Back propped against the wall, he was just drifting off to sleep, still smoking that first cigarette, when there was a gust of wind, a sudden chilling flurry of snow and Brown was inside the cave, wearily slipping the transmitter straps from his shoulders. Lugubrious as ever, his tired eyes lit up momentarily at the sight of the fire. Blue-faced and shuddering with cold–no joke, Mallory thought grimly, squatting motionless for half an hour on that bleak and frozen hillside–he hunched down silently by the fire, dragged out the inevitable cigarette and gazed moodily into the flames, oblivious alike of the clouds of steam that almost immediately enveloped him, of the acrid smell of his singeing clothes. He looked utterly despondent. Mallory reached for a bottle, poured out some of the heated retsimo–mainland wine heavily reinforced with resin–and passed it across to Brown.
“Chuck it straight down the hatch,” Mallory advised. “That way you won’t taste it.” He prodded the transmitter with his foot and looked up at Brown again. “No dice this time either?”
“Raised them no bother, sir.” Brown grimaced at the sticky sweetness of the wine. “Reception was first class–both here and in Cairo.”
“You got through!” Mallory sat up, leaned forward eagerly. “And were they pleased to hear from their wandering boys to-night?”
“They didn’t say. The first thing they told me was to shut up and stay that way.” Brown poked moodily at the fire with a steaming boot. “Don’t ask me how, sir, but they’ve been tipped off that enough equipment for two or three small monitoring stations has been sent here in the past fortnight.”
Mallory swore.
“Monitoring stations! That’s damned handy, that is!” He thought briefly of the fugitive, nomad existence these same monitoring stations had compelled Andrea and himself to lead in the White Mountains of Crete. “Dammit, Casey, on an island like this, the size of a soup plate, they can pin-point us with their eyes shut!”
“Aye, they can that, sir,” Brown nodded heavily.
“Have you heard anything of these stations, Louki?’ Mallory asked.
“Nothing, Major; nothing.” Louki shrugged. “I am afraid I do not even know what you are talking about.”
“I don’t suppose so. Not that it matters–it’s too late now. Let’s have the rest of the good news, Casey.”
“That’s about it, sir. No sending for me–by order. Restricted to code abbreviations–affirmative, negative, repetitive, wilco and such-like. Continuous sending only in emergency or when concealment’s impossible anyway.”
“Like from the condemned cell in these ducky little dungeons in Navarone,” Mallory murmured. “I died with my boots on, ma.”
“With all respects, sir, that’s not funny,” Brown said morosely. “Their invasion fleet–mainly caiques and Eboats–sailed this morning from the Piraeus,” he went on. “About four o’clock this morning. Cairo expects they’ll be holing up in the Cyclades somewhere tonight.”
“That’s very clever of Cairo. Where the hell else could they hole up?” Mallory lit a fresh cigarette and looked bleakly into the fire. “Anyway, it’s nice to know they’re on the way. That the lot, Casey?”
Brown nodded silently.
“Good enough, then. Thanks a lot for going out. Better turn in, catch up with some sleep while you can. . . . Louki reckons we should be down in Margaritha before dawn, hole up there for the day–he’s got some sort of abandoned well all lined up for us–and push on to the town of Navarone tomorrow night.”
“My God!” Brown moaned. “To-night a leaking cave. To-morrow night an abandoned well–half-full of water, probably. Where are we staying in Navarone, sir. The crypt in the local cemetery?”
“A singularly apt lodging, the way things are going,” Mallory said dryly. “We’ll hope for the best. We’re leaving before five.” He watched Brown lie down beside Stevens and transferred his attention to Louki. The little man was seated on a box on the opposite side of the fire, occasionally turning a heavy stone to be wrapped in cloth and put to Stevens’s numbed feet, and blissfully hugging the flames. By and by he became aware of Mallory’s close scrutiny and looked up.
“You look worried, Major.” Louki seemed vexed. “You look–what is the word?–concerned. You do not like my plan, no? I thought we had agreed–”
“I’m not worried about your plan,” Mallory said frankly. “I’m not even worried about you. It’s that box you’re sitting on. Enough H.E. in it to blow up a battleship–and you’re only three feet from that fire. It’s not just too healthy, Louki.”
Louki shifted uneasily on his seat, tugged at one end of his moustache.
“I have heard that you can throw this T.N.T. into- a fire and that it just burns up nicely, like a pine full of sap.”
“True enough,” Mallory acquiesced. “You can also bend it, break it, file it, saw it, jump on it and hit it with a sledgehammer, and all you’ll get is the benefit of the exercise. But if it starts to sweat in a hot, humid atmosphere–and then the exudation crystallises. Oh, brother! And it’s getting far too hot and sticky in this hole.”
“Outside with it!” Louki was on his feet, backing farther into the cave. “Outside with it!” He hesitated. “Unless the snow, the moisture–”
“You can also leave it immersed in salt water for ten years’ without doing it any harm,” Mallory interrupted didactically. “But there are some primers there that might come to grief–not to mention that box of detonators beside Andrea. We’ll just stick the lot outside, under a cape.”
“Pouf! Louki has a far better idea!” The little man was already slipping into his cloak. “Old Leri’s hut! The very place! Exactly! We can pick it up, there whenever we want–and if you have to leave here in a hurry you do not have to worry about it.” Before Mallory could protest, Louki had bent over the box, lifted it with an effort, half-walked, half-staggered round the fire, making for the screen. He had hardly taken three steps when Andrea was by his side, had relieved him firmly of the box and tucked it under one arm.
“If you will permit me–”
“No, no!” Louki was affronted. “I can manage easily. It is nothing.”
“I know, I know,” Andrea said pacifically. “But these explosives–they must be carried a certain way. I have been trained,” he explained.
“So? I did not realise. Of course it must be as you say! I, then, will bring the detonators.” Honour satisfied, Louki thankfully gave up the argument, lifted the little box and scuffled out of the cave close on Andrea’s heels.
Mallory looked at his watch. One o’clock exactly. Miller and Panayis should be back soon, he thought. The wind had passed its peak and the snow was almost gone: the going would be all that easier, but there would be tracks in the snow. Awkward, these tracks, but not fatal–they themselves would be gone before light, cutting straight downhill for the foot of the valley. The snow wouldn’t lie there–and even if there were patches they could take to the stream that wound through the valley, leaving no trace behind.
The fire was sinking and the cold creeping in on them again. Mallory shivered in his still wet clothes, threw some more wood on the fire, watched it blaze up, and flood the cave with light. Brown, huddled on a groundsheet, was already asleep. Stevens, his back to him, was lying motionless, his breathing short and quick. God only knew how long the boy would stay alive: he was dying, Miller said, but “dying” was a very indefinite term: when a man, a terribly injured, dying man, made up his mind not to die he became the toughest, most enduring creature on earth. Mallory had seen it happen before. But maybe Stevens didn’t want to live. To live, to overcome these desperate injuries–that would be to prove himself to himself, and to others, and he was young enough, and sensitive enough and had been hurt and had suffered so much in the past that that could easily be the most important thing in the world to him: on the other hand, he knew what an appalling handicap he had become–he had heard Mallory say so; he knew, too, that Mallory’s primary concern was not for his welfare but the fear that he would be captured, crack under pressure and tell everything–he bad heard Mallory say so; and he knew that he had failed his Mends. It was all very difficult, impossible to say how the balance of contending forces would work out eventually. Mallory shook his head, sighed, lit a fresh cigarette and moved closer to the fire.
Andrea and Louki returned less than five minutes later, and Miller and Panayis were almost at their heels. They could hear Miller coming some distance away, slipping, falling and swearing almost continuously as he struggled up the gully under a large and awkward load. He practically fell across the threshold of the cave and collapsed wearily by the fire. He gave the impression of a man who had been through a very great deal indeed. Mallory grinned sympathetically at him.