by Colin Forbes
'This might just be the moment to get clear of this bunch of peasants,' Reader suggested, not in the least disconcerted by his companion's reaction. 'They're all grouped together quite a way from where we are now. Take it one step at a time. Head for the spot where I buried the transmitter..
'Could I take a look at that sten of yours?'
The question was so unexpected that Reader handed over the weapon almost as a reflex action.
Lindsay stepped back a few paces, grasping the weapon firmly as he performed a simple action.
'Watch out!' There was genuine alarm in Reader's voice. 'You just released the safety catch — and that's a full mag.'
'I know. And I'm aiming it at you point-blank. Colonel Browne is a chain-smoker — of cigarettes. He's never touched a cigar in his life..
'I've been hoping to hell you'd pick me up on that...'
'Really, Sergeant? May I ask why?'
'Like I tells you before, mate.' Reader was lapsing back into his awful cockney. Out of the corner of his eye Lindsay saw that Paco was approaching. Reader was quick as a knife, he'd grant the bastard that. He went on, gabbling out the explanation. 'We was told to be especially bleedin' careful in this dung-heap. No one is what they say they is until they've been triple- checked, then don't make any cosy assumptions. Those cigars was thought up by the Colonel himself as a trick question. You could have been anyone... Reader rattled on, 'seeing as the Allied Mission is a prime Jerry target. Had to be sure. No offence...'
He broke off as Paco arrived, swept off his cap in an elaborate gesture of politeness and stared at her with blatant interest as she stood and stared back.
'And who have we here, Wing Commander? When they told me you're for the Balkans, my lad, I never expected to meet the Queen of Sheba? I am right? I 'ave to be …'
'This,' Lindsay introduced him to Paco, 'is Sergeant Len Reader who, you may already have gathered, has a habit of speaking his mind - and hardly ever stops doing just that. Reader, meet Paco.'
'Pleasure's all mine.'
They shook hands. Paco's sleepy eyes studied Reader and under her scrutiny he became oddly restless.
'Could I have my hand back now?' Paco suggested. 'I only have two of them...'
'A thousand apologies, lady. No offence meant - but out here a man gets bowled over when someone like you turns up. And when you speak the King's English... This sing-song chatter I've been hearing ever since I arrived...'
'When did you arrive, Sergeant Reader?' Paco enquired.
'It's all right,' Lindsay assured her. 'I've checked his identity.'
'I'd still like to know when he arrived, where and how?'
It was the first time Lindsay realized one of Paco's duties was to act as Intelligence Officer for the Partisan group. The irony of the situation intrigued him - she had little idea that she was interrogating a man who himself was undoubtedly highly-trained in the sophisticated craft of interrogation.
'The when was days ago. The where Mickey can tell you - me I've no flaming idea. The how was by parachute, dangling by my braces over the Black Hole of Calcutta. Anything else you'd like to know, Lady Bountiful? - Blood group? I can show you me birthmark if you're not shy.'
'Mickey?'
'I think he means Milic who brought him in,' Lindsay explained.
Paco ignored him as she continued studying Reader who stared back with what Lindsay felt sure he would have described as 'dumb insolence'. Lindsay sensed a growing hostility between the pair.
'Milic,' Paco said with quiet deliberation, 'tells me he found you wandering round in the middle of the night. No sign of any parachute.'
`So I buried it under some rocks, didn't I? You think I'm going to leave it lying around for Jerry to find? Next thing we know is a whole bleedin' Panzer division is on me heels. First thing you do when your arse hits enemy territory is hide the 'chute.'
'I know...'
'Why ask then, for Christ's sake?' Reader flared up. 'We come here to help you people out and you try and stand me in the witness box. Why did you do this? Why didn't you do that? My boss is going to love you...'
'And just who is your boss?' Paco asked sharply.
'Brigadier Fitzroy Maclean...' Reader leaned his face close to Paco's. 'And let me tell you something. He's been in more scraps than you've had hot dinners. We started fighting 'itler in 1939. You joined the party a bit late, didn't you?'
'I think that's enough, Sergeant,' Lindsay intervened.
'Well keep your girlfriend off my back or I'm liable to get a bit shirty. She wouldn't like that is my guess.'
Taking his sten from Lindsay, Reader marched away at a steady one-two, one-two. Paco waited until he was out of hearing before she spoke.
'Lindsay, I don't trust that man...'
'Just because you didn't hit it off with him? He's come a long way to...'
'It's the classic manoeuvre of the suspect under interrogation,' she insisted. 'Pick a quarrel, break the trend when the questions get dangerous...'
'He just hasn't attuned himself to the atmosphere out here. He only dropped out of the blue a few days ago.'
'You're sure of that? Milk found him roaming about. No one saw him coming down in a parachute. He's sensitive about that 'chute, as he calls it. And why did he call me your girlfriend?'
The question, idly thrown into the conversation, caught Lindsay off guard. Paco was standing very close to him. He was excruciatingly aware of her physical proximity. The emotions he had clamped a lid down on flooded out. The lid was blown sky-high. Damn Reader and his careless remark to the flames of hell.
He stood very still, not looking at her. She waited in silence. He knew she was watching him as closely as she had so recently watched Reader. He took out one of his few remaining packs of cigarettes, cupped his hand against the breeze which was blowing up, and lit it.
'Could I have one?' Paco asked quietly.
'Here you are, take this one...'
He would have liked to place it between her lips but refrained from even this small gesture of intimacy. Instead, he handed it to her. He was pleased to see his hand was steady. This was unadulterated hell. Paco took short, quick puffs and then opened Pandora's box.
'Lindsay, I like you.' She paused. 'I like you a lot. But that's all. I'm sorry...'
'The feeling's mutual...'
He didn't know how he'd managed to get the words out. He was worried his voice had sounded forced, unnatural. Paco, he knew, was a very perceptive girl. God knows he'd done his best to conceal his real feelings. If she went on like this he was going to give himself away.
'You're still very carefully not looking at me.
'I'm watching Reader traipsing about. You said don't trust him.'
'Now you're changing the subject. What's your next move — to manufacture a row between us?'
He swung round violently and stared straight at her. 'What do you want me to say then?'
'Let's go for a stroll. I want to talk to you.'
She linked her arm inside his and he felt the gentle pressure of her right breast. They walked in step as she began talking.
'You don't know much about me. There is no one else, by the way. The war seems to have stultified my emotions. I've seen so much horror I've grown almost immune. That worries me, worries me more than you might imagine, Lindsay. I know how you feel - I wish I felt the same way. I don't. And a quick roll in the hay after dark isn't going to help either of us. I thought bringing it out into the open might help. I made a mistake. I can see that now. War is not the most amusing of human activities.'
She let go of his arm, bent down to stub out her cigarette on a rock and then dropped the dead stub in her pocket. Her voice changed, became matter-of- fact.
'The first rule of Partisan survival. Leave no traces for the enemy to find.'
She walked away, a slow, purposeful tread. The sun came out. It showed up the gleam of her neat, blonde hair. She had never looked more desirable.
Lindsay stopped at the edge of th
e abyss. The rock wall fell a thousand feet to a scatter of boulders far below. They looked no larger than pebbles.
He had to get his priorities sorted out. He was carrying - inside his head, in his diary – priceless information which London must know. It could even affect the outcome of the war. Getting back to Allied territory was his prime objective.
He found it poor consolation. He felt humiliated. Paco knew. It was, he now realized, her presumed ignorance of his feelings which had sustained him. He felt an emotional wreck. How often had he imagined making love to her in every erotic detail - her equally passionate response.
'We could make a break for it now, Wing Commander. I've found a hidden gulch which leads into the valley...'
It was Sergeant Len Reader. Of course.
Chapter Thirty-Five
'That bloody colonel commanding this column needs shooting,' Jaeger commented savagely to Schmidt. 'Yugoslavia isn't France, it isn't even Russia. To understand this theatre of war you go back to Wellington and the Peninsular War - the Spanish guerrillas. He's going to lead us straight into an ambush.'
'At least you persuaded him to position the mortar teams at the rear of the column,' Schmidt replied.
'Only by waving the Fuhrer's signed order,' Jaeger growled. 'Look at the terrain - the way he's crammed everything together. We should be spread out in well- separated sections...'
They were well south of Zagreb and dusk was beginning to descend on all sides like a sinister, cloud.
The armoured column - comprising tanks, mobile guns and motorized infantry was entering a narrow,
winding defile. On both sides rose precipitous heights. Jaeger frowned and raised the field-glasses
looped from his neck to focus on a rampart of huge boulders which lay strewn along the brink of the
right-hand ridge.
They were travelling as passengers in a half-track, the last vehicle in the straggled column. Immediately ahead of them crawled two canvas-sided trucks carrying the mortar teams. It was very silent apart from the purr of slow-moving engines and Jaeger sat as rigid as a statue, his twin lenses studying the boulder rampart poised far above them.
'There's something funny about those damned rocks,' he told Schmidt. 'Here, you take a look.'
'What am I looking for?' Schmidt asked as he peered through the glasses.
'The slightest sign of movement up there. That's a geological oddity — that line of boulders. There are too many of them. They're too evenly spaced. They're all perched just on the brink. That crazy fool, Schrenk, should have sent a patrol up there before he entered the defile. According to this map the defile is over four kilometres long. Don't like it...'
They had attached themselves to the column because it was the only way to get deep into Yugoslavia. Jaeger hoped for Partisan prisoners, men he could question as to the whereabouts of Lindsay and the girl he had come to refer to as the Baroness.
Schrenk's column was undertaking a punitive expedition. He was searching for the phantom Amazon Brigade. An informant had told him the Brigade had passed along this route only a few hours earlier. Jaeger had made himself unpopular by being sceptical, almost contemptuous.
'This informant,' he had demanded,.. he is a local?'
'A Serb,' Schrenk had replied. 'Greedy for gold. Always before he has proved reliable.'
`So he is trustworthy forever?'
Schrenk had stormed off and the two colonels had not met again since the column moved off seven hours earlier. At intervals a courier had driven back along the column on his motorcycle with 'evidence' that they were on the right track. A discarded pair of woman's coarse pantaloons; a Partisan cap complete with the red star badge and a small tuft of feminine hair attached.
'Very convenient,' had been Jaeger's only comment.
'I still think this would be a good time to make a break for it,' Reader repeated to Lindsay. 'It will be dark in no time. There's no one guarding that hidden gulch I found.'
Lindsay looked carefully round the hilltop. On surface appearances Reader was right. Dusk was falling suddenly, the way it did in this part of the world. There was growing activity among the Partisans who, under Heljec's prodding, were gathering behind the rampart of boulders.
They were now armed with thick wooden poles which they seemed to be prepared to use as levers. The ends of the poles were being rammed under the line of boulders perched on the brink of the drop above the gorge where earlier the Amazon Brigade had marched.
'Well?' snapped Reader impatiently, 'do we make a run for it or can't you tear yourself away from that Paco?'
'I'm just not too partial to committing suicide. You're not familiar with these peasants, as you call them, Sergeant. They can hide in a cleft in the ground, merge against the background of a rock cluster. They're everywhere but you don't see them - until too late.'
'I think it's Paco...'
'Think what you like,' replied Lindsay calmly, refusing to be provoked. 'Heljec will certainly know about that so-called hidden gulch of yours. The first warning you'll get that I'm right will be a knife between the shoulder-blades...'
'Have it your own way - we've lost our chance now, anyway. We have company...'
Through the purple gloaming which was becoming denser by the minute, Lindsay saw Paco approaching. She was accompanied by Milic who carried a German machine-pistol at the ready.
'Heljec insists you both come over and watch.' There was a note of disapproval in her voice. 'And could Sergeant Reader please hand over his sten to Milic for the moment? Heljec has ordered him to confiscate the weapon no matter what means he has to use. Humour him, for God's sake - for my sake …'
'Give him the sten,' said Lindsay, standing up. 'I'll give him a burst...'
'Don't be a bigger bloody fool than you have to. Look behind us. We're surrounded. I warned you about men rising up out of the ground.'
'Christ Almighty...!'
A screen of a dozen or so Partisans stood silently, barely a few feet behind them. They carried a motley collection of guns, all aimed point-blank at Reader. The weapons were even more eloquent than their silence. With a curse, Reader handed the sten to Milic.
'Now you come with us very quietly. Heljec wishes you both to witness a demonstration of Partisan fighting...'
She led the way, and Lindsay walked beside her, towards where the main body of Partisans crouched behind their improvised wall of boulders. It was only as they came close that Lindsay saw Hartmann. He had been on the verge of asking Paco what had happened to the German.
Hartmann stood as erect as he could, turning his head to look at Lindsay. His wrists were bound behind his back. Again his eyes seemed to attempt to convey some message to the Englishman.
'Is that really necessary?' snapped Lindsay.
'Keep your voice down,' she hissed. 'It was done on the direct orders of Heljec. A German armoured column is approaching the gorge below. That is why the Amazon Brigade marched through it so openly earlier. It is a trap and the Germans are falling into it. Look down - not too close!' she warned.
The mutter of many slow-moving engines drifted up from the depths of the gorge. Peering over the edge, Lindsay saw the head-of the toy-like column snaking its way along the twisting defile. There was just enough light to see that this was an expedition in force.
Armoured cars and motorcyclists preceded the convoy. Behind came the tanks, nose to tail, their gun barrels swivelled to one side or the other at maximum elevation. Even to Lindsay's non-military eye this powerful cavalcade seemed useless, they would never be able to elevate the barrels to anything like the angle required to bombard the heights on which Heljec had placed his men.
And now he understood all the effort which had gone into shifting the boulders to the brink, the reason for the thick poles like pine trunks the Partisans had dug beneath the rocks and which they manned like giant levers, two or three Partisans to a pole.
Doubtless the German commander had taken a gamble - because it was established military lor
e that in this part of the world the Wehrmacht never moved at night. He was hoping to slip through under the cover of dusk - to break out into the open plain beyond which Lindsay had seen earlier to the south.
It was military madness. It would be a massacre.
Hartmann, compelled by Heljec to watch the destruction of his countrymen, stood close to Lindsay now with Paco between them. The Abwehr officer leaned forward to take a closer look into the abyss. He took a furtive step forward -and Paco ground her booted heel hard on the German's foot.
'You want to die early, you maniac?' she whispered.
'What happened?' murmured Lindsay.
'Your German is a brave man. He was trying to kick a stone over the edge. He could have caused a gravel slide - warning the column down there. It is, of course, doomed...'
There was no hint of excitement, of triumph in her voice - only an infinite weariness at the thought of the imminent catastrophe and bloodshed.
Soundless as a cat, Heljec ran along the line of men holding the levers. Gentle as a cat, he touched each team leader's elbow as he passed. He was signalling them to launch the attack.
Only one truckload of infantry, the two trucks containing the mortar teams, and the half-track bringing up the rear remained outside the gorge. Within a minute they would have joined their companions.
inside the defile.
Jaeger had taken back his field-glasses from Schmidt and stared up like a man obsessed, the eyepieces screwed hard against his flesh. The caterpillar tracks ground forward under them. For a split second Jaeger thought fatigue was affecting his vision.
A giant boulder was wobbling. Rocking back and forth. Then the whole rampart began to tremble as though shaking under growing vibrations of an earthquake. A gap appeared on the skyline, still faintly visible. The giant had plunged down...
It struck an outcrop, ricocheted with all its massive weight across the gorge to hammer the opposite slope, bounced back in mid-air and then fell vertically. It landed smack on the top of the open turret of a tank. The commander was pounded to a jelly as the boulder collapsed the turret and concertinaed the chassis.