«Because I'm still alive?»
«Because. you're still alive,» Mallory echoed.
Less than ten minutes later the two guards at the gates had joined their comrades in the back room, captured, disarmed, bound and gagged with a speed and noiseless efficiency that excited Turzig's professional admiration, chagrined though he was. Securely tied hand and foot, he lay in a corner of the room, not yet gagged.
«I think I understand now why your High Command chose you for this task, Captain Mallory. If anyone could succeed, you would — but you must fail. The impossible must always remain so. Nevertheless, you have a great team.»
«We get by,» Mallory said modestly. He took a last look round the room, then grinned down at Stevens.
«Ready to take off on your travels again, young man, or do you find this becoming rather monotonous?»
«Ready when you are, sir.» Lying on a stretcher which Louki had miraculously procured, he sighed in bliss. «First-class travel, this time, as befits an officer. Sheer luxury. I don't mind how far we go!»
«Speak for yourself,» Miller growled morosely. He had been allocated first stint at the front or heavy end of the stretcher. But the quirk of his eyebrows robbed the words of all offence.
«Right then, we're off. One last thing. Where is the camp radio, Lieutenant Turzig?»
«So you can smash it, I suppose?»
«Precisely.»
«I have no idea.»
«What if I threaten to blow your head off?»
«You won't.» Turzig smiled, though the smile was a trifle lopsided. «Given certain circumstances, you would kill me as you would a fly. But you wouldn't kill a man for refusing such information.»
«You haven't as much to learn as your late and unlamented captain thought,» Mallory admitted. «It's not all that important… . I regret we have to do all this. I trust we do not meet again — not, at least, until the war is over. Who knows, some day we might even go climbing together.» He signed to Louki to fix Turzig's gag and walked quickly out of the room. Two minutes later they had cleared the barracks and were safely lost in the darkness and the olive groves that stretched to the south of Margaritha.
When they cleared the groves, a long time later, it was almost dawn. Already the black silhouette of Kostos was softening in the first feathery greyness of the coming day. The wind was from the south, and warm, and the snow was beginning to melt on the hills.
CHAPTER 11
All day long they lay hidden in the carob grove, a thick clump of stunted, gnarled trees that clung grimly to the treacherous, scree-strewn slope abutting what Louki called the «Devil's Playground.» A poor shelter and an uncomfortable one, but in every other way all they could wish for: it offered concealment, a first-class defensive position immediately behind, a gentle breeze drawn up from the sea by the sun-baked rocks to the south, shade from the sun that rode from dawn to dusk in a cloudless sky — and an incomparable view of a sundrenched, shimmering Aegean.
Away to their left, fading through diminishing shades of blue and indigo and violet into faraway nothingness, stretched the islands of the Lerades, the nearest of them, Maidos, so close that they could see isolated fisher cottages sparkling whitely in the sun: through that narrow, intervening gap of water would pass the ships of the Royal Navy in just over a day's time. To the right, and even farther away, remote, featureless, back-dropped by the towering Anatolian mountains, the coast of Turkey hooked north and west in a great curving scimitar: to the north itself, the thrusting spear of Cape Demirci, rock-rimmed but dimpled with sand coves of white, reached far out into the placid blue of the Aegean: and north again beyond the Cape, haze-blurred in the purple distance, the island of Kheros lay dreaming on the surface of the sea.
It was a breath-taking panorama, a heart-catching beauty sweeping majestically through a great semi-circle over the sunlit sea. But Mallory had no eyes for it, had spared it only a passing glance when he had come on guard less than half an hour previously, just after two o'clock. He had dismissed it with one quick glance, settled by the bole of a tree, gazed for endless minutes, gazed until his eyes ached with strain atwhat he had so long waited to see. Had waited to see and come to destroy — the guns of the fortress of Navarone.
The town of Navarone — a town of from four to five thousand people, Mallory judged — lay sprawled round the deep, volcanic crescent of the harbour, a crescent so deep, so embracing, that it was almost a complete circle with only a narrow bottleneck of an entrance to the north-west, a gateway dominated by searchlights and mortar and machine-gun batteries on either side. Less than three miles distant to the north-east from the carob grove, every detail, every street, every building, every caique and launch in the harbour were clearly visible to Mallory and ho studied them over and over again until he knew them by heart: the way the land to the west of the harbour sloped up gently to the olive groves, the dusty streets running down to the water's edge: the way the ground rose more sharply to the south, the streets now running parallel to the water down to the old town: the way the cliffs to the east — cliffs pock-marked by the bombs of Torrance's Liberator Squadron-- stretched a hundred and fifty sheer feet above the water, then curved dizzily out over and above the harbour, and the great mound of volcanic rock towering above that again, a mound barricaded off from the town below by the high wall that ended flush with the cliff itself: and, finally, the way the twin rows of A.A. guns, the great radar scanners and the barracks of the fortress, squat, narrow-embrasured, built of big blocks of masonry, dominated everything in sight — including that great, black gash in the rock, below the fantastic overhang of the cliff.
Unconsciously, almost, Mallory nodded to himself in slow understanding. This was the fortress that had defied the Allies for eighteen long months, that had dominated the entire naval strategy in the Sporades since the Germans had reached out from the mainland into the isles, that had blocked all naval activity in that 2,000 square mile triangle between the Lerades and the Turkish coast. And now, when he saw it, it all made sense. Impregnable to land attack — the commanding fortress saw to that: impregnable to air attack — Mallory realised just how suicidal it had been to send out Torrance's squadron against the great guns protected by that jutting cliff, against those bristling rows of anti-aircraft guns: and impregnable to sea attack — the waiting squadrons of the Luftwaffe on Samos saw to that. Jensen had been right — only a guerrilla sabotage mission stood any chance at alclass="underline" a remote chance, an all but suicidal chance, but still a chance, and Mallory knew he couldn't ask for more.
Thoughtfully he lowered the binoculars and rubbed the back of his hand across aching eyes. At last he felt he knew exactly what he was up against, was grateful for the knowledge, for the opportunity he'd been given of this long-range reconnaissance, this familiarising of himself with the terrain, the geography of the town. This was probably the one vantage point in the whole island that offered such an opportunity together with concealment and near immunity. No credit to himself, the leader of the mission, he reflected wryly, that they had found such a place: it had been Louki's idea entirely.
And he owed a great deal more than that to the sadeyed little Greek. It had been Louki's idea that they first move upvalley from Margaritha, to give Andrea time to recover the explosives from old Leri's hut, and to make certain there was no immediate hue and cry and pursuit — they could have fought a rearguard action up through the olive groves, until they had lost themselves in the foothills of Kostos: it was he who had guided them back past Margaritha when they had doubled on their tracks, had halted them opposite the village while he and Panayis had slipped wraith-like through the lifting twilight, picked up outdoor clothes for themselves, and, on the return journey, slipped into the Abteilung garage, torn away the coil ignitions of the German command car and truck — the only transport in Margaritha — and smashed their distributors for good measure; it was Louki who bad led them by a sunken ditch right up to the roadblock guard post at the mouth of the valley — ft had been almost ludicrously simple to disarm the sentries, only one of whom bad been awake — and, finally, it was Louki who bad insisted that they walk down the muddy centre of the valley track till they came to the metalled road, less than two miles from the town itself. A hundred yards down this they had branched off to the left across a long, sloping field of lava that left no trace behind, arrived in the carob copse just on sunrise.