Jack Higgins (8 page)

I could have taken her in my arms there and then. She needed me, but Aleko was watching us in the mirror behind the bar, his face pale and tense. He knew then, I realised that afterwards, but carried on fighting.

He smiled as our eyes met, passed Sara a tall glass and produced a bottle of Jameson from under the bar. “I believe you prefer this brand, Mr. Savage?”

“You've been checking up on me,” I said lightly. “Why?”

“John Henry Savage,” he said. “Born on a farm near Sligo in 1927. Irish citizen. Joined the British Marine Commandos in 1943 giving a false age. Commissioned in the field. Retired with the rank of captain in 1958. Lack of promotion due to Irish citizenship. A fair summary?”

He waited, the bottle in one hand, my glass in the
other. “I could have saved you some time and told you that myself,” I said.

“I'm sure you could. It is, of course, as false a picture as could have been presented and one you put about to suit your own purpose. Say when,” he added pleasantly.

I raised a finger when the glass was half-full, aware that Sara Hamilton was watching gravely. I suddenly realised that whatever was coming, she knew about it.

“All right, I'll buy it.”

Aleko was enjoying himself. He put the bottle away. “Would you like to know what it says on the confidential file of Captain John Henry Savage? What it really says?”

“Now that can't have come cheap,” I said. “Admiralty clerks are a notoriously old-fashioned lot and a breach of security of that magnitude comes under the Official Secrets Act as I remember.”

“You crossed the Rhine in 1945 about a week before anyone else. Underwater, of course. You were a sergeant then and that little exploit earned you the Distinguished Conduct Medal and promotion in the field to full lieutenant.”

“Those were the days.” I toasted him and took half the whiskey down in one go. I had an idea I was going to need it.

“Palestine, 1947. The Jews had a very efficient underwater sabotage unit.”

“You don't need to rub it in. Some of them served with me during the war.”

“You got a mention in dispatches for removing a couple of limpet mines from the keel of a destroyer in Jaffa harbour in the nick of time, as they say.”

Had I done that?
How old had I been? Twenty-one?
No, that had been another Jack Savage entirely. An eager youngster with Irish mud still clinging to his boots, mad keen to astonish the wide world. And his information was incomplete, thank God. He'd missed the big one.

“More good work in Korea, the odd spell of security duty in Trucial Oman.”

“The tribesmen were restless that year.”

Sara choked on her drink and even Aleko smiled as if he meant it.

“Finally Cyprus. The D.S.O. in 1957. More underwater only this time the saboteurs were the E.O.K.A. variety.” He produced the Jameson and topped up my glass. “And in 1958, you retired and went into the salvage game.”

I turned to Sara. “So now you know. The mail got through. I was a hero.”

“I never doubted it.”

“A most promising officer with exceptional leadership qualities,” Aleko put in. “That is a direct quote. Now why would anyone as highly thought of as that retire?”

I was suddenly tired of playing the game his way and showed it. “Why ask when you bloody well know?”

He put up a hand defensively. “All right, Mr. Savage, so you told a certain British general at a cocktail party in Nicosia who hails, I understand, from that part of Ireland which those who think like yourself still regard as disputed territory, that he was a blue-arsed baboon and not fit to be described as an Irishman. I believe you also added that you more than sympathised with the E.O.K.A. movement. Would that be a reasonably accurate description of what happened?”

“You've missed out the bit where I belted his aide on the jaw.” I turned to Sara. “You should have been there. Saturday night at Cohan's Select Bar with the tables going one way and the glasses the other.”

“Was it worth it?” she asked gravely.

“I thought so at the time. They didn't want a stink, of course. I was invited to resign quietly. Did you hear about poor Jack Savage? Been to the well too often, poor devil. Cracked up.” I shrugged. “I got my gratuity anyway. Funny people you English. Always have to do the decent thing.”

“Bred in the bone. It makes us feel superior.”

I started to get up. “All right if I go now. It's been fun although I'm not sure who for.”

“But we haven't mentioned your services to Greece, Mr. Savage.”

So he knew after all and for that kind of information he would have needed to go right to the top
.

“There's nothing about any service in Greece during the war on my records,” I said carefully. “I know that for certain.”

“I am speaking about after the war. May 1946 to be precise, during the Greek Civil War. A Communist force was in possession of the old Turkish fort on the island of Pelos in the Gulf of Thermai. In other circumstances the Greek Navy would have blasted them out of the sea. In this case there was an added complication. A general named Tharakos who provided a more than adequate hostage. They threatened to hang him from the battlements if any move was made against them. All very mediaeval.”

“It was a hell of a war,” I said, remembering. “Things could be like that in those days.”

“But Tharakos had the highest possible connections in the government and in any case, it would have been bad for morale if the Communists had been allowed to get away with it. And nobody wanted that, not even the British government.” He smiled gently. “People knew which side they were on in those days.”

“All right,” I said. “So the Greek government asked for specialist help and got me and four Royal Marine Commandos. We landed on Pelos and got Tharakos out.”

“A remarkable operation. Worth a Victoria Cross according to my information if it hadn't happened in someone else's war. Plus the fact that it had to remain top secret. I don't suppose the Russians would have been pleased.”

“True enough,” I said. “But don't let's exaggerate. It was the kind of small-scale, cutting-out operation the commandos handled all the time during the war. Nothing very special.”

Nothing very special
. Could I really dismiss it all as lightly as that, even after so many years? I sat there, trapped by memory, and stared blindly into the past.

The old
caicque
we were using had a diesel engine, but the captain, a Greek Navy lieutenant named Demos, was taking her in under sail. He'd spent the war working for the British in the Aegean with the Special Boat Service so there wasn't much he didn't know about landings at night on unfriendly shores.

The small cabin was hot and stifling. I'd slept, but not for long and when I woke, there was a dull, nagging pain at the back of my head that wouldn't go away. The smell of diesel oil was all pervading mixed in with fish and stale urine. An unhappy combination that came close to turning my stomach.

I wasn't in the right frame of mind for this business, that was the trouble. There had been a time when this kind of action by night was a whole way of life that one accepted because there was a war on and such things had to be done. But the war, in Europe at least, had been over for nearly a year. Certainly long enough for me to have gotten used to the idea that there was no longer the
regular prospect that tomorrow might never arrive.

I swung my legs to the floor and sat there, head in hands. There was a knock at the door and Sergeant Johnson looked in. He wouldn't have gone down well at the depot in Pompey at all. He hadn't shaved for a week and was wearing an old cloth cap, the kind of patched, incredibly filthy suit that any self-respecting Irish tinker would have been ashamed to wear, and broken boots.

“Twenty minutes, sir. You asked me to call you.”

Before I was commissioned we had served together as sergeants, but these days he was very careful to preserve the niceties of rank. Having said that, he knew me as well as any man can hope to know another.

He said carefully, “Are you all right, sir?”

“Depends entirely on your point of view. I'm beginning to wonder if it was wise of me to learn all that Greek. Some other poor bastard would have been stuck with this one if I hadn't. What about you?”

He shrugged. “It's what they pay me for.”

Which was true enough and applied equally well to myself. For some unaccountable reason it made me feel better. I got up and stretched.

“And the others?”

“Ready for anything. You know O'Brien. A fight a night and twice on Saturdays. And young Dawson can't believe his luck.”

“I can remember when I couldn't believe mine,” I told him sourly, “but that was a long time ago.”

 

The other three were waiting in the big cabin that usually housed the crew. Like Johnson and myself, they wore patched, shabby clothing and old boots. In other words,
the standing garb of the Greek peasant in the poverty-stricken mountain area of the north.

O'Brien, a twice-a-day shaver, already sported a fair beard and Forbes looked satisfactorily villainous. Young Dawson was as clean as a whistle, mainly because there was nothing he could put a razor to, so he'd had to make do with a liberal application of dirt to the face.

He was the weak link in more ways than one. Still in training when the war ended, he was certain he'd missed out on life's greatest adventure, convinced as he was that war was some sort of splendid game. In other circumstances I wouldn't have touched him with a bargepole, but I'd needed a wireless operator and he was the best they could do on such short notice.

They all stood up and I waved them down again. “We've got about fifteen minutes so I'll make it brief. To recap. Phase One of the operation, we go in by dinghy to Thrassos Bay where we're met by a guide waiting to take us to this farmer, Mikali. Phase Two, we arrive at Mikali's place and sort out the situation with him. Phase Three, we get Tharakos out of the fort.”
Good, positive thinking that
. “Phase Four, we get ourselves and Tharakos out by the same way we got in.”

They knew it frontwards and backwards in detail, but there was no harm in rubbing it in.

“Any alternatives, sir, in case things go wrong?” Dawson asked.

And that question alone made me almost decide to leave him for intelligent improvisation was supposed to be one of the most important products of commando training.

“Alternatives are something we make up as we go
along,” I said, which wasn't entirely true, but was good enough for him.

Johnson did an equipment check. Each man carried a sub-machine gun, an automatic pistol and four grenades and Dawson had his radio transmitter in an old German military haversack, the sort of thing Greek partisans used all the time. And that was it, apart from individual emergency food packs.

I left them to it and went up on deck. It was the right kind of night for it. No moon and plenty of cloud so that even the stars only glowed intermittently. A couple of Greek Navy boys dressed like fishermen were inflating the dinghy and Demos was leaning out of the window of the wheelhouse, speaking to them softly.

“How does it look?” I asked.

“Oh, it's you.” He shook his head. “Not good. Not good at all. There is a very strong current running into the bay here which is what we want, but tonight of all nights there has to be a snag. The wind has turned unexpectedly. An easterly, which means it's driving straight into the bay.”

“A lee shore?” I said. “No good for a sail boat. You'd end up on the rocks.”

“Exactly, and if I use the engine they hear us come in.”

“So what do we do?”

“We could always try another night.”

I shook my head. “No good. The navy won't wait. The central government in Athens had a hell of a job stopping them from blowing that fort off the top of the cliffs before now. It's tonight or not at all.”

He nodded. “All right, if you are willing to have a try, then so am I. I'll take you into the bay, making my
run from the southeast, but I'll have to turn to come out again almost immediately which leaves you a quarter of a mile to cover in the dinghy.”

“We'll manage,” I said.

He chuckled grimly. “Let's hope you can all swim.”

It was a cheerful thought and I left him there and went below to prepare them for the worst.

 

The
caicque
was low in the waist which made disembarking simpler than it might otherwise have been, but it was still a tricky business. The run-in to the bay wasn't too bad although there was little doubt now that conditions in the water were going to be worse than I had anticipated.

We were all waiting in the waist and the inflatable dinghy was already over the side and held in close by the two sailors. Each man carried his own gear and wore a lifejacket. The time to go was when Demos started to turn away from land to commence his run out to sea again because it was then that the boat's speed would drop though only for a minute or two.

Demos gave a sudden sharp whistle, the prow of the
caicque
started to turn into the wind and she shuddered and heeled over, almost coming to a dead stop, the great sail fluttering wildly.

Johnson needed no order. He went over the side briskly followed by Forbes and O'Brien. Dawson snagged his haversack on the rail and hung there for a couple of violent moments, struggling desperately while Johnson cursed him.

Already we had picked up speed. Soon it would be too late. I lifted him over the rail bodily, dropped him
into the darkness and went after him. A second later and the
caicque
was a ghost ship fading into the night as silently as it had come.

 

I'd made a mistake, I knew that as soon as I felt the dinghy heel, water pouring over the gunnel. I adjusted my weight and grabbed for a paddle, but the wind was lifting the waves into whitecaps and it was impossible to keep it from slopping in over the sides.

We were waist-deep in the stuff within seconds, but still floating which was the main thing. I told them to paddle like hell if they wanted to live, which sounds dramatic enough at a distance of years, but was a reasonably accurate statement in view of what happened.

We moved in fast which didn't surprise me as Demos had warned of a five- or six-knot current and the land was plain to see now, partly because the low cloud seemed to have moved away, but mainly owing to the surf white in the darkness as it pounded in across the beach at the bottom of the cliffs.

We were moving faster now, the waves dipping in great shallow runs like a moorland burn in spate the morning after heavy rain and we were caught in a current of such strength that there was nothing to be done except to try to keep floating and hang on.

The sea filled the night with its roaring, the waves pounded in across the rocks, tearing the shingle from the beach with a great, angry sucking and the surface of the water trembled and shook, a hundred different cross-currents pulling every which way, spinning the dinghy round and round so that we lost control altogether.

A long comber rolled in out of the darkness, a six-
footer with a white, curling head on it that would have warmed the heart of any surf-rider. It was exactly what we didn't need at this stage. The dinghy shook violently and Forbes went backwards over the stern. O'Brien reached for him desperately and managed to catch him by the top of his lifejacket. Better for him if he had missed for a second later, the dinghy bucked violently to one side and Forbes was swept into the darkness pulling O'Brien in after him.

The current had us then and took us into the final line of breakers at a frightening speed. A great wave swept under, rolling in to dissolve into a cauldron of froth and white spray that boiled for about fifty yards between us and the shore. Another wave took us in so fast that we were suddenly half-way across. For a moment, I thought we might make it and then a giant hand simply tipped us over.

My feet touched bottom at once for it was no more than five or six feet deep. I was aware of the dinghy spinning beside me upside down, reached out blindly and grabbed hold of one of the handlines. There was no sign of Johnson or Dawson and in any event, it was all I could do to help myself.

The world had turned upside down, darkness and spray, no clear way to go and I floundered there in bad trouble for a moment and then a light flashed briefly three times. I thought it my imagination until it came again. I kicked out desperately, in three feet of water.

The sea poured in again, a great final wave that seemed determined to have me back, but I hung on, clawing into the shingle with my right hand for all I was worth. And as it flooded back again, someone grabbed me under the arm and pulled me to my feet. We splashed
forward into the darkness and then my feet stumbled in soft dry sand and I fell on to my hands and knees and vomited what felt like half the Aegean.

The sea was in my head, my heart, my brain, its roaring filled the night. I took a deep, deep breath and it stopped and then a dim light dazzled my eyes. I blinked a couple of times to get things into focus and a woman's face loomed out of the darkness. Great flat cheekbones, slanting eyes, wide nostrils, a mouth that was far too big. She was almost a Tartar. Pure peasant. The most beautifully ugly woman I have ever known.

“You are all right now?” Her voice was low and rough in the way you get in the mountains of the north.

“I'll do,” I said. “But who in the hell might you be? I was expecting to be met by Mikali—John Mikali.”

“He was killed yesterday at the fort,” she said calmly. “One of the guards shot him by mistake. I am his daughter Anna.”

“And you know what all this is about? You'll help us?”

“I know what is to be done,” she said, “and I will do it. For my father's sake I will do it.”

I crouched there, trying to make some sense of it all, aware of the stale, unwashed smell of her, pungent on the clean salt air and then Sergeant Johnson and Dawson staggered out of the surf hanging on to each other for dear life and collapsed beside me.

 

Both of them had lost everything in the surf. Radio, sub-machine guns, even their supply packs which left them with only a commando knife apiece and the .38 Smith & Wesson automatics we each carried in a shoulder hol
ster. I still had my sub-machine gun and haversack slung round my neck. I gave them a couple of grenades each and we split into two groups and spent a fruitless half-hour searching for Forbes and O'Brien. It was a hopeless task, so dark that you could hardly see your hand in front of your face and the surf seemed to be getting worse all the time.

So, now there were three of us which raised all kinds of new problems, but they would have to wait. The girl indicated a shallow cave where we left the dinghy ready inflated against a quick departure and we moved out, following her across the beach to climb the cliffs by means of a track so narrow and crumbling that it was probably best for all concerned that we had to manage in almost total darkness.

Once out of the bay with its enclosing cliffs, things improved considerably. The low cloud had cleared and the dark night sky was a blaze of stars. The girl didn't hesitate and started to lead the way across a plateau of short close-cropped grass without the slightest sign of caution.

There was a movement in the bushes ahead of us. I swung, crouching, the sub-machine gun ready. There was the dull clanking of one of those home-made bells that peasants make to hang round the necks of their animals. A goat brushed past me, the stink of it tainting the air.