‘Yes,’ Neufeld’s voice crackled metallically over the loudspeaker. ‘They’ve asked to be flown to sanctuary deep behind our lines, even to Germany. They feel – unsafe here.’
‘Well, well, well. Is that how they feel.’ Zimmermann paused, considered, then continued. ‘You are fully informed of the situation, Hauptmann Neufeld? You are aware of the delicate balance of – um-niceties involved?’
‘Yes, Herr General.’
This calls for a moment’s thought. Wait.’ Zimmermann swung idly to and fro in his swivel chair as he pondered his decision. He gazed thoughtfully but almost unseeingly to the north, across the meadows bordering the south bank of the Neretva, the river spanned by the iron bridge, then the meadows on the far side rising steeply to the rocky redoubt which served as the first line of defence for Colonel Lazlo’s Partisan defenders. To the east, as he turned, he could look up the green-white rushing waters of the Neretva, the meadows on either side of it narrowing until, curving north, they disappeared suddenly at the mouth of the cliff-sided gorge from which the Neretva emerged. Another quarter turn and he was gazing into the pine forest to the south, a pine forest which at first seemed innocuous enough and empty of life – until, that was, one’s eyes became accustomed to the gloom and scores of large rectangular shapes, effectively screened from both observation from the air and from the northern bank of the Neretva by camouflage canvas, camouflage nets and huge piles of dead branches. The sight of those camouflaged spearheads of his two Panzer divisions somehow helped Zimmermann to make up his mind. He picked up the microphone.
‘Hauptmann Neufeld? I have decided on a course of action and you will please carry out the following instructions precisely …’
Droshny removed the duplicate pair of ear-phones that he had been wearing and said doubtfully to Neufeld: ‘Isn’t the General asking rather a lot of us?’
Neufeld shook his head reassuringly. ‘General Zimmermann always knows what he is doing. His psychological assessment of the Captain Mallorys of this world is invariably a hundred per cent right.’
‘I hope so.’ Droshny was unconvinced. ‘For our sakes, I hope so.’
They left the hut. Neufeld said to the radio operator: ‘Captain Mallory in my office, please. And Sergeant Baer.’
Mallory arrived in the office to find Neufeld, Nroshny and Baer already there. Neufeld was brief and businesslike.
‘We’ve decided on a ski-plane to fly you out – They’re the only planes that can land in those damned mountains. You’ll have time for a few hours’ sleep – we don’t leave till four. Any questions?’
‘Where’s the landing-strip?’
‘A clearing. A kilometre from here. Anything else?’
‘Nothing. Just get us out of here that’s all.’
‘You need have no worry on that score,’ Neufeld laid emphatically. ‘My one ambition is to see you safely on your way. Frankly, Mallory, you’re just an embarrassment to me and the sooner you’re on your way the better.’
Mallory nodded and left. Neufeld turned to Baer and said: ‘I have a little task for you, Sergeant Baer. Little but very important. Listen carefully.’
Mallory left Neufeld’s hut, his face pensive, and walked slowly across the compound. As he approached the guest hut, Andrea emerged and passed wordlessly by, wreathed in cigar smoke and scowling. Mallory entered the hut where Petar was again playing the Yugoslavian version of ‘The girl I left behind me’. It seemed to be his favourite song. Mallory glanced at Maria, Reynolds and Groves, all sitting silently by, then at Miller who was reclining in his sleeping-bag with his volume of poetry.
Mallory nodded towards the doorway. ‘Something’s upset our friend.’
Miller grinned and nodded in turn towards Petar. ‘He’s playing Andrea’s tune again,’
Mallory smiled briefly and turned to Maria. Tell him to stop playing. We’re pulling out late this afternoon and we all need all the sleep we can get.’
‘We can sleep in the plane,’ Reynolds said sullenly. ‘We can sleep when we arrive at our destination – wherever that may be.’
‘No, sleep now.’
‘Why now?’
‘Why now?’ Mallory’s unfocused eyes gazed into the far distance. He said in a quiet voice: ‘For now is all the time there may be.’
Reynolds looked at him strangely. For the first time that day his face was empty of hostility and suspicion. There was puzzled speculation in his eyes, and wonder and the first faint beginnings of understanding.
On the Ivenici plateau, the phalanx moved on, but they moved no more like human beings. They stumbled along now in the advanced stages of exhaustion, automatons, no more, zombies resurrected from the dead, their faces twisted with pain and unimaginable fatigue, their limbs on fire and their minds benumbed. Every few seconds someone stumbled and fell and could not get up again and had to be carried to join scores of others already lying in an almost comatose condition by the side of the primitive runway, where partisankas did their best to revive their frozen and exhausted bodies with mugs of hot soup and liberal doses of raki.
Captain Vlanovich turned to Colonel Vis. His face was distressed, his voice low and deeply earnest.
‘This is madness, Colonel, madness! It’s – it’s impossible, you can see it’s impossible. We’ll never – look, sir, two hundred and fifty dropped out in the first two hours. The altitude, the cold, sheer physical exhaustion. It’s madness.’
‘All war is madness,’ Vis said calmly. ‘Get on the radio. We require five hundred more men.’
CHAPTER EIGHT
Friday 1500-2115
Now it had come, Mallory knew. He looked at Andrea and Miller and Reynolds and Groves and knew that they knew it too. In their faces he could see very clearly reflected what lay at the very surface of his own mind, the explosive tension, the hair-trigger alertness straining to be translated into equally explosive action. Always it came, this moment of truth that stripped men bare and showed them for what they were. He wondered how Reynolds and Groves would be: he suspected they might acquit themselves well. It never occurred to him to wonder about Miller and Andrea, for he knew them too well: Miller, when all seemed I lost, was a man above himself, while the normally easy-going, almost lethargic Andrea was transformed into an unrecognizable human being, an impossible combination of an icily calculating mind and berserker fighting machine entirely without the remotest parallel in Mallory’s knowledge or experience. When Mallory spoke his voice was as calmly impersonal as ever.
‘We’re due to leave at four. It’s now three. With any luck we’ll catch them napping. Is everything clear?’
Reynolds said wonderingly, almost unbelievingly: ‘You mean if anything goes wrong we’re to shoot our way out?’
‘You’re to shoot and shoot to kill. That, Sergeant, is an order.’
‘Honest to God,’ Reynolds said, ‘I just don’t know what’s going on.’ The expression on his face clearly indicated that he had given up all attempts to understand what was going on.
Mallory and Andrea left the hut and walked casually across the compound towards Neufeld’s hut. Mallory said: ‘They’re on to us, you know.’
‘I know. Where are Petar and Maria?’
‘Asleep, perhaps? They left the hut a couple of hours ago. We’ll collect them later.’
‘Later may be too late … They are in great peril my Keith.’
‘What can a man do, Andrea? I’ve thought of nothing else in the past ten hours. It’s a crucifying risk to have to take, but I have to take it. They are expendable Andrea. You know what it would mean if I showed my hand now.’
‘I know what it would mean,’ Andrea said heavily ‘The end of everything.’
They entered Neufeld’s hut without benefit of knocking. Neufeld, sitting behind his desk with Droshny by his side, looked up in irritated surprise and glanced at his watch.
He said curtly: ‘Four o’clock, I said, not three.’
‘Our mistake,’ Mallory apologized. He closed tin door. ‘Please do not be foolish.’
Neufeld and Droshny were not foolish, few people would have been while staring down the muzzles of two Lugers with perforated silencers screwed to tin end: they just sat there, immobile, the shock slowly draining from their faces. There was a long pause then Neufeld spoke, the words coming almost haltingly.
‘I have been seriously guilty of underestimating -‘Be quiet. Broznik’s spies have discovered the whereabouts of the four captured Allied agents. We know roughly where they are. You know precisely where are. You will take us there. Now.
‘You’re mad,’ Neufeld said with conviction.
‘We don’t require you to tell us that.’ Andrea walked round behind Neufeld and Droshny, removed their pistols from their holsters, ejected the shells and replaced pistols. He then crossed to a corner of the hut, opened up two Schmeisser machine-pistols, emptied them, walked back round to the front of the table placed the Schmeissers on its top, one in front Neufeld, one in front of Droshny.
‘There you are, gentlemen,’ Andrea said affably, armed to the teeth.’ Droshny said viciously: ‘Suppose we decide not I come with you?’