The German captain leaned back in his chair and steepled his fingers. He had the air of a man enjoying the passing moment.
‘Hauptmann Neufeld, Captain Mallory.’ He looked at the places on Mallory’s uniform where the missing insignia should have been. ‘Or so I assume. You are surprised to see me?’
‘I am delighted to meet you, Hauptmann Neufeld.’ Mallory’s astonishment had given way to the beginnings of a long, slow smile and now he sighed in deep relief. ‘You just can’t imagine how delighted.’ Still smiling, he turned to Droshny, and at once the smile gave way to an expression of consternation. ‘But who are you? Who is this man, Hauptmann Neufeld? Who in the name of God are those men out there? They must be – they must be -’
Droshny interrupted heavily: ‘One of his men killed one of my men tonight.’
‘What!’ Neufeld, the smile now in turn vanishing from his face, stood abruptly: the backs of his legs sent his chair crashing to the floor. Mallory ignored him, looked again at Droshny.
‘Who are you? For God’s sake, tell me!’
Droshny said slowly: ‘They call us Cetniks.’
‘Cetniks? Cetniks? What on earth are Cetniks?’
‘You will forgive me, Captain, if I smile in weary disbelief.’ Neufeld was back on balance again, and his face had assumed a curiously wary impassivity, an expression in which only the eyes were alive: things, Mallory reflected, unpleasant things could happen to people misguided enough to underrate Hauptmann Neufeld. ‘You? The leader of a special mission to this country and you haven’t been well enough briefed to know that the Cetniks are our Yugoslav allies?’
‘Allies? Ah!’ Mallory’s face cleared in understanding. ‘Traitors? Yugoslav Quislings? Is that it?’
A subterranean rumble came from Droshny’s throat and he moved towards Mallory, his right hand closing round the haft of a knife. Neufeld halted him with a sharp word of command and a brief downward-chopping motion of his hand.
‘And what do you mean by a special mission?’ Mallory demanded. He looked at each man in turn and smiled in wry understanding. ‘Oh, we’re special mission all right, but not in the way you think. At least, not in the way I think you think.’
‘No?’ Neufeld’s eyebrow-raising technique, Mallory reflected, was almost on a par with Miller’s. ‘Then why do you think we were expecting you?’
‘God only knows,’ Mallory said frankly. ‘We thought the Partisans were. That’s why Droshny’s man was killed, I’m afraid.’
‘That’s why Droshny’s man –’ Neufeld regarded Mallory with his warily impassive eyes, picked up his chair and sat down thoughtfully. ‘I think, perhaps, you had better explain yourself.’
As befitted a man who had adventured far and wide in the West End of London, Miller was in the habit of using a napkin when at meals, and he was using one now, tucked into the top of his tunic, as he sat on his rucksack in the compound of Neufeld’s camp and fastidiously consumed some indeterminate goulash from a mess-tin. The three sergeants, seated nearby, briefly observed this spectacle with open disbelief, then resumed a low-voiced conversation. Andrea, puffing the inevitable nostril-wrinkling cigar and totally ignoring half-a-dozen watchful and understandably apprehensive guards, strolled unconcernedly about the compound, poisoning the air wherever he went. Clearly through the frozen night air came the distant sound of someone singing a low-voiced accompaniment to what appeared to be guitar music. As Andrea completed his circuit of the compound, Miller looked up and nodded in the direction of the music.
‘Who’s the soloist?’
Andrea shrugged. ‘Radio, maybe.’
‘They want to buy a new radio. My trained ear –’
‘Listen.’ Reynolds’s interrupting whisper was tense and urgent. ‘We’ve been talking.’
Miller performed some fancy work with his napkin and said kindly: ‘Don’t. Think of the grieving mothers and sweethearts you’d leave behind you.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘About making a break for it is what I mean,’ Miller said. ‘Some other time, perhaps?’
‘Why not now?’ Groves was belligerent. ‘They’re off guard –’
‘Are they now.’ Miller sighed. ‘So young, so young. Take another look. You don’t think Andrea likes exercise, do you?’
The three sergeants took another look, furtively, surreptitiously, then glanced interrogatively at Andrea.
‘Five dark windows,’ Andrea said. ‘Behind them, five dark men. With five dark machine-guns.’
Reynolds nodded and looked away.
‘Well, now.’ Neufeld, Mallory noted, had a great propensity for steepling his fingers: Mallory had once known a hanging judge with exactly the same propensity. This is a most remarkably odd story you have to tell us, my dear Captain Mallory.’
‘It is,’ Mallory agreed. ‘It would have to be, wouldn’t it, to account for the remarkably odd position in which we find ourselves at this moment.’
‘A point, a point.’ Slowly, deliberately, Neufeld ticked off other points on his fingers. ‘You have for some months, you claim, been running a penicillin and drug-running ring in the south of Italy. As an Allied liaison officer you found no difficulty in obtaining supplies from American Army and Air Force bases.’
‘We found a little difficulty towards the end,’ Mallory admitted.
‘I’m coming to that. Those supplies, you also claim, were funnelled through to the Wehrmacht.’
‘I wish you wouldn’t keep using the word “claim” in that tone of voice,’ Mallory said irritably. ‘Check with Field-Marshal Kesselring’s Chief of Military Intelligence in Padua.’
‘With pleasure.’ Neufeld picked up a phone, spoke briefly in German and replaced the receiver.
Mallory said in surprise: ‘You have a direct line to the outside world? From this place?’
‘I have a direct line to a hut fifty yards away where we have a very powerful radio transmitter. So. You further claim that you were caught, court – martialled and were awaiting the confirmation of your death sentence. Right?’
‘If your espionage system in Italy is all we hear it is, you’ll know about it tomorrow,’ Mallory said drily.
‘Quite, quite. You then broke free, killed your guards and overheard agents in the briefing room being briefed on a mission to Bosnia.’ He did some more finger-steepling. ‘You may be telling the truth at that. What did you say their mission was?’
‘I didn’t say. I didn’t really pay attention. It had something to do with locating missing British mission leaders and trying to break your espionage set-up. I’m not sure. We had more important things to think about.’
‘I’m sure you had,’ Neufeld said distastefully. ‘Such as your skins. What happened to your epaulettes, Captain? The medal ribbons? The buttons?’
‘You’ve obviously never attended a British court-martial, Hauptmann Neufeld.’
Neufeld said mildly: ‘You could have ripped them off yourself.’
‘And then, I suppose, emptied three-quarters of the fuel from the tanks before we stole the plane?’
‘Your tanks were only a quarter full?’ Mallory nodded. ‘And your plane crashed without catching fire?’
‘We didn’t