Corporal Cotton's Little War (17 page)

‘We’ll win in the end.’ Cotton had never been in any doubt about that. He towered over the Greek, burly, strong and black-haired, the tommy-gun in his fists. ‘Put it in the sacks,’ he said. ‘Then get the donkey loaded. We’re taking it back with us.’

Petrakis looked at the girl. ‘You brought them here,’ he accused. As he stepped towards her, his hand lifted, Cotton moved in front of him and jammed the muzzle of the tommy-gun into his stomach. Petrakis’ hand dropped and he stared at the girl with glittering eyes.

‘You’ll pay for this,’ he said.

For a moment she stared at him, confused by her loyalties. Then she drew herself up. ‘You do not believe in God!’ she burst out. ‘You have told me often! Your god is the Communist party!’

Cotton pushed her aside. ‘Load the donkey,’ he said.

Unwillingly, Petrakis and the other two stuffed their spoils back into the sacks and tied them across the back of the minute beast.

‘Better search the place for weapons,’ Cotton said to Bisset. ‘I wouldn’t want to be shot in the back.’

Bisset moved further into the cave. He returned with two rifles and a tommy-gun.

‘That’s a help. Anymore?’

‘I didn’t see any. But there are plenty of places they could have hidden ‘em. I didn’t think now was the time for a prolonged investigation.’

The girl looked at her cousin and then at Cotton. ‘I must come with you,’ she pointed out. ‘I cannot stay here now.’

‘No.’ It didn’t seem unreasonable. ‘Okay. You’d better go ahead and lead the donkey. You go with her, Bisset. I’ll back you up. There’s a manoeuvre for this. It’s called leap-frogging. A hundred yards down the slope - at a nice easy range where you could hit what you aimed at - make yourself comfortable and shout. I’ll pass through you. If they shove their heads out, let ‘em have a shot to make ‘em pull ‘em back quick.’

As Bisset and the girl set off down the side of the hill with the donkey, following the winding path that curved like a discarded snake skin towards the sea, Cotton waited behind the rocks outside. Up against the escarpment in the sun, the heat seemed stuffy and oppressive. He could hear the mutter of guns to the north and somewhere out of sight the low hum of an aeroplane engine. He shifted restlessly, wanting to be away.

Petrakis was watching him from just inside the cave and he was aware of his stare of hatred like the blade of a knife. Then he heard Bisset’s shout and, without looking back, he turned and began to march down the path.

7

‘All right.’ Major Baldamus looked up at Captain Ehrhardt. ‘So these survivors were picked up and there
was
another boat, and the Luftwaffe missed it.’

Ehrhardt shrugged. ‘According to my sergeant, Herr Major, there were no footprints leading from the beach -- only into the sea -- and he could only imagine, since the boat and the rubber dinghy were missing, together with the weapons -- two light machine-guns and a 20-millimetre cannon by the look of the mountings - that this boat must have been accompanied by the third boat you mentioned, and that when the Luftwaffe had gone, they paddled out and were taken on board with what they could salvage. They’re doubtless now back in Crete.’

Baldamus shrugged, nagged by doubt. There was a lot at stake and he felt it was unsafe to assume too much. ‘But just suppose they
weren’t
picked up?’ he said.

Ehrhardt shrugged. ‘There was no sign of them.’

‘Even so, we’d be unwise to risk any more men down there yet. It’s
just possible,
I suppose, that we could be wrong, in which case they’re in those hills with two machine-guns and a cannon.-Not exactly something to argue against. Fortunately, they can’t harm us so we’ll leave them alone. However, we’ll have a watch kept - from the sea, as I suggested. What have you found us?’

Ehrhardt grinned. ‘Two large caiques have been taken over, Herr Major. We found them in the harbour here. We’re mounting machine-guns on one of them at this moment. I’ve sent the other down with drums to lay alongside the wreck in Kharasso Bay and pump out the petrol. It’s better if it belongs to us than to the Greeks.’

‘That was quick thinking, Ehrhardt.’

Ehrhardt grinned again. ‘Well, the other one was stripped and pumped dry by the islanders,’ he said. ‘Just before we arrived. It occurred to me they might try to do the same with this one. When the sergeant went through it yesterday he removed everything that was left.’

‘And doubtless at this moment he and his merry men are flogging half of it round the market place in Kalani.’

‘It’s soldier’s pay.’

‘Indeed. So long as we get
some
of it. Just for the look of the thing.’ Baldamus lit a cigar and drew gently on it for a while. ‘When your caique’s finished pumping out, have her armed like the other. Their job will be to make sure none of the Greeks slip south to say what’s happening in Yanitsa. They’ll make a daily circuit of the island and keep their eyes well open.’

Baldamus drew on his cigar comfortably and glanced at the papers on his desk. The build-up at Yanitsa was still increasing; he was erecting tents all round the edge of the strip now, and clearing families from the houses in the village alongside to make billets. A bar had been taken over as a headquarters for the Luftwaffe captain who was running the place, petrol was being stacked in heavy jerricans inside the wire compound that was being put up. Marquees for workshops had been erected and a separate mess arranged for the flying crews of the Junkers of
Fliegerkorps IX
and the Messerschmitts and Dormers of
Fliegerkorps VIII.

The place was beginning to look important. If it grew any more important, Baldamus decided, it would need someone with the rank of colonel to run it. And that colonel, he intended, would be Renatus von Boenigk Baldamus. General Ritsicz had promised it.

‘Make it clear that no one’s to leave the island, Ehrhardt,’ he said. ‘It’s absolutely essential that no one knows we’re here. All fishing vessels are to report nightly and I’ve asked the Italian navy to supply us with a launch. It’s due to arrive tomorrow. General Ritsicz’s got the Wehrmacht to supply an officer and an NCO with sea experience, together with two or three sailors and engineers and someone to fire a gun. After all, the British might decide to do something mad here.’

As it happened, the British were already doing something mad. At least, some of the British were.

A sunset like watercolours on wet paper was just fading into darkness as Cotton and Bisset climbed down to Kharasso Bay. Over the noise of the stream they could hear the croak of frogs so that the silence sounded like the silence of a Hollywood thriller. Then a nightingale started singing among the bushes and somehow it relieved the tension.

Then, as they were walking down the hill, Cotton sensed that everything was not right. He touched Bisset’s arm and stopped. As he listened, he heard the clatter of stones, then, through the foliage, he saw a man picking his way up the slope, moving as fast as he could go, his breath coming in sobbing pants. Under his arm in the last of the light they could see a blue blanket and a jar, and then in the undergrowth they saw a bicycle.

‘It’s that chap who hid the rum,’ Bisset said. ‘He’s come back fork.’

Cotton’s eyes glittered. ‘And the way he’s moving,’ he said, ‘he’s seen somebody on the boat. Get over there. I’ll wait here.’

The girl was watching them silently, her eyes wide, and Cotton pushed her into the bushes. His stomach heaving, he reversed his rifle and held it by the barrel.

She put her hand on his arm. ‘What are you going to do, Cotton?’ she whispered.

He brushed her aside. ‘If we don’t stop him,’ he said,
‘we’re
all prisoners and
you’re
probably dead.’

He weighed the rifle in his hands, his throat working. The German was still climbing as fast as he could go, his breath coming in wheezy gasps. Then, as he rounded a curve in the path, he came face to face with Cotton. There was just time for an expression of terror to fill his eyes before the rifle came round to crash against his temple. The blanket went flying and Cotton heard the rum jar smash at his feet. As the German crumpled up, Cotton grabbed a stone and fell across him, pounding until the German managed to squirm free and started to run with little agonized bleating sounds in the back of his throat. He had gone no more than one or two steps when he crashed into Bisset and the two of them went down together. Scrambling up, Cotton jumped with his knees in the German’s back and the three of them struggled in the half-light, Bisset’s hands on the German’s throat, Cotton bashing sickeningly with the stone until the German became still. When he stood up he saw there was blood on his hands and shirt. Bisset rose up with him, his jaw hanging open.

‘I think I killed him,’ Cotton said.

Bisset’s eyes narrowed, then he shrugged. ‘You or me.’ He bent over the German. ‘He’s dead all right,’ he agreed.

Cotton drew a deep breath. ‘We’d better bury him,’ he said.

He stared down at the dead man. His uniform was shabby, stained and rumpled, and there were greying whiskers among the blood and fragments of bone in the shattered face. He turned away from the single bloodshot eye that stared up at them.

The girl crept forward. Her eyes dilated, she stared at the body, a look of sick horror on her face.

‘You have killed him,’ she said.

Cotton nodded and wiped his big paws on his trousers. She gazed at him, pale and strained, then she turned away, her face buried in her hands.

Cotton drew a deep breath. ‘Come on, Bisset,’ he said. ‘Let’s get rid of him. I bet he’s a deserter.’

They hid the bicycle. Then they scraped a shallow hole under an overhanging tree and, shoving the body into it, kicked earth and stones over it. Finally they rolled heavy rocks on top. It was like shoving guilt out of sight.

When they’d finished, without a word they picked up the weapons they’d dropped and set off down the hill again. Eventually they saw the dim shape of the boat by the light of the stars but there was no sign of Docherty, Gully or Kitcat, and as they stopped on the beach, over the hill, muffled by the height, they could still hear the mutter of guns.

As they waited, there was a faint reedy pipe from the trees that sounded like an owl. Cotton waited and it came again. He whistled back and heard Docherty’s voice. As they moved forward, they saw dark figures move forward along the beach. Docherty was grinning. What Cotton had to say wiped the smile off his face at once.

‘A German? He didn’t come down here!’

‘He didn’t have to,’ Cotton growled. ‘He’d hidden what he was after up the hill. Did the other Jerries come?’

Docherty nodded. ‘They had a caique and they pumped the petrol out into drums. It took ‘em bloody hours.’

There was a long silence. They were all a little afraid, and the death of the German deserter bothered Cotton. Kitcat was the first to throw off the feeling. It had taken some courage for him to live alone above Xiloparissia Bay for days, and, with all the others around him, he felt anything was bearable. He gestured towards the boat.

‘We’ve rigged up the forecastle,’ he said as they unloaded the donkey. ‘We’ve stopped up the holes and shaded the ports and Docherty’s fixed a light.’

As he lifted his hand to drive the donkey away, Cotton caught his arm. ‘Moor her up,’ he said. ‘We might want her again. How’s the kid?’

‘No worse. Gully said he might even be better.’

It was then that Docherty noticed the girl standing nearby in the shadows. ‘What’s she doing here?’ he demanded.

‘She decided it was safer with us,’ Cotton said.

Docherty grinned. ‘Who’re we to complain?’ he said. ‘Who’s she sleeping with?’

They hoisted the sacks on board and Docherty began to check the contents with the engines. As he worked, Cotton drew Kitcat on to the foredeck. The sky was studded with stars, and they seemed to glow instead of glittering as they did at home.

‘Those guns
Loukia
was carrying?’ he said.

Kitcat looked sideways at him. ‘What about ‘em?’

‘There were a lot, weren’t there?’

‘Were there?’

Cotton scowled. ‘You know damn well there were.’

Kitcat hedged. ‘Well,’ he said. ‘One or two.’

‘I think there were more.’

Kitcat looked up at him quickly. ‘How do you know?’

‘I was told. Before we left Crete. What sort were they?’

Kitcat studied him in the semi-darkness. ‘I dunno,’ he said. ‘I heard ‘em say they were old British issue.’

‘Did you see what happened to ‘em?’

‘No. The Germans took ‘em, I suppose. When they murdered Samways and the others. When I got back they were gone.’

‘How many were there?’

‘I dunno. They had ‘em stacked in the captain’s cabin, in the alleyway and under the floorboards. I saw ‘em when we got Travers aboard and into a bunk. I should say there were four or five dozen rifles, some boxes of ammunition, a few grenades, and one or two Brens and tommy-guns.’

‘They were carrying something else as well, weren’t they? Money. And there was a lot of it, wasn’t there?’

Kitcat frowned. He’d known about the money all right but he’d been told to hold his tongue and so far he had done. He decided that since Cotton seemed to be well in control there could be no harm in admitting something he already knew.

‘Yes.’ He nodded. ‘There was. Samways got us to carry it up the cliff and hide it. As soon as we ran ashore. It was heavy, so there must have been a lot. We put it in a hole we scraped under a rock shaped like a toad and piled stones on it.’

‘Could you find it again?’

‘Easy.’

Cotton drew a deep breath. ‘Then keep it to yourself. Nobody else knows about it.’ He thought of Gully and Docherty. ‘Perhaps it’s as well,’ he ended.

They made arrangements for the night and when the girl promised that a boat would be round in the morning from Ay Yithion, they decided to carry Howard down to the captain’s cabin aboard
Claudia.
By the time they’d installed him, Bisset had managed to set up the paraffin stove and he and the girl were organizing a meal.