Алистер Маклин: The Guns of Navarone

He wondered if the other two were at their posts, unmolested; they should be, the search party had long passed through the upper part of the town; but you never knew what could go wrong, there was so much that could go wrong, and so easily. Mallory looked at his watch again: he had never seen a second hand move so slowly. He lit a last cigarette, poured a final glass of wine, listened without really hearing to the weird, keening threnody of the rembetika song in the corner. And then the song of the hashish singers died plaintively away, the glasses were empty and Mallory was on his feet.

‘Time bringeth all things,’ he murmured. ‘Here we go again.’

He sauntered easily towards the door, calling good night to the tavernaris. Just at the doorway he paused, began to search impatiently through his pockets as if he had lost something: it was a windless night, and it was raining, he saw, raining heavily, the lances of rain bouncing inches off the cobbled street – and the street itself was deserted as far as he could see in either direction. Satisfied, Mallory swung round with a curse, forehead furrowed in exasperation, started to walk back towards the table he had just left, right hand now delving into the capacious inner pocket of his jacket. He saw without seeming to that Dusty Miller was pushing his chair back, rising to his feet. And then Mallory had halted, his face clearing and his hands no longer searching. He was exactly three feet from the table where the four Germans were sitting.

‘Keep quite still!’ He spoke in German, his voice low but as steady, as menacing, as the Navy Colt .455 balanced in his right hand. ‘We are desperate men. If you move we will kill you.’

For a full three seconds the soldiers sat immobile, expressionless except for the shocked widening of their eyes. And then there was a quick flicker of the eyelids from the man sitting nearest the counter, a twitching of the shoulder and then a grunt of agony as the .32 bullet smashed into his upper arm. The soft thud of Miller’s silenced automatic couldn’t have been heard beyond the doorway.

‘Sorry, boss,’ Miller apologised. ‘Mebbe he’s only sufferin’ from St. Vitus’ dance.’ He looked with interest at the pain-twisted face, the blood welling darkly between the fingers clasped tightly over the wound. ‘But he looks kinda cured to me.’

‘He is cured,’ Mallory said grimly. He turned to the innkeeper, a tall, melancholy man with a thin face and mandarin moustache that drooped forlornly over either corner of his mouth, spoke to him in the quick, colloquial speech of the islands. ‘Do these men speak Greek?’

The tavernaris shook his head. Completely unruffled and unimpressed, he seemed to regard armed hold-ups in his tavern as the rule rather than the exception.

‘Not them!’ he said contemptuously. ‘English a little, I think – I am sure. But not our language. That I do know.’

‘Good. I am a British Intelligence officer. Have you a place where I can hide these men?’

‘You shouldn’t have done this,’ the tavernaris protested mildly. ‘I will surely die for this.’

‘Oh, no, you won’t.’ Mallory had slid across the counter, his pistol boring into the man’s midriff. No one could doubt that the man was being threatened – and violently threatened – no one, that is, who couldn’t see the broad wink that Mallory had given the inn-keeper. ‘I’m going to tie you up with them. All right?’

‘All right. There is a trap-door at the end of the counter here. Steps lead down to the cellar.’

‘Good enough. I’ll find it by accident.’ Mallory gave him a vicious and all too convincing shove that sent the man staggering, vaulted back across the counter, walked over to the rembetika singers at the far corner of the room.

‘Go home,’ he said quickly. ‘It is almost curfew time anyway. Go out the back way, and remember – you have seen nothing, no one. You understand?’

‘We understand.’ It was the young bouzouko player who spoke. He jerked his thumb at his companions and grinned. ‘Bad men – but good Greeks. Can we help you?’

‘No!’ Mallory was emphatic. ‘Think of your families – these soldiers have recognised you. They must know you well – you and they are here most nights, is that not so?’

The young man nodded.

‘Off you go, then. Thank you all the same.’

A minute later, in the dim, candle-lit cellar, Miller prodded the soldier nearest him – the one most like himself in height and build. ‘Take your clothes off!’ he ordered.

‘English pig!’ the German snarled.

‘Not English ,’ Miller protested. ‘I’ll give you thirty seconds to get your coat and pants off.’

The man swore at him, viciously, but made no move to obey. Miller sighed. The German had guts, but time was running out. He took a careful bead on the soldier’s hand and pulled the trigger. Again the soft plop and the man was staring down stupidly at the hole torn in the heel of his left hand.

‘Mustn’t spoil the nice uniforms, must we?’ Miller asked conversationally. He lifted the automatic until the soldier was staring down the barrel of the gun. ‘The next goes between the eyes.’ The casual drawl carried complete conviction. ‘It won’t take me long to undress you, I guess.’ But the man had already started to tear his uniform off, sobbing with anger and the pain of his wounded hand.

Less than another five minutes had passed when Mallory, clad like Miller in German uniform, unlocked the front door of the tavern and peered cautiously out. The rain, if anything, was heavier than ever – and there wasn’t a soul in sight. Mallory beckoned Miller to follow and locked the door behind him. Together the two men walked up the middle of the street, making no attempt to seek either shelter or shadows. Fifty yards took them into the town square, where they turned right along the south side of the square, then left along the east side, not breaking step as they passed the old house where they had hidden earlier in the evening, not even as Louki’s hand appeared mysteriously behind the partly opened door, a hand weighted down with two German Army rucksacks – rucksacks packed with rope, fuses, wire and high explosive. A few yards farther on they stopped suddenly, crouched down behind a couple of huge wine barrels outside a barber’s shop, gazed at the two armed guards in the arched gateway, less than a hundred feet away, as they shrugged into their packs and waited for their cue.

They had only moments to wait – the timing had been split-second throughout. Mallory was just tightening the waist-belt of his rucksack when a series of explosions shook the centre of the town, not three hundred yards away, explosions followed by the vicious rattle of a machine-gun, then by further explosions. Andrea was doing his stuff magnificently with his grenades and homemade bombs.

Both men suddenly shrank back as a broad, white beam of light stabbed out from a platform high above the gateway, a beam that paralleled the top of the wall to the east, showed up every hooked spike and strand of barbed wire as clearly as sunlight. Mallory and Miller looked at each other for a fleeting moment, their faces grim. Panayis hadn’t missed a thing: they would have been pinned on these strands like flies on fly-paper and cut to ribbons by machine-guns.

Mallory waited another half-minute, touched Miller’s arm, rose to his feet and started running madly across the square, the long hooked bamboo pressed close to his side, the American pounding behind him. In a few seconds they had reached the gates of the fortress, the startled guards running the last few feet to meet them.

‘Every man to the Street of Steps!’ Mallory shouted. ‘Those damned English saboteurs are trapped in a house down there! We’ve got to have some mortars. Hurry, man, hurry, in the name of God!’