Force 10 from Navarone

‘Ah!’ Mallory said. There was a brief silence while he, Andrea and Miller absorbed the significance behind Jensen’s words. Abstractedly, Andrea threw some more wood on the sinking fire and looked around for a poker: but the only poker was the one that Reynolds had already bent into a ‘U’-shape. Andrea picked it up. Absent-mindedly, effortlessly, Andrea straightened it out, poked the fire into a blaze and laid the poker down, a performance Vukalovic watched with a very thoughtful expression on his face.

Jensen went on: ‘Your plane, Captain Mallory, will not be returning because your plane is expendable in the interests of authenticity.’

‘Us, too?’ Miller asked.

‘You won’t be able to accomplish very much, Corporal Miller, without actually putting your feet on the ground. Where you’re going, no plane can possibly land: so you jump – and the plane crashes.’

‘That sounds very authentic,’ Miller muttered.

Jensen ignored him. ‘The realities of total war are harsh beyond belief. Which is why I sent those three youngsters on their way – I don’t want to dampen their enthusiasm.’

‘Mine’s water-logged,’ Miller said dolefully.

‘Oh, do be quiet. Now, it would be fine if, by way of a bonus, you could discover why eighty per cent of our air-drops fall into German hands, fine if you could locate and rescue our captured mission leaders. But not important. Those supplies, those agents are militarily expendable. What are not expendable are the seven thousand men under the command of General Vukalovic here, seven thousand men trapped in an area called the Zenica Cage, seven thousand starving men with almost no ammunition left, seven thousand men with no future.’

‘We can help them?’ Andrea asked heavily. ‘Six men?’

Jensen said candidly: ‘I don’t know.’

‘But you have a plan?’

‘Not yet. Not as such. The glimmerings of an idea. No more.’ Jensen rubbed his forehead wearily. ‘I myself arrived from Alexandria only six hours ago.’ He hesitated, then shrugged. ‘By tonight, who knows? A few hours’ sleep this afternoon might transform us all. But, first, the report on Navarone. It would be pointless for you three other gentlemen to wait – there are sleeping quarters down the hall. I daresay Captain Mallory can tell me all I want to know.’

Mallory waited till the door closed behind Andrea, Miller and Vukalovic and said: ‘Where shall I begin my report, sir?’

‘What report?’

‘Navarone, of course.’

‘The hell with Navarone. That’s over and done with.’ He picked up his cane, crossed to the wall, pulled down two more maps. ‘Now, then.’

‘You – you have a plan,’ Mallory said carefully.

‘Of course I have a plan,’ Jensen said coldly. He rapped the map in front of him. ‘Ten miles north of here. The Gustav Line. Right across Italy along the line of the Sangro and Liri rivers. Here the Germans have the most impregnable defensive positions in the history of modern warfare. Monte Cassino here – our finest Allied divisions have broken on it, some for ever. And here – the Anzio beachhead. Fifty thousand Americans fighting for their lives. For five solid months now we’ve been battering our heads against the Gustav Line and the Anzio perimeter. Our losses in men and machines – incalculable. Our gains – not one solitary inch.’

Mallory said diffidently: ‘You mentioned something about Yugoslavia, sir.’

‘I’m coming to that,’ Jensen said with restraint. ‘Now, our only hope of breaching the Gustav Line is by weakening the German defensive forces and the only way we can do that is by persuading them to withdraw some of their front-line divisions. So we practise the Allenby technique.’

‘I see.’

‘You don’t see at all. General Allenby, Palestine, 1918. He had an east-west line from the Jordan to the Mediterranean. He planned to attack from the west – so he convinced the Turks the attack was coming from the east. He did this by building up in the east a huge city of army tents occupied by only a few hundred men who came out and dashed around like beavers whenever enemy planes came over on reconnaissance. He did this by letting the same planes see large army truck convoys pouring to the east all day long – what the Turks didn’t know was that the same convoys poured back to the west all night long. He even had fifteen thousand canvas dummies of horses built. Well, we’re doing the same.’

‘Fifteen thousand canvas horses?’

‘Very, very amusing.’ Jensen rapped the map again. ‘Every airfield between here and Bari is jammed with dummy bombers and gliders. Outside Foggia is the biggest military encampment in Italy – occupied by two hundred men. The harbours of Bari and Taranto are crowded with assault landing craft, the whole lot made of plywood. All day long columns of trucks and tanks converge on the Adriatic coast. If you, Mallory, were in the German High Command, what would you make of this?’

‘I’d suspect an airborne and sea invasion of Yugoslavia. But I wouldn’t be sure.’

The German reaction exactly,’ Jensen said with some satisfaction. ‘They’re badly worried, worried to the extent that they have already transferred two divisions from Italy to Yugoslavia to meet the threat.’

‘But they’re not certain?’

‘Not quite. But almost.’ Jensen cleared his throat. ‘You see, our four captured mission leaders were all carrying unmistakable evidence pointing to an invasion of Central Yugoslavia in early May.’

‘They carried evidence –’ Mallory broke off, looked at Jensen for a long and speculative moment, then went on quietly: ‘And how did the Germans manage to capture them all?’

‘We told them they were coming.’

‘You did what!’

‘Volunteers all, volunteers all,’ Jensen said quickly. There were, apparently, some of the harsher realities of total war that even he didn’t care to dwell on too long. ‘And it will be your job, my boy, to turn near-conviction into absolute certainty.’ Seemingly oblivious of the fact that Mallory was regarding him with a marked lack of enthusiasm, he wheeled round dramatically and stabbed his cane at a large-scale map of Central Yugoslavia.

‘The valley of the Neretva,’ Jensen said. ‘The vital sector of the main north-south route through Yugoslavia. Whoever controls this valley controls Yugoslavia – and no one knows this better than the Germans. If the blow falls, they know it must fall here. They are fully aware that an invasion of Yugoslavia is on the cards, they are terrified of a link-up between the Allies and the Russians advancing from the east and they know that any such link-up must be along this valley. They already have two armoured divisions along the Neretva, two divisions that, in the event of invasion, could be wiped out in a night. From the north – here – they are trying to force their way south to the Neretva with a whole army corps – but the only way is through the Zenica Cage here. And Vukalovic and his seven thousand men block the way.’

‘Vukalovic knows about this?’ Mallory asked. ‘About what you really have in mind, I mean?’

‘Yes. And the Partisan command. They know the risks, the odds against them. They accept them.’

‘Photographs?’ Mallory asked.

‘Here.’ Jensen pulled some photographs from a desk drawer, selected one and smoothed it out on the table. ‘This is the Zenica Cage. Well named: a perfect cage, a perfect trap. To the north and west, impassable mountains. To the east, the Neretva dam and the Neretva gorge. To the south, the Neretva river. To the north of the cage here, at the Zenica gap, the German 11th Army Corps is trying to break through. To the west here – they call it the West Gap – more units of the 11th trying to do the same. And to the south here, over the river and hidden in the trees, two armoured divisions under a General Zimmermann.’

‘And this?’ Mallory pointed to a thin black line spanning the river just north of the two armoured divisions.

‘That,’ Jensen said thoughtfully, ‘is the bridge at Neretva.’

Close-up, the bridge at Neretva looked vastly more impressive than it had done in the large-scale photograph: it was a massively cantilevered structure in solid steel, with a black asphalt roadway laid on top. Below the bridge rushed the swiftly-flowing Neretva, greenish-white in colour and swollen with melting snow. To the south there was a narrow strip of green meadowland bordering the river and, to the south of this again, a dark and towering pine forest began. In the safe concealment of the forest’s gloomy depths, General Zimmermann’s two armoured divisions crouched waiting.

Parked close to the edge of the wood was the divisional command radio truck, a bulky and very long vehicle so beautifully camouflaged as to be invisible at more than twenty paces.

General Zimmermann and his ADC, Captain Warburg, were at that moment inside the truck. Their mood appeared to match the permanent twilight of the woods. Zimmermann had one of those high-foreheaded, lean and aquiline and intelligent faces which so rarely betray any emotion, but there was no lack of emotion now, no lack of anxiety and impatience as he removed his cap and ran his hand through his thinning grey hair. He said to the radio operator seated behind the big transceiver:

‘No word yet? Nothing?’

‘Nothing, sir.’

‘You are in constant touch with Captain Neufeld’s camp?’

‘Every minute, sir.’

‘And his operator is keeping a continuous radio watch?’

‘All the time, sir. Nothing. Just nothing.’

Zimmermann turned and descended the steps, followed by Warburg. He walked, head down, until he was out of earshot of the truck, then said: ‘Damn it! Damn it! God damn it all!’

‘You’re as sure as that, sir.’ Warburg was tall, good-looking, flaxen-haired and thirty, and his face at the moment reflected a nice balance of apprehension and unhappiness. ‘That they’re coming?’