“No, sir,” Racini replied. “He didn’t seem to care.”
“He didn’t?” Buzzini frowned.
“He simply wanted to know if his friend the German professor had arrived. I told him he had, two days ago. I also gave him all his cables from Berlin on the spot.” The sergeant from Palermo quickly added, “To save him another trip to the office here.”
“You mean save us another visit from that bastard.” Buzzini looked out the window over Corfu Town’s spiniada. “Was his so-called nurse with him?”
“Yes, but she didn’t look well at all. I think she’s suffered some trauma. She said she was going to drown herself, and the Baron said she could be his guest.”
“And why shouldn’t she, Sergeant?” Buzzini turned from the window. “Her parents are dead, hanged by the SS in Athens!”
“Mother of God!” cried Racini.
“Yes,” said Buzzini grimly. “If he could, the Baron would murder the Virgin Mary herself before she could bear the Christ Child.” He held up the communique his radio operator had picked up while Racini was gone. “This is from General Vecchiarelli’s headquarters in Athens,” he said, waving the flimsy piece of paper wildly. “The Baron’s nurse, it turns out, is none other than Aphrodite Vasilis of the tobacco family. It was her parents the Baron murdered.”
“No!” said Racini.
“Yes, Sergeant,” said Buzzini, relishing this rare display of superior knowledge. “Not only that, but it seems none other than the son of General Andros paid the good Baron a visit in Athens.”
“The son of General Andros?” repeated Racini, his face flushed from these revelations.
Buzzini decided to drop his final bombshell. “Furthermore, radio traffic is heavy with news from the Peloponnese,” he went on. “Even as we speak, a German air strike is under way against Greek partisans in the Parnon Mountains of the Peloponnese.”
Racini looked flabbergasted, much to Buzzini’s satisfaction. “But what does this mean, Commandant?”
Buzzini, enjoying himself, said, “Consider what we know so far, Sergeant.” He held up a finger to make his first point. “The German First Panzer Division is on its way from France along with further reinforcements to bring a total of four German divisions alongside our own Italian Eleventh Army in Greece.”
The sergeant from Palermo nodded.
Buzzini held up a second finger. “The Germans have relieved us of control of the minefields we’ve laid all along the west coast of Greece. Indeed, German R-boats now patrol the waters surrounding these islands and the coast.”
Racini received the second volley of information with a simple “This is true.”
Buzzini held up three fingers. “Then there is this air strike against increased partisan activity in the mountains.”
Racini shrugged. “Again I must ask you, Commandant, what does this mean?”
Buzzini smiled triumphantly as he held up four fingers. “And now the Baron himself returns to the island in a fury and cloisters himself behind the gates of the Achillion. The only conclusion we can draw is that the Allies are about to invade Greece.”
“But where in Greece?” pressed Racini.
“The German Naval War Staff said it last week in that cable to General von Berg when they suggested that landing attempts will most likely be here on Corfu.”
“Here?” cried Racini. “But when?”
“That, unfortunately, I cannot tell you,” Buzzini admitted as he turned to the window once again and looked out across Garitsa Bay. “But I’ll wager you one thing, Sergeant: the Baron knows. Oh, yes, he knows.”
93
What was left of the National Bands of Greece base was being mopped up by the SS Death’s Head unit of Standartenfuhrer Spreicher, a man who delighted in this sort of thing, personally picking off any wounded men who were half dead. Medics, he reasoned, were unnecessary baggage in these sorts of operations. After all, he himself had lost half his face in Crete and managed to survive. If any of his own men were wounded, they were to fight to the death or be shot by their brothers in arms. It was simpler that way. All for one and one for all.
Spreicher worked his way through the debris and bodies, searching for Andros. He spotted a British battle dress uniform by the gorge and found the man sprawled facedown, still alive and groaning in pain.
Digging the toe of his jackboot under the man’s body, Spreicher kicked him over. “Hey, Englishman,” he said in crude, brutal English. “It’s morning. Face your maker.”
Death-glazed eyes looked up at him from the ravaged face. Out of the dirt-encrusted mouth came a spurt of blood that dribbled down the chin and matted in the red beard. Half torn from the soiled uniform was a New Zealand insignia.
“Where’s the film negative?” he demanded. “Where’s Andros?”
When he received no answer, he put his jackboot on the New Zealander’s skull and began to apply pressure. His second in command, Oberfuhrer Borgman, ran over with the S-phone. “Linder wants to know if there are any prisoners up here.”
Spreicher looked down at Doughty. “Well?”
When there was no reply, he dug the heel of his boot deep into the skull until there was a crack and he crushed it. Then he turned to his second in command and said, “None up here, Oberfuhrer. What does Linder say at the bottom of the gorge?”
“His party had nothing to report down there.”
Spreicher moved to the edge of the gorge and looked down the nine-hundred-foot cliff walls. Linder and his men were busy looting what little they could find among the smashed bodies of the Greek andartes strewn among the rocks. Spreicher spat and wiped his nose. The stench of burned horse and human flesh was foul. He told Borgman, “Looks like you’ll have to inform General von Berg that we have no prisoners or survivors, so far as we can tell. Nor any film.”
Borgman looked terrified. “You want me to say we found nothing?”
“Tell him we’re still searching.” Spreicher frowned as he surveyed the destruction and devastation. Damn, he thought, I missed all the fun on this one. Furthermore, he hadn’t obtained the microfilm, and he knew all too well from his predecessor, Ulrich, what happened to those who failed von Berg.
He heard a shout from across the gorge and saw Miller waving his hands. “Go see what he wants,” he told Borgman.
While Borgman left, Spreicher looked down at the New Zealander’s head on the ground and watched the blood seep out of the cracked skull.
Borgman returned with good news. “Miller and his men found tracks on the other side of the gorge, sir,” he reported. “They’re not ours, and they’re fresh. Someone must have made it over the bridge before she blew, perhaps someone from that patrol we ran into during our advance.”
“General von Berg’s orders are clear,” Spreicher said with a gleam in his eye. “We must hunt this man down. We’ll turn over every village between here and Sparta if we have to. Andros cannot get away. Let’s move.”
“Zu Befehl!” replied Borgman.
Yes, thought Spreicher, surveying the destruction, the fun was just beginning.
94
His mother was in a life jacket, her arms wrapped around him as they floated in a sea of fire, bodies everywhere, some swallowed up by the burning oil from the sinking ocean liner in the distance. As the crest of a wave lifted them up, his mother’s tired arms loosened, and the wave parted them forever, her screams of “Christos! Christos!” fading in the darkness of night. For Chris, there were no words he could form, only a helpless cry as he turned in his bed, soaked with sweat, aware of another presence.
“Better to enter the kingdom of God with one leg than to have two and be thrown into hell.”
Andros blinked his eyes open to see two eyes, alive with light and compassion, looking down at him. Then a sharp pain shot up his leg, and he shivered.
The voice said, “You have both of them, don’t worry.”