by Alan Evans
He laid Tim down. The stream was barely a trickle from one small rockpool to another, a staircase of them descending the hill. Mark wondered anxiously if the water was drinkable, but then decided he would have to drink it anyway. He put his face to one of the pools and sucked. The water seemed fresh, was cool as he splashed some on his face. He untied the handkerchief from Tim’s wrists and used it to bathe the observer’s face. He thought Tim was breathing more quietly now, but the cold water did not wake him.
He heard the soldiers climbing the hill and calling to each other. He crept up the side of the ravine and saw them strung in a long line again, moving forward and continuing the search. But their backs were turned to him; they were going away. Now he was hidden in the dead ground they had already swept over.
He stretched out beside Tim and closed his eyes. He ached from head to foot, was coated in a paste of dust and sweat. His hands and knees were torn and bloody but he didn’t care. The bastards hadn’t got him. And they wouldn’t. He closed his eyes against the sun. Its heat and his exhaustion worked together and soon he dozed.
He woke with a start and found that he and Tim now lay in shade. The sun was sinking and the scrub that fringed the edge of the ravine cast long shadows. It was late afternoon. The snarling of an aero-engine had wakened him and he lifted himself on one knee until he could see a seaplane skimming low along the side of the hill about a mile away. The seaplane was looking for him, he knew, and wondered why they hadn’t used it- before? He decided that the British raid in the early morning had disorganised the base and its aircraft were only now becoming operational again.
He cursed as he saw the seaplane working back along the side of the hill towards him. He grabbed Tim and hauled him to the side of the ravine until they both lay in the shadow under the fringe of scrub. He resisted the temptation to look up when the seaplane swept low above him because he knew his face would show white. For that reason, too, he had thrown his jacket over Tim’s head.
Tim started shouting as the engine boomed overhead but it quickly receded and Mark lifted the jacket. Tim pawed at its leather and blinked at him. Mark said, “Hello, old cock. How d’you feel?”
Tim mumbled, “What’s going on? My bloody head —” He stared around at the scrub.
Mark thought with relief, He’s all right. He said, “We copped it. Flak. Came down on the island and Ethel was a total write-off. You got a bump on the noggin and you’ve been out all day.” He told the rest then, explaining how they got where they were.
The seaplane returned, sweeping low. As the drone of its engine faded, Mark raised his head to see it circling far along the hillside, then it lifted over the crest and was gone. Minutes later a whistle shrilled faintly in the distance and the trucks on the track below him started up and drove away. He said, “I’ll bet they’re going to pick up the search party. Called it a day, I suppose, after the observer in that seaplane reported he couldn’t see anybody.”
The trucks did not return but later a file of soldiers trudged wearily up the track and turned off it to go down into the village. There were eight of them.
Mark thought that these would be the party he first saw, and that the village must be their base. They disappeared among the scatter of little, white houses then showed again on the shore. They went to a house on the left of the village and passed inside.
It was dusk. Mark knelt below the edge of the little ravine and watched the village through a gap in the scrub. Tim lay by the side of the stream and asked, “Anything happening?”
“Fishing boats coming home. Four of them. Three fairly big, one small.” They had all come in under sail, drifting in slowly with a faint, barely fair wind. The sails came down as they closed the shore and the men in the boats stepped over the sides into the sea and waded in, pulling the boats well up onto the shore. A line was made fast to each boat but Ward thought they must have been secured out of habit because the sea was calm and the sky clear; there was no threat of a storm that might wash the boats off the beach and out to sea.
He watched the smallest boat as the fishermen passed to and fro unloading their catch. He was working out what he and Tim would need, thinking that there might be a sentry at night because the soldiers were presumably there as some sort of coast watch. He was trying to solve problems and to anticipate them. One problem was that Tim still could not walk. He had broken or sprained his ankle, either in the crash or when Ward hauled him out of the Swordfish. He was also in considerable pain from bruising or internal injuries and winced whenever he moved. He did not complain but Ward worried.
When night fell the white houses were a grey mass in the cleft below him, pricked here and there by lights that went out one after the other until there was only one, on the left edge of the village. That was the house the soldiers occupied, the guard-house.
Mark slid down beside Tim and asked him, “Are you tired? Need to sleep?” He was remembering Campbell and the effects of concussion.
“Lord, no. Wide awake.”
“O.K. You call me in one hour from now.” Mark fastened his leather jacket around him and laid down. It was pleasantly cool now but later they would be very glad of the flying-jackets. He closed his eyes and went over his plan again in his mind. He thought it might work. There was only one way to find out. He slept.
When Tim woke him the night was chill, the sky clear with a dusting of stars and a sliver of moon. Mark knelt at the stream, drank from his cupped hands then splashed water on his face. He rose to his feet, looked about him carefully then stretched his tall frame. He could see the white houses clearly and the boats beyond, drawn up on the shore with the sea washing at their sterns. He asked, “Anyone moving?”
Tim answered, “One man. I think only one. I’ve- seen someone patrolling in front of the houses.”
So there was a sentry. There would be, of course, because the soldiers had hunted for British airmen all day and had not found them.
Mark said, “Let’s have your knife.”
Tim dug it out of his pocket and passed it over. “What do you want it for?”
Mark answered evasively, “In case I need a knife.” He wanted a weapon and hefted the big claspknife, its handle filling his palm, heavy. He shoved it in his own pocket then unzipped his flying-boots and took them off.
Tim asked, “What are you going to do?”
“Take a look around and see what offers.” Mark dropped his boots beside Tim. “You keep awake, and be ready to move.”
Tim said wrily, “I’m as ready as I’ll ever be.”
Then as Mark moved away: “Look out for yourself. “
Mark lifted a hand but did not turn. He walked down to the road, crossed it, then angled to his left. He worked around the back of the village in a wide circle then closed in on the house at its left edge where a vertical chink of yellow light still showed: the guard-house.
He moved slowly now, eyes lifted, searching, until he saw the black thread of the telephone wire looping from pole to pole down to the house. The poles were ten feet tall but between them the wire sagged down almost to the height of his head. He reached up, eased down a loop of it and cut it with his knife. He cut it again twenty feet further on and wound that loose length around his waist.
He went on, edging away from the guard-house and sidling into the shadow of the next cottage along. He waited a while there, listening. There was no sound from the guard-house but he could hear the slow footfall of the sentry. Mark eased to the corner of the house, peered cautiously around it and saw the soldier. The man was walking along the front of the houses and some ten yards from them. As Mark watched, the sentry halted, stood for a minute or so staring out to sea then turned to retrace his steps. He carried a rifle slung over his shoulder.
Mark withdrew into the shadow cast by the house and crouched in its darkness. He listened to the slow footfalls returning and wondered that no dog in the village had barked. He had never killed a man before, did not wish to now, but — he would not be a prisoner.
>
The sentry came into sight but did not look in Ward’s direction, walked slowly on to the guard-house. The vertical crack of light widened as he opened the door and peered in. Then the light was snuffed out, all but that vertical chink, as he closed the door again. He turned and walked back along his beat.
Mark waited until he had passed, then followed, silent in his stockinged feet, stalking the sentry along the front of the houses. He trailed the man by ten yards to begin with but steadily closed that distance. As he passed the boats he saw their sails and oars laid across their thwarts.
When the sentry was almost at the end of his beat, Mark was barely a stride behind him. The man halted, began to turn and Mark reached out, grabbed the front of his jacket and rammed the point of the knife under his chin. The sentry sucked in air. His mouth was open but he made no sound. He could not see the knife but knew what it was, felt it pricking into his skin. He saw Mark’s face with the tight mouth and black brows, close, looming over him.
Mark said nothing; there was no need. He marched the man back towards the village, never relaxing his grip or the pressure of the knife, until they were in a gap between two of the houses. He took the Italian’s rifle away then and stood it against the wall while he held the man pressed against the white stone by the knife at his throat. Mark pulled his handkerchief from his pocket and jammed the grubby ball of it into the sentry’s mouth.
The Italian had got over his first shock. His eyes were watchful now, not wide. He would fight his way free if Ward gave him the chance. Mark did not, but pushed him into the ground, knelt on his back and tied his arms and ankles with a length of the wire, used another short length to fasten the gag in place.
He picked up the rifle, left the alley and walked back along the front of the houses. Despite the coolness of the night he was warm and sweating. He went to the guard-house, reasoning that there would be a sergeant or a corporal in there who ought to be wide awake — but would he be, after a day spent on the hill? And the sentry had peered in at the guard-house door — to see how long he still had to patrol before waking his relief?
Mark went quietly to the door. It stood an inch ajar, letting out that narrow slit of light. He held his breath and set his eye to that crack but saw only the end of a table and the far wall. He pushed the door gently, slowly, and it opened without creaking. A man sat slumped in a chair at the table, wrapped in a brown blanket. Presumably it was the guard commander but his badges of rank were hidden by the blanket around him. His booted feet were outstretched and his head leaned on the high back of the chair. He was snoring.
There were three beds against the left-hand wall, two of them occupied by blanket-wrapped forms, one empty. The sentry’s? That other would be the commander’s bed, against the back wall. And the rest?
Mark held the rifle ready as he edged his head around the door. Suppose one was awake? But they slept, four of them lined along the right-hand wall. So that was all eight accounted for: one outside and seven in here. Rifles stood against the wall by each bed except the sentry’s. Mark’s gaze slid back to the table. There was the clock in the centre of it, facing him. On the end of the table near the commander stood a field telephone, but Mark had already cut the wire to that.
He moved to the table, knowing what he wanted. Among the litter of mess tins was a foot of bread, a sausage nearly as long and the colour of a boot, a hunk of cheese. He thrust this all inside his jacket. There was a stone wine jar with a cork jammed in the top of it and he carried that with him as he backed out of the room.
Outside, he set down the jar and the rifle, then cut another length of wire. He closed the door gently and slipped a noose of the wire around the handle. There were hooks in the wall to hold open in the day the shutters that now were closed. He looped the other end of the wire around one of the hooks, drew it tight and made it fast. He tied the shutters of each window with wire. The place was not exactly a prison now, but at least he would have some warning if the Italians awoke.
He picked up the rifle and jar and walked back around the village. He found Tim where he had left him, sitting by the stream. Tim’s whisper came: “What happened?”
“We’ve got a boat.”
“What about the sentry?”
Mark told him, kneeling by the stream and emptying the dregs of the wine from the jar, washing it out then refilling it with water cupped in his hands. It took some minutes and his terse account — “Then I found the sentry and tied him up, went to the guard-house...” — was done long before the jar was full. Tim watched him and asked only one question: “Didn’t the sentry put up a fight?”
“I suppose he thought it wasn’t a good idea.”
Tim was silent after that. This new, ruthless Mark Ward was a stranger.
They weaved slowly down to the village, Tim limping with one hand around Mark’s shoulders, the other holding the jar of drinking water. Both were in stockinged feet, their boots tied together and hanging around their necks. This time Mark took a short-cut through an alley between the houses.
They had stepped clear of the front of them when a dog whimpered close by.
They froze. The dog yelped then went on whimpering until a man’s voice growled and it was silent. Tim and Mark drew breath but then the door in the nearest house opened and a man stood on the threshold. He was not five paces away and they could see him clearly, an old man, in trousers and a shirt, skinny and stooped, barefoot.
He stared at them. The rifle was slung over Mark’s shoulder but he did not touch it. He smiled at the old man, lifted one hand in salute then started forward again, Tim limping along with him.
As they shuffled down to the shore, Tim whispered, “What’s he doing?”
“Don’t know. Just take it steady, as if you didn’t expect him to do anything.”
“What if he wakes them all and they try to stop us?”
“Nobody’s going to stop us.” Not now, with the boat only feet away.
That tone of cold certainty silenced Tim.
Mark put boots, jar and rifle into the boat, set his shoulder to the bow and shoved but it did not move. Tim, balancing on his good leg, added his weight and now the boat slid astern. Mark kept it moving, feet digging into the sand and shale as he strained at it, Tim hopping alongside. Then the stern took the water and she floated.
Tim clambered in over the bow with Mark’s help and dragged himself aft to the sternsheets. Mark shoved again until the bow was free and the water up to his knees, then he climbed aboard. There was no wind so he shipped the oars, turned the boat around and began to row.
Tim said softly, head turned on his shoulder to look back, “That old boy’s watching us.”
The man had moved out from the shadow of the house and now stood at the water’s edge. Mark said, “Let him.” No one would catch them now. He wondered if this was the old man’s boat, and they were taking away his livelihood. His or another’s; he had not protested. Were the natives of these islands Greek? Did he hate the Italians, have a liking for the British? Mark was sorry if he had done the old man harm, but he had to get away.
Would he have killed the sentry, if put to it? Jamie had said, “You’re a hard man. I’ve seen it...men who did it with their bare hands.” Mark shied away from that, but a determination to escape still ruled him. Perhaps the sentry had seen it in his face.
It drove him throughout the next day, after the storm had hit them. The wind raged for twelve hours. They barely survived, with the one big sail reefed down to a quarter of its size and the pair of them bailing. The storm left them both exhausted and Tim Rogers very ill. Mark saw no searching aircraft and concluded that either the storm had prevented the seaplanes from flying or the Italians had not bothered to continue the hunt.
He headed southward, for Crete, but in the evening of the second day he sighted a ship. He watched as she came up, a tramp steamer, heading to pass close by the boat. He had trailed lines over the side, and if she was Italian he would keep up the pretence of being a fisherm
an. There was little of the food and water left because he did not feel he could refuse Tim’s thirst, but he still would not give up.
The ship was a Greek tramp, bound for Livrion in Greece. She took them aboard and Mark could finally relax, collapsing on the bunk they gave him.
Before sleep claimed him he remembered the planned attack on Taranto. He must have missed it. It was an odd feeling; these weeks and months past he had watched the steady approach to the attack, its growing inevitability, the tunnel narrowing down towards its dark ending. Now all that was changed. Did he feel reprieved — or cheated?
He wondered how the attack had gone and how many of his friends had survived. He thought about Katy, her photograph in the pocket of his shirt. And then, because he was weary, he slept.
2 A Walk in the Rain
They were aboard the Greek ship for two nights and a day as she chugged her way slowly between the islands. On the afternoon of the second day she berthed at Livrion, thirty miles south of Athens, and soon afterwards a doctor came to the cabin amidships where Mark sat worriedly by Tim’s bunk. The doctor made a quick but thorough examination of Tim, and an even quicker one of Mark, then nodded his satisfaction.
Mark had wondered if they would be interned and now the ship’s captain brought an army officer and two soldiers to the cabin. All four crowded in, to the doctor’s annoyance. Captain, doctor and officer were all men in middle-age, paunchy. They argued incomprehensibly among themselves, the officer pointing at Mark, the doctor at Tim, pale and drawn. The captain pointed his black cigar at each in turn.
Mark could guess at the captain’s argument: he wanted the airmen off his ship. He had saved their lives and cared for them, brought them safely here, but he was not running a hotel or a hospital. The army officer seemed ready to go along with that but the doctor was against it, and if he was not winning the argument it seemed he was forcing a draw. There was a great deal of shrugging and spreading of hands, then finally the officer went ashore but left his two soldiers on guard outside the cabin. The doctor clapped a pudgy hand on Ward’s shoulder and told him, “You all right. O.K. Consul come. Yes?”
