Andrea muttered warningly and took a step nearer Reynolds, but Mallory made a brief conciliatory movement of his right hand. He said: 'It's entirely up to you, of course, Major. I'm sorry that we have been responsible for giving you and your men so sleepless a night. See you in the morning.' He smiled wryly. 'Not that that's so far away.' He turned to go, found his way blocked by Sergeant Groves, a Groves whose normally cheerful countenance now mirrored the tight hostility of Reynolds's.
'So he's got clear away, has he? Away to hell and gone. And that's the end of it, eh?'
Mallory looked at him consideringly. 'Well, no. I wouldn't quite say that. A little time. We'll find him.'
'A little time? Maybe even before he dies of old age?'
Andrea looked at Mallory. Twenty-four hours?'
'Less.'
Andrea nodded and he and Mallory turned and walked away towards the guest hut. Reynolds and Groves, with Miller slightly behind them, watched the two men as they went, then looked at each other, their faces still bleak and bitter.
'Aren't they a nice warm-hearted couple now? Completely broken up about old Saunders.' Groves shook his head. They don't care. They just don't care.'
'Oh, I wouldn't say that,' Miller said diffidently. 'It's just that they don't seem to care. Not at all the same thing.'
'Faces like wooden Indians,' Reynolds muttered. 'They never even said they were sorry that Saunders was killed.'
'Well,' Miller said patiently, 'it's a cliche, but different people react in different ways. Okay, so grief and anger is the natural reaction to this sort of thing, but if Mallory and Andrea spent their time in reacting in that fashion to all the things that have happened to them in their lifetimes, they'd have come apart at the seams years ago. So they don't react that way any more. They do things. Like they're going to do things to your friend's killer. Maybe you didn't get it, but you just heard a death sentence being passed.'
'How do you know?' Reynolds said uncertainly. He nodded in the direction of Mallory and Andrea who were just entering the guest hut. 'And how did they know? Without talking, I mean.' Telepathy.'
'What do you mean — 'telepathy'?' 'It would take too long,' Miller said wearily. 'Ask me in the morning.'
CHAPTER SIX
Crowning the tops of the towering pines, the dense, interlocking snow-laden branches formed an almost impenetrable canopy that effectively screened Major I Broznik's camp, huddled at the foot of the jamba, from [ill but the most fleeting glimpses of the sky above. Even at high noon on a summer's day, it was never more than a twilit dusk down below: on a morning such as this, an hour after dawn with snow falling gently from an overcast sky, the quality of light was such as to be hardly distinguishable from a starlit midnight. The interior of the dining hut, where Mallory and his company were at breakfast with Major Broznik, was gloomy in the extreme, the darkness emphasized rather than alleviated by the two smoking oil lamps which formed the only primitive means of illumination.
The atmosphere of gloom was significantly deepened by the behaviour and expression of those seated round the breakfast table. They ate in a moody silence, heads lowered, for the most part not looking at one another: the events of the previous night had clearly affected them all deeply but none so deeply as Reynolds and Groves in whose faces was still unmistakably reflected the shock caused by Saunders's murder. They left their food untouched.
To complete the atmosphere of quiet desperation, it was clear that the reservations held about the standard of the Partisan early-morning cuisine were of a profound and lasting nature. Served by two young partisankas — women members of Marshal Tito's army — it consisted of polenta, a highly unappetizing dish made from ground corn, and raki, a Yugoslav spirit of unparalleled fierceness. Miller spooned his breakfast with a marked lack of enthusiasm.
'Well,' he said to no one in particular, 'it makes a change, I'll say that.'
'It's all we have,' Broznik said apologetically. He laid down his spoon and pushed his plate away from him. 'And even that I can't eat. Not this morning. Every entrance to the jamba is guarded, yet there was a killer loose in my camp last night. But maybe he didn't come in past the guards, maybe he was already inside. Think of it — a traitor in my own camp. And if there is, I can't even find him. I can't even believe it!'
Comment was superfluous, nothing could be said that hadn't been said already, nobody as much as looked in Broznik's direction: his acute discomfort, embarrassment and anger were apparent to everyone in his tone of voice. Andrea, who had already emptied his plate with apparent relish, looked at the two untouched plates in front of Reynolds and Groves and then enquiringly at the two sergeants themselves, who shook their heads. Andrea reached out, brought their plates before him and set to with every sign of undiminished appetite. Reynolds and Groves looked at him in shocked disbelief, possibly awed by the catholicity of Andrea's taste, more probably astonished by the insensitivity of a man who could eat so heartily only a few hours after the death of one of his comrades. Miller, for his part, looked at Andrea in near horror, tried another tiny portion of his polenta and wrinkled his nose in delicate distaste. He laid down his spoon and looked morosely at Petar who, guitar slung over his shoulder, was awkwardly feeding himself.
Miller said irritably: 'Does he always wear that damned guitar?'
'Our lost one,' Broznik said softly. 'That's what we ill him. Our poor blind lost one. Always he carries or has it by his side. Always. Even when he sleeps didn't you notice last night? That guitar means as much to him as life itself. Some weeks ago, one of our men, by way of a joke, tried to take it from him: Petar, blind though he is, almost killed him.'
'He must be stone tone deaf,' Miller said wonderingly. 'It's the most god-awful guitar I ever heard.'
Broznik smiled faintly. 'Agreed. But don't you understand? He can feel it. He can touch it. It's his own. It's the only thing left to him in the world, a dark and 'lonely and empty world. Our poor lost one.'
'He could at least tune it,' Miller muttered.
'You are a good man, my friend. You try to take our minds off what lies ahead this day. But no man can do that.' He turned to Mallory. 'Any more than you can hope to carry out your crazy scheme of rescuing your captured agents and breaking up the German counter-espionage network here. It is insanity. Insanity!'
Mallory waved a vague hand. 'Here you are. No food. No artillery. No transport. Hardly any guns and practically no ammunition for those guns. No medical supplies. No tanks. No planes. No hope — and you keep on fighting. That makes you sane?'
'Touche.' Broznik smiled, pushed across the bottle of raki, waited until Mallory had filled his glass. 'To the madmen of this world.'
'I've just been talking to Major Stephan up at the Western Gap,' General Vukalovic said. 'He thinks we're all mad. Would you agree, Colonel Lazlo?'
The man lying prone beside Vukalovic lowered his binoculars. He was a burly, sun-tanned, thickset, middle- aged man with a magnificent black moustache that had every appearance of being waxed. After a moment's consideration, he said: 'Without a doubt, sir.'
'Even you?' Vukalovic said protestingly. 'With a Czech father?'
'He came from the High Tatra,' Lazlo explained 'They're all mad there.'
Vukalovic smiled, settled himself more comfortably on his elbows, peered downhill through the gap between two rocks, raised his binoculars and scanned the scene to the south of him, slowly raising his glasses as he did so.
Immediately in front of where he lay was a bare, rocky hillside, dropping gently downhill for a distance of about two hundred feet. Beyond its base it merged gradually into a long flat grassy plateau, no more than two hundred yards wide at its maximum, but stretching almost as far as the eye could see on both sides, on the right- hand side stretching away to the west, on the left curving away to the east, north-east and finally north.
Beyond the edge of the plateau, the land dropped abruptly to form the bank of a wide and swiftly flowing river, a river of that peculiarly Alpine greenish-white colour, green from the melting ice-water of spring, white from
