The Complete Navarone (105 page)

‘There’ll be a guard –’

‘Out. There’s no safety lock.’

Andrea heard real urgency in his voice. He did not know what Miller was talking about. But he had worked with Miller long enough to trust his instincts.

Miller was right. The door slid open. Andrea and Miller stepped on to the threshold, blinking in the sudden light.

The eight
Wehrmacht
soldiers outside raised their Schmeissers to belly height.
‘Hände hoch,’
said the officer in charge.
‘Ausweis, bitte.’

‘For Christ’s sake,’ said Miller, in his excellent German. ‘It’s one or the other.’

‘Hände hoch,’
said the officer. He had an efficient look that Miller disliked intensely. The lift was in a sort of lobby, shielded by concrete walls from whatever took place beyond. Andrea and Miller separated, standing one on either side of the door. The officer started rummaging in Miller’s pockets. It was evident to Miller, with four Schmeissers trained upon him, that he and Andrea were in big trouble. But then again, the only thing that really amazed him was that they had got this far.

Andrea had a look of great stupidity on his face. He rolled his eyes towards the empty door of the lift shaft, and gave Miller a wink cunningly judged to be both conspiratorial and obvious. ‘You bloody idiot,’ said Miller, with venom. ‘They’ve had it now.’

The German officer frowned. He said, ‘Cover me,’ to his men. Four of them went to the lift door, and peered down the shaft.

‘Nobody,’ said the officer.

Miller glanced at his watch. ‘Now, boys!’ he said.

From the lift shaft there came the sound of a large, hollow boom, followed by a twang of breaking cable, screams, and a crash. The men at the door were blown backwards by a blast of hot gas. The men covering Andrea and Miller clapped their hands to their scalded eyes. One of them fell into Andrea, who heaved him down the shaft.

Miller felt quietly proud. It was not everyone, he considered, who would, under the kind of pressure he and Andrea had suffered on the lift roof, have noticed that it was a device with neither a safety wire nor a shaft brake. Nor would it have been just anybody who would have taken the time to wrap half a pound of plastique round the cable, with a five-minute time pencil.

Miller flattered himself that it had all gone rather well.

But he did not waste time feeling smug. He pulled a fire extinguisher out of its clips, smashed the button in, and started spraying the men staggering about by the lift gate.
‘Hilfe
!’ he yelled.
‘Feuer
!’

When the first reinforcements came round the corner, they found a huge
SS
man and a lanky engineer in a cloud of evil-smelling smoke, dousing the fuming lift shaft and half-a-dozen smouldering soldiers with foam. The reinforcements started yelling as only German reinforcements can yell. More fire extinguishers started going off. And nobody paid any attention when the
SS
man hefted his pack and vanished into the workshops, accompanied by the engineer.

Herr Doktor Doktor Professor
Gunther Helm was a neat man. His brown overall was sharply pressed, his black shoes polished to a mirror-like sheen, and his dark, narrow moustache trimmed with mathematical exactness below his long, mobile nose. Helm was a specialist in inertial guidance systems. It had been bad enough to be removed from his comfortably ancient rooms above the river at Heidelberg University to a shed on a Baltic sand-flat at Peenemunde. This place, this hideous warren of black rock and bare cable and improvised factory space, was unpleasant. Worse, it was untidy.

Boots were crashing in the tunnel ahead. They belonged (Helm saw, as they rounded the corner) to two
SS
men. To two of the untidiest
SS
men he had ever seen. For one thing, neither of them seemed to have shaved for at least twenty-four hours. For another they were filthy dirty, smeared with white clay and blood, and unless he was gravely mistaken, wearing non-regulation boots. In addition, one of them had a moustache not unlike his own, but (
Herr Doktor Doktor Professor
Helm was compelled in all frankness to admit) considerably blonder and more lustrous. They had a wild look, as if they had been outdoors. They took up more room than seemed necessary. Frankly, Helm found them intimidating.

‘Where’s the hospital?’ said the one without the moustache.

‘The hospital,’ said Helm, flustered. ‘You proceed down this corridor. You will see three fire extinguishers on the wall, then a steel staircase. Ignore this. Proceed until you see a sign saying
Ausgang
– no, I am wrong;
Eintritt
, it says –’

‘What level?’ said the
SS
man, who was Mallory.

Helm was notoriously a hard man to stop, but there was enough violence in the voice to stop him. ‘Third level,’ said Helm, and found himself flung back against the wall by the breeze of their passing. Breathing heavily, he returned to his desk, picked up his slide rule, and re-entered the calm, ordered world of numbers. Somewhere at the periphery of his attention, he heard the klaxons going again. The klaxons were always going in the factory. It was part of the general untidiness. Since there was no way of controlling it, it was in the view of
Herr Doktor Doktor Professor
Helm best ignored.

He therefore ignored it.

The klaxons started as Mallory and Carstairs clattered down a steep set of spiral stairs. There was the distant crash of steel doors slamming, the bang of running feet. A squad of men ran up the stairs. Mallory braced himself. The squad ran past. Mallory started running again, full-pelt, down the endless latticed-steel corkscrew of the stairs. Endless stairs, in a vertical tube through the solid rock –

Carstairs was right behind Mallory now. Uniform or no uniform, thought Mallory, it was a nasty naked feeling to be inside this hollow mountain, knowing that one look at your papers –

Something hit him in the small of the back. A boot, he had time to think: whose boot?

Then Mallory was down, off balance, diving forwards, his shoulder driving into the sharp steel edge of the step, steel helmet (thank God for the helmet) ringing like a gong against the stair treads. Mallory bunched up and rolled, the way he had been taught to roll in his parachute training, tucking in his hands, protecting his fingers and his elbows and knees from the hammer of acute-edged metal. He went down twenty steps before he hit the wall. He lay there, ears ringing, winded. Carstairs ran past. Carstairs pushed me, he realized. Carstairs wanted time on his own. What for? To find the survivor of the shipwreck. Mallory remembered the grenade, pin out, above the ambulance in the gorge. Not to debrief the survivor. To do something more final than that …

A couple of
Wehrmacht
privates rattled down the stairs. One of them aimed a kick at his
SS
ribs. It hurt. But Mallory grinned. Dissension in the enemy camp was truly a marvellous thing.

Dissension in his own was a different matter. He spat blood, and hurried stiffly down the steps. Three minutes later, he came to a door. On the rock above the door was stencilled a broad black number three. Mallory went through it.

He was at the opposite end of the long, steel-floored corridor from the place where Andrea and Miller had taken the lift. ‘Papers!’ screamed a voice. It belonged to a
Wehrmacht Leutnant
, white in the face and greasy with sweat. Behind him, at the far end of the corridor where the lift doors had once stood, there was a throng of men, noise and smoke and shouting.

‘Papers!’ screamed the
Leutnant
, again.

Mallory gazed upon the man with freezing eyes. ‘There are wounded men down there,’ he said. ‘They need you.’ Then he walked straight through him. The
Leutnant
reeled back into the wall. His hand went to his holster flap. Mallory allowed his own hand to stray to the grip of his Schmeisser. The
Wehrmacht
officer thought better of his move, and hurried towards the lift door. Mallory walked through the doorway with the red cross above it. An orderly looked up from a desk. ‘The man from the shipwreck,’ said Mallory.

The orderly looked nervous. There had been too many alarm bells, and he really hated these
SS
. ‘Down there,’ he said, pointing down the corridor. ‘Your friend’s already with him.’

‘When I want your conversation I’ll ask for it,’ said Mallory, to pour oil on the flames. Then he crashed off down the corridor.

The door the orderly had indicated was closed. Mallory twisted the handle. It was locked. It was a hospital door, not a military door; a flimsy thing of cheap deal. Mallory hit it with his boot, hard, next to the handle. The orderly had been watching him. When he caught his eye he quickly looked away. The door held. Mallory knew he was on the edge. Never mind how much trouble there was between
Wehrmacht
and
SS
and boffins, there came a time when he would no longer get away with disobeying orders and wrecking government property. But Carstairs was behind that door, with a man Mallory was interested in, and who would not be alive for long, unless –

His boot hit the door again. This time it burst open with a splintering crash.

It was a small, green room, with a smell of cleanliness, a bed and a chair. There were two men on the bed: one lying down, legs thrashing, the other bent over him. The bending man was Carstairs. The reason for his bending was that he had a pillow in his hands, a pillow he was pressing over the face of whoever it was that was lying on the bed. The survivor of the
Kormoran
, at a rough guess.

Mallory could kill, all right. But he was a soldier, not an assassin. There was a difference between killing and murder.

He said, ‘Stop that.’

Carstairs did not answer. His face was set and ugly, ridged with muscle, holding the pillow down. Mallory lifted his Schmeisser. ‘Stop it now,’ he said.

Carstairs raised one hand to swat the barrel aside. ‘No noise,’ he said. ‘Quiet, you idiot.’ The assumption that he would not use the weapon fed Mallory’s irritation. He jabbed Carstairs on the arm with the barrel. The flapping of the supine figure’s legs was weakening. ‘All right,’ said Carstairs, face twisted with effort. ‘So fire.’

Mallory did not fire. Instead, he kicked Carstairs very hard on the bundle of nerves inside his right knee. It was a kick that would hurt like hell, but do no permanent damage.

It worked.

Carstairs crashed to the ground, grabbing for his dagger. Mallory stamped on his hand and let him look down the black tube of the machine pistol’s muzzle.

The man on the bed said, ‘Jesoos.’

‘Shut up!’ hissed Carstairs.

‘Hold your tongue,’ said Mallory.

The man on the bed was small and stout, with curly black hair and a thick black moustache and a very bad colour. ‘Don’ kill me,’ he said. ‘Don’ kill me. For why you want to kill me?’

Mallory looked at Carstairs, then at the black-haired man. He said, in English, ‘What happened to you?’

The small man’s eyes narrowed. He said, in German, ‘Why are you speaking English?’

Mallory lay wearily back in the chair. Carstairs was spluttering like an unexploded bomb on the floor. ‘Because I’m English,’ he said. ‘Who are you?’

‘Shut your bloody mouth,’ said Carstairs, frantic. ‘I forbid you to speak.’

‘So,’ said the short man, indignation getting the better of suspicion. ‘I answer your damned question, and you tries to suffocate me. And now there is another German
SS
who talk English and want to know. Is it for this that I swim, I paddle, I bring –’

‘Start at the beginning,’ said Carstairs, wearily. ‘Go on.’

‘How do I know who you are?’ said the Greek.

Mallory offered the man a cigarette, lit one himself, closing his mind to the idea that outside that door was bandit country, crawling with people who would kill him as quick as blow their noses. Carstairs had had orders from Admiral Dixon to assassinate this man. Mallory had countermanded them. There would be trouble in England, too. Wearily, he took off his helmet.

The Greek made a sound half-way between a gasp and a squeak. ‘Mallory!’ he said. ‘Is no possible.’

Mallory looked at him, one eyebrow up.

‘Mount Cook,’ said the Greek. ‘My cousin Latsis he went to New Zealand for the farm. But the farm no work out good so he get work with expedition, because he know how make food in fire far from roof. He cook with you. He send me photograph, newspaper story. You and Latsis. You remember? My cousin Latsis. Sure you remember. Yes, yes, you remember.’

Mallory remembered, all right. He remembered the Mount Cook expedition, the first and last major expedition he had led in the Southern Alps, after his lone climbs. He remembered far too many people, far too much organization: the green New Zealand sky over the white prisms of the mountains, the crisp new air, the sound of too many voices; the taste of burned beans. He remembered a charming Greek with a huge nose, a ready smile, and absolutely no talent in the kitchen.

‘Big nose,’ said Mallory.

If there had been wine in the little hospital room, someone would have opened it. As it was, the Greek seized Mallory’s right hand in both of his and shook it furiously. ‘I am Spiro,’ he said. ‘And I must tell you what I told your … this man.’ Here he narrowly failed to spit on Carstairs. ‘I have got the machine.’

‘The machine?’

Carstairs said, ‘Now look here –’

‘The seven-rotor Enigma,’ said Spiro. ‘Of course.’

‘What is the seven-rotor Enigma?’ said Mallory.

‘Nothing,’ said Carstairs. ‘Spiro, I should warn you –’

‘Shut the mouth,’ said Spiro. ‘I am tired. So bloody tired you would not believe. Always I keeps my mouth shut –’

‘A little longer,’ said Mallory. ‘First, we must get you out of here.’

‘So let’s get out,’ said Spiro. ‘And then I show you machine.’

‘Show us?’ said Carstairs. ‘You don’t really mean you’ve got it?’

‘Yes,’ said Spiro. ‘What did you think?’

Carstairs’ face had gone a nasty shade of grey. ‘They told me you knew about it,’ he said. ‘That you had been sent to steal it. But that there was no hope, what with the shipwreck. I was to … silence you before you were tortured. If I’d known …’

‘Of courses,’ said Spiro, nastily. ‘First murder, then asking questions. Fool.’

Carstairs gave him a sickly smile. ‘Awfully sorry,’ he said, ‘but I’m sure you understand, what? Now, then. This is marvellous. Exactly where is it?’

Spiro turned upon him a puffed and hostile gaze. ‘I tell your friend when we are out,’ he said. ‘Just for now, it is in a safe place. Okay?’

‘Where?’

‘Out first,’ said Spiro. ‘Where later.’

Miller found the workshops most impressive. In the lava bubbles of the cold volcano, the Germans had built a fair-sized factory. There were machine shops and an assembly line staffed by brown-coated engineers, with Greek slave labourers in blue boiler suits wheeling racks of parts and tools. The air was full of the limey reek of wet concrete. Someone somewhere was building something. Miller found an abandoned trolley and loaded in the explosives pack. They trundled it along the lines of benches, through tunnels into new caverns, with curved alloy castings and cylindrical motors of huge complexity with nozzles and no driveshafts, fuel and lubricant tanks, steel doors marked with skull-and-crossbones stencils, until at the end they came to a series of concrete baffles built out across the passage. Standing in front of the baffles was an
SS
man with a Schmeisser. Above his head, a large sign said:
Eingang Verboten
.

‘Looks like it,’ said Miller. ‘Plan?’

Andrea did not answer. But Miller saw from the corner of his eye the huge Greek’s right hand go to the place on his belt occupied by his knife. And not before time: from behind, there was the sound of shouting and running feet. The confusion by the lift seemed to have sorted itself out.

Somewhere ahead, a field telephone rang. The
SS
man picked up the receiver and gave what must have been a password. Then his eyes bulged out of their sockets and his mouth opened and no sound came out, because Andrea had walked straight up to him and slammed his knife between his fourth and fifth ribs and into his heart, and as he slid to the ground had plucked the telephone from the dead fingers.
‘Bitte?’
said Andrea.