Authors: Rick Stroud
Ilias had another worry: the spot chosen for the ambush. The bend in the road where they planned to stop the car had a restricted view and any escort or vehicles following would be hidden until it was too late. Fenske was a good driver, equipped with the latest model Opel. Ilias did not think the bend was sharp enough to slow him down. Much better he argued was the junction further along, where the road joined the Heraklion–Houdetsi road. The car would have to make a hard left turn, forcing even a good driver to come almost to a stop. The junction had another advantage: on the approach there was a line of hillocks with excellent views in both directions, an ideal place for the lookouts. At the junction itself, the road was flanked by ditches deep enough for the guerrillas to hide in.
After some argument Leigh Fermor conceded that Ilias was right: they would jump the general’s car at the junction, which they now called Point A. The plan was taking shape. Next a runner was sent to contact the ‘Falstaffian’ Kapitan Anastasios Boutzalis, asking him to come to the hideout bringing some of his fighters to provide a back-up team to deal with Kreipe’s escort or any other troops appearing on the road.
The next problem was how to stop the car. They thought about putting rocks in the road, or overturning a cart. Both methods were cumbersome and dangerous. Anything involving animals, rocks or trees would take time to set up, and the appearance of other cars on the road could lead to a traffic jam. Any sign of trouble and the general’s escort would hold him back until the obstacle was cleared. They decided that if Leigh Fermor and Moss were disguised as German military policemen they stood a chance of being able to wave down the car. The two Englishmen had the right complexions and Leigh Fermor could speak German, though his accent and grammar were not perfect. The light-haired Moss could not speak the language but would at least look the part. It was the best they could do. The rest of the team could hide in the ditches on either side of the road, ready to spring out when the car stopped.
The original Villa Ariadne plan had all the attackers disguised as German soldiers, but the uniforms had been left in the plane that returned to Cairo after only dropping Leigh Fermor. The disguises had to be found locally. Micky thought he might be able to track down the right clothes and equipment.
The next day, while the group were munching their lunch of goat’s cheese and hard bread, eighteen RAF bombers appeared over the airfield at Kasteli, visible on the flat plain a few miles to the east, and flying in a tight wedge formation. Black bombs tumbled from the fuselages, wobbling down to earth and exploding with dull bangs, sending sound waves which rumbled round the mountain hideout. Vasily and Ivan stood on the rocks waving their arms, shrieking and laughing in Russian. Tyrakis took off his beret and waved it, shouting ‘
Rooly Britannia
’.
The German anti-aircraft guns opened up, puffs of grey smoke blossomed, masking the attackers. The spectators groaned and then cheered when the planes reappeared, unharmed. Their bombs delivered, the planes banked, flying south to the coast and the sea, heading for home and North Africa. Leigh Fermor and Moss clapped as if they were watching a cricket match. Black smoke billowed over Kasteli where German planes and fuel burned in the hot summer air.
By
1
8 May, the kidnappers were ready, Leigh Fermor announced that the abduction was on for the 24th, when the moon would be new and the night dark. His announcement was greeted with much shaking of hands, back-slapping and laughter; they were accomplices in a great plot of heroic Cretan proportions, bonded by the shared experience of what was to come.
In the late morning of the next day, Kapitan Boutzalis arrived with his fighters; they had set off as soon as the runner arrived and marched through the night. The landscape was filled with a sudden blaze of colour – blue and turquoise shirts, black turbans, silver knives held by purple cummerbunds contrasting with the scrubby green trees and the reddish brown rock. The new arrivals sat talking quietly in the shade of the trees, ‘bristling like lobsters’ in their criss-crossed bandoliers stiff with pointed brass cartridges. Cigarette smoke drifted through the air and the sunlight glinted dull on their rifle barrels.
To Leigh Fermor and Moss they appeared to be a tough lot; Paterakis and Tyrakis were less impressed, saying they were not as hard as they looked. While some of the men were seasoned mountain fighters, others had scarcely started to shave. They had all joined the resistance out of a deep-rooted sense of patriotism, prepared to defend their country with their lives.
The talk flowed round them like a quiet stream. After a while they began to clean their weapons, enjoying the metallic snap of rifle bolts sliding shut on to breeches shiny with clean oil. Since the German invasion, most of the firearms had been hidden up chimneys or buried in gardens. Moss thought some of them looked as though they dated back to the last Turkish invasion. Two of the guerrillas looked similarly ancient. Boutzalis explained that they had come along for the adventure, not wishing to be left out. Leigh Fermor and Moss wondered whether they were going to be up to the rigours of the coming days. Later, Leigh Fermor encouraged the fighters to change into British battledress tops and berets so they would look more like a coherent unit of fighting soldiers and not like civilian
francs-tireurs
, the punishment for which was execution.
Grigorios Chnarakis provided lunch: potatoes baked in the fire, soft-boiled eggs, fried onions, all mashed together with butter and salt in a large bowl. It was Boutzalis’s turn to be taken aside and briefed by Leigh Fermor, who spoke softly to him in Greek. The kapitan unsheathed one of the long knives he carried round his waist and began to clean his nails, looking more than ever to the Englishmen like a bearded pantomime villain. The guerrilla leader learned that his men were to deal with any escort, or other enemy vehicles that suddenly appeared, and keep the enemy at bay while the German general was seized and spirited into the hills. After the kidnap his andartes were to provide guides and lookouts for the first leg of the journey to Anogia, from where they would move to a beach in southern Crete and the rendezvous with the Royal Navy.
When Leigh Fermor finished speaking Boutzalis grinned and gripped Moss around the shoulders, his eyes ablaze, grasping him in a whiskery bear hug and kissing him hard on both cheeks, laughing and chattering incomprehensibly. The briefing over, Moss scrambled into the cave and took a camera from his haversack which he had asked Micky to find for him. He was keeping a written and photographic record of the mission. Had they been captured the pictures and the diary would have incriminated everyone involved. Nevertheless a Leica was found on the black market in Heraklion. This was Moss’s reckless, unthinking side: even purchasing these objects was dangerous and could have given the game away. Back in the bright light he motioned to the guerrillas that he wanted to take their picture. Delighted, the men clambered to their feet. They posed together in a group on the rocks, instructing Moss in fast, excited Greek how they wished to be recorded for posterity, striking serious warlike poses, thrusting out their chests, holding their chins up like the heroes they were. After the first few shots one of them grabbed the camera, gave it to Vasily and then made Moss and Leigh Fermor sit in the middle of the group: Leigh Fermor resplendent in his battledress blouse with showy parachute wings above the left pocket; Moss with his captain’s pips on his shoulders and black beret oddly askew.
After the excitement of the photo session everyone packed their belongings ready for the night march to Knossos and the Zografistos house. The kidnap team pulled their rucksacks from the cave that had been their headquarters and home for the last twelve days. There was little talk and tension filled the air. At dusk the twenty-five-strong column set off; there was no moon and it soon became pitch black. The steep shingle screes gave way beneath their feet, creating small landslides, the men flailed their arms trying to grab the vegetation to keep upright. The young found the going hard; the old found it almost impossible.
After an hour they stopped to rest by a stream, splashing the icy water on to their faces, scooping it into their parched mouths. Around them the cicadas chirruped and the heavy scent of wild herbs filled their nostrils. A few minutes later they set off again, till one of the band, Zahari, stopped, cursing: he had left his sub-machine gun by the stream. He went back to find it, urged on by the others swearing at him because they had to wait and hide until he came back. Four hours later the same thing happened again, but this time it took Zahari half an hour to pluck up the courage to confess that he had mislaid his weapon for the second time. The wait was much longer, the cursing greater, as precious time and the possibility of moving in the safety of darkness were lost.
As they marched the landscape changed, the hills became less steep and the going easier. They stopped sliding about on the screes and waded through hundreds of small streams; the song of a nightingale floated across the dark landscape accompanied by the raucous croaking of frogs.
After six hours they marched in an exhausted dream. At each stop their guide promised that the destination was only one more hour away. High in the hills around them were more fighting mountain men, positioned all along the fifteen-mile route, protecting them from the German patrols. The abductors passed unseen, like phantoms, across the landscape.
Progress slowed and Leigh Fermor realised that they were not going to reach Knossos before dawn. Boutzalis reassured him that one of his band had relatives in the nearby village of Kharasso. A man was sent ahead to warn that the abductors were on their way and to organise somewhere for them to hide. After fifteen hours marching they stumbled along the goat track into the village. Two figures appeared out of the gloom: it was the scout who had gone ahead accompanied by his cousin. In a rapid exchange of Greek they explained that the house where they were to hide was too small to accommodate everybody, the group had to split up. Boutzalis and his men were led to another place while Leigh Fermor’s kidnap group was taken through the dark hamlet to a building with external stone steps leading to a small loft. Inside they found it was full of sacks of beans, olives and barrels of wine, and flung themselves down and fell asleep on the flea-ridden bedding.
They were woken soon after dawn with an earthenware basin of hot sweet milk, after which they flopped back into sleep. Around the village, the andartes continued to keep watch, guarding the team with the same fierce care that they guarded their sheep. The hot sun rose in the sky, the day passed and the men in the loft received bowls of cheese, hard-boiled eggs and onions. They drank what Moss described as resin-tasting wine from the barrels. Some of the older members of Boutzalis’s group had found the night march too hard. Their footwear was useless – often little more than the rubber pads cut from car tyres – hardly enough for walking on the flat, let alone a steep, narrow, slippery mountain goat track. The old ones hugged the younger men, kissing them on the cheeks and wishing them luck with the mission, and then disappeared down the slopes, heading sadly for home and safety.
In the loft the kidnappers passed the day sleeping, chatting smoking, and tending to the bloody sores on their feet. At dusk they gathered their kit together and tramped down the stone stairs, where they found the owner of the house, his family and some of his livestock crammed into the living space. On the table was a feast of boiled snails, mutton, eggs, cheeses, fresh almonds and a variety of boiled grasses. The men ate through the evening, murmuring over and over ‘
Efkaristo poly
’ (‘Thank you very much’) and drinking the health of their hosts. Shortly after ten they set off into another black, moonless night. Boutzalis and his men had now been on the move for three gruelling nights. Moss found the going slightly easier than the night before, not so steep, but still slippery and difficult. In his diary he describes the journey as being like going up and down an ancient, rotten staircase where every other step is broken and every third step missing. His misery was increased by the fact that the old staircase itself was very narrow and the whole operation had to be carried out in the pitch dark.
Two hours before dawn they reached the house of Pavlos Zografistos, the base camp from which they were to carry out the operation. They were now in farming country, over which the Germans could move easily on foot and use their military vehicles. A few miles to the north was the Villa Ariadne and further on, the garrison town of Heraklion, teeming with the enemy; to the south was Archanes, Kreipe’s headquarters. The ambush point, Point A, was just over a mile away to the west.
At the house they were met by Pavlos Zografistos himself. Again the group split into two. Boutzalis, his men, and the Russians were led to an old tumbledown building, about three-quarters of a mile away, at the end of the track. It was an old wine press, where they were to hide until they moved off; the kidnappers were to stay in the Zografistos house itself.
The Zagrofistos house was small, clean and tidy, with no pictures or photographs on the walls. It stood on its own surrounded by olive trees and vines. Zagrofistos’s nearest neighbour lived just under a mile away. The house was like the one they had stayed in the night before: two rooms, one above the other. This time it was a wooden ladder that gave access to the storage area upstairs . . . Micky had used his contacts in the Heraklion black market to provide chocolate, tinned butter, Greek coffee and plenty of white wine. The men settled down to wait.