of the slugs from the Schmeisser would tear him in half before he could cover the distance. But he would try. He must try. It was the least he owed to Andrea.
Skoda reached the back of the table, opened a drawer and lifted out a gun. An automatic, Mallory noted with detachment – a little, blue-metal, snub-nosed toy – but a murderous toy, the kind of gun he would have expected Skoda to have. Unhurriedly Skoda pressed the release button, checked the magazine, snapped it home with the palm of his hand, flicked off the safety catch and looked up at Mallory. The eyes hadn’t altered in the slightest – they were cold, dark and empty as ever. Mallory flicked a glance at Andrea and tensed himself for one convulsive fling backwards. Here it comes, he thought savagely, this is how bloody fools like Keith Mallory die – and then all of a sudden, and unknowingly, he relaxed, for his eyes were still on Andrea and he had seen Andrea doing the same, the huge hand slipping down unconcernedly from the neck, empty of any sign of knife.
There was a scuffle at the table and Mallory was just in time to see Turzig pin Skoda’s gun-hand to the table-top.
‘Not that, sir!’ Turzig begged. ‘For God’s sake, not that way!’
‘Take your hands away,’ Skoda whispered. The staring, empty eyes never left Mallory’s face. ‘Take your hands away, I say – unless you want to go the same way as Captain Mallory.’
‘You can’t kill him, sir!’ Turzig persisted doggedly. ‘You just can’t. Herr Kommandant’s orders were very clear, Hauptmann Skoda. The leader must be brought to him alive.’
‘He was shot while trying to escape,’ Skoda said thickly.
‘It’s no good.’ Turzig shook his head. ‘We can’t kill them all – and the other prisoners would talk.’ He released his grip on Skoda’s hands. ‘Alive, Herr Kommandant said, but he didn’t say how much alive.’ He lowered his voice confidentially. ‘Perhaps we may have some difficulty in making Captain Mallory talk,’ he suggested.
‘What! What did you say?’ Abruptly the death’s head smile flashed once more, and Skoda was completely on balance again. ‘You are over-zealous, Lieutenant. Remind me to speak to you about it some time. You underestimate me: that was exactly what I was trying to do – frighten Mallory into talking. And now you’ve spoilt it all.’ The smile was still on his face, the voice light, almost bantering, but Mallory was under no illusions. He owed his life to the young WGB lieutenant – how easily one could respect, form a friendship with a man like Turzig if it weren’t for this damned, crazy war … Skoda was standing in front of him again: he had left his gun on the table.
‘But enough of this fooling, eh, Captain Mallory?’ The German’s teeth fairly gleamed in the bright light from the naked lamps overhead. ‘We haven’t all night, have we?’
Mallory looked at him, then turned away in silence. It was warm enough, stuffy almost, in that little guardroom, but he was conscious of a sudden, nameless chill, he knew all at once, without knowing why, but with complete certainty, that this little man before him was utterly evil.
‘Well, well, well, we are not quite so talkative now, are we, my friend?’ He hummed a little to himself, looked up abruptly, the smile broader than ever. ‘Where are the explosives, Captain Mallory?’
‘Explosives?’ Mallory lifted an interrogatory eyebrow. ‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘You don’t remember, eh?’
‘I don’t know what you are talking about.’
‘So.’ Skoda hummed to himself again and walked over in front of Miller. ‘And what about you, my friend?’
‘Sure I remember,’ Miller said easily. ‘The captain’s got it all wrong.’
‘A sensible man!’ Skoda purred – but Mallory could have sworn to an undertone of disappointment in the voice. ‘Proceed, my friend.’
‘Captain Mallory has no eye for detail,’ Miller drawled. ‘I was with him that day. He is malignin’ a noble bird. It was a vulture, not a buzzard.’
Just for a second Skoda’s smile slipped, then it was back again, as rigidly fixed and lifeless as if it had been painted on.
‘Very, very witty men, don’t you think, Turzig? What the British would call music-hall comedians. Let them laugh while they may, until the hangman’s noose begins to tighten …’ He looked at Casey Brown. ‘Perhaps you –’
‘Why don’t you go and take a running jump to yourself?’ Brown growled.
‘A running jump? The idiom escapes me, but I fear it is hardly complimentary.’ Skoda selected a cigarette from a thin case, tapped it thoughtfully on a thumb nail. ‘Hmm. Not just what one might call too co-operative, Lieutenant Turzig.’
‘You won’t get these men to talk, sir.’ There was a quiet finality in Turzig’s voice.
‘Possibly not, possibly not.’ Skoda was quite unruffled. ‘Nevertheless, I shall have the information I want, and within five minutes.’ He walked unhurriedly across to his desk, pressed a button, screwed his cigarette into its jade holder, and leaned against the table, an arrogance, a careless contempt in every action, even to the leisurely crossing of the gleaming jack-boots.
Suddenly a side door was flung open and two men stumbled into the room, prodded by a rifle barrel. Mallory caught his breath, felt his nails dig savagely into the palms of his hands. Louki and Panayis! Louki and Panayis, bound and bleeding, Louki from a cut above the eye, Panayis from a scalp wound. So they’d got them too, and in spite of his warnings. Both men were shirt-sleeved; Louki, minus his magnificently frogged jacket, scarlet stanta and the small arsenal of weapons that he carried stuck beneath it, looked strangely pathetic and woebegone – strangely, for he was red-faced with anger, the moustache bristling more ferociously than ever. Mallory looked at him with eyes empty of all recognition, his face expressionless.
‘Come now, Captain Mallory,’ Skoda said reproachfully. ‘Have you no word of greeting for two old friends? No? Or perhaps you are just overwhelmed?’ he suggested smoothly. ‘You had not expected to see them so soon again, eh, Captain Mallory?’
‘What cheap trick is this?’ Mallory asked contemptuously. ‘I’ve never seen these men before in my life.’ His eyes caught those of Panayis, held there involuntarily: the black hate that stared out of those eyes, the feral malevolence – there was something appalling about it.
‘Of course not,’ Skoda sighed wearily. ‘Oh, of course not. Human memory is so short, is it not, Captain Mallory.’ The sigh was pure theatre – Skoda was enjoying himself immensely, the cat playing with the mouse. ‘However, we will try again.’ He swung round, crossed over to the bench where Stevens lay, pulled off the blanket and, before anyone could guess his intentions, chopped the outside of his right hand against Stevens’s smashed leg, just below the knee … Stevens’s entire body leapt in a convulsive spasm, but without even a whisper of a moan: he was still fully conscious, smiling at Skoda, blood trickling down his chin from where his teeth had gashed his lower lip.
‘You shouldn’t have done that, Hauptmann Skoda,’ Mallory said. His voice was barely a whisper, but unnaturally loud in the frozen silence of the room. ‘You are going to die for that, Hauptmann Skoda.’
‘So? I am going to die, am I?’ Again he chopped his hand against the fractured leg, again without reaction. ‘Then I may as well die twice
