Small Wars Page 5

  ‘Proper fighting?’

  Hal laughed.

  Clara pressed herself close up to him. Let him think her a girl-woman if he wanted. ‘Proper fighting, Hal?’ she repeated and he laughed again.

  ‘Well, a bit of action, anyway. If I’m lucky,’ he said.

  Chapter Six

  The boy Hal had handed over to the Special Investigations Branch was called Andreas. He was interrogated by them, but the talking was done by an interpreter, who was a gentle young Englishman, a classics scholar before his National Service, and not inclined to – or often able to – translate the more colourful language of the two SIB plain-clothes officers he had been attached to. The transformation from Homeric to modern Greek had been achieved by a hasty language course in England at the end of his basic training when the WOSB had discovered he had a classics degree.

  The interpreter was one of life’s diplomats, and his answer to ‘What did he say?’ was often a tactful approximation: ‘He said he doesn’t know, sir,’ rather than ‘He said you can rot in hell.’

  After three months in Limassol, the interpreter had begun to see himself more as protector than questioner. In Nicosia he had worked for the Special Investigations Branch attached to a different regiment, and wished he was still there, where he could honestly say he had never felt ashamed. These two were harsher. They were both quiet men, who kept to themselves, not making friends around the camp, standing out in their suits as the outsiders they were. The sight of them going about their secretive business was chilling sometimes even to the soldiers who worked alongside them.

  The interrogations he was asked to leave were the ones he felt he’d failed at, and often he thought he was under more pressure to get results than the SIB themselves, because he so badly didn’t want anybody to be hurt. He didn’t want this boy to go onto the next stage of questioning, the more unpleasant stage. He tried to explain to him, without meaning to threaten, that if the boy would be helpful, then he would be unhurt and even protected, but if he was stubborn he – the interpreter – couldn’t say that he would not be hurt, and perhaps seriously. Often prisoners took this the wrong way, and were defiant, but sometimes they accepted that the young officer was trying to help them. His uniform was less frightening than the incongruous dark suits of his two superiors; it was honest, and his face was honest too, and kind. Sometimes they gave up their secrets, if they had any to give. Sometimes they didn’t.

  The moment where a variation of ‘All right, Davis, we’ll take over from here,’ was said to him, and he was dismissed – leaving them with a soldier and the prisoner in a closed room – was a relatively rare, but deeply uncomfortable one for the interpreter. He saw the prisoner again an hour later, or the next morning, when the phrase he used in his mind for that was ‘a little the worse for wear’. A face that was a little the worse for wear was not a pleasant sight. It might not be bloody – although he’d seen that too – but it was always changed.

  The interpreter knew he was a necessary part of a larger process; he tried not to feel responsible when the process went on without him. He had been told harsh methods were justifiable, and he believed that to be true, but he had never seen an English death brought about by terrorism, he felt no animosity towards the Cypriots, and he could not help feeling that violence was like cheating, and unfair.

  This boy, Andreas, was not a hard nut to crack. His defiance on arriving at Episkopi Garrison faded to sulkiness within an hour of being locked up. He was given food and water and spoken to by Davis, and when the evidence of his feeble crimes was laid before him on the wooden table he became actually chatty. He had an uncle, he said, who had been talking to him and his friends for months about EOKA. His uncle hated the British – Andreas gave his name, pausing politely for it to be spelled correctly – and would do anything to drive them out of Cyprus. He was in a camp up in the Troodos, and rumour was that he was with Axfentiou, but he couldn’t say for sure. He had another uncle, though, the black sheep of the family, a sort of cousin of an uncle, in fact, and the British were after him, too. Photographs were brought. Andreas identified him in the booklet handed out to every British officer of EOKA’s ‘most wanted’. General Grivas and Axfentiou, EOKA’s leaders, were at numbers one and two, and Andreas’s uncle was there too, down the list, at number thirty-four. Andreas described a farmhouse in the foothills near Kaminaria where he knew they were storing weapons and where this man was hiding. Encouraged by the enthusiasm of his questioners, he gave places and names; they were all good friends. Andreas himself had nothing against the British, and was keen to point that out, but he had been persuaded that fighting for Greece was a fine thing to do, and he regretted it now.

  ‘Davis, tell him if he behaves himself, we won’t tell the whole village he’s a toad and he won’t get his throat cut.’

  ‘Andreas, we will take you home. We won’t betray you to your village, if you don’t betray us. We are all trying to stop more violence. Yes?’

  Andreas was to do one more thing for them before his release: he was to show them exactly where the farmhouse was. He agreed immediately to this, and it crossed Davis’s mind that the boy could lead a hundred soldiers into an ambush very easily and be a hero. It was impossible to tell from his dark face what he was really thinking.

  SIB briefed Colonel Burroughs about Andreas’s black sheep of an uncle, whose name was Loulla Kollias, and Burroughs briefed Hal. Hal devised a plan, his first, with particular care, and then – like a schoolboy having his prep inspected – went over it with Burroughs, who was thorough and helpful and questioned everything.

  Loulla Kollias’s photograph also hung in Colonel Burroughs’s office, in his rogues gallery and opposite his picture of the Queen. It showed a middle-aged man who could have been a shepherd or a farmer, with a large black moustache, thick eyebrows and a frayed and faded sweater with a neck that stood up. The photograph had been taken for EOKA propaganda. In it, he was squinting manfully into a wind, with his hair blowing up from his head and the camera at a low angle. The only thing distinguishing him from any other Greek man between the ages of twenty-five and forty was the bullet belt slung diagonally over his body and the nose of his rifle, which could be seen poking up from behind his shoulder. He was responsible for the death of an American government official in a car bombing. He organised roadside ambushes and riots. He was close to General Grivas, and a chief recruiter for EOKA. He was a man who believed in a Cyprus independent of British rule and took his army straight from school, transforming romantic Greek schoolboys into soldiers – or terrorists, depending on your point of view.

  Three hours before dawn, three days after Andreas’s capture, Hal left Clara pretending to be asleep in their brand-new bedroom on Lionheart Estate and joined Kirby and a convoy of trucks and Land Rovers, which left the garrison, heading north into the Troodos. Andreas was in the Land Rover behind Hal’s, flanked by soldiers, with the interpreter, Davis, sitting in front, very nervous.

  It was still dark. The trucks crawled slower and slower, the drivers keeping to the hard-packed centre of the road, looking for disturbed ground where mines might be hidden, and the soldiers stopped talking and stayed quiet and watchful. There was no protection in being in a vehicle; they would rather have been out of them and on foot, where they could listen better and move more carefully and the ground away from the road had no mines hidden in it.

  There had been burns casualties from a roadside ambush in the hills the week before. The terrain was good for it – scrubby and plenty of low cover – and there were caves, too, and not all of the island was mapped thoroughly.

  The threat of ambush takes everyone differently. Some spend all their time imagining what may happen: in the front of a truck at night they sit to one side to avoid a bullet from a sniper who might use the headlights to gauge the position of their head. They get superstitious and try to second guess the mind of the man who may have hidden a mine or tripwire in this place or that place. Then there’s the other kind, who don�
�t think about it imaginatively. They limit their thoughts; they aren’t interested in chance and they don’t give any choice power over another choice because they know they’d spend their whole lives doing it and dying a different way each time. Hal was one of those.

  He knew it was a decision to be like that, and understood how you could lose your nerve and start imagining things and he didn’t know if he would be as cool in combat. He hadn’t had the chance to find out yet. Perhaps he would now.

  He could smell the damp pines, the mineral rocky ground, goats and, faintly, diesel. He felt his body quicken in readiness for what lay ahead and he was thinking about that, not worrying about imaginary mines, as the trucks made the climb towards the tree-line.

  The farmhouse was deep at the bottom of a very steep valley. A river ran along it with a bridge, and the main house and outhouses were along the river and hidden beneath trees. There was one road in, and one road out, and each of the narrow roads made several hairpin bends, doubling back and forth deeper and deeper into the invisible valley or higher and higher to the top of the black hills that met a black sky almost no different.

  They left the trucks and blocked the roads at their dividing. Then there was a long wait while half of Two Platoon went the long way around the valley to block the second road before they went forward on foot.

  The soldiers spread out across the hillside, making the best of poor cover, creeping down into the dark crack in the earth that was the valley.

  When dawn came, it would reach this place last; a more acute and crevice-like hiding place would be hard to find. It was a sharp sudden valley and it wasn’t fanciful to consider it sinister, with the slithering hard stones and earth that went steeply downwards. For most of the day it would be in shadow. Hal had seen the gradients on the map, but was still surprised by the extremity of the land and that anyone would choose to build a farm there, so deep.

  The soldiers moved slowly downwards.

  Hal’s platoon had the interpreter and Andreas at their rear. Andreas was jittery, flanked by soldiers, and the interpreter, Davis, was hanging back and wishing himself home. Mark Innes and Two Platoon, coming down the other hillside, had the better time of it because they were in trees.

  Hal could hear each sound very clearly. He was concentrating intensely, except for the small part of him that felt the eagerness to be getting on with it. He couldn’t see the ground in front of him, or the house, and could only sense the men to his left and right and the mountainside opposite him, but as they went down, and dawn approached, the high line of the mountain showed him where the sky was.

  A dog began to bark, then more dogs, and the sound was very loud, breaking the stillness. They all stopped, but no lights showed where the house must be. They continued their approach, holding their Stens close to their bodies. The hill was almost vertical, and they had to cross the flat road every fifty yards. The approach took a long time and their legs shook with the effort of the slope and with crouching so low to the earth.

  At the banks of the narrow river the soldiers stopped. The bridge was wooden, and Hal was very near it. The water, where it broke slowly over big boulders, and around the supports of the bridge, gleamed white.

  The dogs were still barking, but rhythmically, not in hysteria, because they were being ignored. Hal went along the edge of the water until he reached Trask, who was gripping Andreas by the arm.

  He could just see a dark shape behind him, which he took to be Davis, and he hissed to him quietly. Davis came over to them. Andreas spoke to him urgently, and Trask yanked his arm to keep him quiet.

  ‘He wants to go back,’ said Davis, weakly.

  ‘Just keep quiet, and wait,’ said Hal, and then, to Trask, ‘Keep them well back.’

  Hal went away from them along the river again. He could see the shadows of men and moved towards them, identifying McKinney. They crossed the river through the water, which was shallow and icy cold, seeping into their boots.

  The dogs, who were chained, began to choke themselves in their excited barking and, at that, McKinney gave the word and the arrest group moved quickly towards the house.

  Hal, McKinney and Kirby were in the cover of some bushes, Hal itching to get in after the others, but for the rest of the platoon there was no more stealth. Over the sound of the dogs, scaring them, came the light spat of gunfire from the house as a shutter was broken open and bullets touched the ground and the trees.

  Very quickly the soldiers surrounded the building, the door was kicked in and there was the harsher sound of a Sten fired inside and shouting, the high scream of a woman, and the banging of furniture going over.

  There was no more gunfire.

  The soft dimness was moving with the blacker shapes of running soldiers. The house, every small building and the big barn too, were surrounded. There didn’t seem to be anybody in the outbuildings but it was difficult to tell anything above the barking dogs and the voices of the soldiers. It was fierce agony for Hal to wait, watching, counting seconds, his blood aching with the need to move.

  Then, in the new light, a man could be seen running away from the back of the house towards the dark hill.

  The familiar shout of ‘Halt! Stamata! Dur!’ and the man flung himself flat to the ground and was held there.

  It had been a stupid dash anyway because the whole yard and house were full of soldiers and he had no chance. He only lived because there was no clear shot at him without one of their own being in the line of fire.

  From inside the house Hal could hear boots on the wooden floors upstairs, and voices, but the first rush of the attack had eased, whatever confusion there was – and there hadn’t been much – subsiding to nothing. Corporals’ shouts of ‘Clear’ followed one another, and guarding positions were taken up.

  Now that it was lighter, Hal could see the positions of his men and the exits blocked. His plan, as drawn, was adhered to. Even the dogs had quieted.

  Now –

  ‘Right, then,’ he said coolly, and started with McKinney towards the house.

  There was no one in the outhouses, just animals. The soldiers stood with their guns held ready, looking towards the shadows, at the house and Hal walking towards it. The man who was pinned to the ground wriggled a bit under the soldier’s boot. Hal went inside.

  A corporal, in a strangely domestic pose, was lighting the oil lamp on the table. He turned up the wick and the warm light grew. The Sten fire hadn’t hit anyone so there was no casualty to deal with.

  ‘One got out the back when we were coming in,’ said Amery.

  ‘Yes, let’s bring him in,’ said Hal, and Amery went out past him.

  There was a woman in a corner, in her nightdress, with two children clinging to her legs, one hiding his face, the other staring, with huge eyes, at Hal. Two men lay on the floor, their arms wide and palms flat, Walsh and Leonard’s Stens at their heads. They were in their nightclothes, too, one man’s naked legs splayed and hairy, the other in baggy trousers but shirtless.

  Hal’s mind was moving so fast that everything seemed to slow down, and in calmness he could absorb the detail. The room was like a photograph with all of it in focus for him to study. He saw the wooden beams disappear into the shadows of the roof. He saw the bones inside the children’s hands where they gripped their mother’s nightdress. He saw the men’s boots lined up against the wall near the stove and little pieces of bread on the table by the lamp, the crumbling walls around him and heard the breathing of each of the people in the house.

  He knew the woman was screaming before the sound left her, saw the movement of the man on the floor reaching up for his child and felt Francke panicking beside him. The woman rushed at Hal, throwing her children behind her, before she saw Francke’s Sten raised to her chest, and Hal caught Francke up short with a word and put his own pistol to the head of the man who was trying to get to his child and told him to be still.

  He held his hand up to the woman and looked at her. ‘Calm,’ he said, in Greek, and for
a moment they were all motionless.

  Amery and another soldier came back in with the prisoner in front of them. They turned him to face Hal. He knew immediately that they had found their man.

  ‘Are you Loulla Kollias?’ he asked, and when the man didn’t answer, he sent for the interpreter.

  When Davis came in, Hal had the woman taken into the other room. There was some screaming and panic as the men tried to fight, as if they thought there was something to protect the family from. Hal kept it brief and attempted to establish names and who owned the house, the broadest of connections between them all, but the prisoners weren’t in the mood to assist him, so he had them dress themselves under guard and stood them outside to wait.

  Outside, the sky was pearly and only black in the west, where there were still stars. The captured men were secured and the outhouses searched while the dogs resumed their helpless barking. The woman and her children sat in the kitchen with a rather embarrassed Leonard to watch them. Once most of the soldiers had left the house, the children cried very loudly and their wailing was a background sound to the searching.

  It did not prove fruitless. There were guns in the main house – not a farmer’s hunting rifles but two Brens and a rich stock of ammunition. Hal’s men found pipe bombs in the well nearby and some dynamite stashed in a wooden crate under some grain sacks in a half-wrecked barn away from the house. With each discovery the mood took a step towards triumphant.

  Searching the farm buildings took a long time; the sun was up over the high hill, hitting the mountainside and the loops of road opposite. The three prisoners were bound and marched under escort with Two Platoon, to keep them away from Andreas, who was exhausted and guilty and had been crying.

  It took an hour to reach the vehicles, then they loaded up the prisoners and the weapons and headed down towards Episkopi. The engines whined and rattled over the dirt roads, grinding metal on metal in low gear, and Hal went over the things that had happened, thought about what had gone well and what he might have done differently. His plan had been sound, although it was unfortunate that in cordoning the house the soldiers were effectively disarmed, for fear of casualties amongst their own.