LITMIR.BIZ

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bearing the winged-hatchet badge of the SAS.

      Mallory glanced at the pips on the epaulette. He said, ‘Morning, Lieutenant.’

      The man on the bed stirred and moaned. His eyes half-opened. They focused on Mallory. They saw a man in a coal-scuttle helmet and a Waffen-SS smock, carrying a Schmeisser.

      ‘Hiding up in a brothel,’ said Mallory. ‘All right for some.’

      The man’s hand crawled towards his pillow. Mallory’s hand beat him to it. His fingers closed on metal. He came out with the Browning automatic. ‘Relax,’ said Mallory.

      The Lieutenant glared at him with berserk blue eyes. His face was white, with grey shadows. Pain. He was badly wounded. ‘SOE,’ said Mallory. ‘We’ve come to bail you out.’ Inwardly, his heart was sinking. This would be one of Killigrew’s men. One of the gung-ho shoot-em-up boys who had been dropped and got themselves lost. Who had probably compromised the operation already. Things were in a bad enough mess without a wounded SAS man to slow them down. A badly wounded SAS man, by the look of him. Perhaps he could be smuggled over the border into Spain.

      ‘How do I know that?’ said the Lieutenant.

      ‘Admiral Beaufort will tell you,’ said Mallory. ‘So did a little man called Captain Killigrew.’ He opened the buttons of the SS smock. ‘And this is British battledress. Seemed tactless to wear it on the outside, somehow.’

      ‘Who told you I was here? Marcel-’

      ‘Marcel was very discreet,’ said Mallory, soothingly.

      Slowly, the blue eyes lost their berserk glare. The wariness remained. ‘Killigrew,’ he said. ‘Yes. When did you get in?’

      ‘Albemarle, last night,’ said Mallory. There was no time for chitchat. ‘I need to know what happened to you.’

      ‘Landed on a bit of a plateau … near here,’ said the SAS man. He obviously wanted to give as little away as possible. ‘Brought a Jeep.’ A Jeep, thought Mallory. A full-size actual Jeep. On parachutes. Amazing. But that was the SAS for you. ‘Heading for the coast. Ambushed. Other chaps bought it. I took a bang on the head and a bullet in the guts.’

      Mallory said, ‘How did it happen?’

      ‘Driving down a track,’ said the SAS man. ‘Next thing we knew, there were two Spandaus. One either side of the road. Don’t remember much after that. The Resistance brought me here.’ There was a shake in his voice. He was very young.

      ‘So it was a road block?’ said Mallory.

      ‘Not much of one.’

      Mallory nodded. Give me strength, he thought. Conning your way through a checkpoint behind enemy lines, SAS style. Two grenades and put your foot down. ‘Where were you going on the coast?’

      ‘Doesn’t really matter,’ said the Lieutenant. This was his first operation. It was just like school, on the Rugby XV. You went for it, and sod the consequences. Your own team tactics were your own team tactics, and you kept them to yourself. The only thing different about war was this damned bullet. He did not let his mind stray too close to the bullet, in case the pain made him sick again. It felt the size of a cricket ball, down there. And it hurt. Was hurting worse, lately … He concentrated on his dislike for this old man in the Waffen-SS uniform who had burst in and dropped a few names, and thought that gave him a license to pump him, take over the operation, grab the glory. Let him find out for himself.

      The old man’s face was close to his. It had a broad forehead and very young brown eyes; eyes like old Brutus, who taught Latin at Shrewsbury and climbed Alps in the summer hols. The eyes seemed to remove the Lieutenant’s reserve the way a tin- opener would take the lid off a tin. The old man said, ‘Where were you going and who were you going to see?’

      The Lieutenant summoned up his undoubted toughness. ‘Doesn’t matter.’

      The eyes hardened. The old man said, ‘Don’t be childish. There’s very little time.’

      The Lieutenant gritted his teeth. He desperately wanted to tell someone. It would be less lonely, for one thing, and he was really, terrifyingly, lonely. But a secret was a secret. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I don’t … I’m not authorised.’

      Mallory allowed his eyes to rest on this lieutenant. He really was absurdly young. His was the berserker’s bravery, frenzied and unbending. If the Gestapo got their hands on him, he would break like a twig.

      Mallory sighed inwardly. He got up, opened the door and put his head out. There seemed to be a party going on. He said, ‘Andrea.’

      The huge Greek padded across from his seat overlooking the square. His shoulders seemed to blot out the light in the little room. Mallory said, ‘If you won’t tell me, tell the Colonel.’

      The SAS man frowned. He saw no colonel. He saw an unshaven giant with a huge moustache. He saw a pair of black eyes, eyes like the eyes on a Byzantine icon, that understood everything, forgave everything. ‘Colonel?’ he said.

      ‘Andrea is a full colonel in the Greek army.’

      ‘How do I know that’s not another bloody lie?’

      Andrea sat down in the pink plush armchair. Suddenly the SAS man felt weak, and ill, and about fourteen years old. ‘You are frightened,’ said Andrea.

      ‘I bloody well am not,’ said the Lieutenant. But even as Andrea spoke, he could feel it draining away, all the team spirit, the gung ho, war-as-a-game-of-rugby. He saw himself as he was: a wounded kid who would die in a dirty little room, alone.

      ‘Not of dying,’ said Andrea. ‘But of yourself, of failing. I also am frightened, all the time. So it is not possible to let myself fail.’

      He did not sound like any colonel the Lieutenant had ever heard. He sounded like a man of warmth and common sense, like a friend. Careful, said a voice in the Lieutenant’s head. But it was a small voice, fading fast.

      Andrea’s eyes alighted on a crude wooden crutch, a section of pole with a pad whittled roughly to the shape of an armpit. ‘Yours?’ he said.

      ‘I’m going to use it,’ said the SAS man. ‘I can get around all right.’ It was not altogether a lie. He could move. It was just that when he moved, he could feel that bit of metal in his guts twisting, doing him damage. But that was not the point. The point was fighting a war. ‘Couple of days,’ he said. ‘Get into the hills.’

      ‘Why don’t you come with us?’ said Andrea, tactfully. This boy and his crutch would not last an hour in the mountains. He could see it in his face. ‘We will take you with us,’ said Andrea. ‘And you and I, and Miller and Mallory, will finish this operation.’

      The Lieutenant’s eyes moved back to the first man, the thin one. ‘Mallory?’ he said. He saw newspaper front pages pinned to the board behind the fives courts. On the front pages were pictures of this man, with a pyramid of snow-covered rock in the background. That Mallory. He came to a decision. He said, ‘Jules told me. Guy Jamalartégui. At the Café de L’Océan in St-Jean-de-Luz. We would have told you. But … there’s been a lot of German activity. Radio silence, except in emergency. Jerry’s very quick.’

      Mallory nodded. Radio detector vans would not be the only reason. The SAS liked to keep their intelligence to themselves, particularly when it was information that might help Jensen and SOE.

      ‘Thank you,’ he said. ‘Thank you very much.’ Sounds of revelry were percolating through the door. ‘Now. Can I get you some breakfast?’

      Once the shock had worn off. Miller had almost started to enjoy himself. The coffee was undoubtedly coffee, and the bread was still warm from the oven, and while he was not a goat cheese enthusiast, in his present frame of mind he would have cheerfully eaten the goat, horns and all. And by the time he had finished eating, there had been stirrings behind some of the doors. At the Cognac stage, his glass had been filled by a dark girl in a red silk nightdress, and Miller

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