Blood of Honour

Balthasar told him about the truck and what he had discovered. ‘The uniforms could have been taken for a number of reasons, but one cannot rule out the possibility that they were intended as a disguise. It seems a coincidence that the day after I capture a leading bandit’s family, a number of my men are killed and stripped not five kilometres away.’

‘Yes, I agree with you, Balthasar. Although even after a shave – which, let us face it, most Cretans seem incapable of doing – I think they would still stand out.’

‘Yes, but it would be easy for the unsuspecting sentry not to notice any imposters passing at dusk or even at night.’

Brauer exhaled a large cloud of smoke. ‘Yes, yes – you’re quite right, Oberleutnant. I still doubt that a handful of Cretans in disguise could cause too much mischief, but the men must be warned. I’ll send out word immediately. Thank you, Balthasar. You were right to tell me.’

‘And perhaps, Herr Oberst, if you will forgive me saying so, it might be prudent to put extra guards around the fortress.’

‘Yes, Balthasar, I’ll do exactly as you suggest, and without delay.’

Around a quarter to nine six men walked towards the Kenouria Gate beside the Jesus Bastion, approaching from the east as though they had come from the direction of the airfield. They had not, as it happened. Rather they had woven their way down from the mountains, carefully crossing the road beyond the crest of the low ridge that led from the town towards Knossos, then working their way first through the groves and then the houses and back alleys of the sprawling town beyond the great walls.

Six of them: Vaughan, with the gull-wing insignia of an Unteroffizier on his left sleeve, Peploe beside him with a single V-shaped chevron. Behind them came Tanner and Sykes, then Chambers and McAllister. They all looked battle-hardened: tanned, faces smeared with sweat and oil; Tanner with his bruising and cut eye. They all had Schmeissers slung from their shoulders, except McAllister, who carried an MG34 across his shoulders, despite its sling. From Tanner’s shoulders hung another strap from which he carried two aluminium ammunition boxes full of MG belts. Peploe, Tanner and Sykes also wore long cloth bandoliers draped around their shoulders, five pouches each side, which they had gleefully discovered were just the right size for a half-pound packet of TNT. German paratroopers, they had found out, did not carry the kind of packs an ordinary infantryman wore as a matter of course. Instead they used the plentiful pockets in their cotton jump smocks. These now bulged with more rounds, stick grenades and explosives. And while Peploe and Vaughan wore Luftwaffe blue wool side caps, the rest had on the distinctive paratrooper helmets, in Tanner’s case low over his eyes.

‘Now just act naturally, boys,’ said Vaughan, in a low voice. In the dim dusk light they saw guards moving towards them either side of the gate. Tanner’s heart was thumping heavily. They had managed it this far, but he knew that getting through the town gates was going to be one of the potential stumbling blocks of the entire operation. But then again, when he thought about it, there were many …

A guard pointing a Schmeisser came towards them and ordered them to halt. Tanner listened as Vaughan said something in German to Peploe, who laughed. It sounded convincing enough to him, but now a lance corporal was ambling over to them, the same single chevron on his sleeve as Peploe wore.

‘Seid ihr vom Flugplatz gekommen?’ he asked.

‘Ja,’ said Vaughan. Tanner watched him wipe the side of his face.

‘Es ist immer noch hei?, nicht wahr?’

What the hell are they talking about? Tanner wondered. The NCO seemed friendly enough. Thank God for Vaughan.

‘Ja, ja. Sind Sie fur die Verstarkung der Festung?’

‘Ja. Was ist los?’

The German grinned. ‘Wir suchen einige Kreter als Fallschirmjager verkleidet. Ihre Soldbuch? ’

Vaughan and Peploe handed over their paybooks, found inside the uniforms of the dead men. The German looked at them briefly with a torch, then said, ‘Gut,’ and waved them on. No other paper required, no careful scan of the face. Tanner felt himself relax. They walked on, the guards talking casually as they passed, and then they were under the gate, the rubber soles of their boots drumming softly on the dirt road as they walked straight on down Evans Street – it had been named after the British archaeologist – as though going towards the port. Only when they were out of sight of the men at the gate did Vaughan lead them off the main road and down a narrow back-street.

‘They know something’s up,’ said Peploe, his voice quiet and urgent.

Vaughan nodded and turned to the others. ‘That guard asked me whether we were reinforcements for the fortress. I said yes and asked him what was going on. Apparently they’re looking out for some Cretans dressed up as paratroopers.’

‘Could be worse, sir,’ said Tanner.

‘I don’t like the sound of the reinforcement bit,’ said McAllister.

‘It’ll be all right,’ said Tanner. ‘We’re in, aren’t we?’

They had agreed they would lay a series of charges at each of the four bastions from the Martinengo Bastion in the south, all along the west side of the walls to the Ayios Andreas Bastion by the sea’s edge, but avoiding the Canea Gate, which, as a major entrance to the town, was likely to be more heavily guarded. First, however, Sykes had to prepare the charges, so Vaughan led them down through a web of narrow streets until they found a small courtyard beside a destroyed house. With Peploe shining his blue-filtered German torch, Sykes got to work, deftly pulling out a time pencil, fixing a small length of instantaneous fuse into the fuse adaptor and then wrapping it around two half-pound blocks of TNT. A cat suddenly mewed above them; none of the men had heard it approach and they flinched.

‘Bloody cat!’ hissed Vaughan. ‘Too damned many of them in this town.’

‘That’s one done,’ said Sykes. The time pencils were colour coded by the metal strip that acted as a safety pin and protruded from one end of the switch. What they had really wanted was an hour’s delay but the choice was either red, which was half an hour, or white, which was ninety minutes. They had chosen white.

‘Ssh!’ hissed Chambers, from the doorway. Footsteps. The men froze, but then the person passed and they relaxed once more. Tanner moved over beside Chambers and listened. The night was still with barely a breath of wind. The stench of rotting corpses had gone, but the air remained heavy with the smell of sewage; a body might rot away but the living still produced effluent. Broken sewers could not be repaired overnight.

In less than ten minutes they were ready, six bundles of explosives prepared with their timers set to begin the moment Sykes broke the acid phial in each of the switches. From that moment the acid would begin to corrode the wire that held the striker away from the fuse adaptor. They had discussed whether they should be set to detonate simultaneously but had decided that staggering the explosions would be more effective. With luck, as soon as troops were drawn to one explosion, another would go off. Sykes now handed out the charges, which they each put carefully into the front pockets of their jump smocks.

‘Just make sure you don’t break the fuse or knock the switch out of place,’ said Sykes. ‘Obvious, I know, but it don’t take much for this stuff to go whoosh.’

Vaughan nodded and took a deep breath. ‘All set?’ he asked.

‘Yes, sir,’ said Sykes.

‘Right – let’s go.’

He led them back up to Plastira. It was now completely dark, with only a sliver of moon and the stars providing any light. Having paused to check there were no troops about, they moved onto the main road that ran beneath the walls. Opposite the entrance to Martinengo Bastion, they crossed to the wall, where they were hidden by dark shadow. A set of steps led up to the walls and Sykes now took out the first of his bombs, broke the phial, placed it on the ground and covered it with a piece of loose paper lying discarded on the street.

They moved on. Two officers walked past, not paratroopers but ordinary army. Vaughan and Peploe saluted, and as the Germans passed them Tanner saw the white Edelweiss symbol on their sleeve. Mountain troops. So they’re here now too.

Another package was dropped by the Bethlehem Bastion and then they were by the break in the wall where there had been so much fighting ten days earlier. This was the stretch of the walls they had briefly manned afterwards and they saw that German troops now occupied the building opposite that had earlier been a Greek company headquarters. There were men inside – they could hear them talking and laughing. Tanner felt his heart