An eyewitness who’d seen him die was finally discovered. Pendlebury had been wounded fighting his way out of Heraklion, and two women had cared for him in their home. He was discovered by German paratroopers, who dragged the women off to prison. A neighbor, Calliope Karatatsanos, saw the paratroopers bring Pendlebury outside and order him to attention. Three times, the Germans shouted a question at him; Calliope believed it was about the location of English forces. Three times, while facing men who would decide if he’d live or die, Pendlebury shouted the reply that had been a Greek anthem since the beginning of the war:
“No!”
Bullets ripped into his chest and stomach. The paratroopers buried Crete’s golden man in a pit by the side of the road, then returned later to carve the glass eye from his skull.
“For the Cretans, it was the loss of an ally and a friend with a status close to that of Ares or Apollo,” Paddy would reflect. “John Pendlebury had spent 12 years in Crete. In this time he had become a mythical figure on the island, famous for his energy and enthusiasm, his dedication and his toughness.”
Now the Butcher was sleeping in his bed. Until suddenly, he wasn’t.
“One item of news, late in March, came as a shock,” Paddy would report: Müller had abruptly abandoned the isolated Villa Ariadne. The SOE thought the Butcher had left the island for good, just like the Turk, but then discovered he was still there; he’d transferred his base to the safety of “Fortress Crete,” the German coastal stronghold.
Paddy was staggered. There was no way they could get Müller out of the Fortress, and a roadside abduction would be impossible on Chania’s narrow and hectic streets. Paddy had to face it: at the last moment, the Butcher had slipped out of their grasp. Taking the Butcher’s place in Heraklion was a new commander, an unknown officer whose only offenses so far were wearing an Iron Cross around his neck and moving into the Villa Ariadne:
Major General Heinrich Kreipe, fresh from the Russian front.
So what are we going to do? Billy asked.
Paddy had been on Crete long enough to know that sometimes you just had to grab a hunk of hair. One of the island’s special gods is Kairos, the speedy little sprite who was Zeus’s last-born child. Kairos was young and wing-footed and forever gorgeous, despite having no hair except a single shock over his forehead. Kairos is the god of golden opportunities and guardian of outlaws, and he could work wonders for you if you were quick enough to grab him by the forelock. But once he flashes past, he’s gone for good. Naturally, the god of grabbing-what-you-can-when-you-can was beloved on an island where tyrants had created generations of outlaws. Kairos is the inspiration for the Cretan chestnut “Opportunity makes thieves.” What matters is the timing, not the target—seize any opportunity, even if it’s not the one you planned.
Paddy put it more bluntly: one general is as good as another. But they’d have to move fast; any more delays and the operation could be called off, same as it had been for Xan. Even extra recon put them at tremendous risk; Paddy had to disperse his first team of guerrilla accomplices because locals spotted them slipping in and out of the hideout and began gossiping about what the armed strangers were up to. They’d need a quick and easy plan, something that didn’t depend on heavy manpower or tricky timing. Paddy had just the ticket. All they had to do was hop over the wall at Villa Ariadne, grab Kreipe in his bedroom, bundle him into his staff car, and blaze off to the coast. Rendezvous with a sub and they’re on their way.
Paddy ran it by his band. The Cretans came from a rich tradition of body snatching—grabbing sheep, Turks, and elope-able girlfriends have long been honored island pastimes—so it was easy for them to assess Paddy’s proposition and recognize it as autoktonia: suicide. The moment they were in Ariadne’s courtyard, all it would take was an alert watchdog or a muffled sneeze and they’d be cornered. “The triple barriers of wire, one of which was said to be electrified, the size of the guard and the frequency of patrols offered too many chances for mishap,” Paddy had to concede. “Besides, to avoid all excuse or pretext for reprisals on the Cretans, I was determined the operation should be performed without bloodshed.” Paddy was firm on that point: any plan with the possibility of a shoot-out was off the table.
Even if they did figure out how to disappear the general from under the nose of his bodyguards, they’d need a sizable head start to stand any chance of getting him off the island. There were too many warships in the harbor and too many rocks near the capital to bring any kind of escape craft close to the northern coast. That meant heading south, on foot, up and over the toughest natural obstacle in southern Europe, with seventy thousand soldiers in hot pursuit. Paddy had also lost the one advantage he’d counted on from the start: instead of being in their clutches, the Butcher would be on their heels.
There was only one way to pull this off, in other words: the hard way.
CHAPTER 25
As I write now we are still in the cave,
and dare not move for fear of being seen.
—BILLY MOSS, scrawling in his diary before zero hour
A FEW HOURS before midnight on April 26, 1944, Paddy scrunched into a ditch by the side of the road and began scouring the darkness for a stab of light. He was dressed in the field-gray uniform of a German military policeman, pinched for him by a Cretan tailor who lived near the German base. By his side, also in a stolen uniform, was Billy Moss, who was about to discover if he could impersonate a German soldier without speaking any German.
There! In the distance, Paddy’s confederate began blinking out a flashlight code.
Blink: “General’s car.”
Blink blink: “Unescorted.”
Blink blink blink: “Action!”
“Here we go,” Paddy whispered. He and Billy scrambled out of the ditch as a black Opel sedan, each mudguard emblazoned with the generals’ Wehrmacht eagle insignia, swept around a bend and sped toward them down the dark road.
Paddy switched on a red signal lantern, and Billy held up a small stop sign. They took their positions at a hard-banking turn where the general’s car would have to slow to merge onto the main road. Were their disguises convincing? Was the general surrounded by edgy guards with cocked machine guns? Paddy had no idea.
Paddy raised his lantern and stepped into the full glare of the speeding headlights.
“Halt!” Paddy shouted.
The black car roared straight at them, then slowed. Paddy and Billy cocked the pistols hidden behind their backs, then split up to approach the side windows.
“Ist dies das Generals Wagen?” Paddy barked into the darkness of the passenger window.
“Ja, ja.”
Paddy could just make out a jutting chin, gold braid, a black Iron Cross. Kreipe was in the front passenger seat.
“Papier, bitte schön,” Paddy demanded. Papers, please.
Before the general could snap at these idiot soldiers to get out of his way, Paddy jammed his pistol into his chest.
“Hände hoch!” Paddy shouted. Hands up!
Paddy heard the general gasp. The chauffeur’s eyes were terrified but his right hand, Billy noticed, was sliding toward his automatic. Billy quickly cracked him across the head with his blackjack. A gang of Cretans burst from the brush alongside the road and yanked open the doors. The backseat was empty; instead of traveling with bodyguards, the general and his driver were alone. Billy and the Cretans pulled the stunned chauffeur into the road, but the general came out swinging, staggering Paddy with a sharp kick and a sock in the face. The Cretans quickly nixed that nonsense; one jammed a dagger under Kreipe’s chin while another snapped handcuffs on his wrists.