The Heights of Zervos

CHAPTER TWO

Saturday, April 5

Dietrich.

The name on the identity card immediately caught the attention of the Turkish passport control officer. Dr Richard Dietrich, German national, born Flensburg. Profession: archaeologist. Age: thirty-two. Officer Sarajoglu buttoned up his collar against the cold and studied the card thoughtfully as though he found it suspect. Behind him in the harbour of the Golden Horn a tugboat siren shrieked non-stop, a piercing sound which the raw, early morning wind from the Black Sea carried clear across Istanbul. Sarajoglu, a man sensitive to atmospheres, was unable to define the feeling of suspense which hung over the waterfront. At half past six on a morning when winter still gripped the straits, the worst always seemed likely to happen.

'You are travelling on business?' the Turk inquired.

'I am leaving Turkey.' Dietrich took a small cigar out of his mouth and flicked ash which fell on the counter separating them. He was a very large man, dressed in a belted leather coat and a dark, soft hat. His reply had been arrogant in manner and wording, implying that since he was leaving the country his activities were of no concern to this bureaucrat. Sarajoglu concealed his annoyance but proceeded to make a gesture of independence, conveying that although German troops had recently marched into Rumania and Bulgaria, his country was still neutral territory: using a gloved finger, he poked the German's ash off the counter. It fell off the edge and landed on Dietrich's highly polished boot. Sarajoglu, who had watched the fall of the ash, looked up and stared at the German. No reaction. Dietrich had clasped his hands behind his back and was staring through a frost-coated window at the harbour.

He was a man whose sheer physical presence was formidable – a man over six feet tall who must weigh at least fourteen stone, Sarajoglu estimated. Even so, the head seemed a little large for the body, a squarish head with a short nose, the mouth wide and firm-lipped, the jaw-line suggesting great energy and enormous determination. But it was the eyes which the Turk found most arresting, large brown eyes which moved slowly and deliberately as though assessing everything. He might be on the list of known German agents, Sarajoglu was thinking. Without much hope, he held onto the card and asked Dietrich to wait a moment.

'I have to catch that boat, the Hydra,' Dietrich informed him roughly, 'so hurry it up,' he rumbled as the Turk moved away inro a small room behind the counter. Pretending not to have heard, Sarajoglu closed the door, opened a filing cabinet, took out the confidential list of German agents and ran his eye down it. No, his memory had not deceived him: Dietrich was not on the list. He turned to a youth who was typing at a desk close to the wall.

'The Hydra – she hasn't changed her sailing schedule so far as you know?'

'No, she's sailing at 7.30 AM and making the normal ferry run – Istanbul to Zervos. Why, sir?'

'Nothing really. But there are three Germans aboard the vessel already and now I've got a fourth outside. It's just unusual – Germans travelling to Greece at this stage of the war.'

'Greece isn't at war with Germany – only with Italy.'

'Yes, and that's a curious situation.' Sarajoglu bit the edge of the identity card between his teeth and failed to notice that some of the ink had flaked off. 'Curious,' he repeated. 'The Greeks have been fighting Germany's ally, Italy, for over six months but the Germans still remain neutral. I heard yesterday that British forces are landing in Greece – one of our captains saw their transports in the Piraeus. They must anticipate a German attack.'

'They probably hope to prevent one.' The typist peered through the window towards the counter beyond. 'Is that him – the big brute out there?

Ah, so you don't like the look of him either, Sarajoglu thought. He stared through the window where he could see the German standing passive and immobile, and this total lack of nervousness impressed him. When a passenger's papers were taken away even the innocent ones displayed a certain perturbation, as though they feared an inadvertent mistake in their documentation. Dietrich, however, stood so still that he might have been carved from wood except for the curl of cigar smoke rising towards the roof of the shed. 'Yes,' Sarajoglu replied, 'that is Dr Richard Dietrich. He is thirty-two years old – so why is he not in the German army, I wonder?'

'Better ask him.' As the typist resumed work Sarajoglu's lips tightened. He flicked the cutting edge of the card sharply across the youth's ear, noted with satisfaction that he had flinched, then went outside to the counter. The German was standing in exactly the same position as when he had left him, hands behind his back, staring out at the harbour, his manner outwardly unruffled by this deliberate delay. Sarajoglu felt even more irked as he laid the card on the counter and spoke with exaggerated courtesy. 'You may go now, Dr Dietrich. A pleasant trip.'

The German picked up the card without haste, put it away inside his wallet, his eyes on Sarajoglu all the time. He stood with that typically German stance, his legs splayed well apart, his body like a human tree-trunk. The Turk began to feel uncomfortable: there had been precise instructions from above as to how to deal with German tourists – don't offend them and treat them with every courtesy so there can be no cause for complaint from Berlin. He felt relieved when Dietrich turned away, nodding curtly to the porter who hastily picked up the single bag and followed him out of the shed and up the ice-sheathed gangway. Inside his cabin Dietrich was feeling in his pocket for the tip when the porter, still nervous of his German passenger, clumsily knocked over the water carafe. Dietrich shook his head brusquely as the porter stooped to pick up the remnants, told him he'd done enough damage already and handed over the modest tip, a sum which normally would have provoked a sarcastic response. But as the German went on staring at him, clearly inviting his immediate departure, the porter thought better of it and left the cabin with a polite mumble.

As soon as the porter had gone, Macomber locked the door, picked up the two largest pieces of broken carafe and deposited them in the wastepaper basket. God, it was a relief to be inside neutral Turkey, to be on board, to be alone in his cabin. And within thirty hours he would be able to revert to his real identity, to be known once more as Ian Macomber, to talk in English all day long if he wished. He went over to the washbasin and looked in the mirror above it, gazing into the glass like a man seeing the result when surgical bandages have been removed.

For the first time since he had left the flat in Bucharest his features relaxed, the crinkles of humour appeared at the corners of his mouth, and even though still wearing the German hat and leather coat the Teutonic image was gone. It was going to be irksome – keeping up his German impersonation until he landed safely on Greek soil – but it was necessary. He was travelling with German papers and the Greek captain might not appreciate his sudden conversion to another nationality. So for one more day and one more night he must go on playing the part of Dr Richard Dietrich, German archaeologist. The knock on the door startled him, reminded him of the extreme fatigue he was labouring under – and also that the danger might not be past yet. He unlocked the door, his hand clutching the Luger inside his coat pocket, opened it cautiously. It was the chief steward and he showed surprise when Macomber addressed him in fluent Greek.

'What do you want?'

'You speak our language – it is most unusual for a German…'

'I said what do you want?'

'Is everything to your satisfaction, sir? Good. If you need something you have only to call me…" The voluble steward chattered on while Macomber stared at him bleakly, then he said something which again startled the Scot. 'I'm sure you'll be interested to know we have three of your fellow-countrymen also on board…'

For a muddled moment Macomber thought he was referring to three Englishmen, then he recovered his tired wits. 'Are they together?' he enquired in a bored tone which concealed his anxiety about the reply.

'No, sir, they are all travelling separately.' The steward paused and there was a malicious gleam in his quick-moving eyes. 'There are also two British passengers.'

'You find that amusing?'

'No, sir.' The steward replied hastily, taken aback by the grimness of this overbearing German. He tried to correct his blunder. 'I shall be in the dining-room where breakfast is being prepared, so if you require anything…'

'Then I shall ask you! And take this -I want a comfortable trip, so do your duty.' Macomber had handed the flabbergasted man a generous tip before turning bis back and closing the cabin door, but it had suddenly occurred to him that the steward could be a valuable source of information and he had already decided to question him further about the other passengers. But not now – it would arouse too much interest. Alone again, Macomber stripped off the hat and coat and doused himself in ice-cold water. Three Germans aboard, he was thinking as he dried himself slowly; perhaps it wasn't all over yet. When he had reached Istanbul he had avoided going anywhere near the British Legation – because the Legation was the very place the Abwehr might be watching for his arrival. It was too late to arrest him but it certainly wasn't too late to have him killed. Not that he feared the Abwehr's revenge – they had a far more powerful motive for ensuring that he never reached Allied territory alive, and they were perfectly capable of putting an assassin aboard the Hydra, an assassin not necessarily of German nationality. It's what I'm carrying in my head they'd like to destroy, he reminded himself. Information gathered over months of patient observation in the Balkans – data about assembly points, storage depots, the routes along which supplies were being sent to the Reich…

He finished drying himself, glanced at the inviting bunk and looked away quickly. Lord, it had been a swine of a trip from Bucharest. Four hours' sleep in forty-eight, his reflexes shot to hell, but he'd better check this damned ship – and forget any ideas about sleep until he was actually on Greek soil. He put on the leather coat and the hat, tested the action of his Luger, glanced in the mirror. He was back in business again. The arrogant, uncompromising image of Dr Richard Dietrich stared back at him. Replacing the gun inside his coat, he left the cabin to carry out his inspection of the 5,000-ton Greek ferry.

The bitter wind raked his face as soon as he reached the deck, a wind unpleasant enough, he soon found, to keep the handful of fellow-passengers below decks. Half an hour later, his tour of the vessel completed, he stood near the stern where he could keep an eye on the gangway for late arrivals. It was just possible that the Abwehr might send someone on board at the last moment. Standing by the rail, Macomber seemed impervious to the weather as he quietly smoked his cigar. The lifeboat covers were still crusted with last night's snowfall, the masthead rigging still encased with glassy ice, but the battered yellow funnel was dripping moisture as the ship began to get up steam. To all outward appearances Macomber had wandered round the vessel with the idle curiosity of the newly arrived passenger who is interested in his temporary home, but now as he smoked his cigar he was cataloguing his discoveries in his mind.

From the chief steward he had learned that the Hydra carried a crew of six, that the captain's name was Nopagos, and that he had plied this regular passage between Istanbul and Zervos for the past fourteen years. Macomber stirred at the rail as the chief steward reappeared at his elbow, chattering amiably.

'Looks as though we've got our full complement of passengers aboard, sir.'

Macomber nodded, wondering whether he had overdone the tip: the steward was becoming his shadow. He checked his watch. 'There's still time for last-minute arrivals.' Again he was subtly probing for information.

'Doubt that, sir. I was talking to the ticket office manager a few minutes ago on the phone – he sold seven tickets for this trip, so it looks as though that's the lot.'

Macomber nodded again and the steward, sensing that he was no longer in a talkative mood, excused himself. Left alone once more, the Scot continued his mental inventory. Two British civilians he hadn't yet seen, one man in his late twenties while his companion was probably a few years beyond thirty. Which was interesting, since both men were of military age. One Greek civilian who lived on Zervos and apparently had something to do with the monastic order which owned the ferry – again a man of military age, but Macomber presumed that his slight limp had kept him out of the Greek Army. And, finally, the three Germans. He had seen two of them briefly, both civilians in their early forties who had the appearance of businessmen, but the third, a man called Schnell, had apparently come aboard very early in the morning and locked himself away in his cabin. 'With his cabin trunk,' as the voluble steward had explained earlier. On this point the Scot had detected an uncertain note in the steward's voice and he had asked a question.

'You find that odd – that he should keep a trunk in his cabin?'

'Well, sir, it takes up a lot of space and I offered to have it put in the hold when he came aboard. After all, we shall be docking at Zervos in twenty-four hours. He was quite abrupt with me, the way some…' He had paused and Macomber, knowing he had been about to say 'the way some Germans are', had smiled grimly to himself. But the steward had changed his wording in time. '… the way some people are when they arrive early. He insisted it stayed with him in the cabin so he must be carrying something valuable.'

Something valuable? Macomber frowned as he recalled the steward's words – it was this cabin trunk and its unknown contents which occupied his thoughts as he gazed out over the muddle of decrepit-looking tramps and coasters which congested the Golden Horn harbour. He heard a sound behind him and remained staring out across the water, one large boot resting on the lower rail. Was it likely that an attempt would be made to assassinate him at this late hour – a few minutes before putting to sea? Out of the corner of his eye he watched the Greek approaching, heard the faint slur of his limping step.

The man's name was Grapos and even with that slight limp Macomber thought he would be an asset to any army: of only medium height there was, nevertheless, a suggestion of tremendous physical strength in those broad shoulders and that powerful chest which swelled the coloured shirt. Not a prosperous individual, Macomber decided: his grey jacket and trousers were of poor quality, the red tie round his neck was faded and his boots were shabby. The steward had told him of an unexpected facility Grapos possessed – the monks had taught him to speak English. The Greek was very close now, stopping almost behind the Scot, and his eyes were shrewd and alert.

'Always it seems so long before the boat sails,' he began. 'You have been to Zervos before?'

'Once.' Macomber replied in Greek and turned bis head away to study the harbour. Grapos might have been surprised had he known how much Macomber had registered in that brief glance. The Greek's face was strong-featured, the jaw-line formidable, and the long straggle of dark moustache which curved round the corners of his wide mouth gave him the look of a bandit or guerrilla. He was one of the most villainous-looking characters Macomber had encountered since entering the Balkans. But the point which had alerted the Scot was the fact that Grapos had spoken to him in Greek. Which could only mean that he had eavesdropped while Macomber was conversing in that language with the steward, unless that talkative individual had informed Grapos that they had a Greek-speaking German aboard.

'There is bad weather on the way,' Grapos remarked and looked upwards.

'Why do you say that?' Macomber's tone was brusque and unencouraging, but the Greek seemed not to notice.

'Because of the birds.' Grapos lifted a hand and pointed to where a cloud of seagulls wheeled and floated in erratic circles high above the white-coated domes and minarets onshore.

'Don't you always get birds over a harbour?' Macomber sounded bored with the company which had thrust itself upon him, but now he was observing the large, hairy-backed hands which gripped the rail as though they might pull a section loose bodily.

'Yes, but not so many, and they are uneasy – you can tell by the way they fly. I have seen them fly like that over Zervos before the great storms. This will be a bad voyage,' he went on cheerfully. 'We shall run into a storm before we land at Katyra. Let us hope it does not strike us off Cape Zervos. You see,' he continued with relish, 'the entrance to the gulf is very narrow and the cape has been the graveyard of a hundred ships or more…' He broke off, grinning savagely as he displayed a row of perfect white teeth. 'But, of course, you know – you have been there before.'

Macomber said nothing as he hunched his broad shoulders and threw the smoked cigar butt into the water. Two ships away along the wharf another vessel was preparing to leave, her white funnel belching out clouds of murky smoke which the wind dispersed in chaotic trails. Behind him he heard footsteps retreating, one of them out of step. Grapos had taken the hint and was on his way to find someone else who would listen to his chatter. Extracting a Zeiss Monokular glass, a single-lens field-glass, from his pocket, Macomber focused it on the other vessel getting up a head of steam. The Rumanian flag whipped in the wind from her masthead and she was, he knew, the Rupescu. Her decks were strangely deserted for a ship on the point of departure and at the head of the gangplank two seamen stood as though on guard. It was quite clear that shortly she would follow the Hydra across the Sea of Marmara and into the Dardanelles, which he found interesting.

From the steward he had learned that the Rupescu, a fast motor vessel, was twelve hours out of the Bulgarian port of Varna and the situation could be a little tricky since she was bound for the Aegean. German troops now controlled Bulgaria so technically the Allies might regard the Rupescu as an enemy vessel, a prize to be sought out by the Royal Navy. Certainly the British Legation at Istanbul would already have wirelessed Egypt of her presence in the straits, but Macomber doubted whether she would be seized – the British Government had broken off diplomatic relations with Rumania but had not yet declared war on that unhappy country. Satisfied with what he had seen – nothing out of the ordinary -Macomber put away his glass and then stiffened as a shabbily dressed man dashed up the gangway. Under his arm he carried a batch of newspapers and he flourished one in the Scot's face when he came along the desk. Macomber bought a copy, glancing at the banner headline before he went below. German Army Poised To Attack?

The engines were throbbing steadily as he made his way along a narrow companionway and walked calmly into the saloon, a small cramped room with panelled walls which was already reeking of acrid cigar smoke. Pulling out his copy of the Frankfurter Zeitung, Macomber sank heavily into an ancient arm-chair in a corner which allowed him to see the whole room while he pretended to read. Hahnemann, a thin-faced German in his early forties and dressed like a travelling salesman in a cheap suit, sat in the diagonally opposite corner smoking one of the cigars responsible for the bad air. In another corner, a heavily built German of medium height, his clothes well-cut and dark, sat reading some typed sheets and also smoking a cigar. That would be Volber. The fourth corner was occupied by a small bar where a man in white uniform was polishing a glass. Thank God, Macomber was thinking, those two don't exactly look like sociable types. I could do without useless conversation in German at the moment. The thought had hardly passed through his head when two men opened the doors and stood hesitating as though not sure whether to come in. Their first words warned Macomber. They were British.

'Go on in, for God's sake,' Prentice said impatiently to Ford, who was standing in the doorway. 'Don't just stand gawping. We've paid our fares just like the rest of these johnnies.'

Ford's face was expressionless as he carefully made his way through the smoke to a table close to the bar. As they settled behind a low table the steward took Macomber's order and a minute later placed a glass of beer in front of him. Ford kept his voice low as he made the remark. 'That chap who's just got his beer looks like another bleedin' Jerry.'

'I think they all are,' Prentice murmured nonchalantly.

'This is a funny, funny war at times.' Unlike Ford, who sat stiffly and kept an eye on the other three men without appearing to do so, Prentice was outwardly the soul of relaxation. When the steward arrived for their order he deliberately raised his voice so the whole room could hear. 'A beer and a glass of ouzo, laddie.'

'Beg, please?' The steward looked at a loss. Prentice leaned round him and stabbed a ringer in the direction of Macomber's table, his voice louder still. 'One ouzo and a beer – beer – like that chap over there ordered.' The other two Germans glanced in his direction and then looked away, but the Scot, who had lowered his paper, stared hard across the room with an unpleasantly inquiring expression.

'Tough-looking basket, that big one,' Ford remarked, keeping his own voice quiet. 'If I met him in Libya I'd let bin have two in the pump. Yes, two – just to be sure.'

The drinks were served and Ford sipped at his palely coloured beer cautiously, then grimaced. 'They've got the washing-up water mixed in with the beer.' He eyed Prentice's glass with even more distaste. 'You're not really drinking that, are you?' But his question was purely rhetorical – Prentice would drink anything, smoke anything, eat anything. Some of the dishes he'd consumed during their brief stay in Turkey had astounded and appalled the conservative Ford. Prentice pushed the glass of yellowish liquid towards him.

'Go on, it tastes just like whisky.' He watched with amusement while his companion took a gulp and then almost dropped the glass, looking round suddenly to make sure his experience hadn't been observed. Macomber was still watching him over his paper.

'Lovely!' Ford choked. 'A delicate mixture of nail varnish and turpentine. If that's the Greek national drink no wonder the Romans licked them. It still seems odd travelling with a bunch of Jerries for company.' He looked round the saloon as he heard a distant rattle. The gangway being hauled up probably. In one corner the thin-faced German was absorbed in a book while the man crouched over some typed sheets made notes with a pencil. They might have been aboard a normal peacetime boat and the war seemed a long way from Istanbul 'It really is damned funny,' Prentice began, his lean, humorous face serious for a change. 'Here we are on a Greek ferry just leaving for Zervos – in the middle of a life-and-death war with Adolf Hider's Reich – and because the Greeks are righting the Italians but not the Germans, we can travel with three Jerries we mustn't even bump into if we meet them in the corridor. I must remember this trip when I write me memoirs, Ford.'

'Yes, sir,' said Ford automatically, and received a sharp dig in the ribs for his pains. He understood the hint and swore inwardly. He'd be glad when this ferry trip was over and they could get back to normal service life, to being Lieutenant Prentice and Staff-Sergeant Ford. Before they had boarded the Hydra Prentice had given him a stern lecture in their Istanbul hotel bedroom and he had tripped up already.

'Ford,' Prentice had begun, 'for the purposes of this sea trip back to Greece and while we're on board the ferry, I want you to forget I'm a lieutenant and, what's more important still, forget that you're a staff-sergeant. We're sporting civvies, but if you keep on calling me "sir" it's a dead giveaway. There may even be a German tourist on that broken-down old Greek ferry.' Prentice hadn't really believed that this would happen but he was dramatizing the situation to try and make Ford forget his years of professional training for a few hours.

'I'll watch it, sir,' Ford had replied and had then watched Prentice throw his trilby on the bed with a despairing cry.

'Ford!' he had bellowed. 'You've just done it again! Look, I know we're at the fag-end of our trip with the military mission to carry out liaison with the Turks in case Jerry attacks them, but we really have got to watch it…'

The trouble really had been the Turks themselves. Anxious to keep out of the war if they could – and who could blame them for that? – they had invited the British to send a military mission to discuss possible defence measures if the worst happened. But to avoid provoking the attack they feared, or rather, to avoid giving Berlin an excuse for launching that attack, they had insisted that the mission should travel in civilian clothes. A Signal Corps man, Prentice had found plenty to discuss with his Turkish opposite numbers in the way of a plan for setting up communications, and Staff-Sergeant Ford, ex-Royal Artillery, was now one of that rare breed, an ammunition examiner, an expert on explosives, both British and foreign. In this role he had also finished his work late when he had been taken to see a Turkish dam it was proposed to blow up in the event of a German invasion. So both of them had returned to Istanbul to find the plane with the military mission aboard had already left for Athens.

'When's the next one?' Prentice had light-heartedly asked the chap at the Legation.

'There isn't one,' the Legation official had informed him coldly. 'You'll have to catch a boat out of here. The very first available boat,' he had added. 'I've already looked it up for you – it's a ship called the Hydra. Sailing for Greece tomorrow morning. Just after dawn,' he had concluded with a twinge of waspish humour which Prentice, who hated rising early, had not fully appreciated.

Later, Prentice had discovered that normally there was a regular service operating between Istanbul and Athens, but the Turks had just cancelled this because of rumours of German troop movements along their northern borders. So, that left the ferry to the peninsula of Zervos, which was in northern Greece, much closer to Salonika than Athens, but at least it would land them on Greek soil. The Legation, of course, had been in the devil of a hurry to see the last of them. Prentice had a shrewd idea that the Ambassador was having kittens at the thought of British soldiers disguised as civilians wandering the streets of Istanbul. As he expressed it quietly to Ford in the saloon of the Hydra while he swallowed the ouzo in two gulps: 'I really think if there'd been a boat leaving for Russia they'd have pushed us on that.'

'Maybe. I still think it's queer there should be three Jerries all on the same trip on this leaky old tub,' Ford persisted. He could hear the rattle of a chain somewhere. They'd be off any minute now.

Prentice grinned. 'They may be embassy staff transferred from Istanbul to their place in Salonika.' He studied Ford, noted again the stocky build, the neatly cut black hair and the alert eyes which watched the room constantly. Always wanting to have a go, was Ford. An aggressive, controlled chap who carried an air of competence and energetic ability. As for Prentice, he never went out of his way to have a go, but if the necessity arose he was more than able to cope with his leisured, laconic manner. The difference was that for Ford, the army was a way of life, whereas for Prentice it was a necessary but time-wasting interval which kept him from his advertising job in the West End of London.

'But if they're embassy staff,' Ford went on obstinately, his hands cupped to hide his mouth, 'why are they travelling separately? They don't know each other, that's obvious enough.'

Prentice felt the ship moving away from the quayside and checked his watch. 7.30 AM. Ford had a point there, he was thinking. And if they were embassy staff going to Salonika why the devil hadn't they taken the train from Istanbul along that line through Macedonia? By all accounts it was a nightmare trip, stopping at every little out-of-the-way village and taking anything up to a couple of days, but at least it would have got them there direct. So why were they in such a rush to reach Greece by the earliest possible hour? Why, Prentice kept asking himself? Why?

Field-Marshal von List stood up from behind the desk at his GHQ in southern Bulgaria and walked to the window, still holding the meteorological report. Beside the desk his staff officer, Colonel Wilhelm Genke, waited patiently. The field-marshal was worried and from long experience Genke knew that this was not the moment to speak. The clock on the desk registered 7.30 AM.

His face seasoned and grim, List gazed out at the view, and this didn't please him either because it was a reminder of the piece of paper he held in his hands. It was an hour after dawn and beyond the stone houses of the village he could make out where the mountains rose to meet the clouds which hung low over Bulgaria, clouds which promised more snow on the way. Which the Met report also promised. He could vaguely see the snow from where he stood – great drifts of it piled up on the lower slopes under the cloud ceiling. His voice was harsh when he spoke.

'It's foul, unspeakably foul weather. They could be wrong, I suppose. They're wrong half the time, these so-called weather experts. Look at what happened in Norway.'

Genke coughed, timing his intervention carefully. 'Spring is late all over Europe, sir. There is still deep snow across the Russian steppes and no sign of a thaw…'

'Don't let's talk about Russia yet. We have to settle this business first.' List turned round, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice. 'Berlin, of course, is quite confident.'

'Berlin is always confident when other people have to do the work, sir. But you have exceptionally powerful forces under your command.'

On that point, at least, the field-marshal agreed. The Twelfth Army comprised two motorized, three mountain Alpenkorps and light infantry divisions, three regiments of the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler Division – and five Panzer divisions, the spearhead of the coming onslaught on Greece and Yugoslavia. A force of enormous strength and great mobility -theoretically powerful enough to overwhelm everything which stood in their path. But there was deep snow on the Greek mountains, deep snow on Olympus and Zervos. Could the machines overcome the hazards of this damnably prolonged winter? The question was never far from his mind – and zero hour was almost here.

Gazing out of the window, he thought that Bulgaria was the most Godforsaken spot he had encountered in his life, and even as he watched, white flakes drifted down outside the window, several clinging to the glass and beginning to build up opaque areas. Would spring never come? Yes, zero hour was very close indeed. Beyond the window he heard a familiar sound – the grind and clatter of tank tracks moving over cobbled streets. The supporting Panzers were rolling towards the border and would be in position before nightfall. The timetable had been set in motion and the operation was under way. Now no power on earth except Berlin could stop it. And within hours even Berlin would have forfeited that prerogative.

From outside the house came the sound of a vehicle stopping, its engine still left running. Genke shuffled his feet.

'The car has arrived, sir.'

List buttoned up his coat to the ndck, put the peaked cap on his head and started for the door. But on the way he paused to glance at the wall map which an orderly would take down as soon as they had left, a map of the southern Balkans and eastern Mediterranean zones. Then Genke opened the door and Field-Marshal von List strode out with his assistant following. Genke had noted that pause to glance at the map and he knew which area had attracted List's attention. He had looked first at Istanbul, then his eye had followed the sea route through the Dardanelles and across the Aegean where it had finally alighted on a certain peninsula.

Zervos.

'The Rupescu? ' The Senior Naval Intelligence Officer at Alexandria looked up at his assistant, Lieutenant-Commander Browne. 'Is that the Rumanian ship the Legation people at Istanbul sent the message about?'

'Yes, sir. It left the Bulgarian port of Varna yesterday and arrived at the Golden Horn a few hours ago. There's some mystery as to her ultimate destination.'

'What mystery?'

It's a bit vague, sir. Apparently she's bound for Beirut -but it's her first trip out of the Black Sea for months and I suppose the Legation's bothered because the Germans control Rumania now.'

'I see. That's rather delicate – we still haven't declared war on Rumania. You're suggesting we keep an eye on her? To make sure she is heading for the Lebanon?'

Browne looked out of the window where a white jetty sparkled in the early morning sunshine, its arm enclosing a basin of brilliant blue water where warships lay at anchor. A transport bound for Greece was just beyond the jetty wall, sailing north-west and leaving behind a clear wake of white on the blue. 'It's the only vessel in the area which has the remotest connexion with the Axis powers – and so far we have no idea what she's carrying.'

'Probably collecting rather than carrying – trying to pick up a cargo before war is eventually declared and we can pounce on her. We're very stretched, you know that, Browne.'

'I was thinking of the Daring, sir. She's patrolling off the Turkish coast and could intercept the Rupescu soon after dark. I'm not thinking of boarding her – but it might be interesting to get her reaction when a British destroyer comes in close.'

'Send Willoughby a message, then. And radio another one to Istanbul. We've had two requests already from those querulous diplomats.' The senior officer looked at the wall clock. 7.30 AM. Yes, it would be after nightfall before Willoughby arrived.