by Gavin Scott
“I’ve just seen Brandt,” he said quietly a few moments later. “He passed us on a motorcycle.”
Her eyes met his calmly, and the smile did not leave her face but it was clear she was thinking rapidly. “He’ll know where we’re going, won’t he?” said Sophie. “From the sign on the bus.”
Forrester realised she was right. “We’ll get off at the village before the last stop,” he said. “Not the one on the sign. I know how to get to the gorge from there.”
“What if he’s going to the gorge himself?”
Forrester hesitated. For the first time he began to wonder if there was some connection between this bizarre apparition of a man and the reason he himself was returning to Crete.
“There’s no particular reason to think that,” he said at last. “I think he’s just following us. But I take your point: it would be better to get there before him.” Then another thought occurred to him. “Perhaps it might be better if you stayed in the village instead of coming to the gorge. Or came back to Chania on the bus instead of getting off.”
“The hell with that, Dr. Forrester,” said Sophie. “If you’re going, I’m coming with you.”
They were heading eastwards now, along the foothills of the mountains, past little chapels that looked as if they dated from the time of St. Paul, whose red-tiled roofs, despite the years of war and occupation, were well repaired, the walls whitewashed, the porches swept clean, the little gardens that surrounded them neat and well-tended, their fig, almond and lemon trees swelling with fruit. Each of them looked like a little bubble of peace, and Forrester longed to enter one – as he had sometimes during the war – and sit in the cool quiet, breathing in the lingering scent of incense and wishing he still believed.
“Tell me about the Gorge of Acharius,” said Sophie after a while. “How exactly did you come to be there?”
“Because of kidnapping General Kreipe,” said Forrester.
“Then start by telling me about that,” said Sophie. “Why were you kidnapping General Kreipe?”
“The original idea was to abduct another general, a chap called Friedrich-Wilhelm Müller, because he’d just destroyed seven villages, taken eight hundred and fifty people hostage and killed five hundred, including women and children. In short he was a bastard and apart from the propaganda value, we’d have been lifting a scourge from the back of every Cretan.
“But halfway through planning the kidnap Müller was replaced by General Heinrich Kreipe, who’d just been transferred from the Eastern Front, and though we didn’t have anything against him personally we decided for propaganda purposes kidnapping one general was as good as kidnapping another.”
“One general was as good as another,” repeated Sophie, as if testing the phrase. She gave Forrester a sideways look.
“Well, that’s what we told ourselves. The first plan was to kidnap him from where he was staying, Arthur Evans’s old headquarters, Villa Ariadne near Heraklion, which the Germans had requisitioned, but it was too well guarded. Instead we decided to catch him on his way home from the divisional headquarters at Archanes, which was about five miles away, and there was a point where the road sloped down steeply and his car had to slow down to a crawl. It was a good spot because it was surrounded by rocks and bushes and there were trees to hide in. I know because I spent days in those trees scouting it out.”
“I can just imagine you,” said Sophie. “Like a boy playing Red Indians.”
“Well, there’s something in that,” said Forrester. “Anyway, the kidnap was going to be at night, so Yanni and I took a lot of trouble to work out how to identify Kreipe’s car in the dark. By the time we’d finished we knew the exact sound of the engine and the exact shape of the slits in the black-out coverings over the headlights. We also spent a lot of time studying the German checkpoints in Heraklion, because once Kreipe had been taken we knew we’d have to drive through it.”
“Heraklion must have been full of Germans,” said Sophie. “How did they not spot you when you were doing your reconnaissances?” Forrester smiled to himself: it was rare and oddly pleasing when Sophie made a tiny error in her delightfully correct use of the language.
“Because by that time I looked like a Cretan shepherd,” said Forrester. “And Yanni, of course, looked like Yanni. And then it nearly all went wrong. A German sentry asked for a cigarette and Yanni offered him a packet of Senior Service.”
“Senior Service?”
“A brand of English cigarette. I thought we were done for, but Yanni dealt with it beautifully: he said he’d got the cigarettes on the black market after the British were defeated in the Dodecanese, and we all laughed. You should have seen us strolling through that place, swastika flags everywhere, and German voices. We even walked past Gestapo headquarters.”
“Were you afraid?”
“To be honest, I was exhilarated. It was like going into the lion’s den.”
“Men,” said Sophie.
“I know,” said Forrester. “Fools, all of us.”
“And the kidnap itself? How did you do it?”
“Paddy and a chap called Billy Moss, who looked like a film star, dressed up as German corporals. As Kreipe’s car slowed down at that bend Paddy waved a red torch and the driver pulled up. Paddy leaned in and asked the General for his papers and the minute Kreipe reached down to get them Paddy grabbed him, hauled him out and shoved a pistol against his chest.”
“Did he resist?”
“Oh yes, he struggled like mad before we could get the handcuffs on. Billy coshed the driver and we dragged him out and tied him up at the side of the road. Then Paddy took the General’s hat and sat in the passenger seat and Billy Moss took the wheel and the rest of us sat in the back with the General, making sure he didn’t say anything or squirm free. We checked the tank was full and turned the car round for Heraklion.”
“Why go through Heraklion if it was full of Germans?”
“We had to. It was the only road that would let us get to the mountains. On the way Paddy identified himself as a British major and told Kreipe he was now a prisoner of war and would be taken to Egypt.”
“How did he react?”
“He was furious, but I think he was also relieved we weren’t going to kill him on the spot. Anyway as we were coming up to the first checkpoint we pushed him down on the floor and Yanni held a knife to his throat so he kept quiet.”
“And they let you through?”
“They let us through the minute they saw the General’s hat, which as I say was now on Paddy’s head. Fortunately Kreipe was known to get shirty with sentries who held him up, so as soon as they saw the gold braid they scrambled to oblige. Also there was a blackout, which made it hard to see anything, and Billy Moss hooted the horn with such Teutonic arrogance the soldiers on the streets started saluting.”
Sophie could not help smiling at the absurdity of it. “How many checkpoints were there?”
“Twenty-two,” said Forrester.
“My God,” said Sophie.
“After the first few we felt absolutely entitled to be waved through, and I think that helped,” said Forrester. “But that’s not to say we weren’t hugely relieved when we were out on the coast road again.”
“And did you let the General up off the floor?”
“We did, and he immediately demanded that Paddy explain the object of what he called ‘this hussar stunt’ and the truth was Paddy found that a bit difficult. But we didn’t have much time for explanations; we had to get rid of the car, get Kreipe onto a mule and head up into the mountains.”
“Because you were on the north coast and the boat to take him to Egypt was going to land on the south coast.”
“Yes. That was where Paddy and I split up: he and Billy Moss and most of the andartes went off with Kreipe, and Yanni and I and a few other chaps set off in a westerly direction.”
“Why was that?”
“Well, we knew it wouldn’t be long before the Germans came after us, and when they found the
car they’d know the point at which Paddy and his gang had gone up into the mountains. Our job was to lay a false trail up into the hills by another route, and then lure Jerry into following us.”
“Which must have been dangerous.”
“Not to put too fine a point on it, it was. All Paddy and Billy had to do was to keep hidden and keep the General moving. Yanni and I had to hang around, get seen, and then get seen again often enough to keep them coming after us. It was a bit like Hare and Hounds.”
“Hare and Hounds?”
“A game we used to play as kids. Cross-country running.”
“Except in cross-country running I imagine your opponents aren’t trying to kill you.”
“Well, it’s fair to say it was quite intense. By contrast Paddy and the General spent weeks on the other side of the island hanging about waiting for the submarine to pick them up. There was even a point when they were on Mount Ida in the snow and Kreipe started reciting Horace.”
“Horace?”
“Latin poet. Wrote odes. Turned out Paddy knew by heart the particular ode that Kreipe was reciting, and he said it made him realise, as he put it, ‘we had both drunk at the same fountain’. I’m not sure they became friends, but apparently things were much easier between them after that.”
“And you? Did you have anyone to recite Latin poetry with?”
“There wasn’t much time for that. Kretzmer was hot on our trail.”
“Kretzmer?”
“The chap they sent out after us. Oberleutnant Hans Kretzmer. He didn’t introduce himself, of course, but I doubled back once and listened in on them from the top of a gully. I heard them use his rank and name then.”
“But he didn’t catch you.”
“Came damn close, though, several times. And he did me a favour, really.”
“A favour? In what way?”
“He forced me to go into the Gorge of Acharius – and that was where I found the cave.”
* * *
The bus was climbing into the mountains now, and the red earth of the maquis began to vanish under a covering of tamarisks, cypresses and oaks. Then as they approached the village of Meskla an intoxicating scent came in through the open windows, and they could see groves of lemons and oranges growing alongside the ruins of ancient walls.
“Cyclops,” said the old woman to Sophie, pointing to them. Sophie looked at Forrester for explanation.
“She’s saying the walls are Cyclopean,” said Forrester. “Because they look as if they were built by giants.”
“I Spiliá tou Kýklopa eínai edó kontá,” said the old woman.
“And she also says the Cyclops’s cave is near here.”
“Wasn’t that near the sea?” said Sophie. “I seem to remember the poor creature throwing stones at Odysseus’s boat when he realised that he and his men had escaped.”
“Quite right. You’ll find the Cretans have annexed quite a lot of Greek mythology and shifted it to their own island. Apart from Cyclops they claim not only to have the cave where the immortal Zeus was born but also the cave where he died.”
“Which is a little bit contradictory.”
“Very much so. If Zeus was immortal, how could he die? But the Cretans love stories for their own sake. How true they are is of less importance. And I suspect these ruins didn’t have much to do with the Cyclops either: they’re most likely Minoan.”
The bus came to a halt in the centre of Meskla, opposite a Byzantine church with two elaborate whitewashed towers and a dome topped with a cross. As they retrieved their backpacks from the luggage compartment Sophie took a deep breath: the scent of citrus blossom was just as exhilarating here as it had been on the bus, and as they inhaled it they looked up at the wooded hills rising up all around the village, red-tiled roofs and white-sailed Cretan windmills glowing in the sunlight among the green canopy of the trees.
“I think I like it here,” said Sophie.
“Good,” said Forrester. “I’d hoped you would.”
A donkey laden with baskets of oranges trotted past them, its hooves clattering sharply on the cobbles, and the big, bald man guiding it called out a cheery good day as they set out. Their course was along a brawling stream, shaded by chestnut trees and bordered by massive lichened rocks over which little falls plunged into deep pools.
Every twist of the stream brought them higher into the mountains, whose silver-grey rock glinted in the sun. Every now and then Sophie would reach into the stream, scoop up handfuls of deliciously cold water and throw it over her head and chest.
Forrester grinned. “I remember doing that the first time I was here,” he said. “I never imagined I’d be back with someone like you.”
“Not someone like me,” said Sophie. “Me.” And she threw a handful of water over him too.
At last the chestnuts and oaks gave way to pines, and the pines grew shorter and the ground more rocky until instead of trees there was the deep-green, scented maquis: lavender, thyme, verbena and blue sage, where the bees droned lazily between plants heavy with pollen.
The stream they were following was narrow now, flowing swiftly between banks of wildflowers, and as Sophie exclaimed over them, naming them in Norwegian, Forrester glanced upwards and saw the dark slash in the white cliff-face.
“There it is,” he said.
“The Gorge of Acharius?” said Sophie. Forrester nodded.
Suddenly they were both aware of the silence. In the distance, very faintly, the tinkling of goat-bells, but somehow the sound served only to emphasise the great noiselessness of this upland world, as if it was holding its breath, waiting for something to happen. Forrester felt his stomach tighten.
“Did the Germans pursue you along this stream?” asked Sophie.
“No,” said Forrester. “Yanni and the rest of us had gone around the outskirts of a village called Theriso, which is a few miles east of here. We didn’t actually go into any villages because we didn’t want to put them at risk. Kretzmer and his men were about a mile behind us at that point, but getting closer. I decided the time had come for us to split up. Some of the andartes headed back to their own hideouts. Yanni and three other men carried on westwards on the north side of the mountains.”
“And you went into the Gorge of Acharius.”
“I went into the gorge.”
They were walking up towards the cliff now, the ground becoming steeper with every step, the vegetation more sparse, as an eagle wheeled. They looked through the slot in the cliff-face that led into the gorge, but accustomed to the brightness on the mountainside, their eyes could make out little in the dimness. By their feet the stream, just inches deep here, slid silently over a lip of rock on its journey down to the sea.
“Ready?” asked Forrester.
“Ready,” said Sophie, and they squeezed through the gap.
The first thing that struck them both was how cool it was between the towering walls after the heat of the exposed mountainside. Sophie glanced behind her: through the entrance she could see a dazzling world of silvery rock and, in the distance, the green hills surrounding Meskla. But in here the sun’s ferocity was tamed and the light was thin, and diffused. The sky was a ribbon of bright blue, high above.
The stream, a mere trickle now, slid along beside them and there were ferns growing in niches in the rock; a few steps in Sophie had to turn aside to avoid treading on a purple orchid. There was a strong scent of damp, ancient rock.
“You were very lucky to find this place,” said Sophie.
“Oh, Crete’s riddled with them,” said Forrester. “The mountains are made of limestone and the acid in rain dissolves it. When the water gets down to the bottom of a gorge, it makes pools, and the pools eat into even more rock, and that’s how you get so many caves.”
“Including your cave.”
“Including my cave.”
Now the walls of the gorge were no more than a dozen feet apart, the rock face alternating bands of green and purple rock. Twisted pines thrust their way out
of cracks in the limestone, like prisoners pushing their arms through the bars of their cells, and round a corner they came upon a grove of cypress trees clustered together like mourners at a funeral.
“Cypress trees grow very old in Crete,” said Forrester. “These might have been planted while Byzantium still ruled the island.”
“The last days of the Roman Empire,” said Sophie.
“Absolutely,” said Forrester. “The Eastern Empire, anyway.” He did not see the secret smile on Sophie’s face as he made his automatic scholarly correction.
“How close behind were the Germans when you were here?”
“To be honest, I don’t know. I’m sure they didn’t see me come into the gorge, or they would have been much more thorough. At the time I hoped they didn’t know I was here at all, which was why I took the chance of hiding in the cave.”
“Is it much further?”
Forrester smiled. “As they say in the pantomimes, it’s behind you.”
Sophie turned, and found herself looking at a gnarled and ancient pine tree, not much taller than she was. Its deeply indented bark looked like the skin of a crocodile. It was only when she ducked beneath its outstretched arms that she saw the crack in the rock.
“Discreet, isn’t it?” said Forrester. “You can see why I chose it.”
Sophie eyed the black hole doubtfully.
“Don’t worry,” said Forrester. “It gets wider once you’re inside.”
“I’m not worried about how wide it is,” said Sophie. “I’m worried about whether your Dutchman or German or whatever is already there, waiting for us.”
“Highly unlikely,” said Forrester. “I’m sure we’ve shaken him off by getting off early. But let’s have a look,” and he swung the pack off his back and knelt on the rocky floor of the gorge. Sophie watched as he examined the ground and the fragments of moss, twigs and pinecones that had fallen from the tree. Without getting up, he said, “It might be better if you didn’t come in.”
“You think he is in there?”
