Force 10 From Navarone

CHAPTER EIGHT

Now it had come, Mallory knew. He looked at Andrea and Miller and Reynolds and Groves and knew that they knew it too. In their faces he could see very clearly reflected what lay at the very surface of his own mind, the explosive tension, the hair-trigger alertness straining to be translated into equally explosive action. Always it came, this moment of truth that stripped men bare and showed them for what they were. He wondered how Reynolds and Groves would be: he suspected they might acquit themselves well. It never occurred to him to wonder about Miller and Andrea, for he knew them too well: Miller, when all seemed I lost, was a man above himself, while the normally easy-going, almost lethargic Andrea was transformed into an unrecognizable human being, an impossible combination of an icily calculating mind and berserker fighting machine entirely without the remotest parallel in Mallory's knowledge or experience. When Mallory spoke his voice was as calmly impersonal as ever.

'We're due to leave at four. It's now three. With any luck we'll catch them napping. Is everything clear?'

Reynolds said wonderingly, almost unbelievingly: 'You mean if anything goes wrong we're to shoot our way out?'

'You're to shoot and shoot to kill. That, Sergeant, is an order.'

'Honest to God,' Reynolds said, 'I just don't know what's going on.' The expression on his face clearly indicated that he had given up all attempts to understand what was going on.

Mallory and Andrea left the hut and walked casually across the compound towards Neufeld's hut. Mallory said: 'They're on to us, you know.'

'I know. Where are Petar and Maria?'

'Asleep, perhaps? They left the hut a couple of hours ago. We'll collect them later.'

'Later may be too late… They are in great peril my Keith.'

'What can a man do, Andrea? I've thought of nothing else in the past ten hours. It's a crucifying risk to have to take, but I have to take it. They are expendable Andrea. You know what it would mean if I showed my hand now.'

'I know what it would mean,' Andrea said heavily 'The end of everything.'

They entered Neufeld's hut without benefit of knocking. Neufeld, sitting behind his desk with Droshny by his side, looked up in irritated surprise and glanced at his watch.

He said curtly: 'Four o'clock, I said, not three.'

'Our mistake,' Mallory apologized. He closed tin door. 'Please do not be foolish.'

Neufeld and Droshny were not foolish, few people would have been while staring down the muzzles of two Lugers with perforated silencers screwed to tin end: they just sat there, immobile, the shock slowly draining from their faces. There was a long pause then Neufeld spoke, the words coming almost haltingly.

'I have been seriously guilty of underestimating — 'Be quiet. Broznik's spies have discovered the whereabouts of the four captured Allied agents. We know roughly where they are. You know precisely where are. You will take us there. Now.

'You're mad,' Neufeld said with conviction.

'We don't require you to tell us that.' Andrea walked round behind Neufeld and Droshny, removed their pistols from their holsters, ejected the shells and replaced pistols. He then crossed to a corner of the hut, opened up two Schmeisser machine-pistols, emptied them, walked back round to the front of the table placed the Schmeissers on its top, one in front Neufeld, one in front of Droshny.

'There you are, gentlemen,' Andrea said affably, armed to the teeth.' Droshny said viciously: 'Suppose we decide not I come with you?'

I Andrea's affability vanished. He walked unhurriedly round the table and rammed the Luger's silencer with such force against Droshny's teeth that he gasped in pain. 'Please — ' Andrea's voice was almost beseeching 'please don't tempt me.'

Droshny didn't tempt him. Mallory moved to the window and peered out over the compound. There were, he saw, at least a dozen Cetniks within thirty feet of Neufeld's hut, all of them armed. Across the other side of the compound he could see that the door the stables was open indicating that Miller and the two sergeants were in position.

'You will walk across the compound to the stables,' Mallory said. 'You will talk to nobody, warn nobody, make no signals. We will follow about ten yards behind.'

'Ten yards behind. What's to prevent us making a break for it? You wouldn't dare hold a gun on us out there.' 'That's so,' Mallory agreed. 'From the moment you open this door you'll be covered by three Schmeissers from the stables. If you try anything — anything — you'll be cut to pieces. That's why we're keeping well behind you — we don't want to be cut to pieces too.'

At a gesture from Andrea, Neufeld and Droshny slung their empty Schmeissers in angry silence. Mallory looked at them consideringly and said: 'I think you'd better do something about your expressions. They're a dead giveaway that something is wrong. If you open that door with faces like that, Miller will cut you down before you reach the bottom step. Please try to believe me.'

They believed him and by the time Mallory opened the door had managed to arrange their features into a near enough imitation of normality. They went down the steps and set off across the compound to the stables. When they had reached halfway Andrea and Mallory left Neufeld's hut and followed them. One or two glances of idle curiosity came their way, but clearly no one suspected that anything was amiss. The crossing to the stables was completely uneventful.

So also, two minutes later, was their departure from the camp. Neufeld and Droshny, as would have been proper and expected, rode together in the lead, Droshny in particular looking very warlike with his Schmeisser, pistol and the wickedly-curved knives at his waist. Behind them rode Andrea, who appeared to be having some trouble with the action of his Schmeisser, for he had it in his hands and was examining it closely: he certainly wasn't looking at either Droshny or Neufeld and the fact that the gun barrel, which Andrea had sensibly pointed towards the ground, had only to be lifted a foot and the trigger pressed to riddle the two men ahead was a preposterous idea that would not have occurred to even the most suspicious. Behind Andrea,

Mallory and Miller rode abreast: like Andrea, they peered unconcerned, even slightly bored. Reynolds and Groves brought up the rear, almost but not quite attaining the degree of nonchalance of the other three: their still faces and restlessly darting eyes betrayed the strain they were under. But their anxiety was needless all seven passed from the camp not only unmolested without as much as even an enquiring glance being it in their direction.

They rode for over two and a half hours, climbing nearly all the time, and a blood-red sun was setting long the thinning pines to the west when they came across a clearing set on, for once, a level stretch of ground. Neufeld and Droshny halted their ponies and tatted until the others came up with them. Mallory rained in and gazed at the building in the middle of the clearing, a low, squat, immensely strong-looking dock-house, with narrow, heavily barred windows and two chimneys, from one of which smoke was coming. 'This is the place?' Mallory asked. 'Hardly a necessary question.' Neufeld's voice was dry, but the underlying resentment and anger unmistakable.

'You think I spent all this time leading you the wrong place?'

'I wouldn't put it past you,' Mallory said. He examined the building more closely. 'A hospitable-looking place.'

'Yugoslav Army ammunition dumps were never intended as first-class hotels.'

'I dare say not,' Mallory agreed. At a signal from im they urged their ponies forward into the clearing, and as they did so two metal strips in the facing wall of the block-house slid back to reveal a air of embrasures with machine-pistols protruding. Exposed as they were, the seven mounted men were completely at the mercy of those menacing muzzles.

'Your men keep a good watch,' Mallory acknowledged to Neufeld. 'You wouldn't require many men to guard and hold a place like this. How many an there?'

'Six,' Neufeld said reluctantly.

'Seven and you're a dead man,' Andrea warned.

'Six.'

As they approached, the guns — almost certainly because the men behind them had identified Neufeld and Droshny-were withdrawn, the embrasures closed, the heavy metal front door opened. A sergeant appeared in the doorway and saluted respectfully, his fact registering a certain surprise.

'An unexpected pleasure, Hauptmann Neufeld,' the sergeant said. 'We had no radio message informing us of your arrival.'

'It's out of action for the moment.' Neufeld waved them inside but Andrea gallantly insisted on the German officer taking precedence, reinforcing his courtesy with a threatening hitch of his Schmeisser. Neufeld entered, followed by Droshny and the other five men The windows were so narrow that the burning oil lamps were obviously a necessity, the illumination they afforded being almost doubled by a large log fire blazing in the hearth. Nothing could ever overcome the bleakness created by four rough-cut stone walls, but the room itself was surprisingly well furnished with a table, chairs, two armchairs and a sofa: there were even some pieces of carpet. Three doors led off from the room, one heavily barred. Including the sergeant who had welcomed them, there were three armed soldiers in the room. Mallory glanced at Neufeld who nodded, his face tight in suppressed anger.

Neufeld said to one of the guards: 'Bring out the.prisoners.' The guard nodded, lifted a heavy key from the wall and headed for the barred door. The sergeant and the other guard were sliding the metal screens back across the embrasures. Andrea walked casually towards the nearest guard, then suddenly and violently shoved him against the sergeant. Both men cannoned the guard who had just inserted the key into door. The third man fell heavily to the ground: other two, though staggering wildly, managed to maintain a semblance of balance or at least remain on their feet. All three twisted round to stare at Andrea, anger and startled incomprehension in their faces, and three remained very still, and wisely so. Faced with Schmeisser machine-pistol at three paces, the wise always remains still.

Mallory said to the sergeant: 'There are three others. Where are they?'

There was no reply: the guard glared at him in defiance. Mallory repeated the question, this time fluent German: the guard ignored him and looked questioningly at Neufeld, whose lips were tight-shut in a mask of stone.

'Are you mad?' Neufeld demanded of the sergeant.

'Can't you see those men are killers? Tell him.'

'The night guards. They're asleep.' The sergeant pointed to a door. 'That one.'

'Open it. Tell them to walk out. Backwards and with their hands clasped behind their necks.'

'Do exactly as you're told,' Neufeld ordered. The sergeant did exactly what he was told and so did the three guards who had been resting in the inner room, who walked out as they had been instructed, with obviously no thought of any resistance in their minds. Mallory turned to the guard with the key who had by this time picked himself up somewhat shakily from the floor, and nodded to the barred door.

'Open it.'

The guard opened it and pushed the door wide. Four British officers moved out slowly and uncertainly into the outer room. Long confinement indoors had made them very pale, but apart from this prison pallor and the fact that they were rather thin they were obviously unharmed. The man in the lead, with a major's insignia and a Sandhurst moustache — and, when he spoke a Sandhurst accent — stopped abruptly and stared in disbelief at Mallory and his men. 'Good God above! What on earth are you chaps — '

'Please.' Mallory cut him short. 'I'm sorry, but later collect your coats, whatever warm gear you have, and wait outside.'

'But — but where are you taking us?' 'Home. Italy. Tonight. Please hurry!' 'Italy. You're talking — '

'Hurry!' Mallory glanced in some exasperation ai his watch. 'We're late already.'

As quickly as their dazed condition would allow, the four officers collected what warm clothing they had and filed outside. Mallory turned to the sergeant again. 'You must have ponies here, a stable.'

'Round the back of the block-house,' the sergeant said promptly. He had obviously made a rapid readjustment to the new facts of life.

'Good lad,' Mallory said approvingly. He looked at Groves and Reynolds. 'We'll need two more ponies Saddle them up, will you?'

The two sergeants left. Under the watchful guns of Mallory and Miller, Andrea searched each of the six guards in turn, found nothing, and ushered them all into the cell, turning the heavy key and hanging it up on the wall. Then, just as carefully, Andrea searched Neufeld and Droshny: Droshny's face, as Andrea carelessly flung his knives into a corner of the room, was thunderous.

Mallory looked at the two men and said: 'I'd shoot if necessary. It's not. You won't be missed before morning.'

They might not be missed for a good few mornings,' Miller pointed out.

'So they're overweight anyway,' Mallory said indifferently. He smiled. 'I can't resist leaving you with last little pleasant thought, Hauptmann Neufeld. something to think about until someone comes and is you.' He looked consideringly at Neufeld, who said nothing, then went on: 'About that information gave you this morning, I mean.'

Neufeld looked at him guardedly. 'What about the formation you gave me this morning?' 'Just this. It wasn't, I'm afraid, quite accurate. Vukalovic expects the attack from the north, through the Zenica Gap, not across the bridge at Neretva from the south. There are, we know, close on two hundred of tanks massed in the woods just to the north of the Zenica Gap — but there won't be at two a.m. this morning when your attack is due to start. Not after we got through to our Lancaster squadrons in Italy, think of it, think of the target. Two hundred tanks bunched in a tiny trap a hundred and fifty yards wide and not more than three hundred yards long. The RAF will be there at 1.30. By two this morning there won't be a single tank left in commission.'

Neufeld looked at him for a long moment, his face very still, then said, slowly and softly: 'Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!' 'Damning is all you'll have for it,' Mallory said agreeably. 'By the time you are released — hopefully assuming that you will be released — it will all be over. See you after the war.'

Andrea locked the two men in a side room and hung the key up by the one to the cell. Then they went outside, locked the outer door, hung the key on a nail by the door, mounted their ponies — Groves and Reynolds had already two additional ones saddled — and started climbing once again, Mallory, map in hand, studying in the fading light of dusk the route they had to take.

Their route took them up alongside the perimeter of a pine forest. Not more than half a mile after leaving the block-house, Andrea reined in his pony, dismounted, lifted the pony's right foreleg and examined it carefully. He looked up at the others who had also reined in their ponies.

'There's a stone wedged under the hoof,' he announced. 'Looks bad — but not too bad. I'll have to cut it out. Don't wait for me — I'll catch you up in a few minutes.'

Mallory nodded, gave the signal to move on. Andrea produced a knife, lifted the hoof and made a great play of excavating the wedged stone. After a minute or so, he glanced up and saw that the rest of the party had vanished round a corner of the pine wood. Andrea put away his knife and led the pony, which quite obviously had no limp whatsoever, into the shelter of the wood and tethered it there, then moved on foot some way down the hill towards the block-house. He sat down behind the bole of a convenient pine and removed his binoculars from their case.

He hadn't long to wait. The head and shoulders of a figure appeared in the clearing below peering out cautiously from behind the trunk of a tree. Andrea flat in the snow now and with the icy rims of the binoculars clamped hard against his eyes, had no difficulty at all in making an immediate identification: Sergeant Baer, moon-faced, rotund and about seventy and overweight for his unimpressive height, had unmistakable physical presence which only the mentally incapacitated could easily forget. Baer withdrew into the woods, then reappeared shortly afterwards leading a string of ponies, one which carried a bulky covered object strapped a pannier bag. Two of the following ponies had riders, both of whom had their hands tied to the pommels of their saddles. Petar and Maria, without a doubt. Behind them appeared four mounted soldiers.

Sergeant Baer beckoned them to follow him across the clearing and within moments all had disappeared from sight behind the block-house. Andrea regarded the now empty clearing thoughtfully, lit a fresh cigar and made his way uphill towards his tethered pony.

Sergeant Baer dismounted, produced a key from his pocket, caught sight of the key suspended from the wall beside the door, replaced his own, took down the other, opened the door with it and passed inside. He glanced around, took down one of the keys hanging on the wall and opened a side door with it. Hauptmann Neufeld emerged, glanced at his watch smiled.

'You have been very punctual, Sergeant Baer. You have the radio?'

'I have the radio. It's outside.'

'Good, good, good.' Neufeld looked at Droshny and smiled again. 'I think it's time for us to make our rendezvous with the Ivenici plateau.'

Sergeant Baer said respectfully: 'How can you be so sure that it is the Ivenici plateau, Hauptmann Neufeld?'

'How can I be so sure? Simple, my dear Baer Because Maria — you have her with you?' 'But of course, Hauptmann Neufeld.' 'Because Maria told me. The Ivenici plateau it is.'

Night had fallen on the Ivenici plateau, but still the phalanx of exhausted soldiers was trudging out the landing-strip for the plane. The work was not by this time so cruelly and physically exacting, for the snow was now almost trampled and beaten hard and flat but, even allowing for the rejuvenation given by the influx of another five hundred fresh soldiers, the overall level of utter weariness was such that the phalanx was in no better condition than its original members who had trudged out the first outline of the airstrip in the virgin snow.

The phalanx, too, had changed its shape. Instead of being fifty wide by twenty deep it was now twenty wide by fifty deep: having achieved a safe clearance for the wings of the aircraft, they were now trudging out what was to be as close as possible an iron-hard surface for the landing wheels.

A three-quarters moon, intensely white and luminous, rode low in the sky, with scattered bands of cloud coming drifting down slowly from the north. As the successive bands moved across the face of the moon, the black shadows swept lazily across the surface of the plateau: the phalanx, at one moment bathed in silvery moonlight, was at the next almost lost to sight in the darkness. It was a fantastic scene with a remarkably faery-like quality of eeriness and foreboding about ii In fact it was, as Colonel Vis had just unromanticallv mentioned to Captain Vlanovich, like something out Dante's Inferno, only a hundred degrees colder. At least a hundred degrees, Vis had amended: he wasn't sure how hot it was in hell.

It was this scene which, at twenty minutes to nine in the evening, confronted Mallory and his men when they topped the brow of a hill and reined in their ponies just short of the edge of the precipice which abutted on to the western edge of the Ivenici plateau. For at least two minutes they sat there on their ponies, not moving, not speaking mesmerized by the other-world quality of a thousand men with bowed heads and bowed shoulders, shuffling exhaustedly across the level floor of the plain beneath, mesmerized because they all knew they were gazing at a unique spectacle which none them had ever seen before and would never see again. Mallory finally broke free from the trance-like condition, looked at Miller and Andrea, and slowly shook his head in an expression of profound wonder conveying his disbelief, his refusal to accept the reality of what his own eyes told him was real and actual beyond dispute. Miller and Andrea returned his look with almost identical negative motions of their heads. Mallory wheeled his pony to the right and the way along the cliff-face to the point where the cliff ran into the rising ground below. Ten minutes later they were being greeted by Colonel Vis.

'I did not expect to see you, Captain Mallory.' Vis pumped his hand enthusiastically. 'Before God, I did not expect to see you. You — and your men — must have a remarkable capacity for survival.'

'Say that in a few hours,' Mallory said drily, 'and I would be very happy indeed to hear it.'

'But it's all over now. We expect the plane — ' Vis glanced at his watch — 'in exactly eight minutes. We have a bearing surface for it and there should be no difficulty in landing and taking off provided it doesn't hang around too long. You have done all that you came to do and achieved it magnificently. Luck has been on your side.'

'Say that in a few hours,' Mallory repeated.

'I'm sorry.' Vis could not conceal his puzzlement 'You expect something to happen to the plane?'

'I don't expect anything to happen to the plane But what's gone, what's past, is — was, rather — only the prologue.'

The — the prologue?'

'Let me explain.'

Neufeld, Droshny and Sergeant Baer left their ponies tethered inside the woodline and walked up the slight eminence before them, Sergeant Baer making heavy weather of their uphill struggle through the snow because of the weight of the large portable transceiver strapped to his back. Near the summit they dropped to their hands and knees and crawled forward till they were within a few feet of the edge of the cliff overlooking the Ivenici plateau. Neufeld unslung his binoculars and then replaced them: the moon had just moved from behind a dark barred cloud highlighting every aspect of the scene below: the intensely sharp contrast afforded by black shadow and snow so deeply and gleamingly white as to be almost phosphorescent made the use of binoculars superfluous.

Clearly visible and to the right were Vis's command tents and, near by, some hastily erected soup kitchens Outside the smallest of the tents could be seen a group of perhaps a dozen people, obviously, even at that distance, engaged in close conversation. Directly beneath where they lay, the three men could see the phalanx turning round at one end of the runway and beginning to trudge back slowly, so terribly slowly, so terribly tiredly, along the wide path already tramped out. As Mallory and his men had been, Neufeld, Droshny and Baer were momentarily caught and held by the weird and other-worldly dark grandeur of the spectacle below. Only by a conscious act of will could Neufeld bring himself to look away and return to the world of normality and reality. 'How very kind,' he murmured, 'of our Yugoslav friends to go to such lengths on our behalf.' He turned to Baer and indicated the transceiver. 'Get through to the General, will you?' Baer unslung his transceiver, settled it firmly in the snow, extended the telescopic aerial, pre-set the frequency and cranked the handle. He made contact almost at once, talked briefly then handed the microphone and head-piece to Neufeld, who fitted on the phones and gazed down, still half mesmerized, at the thousand men and women moving ant like across the plain below. The head-phones cracked suddenly in his ears and the spell was broken. 'Herr General?'

'Ah. Hauptmann Neufeld.' In the earphones the General's voice was faint but very clear, completely free from distortion or static. 'Now then. About my psychological assessment of the English mind?'

'You have mistaken your profession, Herr General. Everything has happened exactly as you forecast. You will be interested to know, sir, that the Royal Air Force is launching a saturation bombing attack on the Zenica Gap at precisely 1.30 a.m. this morning.'

'Well, well, well,' Zimmermann said thoughtfully that is interesting. But hardly surprising.'

'No, sir.' Neufeld looked up as Droshny touched him on the shoulder and pointed to the north. 'One moment, sir.'

Neufeld removed the earphones and cocked his head in the direction of Droshny's pointing arm He lifted his binoculars but there was nothing to be seen. But unquestionably there was something to be heard — the distant clamour of aircraft engines, closing Neufeld readjusted the earphones.

'We have to give the English full marks for punctuality, sir. The plane is coming in now.'

'Excellent, excellent. Keep me informed.' Neufeld eased off one earphone and gazed to the north. Still nothing to be seen, the moon was now temporarily behind a cloud, but the sound of the aircraft engines was unmistakably closer. Suddenly, somewhere down on the plateau, came three sharp blasts on a whistle. Immediately, the marching phalanx broke up, men and women stumbling off the runway into the deep snow on the eastern side of the plateau, leaving behind them, obviously by prearrangement, about eighty men who spaced themselves out on either side of the runway.

'They're organized, I'll say that for them,' Neufeld said admiringly.

Droshny smiled his wolf's smile. 'All the better for us, eh?'

'Everybody seems to be doing their best to help us tonight,' Neufeld agreed.

Overhead, the dark and obscuring band of cloud drifted away to the south and the white light of the moon raced across the plateau. Neufeld could immediately see the plane, less than half a mile away, its camouflaged shape sharply etched in the brilliant moonlight as it sank down towards the end of the runway. Another sharp blast of the whistle and at once the men lining both sides of the runway switched on hand lamps — a superfluity, really, in those almost light as day perfect landing conditions, but essential id the moon been hidden behind cloud.

'Touching down now,' Neufeld said into the microphone. 'It's a Wellington bomber.'

'Let's hope it makes a safe landing,' Zimmermann said.

'Let's hope so indeed, sir.'

The Wellington made a safe landing, a perfect landing considering the extremely difficult conditions. It slowed down quickly, then steadied its speed as it headed towards the end of the runway.

Neufeld said into the microphone: 'Safely down, herr General, and rolling to rest.'

'Why doesn't it stop?' Droshny wondered. 'You can't accelerate a plane over snow as you can over a concrete runway,' Neufeld said. 'They'll require every yard of the runway for the take-off.'

Quite obviously, the pilot of the Wellington was of the same opinion. He was about fifty yards from the end of the runway when two groups of people broke from the hundreds lining the edge of the runway, one group heading for the already opened door in the side of the bomber, the other heading for the tail of the plane. Both groups reached the plane just it rolled to a stop at the very end of the runway, a dozen men at once flinging themselves upon the tail unit and beginning to turn the Wellington through 180 degrees.

Droshny was impressed. 'By heavens, they're not wasting much time, are they?'

They can't afford to. If the plane stays there anytime at all it'll start sinking in the snow.' Neufeld lifted his binoculars and spoke into the microphone.

'They're boarding now, Herr General. One, two, three… seven, eight, nine. Nine it is.' Neufeld sighed in relief and at the relief of tension. 'My warmest congratulations, Herr General. Nine it is, indeed.'

The plane was already facing the way it had come The pilot stood on the brakes, revved the engines up to a crescendo, then twenty seconds after it had come to;i halt the Wellington was on its way again, accelerating down the runway. The pilot took no chances, he waited till the very far end of the airstrip before lifting the Wellington off, but when he did it rose cleanly and easily and climbed steadily into the night sky.

'Airborne, Herr General,' Neufeld reported. 'Every thing perfectly according to plan.' He covered the microphone, looking after the disappearing plane, then smiled at Droshny. 'I think we should wish them bon voyage, don't you?'

Mallory, one of the hundreds lining the perimeter of the airstrip, lowered his binoculars. 'And a very pleasant journey to them all.'

Colonel Vis shook his head sadly. 'All this work just to send five of my men on a holiday to Italy.'

'I dare say they needed a break,' Mallory said.

'The hell with them. How about us?' Reynolds demanded. In spite of the words, his face showed no anger, just a dazed and total bafflement. 'We should have been aboard that damned plane.'

'Ah. Well. I changed my mind.'

'Like hell you changed your mind,' Reynolds said bitterly.

Inside the fuselage of the Wellington, the moustached major surveyed his three fellow-escapees and the five Partisan soldiers, shook his head in disbelief and turned to the captain by his side.

'A rum do, what?'

'Very rum, indeed, sir,' said the captain. He looked curiously at the papers the major held in his hand.

'What have you there?'

'A map and papers that I'm to give to some bearded naval type when we land back in Italy. Odd fellow, that Mallory, what?'

'Very odd indeed, sir,' the captain agreed.

Mallory and his men, together with Vis and Vlanovich, I detached themselves from the crowd and were now standing outside Vis's command tent. Mallory said to Vis: 'You have arranged for the ropes? We must leave at once.'

'What's all the desperate hurry, sir?' Groves asked.

Like Reynolds, much of his resentment seemed to have gone to be replaced by a helpless bewilderment.

'All of a sudden, like, I mean?'

'Petar and Maria,' Mallory said grimly. 'They're the hurry.'

'What about Petar and Maria?' Reynolds asked suspiciously. 'Where do they come into this?'

'They're being held captive in the ammunition block-house. And when Neufeld and Droshny get back there — '

'Get back there,' Groves said dazedly. 'What do you mean, get back there? We — we left them locked up. how in God's name do you know that Petar and Maria are being held in the block-house? How can they be? I mean, they weren't there when we left there — and it wasn't so long ago.'

'When Andrea's pony had a stone in its hoof on the way up here from the block-house, it didn't have a stone in its hoof. Andrea was keeping watch.'

'You see,' Miller explained, 'Andrea doesn't trust anyone.'

'He saw Sergeant Baer taking Petar and Maria there,' Mallory went on. 'Bound. Baer released Neufeld and Droshny and you can bet your last cent our precious pair were up on the cliff side there checking that we really did fly out.'

'You don't tell us very much, do you, sir?' Reynolds said bitterly.

'I'll tell you this much,' Mallory said with certainty 'If we don't get there soon, Maria and Petar are for the high jump. Neufeld and Droshny don't know yet, but by this time they must be pretty convinced that it was Maria who told me where those four agents were being kept. They've always known who we really were — Maria told them. Now they know who Maria is. Just before Droshny killed Saunders — '

'Droshny?' Reynolds's expression was that of a man who has almost given up all attempt to understand 'Maria?'

'I made a miscalculation.' Mallory sounded tired. 'We all make miscalculations, but this was a bad one.' He smiled, but the smile didn't touch his eyes. 'You will recall that you had a few harsh words to say about Andrea here when he picked that fight with Droshny outside the dining hut in Neufeld's camp?' 'Sure I remember. It was one of the craziest — ' 'You can apologize to Andrea at a later and more convenient time,' Mallory interrupted. 'Andrea provoked Droshny because I asked him to. I knew that Neufeld and Droshny were up to no good in the dining hut after we had left and I wanted a moment to ask Maria what they had been discussing. She told me that they intended to send a couple of Cetniks after us into Broznik's camp — suitably disguised, of course to report on us. They were two of the men acting as our escort in that wood-burning truck. Andrea and killed them.'

'Now you tell us,' Groves said almost mechanically.

'Andrea and Miller killed them.'

'What I didn't know was that Droshny was also following us. He saw Maria and myself together.' He looked at Reynolds. 'Just as you did. I didn't know at time that he'd seen us, but I've known for some hours now. Maria has been as good as under sentence death since this morning. But there was nothing I could do about it. Not until now. If I'd shown my hand, we'd have been finished.'

Reynolds shook his head. 'But you've just said that Maria betrayed us — '

'Maria,' Mallory said, 'is a top-flight British espionage agent. English father, Yugoslav mother. She was in this country even before the Germans came. As a student in Belgrade. She joined the Partisans, who trained her as a radio operator, then arranged for her defection to the Cetniks. The Cetniks had captured a radio operator from one of the first British missions. They — the Germans, rather — trained her to imitate this operator's hand — every radio operator has his own unmistakable style — until their styles were quite indistinguishable. And her English, of course, was perfect. So then she It in direct contact with Allied Intelligence in both both Africa and Italy. The Germans thought they had completely fooled: it was, in fact, the other way round.'

Miller said complainingly: 'You didn't tell me any of this, either.'

'I've so much on my mind. Anyway, she was notified direct of the arrival of the last four agents to be parachuted in. She, of course, told the Germans. And and those agents carried information reinforcing the German belief that a second front — a full-scale invasion — of Yugoslavia was imminent.'

Reynolds said slowly: 'They knew we were coming too?'

'Of course. They knew everything about us all along, what we really were. What they didn't know, of course, is that we knew they knew and though what they knew of us was true it was only part of the truth.'

Reynolds digested this. He said, hesitating: 'Sir?' 'Yes?'

'I could have been wrong about you, sir.'

'It happens,' Mallory agreed. 'From time to time, it happens. You were wrong, Sergeant, of course you were, but you were wrong from the very best motives The fault is mine. Mine alone. But my hands were tied.' Mallory touched him on the shoulder. 'One of these days you might get round to forgiving me.'

'Petar?' Groves asked. 'He's not her brother?'

'Petar is Petar. No more. A front.'

'There's still an awful lot — ' Reynolds began, but Mallory interrupted him.

'It'll have to wait. Colonel Vis, a map, please.' Captain Vlanovich brought one from the tent and Mallory shone a torch on it. 'Look. Here. The Neretva dam and the Zenica Cage. I told Neufeld that Broznik had told me that the Partisans believe that the attack is coming across the Neretva bridge from the south. But, as I've just said, Neufeld knew — he knew even before we had arrived — who and what we really were. So hi was convinced I was lying. He was convinced that I was convinced that the attack was coming through the Zenica Gap to the north here. Good reason for believing it, mind you: there are two hundred German tanks there.'

Vis stared at him. 'Two hundred!'

'One hundred and ninety of them are made of plywood. So the only way Neufeld — and, no doubt, German High Command — could ensure that this useful information got through to Italy was to allow stage this rescue bid. Which, of course, they very gladly did, assisting us in every possible way even to extent of gladly collaborating with us in permitting themselves to be captured. They knew, of course, that had no option left but to capture them and force them to lead us to the block-house — an arrangement they had ensured by previously seizing and hiding away the only other person who could have helped us in this — Maria. And, of course, knowing this in advance, they arranged for Sergeant Baer to come and free them.'

'I see.' It was plain to everyone that Colonel Vis not see at all.

'You mentioned an RAF saturation attack on the Zenica Gap. This, of course, will now be pitched to the bridge?'

'No. You wouldn't have us break our word to Wehrmacht, would you? As promised, the attack comes on the Zenica Gap. As a diversion. To convince them, in case they have any last doubts left in their minds, that we have been fooled. Besides, you know as well as I do that that bridge is immune to high-level air attack. It will have to be destroyed in some other way.'

'In what way?'

'We'll think of something. The night is young. Two last things, Colonel Vis. There'll be another Wellington at midnight and a second at three a.m. Let them both go. The next in, at six a.m., hold it against our rival. Well, our possible arrival. With any luck we'll flying out before dawn.'

'With any luck,' Vis said sombrely.

'And radio General Vukalovic, will you? Tell him what I've told you, the exact situation. And tell him to begin intensive small-arms fire at one o'clock in the morning.'

'What are they supposed to fire at?'

'They can fire at the moon for all I care.' Mallory swung aboard his pony. 'Come on, let's be off.'

'The moon,' General Vukalovic agreed, 'is a fair-sized target, though rather a long way off. However, if that's what our friend wants, that's what he shall have.' Vukalovic paused for a moment, looked at Colonel Janzy who was sitting beside him on a fallen log in the woods to the south of the Zenica Gap, then spoke again into the radio mouth-piece.

'Anyway, many thanks, Colonel Vis. So the Neretva bridge it is. And you think it will be unhealthy for us to remain in the immediate vicinity of this area after 1 a.m. Don't worry, we won't be here.' Vukalovic removed the head-phones and turned to Janzy. 'We pull out, quietly, at midnight. We leave a few men to make a lot of noise.'

The ones who are going to fire at the moon?'

'The ones who are going to fire at the moon. Radio Colonel Lazlo at Neretva, will you? Tell him we'll be with him before the attack. Then radio Major Stephan Tell him to leave just a holding force, pull out of the Western Gap and make his way to Colonel Lazlo's HQ.' Vukalovic paused for a thoughtful moment. 'We should be in for a few very interesting hours, don't you think?'

'Is there any chance in the world for this man Mallory?' Janzy's tone carried with it its own answer

'Well, look at it this way,' Vukalovic said reasonably. 'Of course there's a chance. There has to be a chance. It is, after all, my dear Janzy, a question of options — and there are no other options left open to us'

Janzy made no reply but nodded several times in slow succession as if Vukalovic had just said something profound.