Thomas Greanias - The 34th Degree

This time around, Safire was the master of his own mint-condition submarine, and his company was neither a distinguished general nor a pseudonymous corpse but an American OSS colonel named Jason Prestwick, who stood beside him in the control room, thrilled to be “in the field,” as he called it.

The American had joined them in Algiers and had made himself an annoying if amusing nuisance to the young crew. The tall, awkward professor seemed harmless enough at first, bumping his head against the short doorways and threatening only his own well-being. Soon, however, he was putting the entire crew in danger. What with his endless fascination with new technology, he was always touching this button or turning that dial. For one wild minute the submarine was in danger of sinking after a curious Prestwick had removed the sea hatch from the floor and was surprised to find water bubbling up into the control room.

Safire turned to the old professor, noted the Band-Aid on his forehead, and asked, “Your Joe ever done this before?”

“ I’ve never done this before, Commander, let alone Andros,” Prestwick replied with a sour expression. “But if he comes out of Greece alive, he’ll have information vital to the war. Information that Churchill and Roosevelt are anxiously awaiting.”

“It’s going to be tricky,” Safire warned, showing Prestwick the charts. “The signal we picked up from Orestes said that the caique carrying Andros is going to launch from Kalamata. That’s in the Gulf of Messenia.”

Prestwick followed Safire’s finger as it traced the route on the chart. “So what?”

“Our orders in Alexandria were to rendezvous six miles off the Cape of Koroni. That’s beyond this peninsula at the mouth of the gulf.”

“I don’t see the difference,” said Prestwick. “Rather than take the land route all the way to Koroni, they’re going to launch from Kalamata and cut across the gulf waters. What are you getting at?”

Safire pointed to a mass of X’s on the chart, off the port of Kalamata. “See these markings? The Germans have mined the Gulf of Messenia. Andros will never get out of there in one piece.”

“Good God!” said Prestwick. “Can’t we stop them?”

Safire rubbed his stubbled chin. “A little late for that, I think. They’ve probably left already from Sparta, and it’s too risky to surface right now. What I can’t understand is why. It was SOE agents in Athens who provided Cairo with the location of the German minefields for our charts in the first place.”

The American’s hands trembled as he lifted the chart and looked for himself, his green eyes squinting from behind their glasses. “What can we do?”

Safire wanted to tell him they could turn back, that it would be foolhardy to jeopardize the Cherub and its crew by straying anywhere near that minefield in the futile search for an agent who would not be there when they surfaced. But Prestwick was the senior intelligence officer here, and Safire had learned early on in his naval career that when a superior asked for his opinion, it was better to offer options and not advice.

“We could try to surface at the designated rendezvous in the unlikely chance that your Joe is there,” he answered. “Or we could call it a day and head back to base.”

“Turn back?” Prestwick put down the chart and looked at him, his angry eyes turning into green slits behind the fogged-up glasses. “You turn back, Commander, and I’ll have you brought up on charges of insubordination and see that you are stripped of your command.”

The nasty tone in the American’s voice tempted Safire toward violence, but he restrained himself. Striking a superior officer, however inferior a man he might be, would do little to boost his naval career or help the Allies.

“Of course, sir,” said Safire, and turned to the helmsman. “Full ahead.”

It was at least thirty miles to Kalamata through the rocky, snowcapped slopes of the Taygetos range, Andros calculated, pushing the engine hard as the lorry climbed the dramatic Langada Gorge. But with mountain road conditions being so intolerable, they’d be lucky to make it in an hour in this crate. Of course, crashing through the checkpoint on their way out of Sparta probably had put every German and Italian checkpoint ahead of them on alert.

Andros glanced over his shoulder toward the back and shouted, “I’m going to pull over!”

“What’s wrong now?” asked Stavros.

“Nothing, we’re changing drivers. You’re up front. Any descriptions or pseudonyms that have been radioed ahead belong to me.”

Andros pulled the lorry over to the side of the road. He left the engine running and walked back to the rear of the lorry while Stavros, now wearing the uniform of a German, climbed into the cab and shifted gears.

As they drove off, Andros crouched in the rear of the lorry among the sacks of grain with Erin, who was still stripping a uniform off one of the dead Germans.

“Whatever happened to silent killing?” he asked.

Erin shrugged sheepishly and rolled up her hair and put on the SS officer’s cap with the Death’s Head badge.

Andros counted four bodies in the back. “I saw only three soldiers at the checkpoint.”

“Stavros and I picked up this one earlier.” Erin pointed to the closest corpse.

Andros glanced at the naked body, twisted among the sacks. Separated from his companions, with no uniform or symbols of fascism on him, he looked like an ordinary young man, much like the cadets back at West Point. He had a powerful build with rippling muscles now stilled. Then the lorry hit a bump, and the head bounced, turning up to reveal a face that was badly burned on one side. Andros looked away.

“You came just in time back there,” Erin said casually, checking a Schmeisser. “What happened at the warehouse?”

“I was tied up by your friend the Minotaur.”

Erin stared at him. Her eyes, what Andros could see of them in the moonlight, seemed to grow larger. Finally, after a long silence, she said, “Eliot. It was Eliot.”

“Along with his friend Colonel Kalos,” Andros added.

“I should have known,” she said, cursing herself. “I should have seen it. I never should have let you go alone to pick up the lorry.” She gripped his shoulder and opened her mouth to say something, but she couldn’t seem to find the words.

Andros gently lifted her hand from his shoulder and returned it to the Schmeisser. “It’s okay,” he told her. “You trained me well. They’re dead and we’re alive.”

“Thanks to you,” she said.

“It’s about time I returned the favor. Now what?”

She looked strangely still in the moonlight in spite of the jerky bounces of the lorry. “You tell me, sir,” she said in a manner that clearly signaled a shift in their relationship. “My orders were to defer to the judgment of my commanding officer in the field once he had proved himself.”

Andros could see that she was referring to him. “And have I, Captain?”

“Yes, Colonel.”

Andros was taken aback. “Colonel now, is it?”

“Churchill’s orders.”

“Since when does the British prime minister bestow promotions within the U.S. Army?”

“Hellenic Royal Army, sir,” she corrected. “King George signed the papers.”

Everything seemed to fall into place for Andros. “This submarine pickup was planned for you, wasn’t it? I was supposed to stay back at the National Bands of Greece to legitimize it.”

Erin nodded slowly.

At that point Andros was aware that the lorry was slowing down as they approached the Taygetos Pass at the top of the ridge of mountains.

“About half a mile ahead of us,” Stavros called from the cab, “an Italian staff car blocking the pass, two soldiers holding hands up for us to stop.”