Corporal Cotton's Little War (31 page)

‘How’s it going?’ he asked Docherty.

Docherty looked up at him. like Gully, despite himself he had been impressed by Cotton’s single-mindedness. They only needed luck now to make their escape and, though he could never have told him so, he knew as well as Bisset that it was entirely due to Cotton’s doggedness.

‘You’ve already asked me that,’ he pointed out. ‘About five times.’

Cotton managed a smile. ‘Bit on edge,’ he explained. ‘Bisset ought to be back soon.’

The Greek women’s song stopped and they started another, and this time it was more lively, and he could hear the voices of the men also joining in.

‘That lot sound cheerful,’ Cotton said.

‘More cheerful than I feel,’ Docherty said. ‘I feel like ten men. Nine dead and one with his foot in the grave. I’ll be glad when we’re away from here.’ He indicated one of the boat’s Mae West life-jackets hanging near the engine-room doorway. ‘Blown up ready,’ he said. ‘Only bit of air support we’ll get this trip.’ He paused. ‘I don’t suppose we could nip off a bit early, could we?’

Cotton shook his head. ‘With that armed launch off the cape, we haven’t a chance before dark.’

A little later, they heard the thumping sound from the north again. It seemed to shudder the air and sent shivers down their spines.

‘Luftwaffe after our ships,’ Docherty said. ‘I expect it’s Dunkirk all over again.’

There was a long silence, as though the heat weighed heavily on them all. From the shore they could hear the high rasping of crickets. The sea looked like pale silk but seemed as solid and unmoving as metal.

‘We’ll single up,’ Cotton suggested, itching to be off.

‘Not till we’ve started the engines,’ Docherty warned. ‘She’ll surge a bit. Leave ‘em.’

Cotton nodded, seeing the sense.
‘Will
they start?’ he asked.

‘Whatcha mean?’

‘The batteries. Will they do it?’

‘Once,’ Docherty said bluntly. ‘That’s all. They’re low and if they don’t do it first time, that’s it. We’re here for the duration.’

The silence continued. The Greeks in the forecastle had fallen silent and Cotton wondered if they were asleep. He slipped into the wheelhouse. The women and children seemed to be dozing in the stuffy heat but through the door he could see Petrakis sitting bolt upright, smoking, and Cotton noticed that the cigarette packet he held in his hand was the familiar duty-free navy issue.

He went back on deck, staring round him, waiting for dusk, praying it would hurry. He glanced up at the hill for Bisset, but the skyline was empty. Then he looked at the hilltop in the direction of Ay Yithion, hoping against hope he’d see Annoula. But again there was nothing except the bare brown-purple soil and the scrub and the clumps of cactus.

He wondered where she’d gone to. She’d been seeking Varvara but Varvara had missed her, and still she hadn’t come. He wondered if the Germans had found her and questioned her and, seeing her again in his mind’s eye as he’d seen her when Docherty had flung himself down on top of her, with her dress open at the throat and the white flesh of her shoulders and breast, the thought of the Germans touching her, perhaps beating her, using cigarettes on her skin to torture her, made his stomach heave.

How long his bitter thoughts occupied him, he didn’t know, but when he jerked to the present again he realized the sun had set and the high hills behind them were flinging shadows. There couldn’t be more than half an hour left before darkness arrived. Bisset should be on his way down at any moment.

His eyes flickered towards the direction of Ay Yithion again. There was still no sign of Annoula, and his fist thumped softly on the top of the battered wheelhouse in his frustrated anger.

He glanced towards the sea. It still looked surprisingly bright, covered now by a metallic sheen so that the deep delphinium blue had become paler, almost the colour of lead. There wasn’t a ripple on it and he knew that if they moved before dark they’d stick out like a sore thumb on its smooth surface.

‘Another half-hour,’ Docherty said, chewing at a matchstick. He looked worried and nervous.

‘Perhaps less.’ Cotton’s eyes moved again to the hill-tops looking for the girl and Bisset. He’d given up hope now that Annoula would ever return, and he realized suddenly that he’d missed her since she’d gone that morning. They’d never spoken much to each other but there’d always been a quiet sort of understanding between them and a lot that had gone unsaid.

‘Bisset!’ Kitcat, sitting in the wheelhouse, spoke suddenly and Cotton heard a faint shout above them. After a while, he saw Bisset scrambling down the slope, carrying the tommy-gun, the binoculars swinging in front of him. He looked in a hurry.

‘Stand by, Docherty,’ Cotton said. ‘Gully, take the stern! Kitcat, foredeck! We might have to leave in a hurry.’

The carpenter hurried down the narrow deck to the well, and Kitcat, dumping his tommy-gun by the winch, waited by the bow ropes.

Bisset was closer now, and they could see him pointing. He came scrambling through the trees, sliding down the last slope on his backside. As his feet thumped on deck, he looked round for Cotton.

‘Jerries are on their way,’ he panted.

‘Where are they?’

‘I’ve been watching them. They arrived some time ago.’ He grinned. ‘They found the equipment and the cap first and they’ve been mounting a full-scale attack on the farm. It was worth watching. They weren’t paratroopers this time but they did all the usual crawling along ditches and behind walls. When they found nothing, they stood around talking for a long time, then started searching. When they saw that SS car we dumped they did it all over again. I think they’re heading this way now. They’ll not be here yet, though. They can’t get their lorries to the top of the hill here so they’ll have to walk and they’ve a fair way to come.’

‘How long?’ Cotton asked.

Bisset glanced up the slope where the last of the light was touching the scrub with paler shades. ‘Half an hour from now,’ he said, ‘they’ll pop up over that ridge.’

7

Major Baldamus’ launch lay in position off Cape Kastamanitsa. The light was going but it was warm and the land scents were coming from Aeos, bringing the smell of dust mingled with flowers and pine trees. The southern aspect of the island looked like a flat wall from which the colours were going and the shadows were taking over as the land grew misty in the twilight. Nothing moved and there were no lights. A narrow spiral of smoke lifted slowly into the air from the direction of Ay Yithion, a reminder to Baldamus of Untersturmbannführer Fernbrugge’s activities that morning.

The radio in the cabin below began to cheep and a moment later one of the Wehrmacht soldiers who were crewing the launch appeared alongside Baldamus with a message. It was from Ehrhardt and it had a faintly exultant note that did Baldamus’ heart good. ‘No word from Fernbrugge,’ it said. ‘Suspect he’s got himself into trouble. Have sent out a party to rescue him.’

Baldamus glanced at the time of origin of the message and saw with surprise that it was more than four hours since Fernbrugge had set out to pick up soldiers and head south.

He clicked his fingers and the signaller gave him a message pad. Baldamus wrote quickly, ordering Ehrhardt to find out if Fernbrugge had managed to collect his soldiers from Haussmann’s special battalion. If he had and had lost himself for four hours, then he
was
in trouble, whatever had happened. Baldamus could imagine nothing on Aeos to account for a four-hour silence, and Haussmann wasn’t the man to lie down even before the SS.

As the signaller disappeared and the cheeping of his radio started again, Baldamus sat in the wheelhouse staring at the land. He lit a cigarette and someone handed him a mug of coffee which he drank in his slow fastidious way.

The young engineer-lieutenant who was in command of the launch appeared and Baldamus indicated the headland. ‘Is this the best place for us?’ he asked.

The lieutenant peered towards the land. ‘If anything leaves the island we’ll be right across its path,’ he replied.

‘Wouldn’t it be worth poking our nose into the bay to see if they’re still there?’

The lieutenant shook his head. ‘It would be dark before we got there.’

‘Haven’t you a searchlight?’

‘Perhaps they’ve got one too, and I wouldn’t want to be caught where we couldn’t manoeuvre. I gather they’ve got a 20-millimetre cannon.’

‘Couldn’t they slip past in the dark?’

The lieutenant shrugged. ‘I’m not Kriegsmarine,’ he said. ‘I’m just an engineer-lieutenant who used to own a boat of his own at Rostock. I’ve not been trained to fight sea battles. Mind’ - he grinned - ‘with the gun we’ve got, I think we could stop anything that came near us.’ He pointed towards the two caiques laying off his starboard quarter, fifty yards away and twenty yards apart, one slightly astern of the other. Like the launch, they were at anchor, bows to the breeze coming off the land.

‘We’re covering quite a bit of sea,’ he pointed out. ‘At the first sound of an engine, we can fix our searchlights on the entrance to the bay. We have the advantage. We’re facing the way they’ll come and, with the wind as it is, we’ll hear their engines start.’

As they spoke, the radio cheeped again and a moment later the signaller appeared with the reply to Baldamus’ message. It made him smile.

‘Fernbrugge accompanied by twenty-four special service men. No signal yet but one of Fernbrugge’s vehicles since seen alongside deserted farmhouse on south side of Kalani plain. No sign of crew or of Fembrugge. Special service vehicle shot up. Suspect trouble he found bad - repeat bad -- trouble. Investigating unit now moving on Xiloparissia Bay.’

Baldamus screwed up the paper. It seemed that Untersturmbannführer Fernbrugge had made rather a mess of things and probably got himself killed into the bargain, and he couldn’t find it in himself to be very sorry.

He studied the two caiques on their starboard quarter. In the last of the light he could see the men crowding the deck and smoking, and the last faint gleam of light on the barrels of the machine-guns mounted on stands on the sterns.

‘So long as they don’t get in each other’s way and shoot each other or us,’ he observed cheerfully, ‘we should be able to assemble quite a lot of firepower. It turns out to be rather fortunate for us that they’ve assembled here.’

And particularly fortunate for Major Renatus von Boenigke Baldamus, he decided. His plans for the future - especially with Untersturmbannführer Fernbrugge safely out of the way with his unpleasant friends and his suspicions of Baldamus’ inefficiency -might still come to excellent fruition.

He stared towards the land and the dark patch that marked the entrance to Xiloparissia Bay. ‘They’ll appear after dark,’ he said. ‘I think Ehrhardt’s people will be flushing them out like rabbits from a burrow any time now.’

While Major Baldamus was studying the land with a satisfied eye, Corporal Cotton was studying the sea, staring from the shelter of Xiloparissia Bay with a great deal of concern.

He glanced at his watch, then back at the sea. It had darkened suddenly and there was a hint of mist so that he felt they might creep out quietly and lay under the shadow of Cape Kastamanitsa.

‘We’ll go in a quarter of an hour,’ he said to Bisset who was leaning against the wheelhouse, staring at the entrance to the bay. ‘Did you notice the German launch?’

‘As I came over the top,’ Bisset said. ‘She’s off the point with the two caiques. Think she’ll see us as we come out? We couldn’t risk that.’

‘She’ll have the light behind her.’ Cotton had spotted something that had escaped the notice of Major Baldamus and the engineer-lieutenant on the German launch. They’d stationed the launch so far offshore it was beyond the shadow of the land, while under the loom of the cliffs it was already growing dark. Taking advantage of the light was the oldest naval trick in the world and Cotton had listened to enough naval lore to be well aware of it. The Germans had had the advantage of it at both Coronel and Jutland, firing at British ships with the evening glow behind them while they themselves were protected by a darker horizon and the loom of low cloud. Cotton had the shadow of the cliffs.

‘We’ll be all right,’ he said confidently.

‘What about the engines? Won’t they hear ‘em start up? They make a row like the last trump.’

Cotton had been studying the belt of mist forming close to the shore, willing it to thicken so that it would hide them, and it was a moment or two before he became aware of Bisset’s question. Starting up was something that had been worrying him too, but the thudding of the gunfire had grown louder now, as though the British ships engaged in the evacuation to the north were being heavily pursued to sea by the Luftwaffe, and he hoped it might drown the noise of the engines.

He stared up at the ridge of hills again. There was no sign of Annoula, and his heart sank and his stomach felt empty as he turned towards the wheelhouse.

‘Tell the Greeks we’re leaving, Kitcat,’ he said. ‘And tell them women to pray with all their Greek Orthodox faith that we’ll make it. Then stand by the forrard rope.’

As Kitcat disappeared into the wheelhouse, Cotton stared round him, assessing the light. The brightness had gone from the sea now. If they could only get out of the bay without being seen, they might easily lay under the shadow of the cliffs until total darkness. He gave a final glance towards the ridge of the hill. There was no sign of anyone and he sighed.

The heavy rumble of guns came again, and he heard the loose glass in the wheelhouse give a vibrating rattle that seemed particularly loud. Then, over the rumbling, he realized he could hear aeroplane engines growing closer and, in the distance, the vanished sun glinting on the underside of their wings as they circled, he saw a flight of five machines. They were the same big three-engined Junkers they’d seen before, and they were turning in a wide arc out to sea to come over the hills to land on the strip at Yanitsa, dropping lower all the time as they lined up into the wind.

‘Stand by!’ he yelled.

The five transports came lower. The noise of the engines grew louder and Cotton peered upwards through the trees, wondering if
Loukia
could be seen. The aeroplanes were low in the sky as he hurried back to the wheelhouse.