Storm Force from Navarone. Sam Llewellyn

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СКАЧАТЬ from his seat overlooking the square. His shoulders seemed to blot out the light in the little room. Mallory said, ‘If you won’t tell me, tell the Colonel.’

      The SAS man frowned. He saw no colonel. He saw an unshaven giant with a huge moustache. He saw a pair of black eyes, eyes like the eyes on a Byzantine icon, that understood everything, forgave everything. ‘Colonel?’ he said.

      ‘Andrea is a full colonel in the Greek army.’

      ‘How do I know that’s not another bloody lie?’

      Andrea sat down in the pink plush armchair. Suddenly the SAS man felt weak, and ill, and about fourteen years old. ‘You are frightened,’ said Andrea.

      ‘I bloody well am not,’ said the Lieutenant. But even as Andrea spoke, he could feel it draining away, all the team spirit, the gung ho, war-as-a-game-of-rugby. He saw himself as he was: a wounded kid who would die in a dirty little room, alone.

      ‘Not of dying,’ said Andrea. ‘But of yourself, of failing. I also am frightened, all the time. So it is not possible to let myself fail.’

      He did not sound like any colonel the Lieutenant had ever heard. He sounded like a man of warmth and common sense, like a friend. Careful, said a voice in the Lieutenant’s head. But it was a small voice, fading fast.

      Andrea’s eyes alighted on a crude wooden crutch, a section of pole with a pad whittled roughly to the shape of an armpit. ‘Yours?’ he said.

      ‘I’m going to use it,’ said the SAS man. ‘I can get around all right.’ It was not altogether a lie. He could move. It was just that when he moved, he could feel that bit of metal in his guts twisting, doing him damage. But that was not the point. The point was fighting a war. ‘Couple of days,’ he said. ‘Get into the hills.’

      ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ said Andrea, tactfully. This boy and his crutch would not last an hour in the mountains. He could see it in his face. ‘We will take you with us,’ said Andrea. ‘And you and I, and Miller and Mallory, will finish this operation.’

      The Lieutenant’s eyes moved back to the first man, the thin one. ‘Mallory?’ he said. He saw newspaper front pages pinned to the board behind the fives courts. On the front pages were pictures of this man, with a pyramid of snow-covered rock in the background. That Mallory. He came to a decision. He said, ‘Jules told me. Guy Jamalartégui. At the Café de L’Océan in St-Jean-de-Luz. We would have told you. But … there’s been a lot of German activity. Radio silence, except in emergency. Jerry’s very quick.’

      Mallory nodded. Radio detector vans would not be the only reason. The SAS liked to keep their intelligence to themselves, particularly when it was information that might help Jensen and SOE.

      ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much.’ Sounds of revelry were percolating through the door. ‘Now. Can I get you some breakfast?’

      Once the shock had worn off. Miller had almost started to enjoy himself. The coffee was undoubtedly coffee, and the bread was still warm from the oven, and while he was not a goat cheese enthusiast, in his present frame of mind he would have cheerfully eaten the goat, horns and all. And by the time he had finished eating, there had been stirrings behind some of the doors. At the Cognac stage, his glass had been filled by a dark girl in a red silk nightdress, and Miller was beginning to be reminded that while occupied France might be occupied, it was still France.

      He lay back in his chair, and listened to the rattle of French and Basque from the maquisards, and sipped his Cognac. A corner of his mind was on the girl in the red nightdress. But most of it was out there in the square, patrolling the darkness under the trees and in the corners. Soon the village’s eyes would start opening and its tongues would start wagging. It was time they were out of here. The girl in the red nightdress ran her fingers through his crewcut. Miller grinned, a lazy grin that to anyone who did not know him would have looked completely relaxed. Which in a way, he was. Because Mallory thought it was okay to be here. So it was okay. In a life that had contained about ten times more incidents than the average citizen’s, Miller had never met a man he trusted more than the New Zealander.

      He was not so sure about the Frenchmen. Jaime was sitting in a corner, coffee cup between his hands. Jaime seemed at least to know his way around. Now he was watching Hugues, who was fussing round Lisette. A lifetime spent in places where personality carried more weight than law had made Miller acutely sensitive to the way people got along. Miller had the distinct feeling that Jaime did not have a lot of time for Hugues.

      Miller had his own doubts about Hugues. Sure, he knew his way round the Resistance. But he was an excitable guy. Lotta fuss that guy makes, thought Miller. And a lotta noise, too much noise. Lisette, now. They were stuck with Lisette. She was slow; she carried too much weight. But she was one tough cookie -

      Jesus.

      Lisette had been removing her outer clothing. She had been wearing an overcoat, two shawls, and a couple of peasant smocks of some kind. They had made her look like a football on legs. Dressed up like that, she had bicycled up a steep valley road without lights, climbed a vertical cliff and force-marched fifteen precipitous miles without sleep.

      What dropped Miller’s jaw on his chest was not what she had done. It was the fact that she was just about the same shape without the winter clothes as with them. Face it, thought Miller. If you were Hugues, and Lisette was your girl, you would maybe feel a tad over-protective yourself.

      Because the reason Lisette looked like a gasometer on legs was that she was at least eight months pregnant.

      Somewhere a telephone rang, the tenuous ring of a hand-cranked exchange. Down the hall someone answered it, and started shouting in frantic Basque. Miller became suddenly completely immobile, listening. The voices had stopped. Cocks were crowing. Otherwise there was silence.

      But behind the silence were engines. Lorry engines, a lot of them.

      In the French frontier zone at this particular time in history, there was only one group of people who had a lot of lorries, and the fuel to run them.

      Miller grabbed his Schmeisser and yanked the cocking lever. The girl in the red nightdress seemed suddenly to have vanished. Marcel the baker was standing up, smiling from a face suddenly grey and wooden. The engines were in the square now: four trucks with canvas backs. The trucks stopped. Soldiers were pouring out of the backs, soldiers with coal-scuttle helmets and field-grey uniforms, their jackboots grinding the wet cobbles of the square.

      A staff car rolled into the square. A tall, black-uniformed officer got out, said something, and pointed at Marcel’s lorry. Two soldiers bayoneted the tyres. The lorry settled on its rims.

      As Mallory put his head out of the SAS man’s door, Andrea’s hand went out and grabbed Marcel by the shoulder. Marcel was a big man, but Andrea held him at arm’s length with his feet off the ground. He said, ‘What are these troops doing here?’

      Marcel’s face was a mask of horror. ‘I don’t know … I was assured …’

      In Mallory’s mind, gears rolled smoothly and a conclusion formed. ‘It’s an SS brothel,’ he said. ‘Isn’t it?’

      Marcel’s face turned a dull, embarrassed purple. ‘It is a cover,’ he said. ‘A good cover. Now, gentlemen …’

      Andrea dropped him. Marcel rubbed his shoulder. He said, ‘Follow me, please.’ His voice was calm and urbane: the voice of the perfect СКАЧАТЬ