had been a long day, and they had barely rested so sleep came easily. In any case fighting, no matter how quickly it was over, was tiring in itself. Yet, despite his exhaustion, Tanner woke before midnight. A number of the men were snoring – too much wine, Tanner guessed – and he found it hard to get back to sleep again. He was hot, too, so he got up and went outside into the courtyard between the house and the barns, sat on the edge of the stone well in the centre and lit a cigarette. There was a faint light from inside the house and he heard laughter – the Cretan men were drinking late. Tanner didn’t blame them. Alopex, he knew, was relieved to have got his family here, to this extraordinary haven. No wonder the fellow was letting off a bit of steam.
A door opened at the side of the house and he looked up. In the light from the doorway, he saw Alexis and his heart lurched. She came over to him, then held out her hand, beckoning him. Tanner followed as she led him out of the yard and down a cart track that ran to the edge of the giant grove. Away from the track there was a grassy bank and she sat down, beckoning him to join her. He did so and looked up at the vast canopy of stars. Above them, an almost half-moon shone, which, with the stars, cast a glow over the valley.
Alexis leaned over and kissed him. ‘At last,’ she said, ‘we are alone.’
‘I was waiting for you,’ he lied.
‘I hoped you would be.’ She sighed happily. ‘It is still so warm.’ He touched her cheek, and she smiled. ‘We have so little time …’
‘A few days, that’s all.’
‘Then stay with me now. For a few hours I want to believe that we are the only two people in this valley. I want to believe that and to remember this night for always.’
Later, much later, with Alexis’s head resting on his chest and her arm across him, he thought again about what she had said. Truly, in these precious hours, it had seemed as though they really were alone in the world and that the war was no more. And he knew then that, no matter how long he lived, whether it be for a few days or until he was an old man, he would not forget this night either.
Around nine the following morning, a German reconnaissance aircraft flew over the Ida Mountains, then dropped height as it continued over the Amari Valley. Slowly, the Storch banked, circled, then continued on its way to the west, then down towards the sea.
Oberleutnant Balthasar was sitting beside the pilot. The previous evening he had requested an aerial recce and had been granted one. It had not been hard to justify, and his request had been perfectly reasonable: he wanted to get an appreciation of this central part of the island and a glimpse of its hidden tracks and valleys that would be quite impossible from the ground, and although the Luftwaffe had already begun to produce aerial reconnaissance photographs, he knew there was no substitute for seeing it for himself, in its full dimensions and colour.
Already, the flight had proved more than worthwhile. With his map spread out over his knees, he had been able to look down and mark up numerous tracks and villages. He had circled the Amari Valley on the off chance that he might spot the Tommies; with binoculars and with the Storch’s slow speed it might have been possible, but he had seen nothing that caught his eye – just a lush valley, dotted with small villages.
It was the southern coast that had been his main objective, however, and it was towards it that he now asked the pilot to fly. Both the tiny coastal village of Plakias and the monastery of Preveli were marked on his map, but this told him very little. He wanted to see it for himself – the tracks, the coves, the beaches, the course of the rivers. What surprised him, as they cleared the mountains and flew over the narrow ten-kilometre strip of land to the coast, was just how different it was from the rest of the island. It was altogether wilder, more remote, with fewer villages, and while there were still olive groves, they were small and sparse. And it was mountainous too. Gone were the high peaks of the Ida range, but these lesser mountains were craggy and inhospitable. They flew over a narrow winding gorge, then south to the coast. As they cleared a high, rocky hill dotted with sheep, Balthasar suddenly saw the monastery of Preveli, perched back from the cliffs above the sea. It was, he realized, entirely hidden from the north, tucked away and isolated, the hill behind, the sea in front. They flew over the coast and he noticed a beach at the foot of the cliffs below the monastery, then, a little way further along, a gap in the cliffs where a river flowed out into the sea.
‘Turn back up there,’ said Balthasar. ‘I want to follow that river.’
The pilot did as he was asked.
‘Lower,’ said Balthasar. A lone track ran above the river, winding through the hills from the monastery. They followed both the track and the river until one crossed the other by means of a small stone bridge.
‘Now follow that track,’ said Balthasar. The pilot banked again, keeping above the course of the track, which wound through the hills and mountains until it reached the dirt road that ran from Rethymno, through Spili and on along the south coast.
‘Thank you,’ said Balthasar, satisfied. ‘Now we can return to Heraklion.’
The flight had cleared up a great deal. Before, several conundrums had been troubling him, but now his plan was clear in his mind. Later that afternoon, he would lead two platoons to Spili, which would leave him just enough time to make his preparations. Then, when the Tommies tried to make their bid for freedom, he and his men would be ready to strike.
23
Saturday, 7 June, around 9 p.m. Their final journey to the coast had just begun. There were nineteen of them in all: fourteen Rangers and Captain Vaughan, and four Cretans, including Alopex, walking up the winding road through the village that snaked like a giant S up the steep mountainside on which Yerakari had been built.
Some of the men chatted easily among themselves, relieved to be on the move again. Laughter, garbled words – it was the banter of men who were both excited about and daunted by what lay ahead. Tanner did not join in: he was in no mood to talk. In the rapidly fading light, he looked hard at the village as they walked, determined to remember as much of it as possible: the limes and plane trees that lined the road with the bases of their trunks whitewashed, the flat-roofed houses, and the white church with its thin, high tower. And the orchards: figs, apples, oranges and lemons – the village was a haven of fruit, growing on the terraces and behind the houses at either side of the road. Shed blossom still lay beneath the apples, a white carpet on the grass.
His heart was heavy. That morning he had bade farewell to Alexis and now he was leaving this enchanted valley too. Only twelve hours earlier he had been as close to her as two people could be but now she was gone, out of his life for ever, as this valley soon would be too. It was the finality that he found so difficult: he was as sure as if she had died that he would never see her again. And then it struck him that what he was feeling was a kind of grief.
He tried to think of other things. The growing shortage of ammunition was a concern. Thanks to Sykes’s raid on a box in the cave, he had around forty rifle rounds left. He had chided his friend for taking precious supplies from the Cretans but had been glad of them all the same. On top of the rifle rounds, he also had six magazines for his MP40, four grenades and, in the loose cotton German bandolier he had kept and which hung around his neck, a number of slabs of TNT. He was conscious, though, that he and Sykes were considerably better armed than the others. With a bit of luck, they would need none of it, yet concern at what Mandoukis might have told the enemy nagged at the back of his mind. They had all agreed that he must have known about the planned evacuation from Preveli; there had been no precise details at that time, but it might have been more than enough for the Germans to scupper the plan. Not for the first time, Tanner cursed Alopex and the other Cretans for their mishandling of Mandoukis. Only time would tell whether they would soon be paying the price.
On the other hand, all of them were now fit enough for the trek to the coast. Vaughan’s strength had been building, but it was Liddell who had really benefited from their three days in the Amari Valley. Food, sleep, a degree of comfort and careful nursing had helped him through the worst, so that the previous day he had got up and begun moving about. Another long night of sleep and now he was, he declared, fit enough to walk – and so far, by the look of it, he was managing well.
He had found Tanner earlier that afternoon, dozing in the orchard behind the barn that had been their base
