‘Because our plans are something the Germans can do something about,’ Andrea said patiently. ‘If they find out. If one of us talked under duress. But they can’t do anything about Ivenici – that’s in Partisan hands.’
Miller pacifically changed the subject. He said to Mallory: ‘Seven thousand feet up, you say. The snow must be thigh-deep up there. How in God’s name does anyone hope to clear all that lot away?’
‘I don’t know,’ Mallory said vaguely. ‘I suspect some body will think of something.’
And seven thousand feet up on the Ivenici plateau, somebody had indeed thought of something.
The Ivenici plateau was a wilderness in white, a bleak and desolate and, for many months of the year, a bitterly cold and howling and hostile wilderness, totally inimical to human life, totally intolerant of human presence. The plateau was bounded to the west by a five-hundred-foot-high cliff-face, quite vertical in some parts, fractured and fissured in others. Scattered along its length were numerous frozen waterfalls and occasional lines of pine trees, impossibly growing on impossibly narrow ledges, their frozen branches drooped and laden with the frozen snow of six long months gone by. To the east the plateau was bounded by nothing but an abrupt and sharply defined line marking the top of another cliff-face which dropped away perpendicularly into the valleys below.
The plateau itself consisted of a smooth, absolutely level, unbroken expanse of snow, snow which at that height of 2,000 metres and in the brilliant sunshine gave off a glare and dazzling reflection which was positively hurtful to the eyes. In length, it was perhaps half a mile: in width, nowhere more than a hundred yards.
At its southern end, the plateau rose sharply to merge with the cliff-face which here tailed off and ran into the ground.
On this prominence stood two tents, both white, one small, the other a large marquee. Outside the small tent stood two men, talking. The taller and older man, wearing a heavy greatcoat and a pair of smoked glasses, was Colonel Vis, the commandant of a Sarajevo-based brigade of Partisans: the younger, lighter figure was his adjutant, a Captain Vlanovich.
Both men were gazing out over the length of the plateau.
Captain Vlanovich said unhappily: There must be easier ways of doing this, sir.’
‘You name it, Boris, my boy, and I’ll do it.’ Both in appearance and voice Colonel Vis gave the impression of immense calm and competence. ‘Bulldozers, I agree, would help. So would snow-ploughs. But you will agree that to drive either of them up vertical cliff-faces in order to reach here would call for considerable skill on the part of the drivers. Besides, what’s an army for, if not for marching?’ ‘Yes, sir,’ Vlanovich said, dutifully and doubtfully
Both men gazed out over the length of the plateau to the north.
To the north, and beyond, for all around a score of encircling mountain peaks, some dark and jagged and sombre, others rounded and snow-capped and rose-coloured, soared up into the cloudless washed-out pale blue of the sky. It was an immensely impressive sight.
Even more impressive was the spectacle taking place on the plateau itself. A solid phalanx of a thousand uniformed soldiers, perhaps half in the buff grey of the Yugoslav army, the rest in a motley array of other countries’ uniforms, were moving, at a snail-pace, across the virgin snow.
The phalanx was fifty people wide but only twenty deep, each line of fifty linked arm-in-arm, heads and shoulders bowed forward as they laboriously trudged at a painfully slow pace through the snow. That the pace was so slow was no matter for wonder, the leading line of men were ploughing their way through waist-deep snow, and already the signs of strain and exhaustion were showing in their faces. It was killingly hard work, work which, at that altitude, doubled the pulse rate, made a man fight for every gasping breath, turned a man’s legs into leaden and agonized limbs where only the pain could convince him that they were still part of him.
And not only men. After the first five lines of soldiers, there were almost as many women and girls in the remainder of the phalanx as there were men, although everyone was so muffled against the freezing cold and biting winds of those high altitudes that it was impossible almost to tell man from woman. The last two lines of the phalanx were composed entirely of partisankas and it was significantly ominous of the murderous labour still to come that even they were sinking knee-deep in the snow.
It was a fantastic sight, but a sight that was far from unique in wartime Yugoslavia. The airfields of the lowlands, completely dominated by the armoured divisions of the Wehrmacht, were permanently barred to the Yugoslavs and it was thus that the Partisans constructed many of their airstrips in the mountains. In snow of this depth and in areas completely inaccessible to powered mechanical aids, there was no other way open to them.
Colonel Vis looked away and turned to Captain Vlanovich.
‘Well, Boris, my boy, do you think you’re up here for the winter sports? Get the food and soup kitchens organized. We’ll use up a whole week’s rations of hot food and hot soup in this one day.’
‘Yes, sir.’ Vlanovich cocked his head, then removed his ear-flapped fur cap the better to listen to the newly-begun sound of distant explosions to the north. ‘What on earth is that?’
Vis said amusingly: ‘Sound does carry far in our pure Yugoslavian mountain air, does it not?’
‘Sir? Please?’
‘That, my boy,’ Vis said with considerable satisfaction, ‘is the Messerschmitt fighter base at Novo Derventa getting the biggest plastering of its lifetime.’
‘Sir?’
Vis sighed in long-suffering patience. ‘I’ll make a soldier of you some day. Messerschmitts, Boris, are fighters, carrying all sorts of nasty cannons and machine-guns. What, at this moment, is the finest fighter target in Yugoslavia?’
‘What is -‘ Vlanovich broke off and looked again at the trudging phalanx. ‘Oh!’
‘ “Oh,” indeed. The British Air Force have diverted six of their best Lancaster heavy bomber squadrons from the Italian front just to attend to our friends at Novo Derventa.’ He in turn removed his cap, the better to listen. ‘Hard at work, aren’t they? By the time they’re finished there won’t be a Messerschmitt able to take off from that field for a week. If, that is to say, there are any left to take off.’ ‘If I might venture a remark, sir?’ ‘You may so venture, Captain Vlanovich.’ ‘There are other fighter bases.’
True.’ Vis pointed upwards. ‘See anything?’ Vlanovich craned his neck, shielded his eyes against the brilliant sun, gazed into the empty blue sky and shook his head.
‘Neither do I,’ Vis agreed. ‘But at seven thousand metres – and with their crews even colder than we are – squadrons of Beaufighters will be keeping relief patrol up there until dark,’
‘Who – who is he, sir? Who can ask for all our soldiers down here, for squadrons of bombers and fighters?’
‘Fellow called Captain Mallory, I believe.’
‘A captain*. Like me?’
‘A captain. I doubt, Boris,’ Vis went on kindly, ‘whether he’s quite like you. But it’s not the rank that counts. It’s the name. Mallory.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘You will, my boy, you will.’
‘But – but this man Mallory. What does he want all this foil’
‘Ask him when you see him tonight.’
‘When I – he’s coming here tonight?’
Tonight. If,’ Vis added sombrely, ‘he lives that long.’
Neufeld, followed by Droshny, walked briskly and confidently into his radio hut, a bleak, ramshackle lean-to furnished with a table, two chairs, a large portable transceiver and nothing else. The German corporal seated before the radio looked up enquiringly at their entrance.
The Seventh Armoured Corps HQ at the Neretva bridge,’ Neufeld ordered. He seemed in excellent spirits. ‘I wish to speak to General Zimmermann personally.’
The corporal nodded acknowledgement, put through the call-sign and was answered within seconds. He listened briefly, looked up at Neufeld. The General coming now, sir.’
Neufeld reached out a hand for the ear-phones took em and nodded towards the door. The corporal rose and left the hut while Neufeld took the vacated seat and adjusted the head-phones to his satisfaction. After a few seconds he automatically straightened in his seat a voice came crackling over the ear-phones.
‘Hauptmann Neufeld here, Herr General. The Englishmen have returned. Their information is that the Partisan division in the Zenica Cage is expecting a full-scale attack from the south across the Neretva bridge.’
‘Are they now?’ General Zimmermann, comfortably seated in a swivel chair in the back of the radio truck parked on the tree-line due south of the Neretva bridge made no attempt to conceal the satisfaction in ms voice. The canvas hood of the truck was rolled back and he removed his peaked cap the better to enjoy the pale spring sunshine. ‘Interesting, very interesting Anything else?’