Alistair MacLean - The Complete Navarone

‘Wha?’ said Carstairs, uncomprehending. ‘Oh, I see. Joke.’ He fumbled in his breast pocket. ‘Cigarette? Virginian this side, Turkish tha — Oh, God. Lost me case.’

‘Here,’ said Mallory, and gave it to him. ‘No smoking.’

‘Oh, I say,’ said Carstairs, frowning. His brain was not working. ‘Sentry’s gone. Relax, eh? Nobody knows we’re here.’

Mallory shook his head. He walked over to the steel door, and shoved it open. ‘They will,’ he said. ‘They will.’

Private Otto Schultz weighed eighteen stone, and this evening every single ounce of him was completely fed up. Some fool had crashed a locomotive, and Schultz had spent a miserably sweaty hour with winches and levers and NCOs screaming at him. Then he had gone for his dinner, and half-way through his fourth sausage all the aerials (someone had said it was the aerials, anyway) had been bombed or shot up, nobody knew which, so they had all had to go and sit in the shelters. And then, before he had had time to finish his food, he had been told to report for duty in the guardhouse with two of those Sonderkommando thugs. They had spent the last half-hour reminiscing about some place called Treblinka, about which Schultz had no desire to hear. Then one of them, Putzi he seemed to be called, had beaten Schultz at chess. Schultz was pretty sure Putzi had cheated, but that was not the sort of thing you accused a Sonderkommando man of, if you wanted to keep your head on your shoulders. Putzi had high cheekbones and hard blue eyes and a smile that never faltered. But sitting there across the table from Schultz, you could see he was just a piece of vicious scum, like all the rest of them. Schultz had been a mathematics teacher, and he did not enjoy being trounced at chess by thugs.

‘Your move,’ said Putzi, as if Schultz did not already know. Schultz moved. Putzi’s grin became more scornful. He moved his bishop. ‘Checkmate, fatso.’

‘Rubbish,’ said Schultz. But Putzi was right. He opened his mouth to concede.

But he never said it.

There was a crash like a bomb going off. Something fell on to Putzi from the sky, and he vanished, the table with him. Splinters of wood flew around the guardhouse. Schultz leaped to his feet and hit the red general alarm button.

Sigmund, the other Sonderkommando man, was bending over the mess on the floor. ‘Dead,’ he said.

Schultz gave the subject ponderous but methodical thought, and arrived at an understanding. A human body, by its uniform a member of the Wehrmacht , had fallen through the asbestos roof of the guardhouse with enough force not only to kill Putzi but to drive his corpse some distance into the floorboards. This implied that he had fallen from a considerable height — one of the lookouts on the cliff face above, no doubt. A tragic accident. Schultz wagged his head on its great rolls of neck.

Then Sigmund rolled the sentry’s jellified body off the crushed corpse of Putzi. It was at that point that Schultz sat down heavily, and started to shake.

For there was no part of Schultz’s imagination that could explain what kind of accident it was that had sent a Wehrmacht private plummeting out of the heavens with a British Special Forces-issue dagger driven to the hilt in its right eye.

When the charges on the aerials went off and the air-raid klaxon began to sound, Miller and Andrea had a short discussion. Men were still strolling in the corridor, unmoved by the moaning of the alarm. Presumably, they were far enough into the mountain to be safe from bombs. So they walked briskly down the steel staging to the sentry box in front of the elevator, and came to attention in front of the guardhouse. There was a Feldwebel and a private behind an armoured-glass window, wearing camouflage uniforms. They looked at Andrea. The Feldwebel’s eyes flicked from his dark Mediterranean features to his badges of rank. Miller saw the man start to frown, then deliberately smooth his face out. There was a fixed number of huge SS Leutnants on Kynthos. It looked as if this might be a Feldwebel with eyes and a memory. Look out, he thought: trouble.

Andrea said, ‘I want to look at your records.’

The Sergeant said, ‘Records, Herr Leutnant? ’

‘The pass records. There may have been a breach of security.’

The Sergeant stiffened. ‘I can assure the Herr Leutnant that —’

‘Let us in.’

‘The Herr Leutnant will excuse me,’ said the sergeant. His hand went for the telephone.

Miller started to cough. He coughed very badly, doubling up, out of the vision of the men in the guard hut. He had his knife out, and as he doubled up he hooked the blade under a cable that ran out of the hut and away down the tunnel, and cut.

Inside the hut, the sergeant jiggled the cradle furiously.

‘Let me in,’ said Andrea, low and dangerous.

The sergeant was looking ruffled now. ‘But I do not … that is, I am not acquainted with the Herr Leutnant’s face.’

‘This is of no interest to me,’ said Andrea. ‘You will however remember the Hauptmann Wolf, with whom you will renew your acquaintance very speedily unless you open up as instructed, immediately.’

At the mention of Wolf’s name, the sergeant’s face turned a nasty grey, and his memory apparently lost its influence. ‘Open the door,’ he said to the private. The door opened. Andrea walked in. ‘The books,’ he said.

The sergeant handed over a large ledger. Andrea put it on the desk, leafed through the pages. ‘Excuse me,’ said the sergeant. ‘The telephone is kaput . I must arrange for repairs. Schmidt —’ he looked at the private ‘— fetch a maintenance crew.’

Andrea slammed the book. ‘All seems to be in order,’ he said. ‘But Schmidt, stay here. There is a general alert. Maximum vigilance. Now, give me the key.’

The sergeant snapped to attention. ‘Herr Leutnant?’

The key,’ said Andrea. ‘To the lift.’

‘The Herr Leutnant’s pass?’

Andrea said, patiently, ‘My pass is being renewed. Now my duty takes me into that lift.’

The sergeant’s face turned to stone. ‘I am sorry,’ he said. ‘No pass, you cannot. It is not permitted.’

‘I am sorry too,’ said Andrea, in a low, dangerous rumble. ‘And you will be sorrier, I promise you.’

The sergeant stared straight ahead of him, the impassive stare of the German NCO who knows he is obeying orders, that the chain of command is complete, that his position is unassailable and his duty done.

Two engineers stopped at the window. ‘Carry on,’ said Andrea. The engineers signed their names and the time in the book. ‘You will please report this telephone out of order,’ said Andrea to the engineers. The private escorted them to the lift door. One of them opened it with his key, pulled back the inner door, slid the outer door into place. The lift machinery hummed.

‘Very good,’ said Andrea. ‘You have made a note, Herr Doktor Muller?’

‘I shall get my notebook,’ said Miller. ‘One moment.’ He crouched, opened the pack he had been carrying. The sergeant moved suddenly, and looked over the lid and inside. His eyes widened and his jaw dropped, and he raised the Schmeisser in his hands.

But Miller had a hand of his own, and in it was a Browning automatic with a long cylindrical snout. The snout coughed flame. The wall behind the Feldwebel turned red. He slammed backwards into the wall, eyes blank, a new eye in the middle of his forehead. The private ran out of the shed and started to run, unlimbering his own Schmeisser as he went. Miller went after him. The man turned. Miller raised the Browning two-handed. The private went down.