“Was wollen Sie in Kreta?” one of the Cretans screamed in Kreipe’s face. What are you doing in Crete?
Paddy pleaded with him to shush. Fury right then would get them killed.
“This was the critical moment,” Billy realized. “If any other traffic had come along the road we could have been caught.” Paddy could barely drive, so Billy slid behind the wheel, hoping he could figure out how to start the unfamiliar German sedan and get it into gear. Good news: “The engine of the car was still ticking over, the handbrake was on, everything was perfect.” There was even a full tank of gas. Three Cretans shoved the general into the backseat and climbed in beside him while Paddy, straightening the general’s hat upon his own head, slipped into the front. Two Cretans dragged the slumped and bloody chauffeur off with them into the brush.
Let’s go, Paddy said.
Headlights blasted their eyes. “A convoy was bearing down on us,” Paddy realized. “Two trucks full of soldiers sitting with their rifles between their knees, some in steel helmets, some in field caps.” A minute earlier and it would have been game over. But the truck squads rumbled past, oblivious, and Billy hit the gas.
“Where is my hat?” the General kept asking. My hat. Where is it?
Keep quiet, the Cretans in the backseat hissed. Then to Paddy: What’s he saying?
The chatter! Paddy had to snip it, quick. They were fast approaching the Villa Ariadne. Two sentries had already spotted them and snapped to attention. A third was opening the striped crossbar blocking the Villa’s entrance. Any commotion now and the sentries would shoot the tires out from under them.
I’ve got your hat, Paddy told General Kreipe. Paddy froze as they whizzed past the bewildered sentries, then wheeled around to face the general. If any of them were going to survive, including the general, he had to get something straight. “Herr General,” Paddy said. “I am a British major. Beside me is a British captain. The men beside you are Greek patriots. They are good men. I am in command of this unit, and you are an honorable prisoner of war. We are taking you away from Crete to Egypt. For you the war is over. I am sorry we had to be so rough. Do everything I say and all will be well.”
“You are really a British major?” General Kreipe said.
“Yes, really. You have nothing to fear.”
Then can I have my hat back?
“Checkpoint ahead,” Billy warned. Two German soldiers were in the road, waving a red stoplight.
I need your hat right now, Paddy said. You’ll get it back later.
Billy throttled back but kept driving straight at the soldiers. “HALT!” one shouted. Suddenly they leaped back and saluted, apparently catching sight of the general’s flags. Billy accelerated and sped past.
“This is marvelous,” Billy said, jamming his foot down on the gas.
“Herr Major,” General Kreipe asked. “Where are you taking me?”
Good Lord. Was he going to ask about the damned hat again, too? “To Cairo,” Paddy repeated.
“No, but now?”
“To Heraklion,” Paddy said.
“To HERAKLION?”
Yes, that was actually Paddy’s plan: to drive the general away from the safety of the mountains and straight into a city bustling with Germans.
A few weeks earlier, Paddy had ridden the bus into Heraklion, disguising himself as a farmer heading to market. Rather inconveniently, the best abduction route ran right from the general’s residence through the heart of Heraklion and into the hills beyond. But street access, Paddy discovered, was awfuclass="underline" every road was thicketed with checkpoints. There was only one way in and out, and all the side streets were dead-ended with razor wire and antitank blocks or guarded by troops. It was madness; no matter how well they forged their travel documents and drugged the general, driving directly past the front door of Gestapo headquarters with a conked-out German officer in the boot and standing up to the scrutiny of more than twenty-two armed control posts was far too risky.
As he walked around town, Paddy found himself repeatedly passing the Gestapo building, morbidly attracted to the torture den, “which,” he reflected, “had meant the doom of many friends.” These were the stakes he was playing for: if the abduction went sour, those doors would shut behind him and he’d never come out. Paddy pulled himself away and made his way south, heading three miles down the road to the Villa Ariadne. By sheer luck, Paddy’s best Cretan spy lived right next door. Micky Akoumianakis was the son of Villa Ariadne’s former caretaker, and he was still allowed to live in his father’s old quarters. And it was there, while Paddy and Mickey were pretending to chat with a shepherd tending his flock by the side of the road but really scoping out the security, that Paddy and General Kreipe first locked eyes.
The general’s sedan suddenly appeared, barreling toward them down the road. Through the windshield, Paddy spotted blue eyes and a chestful of medals. Without thinking, Paddy popped up his hand and gave the general a friendly wave. Startled, the general responded, gravely raising a gloved hand toward his … his …
Paddy had a flash of inspiration. The general’s hat! It was the one thing that made sentries stand down and roadblocks disappear. Who would bother to check the face beneath it? Who even knew what that face looked like? General Kreipe had been on Crete for barely five weeks, after two years on the Russian front. Few of his troops would recognize him, but they would instantly recognize—and respect—the gold-braided oak cluster and rampant eagle.
It was perfect. Rather than making the general vanish, they’d use him as their passport to a short cut right through the guts of German headquarters. “The results of a mishap in the town were too disastrous to contemplate,” Paddy knew, “but a plunge straight into the enemy stronghold with their captured commander would be the last idea to occur to them.”
Three generations of Maskelynes would have applauded. If Jasper and his Magic Gang could impersonate an entire harbor, Paddy was sure he could impersonate one man. Especially at night.
Unless that night was Saturday.
“It was truly unfortunate that we arrived in town at the moment,” Billy discovered. Billy tooted the horn, grinding through the mob clogging the street. The weekend movie had just gotten out, and Heraklion was jammed with idling troop buses and strolling soldiers. Paddy sank back into his seat while the three Cretans behind him pulled the general down on the floor. One clamped a hand over the General’s mouth and kept the dagger at his throat while the other two pointed their Marlin submachine guns up at the windows.
Paddy had put together a superb team, all of them icy under pressure. Manoli Paterakis was a goatherd and high-mountain hunter who’d been mentoring Paddy for much of the past year. George Tyrakis was a younger version of Manoli who’d instantly bonded with Billy even though they could communicate only with “grins and gestures,” as Paddy put it. Paddy’s last recruit, Stratis Saviolakis, was born and bred for this kind of operation: in regular life, Stratis was a cop from the southern rebel enclave of Sphakia, so he knew how to keep peace and raise hell.
German faces crowded around, passing just inches from the windows. Billy inched along, praying the car wouldn’t overheat or stall. “Tension,” Paddy noted dryly, “rose several degrees.” After what seemed like hours, they circled the central market roundabout and began the straight descent to the Canae Gate. Once past that thick stone arch, it was open road—but that’s when Billy knew they’d been discovered. Ahead of them, a sentry was standing fast in the middle of the road, red lantern held high. Behind him, extra manpower had massed. “There were not only the normal sentries and guards, but a large number of other soldiers in the gateway as well,” Paddy realized. “The one wielding the red torch failed to budge; it looked as though they were going to stop us.” Could they smash through? Doubtful; the passage had been narrowed with cement blocks and blocked with a thick wood barricade.