No Colours or Crest: The Secret Struggle for Europe by Kemp Peter

Author:Kemp, Peter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mystery Grove Publishing Co. LLC
Published: 2020-07-02T07:00:00+00:00

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1 Women and children were generally excluded from the Hakmarjë.

2 Kaplanë was captured by the Partisans at the end of the war and, after months of cruel imprisonment, executed.

3 ‘I am Albanian. I have no papers.’

4 It is reported that he has been executed by Enver Hoxha.

VIII

ON THE RUN

One morning a week later I was lying under the trees outside the tent I shared with Seymour, watching the dappled sunlight on the pine needles and happy to be feeling well again, when Roberts brought me a signal from Cairo which he had just deciphered. I read it with some satisfaction.

‘George!’ I called into the tent. ‘The Brigadier wants to see me right away. From the wording of this signal it looks as though I may be going to Kossovo.’

‘Good show, old boy! When will you leave?’

‘The signal says as soon as I’m fit enough to travel—that’s any time now. The Central Council have already left for Biza, so there’s nothing more for me to do here. I’ll have to leave Roberts and the wireless set with you because I’ve only got one mule; but I’ll come back for them as soon as the Brigadier lets me have some more.’

That evening Seymour and I buried two canisters of gold in a secret hide-out, which we marked carefully. We had been visited every day by a German reconnaissance plane, and although we had done our best to camouflage the camp we could not be sure that it was invisible from the air. Lying in a rough triangle between three main roads, the area was peculiarly vulnerable to any German drive; if it came we should have neither time nor transport to remove the gold. Our efforts, however, were in vain, as Seymour told me much later; the gold was found, not by the Germans but by the people of Grecë.

After lunch on 21st October I began my journey to the Brigadier’s headquarters at Biza with Stiljan and my Italian groom, a quiet young Florentine called Tomaso: he was an intelligent and reliable servant and a cheerful companion. I took my horse and mule with a minimum of personal kit for the three of us. On the way we stopped to have a drink with Myslim Peza and ask him for a guide to see me as far as the Tiranë-Elbasan road, the limit of Myslim’s territory. He gave me a guide with a message to some friends who lived in a village near the road.

I spent the first night at Haxhijas in the house of a poor peasant; the guest-room was used as a store for maize—also, it seemed, as a breeding-ground for a million fleas, whose attentions made sleep impossible. Stiljan and Tomaso, who had the sense to sleep outside, were undisturbed.

The following afternoon we reached the tiny hillside village which was the home of Myslim’s friends. These were three old men who shared a house but whose precise relationship to each other I could not determine. They gave us an enthusiastic welcome, plying us with raki and turning out a large room for our use.

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