Maria said softly: ‘You are kind to worry, Sergeant Groves. But we don’t want to go. We want to stay here.’
‘And what in hell’s name good can you do by lying here?’ Groves asked roughly. He paused, then it on, almost kindly: ‘I know who you are now, Maria. I know what you’ve done, how good you are at your own job. But this is not your job. Please.’
‘No.’ She shook her head. ‘And I can fire a gun.’
‘You haven’t got one to fire. And Petar here, what right have you to speak for him. Does he know where he is?’
Maria spoke rapidly to her brother in incomprehensible Serbo-Croat: he responded by making his customary odd sounds in his throat. When he had finished, Maria turned to Groves.
‘He says he knows he is going to die tonight, has what you people call the second sight and he says there is no future beyond tonight. He says he is tired of running. He says he will wait here till the time comes.’
‘Of all the stubborn, thick-headed -‘ ‘Please, Sergeant Groves.’ The voice, though still low, was touched by a new note of asperity. ‘His mind is made up, and you can never change it.’
Groves nodded in acceptance. He said: ‘Perhaps I can change yours.’
‘I do not understand.’
‘Petar cannot help us anyway, no blind man could but you can. If you would.’ ‘Tell me.’
‘Andrea is holding off a mixed force of at least twenty Cetniks and German troops.’ Groves smiled wryly. ‘I have recent reason to believe that Andrea probably has no equal anywhere as a guerilla fighter, but one man cannot hold off twenty for ever. When he goes, then there is only Reynolds left to guard the bridge – and if he goes, then Droshny and his men will be through in time to warn the guards, almost certainly in time to save the dam, certainly in time to send a radio message through to General Zimmermann to pull his tanks back on to high ground. I think, Maria, that Reynolds may require your help. Certainly, you can be of no help here – but if you stand by Andrea you could make all the difference between success and failure. And you did say you can fire a gun.’
‘And as you pointed out, I haven’t got a gun.’ ‘
That was then. You have now.’ Grove unslung his Schmeisser and handed it to her along with some span ammunition.
‘But – ‘ Maria accepted gun and ammunition reluctantly. ‘But now you haven’t a gun.’ ‘Oh yes I have.’ Groves produced his silenced Luger from his tunic. ‘This is all I want tonight. I can’t afford make any noise tonight, not so close to the dam as this’
‘But I can’t leave my brother.’
‘Oh, I think you can. In fact, you’re going to. None on earth can help your brother any more, now. Please hurry.’
Very well.’ She moved off a few reluctant paces, and, turned and said: ‘I suppose you think you’re clever, Sergeant Groves?’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about,’ Groves said woodenly. She looked at him steadily for a few moments, then turned and made her way down-river, Groves smiled to himself in the near-darkness. The smile vanished in the instant of time that it took for the gorge to be suddenly flooded with bright moonlight as a black, sharply-edged cloud moved away from the face of the moon. Groves called softly, urgently to Maria: ‘Face down on the rocks and keep still,’ saw at once do what he ordered, then looked up the en ladder, his face registering the strain and anxiety his mind.
About three-quarters of the way up the ladder, Mallory and Miller, bathed in the brilliant moonlight, clung to the top of one of the angled sections immobile as if they had been carved from the rock self. Their unmoving eyes, set in equally unmoving faces, were obviously fixed on – or transfixed by – the same point in space.
That point was a scant fifty feet away, above and their left, where two obviously jumpy guards were leaning anxiously over the parapet at the top of the dam: they were gazing into the middle distance, down the gorge, towards the location of what seemed to be the sound of firing. They had only to move their eyes downwards and discovery for Groves and Maria was certain: they had only to shift their gaze to the left and discovery for Mallory and Miller would have been equally certain. And death for all inevitable
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Saturday 0120-0135
Like Mallory and Miller, Groves, too, had caught sight of the two German sentries leaning out over the parapet the top of the dam and staring anxiously down gorge. As a situation for conveying a feeling of complete nakedness, exposure and vulnerability, it would, Groves felt, take a lot of beating. And if he felt like that, how must Mallory and Miller, clinging to the ladder and less than a stone’s throw from the guards, be feeling? Both men, Groves knew, carried silenced Lugers, but their Lugers were inside their lies and their tunics encased in their zipped-up frogmen’s suits, making them quite inaccessible. At least, making them quite inaccessible without, cling-as they were to the ladder, performing a variety of contortionist movements to get at them – and it was certain that the least untoward movement would have been immediately spotted by the two guards. How it was that they hadn’t already been seen, even without movement, was incomprehensible to Groves: in that bright moonlight, which cast as much light on the dam and in the gorge as one would have expected on any reasonably dull afternoon, any normal peripheral vision should have picked them all up immediately, and it was unlikely that any front-line troops of the Wehrmacht had less than standard peripheral vision, Groves could only conclude that the intentness of the guards’ gaze did not necessarily mean that they were looking intently: it could have been that all their being was at that moment concentrated on their hearing, straining to locate the source of the desultory machine pistol fire down the gorge. With infinite caution Groves eased his Luger from his tunic and lined it up. At that distance, even allowing for the high muzzle-velocity of the gun, he reckoned his chances of getting either of the guards to be so remote as to be hardly worth considering: but at least, as a gesture, it was better than nothing.
Groves was right on two counts. The two sentries on the parapet, far from being reassured by General Zimmermann’s encouraging reassurance, were in fact concentrating all their being on listening to the down-river bursts of machine-pistol fire, which were becoming all the more noticeable, not only because they seemed – as they were – to be coming closer, but also because the ammunition of the Partisan defenders of the Zenica Gap was running low and their fire was becoming more sporadic. Groves had been right, too, about the fact that neither Mallory nor Miller had made any attempt to get at their Lugers. For the first few seconds, Mallory, like Groves, had felt sure that any such move would be bound to attract immediate attention, but, almost at once and long before the idea had occurred to Groves, Mallory had realized that the men were in such a trance-like state of listening thai a hand could almost have passed before their faces without their being aware of it. And now, Mallory was certain, there would be no need to do anything a) all because, from his elevation, he could see something that was quite invisible to Groves from his position at the foot of the dam: another dark band of cloud was almost about to pass across the face of the moon.
Within seconds, a black shadow flitting across the waters of the Neretva dam turned the colour from dark green to the deepest indigo, moved rapidly across the top of the dam wall, blotted out the ladder and the two men clinging to it, then engulfed the gorge in darkness.
Groves sighed in soundless relief and lowered his Luger.
Maria rose and made her way down-river towards the bridge. Petar moved his unseeing gaze around in the sightless manner of the blind. And, up above, Mallory and Miller at once began to climb again. Mallory now abandoned the ladder at the top of one of its zigs and struck vertically up the cliff-face. The cliff-face, providentially, was not completely smooth, It such hand and footholds as it afforded were few and awkwardly situated, making for a climb that was as arduous as it was technically difficult: normally, he been using the hammer and pitons that were stuck in his belt, Mallory would have regarded it as a climb of no more than moderate difficulty: but the use of pitons was quite out of the question. Mallory was directly opposite the top of the dam wall and no more than 35 feet from the nearest guard: one tiny chink of hammer on metal could not fail to register on the hearing of the most inattentive listener: and, as Mallory had It observed, inattentive listening was the last accusation that could have been levelled against the sentries on the dam. So Mallory had to content himself with the use of his natural talents and the vast experience gathered over many years of rock-climbing and continue the climb as he was doing, sweating profusely inside the hermetic rubber suit, while Miller, now some forty feet below, peered upwards with such tense anxiety on face that he was momentarily oblivious of his own precarious perch on top of one of the slanted ladders, a predicament which would normally have sent him into a case of mild hysterics.