Kidnap in Crete by Rick Stroud

Author:Rick Stroud
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Bloomsbury Publishing
Published: 2014-08-05T16:00:00+00:00

See Notes to Chapter 14

15

The Waiting

In the afternoon Micky and Ilias Athanassakis arrived from Heraklion. They brought more black market food and two German uniforms. A resistance worker in the city, Demetrios Balahoutis, had a brother who owned a tailor’s where the Germans got their uniforms mended. The tailor had made up two suits from offcuts and old pieces of uniform lying around his workshop. Micky had also laid his hands on a military police traffic paddle, a circle of tin fastened to a handle, the disc was red on one side and green on the other. The police used it to wave down vehicles.

Under the critical eye of ex-gendarme Manolis Paterakis, Moss and Leigh Fermor tried on the uniforms. The larger of the two jackets had a corporal’s stripes on the sleeve: this one went to Leigh Fermor, the taller of the two men. Micky had found some military decorations and two small cloth cap badges. Leigh Fermor’s jacket had a small round swastika badge pinned just under the left-hand chest pocket. The crowning touch to their disguise was two leather belts with silvered buckles bearing the words ‘Gott Mit Uns’ set around an imperial crown. When the staff car was stopped and the two SOE men approached the windows, their buckles would be the most prominent things the driver and the general saw. For good measure the leather scabbards of their lethal British commando daggers were added to the belts, plus holsters for their Colt automatics.

The two men paraded in front of Micky and Manolis. Micky said that Moss looked like a typical disappointed German of 1944; Moss posed for a photograph and Leigh Fermor said that he looked like an Englishman dressed up as a German propping up the bar at the Berkley. Leigh Fermor was told to shave off his moustache; when he did so Moss found that his companion had a presence that was unnervingly close to the genuine article. They all agreed that, given the cover of night, the uniforms would pass muster, even if the sleeves were a bit short.

They took the uniforms off for Pavlos’s sister to sew on extra bits and pieces, including some campaign ribbons. Her work was interrupted by Pavlos storming up the ladder. A group of German soldiers, possibly a patrol, was heading towards the house. They all waited in the small, stuffy upper room to see what the soldiers wanted. Moss, Leigh Fermor and Paterakis sat on their beds, cocked their weapons and waited for developments. Micky and the others sat with them, unarmed.

The soldiers hammered on the door, shouting for it to be opened. This was followed by the creaking of the hinges as Pavlos opened it and asked what the soldiers wanted. Upstairs the abduct­ors kept their eyes and their guns trained on the entrance. Below them an argument took place, steel-shod boots tramped about on the stone floor as if the owners were looking for something. Then the door slammed, the sound of heavy footsteps followed by silence.

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