Force 10 from Navarone. Alistair MacLean
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have to attend a wedding.’
‘A wedding?’ Miller said politely.
‘Must you two repeat everything I say? A wedding.’
‘But who do you know?’ Miller asked. ‘And at this hour of night.’
‘For some people in Navarone,’ Andrea said drily, ‘the night is the only safe time.’ He turned abruptly, walked away, opened the door and hesitated.
Mallory asked curiously: ‘Who’s getting married?’
Andrea made no reply. Instead he walked back to the nearest table, poured and drained a half-tumbler of the brandy, ran a hand through his thick dark hair, straightened his cummerbund, squared his shoulders and walked purposefully towards the door. Mallory and Miller stared after him, then at the door that closed behind him: then they stared at each other.
Some fifteen minutes later they were still staring at each other, this time with expressions which alternated between the merely bemused and slightly stunned.
They were seated in the back seat of the Greek Orthodox church – the only part of any pew in the entire church not now occupied by islanders. From where they sat, the altar was at least sixty feet away but as they were both tall men and sitting by the central aisle, they had a pretty fair view of what was going on up there.
There was, to be accurate, nothing going on up there any more. The ceremony was over. Gravely, the Orthodox priest bestowed his blessing and Andrea and Maria, the girl who had shown them the way into the fortress of Navarone, turned with the slow dignity becoming the occasion, and walked down the aisle. Andrea bent over, tenderness and solicitousness both in expression and manner, and whispered something in her ear, but his words, it would have seemed, bore little relation to the way in which they were expressed, for halfway down the aisle a furious altercation broke out between them. Between, perhaps, is not the right word: it was less an altercation than a very one-sided monologue. Maria, her face flushed and dark eyes flashing, gesticulating and clearly mad through, was addressing Andrea in far from low tones of not even barely-controlled fury: Andrea, for his part, was deprecatory, placatory, trying to hush her up with about the same amount of success as Canute had in holding back the tide, and looking apprehensively around. The reaction of the seated guests varied from disbelief through open-mouthed astonishment and bafflement to downright horror: clearly all regarded the spectacle as a highly unusual aftermath to a wedding ceremony.
As the couple approached the end of the aisle opposite the pew where Mallory and Miller were seated, the argument, if such it could be called, raged more furiously than ever. As they passed by the end pew, Andrea, hand over his mouth, leaned over towards Mallory.
‘This,’ he said, sotto voce, ‘is our first married quarrel.’
He was given time to say no more. An imperative hand seized his arm and almost literally dragged him through the church doorway. Even after they had disappeared from sight, Maria’s voice, loud and clear, could still be heard by everyone within the church. Miller turned from surveying the empty doorway and looked thoughtfully at Mallory.
‘Very high-spirited girl, that. I wish I understood Greek. What was she saying there?’
Mallory kept his face carefully expressionless. ‘What about my honeymoon?’
‘Ah!’ Miller’s face was equally dead-pan. ‘Don’t you think we’d better follow them?’
‘Why?’
‘Andrea can take care of most people.’ It was the usual masterly Miller understatement. ‘But he’s stepped out of his class this time.’
Mallory smiled, rose and went to the door, followed by Miller, who was in turn followed by an eager press of guests understandably anxious to see the second act of this unscheduled entertainment: but the village square was empty of life.
Mallory did not hesitate. With the instinct born from the experience of long association with Andrea, he headed across the square to the communal hall where Andrea had made the earlier of his two dramatic statements. His instincts hadn’t betrayed him. Andrea, with a large glass of brandy in his hand and moodily fingering a spreading patch of red on his cheek, looked up as Mallory and Miller entered.
He said moodily: ‘She’s gone home to her mother.’
Miller glanced at his watch. ‘One minute and twenty-five seconds,’ he said admiringly. ‘A world record.’
Andrea glowered at him and Mallory moved in hastily.
‘You’re coming, then.’
‘Of course I’m coming,’ Andrea said irritably. He surveyed without enthusiasm the guests now swarming into the hall and brushing unceremoniously by as they headed, like the camel for the oasis, towards the bottle-laden tables. ‘Somebody’s got to look after you two.’
Mallory looked at his watch. ‘Three and a half hours yet before that plane is due. We’re dead on our feet, Andrea. Where can we sleep – a safe place to sleep. Your perimeter guards are drunk.’
‘They’ve been that way ever since the fortress blew up,’ Andrea said. ‘Come, I’ll show you.’
Miller looked around the islanders, who, amid a loud babel of cheerful voices, were already quite exceptionally busy with bottles and glasses. ‘How about your guests?’
‘How about them, then?’ Andrea surveyed his compatriots morosely. ‘Just look at that lot. Ever known a wedding reception yet where anybody paid any attention to the bride and groom? Come.’
They made their way southwards through the outskirts of Mandrakos to the open countryside beyond. Twice they were challenged by guards, twice a scowl and growl from Andrea sent them back hurriedly to their ouzo bottles. It was still raining heavily, but Mallory’s and Miller’s clothes were already so saturated that a little more rain could hardly make any appreciable difference to the way they felt, while Andrea, if anything, seemed even more oblivious of it. Andrea had the air of a man who had other things on his mind.
After fifteen minutes’ walk, Andrea stopped before the swing doors of a small, dilapidated and obviously deserted roadside barn.
‘There’s hay inside,’ he said. ‘We’ll be safe here.’
Mallory said: ‘Fine. A radio message to the Sirdar to send her CE message to Cairo and –’
‘CE?’ Andrea asked. ‘What’s that?’
‘To let Cairo know we’ve contacted you and are ready for pick-up … And after that, three lovely hours’ sleep.’
Andrea nodded. ‘Three hours it is.’
‘Three long hours,’ Mallory said meditatively.
A smile slowly broke on Andrea’s craggy face as he clapped Mallory on the shoulder.
‘In three long hours,’ he said, ‘a man like myself can accomplish a great deal.’
He turned and hurried off through the rain-filled night. Mallory and Miller looked after him with expressionless faces, looked at each other, still with the same expressionless faces, then pushed open the swing doors of the barn.
The Mandrakos airfield would not have received a licence from any Civil Air Board anywhere in the world. It was just over half a mile long, with hills rising steeply at both ends of the alleged runway, not more than forty yards wide and liberally besprinkled with a variety of bumps and potholes virtually guaranteed to wreck any undercarriage in the aviation business. But the RAF had used it before so it was not impossible that they might be able to use it at least once again.
To the south, the airstrip was lined with groves of carob trees. Under the pitiful shelter afforded by one of those, Mallory, Miller and Andrea sat waiting. At least Mallory and Miller did, hunched, miserable and shivering violently in their still sodden clothes. Andrea, however, was stretched out luxuriously with his hands behind his head, oblivious of the