Suddenly he caught sight of the number of ponies tethered outside the block-house. Seven. Exactly the right number. He ran across to the embrasure outside the cell window and shouted: ‘Our ponies are tethered two hundred yards uphill just inside the pines. Don’t forget.’ Then he ran quickly back and ordered the others to mount. Reynolds looked at him in astonishment.
‘You think of this, sir? At such a time?’
‘I’d think of this at any time.’ Mallory turned to Petar, who had just awkwardly mounted his horse, then turned to Maria. ‘Tell him to take off his glasses.’
Maria looked at him in surprise, nodded in apparent understanding and spoke to her brother, who looked at her uncomprehendingly, then ducked his head obediently, removed his dark glasses and thrust them deep inside his tunic. Reynolds looked on in astonishment, then turned to Mallory.
‘I don’t understand, sir.’
Mallory wheeled his pony and said curtly: ‘It’s not necessary that you do.’
‘I’m sorry, sir.’
Mallory turned his pony again and said, almost wearily: ‘It’s already eleven o’clock, boy, and almost already too late for what we have to do.’
‘Sir.’ Reynolds was deeply if obscurely pleased that Mallory should call him boy. ‘I don’t really want to know, sir.’
‘You’ve asked. We’ll have to go as quickly as our ponies can take us. A blind man can’t see obstructions, can’t balance himself according to the level of the terrain, can’t anticipate in advance how he should brace himself for an unexpectedly sharp drop, can’t lean in the saddle for a corner his pony knows is coming. A blind man, in short, is a hundred times more liable to fall off in a downhill gallop than we are. It’s enough that a blind man should be blind for life. It’s too much that we should expose him to the risk of a heavy fall with his glasses on, expose him to the risk of not only being blind but of having his eyes gouged out and being in agony for life.’
‘I hadn’t thought – I mean – I’m sorry, sir.’
‘Stop apologizing, boy. It’s really my turn, you know – to apologize to you. Keep an eye on him, will you?’
Colonel Lazlo, binoculars to his eyes, gazed down over the moonlit rocky slope below him towards the bridge at Neretva. On the southern bank of the river, in the meadows between the south bank and the beginning of the pine forest beyond, and, as far as Lazlo could ascertain, in the fringes of the pine forest itself, there was ;ú disconcertingly ominous lack of movement, of any sign of life at all. Lazlo was pondering the disturbingly sinister significance of this unnatural peacefulness when a hand touched his shoulder. He twisted, looked up and recognized the figure of Major Stephan, commander of the Western Gap.
‘Welcome, welcome. The General has advised me of your arrival. Your battalion with you?’ ‘What’s left of it.’ Stephan smiled without really smiling. ‘Every man who could walk. And all those who couldn’t.’
‘God send we don’t need them all tonight. The General has spoken to you of this man Mallory?’ Major Stephen nodded, and Lazlo went on: ‘If he fails? If the Germans cross the Neretva tonight -‘
‘So?’ Stephan shrugged. ‘We were all due to die tonight anyway.’
‘A well-taken point,’ Lazlo said approvingly. He lifted his binoculars and returned to his contemplation the bridge at Neretva.
So far, and almost incredibly, neither Mallory nor any of the six galloping behind him had parted company with their ponies. Not even Petar. True, the incline of the slope was not nearly as steep as it had been im the Ivenici plateau down to the block-house, It Reynolds suspected it was because Mallory had imperceptibly succeeded in slowing down the pace of their earlier headlong gallop. Perhaps, Reynolds – thought vaguely, it was because Mallory was subconsciously trying to protect the blind singer, who was riding almost abreast with him, guitar firmly strapped over his shoulder, reins abandoned and both hands clasped desperately to the pommel of his saddle, unbidden, almost, Reynolds’s thoughts strayed back that scene inside the block-house. Moments later, was urging his pony forwards until he had drawn alongside Mallory.
‘Sir?’
‘What is it?’ Mallory sounded irritable.
‘A word, sir. It’s urgent. Really it is.’
Mallory threw up a hand and brought the company to a halt. He said curtly: ‘Be quick.’
‘Neufeld and Droshny, sir.’ Reynolds paused in a moment’s brief uncertainty, then continued. ‘Do you reckon they know where you’re going?’
‘What’s that to do with anything?’
‘Please.’
‘Yes, they do. Unless they’re complete morons. And they’re not.’
‘It’s a pity, sir,’ Reynolds said reflectively, ‘that you hadn’t shot them after all.’
‘Get to the point,’ Mallory said impatiently.
‘Yes, sir. You reckoned Sergeant Baer released them earlier on?’
‘Of course.’ Mallory was exercising all his restraint ‘Andrea saw them arrive. I’ve explained all this. They – Neufeld and Droshny – had to go up to the Ivenici plateau to check that we’d really gone.’
‘I understand that, sir. So you knew that Baer was following us. How did he get into the block-house?’
Mallory’s restraint vanished. He said in exasperation: ‘Because I left both keys hanging outside.’
‘Yes, sir. You were expecting him. But Sergeant Baer didn’t know you were expecting him – and even if he did he wouldn’t be expecting to find keys so conveniently to hand.’
‘Good God in heaven! Duplicates!’ In bitter chagrin, Mallory smacked the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. ‘Imbecile! Imbecile! Of course he would have his own keys.’
‘And Droshny,’ Miller said thoughtfully, ‘may know a short cut.’
‘That’s not all of it.’ Mallory was completely back on balance again, outwardly composed, the relaxed calmness of the face the complete antithesis of his racing mind. ‘Worse still, he may make straight for his camp radio and warn Zimmermann to pull his armoured divisions back from the Neretva. You’ve earned your passage tonight, Reynolds. Thanks, boy How far to Neufeld’s camp, do you think, Andrea?’
‘A mile.’ The words came over Andrea’s shoulder, for Andrea, as always in situations which he knew called for the exercise of his highly specialized talents, was already on his way.
Five minutes later they were crouched at the edge j the forest less than twenty yards from the perimeter . Neufeld’s camp. Quite a number of the huts had illuminated windows, music could be heard coming am the dining hut and several Cetnik soldiers were moving about in the compound. Reynolds whispered to Mallory: ‘How do we go about it, sir?’
‘We don’t do anything at all. We just leave it to Andrea.’
Groves spoke, his voice low. ‘One man? Andrea? leave it to one man?’
Mallory sighed. Tell them, Corporal Miller.’
‘I’d rather not. Well, if I have to. The fact is,’ Miller went on kindly, ‘Andrea is rather good at this sort of thing.’
‘So are we,’ Reynolds said. ‘We’re commandos. We’ve been trained for this sort of thing.’
‘And very highly trained, no doubt,’ said Miller approvingly. ‘Another half-dozen years’ experience and a dozen of you might be just about able to cope with him. Although I doubt it very much. Before the night is out, you’ll learn – and I don’t mean to be insulting, Sergeants – that you are little lambs to Andrea’s wolf.’ Miller paused and went on sombrely: ‘Like whoever happens to be inside that radio hut at this moment.’
‘Like whoever happens -‘ Groves twisted round and looked behind him. ‘Andrea? He’s gone. I didn’t see him go.’
‘No one ever does,’ Miller said. ‘And those poor devils won’t ever see him come.’
He looked at Mallory. ‘Time’s a-wasting.’
Mallory glanced at the luminous hands of his watch, Eleven-thirty. Time is a-wasting.’
For almost a minute there was a silence broken only by the restless movements of the ponies tethered deep in the woods behind them, then Groves gave a muffled exclamation as Andrea materialized beside him. Mallory looked up and said: ‘How many?’
Andrea held up two fingers and moved silently into the woods towards his pony. The others rose and followed him, Groves and Reynolds exchanging glances which indicated more clearly than any words could possibly have done that they could have been even more wrong about Andrea than they had ever been about Mallory.
At precisely the moment that Mallory and his companions were remounting their ponies in the woods fringing Neufeld’s camp, a Wellington bomber came sinking down towards a well-lit airfield – the same airfield from which Mallory and his men had taken off less than twenty-four hours previously. Termoli, Italy. It made a perfect touchdown and as it taxied along the runway an army radio truck curved in on an interception course, turning to parallel the last hundred yards of the Wellington’s run down. In the left-hand from seat and in the right-hand back seat of the truck sat two immediately recognizable figures: in the front, the piratical splendidly bearded figure of Captain Jensen, in the back the British lieutenant-general with whom Jensen had recently spent so much time in pacing the Termoli Operations Room.