Colin Forbes - The Heights of Zervos

Dietrich ignored the explanation. 'Corporal Schultz is waiting in the passage? Good, I'd like to see him.'

Hahnemann went to the door and let inside a slim man in his late twenties who was clearly not at ease, and his embarrassment increased when he slipped en the polished floor. He glanced at the colonel as he saluted and Burckhardt merely told him to answer questions. He had already had a word with the negligent NCO.

'These fuses are totally reliable?' enquired Dietrich. The pink-faced corporal glanced at Hahnemann who told him briskly to answer the question. Schultz was uncertain how much to say and the colonel barked at him to get on with it.

'No, sir, not always,' Schultz began. And having begun he gained confidence and spoke rapidly. 'They have a habit when set of stopping for no reason at all. Then they can start up again of their own accord – again for no particular reason. We do know that they can be affected by jolting or vibrations. They're weird – I heard of one case where a fuse was set to detonate the charge in two days. It was put under a bridge during training and then the man who had put it there died in a motor crash. Everyone forgot about it.' He paused, his eyes on Dietrich who was staring at him fixedly. 'Two years later the bridge blew up. Yes, sir – two years later.'

'Thank you.' Dietrich returned the time fuse to Hahnemann who picked up the charge by the handle and left the cabin with Corporal Schultz.

'And where does that get us?' asked Burckhardt.

'It gets us into a worse state of nerves than we were before, I should have thought. You heard what he said?'

'Of course! Which point were you referring to?'

Dietrich clubbed one large fist and began drumming it slowly on the table. It took Burckhardt a moment to grasp that he was drumming in time with the beat of the Hydra 's engines. He pursed his lips uncomfortably as Dietrich rammed the point home verbally. 'Affected by jolting or vibrations,' he said.

'We shall not be on board much longer.' He hesitated. It must by now be patently obvious when they were going ashore to anyone who knew the Hydra 's timetable. 'Barely an hour. In the meantime the search continues and they may find it.'

'Colonel Burckhardt.' Dietrich was standing up now, his hat in his hand. 'This is likely to be the longest hour of your life. I think I'll go and help them try to find it. You never know -they say heaven protects the innocent."

As he went along the companionway, hands thrust deep inside his coat pockets, he heard the frenzied clump of nailed boots everywhere. The boots rarely stayed still for more than a short time, as though their occupants were finding it impossible to keep in one place while they continued their frantic search for the missing demolition charge. Inside one cabin he found men with moist faces pushing aside a pile of dark brown hickory skis which could not possibly have concealed the charge. A soldier who didn't look a day over nineteen was peering behind a fire-extinguisher, another impossible hiding-place. There had been tension aboard the Hydra ever since the Alpenkorps had arrived, tension initially through the knowledge that at any minute they might be stopped by a British warship, tension because they were aboard the vessel of a country which Germany still officially treated as a neutral in the war. But the earlier tension brought on by the secrecy, by the storm, by the sabotage of a wireless set and the death of one of their men overboard – this tension had been serenity compared with the stark, livid tension which now gripped the Hydra 's illegal passengers.

It manifested itself in little ways. The lift of a rifle as Dietrich came round a corner. The kicking over of a bucket of sand by an Alpenkorps soldier hurrying past. The disorganized clump of those nailed boots on the ceiling when he was walking along the companionway of the lower deck. The sentry who guarded Grapos was still at bis post, his back to the port-holed steel door leading down to the hold where the Greek was imprisoned. Farther along the companionway Dietrich looked inside the half-open door which led down to the engine-room. He had one foot on the iron platform when a rifle muzzle was thrust in his face, reminding him of the muzzle which Volber had thrust at him as he opened his cabin door when they had taken over the ship. But this time he withdrew swiftly – the muzzle had wobbled slightly. la that brief glimpse he had seen below at least half-a-dozen field grey figures searching among the machinery while another man mounted guard over the chief engineer. The fear was a living mounting thing which he saw in men's faces as he climbed back to the top deck, faces damp, baggy-eyed and drawn with strain as they went on searching amid the ferry's complexities for something no larger than an attache case. This is a formula for driving men mad, he was thinking as he went on climbing, for slowly shredding their nerves to pieces.

On the open deck it was quieter because there were fewer searchers: Burckhardt had given strict instructions that despite the gravity of the emergency only those men who could cover their uniforms with civilian coats were to be sent up here. Even now he was not prepared to risk a British motor-torpedo boat suddenly appearing and flashing its searchlight over the deck to illuminate men in German uniform. So far as Dietrich could see there were no more than a dozen, hatless men flitting in the shadows. But here again he heard the disjointed hurrying clump of those heavily nailed boots pounding the wooden deck. It was quite dark now, the impenetrable pitchblackness of the night before dawn, and a cold wind was blowing along the gulf. He leant against the ventilator amidships to light his cigar and a soldier came round the side and cannoned into him. When he saw the silhouette of the hat against the match-flare he apologized and hurried away. Dietrich sighed. Again he had seen the lift of the rifle prior to recognition. He went to the stern and looked over the rail where the screw churned the sea a dirty white colour, stumbled over a piled loop of rope, and went back along the deck to the illuminated safety of the bridge. It was 4.45 AM.

The ten-kilogram composite demolition charge swayed at the end of the rope. The vibrations of the ship's engines shuddered it in mid-sway and the rock of the ship's movements reproduced themselves in the sway itself. The charge thudded regularly against the metalwork as it continued its endless pendulum motion, but the sound of the thuds was camouflaged by the same engine beats which shook it. A man standing close by might not have heard those warning thuds as the charge dangled and swayed and shuddered. The clock was set and the mechanism was ticking, but the most vital sound – the ticking – was muffled by the larger noises. Occasionally the vessel plunged its bows a little deeper into the waters of the gulf and then the charge would strike the metal heavily, its rhythmic sway temporarily upset by the unexpected jolt. For a minute or more it would sway erratically, its pendulum balance disturbed, then it would recover its poise and resume the same even swing backwards and forwards with the regularity of a metronome. It was suspended a long way down the shaft, suspended from an Alpenkorps scabbard which still held its bayonet, a scabbard which had been jammed inside the shaft at an angle which might hold it there indefinitely. And as it went on swaying none of the hatless men who thumped along the open deck in growing desperation had, as yet, carefully examined the ventilator shaft amidships.

Sunday, Dawn

'The Greek has escaped – I have instituted an immediate and intensive search of the ship.' Hahnemann reported the news to Burckhardt whom he had found on the bridge standing next to Dietrich. He waited nervously for the colonel's reaction, but Burckhardt, holding a pair of field-glasses, simply looked at him as he asked the question.