Not even gods had the final say: instead of one Almighty there were a dozen, all divvying up the work and jockeying for position. Zeus was the big dog, but he was constantly being one-upped and second-guessed. One of his biggest worries was being outsmarted by his first wife—whose name, of course, was Mêtis. She was an alluring Titan known for her “magical cunning” and close friendship with that master thief Prometheus. Zeus managed to muster a little cunning of his own and con Mêtis into briefly transforming herself into a fly, giving him a chance to grab and swallow her—forever uniting, in the eyes of the ancient Greeks, the bond between imagination and immortality: the spirit of resourcefulness was now buzzing inside a god who would never die.
Not that everyone was on board. An outlaw outlook meant freedom, which put it at odds with biê—“brute force.” Biê was for kings and conquerors, the mighty and the muscle-bound; mêtis was power to the people, especially the weak and poor who had no other options. Achilles was bursting with biê and sneered at the schemes of Odysseus, who was “equal to Zeus in mêtis.” Too late, Achilles discovered that even a golden warrior can be taken out by a nobody with a good idea; an idea like, say, infuriating your enemy so much he forgets to cover his vulnerable heel. Achilles’ cousin, Ajax, was just as much of a raging bull and learned the same lesson: when he wrestled Odysseus, he was twisted around and thumped down on his back before he saw it coming.
“It is with mêtis rather than biê that a woodcutter is better,” the ancient warrior Nestor coaches his son in the Iliad. “It is mêtis that lets a pilot on the wine-dark sea keep a swift ship on course when a gale strikes. And mêtis makes one charioteer better than another.”
For young Brits like Xan and Paddy, brute force was everything they were trying to escape. Biê was boarding school beatings, Victorian prudishness, the blind obedience to the dogma of “Theirs not to make reply, / Theirs not to reason why, / Theirs but to do and die” that sent their fathers and brothers marching into machine-gun fire during the Great War. Weirdly, religion had a lot to do with it. Once the Greek myths were replaced by Christianity, the raucous tribe of Olympians were replaced by just one God. Instead of becoming our own heroes, we were given a list of commandments and told to follow the rules, bend our knees, and wait for a savior.
Not on Crete, though. The Island of Heroes still followed the ancient code, and when Xan and Paddy and Billy Moss arrived, they discovered a whole new level of outlaw thinking.
“Klepsi-klepsi—translatable into English as ‘swiping’ or ‘pinching’ but hardly stealing—is something of a Cretan sport,” Billy learned after being awakened with a cold splash of outlaw thinking when his bedroll and warm clothes were nicked by a fellow rebel. “Sympathy is usually on the side of the ‘pincher’ rather than of the loser. If you allow someone to steal from you, it is you who are the mug, he the clever fellow.”
Crete had been under the heel of invaders for so long that stealing had become the job of patriots. Sheep rustling was the only way for Resistance fighters to survive during the Turkish occupation, so heroic struggle became synonymous with banditry. They’re even the same word: in Cretan dialect, rebels and robbers are both klephts. “It’s one of the most important Greek lessons you could learn,” George Psychoundakis told a new SOE recruit, urging him to steal some grapes. “As your teacher, I insist on it!” To survive on Crete, you had to think and act like an old-time hero.
Which is exactly what Paddy had done. He’d gone into the Minotaur’s lair and not only defeated the monster but snuck it out on a leash.
The roar of trucks brought an end to the merriment. A German convoy was grinding up the mountain road and pouring into the Anogia town square. Within minutes, soldiers were hopping down and scurrying into formation.
Up, up, the Cretans told Paddy. You’ve got to get out of here. The Germans could surround the village at any moment and begin the house-to-house ransack. Paddy and George scrambled their gear and headed toward the door. Could someone guide them to Billy’s hideout? And was there a donkey they could bring along for the general?
Yes, yes, their host replied. Whatever you need. But hurry.
“You’ll see!” Paddy promised as he went out the door. “Those three days will go by and there won’t be any villages burnt or even shooting!” Privately, however, he wasn’t feeling so bully. “I prayed that urgency would lend wings to the messengers’ heels,” he thought to himself, “and scatter our counter leaflets and the BBC News of the General’s departure from the island.”
The town square was teeming with troops as Paddy and George cautiously worked their way through the streets. Paddy couldn’t figure out how the Butcher got his men to Anogia so quickly, but he was even more perplexed by why they were still standing around. The Butcher had the drop on them, so why didn’t he snap shut the trap? If the Germans had circled Anogia as soon as they arrived, Paddy and Billy might be in chains by now. So what were they waiting for?
The Butcher was frozen by a chilling thought: What if it’s a feint?
The bandits were smart, so smart that the Butcher hadn’t managed to lay his hands on a single Brit the entire time he’d been on Crete. Every time he got close, they were one jump ahead. So could trapping them really be so easy this time? Or did they want to be chased? The bandits had to know that nothing would outrage the Germans more than kidnapping a general from right under the nose of the Gestapo. Thousands of German foot soldiers would be hot on their trail, racing into the mountains and drawing fleets of fighter planes into the backcountry … leaving Fortress Crete and the capital exposed!
So that was their game. Maybe, the Butcher thought, Kreipe’s abduction was an Allied ploy to make him move large forces towards the mountains, thereby allowing them to land on the plains while the andartes and commandos attacked from the rear. He wasn’t going to fall for it. The Butcher sent word to Anogia: Bring one company back to Heraklion immediately. He ordered the reconnaissance planes back to base and the leafleting postponed till further notice. Before scattering his troops all over the mountains, the Butcher needed to be ready for invasion.
By nightfall, the coast was secure. The hunt for General Kreipe was ready to resume at full force—but Paddy and his crew had already slipped back into the wilderness.
CHAPTER 30
Where danger is,
Deliverance also beckons.
—FRIEDRICH HÖLDERLIN, “Patmos”
CHRIS WHITE AND I began hunting Paddy’s trail as soon as the sun rose high enough for us to see the ground. We’d set off before daybreak from Heraklion, hopping a bus to the exact spot along the shore where, according to Chris’ calculations, Paddy had ditched the general’s car. Chris checked his bearings: Mount Ida straight ahead, rocky thumbnail of beach dead behind. Yup, we’d found the right meadow. But there was no hint of a path, nothing except a snarl of brambles leading straight to an unclimbable cliff.
“Brilliant, isn’t it?” Chris said. “It would have been just as wild when Paddy came through. You can just imagine the Germans looking at this and thinking, Well, they certainly didn’t go that way.”