Алистер Маклин: Force 10 from Navarone

‘I understand, sir.’ From the expression on Lindemann’s face, Neufeld thought that Lindemann had understood very little of what he had said to him: but Neufeld felt infinitely tired and he did not feel like repeating his instructions. Lindemann mounted a pony, snatched the reins of another and spurred his pony up alongside the railway track.

Neufeld said, almost to himself: ‘There’s not all that hurry, boy.’

‘Herr Hauptmann?’ The other soldier was looking at him strangely.

‘It’s too late now,’ Neufeld said.

Mallory gazed down the still foaming gorge, turned and gazed at the Neretva dam whose level had already dropped by at least fifty feet, then turned to look at the men and the girl behind him. He felt weary beyond all words.

Andrea, battered and bruised and bleeding, his left arm now roughly bandaged, was demonstrating once again his quite remarkable powers of recuperation: to look at him it would have been impossible to guess that, only ten minutes ago, he had been swaying on the edge of total collapse. He held Maria cradled in his arms: she was coming to, but very, very slowly. Miller finished dressing the head wound of a now sitting Petar who, though wounded in shoulder and head, seemed more than likely to survive, crossed to Groves and stooped over him. After a moment or two he straightened and stared down at the young sergeant.

‘Dead?’ Mallory asked.

‘Dead.’

‘Dead.’ Andrea smiled, a smile full of sorrow. ‘Dead – and you and I are alive. Because this young lad is dead.’

‘He was expendable,’ Miller said.

‘And young Reynolds.’ Andrea was inexpressibly tired. ‘He was expendable too. What was it you said to him this afternoon, my Keith – for now is all the time there may be? And that was all the time there was. For young Reynolds. He saved my life tonight – twice. He saved Maria’s. He saved Petar’s. But he wasn’t clever enough to save his own. We are the clever ones, the old ones, the wise ones, the knowing ones. And the old ones are alive and the young ones are dead. And so it always is. We mocked them, laughed at them, distrusted them, marvelled at their youth and stupidity and ignorance.’ In a curiously tender gesture he smoothed Maria’s wet blonde hair back from her face and she smiled at him. ‘And in the end they were better men than we were …’

‘Maybe they were at that,’ Mallory said. He looked at Petar sadly and shook his head in wonder. ‘And to think that all three of them are dead, Reynolds dead, Groves dead, Saunders dead, and not one of them ever knew that you were the head of British espionage in the Balkans.’

‘Ignorant to the end.’ Miller drew the back of his sleeve angrily across his eyes. ‘Some people never learn. Some people just never learn.’

Once again Captain Jensen and the British lieutenant-general were back in the Operations Room in Termoli, but now they were no longer pacing up and down. The days of pacing were over. True, they still looked very tired, their faces probably fractionally more deeply lined than they had been a few days previously: but the faces were no longer haggard, the eyes no longer clouded with anxiety, and, had they been walking instead of sitting deep in comfortable armchairs, it was just conceivable that they might have had a new spring in their steps. Both men had glasses in their hands, large glasses.

Jensen sipped his whisky and said, smiling: ‘I thought a general’s place was at the head of his troops?’

‘Not in these days, Captain,’ the General said firmly. ‘In 1944 the wise general leads from behind his troops – about twenty miles behind. Besides, the armoured divisions are going so quickly I couldn’t possibly hope to catch up with them.’

‘They’re moving as fast as that?’

‘Not quite as fast as the German and Austrian divisions that pulled out of the Gustav Line last night and are now racing for the Yugoslav border. But they’re coming along pretty well.’ The General permitted himself a large gulp of his drink and a smile of considerable satisfaction. ‘Deception complete, break-through complete. On the whole, your men have done a pretty fair job.’

Both men turned in their chairs as a respectful rat-a-tat of knuckles preceded the opening of the heavy leather doors. Mallory entered, followed by Vukalovic, Andrea and Miller. All four were unshaven, all of them looked as if they hadn’t slept for a week. Andrea carried his arm in a sling.

Jensen rose, drained his glass, set it on a table, looked at Mallory dispassionately and said: ‘Cut it a bit bloody fine, didn’t you?’

Mallory, Andrea and Miller exchanged expressionless looks. There was a fairly long silence, then Mallory said: ‘Some things take longer than others.’

Petar and Maria were lying side by side, hands clasped, in two regulation army beds in the Termoli military hospital when Jensen entered, followed by Mallory, Miller and Andrea.

‘Excellent reports about both of you, I’m glad to hear,’ Jensen said briskly. ‘Just brought some – ah – friends to say goodbye.’

‘What sort of hospital is this, then?’ Miller said severely. ‘How about the high army moral tone, hey? Don’t they have separate quarters for men and women?’

‘They’ve been married for almost two years,’ Mallory said mildly. ‘Did I forget to tell you?’

‘Of course you didn’t forget,’ Miller said disgustedly. ‘It just slipped your mind.’

‘Speaking of marriage–’ Andrea cleared his throat and tried another tack. ‘Captain Jensen may recall that back in Navarone–’

‘Yes, yes.’ Jensen held up a hand. ‘Quite so. Quite. Quite. But I thought perhaps – well, the fact of the matter is – well, it so happens that another little job, just a tiny little job really, has just come up and I thought that seeing you were here anyway …’

Andrea stared at Jensen. His face was horrorstricken.