by Tom Harper
So two wild boars spring furious from their den,
Roused with the cries of dogs and voice of men;
On every side the crackling trees they tear,
And root the shrubs, and lay the forest bare;
They gnash their tusks, with fire their eyeballs roll,
Till some wide wound lets out their mighty soul.
The poetry thumped in his heart. He was aware of others around him — Grant, Muir, perhaps Jackson — breaking their stride to pause and return fire, but he carried on relentless. He had never run so far, so hard. His legs were like jelly. When the forest thinned into a bare clearing of rock and scrub he tried to run faster to get back into the safety of the trees, but couldn't.
* * *
Grant turned and squeezed off a few rounds from the Sten. It felt like some lethal fairy tale, being chased through dark woods by a shapeless malevolence. Perhaps they should have made a stand — at least that would have solved the risk of getting a bullet in his back. But the forest stretched away in every direction and their pursuers almost certainly had them outgunned. Probably outnumbered, too.
He reached the edge of some open ground, where a landslide seemed to have carried away the trees. Ahead, he could see Reed flailing frantically between the boulders. Grant fired a short burst into the trees. That might give them pause for thought, give him time to cross the clearing.
The blood was pumping in his ears — but for all that, it was a strangely silent battle. The shots were sporadic, quickly swallowed in the damp silence. So although the bomber was high overhead, he heard the buzz of its engines loud and clear. Despite the danger all around he looked up.
The storm had passed and a cool wind was pulling the clouds apart. Grant could see pale-blue sky through the shreds of grey — and, passing in front of it, a dark shadow like a fly or a bird. As Grant watched, it split in two. Part of it seemed to break away, plummeting to the earth, while the other glided serenely on.
'Run!'
The others were already well across the clearing. There was no one to hear Grant's words but himself. He launched himself towards them, vaulting round the boulders and hurdling the roots and stumps that tried to grab him. Whoever was following them must have reached the edge of the forest: he heard shots, saw one of the rocks throw up a puff of white dust as a bullet struck it only a few feet away. His erratic course, zigzagging between the debris, made him a hard target to hit, but not impossible. The edge of the clearing was agonisingly close, twenty yards distant, but he couldn't chance it. He slid down into a pocket behind two boulders and peered through the crack between them.
For a second he saw them clearly: seven of them, all in green combat fatigues. They were spread out in a line along the edge of the forest, all with guns at their shoulders. Grant raised the Sten, wondering how many bullets he had left. Behind them, over the trees, a black comet crashed into the woods.
The world seemed to melt into flames. A pillar of fire rose up out of the forest, three times as high as the trees, which turned to tinder in the inferno. It was like no explosion Grant had ever seen. Instead of rolling away, the noise grew, swelling like a train rushing through a tunnel. A high wind blasted through the clearing; Grant was thrown against the boulder as the hungry fire sucked in all the air it could grasp. The wind swept his pursuers off their feet, picking them up like dolls and hurling them into the burning forest.
Black smoke crawled up the wall of flame and swallowed it. The wind subsided, drifting back over Grant like a wave running down a beach. He ran with it, scrambling over the broken ground to the line where the trees resumed. The others were waiting for him there.
'What the hell is that?' Grant's lungs felt as if they were struggling against a ten-ton boulder on his chest.
'Napalm.' Jackson held a red spotted handkerchief against his mouth. 'We use it for smoking out the Reds.'
'Well, we're going to be served on toast if we don't get out fast.' The far side of the clearing was completely ablaze and the fire had already started licking round its flanks.
'Did you see Belzig in there?'
'I didn't have time to look.' Grant glanced back. A black figure ran screaming into the clearing. His head was bald, burned clean, and fiery shapes clung to his back like demons. Three bullets from Jackson's Colt ended his misery. Then they ran.
Black clouds hid the sky again, but this time they were clouds of fire, not water. Tendrils of smoke reached between the trees, chasing after them. Reed could only think of the Hydra, a slithery ball of sinuous necks and snapping heads. The fire seemed to have receded a bit, but every time he glanced over his shoulder it was still there, a dull orange glow behind the trees.
They reached an outcrop on the shoulder of the mountain, a rocky place, high and very exposed. From there, they could look down into the steep valleys that defined the mountain, and across to the slopes and summits on the far side. The valleys were dark and thickly wooded, with occasional flecks of white where a fast-flowing river showed through.
Muir pushed past Reed to the edge of the outcrop. 'So where's the fucking airstrip, then?'
Grant pointed to the low saddle between the valleys, almost directly beneath them. The mountains on either side pressed close against it and the ridge itself looked barely wide enough for a goat track.
'We'll never land a plane there.'
'I've done it before.'
The metallic click of a bolt shuttling home cut through the open space like a gunshot. They turned. There was no point even trying to raise their guns. A dozen men were standing round them in a rough horseshoe, all armed. More could be seen in the trees and bushes beyond.
One of them stepped forward. He was a scrawny man, far too small for the gun he carried. He wore an expression of earnest concentration. As he turned to share something with one of his subordinates, he showed a red star sewn on the sleeve of his shirt, like the one Grant had seen on the man at Sourcelles's house. When he looked back, a strange smile had spread across his face.
'Sam Grant,' he said in heavily accented English. 'We meet again.'
Grant holstered the Webley and returned the smile with an uneasy grin. 'Hello, Panos.'
Twenty-four
'Who the hell is this?' Jackson demanded. 'You know him?'
'Panos Roussakis — we met during the war. He was righting the Germans on Crete.'
Jackson pointed to the gun. 'Who's he fighting now?'
'For Greece.' Roussakis seemed to stand straighter as he said it and his grip on his gun tightened.
'You wouldn't like his politics,' Grant warned. 'Better not ask too many questions.'
'And them?' The guerrilla jerked his gun at Grant's companions. His smile had vanished. 'Who…?'
He broke off, staring at Marina as if he'd seen a ghost. 'You? Why are you here?'
He looked troubled, confusion written on his gaunt face. For the first time Grant began to feel worried. Roussakis looked at Jackson, then up at the sky, a mess of blue and black and grey. The bomber had vanished, but the smell of burning was all around them. 'Why you bring them here?'
'The bomber's nothing to do with us. It's a long story — and we don't want to hang around. We've got a plane coming to pick us up from the airstrip. If you can just let us get there, we'll be out of your way.'
Roussakis snapped something at one of his lieutenants. The guerrillas moved closer. 'You come with us.'
* * *
They surrendered their guns and marched in single file down the mountain. They had no choice. Roussakis's men surrounded them, keeping them under guard as they negotiated the precipitous stair of rocks and tree roots. The sun had come out, and the air was dense with the moisture steaming off the damp foliage. To Grant, it felt more like the Congo basin than northern Greece.
Jackson, walking behind Grant, asked, 'How come you know this guy?'
'We worked together on Crete in the war. He led a group of partisans.'
'So he knew Marina?'
'Not well.
He and her brother had…' Grant hesitated, '… a difference of opinion.'
'That would be one way of putting it,' said Muir.
After what seemed like an interminable descent, the slope began to level off. Grant paused, sniffing the air. He could smell fire again, but not the sticky, oily fire that the plane had brought. This was tinged with the sweetness of pine resin — and the sizzling fat of roasting lamb. A pang of hunger shot through Grant's belly. He hadn't eaten since the morning. Now it was almost dusk.
Suddenly the trees thinned out. A hundred yards away sunlight shone through on to a thin scar carved out of the forest: the airstrip. It wasn't on top of the ridge, but on a natural terrace just below, so that the trees above hid it from almost every angle. The guerrillas had their camp in the forest around it: a handful of pup tents, a cooking fire and a few crates of ammunition. Two women in fatigues were roasting a lamb over the fire. To Reed, whose trip to the pictures was his weekly treat in Oxford, it looked like a scene from The Adventures of Robin Hood.
He half expected to see Errol Flynn come through the twilit forest in his feathered cap. Instead, he saw something even more surprising. On the edge of the camp, branches had been lashed together to make the frame of a crude hut, open-sided and roofed with foliage. Roughly hewn log benches were lined up underneath it and all of them were filled with rows of children staring attentively at the front of the room, where a grey-haired teacher was writing on a blackboard. A few of them stared curiously at the new arrivals, wide-eyed under their mopped hair and pigtails. Then the teacher rapped her pointer against the blackboard and they turned back dutifully.
'What are they doing?' asked Jackson.
'Their fathers are all wanted men. They can't go to the local schools, so their families bring them here.'
Roussakis turned round.
'Quiet.'
He gestured to his men, who herded Grant and the others into a knot on the edge of the airstrip. The only sound was the unsettling chorus of the children chanting a nursery rhyme after their teacher.
'The last time we meet, I tell you never to see me again.'
Grant took a step towards the edge of the circle. A rifle angrily jabbed him back. 'Christ, Panos. You know I'm on your side.'
'Yes? Once, maybe. Now I see you are with the Fascists.'
Jackson couldn't contain himself. 'Fascists? We're the good guys. In case you didn't notice, we spent four years helping fellas like you get rid of the Fascists. You want to know who the real heirs to Hitler are? Why don't you ask your buddies in Moscow?'
'There is a man from Moscow who comes here this morning. A colonel in the MGB. He has only one eye.' Roussakis held a palm over the right side of his face to mimic an eyepatch.
'Kurchosov.'
'So. You know him. And he knows you. He says: he is looking for an Ameriki and three English men. Enemies of socialism — very dangerous.' Roussakis walked over to one of the ammunition crates and picked up a fat pistol with a barrel like a drainpipe. None of the others dared to speak. 'He offers me money — gold — and many weapons if I go with him to find you.'
'But you didn't go,' said Grant.
Roussakis loaded a flare into the gun. 'He has a man with him — a German. I know this man from Crete. A Fascist; they call him Belzig. He has killed many Greeks in the war. He makes them slaves; he makes them dig; he makes them die. A pig. So I say no.'
Grant exhaled. 'What happened to Kurchosov?'
Roussakis shrugged. 'We have many men in this valley. Maybe he finds someone else who will do his work.'
'I think we ran into them.'
Roussakis said nothing. In the pause the distant hum of aeroplane engines drifted down through the forest canopy; not the harsh buzzing of the bombers, but the hollow chop of a Dakota.
'And what about her?' He pointed the flare gun at Marina. 'It is not the first time I find the Papagiannopouli working with Fascists.'
Roussakis aimed the pistol into the open sky and pulled the trigger. With a searing whoosh, a flare shot up and exploded high above the trees with a puff of red smoke. Haifa dozen of Roussakis's men ran to positions along the sides of the airstrip.
'What happened to Alexei has nothing to do with this,' said Grant. All the guns suddenly seemed to be pointing straight at him, deadly accusing fingers. He was also painfully aware of Marina's gaze.
'What do you mean?' There was an almost hysterical edge to Marina's voice now. A shadow passed over them: the Dakota, flying low to reconnoitre the runway. No one looked. 'What about Alexei?'
Roussakis's eyes narrowed. 'Grant doesn't tell you?'
'He was killed in an ambush,' said Grant desperately. The moist air was thick around him; he felt ill.
'The British killed him,' said Marina. 'They were afraid that when the Germans were gone, the resistance would try to take over all Greece for Communism. They thought if they eliminated the Communist leaders they could keep Greece for themselves. So they had Alexei killed.'
'No. Not because he was Communist. And not the British. They have tried — they send a man to do it, but he fails.' Roussakis shot Grant a contemptuous look. 'But I follow. I go there, to the gorge. I kill Alexei.'
Marina stared at him. 'You? Why?'
'You remember what happens three days before he died? All your men — massacred by Germans. There are surviving only three: you, Alexei and Grant.'
'Alexei had sent us to Rethymno to spy out a German fuel dump.'
'Because he knows. He knows what will happen. You know for why the Germans find your men? Alexei tells them.'
Marina shuddered as if she'd been kicked in the stomach. Her face went pale. Grant reached out an arm to steady her, but she shook it away. 'Why would he betray us? He spent his life fighting the Germans.'
Roussakis shrugged. 'Why do men betray their country? Maybe a girl, maybe gold? Then ksero — I do not know. But I look in his eyes, in the gorge of Imros, and I see it is truth.'
Anything else he might have said was drowned out as the Dakota roared low overhead and thumped down on the landing strip. Its wheels barely bounced on the rain-softened earth. The pilot had done well to get it down, but he still needed all the space he had to bring it to a halt in time. Hidden alongside the runway, Roussakis's men readied their weapons and looked for his signal. He glanced at them uncertainly — and in that split second Marina pounced. She flew at him; in a single lithe movement she wrapped one arm round his neck and pulled him against her in a choking embrace, while the other twisted the pistol out of his hand. She pressed it against his right ear.
'Is he lying?'
The guerrillas surrounded her like a baying pack of hounds, jabbing with their guns and shouting at her to let Roussakis go. A hot breeze swept through the clearing as they felt the wash from the Dakota's propellers. But the answer on Grant's face was plain.
'I swore I would kill the man who killed Alexei,' she hissed.
Roussakis gestured his men to be still. 'If you kill me, you die. Your friends die, everyone dies.'
At the far end of the runway the Dakota made a tight turn and readied itself for take-off. Grant could see the pilot through the windscreen, peering out as he looked for his passengers. The partisans, concealed in the trees, must have been invisible to him.
'Can I make a humble suggestion?' said Muir. All eyes — and several guns — turned towards him.
'You?' spat Marina. 'What have you got to say? Did you give the order to kill Alexei?'
'Nothing to do with me. That was SOE's pitch — I was SIS.' Muir flipped open his ivory cigarette case and lit a cigarette. 'But as I see it, we could come over all Hamlet here and end up with a pile of corpses — or we could use some fucking common sense. Hands up everyone who wants to die here today.'
He looked around the knot of men, the press of hard and angry faces. 'Good. Now, your brother's dead and that's your tragedy, but if Mr Roussakis hadn't got him then somebody else would. Maybe you'd have done the deed yourself, if you'd known the truth. So why
don't we make a bargain? You let Roussakis go, he lets us get on that plane and we can all bugger off to more important things.'
Marina tightened her finger on the trigger. The ring of men around her pressed closer. 'If I let you go, will you let us get on that plane?'
'If I do, my hands are clean? There is nothing between us?' Roussakis could hardly speak with her arm strangling him. 'Yes.'
'And the Yankee planes stop coming?'
Jackson frowned. 'I can't promise…'
Muir whipped round. 'For fuck's sake, Jackson. Think about what's important.'
'OK, OK.' Jackson raised his hands in surrender. 'We'll stop the bombers.' He shook his head in disgust and looked at Roussakis. 'You're not going to win this war, you know.'
Marina lowered the pistol and loosed her grip.
Roussakis rubbed his neck. 'You cannot stop a better world for ever.'
* * *
They climbed into the Dakota, ducking in the propellers' slipstream. The sun had dipped below the clouds, and on the upper slopes of the mountain the forest was still burning. They saw the whole valley filled with a viscous golden haze. Reed hugged the tablet to his chest. Marina turned her head away and looked out of the window, trying to hide her tears.
'Think what Kurchosov's going to say when he finds out his own men helped us escape,' said Jackson gleefully. 'By the time he calms down, we'll have snatched the shield right from under his nose.'
Grant glanced at him. 'You will keep your promise to Panos? Send your bombers somewhere else?'
'Sure,' said Jackson nonchalantly.
The plane banked and turned towards Thessalonica. Grant looked back, hoping for a last glimpse of the gilded sky. But the sun had gone, and the valley was lost in smoke and darkness.
Twenty-five
It was dark by the time they arrived back in Thessalonica. A staff car met them at the airport and took them to a small hotel. It had no restaurant; the only place they could find that would serve them food was a dingy ouzeria filled with old men playing backgammon and cards. The waiter brought them a tray of olives and stuffed vine leaves, which they ate hungrily.
