Here is forty shillings in good silver,

slipped into the Abteilung garage, torn away the coil ignitions of the German command car and truckthe only transport in Margarithaand smashed their distributors for good measure; it was Louki who bad led them by a sunken ditch right up to the roadblock guard post at the mouth of the valleyft had been almost ludicrously simple to disarm the sentries, only one of whom bad been awakeand, finally, it was Louki who bad insisted that they walk down the muddy centre of the valley track till they came to the metalled road, less than two miles from the town itself. A hundred yards down this they had branched off to the left across a long, sloping field of lava that left no trace behind, arrived in the carob copse just on sunrise. And it had worked. All these carefully engineered pointers, pointers that not even the most sceptical could have ignored and denied, had worked magnificently. Miller and Andrea, who had shared the forenoon watch, had seen the Navarone garrison spending long hours making the most intensive house-to-house search of the town. That should make it doubly, trebly safe for them the following day, Mallory reckoned: it was unlikely that the search would be repeated, still more unlikely that, if it were, it would be carried out with a fraction of the same enthusiasm. Louki had done his work welL Mallory turned his head to look at him. The little man was still asleepwedged on the slope behind a couple of tree-trunks, he hadn't stirred for five hours. Still dead tired himself, his legs aching and eyes smarting with sleeplessness, Mallory could not find ft in him to grudge Louki a moment of his rest. He'd earned it alland he'd been awake all through the previous night. So had Panayis, but Panayis was already awakening, Mallory saw, pushing the long, black hair out of his eyes: awake, rather, for his transition from sleep to full awareness was immediate, as fleeting and as complete as a cat's. A dangerous man, Mallory knew, a desperate man, almost, and a bitter enemy, but he knew nothing of Panayis, nothing at all. He doubted if he ever would. Farther up the slope, almost in the centre of the grove, Andrea had built a high platform of broken branches and twigs against a couple of carob poles maybe five feet apart, gradually filling up the space between slope and trees until he had a platform four feet in width, as nearly level as he could make it. Andy Stevens lay on this, still on his stretcher, still conscious. As far as Mallory could tell, Stevens hadn't closed his eyes since they had been marched 43mm camera digital lens away by Turzig from their cave in the mountains. He seemed to have passed beyond the need for sleep, or had crushed all desire for it. The stench from the gangrenous leg was nauseating, appalling, poisoned all the air around. Mallory and Miller had had a look at the leg shortly after their arrival in the copse, uncovered it, examined it, smiled at one another, tied it up again and assured Stevens that the wound was closing. Below the knee, the leg bad turned almost completely black. Mallory lifted his binoculars to have another look at the town, but lowered them almost at once as someone came sliding down the slope, touched him on the arm. It was Panayis, upset, anxious, almost angry looking. He gesticulated towards the westering sun. "The time, Captain Mallory?" He spoke in Greek his voice low, sibilant, urgentan inevitable voice, Mallory thought, for the lean, dark mysteriousness of the man. "What is the time?" he repeated. "Half-past two, or thereabouts." Mallory lifted an interrogatory eyebrow. "You are concerned, Panayis. Why?" "You should have wakened me. You should have wakened me hours ago!" He was angry, Mallory decided. "It is my turn to keep watch." "But you had no sleep last night," Mallory pointed out reasonably. "It just didn't seem fair" "It is my turn to keep watch, I tell you!" Panayis insisted stubbornly. "Very well, then. If you insist." Mallory knew the high fierce pride of the islanders too well to attempt to argue. "Heaven only knows what we would have done without Louki and yourself.. . . I'li stay and keep you company for a while." "Ah, so that is why you let me sleep on!" There was no disguising the hurt in the eyes, the voice. "You do not trust Panayis" "Oh, for heaven's sake!" Mallory began in exasperation, checked himself and smiled. "Of course we trust you. Maybe I should go and get some more sleep anyway; you are kind to give me the chance. You will shake me in two hour's time?" "Certainly, certainly!" Panayis was almost beaming. "I shall not fail." Mallory scrambled up to the centre of the grove and stretched out lazily along the ledge he had levelled out for himself. For a few idle moments he watched Panayis pacing restlessly to and fro just inside the perimeter of the grove, lost interest when he saw him climbing swiftly up among the branches of a tree, seeking a high lookout vantage point and decided he might as well