Slowly, with an infinitely careful carelessness, he let his eyes wander away from the cave, let them light indifferently on the sentry who sat on Brown's transmitter, hunched watchfully over the Schmeisser cradled on his knees, finger crooked on the trigger. Pray God he doesn't turn round, Mallory said to himself over and over again, pray God he doesn't turn round. Let him sit like that just for a little while longer, only a little while longer . In spite of himself, Mallory felt his gaze shifting, being dragged back again towards that cave-mouth.
Andy Stevens was coming out of the cave. Even in the dim starlight every movement was terribly piain as he inched forward agonisingly on chest and belly, dragging his shattered leg behind him. He was placing his hands beneath his shoulders, levering himself upward and forward while his head dropped below his shoulders with pain and the exhaustion of the effort, lowering himself slowly on the soft and sodden snow, then repeating the same heart-sapping process over and over again. Exbausted and pain-filled as the boy might be, Mallory thought, his mind was still working: he bad a white sheet over his shoulders and back as camouflage against the snow, and he carried a climbing spike in his right hand. He must have heard at least some of Tuizig's conversation: there were two or three guns in the cave, he could easily have shot the guard without coming out at all but he must have known that the sound of a shot would have brought the Germans running, bad them back at the cave long before he could have crawled across the gully, far less cut loose any of his Mends.
Five yards Stevens had to go, Mallory estimated, five yards at the most. Deep down in the gully where they were, the south wind passed them by, was no more than a muted whisper in the night; that apart, there was no sound at all, nothing but their own breathing, the occasional stirring as someone stretched a cramped or frozen leg. He's bound to hear him if he comes any closer, Mallory thought desperately, even in that soft snow he's bound to hear him.
Mallory bent his head, began to cough loudly, almost continuously. The sentry looked at him, in surprise first, then in irritation as the coughing continued.
Be quiet! the sentry ordered in German. Stop that coughing at once!
Husten? Hьsten? Coughing, is it? I can't help it, Mallory protested in English. He coughed again, louder, more persistently than before. It is your Oberleutnant's fault, he gasped. He has knocked out some of my teeth. Mallory broke into a fresh paroxysm of coughing, recovered himself with an effort. Is It my fault that I'm choking on my own blood? he demanded.
Stevens was less than ten feet away now, but his tiny reserves of strength were almost gone. He could no longer raise himself to the full stretch of his arms, was advancing only a few pitiful inches at a time. At length he stopped altogether, lay still for half a minute. Ma!lory thought he had lost consciousness, but by and by ho raised himself up again, to the full stretch this time, had just begun to pivot himself forward when he collapsed, fell heavily in the snow. Mallory began to cough again, but he was too late. The sentry leapt off his box and whirled round all in one movement, the evil mouth of the Schmeisser lined up on the body almost at his feet. Then he relaxed as he realised who it was, lowered the barrel of his gun.
So! he said softly. The fledgling has left its nest. Poor little fledgling! Mallory winced as he saw the back-swing of the gun ready to smash down on Ste.. vens's defenceless head, but the sentry was a kindly enough man, his reaction had been purely automatic. He arrested the swinging butt inches above the tortured face, bent down and almost gently removed the spike from the feebly threatening hand, sent it spinning over the edge of the gully. Then he lifted Stevens carefully by the shoulders, slid in the bunched-up sheet as pillow for the unconscious head against the bitter cold of the snow, shook his head wonderingly, sadly, went back to his seat on the ammunition box.
Hauptmann Skoda was a small, thin man in his late thirties, neat, dapper, debonair and wholly evil. There was something innately evil about the long, corded neck that stretched up scrawnily above his padded shoulders, something repellent about the incongruously small bullet head perched above. When the thin, bloodless lips parted in a smile, which was often, they revealed a perfect set Of teeth: far from lighting his face, the smile only emphasised the sallow skin stretched abnormally taut across the sharp nose and high cheekbones, puckered up the sabre scar that bisected the left cheek from eyebrow to chin: and whether he smiled or not, the pupils of the deep-set eyes remained always the same, stifi and black and empty. Even at that early hour it was not yet six o'clock he was immaculately dressed, freshly shaven, the wetly-gleaming hair thin, dark, heavily indented above the temples brushed straight back across his head. Seated behind a flat-topped table, the sole article of furniture in the bench-lined guardroom, only the upper half of his body was visible: even so, one instinctively knew that the crease of the trousers, the polish of the jackboots, would be beyond reproach.
He smiled often, and he was smiling now as Oberleutinant Turzig finished his report. Leaning far back in his chair, elbows on the arm-rests, Skoda steepled his lean fingers under his chin, smiled benignly round the guardroom. The lazy, empty eyes missed nothing the guard at the door, the two guards behind the bound prisoners, Andrea sitting on the bench where he had just laid Stevens one lazy sweep of those eyes encompassed them all.
Excellently done, Oberleutnant Turzigl he purred. Most efficient, really most efficient! He looked speculatively at the three men standing before him, at their bruised and blood-caked faces, switched his glance to Stevens, lying barely conscious on the bench, smiled again and permitted himself a fractional lift of his eyebrows. A little trouble, perhaps, Turzig? The prisoners were not too ah---co-operative?
They offered no resistance, sir, no resistance at all, Turzig said stiffly. The tone, the manner, were punctilious, correct, but the distaste, the latent hostility were mirrored in his eyes. My men were maybe a little onthusiastic. We wanted to make no mistake.
Quite right, Lieutenant, quite right, Skoda murmured approvingly. These are dangerous men and one cannot take chances with dangerous men. He pushed back his chair, rose easily to his feet, strolled round the table and stopped in front of Andrea. Except maybe this one, Lieutenant?
He is dangerous only to his friends, Turzig said shortly. It is as I told you, sir. He would betray his mother to save his own skin.
And claiming friendship with us, eh? Skoda asked musingly. One of our gallant allies, Lieutenant. Skoda reached out a gentle hand, brought it viciously down and across Andrea's cheek, the heavy signet ring on his middle finger tearing skin and flesh. Andrea cried out in pain, clapped one hand to his bleeding face and cowered away, his right arm raised above his head in blind defence.
A notable addition to the armed forces of the Third Reich. Skoda murmured. You were not mistaken, Lieutenant. A poltroon the instinctive reaction of a hurt man is an infallible guide. It is curious, he mused, how often very big men are thus. Part of nature's compensatory process, I suppose . What is your name, my brave friend?
Papagos, Andrea muttered sullenly. Peter Papagos. He took his hand away from his cheek, looked at it with eyes slowly widening with horror, began to rub it across his trouser leg with jerky, hurried movements, the repugnance on his face plain for every man to see. Skoda watched him with amusement You do not like to see blood, Papagos, eh? he suggested. Especially your own blood?