The Guns of Navarone

by Alistair MacLean

  The same golden rays highlighted the crumbling old watch-tower on the very point of the cliff, a hundred feet above the river. They burnished its fine-grained white Parian marble, mellowed it to a delicate rose: they gleamed on the glittering steel, the evil mouths of the Spandau machine-guns reaching out from the slotted embrasures in the massive walls, illumined the hooked cross of the swastika on the flag that streamed out stiffly from the staff above the parapet. Solid even in its decay, impregnable in its position, commanding in its lofty outlook, the tower completely dominated both waterborne approaches, from the sea and, upriver, down the narrow, winding channel that lay between the moored caique and the foot of the cliff.

  Slowly, reluctantly almost, Mallory turned away and gently lowered the tarpaulin. His face was grim as he turned round to Andrea and Stevens, ill-defined shadows in the twilit gloom of the cabin.

  ‘Brilliant!’ he repeated. ‘Sheer genius. Mastermind Mallory. Probably the only bloody creek within a hundred miles – and in a hundred islands – with a German guard post on it. And of course I had to go and pick it. Let’s have another look at that chart, will you, Stevens?’

  Stevens passed it across, watched Mallory study it in the pale light filtering in under the tarpaulin, leaned back against the bulkhead and drew heavily on his cigarette. It tasted foul, stale and acrid, but the tobacco was fresh enough, he knew. The old, sick fear was back again, as strongly as ever. He looked at the great bulk of Andrea across from him, felt an illogical resentment towards him for having spotted the emplacement a few minutes ago. They’ll have cannon up there, he thought dully, they’re bound to have cannon – couldn’t control the creek otherwise. He gripped his thigh fiercely, just above the knee, but the tremor lay too deep to be controlled: he blessed the merciful darkness of the tiny cabin. But his voice was casual enough as he spoke.

  ‘You’re wasting your time, sir, looking at that chart and blaming yourself. This is the only possible anchorage within hours of sailing time from here. With that wind there was nowhere else we could have gone.’

  ‘Exactly. That’s just it.’ Mallory folded the chart, handed it back. ‘There was nowhere else we could have gone. There was nowhere else anyone could have gone. Must be a very popular port in a storm, this – a fact which must have become apparent to the Germans a long, long time ago. That’s why I should have known they were almost bound to have a post here. However, spilt milk, as you say.’ He raised his voice. ‘Chief?’

  ‘Hallo!’ Brown’s muffled voice carried faintly from the depths of the engine-room.

  ‘How’s it going?’

  ‘Not too bad, sir. Assembling it now.’

  Mallory nodded in relief.

  ‘How long?’ he called. ‘An hour?’

  ‘Aye, easy, sir.’

  ‘An hour.’ Again Mallory glanced through the tarpaulin, looked back at Andrea and Stevens. ‘Just about right. We’ll leave in an hour. Dark enough to give us some protection from our friends up top, but enough light left to navigate our way out of this damned corkscrew of a channel.’

  ‘Do you think they’ll try to stop us, sir?’ Stevens’s voice was just too casual, too matter of fact. He was pretty sure Mallory would notice.

  ‘It’s unlikely they’ll line the banks and give us three hearty cheers,’ Mallory said dryly. ‘How many men do you reckon they’ll have up there, Andrea?’

  ‘I’ve seen two moving around,’ Andrea said thoughtfully. ‘Maybe three or four altogether, Captain. A small post. The Germans don’t waste men on these.’

  ‘I think you’re about right,’ Mallory agreed. ‘Most of them’ll be in the garrison in the village – about seven miles from here, according to the chart, and due west. It’s not likely –’

  He broke off sharply, stiffened in rigid attention. Again the call came, louder this time, imperative in its tone. Cursing himself for his negligence in not posting a guard – such carelessness would have cost him his life in Crete – Mallory pulled the tarpaulin aside, clambered slowly on to the deck. He carried no arms, but a half-empty bottle of Moselle dangled from his left hand; as part of a plan prepared before they had left Alexandria, he’d snatched it from a locker at the foot of the tiny companionway.

  He lurched convincingly across the deck, grabbed at a stay in time to save himself from falling overboard. Insolently he stared down at the figure on the bank, less than ten yards away – it hadn’t mattered about a guard, Mallory realised, for the soldier carried his automatic carbine slung over his shoulder – insolently he tilted the wine to his mouth and swallowed deeply before condescending to talk to him.

  He could see the mounting anger in the lean, tanned face of the young German below him. Mallory ignored it. Slowly, an inherent contempt in the gesture, he dragged the frayed sleeve of his black jacket across his lips, looked the soldier even more slowly up and down in a minutely provocative inspection as disdainful as it was prolonged.

  ‘Well?’ he asked truculently in the slow speech of the islands. ‘What the hell do you want?’

  Even in the deepening dusk he could see the knuckles whitening on the stock of the carbine, and for an instant Mallory thought he had gone too far. He knew he was in no danger – all noise in the engine-room had ceased, and Dusty Miller’s hand was never far from his silenced automatic – but he didn’t want trouble. Not just yet. Not while there were a couple of manned Spandaus in that watch-tower.

  With an almost visible effort the young soldier regained his control. It needed little help from the imagination to see the draining anger, the first tentative stirrings of hesitation and bewilderment. It was the reaction Mallory had hoped for. Greeks – even half-drunk Greeks – didn’t talk to their over-lords like that – not unless they had an overpoweringly good reason.

  ‘What vessel is this?’ The Greek was slow and halting but passable. ‘Where are you bound for?’

  Mallory tilted the bottle again, smacked his lips in noisy satisfaction. He held the bottle at arm’s length, regarded it with a loving respect.

  ‘One thing about you Germans,’ he confided loudly. ‘You do know how to make a fine wine. I’ll wager you can’t lay your hands on this stuff, eh? And the swill they’re making up above’ – the island term for the mainland – ‘is so full of resin that it’s only good for lighting fires.’ He thought for a moment. ‘Of course, if you know the right people in the islands, they might let you have some ouzo. But some of us can get ouzo and the best Hocks and the best Moselles.’

  The soldier wrinkled his face in disgust. Like almost every fighting man he despised Quislings, even when they were on his side: in Greece they were very few indeed.

  ‘I asked you a question,’ he said coldly. ‘What vessel, and where bound?’

  ‘The caique Aigion,’ Mallory replied loftily. ‘In ballast, for Samos. Under orders,’ he said significantly.

  ‘Whose orders?’ the soldier demanded. Shrewdly Mallory judged the confidence as superficial only. The guard was impressed in spite of himself.

  ‘Herr Commandant in Vathy. General Graebel,’ Mallory said softly. ‘You will have heard of the Herr General before, yes?’ He was on safe ground here, Mallory knew. The reputation of Graebel, both as a paratroop commander and an iron disciplinarian, had spread far beyond these islands.

  Even in the half-light Mallory could have sworn that the guard’s complexion turned paler. But he was dogged enough.

  ‘You have papers? Letters of authority?’

  Mallory sighed wearily, looked over his shoulder.

  ‘Andrea!’ he bawled.

  ‘What do you want?’ Andrea’s great bulk loomed through the hatchway. He had heard every word that passed, had taken his cue from Mallory: a newly-opened wine bottle was almost engulfed in one vast hand and he was scowling hugely. ‘Can’t you see I’m busy?’ he asked surlily. He stopped short at the sight of the German and scowled again, irritably. ‘And what does this halfling want?’

  ‘Our passes and letters of authority from Herr General. Th
ey’re down below.’

  Andrea disappeared, grumbling deep in his throat. A rope was thrown ashore, the stern pulled in against the sluggish current and the papers passed over. The papers – a set different from those to be used if emergency arose in Navarone – proved to be satisfactory, eminently so. Mallory would have been surprised had they been anything else. The preparation of these, even down to the photo-static facsimile of General Graebel’s signature, was all in the day’s work for Jensen’s bureau in Cairo.

  The soldier folded the papers, handed them back with a muttered word of thanks. He was only a kid, Mallory could see now – if he was more than nineteen his looks belied him. A pleasant, open-faced kid – of a different stamp altogether from the young fanatics of the SS Panzer Division – and far too thin. Mallory’s chief reaction was one of relief: he would have hated to have to kill a boy like this. But he had to find out all he could. He signalled to Stevens to hand him up the almost empty crate of Moselle. Jensen, he mused, had been very thorough indeed: the man had literally thought of everything . . . Mallory gestured in the direction of the watch-tower.

  ‘How many of you are up there?’ he asked.

  The boy was instantly suspicious. His face had tightened up, stilled in hostile surmise.

  ‘Why do you want to know?’ he asked stiffly.

  Mallory groaned, lifted his hands in despair, turned sadly to Andrea.

  ‘You see what it is to be one of them?’ he asked in mournful complaint. ‘Trust nobody. Think everyone is as twisted as . . .’ He broke off hurriedly, turned to the soldier again. ‘It’s just that we don’t want to have the same trouble every time we come in here,’ he explained. ‘We’ll be back in Samos in a couple of days, and we’ve still another case of Moselle to work through. General Graebel keeps his – ah – special envoys well supplied . . . It must be thirsty work up there in the sun. Come on, now, a bottle each. How many bottles?’

  The reassuring mention that they would be back again, the equally reassuring mention of Graebel’s name, plus, probably, the attraction of the offer and his comrades’ reaction if he told them he had refused it, tipped the balance, overcame scruples and suspicions.

  ‘There are only three of us,’ he said grudgingly.

  ‘Three it is,’ Mallory said cheerfully. ‘We’ll bring you some Hock next time we return.’ He tilted his own bottle. ‘Prosit!’ he said, an islander proud of airing his German, and then, more proudly still, ‘Auf Wiedersehen!’

  The boy murmured something in return. He stood hesitating for a moment, slightly shame-faced, then wheeled abruptly, walked off slowly along the river bank, clutching his bottles of Moselle.

  ‘So!’ Mallory said thoughtfully. ‘There are only three of them. That should make things easier –’

  ‘Well done, sir!’ It was Stevens who interrupted, his voice warm, his face alive with admiration. ‘Jolly good show!’

  ‘Jolly good show!’ Miller mimicked. He heaved his lanky length over the coaming of the engine hatchway, ‘“Good” be damned! I couldn’t understand a gawddamned word, but for my money that rates an Oscar. That was terrific, boss!’

  ‘Thank you, one and all,’ Mallory murmured. ‘But I’m afraid the congratulations are a bit premature.’ The sudden chill in his voice struck at them, so that their eyes aligned along his pointing finger even before he went on. ‘Take a look,’ he said quietly.

  The young soldier had halted suddenly about two hundred yards along the bank, looked into the forest on his left in startled surprise, then dived in among the trees. For a moment the watchers on the boat could see another soldier, talking excitedly to the boy and gesticulating in the direction of their boat, and then both were gone, lost in the gloom of the forest.

  ‘That’s torn it!’ Mallory said softly. He turned away. ‘Right, that’s enough. Back to where you were. It would look fishy if we ignored that incident altogether, but it would look a damned sight fishier if we paid too much attention to it. Don’t let’s appear to be holding a conference.’

  Miller slipped down into the engine-room with Brown, and Stevens went back to the little for’ard cabin. Mallory and Andrea remained on deck, bottles in their hands. The rain had stopped now, completely, but the wind was still rising, climbing the scale with imperceptible steadiness, beginning to bend the tops of the tallest of the pines. Temporarily the bluff was affording them almost complete protection. Mallory deliberately shut his mind to what it must be like outside. They had to put out to sea – Spandaus permitting – and that was that.

  ‘What do you think has happened, sir?’ Stevens’s voice carried up from the gloom of the cabin.

  ‘Pretty obvious, isn’t it?’ Mallory asked. He spoke loudly enough for all to hear. ‘They’ve been tipped off. Don’t ask me how. This is the second time – and their suspicions are going to be considerably reinforced by the absence of a report from the caique that was sent to investigate us. She was carrying a wireless aerial, remember?’

  ‘But why should they get so damned suspicious all of a sudden?’ Miller asked. ‘It doesn’t make sense to me, boss.’

  ‘Must be in radio contact with their HQ. Or a telephone – probably a telephone. They’ve just been given the old tic-tac. Consternation on all sides.’

  ‘So mebbe they’ll be sending a small army over from their HQ to deal with us,’ Miller said lugubriously.

  Mallory shook his head definitely. His mind was working quickly and well, and he felt oddly certain, confident of himself.

  ‘No, not a chance. Seven miles as the crow flies. Ten, maybe twelve miles over rough hill and forest tracks – and in pitch darkness. They wouldn’t think of it.’ He waved his bottle in the direction of the watch-tower. ‘Tonight’s their big night.’

  ‘So we can expect the Spandaus to open up any minute?’ Again the abnormal matter-of-factness of Stevens’s voice.

  Mallory shook his head a second time.

  ‘They won’t. I’m positive of that. No matter how suspicious they may be, how certain they are that we’re the big bad wolf, they are going to be shaken to the core when that kid tells them we’re carrying papers and letters of authority signed by General Graebel himself. For all they know, curtains for us may be the firing squad for them. Unlikely, but you get the general idea. So they’re going to contact HQ, and the commandant on a small island like this isn’t going to take a chance on rubbing out a bunch of characters who may be the special envoys of the Herr General himself. So what? So he codes a message and radios it to Vathy in Samos and bites his nails off to the elbow till a message comes back saying Graebel has never heard of us and why the hell haven’t we all been shot dead?’ Mallory looked at the luminous dial of his watch. ‘I’d say we have at least half an hour.’

  ‘And meantime we all sit around with our little bits of paper and pencil and write out our last wills and testaments.’ Miller scowled. ‘No percentage in that, boss. We gotta do somethin’.’

  Mallory grinned.

  ‘Don’t worry, Corporal, we are going to do something. We’re going to hold a nice little bottle party, right here on the poop.’

  The last words of their song – a shockingly corrupted Grecian version of ‘Lilli Marlene’, and their third song in the past few minutes – died away in the evening air. Mallory doubted whether more than faint snatches of the singing would be carried to the watch-tower against the wind, but the rhythmical stamping of feet and waving of bottles were in themselves sufficient evidence of drunken musical hilarity to all but the totally blind and deaf. Mallory grinned to himself as he thought of the complete confusion and uncertainty the Germans in the tower must have been feeling then. This was not the behaviour of enemy spies, especially enemy spies who know that suspicions had been aroused and that their time was running out.

  Mallory tilted the bottle to his mouth, held it there for several seconds, then set it down again, the wine untasted. He looked round slowly at the three men squatting there with him on the poop, Miller, Stevens and Brown. Andrea was n
ot there, but he didn’t have to turn his head to look for him. Andrea, he knew, was crouched in the shelter of the wheelhouse, a waterproof bag with grenades and a revolver strapped to his back.

  ‘Right!’ Mallory said crisply. ‘Now’s your big chance for your Oscar. Let’s make this as convincing as we can.’ He bent forward, jabbed his finger into Miller’s chest and shouted angrily at him.

  Miller shouted back. For a few moments they sat there, gesticulating angrily and, to all appearances, quarrelling furiously with each other. Then Miller was on his feet, swaying in drunken imbalance as he leaned threateningly over Mallory, clenched fists ready to strike. He stood back as Mallory struggled to his feet, and in a moment they were fighting fiercely, raining apparently heavy blows on each other. Then a haymaker from the American sent Mallory reeling back to crash convincingly against the wheelhouse.

  ‘Right, Andrea.’ He spoke quietly, without looking round. ‘This is it. Five seconds. Good luck.’ He scrambled to his feet, picked up a bottle by the neck and rushed at Miller, upraised arm and bludgeon swinging fiercely down. Miller dodged, swung a vicious foot, and Mallory roared in pain as his shins caught on the edge of the bulwarks. Silhouetted against the pale gleam of the creek, he stood poised for a second, arms flailing wildly, then plunged heavily, with a loud splash, into the waters of the creek.