Now here on the bridge we will play;

soldier stood on the threshhold, breathing heavily. He was armed, but clad only in a singlet and trousers, oblivious of the cold. "Lieutenant! Lieutenant!" he spoke in German. "We heard the shots" "It is nothing, Sergeant." Turzig bent his head over an open drawer, pretended to be searching for something to account for his solitary presence in the room. "One of our prisoners tried to escape. . . . We stopped him." "Perhaps the medical orderly" "I'm afraId we stopped him rather permanently." Turzig smiled tiredly. "You can organise a burial detail in the morning. Meantime, you might tell the guards at the gate to come here for a minute. Then get to bed yourselfyou'll catch your death of cold!" "Shall I detail a relief guard" "Of course not!" Turzig said impatiently. "It's just for a minute. Besides, the only people to guard against are already in here." His lips tightened for a second as he realised what he had said, the unconscious irony of the words. "Hurry up, man! We haven't got all night!" He waited till the sound of the running footsteps died away, then looked steadily at Mallory. "Satisfied?" "Perfectly. And my very sincere apologies," Mallory said quietly. "I hate to do a thing like this to a man like you." He looked round the door as Andrea came into the room. "Andrea, ask Louki and Panayis if there's a telephone switchboard in this block of huts. Tell them to smash it up and any receivers they can find." He grinned. "Then hurry back for our visitors from the gate. I'd be lost without you on the reception committee." Turzig's gaze followed the broad retreating back. "Captain Skoda was right. I still have much to learn." There was neither bitterness nor rancour in his voice. "He fooled me completely, that big one." "You're not the first," Mallory reassured him. "He's fooled more people than I'll ever know. . . . You're not the first," he repeated. "But I think you must be just about the luckiest." "Because I'm still alive?" "Because. you're still alive," Mallory echoed. Less than ten minutes later the two guards at the gates had joined their comrades in the back room, captured, disarmed, bound and gagged with a speed and noiseless efficiency that excited Turzig's professional admiration, chagrined digital camera with swivel lcd though he was. Securely tied hand and foot, he lay in a corner of the room, not yet gagged. "I think I understand now why your High Command chose you for this task, Captain Mallory. If anyone could succeed, you wouldbut you must fail. The impossible must always remain so. Nevertheless, you have a great team." "We get by," Mallory said modestly. He took a last look round the room, then grinned down at Stevens. "Ready to take off on your travels again, young man, or do you find this becoming rather monotonous?" "Ready when you are, sir." Lying on a stretcher which Louki had miraculously procured, he sighed in bliss. "First-class travel, this time, as befits an officer. Sheer luxury. I don't mind how far we go!" "Speak for yourself," Miller growled morosely. He had been allocated first stint at the front or heavy end of the stretcher. But the quirk of his eyebrows robbed the words of all offence. "Right then, we're off. One last thing. Where is the camp radio, Lieutenant Turzig?" "So you can smash it, I suppose?" "Precisely." "I have no idea." "What if I threaten to blow your head off?" "You won't." Turzig smiled, though the smile was a trifle lopsided. "Given certain circumstances, you would kill me as you would a fly. But you wouldn't kill a man for refusing such information." "You haven't as much to learn as your late and unlamented captain thought," Mallory admitted. "It's not all that important. . . . I regret we have to do all this. I trust we do not meet againnot, at least, until the war is over. Who knows, some day we might even go climbing together." He signed to Louki to fix Turzig's gag and walked quickly out of the room. Two minutes later they had cleared the barracks and were safely lost in the darkness and the olive groves that stretched to the south of Margaritha. When they cleared the groves, a long time later, it was almost dawn. Already the black silhouette of Kostos was softening in the first feathery greyness of the coming day. The wind was from the south, and warm, and the snow was beginning to melt on the hills. CHAPTER 11 Wednesday 14001600 All day long they lay hidden in the carob grove, a thick clump of stunted,