As if they had been threshing of corn.

out everything. I was trembling violently, and although Corazzini must have noticed it he affected not to. He stepped forward and handed me the Beretta, butt first. "You're a mite careless about where you stow your armoury, Doc. I've known for a long time where you kept this. But I guess it may have been fairly useful these last few minutes." "Butbut why-?" "Because I've got a damned good job and a chair behind a vice-president's desk waiting for me in Glasgow," he snapped. "I'd appreciate the chance to sit in that chair some day." Without another word, he turned away. I knew what he meant, all right. I knew we owed him our lives. Corazzini was as convinced as I that someone had engineered the whole thing. It didn't require any thought at all to guess who that someone was. My first thought was for Jackstraw. Jackstraw with a broken arm was going to make things very difficult for me: it might well make things quite impossible. But when I'd worked his parka off it required only one glance at the unnatural twist of the left arm to see that though Jackstraw had had every excuse for thinking his arm gone, it was, in fact, an elbow dislocation. He made no murmur and his face remained quite expressionless as I manipulated the bone back into the socket, but the wide white grin that cracked his face immediately afterwards was proof enough of his feelings. I walked over to where Helene Fleming sat on the sledge, still shaking from the shock, Mrs Dansby-Gregg and Margaret Ross doing their best to soothe her. The uncharitable thought struck me that it was probably the first time that Mrs Dansby-Gregg had ever tried to soothe anyone, but I was almost ashamed of the thought as soon as it had occurred to me. "That was a close call, young lady," I said to Helene. "But all's well.. . . Any more bones broken, eh?" I tried to speak jocularly, but it didn't sound very convincing. "No, Dr Mason." She gave a long shuddering sigh. "I don't know how to thank you and Mr Nielsen" "Don't try," I advised. "Who pushed you?" "What?" She stared at me. "You heard, Helene. Who did it?" "Yes, I -1 was pushed," she murmured reluctantly. "But it was an accident, I know it was." "Who?" I persisted. "It was me," Solly Levin put in. He was twisting his hands nervously. "Like the lady canon eos digital camera refurbished body said, Doc, it was an accident. I guess I kinda stumbled. Someone tapped my heels and" "Who tapped your heels?" "For cryin' out loud!" I'd made no attempt to hide the cold disbelief in my voice. "What would I want to do a thing like that for?" "Suppose you tell me," I said, and turned away, leaving him to stare after me. Zagero stepped in my way, but I brushed roughly past him and went up towards the tractor. On the sled behind I saw the Rev. Smallwood sitting nursing a bleeding mouth. Corazzini was apologising to him. "I'm sorry, Reverend, I'm really and truly sorry. I didn't for a moment think you were one of them, but I couldn't afford to take any chances back there. I hope you understand, Mr Smallwood." Mr Smallwood did, and was suitably Christian and forgiving. But I didn't wait to hear the end of it. I wanted to get through the Vindeby Nunataks, and get through with as little loss of time as possible, preferably before it became dark. There was something that I knew now that I had to do, and as soon as possible: but I didn't want to do it while we were all teetering on the edge of that damned crevasse. We were through without further incident and at the head of that long almost imperceptible slope that fell away for thousands of feet towards the ice-bare rocks of the Greenland coast, before the last of the noon twilight had faded from the sky. I halted the tractor, spoke briefly to Jackstraw, told Margaret Ross to start thawing out some corned beef for our belated mid-day meal, and had just seen Mahler, now semi-conscious, and Marie LeGarde once again safely ensconced in the tractor cabin when Margaret Ross came up to me, her brown eyes troubled. "The tins, Dr Masonthe corned beef. I can't find them." "What's that? The bully? They can't be far away, Margaret." It was the first time I'd called her that, but my thoughts had been fixed exclusively on something else, and it wasn't until I saw the slight smile touching her lipsif she was displeased she was hiding it quite wellthat I realised what I had said. I didn't care, it was worth it, it was the first time I had ever seen her smile, and it transformed her rather plain facebut I told my heart that there was a time and a place for somersaults, and this wasn't it. "Come on, let's have a look." We looked, and we found nothing. The tins were gone all

He went laughing all the way.

friend was not alone." Mallory tightened his lips, mentally cursed himself for his obtuseness. VoicesDusty had said there had been voices. Must be even more tired than he had thought. . . . A tall, lean man blocked the entrance to the doorway. His face was shadowed under an enveloping snow-hood, but there was no mistaking the gun in his hand. A short Lee Enfleld rifle, Mallory noted dispassionately. "Do not shoot!" The little man spoke rapidly in Greek. "I am almost sure that they are those whom we seek, Panayis." Panayis! Mallory felt the wave of relief wash over him. That was one of the names Eugene Viachos had given him,. back in Alexandria. "The tables turned, are they not?" The little man smiled at Mallory, the tired eyes crinkling, the heavy black moustache lifting engagingly at one corner. "I ask you again, who are you?" - "S.O.E.," Mallory answered unhesitatingly. The man nodded in satisfaction. "Captain Jensen sent you?" Mallory sank back on the bunk and sighed in long relief. "We are among friends, Dusty." He looked at the little man before him. "You must be Loukithe first plane tree in the square in Margaritha?" The little man beamed. He bowed, stretched out his hand. "Louki. At your service, sir." "And this, of course, is Panayis?" The tall man in the doorway, dark, saturnine, unsmiling, inclined his head briefly but said nothing. "You have us right!" The little man was beaming with delight. "Louki and Panayis. They know about us in Alexandria and Cairo, then?" he asked proudly. "Of course!" Mallory smothered a smile. "They spoke highly of you. You have been of great help to the Allies before." "And we will again," Louki said briskly. "Come, we are wasting time. The Germans are on the hills. What help can we give you?" "Food, Louki. We need foodwe need it badly." "We have it!" Proudly, Louki gestured at the rucksacks. "We were on our way up with it." "You were on your way. . . ." Mallory was astonished. "How did you know where we wereor even that we were on the island?" Louki waved a deprecating hand. "It was easy. Since first light German troops have been moving south through Margaritha up into the hills. All morning learn about digital cameras they combed the east col of Kostos. We knew someone must have landed, and that the Germans had blocked the cliff path on the south coast, at both ends. So you must have come over the west col. They would not expect thatyou fooled them. So we came to find you." - "But you would never have found us" "We would have found you." There was complete certainty in the voice. "Panayis and Iwe know every stone, every blade of grass in Navarone." Louki shivered suddenly, stared out bleakly through the swirling snow. "You couldn't have picked worse weather." "We couldn't have picked better," Mallory said grimly. "Last night, yes," Lould agreed. "No one would expect you in that wind and rain. No one would hear the aircraft or even dream that you would try to jump" "We came by sea," Miller interrupted. He waved a negligent hand. "We climbed the south cliff." "What? The south cliff!" Louki was frankly disbelieving. "No one could climb the south cliff. It is impossible!" "That's the way we felt when we were about half-way up," Mallory said candidly. "But Dusty, here, is right. That's how it was." Louki had taken a step back: his face was expressionless. "I say it is impossible," he repeated flatly. "He is telling the truth, Louki," Miller cut in quietly. "Do you never read newspapers?" "Of course I read newspapers!" Louki bristled with indignation. "Do you think I amhow you sayilliterate?" "Then think back to just before the war," Miller advised. "Think of mountaineerin'and the Himalayas. You must have seen his picture in the papersonce, twice, a hundred times." He- looked at Mallory consideringly. "Only he was a little prettier in those days. You must remember. This is Mallory, Keith Mallory of New Zealand." Mallory said nothing. He was watching Louki, the puzzlement, the ?omical screwing up of the eyes, head cocked to one side: then, all at once, something clicked in the little man's memory and his face lit up in a great, crinkling smile that swamped every last trace of suspicion. He stepped forward, hand outstretched in we!come. "By heaven, you are- right! Mallory! Of course I know Mallory!" He grabbed Mallory's hand, pumped it up and down with great enthusiasm. "It is indeed as the American says. You need a shave. . . . And

Insensible, I trust, but none the worse,

Schmeisser would tear him in half before he could cover the distance. But he would try. He must try. It was the least he owed to Andrea. Skoda reached the back of the table, opened a drawer and lifted out a gun. An automatic, Mallory noted with detachmenta little, blue-metal, snub-nosed toybut a murderous toy, the kind of gun he would have expected Skoda to have. Unhurriedly Skoda pressed the release button, checked the magazine, snapped it home with the palm of his hand, ificked off the safety catch and looked up at Mallory. The eyes hadn't altered in the slightestthey were cold, dark and empty as ever. Mallory ificked a glance at Andrea and tensed himself for one convulsive fling backwards. Here it comes, he thought savagely, this is how bloody fools like Keith Mallory dieand then all of a sudden, and unknowingly, he relaxed, for his eyes were still on Andrea and he had seen Andrea doing the same, the huge hand slipping down unconcernedly from the neck, empty of any sign of knife. There was a scuffle at the table and Mallory was just in time to see Turzig pin Skoda's gun-hand to the tabletop. "Not that, sir!" Turzig begged. "For God's sake, not that way!" "Take your hands away," Skoda whispered. The staring, empty eyes never left Mallory's face. "Take your hands away, I sayunless you -want to go the same way as Captain Mallory." "You can't kill him, sir!" Turzig persisted doggedly. "You just can't. Herr Kommandant's orders were very clear, Hauptmann Skoda. The leader must be brought to him alive." "He was shot while trying to escape," Skoda said thickly. "It's no good." Turzig shook his head. "We can't kill them alland the other prisoners would talk." He released his grip on Skoda's hands. "Alive, Herr Kommandant said, but he didn't say how much alive." He lowered his voice confidentially. "Perhaps we may have some difficulty in making Captain Mallory talk," he suggested. "What? What did you say?" Abruptly the death's head smile flashed once more, and Skoda was completely on balance again. "You are over-zealous, Lieutenant Remind me to speak to you about it some time. You underestimate me: that was exactly what I was trying to dofrighten Mallory into talking. And now you've spoilt it all." The smile was still on his face, the voice light, almost bantering, but Mallory was under no fflusions. He owed his life to the young W.G.B. lieutenanthow easily one could respect, form a friendship with a man like Turzig if it weren't for this damned, refurbished mark canon camera digital crazy war. . . . Skoda was standing in front of him again: he had left his gun on the table. "But enough of this fooling, eh, Captain Mallory?" The German's teeth fairly gleamed in the bright light from the naked lamps overhead. "We haven't all night, have we?" Mallory looked at him, then turned away in silence. It was warm enough, stuffy almost, in that little guardroom, but he was conscious of a sudden, nameless chili; he knew all at once, without knowing why, but with complete certainty, that this little man before him was utterly evil. 'Well, well, well, we are not quite so talkative now, are we, my friend?" He hummed a little to himself, looked up abruptly, the smile broader than ever. "Where are the explosives, Captain Mallory?" "Explosives?" Mallory lifted an interrogatory eyebrow. "I don't know what you are talking about." "You don't remember, eh?" "I don't know what you are talking about." "So." Skoda hummed to himself again and walked over in front of Miller. "And what about you, my Mend?" "Sure I remember," Miller said easily. "The captain's got it all wrong." "A sensible man!" Skoda purredbut Mallory could have sworn to an undertone of disappointment in the voice. "Proceed, my friend." "Captain Mallory has no eye for detail," Miller drawled. "I was with him that day. He is malignin' a noble bird. It was a vulture, not a buzzard." Just for a second Skoda's smile slipped, then it was back again, as rigidly fixed and lifeless as if it had beeii painted on. "Very, very witty men, don't you think, Turzig? What the British would call music-hall comedians. Let them laugh while they may, until the hangman's noose begins to tighten. . . ." He looked at Casey Brown. "Perhaps you" "Why don't you go and take a running jump to yourself?" Brown growled. "A running jump? The idiom escapes me, but I fear it is hardly complimentary." Skoda selected a cigarette from a thin case, tapped it thoughtfully on a thumb nail. "Hmm. Not just what one might call too co-operative, Lieutenant Turzig." "You won't get these men to talk, sir." There was quiet finality in Turzig's voice. "Possibly not, possibly not." Skoda was quite unruffled. "Nevertheless, I shall have the information I want, and within five

To keep his memory whole, and mummy hid;

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 sightwalls, 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. As it was, the gloom suited him well. Their dark clothes, braided jackets, tsantas and jackboots looked genuine enough, Mallory knew, and the black-fringed turbans Louki had mysteriously obtained for them looked as they ought to look in a tavern where every islander thereabout eight of themwore nothing else on their heads. Their clothes had been good enough to pass muster with the tavernarisbut then even the keeper of a wine shop could hardly be expected to know every man in a town of five thousand, and a patriotic Greek, as Louki had declared this man to be, wasn't going to lift even a faintly suspicious eyebrow as long as there were German soldiers present. And there were Germans presentfour of them, sitting round a table near the counter. Which was why Mallory had been glad of the semi-darkness. Not, he was certain, that he and Dusty Miller had any reason to be digital cameras designer colors physically afraid of these men. Louki had dismissed them contemptuously as a bunch of old womenheadquarters clerks, Mallory guessedwho came to this tavern every night of the week. But there was no point in sticking out their necks unnecessarily. Miller lit one of the pungent, evil-smelling local cigarettes, wrinkling his nose in distaste. "Damn' funny smell in this joint, boss." "Put your cigarette out," Mallory suggested. "You wouldn't believe it, but the smell I'm smelling is a damn' sight worse than that." "Hashish," Mallory said briefly. "The curse of these island ports." He nodded over towards a dark corner. "The lads of the village over there will be at it every night in life. It's all they live for." "Do they have to make that gawddamned awful racket when they're at it?" Miller asked peevishly. "Toscanini should see this lot!" Mallory looked at the small group in the corner, clustered round the young man playing a bouzoukoa long-necked mandolinand singing the haunting, nostalgic rembetika songs of the hashish smokers of the Piraeus. He supposed the music did have a certain melancholy, lotus-land attraction, but right then it jarred on him. One had to be in a certain twi-lit, untroubled mood to appreciate that sort of thing; and he had never felt less untroubled in his life. "I suppose it is a bit grim," he admitted. "But at least it lets us talk together, which we couldn't do if they all packed up and went home." "I wish to hell they would," Miller said morosely. "I'd gladly keep my mouth shut." He picked distastefully at the mezea mixture of chopped olives, liver, cheese and appleson the plate before him; as a good American and a bourbon drinker of long standing he disapproved strongly of the invariable Greek custom of eating when drinking. Suddenly he looked up and crushed his cigarette against the table top. "For Gawd's sake, boss, how much longer?" Mallory looked at him, then looked away. He knew exactly how Dusty Miller felt, for he felt that way himselftense, keyed-up, every nerve strung to the tautest pitch of efficiency. So much depended on the next few minutes; whether all their labour and their suffering had been necessary, whether the men on Kheros would live or die, whether Andy Stevens had lived and died in vain. Mallory looked at Miller again, saw the

Colder thy kiss;

The wandering beam of a torch and they were bound to be seen, it was impossible not to be seen: he and Dusty Millerthe American was stretched out behind him and clutching the big truck battery in his armswere 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 insidefrom what they had seen, practically half the garrison were combing either the town or the countryside out in the direction of Vygosbut 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 squareone of several adjoining houses used as officers' billetsthe 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 dangersthe charred patch on his hand stung painfullybut, again as Louki had said, it had burned magnificently. A pity, in a wayit digital camera drivers fr 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 usinteresting 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

"His name shall be alterd," quoth William Stutely,

night. If she wants me now why doesn't she come and ask me?" "Because she's scared of you, that's why," she said angrily. She stamped a foot in the frozen snow. "Will you go or not?" I went. Below, I stripped off my gloves, emptied the ice out of them and washed my blistered, bleeding hands in disinfectant. I saw Marie LeGarde's eyes widen at the sight of my hands, but she said nothing: maybe she knew I wasn't in the mood for condolences. I rigged up a screen in the corner of the room remote from the table where the women had been gathering and dividing out the remaining food supplies, and had a look at Margaret Ross's back. It was a mess, all right, a great ugly blue and purpling bruise from the spine to the left shoulder: in the centre, just below the shoulder blade, was a deep jagged cut, which looked as if it had been caused by a heavy blow from some triangular piece of sharp metal. Whatever had caused it had passed clean through her tunic and blouse. "Why didn't you show me this yesterday?" I asked coldly. "I -1 didn't want to bother you," she faltered. Didn't want to bother me, I thought grimly. Didn't want to give yourself away, you mean. In my mind's eye I had a picture of the pantry where we had found her, and I was almost certain now that I could get the proof that I needed. Almost, but not quite. I'd have to go to check. "Is it very bad?" She twisted round, and I could see there were tears in the brown eyes from the pain of the disinfectant I was rubbing on none too gently. "Bad enough," I said shortly. "How did you get this?" "I've no idea," she said helplessly. "I just don't know, Dr Mason." "Perhaps we can find out." "Find out? Why? What does it matter?" She shook her head wearily. "I don't understand, I really don't. What have I done, Dr Mason?" It was magnificent, I had to admit. I could have hit her, but it was magnificent. "Nothing, Miss Ross. Just nothing at all." By the time I had pulled on my parka, gloves, goggles and mask she was fully dressed, staring at me as I climbed up the steps and out through the hatch. The snow was falling quite heavily now, gusting in swirling ghostly flumes through the pale beam of my torch: it seemed to vanish as it hit the ground, freezing as it touched, or scudding smoke-like over the frozen surface with a thin digital camera hp r742 rustling sound. But the wind was at my back, the bamboo markers stretched out in a dead straight line ahead, never less than two of them in the beam of my torch, and I had reached the crashed plane in five or six minutes. I jumped for the windscreen, hooked my fingers over the sill, hauled myself up with some difficulty and wriggled my way into the control cabin. A moment later I was in the stewardess's pantry, flashing my torch around. On the after bulkhead was a big refrigerator, with a small hinged table in front of it, and at the far end, under the window, a hinged box covered over what might have been a heating unit or sink or both. I didn't bother investigating, I wasn't interested. What I was interested in was the for'ard bulkhead, and I examined it carefully. It was given up entirely to the small closed doors of little metal lockers let in flush to the wallfood containers, probablyand there wasn't a single metal projection in the entire wall, nothing that could possibly account for the wound in the stewardess's back. And if she had been here at the moment of impact, that was the wall she must have been flung against. The inference was inescapableshe must have been elsewhere at the time of the crash. I remembered now, with chagrin, that I hadn't even bothered to see whether or not she was conscious when we'd first found her lying on the floor. Across the passage in the radio compartment I found what I was looking for almost immediatelyI'd a pretty good idea where to look. The thin sheet metal at the top left-hand corner of the radio cabinet was bent almost half an inch out of true: and it didn't require any microscope to locate or forensic expert to guess at the significance of the small dark stain and the fibres of navy blue cloth clinging to the corner of the smashed set. I looked inside the set itself, and now that I had time to spare it more than a fleeting glance it was abundantly clear to me that the wrenching away of the face-plate didn't even begin to account for the damage that had been done to the set: it had been systematically and thoroughly wrecked. If ever there was a time when my thoughts should have been racing it was then, but the plain truth is that they weren't. It was abominably cold inside the chilled metal of that dead plane, and my mind was sluggish, but even so I knew that this time I couldn't be wrong about what had happened. I could see now why the second

Behind the panes, which wind about

As the brilliantly successful Chief of Operations of the Subversive Operations Executive in Cairo, intrigue, deception, imitation and disguise were the breath of life to Captain James Jensen, D.S.O., R.N. As a Levantine stevedore agitator, he had won the awed respect of the dock-labourers from Alexandretta to Alexandria: as a camel-driver, he had blasphemously out-camel-driven all available Bedouin competition: and no more pathetic beggar had ever exhibited such realistic sores in the bazaars and marketplaces of the East. To-night, however, he was just the bluff and simple sailor. He was dressed in white from cap-cover to canvas shoes; the starlight glinted softly on the golden braid on epaulettes and cap peak. Their footsteps crunched in companionable unison over the hard-packed sand, rang sharply as they moved on to the concrete of the runway. The hurrying figure of the air commodore was already almost lost to sight. Mallory took a deep breath and turned suddenly towards Jensen. "Look, sir, just what is all this? What's all the flap, all the secrecy about? And why am I involved in it? Good lord, sir, it was only yesterday that I was pulled out of Crete, relieved at eight hours' notice. A month's leave, I was told. And what happens?" "Well," Jensen murmured, "what did happen?" "No leave," Mallory said bitterly. "Not even a night's sleep. Just hours and hours in the S.O.E. Headquarters, answering a lot of silly, damnfool questions about climbing in the Southern Alps. Then hauled out of bed at midnight, told I was to meet you, and then driven for hours across the blasted desert by a mad Scotsman who sang drunken songs and asked hundreds of even more silly, damnfool questions!" "One of my more effective disguises, I've always thought," Jensen said smugly. "Personally, I found the journey most entertaining!" "One of your" Mallory broke off, appalled at the memory of the things he had said to the elderly, bewhiskered Scots captain who had driven the command vehicle. "II'm terribly sorry, sir. I never realised" "Of course you didn't!" Jensen cut in briskly. "You weren't supposed to. Just wanted to find out if you were the man for the job. I'm sure you areI was pretty sure you were before I pulled you out of Crete. But where you got the idea about leave I don't know. The sanity of the S.O.E. has often been questioned, but even we aren't given to sending a flying-boat for the sole purpose of enabling junior officers to spend a month wasting their sony dsc650 digital camera review substance among the flesh-pots of Cairo," be finished dryly. "I still don't know" "Patience, laddie, patienceas our worthy commodore has just advocated. Time is endless. To wait, and to keep on waitingthat is to be of the East." "To total four hours' sleep in three days is not," Mallory said feelingly. "And that's all I've had. . . . Here they come!" Both men screwed up their eyes in automatic reflex as the fierce glare of the landing lights struck at them, the flare path arrowing off into the outer darkness. In less than a minute the first bomber was down, heavily, awkwardly, taxi-ing to a standstill just beside them. The grey camouflage paint of the after fuselage and tailplanes was riddled with bullet and cannon shells, an aileron was shredded and the port outer engine out of commission, saturated in oil. The cabin perspex was shattered and starred in a dozen places. For a long time Jensen stared at the holes and scars of the damaged machine, then shook his head and looked away. "Four hours' sleep, Captain Mallory," he said quietly. "Four hours. I'm beginning to think that you can count yourself damn' lucky to have had even that much." The interrogation room, harshly lit by two powerful, unshaded lights, was uncomfortable and airless. The furniture consisted of some battered wall-maps and charts, a score or so of equally scuffed chairs and an unvarnished deal table. The commodore, flanked by Jensen and Mallory, was sitting behind this when the door opened abruptly and the first of the flying crews entered, blinking rapidly in the fierceness of the unaccustomed light They were led by a dark-haired, thick-set pilot, trailing helmet and flying-suit in his left hand. He had an Anzac bush helmet crushed on the back of his head, and the word "Australia" emblazoned in white across each khaki shoulder. Scowling, wordlessly and without permission, he sat down in front of them, produced a pack of cigaottes and rasped a match across the surface of the table. Mallory looked furtively at the commodore. The commodore just looked resigned. He even sounded resigned. "Gentlemen, this is Squadron Leader Torrance. Squadron Leader Torrance," he added unnecessarily, "is an Australian." Mallory had the impression that the commodore rather hoped this would explain some things, Squadron Leader Torrance among them. "He led tonight's attack on Navarone. Bill, these

But in my breast and in my brain,

gun-smoke that hung heavily in the frosty evening air. The enemy had vanished, completely, rolled behind scattered boulders or burrowed frantically into the blanketing anonymity of the snow. But they were still there, still potentially as dangerous as ever. Andrea knew that they would recover fast from the death of their officerthere were no finer, no more tenacious fighters in Europe than the ski-troops of the Jaeger mountain battalionand would come after him, catch and kill him if humanly possible. That was why Andrea's first care had been to kill their officerhe might not have come after him, might have stopped to puzzle out the reason for this unprovoked flank attack. Andrea ducked low in reflex instinct as a sudden burst of automatic fire whined in murderous ricochet off the boulders before him. He had expected this. It was the old classic infantry attack patternadvance under covering fire, drop, cover your mate and come again. Swiftly Andrea rammed home another charge into the magazine of his Mauser, dropped flat on his face and inched his way along behind the low line of broken rock that extended fifteen or twenty yards to his righthe had chosen his ambush point with careand then petered out. At the far end he pulled his snow hood down to the level of his brows and edged a wary eye round the corner of the rock. Another heavy burst of automatic fire smashed into the boulders he had just left, and half a dozen men three from either end of the linebroke cover, scurried along the slope in a stumbling, crouching run, then pitched forward into the snow again. Along the slope the two parties had run in opposite directions. Andrea lowered his head and rubbed the back of a massive hand across the stubbled grizzle of his chin. Awkward, damned awkward. No frontal attack for the foxes of the W.G.B. They were extending their lines on either side, the points hooking round in a great, encircling halfmoon. Bad enough for himself, but he could have coped with thata carefully reconnoitred escape gully wound up the slope behind him. But he hadn't foreseen what was obviously going to happen: the curving crescent of line to the west was going to- sweep across the rock-shelter where the others lay hidden. Andrea twisted over on his back and looked up at the evening sky. It was darkening by the moment, darkening with the gloom of coming snow, and daylight was beginning to fail. He twisted again and looked across the great swelling shoulder of Mount Kostos, looked at the few scattered rocks and shallow depressions that barely dubai digital cameras sony dimpled the smooth convexity of the slope. He took a second quick look round the rock as the rifles of the W.G.B. opened up once more, saw the same encircling manoeuvre being executed again, and waited no longer. Firing blindly downhill, he half-rose to his feet and flung himself out into the open, finger squeezing on the trigger, feet driving desperately into the frozen snow as he launched himself towards the nearest -rock-cover, forty yards away if an inch. Thirty-five yards to go, thirty, twenty and still not a shot fired, a slip, a stumble on the sliding scree, a catlike recovery, ten yards, still miraculously immune, and then he had dived into shelter to land on chest and stomach with a sickening impact that struck cruelly into his ribs and emptied his lungs with an explosive gasp. Fighting for breath, he struck the magazine cover, rammed home another charge, risked a quick peep over the top of the rock and catapulted himself to his feet again, all inside ten seconds. The Mauser held across his body opened up again, firing downhill at vicious random, for Andrea had eyes only for the smoothly-treacherous ground at his feet, for the scree-lined depression so impossibly far ahead. And then the Mauser was empty, useless in his hand, and every gun far below had opened up, the shells whistling above his head or blinding him with spurting gouts of snow as they ricochetted off the solid rock. But twilight was touching the hills, Andrea was only a blur, a swiftly-flitting blur against a ghostly background, and uphill accuracy was notoriously difficult at any time. Even so, the massed fire from below was steadying and converging, and Andrea waited no longer. Unseen hands plucking wickedly at the flying tails of his snow-smock, he flung himself almost horizontally forward and slid the last ten feet face down into the waiting depression. Stretched full length on his back in the hollow, Andrea fished out a steel mirror from his breast pocket and held it gingerly above his head. At first he could see nothing, for the darkness was deeper below and the mirror misted from the warmth of his body. And then the film vanished in the chill mountain air and he could see two, three and then half a dozen men breaking cover, heading at a clumsy run straight up the face of the hilland two of them had come from the extreme right of the line. Andrea lowered the mirror and relaxed with a long sigh of relief, eyes crinkling in a smile.

The autumn frosts will lie upon the grass

taking chances. And whoever held the other end of the rope up above was moving even as quickly as I was, for the rope tightened just as I finished tying the knot. I learned later that Helene owed her life to Mahler's quick thinking. The dog-sledge carrying Marie LeGarde and himself had stopped directly opposite the spot where Helene had gone over, and he had shouted to Brewster and Margaret Ross to sit on it and thread the rope through the slats on the sledge top. It had been a chance, but one that came off: even on that slippery surface their combined weights were more than enough to hold the slightly built Helene. It was then that I made my mistakemy second mistake of that afternoon, though I did not realise that at the time. To help those above I stooped to boost her up, and as I straightened abruptly the suddenly increased pressure proved too much for the already crumbling bridge. I heard the ominous rumble, felt the snow begin to give under my feet, released my hold on Heleneshe was already well clear anywaygrabbed Jackstraw by the arm and jumped for the other side of the bridge a second before the spot where we had been standing vanished with a whroom and went cascading down into the gloomy depths of the crevasse. At the full extent of my rope I hit the ice on the far side of the crevasse, wrapped both arms tightly round JackstrawI heard his muffled expression of pain and remembered his injury for the first timeand wondered how long I could hold him when that side of the bridge went too, as go it must, its support on the far side no longer existing. But, miraculously, for the moment it held. Both of us were pressed hard in against the ice, motionless, hardly daring to breathe, when I heard a sudden cry of pain from above. It came from Heleneshe must have caught her injured shoulder as she was being pulled over the edge of the crevasse. But what caught my eye was not Helene, but Corazzini. He was standing very close to the edge, and he had my gun in his hand. I have never known such chagrin, such profound despair, such bitterness of spiritor, to be utterly frank, such depths of fear. The one thing I had guarded against all the time, the one thing I had dreaded above all other things, that Jackstraw and I should ever find ourselves, at the same time, completely at the mercy of the killers, had come to pass. But even in my fear there was savagerysavagery towards the man who had engineered this so beautifully, savagery towards myself for having been so easily and utterly fooled. Even a child polaroid digital camera filter could see how it had been done. The series of snow-bridges had given Corazzini the idea. A little nudge to Helene Fleming at the right placeit was as plain as a pikestaff that it had been no accidentand it was a foregone conclusion that either Jackstraw or myself would have to go down to fix a rope round the youngster who, with her broken collar-bone, would be unable to do it herself: I suppose the possibility that she might have crashed straight through the snow-bridge must have occurred to Corazzini, but a man with a record of killings like he had wouldn't be worried unduly on that scoreannoyance at the failure of his plan would probably have been his only reaction. And when one of us had gone down and the other was supervising the rescue from abovewell, another little nudge would have solved all Corazzini's problems. As it was, I had played into his hands more completely than he could ever have hoped. Mouth dry, sweat breaking out in the palms of my clenched fists and my heart going like a trip-hammer in my chest, I was wondering desperately how he was going to administer the coup de grace when I saw the Rev. Smallwood approaching him arms outstretched and saying something I couldn't catch. It was a brave gesture of the little minister's, but a forlorn and hopeless one: I could see Corazzini change his gun to his left hand, strike Mr Smallwood a heavy backhanded blow across the face and the sound of a body falling on the ice above was unmistakable. And then Corazzini was waving the others back at the point of the gun and was advancing towards the wooden battens that straddled the crevasse, and I knew with a dull certainty how he intended to dispose of us. Why waste two bullets when all he had to do was to kick the edges of these battens over the side? Whether these . battens, weighing two hundred pounds between them, struck us or smashed away the last remaining buttress of the snow-bridge was quite immaterial: the point was that I was inescapably attached to them by the nylon rope round my waist, and when they plummeted down I would go with them, tearing away the bridge and carrying Jackstraw with me to our deaths in the unthinkable depths below. Despairingly, I considered the idea of snatching at the rifle still strapped to Jackstraw's back, but dismissed it even with the thought. It would take me seconds to get it off. There was only one thing for it, and it wasn't going to do me any good at

Nor those great shades whom we have held as foes;

It was Jackstraw who heard it firstit was always Jackstraw, whose hearing was an even match for his phenomenal eyesight, who heard things first. Tired of having my exposed hands alternately frozen, I had dropped my book, zipped my sleeping-bag up to the chin and was drowsily watching him carving figurines from a length of inferior narwhal tusk when his hands suddenly fell still and he sat quite motionless. Then, unhurriedly as always, he dropped the piece of bone into the coffee-pan that simmered gently by the side of our oil-burner stovecurio collectors paid fancy prices for what they No meadow of asfodel our feet shal tread, imagined to be the dark ivory of fossilised elephant tusksrose and put his ear to the ventilation shaft, his eyes remote in the unseeing gaze of a man lost in listening. A couple of seconds were enough. "Aeroplane," he announced casually. "Aeroplane!" I propped myself up on an elbow and stared at him. "Jackstraw, you've been hitting the methylated spirits again." "Indeed, no, Dr Mason." The blue eyes, so incongruously at

"O thine apparel is good," he said,

been sitting behind them to take his place, led the way out through a side door and into his own quarters. "Well, that is that, I suppose." He broke the seal of a bottle of Talisker, brought out some glasses. "You'll have to accept it as final, Jensen. Bill Torrance's is the senior, most experienced squadron left in Africa to-day. Used to pound the Ploesti oil wells and think it a helluva skylark. If anyone could have done to-night's job it was Bill Torrance, and if he says it's impossible, believe me, Captain Jensen, it can't be done." "Yes." Jensen looked down sombrely at the golden amber of the glass in his hand. "Yes, I know. I almost knew before, but I couldn't be sure, and I couldn't take the chance of being wrong. . . . A terrible pity that it took the lives of a dozen men to prove me right . . . There's just the one way left, now." "There's just the one," the commodore echoed. He lifted his glass, shook his head. "Here's luck to Kheros!" "Here's luck to Kheros!" Jensen echoed in turn. His face was grim. "Look!" Mallory begged. "I'm completely lost. Would somebody please tell me" "Kheros," Jensen interrupted. "That was your cue call, young man. All the world's a stage, laddie, etcetera, and this is where you tread the boards in this particular little comedy." Jensen's smile was quite mirthless. "Sorry you've missed the first two acts, but don't lose any sleep over that. This is no bit part: you're going to be the star, whether you like it or not. This is it. Kheros, Act 3, Scene 1. Enter Captain Keith Mallory." Neither of them had spoken in the last ten minutes. Jensen drove the big Humber command car with the same sureness, the same relaxed efficiency that hallmarked everything he did: Mallory still sat hunched over the map on his knees, a large-scale Admiralty chart of the Southern Aegean illuminated by the hooded dashboard light, studying an area of the Sporades and Northern Dodecanese heavily squared off in red pencil. Finally he straightened up and shivered. Even in Egypt these late November nights could be far too cold for comfort. He looked across at Jensen. "I think I've got it now, sir." "Good!" Jensen gazed straight ahead along the winding grey ribbon of dusty road, along the white glare of the headlights that cleaved through the darkness of the desert. The beams lifted and dipped, constantly, hypnotically, to the cushioning of the springs on the rutted road. "Good!" he georgia digital camera wholesale repeated. "Now, have another look at it and imagine yourself standing in the town of Navaronethat's on the almost circular bay on the north of the island? Tell me, what would you see from there?" Mallory smiled. "I don't have to look again, sir. Four miles or so away to the east I'd see the Turkish coast curving up north and west to a point almost due north of Navaronea very sharp promontory, that, for the coastline above curves back almost due east. Then, about sixteen miles away, due north beyond this promontoryCape Demirci, isn't it?and practically in a line with it I'd see the island of Kheros. Finally, six miles to the west is the island of Maidos, the first of the Lerades group. They stretch away in a north-westerly direction, maybe fifty miles." "Sixty." Jensen nodded. "You have the eye, my boy. You've got the guts and the experiencea man doesn't survive eighteen months in Crete without both. You've got one or two special qualifications I'll mention by and by." He paused for a moment, shook his head slowly. "I only hope you have the luckall the luck. God alone knows you're going to need it." Mallory waited expectantly, but Jensen had sunk into some private reverie. Three minutes passed, perhaps five, and there was only the swish of the tyres, the subdued hum of the powerful engine. Presently Jensen stirred and spoke again, quietly, still without taking his eyes off the road. "This is Saturdayrather, it's Sunday morning now. There are one thousand two hundred men on the island of Kherosone thousand two hundred British soldierswho will be dead, wounded or prisoner by next Saturday. Mostly, they'll be dead." For the first time he looked at Mallory and smiled, a brief smile, a crooked smile, and then it was gone. "How does it feel to hold a thousand lives in your hands, Captain Mallory?" For long seconds Mallory looked at the impassive face beside him, then looked away again. He stared down at the chart. Twelve hundred men on Kheros, twelve hundred men waiting to die. Kheros and Navarone, Kheros and Navarone. What was that poem again, that little jingle that he'd learnt all these long years ago in that little upland village in the sheeplands outside Queenstown? Chimborazothat was it. "Chimborazo and Cotopaxi, you have stolen my heart away." Kheros and Navaronethey had the same ring, the same indefinable glamour, the same