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by-passed itand 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-estimateand 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 everythingparatroopers, airborne troops, crack mountain brigades, hordes of StukasI'm told they stripped the Italian front of dive-bombers for these operations. Anyway, they flung everything inthe lot. In a few weeks we'd lost over ten thousand troops and every island we'd ever recapturedexcept 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. . . ." "Butbut 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 olympus stylus verve digital camera can't stop them from getting across. They'll be there Saturday or Sundayand 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 offand all for sweet damn all. We've had two battleships wrecked, eight cruisers out of commissionfour 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 youfor 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 concernedexcept, 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 islandsand 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 destroyerssorry, 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