Jensen broke the silence.
«Eighteen months ago, you remember, after the fall of Greece, the Germans had taken over nearly all the islands of the Sporades: the Italians, of course, already held most of the Dodecanese. Then, gradually, we began to establish missions on these islands, usually spear-headed by your people, the Long Range Desert Group or the Special Boat Service. By last September we had retaken nearly all the larger islands except Navarone — it was too damned hard a nut, so we just by-passed it — and brought some of the garrisons up to, and beyond, battalion strength.» He grinned at Mallory. «You were lurking in your cave somewhere in the White Mountains at the time, but you'll remember how the Germans reacted?»
«Violently?»
Jensen nodded.
«Exactly. Very violently indeed. The political importance of Turkey in this part of the world is impossible to over-estimate — and she's always been a potential partner for either Axis or Allies. Most of these islands are only a few miles off the Turkish coast. The question of prestige, of restoring confidence in Germany, was urgent.»
«So?»
«So they flung in everything — paratroopers, airborne troops, crack mountain brigades, hordes of Stukas — I'm told they stripped the Italian front of dive-bombers for these operations. Anyway, they flung everything in — the lot. In a few weeks we'd lost over ten thousand troops and every island we'd ever recaptured — except Kheros.»
«And now it's the turn of Kheros?»
«Yes.» Jensen shook out a pair of cigarettes, sat silently until Mallory had lit them and sent the match spinning through the window towards the pale gleam of the Mediterranean lying north below the coast road. «Yes, Kheros is for the hammer. Nothing that we can do can save it. The Germans have absolute air superiority in the Aegean… .»
«But — but how can you be so sure that it's this week?»
Jensen sighed.
«Laddie, Greece is fairly hotching with Allied agents. We have over two hundred in the Athens-Piraeus area alone and—»
«Two hundred!» Mallory interrupted incredulously. «Did you say—»
«I did.» Jensen grinned. «A mere bagatelle, I assure you, compared to the vast hordes of spies that circulate freely among our noble hosts in Cairo and Alexandria.» He was suddenly serious again. «Anyway, our information is accurate. An armada of caiques will sail from the Piraeus on Thursday at dawn and island-hop across the Cyclades, holing up in the islands at night.» He smiled. «An intriguing situation, don't you think? We daren't move in the Aegean in the daytime or we'd be bombed out of the water. The Germans don't dare move at night. Droves of our destroyers and M.T.B.s and gunboats move into the Aegean at dusk: the destroyers retire to the South before dawn, the small boats usually lie up in isolated islands creeks. But we can't stop them from getting across. They'll be there Saturday or Sunday — and synchronise their landings with the first of the airborne troops: they've scores of Junkers 52s waiting just outside Athens. Kheros won't last a couple of days.» No one could have listened to Jensen's carefully casual voice, his abnormal matter-of-factness and not have believed him.
Mallory believed him. For almost a minute he stared down at the sheen of the sea, at the faery tracery of the stars shimmering across its darkly placid surface. Suddenly he swung around on Jensen.
«But the Navy, sir! Evacuation! Surely the Navy—»
«The Navy,» Jensen interrupted heavily, «is not keen. The Navy is sick and tired of the Eastern Med. and the Aegean, sick and tired of sticking out its long-suffering neck and having it regularly chopped off — and all for sweet damn all. We've had two battleships wrecked, eight cruisers out of commission — four of them sunk-- and over a dozen destroyers gone… . I couldn't even start to count the number of smaller vessels we've lost. And for what? I've told you — for sweet damn all! Just so's our High Command can play round-and-round- the-rugged-rocks and who's the-king-of-the-castle with their opposite numbers in Berlin. Great fun for all concerned — except, of course, for the thousand or so sailors who've been drowned in the course of the game, the ten thousand or so Tommies and Anzacs and Indians who suffered and died on these same islands — and died without knowing why.»
Jensen's hands were white-knuckled on the wheel, his mouth tight-drawn and bitter. Mallory was surprised, shocked almost, by the vehemence, the depth of feeling; it was so completely out of character… . Or perhaps it was in character, perhaps Jensen knew a very great deal indeed about what went on on the inside.
«Twelve hundred men, you said, sir?» Mallory asked quietly. «You said there were twelve hundred men on Kheros?»
Jensen flickered a glance at him, looked away again.
«Yes. Twelve hundred men.» Jensen sighed. «You're right, laddie, of course, you're right. I'm just talking off the top of my head. Of course we can't leave them there. The Navy will do its damnedest. What's two or three more destroyers — sorry, boy, sorry, there I go again… . Now listen, and listen carefully».
«Taking 'em off will have to be a night operation. There isn't a ghost of a chance in the daytime — not with two-three hundred Stukas just begging for a glimpse of a Royal Naval destroyer. It'll have to be destroyers-- transports and tenders are too slow by half. And they can't possibly go northabout the northern tip of the Lerades — they'd never get back to safety before daylight. It's too long a trip by hours.»
«But the Lerades is a pretty long string of Islands,» Mallory ventured. «Couldn't the destroyers go through—»
«Between a couple of them? Impossible.» Jensen shook his head. «Mined to hell and back again. Every single channel. You couldn't take a dinghy through.»
«And the Maidos-Navarone channel. Stiff with mines also, I suppose?»
«No, that's a clear channel. Deep water — you can't moor mines in deep water.»
«So that's the route you've got to take, isn't it, sir? I mean, they're Turkish territorial waters on the other side and we—»
«We'd go through Turkish territorial waters to-morrow, and in broad daylight, if it would do any good,» Jensen said flatly. «The Turks know it and so do the Germans. But all other things being equal, the Western channel is the one we're taking. It's a clearer channel, a shorter route — and it doesn't involve any unnecessary international complications.»
«All other things being equal?»
«The guns of Navarone.» Jensen paused for a long time, then repeated the words, slowly, expressionlessly, as one would repeat the name of some feared and ancient enemy. «The guns of Navarone. They make everything equaL They cover the northern entrances to both channels. We could take the twelve hundred men off Kheros to-night----if we could silence the guns of Navarone.»
Mallory sat silent, said nothing. He's coming to it now, he thought.
«These guns are no ordinary guns,» Jensen went on quietly. «Our naval experts say they're about nine-inch rifle barrels. I think myself they're more likely a version of the 210 mm. 'crunch' guns that the Germans are using in Italy — our soldiers up there hate and fear those guns more than anything on earth. A dreadful weapon — shell extremely slow in flight and damnably accurate. Anyway,» he went on grimly, «whatever they were they were good enough to dispose of the Sybaris in five minutes flat.»
Mallory nodded slowly.
«The Sybaris? I think I heard—»
«An eight-inch cruiser we sent up there about four months ago to try conclusions with the Hun. Just a formality, a routine exercise, we thought. The Sybaris was blasted out of the water. There were seventeen survivors.»
«Good God!» Mallory was shocked. «I didn't know—»
«Two months ago we mounted a large-scale amphibious attack on Navarone.» Jensen hadn't even heard the interruption. «Commandos, Royal Marine Commandos and Jellicoe's Special Boat Service. Less than an even chance, we knew — Navarone's practically solid cliff all the way round. But then these were very special men, probably the finest assault troops in the world today.» Jensen paused for almost a minute, then went on very quietly. «They were cut to ribbons. They were massacred almost to a man».