was tensed, waiting for bullets to rip apart the open boat. But none came.
Grant pulled himself up and managed to squeeze on to the bench that ran along the side of the boat. After about a quarter of an hour one of his companions lit a match, and a few moments later the boat was alive with glowing cigarettes and whispered jubilation. Grant picked his way aft and found the Irgun commander. “Where are we going?”
“We have a cargo ship waiting off shore. She’ll take us up the coast to Tire.” He opened his hands. “After that, wherever you want.”
Grant thought for a moment. Muir’s visit had planted an idea in his mind—though he had never expected to be able to act on it so quickly. He took a drag on his cigarette and blew smoke into the moonlight. “Can you get me to Crete?”
CHAPTER 3
Archanes, Crete. Two weeks later
The locals called the mountain the Face of Zeus. It towered over the village and its surrounding vineyards, a high fist of rock clenched against the sky. In prehistoric times the bull-worshipping Minoans had built a shrine on its summit; thousands of years later a small, whitewashed church had replaced the shrine, but every August the villagers still made their pilgrimage up the slopes to take offerings to the sanctuary. Even the comings and goings of gods could not change the island’s routine.
At about eleven o’clock on that April morning, any god looking down would have seen the old bus rattle into the town square and discharge a gaggle of passengers—mostly farmers returning from the market. Many drifted toward the kaphenion to continue their arguments and gossip over coffee, but one walked in the opposite direction and turned down the narrow lane that led up toward the foot of the mountain. No one paid him mu
ch attention, though everyone noticed him. They had grown used to strangers passing through their village, ever since the Germans came. Hard experience had taught it was always safest to ignore them.
Grant walked to the edge of the village, where the lane became a track running between apple orchards. The ground rose to meet the mountain and there, just where cultivated fields gave way to rock and wild grass, a stone house stood. Hens pecked around a rusty grape press in the front garden and bundles of unplanted vines leaned against the wall, but the shutters were freshly painted and a thin trail of smoke rose from the chimney. At the side of the house the first leaves were beginning to appear on the small grove of apricot trees.
Grant stood there for a moment, watching, then let himself through the gate and walked softly up the stairs to the front door which—as usual with Greek village houses—was on the first floor. He didn’t knock; instead, he whistled a few bars of a mournful Greek marching song.
The wind coming off the mountain snatched the notes from his lips and whisked them away. Wildflowers rustled in the breeze. A loose shutter banged against the wall. Afraid that his hat might blow away, Grant took it off and tucked it under his arm. He’d bought it in haste at the bazaar in Alexandria, three days earlier, and the band was a little loose.
He waited another minute, then decided to come back later. He turned round—and stopped.
Even with all his training, he hadn’t heard her come up behind him. She wore a plain black dress, and a black scarf covered her head. If you had seen her from behind you would have taken her for one of the old women who inhabited every Greek village, as gnarled and wizened as the olive trees and just as much part of the landscape. But if you looked from the front, you would have seen that the dress was pulled in at the waist, tracing the curves beneath, and that below the hem of the skirt her ankles were smooth and slender. Her dark hair was pulled back under the scarf, except for one loose strand which hung over her cheek. It only seemed to accentuate the wild beauty in her face.