Authors: Jack Higgins
‘What did you tell them?’
‘About Luca? Mission a failure.’ He started to cough over the cigarette and there was that sudden sharp pain in his lung again.
Vito said, ‘Half a loaf’s better than none, Harry. I'll call a meeting of the district committee for tonight. Father Collura, Verga, those two Reds. Warn every man to oil his gun and be ready to move tomorrow.’
‘And Mafia?’
‘In the Bellona valley, I speak for Mafia,’ Vito said simply. ‘Luciano and Captain Savage have taken Maria up to Crown of Thorns. Better you spend the night up there, too, Harry. You're not looking too good. I'll come up in the morning.’
‘All right.’ Carter got up and Vito Barbera led the way out through the coffin room. They passed through the waiting mortuary and Barbera opened the door to the street. It was pouring with rain, everything out of focus, the houses, the mountain beyond. He went and untethered Carter's mule and led it to the door.
Carter was seized with a violent paroxysm of coughing. He leaned against the doorpost, holding a grimy handkerchief to his mouth. When he examined it, he saw that it was stained with blood.
He held it out to Barbera and tried to smile. ‘Ain't life grand?’
‘Come on, Harry,’ Barbera said gently. ‘The sooner you're up there, the better. Maria will know what to do.’
Carter clambered up, sitting sideways on the wooden saddle. He reached for the reins and managed a smile.
‘Suddenly I feel tired, Vito, really tired. You know what I mean?’
‘I know, old friend, I know,’ Barbera said sadly.
Carter kicked his heel against the mule's belly and moved away across the square.
Padre Giovanni, a large black umbrella protecting him from the rain, was feeding the pigeons on the battlement when Luciano came up the steps.
‘How is Colonel Carter?’ the old man asked.
Luciano stood under the overhanging eaves of the hut to avoid the worst of the rain and offered him a cigarette.
‘Not good. High fever, something close to pneumonia. Maria says he probably needs surgery and he certainly isn't going to get that here.’
‘Remember the Americans will get here soon. He'll have the best of treatment then. The finest doctors.’
‘If he lives that long.’ Luciano looked out at the mountains, shrouded in rain. ‘Crazy when you think of it. It's only a few weeks since the guy took a bullet in the lung. He should have been invalided out, back to that university of his.’
‘He is an exceptional man, I think.’ Padre Giovanni said. ‘For some people, moral decisions come out of a personal evaluation of what is right against what is wrong. Frequently, circumstances modify their actions.’
‘What you mean, Father, is they won't do what's right if it looks as if it might prove unhealthy for them.’
Padre Giovanni nodded. ‘Colonel Carter, on the other hand, does what he does because he can do no other.’
‘Here I stand,’ Luciano said. ‘Isn't that what Martin Luther said? People like that can make life damned uncomfortable for the rest of us.’
The door opened in the small courtyard below and Maria came out. She had on an old raincoat over her shoulders and looked tired as she came up the steps.
‘How is he?’ Luciano asked.
‘Not good. Medical supplies in the emergency kits we carried are limited. I've given him morphine for the pain and the monastery clinic was able to supply me with quinine. I've given him a heavy dose of that. It should help reduce the fever.’
‘Will that be enough?’
‘No. In my opinion, the lung is ulcerated. I suspect the original wound didn't get a chance to heal properly, mainly because of a lack of any kind of convalescence.’
‘I'll go and sit with him for a while,’ Padre Giovanni said.
‘That would be a kindness, Father.’
The old man went down the steps and Maria and Luciano stood there under the eaves, looking out across the valley as evening fell.
‘So here we are,’ Luciano said. ‘A hell of a lot of effort that seems to have added up to a considerable waste of time.’
‘Perhaps,’ she said.
The wind dashed rain across the pantiled roofs. Luciano said, ‘A long way from Liverpool and that convent of yours.’
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘Too far to go back.’ There was an expression of infinite sadness on her face when she looked up at him. ‘I know that now.’
Luciano couldn't think of a thing to say. He stood there, watching her go back down the steps to the courtyard and disappear through the door.
By four o'clock in the morning, under cover of darkness, Meyer and his men in an armoured troop carrier and three
kubelwagens
had taken up position in the pine forest at the south end of the valley some five miles from Crown of Thorns.
Suslov joined Meyer beside the front vehicle, glancing at his watch. ‘They should be taking off in one hour exactly at five o'clock.’
There was a paleness in the sky beyond the mountains and Meyer looked up at the monastery through Zeiss nightglasses.
‘Is this going to work?’ Major Suslov asked.
‘Of course it is,’ Meyer said. ‘I don't like Koenig, I make no secret of the fact. I don't think he's a good German and I have heard him make remarks which indicate a certain contempt for the Führer, but he is also a soldier of genius. If anyone can pull this off, he can.’
‘And afterwards?’
Meyer turned and smiled coldly. ‘Oh, that, of course, is quite another matter.’
At the Otranto Luftwaffe base, rain swept across the tarmac in solid sheets, but the three engines of the Junkers 52 were already ticking over. Kubel leaned out of the cockpit window and raised a thumb.
The men, in Brandt's charge, were already on board and Koenig stood beside the open hatch with Guzzoni. He wore a paratrooper's camouflage smock in the SS pattern. A machine pistol was suspended across his chest.
Guzzoni said, ‘It would appear he thinks it's still on in spite of this wretched weather. You really think you can jump in conditions like this?’
‘They jumped at Maleme, they dropped into Stalingrad. They'd jump into hell if I told them to.’ Koenig saluted. ‘And now, I think, Kubel is getting impatient.’
Guzzoni grasped his hand warmly. ‘What can I say?’
‘Nothing, I suspect, would be perfectly adequate in the circumstances.’ Koenig placed the end of his static line between his teeth and climbed into the Junkers. The hatch was closed and Guzzoni stepped back.
Kubel increased engine revs and the Junkers moved away into the rain and darkness. The flare path had not been lit due to the everpresent chance of an Allied airstrike. The lights switched on now for the final run only. The roaring of the engines filled the morning as Kubel boosted power and the Junkers skimmed along the runway, rain spraying up in great waves on either side.
Guzzoni watched it lift above the trees and fade into the grey morning. He shivered, pulling his cloak around him, and turned away.
At the monastery, Carter slept fitfully, his hands clutching sheets that were drenched in his own sweat. Maria, on the chair beside him, slept the sleep of total exhaustion. The blanket she had wrapped around herself had slipped to the floor. Luciano, sitting in the window seat, crossed to her side, picked up the blanket and covered her. The wind moaned eerily around the battlements. He lit a cigarette and stood, peering out through the window, suddenly uneasy.
Savage was so tired he hadn't bothered to undress, simply lay on the small bed in one of the monks’ cells and was instantly asleep.
He couldn't remember when Rosa joined him, but when he awakened, just before dawn, he found her lying in the crook of his arm.
She stirred sleepily, ‘Savage, is that you?’
‘Who else would it be?’
She smiled, still half-asleep, then raised her head. ‘What's that? I thought I heard something.’
‘The wind,’ he said. ‘Just the wind. Go back to sleep.’
She closed her eyes again and turned her face into his shoulder, smiling.
Flying at one thousand feet the view was spectacular in the dawn light in spite of the heavy rain. Chains of mountains, peaks and ridges on every hand, the valleys dark with shadow.
Sitting beside the hatch, Koenig looked down the line of his men, anonymous in the dim light in helmets and camouflaged jump jackets and parachutes. No bulky equipment this time, no supply bags. Each man carried a Schmeisser across his chest, ammunition pouches, grenades.
‘How many times have we done this, Rudi?’ he asked Brandt, who sat next to him.
‘God knows,’ Brandt said. ‘Narvik was the first, I know that, but in between is a blur. Too many good men gone.’
‘Yes,’ Koenig said. ‘Sometimes I think that's all we have, our dead.’
‘No, Colonel,’ Brandt said firmly. ‘We have each other. We have the Regiment. We have you.’
My God, Koenig thought. Is that all we're left with after so much suffering? Is that what it was really all about? He looked out of the window and saw the jagged peak of Monte Cammarata, the western slope. They started to descend rapidly. A jagged ridge seemed to bar their way, the Junkers lifted as Kubel eased back the stick, the spine of rock no more than fifty feet beneath them as they slipped over it.
And there was the Bellona valley below them, the river railing through pine trees, the rain and mist so heavy that it was impossible to see Bellona itself or Crown of Thorns at the other end of the valley.
Kubel swung into the wind, the tip of his starboard wing breathtakingly close to the rock face. Koenig got up, moved along the fuselage and leaned in the cockpit.
‘What do you think?’
‘I think it stinks. If you want to go through with it, I'll play along, but you only get one chance, remember that, and when you go, go together and very fast or you'll miss the target altogether.’
‘Understood.’
‘Right you've got approximately two minutes.’
Koenig moved back along the line. ‘On your feet and let's get ready.’
Brandt opened the hatch as they stood and clipped on their static lines, each man checking his neighbour. The Junkers descended even further and then everything happened at once.
As the light flared above the hatch, they roared across the village and Wolf Kubel banked to starboard.
There was Crown of Thorns, the road snaking up the side of the valley to the great gate.
‘Now!’ Koenig cried, even before they'd reached the outer wall, and Brandt went out through the door, the others following him so fast that they seemed to be falling on top of each other.
Then it was Koenig's turn. He plunged out, aware of the courtyard directly below him, the red pantiles of the roofs and then his parachute cracked open. He glanced up to see the Junkers fading into the rain, looked the other way and saw his men to the left and beneath him, drifting in over the wall.
The essential difference between the parachutes used by the Germans and the English and Americans was that the German variety caried no shroud lines, which made any kind of manoeuvring by the parachutist impossible. This explained the popularity of drops at a very low level by German forces. But the system had its disadvantages, especially in a case like this. Koenig saw two of his men vanish on the other side of the wall, a third land badly on the battlements above the gate, then fall headfirst to the courtyard below.
Others had already landed in the courtyard itself, parachutes billowing, and then the red pantiles at one of the higher levels were rushing up to meet him. He braced himself for the shock, folding his arms and landed hard, smashing right through the roof.
From the pine trees, Meyer watched through fieldglasses as the parachutes drifted down.
‘He's done it!’
‘Fifteen, by my count,’ Suslov said. ‘The rest are somewhere outside.’
But Meyer didn't seem to hear him. ‘Mount up,’ he cried. ‘And let's get out of here.’
He nodded to the driver of his
kubelwagen
and they drove away rapidly.
Luciano, unable to sleep, went out on the battlements just after dawn and found Padre Giovanni standing there under his old black umbrella, enjoying the first cigarette of the day.
‘So, you couldn't sleep either?’ he said.
‘No, I guess not,’ Luciano replied.
‘Holy Mother of God!’ Padre Giovanni said, the smile wiped clean from his face.
Luciano swung round as the Junkers appeared from the rain like a grey ghost and roared down the valley towards them at four hundred feet. And as the first paratrooper plunged into space, all became horrifyingly clear.
Padre Giovanni pushed him towards the door. ‘You must leave, you and the others, as quickly as possible and take Carter with you. There is nothing to be gained by trying to stand and fight here.’
Carter, halfdazed, was struggling to sit up in bed and Maria was on her feet as they entered the room.
‘We're in trouble,’ Luciano said. ‘Paratroopers. We've got to get out of here.’
The door opened and Savage appeared, pulling on his rucksack. Rosa was behind him holding his M1 and she passed it to him.
‘What's happening?’
‘Detweiler, or I miss my guess,’ Luciano said.
They moved to the window in time to see Koenig crash through the red pantile roof to the left of them and disappear. The men in the courtyard under Brandt's direction, were already discarding their parachutes.
Savage raised his rifle to fire and Luciano knocked it up. ‘No need for that. We're getting out of here. That way we leave it clean for the Franciscans.’
‘How?’
‘The catacombs,’ Padre Giovanni said. ‘Follow me, please, but we must hurry. There isn't much time.’
Luciano said to Savage. ‘Sling Carter over your shoulder and you bring his clothes, Maria. We'll dress him later.’
They hurried along the passage outside. Padre Giovanni produced a key and opened an oak door at the far end disclosing a stone spiral staircase.
‘This goes all the way down to the chapel. The entrance to the crypt, I showed you the other day. I can only wish you luck, my friends. Now hurry, I beg you.’
Luciano led the way and Savage followed, Carter over his shoulder, Rosa and Maria behind. Padre Giovanni closed the door and locked it. As he turned, one of the SS paratroopers appeared from the stairhead at the other end of the passageway and covered him with his Schmeisser.