A New Kind of War (7 page)

‘It is evident that Mr Audley is not going to introduce us, captain. So … I am Amos de Souza, formerly of the Guards but now fallen upon hard times. But nonetheless at your service, captain.’

The man’s smile was as infectious as his good manners were comforting after the horrors of the last hour. ‘Fattorini—Brigade RE, Captain de Souza. Also fallen on hard times, apparently.’ He grinned at de Souza. ‘I wish I knew what was going on. Perhaps you can enlighten me?’

‘My dear fellow—I wish I could!’ The rueful smile twisted. Then de Souza frowned slightly and cocked his head. ‘Fattorini … not the
banking
Fattorinis, by any chance?’

Fred felt that he ought to be able to place the Guards de Souza, who had plainly been as anglicized over so many generations as the banking Fattorinis, and with blood that was even more blue. But to his shame he couldn’t. ‘Yes, Captain de Souza.’

‘Ah!’ Captain de Souza didn’t bother to explain his own secret. Instead he switched to Kyriakos. ‘And this gentleman?’

‘Michaelides—Captain.’ Kyriakos stopped there.

‘Yes?’ De Souza waited until he was sure nothing more was coming. ‘Regular Greek Army? Or National Guard?’ Suddenly Fred was aware of the seconds ticking away, as the Greek failed to rise to what was clearly intended as a provocation. Somewhere nearby Lieutenant Audley’s Brigadier must be fuming. And down the rocky path the RSM would be approaching those lorries and the slovenly Mendips like the wrath of God. And, without looking up, he knew those bloody birds would still be circling, waiting in vain for the meal under those groundsheets which would now be denied them.

‘Neither, actually, old boy.’ Kyriakos drawled, packing all his years of British education into his accent. ‘Banking too, actually.’

‘Ah!’ Captain de Souza permitted himself a well-bred snigger. ‘Now I understand!’ He wagged a finger at Audley. ‘What a sly fellow you are—bagging a brace of bankers for the Brigadier! I really must stop underestimating you, David: you have the precious gift of luck which Napoloen Bonaparte admired so much, in preference to vulgar cleverness.’ He jerked his head towards the little arched doorway. ‘Go on, dear boy—go and take your gifts to him without delay. If you cheer him up we shall all be better off—go on!’ He turned from Audley, favouring Fred and Kyriakos with the slightest of bows as he began moving towards the bodies. ‘And leave me to my ghoulish tasks … gentlemen, I confide that we may meet again in happier circumstances … ’

Fred was torn between following de Souza and watching Audley bend almost double to enter the ruins. But then he remembered Kyriakos.

‘Are they all m—?’ He bit off the word as the Greek shook his head, and followed the direction of his friend’s gaze instead.

Captain de Souza had thrown back the groundsheet from the body with the jackboots and was stripping it methodically.

‘
Mad
?’ he whispered.

‘No!’ Kyriakos whispered back without looking at him. ‘Not mad.’

The languid captain from the Very Famous Regiment was examining the corpse’s jacket with all the distaste of a man who knew from bitter experience that all
andartes
were flee-ridden and lousy. But his examination was nonetheless careful, pocket by pocket, seam by seam.

‘Not mad?’ He watched de Souza cast the jacket aside, and apply himself to one of the boots.

‘No!’ Kyriakos repeated the word out of the side of his mouth as de Souza unwound a piece of rag and then let the foot fall back to earth while he felt inside the boot.

Yuk
—
urch!
Fred imagined the sweaty-clamminess of the inside of that boot. ‘What’s he doing?’

‘Isn’t it obvious?’ murmured Kyriakos, almost contemptuously.

Captain de Souza added the boot to the jacket and pulled at the second boot, and went through the same process, letting the second dirty white foot fall back, jarring the corpse with a false shudder of life.

‘Good boots, those.’ The Greek turned to Fred suddenly. ‘Do you remember where we last saw boots like that? And a rag instead of socks?’

‘No.’ He watched the careful examination of the second boot before it joined its comrade. But as the slender, fastidious fingers began to unbutton the corpse’s fly-buttons he decided that he had had enough of de Souza’s duty, and could more usefully pick over the contents of Kyriakos’s brains. And that concentrated his memory. ‘Yes. That Russian officer—the liaison fellow we had to put to bed—?’

That’s right.‘ Kyriakos returned his attention to the corpse-stripping as he replied. ’So … now you know, eh?‘ Something almost approaching a smile, albeit a terrible one, lifted half the Greek’s mouth, under his moustache. ’It’s actually very comforting, old boy.‘

‘Comforting—?’ Against his will and better judgement, Fred’s attention was drawn back to de Souza’s duty. And, although he instantly regretted the impulse, he was hypnotically held by the image which comforted Kyriakos, of Captain de Souza emptying the trouser pockets first—scrutinizing their pathetic contents, and then throwing them on the already checked pile … clasp-knife, coins, filthy handkerchief—and then ripping at the lining savagely. That was a skill his Guards regiment had never taught him, and those hairy white legs, and the raised shirt above them exposing the dark bush of pubic hair and genitals, had never been included in his Army Training Instructions. ‘Comforting?’

‘Uh-huh.’ Kyriakos was hardly listening to him: his fascination was absolute as the trousers joined the pile. Instead he murmured something in Greek, which Fred wouldn’t have understood even if he heard it.

‘What’s that—?’ He couldn’t
not
look now, even if he hadn’t wanted to look, as de Souza straddled the body, and turned it over, face in the dirt, arms flopping obscenely as gravity shifted their dead weight. ‘What was that you said—?’

‘I said … “Go on—do it properly!”’ Kyriakos paused, as de Souza began to do something so revolting that Fred couldn’t believe his eyes. ‘
Ah
—
that’s right!’

‘God Almighty!’ What was almost more revolting than what de Souza was doing was Kyriakos’s approbation of the unnatural act.

‘Nothing?’ Kyriakos exhaled slowly. ‘Bad luck! But … well done, de Souza!’ He came back to Fred at last. ‘You were saying—?’

‘I wasn’t saying anything. I was feeling sick, that’s all.’

Then … the more fool, you!‘ The Greek’s eyes were hard. That’s where they hide things, when they have to, old boy.’

For the next foul moment, Fred found himself looking at de Souza again: he was stripping off the corpse’s shirt now, leaving the whole naked body leprous white, except for its brown hands and arms and ruined, bloody face.

‘But … but
why
, Kyriakos?’ He abandoned the final tableau of Captain de Souza doing his duty. ‘For God’s sake!’

Kyriakos bit his lip, under his moustache. ‘My poor Fred!’ He let go his lip. ‘These are professionals—they know what they want … Which is not
killing
their enemies, any more. They have progressed beyond that—they are not mere soldiers … like you and me—do you understand?’ The lip drooped, one-sidedly. They are not crude—?‘

‘
Crude
!’ That was a joke he couldn’t laugh at.

‘Don’t be deceived by appearances.’

‘Appearances?’ The repeated word suddenly sounded foolish as he realized that he
had
been deceived: he had taken de Souza for a civilized man and the large young dragoon for a major, and then for a typical subaltern. But neither of them was what he had at first seemed.

‘Actually, I really feel quite comforted.’ Kyriakos stared at him. ‘I am comforted … comforted and
surprised
—
or, comforted and much reassured, anyway.’

‘Reassured?’ After six weeks in Greece, never mind all those months in Italy, Fred regarded himself as a veteran, and an expert on war’s idiocies. It irritated him to be treated like an innocent. ‘This has reassured you, has it? About what?’

That you British are beginning to know your business.‘ Kyriakos gestured to stop him replying. ’Oh yes—I know you came to Greece—‘ he nodded ’—and that proves
someone
knew his business … which would be your Mr Churchill of course. But you did not really anticipate events, did you?‘

‘I didn’t?’ Whenever the Greek talked high politics he always addressed Fred as though he was personally responsible for War Cabinet decisions. But then, as he controlled the temptation to adapt his answer accordingly, he saw the truth of the question: in early December the brigade—indeed, the whole division—had been under orders for Palestine, and had actually had to re-possess all the equipment it had surrendered on the eve of embarkation. So Greece had plainly been an unforeseen emergency. ‘No, we didn’t. But—’ As he spoke, Kyriakos nodded past him, in de Souza’s direction again.

‘See there, old man.’

Much against his will, and fortified only by the thought that de Souza couldn’t be doing anything nastier than what he had already done, Fred obeyed the injunction—and instantly regretted his decision.

‘Ah … ’ The Greek caught his arm. ‘He has something—
yes
—
he has something, indeed!’

Captain de Souza had been taking a dentist’s view of the shattered head, probing inside the gaping mouth with a sliver of bright metal. And, until the Greek spoke, all Fred had been thinking was …
at least he’s not just using his finger now
!

‘Yes!’ Kyri’s fingers tightened, then relaxed as de Souza examined what he had found. ‘So now we know!’

Fred swallowed. ‘What do we know, Kyri?’ But in that instant, as he asked his question, he realized that he did indeed know something now, even if it had nothing to do with the beastliness he had been witnessing. Or, not directly, anyway. ‘What do we know?’

Kyriakos caught the change in his voice. ‘Are you shocked?’

‘Not by that.’ Comparatively, that was the truth.

‘You know what he’s found then?’ Kyriakos misunderstood him.

Fred faced a bitter truth. There had once been a Captain Michaelides he had known, who had been a Greek soldier much beloved by the Canadians with whom he was liaising, who didn’t love fools and cowards. And that had been his own Captain Michaelides, devoted to war and wine and women in whichever order the immediate circumstances allowed.

‘You lied to me, Kyri.’ He thought about the new Captain Michaelides, with whom he had made happy contact in Athens, who had seemed exactly the same as the first one, except for the moustache … and a slight tendency to talk politics, which had seemed fair enough now that he was in his homeland.

Kyriakos frowned. ‘I lied to you?’

‘Yes.’ As always, thinking for himself paid dividends … even though this pay-out sickened him as he remembered how very interested Kyriakos had been in the morale of General Scobie’s troops, and their feelings about what they were doing in Greece; and although he had never thought about it until now, he didn’t know what Captain Michaelides had been doing … except that he always knew what was going on, and where (until this last hour or two) the safety line could be drawn.

‘Yes?’ To his credit, the second Captain Michaelides didn’t try to add to his deceptions. ‘When?’

‘Just now.’ Even as Fred knew he was right, he knew also that he had no right to judge the man in his own poor bloodthirsty, blood-stained and ruined country. ‘You said you and I were different from this lot—just another pair of simple soldiers, eh?’ He watched the Greek narrowly. ‘But you know
exactly
what is happening here—don’t you?’

Kyriakos stared at him for a moment, then shook his head. ‘Not … not
exactly
!’ Then he smiled. ‘If I knew that, then we wouldn’t be here.’ The smile vanished. ‘But you’re right, of course—I know
what
these men are, if not
who
they are, shall we say?’

This was the moment to ask questions, Fred sensed. ‘What did Captain de Souza find? Or would you rather let me guess?’

The Greek shrugged, aware that he had lost a friend, but also that his hospitality-invitation to an ally still obligated him. ‘A happy pill.’ He let the memory of the shrug do its work. ‘When you don’t want to talk, but you think you may, then you crunch it … and then you don’t talk ever again.’

‘Oh … ’ He didn’t really know what he would have guessed. But he wouldn’t have guessed that. ‘And that’s happiness, is it?’

‘Compared with being tortured by experts—yes it is.’

That was nasty. And, more than nasty, it was libellous. ‘But we don’t torture our prisoners, Kyri.’ He could recall having leaned quite heavily on the rare German rearguard prisoner he’d been given, who might be expected to know where the booby-traps were. But that had been in the nature of give-and-take, and it really only stretched the Geneva Convention somewhat, falling infinitely short of torture. And then an alternative possibility presented itself. ‘Could be he was expecting to be captured by your lot though—eh?’

‘Could be.’ Kyriakos accepted the insult without taking offence. ‘Except, old man, he
didn’t
crunch the pill, did he—eh?’

Fred resisted the renewed temptation to see what Captain de Souza was doing now. ‘Obviously, no—if that was what Captain de Souza found.’ Thinking about the stripped white-hairy-defiled body was bad enough: it didn’t need a double check. Indeed, he had no desire either to think about it or discuss it. Nor, come to that, was he particularly keen to face up to the implications of Captain Michaelides’ too-professional interest and expertise in such matters. But since they could not be ignored he could hardly leave those matters unresolved. ‘Didn’t do him any good though, did it!’

‘No —’

‘No. His name was on a bullet, not a pill.’ Fred was simultaneously pleased and ashamed of passing himself off as a hardened veteran. ‘So what?’

‘Ah!’ Kyriakos pounced on him. ‘But you have missed the point, old man—missed it by a mile—’ As he spoke, David Audley ducked out from the little doorway again‘—by a mile!’ He repeated the distance for Audley’s benefit. ‘Would you not agree, Mr Audley, David?’