Mallory said drily: 'Very interesting information — for a parachute brigade. But we've other and more urgent fish to fry. Come on.' He glanced at Miller, who nodded and began to ease his way back up the slope, followed by the two sergeants, Maria and Petar Mallory and Andrea lingered for a few moments longer
'I wonder what it's like,' Mallory murmured.
'What's what like?' Andrea said.
'The other side of the dam.'
'And the ladder let into the cliff?'
'And the ladder let into the cliff.'
From where General Vukalovic lay, high on a cliff-top on the right-hand or western side of the Neretva gorge, he had an excellent view of the ladder let into the cliff he had, in fact, an excellent view of the entire outer face of the dam wall and of the gorge which began at the foot of the wall and extended southwards for almost a mile before vanishing from sight round an abrupt right-hand corner.
The dam wall itself was quite narrow, not much more than thirty yards in width, but very deep, stretching down in a slightly V-formation from between overhanging cliff-faces to the greenish-white torrent of water foaming from the outlet pipes at the base On top of the dam, at the eastern end and on a slight eminence, were the control station and two small huts, one of which, judging from the clearly visible soldiers patrolling the top of the wall, was almost certainly a guard-room. Above those buildings the walls of the gorge rose quite vertically for about thirty feet, then jutted out in a terrifying overhang.
From the control-room, a zig-zag, green-painted iron ladder, secured by brackets to the rock-face, led down the floor of the gorge. From the base of the ladder a narrow path extended down the gorge for a distance of about a hundred yards, ending abruptly at a spot where the ancient landslide had gouged a huge scar into the of the gorge. From here a bridge spanned the river another path on the right-hand bank. As bridges go, it wasn't much, an obviously very elderly and rickety wooden swing bridge which looked if its own weight would be enough to carry it into the torrent at any moment: what was even worse, it seemed, at first glance, as if its site had been deliberately picked by someone with an unhinged mind, for it lay directly below an enormous boulder some forty feet up the landslide, a boulder so clearly in a highly precarious state of balance that none but the most foolhardy would have lingered in the crossing of the bridge. In point of fact, no other site would have been possible.
From the western edge of the bridge, the narrow, boulder-strewn path followed the line of the river, passing by what looked like an extremely hazardous ford, and finally curving away from sight with the river. General Vukalovic lowered his binoculars, turned the man at his side and smiled. 'All quiet on the eastern front, eh, Colonel Janzy?' 'All quiet on the eastern front,' Janzy agreed. He was small, puckish, humorous-looking character with a youthful face and incongruous white hair. He twisted around and gazed to the north. 'But not so quiet on the northern front, I'm afraid.'
The smile faded from Vukalovic's face as he turned, lifted his binoculars again and gazed to the north.
Less than three miles away and clearly visible in the morning sunlight, lay the heavily wooded Zenica Gap, for weeks a hotly contested strip of territory between Vukalovic's northern defensive forces, under the command of Colonel Janzy, and units of the invading German 11th Army Corps. At that moment frequent puffs of smoke could be seen, to the left a thick column of smoke spiralled up to form a dark pall against the now cloudless blue of the sky, while the distant rattle of small-arms fire, punctuated by the occasional heavier boom of artillery, was almost incessant. Vukalovic lowered his glasses and looked thoughtfully at Janzy.
The softening-up before the main attack?'
'What else? The final assault.'
'How many tanks?'
'It's difficult to be sure. Collating reports, my staff estimate a hundred and fifty.'
'One hundred and fifty!'
'That's what they make it — and at least fifty of those are Tiger tanks.'
'Let's hope to heaven your staff can't count.' Vukalovic rubbed a weary hand across his bloodshot eyes: he'd had no sleep during the night just gone, no sleep during the night previous to that. 'Let's go and see how many we can count.'
Maria and Petar led the way now, with Reynolds and Groves, clearly in no mood for other company, bringing up the rear almost fifty yards behind. Mallory, Andrea and Miller rode abreast along the narrow road. Andrea looked at Mallory, his eyes speculative. 'Saunders's death? Any idea?' Mallory shook his head. 'Ask me something else.' 'The message you'd given him to send. What was it?' 'A report of our safe arrival in Broznik's camp Nothing more.'
'A psycho,' Miller announced. 'The handy man with the knife, I mean. Only a psycho would kill that reason.'
'Maybe he didn't kill for that reason,' Mallory said mildly. 'Maybe he thought it was some other kind of message.'
'Some other kind of message?' Miller lifted an eyebrow in the way that only he knew how. 'Now kind — ' He caught Andrea's eye, broke off and changed his mind about saying anything more. Both he and Andrea gazed curiously at Mallory who seemed have fallen into a mood of intense introspection.
Whatever its reason, the period of deep preoccupation did not last for long. With the air of a man who has just arrived at a conclusion about something, Mallory lifted his head and called to Maria to stop, at the same time reining in his own pony. Together they waited until Reynolds and Groves had made up on them.
There are a good number of options open to us,' Mallory said, 'but for better or worse this is what I have decided to do.' He smiled faintly. 'For better, I think, if for no other reason than that this is the course of action that will get us out of here fastest. I've talked to Major Broznik and found out what I wanted. He tells me — '
'Got your information for Neufeld, then, have you?'
If Reynolds was attempting to mask the contempt in his voice he made a singularly poor job of it.
The hell with Neufeld,' Mallory said without heat.
Partisan spies have discovered where the four captured Allied agents are being held.'
'They have?' Reynolds said. 'Then why don't the Partisans do something about it?'
'For a good enough reason. The agents are held deep in German territory. In an impregnable block-house high up in the mountains.'
'And what are we going to do about the Allied agents held in this impregnable block-house?'
'Simple.' Mallory corrected himself. 'Well, in theory it's simple. We take them out of there and make our break tonight.'
Reynolds and Groves stared at Mallory, then at each other in frank disbelief and consternation. Andrea and Miller carefully avoided looking at each other or at anyone else.
'You're mad!' Reynolds spoke with total conviction.
'You're mad, sir,' Andrea said reprovingly.
Reynolds looked uncomprehendingly at Andrea, then turned back to Mallory again.
'You must be!' he insisted. 'Break? Break for where, in heaven's name?'
'For home. For Italy.'
'Italy!' It took Reynolds all of ten seconds to digest this startling piece of information, then he went on sarcastically: 'We're going to fly there, I suppose?'
'Well, it's a long swim across the Adriatic, even for a fit youngster like you. How else?'
'Flying?' Groves seemed slightly dazed.
'Flying. Not ten kilometres from here is a high — a very high mountain plateau, mostly in Partisan hands. There'll be a plane there at nine o'clock tonight.'
In the fashion of people who have failed to grasp something they have just heard, Groves repeated the statement in the form of a question. 'There'll be a plane there at nine o'clock tonight? You've just arranged this?'
'How could I? We've no radio.'
Reynolds's distrustful face splendidly complemented the scepticism in his voice. 'But how can you be sure — well, at nine o'clock?'
'Because, starting at six o'clock this evening, there'll be a Wellington bomber over the airstrip every three hours for the next week if necessary.'
Mallory kneed his pony and the party moved on, Reynolds and Groves taking up their usual position well I the
