The Complete Navarone (30 page)

The five-minute journey down to the harbour wall – a journey made in soft-footed silence with Mallory hushing even the beginnings of a whisper – was quite uneventful. Not only did they see no soldiers, they saw no one at all. The inhabitants of Navarone were wisely obeying the curfew, and the streets were completely deserted. Andrea had drawn off pursuit with a vengeance. Mallory began to fear that the Germans had taken him, but just as they reached the water’s edge he heard the gunfire again, a good deal farther away this time, in the very north-east corner of the town, round the back of the fortress.

Mallory stood on the low wall above the harbour, looked at his companions, gazed out over the dark oiliness of the water. Through the heavy rain he could just distinguish, to his right and left, the vague blurs of caiques moored stern on to the wall. Beyond that he could see nothing.

‘Well, I don’t suppose we can get much wetter than we are right now,’ he observed. He turned to Louki, checked something the little man was trying to say about Andrea. ‘You sure you can find it all right in the darkness?’ ‘It’ was the commandant’s personal launch, a thirty-six-foot ten-tonner always kept moored to a buoy a hundred feet offshore. The engineer, who doubled as guard, slept aboard, Louki had said.

‘I am already there,’ Louki boasted. ‘Blindfold me as you will and I –’

‘All right, all right,’ Mallory said hastily. ‘I’ll take your word for it. Lend me your hat, will you, Casey?’ He jammed the automatic into the crown of the hat, pulled it firmly on to his head, slid gently into the water and struck out by Louki’s side.

‘The engineer,’ Louki said softly. ‘I think he will be awake, Major.’

‘I think so, too,’ Mallory said grimly. Again there came the chatter of machine-carbines, the deeper whiplash of a Mauser. ‘So will everyone else in Navarone, unless they’re deaf or dead. Drop behind as soon as we see the boat. Come when I call.’

Ten seconds, fifteen passed, then Louki touched Mallory on the arm.

‘I see it,’ Mallory whispered. The blurred silhouette was less than fifteen yards away. He approached silently, neither legs nor arms breaking water, until he saw the vague shape of a man standing on the poop, just aft of the engine-room hatchway. He was immobile, staring out in the direction of the fortress and the upper town: Mallory slowly circled round the stern of the boat and came up behind him, on the other side. Carefully he removed his hat, took out the gun, caught the low gunwale with his left hand. At the range of seven feet he knew he couldn’t possibly miss, but he couldn’t shoot the man, not then. The guard-rails were token affairs only, eighteen inches high at the most, and the splash of the man falling into the water would almost certainly alert the guards at the harbour mouth emplacements.

‘If you move I will kill you!’ Mallory said softly in German. The man stiffened. He had a carbine in his hand, Mallory saw.

‘Put the gun down. Don’t turn round.’ Again the man obeyed, and Mallory was out of the water and on to the deck, in seconds, neither eye nor automatic straying from the man’s back. He stepped softly forward, reversed the automatic, struck, caught the man before he could fall overboard and lowered him quietly to the deck. Three minutes later all the others were safely aboard.

Mallory followed the limping Brown down to the engine room, watched him as he switched on his hooded torch, looked around with a professional eye, looked at the big, gleaming, six-cylinder in-line Diesel engine.

‘This,’ said Brown reverently, ‘is an engine. What a beauty! Operates on any number of cylinders you like. I know the type, sir.’

‘I never doubted but you would. Can you start her up, Casey?’

‘Just a minute till I have a look round, sir.’ Brown had all the unhurried patience of the born engineer. Slowly, methodically, he played the spotlight round the immaculate interior of the engine-room, switched on the fuel and turned to Mallory. ‘A dual control job, sir. We can take her from up top.’

He carried out the same painstaking inspection in the wheelhouse, while Mallory waited impatiently. The rain was easing off now, not much, but sufficiently to let him see the vague outlines of the harbour entrance. He wondered for the tenth time if the guards there had been alerted against the possibility of an attempted escape by boat. It seemed unlikely – from the racket Andrea was making, the Germans would think that escape was the last thing in their minds … He leaned forward, touched Brown on the shoulder.

‘Twenty past eleven, Casey,’ he murmured. ‘If these destroyers come through early we’re apt to have a thousand tons of rock falling on our heads.’

‘Ready now, sir,’ Brown announced. He gestured at the crowded dashboard beneath the screen. ‘Nothing to it really.’

‘I’m glad you think so,’ Mallory murmured fervently. ‘Start her moving, will you? Just keep it slow and easy.’

Brown coughed apologetically. ‘We’re still moored to the buoy. And it might be a good thing, sir, if we checked on the fixed guns, searchlights, signalling lamps, life-jackets and buoys. It’s useful to know where these things are,’ he finished deprecatingly.

Mallory laughed softly, clapped him on the shoulder.

‘You’d make a great diplomat, Chief. We’ll do that.’ A landsman first and last, Mallory was none the less aware of the gulf that stretched between him and a man like Brown, made no bones about acknowledging it to himself. ‘Will you take her out, Casey?’

‘Right, sir. Would you ask Louki to come here – I think it’s steep to both sides, but there may be snags or reefs. You never know.’

Three minutes later the launch was half-way to the harbour mouth, purring along softly on two cylinders, Mallory and Miller, still clad in German uniform, standing on the deck for’ard of the wheelhouse, Louki crouched low inside the wheelhouse itself. Suddenly, about sixty yards away, a signal lamp began to flash at them, its urgent clacking quite audible in the stillness of the night.

‘Dan’l Boone Miller will now show how it’s done,’ Miller muttered. He edged closer to the machine-gun on the starboard bow. ‘With my little gun I shall …’

He broke off sharply, his voice lost in the sudden clacking from the wheelhouse behind him, the staccato off-beat chattering of a signal shutter triggered by professional fingers. Brown had handed the wheel over to Louki, was morsing back to the harbour entrance, the cold rain lancing palely through the flickering beams of the lamp. The enemy lamp had stopped but now began again.

‘My, they got a lot to say to each other,’ Miller said admiringly. ‘How long do the exchange of courtesies last, boss?’

‘I should say they are just about finished.’ Mallory moved back quickly to the wheelhouse. They were less than a hundred feet from the harbour entrance. Brown had confused the enemy, gained precious seconds, more time than Mallory had ever thought they could gain. But it couldn’t last. He touched Brown on the arm.

‘Give her everything you’ve got when the balloon goes up.’ Two seconds later he was back in position in the bows, Schmeisser ready in his hands. ‘Your big chance, Dan’l Boone. Don’t give the searchlights a chance to line up – they’ll blind you.’

Even as he spoke, the light from the signal lamp at the harbour mouth cut off abruptly and two dazzling white beams, one from either side of the harbour entrance, stabbed blindingly through the darkness, bathing the whole harbour in their savage glare – a glare that lasted for only a fleeting second of time, yielded to a contrastingly Stygian darkness as two brief bursts of machine-gun fire smashed them into uselessness. From such short range it had been almost impossible to miss.

‘Get down, everyone!’ Mallory shouted. ‘Flat on the deck!’

The echoes of the gunfire were dying away, the reverberations fading along the great sea wall of the fortress when Casey Brown cut in all six cylinders of the engine and opened the throttle wide, the surging roar of the big Diesel blotting out all other sounds in the night. Five seconds, ten seconds, they were passing through the entrance, fifteen, twenty, still not a shot fired, half a minute and they were well clear, bows lifting high out of the water, the deep-dipped stern trailing its long, seething ribbon of phosphorescent white as the engine crescendoed to its clamorous maximum power and Brown pulled the heeling craft sharply round to starboard, seeking the protection of the steep-walled cliffs.

‘A desperate battle, boss, but the better men won.’ Miller was on his feet now, clinging to a mounted gun for support as the deck canted away beneath his feet. ‘My grandchildren shall hear of this.’

‘Guards probably all up searching the town. Or maybe there
were
some poor blokes behind those searchlights. Or maybe we just took ’em all by surprise.’ Mallory shook his head. ‘Anyway you take it, we’re just plain damn lucky.’

He moved aft, into the wheelhouse. Brown was at the wheel, Louki almost crowing with delight.

‘That was magnificent, Casey,’ Mallory said sincerely. ‘A first-class job of work. Cut the engine when we come to the end of the cliffs. Our job’s done. I’m going ashore.’

‘You don’t have to, Major.’

Mallory turned. ‘What’s that?’

‘You don’t have to. I tried to tell you on the way down, but you kept telling me to be quiet.’ Louki sounded injured, turned to Casey. ‘Slow down, please. The last thing Andrea told me, Major, was that we were to come this way. Why do you think he let himself be trapped against the cliffs to the north instead of going out into the country, where he could have hidden easily?’

‘Is this true, Casey?’ Mallory asked.

‘Don’t ask me, sir. Those two – they always talk in Greek.’

‘Of course, of course.’ Mallory looked at the low cliffs close off the starboard beam, barely moving now with the engine shut right down, looked back at Louki. ‘Are you quite sure …’

He stopped in mid-sentence, jumped out through the wheelhouse door. The splash – there had been no mistaking the noise – had come from almost directly ahead. Mallory, Miller by his side, peered into the darkness, saw a dark head surfacing above the water less than twenty feet away, leaned far over with outstretched arm as the launch slid slowly by. Five seconds later Andrea stood on the deck, dripping mightily and beaming all over his great moon face. Mallory led him straight into the wheelhouse, switched on the soft light of the shaded chart-lamp.

‘By all that’s wonderful, Andrea, I never thought to see you again. How did it go?’

‘I will soon tell you,’ Andrea laughed. ‘Just after –’

‘You’ve been wounded!’ Miller interrupted. ‘Your shoulder’s kinda perforated.’ He pointed to the red stain spreading down the sea-soaked jacket.

‘Well, now, I believe I have.’ Andrea affected vast surprise. ‘Just a scratch, my friend.’

‘Oh, sure, sure, just a scratch! It would be the same if your arm had been blown off. Come on down to the cabin – this is just a kindergarten exercise for a man of my medical skill.’

‘But the captain –’

‘Will have to wait. And your story. Ol’ Medicine Man Miller permits no interference with his patients. Come on!’

‘Very well, very well,’ Andrea said docilely. He shook his head in mock resignation, followed Miller out of the cabin.

Brown opened up to full throttle again, took the launch north almost to Cape Demirci to avoid any hundred to one chance the harbour batteries might make, turned due east for a few miles then headed south into the Maidos Straits. Mallory stood by his side in the wheelhouse, gazing out over the dark, still waters. Suddenly he caught a gleam of white in the distance, touched Brown’s arm and pointed for’ard.

‘Breakers ahead, Casey, I think. Reefs perhaps?’

Casey looked in long silence, finally shook his head.

‘Bow-wave,’ he said unemotionally. ‘It’s the destroyers coming through.’

Commander Vincent Ryan, RN, Captain (Destroyers) and Commanding Officer of His Majesty’s latest S-class destroyer
Sirdar
, looked round the cramped chart-room and tugged thoughtfully at his magnificent Captain Kettle beard. A scruffier, a more villainous, a more cut and battered-looking bunch of hard cases he had never seen, he reflected, with the possible exception of a Bias Bay pirate crew he had helped round up when a very junior officer on the China Station. He looked at them more closely, tugged his beard again, thought there was more to it than mere scruffiness. He wouldn’t care to be given the task of rounding this lot up. Dangerous, highly dangerous, he mused, but impossible to say why, there was only this quietness, this relaxed watchfulness that made him feel vaguely uncomfortable. His ‘hatchet-men’, Jensen had called them: Captain Jensen picked his killers well.

‘Any of you gentlemen care to go below,’ he suggested. ‘Plenty of hot water, dry clothes – and warm bunks. We won’t be using them tonight.’

‘Thank you very much, sir.’ Mallory hesitated. ‘But we’d like to see this through.’

‘Right then, the bridge it is,’ Ryan said cheerfully. The
Sirdar
was beginning to pick up speed again, the deck throbbing beneath their feet. ‘It is at your own risk, of course.’

‘We lead charmed lives,’ Miller drawled. ‘Nothin’ ever happens to us.’

The rain had stopped and they could see the cold twinkling of stars through broadening rifts in the clouds. Mallory looked around him, could see Maidos broad off the port bow and the great bulk of Navarone slipping by to starboard. Aft, about a cable length away, he could just distinguish two other ships, high-curving bow-waves piled whitely against tenebrious silhouettes. Mallory turned to the captain.

‘No transports, sir?’

‘No transports.’ Ryan felt a vague mixture of pleasure and embarrassment that this man should call him ‘sir’. ‘Destroyers only. This is going to be a smash-and-grab job. No time for dawdlers tonight – and we’re behind schedule already.’

‘How long to clear the beaches?’

‘Half an hour.’

‘What! Twelve hundred men?’ Mallory was incredulous.

‘More.’ Ryan sighed. ‘Half the ruddy inhabitants want to come with us, too. We could still do it in half an hour, but we’ll probably take a bit longer. We’ll embark all the mobile equipment we can.’

Mallory nodded, let his eye travel along the slender outlines of the
Sirdar
. ‘Where are you going to put ’em all, sir.’

‘A fair question,’ Ryan admitted. ‘Five p.m. on the London Underground will be nothing compared to this little lot. But we’ll pack them in somehow.’

Mallory nodded again and looked across the dark waters at Navarone. Two minutes, now, three at the most, and the fortress would open behind that headland. He felt a hand touch his arm, half-turned and smiled down at the sad-eyed little Greek by his side.

‘Not long now, Louki,’ he said quietly.

‘The people, Major,’ he murmured. ‘The people in the town. Will they be all right?’

‘They’ll be all right. Dusty says the roof of the cave will go straight up. Most of the stuff will fall into the harbour.’

‘Yes, but the boats –?’

‘Will you stop worrying! There’s nobody aboard them – you know they have to leave at curfew time.’ He looked round as someone touched his arm.

‘Captain Mallory, this is Lieutenant Beeston, my gunnery officer.’ There was a slight coolness in Ryan’s voice that made Mallory think that he wasn’t overfond of his gunnery officer. ‘Lieutenant Beeston is worried.’

‘I
am
worried!’ The tone was cold, aloof, with an indefinable hint of condescension. ‘I understand that you have advised the captain not to offer any resistance?’

‘You sound like a BBC communiqué,’ Mallory said shortly. ‘But you’re right, I did say that. You couldn’t locate the guns except by searchlight and that would be fatal. Similarly with gunfire.’

‘I’m afraid I don’t understand.’ One could almost see the lift of the eyebrows in the darkness.

‘You’d give away your position,’ Mallory said patiently. ‘They’d nail you first time. Give ’em two minutes and they’d nail you anyway. I have good reason to believe that the accuracy of their gunners is quite fantastic’

‘So has the Navy,’ Ryan interjected quietly. ‘Their third shell got the
Sybaris
’s B magazine.’

‘Have you got any idea why this should be, Captain Mallory?’ Beeston was quite unconvinced.

‘Radar-controlled guns,’ Mallory said briefly. ‘They have two huge scanners atop the fortress.’

‘The
Sirdar
had radar installed last month,’ Beeston said stiffly. ‘I imagine we could register some hits ourselves if –’

‘You could hardly miss.’ Miller drawled out the words, the tone dry and provocative. ‘It’s a helluva big island, Mac.’

‘Who – who are you?’ Beeston was rattled. ‘What the devil do you mean?’

‘Corporal Miller.’ The American was unperturbed. ‘Must be a very selective instrument, Lootenant, that can pick out a cave in a hundred square miles of rock.’

There was a moment’s silence, then Beeston muttered something and turned away.

‘You’ve hurt Guns’s feelings, Corporal,’ Ryan murmured. ‘He’s very keen to have a go – but we’ll hold our fire … How long till we clear that point, Captain?’

‘I’m not sure.’ He turned. ‘What do you say, Casey?’

‘A minute, sir. No more.’

Ryan nodded, said nothing. There was a silence on the bridge, a silence only intensified by the sibilant rushing of the waters, the weird, lonesome pinging of the Asdic. Above, the sky was steadily clearing, and the moon, palely luminous, was struggling to appear through a patch of thinning cloud. Nobody spoke, nobody moved. Mallory was conscious of the great bulk of Andrea beside him, of Miller, Brown and Louki behind. Born in the heart of the country, brought up on the foothills of the Southern Alps, Mallory knew himself as a landsman first and last, an alien to the sea and ships: but he had never felt so much at home in his life, never really known till now what it was to belong. He was more than happy, Mallory thought vaguely to himself, he was content. Andrea and his new friends and the impossible well done – how could a man be but content? They weren’t all going home, Andy Stevens wasn’t coming with them, but strangely he could feel no sorrow, only a gentle melancholy … Almost as if he had divined what Mallory was thinking, Andrea leaned towards him, towering over him in the darkness.

‘He should be here,’ he murmured. ‘Andy Stevens should be here. That is what you are thinking, is it not?’

Mallory nodded and smiled, and said nothing.

‘It doesn’t really matter, does it, my Keith?’ No anxiety, no questioning, just a statement of fact. ‘It doesn’t really matter.’

‘It doesn’t matter at all.’

Even as he spoke, he looked up quickly. A light, a bright orange flame had lanced out from the sheering wall of the fortress; they had rounded the headland and he hadn’t even noticed it. There was a whistling roar – Mallory thought incongruously of an express train emerging from a tunnel – directly overhead, and the great shell had crashed into the sea just beyond them. Mallory compressed his lips, unconsciously tightened his clenched fists. It was easy now to see how the
Sybaris
had died.

He could hear the gunnery officer saying something to the captain, but the words failed to register. They were looking at him and he at them and he did not see them. His mind was strangely detached. Another shell, would that be next? Or would the roar of the gunfire of that first shell come echoing across the sea? Or perhaps … Once again, he was back in that dark magazine entombed in the rocks, only now he could see men down there, doomed, unknowing men, could see the overhead pulleys swinging the great shells and cartridges towards the well of the lift, could see the shell hoist ascending slowly, the bared, waiting wires less than half an inch apart, the shining, spring-loaded wheel running smoothly down the gleaming rail, the gentle bump as the hoist …

A white pillar of flame streaked up hundreds of feet into the night sky as the tremendous detonation tore the heart out of the great fortress of Navarone. No after-fire of any kind, no dark, billowing clouds of smoke, only that one blinding white column that lit up the entire town for a single instant of time, reached up incredibly till it touched the clouds, vanished as if it had never been. And then, by and by, came the shock waves, the solitary thunderclap of the explosion, staggering even at that distance, and finally the deep-throated rumbling as thousands of tons of rock toppled majestically into the harbour – thousands of tons of rock and the two great guns of Navarone.

The rumbling was still in their ears, the echoes fading away far out across the Aegean, when the clouds parted and the moon broke through, a full moon silvering the darkly-rippling waters to starboard, shining iridescently through the spun phosphorescence of the
Sirdar
’s boiling wake. And dead ahead, bathed in the white moonlight, mysterious, remote, the island of Kheros lay sleeping on the surface of the sea.