Alistair MacLean - The Complete Navarone

But Moose Michael’s hand was not groping for Darling Miss Daisy’s outstanding assets. It was groping for the money in the garter. This was not in the rules. Miss Daisy clenched her perfectly-formed fist, rolled her flashing black eyes, and gun in her neck or not, broke Moose Michael’s jaw in four places.

Miller could see a lot of Darling Miss Daisy in Clytemnestra. Trudging on through the scrub, he crossed her and Wills off the worry-list.

Ahead, the clank of machinery was getting louder.

Leutnant Priem had been in North Africa, and at the invasion of Crete, and most recently in Yugoslavia. As he skirted the shoulder of the ravine (they could have done with a dog; but the dogs had disappeared) he thought: this could be a great posting, this island, if the commanding officer used his brains. One stupid Storch crashes, observer’s been drinking Metaxa, screaming down the radio, and Wolf panics, and here we are pretending to be mountain goats, heading for his bloody map reference as if we were doing a security sweep for a Führer visit …

The path came out on the ledge. Cicadas trilled in the noonday sun, and the air was heavy with the whiff of thyme and rue. Priem cast a scornful eye over the ruined buildings. How could you believe in the glories of Greek culture when the people lived in such hovels? Degenerate scum. No better than animals. Of course, nobody had been here for years …

‘Search the place!’ he barked. He lit a cigarette and sat in the shade. A lizard lay on a slab of rock, bringing itself up to temperature for the next hunting trip. Lucky damned lizard. Nothing to do but sit around in the sun all day. While Priem had to make a pretence of searching these places where nobody had been, ever. That was Wolf for you. Savage, but gründlich . Thorough –

‘Herr Leutnant?’ yelled a voice.

Priem stamped out his cigarette and went to interview the sergeant.

‘Buildings empty,’ said the sergeant. ‘Found this here, sir.’ He pointed with the tip of his jackboot at a little pile of golden cylinders. Cartridge cases.

Priem was suddenly not relaxed any more. ‘Good,’ he said. They were Schmeisser cases. ‘And the aeroplane?’ he said.

‘Over here,’ said the sergeant. ‘One hundred and three metres down.’

‘Rope,’ said Priem.

‘Rope in place,’ said the NCO.

The wreckage of the Storch was draped over a crag. Priem climbed round it, scrutinized the burned remains of the pilot and the observer, frowning slightly. He paused to examine the line of bullet-holes starting at the wing-root and vanishing under the belly.

He climbed back to the ledge in silence. ‘Sergeant,’ he said. ‘We will establish a field HQ here. Search again, particularly down the cliffs. And give me that radio.’

Higher on the mountain, in what would once have been the uppermost street of the bandit village, Clytemnestra and Wills lay in darkness. It was a cool darkness, smelling slightly of mould, but that was not surprising, since their hiding place was situated under the ruins of the washing-copper in the corner of four walls that had once served as a laundry.

This village of bandits was a village for which searches and razzias were no novelty. The crusaders had rummaged it, then the Turks, then the Greeks. The Germans were merely the latest in line.

Just as long (Clytemnestra reflected, listening to the concussed muttering of Wills) as they did not bring their dogs.

It was a tidy enough quarry, as quarries went; a big horseshoe cut in the cliff, fans of fallen stone at the base, a couple of diggers moving across a white floor trailing clouds of dust. There was a crusher, a big machine with a hopper and a black funnel that belched smoke, panting and grinding, discharging crushed stone into another, larger hopper. Under the larger hopper ran a railway track. As the men on the quarry lip watched, a train reversed into the quarry and positioned the first of its four trucks under the hopper. The hopper-release opened. A dose of crushed stone roared into the truck. The locomotive moved on. Another dose roared into the second truck. Move. Roar. Move. Roar. The locomotive hissed steam and began to pull out, gathering speed.

‘Well?’ said Carstairs.

‘Wait,’ said Mallory, eyes down on his watch.

The train bustled off across the plain, shrinking on its converging lines, speeding on to a causeway across the marsh, shrinking still. At the far end a cloud of white dust rose, then whipped away on the breeze. The breeze was up, now. A long edge of grey was travelling down the sky from the north. ‘Twelve minutes,’ said Mallory. ‘Down we go.’

‘Why?’ said Carstairs.

The other men were slinging their packs. Miller pointed behind them, up the cliff, where little figures were descending on ropes, rummaging every ledge and hollow. ‘They’re still looking,’ said Mallory. ‘If we don’t keep moving, they’ll spot us.’ Carstairs’ mouth went dry. He scrambled to his feet, and down the flank of the quarry.

Far away, a long steam-whistle blew. The stone train had emptied its trucks. Now it was on its way back.

The four men went down the big fan of rubble on the quarry’s northern side. The sun beat hot on the white stone as they ran, jumping from stone to stone, slithering in the small gravel, dust trailing from their heels. Men below looked up; labourers, mostly, in dusty overalls, trailing shovels, smoking cigarettes. They saw four men in camouflage smocks and Wehrmacht caps sliding down a pile of rubble. They were used to seeing soldiers; too many soldiers.

A sentry walked over, Wehrmacht , a Feldwebel , bored and dusty. The Sonderkommando had only been on the island three days. Mallory was betting that between the Wehrmacht guards and the Sonderkommando there would be no love lost. ‘What do you want?’ said the Feldwebel .

Mallory said, ‘Mind your own damned business.’

The Feldwebel blinked. ‘It is my business.’

‘Perhaps you would like to explain that to Hauptmann Wolf.’

It did not work. ‘I have my own officers,’ said the Feldwebel . ‘I do not need to talk to your nasty little Hauptmann .’

Mallory said, ‘Very wise,’ and started to walk past him towards the rock crusher.

‘One moment,’ said the sentry. ‘Papers.’

‘Don’t be bloody stupid,’ said Mallory. They were all walking now, towards the shade of the crusher, the sentry nearly running alongside them. The cloud had covered the sun. The air felt thick and moist.

The sentry got in front of them and unslung his rifle. ‘Papers,’ he said, and in his eye there was a meticulous glint, the legendary obstinacy of the German NCO. Mallory’s heart sank.

‘All right,’ said Mallory. ‘Shall we go and see your commanding officer?’ Andrea was standing close behind him. Above them, the stilts of the rock crusher towered like the legs of an enormous insect. Mallory could feel Andrea moving. The guard’s life was hanging by a thread. He looked Mallory up and down …

And saw his boots.

They were caked with dust, scuffed and battered. They were variations on a theme of British paratrooper’s boots, manufactured for Mallory by Lobb of St James’ Street, London, in collaboration and discussion with Black’s of Holborn, expedition outfitters, fitted on his personal last, studded with pyramid nails hand-sharpened with the file Mallory carried in his pocket.

They should have been regulation German army jackboots.

There was no way of knowing what was in the Feldwebel ’s mind, but Mallory could guess. The Feldwebel was a high priest of order and regulation, and the boots were heresy and sacrilege. The rifle came up. The eyes went round. The mouth opened to shout.