Storm Force from Navarone. Sam Llewellyn

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СКАЧАТЬ we are,’ said Marcel, cheerfully. “Op out.’

      Boots clattered on the wet cobbles. The etched-glass windows of the café reflected the group of civilians and the three Waffen-SS with heavy packs and Schmeissers; the civilians might have been prisoners. It was a sight to cause twitched-aside curtains to drop over windows - not that there was any visible twitching. The German forces of Occupation in the frontier zone were remarkably acute about twitched curtains.

      Grinning and puffing, Marcel hustled his charges into the café, and shepherded them up through the beaded fringe covering the mouth of a staircase behind the bar. Miller’s nostrils dilated. He said, ‘Coffee. Real coffee.’

      ‘Comes from Spain,’ said Marcel. ‘With the senoritas and the oranges. Particularly the senoritas. Come up, now.’

      Miller went up the stairs. Mallory was behind him. Miller stopped, dead. Mallory’s finger moved to the trigger of his Schmeisser. At the top of the stairs was a large landing overlooking the square. The landing had sofas and chairs. Too many doors opened off it. It smelt of stale scent and unwashed bodies.

      Miller said, ‘It’s a cathouse.’

      Mallory said, ‘So you will feel completely at home.’

      They had been walking most of the night. Mallory was soaking wet and shivering. His hands felt raw, his feet rubbed and blistered inside the jackboots. He wanted to find the objective of the operation, and carry the operation out while there was still an operation to carry out.

      And instead, they were attending a breakfast party in a brothel.

      ‘Village this size?’ said Miller. ‘With a cathouse?’

      It should have meant something. But the smell of the coffee had blunted Mallory’s perceptions. All he knew was that he had to get hold of some, or die.

      It was light outside, cold and grey. But inside on the sideboard there was coffee, and bread, and goat’s cheese, and a thin, fiery brandy for those who wanted it. Mallory drank a cup of coffee. He said to Marcel, ‘You said there was someone here.’

      Marcel nodded. ‘He will be sleeping. Another croissant? I make them my own self.’

      ‘We’ll wake him.’

      Marcel shrugged, and opened one of the doors off the landing.

      The smell of sweat and perfume intensified. It was a bedroom, decorated in dirty pink satin. On the bed was a man in khaki uniform, lying on his back like a crusader on a tomb. Bandages showed through the unbuttoned waistband of his battledress blouse: bandages with rusty stains. On the chair beside the bed was a beret bearing the winged-hatchet badge of the SAS.

      Mallory glanced at the pips on the epaulette. He said, ‘Morning, Lieutenant.’

      The man on the bed stirred and moaned. His eyes half-opened. They focused on Mallory. They saw a man in a coal-scuttle helmet and a Waffen-SS smock, carrying a Schmeisser.

      ‘Hiding up in a brothel,’ said Mallory. ‘All right for some.’

      The man’s hand crawled towards his pillow. Mallory’s hand beat him to it. His fingers closed on metal. He came out with the Browning automatic. ‘Relax,’ said Mallory.

      The Lieutenant glared at him with berserk blue eyes. His face was white, with grey shadows. Pain. He was badly wounded. ‘SOE,’ said Mallory. ‘We’ve come to bail you out.’ Inwardly, his heart was sinking. This would be one of Killigrew’s men. One of the gung-ho shoot-em-up boys who had been dropped and got themselves lost. Who had probably compromised the operation already. Things were in a bad enough mess without a wounded SAS man to slow them down. A badly wounded SAS man, by the look of him. Perhaps he could be smuggled over the border into Spain.

      ‘How do I know that?’ said the Lieutenant.

      ‘Admiral Beaufort will tell you,’ said Mallory. ‘So did a little man called Captain Killigrew.’ He opened the buttons of the SS smock. ‘And this is British battledress. Seemed tactless to wear it on the outside, somehow.’

      ‘Who told you I was here? Marcel-’

      ‘Marcel was very discreet,’ said Mallory, soothingly.

      Slowly, the blue eyes lost their berserk glare. The wariness remained. ‘Killigrew,’ he said. ‘Yes. When did you get in?’

      ‘Albemarle, last night,’ said Mallory. There was no time for chitchat. ‘I need to know what happened to you.’

      ‘Landed on a bit of a plateau … near here,’ said the SAS man. He obviously wanted to give as little away as possible. ‘Brought a Jeep.’ A Jeep, thought Mallory. A full-size actual Jeep. On parachutes. Amazing. But that was the SAS for you. ‘Heading for the coast. Ambushed. Other chaps bought it. I took a bang on the head and a bullet in the guts.’

      Mallory said, ‘How did it happen?’

      ‘Driving down a track,’ said the SAS man. ‘Next thing we knew, there were two Spandaus. One either side of the road. Don’t remember much after that. The Resistance brought me here.’ There was a shake in his voice. He was very young.

      ‘So it was a road block?’ said Mallory.

      ‘Not much of one.’

      Mallory nodded. Give me strength, he thought. Conning your way through a checkpoint behind enemy lines, SAS style. Two grenades and put your foot down. ‘Where were you going on the coast?’

      ‘Doesn’t really matter,’ said the Lieutenant. This was his first operation. It was just like school, on the Rugby XV. You went for it, and sod the consequences. Your own team tactics were your own team tactics, and you kept them to yourself. The only thing different about war was this damned bullet. He did not let his mind stray too close to the bullet, in case the pain made him sick again. It felt the size of a cricket ball, down there. And it hurt. Was hurting worse, lately … He concentrated on his dislike for this old man in the Waffen-SS uniform who had burst in and dropped a few names, and thought that gave him a license to pump him, take over the operation, grab the glory. Let him find out for himself.

      The old man’s face was close to his. It had a broad forehead and very young brown eyes; eyes like old Brutus, who taught Latin at Shrewsbury and climbed Alps in the summer hols. The eyes seemed to remove the Lieutenant’s reserve the way a tin- opener would take the lid off a tin. The old man said, ‘Where were you going and who were you going to see?’

      The Lieutenant summoned up his undoubted toughness. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

      The eyes hardened. The old man said, ‘Don’t be childish. There’s very little time.’

      The Lieutenant gritted his teeth. He desperately wanted to tell someone. It would be less lonely, for one thing, and he was really, terrifyingly, lonely. But a secret was a secret. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t … I’m not authorised.’

      Mallory allowed his eyes to rest on this lieutenant. He really was absurdly young. His was the berserker’s bravery, frenzied and unbending. If the Gestapo got their hands on him, he would break like a twig.

      Mallory sighed inwardly. He got up, opened the door and СКАЧАТЬ