Blood Red City (24 page)

The man gave a gap-toothed grin. ‘Nor have you, old man,' he replied in English. His voice was surprisingly cultured – a contrast to the rural Greek accent he had adopted earlier.

‘Thank you for that,' Guy said. ‘How did you know we'd be here?'

‘I was watching for Dimitry's boat from the cliffs further along, by the cove. So I saw what happened, and came as fast as I could.' The man reached out to shake Guy's hand. ‘Call me Mihali,' he said.

*   *   *

They slept in a barn. It was cool but dry, if rather draughty. ‘Mihali' had a stack of blankets ready for them as well as a couple of buckets of clean water for them to wash in. A pot of stew was bubbling on a small fire just outside the barn.

‘Mutton,' he told them. ‘Well, I am a shepherd. You'll feel better when you've eaten something hot. There's no tea, I'm afraid.'

He told them he had seen what had happened to Dimitry, shaking his head sadly.

‘Will you tell his wife?' Brinkman asked. ‘Do you want us to come with you?'

Mihali waved his hand. ‘Dimitry wasn't married. No relatives. Not even cousins,' he added with a sad smile. ‘But his friends will miss him.'

Guy slept well despite the conditions. He was completely worn out by the day's exertions. His sleep was deep and mostly dreamless. When he did dream, it was a confused version of his usual nightmare of struggling through the water at Dunkirk. But now Brinkman was with him, and Dimitry's lifeless body floated past – the man's cold, dead eyes staring up at the smoky sky.

Breakfast was water and hunks of coarse bread and hard cheese. Mihali laid a map out on top of a bale of straw. He showed them where the barn was in relation to the area they wanted to explore.

‘It's not too far. Dimitry deliberately chose the cove because it's the closest we could safely get you.' He gave a humourless laugh. ‘Safely…'

‘How long will it take to get there?' Brinkman wondered.

‘Three hours if we take it fairly swiftly, I'd say. It's not that far, but the terrain is quite rough. And we'll need to take a bit of a roundabout route to avoid any patrols. Especially as you have no papers.'

‘Will that be a problem?' Guy asked.

‘Probably not. I think they only asked you for them last night because they were bored and thought you might be British spies sneaking ashore.'

Guy smiled. ‘As if.'

‘Well, quite.' Mihali folded up the map and stuffed it into a backpack. ‘If we start now, we can be there in time for a picnic lunch.'

‘That sounds good,' Brinkman said.

‘Don't get too excited,' Mihali told him. ‘It's the rest of the bread and cheese.'

*   *   *

The weather was a complete contrast to the day before. The only clouds were pale wisps against the deep blue of the sky. It was already getting mercilessly hot as they set off. Mihali suggested they take their coats, stuffed into backpacks, as it would get cold in the evening and as they again approached the sea.

The landscape was rugged. It seemed to be composed entirely of hills covered with coarse grass and punctuated by outcrops of jagged rock. To Mihali the journey appeared to be a casual stroll. When Guy and Brinkman rested, Mihali stood impatiently, ready to get moving again almost immediately.

‘I don't really know this area,' he confessed as they approached their destination.

Approaching the top of yet another hill, Guy could feel the sea breeze, and fancied he could hear the waves, though that might just be the wind. There was something else too, he realised as they got closer – metallic, industrial sounds, and voices. Brinkman had heard it too, and gestured for them to slow.

‘Wait here,' Mihali said. ‘I'll check ahead.'

He ducked down as he reached the top of the hill, crawling the last few yards. After a moment he beckoned for them to follow. Guy and Brinkman crawled up to join him.

Mihali had produced a pair of binoculars from his backpack and handed them to Brinkman. But Guy didn't need them to see they were in trouble.

On the other side of the hill, the ground sloped sharply down before levelling out. The sea was perhaps half a mile away, across the rocky plain below. Guy could see the vague outline of the axe-shaped indentation in the ground. But from this angle, he would never have noticed it if he had not seen the aerial photographs.

That wasn't the problem. The photographs had also shown what looked like a fuel depot close by. It had not been clear from the photographs just how close the depot was. The huge tanks of petrol and diesel were a good distance away, but a set of narrow pipelines ran across the plain to a jetty. They were laid right along the edge of the indented ground, curving round it. There was a huge ship at the jetty, either taking on fuel or delivering it.

Surrounding the whole installation – pipeline, fuel tanks, and jetty – was a wire fence. It looked to be about ten feet high, maybe more. Guy didn't need the binoculars to see that there were several guards patrolling the fence. And it was between them and where they needed to go.

‘Looks like we'll be doing our archaeological investigations right under the nose of the Germans,' Brinkman said.

‘I can arrange a distraction for a while,' Mihali offered. ‘But you still need to get through that fence.'

‘Do you have spare weapons?' Guy asked. ‘I don't fancy going in there unarmed.'

‘For this sort of operation we'll want quite a bit of equipment,' Brinkman said.

‘I'll ask SOE to send us what we need,' Mihali said. ‘I'm due to report in tonight. We don't keep in close contact, because the Germans monitor the radio and if they pick us up they try to triangulate where we are. Not very healthy if they find out. But let's make a Christmas list and I'll ask Santa if he can deliver it all.'

*   *   *

To her surprise, Sarah had discovered from her father that J.D. Sumner still had the photographer's camera from the night the man was killed. Sumner was happy to send it over, and it arrived on one of the ferry flights from Canada.

Miss Manners made arrangements to deliver the camera directly to Blithe at RAF Medmenham. Sarah drove them down, and they waited in the corner of the room where Blithe and his colleagues worked while he supervised developing the film.

June brought them black coffee, apologising that she had to get back to work. ‘We're just getting pictures of the U-boat yards at Danzig. They used that new heavy bomber, the Lancaster, last night. We're all rather keen to see what sort of damage they inflicted.'

Blithe was back within an hour, clutching a handful of prints still wet with fluid. He laid the prints out one by one out on the table.

‘Most, as you can see, are just shots of people partying like there's no tomorrow. Which, of course, is always possible these days.'

He put down a shot of a man and a much younger woman holding wine glasses and laughing. It was an informal shot, catching them unawares.

‘I rather like this one,' Blithe said, raising his eyebrows.

‘He's my father,' Sarah told him. ‘And if we seem to be having fun, we didn't know the man who took these photographs would be dead within the hour.'

Blithe's smile faded. ‘I didn't realise that, I'm sorry.'

The next photograph was more posed – two couples, facing the camera, smiles fixed and practised.

‘Anyway,' Blithe went on, ‘as I said, most are just the sort of pictures you'd expect.'

He laid down the three photographs he'd kept until last next to each other in front of them.

‘And then, there are these.'

Sarah and Miss Manners stared in silence at the photographs.

‘Oh my God,' Sarah said quietly.

 

CHAPTER 23

‘Well, he certainly didn't look like that when we saw him,' Sergeant Green said.

The photos from the journalist's camera were spread out across the table in the conference room back at the Station Z offices. The three photographs that Blithe had held back till last were arranged together off to one side of the others.

Leo Davenport picked up one of the pictures, examining it closely. ‘And these were developed in the normal way?'

Miss Manners nodded. ‘Mr Blithe assures us that's exactly how they were taken.'

‘The film was still in the camera and no one's tampered with it,' Sarah said.

‘Curious,' Leo said.

‘That's one word for it,' Green agreed.

Leo put the photo back down with the others. Each of them showed a general view of the reception J.D. Sumner had held. At the edge of one of the photos, Sarah herself appeared – half in and half out of the shot.

The common factor was that each of the three pictures showed the Ubermensch. In one, he was half hidden behind several other people at the back of the room. In the second he was visible between a waiter and one of the guests. In the third shot, the Ubermensch was off to one side, but very much in the foreground.

And in all three pictures, it was clear that the man wasn't human.

The clothes the creature was wearing looked normal enough. But in place of hands and head, there was a web-like network of interconnected lines, as if these areas had been scribbled over by a small child.

‘Some sort of nervous system, do you think?' Miss Manners said.

‘Or the fungus stuff that seems to replace the internal structure of the body,' Davenport said.

‘But I don't understand why he looks like that here in the photos when we saw him as a normal human being,' Green said.

‘Maybe it's to do with the way film works,' Sarah suggested. ‘I don't really know much about it, but isn't it to do with light levels?'

‘It is,' Miss Manners said. ‘Perhaps the infected skin reflects light into the camera lens in a different way from other solid objects.'

‘Oh, that this too, too solid flesh would melt, thaw, and resolve itself into a dew,' Leo said quietly. ‘
Hamlet
,' he added for anyone who was interested. ‘There is another explanation. Well, probably several, but one that springs to mind.'

‘Oh?' Sarah prompted.

‘I assume your photographer used a flash gun?'

‘You think this is due to exposure to the flash?' Miss Manners asked.

‘Anyone close by would be blinded for a split second. The split second in which the Ubermensch was visible in this form. Well, as I say, it's just a possibility.'

‘The important thing is we have a way of recognising them,' Green pointed out. ‘We should tell the colonel.'

‘He's rather out of touch at the moment,' Miss Manners pointed out. ‘But it's certainly worth telling Elizabeth Archer. She may have some ideas.'

‘Hang about,' Green said. ‘She's got the body of one of these things in her collection.'

‘It's badly damaged, almost charcoal the way it was burned,' Leo said.

‘Even so, it might be worth taking its picture,' Green said. ‘See how it turns out. With and without a flashgun.'

‘Dr Wiles might have some ideas too,' Sarah said.

‘I'll phone Bletchley,' Miss Manners said.

‘Good idea,' Leo agreed. ‘Now if you'll excuse me, I have to arrange to send a telegram. A friend of mine got married a few days ago, and I need him to know that my invitation never turned up.'

‘Perhaps you weren't sent one,' Sarah said.

‘Oh I'm sure I wasn't. And I couldn't have gone anyway as it was in America.'

Green laughed. ‘You mean Cary Grant?' The actor's marriage to Barbara Hutton had made most of the papers.

‘I do indeed,' Leo said. ‘Seems only right and proper to send my congratulations to the happy couple.'

‘Hasn't Cary Grant become an American citizen now too?' Sarah asked.

‘He has. But with all due respect, my dear, I don't feel that is quite such a cause for congratulation.'

*   *   *

Dr Wiles was intrigued by Miss Manners' description of the pictures when she phoned him. She promised to send up a set of prints for Wiles to see.

‘Not really that clued up on photography,' Wiles confessed. ‘But Douglas dabbles a bit, I gather. He may have some thoughts. Send them up marked for my attention and Debbie can make sure they get to us.'

‘Her name is Eleanor,' Miss Manners pointed out.

‘Whose name?'

‘Your assistant.'

‘What, Eleanor? Well, of course it is. What are you talking about?'

‘I sometimes wonder,' Miss Manners muttered.

‘Actually, I had a note to contact you today anyway,' Wiles went on. There was a pause, and Miss Manners could hear the sound of papers being shuffled. ‘Yes, here it is. “Call them,” it says.'

‘Does it say what about?' she asked with enforced patience.

‘Oh, doesn't need to, I know. It's about Crete.'

Miss Manners leaned forward at her desk, telephone receiver pressed tight to her ear. ‘What about Crete?'

‘I know the colonel's interested in Crete, he asked me if we had any data about the island.'

‘And did you?'

‘Not that I haven't already passed on, which is mainly to do with UDT tracking. But that's because it isn't somewhere we were really watching. Well, I'm sure someone is, but
we
weren't, if you see what I mean. Anyway, I made arrangements for us to receive any unusual communications data from the area. The first batch came in yesterday. We're still analysing it, but recently there's been a lot of radio traffic that the Y Stations put down to interference or bad reception.'

‘UDT transmissions?' Miss Manners guessed.

‘Almost certainly,' Wiles confirmed. ‘Quite a lot of activity. We're going back through whatever we can find in the historical data to see when it started. Don't know yet, I'm afraid. It might have been going on for years, of course.'