The Heights of Zervos (6 page)

'Beg, please?' The steward looked at a loss. Prentice leaned round him and stabbed a ringer in the direction of Macomber's table, his voice louder still. 'One
ouzo
and a beer - beer - like that chap over there ordered.' The other two Germans glanced in his direction and then looked away, but the Scot, who had lowered his paper, stared hard across the room with an unpleasantly inquiring expression.

'Tough-looking basket, that big one,' Ford remarked, keeping his own voice quiet. 'If I met him in Libya I'd let bin have two in the pump. Yes, two - just to be sure.'

The drinks were served and Ford sipped at his palely coloured beer cautiously, then grimaced. 'They've got the washing-up water mixed in with the beer.' He eyed Prentice's glass with even more distaste. 'You're not really drinking that, are you?' But his question was purely rhetorical - Prentice would drink anything, smoke anything, eat anything. Some of the dishes he'd consumed during their brief stay in Turkey had astounded and appalled the conservative Ford. Prentice pushed the glass of yellowish liquid towards him.

'Go on, it tastes just like whisky.' He watched with amusement while his companion took a gulp and then almost dropped the glass, looking round suddenly to make sure his experience hadn't been observed. Macomber was still watching him over his paper.

'Lovely!' Ford choked. 'A delicate mixture of nail varnish and turpentine. If that's the Greek national drink no wonder the Romans licked them. It still seems odd travelling with a bunch of Jerries for company.' He looked round the saloon as he heard a distant rattle. The gangway being hauled up probably. In one corner the thin-faced German was absorbed in a book while the man crouched over some typed sheets made notes with a pencil. They might have been aboard a normal peacetime boat and the war seemed a long way from Istanbul 'It really is damned funny,' Prentice began, his lean, humorous face serious for a change. 'Here we are on a Greek ferry just leaving for Zervos - in the middle of a life-and-death war with Adolf Hider's Reich - and because the Greeks are righting the Italians but not the Germans, we can travel with three Jerries we mustn't even bump into if we meet them in the corridor. I must remember this trip when I write me memoirs, Ford.'

'Yes, sir,' said Ford automatically, and received a sharp dig in the ribs for his pains. He understood the hint and swore inwardly. He'd be glad when this ferry trip was over and they could get back to normal service life, to being Lieutenant Prentice and Staff-Sergeant Ford. Before they had boarded the
Hydra
Prentice had given him a stern lecture in their Istanbul hotel bedroom and he had tripped up already.

'Ford,' Prentice had begun, 'for the purposes of this sea trip back to Greece and while we're on board the ferry, I want you to forget I'm a lieutenant and, what's more important still, forget that you're a staff-sergeant. We're sporting civvies, but if you keep on calling me "sir" it's a dead giveaway. There may even be a German tourist on that broken-down old Greek ferry.' Prentice hadn't really believed that this would happen but he was dramatizing the situation to try and make Ford forget his years of professional training for a few hours.

'I'll watch it, sir,' Ford had replied and had then watched Prentice throw his trilby on the bed with a despairing cry.

'Ford!' he had bellowed. 'You've just done it again! Look, I know we're at the fag-end of our trip with the military mission to carry out liaison with the Turks in case Jerry attacks them, but we really have got to watch it...'

The trouble really had been the Turks themselves. Anxious to keep out of the war if they could - and who could blame them for that? - they had invited the British to send a military mission to discuss possible defence measures if the worst happened. But to avoid provoking the attack they feared, or rather, to avoid giving Berlin an excuse for launching that attack, they had insisted that the mission should travel in civilian clothes. A Signal Corps man, Prentice had found plenty to discuss with his Turkish opposite numbers in the way of a plan for setting up communications, and Staff-Sergeant Ford, ex-Royal Artillery, was now one of that rare breed, an ammunition examiner, an expert on explosives, both British and foreign. In this role he had also finished his work late when he had been taken to see a Turkish dam it was proposed to blow up in the event of a German invasion. So both of them had returned to Istanbul to find the plane with the military mission aboard had already left for Athens.

'When's the next one?' Prentice had light-heartedly asked the chap at the Legation.

'There isn't one,' the Legation official had informed him coldly. 'You'll have to catch a boat out of here. The very first available boat,' he had added. 'I've already looked it up for you - it's a ship called the
Hydra
. Sailing for Greece tomorrow morning. Just after dawn,' he had concluded with a twinge of waspish humour which Prentice, who hated rising early, had not fully appreciated.

Later, Prentice had discovered that normally there was a regular service operating between Istanbul and Athens, but the Turks had just cancelled this because of rumours of German troop movements along their northern borders. So, that left the ferry to the peninsula of Zervos, which was in northern Greece, much closer to Salonika than Athens, but at least it would land them on Greek soil. The Legation, of course, had been in the devil of a hurry to see the last of them. Prentice had a shrewd idea that the Ambassador was having kittens at the thought of British soldiers disguised as civilians wandering the streets of Istanbul. As he expressed it quietly to Ford in the saloon of the Hydra while he swallowed the ouzo in two gulps: 'I really think if there'd been a boat leaving for Russia they'd have pushed us on that.'

'Maybe. I still think it's queer there should be three Jerries all on the same trip on this leaky old tub,' Ford persisted. He could hear the rattle of a chain somewhere. They'd be off any minute now.

Prentice grinned. 'They may be embassy staff transferred from Istanbul to their place in Salonika.' He studied Ford, noted again the stocky build, the neatly cut black hair and the alert eyes which watched the room constantly. Always wanting to have a go, was Ford. An aggressive, controlled chap who carried an air of competence and energetic ability. As for Prentice, he never went out of his way to have a go, but if the necessity arose he was more than able to cope with his leisured, laconic manner. The difference was that for Ford, the army was a way of life, whereas for Prentice it was a necessary but time-wasting interval which kept him from his advertising job in the West End of London.

'But if they're embassy staff,' Ford went on obstinately, his hands cupped to hide his mouth, 'why are they travelling separately? They don't know each other, that's obvious enough.'

Prentice felt the ship moving away from the quayside and checked his watch. 7.30 AM. Ford had a point there, he was thinking. And if they were embassy staff going to Salonika why the devil hadn't they taken the train from Istanbul along that line through Macedonia? By all accounts it was a nightmare trip, stopping at every little out-of-the-way village and taking anything up to a couple of days, but at least it would have got them there direct. So why were they in such a rush to reach Greece by the earliest possible hour? Why, Prentice kept asking himself? Why?

Field-Marshal von List stood up from behind the desk at his GHQ in southern Bulgaria and walked to the window, still holding the meteorological report. Beside the desk his staff officer, Colonel Wilhelm Genke, waited patiently. The field-marshal was worried and from long experience Genke knew that this was not the moment to speak. The clock on the desk registered 7.30 AM.

His face seasoned and grim, List gazed out at the view, and this didn't please him either because it was a reminder of the piece of paper he held in his hands. It was an hour after dawn and beyond the stone houses of the village he could make out where the mountains rose to meet the clouds which hung low over Bulgaria, clouds which promised more snow on the way. Which the Met report also promised. He could vaguely see the snow from where he stood - great drifts of it piled up on the lower slopes under the cloud ceiling. His voice was harsh when he spoke.

'It's foul, unspeakably foul weather. They could be wrong, I suppose. They're wrong half the time, these so-called weather experts. Look at what happened in Norway.'

Genke coughed, timing his intervention carefully. 'Spring is late all over Europe, sir. There is still deep snow across the Russian steppes and no sign of a thaw...'

'Don't let's talk about Russia yet. We have to settle this business first.' List turned round, a tinge of sarcasm in his voice. 'Berlin, of course, is quite confident.'

'Berlin is always confident when other people have to do the work, sir. But you have exceptionally powerful forces under your command.'

On that point, at least, the field-marshal agreed. The Twelfth Army comprised two motorized, three mountain Alpenkorps and light infantry divisions, three regiments of the Liebstandarte Adolf Hitler Division - and five Panzer divisions, the spearhead of the coming onslaught on Greece and Yugoslavia. A force of enormous strength and great mobility -theoretically powerful enough to overwhelm everything which stood in their path. But there was deep snow on the Greek mountains, deep snow on Olympus and Zervos. Could the machines overcome the hazards of this damnably prolonged winter? The question was never far from his mind - and zero hour was almost here.

Gazing out of the window, he thought that Bulgaria was the most Godforsaken spot he had encountered in his life, and even as he watched, white flakes drifted down outside the window, several clinging to the glass and beginning to build up opaque areas. Would spring never come? Yes, zero hour was very close indeed. Beyond the window he heard a familiar sound - the grind and clatter of tank tracks moving over cobbled streets. The supporting Panzers were rolling towards the border and would be in position before nightfall. The timetable had been set in motion and the operation was under way. Now no power on earth except Berlin could stop it. And within hours even Berlin would have forfeited that prerogative.

From outside the house came the sound of a vehicle stopping, its engine still left running. Genke shuffled his feet.

'The car has arrived, sir.'

List buttoned up his coat to the ndck, put the peaked cap on his head and started for the door. But on the way he paused to glance at the wall map which an orderly would take down as soon as they had left, a map of the southern Balkans and eastern Mediterranean zones. Then Genke opened the door and Field-Marshal von List strode out with his assistant following. Genke had noted that pause to glance at the map and he knew which area had attracted List's attention. He had looked first at Istanbul, then his eye had followed the sea route through the Dardanelles and across the Aegean where it had finally alighted on a certain peninsula.

Zervos.

'The
Rupescu?
' The Senior Naval Intelligence Officer at Alexandria looked up at his assistant, Lieutenant-Commander Browne. 'Is that the Rumanian ship the Legation people at Istanbul sent the message about?'

'Yes, sir. It left the Bulgarian port of Varna yesterday and arrived at the Golden Horn a few hours ago. There's some mystery as to her ultimate destination.'

'What mystery?'

It's a bit vague, sir. Apparently she's bound for Beirut -but it's her first trip out of the Black Sea for months and I suppose the Legation's bothered because the Germans control Rumania now.'

'I see. That's rather delicate - we still haven't declared war on Rumania. You're suggesting we keep an eye on her? To make sure she is heading for the Lebanon?'

Browne looked out of the window where a white jetty sparkled in the early morning sunshine, its arm enclosing a basin of brilliant blue water where warships lay at anchor. A transport bound for Greece was just beyond the jetty wall, sailing north-west and leaving behind a clear wake of white on the blue. 'It's the only vessel in the area which has the remotest connexion with the Axis powers - and so far we have no idea what she's carrying.'

'Probably collecting rather than carrying - trying to pick up a cargo before war is eventually declared and we can pounce on her. We're very stretched, you know that, Browne.'

'I was thinking of the Daring, sir. She's patrolling off the Turkish coast and could intercept the
Rupescu
soon after dark. I'm not thinking of boarding her - but it might be interesting to get her reaction when a British destroyer comes in close.'

'Send Willoughby a message, then. And radio another one to Istanbul. We've had two requests already from those querulous diplomats.' The senior officer looked at the wall clock. 7.30 AM. Yes, it would be after nightfall before Willoughby arrived.

CHAPTER THREE

Saturday, 10 PM

The tension had slowly risen aboard the
Hydra
, a tension which seemed reproduced by the steady beat of her throbbing engines as she left the Dardanelles and proceeded far out into the open Aegean. By nightfall she was midway between the Turkish and Greek coasts, steaming through seas which were beginning to curdle. The tension rose from small, meaningless incidents. The meeting at a doorway between Prentice and the squat, dark-haired German, Volber, when the latter had started to push his way through first and had then changed his mind, offering prior entry to Prentice. The episode at dinner when a cork came out of a bottle like a pistol shot and for several seconds the company had frozen. The careful way in which passengers of different nationalities turned to go in another direction when they saw someone coming towards them.