strapped over his shoulder, reins abandoned and both hands clasped desperately to the pommel of his saddle, unbidden, almost, Reynolds's thoughts strayed back that scene inside the block-house. Moments later, was urging his pony forwards until he had drawn alongside Mallory.
'Sir?'
'What is it?' Mallory sounded irritable.
'A word, sir. It's urgent. Really it is.'
Mallory threw up a hand and brought the company to a halt. He said curtly: 'Be quick.'
'Neufeld and Droshny, sir.' Reynolds paused in a moment's brief uncertainty, then continued. 'Do you reckon they know where you're going?'
'What's that to do with anything?'
'Please.'
'Yes, they do. Unless they're complete morons. And they're not.'
'It's a pity, sir,' Reynolds said reflectively, 'that you hadn't shot them after all.'
'Get to the point,' Mallory said impatiently.
'Yes, sir. You reckoned Sergeant Baer released them earlier on?'
'Of course.' Mallory was exercising all his restraint 'Andrea saw them arrive. I've explained all this. They — Neufeld and Droshny — had to go up to the Ivenici plateau to check that we'd really gone.'
'I understand that, sir. So you knew that Baer was following us. How did he get into the block-house?'
Mallory's restraint vanished. He said in exasperation: 'Because I left both keys hanging outside.'
'Yes, sir. You were expecting him. But Sergeant Baer didn't know you were expecting him — and even if he did he wouldn't be expecting to find keys so conveniently to hand.'
'Good God in heaven! Duplicates!' In bitter chagrin, Mallory smacked the fist of one hand into the palm of the other. 'Imbecile! Imbecile! Of course he would have his own keys.'
'And Droshny,' Miller said thoughtfully, 'may know a short cut.'
'That's not all of it.' Mallory was completely back on balance again, outwardly composed, the relaxed calmness of the face the complete antithesis of his racing mind. 'Worse still, he may make straight for his camp radio and warn Zimmermann to pull his armoured divisions back from the Neretva. You've earned your passage tonight, Reynolds. Thanks, boy How far to Neufeld's camp, do you think, Andrea?'
'A mile.' The words came over Andrea's shoulder, for Andrea, as always in situations which he knew called for the exercise of his highly specialized talents, was already on his way.
Five minutes later they were crouched at the edge j the forest less than twenty yards from the perimeter. Neufeld's camp. Quite a number of the huts had illuminated windows, music could be heard coming am the dining hut and several Cetnik soldiers were moving about in the compound. Reynolds whispered to Mallory: 'How do we go about it, sir?'
'We don't do anything at all. We just leave it to Andrea.'
Groves spoke, his voice low. 'One man? Andrea? leave it to one man?'
Mallory sighed. Tell them, Corporal Miller.'
'I'd rather not. Well, if I have to. The fact is,' Miller went on kindly, 'Andrea is rather good at this sort of thing.'
'So are we,' Reynolds said. 'We're commandos. We've been trained for this sort of thing.'
'And very highly trained, no doubt,' said Miller approvingly. 'Another half-dozen years' experience and a dozen of you might be just about able to cope with him. Although I doubt it very much. Before the night is out, you'll learn — and I don't mean to be insulting, Sergeants — that you are little lambs to Andrea's wolf.' Miller paused and went on sombrely: 'Like whoever happens to be inside that radio hut at this moment.'
'Like whoever happens — ' Groves twisted round and looked behind him. 'Andrea? He's gone. I didn't see him go.'
'No one ever does,' Miller said. 'And those poor devils won't ever see him come.'
He looked at Mallory. 'Time's a-wasting.'
Mallory glanced at the luminous hands of his watch, Eleven-thirty. Time is a-wasting.'
For almost a minute there was a silence broken only by the restless movements of the ponies tethered deep in the woods behind them, then Groves gave a muffled exclamation as Andrea materialized beside him. Mallory looked up and said: 'How many?'
Andrea held up two fingers and moved silently into the woods towards his pony. The others rose and followed him, Groves and Reynolds exchanging glances which indicated more clearly than any words could possibly have done that they could have been even more wrong about Andrea than they had ever been about Mallory.
At precisely the moment that Mallory and his companions were remounting their ponies in the woods fringing Neufeld's camp, a Wellington bomber came sinking down towards a well-lit airfield — the same airfield from which Mallory and his men had taken off less than twenty-four hours previously. Termoli, Italy. It made a perfect touchdown and as it taxied along the runway an army radio truck curved in on an interception course, turning to parallel the last hundred yards of the Wellington's run down. In the left-hand from seat and in the right-hand back seat of the truck sat two immediately recognizable figures: in the front, the piratical splendidly bearded figure of Captain Jensen, in the back the British lieutenant-general with whom Jensen had recently spent so much time in pacing the Termoli Operations Room.
Plane and truck came to a halt at the same moment. Jensen, displaying a surprising agility for one of his very considerable bulk, hopped nimbly to the ground and strode briskly across the tarmac and arrived at the Wellington just as its door opened and the first of the passengers, the moustached major, swung to the ground.
Jensen nodded to the papers clutched in the major's hand and said without preamble: 'Those for me?'
The major blinked uncertainly, then nodded stiffly return, clearly irked by this abrupt welcome for a in just returned from durance vile. Jensen took the papers without a further word, went back to his seat the jeep, brought out a flashlight and studied the papers briefly. He twisted in his seat and said to the radio operator seated beside the General: 'Flight plan as stated. Target as indicated. Now.' The radio operator began to crank the handle.
Some fifty miles to the south-east, in the Foggia area, the buildings and runways of the RAF heavy bomber base echoed and reverberated to the thunder scores of aircraft engines: at the dispersal area at the west end of the main runway several squadrons Lancaster heavy bombers were lined up ready for take-off, obviously awaiting the signal to go. The signal was not long in coming.
Halfway down the airfield, but well to one side the main runway, was parked a jeep identical to one in which Jensen was sitting in Termoli. In the back seat a radio operator was crouched over a radio, earphones to his head. He listened intently, and then looked up and said matter-of-factly: 'Instructions as stated. Now. Now. Now.'
'Instructions as stated,' a captain in the front seat repeated. 'Now. Now. Now.' He reached for a wooden box, produced three Very pistols, aimed directly across the runway and fired each in turn. The brilliantly arcing flares burst into incandescent life, green, red and green again, before curving slowly back to earth.
The thunder at the far end of the airfield mounted to rumbling crescendo and the first of the Lancasters began to move. Within a few minutes the last of them had taken off and was lifting into the darkly hostile night skies of the Adriatic.
'I did say, I believe,' Jensen remarked conversationally and comfortably to the General in the back seat, 'that they are the best in the business. Our friends from Foggia are on their way.'
'The best in the business. Maybe. I don't know What I do know is that those damned German and Austrian divisions are still in position in the Gustav Line. Zero hour for the assault on the Gustav Line is he glanced at his watch — 'in exactly thirty hours.'
'Time enough,' Jensen said confidently.
'I wish I shared this blissful confidence.'
Jensen smiled cheerfully at him as the jeep moved off, then faced forward in his seat again. As he did the smile vanished completely from his face and hi fingers beat a drum tattoo on the seat beside him.
The moon had broken through again as Neufeld, Droshny and their men came galloping into camp and reined in ponies so covered with steam from their heaving flanks and distressed breathing as t<> have a weirdly insubstantial appearance in the pal< moonlight. Neufeld swung from his pony and turned to Sergeant Baer.
'How many ponies left in the stables?'
Twenty. About that.'
'Quickly. And as many men as there are ponies Saddle up.'
