the long, corded neck that stretched up scrawnily above his padded shoulders, something repellent about the incongruously small bullet head perched above. When the thin, bloodless lips parted in a smile, which was often, they revealed a perfect set of teeth: far from lighting his face, the smile only emphasised the sallow skin stretched abnormally taut across the sharp nose and high cheekbones, puckered up the sabre scar that bisected the left cheek from eyebrow to chin: and whether he smiled or not, the pupils of the deep-set eyes remained always the same, still and black and empty. Even at that early hour – it was not yet six o’clock – he was immaculately dressed, freshly shaven, the wetly gleaming hair – thin, dark, heavily indented above the temples – brushed straight back across his head. Seated behind a flat-topped table, the sole article of furniture in the bench-lined guardroom, only the upper half of his body was visible: even so, one instinctively knew that the crease of the trousers, the polish of the jack-boots, would be beyond reproach.
He smiled often, and he was smiling now as Oberleutnant Turzig finished his report. Leaning far back in his chair, elbows on the armrests, Skoda steepled his lean fingers under his chin, smiled benignly round the guardroom. The lazy, empty eyes missed nothing – the guard at the door, the two guards behind the bound prisoner, Andrea sitting on the bench where he had just laid Stevens – one lazy sweep of those eyes encompassed them all.
‘Excellently done, Oberleutnant Turzig!’ he purred. ‘Most efficient, really most efficient!’ He looked speculatively at the three men standing before him, at their bruised and blood-caked faces, switched his glance to Stevens, lying barely conscious on the bench, smiled again and permitted himself a fractional lift of his eyebrows. ‘A little trouble perhaps, Turzig? The prisoners were not too – ah – co-operative?’
‘They offered no resistance, sir, no resistance at all,’ Turzig said stiffly. The tone, the manner, were punctilious, correct, but the distaste, the latent hostility were mirrored in his eyes. ‘My men were maybe a little enthusiastic. We wanted to make no mistake.’
‘Quite right, Lieutenant, quite right,’ Skoda murmured approvingly. ‘These are dangerous men and one cannot take chances with dangerous men.’ He pushed back his chair, rose easily to his feet, strolled round the table and stopped in front of Andrea. ‘Except maybe this one, Lieutenant?’
‘He is dangerous only to his friends,’ Turzig said shortly. ‘It is as I told you, sir. He would betray his mother to save his own skin.’
‘And claiming friendship with us, eh?’ Skoda asked musingly. ‘One of our gallant allies, Lieutenant.’ Skoda reached out a gentle hand, brought it viciously down and across Andrea’s cheek, the heavy signet ring on his middle finger tearing skin and flesh. Andrea cried out in pain, capped one hand to his bleeding face and cowered away, his right arm raised above his head in blind defence.
‘A notable addition to the armed forces of the Third Reich,’ Skoda murmured. ‘You were not mistaken, Lieutenant. A poltroon – the instinctive reaction of a hurt man is an infallible guide. It is curious,’ he mused, ‘how often very big men are thus. Part of nature’s compensatory process, I suppose … What is your name, my brave friend?’
‘Papagos,’ Andrea muttered sullenly. ‘Peter Papagos.’ He took his hand away from his cheek, looked at it with eyes slowly widening with horror, began to rub it across his trouser leg with jerky, hurried movements, the repugnance on his face plain for every man to see. Skoda watched him with amusement.
‘You do not like to see blood, Papagos, eh?’ he suggested. ‘Especially your own blood?’
A few seconds passed in silence, then Andrea lifted his head suddenly, his fat face screwed up in misery. He looked as if he were going to cry.
‘I am only a poor fisherman, your Honour!’ he burst out. ‘You laugh at me and say I do not like blood, and it is true. Nor do I like suffering and war. I want no part of any of these things!’ His great fists were clenched in futile appeal, his face puckered in woe, his voice risen an octave. It was a masterly exhibition of despair and even Mallory found himself almost believing in it. ‘Why wasn’t I left alone?’ he went on pathetically. ‘God only knows I am no fighting man –’
‘A highly inaccurate statement,’ Skoda interrupted dryly. ‘That fact must be patently obvious to every person in the room by this time.’ He tapped his teeth with a jade cigarette-holder, his eyes speculative. ‘A fisherman you call yourself –’
‘He’s a damned traitor!’ Mallory interrupted. The commandant was becoming just that little bit too interested in Andrea. At once Skoda wheeled round, stood in front of Mallory with his hands clasped behind his back, teetering on heels and toes, and looked him up and down in mocking inspection.
‘So!’ he said thoughtfully. ‘The great Keith Mallory! A rather different proposition from our fat and fearful friend on the bench there, eh, Lieutenant?’ He did not wait for an answer. ‘What rank are you, Mallory?’
‘Captain,’ Mallory answered briefly.
‘Captain Mallory, eh? Captain Keith Mallory, the greatest mountaineer of our time, the idol of pre-war Europe, the conqueror of the world’s most impossible climbs.’ Skoda shook his head sadly. ‘And to think that it should all end like this … I doubt whether posterity will rank your last climb as among your greatest: there are only ten steps leading to the gallows in the fortress of Navarone.’ Skoda smiled. ‘Hardly a cheerful thought, is it, Captain Mallory?’
‘I wasn’t even thinking about it,’ the New Zealander answered pleasantly. ‘What worries me is your face.’ He frowned. ‘Somewhere or other I’m sure I’ve seen it or something like it before.’ His voice trailed off into silence.
‘Indeed?’ Skoda was interested. ‘In the Bernese Alps, perhaps? Often before the war –’
‘I have it now!’ Mallory’s face cleared. He knew the risk he was taking, but anything that concentrated attention on himself to the exclusion of Andrea was justified. He beamed at Skoda. ‘Three months ago, it was, in the zoo in Cairo. A plains buzzard that had been captured in the Sudan. A rather old and mangy buzzard, I’m afraid,’ Mallory went on apologetically, ‘but exactly the same scrawny neck, the same beaky face and bald head –’
Mallory broke off abruptly, swayed back out of reach as Skoda, his face livid and gleaming teeth bared in rage, swung at him with his fist. The blow carried with it all Skoda’s wiry strength, but anger blurred his timing and the fist swung harmlessly by: he stumbled, recovered, then fell to the floor with a shout of pain as Mallory’s heavy boot caught him flush on the thigh, just above the knee. He had barely touched the floor when he was up like a cat, took a pace forward and collapsed heavily again as his injured leg gave under him.
There was a moment’s shocked stillness throughout the room, then Skoda rose painfully, supporting himself on the edge of the heavy table. He was breathing quickly, the thin mouth a hard, white line, the great sabre scar flaming redly in the sallow face drained now of all colour. He looked neither at Mallory nor anyone else, but slowly, deliberately, in an almost frightening silence, began to work his way round to the back of the table, the scuffling of his sliding palms on the leather top rasping edgily across overtautened nerves.
Mallory stood quite still, watching him with expressionless face, cursing himself for his folly. He had overplayed his hand. There was no doubt in his mind – there could be no doubt in the mind of anyone in that room – that Skoda meant to kill him; and he, Mallory, would not die. Only Skoda and Andrea would die: Skoda from Andrea’s throwing knife – Andrea was rubbing blood from his face with the inside of his sleeve, fingertips only inches from the sheath – and Andrea from the guns of the guards, for the knife was all
