Force 10 from Navarone (6 page)

‘All war is a pity.’

Droshny nodded. ‘Come. Our headquarters is close by.’

No more was said. Droshny, leading, moved at once into the shelter of the forest. Mallory, behind him, was intrigued by the footprints, clearly visible in the now bright moonlight, left by Droshny in the deep snow. They were, thought Mallory, most peculiar. Each sole left three V-shaped marks, the heel one: the right-hand side of the leading V on the right sole had a clearly defined break in it. Unconsciously, Mallory filed away this little oddity in his mind. There was no reason why he should have done so other than that the Mallorys of this world always observe and record the unusual. It helps them to stay alive.

The slope steepened, the snow deepened and the pale moonlight filtered thinly down through the spreading, snow-laden branches of the pines. The light wind was from the east: the cold was intense. For almost ten minutes no voice was heard, then Droshny’s came, softly but clearly and imperative in its staccato urgency.

‘Be still.’ He pointed dramatically upward. ‘Be still! Listen!’

They stopped, looked upward and listened intently. At least, Mallory and his men looked upward and listened intently, but the Yugoslavs
had other things on their minds: swiftly, efficiently and simultaneously, without either spoken or gestured command being given, they rammed the muzzles of their machine-guns and rifles into the sides and backs of the six parachutists with a force and uncompromising authority that rendered any accompanying orders quite superfluous.

The six men reacted as might have been expected. Reynolds, Groves and Saunders, who were rather less accustomed to the vicissitudes of fate than their three older companions, registered a very similar combination of startled anger and open-mouthed astonishment. Mallory looked thoughtful. Miller lifted a quizzical eyebrow. Andrea, predictably, registered nothing at all: he was too busy exhibiting his usual reaction to physical violence.

His right hand, which he had instantly lifted halfway to his shoulder in an apparent token of surrender, clamped down on the barrel of the rifle of the guard to his right, forcing it away from him, while his left elbow jabbed viciously into the solar plexus of the guard to his left, who gasped in pain and staggered back a couple of paces. Andrea, with both hands now on the rifle of the other guard, wrenched it effortlessly free, lifted it high and brought the barrel down in one continuous blur of movement. The guard collapsed as if a bridge had fallen on him. The winded guard to the left, still bent and whooping in agony, was trying to line up his rifle when the butt of Andrea’s rifle struck him in the face: he
made a brief coughing sound and fell senseless to the forest floor.

It took all of the three seconds that this action had lasted for the Yugoslavs to release themselves from their momentary thrall of incredulity. Half-a-dozen soldiers flung themselves on Andrea, bearing him to the ground. In the furious, rolling struggle that followed, Andrea laid about him in his usual willing fashion, but when one of the Yugoslavs started pounding him on the head with the barrel of a pistol, Andrea opted for discretion and lay still. With two guns in his back and four hands on either arm Andrea was dragged to his feet: two of his captors already looked very much the worse for wear.

Droshny, his eyes bleak and bitter, came up to Andrea, unsheathed one of his knives and thrust its point against Andrea’s throat with a force savage enough to break the skin and draw blood that trickled on to the gleaming blade. For a moment it seemed that Droshny would push the knife home to the hilt, then his eyes moved sideways and downwards to look at the two huddled men lying in the snow. He nodded to the nearest man.

‘How are they?’

A young Yugoslav dropped to his knees, looked first at the man who had been struck by the rifle-barrel, touched his head briefly, examined the second man, then stood up. In the filtered moonlight, his face was unnaturally pale.

‘Josef is dead. I think his neck is broken. And his
brother – he’s breathing – but his jaw seems to be –’ The voice trailed away uncertainly.

Droshny transferred his gaze back to Andrea. His lips drew back, he smiled the way a wolf smiles and leaned a little harder on the knife.

‘I should
kill you now. I
will
kill you later.’ He sheathed his knife, held up his clawed hands in front of Andrea’s face, and shouted: ‘Personally. With those hands.’

‘With those hands.’ Slowly, meaningly, Andrea examined the four pairs of hands pinioning his arms, then looked contemptuously at Droshny. He said: ‘Your courage terrifies me.’

There was a brief and unbelieving silence. The three young sergeants stared at the tableau before them with faces reflecting various degrees of consternation and incredulity. Mallory and Miller looked on impassively. For a moment or two, Droshny looked as if he hadn’t heard aright, then his face twisted in savage anger as he struck Andrea backhanded across the face. Immediately a trickle of blood appeared at the right-hand corner of Andrea’s mouth but Andrea himself remained unmoving, his face without expression.

Droshny’s eyes narrowed. Andrea smiled again, briefly. Droshny struck again, this time with the back of the other hand. The effect was as before, with the exception that this time the trickle of blood came from the left-hand corner of the mouth. Andrea smiled again but to look into his eyes was to look into an open grave. Droshny
wheeled and walked away, then halted as he approached Mallory.

‘You
are
the leader of those men, Captain Mallory?’

‘I am.’

‘You’re a very –
silent
leader, Captain?’

‘What am I to say to a man who turns his guns on his friends and allies?’ Mallory looked at him dispassionately. ‘I’ll talk to your commanding officer, not to a madman.’

Droshny’s face darkened. He stepped forward, his arm lifted to strike. Very quickly, but so smoothly and calmly that the movement seemed unhurried, and totally ignoring the two rifle-muzzles pressing into his side, Mallory lifted his Luger and pointed it at Droshny’s face. The click of the Luger safety-catch being released came like a hammer-blow in the suddenly unnatural intensity of silence.

And unnatural intensity of silence there was. Except for one little movement, so slow as to be almost imperceptible, both Partisans and parachutists had frozen into a tableau that would have done credit to the frieze on an Ionic temple. The three sergeants, like most of the Partisans, registered astonished incredulity. The two men guarding Mallory looked at Droshny with questioning eyes. Droshny looked at Mallory as if he were mad. Andrea wasn’t looking at anyone, while Miller wore that look of world-weary detachment which only he could achieve. But it was Miller who made that one little movement, a movement that now came to an end
with his thumb resting on his Schmeisser’s safety-release. After a moment or two he removed his thumb: there would come a time for Schmeissers, but this wasn’t it.

Droshny lowered his hand in a curious slow-motion gesture and took two paces backwards. His face was still dark with anger, the dark eyes cruel and unforgiving, but he had himself well in hand. He said: ‘Don’t you know we have to take precautions? Till we are satisfied with your identity?’

‘How should I know that?’ Mallory nodded at Andrea. ‘Next time you tell your men to take precautions with my friend here, you might warn them to stand a little farther back. He reacted the only way he knows how. And I know why.’

‘You can explain later. Hand over your guns.’

‘No.’ Mallory returned the Luger to its holster.

‘Are you mad? I can take them from you.’

‘That’s so,’ Mallory said reasonably. ‘But you’d have to kill us first, wouldn’t you? I don’t think you’d remain a captain very long, my friend.’

Speculation replaced anger in Droshny’s eyes. He gave a sharp order in Serbo-Croat and again his soldiers levelled their guns at Mallory and his five companions. But they made no attempt to remove the prisoners’ guns. Droshny turned, gestured and started moving up the steeply-sloping forest floor again. Droshny wasn’t, Mallory reflected, a man likely to be given to taking too many chances.

For twenty minutes they scrambled awkwardly up the slippery hillside. A voice called out from the darkness ahead and Droshny answered without breaking step. They passed by two sentries armed with machine-carbines and, within a minute, were in Droshny’s HQ.

It was a moderately-sized military encampment – if a wide circle of rough-hewn adze-cut cabins could be called an encampment – set in one of those very deep hollows in the forest floor that Mallory was to find so characteristic of the Bosnian area. From the base of this hollow grew two concentric rings of pines far taller and more massive than anything to be found in western Europe, massive pines whose massive branches interlocked eighty to a hundred feet above the ground, forming a snow-shrouded canopy of such impenetrable density that there wasn’t even a dusting of snow on the hard-packed earth of the camp compound: by the same token, the same canopy also effectively prevented any upward escape of light: there was no attempt at any black-out in several illuminated cabin windows and there were even some oil lamps suspended on outside hooks to illuminate the compound itself. Droshny stopped and said to Mallory:

‘You come with me. The rest of you stay here.’

He led Mallory towards the door of the largest hut in the compound. Andrea, unbidden, slipped off his pack and sat on it, and the others, after various degrees of hesitation, did the same. Their
guards looked them over uncertainly, then withdrew to form a ragged but watchful semi-circle. Reynolds turned to Andrea, the expression on his face registering a complete absence of admiration and goodwill.

‘You’re crazy.’ Reynolds’s voice came in a low, furious whisper. ‘Crazy as a loon. You could have got yourself killed. You could have got all of us killed. What are you, shell-shocked or something?’

Andrea did not reply. He lit one of his obnoxious cigars and regarded Reynolds with mild speculation or as near an approach to mildness as it was possible for him to achieve.

‘Crazy isn’t half the word for it.’ Groves, if anything, was even more heated than Reynolds. ‘Or didn’t you
know
that was a Partisan you killed? Don’t you
know
what that means? Don’t you
know
people like that must always take precautions?’

Whether he knew or not, Andrea wasn’t saying. He puffed at his cigar and transferred his peaceable gaze from Reynolds to Groves.

Miller said soothingly: ‘Now, now. Don’t be like that. Maybe Andrea
was
a mite hasty but –’

‘God help us all,’ Reynolds said fervently. He looked at his fellow-sergeants in despair. ‘A thousand miles from home and help and saddled with a trigger-happy bunch of has-beens.’ He turned back to Miller and mimicked: ‘“Don’t be like that.”‘

Miller assumed his wounded expression and looked away.

The room was large and bare and comfortless. The only concession to comfort was a pine fire crackling in a rough hearth-place. The only furniture consisted of a cracked deal table, two chairs and a bench.

Those things Mallory noted only subconsciously. He didn’t even register when he heard Droshny say: ‘Captain Mallory. This is my commanding officer.’ He seemed to be too busy staring at the man seated behind the table.

The man was short, stocky and in his mid-thirties. The deep lines around eyes and mouth could have been caused by weather or humour or both: just at that moment he was smiling slightly. He was dressed in the uniform of a captain in the German Army and wore an Iron Cross at his throat.

The German captain leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. He had the air of a man enjoying the passing moment.

‘Hauptmann Neufeld, Captain Mallory.’ He looked at the places on Mallory’s uniform where the missing insignia should have been. ‘Or so I assume. You are surprised to see me?’

‘I am
delighted
to meet you, Hauptmann Neufeld.’ Mallory’s astonishment had given way to the beginnings of a long, slow smile and now he sighed in deep relief. ‘You just can’t imagine
how
delighted.’ Still smiling, he turned to Droshny, and at once the smile gave way to an expression of consternation. ‘But who
are
you? Who is this man, Hauptmann Neufeld? Who in the name of God are those men out there? They must be – they must be -’

Droshny interrupted heavily: ‘One of his men killed one of my men tonight.’

‘What!’ Neufeld, the smile now in turn vanishing
from his face, stood abruptly: the backs of his legs sent his chair crashing to the floor. Mallory ignored him, looked again at Droshny.

‘Who are you?
For God’s sake, tell me!’

Droshny said slowly: ‘They call us Cetniks.’

‘Cetniks? Cetniks? What on earth are Cetniks?’

‘You will forgive me, Captain, if I smile in weary disbelief.’ Neufeld was back on balance again, and his face had assumed a curiously wary impassivity, an expression in which only the eyes were alive: things, Mallory reflected, unpleasant things could happen to people misguided enough to underrate Hauptmann Neufeld. ‘You? The leader of a special mission to this country and you haven’t been well enough briefed to know that the Cetniks are our Yugoslav allies?’

‘Allies? Ah!’ Mallory’s face cleared in understanding. ‘Traitors? Yugoslav Quislings? Is that it?’

A subterranean rumble came from Droshny’s throat and he moved towards Mallory, his right hand closing round the haft of a knife. Neufeld halted him with a sharp word of command and a brief downward-chopping motion of his hand.

‘And what do you mean by a special mission?’ Mallory demanded. He looked at each man in turn and smiled in wry understanding. ‘Oh, we’re special mission all right, but not in the way you think. At least, not in the way I think you think.’

‘No?’ Neufeld’s eyebrow-raising technique, Mallory reflected, was almost on a par with Miller’s. ‘Then why do you think we were expecting you?’

‘God only knows,’ Mallory said frankly. ‘We thought the Partisans were. That’s why Droshny’s man was killed, I’m afraid.’

‘That’s why Droshny’s man –’ Neufeld regarded Mallory with his warily impassive eyes, picked up his chair and sat down thoughtfully. ‘I think, perhaps, you had better explain yourself.’

As befitted a man who had adventured far and wide in the West End of London, Miller was in the habit of using a napkin when at meals, and he was using one now, tucked into the top of his tunic, as he sat on his rucksack in the compound of Neufeld’s camp and fastidiously consumed some indeterminate goulash from a mess-tin. The three sergeants, seated nearby, briefly observed this spectacle with open disbelief, then resumed a low-voiced conversation. Andrea, puffing the inevitable nostril-wrinkling cigar and totally ignoring half-a-dozen watchful and understandably apprehensive guards, strolled unconcernedly about the compound, poisoning the air wherever he went. Clearly through the frozen night air came the distant sound of someone singing a low-voiced accompaniment to what appeared to be guitar music. As Andrea completed his circuit of the compound, Miller looked up and nodded in the direction of the music.

‘Who’s the soloist?’

Andrea shrugged. ‘Radio, maybe.’

‘They want to buy a new radio. My trained ear –’

‘Listen.’ Reynolds’s interrupting whisper was tense and urgent. ‘We’ve been talking.’

Miller performed some fancy work with his napkin and said kindly: ‘Don’t. Think of the grieving mothers and sweethearts you’d leave behind you.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘About making a break for it is what I mean,’ Miller said. ‘Some other time, perhaps?’

‘Why not now?’ Groves was belligerent. ‘They’re off guard –’

‘Are they now.’ Miller sighed. ‘So young, so young. Take another look. You don’t think Andrea
likes
exercise, do you?’

The three sergeants took another look, furtively, surreptitiously, then glanced interrogatively at Andrea.

‘Five dark windows,’ Andrea said. ‘Behind them, five dark men. With five dark machine-guns.’

Reynolds nodded and looked away.

‘Well, now.’ Neufeld, Mallory noted, had a great propensity for steepling his fingers: Mallory had once known a hanging judge with exactly the same propensity. This
is
a most remarkably odd story you have to tell us, my dear Captain Mallory.’

‘It is,’ Mallory agreed. ‘It would have to be, wouldn’t it, to account for the remarkably odd position in which we find ourselves at this moment.’

‘A point, a point.’ Slowly, deliberately, Neufeld ticked off other points on his fingers. ‘You have for
some months, you claim, been running a penicillin and drug-running ring in the south of Italy. As an Allied liaison officer you found no difficulty in obtaining supplies from American Army and Air Force bases.’

‘We found a little difficulty towards the end,’ Mallory admitted.

‘I’m coming to that. Those supplies, you also claim, were funnelled through to the Wehrmacht.’

‘I wish you wouldn’t keep using the word “claim” in that tone of voice,’ Mallory said irritably. ‘Check with Field-Marshal Kesselring’s Chief of Military Intelligence in Padua.’

‘With pleasure.’ Neufeld picked up a phone, spoke briefly in German and replaced the receiver.

Mallory said in surprise: ‘You have a direct line to the outside world? From
this
place?’

‘I have a direct line to a hut fifty yards away where we have a very powerful radio transmitter. So. You further claim that you were caught, court – martialled and were awaiting the confirmation of your death sentence. Right?’

‘If your espionage system in Italy is all we hear it is, you’ll know about it tomorrow,’ Mallory said drily.

‘Quite, quite. You then broke free, killed your guards and overheard agents in the briefing room being briefed on a mission to Bosnia.’ He did some more finger-steepling. ‘You may be telling the truth at that. What did you say their mission was?’

‘I didn’t say. I didn’t really pay attention. It had something to do with locating missing British mission leaders and trying to break your espionage set-up. I’m not sure. We had more important things to think about.’

‘I’m sure you had,’ Neufeld said distastefully. ‘Such as your skins. What happened to your epaulettes, Captain? The medal ribbons? The buttons?’

‘You’ve obviously never attended a British court-martial, Hauptmann Neufeld.’

Neufeld said mildly: ‘You could have ripped them off yourself.’

‘And then, I suppose, emptied three-quarters of the fuel from the tanks before we stole the plane?’

‘Your tanks were only a quarter full?’ Mallory nodded. ‘And your plane crashed without catching fire?’

‘We didn’t mean to crash,’ Mallory said in a weary patience. ‘We meant to land. But we were out of fuel – and, as we know now, at the wrong place.’

Neufeld said absently: ‘Whenever the Partisans put up landing flares we try a few ourselves –
and
we knew that you – or someone – were coming. No petrol, eh?’ Again Neufeld spoke briefly on the telephone, then turned back to Mallory. ‘All very satisfactory – if true. There just remains to explain the death of Captain Droshny’s man here.’

‘I’m sorry about that. It was a ghastly blunder.
But surely you can understand. The last thing we wanted was to land among you, to make direct contact with you. We’ve heard what happens to British parachutists dropping over German territory.’

Neufeld steepled his fingers again. ‘There is a state of war. Proceed.’

‘Our intention was to land in Partisan territory, slip across the lines and give ourselves up. When Droshny turned his guns on us we thought the Partisans were on to us, that they had been notified that we’d stolen the plane. And that could mean only one thing for us.’

‘Wait outside. Captain Droshny and I will join you in a moment.’

Mallory left. Andrea, Miller and the three sergeants were sitting patiently on their rucksacks. From the distance there still came the sound of distant music. For a moment Mallory cocked his head to listen to it, then walked across to join the others. Miller patted his lips delicately with his napkin and looked up at Mallory.

‘Had a cosy chat?’

‘I spun him a yarn. The one we talked about in the plane.’ He looked at the three sergeants. ‘Any of you speak German?’

All three shook their heads.

‘Fine. Forget you speak English too. If you’re questioned you know nothing.’

‘If I’m not questioned,’ Reynolds said bitterly, ‘I still don’t know anything.’

‘All the better,’ Mallory said encouragingly. ‘Then you can never tell anything, can you?’

He broke off and turned round as Neufeld and Droshny appeared in the doorway. Neufeld advanced and said: ‘While we’re waiting for some confirmation, a little food and wine, perhaps.’ As Mallory had done, he cocked his head and listened to the singing. ‘But first of all, you must meet our minstrel boy.’

‘We’ll settle for just the food and wine,’ Andrea said.

‘Your priorities are wrong. You’ll see. Come.’

The dining-hall, if it could be dignified by such a name, was about forty yards away. Neufeld opened the door to reveal a crude and makeshift hut with two rickety trestle tables and four benches set on the earthen floor. At the far end of the room the inevitable pine fire burnt in the inevitable stone hearth-place. Close to the fire, at the end of the farther table, three men – obviously, from their high-collared coats and guns propped by their sides, some kind of temporarily off-duty guards – were drinking coffee and listening to the quiet singing coming from a figure seated on the ground by the fire.

The singer was dressed in a tattered anorak type jacket, an even more incredibly tattered pair of trousers and a pair of knee boots that gaped open at almost every possible seam. There was little to be seen of his face other than a mass of dark hair and a large pair of rimmed dark spectacles.

Beside him, apparently asleep with her head on his shoulder, sat a girl. She was clad in a high-collared British Army greatcoat in an advanced state of dilapidation, so long that it completely covered her tucked-in legs. The uncombed platinum hair spread over her shoulders would have done justice to any Scandinavian, but the broad cheekbones, dark eyebrows and long dark lashes lowered over very pale cheeks were unmistakably Slavonic.

Neufeld advanced across the room and stopped by the fireside. He bent over the singer and said: ‘Petar, I want you to meet some friends.’

Petar lowered his guitar, looked up, then turned and touched the girl on the arm. Instantly, the girl’s head lifted and her eyes, great dark sooty eyes, opened wide. She had the look, almost, of a hunted animal. She glanced around her, almost wildly, then jumped quickly to her feet, dwarfed by the greatcoat which reached almost to her ankles, then reached down to help the guitarist to his feet. As he did so, he stumbled: he was obviously blind.

‘This is Maria,’ Neufeld said. ‘Maria, this is Captain Mallory.’

‘Captain Mallory.’ Her voice was soft and a little husky: she spoke in almost accentless English. ‘You are English, Captain Mallory?’

It was hardly, Mallory thought, the time or the place for proclaiming his New Zealand ancestry. He smiled. ‘Well, sort of.’

Maria smiled in turn. ‘I’ve always wanted to meet an Englishman.’ She stepped forward towards Mallory’s outstretched hand, brushed it aside and struck him, open-handed and with all her strength, across the face.

‘Maria!’ Neufeld stared at her. ‘He’s on our side.’

‘An Englishman
and
a traitor!’ She lifted her hand again but the swinging arm was suddenly arrested in Andrea’s grip. She struggled briefly, futilely, then subsided, dark eyes glowing in an angry face. Andrea lifted his free hand and rubbed his own cheek in fond recollection.

He said admiringly: ‘By heavens, she reminds me of my own Maria,’ then grinned at Mallory. ‘Very handy with their hands, those Yugoslavs.’

Mallory rubbed his cheek ruefully with his hand and turned to Neufeld. ‘Perhaps Petar – that’s his name –’

‘No.’ Neufeld shook his head definitely. ‘Later. Let’s eat now.’ He led the way across to the table at the far end of the room, gestured the others to seats, sat down himself and went on: ‘I’m sorry. That was my fault. I should have known better.’

Miller said delicately: ‘Is she – um – all right?’

‘A wild animal, you think?’

‘She’d make a rather dangerous pet, wouldn’t you say?’

‘She’d a graduate of the University of Belgrade. Languages. With honours, I’m told. Some time after graduation she returned to her home in the
Bosnian mountains. She found her parents and two small brothers butchered. She – well, she’s been like this ever since.’