Colin Forbes: The Heights of Zervos

From the steward he had learned that the Rupescu, a fast motor vessel, was twelve hours out of the Bulgarian port of Varna and the situation could be a little tricky since she was bound for the Aegean. German troops now controlled Bulgaria so technically the Allies might regard the Rupescu as an enemy vessel, a prize to be sought out by the Royal Navy. Certainly the British Legation at Istanbul would already have wirelessed Egypt of her presence in the straits, but Macomber doubted whether she would be seized – the British Government had broken off diplomatic relations with Rumania but had not yet declared war on that unhappy country. Satisfied with what he had seen – nothing out of the ordinary -Macomber put away his glass and then stiffened as a shabbily dressed man dashed up the gangway. Under his arm he carried a batch of newspapers and he flourished one in the Scot's face when he came along the desk. Macomber bought a copy, glancing at the banner headline before he went below. German Army Poised To Attack?

The engines were throbbing steadily as he made his way along a narrow companionway and walked calmly into the saloon, a small cramped room with panelled walls which was already reeking of acrid cigar smoke. Pulling out his copy of the Frankfurter Zeitung, Macomber sank heavily into an ancient arm-chair in a corner which allowed him to see the whole room while he pretended to read. Hahnemann, a thin-faced German in his early forties and dressed like a travelling salesman in a cheap suit, sat in the diagonally opposite corner smoking one of the cigars responsible for the bad air. In another corner, a heavily built German of medium height, his clothes well-cut and dark, sat reading some typed sheets and also smoking a cigar. That would be Volber. The fourth corner was occupied by a small bar where a man in white uniform was polishing a glass. Thank God, Macomber was thinking, those two don't exactly look like sociable types. I could do without useless conversation in German at the moment. The thought had hardly passed through his head when two men opened the doors and stood hesitating as though not sure whether to come in. Their first words warned Macomber. They were British.

'Go on in, for God's sake,' Prentice said impatiently to Ford, who was standing in the doorway. 'Don't just stand gawping. We've paid our fares just like the rest of these johnnies.'

Ford's face was expressionless as he carefully made his way through the smoke to a table close to the bar. As they settled behind a low table the steward took Macomber's order and a minute later placed a glass of beer in front of him. Ford kept his voice low as he made the remark. 'That chap who's just got his beer looks like another bleedin' Jerry.'

'I think they all are,' Prentice murmured nonchalantly.

'This is a funny, funny war at times.' Unlike Ford, who sat stiffly and kept an eye on the other three men without appearing to do so, Prentice was outwardly the soul of relaxation. When the steward arrived for their order he deliberately raised his voice so the whole room could hear. 'A beer and a glass of ouzo, laddie.'

'Beg, please?' The steward looked at a loss. Prentice leaned round him and stabbed a ringer in the direction of Macomber's table, his voice louder still. 'One ouzo and a beer – beer – like that chap over there ordered.' The other two Germans glanced in his direction and then looked away, but the Scot, who had lowered his paper, stared hard across the room with an unpleasantly inquiring expression.

'Tough-looking basket, that big one,' Ford remarked, keeping his own voice quiet. 'If I met him in Libya I'd let bin have two in the pump. Yes, two – just to be sure.'

The drinks were served and Ford sipped at his palely coloured beer cautiously, then grimaced. 'They've got the washing-up water mixed in with the beer.' He eyed Prentice's glass with even more distaste. 'You're not really drinking that, are you?' But his question was purely rhetorical – Prentice would drink anything, smoke anything, eat anything. Some of the dishes he'd consumed during their brief stay in Turkey had astounded and appalled the conservative Ford. Prentice pushed the glass of yellowish liquid towards him.

'Go on, it tastes just like whisky.' He watched with amusement while his companion took a gulp and then almost dropped the glass, looking round suddenly to make sure his experience hadn't been observed. Macomber was still watching him over his paper.

'Lovely!' Ford choked. 'A delicate mixture of nail varnish and turpentine. If that's the Greek national drink no wonder the Romans licked them. It still seems odd travelling with a bunch of Jerries for company.' He looked round the saloon as he heard a distant rattle. The gangway being hauled up probably. In one corner the thin-faced German was absorbed in a book while the man crouched over some typed sheets made notes with a pencil. They might have been aboard a normal peacetime boat and the war seemed a long way from Istanbul 'It really is damned funny,' Prentice began, his lean, humorous face serious for a change. 'Here we are on a Greek ferry just leaving for Zervos – in the middle of a life-and-death war with Adolf Hider's Reich – and because the Greeks are righting the Italians but not the Germans, we can travel with three Jerries we mustn't even bump into if we meet them in the corridor. I must remember this trip when I write me memoirs, Ford.'

'Yes, sir,' said Ford automatically, and received a sharp dig in the ribs for his pains. He understood the hint and swore inwardly. He'd be glad when this ferry trip was over and they could get back to normal service life, to being Lieutenant Prentice and Staff-Sergeant Ford. Before they had boarded the Hydra Prentice had given him a stern lecture in their Istanbul hotel bedroom and he had tripped up already.

'Ford,' Prentice had begun, 'for the purposes of this sea trip back to Greece and while we're on board the ferry, I want you to forget I'm a lieutenant and, what's more important still, forget that you're a staff-sergeant. We're sporting civvies, but if you keep on calling me "sir" it's a dead giveaway. There may even be a German tourist on that broken-down old Greek ferry.' Prentice hadn't really believed that this would happen but he was dramatizing the situation to try and make Ford forget his years of professional training for a few hours.

'I'll watch it, sir,' Ford had replied and had then watched Prentice throw his trilby on the bed with a despairing cry.

'Ford!' he had bellowed. 'You've just done it again! Look, I know we're at the fag-end of our trip with the military mission to carry out liaison with the Turks in case Jerry attacks them, but we really have got to watch it…'

The trouble really had been the Turks themselves. Anxious to keep out of the war if they could – and who could blame them for that? – they had invited the British to send a military mission to discuss possible defence measures if the worst happened. But to avoid provoking the attack they feared, or rather, to avoid giving Berlin an excuse for launching that attack, they had insisted that the mission should travel in civilian clothes. A Signal Corps man, Prentice had found plenty to discuss with his Turkish opposite numbers in the way of a plan for setting up communications, and Staff-Sergeant Ford, ex-Royal Artillery, was now one of that rare breed, an ammunition examiner, an expert on explosives, both British and foreign. In this role he had also finished his work late when he had been taken to see a Turkish dam it was proposed to blow up in the event of a German invasion. So both of them had returned to Istanbul to find the plane with the military mission aboard had already left for Athens.

'When's the next one?' Prentice had light-heartedly asked the chap at the Legation.

'There isn't one,' the Legation official had informed him coldly. 'You'll have to catch a boat out of here. The very first available boat,' he had added. 'I've already looked it up for you – it's a ship called the Hydra. Sailing for Greece tomorrow morning. Just after dawn,' he had concluded with a twinge of waspish humour which Prentice, who hated rising early, had not fully appreciated.