Kidnap in Crete (17 page)

The route to the sheepfold was much easier than it had been the day before. Instead of going up every peak they followed the contour lines. The shepherd showed no surprise when he was introduced to them and Moss thought that the whole area must know of their presence, if not their mission. The old man welcomed them with milk in a communal glass and
mizithra
, a soft unsalted cheese with a pungent aroma and mild flavour, stored in a basket hanging, dripping from the ceiling of his tiny stone hut. After a short rest they moved on. In every village they passed, the dogs sensed their presence and began to bark. Leigh Fermor's solution to the problem was to draw attention to themselves, shouting orders in a loud voice and in German, and singing German military songs including ‘Bomber über England', ‘Lili Marlene' and the unofficial German national anthem so loved by Hitler, the ‘Horst Wessel Lied'. Moss was introduced to one of the Cretan methods of judging distance – how many cigarettes could be smoked before the next rendezvous was reached.

As they got nearer to Skinias the danger of discovery grew. One of the mule handlers warned them that a few months earlier the Germans had set up an ambush on a bridge which they would soon have to cross and that even the track they were on was regularly patrolled. Another of the muleteers went ahead to check that all was clear; the others waited in a ditch until they heard him whistle, the signal that they could go on in safety. They walked along the deserted streets of the village, the noise of their boots echoing off the walls. Ahead, in the moonlight, they saw two uniformed men. Manolis Paterakis recognised them: they were part of the local gendarmerie, the force to which he had belonged before the invasion. He decided to lead the group straight past them, warning, ‘Don't say anything, don't catch their eye.' The kidnappers walked on, single file, heads down, faces hidden. The two gendarmes took no notice of them, dragging on their cigarettes and chatting quietly, as though the band of desperadoes did not exist.

At the end of the village they reached the house where they were to have supper before moving on. Their arrival was the cue for another display of Cretan hospitality. The house was owned by a shepherd called Mihalis, who lived there with his elder sister. The party was immediately offered glasses of raki and Mihalis insisted they stay with him until the following night as they had no chance of getting to Kastamonitsa in the remaining hours of darkness. He would not take no for an answer and said he had already made the arrangements.

Then dinner was prepared, a feast in spite of the wartime shortages: mutton, chopped up and cooked in olive oil. Then lentils, also prepared in oil, creamed goat's cheese and hard-boiled eggs, washed down with Cretan red wine. Moss says that ten people sat down to the meal and, ‘I was introduced to the Cretan custom of making a toast not only for each round of drinks, but also as often as anyone at the table lifted his glass to his lips. With ten people present our eating was so punctuated by glass-raising that the meal seemed to continue for hours.'

After the meal a stream of visitors visited the house, all wanting to set eyes on the strange men who had arrived from the sea. Soon the small room was filled with smiles and noisy enthusiasm for the resistance team. Two of the callers were the gendarmes they had so recently passed in the square. The officers were greeted like long-lost brothers.

It was nearly dawn when the party ended. The next day they were served a breakfast of eggs, goats' milk, wine and more raki. Moss came to realise that ‘wine takes the place of one's morning cup of tea and one often drinks a liberal quantity before brushing one's teeth'. After breakfast more visitors arrived, each one subjected to a charade of mock security with the door half open and whispered passwords. The most important visitor was Kapitan Anastasios Boutzalis. Originally from Anatolia, Boutzalis looked like a kindly Cretan uncle. He sported a thick moustache and was six foot tall with broad shoulders and a comfortable paunch. His gentle aspect concealed a man who was a great patriot to Crete and an enormously useful ally to the British agents on the island. Like Manolis Paterakis, he had distinguished himself in the battle for Crete and then became one of the first resistance fighters in the mountains, taking part in the battle of Viannos. He struck Moss as something of a Falstaff: he used a dagger to eat the mutton; seeing that Billy Moss was looking at him he suddenly spiked a sheep's eyeball and offered the delicacy to him. Moss found he was unable to accept the gift. Boutzalis shrugged and popped the orb into his own mouth. Moss watched him chew in fascination. ‘I could see its shape like a skinned golf ball riding in his cheek.'

Another visitor was a young woman carrying a baby who turned out to be Leigh Fermor's god-daughter. She had been christened ‘England Rebellion' in a hilltop ceremony some months before. The child's father had been wounded and evacuated to Cairo, the mother was now in hiding with the infant in the mountains. To be a godfather to a Cretan child is an honour and a solemn undertaking; the role is binding and as deep as a blood tie. The responsibilities last until death. Leigh Fermor presented the child with a gold sovereign. Another person at the lunch was an old man who had been ejected by the Germans from his house in Chania and was now taking refuge with his relatives. He was dressed like a priest and looked to be in his mid-seventies. He claimed to have worked in a restaurant in Los Angeles and his conversation was peppered with phrases like ‘Hot dog' and ‘Goddam son of a bitch'. The two policemen who had seemed so menacing in the moonlight made a return visit. They were eager to help with the next stage of the journey and were full of helpful suggestions.

After so much social activity the small team was grateful when, as darkness fell, they headed off into the rain on the last leg of the trek to Kastamonitsa. A surreal moment came when, ahead of them, they saw what appeared to be fireflies dancing on the mountain slopes; the lights turned out to be the lanterns of villagers foraging for snails, which crawl out from under rocks after rain, and which are fried or roasted with wild rosemary to make a popular Cretan dish, and a necessity in a time when food was being stolen from them by the German army.

Just before dawn on the morning of
7
April, on the brow of the next hill, the tired walkers saw the village of Kastamonitsa. In three nights' tough trekking they had covered little more than sixteen miles. Billy Moss now knew what they were in for and how demanding the mountain country could be. He regretted wearing hobnail-studded boots and wished that he had the rubber, Vibram soles that had been developed by the Italians for mountaineering and adopted by the British commandos.

As they arrived at the Zografakis house, Kimonas decided to split the team up. He sent the guerrillas who had guided the abduction team across the mountains to shelter in a disused building. Leigh Fermor, Moss, Paterakis and Tyrakis were to stay in the main house. The family were not well-to-do but they were prosperous by Cretan mountain standards, living in a two-storey building with a living room, bedroom and kitchen. The family had often sheltered Allied agents, despite the astonishing risks: there was a German garrison and military hospital in the village; and off-duty German soldiers were in the habit of just wandering into islanders' houses demanding food and drink.

By day the brothers and sisters of the house kept lookout, coming in to warn them when soldiers were loitering nearby or even walking towards the front door; the men were told to keep well away from the windows. Nearby was a dried riverbed full of trees, bushes and large rocks which provided a hiding place where the kidnap team could hide if they had enough warning. Zografakis's wife, whose son had been murdered only months before, found the ordeal of concealing the SOE men distressing. Zografakis himself appeared to be unmoved. He was a handsome, silent man, unsmiling but with an honest, open face, white hair and sparkling bright eyes. He moved over the rough terrain with a nimbleness given only to men who have spent their lives farming on mountain slopes.

Later, the women of the family, Kimonas's wife and two daughters, prepared a banquet for the group. Again many toasts were made, including some swearing revenge for the death of Kimonas's son. By the time they were allowed to climb the rickety ladder up to the bedroom, the team were drunk and half asleep. They slipped gratefully into beds that had been prepared with clean sheets, falling immediately into a deep stupor, oblivious to the fleas that crawled all over them. The first phase of the mission was over: they had landed and reached the base that was to be their headquarters while they finalised the details of the kidnapping.

 

See Notes to Chapter 13

14

First Base

The next day they woke late to find ‘pretty plump girls’ bringing their lunch and waiting on them hand and foot. As they ate the four men discussed their next move. The plan was to break into the Villa Ariadne, overpower Kreipe’s guards and spirit him away. First they needed to make a study of the villa, the guards, the route in and how they were going to escape with their prisoner.

After lunch they dressed and clambered down the wooden ladder to the ground-floor room. Waiting for them was a happy-faced man of about thirty. Unlike the mountain men, he wore a grey pinstriped suit with a button-down shirt and polished black shoes. He had come by bus from Heraklion. This was Micky Akoumianakis, head of counter-intelligence with Force 133 SOE in Heraklion. It was Micky’s father, who had worked for the archaeologist Sir Arthur Evans, who had been killed fighting in the battle for Crete. Micky had inherited his father’s house, next door to the Villa Ariadne, the perfect place from which to watch General Kreipe’s comings and goings. Leigh Fermor asked Micky to take him to the villa, a short bus journey away.

The presence of the military hospital in Kastamonitsa quickly made it too dangerous for the kidnappers to spend much more time in the Zografakis house. Members of the family kept coming in to warn them that Germans were loitering nearby or even walking towards the front door. They decided that when Leigh Fermor and Akoumianakis left to reconnoitre the villa, the rest of the party must move to a new hideout.

That evening they filled in Leigh Fermor’s false identity cards, sorted out maps and papers, and ate and drank. Leigh Fermor’s cover name was Mihali Phrangiadakis, twenty-seven, a farm worker from the Amari valley. When they finished the four men climbed the stairs to bed, serenaded by drunken German soldiers singing at the other end of the village.

The next day a new recruit arrived: Grigorios Chnarakis, sent for by Leigh Fermor, who knew him to be an expert in guerrilla fighting. Chnarakis had already taken part in several armed raids and knew the terrain well. Before heading off towards the city, Leigh Fermor turned himself into what he termed a ‘Heraklion gadabout’: a smart suit was found for him and he used a burnt cork to darken his eyebrows and moustache, his face already tanned nut-brown from years under the Mediterranean sun. A cap, pulled hard down, disguised his fair hair. He and Micky left in the late afternoon and walked to the nearby town of Kasteli to catch the bus.

Kasteli was next to an airfield and was full of army and Luftwaffe personnel. The two men clambered aboard the bus; it was nearly empty, with just a few people carrying poultry and vegetables to sell at the market. Micky nodded to the driver, who was a friend and a trusted member of the resistance. He handed over the fare and settled into a seat; Leigh Fermor slumped beside him, and quickly pretended to have fallen asleep, his head lolling forward.

Outside Heraklion the bus was flagged down at a temporary roadblock. A military policeman climbed aboard demanding that everyone produce their papers. The two agents fumbled in their pockets and produced their forged documents. In the half-dark the soldier glanced at Leigh Fermor, looked at his photograph and handed his papers back. The bus was waved through into the noisy city. On arrival the two men got off, and vanished into the crowds of civilians and uniformed soldiers.

Military vehicles thronged the streets, parked in roads still lined by the ruins of buildings destroyed in the fighting nearly four years earlier. Soldiers manned roadblocks, stopping the locals to check their papers and to enforce the civilian curfew that started at seven every night. Others strolled in the evening light, crowding the pavements, or sat drinking raki and coffee in cafés and bars. Some of the more impressive buildings had been taken over by the invaders and turned into offices. Draped down the facades were enormous, billowing red and white flags emblazoned with the swastika.

Military policemen with whistles controlled the garrison traffic; unease and tension pervaded the streets. The German soldiers were aware that the Cretans detested them and were waiting for the day when they could take revenge on their conquerors. Leigh Fermor found that there was ‘something bracing about these descents into the lion’s den: the swastika flags everywhere, the German conversation in one’s ears and the constant rubbing shoulders with the enemy in the streets. The outside of Gestapo HQ particularly, which had meant the death of many friends, held a baleful fascination.’

Back at the Zografakis house, the rest of the group, Moss, Paterakis, Tyrakis and Chnarakis, started moving the base with all its equipment higher up the mountains. Kimonas’s father offered to guide them on the first leg of the journey. They waited until dark, loaded the mules and slipped out through the deserted streets into the country. In the clear moonlight they followed the old man up a twisting mountain path out of Kastamonitsa. Once safely on their way he left them; for a second they watched his white hair bobbing as he walked back down to the village towards the military hospital, its lights ablaze. The kidnappers walked for three hours, climbing higher and higher. The going was slippery and dangerous; even the three mules carrying the equipment had trouble. Eventually they were forced to stop and spend the rest of the night in the bitter cold under an overhanging rock. When the sun rose the next morning, Moss was amazed to see the mountains towering all round him. To the east the white slopes of Mount Ida, and beyond that the White Mountains where legend has it that Icarus once tried to fly. In the far distance they could see smaller peaks and on the horizon ‘a tiny cluster of white doll’s houses – Heraklion’.