Force 10 from Navarone (9 page)

‘Getting worse?’

‘How far to go?’ Andrea asked hoarsely.

‘Must be less than a mile.’

Andrea said nothing, he just stood there breathing heavily and wearing the stricken look of a sick man contemplating the prospect of another upward mile through deep snow. Saunders, already carrying two rucksacks, approached Andrea diffidently, tentatively. He said: ‘It would help, you know, if –’

‘I know.’ Andrea smiled painfully, unslung his Schmeisser and handed it to Saunders. ‘Thanks, son.’

Petar was still softly plucking the strings of his guitar, an indescribably eerie sound in those dark
and ghostly pine woods. Miller looked at him and said to Mallory: ‘What’s the music while we march for?’

‘Petar’s password, I should imagine.’

‘Like Neufeld said? Nobody touches our singing Cetnik?’

‘Something like that.’

They moved on up the trail. Mallory let the others pass by until he and Andrea were bringing up the rear. Mallory glanced incuriously at Andrea, his face registering no more than a mild concern for the condition of his friend. Andrea caught his glance and nodded fractionally: Mallory looked away.

Fifteen minutes later they were halted, at gunpoint, by three men, all armed with machine-pistols, who simply appeared to have materialized from nowhere, a surprise so complete that not even Andrea could have done anything about it – even if he had had his gun. Reynolds looked urgently at Mallory, who smiled and shook his head.

‘It’s all right. Partisans – look at the red star on their forage caps. Just outposts guarding one of the main trails.’

And so it proved. Maria talked briefly to one of the soldiers, who listened, nodded and set off up the path, gesturing to the party to follow him. The other two Partisans remained behind, both men crossing themselves as Petar again strummed gently on his guitar. Neufeld, Mallory reflected, hadn’t
exaggerated about the degree of awed respect and fear in which the blind singer and his sister were held.

They came to Partisan HQ inside another ten minutes, an HQ curiously similar in appearance and choice of location to Hauptmann Neufeld’s camp: the same rough circle of crude huts set deep in the same
jamba
– depression – with similar massive pines towering high above. The guide spoke to Maria and she turned coldly to Mallory, the disdain on her face making it very plain how much against the grain it went for her to speak to him at all.

‘We are to go to the guest hut. You are to report to the commandant. This soldier will show you.’

The guide beckoned in confirmation. Mallory followed him across the compound to a fairly large, fairly well-lit hut. The guide knocked, opened the door and waved Mallory inside, he himself following.

The commandant was a tall, lean, dark man with that aquiline, aristocratic face so common among the Bosnian mountainmen. He advanced towards Mallory with outstretched hand and smiled.

‘Major Broznik, and at your service. Late, late hours, but as you see we are still up and around. Although I must say I did expect you before this.’

‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’

‘You don’t know – you
are
Captain Mallory, are you not?’

‘I’ve never heard of him.’ Mallory gazed steadily at Broznik, glanced briefly sideways at the guide, then looked back to Broznik again. Broznik frowned for a moment, then his face cleared. He spoke to the guide, who turned and left. Mallory put out his hand.

‘Captain Mallory, at your service. I’m sorry about that, Major Broznik, but I insist we must talk alone.’

‘You trust no one? Not even in
my
camp?’

‘No one.’

‘Not even your own men?’

‘I don’t trust them not to make mistakes. I don’t trust myself not to make mistakes. I don’t trust
you
not to make mistakes.’

‘Please?’ Broznik’s voice was as cold as his eyes.

‘Did you ever have two of your men disappear, one with ginger hair, the other with black, the ginger-haired man with a cast to his eye and a scar running from mouth to chin?’

Broznik came closer. ‘What do you know about those men?’

‘Did you? Know them, I mean?’

Broznik nodded and said slowly: ‘They were lost in action. Last month.’

‘You found their bodies?’

‘No.’

‘There were no bodies to be found. They had deserted – gone over to the Cetniks.’

‘But they
were
Cetniks – converted to our cause.’

‘They’d been reconverted. They followed us
tonight. On the orders of Captain Droshny. I had them killed.’

‘You – had – them – killed?’

‘Think, man,’ Mallory said wearily. ‘If they had arrived here – which they no doubt intended to do a discreet interval after our arrival – we wouldn’t have recognized them and you’d have welcomed them back as escaped prisoners. They’d have reported our every movement. Even if we had recognized them after they had arrived here and done something about it, you may have
other
Cetniks here who would have reported back to their masters that we had done away with their watchdogs. So we disposed of them very quietly, no fuss, in a very remote place, then hid them.’

‘There are no Cetniks in my command, Captain Mallory.’

Mallory said drily: ‘It takes a very clever farmer, Major, to see two bad apples on the top of the barrel and be quite certain that there are none lower down. No chances. None. Ever.’ Mallory smiled to remove any offence from his words and went on briskly: ‘Now, Major, there’s some information that Hauptmann Neufeld wants.’

To say that the guest hut hardly deserved so hospitable a title would have been a very considerable understatement. As a shelter for some of the less-regarded domesticated animals it might have been barely acceptable: as an overnight accommodation for human beings it was conspicuously lacking in
what our modern effete European societies regard as the minimum essentials for civilized living. Even the Spartans of ancient Greece would have considered it as too much of a good thing. One rickety trestle table, one bench, a dying fire and lots of hard-packed earthen floor. It fell short of being a home from home.

There were six people in the hut, three standing, one sitting, two stretched out on the lumpy floor. Petar, for once without his sister, sat on the floor, silent guitar clasped in his hands, gazing sightlessly into the fading embers. Andrea, stretched in apparently luxurious ease in a sleeping-bag, peacefully puffed at what, judging from the frequent suffering glances cast in his direction, appeared to be a more than normally obnoxious cigar. Miller, similarly reclining, was reading what appeared to be a slender volume of poetry. Reynolds and Groves, unable to sleep, stood idly by the solitary window, gazing out abstractedly into the dimly-lit compound: they turned as Saunders removed his radio transmitter from its casing and made for the door.

With some bitterness Saunders said: ‘Sleep well.’

‘Sleep well?’ Reynolds raised an eyebrow. ‘And where are you going?’

‘Radio hut across there. Message to Termoli. Mustn’t spoil your beauty sleep while I’m transmitting.’

Saunders left. Groves went and sat by the table, cradling a weary head in his hands. Reynolds
remained by the window, watched Saunders cross the compound and enter a darkened hut on the far side. Soon a light appeared in the window as Saunders lit a lamp.

Reynolds’s eyes moved in response to the sudden appearance of an oblong of light across the compound. The door to Major Broznik’s hut had opened and Mallory stood momentarily framed there, carrying what appeared to be a sheet of paper in his hand. Then the door closed and Mallory moved off in the direction of the radio hut.

Reynolds suddenly became very watchful, very still. Mallory had taken less than a dozen steps when a dark figure detached itself from the even darker shadow of a hut and confronted him. Quite automatically, Reynolds’s hand reached for the Luger at his belt, then slowly withdrew. Whatever this confrontation signified for Mallory it certainly wasn’t danger, for Maria, Reynolds knew, did not carry a gun. And unquestionably it was Maria who was now in such apparent close conversation with Mallory.

Bewildered now, Reynolds pressed his face close against the glass. For almost two minutes he stared at this astonishing spectacle of the girl who had slapped Mallory with such venom, who had lost no opportunity of displaying an animosity bordering on hatred, now talking to him not only animatedly but also clearly very amicably. So total was Reynolds’s baffled incomprehension at this inexplicable turn of events that his mind moved
into a trance-like state, a spell that was abruptly snapped when he saw Mallory put a reassuring arm around her shoulder and pat her in a way that might have been comforting or affectionate or both but which in any event clearly evoked no resentment on the part of the girl. This was still inexplicable: but the only interpretation that could be put upon it was an uncompromisingly sinister one. Reynolds whirled round and silently and urgently beckoned Groves to the window. Groves rose quickly, moved to the window and looked out, but by the time he had done so there was no longer any sign of Maria: Mallory was alone, walking across the compound towards the radio hut, the paper still in his hand. Groves glanced questioningly at Reynolds.

They were together,’ Reynolds whispered. ‘Mallory and Maria. I saw them! They were talking!’

‘What? You sure?’

‘God’s my witness. I
saw
them, man. He even had his arm around – Get away from this window – Maria’s coming.’

Without haste, so as to arouse no comment from Andrea or Miller, they turned and walked unconcernedly towards the table and sat down. Seconds later, Maria entered and, without looking at or speaking to anyone, crossed to the fire, sat by Petar and took his hand. A minute or so later Mallory entered, and sat on a palliasse beside Andrea, who removed his cigar and glanced at him in mild enquiry. Mallory casually checked
to see that he wasn’t under observation, then nodded. Andrea returned to the contemplation of his cigar.

Reynolds looked uncertainly at Groves, then said to Mallory, ‘Shouldn’t we be setting a guard, sir?’

‘A guard?’ Mallory was amused. ‘Whatever for? This is a Partisan camp. Sergeant. Friends, you know. And, as you’ve seen, they have their own excellent guard system.’

‘You never know –’

‘
I
know. Get some sleep.’

Reynolds went on doggedly: ‘Saunders is alone over there. I don’t like –’

‘He’s coding and sending a short message for me. A few minutes, that’s all.’

‘But –’

‘Shut up,’ Andrea said. ‘You heard the captain?’

Reynolds was by now thoroughly unhappy and uneasy, an unease which showed through in his instantly antagonistic irritation.

‘Shut up? Why should I shut up? I don’t take orders from you. And while we’re telling each other what to do, you might put out that damned stinking cigar.’

Miller wearily lowered his book of verse.

‘I quite agree about the damned cigar, young fellow. But do bear in mind that you are talking to a ranking colonel in the army.’

Miller reverted to his book. For a few moments
Reynolds and Groves stared open-mouthed at each other, then Reynolds stood up and looked at Andrea.

‘I’m extremely sorry, sir. I – I didn’t realize –’

Andrea waved him to silence with a magnanimous hand and resumed his communion with his cigar. The minutes passed in silence. Maria, before the fire, had her head on Petar’s shoulder, but otherwise had not moved: she appeared to be asleep. Miller shook his head in rapt admiration of what appeared to be one of the more esoteric manifestations of the poetic muse, closed his book reluctantly and slid down into his sleeping-bag. Andrea ground out his cigar and did the same. Mallory seemed to be already asleep. Groves lay down and Reynolds, leaning over the table, rested his forehead on his arms. For five minutes, perhaps longer, Reynolds remained like this, uneasily dozing off, then he lifted his head, sat up with a jerk, glanced at his watch, crossed to Mallory and shook him by the shoulder. Mallory stirred.

‘Twenty minutes,’ Reynolds said urgently. ‘Twenty minutes and Saunders isn’t back yet.’

‘All right, so it’s twenty minutes,’ Mallory said patiently. ‘He could take that long to make contact, far less transmit the message.’

‘Yes, sir. Permission to check, sir?’

Mallory nodded wearily and closed his eyes. Reynolds picked up his Schmeisser, left the hut and closed the door softly behind him. He released
the safety-catch on his gun and ran across the compound.

The light still burned in the radio hut. Reynolds tried to peer through the window but the frost of that bitter night had made it completely opaque. Reynolds moved around to the door. It was slightly ajar. He set his finger to the trigger and opened the door in the fashion in which all Commandos were trained to open doors – with a violent kick of his right foot.

There was no one in the radio hut, no one, that is, who could bring him to any harm. Slowly, Reynolds lowered his gun and walked in in a hesitant, almost dreamlike fashion, his face masked in shock.

Saunders was leaning tiredly over the transmitting table, his head resting on it at an unnatural angle, both arms dangling limply towards the ground. The hilt of a knife protruded between his shoulderblades: Reynolds noted, almost subconsciously, that there was no trace of blood: death had been instantaneous. The transmitter itself lay on the floor, a twisted and mangled mass of metal that was obviously smashed beyond repair. Tentatively, not knowing why he did so, he reached out and touched the dead man on the shoulder: Saunders seemed to stir, his cheek slid along the table and he toppled to one side, falling heavily across the battered remains of the transmitter. Reynolds stooped low over him. Grey parchment now, where a bronzed tan had been, sightless,
faded eyes uselessly guarding a mind now flown. Reynolds swore briefly, bitterly, straightened and ran from the hut.