The Heights of Zervos

by Colin Forbes

  • 'Nopagos could be right - we may end up as a wreck on the rocks.'

  'That is a chance we must take. Personally, I am confident that Schnell will take us through.' Burckhardt paused, struggling to control his sudden rage. He had purposely left out that remark of Nopagos' when relaying what the Greek had said to Schnell, and it infuriated him that Dietrich should have repeated it for all to hear. But in spite of the immense pressure, the almost unbearable responsibility resting on his shoulders, Burckhardt's brain was still working and he had registered something he hadn't previously known.

  'You understand Greek, then?' he asked abruptly.

  'Perfectly. I speak it fluently - rather more fluently than yourself, incidentally.' Dietrich's tone of voice became scathing, a tone of voice which prickled the colonel's raw nerves. 'Why the devil do you think they chose me for this trip - one of the first qualifications, surely, is a mastery of Greek?'

  'Any other languages?' It was just something to say and Burckhardt wasn't in the least interested in the reply.

  'Yes, French. I don't anticipate being able to employ that particular talent on this voyage.' He spoke banteringly and his brief outburst seemed forgotten. This was another aspect of the Abwehr man's character which Burckhardt found so disconcerting : his moods changed with astonishing swiftness and kept you off-balance. He stiffened as Nopagos turned and spoke urgently, his eyes pleading.

  'There is still time to change your mind - but you must decide now.'

  'We are entering the gulf at the earliest possible moment. It is your duty to see that we make safe passage. For the sake of your crew, if for no other reason.'

  Nopagos' manner altered. He stood up very straight and stared directly at the German with an authoritative expression. In that case we must change course. There is a dangerous cross-current from the east we must allow for if we are not to pile up on the rocks to the west. Tell your wheelsman...'

  Burckhardt relayed the instructions automatically in German, instructions which he didn't understand completely and which he mistrusted. Nopagos had given the incredible order that they must steer straight for the cliffs of Zervos and the strangeness of the order raised an entirely fresh spectre in Burckhardt's already anxiety-laden mind. Quickly, he tried to resolve the fear before it was too late. Nopagos was undoubtedly a Greek patriot - his whole attitude had confirmed this to Burckhardt hours earlier - so to what lengths might he go to prevent the Hydra and its cargo of Alpenkorps troops ever reaching Katyra? Would he deliberately wreck his own vessel on those fearsome cliffs? He had a crew of his own countrymen aboard but would this prevent him from taking action which could only end in the death of every man aboard? Like Dietrich, Burckhardt was secretly under no illusion as to the chances of survival if the ship went down. If anything, they were less than they might have been ten minutes ago. It all depended on the inscrutable mind of one middle-aged Greek.

  'There is a cross-current.' It was Dietrich who had spoken and now Burckhardt could feel the first signs of the ship heeling from starboard to port. The Hydra, its overstrained engines thumping heavily, began to move chaotically in the churning seas, like a gyroscope out of control. Sick with dread, Burckhardt watched Schnell struggling with the wheel to keep the vessel on the nightmarish course Nopagos had dictated, a course which seemed to have no direction at all as the ferry wallowed amid the inferno of near-tidal high waves rolling in all directions as the cross-current grew stronger. Soon the ship was being driven two ways - forward by the labouring engines and sideways by the powerful current from the east. Then for several minutes they suffered the illusion that they were making no progress - until the illusion was shattered in a particularly terrifying manner. Burckhardt had been under the impression that great bursts of spray in the near-distance were the product of huge waves colliding with each other and disintegrating, but as the spray settled briefly he saw an immense shadow rising in the night and knew that he was staring at the almost vertical rock face of the towering cliffs which barred their way. The surf was exploding at the base of the cliffs as the waves destroyed themselves against the barrier. Horror-struck, he heard Dietrich's voice close to his ear, a low rumble like a knell of doom. 'I estimate we are six hundred metres from them...' The Hydra reached the crest of a wave and now they were near enough to see huge billows shattering against the awful monolith of rock, sending up blurred spray which rose a good hundred feet above the gyrating crests of the Aegean far below. Burckhardt felt a constriction of the throat as he gazed with fascination at the spectacle - the rock face rearing upwards, the spurs st its base momentarily exposed as the sea receded, the lift of the Hydra's bows, so close now that with their next fall it seemed they must rara down on that immovable rock base. And from the heaving bridge they could hear a new, sinister sound - the boom of the sea as it drove against the massive bastion of the headland. For the first time Burckhardt felt compelled to speak, to voice a navigational question. He had to lift his voice so that Schnell, still crouched over the wheel, could hear him above the shrieking wind and the steady roar of sea breaking against the cliff face.

  'What's gone wrong? We're nearly on top of Cape Zervos!' Schnell made no reply, didn't even turn round as Burckhardt took a step forward, grabbing Nopagos tightly by the arm as he spoke harshly in Greek, trying to trap the man into an admission by the suddenness of his approach. 'We're too close, aren't we? You've done it deliberately...'

  Nopagos stood perfectly still, his body frozen rigid under the German's grip. As he turned to gaze directly at the colonel, Hahnemann arrived on the bridge, slamming the door shut behind hira and then waiting. Nopagos spoke with dignity. 'You think I would destroy my own men? Because you are a soldier you think you are the only one with responsibilities?' He looked down at the gloved hand which held his forearm. 'You are hurting me, Colonel. This is no moment to panic. You must leave it to Schnell - or hand over the wheel to me.' Burckhardt relaxed his grip, let go, his eyes still on the Greek's face. No hint of triumph, no suggestion of treachery in those steady eyes; only a touch of resignation. Burckhardt was unmoved by the suggestion that bis nerve was going - it was immaterial to him at this moment what Nopagos thought so long as he got the truth out of the man. And he believed him. The tilt of the deck almost threw him clear across the bridge as the Hydra heeled over again, but the soldier who was guarding Nopagos saved him. Holding firmly onto the rail Burckhardt listened while Hahnemann reported that all was well below but more than half the unit was sea-sick. As Hahnemann spoke Burckhardt was waiting for the first grind and shudder as the ferry struck. The lieutenant completed his report, saluted, and left the bridge. He closed the door as water surged over the port side, enveloping him when the wave broke against the bridge, and for a moment Burckhardt thought he had gone, but when the flood subsided Hahnemann was still clinging to the rail and he took advantage of the respite to dash below.

  The not unexpected news he had brought depressed Burckhardt : within three hours the unit had to go ashore and the landing might be opposed. For such an operation the troops should be in the peak of condition and already half their energy must have drained away under the impact of their experiences so far - and the voyage was not yet accomplished. In fact, the worst probably lay ahead. Suppressing a sigh, he turned to face the cliffs and saw only spray. A second later every man on the bridge was petrified and their expressions of hypnotized fear were etched on Burckhardt's mind - a long drawn-out grinding noise was heard and the ship shuddered. She had struck! The message flashed through his brain and then the engines, which had missed a beat, started up reluctantly, and he knew that it was this which had caused the diabolical sound and tremor. He caught Dietrich's eye and the Abwehr man nodded, as much as to say, yes, this is gruelling. Burckhardt turned to look ahead as the vessel climbed, the spray faded and the entrance to the gulf appeared again. Within minutes their position had changed radically and they were now lying close to the narrows and well clear of the Zervos cliffs. But within a matter of only a few more minute
s an even graver crisis faced them.

  The enormously powerful cross-current which had carried them clear of the cliffs now threatened to carry the Hydra to a new and equally total destruction. From the bridge Burckhardt could now see why Nopagos had advised the apparently suicidal course of steaming directly for the notorious cape - it was an attempt to take them close enough to the narrows to pass through the bottleneck before the cross-current swept them sideways beyond it. The Greek mainland to the west lay several miles away, but from its distant coast a chain of rocks stretched out across the gulf entrance, a chain which ended close enough to the cliffs of the Zervos peninsula to compress the entrance dangerously narrow. And the only navigable channel, Schnell had explained earlier, lay through the bottleneck, guarded by the last rock in the chain. Burckhardt was staring grimly at that rock as the ferry ploughed its way forward towards the entrance, half its engine-power neutralized by the insidious sideslip motion of the cross-current which, only a few minutes before their saviour, was fast becoming their most deadly enemy.

  In size the rock was more like a small island, a pointed island which rose straight out of the sea to its peak, a saw-toothed giant against which a warship might well destroy itself at the first impact, whereas the ferry they were aboard was a little more fragile than a steel-plated cruiser. Mountainous waves were surging half-way up the rock's face and the bursting spray smothered its peak. It had the appearance of waiting for them.

  'It is fortunate that we did not plan to scale the so-called cliff path,' Eberhay commented. He had said the first thing which came into his head to break the tension permeating the bridge like a disease. 'I hardly imagine it would have been a great success,' he went on lightly. "There might have been some difficulty in disembarking the troops at the base of the cliff.'

  'I don't believe there is a path,' Burckhardt replied. When the operation had been planned one of the experts had mentioned this path which he said climbed the apparently sheer face in a series of zigzag walks leading eventually to the summit close to the monastery. Superficially, it had seemed an attractive idea - Burckhardt could have taken his main objective soon after landing instead of going to the head of the gulf and then marching twenty miles back down the peninsula. From the monastery he could have sent out patrols to the north to occupy the peninsula from the heights - the operation would, in fact, have taken place in precisely the reverse direction from the one now contemplated. The operation had been revised to its present form when the planners had realized that the Greek ferry reached the cape in the early hours of the morning; the prospect of scaling the cliffs at night had,been considered impracticable and the ferry had to complete its run to preserve the appearance of normality up to the last moment.

  'Yes, there is a track,' Dietrich informed the colonel. 'It links up the anchorite dwellings built into the cliff face. The anchorites are hermit monks who spend all their lives in isolation from their fellows - hence the extraordinary places they live in.' He chuckled throatily. 'I have always thought it must be similar to solitary confinement during a lifetime in prison.'

  'How do you know this?' Burckhardt was twisted round one hand still gripping the rail as the bridge swayed alarmingly.

  'Because I paid a visit to Zervos five years ago.' Dietrich regarded'the colonel ironically. 'Which is simply another of my qualifications for being here. I travelled all over the peninsula.'

  'You went to the monastery?' Burckhardt put the question casually but the information interested him intensely. He had only one man among the two hundred aboard who knew Zervos personally - Lieutenant Hahnemann - and he had worried over this ever since the expedition had been planned. Perhaps, after all, the Abwehr officer was going to prove extremely useful during the dangerous hours ahead.

  'Yes, I visited the monastery. Why?'

  'I simply wondered how widespread }'our travels had been. I understand there is no landing place along the peninsula coast between the cape and Katyra at the head of the gulf.'

  'There is Molos - twenty kilometres south of Katyra.'

  'Yes, I know. It is a small fishing village - but has it access to the interior?'

  'It depends what you call access.' Dietrich was still holding the cigar unlit in his mouth and he didn't bother to remove it to reply to the colonel. 'There is a footpath which goes up into the mountains but often it is washed away during the winter.'

  'I see.' Burckhardt replied as though this were news, but he had heard this at the planning stage and it confirmed that Dietrich did know the geography of the peninsula. "There is a road south from Katyra, of course?"

  'You know perfectly well there is, or I presume you would not be on board this ship. It is little more than a track and winds its way among the hills. You should have brought mules with you,' he told Burckhardt bluntly.

  'We considered them - but it was hardly practicable to transfer animals from the Rupescu to this ferry.' Satisfied with Dietrich's replies he turned away, but the Abwehr man had the last word.

  'All this is assuming that we ever penetrate that gulf. You see what is happening, don't you?'

  Burckhardt, who had let his attention slip for the shortest period of time, looked ahead and stiffened. During the very brief interval while he had conversed with Dietrich, the Hydra, caught up in the main force of the cross-current, had been swept three-quarters of the way across the entrance and now he heard a fresh sound, a sound more muted than the breaking of the sea against the cape but no less sinister - the dull boom of the swaying Aegean against the base of the sawtooth. They were very close to the narrows - close enough to see that there the water was quieter, although still it heaved and bubbled like a tidal race, but they were equally close to the saw-tooth. He looked away to starboard where the big rollers were rounding Cape Zervos and hurtling towards the ferry, a piling-up of the sea which had more than once shaken the vessel as though she were a toy ship. It was these mountainous rollers which posed Burckhardt's second nightmare. If a big one came just at the wrong moment as they were passing the saw-tooth... He noticed Schnell again turning his head to look to port, and Schnell's frequent glances in that direction worried him. The naval officer was clearly aware that they were engaged in a lethal race - to pass through the narrows before they piled-up against the rock. There was no longer anything they could do except to hope. Everything seemed to conspire to screw up their tense nerves to an unbearable pitch - the engines were beating foggily as though on the verge of breaking down altogether; the vessel's movements were becoming laboured and had a discouraging, waterlogged feel; the cross-current seemed to be carrying them sideways faster than the bows of the ship moved forward. He heard Eberhay clear his throat and the sound alerted him, made him look again to port. They were about to enter the narrows but the saw-tooth was less than thirty metres from the hull. A wave broke on the rock's side and spray reached the apexed summit. Out of the corner of his eye Burckhardt caught a slight movement - Nopagos was staring in the opposite direction towards the cape as though transfixed.

  Following his gaze, the colonel clenched his teeth and felt coldness like an affliction chill his spine. Another roller was coming, a roller more mountainous than any Burckhardt had seen. There must have been some accumulation of the waters, even an overtaking and merging of three giant waves to form the foam-crested colossus bearing down on them like an upheaval from the deep. All heads were turned in that direction now, even Schnell's before he dragged his gaze to for'ard by some supreme effort of will. The crest of the monster was well above funnel height. Hands gripped the rails tightly, bodies stood rigid with fright. Even Burckhardt took several steps back as Dietrich moved aside for him to brace his back against the rear wall. With the wood pressed against his shoulder-blades he stared incredulously at the appalling spectacle. The wave seemed to be climbing higher and higher, swallowing up more of the sea to swell itself to mammoth proportions. We'll be overwhelmed, Burckhardt thought, we'll never emerge from this: we'll plunge down to the floor of the gulf like a sub-" marine o
ut of control. God, had there been some frightful underwater upheaval, some shift in the earth's surface on the Aegean floor? The wave was within ten metres now. Half the wave's height would be clear over them... His hands locked on the rail, felt the greasy sweat inside his gloves, and then the Hydra tried to climb, to carry itself up the side of the monstrous wave - and instead was swept sideways. Lifted like a paper boat, it seemed no longer to move forward at all as the screw churned frantically inside the pounding sea. Eberhay lost his grip and was hurled bodily across the bridge where he collided with the Alpenkorps soldier. Bracing himself afresh, determined not to follow Eberhay, the colonel looked to port again. For a moment he saw nothing except the wave travelling westward, a shifting wobble of sea which shimmered his vision, then a window appeared in the water and his jaw muscles tautened. Just beyond the ship, it appeared, the sawtooth was rushing towards them like the wall of a building toppling over on the port deck. He waited for the shuddering crash of hull disintegrating against immovable rock, the sinking sensation as the Hydra foundered.