Secret Passages

by Paul Preuss

  “My love of numbers is not so pure,” I said, confused by this flattery.

  “And then there is the physics, or whatever. A Professor Dirac—chap won the Nobel Prize, I’m told—said something about a paper of yours. Don’t remember what. Remarkable only because the fellow rarely says anything at all.”

  “I didn’t know that.” I’d written a note on the theory of negative electrons for Dirac’s seminar; the only response was a correction in the margin.

  Pendlebury cocked his head at me. You would have had to know, as I did, that his left eye was glass to detect anything the least unusual about his penetrating stare. “Perhaps you think I am asking myself about the soundness of our investment in your education.”

  “You have every right to do so,” I replied.

  “In fact that’s not what I’m after.” He switched to Cretan-accented Greek, as if spies were lurking. “Because I trust you completely, I will tell you a secret. I’m going back to Crete.”

  “To prepare for an invasion,” I said.

  “I’m to be British vice-consul in Iraklion,” he said, agreeing without saying yes.

  “I’ve been thinking of going back to Crete myself.”

  “That’s what I suspected, and that’s why we are having this conversation. If you want to defend Ellas—and not only Ellas, but free men everywhere—you are far more valuable here.”

  “I don’t know about Ellas. I want to defend Kriti. I know Lasithi better than anyone.”

  “There are others who know Lasithi almost as well, and I doubt that any of them would be of any use deciphering the enemy’s codes or building new weapons against the enemy.”

  “Forgive me for saying so, kyrie Pendabri, but it sounds strange to hear you asking me to leave the defense of Crete to the English.”

  “The issue is larger than one island, Little Minos. This will be a world war, much more encompassing than the Great War. Every one of us must make use of his resources and talents.”

  “I understand your concern for the British Empire. But my talents are sheep and goat tending, cheese making, shooting, and the identification of broken pots. My shooting, at least, might be useful against Germans.”

  “See this?” Pendlebury took up the walking stick he had with him, not the rough old shepherd’s stick he had carried in Crete, but a polished oaken staff with brass fittings. He seized its handle, gave it a twist, and with a flourish and a ring of steel he drew out a glittering blade. “A sword stick,” he said, “wildly romantic, an affectation, according to my fellow officers. But I have been studying the German paratroopers. Never mind the Italians, there will be no taking of Crete without the Germans. Do you know that the German paratroopers cannot carry their weapons with them when they jump? Their arms and supplies must be dropped separately. Inside their coveralls they carry grenades and a Schmeisser machine pistol with a few rounds, useless at more than thirty yards. They cannot even defend themselves as they descend.” He swung his sword, making it whistle, then jabbed it into the low ceiling. “A traditional weapon, but I think it will prove telling.” He grinned wickedly and resheathed the sword inside the walking stick. “I’m not a fool, Manolis. Airplanes and tanks and submarines and radio communications have changed the nature of warfare. Equally ingenious devices will be devised in this war. You will help devise them. For our side.”

  “I’m a neutral,” I said. “Your side does not consider me to be on their side.”

  “They will, my son, and very soon.”

  I doubt he realized what he’d said. In Greek, everybody is “my child,” but not “my son.” By calling me his son, Pendlebury temporarily won my compliance. Despite my longing for Crete—which crystallized most vividly in my longing for Elpida and her teasing intelligence, her challenges, her fiery moods—I did not leave England for another year.

  20

  May 20, 1941, a Tuesday, began beautifully in the west of Crete. As the sun climbed above the morning hills, pearly coastal fog cleared to reveal a calm sea. Minutes later the smooth surface of the water was darkened by the shadows of Stukas and Messerschmitts in formation, flying from the north. Behind the fighters and bombers came swarms of Junker transports, many of them towing gliders. Their objective was a landing ground west of Hania, the closest to mainland Greece.

  Seven months earlier, in October, the Italians had invaded Greece, but by December the Greeks had chased the unhappy fascists back across the border into Albania; Hitler cursed when he had to divert forces from his planned assault on Russia to bail out Mussolini. The Greek dictatorship reluctantly accepted help from Great Britain, but it was too little, too late. Greece surrendered in April, two weeks after the Germans attacked. The remnants of the Greek army and their British, Australian, and New Zealander allies fled to Crete.

  A month went by before the Luftwaffe attacked Crete. That morning the defenders in Iraklion, eighty miles to the east, heard not a word of the airborne assault on Hania, a failure of communications for which there would never be an explanation—except that Tuesday had been a bad-luck day ever since the Tuesday in 1453 when Constantinople fell to the Turks.

  “What marvelous timing, Androulakis! I’ll want the story of how you got here just as soon as I have time to listen—you always were devious—but if you want to help us win, you have to swear to me right this minute that you won’t let yourself get shot.” Pendlebury was hunched over his desk in the British consulate, scribbling furiously.

  “I cannot be killed by bullets,” Manolis said without a hint of humor. He was dressed in a British army uniform with Greek insignia; he sported a trim mustache and a beret pulled down snugly on his head. A Marlin gun was slung over his shoulder.

  “Oh, marvelous, a Cambridge moral philosopher who believes in magic.” Pendlebury glanced up from his scribbling. Where his left eye would have been he wore a black patch. His glass eye sat beside him on the desktop, staring at Manolis independently. “Just because a shepherd boy with a birding gun couldn’t hit you doesn’t mean a German paratrooper with a tommy gun can’t. Eh, Grigorakis?”

  “You ask my advice, Pendabri?” A mustachioed gent in baggy trousers leaned against the wall, his arms crossed over his chest. “Use this one up quickly. See if he is as brave as he is stupid.”

  “Hear that, Androulakis?” Pendlebury still scribbled. “Here speaks a man with so many bullets in him they claim he is the devil incarnate.”

  Manolis feigned boredom, as he had learned to do at Cambridge. “I have heard of Captain Satan. Is it true, Captain, that you shot off your own finger because it failed you rolling dice? Surely that was an act of great…bravery.”

  Satan stood away from the wall, bringing his silver-inlaid carbine across his chest. His right hand gripped the small of the stock, and it was plain that his trigger finger had been severed at the first joint. “And I have heard that Manolis Androulakis was born without a father. Is a bastard mocking me?”

  “No more discussion,” Pendlebury said sharply, folding the paper and handing it to Manolis. “Take this to the Old Wolf at Knossos. Tell him that what we discussed has come to pass—except that we face Germans, not Italians. Then I want you to go to Krousonas, in the foothills of Ida. Can you find it?”

  “Certainly. Why go there?”

  “Because I order you to.”

  Manolis came stiffly to attention. “SAH!”

  “Oh, give it a rest,” Pendlebury said. “Somehow you talked yourself into the SOE against my express displeasure. But you’re in my clutches now, child, and I’m appointing you my deputy liaison between the irregulars and the allied forces. That’s a fancy name for a runner.” Pendlebury stood up from his desk and snatched his sword stick. “If the Cretans possessed the ten thousand rifles I begged Wavell to give them, they wouldn’t need allies.”

  “We have arms,” said Captain Satan, hefting his carbine. “Everything we hid from the Royalists.”

  “Precisely weapons of that vintage, Grigorakis, and what few rounds of ammunition you
have hoarded,” Pendlebury said irritably, “which means that despite the bravery of warriors like you and your men, it will be a long fight.” He turned to Manolis. “Knossos, then Krousonas. Wait for me there. We have important things to discuss.”

  Manolis snapped a salute. “SAH!”

  Pendlebury returned it smartly, but when Manolis turned on his heel and marched out, Pendlebury could not suppress a grin.

  At four o’clock in the afternoon, Stukas and Messerschmitts appeared over the city. The Messerschmitts strafed everything that moved on the quays. The Stukas had sirens under their wings to make them howl as they dived, and whistles on their bombs, the better to terrify those below. The bombs were aimed at the ships, not for the docks, which the Germans hoped to preserve.

  A mile to the east the bombs were aimed for the defenses around the airstrip, not for the airstrip itself, but these hit only dirt; the defenses visible from the air were decoys, wooden guns manned by scarecrows. In the rocky hills, well-camouflaged British antiaircraft machine guns and Bofors guns held their fire, waiting for the German troop transports.

  The Messerschmitts and Stukas emptied their magazines and bomb racks over Iraklion and, running low on fuel, retreated to Athens, to the dust storms and wreckage of the Fliegerkorps’s crowded dirt airfields. For a long time, no transports appeared. Although the defenders of Iraklion could not know it, German plans had gone badly awry.

  At last came the green German “Aunties,” the trimotor Junker 52s, flocks of them full of paratroopers, low and slow and loud—a mere two hundred feet off the ground, fatally behind schedule and unprotected by air cover, the ripest imaginable targets. Only when they were close enough to be pinned in the gunsights did the British Bofors guns open fire.

  Transports fell in flames—two of them, six of them, a dozen, fifteen Junkers—exploding in midair or going down trailing smoke.

  Parachutists tumbled out of the crippled planes, their parachutes hanging up in the wide tail assemblies, or blossoming into flame as they opened, or never opening at all. Even at two hundred feet, those who survived the jump still had to endure five long seconds dangling in the air. White parachutes for the officers. Olive drab parachutes for the men. Much bigger and much slower than clay pigeons. Some died in the sky. Some came down into green fields and olive groves where soldiers jumped up to meet them with bayonets. Some hung up in the plane trees and eucalyptus trees, unable to escape their harnesses before they were shot.

  Most of those who made it to the ground alive were separated from their weapons containers, which came down behind them trailing colored smoke. If they were lucky, the paratroopers were captured by British or Anzac regulars; the unlucky were hacked and beaten to death with scythes and flails by villagers who despised them for polluting the soil.

  A very few landed safely, within reach of their weapons containers. They retrieved their weapons and huddled to defend themselves, waiting for the refueled and rearmed fighters and bombers to return, and for the next wave of transports.

  “How will I find Uncle Manolakis, Sister? John Pendlebury gave me an important message for him.”

  “He went with the other men down to the airfield, to fight the Germans.” Phylia Akoumianaki whispered so that her mother would not overhear. “The Polakis boy came running to tell them that they didn’t need weapons, that they could take the German weapons that were falling from the sky. That’s why Mother won’t talk to you. She thinks you will encourage Father in his folly.”

  They were alone in the basement of the palace of Knossos, down a corridor and past the columns of the Queen’s Megaron, where kyria Akoumianaki had made a campfire under the restored frescoes of leaping dolphins. When she heard bombs falling to the north, she had taken her youngest boy and her daughter into the ruins, trusting Sir Arthur’s reinforced concrete more than their house in the village.

  “Did they go east of the airfield or west?”

  “They followed the old Minoan road.”

  “Now tell me, where’s Elpida?”

  Phylia avoided his gaze.

  “Sister, you must tell me where to find her.”

  When she looked him in the eye, her expression was not friendly. “I’m sure she heard your voice.”

  “Just now?”

  “We knew you were on Crete. You didn’t come to visit.”

  “I’m in the army!” His face twisted in anguish. “Cairo to Hania four days ago—even the Germans got to Kastro before me.”

  “Tell her that when you see her,” Phylia said coolly.

  “If she’ll let me see her.”

  “Stay here,” Phylia suggested. “My father will return soon.”

  “I can’t, I have orders.” He seized Phylia’s hand and looked into her eyes. “Even in England I never saw so many German airplanes in one day. If things go badly, move to Lasithi. To the house of Siganos, the schoolmaster in Tzermiado.”

  “Father says we must go to Katalagari, to Mother’s family.”

  “To Katalagari, then.”

  “I told him I would not.”

  “Why not? It’s a good idea.”

  “The Germans killed Micky.” She turned her face aside. He could barely see her in the darkness. “I will kill Germans.”

  “Don’t believe rumors,” he said. “Micky could be on his way here right now.”

  After a moment she faced him again, her face dimly outlined by reflected firelight in the ruins. “Micky’s dead. The Germans killed him in Epirus. I will kill Germans on Crete.”

  “First you must make sure your mother and your little brother are safe. And Elpida. Take them to Katalagari, as your father wishes. I will come as soon as I can.”

  She said nothing. In the shadows he could not read her expression.

  He moved cautiously on the Minoan road that went to the ruined seaport of Amnisos—less a road than a footpath down the gullies and over the ridges. The night was moonless, but from the heights he caught glimpses of Iraklion away to his left, lit by ruddy grenade bursts and flashes of gunfire. German parachutists had landed on the coast road to the west of the town in the late afternoon; some of them must have gotten inside the walls.

  Toward the airfield and the sea, all was darkness and silence. He saw the allied sentry silhouetted against the stars—the man’s shallow helmet looked more like a cooking pot than a warrior’s headgear, so he had to be a Brit or an Anzac. “God save the king,” Manolis called out, crouching in the bushes.

  The sentry squatted and waved his rifle. “Who’s there?”

  “I have dispatches from Captain Pendlebury, Special Operations Executive.”

  “Never heard of him. Who are you?”

  “Androulakis, Greek army seconded to SOE.”

  “Stand up then. Hands over your head.”

  “I’ll leave my weapon on the ground.”

  “Which I was about to recommend.”

  The sentry stepped into the path with his rifle leveled as Manolis stood. Manolis indicated the Marlin gun with a thrust of his chin, and the sentry bent to peer at it, then straightened. “Right. Well, I do believe you’re a Greek, Leftenant. No fucking kraut would announce himself like the bleeding Second Coming.”

  Manolis silently agreed. No fucking kraut would have let the sentry live long enough to express an opinion.

  Battalion headquarters was a dugout in the side of a gully. Officers of the Black Watch questioned Manolis for half an hour about his knowledge of German deployment around Iraklion; then they directed him farther down to a line of smoldering campfires under the banks of the dry stream.

  He found his foster father crouched in the smoke among a dozen men and boys from the village of Knossos, a bedraggled but happy bunch sporting new Schmeissers and clips of German ammunition, boasting loudly of their exploits as they passed around a bottle of country wine.

  “Uncle Manolakis?” Manolis called softly.

  “Little Minos? Come here to me.” Manolakis struggled to his feet and engulfed Manolis in his emb
race. As always he wore mountain clothes, a black shirt pushed into baggy black breeches, a big curved knife and a Luger pistol shoved into his red sash, and a wide straw hat on his head. “You remember this rascal,” he said to the others. A few of them apparently did, hailing him rowdily.

  “You were safe in England?” one of the men demanded. “Why did you come back?”

  Manolis fumbled for an answer. “All the people I—”

  “To help us kill Germans,” Manolakis interrupted, answering for him. “Isn’t that so, child?”

  Manolis hesitated before he said, “To kill Germans in England, you have to fly a fighter plane. In England the Luftwaffe come over every night with their bombs. As they came here today. Except there they come every night.”

  “And how many Germans have you killed since you came back to Crete?” The questioner was surly, as if he sensed evasion.

  “One,” Manolis said. “He was lying in a ditch, tangled in his parachute. Those who tried to beat him to death hadn’t finished the job. He begged me to do it for him.”

  “He begged you in Greek?”

  “I had no trouble understanding his German.”

  The other men laughed, and the questioner muttered, “Too bad you didn’t get there in time to steal his weapon.”

  “Uncle, I must speak with you,” Manolis said.

  He and Manolakis went a few steps down the gully, far enough to be out of earshot of the men carousing under the ledge, though still illuminated by their campfire.

  “This is from Pendlebury.” Manolis handed over the envelope.

  Manolakis peered at it, then handed it back. “Your eyes are young. Read it to me.”

  “‘To Akoumianakis, twenty-one May. Greetings, Old Wolf. German paratroops have landed in force, west of Candia and east of the airfield. Vital to keep south road open for reinforcements debarking in the Messara. In Skalani you will find well-armed men who support our cause. Base your defense on the ridge above Makritihos. Go with God.’ It is signed ‘John.’”