Alistair MacLean - The Complete Navarone

‘Miracle,’ said Mallory. ‘Definitely.’

‘And the machine,’ said Carstairs. ‘What about the machine?’

‘Hah!’ said Spiro. ‘Well. I got him on beach. Very ill, I was. Lying with him, sleeping, very thirsty, sand in face, no move. Then a chap I think is there, speaking Greeks, give me drink of water.’ He was frowning, as if he did not remember properly. ‘Like dreams. Like dreams. Then I hear his voice loud, and other voices, not so loud, further away, and they are speaking Germans. I trying to get up, but no luck, fall on face bang, pass out again. And when I wakes up again I am in some ambulance, on some bed, and there are Germanses everywhere, but no machina.’

‘No machine,’ said Carstairs. ‘Then they’ve got it.’

‘Greeks man got it,’ said Spiro. ‘I spose. I never seen it no more. But I worry, I worry. I am thinking, if I wakes up, then they ask me questions, so I will be asleep and they will not ask me no questions and I will not be frightened. Because I am weak, you know, when I am tired like this, and I will tell anybody anything. So I make out I am knock out. So there.’

‘You pretended to be in a coma for a week?’ said Mallory.

‘Just about. Yes,’ said Spiro, with some smugness. ‘Eat, drink when nobody lookings. When you are very very frightens you can be very very brave.’

Carstairs said, ‘You are very brave and we admire you like hell, but we will tell you all about that later. Where is the machine?’

‘I remembers,’ said Spiro. ‘This chap who give me drink of water on beach. He said he was hiding this thing in a place that only he know, nobody else, ever. So is okay. He is a good guy, I think: hate Germans scums, fight for us, our side. And he give me his name. So now we go find him, tell him, British armies arrived, hand over, me old cocky. Everything hunky-boo.’

‘So what was his name?’ said Carstairs.

‘Achilles,’ said Spiro. Then, by Mallory’s computation about a thousand years later, ‘What wrong? You get problem?’

‘Yes,’ said Mallory. ‘Just a bit.’

Because Achilles was the name of the brother of Clytemnestra, who had been hanged in the Parmatia razzia. So it seemed very much as if the seven-rotor Enigma machine was somewhat lost.

In the dark very close behind them, someone cleared his throat. Mallory’s hand jumped automatically on the cocking lever of his Schmeisser.

‘Not today, thanks,’ said a voice. And Miller stepped into the lamplight, with Andrea close beside him.

‘I’ll go and find her,’ said Andrea.

‘Find who?’ said Carstairs.

‘Clytemnestra. Achilles’ sister.’

‘You heard.’

‘He wasn’t exactly whispering.’

Carstairs laughed, his short, patronizing bark. ‘Clytemnestra could be anywhere.’

‘We have a rendezvous,’ said Andrea. ‘The road’s open, again. We’ll take transport. We’ll find this machine.’

Carstairs nodded his head, wincing slightly. ‘I expect you will,’ he said. Then he swayed and lay down, suddenly.

‘What is it?’ said Mallory.

‘Giddy,’ said Carstairs. He tried to sit up, fell down again. ‘Christ.’

‘Stay there,’ said Mallory. You could not expect a man who had smashed himself unconscious on a rock to laugh lightly and carry on as if nothing had happened. ‘Andrea, get going. Miller, what’s your timing?’

‘Eight-hour fuses,’ said Miller.

‘Yes,’ said Mallory. ‘And the rest of it?’

‘Depends when they start pumping fuel,’ said Miller.

‘Any sign of anyone doing any rocket firing?’

‘Dunno,’ said Miller. ‘They’ve got one standing right there, pointed out of the roof. There weren’t no action we could see. But I guess they could have that sucker ready to go in, what, two hours, from a standing start?’

Andrea said, ‘I’ll be at the jetty by sunrise.’ There was no sound of movement. One moment he was there; the next, the darkness had flowed in to occupy the place where he had been standing.

‘Well,’ said Miller. ‘This is real nice.’ Miller was a man who believed in reconnaissance. On the way to the village, he had checked the place out. Once, it had probably been a thriving little community. Now, by the look of it, the original inhabitants had been displaced, the houses turned into dormitories for the men who worked inside the mountain, the church desecrated, a field kitchen on its mosaic floors turning out coarse bread and a soup whose smell did not inspire Miller to make its further acquaintance.

There was one bonus. The village was a prison, with the guards on the outside. The Germans would be looking for escapers, not intruders.

Miller left Mallory with Carstairs and Spiro, and went scouting. He walked quietly among the little knots of men in the village square. Soon, he observed a man with a disc-shaped loaf of white bread and a bottle of wine. Miller had lived through Prohibition in the States, and his nose for a bootlegger was practically supernatural. So he followed on down a narrow alley, and found a lamplit door and inside it an old man with a white bandit’s moustache, who looked at Miller’s gold drachmae with a face that did not budge an inch, but was still extremely impressed. ‘Where you from?’ he said.

‘Crete,’ said Miller.

‘How did you find me?’

‘I found you,’ said Miller, dour. He did not want to be gossiped about. ‘What you got?’

The old man hauled bread, wine and olives from a wormy wooden box. Miller blessed him, and walked out.

At the back of the church was a little house; the priest’s house, perhaps, built right up against the wall. It was dusty and cobwebbed, and had an odour suggestive of graveyards, and its floors were connected not by stairs but by a movable ladder, somewhat worm-eaten. But it was dry and secure, and to Miller it looked better than the Waldorf Astoria. He went back for Mallory and Carstairs and Spiro. Inside, he took out sardines and chocolate, and the bread and olives, and the wine. They ate like hungry wolves, tearing great lumps of bread and washing them down with draughts of turpentine-flavoured retsina. It seemed to Miller that for a man suffering from delayed concussion, Carstairs seemed to have a hearty appetite; a very hearty appetite indeed. Miller had taken a good few knocks on the head in his time as gold-miner and bootlegger. As far as he remembered — which was not, admittedly, very far, given the nature of the injury — for some weeks afterwards the very thought of food had been enough to make him spew his guts up …

Different strokes for different folks, thought Miller, watching Carstairs tap a cigarette on his gold case and light up. Very different folks. Carstairs was very different indeed.

Soon after this, in fact about ten seconds after this, he left his body behind, the sore eyes and the aching bones, and drifted down and down into a soft void, a place of no pain and total rest –

Then someone had hold of him and was yanking at his shoulder, and the softness was gone and the soreness in his head and his bones was back at double strength, and he was awake, looking at his watch. The watch that said he had been asleep for only ten minutes.

But during that ten minutes, the world had changed completely.

The crack under the door of the house had become a white-hot bar of light. Outside, there was noise; the noise of sirens squawking, of feet running; jackbooted feet. German feet.

Miller grabbed his thoughts by the scruff of the neck and told them to get themselves organized. They resisted, floating in and out of focus. Perhaps Andrea had got himself caught. Perhaps the Greek with the white moustache had reported that a stranger with a Cretan accent had paid him in gold. Perhaps they had found the plastic explosive charges on the rocket …