‘Good.’ Vigar winked, then left them.
Of course they had needed the supplies of ammunition that had been dropped, and the rations too, but Oberleutnant Kurt Balthasar was particularly relieved to have been sent some water-purification tablets. Truly, these were manna from heaven. He was not the only one suffering from diarrhoea – most of the men were. Water was always the most important ingredient of life, but even more so when the men were spending much of the day out under a hot sun sweating so much body fluid. They had had no choice but to drink the river water, but they were paying the price. Now there was not only the stench of decomposing paratroopers.
The men were ordered to dig holes in the ground as much as possible, but since they had not landed with any entrenching tools, this had been difficult: bayonets and knives had been used to loosen the earth, and helmets to scoop away the soil, but these efforts offered only limited sanitation. The crap and decaying flesh attracted the flies as well. Millions of them seemed to have descended on the remnants of the 3rd Battalion. The men were struggling, but every other living thing seemed to be thriving on their discomfort: carrion crows, flies, mosquitoes, ants – even the rock lizards that darted about. Balthasar found himself whisking his hand about his face almost continuously. It did nothing to improve his mood.
Neither did the lack of news. The only radio contact was with Athens, picking up brief snatches of radio traffic here and there. Runners had been sent out at night to try to link up with Oberst Brauer and the men to the east of the airfield, but they had not been seen since. Most probably they had been intercepted by Cretan bandits. The attacks the previous night had cost the lives of a dozen more men – a comparatively light return, all things considered, but he for one had not slept even a minute and, from the men’s faces, he was not the only one.
The decapitation of the pickets the previous night had unnerved them all, but while his own thirst for revenge had been exacerbated by this monstrous act, the reality of their situation meant that at present there was little opportunity for exacting any retribution. Rather, their position continued to be extremely precarious, as Balthasar was keenly aware. The men were on edge, suffering from various degrees of dysentery, chronically short of sleep, and with insufficient arms to properly defend themselves.
And to make matters worse, the English captain, Pendlebury, was not talking. It was Eicher who had begun questioning him that morning; the Leutnant could speak near fluent English.
Pendlebury was weak but conscious. He knew very little, he told Eicher. He was no soldier; Heraklion had become too oppressive; he had had to get away from the smell, the death. He claimed to have lost his nerve. When Eicher had pointed out that he had tried to cross their lines with an escort of British soldiers, Pendlebury had denied it. Rather, he claimed, he had seen the patrol leaving and had crept out behind them. They had not even known he was there. It was the truth: he was an academic, not a soldier, who had been on the island before the war. His position, he said, was as vice consul – a minor diplomatic post, nothing more. His task had been to ease relations between the Greeks and the British on the island – always uneasy, and especially so since the loss of the Cretan Division on the mainland. He had never had any military training at all in his life – it had probably been obvious enough to them.
Eicher had pointed out that Pendlebury had killed three of their men. Pendlebury apologized. It had been nothing more than self-defence – they had been firing at him. He was surprised to learn that he’d killed anyone – with one eye, it was hard to aim properly. He’d had no real thought of where he might go, but he had supposed into the mountains. That was all. It was the truth.
‘He’s lying,’ Balthasar had told Eicher. ‘I saw him two nights ago in the fighting around the Canea Gate. He was leading their counter-attack. See what he says to that.’
Everyone had been fighting that night, Pendlebury told him. Civilians, Greek soldiers, British. He had joined in because, like the Cretans in the town, he felt compelled to try to force back the invader.
‘He was leading the attack,’ said Balthasar. ‘Using a swordstick.’
No, Pendlebury insisted. He had merely joined in. Perhaps it had looked that way, but it was not the case – he had been just one of many. It was true he had used a swordstick – but that, he hoped, only went to prove how little soldiering he had ever done.
‘I don’t believe a word of it,’ said Balthasar. ‘He thinks we were born yesterday. He’s a British agent, and he was trying to get through to the bandits in the mountains.’
Pendlebury denied it, and continued to deny it. Soon after they stopped the questioning: the wounded man was flagging, but so too was Balthasar, gripped with an acute pain in his stomach. ‘Get some rest,’ Balthasar told him. ‘Build up your strength. But you will tell me all you know, Hauptmann Pendlebury.’
Since then, Balthasar had spoken with Major Schulz and Hauptmann von der Schulenberg.
‘Take the note we found,’ suggested von der Schulenberg, as they sat in the shade of a large chestnut behind the house next to the river. Flies darted and buzzed around them, but at least the leaves, dark and fecund, offered some shade from the sun. ‘If he is an agent with the Cretan bandits, he’ll know about that note.’
‘Yes – yes, I will,’ said Balthasar.
‘And what was he doing here before the war? An academic, you say? What kind? An archaeologist?’
‘I’ll interrogate him more fully this afternoon,’ he had told them. ‘Reibert does not think his wound is life- threatening, but the more time he has to rest the better.’ The same applied to himself, as he well knew. He could sense his own strength sapping, and had begun to feel a little light-headed. He had eaten a biscuit, a hard, dry tooth-breaker, but it had hardly made him feel better. When he and Eicher eventually returned to the cottage where Pendlebury was being held, Reibert suggested he take a Pervitin tablet: for all their shortages, they had plenty of those energy pills. It had made a notable difference – within ten minutes, Balthasar felt the fatigue seep away.
And Pendlebury was awake when he and Eicher entered the dark, shuttered room in which he still lay.
‘Tell him, Eicher,’ said Balthasar, ‘that we know he speaks German.’
Pendlebury smiled. ‘Yes, it’s true,’ he said.
A correct guess.
‘You never asked.’
‘I am interested to know what you were doing here before the war.’
‘I am an archaeologist. I was curator at Knossos for some years.’
‘For how long?’
‘I took over from Arthur Evans in 1929. We carried out other digs. Many digs.’ He lolled his head. ‘Good days – peaceful days, they were.’
‘Work that took you all over the island.’
‘Oh, yes. It’s a beautiful place.’
‘You must know a great deal about the ancient world,’ said Balthasar.
‘And it was littered with despots just like your Hitler.’
Balthasar ignored the comment. He smoothed his hair, then wiped his brow. ‘And tell me, Hauptmann Pendlebury, I am curious – how much do you learn from your excavations and how much from texts written at the time?’
‘It entirely depends on what one is excavating. What age it is.’
‘But the ancient Greeks wrote books, did they not?’
‘Oh, yes,’ Pendlebury replied. ‘Some of the finest ever produced. Homer, Aeschylus, Herodotus. You should try them. They tell us so much about life, about history. That human nature never really changes.’
Balthasar produced the bloodied note left pinned to his headless men. ‘Perhaps, Herr Pendlebury, you recognize this quote. “Ravening a blood drinker though you may be, yet will I glut your taste for blood.”’ He eyed Pendlebury closely. His eyes were closed again, but his mouth creased into a smile. ‘You recognize it? We’ve been wondering what it means.’
‘Herodotus,’ muttered Pendlebury. ‘The master story-teller. Let me tell you about this. You see, long ago, there was a king – King Cyrus of Persia, the Great One. He was a cruel, ruthless emperor. Half the known world bowed down before him, but then he tried to tame the Massagetae, a wild and independent people, fiercely proud and determined not to become the slaves of Persia, as so many others had. And the unthinkable happened – Cyrus was defeated and killed and his body brought before Tomyris, the queen of the Massagetae. And those were the words she spoke before she cut off his head. She kept it in a wineskin filled with blood. Rather apposite, don’t you think?’
‘And written by you, no doubt?’
‘You will find that there are many men on Crete fully acquainted with the writings of Herodotus. He is as well beloved and read as Shakespeare or Goethe.’
