“That’s right. We were burning juniper.”
“Sure we were. But he said he smelt it on Kostos– and the wind was blowin’ off Kostos all day long.”
“My God!” Mallory whispered. “Of course, of course! And I missed it completely.”
“But Jerry knew we were there. How? Waal, he ain’t got second sight no more than I have. So he was tipped off–he was tipped off by the boy-friend here. Remember I said he’d talked to some of his pals in Margaritha when we went down there for the supplies?” Miller spat in disgust. “Fooled me all along the line. Pals? I didn’t know how right I was. Sure they were his pals–his German pals! And that food he said he got from the commandant’s kitchen–he got it from the kitchen all right. Almost certainly he goes in and asks for it–and old Skoda hands him his own suitcase to stow it in.”
“But the German he killed on the way back to the village? Surely to God–”
“Panayis killed him.” There was a tired certainty in Miller’s voice. “What’s another corpse to Sunshine here. Probably stumbled on the poor bastard in the dark and had to kill him. Local colour. Louki was there, remember, and he couldn’t have Louki gettin’ suspicious. He would have blamed it on Louki anyway. The guy ain’t human. . . . And remember when he was flung into Skoda’s room in Margaritha along with Louki, blood pourin’ from a wound in his head?”
Mallory nodded.
“High-grade ketchup. Probably also from the commandant’s kitchen,” Miller said bitterly. “If Skoda had failed by every other means, there would still have been the boy-friend here as a stool-pigeon. Why he never asked Louki where the explosives were I don’t know.”
“Obviously he didn’t know Louki knew.”
“Mebbe. But one thing the bastard did know–how to use a mirror. Musta heliographed the garrison from the carob grove and given our position. No other way, boss. Then sometime this morning he must have got hold of my rucksack, whipped out all the slow fuse and fixed the clock fuse and detonators. He should have had his hands blown off tamperin’ with them fulminates. Lord only knows where he learnt to handle the damn’ things.”
“Crete,” Mallory said positively. “The Germans would see to that. A spy who can’t also double as a saboteur is no good to them.”
“And he was very good to them,” Miller said softly. “Very, very good. They’re gonna miss their little pal. Iscariot here was a very smart baby indeed.”
“He was. Except to-night. He should have been smart enough to know that at least one of us would be suspicious–”
“He probably was,” Miller interrupted. “But he was misinformed. I think Louki’s unhurt. I think Junior here talked Louki into letting him stay in his place–Louki was always a bit scared of him–then he strolled across to his pals at the gate, told ’em to send a strong-arm squad out to Vygos to pick up the others, asked them to fire a few shots–he was very strong on local colour, was our loyal little pal–then strolls back across the square, hoists himself up on the roof and waits to tip off his pals as soon as we came in the back door. But Louki forgot to tell him just one thing–that we were goin’ to rendezvous on the roof of the house, not inside. So the boy-friend here lurks away for all he’s worth up top, waiting to signal his Mends. Ten to one that he’s got a torch in his pocket.”
Mallory picked up Panayis’s coat and examined it briefly. “He has.”
“That’s it, then.” Miller lit another cigarette, watched the match burn down slowly to his fingers, then looked up at Panayis. “How does it feel to know that you’re goin’ to die, Panayis, to feel like all them poor bastards who’ve felt just as you’re feeling now, just before they died–all the men in Crete, all the guys in the sea-borne and air landings on Navarone who died because they thought you were on their side? How does it feel, Panayis?”
Panayis said nothing. His left hand clutching his torn right arm, trying to stem the blood, he stood there motionless, the dark, evil face masked in hate, the lips still drawn back in that less than human snarl. There was no fear in him, none at all, and Mallory tensed himself for the last, despairing attempt for life that Panayis must surely make, and then he had looked at Miller and knew there would be no attempt, because there was a strange sureness and inevitabifity about the American, an utter immobility of hand and eye that somehow precluded even the thought, far less the possibility of escape.
“The prisoner has nothin’ to say.” Miller sounded very tired. “I suppose I should say somethin’. I suppose I should give out with a long spiel about me bein’ the judge, the jury and the executioner, but I don’t think I’ll bother myself. Dead men make poor witnesses. . . . Mebbe it’s not your fault, Panayis, mebbe there’s an awful good reason why you came to be what you are. Gawd only knows. I don’t, and I don’t much care. There are too many dead men. I’m goin’ to kill you, Panayis, and I’m goin’ to kill you now.” Miller dropped his cigarette, ground it into the floor of the hut. “Nothin’ at all to say?”
And he had nothing at all to say, the hate, the malignity of the black eyes said it all for him and Miller nodded, just once, as if in secret understanding. Carefully, accurately, he shot Panayis through the heart, twice, blew out the candles, turned his back and was half-way towards the door before the man had crashed to the ground.
“I am afraid I cannot do it, Andrea.” Louki sat back wearily, shook his head in despair. “I am very sorry, Andrea. The knots are too tight.”
“No matter.” Andrea rolled over from his side to a sitting position, tried to ease his tightly-bound legs and wrists. “They are cunning, these Germans, and wet cords can only be cut.” Characteristically, he made no mention of the fact that only a couple of minutes previously he had twisted round to reach the cords on Louki’s wrist and undone them with half a dozen tugs of his steel-trap fingers. “We will think of something else.”
He looked away from Louki, glanced across the room in the faint light of the smoking oil-lamp that stood by the grille door, a light so yellow, so dim that Casey Brown, trussed like a barnyard fowl and loosely secured, like himself, by a length of rope to the iron hooks suspended from the roof, was no more than a shapeless blur in the opposite corner of the stone-flagged room. Andrea smiled to himself, without mirth. Taken prisoner again, and for the second time that day–and with the same ease and surprise that gave no chance at all of resistance: Completely unsuspecting, they had been captured in an upper room, seconds after Casey had finished talking to Cairo. The patrol had known exactly where to find them–and with their leader’s assurance that it was all over, with his gloating explanation of the part Panayis had played, the unexpectedness, the success of the coup was all too easy to understand. And it was difficult not to believe his assurance that neither Mallory nor Miller had a chance. But the thought of ultimate defeat never occurred to Andrea.
His gaze left Casey Brown, wandered round the room, took in what he could see of the stone walls and floor, the hooks, the ventilation ducts, the heavy grille door. A dungeon, a torture dungeon, one would have thought, but Andrea had seen such places before. A castle, they called this place, but it was really only an old keep, no more than a manor house built round the crenelated towers. And the long-dead Franldsh nobles who had built these keeps had lived well. No dungeon this, Andrea knew, but simply the larder where they had hung their meat and game, and done without windows and light for the sake of . . .
The light! Andrea twisted round, looked at the smoking oil lamp, his eyes narrowing.
“Louki!” he called softly. The little Greek turned round to look at him.
“Can you reach the lamp?”
“I think so. . . . Yes, I can.”
“Take the glass off,” Andrea whispered. “Use a cloth–it will be hot. Then wrap it in the cloth, hit it on the floor–gently. The glass is thick–you can cut me loose in a minute or two.”
Louki stared at him for an uncomprehending moment, then nodded in understanding. He shuffled across the floor–his legs were still bound–reached out, then halted his hand abruptly, only inches from the glass. The peremptory, metallic clang had been only feet away, and he raised his head slowly to see what had caused it.