Alistair MacLean - The Complete Navarone

Miller was singing ‘Your Feet’s Too Big’ and hauling in his line, when there was a commotion in the water nearby. A long, dark shape rose against the sky. A voice floated across the water. ‘Any of you chaps called Mallory?’

‘Yes,’ said Mallory.

‘Come on, then. Tea’s brewing.’ Pause. ‘Nasty smell of smoke,’ said the voice.

Mallory’s eyes went back across the water to the hot orange glow that had once been the V4 plant.

There was a clang of boots on a steel pressure hull, the slam of a hatch, the whine of ballast-pumps filling tanks. Then there was silence; silence except for a sound that might have been the fading pant of a single-cylinder diesel, and the great, stirring rumour of the sea.

The sun was shining brilliantly on an emerald-green lawn, laid out for croquet. At the end of the lawn stood a small figure in an impeccable tropical uniform: Captain Jensen, a captain no longer, his sleeves and cap incandescent with bullion in the bright noonday. With him were Andrea, Mallory, Miller, and Wills; Wills looking faintly shifty in the presence of so much scrambled egg, the rest gaunt and hollow-eyed, and apprehensive, as if they were waiting for something.

The debriefing was over. The Enigma machine was already in a Hurricane en route for Tangmere, with a large and well-armed escort.

‘Well,’ said Jensen. ‘That’s that, then.’

Mallory said nothing. It would not have been politic to mention Admiral Dixon. Carstairs’ role had already been explained. But Mallory was not feeling politic. Carstairs had been first a liability, then a danger, and finally a traitor. Carstairs had been Admiral Dixon’s idea.

So Mallory said, ‘We’d expected to find Admiral Dixon here.’

Jensen grinned, his alarming tiger’s grin. ‘I bet you had,’ he said, and Mallory, as so often when he was with Jensen, knew that he had been outplayed and outmanoeuvred by a master. ‘By the way,’ said Jensen. ‘It isn’t Admiral Dixon any more. Captain Dixon, RN, Retired.’ He looked down at the bullion on his arm. A broad stripe had joined the narrower gold hoops. ‘Only room for so many admirals in the Service,’ he said.

They looked at him: Andrea, hulking against the sun, Miller with his hands in his pockets, apparently half-asleep, and Mallory, the flesh bitten away from his face by hunger and exhaustion. That was Jensen for you. They had thought they had been playing one game on Kynthos, and they had played it well. But they had been pieces in another game, the game of intrigue and back-stabbing that Jensen had been playing against Dixon –

‘Just one of those things,’ said Jensen. He nodded at Wills. ‘He doesn’t mind, even if you do.’

But Wills was not listening. His mind was back on the submarine, standing in the conning tower, feeling the last pressure of Clytemnestra’s hand on his, watching her steer the boat into the smokereeking night, heading for Parmatia. The turbulent currents of war had washed them apart, sure enough. In the smoother flow of peace, though, he would be back …

Jensen was saying something. ‘Well,’ he said, briskly. ‘All’s well that ends well, eh?’

‘Yessir,’ said Mallory.

‘And I am very glad to see you. Very glad. Particularly glad today, as it happens …’

‘Oh, no,’ said Miller, under his breath. ‘No, please.’ Andrea was staring at Jensen, horrified. Mallory opened his mouth to speak, but Jensen put up his hand.

‘… because I have a job for you,’ he said. ‘Just a tiny little job, really. And I thought, since the three of you are here anyway …’

Mallory sighed. ‘We would be fascinated to hear about it,’ he said. ‘But we will need brandy.’

‘Large amounts of brandy,’ said Andrea.

‘Five star,’ said Miller. ‘Roll out the barrel.’

‘Of course,’ said Jensen. ‘And then we will begin.’

Alistair MacLean, the son of a Scots minister, was born in 1922 and brought up in the Scottish Highlands. In 1941 at the age of eighteen he joined the Royal Navy; two-and-a half years spent aboard a cruiser was later to give him the background for HMS Ulysses , his first novel, the outstanding documentary novel on the war at sea. After the war, he gained an English Honours degree at Glasgow University, and became a school master. In 1983 he was awarded a D. Litt from the same university.

He is now recognized as one of the outstanding popular writers of the 20th century. By the early 1970s he was one of the top 10 bestselling authors in the world, and the biggest selling Briton. He wrote twenty-nine worldwide bestsellers that have sold more than 30 million copies, and many of which have been filmed, including The Guns of Navarone, Where Eagles Dare, Fear is the Key and Ice Station Zebra . Alistair MacLean died in 1987 at his home in Switzerland.

Sam Llewellyn is the author of a number of hugely successful thrillers, including Blood Knot, Clawhammer and The Shadow in the Sands , the continuation of Erskine Childers’ classic adventure, The Riddle of the Sands . An experienced sailor, he has sailed all over the world and now lives with his wife and family in Herefordshire.

HMS Ulysses

The Guns of Navarone

South by Java Head

The Last Frontier

Night Without End

Fear is the Key

The Dark Crusader

The Satan Bug

The Golden Rendezvous

Ice Station Zebra

When Eight Bells Toll

Where Eagles Dare

Force 10 from Navarone

Puppet on a Chain

Caravan to Vaccares

Bear Island

The Way to Dusty Death

Breakheart Pass

Circus

The Golden Gate

Seawitch

Goodbye California

Athabasca

River of Death

Partisans

Floodgate

San Andreas

The Lonely Sea (stories)

Santorini