A New Kind of War

‘ Doucement, doucement!’ murmured Kyriakos, touching his arm above the elbow. ‘ Doucement, mon vieux – eh?’

‘It’s not my bloody f-f-fault!’ protested Audley, his voice lifting.

‘I’ve got to explain you both to the Brigadier himself – damn!’ The jeep lurched over fallen stone from another ruined building which half-blocked the road. ‘He’ll want to know ... I know how his mind works . . . And if you don’t want to go all the way back to Athens with us, while he checks your story – I’m trying to help you, damn it!’

‘Of course, of course!’ Kyriakos soothed them both. ‘It is all my fault –’ He squeezed Fred’s arm ‘ – my fault, old boy.’

The jeep stopped abruptly, having climbed steeply out of Osios Konstandinos, up an apology for a track which only a jeep could have attempted, short of a tracked vehicle. Certainly nothing with either wheels or tracks could ever have penetrated further than this point, where huge boulders blocked the way, leaving only a narrow path hardly fit for mules . . . although there were buildings of some sort higher up, just visible through a scatter of pines under an uprearing cliff high above them.

‘Your fault?’ The buildings ahead were roofless and ruined. Half dummy4

the bloody world was roofless and ruined, thought Fred savagely.

Or half of the poor, innocent, impoverished villages of Greece and Italy seemed to be ruined, anyway, as the price of their resistance and liberation, no matter how inaccessible. And as this was Kyri’s country that thought suffused him with guilt – guilt all the more irredeemable because he was here because the Greek had invited him home as his guest, for wine and a soft bed if not for some dark-eyed virgin. ‘It isn’t your fault, Kyriakos.’

‘Oh, but it is, old boy.’ Kyriakos began to climb out of the jeep.

‘An Englishman teaching me about Markos Botsaris – in Osios Konstandinos!’ He straightened up, and then pointed. ‘Look there!

Do you see – ?’

‘What?’ Audley followed Kyriakos’s instruction first.

‘Yes, I do! By God – eagles!’ He pointed. ‘Do you see them – ?

They said in Athens that there’d be eagles here!’

Fred looked upwards, and saw that the bloody birds were still circling above the cliff, knife and fork in claw, and napkins knotted ready.

Kyriakos cleared his throat. ‘I meant the cliff – the path goes up that gulley – and then across, to where that tree sticks out, under the overhang . . .’

‘Yes.’ Fred couldn’t see. But what he could see was that, whatever happened in 1824, one burst from Sergeant Devenish’s machine-gunners would have turned Osios Konstandinos into a surrender-or-die trap. Except . . . except ... if the sergeant’s own position had itself been taken in the rear, by someone coming up that path dummy4

behind him, on the other side of the impossible cliff . . . then that would have ruined the trap, of course.

‘They are eagles, aren’t they?’ Audley had retrieved a fine pair of German binoculars from the jeep, and was struggling to adjust them.

‘You are a bird-watcher too?’ Kyri’s voice was hollow with disbelief, as it had been with the thirteenth century. ‘As well as an historian?’

‘No’. Audley lowered the binoculars quickly. ‘It’s just . . .

everybody keeps asking me whether I’ve seen them, and I’m tired of telling lies, that’s all.’ He grinned at the Greek.. ‘It was the same with the 88s in Normandy – I never could see the bloody things, when everyone else could, don’t you know . . . But that was Botsaris’ cliff –was it? Or ... is it?’

‘You were in Normandy?’ The Greek frowned as though one so young could not have been allowed to participate in a real war.

‘Yes.’ Audley’s mouth opened, and then closed again, wordlessly.

‘It was very unc-c-c – unpleasant, I can tell you . . . Greece is infinitely more p-p-p – agreeable.’ He grinned unashamedly. ‘No G-Germans – no 88s – eh?’ The grin became disarming. ‘That’s the monastery up there, is it? The one the Turks burnt in ’24?‘

‘Yes.’ But now Kyriakos was dead-serious. ‘You haven’t been here before, then?’ He blinked. ‘Somebody told you about the path, did they?’

Audley blinked back at him. ‘Actually . . . no . . . But it’s all in Pemberton about the path, and Markos Botsaris. There was a map dummy4

too – ’ The half grin became a frown ‘ –why d’you want to know?

Are you an historian?’

‘No. I am merely a Greek.’ Kyriakos glanced at Fred. ‘And once I was also a banker.’ Someone was shouting at them, through the trees. ‘A ... what– ?’ Audley struggled with this intelligence, against the shout. ‘A ... banker– ?’

‘Merchant banker,’ elaborated Kyriakos. But then not even he could ignore the figure which was approaching them, its hobnailed boots cracking on the stony track like caps in a child’s pistol. Audley quailed. ‘What is it, Mr Levin?’

‘ Sar!’ The RSM somehow contrived to look immaculate, even under a fine coating of dust. ‘The Brigadier and the Colonel have both been asking for you, Mr Audley – sar! He addressed Audley from beneath a quivering Guards’ salute, totally ignoring Fred and Kyriakos. ’They wish to hear about your prisoners – sar!‘