Go on.
He said that was the best news he'd ever had. He said his information had been wrong, he'd been fooled, that the invasion fleet didn't hold up overnight in the Cyclades, that they had come straight through under the heaviest air and E-boat escort ever seen in the Med., and are due to hit the beaches on Kheros some time before dawn to-morrow. He said our destroyers had been waiting to the south all day, moved up at dusk and were waiting word from him to see whether they would attempt the passage of the Maidos Straits. I told him maybe something could go wrong, but he said not with Captain Mallory and Miller inside and besides he wasn't he couldn't risk the lives of twelve hundred men on Kheros just on the off chance that he might be wrong. Brown broke off suddenly and looked down miserably at his feet. No one else in the hail moved or made any sound at all.
Go on. Mallory repeated in a whisper. His face was very pale.
That's all, sir. That's all there is.. The destroyers are coming through the Straits at midnight. Brown looked down at his luminous watch. Midnight. Four hours to go.
Oh, God! Midnight! Mallory was stricken, his eyes for the moment unseeing, ivory-knuckled hands clenched in futility and despair. They're coming through at midnight! God help them! God help them all now!
CHAPTER 15
Eight-thirty, his watch said. Eight-thirty. Exactly half an hour to curfew. Mallory flattened himself on the roof, pressed himself as closely as possible against the low retaining wall that almost touched the great, sheering sides of the fortress, swore softly to himself. It only required one man with a torch in his hand to look over the top of the fortress wall a catwalk ran the whole length of the inside of the wall, four feet from the top and it would be the end of them alL The wandering beam of a torch and they were bound to be seen, it was impossible not to be seen: he and Dusty Miller the American was stretched out behind him and clutching the big truck battery in his arms were wide open to the view of anyone who happened to glance down that way. Perhaps they should have stayed with the others a couple of roofs away, with Casey and Louki, the one busy tying spaced knots in a rope, the other busy splicing a bent wire hook on to a long bamboo they had torn from a bamboo hedge just outside the town, where they had hurriedly taken shelter as a convoy of three trucks had roared past them heading for the castle Vygos.
Eight thirty-two. What the devil was Andrea doing down there, Mallory wondered irritably and at once regretted his irritation. Andrea wouldn't waste an unnecessary second. Speed was vital, haste fatal. It seemed unlikely that there would be any officers inside from what they had seen, practically half the garrison were combing either the town or the countryside out in the direction of Vygos but if there were and even one gave a cry it would be the end.
Mallory stared down at the burn on the back of his hand, thought of the truck they had set on fire and grinned wryly to himself. Setting the truck on fire had been his only contribution to the night's performance so far. All the other credit went to either Andrea or Miller. It was Andrea who had seen in this house on the west side of the square one of several adjoining houses used as officers' billets the only possible answer to their problem. It was Miller, now lacking all time-fuses, clockwork, generator and every other source of electric power who had suddenly stated that he must have a battery, and again it was Andrea, hearing the distant approach of a truck, who had blocked the entrance to the long driveway to the keep with heavy stones from the flanking pillars, forcing the soldiers to abandon their truck at the gates and run up the drive towards their house. To overcome the driver and his mate and bundle them senseless into a ditch had taken seconds only, scarcely more time than it had taken Miller to unscrew the terminals of the heavy battery, find the inevitable jerrican below the tailboard and pour the contents over engine, cab and body. The truck had gone up in a roar and whoosh of flames: as Louki had said earlier in the night, setting petrol-soaked vehicles on fire was not without its dangers the charred patch on his hand stung painfully but, again as Louki had said, it had burned magnificently. A pity, in a way it had attracted attention to their escape sooner than was necessary-- but it had been vital to destroy the evidence, the fact that a battery was missing. Mallory had too much experience of and respect for the Germans ever to underrate them: they could put two and two together better than most.
He felt Miller tug at his ankle, started, twisted round quickly. The American was pointing beyond him, and he turned again and saw Andrea signalling to him from the raised trap in the far corner: he had been so engrossed in his thinking, the giant Greek so catlike in his silence, that he had completely failed to notice his arrival. Mallory shook his head, momentarily angered at his own abstraction, took the battery from Miller, whispered to him to. get the others, then edged slowly across the roof, as noiselessly as possible. The sheer deadweight of the battery was astonishing, it felt as if it weighed a ton, but Andrea plucked it from his hands, lifted it over the trap coaming, tucked it under one arm and nimbly descended the stairs to the tiny hail-way as if it weighed nothing at all
Andrea moved out through the open doorway to the covered balcony that ovetlooked the darkened harbour, almost a hundred vertical feet beneath. Mallory, following close behind, touched him on the shoulder as he lowered the battery gently to the ground.
Any trouble? he asked softly.
None at all, my Keith. Andrea straightened. The house is empty. I was so surprised that I went over it all, twice, Just to make sure.
Fine! Wonderful! I suppose the whole bunch of them are out scouring the country for us interesting to know what they would say if they were told we were sitting in their front parlour?
They would never believe it, Andrea said without hesitation. This is the last place they would ever think to look for us.
I've never hoped so much that you're right! Mallory murmured fervently. He moved across to the latticed railing that enclosed the balcony, gazed down into the blackness beneath his feet and shivered. A long long drop and it was very cold; that sluicing, vertical rain chilled one to the bone . He stepped back, shook the railing.
This thing strong enough, do you think? he whispered.
I don't know, my Keith, I don't know at all. Andrea shrugged. I hope so.
I hope so, Mallory echoed. It doesn't really matter. This is how it has to be. Again he leaned far out over the railing, twisted his head to the right and upwards. In the rain-filled gloom of the night he could just faintly make out the still darker gloom of the mouth of the cave housing the two great guns, perhaps forty feet away from where he stood, at least thirty feet higher and all vertical cliff-face between. As far as accessibility went, the cave mouth could have been on the moon.
He drew back, turned round as he heard Brown limping on to the balcony.
Go to the front of the house and stay there, Casey, will you? Stay by the window. Leave the frontt door unlocked. If we have any visitors, let them in.
Club 'em, knife 'em, no guns, Brown murmured. Is that it, sir?
That's it, Casey. .
Just leave this little thing to me, Brown said grimly. He hobbled away through the doorway.
Mallory turned to Andrea. I make it twenty-three minutes.
I, too. Twenty-three minutes to nine.
Good luck, Mallory murmured. He grinned at Miller. Come on, Dusty. Opening time.
Five minutes later, Mallory and Miller were seated in a taverna just off the south side of the town square. Despite the garish blue paint with which the tavernaris had covered everything in sight walls, tables, chairs, shelves all in the same execrably vivid colour (blue and red for the wine shops, green for the sweetmeats shops was the almost invariable rule throughout the islands)--it was a gloomy, ill-lit place, as gloomy almost as the stern, righteous, magnificently-moustached heroes of the Wars of Independence whose dark, burning eyes glared down at them from a dozen faded prints scattered at eye-level along the walls. Between each pair of portraits was a brightly-coloured wail advertisement for Fix's beer: the effect of the decor, taken as a whole, was indescribable, and Mallory shuddered to think what it would have been like had the tavernaris had at his disposal any illumination more powerful than the two smoking oil lamps placed on the counter before him.