Blood of Honour

But it wasn’t just ships that those on Crete were short of – it was almost everything. There were not enough vehicles, guns or other arms. It was all very well organizing the local mountain kapitans into some kind of resistance force, but they needed to fight with something. Despite pleas to Cairo, there had been little forthcoming: Middle East Command had more pressing concerns – the campaign in North Africa, a potential Axis-backed rebellion in Iraq, fighting in Syria, and, since April, the battle on mainland Greece. Even so, a stash of weapons and equipment had been established in the west of Crete, on Suda Island, and it was from this dump that Pendlebury was now plundering supplies to take back to Heraklion and to the local kapitans. So it was that the old wooden caique was carrying a cargo, not of fish, but of Bren guns, rifles, ammunition, grenades and, above all, explosives. It was something, but there was one vital piece of equipment that Vaughan was especially worried about, and that was the terrible shortage of wireless transmitters; there was not even one that could be salvaged from Suda Island. Communication between one end of the island and the other depended almost entirely on telephone, which, as Vaughan remembered all too well from his time in France, was far too unreliable once the fighting began. When communication was lost, so too was cohesion. And then the battle.

Vaughan glanced at his watch and tutted to himself. The trip from Suda Island had been uneventful, but they had set sail an hour late. The Luftwaffe had started sending bombers most days – Stukas or Junkers 88s – which would thunder over to bomb the harbour and the small, ancient port. Really, this latest trip was cutting it fine. Another five minutes or so to the inner harbour, Vaughan calculated, then at least half an hour to get all the stores off and to safety. It wasn’t enough, not if Jerry came over this morning at nine as usual. He shook his head. It was strange – one could set one’s watch by the Germans. Why didn’t they come over at different times? It seemed highly counter-productive to him to keep bombing a place at the same hour each day.

Vaughan looked down into the water. The sails had been unfurled and they were gliding into the outer harbour on Dolphin’s diesel engine, which chugged rhythmically, the sea slapping gently against the prow. Even entering the harbour, the water looked such a deep never-ending blue, but then they passed over a sandy stretch free of rocks and the colour turned from inky darkness to a sparkling iridescent turquoise, and suddenly the sea floor seemed not unfathomable but almost close enough to touch.

‘Perhaps Jerry won’t come today,’ said a voice behind him.

Vaughan turned and looked up at Captain Pendlebury, standing behind him, rope in hand, squinting with his one eye against the early-morning sun’s reflection on the water. Vaughan smiled and raised an eyebrow. Perhaps.

‘After all,’ added Pendlebury, ‘they are rather busy at the moment.’

‘Pasting our lot leaving Greece?’

Pendlebury nodded.

‘Maybe,’ said Vaughan at length, without much conviction. He knew Stukas were already based on the Italian-garrisoned island of Kasos, to the east. It seemed to him unlikely they would be operating against the British evacuation currently under way from the mainland. He looked ahead, up at the thick, solid walls of the fortress that guarded the entrance to the inner harbour, made with the kind of large rectangular slabs of limestone that he had seen in the Pyramids outside Cairo. There were no towers, no turrets, just a solid, defiant block, and he wondered how many times before the fortress had withstood an enemy attack.

Following his gaze, Pendlebury said, ‘There’s a sense of continuity, isn’t there? The Mediterranean always looks so peaceful but, my God, the bloodshed it’s seen. We’re in good company. All the way back to Theseus and beyond, people have been arriving here from across the sea to fight.’

‘Rather depressing, really.’

‘Or quite exciting.’ Pendlebury grinned. ‘You can’t tell me you don’t find all this rather thrilling.’

Vaughan eyed him silently.

‘I’ve spent my life digging up warriors of the past,’ Pendlebury said. ‘To find myself in that position – well, I’d be lying if I said I didn’t find it exciting. I mean, look at us – stealing along the northern coast of Crete with a cargo of arms and explosives, desperately praying we get it into port before the enemy arrive and blow us all sky high. And the fact that it’s rather important, too, Alex, adds to the sense of purpose. This is no frivolous exercise in adventurism.’

‘Oh, I don’t doubt it,’ Vaughan replied. ‘You’ve done a great job already, John. But I don’t think I’m quite the romantic you are.’

Pendlebury patted his shoulder. ‘Don’t worry. It’ll be all right.’ Then the smile suddenly left him. ‘It’s got to be all right,’ he muttered. ‘I care about this island far too much to let the Nazis spread their vile rash across the place.’

Vaughan gazed back down at the water. Pendlebury was a fine man – an academic, maybe, but he also happened to be a natural leader of men, albeit an eccentric one. He wore an eyepatch for this trip – the glass eye had been left on his desk in his house in Heraklion – and never went anywhere without his swordstick or a rifle slung over his shoulder. But eccentrics could thrive in this war – Britain was turning out all kinds of fighting men who might otherwise never have worn a uniform. And out here, all the normal rules seemed to be going to the four winds. Good God, one only had to look at their skipper. Where had Mike Cumberlege come from? His skin was as tanned as any Greek’s, his hair unkempt, a gold earring in one ear and Lord only knew how many tattoos. He was like a buccaneer of old and yet, by all accounts, he had come from a perfectly respectable background in England. Yet while there was nothing remotely military about him – Vaughan could only imagine what the bigwigs in the Admiralty would make of him – there was no doubting his knowledge or expertise. Sailing was his life. It was said that there was not a cove or bay in all the Aegean Mike Cumberlege and his cousin Cle did not know. Well, that kind of knowledge was damned useful.

Cumberlege now shouted to them, pointing to a berth along the quayside across the far side of the harbour, between two other caiques. There were perhaps two dozen fishing-boats, dinghies and other vessels moored in the inner harbour. Vaughan saw fishermen passing nets, heard them calling to one another, seemingly oblivious to the war. Men still had to fish, to eat, he supposed. He could smell the harbour too: fish, saltwater, dust, rope and diesel. The ancient town, long ago dominated by the Venetians, rose up from the harbour’s edge and climbed over the ridge behind. Beyond that, and to the west reaching out over a headland into the sea, were the mountains, still hazy but massive in the morning light. No wonder the Cretans felt bullish about resisting any invasion, he thought. Who would want to fight them up there?

As they neared the quayside, Vaughan glanced at the row of buildings in front of them. The whole line was the same: half a dozen classical facades with a large twelve-foot-high arched window in the centre and two smaller ones either side. Behind these seemingly deceptive frontages lay the town arsenals, with their vast curved roofs, already filling with stores – food, ammunition, weapons, even clothing, so that the soldiers could swap their thick serge battledress for cooler cotton khaki drill now that summer was fast approaching.

Dolphin slipped smoothly into the gap. Several men were waiting – some of Pendlebury’s Cretans and Corporal Tasker-Brown, too, another from 50 ME Commando who had been commandeered by Pendlebury.

‘Here,’ growled one of the Cretans, a man Vaughan recognized as Alopex, one of Satanas’s local kapitans.

Both Vaughan and Pendlebury threw ropes to Alopex and the waiting men and, moments later, the boat nudged against the quay.

‘What took you so long?’ Alopex asked.

‘We were late getting going,’ Pendlebury replied, grabbing the first box from their stash of cargo and stepping ashore. ‘Too many ships in Suda Bay.’

‘So it’s true? You’re leaving the mainland?’

Pendlebury nodded, then looked up at the sky.

‘Yes,’ said Alopex, following his gaze, ‘we need to be quick.’ He jumped on board and picked up a box.

On the quayside, a mule and cart were waiting. Hurriedly the men now unloaded the cargo. As Vaughan swung the boxes across to ready hands on the quay, he felt the sweat running down the side of his face and tickling his back. It was hot work, but he wished they could unload and get away even more quickly. All it needed was one bomb, a chance bullet or cannon shell, and they would be obliterated. He glanced at his watch. It was two minutes to nine and they were still by the quayside.

‘Come on, nearly there,’ shouted Cumberlege. Vaughan grabbed another box, just as the skipper’s cousin,