be able to help us get to the sea. And if the others don’t turn up they’ll probably have ways of finding out what’s happened to them. What do you reckon?’
‘Do you think they’re the genuine article?’ Rafferty asked.
‘Yes,’ Farnham said without hesitation.
‘Then why not?’
‘Sounds good to me,’ McCaigh said. ‘Especially the bit about drying out.’
‘We shall be honoured,’ Farnham told Enzio.
The two Italians escorted them back across the rainswept hillside to the village, and as they walked down the only street the doorways seemed full of curious eyes. Their destination was a large barn that had obviously been built to withstand the winter weather, for inside it was dry and relatively warm. Enzio left them for a few minutes, and then returned with a pile of dry clothes in varying sizes. Not long after that two oldish women arrived with a pot of steaming noodle soup and two loaves of freshly baked bread, all of which left the four men feeling truly warm for the first time since their departure from Salerno three nights before.
Every now and then the door would inch open to reveal one or more children staring in at them. One young girl, probably no more than six years old, with dark, saucer-like eyes seemed unable to drag herself away.
‘But where are they keeping the older sisters?’ McCaigh wondered out loud.
‘They’ve probably been locked up for the duration of your visit,’ Rafferty told him.
‘Ah, fame,’ McCaigh said dreamily.
‘We should get some sleep,’ Farnham said, interrupting the reverie. His instincts told him the Italians were trustworthy, but he wasn’t about to lower their guard completely. ‘I’ll take first watch,’ he added, and it seemed only seconds before the barn was echoing to satisfied snores. Farnham sat with his back against a stall, running through the events of the past twelve hours. He couldn’t pretend he had liked Morgan – he’d always thought of him as one of those men who found it hard to imagine a world without them – but there was no doubting that the man had been tailor-made for the SAS.
Life was so easy to snuff out. One moment a whole person, in all his or her bewildering complexity, and the next – nothing. Unless of course you believed in an afterlife, and Farnham was pretty sure he didn’t. It would have been nice to believe that a life in heaven had saved Catherine from extinction, but only for his own sake. She would have found it boring.
The morning went by. Farnham took a brief look around outside – he needed some idea of where they were – but otherwise kept to the safety of the barn. More food arrived early in the afternoon, this time accompanied by a jug of wine, from which he poured four conservative measures. This didn’t seem the time or place for dulling their brains or motor skills.
Soon after dark Enzio returned, a stern look on his face. ‘The Germans have captured them,’ he said without preamble.
Farnham’s heart sank but he wasn’t surprised. ‘Where are they?’ he asked.
‘They are being held in the town hall. They have been there most of the day – the story is that they walked straight into a German patrol in the darkness.’
‘Are they being treated as prisoners of war?’ Farnham asked anxiously. Late in 1942 Hitler had ordered the execution of all commandos captured behind enemy lines, regardless of whether or not they were in uniform. In Africa Rommel had ignored the order, but on at least two recent occasions German commanders in Italy had carried it out.
Enzio didn’t know. ‘The Army captured them, but the men in leather coats arrived this afternoon.’ He shrugged.
Farnham’s heart sank again. If they were being questioned by the Gestapo, then torture was a real possibility. That would be bad enough in itself, but both men knew the pick-up point at the mouth of the River Chienti. ‘How many men are guarding them?’ he asked Enzio. After all, a town hall was not a prison.
The Italian raised both eyebrows. ‘You are thinking of a rescue?’ he asked.
‘If it is possible.’
Enzio blew a silent whistle with his lips. ‘The town is full of Germans now. Your broken bridge – well, they are like flies around shit. But maybe the town hall…I don’t know…’
‘Could you get us into the town to take a look?’ Farnham asked.
The Italian nodded. ‘Two of you, perhaps. Early in the morning, when there are many carts on the road.’
‘That would be wonderful. Now, I must tell the others what you have told me.’
Enzio nodded, turned away, and then turned back again. ‘And I have other news for you. Better news. Your armies have landed this morning on the coast south of Rome.’ He smiled. ‘You were expecting this, I suppose.’
‘It is why we came to blow the bridge, to make it harder for the Germans to reinforce their armies in the south.’
Enzio smiled again, and left.
Farnham turned to the others. Their grim faces told him they had guessed the gist, but he went through the conversation in detail. This was the SAS, not the regular army, and they needed to know everything he did before a decision could be taken on what to do next.
‘So what do you think, boss?’ McCaigh asked, once all the information had been shared.
Farnham chose his words carefully. ‘If there’s any chance of getting the two of them back without getting everyone – including them – killed, then I think we’ll have to give it a shot. And if that means blowing the boat…’
‘We can always steal a boat,’ Rafferty said with a sniff. Both he and Tobin seemed to be developing colds. ‘The Adriatic can’t be that wide.’
‘Yeah, but Yugoslavia’s on the other side,’ McCaigh said. ‘And I seem to remember a German invasion.’
‘So we sail south,’ Rafferty said. ‘We’re bound to hit Africa sooner or later.’
Farnham did a round of the faces. They all knew that staying where they were was risky, let alone taking a trip back into the lion’s den, but he could detect no real desire to cut and run. They’d rather head for the sea and home – who wouldn’t? – but they wouldn’t desert their mates without a damn good reason.
He felt proud of them. ‘All right, then,’ he said. ‘I’ll give Enzio the good news.’
The cart left the following morning as dawn was breaking, Farnham and Rafferty sharing the back with seven villagers, while Enzio, Giancarlo and a woman called Carmela sat in the front. Most of their fellow passengers seemed friendly, but Farnham couldn’t help noticing the resentment in a few of the eyes. In their place, he thought, he might well have felt the same.
The rain and clouds had vanished overnight, giving the two Englishmen their first real view of the village and surrounding countryside. The twenty or so dwellings of San Giuseppe were perched high on a hillside, above the fields which its inhabitants worked, staring out across the mile-wide valley at a similar-sized village on the opposite slope. About six hundred feet below them the Chienti, exhausted after its precipitous descent from the mountains, was beginning its lazy meander to the sea.
Enzio had explained that by taking a roundabout route they could avoid the usual checkpoint at the eastern approach to the town, and it was almost two hours before the horses toiled across the brow of a bare hill and San Severino came into view below them. The descending road wound through a series of hairpin bends, and it was above the last of these, by the side of an apparently endless orchard, that Enzio pulled the animals to a halt and gave Farnham the bad news. ‘There’s a checkpoint ahead,’ he said.
Looking over the Italian’s shoulder, the SAS man could see the posse of helmeted guards and their motorcycles astride a small bridge at the southern entrance to the town.
‘You’ll