'Your men keep a good watch,' Mallory acknowledged to Neufeld. 'You wouldn't require many men to guard and hold a place like this. How many an there?'
'Six,' Neufeld said reluctantly.
'Seven and you're a dead man,' Andrea warned.
'Six.'
As they approached, the guns — almost certainly because the men behind them had identified Neufeld and Droshny-were withdrawn, the embrasures closed, the heavy metal front door opened. A sergeant appeared in the doorway and saluted respectfully, his fact registering a certain surprise.
'An unexpected pleasure, Hauptmann Neufeld,' the sergeant said. 'We had no radio message informing us of your arrival.'
'It's out of action for the moment.' Neufeld waved them inside but Andrea gallantly insisted on the German officer taking precedence, reinforcing his courtesy with a threatening hitch of his Schmeisser. Neufeld entered, followed by Droshny and the other five men The windows were so narrow that the burning oil lamps were obviously a necessity, the illumination they afforded being almost doubled by a large log fire blazing in the hearth. Nothing could ever overcome the bleakness created by four rough-cut stone walls, but the room itself was surprisingly well furnished with a table, chairs, two armchairs and a sofa: there were even some pieces of carpet. Three doors led off from the room, one heavily barred. Including the sergeant who had welcomed them, there were three armed soldiers in the room. Mallory glanced at Neufeld who nodded, his face tight in suppressed anger.
Neufeld said to one of the guards: 'Bring out the.prisoners.' The guard nodded, lifted a heavy key from the wall and headed for the barred door. The sergeant and the other guard were sliding the metal screens back across the embrasures. Andrea walked casually towards the nearest guard, then suddenly and violently shoved him against the sergeant. Both men cannoned the guard who had just inserted the key into door. The third man fell heavily to the ground: other two, though staggering wildly, managed to maintain a semblance of balance or at least remain on their feet. All three twisted round to stare at Andrea, anger and startled incomprehension in their faces, and three remained very still, and wisely so. Faced with Schmeisser machine-pistol at three paces, the wise always remains still.
Mallory said to the sergeant: 'There are three others. Where are they?'
There was no reply: the guard glared at him in defiance. Mallory repeated the question, this time fluent German: the guard ignored him and looked questioningly at Neufeld, whose lips were tight-shut in a mask of stone.
'Are you mad?' Neufeld demanded of the sergeant.
'Can't you see those men are killers? Tell him.'
'The night guards. They're asleep.' The sergeant pointed to a door. 'That one.'
'Open it. Tell them to walk out. Backwards and with their hands clasped behind their necks.'
'Do exactly as you're told,' Neufeld ordered. The sergeant did exactly what he was told and so did the three guards who had been resting in the inner room, who walked out as they had been instructed, with obviously no thought of any resistance in their minds. Mallory turned to the guard with the key who had by this time picked himself up somewhat shakily from the floor, and nodded to the barred door.
'Open it.'
The guard opened it and pushed the door wide. Four British officers moved out slowly and uncertainly into the outer room. Long confinement indoors had made them very pale, but apart from this prison pallor and the fact that they were rather thin they were obviously unharmed. The man in the lead, with a major's insignia and a Sandhurst moustache — and, when he spoke a Sandhurst accent — stopped abruptly and stared in disbelief at Mallory and his men. 'Good God above! What on earth are you chaps — '
'Please.' Mallory cut him short. 'I'm sorry, but later collect your coats, whatever warm gear you have, and wait outside.'
'But — but where are you taking us?' 'Home. Italy. Tonight. Please hurry!' 'Italy. You're talking — '
'Hurry!' Mallory glanced in some exasperation ai his watch. 'We're late already.'
As quickly as their dazed condition would allow, the four officers collected what warm clothing they had and filed outside. Mallory turned to the sergeant again. 'You must have ponies here, a stable.'
'Round the back of the block-house,' the sergeant said promptly. He had obviously made a rapid readjustment to the new facts of life.
'Good lad,' Mallory said approvingly. He looked at Groves and Reynolds. 'We'll need two more ponies Saddle them up, will you?'
The two sergeants left. Under the watchful guns of Mallory and Miller, Andrea searched each of the six guards in turn, found nothing, and ushered them all into the cell, turning the heavy key and hanging it up on the wall. Then, just as carefully, Andrea searched Neufeld and Droshny: Droshny's face, as Andrea carelessly flung his knives into a corner of the room, was thunderous.
Mallory looked at the two men and said: 'I'd shoot if necessary. It's not. You won't be missed before morning.'
They might not be missed for a good few mornings,' Miller pointed out.
'So they're overweight anyway,' Mallory said indifferently. He smiled. 'I can't resist leaving you with last little pleasant thought, Hauptmann Neufeld. something to think about until someone comes and is you.' He looked consideringly at Neufeld, who said nothing, then went on: 'About that information gave you this morning, I mean.'
Neufeld looked at him guardedly. 'What about the formation you gave me this morning?' 'Just this. It wasn't, I'm afraid, quite accurate. Vukalovic expects the attack from the north, through the Zenica Gap, not across the bridge at Neretva from the south. There are, we know, close on two hundred of tanks massed in the woods just to the north of the Zenica Gap — but there won't be at two a.m. this morning when your attack is due to start. Not after we got through to our Lancaster squadrons in Italy, think of it, think of the target. Two hundred tanks bunched in a tiny trap a hundred and fifty yards wide and not more than three hundred yards long. The RAF will be there at 1.30. By two this morning there won't be a single tank left in commission.'
Neufeld looked at him for a long moment, his face very still, then said, slowly and softly: 'Damn you! Damn you! Damn you!' 'Damning is all you'll have for it,' Mallory said agreeably. 'By the time you are released — hopefully assuming that you will be released — it will all be over. See you after the war.'
Andrea locked the two men in a side room and hung the key up by the one to the cell. Then they went outside, locked the outer door, hung the key on a nail by the door, mounted their ponies — Groves and Reynolds had already two additional ones saddled — and started climbing once again, Mallory, map in hand, studying in the fading light of dusk the route they had to take.
Their route took them up alongside the perimeter of a pine forest. Not more than half a mile after leaving the block-house, Andrea reined in his pony, dismounted, lifted the pony's right foreleg and examined it carefully. He looked up at the others who had also reined in their ponies.
'There's a stone wedged under the hoof,' he announced. 'Looks bad — but not too bad. I'll have to cut it out. Don't wait for me — I'll catch you up in a few minutes.'
Mallory nodded, gave the signal to move on. Andrea produced a knife, lifted the hoof and made a great play of excavating the wedged stone. After a minute or so, he glanced up and saw that the rest of the party had vanished round a corner of the pine wood. Andrea put away his knife and led the pony, which quite obviously had no limp whatsoever, into the shelter of the wood and tethered it there, then moved on foot some way down the hill towards the block-house. He sat down behind the bole of a convenient pine and removed his binoculars from their case.
He hadn't long to wait. The head and shoulders of a figure appeared in the clearing below peering out cautiously from behind the trunk of a tree. Andrea flat in the snow now and with the icy rims of the binoculars clamped hard against his eyes, had no difficulty at all in making an immediate identification: Sergeant Baer, moon- faced, rotund and about seventy and overweight for his unimpressive height, had unmistakable physical presence which only the mentally incapacitated could easily forget. Baer withdrew into the woods, then reappeared shortly afterwards leading a string of ponies, one which carried a bulky covered object strapped a pannier bag. Two of the following ponies had riders, both of whom had their hands tied to the pommels of their saddles. Petar and Maria, without a doubt. Behind them appeared four mounted soldiers.
Sergeant Baer beckoned them to follow him across the clearing and within moments all had disappeared from
