“The loft,” Anna said. “You will be safe up there.”
There was a ladder in one corner leading up to a trapdoor. Spiro went up quickly, shoving the trap back and Johnson and Dawson went after him.
As I put my foot on the first rung, the girl placed a hand on my arm. Funny, but somehow that smell didn’t seem anything like as unpleasant, the face not ugly, but strong and full of character.
“I will get rid of them as soon as I can.”
“They might want to stay,” I said.
She shook her head. “They never stay long. What they want, they take very quickly.”
A hell of a time for this kind of discussion, but I had to say it. “And this doesn’t bother you?”
“It has been a long time. It doesn’t really happen any more. Not to me. You understand this?” She smiled briefly, but sadly. “One thing life has taught me above all others is that one can get used to anything.”
Spiro jammed the trapdoor open slightly with a piece of wood, making it possible to see a little of the room below, mainly the table and the area around it.
There was laughter, the door banged and three men moved into view. Two of them were dressed in the usual shabby peasant clothes, bandoliers at the waist, machine pistols hanging from their shoulders. The third wore an old khaki uniform which in spite of its filthy condition still managed to give him a certain military air when combined with a peaked cap on which he wore a red star.
“Major Ampoulides,” Spiro whispered. “He is in charge at the fort this week.”
What happened then, took place with extraordinary rapidity as violent events often do in life. There was hardly even time to think.
Ampoulides simply grabbed Anna Mikali the moment he came in and kissed her. Then he laid her across the table and lifted up her dress. He was between her legs before any of us realised what was happening.
It wasn’t even particularly brutal, that was the terrible thing, although it was rape of a kind, no matter how much that wretched girl had come to accept it as a fact of life. It was animal-like, something out of the cow byre, but there was still the girl to consider, gazing blindly past his shoulder, beyond him, beyond any of us, trying to pretend that this wasn’t happening to her.
A sob rose in Spiro’s throat, he had the trapdoor back with a crash and dropped through. Which left me with no choice but to go after him. I landed badly and rolled for the wall. Spiro had Ampoulides by the tunic and went over backwards, tearing him away from the girl. She pulled down her dress and started to get up.
And then all hell broke out as one of the other two men cut loose with his machine pistol, firing from the waist, trying to catch me as I rolled against the wall. He was too high, way too high, but not for Sergeant Johnson, who dropped right into the line of fire. As he fell to the floor, the girl was knocked off the table by a burst in the chest and fetched up against me.
Her eyes rolled in a kind of surprise and she died as calmly as she had lived. I shoved her away and fired one-handed from the floor, sending the man who’d done all the execution back into the far wall.
The third man was having trouble with the sling of his machine pistol which had caught in a tear in the shoulder of his old jacket. On such small turns can a man’s life go one way instead of another. He died struggling, for young Dawson leaned out through the trapdoor and shot him in the head at close range with his automatic pistol.
Ten, perhaps twenty seconds was all it had taken to turn the world into a bloody shambles. As I got to my feet, Spiro and Ampoulides rolled against the door struggling violently. Ampoulides ended on top, his hands wrapped round the boy’s throat, but a kick in the side of the head soon took care of him.
Johnson was still alive, but not for long as far as I could judge. His left arm was badly shattered and he’d taken at least two bullets through the chest. He was in deep shock, eyes glazed, quite unable to communicate. I did what I could for him, binding him up with two or three field dressings, and gave him a morphine shot.
The girl was beyond anyone’s help and I told Dawson to get a blanket to cover her with. Poor lad, he’d aged ten years in as many minutes. Forbes and O’Brien and now this. I wondered just how much more he would be able to take. This was make-or-break time with a vengeance.
Spiro had taken a pretty hard knock on the head and blood oozed from a gash above his left temple. He appeared to be dazed and very badly shocked and dropped to his knees beside the girl, pulling the blanket down from her face.
He crouched there looking at her as if not really taking in what had happened and I examined the two dead men. We were certainly well fixed for arms again now for both of them had been carrying a Schmeisser sub-machine gun, presumably picked up during the war after some German column or other had been ambushed.
I put them on the table and Major Ampoulides groaned and tried to sit up. Spiro’s head turned and suddenly, the face, the eyes, were filled with what I can only describe as burning hate.
“Bastard! Filthy scum!”
He pulled a knife from his belt and jumped up and it was Dawson who got in the way first, his Smith and Wesson surprisingly steady as he pointed it right between Spiro’s eyes.
“None of that, now.” He turned to me. “I presume you want Ampoulides in one piece, sir?”
“You presume right.” I moved to join him and said to Spiro, “I’m sorry. I know how you must feel, but I’ve got a job to do and it looks as if Ampoulides could be helpful so I don’t want any rash moves from you. Understand?”
There was agony on his face. “He killed Anna.”
“The war killed Anna,” I said bluntly. “Now, are you going to help us get Tharakos out of there, or aren’t you?”
He passed a hand wearily across his eyes. “It was what Anna wanted.”
I patted him on the shoulder and gave him a cigarette, then turned and walked across to Ampoulides who was sitting up now, his back against the wall. His eyes were watchful and wary, no fear there at all.
I squatted beside him. “You are alive, your friends are dead. You wish this happy state of affairs to continue?”
“What do I have to do?”
“I want Tharakos. Out of the fort, alive and well.”
“You must be crazy.”
“I don’t see why. We drive in through the gate in your truck. We get him out of his cell with your assistance and come out in the truck again, five minutes at the most.”
“And what happens to me then? Facedown in a ditch with a bullet in the heart.”
“You’ll have to take your chances on that one,” I said, “But for what it’s worth, I give you my word you’ll survive.”
“Your word.” His tone of voice indicated the extent of his recovery.
“I could always turn Spiro loose on you,” I pointed out.
Ampoulides turned and met Spiro’s burning eyes briefly. He looked back at me hurriedly. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll do whatever you want.”
Whatever happened next had to take place that night because it would only be a matter of hours before Ampoulides and his men were missed. Under the circumstances, it seemed sensible to strike while the iron was hot and I decided that three o’clock in the morning was as good a time as any to go in. Even the card players should be asleep by then.
The truck was an old three tonner, a British army Bedford. Spiro did the driving and I sat next to him and poked the muzzle of my sub-machine gun into the major’s side. Dawson lurked in the shadows at the rear with one of the Schmeissers.
The road up to the fort was very rough, more a track than anything else, and had obviously deteriorated considerably over the years. The final quarter of a mile crossed a flat, boulder-strewn plain that sloped up to meet the edge of the high cliffs at that end of the island. It was certainly a hell of a good site for a fort strategically speaking, or must have been in the old days when the Turks ruled this part of the Mediterranean.
A hurricane lamp hung from a hook at the main gate and beneath it, a se
ntry, if that was what he was supposed to be, squatted against the wall, a rifle across his knees, and slept.
As we slowed to negotiate the gate, he came to life and staggered to his feet. I nudged Ampoulides in the side and he leaned out of the cab for his face to be seen.
It was enough. The sentry called something and waved and Spiro drove across the dark fort towards the door at the bottom of the tower over which another hurricane lamp hung. He turned the Bedford back towards the gate, ready for a quick exit, braked to a halt and left the engine running.
We’d been through what was to happen, in theory at least, half a dozen times, but I still had my doubts about Ampoulides.
I said, “If there’s a sentry up there, you’d better make it good for all our sakes. If anything goes wrong, you’ll be the first to go. I’m warning you.”
Perhaps it was a miscalculation, the final straw that pushed him towards the course of action he chose, although I suspect that he expected a bullet in the head whatever happened for that is exactly what he would have given me.
In any event, we moved towards the door, myself on one side of him and Dawson on the other and Spiro waited by the truck. I opened the door gently and light drifted into the dark passage from the hurricane lamp.
It was as quiet as the grave. Dawson slipped inside and flattened himself against the wall, his Schmeisser covering the door to the guardroom on the left.
The flight of stone steps opposite was wider than I had expected and turned to the right some way up, light flickering on the rough wall, presumably from another lamp on the landing outside the general’s cell.
I said to Ampoulides in a whisper, “All right, up we go.”
He took a light, hesitant step forward, spun round and jumped out through the door and ran for it. He didn’t stand a chance for Spiro had been waiting, probably hoping he would do exactly that. There are twenty-eight rounds in a Schmeisser’s detachable magazine and I think Spiro must have pumped the lot into Ampoulides, driving him back towards the entrance with terrible force.
There was a sudden shout inside the guardroom, a chair went over with a crash.
“They’re all yours,” I said to Dawson. “I’ll get Tharakos.”
I went up the steps on the run and reached the corner at the same moment a burly peasant appeared on the way down. He lurched into me with a cry of dismay, an old Lee Enfield rifle clutched to his chest, and I rammed the muzzle of my Thompson into his belly and blew him away from me with a short burst.
The door opened in the passage below and whoever emerged walked straight into a burst of fire from Dawson’s Schmeisser. I kept on going round the turn in the staircase and found myself on a small stone landing.
There was a battered oak door opposite, heavily strengthened with bands of iron. In the light of the hurricane lantern hanging from a hook in the wall, I saw that it was held in place by two great iron bolts. I eased them back quietly and kicked the door open.
There was heavy firing downstairs now, but up there, it was calm and still and nothing moved in the darkness of the cell. I took down the hurricane lamp and stepped inside.
“General Tharakos? I’ve come to get you out.”
He emerged from the darkness like some pale despairing ghost, a man whom I knew to be forty-nine years of age and who looked seventy. He shambled forward, reached out and clutched at the front of my coat.
“Are you all right? Can you walk?” I said.
He moaned horribly, tightening his grip on my jacket, then opened his mouth and pointed inside.
The bastards had cut out his tongue.
As I got him to the turn of the staircase, there was what seemed like a considerable explosion and the whole damned tower seemed to shake, dust rising everywhere in clouds. It was Dawson who, as I learned later, had thrown two grenades in through the door of the guardroom one after the other to finish the business off.
He rose to meet me as I came down the stairs, supporting Tharakos with one hand. Dawson grabbed him by the other arm and we stumbled to the door.
Spiro was waiting at the tail of the Bedford, his Schmeisser ready. “Get behind the wheel. Let’s get out of here,” I said, and Dawson and I heaved the general up and over the tailboard and dumped him inside.
Dawson climbed over after him and Spiro slung his Schmeisser over his shoulder and ran to the cab of the Bedford. I was no more than a couple of yards away as he started to climb up behind the wheel. He never made it because a single, well-placed rifle shot drilled into the base of his skull, killing him instantly.
I loosed off a great rolling burst into the shadows on the far side of the square from where that shot had come, pulled Spiro’s body back out of the cab and scrambled up behind the wheel.
As we started to roll, the shooting increased considerably, lights flashing on and off in the darkness like some macabre firework display. Bullets thudded into the body-work of the Bedford, ripped through the canvas, for we presented a target as big as the proverbial barn door.
The arched gateway loomed out of the night and the sentry appeared dead in the centre, rifle levelled. I put down my head and increased speed. The windscreen shattered, showering me with glass. There was a sudden jolt, a desperate cry and we were through and darkness was our friend.
We were about a quarter of a mile from the farm when the engine coughed asthmatically and died on me. I could smell the petrol as soon as I jumped down and went to the rear.
Dawson dropped the tailgate. “I thought she caught a few down there,” he said. “What happens now?”
“We walk,” I said. “Run, if possible. If those characters back there get their hands on you, they’ll roast you alive.”
“I can believe anything after tonight,” he said. “But I’d say we’ll be lucky if we get the general to move more than a hundred yards under his own steam, sir. I don’t know what they did to him back there, but it must have been bad.”
“They cut out his tongue for a start,” I said. “And I hope that pleasant item of news puts an edge on you.”
And it did, for he responded magnificently to the challenge of the hour that followed. He had been absolutely right about the general. He was virtually a deadweight and after the first few yards, we had to carry him between us. When that didn’t prove any more satisfactory, we took turns at carrying him on our backs, moving at a steady jog-trot all the time.
I had never felt so grateful for the extreme physical fitness that was a product of commando training and yet, when I turned into the farmyard, Tharakos across my shoulders apparently unconscious, I felt almost at the point of collapse.
I laid him down none too gently and said to Dawson, “A cart—any kind of handcart. There must be one around here somewhere. I’ll see to Johnson.”
The room, when I lit the lamp, was exactly as I had left it. A bloody shambles, the smell of death everywhere, and it had touched Johnson also with its dark hand, for when I dropped to examine him, I saw at once that he had been dead for an hour at least, his face already cold.
The door swung open with a crash and Dawson appeared. “I’ve found a cart, sir, and there’s somebody coming. I heard voices down the track.”
“Get Tharakos on the cart and move out,” I said, “I’ll catch up with you.”
He appeared to hesitate. “Sergeant Johnson, sir, we’re leaving him?”
“I’ll see to Sergeant Johnson. Now get the hell out of here.”
There was lamp oil in a five-gallon drum in the back room and I emptied it across the floor, the bodies themselves. It was Johnson I was thinking of. We’d soldiered together for a long time now and I owed him something, one Marine to another. I couldn’t take him with me, but I was damned if I was going to leave him to the bunch who were on their way here looking for us.
When I tossed the lighted lamp into the room from the doorway, it exploded like a bomb and I turned and ran across the yard and followed Dawson along the narrow track. I caught up with him within a few yards and took one handle o
f the cart and we put our backs to it.
When we reached the shoulder of the mountain, we paused to look back. The farm was burning well now, a beacon in the night, and I wondered what they were thinking on the bridges of those ships out there. I could see figures, a dozen, possibly more, black outlines against the flames, but no one saw us, or at least there was no shooting.
“A Viking’s funeral,” Dawson said softly.
“Something like that. Now let’s get out of here.”
The rest was mainly anti-climax. We pushed the cart to the edge of the cliffs above Thrassos Bay and got General Tharakos down to the beach between us, although it was a hell of a struggle and he remained unconscious for most of the time.
The sea was calmer now which helped when we put out in the dinghy, for the paddles had been lost in the upset on the way in and we had to make do with our hands and a piece of driftwood Dawson found on the shoreline.
We were sighted by an M.T.B. which picked us up just after dawn and radioed the news at once to the destroyer that the admiral in charge of the task force was using as his flagship. They also reported on the general’s condition which explained what started to happen within a matter of minutes.
I went out on deck and found young Dawson standing at the rail in a duffle coat someone had loaned him.
“How are you doing?” I said.
“All in a day’s work, sir.”
I suppose he thought I expected that kind of remark. In any case, he tried to smile and started to cry helplessly instead. I put an arm around his shoulders and we stood there together at the rail. The destroyers of the task force, line astern, opened up with their big guns and started to blow the island of Pelos out of existence.
eight
A KNIFE IN THE HEART
Dicky Dawson. Sergeant Major Richard Emmet Dawson, D.C.M., shot in the back by an E.O.K.A. gunman while shopping with his wife in Nicosia, January 1956.
Jack Higgins Page 9
