Force 10 from Navarone (12 page)

General Vukalovic lowered his binoculars, turned to the man at his side and smiled.

‘All quiet on the eastern front, eh, Colonel Janzy?’

‘All quiet on the eastern front,’ Janzy agreed. He was a small, puckish, humorous-looking character with a youthful face and incongruous white hair. He twisted round and gazed to the north. ‘But not so quiet on the northern front, I’m afraid.’

The smile faded from Vukalovic’s face as he turned, lifted his binoculars again and gazed to the north. Less than three miles away and clearly visible in the morning sunlight, lay the heavily wooded Zenica Gap, for weeks a hotly contested strip of territory between Vukalovic’s northern defensive forces, under the command of Colonel Janzy, and units of the invading German 11th Army Corps. At that moment frequent puffs of smoke could be seen, to the left a thick column of
smoke spiralled up to form a dark pall against the now cloudless blue of the sky, while the distant rattle of small-arms fire, punctuated by the occasional heavier boom of artillery, was almost incessant. Vukalovic lowered his glasses and looked thoughtfully at Janzy.

‘The softening-up before the main attack?’

‘What else? The final assault.’

‘How many tanks?’

‘It’s difficult to be sure. Collating reports, my staff estimate a hundred and fifty.’

‘One hundred and fifty!’

‘That’s what they make it – and at least fifty of those are Tiger tanks.’

‘Let’s hope to heaven your staff can’t count.’ Vukalovic rubbed a weary hand across his bloodshot eyes: he’d had no sleep during the night just gone, no sleep during the night previous to that. ‘Let’s go and see how many
we
can count.’

Maria and Petar led the way now, with Reynolds and Groves, clearly in no mood for other company, bringing up the rear almost fifty yards behind. Mallory, Andrea and Miller rode abreast along the narrow road. Andrea looked at Mallory, his eyes speculative.

‘Saunders’s death? Any idea?’

Mallory shook his head. ‘Ask me something else.’

‘The message you’d given him to send. What was it?’

‘A report of our safe arrival in Broznik’s camp. Nothing more.’

‘A psycho,’ Miller announced. ‘The handy man with the knife, I mean. Only a psycho would kill for that reason.’

‘Maybe he didn’t kill for that reason,’ Mallory said mildly. ‘Maybe he thought it was some other kind of message.’

‘Some other kind of message?’ Miller lifted an eyebrow in the way that only he knew how. ‘Now what kind –’ He caught Andrea’s eye, broke off and changed his mind about saying anything more. Both he and Andrea gazed curiously at Mallory who seemed to have fallen into a mood of intense introspection.

Whatever its reason, the period of deep preoccupation did not last for long. With the air of a man who has just arrived at a conclusion about something, Mallory lifted his head and called to Maria to stop, at the same time reining in his own pony. Together they waited until Reynolds and Groves had made up on them.

‘There are a good number of options open to us,’ Mallory said, ‘but for better or worse this is what I have decided to do.’ He smiled faintly. ‘For better, I think, if for no other reason than that this is the course of action that will get us out of here fastest. I’ve talked to Major Broznik and found out what I wanted. He tells me –’

‘Got your information for Neufeld, then, have you?’ If Reynolds was attempting to mask the
contempt in his voice he made a singularly poor job of it.

‘The hell with Neufeld,’ Mallory said without heat. ‘Partisan spies have discovered where the four captured Allied agents are being held.’

‘They have?’ Reynolds said. ‘Then why don’t the Partisans do something about it?’

‘For a good enough reason. The agents are held deep in German territory. In an impregnable blockhouse high up in the mountains.’

‘And what are
we
going to do about the Allied agents held in this impregnable block-house?’

‘Simple.’ Mallory corrected himself. ‘Well, in theory it’s simple. We take them out of there and make our break tonight.’

Reynolds and Groves stared at Mallory, then at each other in frank disbelief and consternation. Andrea and Miller carefully avoided looking at each other or at anyone else.

‘You’re mad!’ Reynolds spoke with total conviction.

‘You’re mad,
sir,’
Andrea said reprovingly.

Reynolds looked uncomprehendingly at Andrea, then turned back to Mallory again.

‘You must be!’ he insisted. ‘Break? Break for where, in heaven’s name?’

‘For home. For Italy.’

‘Italy!’ It took Reynolds all of ten seconds to digest this startling piece of information, then he went on sarcastically: ‘We’re going to fly there, I suppose?’

‘Well, it’s a long swim across the Adriatic, even for a fit youngster like you. How else?’

‘Flying?’ Groves seemed slightly dazed.

‘Flying. Not ten kilometres from here is a high – a very high mountain plateau, mostly in Partisan hands. There’ll be a plane there at nine o’clock tonight.’

In the fashion of people who have failed to grasp something they have just heard, Groves repeated the statement in the form of a question. ‘There’ll be a plane there at nine o’clock tonight? You’ve just arranged this?’

‘How could I? We’ve no radio.’

Reynolds’s distrustful face splendidly complemented the scepticism in his voice. ‘But
how
can you be sure – well, at nine o’clock?’

‘Because, starting at six o’clock this evening, there’ll be a Wellington bomber over the airstrip every three hours for the next week if necessary.’

Mallory kneed his pony and the party moved on, Reynolds and Groves taking up their usual position well to the rear of the others. For some time Reynolds, his expression alternating between hostility and speculation, stared fixedly at Mallory’s back: then he turned to Groves.

‘Well, well, well. Isn’t that very convenient indeed. We just
happen
to be sent to Broznik’s camp. He just
happens
to know where the four agents are held. It just
happens
that an airplane will be over a certain airfield at a certain time – and it also so happens that I know for an
absolute certainty that there are no airfields up in the high plateau. Still think everything clean and above-board?’

It was quite obvious from the unhappy expression on Groves’s face that he thought nothing of the kind. He said: ‘What in God’s name are we going to do?’

‘Watch our backs.’

Fifty yards ahead of them Miller cleared his throat and said delicately to Mallory: ‘Reynolds seems to have lost some of his – um – earlier confidence in you, sir.’

Mallory said drily: ‘It’s not surprising. He thinks I stuck that knife in Saunders’s back.’

This time Andrea and Miller did exchange glances, their faces registering expressions as close to pure consternation as either of those poker-faced individuals was capable of achieving.

Half a mile from Neufeld’s camp they were met by Captain Droshny and some half-dozen of his Cetniks. Droshny’s welcome was noticeably lacking in cordiality but at least he managed, at what unknown cost, to maintain some semblance of inoffensive neutrality.

‘So you came back?’

‘As you can see,’ Mallory agreed.

Droshny looked at the ponies. ‘And travelling in comfort.’

‘A present from our good friend Major Broznik.’ Mallory grinned. ‘He thinks we’re heading for Konjic on them.’

Droshny didn’t appear to care very much what Major Broznik had thought. He jerked his head, wheeled his horse and set off at a fast trot for Neufeld’s camp.

When they had dismounted inside the compound, Droshny immediately led Mallory into Neufeld’s hut. Neufeld’s welcome, like Droshny’s,
was something less than ecstatic, but at least he succeeded in imparting a shade more benevolence to his neutrality. His face held, also, just a hint of surprise, a reaction which he explained at once.

‘Candidly, Captain, I did not expect to see you again. There were so many – ah – imponderables. However, I am delighted to see you – you would not have returned without the information I wanted. Now then, Captain Mallory, to business.’

Mallory eyed Neufeld without enthusiasm. ‘You’re not a very business-like partner, I’m afraid.’

‘I’m not?’ Neufeld said politely. ‘In what way?’

‘Business partners don’t tell lies to each other. Sure you said Vukalovic’s troops are massing. So they are indeed. But not, as you said, to break out. Instead, they’re massing to defend themselves against the final German attack, the assault that is to crush them once and for all, and this assault they believe to be imminent.’

‘Well, now, you surely didn’t expect me to give away our military secrets – which you might, I say just might, have relayed to the enemy – before you had proved yourselves,’ Neufeld said reasonably. ‘You’re not that naïve. About this proposed attack. Who gave you the information?’

‘Major Broznik.’ Mallory smiled in recollection. ‘He was very expansive.’

Neufeld leaned forward, his tension reflected in the sudden stillness of his face, in the way his unblinking eyes held Mallory’s. ‘And did they say where they expected this attack to come?’

‘I only know the name. The bridge at Neretva.’

Neufeld sank back into his chair, exhaled a long soundless sigh of relief and smiled to rob his next words of any offence. ‘My friend, if you weren’t British, a deserter, a renegade and a dope-peddler, you’d get the Iron Cross for this. By the way,’ he went on, as if by casual afterthought, ‘you’ve been cleared from Padua. The bridge at Neretva? You’re sure of this?’

Mallory said irritably: ‘If you doubt my word -’

‘Of course not, of course not. Just a manner of speaking.’ Neufeld paused for a few moments, then said softly: ‘The bridge at Neretva.’ The way he spoke them, the words sounded almost like a litany.

Droshny said softly: ‘This fits in with all we suspected.’

‘Never mind what you suspected,’ Mallory said rudely. ‘To
my
business now, if you don’t mind. We have done well, you would say? We have fulfilled your request, got the precise information you wanted?’ Neufeld nodded. ‘Then get us the hell out of here. Fly us deep into some German-held territory. Into Austria or Germany itself, if you like – the farther away from here the better. You know what will happen to us if we ever again fall into British or Yugoslav hands?’

‘It’s not hard to guess,’ Neufeld said almost cheerfully. ‘But you misjudge us, my friend. Your departure to a place of safety has already been arranged. A certain Chief of Military Intelligence in
northern Italy would very much like to make your personal acquaintance. He has reason to believe that you can be of great help to him.’

Mallory nodded his understanding.

General Vukalovic trained his binoculars on the Zenica Gap, a narrow and heavily-wooded valley floor lying between the bases of two high and steep-shouldered mountains, mountains almost identical in both shape and height.

The German 11th Army Corps tanks among the pines were not difficult to locate, for the Germans had made no attempt either to camouflage or conceal them, measure enough, Vukalovic thought grimly, of the Germans’ total confidence in themselves and in the outcome of the battle that lay ahead. He could clearly see soldiers working on some stationary vehicles: other tanks were backing and filling and manoeuvring into position as if making ready to take up battle formation for the actual attack: the deep rumbling roar of the heavy engines of Tiger tanks was almost incessant.

Vukalovic lowered his glasses, jotted down a few more pencil marks on a sheet of paper already almost covered with similar pencil marks, performed a few exercises in addition, laid paper and pencil aside with a sigh and turned to Colonel Janzy, who was similarly engaged.

Vukalovic said wryly: ‘My apologies to your staff. Colonel. They can count just as well as I can.’

For once, Captain Jensen’s piratical swagger and flashing, confident smile were not very much in evidence: at that moment, in fact, they were totally absent. It would have been impossible for a face of Jensen’s generous proportions ever to assume an actually haggard appearance, but the set, grim face displayed unmistakable signs of strain and anxiety and sleeplessness as he paced up and down the 5th Army Operations Headquarters in Termoli in Italy.

He did not pace alone. Beside him, matching him step for step, a burly grey-haired officer in the uniform of a lieutenant-general in the British Army accompanied him backwards and forwards, the expression on his face an exact replica of that on Jensen’s. As they came to the farther end of the room, the General stopped and glanced interrogatively at a head-phone-wearing sergeant in front of a large RCA transceiver. The sergeant slowly shook his head. The two men resumed their pacing.

The General said abruptly: ‘Time is running out. You do appreciate, Jensen, that once you launch a major offensive you can’t possibly stop it?’

‘I appreciate it,’ Jensen said heavily. ‘What are the latest reconnaissance reports, sir?’

‘There is no shortage of reports, but God alone knows what to make of them all.’ The General sounded bitter. ‘There’s intense activity all along the Gustav Line, involving – as far as we can make out – two Panzer divisions, one German
infantry division, one Austrian infantry division and two Jaeger battalions – their crack Alpine troops. They’re not mounting an offensive, that’s for sure – in the first place, there’s no possibility of their making an offensive from the areas in which they are manoeuvring and in the second place if they
were
contemplating an offensive they’d take damn good care to keep all their preparations secret.’

‘All this activity, then? If they’re not planning an attack.’

The General sighed. ‘Informed opinion has it that they’re making all preparations for a lightning pull-out. Informed opinion! All that concerns me is that those blasted divisions are still in the Gustav Line. Jensen,
what has gone wrong?’

Jensen lifted his shoulders in a gesture of helplessness. ‘It was arranged for a radio rendezvous every two hours from four a.m. -’

‘There have been no contacts whatsoever.’

Jensen said nothing.

The General looked at him, almost speculatively. ‘The best in Southern Europe, you said.’

‘Yes, I did say that.’

The General’s unspoken doubts as to the quality of the agents Jensen had selected for operation Force 10 would have been considerably heightened if he had been at that moment present with those agents in the guest hut in Hauptmann Neufeld’s camp in Bosnia. They were exhibiting none of the
harmony, understanding and implicit mutual trust which one would have expected to find among a team of agents rated as the best in the business. There was, instead, tension and anger in the air, an air of suspicion and mistrust so heavy as to be almost palpable. Reynolds, confronting Mallory, had his anger barely under control.

‘I want to know now!’ Reynolds almost shouted the words.

‘Keep your voice down,’ Andrea said sharply.

‘I want to know now,’ Reynolds repeated. This time his voice was little more than a whisper, but none the less demanding and insistent for that.

‘You’ll be told when the time comes.’ As always, Mallory’s voice was calm and neutral and devoid of heat. ‘Not till then. What you don’t know, you can’t tell.’

Reynolds clenched his fists and advanced a step. ‘Are you damn well insinuating that –’

Mallory said with restraint: ‘I’m insinuating nothing. I was right, back in Termoli, Sergeant. You’re no better than a ticking time-bomb.’

‘Maybe.’ Reynolds’s fury was out of control now. ‘But at least there’s something honest about a bomb.’

‘Repeat that remark,’ Andrea said quietly.

‘What?’

‘Repeat it.’

‘Look, Andrea –’

‘Colonel Stavros, sonny.’

‘Sir.’

‘Repeat it and I’ll guarantee you a minimum of five years for insubordination in the field.’

‘Yes, sir.’ Reynolds’s physical effort to bring himself under control was apparent to everyone. ‘But
why
should he
not tell
us his plans for this afternoon and at the same time let us all know that we’ll be leaving from this Ivenici place tonight?’

‘Because our plans are something the Germans can do something about,’ Andrea said patiently. ‘If they find out. If one of us talked under duress. But they can’t do anything about Ivenici – that’s in Partisan hands.’

Miller pacifically changed the subject. He said to Mallory: ‘Seven thousand feet up, you say. The snow must be thigh-deep up there. How in God’s name does anyone hope to clear all that lot away?’

‘I don’t know,’ Mallory said vaguely. ‘I suspect somebody will think of something.’

And seven thousand feet up on the Ivenici plateau, somebody had indeed thought of something.

The Ivenici plateau was a wilderness in white, a bleak and desolate and, for many months of the year, a bitterly cold and howling and hostile wilderness, totally inimical to human life, totally intolerant of human presence. The plateau was bounded to the west by a five-hundred-foot-high cliff-face, quite vertical in some parts, fractured and fissured in others. Scattered along its length
were numerous frozen waterfalls and occasional lines of pine trees, impossibly growing on impossibly narrow ledges, their frozen branches drooped and laden with the frozen snow of six long months gone by. To the east the plateau was bounded by nothing but an abrupt and sharply defined line marking the top of another cliff-face which dropped away perpendicularly into the valleys below.

The plateau itself consisted of a smooth, absolutely level, unbroken expanse of snow, snow which at that height of 2,000 metres and in the brilliant sunshine gave off a glare and dazzling reflection which was positively hurtful to the eyes. In length, it was perhaps half a mile: in width, nowhere more than a hundred yards. At its southern end, the plateau rose sharply to merge with the cliff-face which here tailed off and ran into the ground.

On this prominence stood two tents, both white, one small, the other a large marquee. Outside the small tent stood two men, talking. The taller and older man, wearing a heavy greatcoat and a pair of smoked glasses, was Colonel Vis, the commandant of a Sarajevo-based brigade of Partisans: the younger, slighter figure was his adjutant, a Captain Vlanovich. Both men were gazing out over the length of the plateau.

Captain Vlanovich said unhappily: There must be easier ways of doing this, sir.’

‘You name it, Boris, my boy, and I’ll do it.’ Both in appearance and voice Colonel Vis gave
the impression of immense calm and competence. ‘Bull-dozers, I agree, would help. So would snow-ploughs. But you will agree that to drive either of them up vertical cliff-faces in order to reach here would call for considerable skill on the part of the drivers. Besides, what’s an army for, if not for marching?’

‘Yes, sir,’ Vlanovich said, dutifully and doubtfully.

Both men gazed out over the length of the plateau to the north.

To the north, and beyond, for all around a score of encircling mountain peaks, some dark and jagged and sombre, others rounded and snowcapped and rose-coloured, soared up into the cloudless washed-out pale blue of the sky. It was an immensely impressive sight.

Even more impressive was the spectacle taking place on the plateau itself. A solid phalanx of a thousand uniformed soldiers, perhaps half in the buff grey of the Yugoslav army, the rest in a motley array of other countries’ uniforms, were moving, at a snail-pace, across the virgin snow.

The phalanx was fifty people wide but only twenty deep, each line of fifty linked arm-in-arm, heads and shoulders bowed forward as they laboriously trudged at a painfully slow pace through the snow. That the pace was so slow was no matter for wonder, the leading line of men were ploughing their way through waist-deep snow, and already
the signs of strain and exhaustion were showing in their faces. It was killingly hard work, work which, at that altitude, doubled the pulse rate, made a man fight for every gasping breath, turned a man’s legs into leaden and agonized limbs where only the pain could convince him that they were still part of him.