Storm Force from Navarone

Miller yawned. He said, ‘Why, thank you, Captain Killigrew.’ Killigrew stared straight ahead, eyes bulging. ‘Seeing that there fly crawling towards my ear,’ said Miller, pointing at a bluebottle spiralling towards the chandelier, ‘the Captain was about to have the neighbourliness to swat the little sucker.’ Jensen’s eyebrow had cocked. ‘I take full responsibility.’

Jensen did not hesitate. ‘No need for that,’ he said. ‘Or charges. Carry on, Captain.’

Killigrew swallowed, “ssir.’ His face was regaining its colour. ‘Right,’ he said, with the air of one wrenching his mind back from an abyss. ‘Our men. Five of them. Dropped Tuesday last, with one Jeep, radio, just south of Lourdes. They reported that they’d landed, were leaving in the direction of Hendaye, travelling by night. They were supposed to radio in eight-hourly. But nothing. Absolutely damn all.’

Once again, Miller caught Mallory’s eye. Jeep, he was thinking. A Jeep, for pity’s sake. Have these people never heard of road blocks?

‘Until last night,’ said Killigrew. ‘Some Resistance johnny came on the air. Said there’d been shooting in some village or other in the mountains twenty miles west of St-Jean-de-Luz. Casualties. So we think it was them. But there was a bit of difficulty with the radio message. Code words not used. Could mean the operator was in a hurry, of course. Or it could mean that the network’s been penetrated.’

Mallory found himself lighting another cigarette. How long since he had drawn a breath not loaded with tobacco smoke? He was avoiding Miller’s eye. They were brave, these SAS people. But Miller had been right. They went at things like a bull at a gate. That was not Mallory’s way.

Mallory believed in making war quietly. There was an old partisan slogan he lived by: if you have a knife you can get a pistol; if you have a pistol, you can get a rifle; if you have a rifle, you can get a machine gun -

‘Thank you, gentlemen,’ said Jensen. ‘I’m grateful for your cooperation.’ Dyas and Killigrew left, Killigrew’s blood-bloated face looking straight ahead, so as not to catch Miller’s sardonic eye.

‘So,’ said Jensen, grinning his appallingly carnivorous grin. Think you can do it?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘Look,’ he said. ‘You may think this is a damn silly scheme. I can’t help that. It could be that a million men depend on those submarines not getting to sea. I’m afraid the SAS have made a balls-up. I just want you to find these damn things. If you can’t blow them up, radio a position. The RAF’ll look after the rest.’

Mallory said, ‘Excuse my asking, sir. But what about the Resistance on the ground?’

Jensen frowned. ‘Good question. Two things. One, you heard that idiot Killigrew. They may have been penetrated. And two, it may be that these U-boats are tucked up somewhere the RAF won’t be able to get at them.’ He grinned. ‘I told Mr Churchill this morning that as far as I was concerned, you lot were equivalent to a bomber wing. He agreed.’ He stood up. ‘I’m very grateful to you. You’ve done two jolly good operations for me. Let’s make this a third. Detailed briefing at the airfield later. There’s an Albemarle coming in this afternoon for you. Takeoff at 1900.’ He looked down at the faces: Mallory, weary but hatchet-sharp; Andrea, solid behind his vast black moustache; and Dusty Miller, scratching his crewcut in a manner prejudicial to discipline. It did not occur to Jensen to worry that in the past fourteen days they had taken a fearsome battering on scarcely any sleep. They were the tool for the job, and that was that.

‘Any questions?’ he said.

‘Yes,’ said Mallory, wearily. ‘I don’t suppose there’s a drop of brandy about the house, is there?’

An hour later the sentries on the marble-pillared steps of the villa crashed to attention as the three men trotted down into the square, where a khaki staff car was waiting. The sentries did not like the look of them. They were elderly, by soldier standards - in their forties, and looking older. Their uniforms were dirty, their boots horrible. It was tempting to ask for identification and paybooks. But there was something about them that made the sentries decide that it would on the whole be better to keep quiet. They moved at a weary, purposeful lope that made the sentries think of creatures that ate infrequently, and when they did eat, ate animals they had tracked down patiently over great distances, and killed without fuss or remorse.

Mallory’s mind was not, however, on eating. ‘Not bad, that brandy,’ he said.

‘Five-star,’ said Miller. ‘Nothing but the best for the white-haired boys.’

After Jensen’s villa the Termoli airfield lacked style. Typhoons howled overhead, swarming on and off the half-built runway in clouds of dust. Inevitably, there was another briefing room. But this one was in a hut with cardboard walls and a blast-taped window overlooking the propeller-whipped dust-storm and the fighters taxiing in the aircraft park. Among the fighters was a bomber, with the long, lumpy nose of a warthog, refuelling from a khaki bowser. Mallory knew it was an Albemarle. Jensen was making sure that the momentum of events was being maintained.

Evans, one of Jensen’s young, smooth-mannered lieutenants, had brought them from the staff car. He said, ‘I expect you’ll have a shopping list.’ He was a pink youth, with an eagerness that made Mallory feel a thousand years old. But Mallory made himself forget the tiredness, and the brandy, and the forty years he had been on the planet. He sat at a table with Andrea and Miller and filled out stores indents in triplicate. Then they rode a three-tonner down to the armoury, where Jensen’s handiwork was also to be seen, in the shape of a rack of weapons, and a backpack B2 radio. There were also two brass-bound boxes whose contents Miller studied with interest. One of them was packed with explosives: gelignite, and blocks of something that looked like butter, but was in fact Cyclonite in a plasticising medium - plastic explosive. The other box contained primers and time pencils, colour-coded like children’s crayons. Miller sorted through them with practised fingers, making some substitutions. There were also certain other substances, independently quite innocent but, used as he knew how to use them, lethal to enemy vehicles and personnel. Finally, there was a flat tin box containing a thousand pounds in used Bradbury fivers.

Andrea stood at a rack of Schmeissers, his hands moving like the hands of a man reading Braille, his black eyes looking far away. He rejected two of the machine pistols, picked out three more, and a Bren light machine gun. He stripped the Bren down, smacked it together again, nodded, and filled a haversack with grenades.

Mallory checked over two coils of wire-cored rope and a bag of climbing gear. ‘Okay,’ he said. ‘Load it on.’

In the briefing hut, three men were waiting. They sat separately at the schoolroom tables, each of them apparently immersed in his own thoughts. ‘Everything all right?’ said Lieutenant Evans. ‘Oh. Introductions. The team.’ The men at the tables looked up, eyeing Mallory, Andrea and Miller with the wariness of men who knew that in a few hours these strangers would have the power of life and death over them.

‘No real names, no pack-drill,’ said Evans. He indicated the man on the right: small, the flesh bitten away under his cheekbones, his mouth hidden by a black moustache. He had the dour, self-contained look of a man who had lived all his life among mountains. ‘This is Jaime,’ Evans said. ‘Jaime has worked in the Pyrenees. He knows his way around.’

‘Worked?’ said Mallory.

Jaime’s face was sallow and unreadable, his eyes unwilling to trust. He said, ‘I have carried goods. Smuggler, you would say. I have escaped Fascists. Spanish Fascists, German Fascists. All die when you shoot them.’

Mallory schooled his face to blankness. Fanatics could be trustworthy comrades; but that was the exception, not the rule.

‘And that,’ said Evans quietly, ‘is Hugues. Hugues is our personnel man. Knows the Resistance on the ground. Practically encyclopaedic. Looks like a German. Don’t be fooled. He was at Oxford before the war. Went back to Normandy to take over the family chateau. The SS shot his wife and two children when he went underground.’

Hugues was tall and broad-shouldered, with light brown hair, an affable pink-and-white Northern face, and china-blue eyes. When he shook Mallory’s hand his palm was moist with nervous sweat. He said, ‘Do you speak French?’

‘No.’ Mallory caught Miller’s eye, and held it.

‘None of you?’

That’s right.’ Many virtues had combined to keep Mallory, Miller and Andrea alive and fighting these past weeks. But the cardinal virtue was this: reserve your fire, and never trust anyone.

Hugues said, ‘I’m glad to meet you. But … no French? Jesus.’

Mallory liked his professionalism. ‘You can do the talking,’ he said.

‘Spent any time behind enemy lines?’ said Hugues.

‘A little.’ There was a wild look in Hugues’ eye, thought Mallory. He was not sure he liked it.

Evans cleared his throat. ‘Word in your ear, Hugues,’ he said, and took him aside. Hugues frowned as the Naval officer murmured into his ear. Then he blushed red, and said to Mallory, ‘Oh dear. ‘Fraid I made a fool of myself, sir.’

‘Perfectly reasonable,’ said Mallory. Hugues was fine. Pink and eager and bright. But there was still that wild look … Not surprising, in the circumstances. A Resistance liaison would be as vital as a guide and a radio operator. Hugues would do.

The last man was nearly as big as Andrea, wearing a ragged, oddly urban straw hat. Evans introduced him as Thierry, an experienced Resistance radio operator. Then he drew the blinds, and pulled a case of what looked like clothing towards him. ‘Doesn’t matter about the French,’ he said, ‘you can stick to German.’ From the box, he pulled breeches and camouflage smocks of a pattern Mallory had last seen in Crete. ‘I hope we’ve got the size right. And you’d better stay indoors for the next wee while.’

It was true, reflected Mallory wryly, that there would be few better ways of attracting attention on a Allied air base than wandering around wearing the uniform of the Waffen-SS.

‘Try ‘em on,’ said Evans.

The Frenchmen watched without curiosity or humour as Mallory, Miller and Andrea pulled the German smocks and trousers over their khaki battledress. Disguising yourself in enemy uniform left you liable to summary execution. But then so did working for the Resistance, or for that matter operating behind German lines in British uniform. In occupied France, Death would be breathing down your neck without looking at the label inside your collar.

‘Okay,’ said Evans, contemplating the Feldwebel with Mallory’s face, and the two privates. ‘Er, Colonel, would you consider shaving off the moustache?’

‘No,’ said Andrea, without changing expression.

‘It’s just that-’

‘SS men do not wear moustaches,’ said Andrea. ‘This I know. But I do not intend to mix with SS men. I intend to kill them.’

Jaime was looking at him with new interest. ‘Colonel?’ he said.

‘Slip of the tongue,’ said Mallory.

Evans looked for a moment faintly flustered. He strode busily to the dais, and unrolled the familiar relief map of the western part of the Pyrenees. There was a blue bite of Atlantic at the top. Along the spine of the mountains writhed the red serpent of the Spanish border.

‘Landing you here,’ said Evans, tapping a brisk pointer on what could have been a hanging valley above St-Jean-Pied-du-Port.

‘Landing?’ said Mallory.

‘Well, dropping then.’