The Guns of Navarone

CHAPTER 14

The three men cleared the town without any difficulty, striking out directly across country for the Castle Vygos and avoiding the main road. It was beginning to rain now, heavily, persistently and the ground was mired and sodden, the few ploughed fields they crossed almost impassable. They had just struggled their way through one of these and could just see the dim outline of the keep — less than a cross-country mile from the town instead of Louki's exaggerated estimate — when they passed by an abandoned earthen house and Miller spoke for the first time since they had left the town square of Navarone.

«I'm bushed, boss.» His head was sunk on his chest, and his breathing was laboured. «01' man Miller's on the downward path, I reckon, and the legs are gone. Couldn't we squat inside here for a couple of minutes, boss, and have a smoke?»

Mallory looked at him in surprise, thought how desperately weary his own legs felt and nodded in reluctant agreement. Miller wasn't the man to complain unless he was near exhaustion.

«Okay, Dusty, I don't suppose a minute or two will harm.» He translated quickly into Greek and led the way inside, Miller at his heels complaining at length about his advancing age. Once inside, Mallory felt his way across to the inevitable wooden bunk, sat down gratefully, lit a cigarette, then looked up in puzzlement. Miller was still on his feet, walking slowly round the hut, tapping the walls as he went.

«Why don't you sit down?» Mallory asked irritably. «That was why you came in here in the first place, wasn't it?»

«No, boss, not really.» The drawl was very pronounced. «Just a low-down trick to get us inside. Twothree very special things I want to show you.»

«Very special. What the devil are you trying to tell me?»

«Bear with me, Captain Mallory,» Miller requested formally. «Bear with me just a few minutes. I'm not wastin' your time. You have my word, Captain Mallory.»

«Very well.» Mallory was mystified, but his confidence in Miller remained unshaken. «As you wish. Only don't be too long about it.»

«Thanks, boss.» The strain of formality was too much for Miller. «It won't take long. There'll be a lamp or candles in here — you said the islanders never leave an abandoned house without 'em?»

«And a very useful superstition it's been to us, too.» Mallory reached under the bunk with his torch, straightened his back. «Two or three candles here.»

«I want a light, boss. No windows — I checked. O.K.?»

«Light one and I'll go outside to see if there's anything showing.» Mallory was completely in the dark about the American's intentions. He felt Miller didn't want him to say anything, and there was a calm surety about him that precluded questioning. Mallory was back in less than a minute. «Not a chink to be seen from the outside,» he reported.

«Fair enough. Thanks, boss.» Miller lit a second candle, then slipped the rucksack straps from his shoulders, laid the pack on the bunk and stood in silence for a moment.

Mallory looked at his watch, looked back at Miller.

«You were going to show me something,» he prompted. «Yeah, that's right. Three things, I said.» He dug into the pack, brought out a little black box hardly bigger than a match-box. «Exhibit A, boss.»

Mallory looked at it curiously. «What's that?»

«Clockwork fuse.» Miller began to unscrew the back panel. «Hate the damned things. Always make me feel like one of those bolshevik characters with a dark cloak, a moustache like Louki's and carryin' one of those black cannon-ball things with a sputterin' fuse stickin' outa it. But it works.» He had the back off the box now, examining the mechanism in the light of his torch. «But this one doesn't, not any more,» he added softly. «Clock's O.K., but the contact arm's been bent right back. This thing could tick till Kingdom Come and it couldn't even set off a firework.»

«But how on earth--?»

«Exhibit B.» Miller didn't seem to hear him. He opened the detonator box, gingerly lifted a fuse from its felt and cotton-wool bed and examined it closely under his torch. Then he looked at Mallory again. «Fulminate of mercury, boss. Only seventy-seven grains, but enough to blow your fingers off. Unstable as hell, too — the little tap will set it off.» He let it fall to the ground, and Mallory winced and drew back involuntarily as the American smashed a heavy heel down on top of it. But there was no explosion, nothing at all.

«Ain't workin' so good either, is it, boss? A hundred to one the rest are all empty, too.» He fished out a pack of cigarettes, lit one, and watched the smoke eddy and swirl above the heat of the candles. He slid the cigarettes into his pocket.

«There was a third thing you were going to show me,» Mallory said quietly.

«Yeah, I was goin' to show you somethin' else.» The voice was very gentle, and Mallory felt suddenly cold. «I was goin' to show you a spy, a traitor, the most vicious, twistin', murderin', doublecrossin' bastard I've ever known.» The American had his hand out of his pocket now, the silenced automatic sitting snugly against his palm, the muzzle trained over Panayis's heart. He went on, more gently than ever. «Judas Iscariot had nothin' on the boy-friend, here, boss… . Take your coat off, Panayis.»

«What the devil are you doing! Are you crazy?» Mallory started forward, half-angry, half-amazed, but brought up sharply against Miller's extended arm, rigid as a bar of iron. «What bloody nonsense is this? He doesn't understand English!»

«Don't he, though? Then why was he out of the cave like a flash when Casey reported hearin' sounds outside … and why was he the first to leave the carob grove this afternoon if he didn't understand your order? Take your coat off, Judas, or I'll shoot you through the arm. I'll give you two seconds.»

Mallory made to throw his arms round Miller and bring him to the ground, but halted in mid-step as he caught the look on Panayis's face — teeth bared, murder glaring out from the coal-black eyes. Never before had Mallory seen such malignity in a human face, a malignity that yielded abruptly to shocked pain and disbelief as the .32 bullet smashed into his upper arm, just below the shoulder.

«Two seconds and then the other arm,» Miller said woodenly. But Panayis was already tearing off his jacket, the dark, bestial eyes never leaving Miller's face. Mallory looked at him, shivered involuntarily, looked at Miller. Indifference, he thought, that was the only word to describe the look on the American's face. Indifference. Unaccountably, Mallory felt colder than ever.

«Turn round!» The automatic never wavered.

Slowly Panayis turned round. Miller stepped forward, caught the black shirt by the collar, ripped it off his back with one convulsive jerk.

«Waal, waal, now, whoever woulda thought it?» Miller drawled. «Surprise, surprise, surprise! Remember, boss, this was the character that was publicly flogged by the Germans in Crete, flogged until the white of his ribs showed through. His back's in a heliuva state, isn't it?»

Mallory looked but said nothing. Completely off balance, his mind was in a kaleidoscopic whirl, his thoughts struggling to adjust themselves to a new set of circumstances, a complete reversal of all his previous thinking. Not a scar, not a single blemish, marked the dark smoothness of that skin.

«Just a natural quick healer,» Miller murmured. «Only a nasty, twisted mind like mine would think that he had been a German agent in Crete, became known to the Allies as a fifth columnist, lost his usefulness to the Germans and was shipped back to Navarone by fast motor-launch under cover of night. Floggin'! Islandhoppin' his. way back here in a rowboat! Just a lot of bloody eyewash!» Miller paused, and his mouth twisted. «I wonder how many pieces of silver he made in Crete before they got wise to him?»

«But heavens above, man, you're not going to condemn someone just for shooting a line!» Mallory protested. Strangely, he didn't feel nearly as vehement as he sounded. «How many survivors would there be among the Allies if—»

«Not convinced yet, huh?» Miller waved his automatic negligently at Panayis. «Roll up the left trouser leg, Iscariot. Two seconds again.»

Panayis did as he was told. The black, venomous eyes never looked away from Miller's. He rolled the dark cloth up to the knee.

«Farther yet? That's my little boy,» Miller, encouraged him. «And now take that bandage off — right off.» A few seconds passed, then Miller shook his head sadly. «A ghastly wound, boss, a ghastly wound!»

«I'm beginning to see your point,» Mallory said thoughtfully. The dark sinewy leg wasn't even scratched. «But why on earth—»

«Simple. Four reasons at least. Junior here is a treacherous, slimy bastard — no self -respectin' rattlesnake would come within a mile of him — but he's a clever bastard. He faked his leg so he could stay in the cave in the Devil's Playground when the four of us went back to stop the Alpenkorps from comin' up the slope below the carob grove.»

«Why? Frightened he'd stop something?»

Miller shook his head impatiently.

«Junior here's scared o' nothin'. He stayed behind to write a note. Later on he used his leg to drop behind us some place, and leave the note where it could be seen. Early on, this must have been. Note probably said that we would come out at such and such a place, and would they kindly send a welcomin' committee to meet us there. They sent it, remember: it was their car we swiped to get to town.… That was the first time I got real suspicious of the boy-friend: after he'd dropped behind he made up on us again real quick — too damn' quick for a man with a game leg. But it wasn't till I opened the rucksack in the square this evenin' that I really knew.»

«You only mentioned two reasons,» Mallory prompted.

«Comin' to the others. Number three — he could fall behind when the welcomin' committee opened up in front — Iscariot here wasn't goin' to get himself knocked off before he collected his salary. And number four — remember that real touchin' scene when he begged you to let him stay at the far end of the cave that led into the valley we came out? Goin' to do his Horatio-on-thebridge act?»

«Going to show them the right cave to pick, you mean.»

«Check. After that he was gettin' pretty desperate. I still wasn't sure, but I was awful suspicious, boss. Didn't know what he might try next. So I clouted him good and hard when that last patrol came up the valley.»

«I see,» Mallory said quietly. «I see indeed.» He looked sharply at Miller. «You should have told me. You had no right—»

«I was goin' to, boss. But I hadn't a chance — Junior here was around all the time. I was just startin' to tell you half an hour back, when the guns started up.»

Mallory nodded in understanding. «How did you happen on all this in the first place, Dusty?»

«Juniper,» Miller said succinctly. «Remember that's how Turzig said he came to find us? He smelt the juniper.»

«That's right. We were burning juniper.»

«Sure we were. But he said he smelt it on Kostos-- and the wind was blowin' off Kostos all day long.»

«My God!» Mallory whispered. «Of course, of course! And I missed it completely.»

«But Jerry knew we were there. How? Waal, he ain't got second sight no more than I have. So he was tipped off — he was tipped off by the boy-friend here. Remember I said he'd talked to some of his pals in Margaritha when we went down there for the supplies?» Miller spat in disgust. «Fooled me all along the line. Pals? I didn't know how right I was. Sure they were his pals — his German pals! And that food he said he got from the commandant's kitchen — he got it from the kitchen all right. Almost certainly he goes in and asks for it — and old Skoda hands him his own suitcase to stow it in.»

«But the German he killed on the way back to the village? Surely to God—»

«Panayis killed him.» There was a tired certainty in Miller's voice. «What's another corpse to Sunshine here. Probably stumbled on the poor bastard in the dark and had to kill him. Local colour. Louki was there, remember, and he couldn't have Louki gettin' suspicious. He would have blamed it on Louki anyway. The guy ain't human… . And remember when he was flung into Skoda's room in Margaritha along with Louki, blood pourin' from a wound in his head?»

Mallory nodded.

«High-grade ketchup. Probably also from the commandant's kitchen,» Miller said bitterly. «If Skoda had failed by every other means, there would still have been the boy-friend here as a stool-pigeon. Why he never asked Louki where the explosives were I don't know.»

«Obviously he didn't know Louki knew.»

«Mebbe. But one thing the bastard did know — how to use a mirror. Musta heliographed the garrison from the carob grove and given our position. No other way, boss. Then sometime this morning he must have got hold of my rucksack, whipped out all the slow fuse and fixed the clock fuse and detonators. He should have had his hands blown off tamperin' with them fulminates. Lord only knows where he learnt to handle the damn' things.»

«Crete,» Mallory said positively. «The Germans would see to that. A spy who can't also double as a saboteur is no good to them.»

«And he was very good to them,» Miller said softly. «Very, very good. They're gonna miss their little pal. Iscariot here was a very smart baby indeed.»

«He was. Except to-night. He should have been smart enough to know that at least one of us would be suspicious—»

«He probably was,» Miller interrupted. «But he was misinformed. I think Louki's unhurt. I think Junior here talked Louki into letting him stay in his place — Louki was always a bit scared of him — then he strolled across to his pals at the gate, told 'em to send a strong-arm squad out to Vygos to pick up the others, asked them to fire a few shots — he was very strong on local colour, was our loyal little pal — then strolls back across the square, hoists himself up on the roof and waits to tip off his pals as soon as we came in the back door. But Louki forgot to tell him just one thing — that we were goin' to rendezvous on the roof of the house, not inside. So the boy-friend here lurks away for all he's worth up top, waiting to signal his Mends. Ten to one that he's got a torch in his pocket.»

Mallory picked up Panayis's coat and examined it briefly. «He has.»

«That's it, then.» Miller lit another cigarette, watched the match burn down slowly to his fingers, then looked up at Panayis. «How does it feel to know that you're goin' to die, Panayis, to feel like all them poor bastards who've felt just as you're feeling now, just before they died — all the men in Crete, all the guys in the sea-borne and air landings on Navarone who died because they thought you were on their side? How does it feel, Panayis?»

Panayis said nothing. His left hand clutching his torn right arm, trying to stem the blood, he stood there motionless, the dark, evil face masked in hate, the lips still drawn back in that less than human snarl. There was no fear in him, none at all, and Mallory tensed himself for the last, despairing attempt for life that Panayis must surely make, and then he had looked at Miller and knew there would be no attempt, because there was a strange sureness and inevitabifity about the American, an utter immobility of hand and eye that somehow precluded even the thought, far less the possibility of escape.

«The prisoner has nothin' to say.» Miller sounded very tired. «I suppose I should say somethin'. I suppose I should give out with a long spiel about me bein' the judge, the jury and the executioner, but I don't think I'll bother myself. Dead men make poor witnesses… . Mebbe it's not your fault, Panayis, mebbe there's an awful good reason why you came to be what you are. Gawd only knows. I don't, and I don't much care. There are too many dead men. I'm goin' to kill you, Panayis, and I'm goin' to kill you now.» Miller dropped his cigarette, ground it into the floor of the hut. «Nothin' at all to say?»

And he had nothing at all to say, the hate, the malignity of the black eyes said it all for him and Miller nodded, just once, as if in secret understanding. Carefully, accurately, he shot Panayis through the heart, twice, blew out the candles, turned his back and was half-way towards the door before the man had crashed to the ground.

«I am afraid I cannot do it, Andrea.» Louki sat back wearily, shook his head in despair. «I am very sorry, Andrea. The knots are too tight.»

«No matter.» Andrea rolled over from his side to a sitting position, tried to ease his tightly-bound legs and wrists. «They are cunning, these Germans, and wet cords can only be cut.» Characteristically, he made no mention of the fact that only a couple of minutes previously he had twisted round to reach the cords on Louki's wrist and undone them with half a dozen tugs of his steel-trap fingers. «We will think of something else.»

He looked away from Louki, glanced across the room in the faint light of the smoking oil-lamp that stood by the grille door, a light so yellow, so dim that Casey Brown, trussed like a barnyard fowl and loosely secured, like himself, by a length of rope to the iron hooks suspended from the roof, was no more than a shapeless blur in the opposite corner of the stone-flagged room. Andrea smiled to himself, without mirth. Taken prisoner again, and for the second time that day — and with the same ease and surprise that gave no chance at all of resistance: Completely unsuspecting, they had been captured in an upper room, seconds after Casey had finished talking to Cairo. The patrol had known exactly where to find them — and with their leader's assurance that it was all over, with his gloating explanation of the part Panayis had played, the unexpectedness, the success of the coup was all too easy to understand. And it was difficult not to believe his assurance that neither Mallory nor Miller had a chance. But the thought of ultimate defeat never occurred to Andrea.

His gaze left Casey Brown, wandered round the room, took in what he could see of the stone walls and floor, the hooks, the ventilation ducts, the heavy grille door. A dungeon, a torture dungeon, one would have thought, but Andrea had seen such places before. A castle, they called this place, but it was really only an old keep, no more than a manor house built round the crenelated towers. And the long-dead Franldsh nobles who had built these keeps had lived well. No dungeon this, Andrea knew, but simply the larder where they had hung their meat and game, and done without windows and light for the sake of …

The light! Andrea twisted round, looked at the smoking oil lamp, his eyes narrowing.

«Louki!» he called softly. The little Greek turned round to look at him.

«Can you reach the lamp?»

«I think so… . Yes, I can.»

«Take the glass off,» Andrea whispered. «Use a cloth — it will be hot. Then wrap it in the cloth, hit it on the floor — gently. The glass is thick — you can cut me loose in a minute or two.»

Louki stared at him for an uncomprehending moment, then nodded in understanding. He shuffled across the floor — his legs were still bound — reached out, then halted his hand abruptly, only inches from the glass. The peremptory, metallic clang had been only feet away, and he raised his head slowly to see what had caused it.

He could have stretched out his hand, touched the barrel of the Mauser that protruded threateningly through the bars of the grille door. Again the guard rattled the rifle angrily between the bars, shouted something he didn't understand.

«Leave it alone, Louki,» Andrea said quietly. His voice was tranquil, unshadowed by disappointment «Come back here. Our Mend outside is not too pleased.» Obediently Louki moved back, heard the guttural voice again, rapid and alarmed this time, the rattle as the guard withdrew his rifle quickly from the bars of the door, the urgent pounding of his feet on the flagstones outside as he raced up the passage.

«What's the matter with our little friend?» Casey Brown was as lugubrious, as weary as ever. «He seems upset.»

«He is upset.» Andrea smiled. «He's just realised that Louki's hands are untied.»

«Well, why doesn't he tie them up again?»

«Slow in the head he may be, but he is no fool,» Andrea explained. «This could be a trap and he's gone for his friends.»

Almost at once they heard a thud, like the closing of a distant door, the sound of more than one pair of feet running down the passage, the tinny rattling of keys on a ring, the rasp of a key against the lock, a sharp click, the squeal of rusty hinges and then two soldiers were in the room, dark and menacing with their jackboots and ready guns. Two or three seconds elapsed while they looked round them, accustoming their eyes to the gloom, then the man nearest the door spoke.

«A terrible thing, boss, nothin' short of deplorable! Leave 'em alone for a couple of minutes and see what happens? The whole damn' bunch tied up like Houdini on an off night!»

There was a brief, incredulous silence, then all three were sitting upright, staring at them. Brown recovered first.

«High time, too,» he complained. «Thought you were never going to get here.»

«What he means is that he thought we were never going to see you again,» Andrea said quietly. «Neither did I. But here you are, safe and sound.»

«Yes,» Mallory nodded. «Thanks to Dusty and his nasty suspicious mind that cottoned on to Panayis while all the rest of us were asleep.»

«Where is he?» Louki asked.

«Panayis?» Miller waved a negligent hand. «We left him behind — he met with a sorta accident.» He was across at the other side of the room now, carefully cutting the cords that pinioned Brown's injured leg, whistling tunelessly as he sawed away with his sheath knife. Mallory, too, was busy, slicing through Andrea's bonds, explaining rapidly what had happened, listening to the big Greek's equally concise account of what had befallen the others in the keep. And then Andrea was on his feet, massaging his numbed hands, looking across at Miller.

«That whistling, my Captain. It sounds terrible and, what is worse, it is very loud. The guards—»

«No worry there,» Mallory said grimly. «They never expected to see Dusty and myself again… . They kept a poor watch.» He turned round to look at Brown, now hobbling across the floor.

«How's the leg, Casey?»

«Fine, sir.» Brown brushed it aside as of no importance. «I got through to Cairo, to-night, sir. The report—»

«It'll have to wait, Casey. We must get out as fast as we can. You all right, Louki?»

«I am heart-broken, Major Mallory. That a countryman of mine, a trusted friend—»

«That, too, will have to wait. Come on!»

«You are in a great hurry,» Andrea protested mildly. They were already out in the passage, stepping over the cell guard lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. «Surely if they're all like our friend here—»

«No danger from, this quarter,» Mallory interrupted impatiently. «The soldiers in the town — they're bound to know by now that we've either missed Panayis or disposed of him. In either case they'll know that we're certain to come hot-footing out here. Work it out for yourself. They're probably half-way here already, and if they do come …» He broke off, stared at the smashed generator and the ruins of Casey Brown's transmitter set lying in one corner of the entrance hail. «Done a pretty good job on these, haven't they?» he said bitterly.

«Thank the Lord,» Miller said piously. «All the less to tote around, is what I say. If you could only see the state of my back with that damned generator—»

«Sir!» Brown had caught Mallory's arm, an action so foreign to the usually punctilious petty officer that Mallory halted in surprise. «Sir, it's terribly important — the report, I mean. You must listen, sir!»

The action, the deadly earnestness, caught and held Mallory's fully attention. He turned to face Brown with a smile.

«O.K., Casey, let's have it,» he said quietly. «Things can't possibly be any worse than they are now.»

«They can, sir.» There was something tired, defeated about Casey Brown, and the great, stone hail seemed strangely chill. «I'm afraid they can, sir. I got through to-night. First-class reception. Captain Jensen himself, and he was hopping mad. Been waiting all day fbr us to come on the air. Asked how things were, and I told him that you were outside the fortress just then, and hoped to be inside the magazine in an hour or so.»

«Go on.»

«He said that was the best news he'd ever had. He said his information had been wrong, he'd been fooled, that the invasion fleet didn't hold up overnight in the Cyclades, that they had come straight through under the heaviest air and E-boat escort ever seen in the Med., and are due to hit the beaches on Kheros some time before dawn to-morrow. He said our destroyers had been waiting to the south all day, moved up at dusk and were waiting word from him to see whether they would attempt the passage of the Maidos Straits. I told him maybe something could go wrong, but he said not with Captain Mallory and Miller inside and besides he wasn't — he couldn't risk the lives of twelve hundred men on Kheros just on the off chance that he might be wrong.» Brown broke off suddenly and looked down miserably at his feet. No one else in the hail moved or made any sound at all.

«Go on.» Mallory repeated in a whisper. His face was very pale.

«That's all, sir. That's all there is.. The destroyers are coming through the Straits at midnight.» Brown looked down at his luminous watch. «Midnight. Four hours to go.»

«Oh, God! Midnight!» Mallory was stricken, his eyes for the moment unseeing, ivory-knuckled hands clenched in futility and despair. «They're coming through at midnight! God help them! God help them all now!»