They began crossing the wooden bridge in single file. The planks groaned under the weight of each passing horse and rider, and Erin made the mistake of looking down into the mouth of the gorge as she passed.
“A good nine hundred feet to the bottom,” Doughty said from behind. “The gorge widens as it goes out to sea, about twelve miles on the other side of the base.”
As they came down into the camp, more andartes ran along beside them to take their horses and mules. All of them stared at her with such intense curiosity that Erin began to feel nervous; she was aware of whispering and even some laughter. When she dismounted, Doughty led her toward the clearing. A fire burned in the center of the earthen floor, around which more andartes had clustered.
“Ah, food’s awaiting,” the New Zealander observed.
“At this hour?”
“The middle of the night is the middle of the day for us,” Doughty explained. “Our diet usually consists of bread and beans. The bread comes from rough maize flour, and the beans we boil in water. An infernal standard fare and the source of my eternal state of diarrhea. But tonight, because of the supply drop, I believe they’ve prepared something special.”
Erin could see that the andartes had spread a rug on the ground in front of the fire for her. “You’re not worried about that fire attracting the enemy?”
“The Krauts are done for the night,” Doughty assured her. “As long as we give the Junkers enough targets for their so-called precision bombing, they’re satisfied and go home like clockwork. Now for a quiet meal.”
As soon as they sat down, however, Erin was bombarded by questions from the curious Greeks. “What are the Allies doing in the Middle East?” they asked. “When is the invasion coming? Is Turkey coming into the war? Are you a real Royal Marine?”
Bewildered by the questions, she turned to Doughty for help.
“They demand to know everything,” he told her in English. “They don’t understand the meaning of the words ‘privileged information’ or ‘security precautions.’”
Young Michaelis offered her a piece of the strange-looking meat he was turning over the fire. It resembled a long, thin sausage.
“Kokkoretsi,” Doughty explained. “The cleansed intestine of a goat, stuffed with the choppings of the animal and some herbs and spices. A real treat.”
Erin politely declined, but Doughty joined the others in helping himself.
At that moment Stavros walked up to the fire, his huge hand holding a half-empty bottle of brandy. “Since our food isn’t delicate enough for her to digest, perhaps the brave captain would prefer something to drink?” he asked, his voice dripping with sarcasm.
Erin was at a loss as to how to treat such a gesture. She realized it was foolish for her to expect suffering, proud home-bred Greeks like Stavros to hide their contempt for foreigners like her, a woman no less. But she knew she’d lose their respect if she didn’t hold her ground. She glanced at Doughty, whose poker face told her she was on her own, and then looked the big Greek guerrilla in the eye.
“Pour me a glass, soldier.”
The andartes around the fire produced a shot glass for her, and Stavros poured her some brandy.
“I propose a toast,” announced Stavros. “To our British defenders for sending us so fine a military adviser as Theseus.”
The andartes raised their assorted tin cups, mugs, and bottles in unison and cried, “Kaly eleftheria!”
“Kaly eleftheria,” she replied, and swallowed her shot in one gulp. She knew the words meant good liberation or deliverance. But she didn’t feel liberated and knew that the only way to be delivered from this insufferable situation was to play the game. So she held out her glass to Stavros for more.
67
I t had taken several shots for Erin to shut up Stavros and prove her mettle. Now the brandy was having its way with her. With Doughty’s help, she had found her kaliva, or shepherd’s hut, then promptly collapsed onto her cot and fell asleep.
She dreamed she was back in the Gestapo cellars in Lyon. Cell number two. She was naked and cold and curled into a ball to keep warm. Her wrists and ankles were raw from the hand and leg chains that had held her for six days. She felt nauseated from the dank, suffocating stench of her own urine.
Looking down at her with his scornful smile was her interrogator, Standartenfuhrer Hoffer. He was a young man, about her age, with a powerful build and an arrogant face. Next to him stood a sergeant holding a camera and flashbulb. They were cataloging her like some specimen for experimentation.
“For the record, please,” Hoffer demanded. “State your name.”
“Joan of Arc.”
“I repeat,” he said sharply, “state your name, age, and rank.”
“Go to hell.”
He struck her across the face, and she could feel the skin beneath her cheekbone split open.
“Let the record state that the subject, age twenty-seven, is a captain in the Strategic Operations Executive, British Secret Intelligence Service. She is known to the French Resistance as Erin. Isn’t that so, Captain?”
She crouched there silently. The blood from the cut across her cheek was dribbling down her face. She rubbed her chin against her shoulder, smearing a streak across her collarbone.
“Isn’t that so, Captain?”
When she looked up, he started urinating in her face. She tried to move away, but he kicked her in the stomach with the toe of his jackboot. The pain seared through her insides, and she collapsed in her corner, retching like a run-over dog, coughing up blood.
“As you know, Captain Erin, you are being charged with espionage and acts of sabotage against the Third Reich,” Hoffer informed her. “Under the rules of the Geneva Convention, spies have no rights. Your existence is not even acknowledged by your own country. You will be hanged. You will be forgotten. But we will remember you for our own records. Sergeant.”
The sergeant readied his camera. Hoffer reached over and pulled her head up by her hair until she screamed. He turned her battered face toward the camera, and an explosion of light burst from the flashbulb. She blinked, and Hoffer let go of her hair. Her head fell to the floor.
“Sergeant, leave us,” said Hoffer. “Tell the others to join us in a few minutes.”
She heard the sergeant leave the cell and lock the door. She and Hoffer were alone. Perhaps she still had a chance to come out of this alive.
Hoffer said, “Tell me the other names in your network, and perhaps we can reach accommodations.”
She thought of the LaRoches, who had been hiding her and little Michelle. “I’m the network,” she said, and spat a ball of blood in Hoffer’s face.
He wiped the blood off his cheek, looked at his red fingertips, and cursed. “You little bitch.”
“Guess you’ll have to kill me, Frederick.”
Upon hearing his first name, uttered with such haunting familiarity, Hoffer suddenly went cold.
“That’s right,” she said. “I know you. You’re the son of Mark Hoffer, the Lutheran pastor.”
His eyes narrowed into slits, his pupils shifting to the right and the left, as if he were afraid they could be overheard. Then he grabbed her throat and started shaking her. “Is that what those British bastards told you?” he demanded. “It’s a lie!”
“Nobody told me, Frederick.”
After a few moments the pupils rested on her, and his eyes grew wide with recognition. “Oh my God,” he muttered in horror, taking his hands off her. “You’re Francis Whyte’s daughter!”
“I wasn’t sure you’d recognize me without my Sunday-school dress,” she said. “Then again, it was over ten years ago when your village church helped my father build his little school for Chinese peasants. We were just sixteen.”
Hoffer looked terrified, his eyes rolling like those of a fox caught in a snare. He started pacing the cell, clutching his head between his hands. “This isn’t happening!”