A New Kind of War (2 page)

‘No.’ Kyriakos replaced the revolver in its holster. ‘Not
your
people—
our
people. But that at least gives us a chance.’ He removed his beret, grinning at Fred as he did so. ‘Lucky I didn’t wear my proper hat. So maybe I’m lucky today.’

Fred watched the Greek raise his head slowly over the top of the rock, trying to equate luck with headgear. Unlike his fellow officers, who wore bus conductors’ SD hats, wired and uncrumpled and quite different from his own, Kyri often wore a black Canadian Dragoons’ beret, complete with their cap badge. But then Kyri was an eccentric, everyone agreed.

‘Nothing.’ Always the professional, Kyriakos lowered his head as slowly as he had raised it. ‘I think I am still lucky, perhaps.’

‘Bugger your luck!’ A further burst of firing, punctuated now by the addition of single rifle shots, snapped Fred’s nerve. ‘What about mine? This is supposed to be my Christmas Eve—I’m your bloody
guest
, Kyriakos!’

‘Ah … but you must understand that
your
odds are a lot better than mine, old boy.’ Kyriakos grinned at him.

‘They are?’ Somehow the assurance wasn’t reassuring. ‘Are they?’

‘Oh yes.’ The grin was fixed unnaturally under the moustache, the eyes were not a-smiling. ‘If our side runs away—your pardon! If
my
side withdraws strategically to regroup … If that happens, then the
Andartes
will outflank us here—’ Kyriakos gestured left and right, dismissively ‘—or take us from below, without difficulty, I’m afraid.’

Fred followed the gestures. There was dead ground not far along the track ahead, and more of it behind them. And they were in full view of the track below.

‘I know this country—this place.’ The Greek nodded at him. There’s a little ruined monastery over the ridge, which the Turks destroyed long ago. I have walked this path before, with my father, in the old days: it is the secret back door to the village which is below the monastery. So … I am very much afraid that our people have made a mistake—the same mistake the Turks once made: they have come up from the sea, to attack the monastery … if that is where the
andartes
are … when they should have come out of the mountains, over this ridge—up this path, even—to take it in the rear, and push them down to the sea … That will be some foolish, stiff-necked Athenian staff officer, who thinks he knows everything, as the Athenians always do.‘

The firing started again, this time punctuated by the distinctive
crump
of mortar shells—a murderous, continuous shower of them.

Kyriakos swore in his native tongue, unintelligibly but eloquently, and Fred frowned at him. ‘What’s the matter?’

‘Those are three-inch—they’ll be ours. So our people are well-equipped.’

That didn’t make sense. ‘So they’ll win—?’

‘Too bloody right!’ Kyriakos swore again.

‘So what’s wrong with that?’

‘I told you.’ Kyriakos was hardly listening to him. He was studying the landscape again. ‘I know this place.’

‘Yes.’ The eagles were still on patrol, wheeling and dipping and soaring over the highest peak, out of which the ridge itself issued in a great jumble of boulders piled beneath its vertical cliff. ‘So what?’

Kyriakos looked at him at last. ‘This is the path the villagers took when the Turks came. Over this ridge—this path—is the only line of retreat. If our side is too strong … we’re rather in the way, old boy.’

The Greek shrugged philosophically, but Fred remembered from Tombe di Pesaro days that the worse things were, the more philosophic Captain Michaelides became. Then hadn’t we better find another spot in which to cower, Kyri?‘ He tried to match the casual tone.

‘Yes, I was thinking about that.’ Kyriakos turned his attention to the hillside below them. But it was unhelpfully open all the way down to the track along which they should have driven an hour earlier, happy and unworried—only an hour, or a lifetime thought Fred. And that further reminded him of the Michaelides Philosophy: being in the Wrong Place … or there at the Wrong Time … that was ‘
No fun at all, old boy
!’ And now they appeared to have achieved the unfunny double, by Christ! But the unfunniness, and the patient eagles, concentrated his mind. ‘If you did see someone up there, Kyri … couldn’t he just possibly be one of yours—ours?’ He threw in his lot finally with the Royal Hellenic Army and the bloodthirsty National Guard.

‘Ye-ess … ’ Kyriakos shifted to another position behind the outcrop. ‘I was thinking about that, too.’

Fred watched him raise himself—
never show yourself in the same place twice
, of course; and the poor bastard had had a lot longer in which to learn that simplest of lessons, ever since the Italians had chanced their luck out of Albania, back in the winter of ‘40. But then he remembered his own manners.

‘My turn, Kyri.’ He raised himself—
too quickly, too quickly
—
but too late, now
! And he wanted to see the crest of that damned ridge for himself, anyway—

The surface of the rock midway between them burst into fragments in the same instant that the machine-gun rattled down at them, with the bullets ricocheting away into infinity behind them.

This time the echoes—their own echoes, much louder than those of the fire-fight over the ridge—took longer to lose themselves, as he breathed out his own mixture of terror and relief.

(“Missed again
!‘ That was what Sergeant Procter, ever-cheerful, ever-efficient, always said, when he himself had been shaking with fear, back in Italy. ’
If they can’t hit us now, sir, then the buggers don’t deserve to win the war
—
do they!‘)

‘That was
deuced
stupid of you, old boy.’ Somewhere along the line of his long multi-national service since Albania in 1940 Kyriakos had picked up
deuced
, probably from some blue-blooded British unit, which he used like
too bloody right
, a ripe Australianism, in other ‘No-fun’ situations.

‘I’m sorry.’ The ridge had been thickly forested on the crest, with encircling horns of trees to the left and right; so the machine-gunner’s friends would have no problem flanking this outcrop, thought Fred miserably. And Kyriakos had certainly observed all that already. ‘A moment of weakness, Kyri—I’m sorry.’

‘But not altogether useless.’ With typical good manners Kyriakos hastened to take the sting from his criticism. ‘That was a Browning—a “B-A-R”, as our American friends would say … a nice little weapon.’

‘Yes?’ Fred let himself be soothed, knowing that Kyri was using his hobby to soothe him, deliberately. ‘I bow to your experience, Captain Michaelides. But what does that mean?’

‘Not a lot, to be honest. It goes back a long way, does the BAR … We had some of them in 1940—Belgian FN variants … But, then so did the Poles. And the Germans and the Russians inherited
them
, as well as ours, of course … But, so far as I’m aware,
you
never used them, old boy.’

Lying back and looking upwards Fred caught sight of one of the eagles making a wider circuit. Or maybe the bloody bird had pinpointed his dinner now. ‘So those aren’t our friends, up there?’

Kyriakos thought for a moment. ‘Ah … now, I don’t think we have any friends at the moment, either way.’ Another moment’s thought. ‘Because we’re not part of the action: we’re an inconvenience, you might say.’

The fire-fight continued sporadically over the crest. By now the commanding officers on each side would be estimating casualties and discretion against the remaining hours of daylight and their very difficult objectives. And suddenly an overwhelming bitterness suffused Fred. Because the bloody Germans were one thing, and bad enough. But the bloody Greeks were another—and this really wasn’t the war he had volunteered for. Even, until now, it wasn’t a war which he had been able to take seriously: it was Kyri’s bloody war, not the British army’s bloody war—and especially
not his!

All of which made him think of the unthinkable, which nestled in his pocket, where he had put it this morning, freshly laundered. ‘How about surrendering—for the time being?’

‘Yes.’ Kyriakos nodded. ‘I had been thinking about that, also.’

The lightness of the Greek’s voice alerted him. The truce talks … we could claim flag of truce—couldn’t we?‘

‘We could.’ The Greek had his own large white handkerchief. ‘But … if you don’t mind … we will claim it my way—’ He shook the handkerchief out. ‘—okay?’

Suddenly Fred felt the breath of a colder wind within him than one he had already felt on his cheeks. ‘Kyri—’

‘No! You are quite right, old boy!’ Kyriakos shook his handkerchief. ‘We wouldn’t get ten yards … This way … there’s a chance, I agree—’

‘No-’

‘Yes!’ The Greek nodded. ‘I am “Alex”—’ He patted his battle-dress pocket‘—and you wanted to visit Delphi … you can bullshit them about your classical education, and how you are a British socialist—tell them that you don’t like Winston Churchill, if you get the chance … But say that Spiros in Levadhia—Spiros the baker—
he
recommended
me
. Okay?’

‘Spiros, the baker.’ Fred echoed the order. ‘In Levadhia—?’

‘That’s all. Let me do the talking, old boy.’ Kyriakos drew a breath, and then grinned at him. ‘If they’re in doubt they won’t shoot you—they can always trade you: you’re worth more alive than dead at the moment—
don’t argue
—
’ He raised his hand quickly to preclude the argument‘—
I
know what to say, if we can only get them to talk. And since this is their only line of retreat I think they’ll talk—at least, to start with.’ He qualified the grin with a shrug. ‘After that, it will be as God always intended.’

Fred bridled, already bitterly regretting his suggestion. ‘I don’t know, Kyri.’ The truth, which he had quite failed to grasp in half-grasping, was that it
was
this man’s own bloody war, truce or no truce. And that meant … that if it was true that a British officer had some value as a prisoner, it was even more true that a Greek royalist officer was certain to be shot out of hand if caught in the Wrong Place at the Wrong Time. In fact, Kyri himself had said as much—and he had replied with cowardly stupidity, claiming guest-rights on Scobiemas Eve—
I’m your bloody guest, Kyri
! ‘I don’t think so.’

The Greek frowned. ‘Don’t think what, old boy?’

Fred shivered inwardly, aware that he could never explain his shame—that would make it worse. ‘I don’t think I care to take the chance. I think I’d rather shoot it out here—’ He clawed at his holster with his right hand, only to find that the damn claw was as useless as ever—more useless even, in its very first real emergency ‘—damn it!’
Damn it to hell! Now he had to reach across with his fumbling left hand!
‘What I mean is … we can just slow them up, and wait for our chaps to come up behind them, Kyri.’
The bloody thing wouldn’t come out
—
it was snagged somehow
—
damn it to hell and back
!

‘Too late, old boy,’ the Greek murmured, almost conversationally, raising himself, and then raising and waving his arm with the handkerchief on the end of it. ‘There! Never done that before … but there’s always a first time for everything, they say … And I’m told it always worked a treat with the Germans—with their ordinary fellows, anyway … eh?’

‘Oh …
fuck!’
Fred almost wept with frustration as his left hand joined the claw’s mutiny. ‘
Fuck
!’

‘Such language!’ Kyriakos tut-tutted at him. ‘We made a pact—remember, old boy?’

That was also true, thought Fred as he gagged on other and fouler expletives, in giving up the struggle: only hours—or maybe only minutes—before they had discussed the degeneration of their everyday language under the influence and pressure of army life, in the light of their imminent meeting with Madame Michaelides (who countenanced no such words) and Fred’s eventual return to the bosom of his family (who would certainly be equally shocked); and while his own persuasion had been that it would be no problem—that some automatic safety-valve would activate—Kyri had not been so confident, and unashamedly more frightened at the prospect than he seemed to be now, at another prospect, as he waved his large white handkerchief.

‘Don’t you forget, now—eh?’ The Greek also waved his finger, admonishing him for all the world as though they were about to meet his mother, instead of more likely God Almighty, Whose intentions they were now supposed to be anticipating. ‘I am Alex, the friend of Spiros—okay?’

It was also, and finally, true … what Sergeant Procter always said: that you could like a man and hate him at the same time.

Kyriakos smiled again, turning the knife in the wound.

‘So now we wait!’

‘What for?’ The mixture of unpleasant noises from the other side of the ridge had become increasingly sporadic while they had been arguing. But now it seemed to have died away altogether, so maybe that was a silly question. ‘Not for long, though?’

‘They’ll flank us.’ Kyri gave the handkerchief a final vigorous wave and then pointed first left, then right. ‘Where those gulleys from the top peter out—“peter out”, is that right?’

‘Yes.’ Five years of English education, followed by another five of military alliance, had rendered the Greek almost perfectly bi-lingual. But, more than that, Fred at last understood how Kyriakos had seen their position through an infantryman’s eye: while their refuge could easily be flanked from those treacherous gulleys, it also had to be eliminated because they in turn had a clear view of the lower slopes and the track below. ‘I understand, Kyri.’

‘Good. Then you watch the left and I will watch the right.’ He paused. ‘And understand this also, old boy: the moment you see anything, you put your hands up—and I mean
up
—
up
high
, my friend … Because we’ll only have that one moment, maybe. Understood?’