The Sword of Fate (35 page)

Even for the sake of the Greeks themselves that was the policy
that should have been urged; because if we lost our tanks and guns on the mainland, how could we hope to defend the islands successfully afterwards? With Crete, Mytilene, Lemnos, Samos, Khios and Samothrace in our keeping, the Greeks at least stood to retain some of their country, and could have evacuated their Government, and all of their Army and leading men that we could take off, to these bases. Whereas now, because of the irresponsible chivalry of some of our idealists, they looked in a fair way to lose everything they had.

This was no case of being wise after the event, and it required no special knowledge of military education to see the course which events were bound to take. All I could hope now was that the God who so very obviously watches over our interests would once again enable us to come out of this party better than we deserved; but I was heavy-hearted as I put away the maps and began to undress.

I had hardly got into bed when the telephone rang. It was Toby and he said: “We’re having a little supper-party tonight, old boy. There’ll be about a dozen of us and it’s frightfully short notice, but I was wondering if you could come along.”

“Thanks,” I said. “I’d love to.” And next minute I was out of bed again, pulling on my clothes as quickly as I could.

It was only a little after ten so I really had ample time, and having packed my things I went along to see the manager to pay my bill to date and tell him that I had been ordered away at short notice on special duties again. Then with my service kit I took a taxi down to the docks.

As the battalion had been standing by for several days it was a bit of real luck for me that embarkation orders should reach them on the very day of my leaving prison. It saved me any complications through having to report the following day at the prisoners-of-war camp and return to duty there, which might have proved a nasty snag if Toby had telephoned the Cecil urgently while I was at my job.

Down at the docks there was considerable activity. Tanks, Bren-gun carriers, lorries, A.A. batteries, searchlight units, and the mass of paraphernalia without which a modern army cannot function in the field were trundling slowly along the streets and through the dock-gates. Such embarkations have to be kept as hush-hush as possible, for which reason they are always carried out at night, when most of the inhabitants of the ports are asleep; but there was little chance of keeping this big-scale
embarkation secret, particularly as the moon was only two days short of full and it was nearly as bright as day.

After considerable trouble I found the wharf from which the New Zealand brigade was to sail. One of the sister battalions of that to which I was attached was already engaged in loading their equipment. Soon after midnight the wharfside had been nearly cleared, and the advance parties of my battalion were able to place their markers for the approaching vehicles to drive up.

Within a few minutes I caught sight of ‘Long Willie’s’ tall figure as, accompanied by his adjutant and Toby, he arrived to supervise the embarkation. Leaving my baggage in the shadow of a shed, I walked straight up to him and saluted smartly.

“Why, hallo, Julian,” he said in his kind voice. “What are you doing here? Come to see us off and wish us luck on our travels?”

“I certainly wish you luck, sir,” I smiled. “But I’m happy to say that I’m going with you. I had to wangle things a bit, and I couldn’t get away until the last moment, but I now have the honour to report.”

“Do you speak Greek, then?” he asked.

“A certain amount, sir. Enough to get you most things that you’re likely to want. You may remember that my fiancée is a Greek.”

“Of course,” he nodded. “Well, I’m delighted to have you with us. It’ll be quite like old times, except that it may be a little more exciting. For the present you’d better just stand by in case the Arab dockers need a word of mild encouragement in their work.”

As I went back to collect my kit and park it near him, I felt a great relief. ‘Long Willie’ had taken the whole thing as perfectly natural and not asked a single question. But actually there was nothing very extraordinary in his old battalion interpreter reporting to him for duty without his receiving any official notification of it at such a busy time. Yet one never knew what unforeseen snags might arise in such a case, and I was heartily glad when, at about three o’clock in the morning, I went on board with ‘Long Willie’ and the rest of the Headquarter staff.

Toby and I managed to get a cabin together. I could no longer make myself useful by cursing or encouraging the Arab porters in their own tongue, so I went straight to bed, as I was anxious to be seen by as few people as possible before the ship sailed. When I awoke it was bright sunlight and we were already standing some distance out to sea. I had given Major Cozelli the slip.

Our ship was just a unit in a considerable convoy, and
naturally the pace of a convoy is the pace of its slowest member, so although our large, rather old-fashioned liner could probably have done eighteen knots comfortably, she rarely made more than ten. In addition, from time to time the course of the whole convoy was altered on orders from its Naval escort, so although I fretted uselessly at the irritating slowness of our voyage on account of Daphnis, it was March the 15th and we had been three days at sea before we even sighted the Greek mainland.

Except for the fact that we had to sleep and practically live in our cork life-saving jackets, from fear of our striking a mine or being torpedoed without warning, and my personal worries, the voyage was rather a pleasant one, as it was a wonderful change to get these few days of winter cruise in the Mediterranean after all those many months of sand and dust and flies and heat in Egypt.

There was never a moment when destroyers were not to be seen making great circles round the convoy and the ’planes droned overhead; but the Navy and the Air Force took such splendid care of us that during the whole three days I saw only one incident. A single ’plane—Italian, presumably, although it was much too far off for us to identify from the deck—suddenly appeared out of a patch of cloud to northward. Instantly half a dozen of our airmen were swooping towards him, and before the enemy pilot could have even had a chance to press a wireless key his reconnaissance aircraft had been shot to smithereens.

As soon as we sighted the mainland my anxieties as to at which port we were to be landed increased. Naturally the plan for the coming campaign was a closed book to us. We had no idea at all if we should be expected to hold Thrace, so as to keep Turkey’s communications with Greece open in the event of an attack by the Germans through Bulgaria, or if we should be sent to some more central position up on the Yugoslav frontier.

In either case, Salonika seemed the most likely port of disembarkation, and I wondered how the devil I was going to manage to get down to Athens from there. It was most unlikely that I should be able to get leave; yet every hour was of importance, if I was to stop Daphnis jeopardising her life before she had been caught out by Mondragora. On the other hand, in general conversation the more experienced officers on board pointed out that when a modern army is shipped from one country to another the number of vehicles is so great that even the largest port cannot comfortably accommodate them all. Unless days are to be wasted every crane in every available port in the country concerned is
needed to hoist the hundreds of tanks, Bren-gun carriers and lorries out of the holds, and that therefore whatever our final destination might be we might arrive at
any
port.

This comforted me a lot, as Piraeus, the port of Athens, has the finest harbour in Greece, so it would certainly take a large share of the traffic, and as it happened my luck was in; on the afternoon of March the 16th we docked there.

At least we anchored and lay off the port until sundown. The officers were then assembled and addressed by the Brigadier, who informed us that it was desired to maintain the greatest possible secrecy regarding the landing of Imperial Forces in Greece, as Greece was still officially at peace with Germany. Therefore the disembarkation would take place as usual at night, but in addition we were to be sent up-country in trains with drawn blinds, and in no circumstances was any officer or man to leave the dock or railway siding at Piraeus until their respective units were entrained.

For me this was a shattering blow, as Piraeus is only eight miles from Athens, and having got so near I was certainly not going to be carried away again without having seen Daphnis, and assured myself that she would immediately drop the dangerous game that she had been playing for my sake. There was only one thing for it. I must take a few hours’ French leave and risk any trouble which might come to me from my C.O. in consequence.

Having told my batman not to worry if he couldn’t find me on the train but to take good care of my baggage and try to get me a corner seat, directly we landed on the quay I slipped away from the rest of the Headquarter staff.

As I thought it likely that the guards on the dock-gates had orders not to let anyone through without a special pass, I made my way to the extremity of the enclosure and walked along the wall for some distance. The moon, which was just getting up, enabled me to see quite well, and I soon found a big coal-dump which had been stacked against the inside of the wall, by mounting which it was easy to slip over and lower myself into the street on the other side.

Walking back towards the dock-gates again I managed to pick up a taxi and half an hour later it set me down in the Kolokotroni, a broad thoroughfare in central Athens, where the offices of the Diamopholi company were situated.

It was now nearly eleven o’clock, so the offices were naturally closed, but after some little difficulty I got it out of the janitor,
who was in charge of the big block, that Monsieur Nicholas Diamopholus had a suite at the Hotel Grande Bretagne.

Jumping back into the taxi, I ordered the man to drive me there. It was not far away, only just round the corner in Constitution Square. Having paid the man off, I marched into the hotel. Neither the taxi-man, the janitor, nor the hall-porter had shown any surprise at the sight of a British officer in uniform walking about their city; only charming smiles and an obvious desire to be of every assistance, and on entering the hallway of the Grande Bretagne I saw, as I had expected, that a number of British officers were in the Greek capital already.

Naturally many arrangements had to be made, and their presence was probably considered to be no more than that of an unusually large military mission, whereas had every shipload of soldiers which was arriving been allowed to roam about the cradle of modern civilisation at will, the cat would soon have been out of the bag. In any case, I felt that the presence of one additional officer like myself for the space of an hour or two at night would not do the British cause any material damage, and my own business was of the most deadly urgency.

Upon my inquiring at the desk for Nicholas Diamopholus, the frockcoated clerk told me that he was in the hotel, and rang through to his suite. A moment later a message came back to say that I was to be taken straight up.

A page led me past the great restaurant, on the oval floor of which many pretty girls and a number of officers, the great majority of whom were Greeks, were dancing. As I went up in the lift my heart was high. Daphnis would almost certainly be living in the suite with her stepfather, even if she was working as a nurse during the daytime. The odds were a good three to one that within the next few minutes I would be holding her loveliness to me once again.

Upstairs the page led me down a long corridor. Old Nicholas was standing at the door of his suite waiting to greet me.

“Where’s Daphnis?” I asked. “I must see her and I’m terribly pressed for time.”

The old fellow regarded me sadly with his kind dark eyes. “She is not here,” he said. “She ran away from me two days after we landed.”

The disappointment was like a physical blow. “Oh God!” I muttered. “Haven’t you any idea where she is at all?”

He drew me inside. “I had a postcard from her three days ago. It only said that I was not to worry about her. It was posted in Sofia but it gave no address.”

I groaned. Sofia was now in the hands of the Germans, so even if I could have got leave there was no longer any possibility of my going there in search of her.

“Why should she run away?” the old man went on unhappily, as he led me into his sitting-room. “I cannot understand it, but when I heard you were here I thought that you might know.”

Evidently Daphnis’ stepfather could not help me, and there was no point in increasing his anxiety by telling him that she had run away in the hope of saving my neck and was now risking her own by spying for the Allies in the Bulgarian capital. He asked me a great many questions and was evidently under the impression, like his wife, that the original reason for Daphnis’ insisting upon coming to Greece as a nurse was because she had quarrelled with me. I assured him that was not so and that my own absence from Alexandria had been caused by a Service matter.

He wanted to give me supper, but I had to explain that I had come to Athens from the Piraeus without permission and must get back as soon as possible. He then insisted that I should at least drink a glass of wine, and gave me some lovely stuff, which, unfortunately, I was in no mood to appreciate. It was very rich and luscious, having something of the qualities of a heavy sherry, a Château Y’Quem and a Muscatel, all blended together. I happened to notice the label on the bottle, and it was called Daphni, so I asked if it was from some special vineyard of his own which he had called after his stepdaughter, but he told me that it came from a little village of that name just outside Athens, on the road to Eleusis.

We discussed the possibilities of tracing Daphnis, and as Bulgaria and Greece were still officially at peace, old Nicholas said that he would willingly have gone there, despite the risk of his being caught by a sudden declaration of war, if there had been any reasonable hope of tracing his stepdaughter; but the postcard which he showed me gave no clue whatever to her whereabouts,
and it was quite possible that by this time she was no longer in Sofia.