Andreas had not yet put on his jumpsuit and leaned forward, elbows resting on his tanned knees, as he drew on his cigarette and watched the men working on the aircraft. Despite the terrible danger he faced he felt happy. His training was complete and he felt confident in the skills he had learned and was keen to put them into practice when he returned to Lefkas. He mentally went over his orders once again. It had been months since the SOE had had an agent on Lefkas. The previous British officer had been injured and evacuated. Contact with the
andartes
had been intermittent and brief when it happened, according to communications protocols, and there was only a vague understanding of what was happening. Andreas would go in with the next supply drop to the largest of the resistance bands. When he reached Lefkas he was to assess the situation and report back on the number of the resistance fighters and their needs. After he had reported back he was then to do what he could to coordinate the efforts of the
andartes
and assist them in their attacks on the enemy.
After he had been over his orders he permitted himself a moment’s reverie at the prospect of seeing Eleni again. He had no idea if she was still living on the island, or indeed was even alive. The winter of starvation that had killed so many of his people might well have claimed her too. But somehow he instinctively believed that she was still alive and still there and he might see her from time to time. After these long months apart, that would be enough to nourish his desire for her, he thought. In time, when the war was over, there would be a new opportunity to know her better, to dare to think of a future together.
His thoughts were interrupted by a car driving across the airfield towards him, throwing up a swirl of dust in its wake. The vehicle stopped outside the ready room and the driver turned the engine off and hopped out to open the door for his passenger. Colonel Huntley emerged, in uniform, and Andreas and the other agents rose to their feet and saluted. Huntley returned their salute and then removed his cap.
‘Just come to say a few words and see you boys off.’ He nodded briefly to Andreas. ‘Be with you in a minute.’
Andreas resumed his seat and continued smoking while the colonel offered a few muted words of encouragement to the others and shook each of them by the hand. Then he made his way to Andreas and gestured to the bench.
‘May I join you, Katarides?’
‘Of course, sir.’
Huntley eased himself down and pulled out an unopened packet of cigarettes and offered it to Andreas.
‘I already have one, sir.’ He raised his cigarette.
‘This is for later. After you’ve landed. Take it. You’ll thank me for it, I can assure you.’
Andreas glanced at him. ‘Then you’ve been in the field?’
‘Of course. You don’t really think that I would send men to do work I was not prepared to do myself.’
‘Forgive me, sir. But that’s not uncommon in the military world.’
‘Well, it’s not how we do things in the SOE.’
Andreas nodded, hesitated briefly, then asked, ‘May I ask where?’
‘You may . . .’
They exchanged a knowing smile before Huntley continued. ‘It’s never the way you think it’s going to be. Before you go, and to an extent afterwards, it seems exciting and terribly noble work. But while you are there, there is only boredom, exhaustion, hunger, thirst and cold, and worst of all a constant sickening dread . . . But there, I shouldn’t be saying these things.’
‘I understand, sir.’
‘That’s good. You have a more dangerous assignment than most of my agents. We can get you on to Lefkas, but exfiltrating you is a rather more tricky process. The chances are that you will have to remain on the island for many months, years even, assuming the war lasts that long. If you are injured or taken ill, there will be nothing we can do to help you. And then there’s the enemy. They will hunt you like a pack of hounds and you will have to be as wily as the brightest of foxes to stay out of their clutches. They may kill you, but the bigger danger is that they take you alive. The Italians are fair enough chaps, but if they are persuaded by their German friends to hand you over then there’s every chance that you will be mistreated. In which case, the SOE offers all out agents a choice . . .’ He paused to reach into his jacket pocket and took out a small black metal case, the size of a domino. ‘We call these L pills. I think you can guess what they do.’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘I’m told it’s quick. All you have to do is bite down on the capsule and the cyanide will do its bit in seconds. Here.’
He held the box out and Andreas did not hesitate as he took it.
‘Keep it on you at all times. I will not order a man to use it in the event of capture. That will be for you to decide. If you don’t then I have a right to ask that you deny the enemy any information for as long as you can. We reckon on at least a day, in order for the rest of your group to make good their escape.’
‘Yes, sir. You can be sure I will do the right thing.’ Andreas put the box in his breast pocket and fastened the button securely. ‘Thank you.’
‘I hope you never have cause to.’
A covered truck drew up by the aircraft and the planes’ crews climbed out and made their way to each of the bombers and clambered up through the belly hatches.
‘They’ll be ready for you soon,’ said Huntley.
Andreas nodded. They sat in silence for a while before the colonel straightened his back and took a deep breath. ‘Well, there’s nothing more to be said. I’ll wish you the best of luck and good fortune, Katarides.’
They both stood up and the colonel shook Andreas by the hand. ‘At times it will feel like you are playing an insignificant part in the war effort. Never let that discourage you. Our enemy will feel even the smallest pinprick and if we have to win this war one drop of blood at a time then that’s how we must play it.’
‘Yes, sir.’
Huntley held his hand a moment longer and fixed him with a determined stare. Then he released his grip and turned back to his car abruptly. The driver opened the door for him and the colonel climbed in and the vehicle drove off without him once looking back at the agents. As the car disappeared across the airfield, the Liberators’ engines coughed into life, one by one, and the propellers spun until they merged into shimmering disks, glinting in the last light of the evening. The truck that had delivered the aircrews rumbled over towards the ready room. The door opened and the corporal came out and cleared his throat as he addressed the agents.
‘It’s time to go.’
Chapter Twenty-One
Lefkas
‘They’re late,’ Michaelis hissed and spat on to the ground. He stood up and stretched his back as he looked out over the bare crest of the hill that had been chosen for the drop site. It was sufficiently far from the nearest settlement to make being disturbed by any locals, let alone the Italians, unlikely. The latter had taken to patrolling the island only by day and confining themselves to the towns and fortified outposts they had constructed at strategic points along the coastline of Lefkas. There was also another issue that vexed Michaelis concerning the matter of supply drops. On the previous two occasions the British had overshot the zone and dropped their cargo some kilometres away. By the time Michaelis’s band had reached the spot, the weapons and ammunition had been gathered up by another band and secreted away. On the second occasion they had been caught in the act and there had been a tense confrontation before the leaders of the two resistance bands had agreed to divide the supplies. He told the radio operator to send a message back to Cairo demanding that it did not happen a third time.
It was a warm night and the breeze blowing over the crest of the hill was gentle and carried the sweet smell of thyme and pine up from the slopes below. A slender arc of silver in the star-studded sky provided what natural light there was, just enough for the pilot of the plane to make out the shape of the island and line up his approach while waiting for the signal lamps to wink on.
Around Michaelis, in the dark, sat a score of his men, and the girl. He turned in her direction and could just make out her silhouette against the dull sheen of the distant sea. She was the only female member of the band and, as far as he knew, one of only a handful across the island who served under any of the
kapetans
fighting the Italians. That she was brave, he had no doubt. She had carried messages for him, and gathered useful intelligence on the enemy’s intentions so that he and his band had been able to remain a step ahead of the Italians, avoiding their occasional sweeps across different sectors of the island and escaping those villages and paths where the enemy had set ambushes.
Recently she had demanded to take a more active role in the resistance and learn how to use firearms so that she could fight alongside them. Michaelis adhered to traditional island values and was reluctant to extend his regard to her as far as letting her fight alongside the men in battle, but he had trained her to fire and maintain their weapons and that had sated her ambitions for the moment. There was another side to his reluctance to permit her to join them in raids and ambushes, namely that she was too valuable as a go-between and spy to be thrown away in a reckless skirmish.
He turned to face the direction they were expecting the plane to come from and strained his eyes and ears to detect any sign of the aircraft but there was nothing and he mouthed another curse on his allies. They had promised much and delivered little. Just as they had in the days of the German invasion of Greece. Some of Michaelis’s men had served in the army and told him sorry tales of the nation’s humbling. Despite the guarantees of help from the British prime minister, Churchill, only a fraction of the promised reinforcements had been sent to Greece, accompanied by tanks that were no match for the German panzers, even when they did not break down. As a result the British had reached the front just in time to join the headlong retreat to Athens. There they had evacuated their men to Crete before being forced to give that up as well, and leave the Greeks to suffer under the fascists.
Michaelis shared his nation’s humiliation and wanted to fight back. But to do that he needed help and the British had provided him with scant supplies of weapons up until now. He had his own suspicions about that. After all, the British had gone to great lengths to save the king and his despotic cronies and offer them a safe haven in Egypt. It was clear that they intended to restore them to power if the allies won the war. Until then they would provide the resistance with just enough equipment for them to harass the enemy, but not enough for them to resist the imposition of an unpopular government when the war was won. My enemy’s enemy is my friend . . . Michaelis smiled thinly. The bitter rivalry between the right and the left in Greek politics threatened to divide the nation and distract the people from their common foe. Even on the small island of Lefkas, some of the bands were inclined to put politics above patriotism. For his own part he would prefer to see the monarchy abolished once the war was over, and the establishment of a real democracy in Greece.
The girl abruptly stood up. ‘Listen!’
Michaelis cocked his head. ‘What is it, Eleni?’
‘Shhh!’
More of his men rose out of the shadows and turned to the south.
‘There, hear it?’ She turned to Michaelis.
The breeze eased for an instant and he heard the unmistakable drone of an aircraft, still too far away to be visible. At once Michaelis turned to his men.
‘Get into position! Yannis, Georgis, go!’
The two men scurried across the hilltop on diverging courses and ran on for a hundred or so metres before stopping and taking out their flashlights. Michaelis had already prepared his own and his thumb was resting on the switch as he kept looking for the approaching plane. His heart was beating quickly as he scanned the starlit sky, threaded with thin trails of cloud. It was always possible that the plane belonged to the enemy. He had heard of other
anadarte
groups who had given a recognition signal only to be strafed by a German fighter. But as the sound grew louder it was clear that this was a big aircraft, such as only the allies operated, and his tension eased.
Eleni thrust her hand out. ‘Up there! I see it.’
He followed the direction indicated and saw the tiny flicker of a green light, the signal they had been told to look for in the radio message from Cairo alerting them to the drop. She had good senses, Michaelis noted, smiling in Eleni’s direction. He turned on his torch, aiming the beam in the aircraft’s direction and moments later the other two torches were switched on. Now was the most dangerous moment, Michaelis knew. Both the aircraft and those on the ground had exposed themselves and if the enemy were close by then they would be alerted to the supply drop and do all they could to intervene. Even if they were too far away they would still have heard the noise of the aircraft and guess what it portended. Which is why the business had to be dealt with as quickly as possible. The crates retrieved, unloaded and their contents strapped to the mules tethered close by, and then Michaelis, his band, and the mules would quit the hilltop as swiftly as possible and be safely hidden away in their caves and remote shepherds’ huts long before dawn broke over the island and the enemy came looking for them.
They heard the change in the note of the engines as the pilot throttled back and began to descend and bank on to the heading for the drop zone markers. Eleni and the others stood still, watching the tiny dark shadow moving across the starred sky and as it drew closer to the island a finger of light flickered up into the darkness above Nidhri and began to sweep slowly across the heavens attempting to seek out the approaching bomber. But by the time the Italian officer in charge of the battery of anti-aircraft guns realised his target was flying low, the bomber would have completed its drop and turned to make the long flight back to Egypt.
Eleni could feel the reverberating throb of the engines as the aircraft steadied for its run and the dark shape swiftly grew in size and then, with a roar, it was on them. Even before it swept overhead the first of the parachutes billowed out below and behind. More followed, like dark flowers blossoming in the night. She could just make out the crates suspended below each parachute, then, as the last one opened she saw that it was a human, dangling like a puppet as he floated to the ground some distance beyond the triangle of lights on the hilltop. The din of the bomber’s engines changed pitch as it began to climb away, its mission complete. On the ground Michaelis snapped off his flashlight and a moment later the remaining lights disappeared.
‘Let’s get the crates! Bring the mules up.’
‘What about the parachutist?’ Eleni asked.
‘Leave him to Yannis and Georgis. Come on.’
There was a faint braying from the strings of mules as their drivers led them forward. Meanwhile Michaelis and the others rushed towards the crates to gather in the parachutes and detach them from the harnesses. Then, using iron bars, they prized the crates open and began to unpack the bundled weapons and cases of ammunition before loading them on to the mules. They worked quickly and as soon as each case was emptied the mules were led away, down the track to the caves used to hide the supplies. The parachutes were also taken away, and the crates broken up for firewood so there would be no trace of the drop for the enemy to use as the focus of any search of the surrounding area that they might conduct.
The last crate was being dismantled as Yannis and Georgis returned, leading a man in a bulky suit and helmet with his parachute bundled up in his arms.
‘Uncle Michaelis,’ Georgis jerked his thumb at the new arrival, ‘seems like Cairo has done us a favour and not sent us another Englishman who speaks like an ancient. He’s one of us.’
‘A Greek?’
‘Better than a Greek,’ the parachutist responded cheerily. ‘I’m from the island. I’ve come home.’
‘It’s true,’ Yannis added. ‘I knew him as a boy.’
‘By Holy God, can it be?’ Eleni said quietly. ‘Andreas . . . ?’
He stopped dead and stood silently for an instant. Then he thrust the tight folds of the parachute into Yannis’s arms and fumbled for the buckle of his helmet as he stepped forward.
‘You know him?’ Michaelis demanded.
‘Know him? Of course I do!’ Eleni laughed as she half ran to Andreas, just as he took his helmet off. ‘Andreas Katarides.’ She embraced him tightly and pressed her face into his chest. Andreas grinned in delight as she spoke.
‘I was afraid I would never see you again.’
‘There’ll be time for that later on,’ Michaelis interrupted, stepping up to scrutinise the new arrival severely. ‘Katrarides, eh? Any relation of the poet?’
‘I am his son.’
‘A pity. We need fighters, not poets.’
‘I hold a commission in the Royal Hellenic Navy. And I have been trained by our British allies to fight with the
andartes
. I’ll prove that soon enough.’
‘Maybe sooner than you think, if we spend all night talking here on the hill. Just so you know, I am Michaelis, kapetan of this band. I give the orders here . . . Let’s go.’
Michaelis turned away abruptly and gestured to the rest to follow him, and the party marched into the darkness and followed the track down the slope towards their hideout.
The cave had a narrow entrance that led up at a sharp angle for several paces before opening out into a large chamber some twenty paces across. Andreas was at once struck by the humidity and the dank smell of sweat and human waste and the acrid stench of burned wood. A steady drip sounded from the rear and as the flashlights flickered over the rocky interior he saw the makeshift bedding of sheep’s fleeces spread over piles of pine branches. Some empty ammunition boxes and smaller crates served as tables and stools. In one corner a pile of ashes showed where the
andartes
occasionally lit fires for warmth and cooking. Above, the roof of the cave was stained black with soot and he could guess at the choking clouds of smoke that would fill the chamber if the fire was allowed to burn for any length of time.
The mules were unloaded at the mouth of the cave before their drivers led them back to the mountain village where they had come from. Once the last of the weapons and ammunition had been stacked at the rear of the cave, Michaelis lit a kerosene lamp and settled down on one of the boxes. He beckoned Andreas to join him. The latter had stripped off his jumpsuit and Eleni had quickly gathered it up before one of the others claimed it for bedding.
‘Sit here,’ Michaelis ordered, indicating another box close by.
Andreas did as he was told.
‘Why have you been sent?’ Michaelis demanded directly.
Eleni sat down close by, a look of dismay on her face as she watched the band’s leader jut out his jaw and regard Andreas suspiciously.
‘I’d have thought that was obvious,’ Andreas replied. ‘I am an islander, born and bred. I know the ground, I know the people, I speak the dialect. I am here to help coordinate the resistance.’
‘We don’t need any coordination. We just need guns and bullets. Besides, I was expecting a British officer. Someone to just observe and report back to his superiors and persuade them to keep supplying us. That’s all. I don’t need you here, spying on me for the British, and those cowards who call themselves the government in exile. And don’t think you are going to take control here.’ He stabbed his finger at the floor of the cave. ‘This is my territory. My band. Understand?’
‘I understand,’ Andreas replied calmly. ‘I am here to help. No more than that.’
‘And who says I need your help?’
‘I would hope that any Greek patriot would welcome another to the cause. We both want to see our country free again, Michaelis.’
‘Truly. But there are patriots and there are patriots, my friend. As you well know. When the war is over, my men and I will not stand by and let things return to the way they were under Metaxas, Holy God rot his soul. There are plenty of others who feel the same. We’ll not kick one bunch of tyrants out the front door while another lot sneak in through the back.’
‘You take your orders from the National Liberation Front, then?’
‘I take orders from no man. I serve Greece.’
‘As do I. And I leave the politics to others.’
‘You may find that you have to choose where you stand. Sooner than you think.’
‘If it comes to that, then I will.’
The two exchanged a hard stare before Michaelis smiled slowly. ‘Good. I see we understand each other! Now, enough of that. What do you know of the situation here?’