Corporal Cotton's Little War (25 page)

‘A tommy-gun stuck up his nostril ought to encourage him,’ Docherty grinned.

As they broke up, Cotton climbed ashore to look at the boat. Without her mast she had a sleek look about her, low and fast, and he decided it might even help them slip past any prowling Italian MAS boats that might be about.

She looked incomplete, however, and he climbed ashore with the axe and cut down a long pole from one of the trees. Trimming it carefully, he lashed it firmly to the stump of the broken mast.

‘What’s that for?’ Kitcat asked.

‘The ensign,’ Cotton said. He studied the new mast from all angles; then he turned to the Canadian. ‘Come on,’ he said. ‘We’ve got things to do.’

‘Such as what?’

‘You remember where you hid that money Samways was carrying?’

‘Sure.’

‘I think it’s time to get it aboard.’

Concerned about whom he should leave on board, Cotton had decided Bisset was probably the most reliable. He was a funny bloke, but at least he had a cool head, a good temper, and a sense of humour; and Cotton had once heard it said that a man who could make you laugh was of more value when you were in trouble than a bore who could only shoot straight.

Bisset received the news without turning a hair. He gave Cotton an interested glance. ‘Thought there was something I hadn’t been told,’ he admitted cheerfully.

Cotton looked quickly at him. ‘Did it show?’ he asked.

‘At times, old son, I felt like hitting you over the head, because it was obvious to anyone possessed of an atom of intelligence that you were hugging some secret to your bosom.’

Cotton flushed. ‘There was also money on board,’ he growled.

‘How much?’

‘Twenty thousand quid.’

Bisset’s eyebrows rose but he showed no other sign of interest. Perhaps, Cotton decided, it was because he came from a wealthy family and money didn’t impress him much. He saw Docherty trying to catch what they were saying and, without thinking much more about it, he slapped a tommy-gun into his hands and told him what they were about to do.

‘Money?’ Docherty said. ‘Where?’

‘Up the cliff.’

‘Whose money?’

‘The government’s. It was on
Loukia
when she ran aground.’

Docherty thought for a while. ‘How much?’ he asked.

‘Twenty thousand quid.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Patullo told me. In Suda Bay.’

‘Twenty thousand quid!’ Docherty sounded awed. ‘You’re a close bastard, aren’t you? That’d buy a few pints of old and mild. We could even nip away somewhere neutral like Turkey. With all the bints you want - black, white and khaki. Do we get to have a look at it?’

‘The box’s locked,’ Kitcat said. ‘Samways had the key but it disappeared with everything he possessed - his watch, his wallet -when he was killed.’

‘Pity,’ Docherty said. ‘I’d have liked to have a look at twenty thousand nicker. I’ll never get the chance again.’

Part Three: Attack

The heat was on in Suda Bay. The whole place was working at a frantic speed.

Through the window of the hut near Retimo, soldiers could be seen digging gun pits round the harbour and pushing up barricades of sandbags. A lorry ground past, churning up the dust in a yellow cloud that coated the trees and turned the grass to a drab khaki. A staff car followed it, a general in the back, his face grim, staring ahead, busy with his thoughts.

‘This place’s beginning to look like Troy before the siege,’ Ponsonby said. His grey suit shabbier now with dust marks on the elbows and knees, his collar stained and rumpled, he was staring from the doorway across the water.

Kennard said nothing. His mind was still on the boats and the men he’d lost at Aeos. The activity around him passed him by. The anxiety everyone felt, from the general down to the simplest gunner or ordinary seaman, was obvious. The Germans were coming but nobody knew which beach they were going to land on. Kennard tried to shove it out of his mind.

‘You still worrying about those chaps we sent to Aeos?’ Ponsonby asked.

‘Of course I am. I don’t like sending chaps out on a job and then abandoning ‘em.’ Kennard turned back to the list he was perusing. The names on it were all familiar to him. ‘At Nauplia embarking troops
- Phoebe, Stuart, Hyacinth, Ulster Prince, Gleneard.
At Raftis embarking troops -
Calcutta, Perth, Glengyle.
On passage -
Grimsby, Vendetta, Waterhen, Themani, Zealand--’

The list went on for another two pages and showed pretty well every available ship in the Mediterranean. What had started as a relieving expedition to snatch Greece from the hands of the Italians had turned into another Dunkirk. Already, it was clear there was to be no orderly embarkation but another scratch job in small boats from open shores.

As the ships came into Suda Bay, the weary, dusty men on board all told the same depressing story: shortages of aircraft, weapons, vehicles and petrol, with constant bombing and casualties, and behind it the threat of ultimate catastrophe. The unclouded sky and calm weather were a help and a hindrance at the same time. While they assisted in the evacuation, they also aided the Luftwaffe as they came over the mountains in the crystal-clear atmosphere that allowed the gaze to travel a hundred miles without interference from haze.

Among the indented rocky coasts with their doll’s-house villages backed by the green of olive groves edging to deep blue waters clear for a hundred feet down, men were streaming south, searching for a safe place to embark. The situation was deteriorating hour by hour. With the Greek Epirus force laying down its weapons, the British army was clinging to its last ditch defences in a hopeless disarray of orders, counter-orders and lack of orders. Troops heading for the coast had no real idea where they were going and independent evacuations were starting everywhere in merchantmen, ferry-boats, caiques and yachts. Along the coast road, Dorniers, flying low over the sea, were shooting up the traffic so that the route was marked by burning vehicles.

Things had been left too late as usual, and the navy, trying to carry on with its mass of routine duties - succouring the army in North Africa, helping besieged Tobruk, escorting convoys through the eastern Mediterranean, victualling, fuelling, ammunitioning - needed time to marshal its resources. Kennard was well aware that the chances of being able to send help to Aeos were pathetically slim.

‘I can’t see what else we can do,’ Ponsonby said.

Neither could Kennard, but he was still hopeful of trying. It was just possible that they might get somebody to take his ship to Aeos to have a look in case there was anyone on one of the beaches waving and hoping still to be picked up. Kennard had already broached the subject to the admiral and got a firm ‘No’ for his trouble, but there were more light forces due from Alexandria in the next few days and he might just prevail on some ship’s captain. Kennard felt his responsibility keenly. He - and nobody else - had sent two boats into Aeos and he considered it his duty to make some effort to check whether the crews had survived. Two dozen men weren’t many in the mass that were being lifted from the Greek mainland but he still felt he ought to try.

Major Renatus von Boenigk Baldamus had just finished an excellent dinner and was in no mood to exert himself much.

As he sat back the telephone rang. He picked it up, listened, then slammed it down again and looked up at Ehrhardt with a smile.

‘The Italian naval launch’s arrived, Ehrhardt,’ he said. ‘Armed to the teeth. I’ve become an admiral.’ He fished among the papers on his desk and tossed a flimsy at Ehrhardt.

‘Telephone message,’ he said. ‘Arrived this afternoon. Whoever it was, refused to identify themselves. It says there’s aviation spirit in Ay Yithion.’

‘Whose aviation spirit?’ Ehrhardt asked.

‘Have
we
lost any?’

‘I gather some’s been missed from the dump at Yanitsa.
Klepsi-klepsi,
the Greeks call it.’

‘Means scrounging,’ Baldamus said. ‘I think someone had better look into it.’

‘Who?’

Baldamus moved a few papers about. ‘Well, we’ve got an SS unit now to look after security, haven’t we, and didn’t we get a couple of the leather-coated fraternity from the Gestapo today?’

‘That’s right. Investigating pilfering of rations.’

Baldamus smiled. ‘Well, let them investigate this too,’ he said. ‘It’s right up their street. They’ll probably tear the balls off some poor devil to find out where it is but I expect they’ll end up with the petrol.’ He turned up the sheet of paper he was looking for and glanced at it. ‘Untersturmbannführer Fernbrugge. He’s your man, Ehrhardt. Let him know, will you? I expect they’ll want to lay on an operation to murder everybody on the island.’

Ehrhardt frowned. ‘I don’t like it,’ he said. ‘I don’t have the conscience to accept the sort of things those bastards do.’

‘It’s something we all have to live with, Ehrhardt,’ Baldamus said equably. ‘When we’ve won the war, we’ll all have to examine our consciences and find out if there isn’t some way we can run Germany without these gentry.’

Cotton was the first awake. It was the sound of aircraft that brought him to life. They were transports and he wondered yet again what they were doing on Aeos.

Aware of being out of the mainstream of events and conscious of a feeling of not belonging, he watched the aeroplanes with a sick heart. Cotton was a man who needed other men about him and was at his best as part of a team. All his training had been devised to that end. It didn’t alter the situation that he was still running the show, however. It was a hard fact to face but Cotton was a stubborn man, with the stubbornness of a bull in a bull-ring. The more he was goaded by adverse conditions, the harder he fought, and climbing into the dinghy, he rowed about the narrow bay in the growing light, dropping the lead line over at intervals and noting the readings on a piece of paper torn from the log. When
Loukia
had entered the bay, she had smashed her screws and rudders on a rock and he had no intention that she should do the same as she left.

They ate bully beef and biscuit for breakfast and were waiting on deck as the sun appeared. As its first glow came between tumultuous clouds, Cotton began to grow worried.

‘Where’s Varvara?’ he said.

An hour later there was still no sign of the Greek caique and he felt he could wait no longer.

‘I’m going into Yithion,’ he announced. ‘I want to know where that petrol is and arrange to pick up the kid.’

Taking one of the curtains from the captain’s cabin, he rolled Patullo’s revolver in it and pushed a few extra rounds into his trouser-pocket. The sky was dark with the possibility of rain as he set off up the slope. It was full of aircraft and he identified them as Junkers 87s and 88s, which could mean only one thing. The navy was copping it somewhere to the east.

Ay Yithion stood out sharply like a group of white stones. Even the gulls looked like spectres against the darkness of the sky, and the colour of the apple and peach orchards bordered by ilex, walnut and mulberry shone against the pink spurs of oleander. The place was quiet and there seemed to be an atmosphere of nervousness about it.

Annoula was almost the first person he saw. She was hurrying past the harbour, looking worried, and had more news of the German look-out post on Cape Kastamanitsa, set up to watch for Greeks trying to escape south.

Cotton frowned. A look-out with a radio meant that they’d be unable to escape until after dark. In daylight the Messerschmitts would be down on them in a matter of minutes.

‘Where’s Varvara?’ he demanded.

Her eyes were scared. ‘I don’t know,’ she said. ‘Something’s happening. They got a message from Kalani. But they’re going to bring the petrol as soon as they can. I was just coming to tell you. They’ve heard that the Germans are coming and they’ve been hiding it.’ She pointed beyond the harbour and Cotton saw the younger Varvara’s boat moored there. ‘Athanasios took his boat out,’ she said. ‘He thought it would be safer.’

The uncertainty that seemed to hang over Ay Yithion affected Cotton and he looked about him nervously. ‘I’d better arrange to have the kid brought back to us,’ he said. ‘Then I’ve got to see Varvara. I’m scared something’s going to go wrong because we’ve got to wait until dark before we can leave, and that’s twelve hours away.’

As they headed into the village, they saw people lifting their heads and staring towards the north. At first Cotton thought it was aircraft they were listening to, then he realized it was the sound of lorry engines.

‘The Germans!’ The speaker was an old man who came hurrying down the flat steps of the main street. He looked terrified and was pointing over his shoulder. ‘I saw them from my window.’

Immediately the place came to life and people began to hurry children indoors. The sponge fishermen, stuffing their work into sacks, vanished among the houses, and the old men mending nets for their sons packed up their twine and followed.

‘Not the cafe,’ Annoula said quickly. ‘The church of Ayia Triadha.’

‘I’ve got to get the kid.’ Cotton turned but she snatched at his hand and pulled him with her. He had just wrenched his hand away again to go and find Howard when a man yelled and he was caught up in a flurry of running people. Annoula’s fingers, thin but strong, grabbed his own again and this time, unwillingly, he allowed himself to be pulled into the church.

It was a tumbledown place full of washed-out colours and insipid pictures, and the smell of incense, herbs, beeswax, candles and candle-smoke. Faded and pale, the two main ikons of our Lord and our Lady had been prominently placed and Annoula crossed herself and kissed them devoutly. Then she bought and lit a candle and Cotton did the same, aware of the irony of Patullo’s revolver clutched inside the curtain in his hand.

Other people seemed to have had the same idea and the church was full. The priest, a big man with a fringe of black beard who looked like a farmer, was invoking the saints as they kneeled, intoning the service with the aid of a cantor.

Outside, everything seemed to have become silent. Then they heard the grinding of the lorry engines.