Force 10 from Navarone. Alistair MacLean

again but to look into his eyes was to look into an open grave. Droshny wheeled and walked away, then halted as he approached Mallory.

      ‘You are the leader of those men, Captain Mallory?’

      ‘I am.’

      ‘You’re a very – silent leader, Captain?’

      ‘What am I to say to a man who turns his guns on his friends and allies?’ Mallory looked at him dispassionately. ‘I’ll talk to your commanding officer, not to a madman.’

      Droshny’s face darkened. He stepped forward, his arm lifted to strike. Very quickly, but so smoothly and calmly that the movement seemed unhurried, and totally ignoring the two rifle-muzzles pressing into his side, Mallory lifted his Luger and pointed it at Droshny’s face. The click of the Luger safety-catch being released came like a hammer-blow in the suddenly unnatural intensity of silence.

      And unnatural intensity of silence there was. Except for one little movement, so slow as to be almost imperceptible, both Partisans and parachutists had frozen into a tableau that would have done credit to the frieze on an Ionic temple. The three sergeants, like most of the Partisans, registered astonished incredulity. The two men guarding Mallory looked at Droshny with questioning eyes. Droshny looked at Mallory as if he were mad. Andrea wasn’t looking at anyone, while Miller wore that look of world-weary detachment which only he could achieve. But it was Miller who made that one little movement, a movement that now came to an end with his thumb resting on his Schmeisser’s safety-release. After a moment or two he removed his thumb: there would come a time for Schmeissers, but this wasn’t it.

      Droshny lowered his hand in a curious slow-motion gesture and took two paces backwards. His face was still dark with anger, the dark eyes cruel and unforgiving, but he had himself well in hand. He said: ‘Don’t you know we have to take precautions? Till we are satisfied with your identity?’

      ‘How should I know that?’ Mallory nodded at Andrea. ‘Next time you tell your men to take precautions with my friend here, you might warn them to stand a little farther back. He reacted the only way he knows how. And I know why.’

      ‘You can explain later. Hand over your guns.’

      ‘No.’ Mallory returned the Luger to its holster.

      ‘Are you mad? I can take them from you.’

      ‘That’s so,’ Mallory said reasonably. ‘But you’d have to kill us first, wouldn’t you? I don’t think you’d remain a captain very long, my friend.’

      Speculation replaced anger in Droshny’s eyes. He gave a sharp order in Serbo-Croat and again his soldiers levelled their guns at Mallory and his five companions. But they made no attempt to remove the prisoners’ guns. Droshny turned, gestured and started moving up the steeply-sloping forest floor again. Droshny wasn’t, Mallory reflected, a man likely to be given to taking too many chances.

      For twenty minutes they scrambled awkwardly up the slippery hillside. A voice called out from the darkness ahead and Droshny answered without breaking step. They passed by two sentries armed with machine-carbines and, within a minute, were in Droshny’s HQ.

      It was a moderately-sized military encampment – if a wide circle of rough-hewn adze-cut cabins could be called an encampment – set in one of those very deep hollows in the forest floor that Mallory was to find so characteristic of the Bosnian area. From the base of this hollow grew two concentric rings of pines far taller and more massive than anything to be found in western Europe, massive pines whose massive branches interlocked eighty to a hundred feet above the ground, forming a snow-shrouded canopy of such impenetrable density that there wasn’t even a dusting of snow on the hard-packed earth of the camp compound: by the same token, the same canopy also effectively prevented any upward escape of light: there was no attempt at any black-out in several illuminated cabin windows and there were even some oil lamps suspended on outside hooks to illuminate the compound itself. Droshny stopped and said to Mallory:

      ‘You come with me. The rest of you stay here.’

      He led Mallory towards the door of the largest hut in the compound. Andrea, unbidden, slipped off his pack and sat on it, and the others, after various degrees of hesitation, did the same. Their guards looked them over uncertainly, then withdrew to form a ragged but watchful semi-circle. Reynolds turned to Andrea, the expression on his face registering a complete absence of admiration and goodwill.

      ‘You’re crazy.’ Reynolds’s voice came in a low, furious whisper. ‘Crazy as a loon. You could have got yourself killed. You could have got all of us killed. What are you, shell-shocked or something?’

      Andrea did not reply. He lit one of his obnoxious cigars and regarded Reynolds with mild speculation or as near an approach to mildness as it was possible for him to achieve.

      ‘Crazy isn’t half the word for it.’ Groves, if anything, was even more heated than Reynolds. ‘Or didn’t you know that was a Partisan you killed? Don’t you know what that means? Don’t you know people like that must always take precautions?’

      Whether he knew or not, Andrea wasn’t saying. He puffed at his cigar and transferred his peaceable gaze from Reynolds to Groves.

      Miller said soothingly: ‘Now, now. Don’t be like that. Maybe Andrea was a mite hasty but –’

      ‘God help us all,’ Reynolds said fervently. He looked at his fellow-sergeants in despair. ‘A thousand miles from home and help and saddled with a trigger-happy bunch of has-beens.’ He turned back to Miller and mimicked: ‘“Don’t be like that.”’

      Miller assumed his wounded expression and looked away.

      The room was large and bare and comfortless. The only concession to comfort was a pine fire crackling in a rough hearth-place. The only furniture consisted of a cracked deal table, two chairs and a bench.

      Those things Mallory noted only subconsciously. He didn’t even register when he heard Droshny say: ‘Captain Mallory. This is my commanding officer.’ He seemed to be too busy staring at the man seated behind the table.

      The man was short, stocky and in his mid-thirties. The deep lines around eyes and mouth could have been caused by weather or humour or both: just at that moment he was smiling slightly. He was dressed in the uniform of a captain in the German Army and wore an Iron Cross at his throat.