' 'Oh,' indeed. The British Air Force have diverted six of their best Lancaster heavy bomber squadrons from the Italian front just to attend to our friends at Novo Derventa.' He in turn removed his cap, the better to listen. 'Hard at work, aren't they? By the time they're finished there won't be a Messerschmitt able to take off from that field for a week. If, that is to say, there are any left to take off.' 'If I might venture a remark, sir?' 'You may so venture, Captain Vlanovich.' 'There are other fighter bases.'
True.' Vis pointed upwards. 'See anything?' Vlanovich craned his neck, shielded his eyes against the brilliant sun, gazed into the empty blue sky and shook his head.
'Neither do I,' Vis agreed. 'But at seven thousand metres — and with their crews even colder than we are — squadrons of Beaufighters will be keeping relief patrol up there until dark,'
'Who — who is he, sir? Who can ask for all our soldiers down here, for squadrons of bombers and fighters?'
'Fellow called Captain Mallory, I believe.'
'A captain*. Like me?'
'A captain. I doubt, Boris,' Vis went on kindly, 'whether he's quite like you. But it's not the rank that counts. It's the name. Mallory.'
'Never heard of him.'
'You will, my boy, you will.'
'But — but this man Mallory. What does he want all this foil'
'Ask him when you see him tonight.'
'When I — he's coming here tonight?'
Tonight. If,' Vis added sombrely, 'he lives that long.'
Neufeld, followed by Droshny, walked briskly and confidently into his radio hut, a bleak, ramshackle lean-to furnished with a table, two chairs, a large portable transceiver and nothing else. The German corporal seated before the radio looked up enquiringly at their entrance.
The Seventh Armoured Corps HQ at the Neretva bridge,' Neufeld ordered. He seemed in excellent spirits. 'I wish to speak to General Zimmermann personally.'
The corporal nodded acknowledgement, put through the call-sign and was answered within seconds. He listened briefly, looked up at Neufeld. The General coming now, sir.'
Neufeld reached out a hand for the earphones took em and nodded towards the door. The corporal rose and left the hut while Neufeld took the vacated seat and adjusted the head-phones to his satisfaction. After a few seconds he automatically straightened in his seat a voice came crackling over the earphones.
'Hauptmann Neufeld here, Herr General. The Englishmen have returned. Their information is that the Partisan division in the Zenica Cage is expecting a full-scale attack from the south across the Neretva bridge.'
'Are they now?' General Zimmermann, comfortably seated in a swivel chair in the back of the radio truck parked on the tree-line due south of the Neretva bridge made no attempt to conceal the satisfaction in ms voice. The canvas hood of the truck was rolled back and he removed his peaked cap the better to enjoy the pale spring sunshine. 'Interesting, very interesting Anything else?'
'Yes,' Neufeld's voice crackled metallically over the loudspeaker. 'They've asked to be flown to sanctuary deep behind our lines, even to Germany. They feel — unsafe here.'
'Well, well, well. Is that how they feel.' Zimmermann paused, considered, then continued. 'You are fully informed of the situation, Hauptmann Neufeld? You are aware of the delicate balance of — um-niceties involved?'
'Yes, Herr General.'
This calls for a moment's thought. Wait.' Zimmermann swung idly to and fro in his swivel chair as he pondered his decision. He gazed thoughtfully but almost unseeingly to the north, across the meadows bordering the south bank of the Neretva, the river spanned by the iron bridge, then the meadows on the far side rising steeply to the rocky redoubt which served as the first line of defence for Colonel Lazlo's Partisan defenders. To the east, as he turned, he could look up the green-white rushing waters of the Neretva, the meadows on either side of it narrowing until, curving north, they disappeared suddenly at the mouth of the cliff-sided gorge from which the Neretva emerged. Another quarter turn and he was gazing into the pine forest to the south, a pine forest which at first seemed innocuous enough and empty of life — until, that was, one's eyes became accustomed to the gloom and scores of large rectangular shapes, effectively screened from both observation from the air and from the northern bank of the Neretva by camouflage canvas, camouflage nets and huge piles of dead branches. The sight of those camouflaged spearheads of his two Panzer divisions somehow helped Zimmermann to make up his mind. He picked up the microphone.
'Hauptmann Neufeld? I have decided on a course of action and you will please carry out the following instructions precisely…'
Droshny removed the duplicate pair of earphones that he had been wearing and said doubtfully to Neufeld: 'Isn't the General asking rather a lot of us?'
Neufeld shook his head reassuringly. 'General Zimmermann always knows what he is doing. His psychological assessment of the Captain Mallorys of this world is invariably a hundred per cent right.'
'I hope so.' Droshny was unconvinced. 'For our sakes, I hope so.'
They left the hut. Neufeld said to the radio operator: 'Captain Mallory in my office, please. And Sergeant Baer.'
Mallory arrived in the office to find Neufeld, Nroshny and Baer already there. Neufeld was brief and businesslike.
'We've decided on a ski-plane to fly you out — They're the only planes that can land in those damned mountains. You'll have time for a few hours' sleep — we don't leave till four. Any questions?'
'Where's the landing-strip?'
'A clearing. A kilometre from here. Anything else?'
'Nothing. Just get us out of here that's all.'
'You need have no worry on that score,' Neufeld laid emphatically. 'My one ambition is to see you safely on your way. Frankly, Mallory, you're just an embarrassment to me and the sooner you're on your way the better.'
Mallory nodded and left. Neufeld turned to Baer and said: 'I have a little task for you, Sergeant Baer. Little but very important. Listen carefully.'
Mallory left Neufeld's hut, his face pensive, and walked slowly across the compound. As he approached the guest hut, Andrea emerged and passed wordlessly by, wreathed in cigar smoke and scowling. Mallory entered the hut where Petar was again playing the Yugoslavian version of 'The girl I left behind me'. It seemed to be his favourite song. Mallory glanced at Maria, Reynolds and Groves, all sitting silently by, then at Miller who was reclining in his sleeping-bag with his volume of poetry.
Mallory nodded towards the doorway. 'Something's upset our friend.'
Miller grinned and nodded in turn towards Petar. 'He's playing Andrea's tune again,'
Mallory smiled briefly and turned to Maria. Tell him to stop playing. We're pulling out late this afternoon and we all need all the sleep we can get.'
'We can sleep in the plane,' Reynolds said sullenly. 'We can sleep when we arrive at our destination — wherever that may be.'
'No, sleep now.'
'Why now?'
'Why now?' Mallory's unfocused eyes gazed into the far distance. He said in a quiet voice: 'For now is all the time there may be.'
Reynolds looked at him strangely. For the first time that day his face was empty of hostility and suspicion. There was puzzled speculation in his eyes, and wonder and the first faint beginnings of understanding.
On the Ivenici plateau, the phalanx moved on, but they moved no more like human beings. They stumbled along now in the advanced stages of exhaustion, automatons, no more, zombies resurrected from the dead, their faces twisted with pain and unimaginable fatigue, their limbs on fire and their minds benumbed. Every few seconds someone stumbled and fell and could not get up again and had to be carried to join scores of others already lying in an almost comatose condition by the side of the primitive runway, where partisankas did their best to revive their frozen and exhausted bodies with mugs of hot soup and liberal doses of raki.
Captain Vlanovich turned to Colonel Vis. His face was distressed, his voice low and deeply earnest.
