The Sword of Fate (43 page)

Seizing his nose again, I stuffed the handkerchief back in his mouth, as I added, “I can’t afford to have you rousing the neighbours with your shouts, so you’ll have to stay here until someone finds you.” I then pocketed my gun, picked up the attaché-case, and, switching out the light, left him.

Out in the alleyway I spent a couple of minutes bundling the trussed and gagged servant into the scullery. Having shut the back door upon him, I let myself out through the wooden gate. The washerwoman was still outside, and she asked me with considerable curiosity if I had succeeded in doing whatever it was that I went in to do.

I told her that I had given the two Germans an exceedingly tough time and that I had left them tied up in there because I did not want them to follow me. The good soul was delighted, but wanted to know what I had done with her laundry basket.

I said that I would go in and get it for her if she wished, but I thought that it was much better to leave it there, as when the man who had let me in had asked why she hadn’t brought it, I had said that I was her nephew. To retrieve it now would only lead any inquirers to suppose that she had been my accomplice, so she had best say that the basket of linen had been stolen from her; but I added that in case she did not get the basket back I would like to pay for it, and I produced a thousand-drachma note, which is something under £2.

However, she flatly refused to take it and said that the basket
was well lost to her if it had helped an English soldier to give a bad half-hour to two of those dirty Nazis.

Having retrieved my cap, tin hat and gas mask from her, I took off Mondragora’s mackintosh and laid it down on the pavement where any passers-by, who thought they might find it useful, could pick it up. Then I parted from the washerwoman with a good hearty handshake and set off towards the centre of Athens.

Already my mind was working desperately fast on the steps it would be necessary to take in order to get to Ventsa and find Daphnis. A car was one thing I must have and ample Greek money another. If Diamopholus had not yet left the Grande Bretagne to join his ship in the Piraeus I felt sure that he would provide me with both, and I hurried forward as fast as my legs would carry me.

I then realised that not only was I going back into the battle area, but that I would have to pass right through the German lines and that I could not possibly do so in the uniform of a British officer.

As I was thinking of the immense difficulties of the journey that lay ahead of me, I put my hand in my pocket to make certain that I’d got the passes and it came in contact with a flimsy piece of paper. I did not need to take it out to see what it was. I knew, and my heart sank like lead to my boots at the thought of it. That paper was the order that I had been sent only an hour earlier to rejoin my regiment at the earliest possible moment. If I failed to do so—if instead I endeavoured to save Daphnis—if I changed into a civilian suit … I should be a deserter.

The thought appalled me. It had been decided that I should go into the Diplomatic because as a child I had shown such an unusual flair for languages; but I came from a family of soldiers. From my earliest days I had heard the stories of courage and endurance by which older, or dead-and-gone, members of the Du
Crow-Fernhurst clan had achieved high rank and coveted decorations. It had become with me an accepted article of faith that desertion at any time is cowardly, criminal and absolutely without justification, however great the extenuating circumstances may appear to be.

Yet Daphnis’ life almost certainly hung upon my speed of action and an immediate decision to throw all that overboard. I continued my way, but thinking more furiously than ever as I went.

From conversations with other officers over lunch at the Club I knew that the British Front was now rapidly dissolving; certain units were being embarked at night, wherever a favourable opportunity offered to get them off, while others were gallantly covering their retreat in a series of desperate rearguard actions. If I made my way up towards Thermopylae I might run into the New Zealanders some time during the next forty-eight hours; but there was quite a possibility that I would fail to locate them or that they had already been evacuated.

I asked myself then what help I could give if I did find them. A spare officer could always make himself useful, either in directing some small local operation or holding the men together during a retreat; but in a day or two at most the party must be over now, and I felt that I was playing absolutely fair in regarding it as only a fifty-fifty chance of my being able to get back to them at all before they were out of Greece.

It seemed then that this was not a question of my deserting a post or a command that had been entrusted to me and abandoning my duty in a crisis on account of my private affairs, but rather as if I was to occupy the next few days before it became imperative that I should leave Greece, if I was to avoid capture, by looking for the New Zealanders or endeavouring to save Daphnis, There was also the indisputable fact that I should not technically be a deserter unless I was absent without leave for more than seven days.

Finally I decided that what really mattered was one’s intentions. Desertion in the ordinary sense is an endeavour to escape further military service; but in my case there was no intention of that kind at all. Far from running away, I was about to take on about as desperate a job as one could imagine. No less than an attempt to penetrate to the Field Headquarters of the German General Staff, and if I got away with my life I did not intend to lose a moment in reporting back for routine duties just as soon as I could reach any British military authority.

While facing up to this harassing dilemma I had been hastening along as fast as my legs could carry me towards the Grande Bretagne. When I entered it I felt now what a ghastly blow it would be if old Diamopholus had already left; but the hall-porter relieved my fears by telling me that the shipping magnate was still upstairs in his suite, and after a telephone inquiry I was asked to go up at once.

As I had never told him anything about Daphnis’ relations with Mondragora I did not think there was any point in going into that now, particularly as time was so precious.

He was packing when I arrived, and he told me that, although the ship in which he intended to sail had been twice hit by bombs during the day, she was still considered seaworthy. Owing to the constant air raids on the Piraeus, intending passengers had been asked to remain in Athens until ten o’clock, but the evacuation authorities hoped to have them on board and the ship under way by midnight.

I thought that the easiest line to take was that I had learned, purely by chance, from a friend in the British Intelligence Service, that a girl answering Daphnis’ description had been living at German Field Headquarters for the past three weeks and moving with it every time Marshal List advanced. I said that the description tallied so well that I had made up my mind to go there and find out, and if it was Daphnis persuade her to come away with me; but that for the purpose I should need a car, a good sum in Greek money in case it was necessary to bribe people, and an outfit of civilian clothes.

Nicholas raised his eyebrows and shook his white head with amazement at my story; but it tied up to some extent with Daphnis’ old pro-Italian feelings which were known to him and the fact that on running away she had gone to Sofia, which was in Axis hands.

He said that I was a brave fellow to take such a risk, and he would willingly help me in every way possible. It would be easy for him to go down to the Piraeus in a taxi so I could have his car, and although he feared it would fit very badly I was welcome to a suit of his clothes and any other things of that kind that I required. As for money—he pulled out a fat pocket-book and insisted on giving me notes to the value of a hundred thousand drachma, which is roughly about a hundred and eighty English pounds.

I gave him the attaché-case containing the papers I had taken from von Hentzen, and without saying what they were I impressed
upon him that they were important, and asked him to undertake their personal delivery to the duty officer at the British G.H.Q. in Athens. He promised to hand them in before going down to the Piraeus, and the thought that there must be the clues to at least some valuable enemy secrets amongst them made me feel that on account of this
coup
alone I had more than earned the ‘French’ leave that I was about to take.

Among Nicholas’ things I found a plus-four suit of a heather mixture which reeked of Scotland, and I decided on that as, owing to its natural looseness, the disparity between his figure and mine would not be so apparent as if I had worn one of his lounge suits.

While I was packing it with a shirt, shoes, socks, tie, etc., in a spare handbag that he gave me for the purpose, he telephoned the hotel garage giving orders that his car was to be made ready for a long journey, then brought round as soon as possible.

In two stiff whiskies we drank a solemn toast to the downfall of the Axis and the resurrection of Greek independence. Then he accompanied me downstairs. His car proved to be an open six-litre Bentley, and the chauffeur obligingly showed me where the maps, tools, etc., were kept before handing it over. I said goodbye to them, thanked old Nicholas for his help and promised I would do my utmost to let him have news as soon as I possibly could if I succeeded in finding Daphnis.

I had returned to Athens by the railway which runs round Mount Parnes and enters the city from the north-east. The road that follows that route would, I knew, be one of the main lines of retreat used by the British Army. The road to the north-west was much more mountainous and would doubtless also be crowded with retreating troops, but it was the more direct route to Central Greece, so I decided to take it.

Leaving the city by the famous Sacred Way, which is now a broad well-kept motor road passing between rich olive groves, I ran up the hill to Daphni, the little village from which Nicholas’ luscious wine had come. As I passed through I remembered it now from my peacetime travels in Greece. To the left of the road there was an ancient ruined monastery with a round-domed church. It was famous for its mosaics of strange wide-eyed Byzantine saints; those thin-lipped emaciated successors of the handsome Apollo and the beautiful Aphrodite who, centuries earlier, had been worshipped in that self-same grove. The tall cypresses beyond the wall of the monastery garden still threw long shadows in the bright late-afternoon light.

Another few miles, down the hill now, and I reached the Bay of Salamis, where the greatest naval battle in ancient history had been fought in 480 B.C., and the Greeks had saved their civilisation for countless generations of men by smashing the Persian armada from the East.

The road now ran north along the seashore and it was black with cars. Nine-tenths of the traffic was military, but as it was nearly all coming towards me and the road was broad, I was able to make fairly good going until I reached Eleusis, where to my fury I got stuck for over an hour in a bad traffic jam.

The little town and harbour had been mercilessly bombed, so that many of its modern buildings were hardly to be distinguished from the great area of ancient ruins spread out on the slope of the hill, where once the celebrated Greek mysteries had been performed.

Eleusis was only fourteen miles from Athens, but on entering it I found myself right back in the war zone. Ships of all sizes were in the bay, from quite large liners to the old sailing
caiques
of the Greek fishermen, and nearly all were in constant motion, zig-zagging about to avoid the bombs of the German ’planes, flight after flight of which came roaring overhead. On shore in the fields and gardens, British and Greek troops were taking cover as well as they could during the long wait for the darkness which would conceal them from their enemies while they carried out the tricky business of embarking.

At last I got through the jam of cars and lorries, and turning inland drove on up into the wooded hills. It was Spring and those woods of Attica were indescribably lovely. Their variety seemed endless, and they were sufficiently broken up for vistas of one mossy glade after another to be visible with every twist and turn of the road; but I had no leisure to dwell upon their loveliness now.

After leaving Eleusis the wide way narrows until at times there is barely room on it for two lorries abreast. As it corkscrews higher and higher up into the mountains the precipices become ever more terrifying, for the road has not even a stone kerb at its edge to keep a carelessly driven vehicle from hurtling over to certain destruction many hundreds of feet below.

In normal times there is so little traffic that the road serves its purpose quite adequately; but now it was jammed by the retreating army.

I must say that the drivers behaved splendidly. There was no sign of panic, and as soon as they could they drew in to let me pass; but at every bend I came face to face with more tractors and
lorries, so the going was slow and nerve-racking. It did not help matters either that from time to time formations of German aircraft flew over for the specific purpose of harrying the retreat. The bombs they dropped were more frightening than dangerous, as owing to the steep slope of the mountain-side and the continual twisting of the road it was almost impossible to hit it; nine-tenths of the bombs burst a hundred or more feet above or below us. Few casualties were caused by lateral bomb-splinters, but the machine-gunning was about the severest nerve test that any motor-driver could ever be called upon to endure.

Even if the column had halted each time a Nazi ’plane hurtled down spitting fire and lead there was nowhere on the more mountainous stretches for the men to take cover; and if they took their eyes off the road, even for a moment, through ducking as the aircraft roared down, there was a good chance of their running headlong over the precipice. In an hour I saw at least ten Army vehicles go whirling over and over in space; but in most of the cases I think it was due to the fact that the driver had been shot and his companions had not had time to grab the wheel before it was too late.