Buch lesen: «The Final Cut»

PROLOGUE

Troödos Mountains, Cyprus – 1956

It was late on an afternoon in May, the sweetest of seasons in the Troödos, beyond the time when the mountains are muffled beneath a blanket of snow but before the days when they serve as an anvil for the Levantine sun. The spring air was filled with the heavy tang of resin and the sound of the breeze being shredded on the branches of great pines, like the noise of the sea being broken upon a pebbled shore. But this was many miles from the Mediterranean, almost as far as is possible to get from the sea on the small island of Cyprus.

These were good times, a season of abundance even in the mountains. For a few weeks in spring, the dust of crumbling rock chippings which passes for soil becomes a treasury of wild flowers – erupting bushes of purple-flowered sword lily, blood-dipped poppies, alyssum, the leaves and golden heads of which in ancient times were supposed to effect a cure for madness.

Yet nothing would cure the madness that was about to burst forth on the side of the mountain.

George, fifteen and almost three-quarters, prodded the donkey further up the mountain path, oblivious to the beauty. His mind had turned once again to breasts. It was a topic which seemed to demand most of his time nowadays, depriving him of sleep, causing him not to hear a word his mother said, making him blush whenever he looked at a woman, which he always did straight between her breasts. They had an energy source all their own which dragged his eyes towards them, like magnets, no matter how hard he tried to be polite. He never seemed to remember what their faces looked like, his eyes rarely strayed that far – he’d marry a toothless old hag one day. So long as she had breasts.

If he were to avoid insanity or, even worse, the monastery, somehow he would have to do it, he decided. Do IT. Before he was fifteen and three-quarters. In two weeks’ time.

He was also hungry…On the way up, he and his younger brother, Eurypides, thirteen and practically one half, had stopped to plunder honey from the hives owned by the old crone, Chlorides, who had mean eyes like a bird and horribly gnarled fingers – she always accused them of robbing her, whether they had or not, so a little larceny used up some of their extensive credit. Local justice. George had subdued the bees with the smoke from a cigarette he had brought along specifically for the purpose. He’d almost gagged – he hadn’t taken to cigarettes yet, but would, he promised himself. Soon. As soon as he had had IT. Then, maybe, he could get to sleep at nights.

Not far to go. The terraced ledges where a few wizened olive trees clung to the rock face were now far behind, they were already two kilometres above the village, less than another two to climb. The light had started to soften, it would be dark in a couple of hours and George wanted to be home by then.

He gave the donkey another fierce prod. The animal, beneath its burden of rough-hewn wooden saddle and bulging cloth panniers, was finding difficulty in negotiating the boulder-strewn trail and cared nothing for such encouragement. The beast expressed its objection in the traditional manner.

‘Not over my school uniform, dog meat!’ Eurypides sprang back in alarm, too late, and cursed. There was a beating if he did not attend school in uniform. Even in a poor mountain village they had standards.

And they had guns.

Like the two Sten guns wrapped in sacking at the bottom of one of the panniers which they were delivering, along with the rest of the supplies, to their older brother. George envied his older brother, hiding out with five other EOKA fighters in a mountain lair.

EOKA. Ethniki Organosis Kyprion Agoniston – the National Organization of Cypriot Fighters – who for a year had been trying to blast open the closed colonial minds of their British rulers and force them to grant the island independence. They were terrorists to some, liberation fighters to others. To George, great patriots. With every part of him that was not concerned with sex he wanted to join them, to fight the enemies of his country. But the High Command was emphatic; no one under the age of eighteen could take up arms. He would have lied, but there was no point, not in a village where everyone knew even the night of his conception, just before Christmas 1939. The war against the Germans was only a few months old and his father’s brother, also George, had volunteered for the Cyprus Regiment of the British Army. Like many young Cypriots, he had wanted to join the fight for freedom in Europe, which, once won, would surely bring their own release. Or so they had thought. His uncle’s farewell celebration had been a long night of feasting and loving, and he had been conceived.

Uncle George never came back.

The younger George had much to live up to. He idolized the uncle he had never known, but he was only fifteen and almost three-quarters and, instead of marching in heroic footsteps, was reduced to delivering messages and supplies.

‘Did you really do it with Vasso? Seriously, George.’

‘Course, stupid. Several times!’ George lied.

‘What was it like?’

‘Like peponia, soft melons of flesh,’ George exclaimed, gyrating his hands in demonstration. He wanted to expand but couldn’t; Vasso had taken him no further than the buttons of her blouse, where he had found not the soft fruits he had anticipated but small, hard breasts with nipples like plum stones.

Eurypides giggled but didn’t believe. ‘You didn’t, did you?’ he accused. George felt his carefully constructed edifice wobbling beneath him.

‘Did.’

‘Didn’t.’

‘Psefti.’

‘Malaka!’

Eurypides threw a stone and George jumped, stumbling on a loose rock and falling flat on his rump, fragments of his dream scattered around him. Eurypides’ squeals of laughter, by turns childishly high pitched and pubescent gruff, filled the valley and cascaded like acid over his brother’s pride. George felt humiliated, he needed something to restore his flagging esteem. Suddenly, he knew exactly how.

George loosened the string neck of one of the panniers and reached deep inside, beneath the oranges and side of smoked pork, until his fingers grasped a cylindrical parcel of sacking. Carefully, he withdrew it, then a second, slightly smaller, bundle. In the shadow of a large boulder, he lay both on the carpet of soft pine needles, gently removed the wrappings, and Eurypides gasped. It was his first trip on the supply run, he hadn’t been told what they were carrying. Staring up at him from the sacking was the dull grey metal of a Sten gun, modified with a folding butt to make it more compact for smuggling. Alongside it were three ammunition mags.

George was delighted with the effect. Within a few seconds, as his older brother had taught him the week before, he had prepared the Sten, a lightweight machine gun, swinging and locking into position the skeletal metal butt, engaging one of the magazines. He fed the first bullet into the chamber. It was ready.

‘Didn’t know I could use one of these, did you?’ He felt much better, authority re-established. He wedged the gun in the crook of his elbow and adopted a fighting pose, raking the valley with a burst of pretend-fire, doing to death a thousand different enemies. Then he turned on the donkey, despatching it with a volley of whistled sound effects. The beast, unaware of its fate, continued to rip at a clump of tough grass.

‘Let me, George. My turn,’ his brother pleaded.

George, the Commander, shook his head.

‘Or I’ll tell everyone about Vasso,’ Eurypides bargained.

George spat. He liked his little brother who, although only thirteen and practically one half, could already run faster and belch more loudly than almost anyone in the village. Eurypides was also craftier than most of his age, and more than capable of a little blackmail. George had no idea precisely what Eurypides was planning to tell everyone about him and Vasso, but in his fragile emotional state any morsel was already too much. He handed over the weapon.

As Eurypides’ hand closed around the rubberized grip and his finger stretched for the trigger, the gun barked, five times, before the horrified boy let it fall to the floor.

‘The safety!’ George yelped, too late. He’d forgotten. The donkey gave a violent snort of disgust and cantered twenty yards along the path in search of less disturbed grazing.

The main advantages of the 9-mm Sten gun are that it is light and capable of reasonably rapid fire; it is neither particularly powerful nor considered very accurate. And its blow-back action is noisy. In the crystal air of the Troödos, where the folds of the mountains spread away from Mount Chionistra into mist-filled distances, sound carries like a petrel on the wing. It was scarcely surprising that the British army patrol heard the bark of the Sten gun; what was more remarkable was the fact that the patrol had been able to approach so closely without George or Eurypides being aware of their presence.

There were shouts from two sides. George sprang to retrieve the donkey but already it was too late. A hundred yards beneath them, and closing, was a soldier in khaki and a Highland bonnet. He was waving a .303 in their direction.

Eurypides was already running; George delayed only to sweep up the Sten and two remaining magazines. They ran up the mountain to where the trees grew more dense, brambles snatching at their legs, the pumping of their hearts and rasping breath drowning any sound of pursuit until they could run no further. They slumped across a rock, wild eyes telling each other of their fear, their lungs burning.

Eurypides was first to recover. ‘Mum’ll kill us for losing the donkey,’ he gasped.

They ran a little more, until they stumbled into a shallow depression in the ground which was well hidden by boulders, and there they decided to hide. They lay face down in the centre of the rocky bowl, an arm across each other, listening.

‘What’ll they do if they catch us, George? Whip us?’ Eurypides had heard dream-churning tales of how the British thrashed boys they believed were helping EOKA, a soldier clinging to each limb and a fifth supplying the whipping with a thin, ripping rod of bamboo. It was like no punishment they received at school, one you could get up and walk away from. With the Tommies, you were fortunate to be able to crawl.

‘They’ll torture us to find out where we’re taking the guns, where the men are hiding,’ George whispered through dried lips. They both knew what that meant. An EOKA hide had been uncovered near a neighbouring village just before the winter snows had arrived. Eight men were cut down in the attack. The ninth, and sole survivor, not yet twenty, had been hanged at Nicosia Gaol the previous week.

They both thought of their elder brother.

‘Can’t let ourselves be captured, George. Mustn’t tell.’ Eurypides was calm and to the point. He had always been less excitable than George, the brains of the family, the one with prospects. There was even talk of his staying at school beyond the summer, going off to the Pankyprion Gymnasium in the capital and later becoming a teacher, even a civil servant in the colonial administration. If there were still to be a colonial administration.

They lay as silently as possible, ignoring the ants and flies, trying to melt into the hot stone. It was twelve minutes before they heard the voices.

‘They disappeared beyond those rocks over there, Corporal. Havnae seen hide nor hair o’ them since.’

George struggled to control the fear which had clamped its jaws around his bladder. He felt disgusted, afraid he was going to foul himself. Eurypides was looking at him with questioning eyes.

From the noises beyond the rocks they reckoned that another two, possibly three, had joined the original soldier and corporal, who were standing some thirty yards away.

‘Kids you say, MacPherson?’

‘Two o’ them. One still in school uniform, Corporal, short troosers an’ all. Cannae harm us.’

‘Judging by the supplies we found on the mule they were intending to do someone a considerable amount o’ harm. Guns, detonators. They even had grenades made up from bits of piping. We need those kids, MacPherson. Badly.’

‘Wee bastards’ll probably already huv vanished, Corporal.’ A scuffling of boots. ‘I’ll hae a look.’

The boots were approaching now, crunching over the thick mat of pine debris. Eurypides bit deep into the soft tissue of his lip. He reached for George’s hand, trying to draw strength, and, as their ice-cold fingers entwined, so George started to grow, finding courage for them both. He was the older, this was his responsibility. His duty. And, he knew, his fault. He had to do something. He pinched his brother’s cheek.

‘When we get back, I’ll show you how to use my razor,’ he said, smiling. ‘Then we’ll go see Vasso, both of us together. Eh?’

He slithered to the top of the rock bowl, kept his head low, pointed the Sten gun over the edge and closed his eyes. Then he fired until the magazine was empty.

George had never been aware of such a silence. It was a silence inside when, for a moment, the heart stops and the blood no longer pulses through the veins. No bird sang, suddenly no breeze, no whispering of the pines, no more sound of approaching footsteps. Nothing, until the corporal, voice a tone deeper, spoke.

‘My God. Now we’ll need the bloody officer.’

The officer in question was Francis Ewan Urquhart. Second Lieutenant. Age twenty-two. Engaged on National Service following his university deferment, he personified the triumph of education over experience and, in the parlance of the officers’ mess, he was not having a good war. Indeed, in the few months he’d been stationed in Cyprus, he’d barely had any war at all. He craved action, all too aware of his callow youth, desperate for the chance to prove himself, yet he had found only frustration. His commander had proved to be a man of chronic constipation, his caution denying the company any chance to show its colours. The EOKA terrorists had been bombing, butchering and even burning alive so-called traitors, setting them in flames to run down the streets of their village as a sign to others, yet Urquhart’s company had broken more sweat digging latrines than hauling terrorists from their foxholes. But that was last week. This week, the company commander was on leave, Urquhart was in charge, the tactics had been changed and his men had walked four hours up the mountain that afternoon to avoid detection. And the surprise seemed to have worked.

At the first crackle of gunfire, a sense of opportunity had filled his veins. He had been waiting two miles down the valley in his Austin Champ and it took him less than fifteen minutes to arrive on the scene, covering the last few hundred yards on foot with a spring in his step.

‘Report, Corporal Ross.’

The flies were already beginning to gather around the bloodied body of MacPherson.

‘Two boys and a donkey? You can’t be serious,’ Urquhart demanded incredulously.

‘The bullet didnae seem to unnerstand it was being fired by a bairn. Sir.’

The two, Urquhart and Ross, were born to collide, one brought into the world in a Clydeside tenement and the other by Highland patriarchs. Ross had been burying comrades from the Normandy beaches while Urquhart was still having his tie adjusted by his nanny.

A year earlier, Urquhart had been the officious little subaltern who had busted Ross from sergeant back down to private after a month’s liquor allowance had disappeared from the officers’ mess at Tell-el-Kebir and Urquhart had been instructed to round up suitable suspects. Ross had only just been given back the second stripe, still making up the lost ground. And lost pay.

Urquhart knew he had to watch his back, but for now he ignored the other’s insolence; he had a more important battle to fight.

The children had stumbled into a remarkably effective natural redoubt. Some twenty feet across, the scraping in the mountainside was backed by a picket line of boulders that effectively denied a clear line of either sight or fire from above, while the ground ran gently away on the valley side, making it difficult to attack except by means of a frontal and uphill assault, a tactic that had already been shown to be mortally flawed. Clumps of bushes hugged the perimeter providing still further cover.

‘Suggestions, Corporal Ross?’ Urquhart slapped the officer’s Browning at his belt.

The corporal sucked a little finger as though trying to remove a splinter. ‘We could surrender straight away, that’d be quickest. Or blow the wee bastards into eternity, if that’s what you want, Lieutenant. One grenade should do the job.’

‘We need them alive. Find out where they were headed with those arms.’

‘They’re weans. Be famished by breakfast time, come oot wavin’ a white flag an’ a fork.’

‘Now, we need them now, Corporal. By breakfast time it will be all too late.’

They both understood the urgency. EOKA supply drops were made at specified times; any more than six hours overdue and the hide was evacuated. They needed short cuts; it made early capture essential and interrogation techniques sometimes short on patience.

‘In life, Ross, timing is everything.’

‘In death an’ all,’ the Clydesider responded, indicating MacPherson.

‘What the hell’s your problem, Corporal?’

‘To be honest, Mr Urquhart, I dinnae hae much stomach for the killing of weans.’ MacPherson had a son not much younger than the boys hiding in the rocks. ‘I’ll do it, if I huv tae. If ye order me. But I’ll tak nae joy fae it. You’re welcome tae any medal.’

‘I’ll remember to include your little homily when I write to MacPherson’s parents. I’m sure they’ll be touched.’

The tangerine sun was chasing through the sky, splashing a glow of misleading warmth across the scene. Delay would bring darkness and failure for Urquhart and he was a young man as intolerant of failure in himself as he was in others. He took a Sten from the shoulder of one of his men and, planting his feet firmly in the forest floor, unleashed a fusillade of bullets against the amphitheatre of boulders at the back of the bowl. A second magazine followed, dust and sparks spitting from the orange-blonde rocks; the noise was awesome.

‘You boys,’ he shouted. ‘You cannot escape. Come out, I promise no one will get hurt.’

There was silence. He directed two other members of the section to empty their magazines against the rocks, and suddenly there was a youthful cry of pain. A spent bullet had ricocheted and caught one of the lads a glancing blow. No damage, but surprise and distress.

‘Can you speak English? Come out now, before anyone gets hurt.’

Silence.

‘Damn them! Do they want to die?’ Urquhart beat his palms with frustration. But Ross was on his knees, fiddling with a Mills grenade.

‘What on earth…?’ Urquhart demanded, but could not avoid taking an involuntary pace backwards.

The corporal had bent the pin so that it could not fall out, then with meticulous care and using the stock of a Sten gun for torque he proceeded to unscrew the top of the grenade, lifting it away from the dull metal body complete with its detonator. The powdered explosive poured out easily into a little pile on the rocks beside his boot. He now reassembled the harmless bomb, and handed it to Urquhart.

‘If this doesnae scare those rabbits out of their hole, nothing will.’

Urquhart nodded in understanding. ‘This is your last chance,’ he shouted to the rocks. ‘Come out or we’ll use grenades.’

‘Eleftheria i Thanatos!’ came the reply.

‘The EOKA battle cry. Freedom or Death!’ Ross explained.

‘They’re only children!’ Urquhart snapped in exasperation.

‘Brave wee buggers.’

Angrily, Urquhart wrenched the pin from the grenade, letting the noise of the spring-loaded firing pin drift out across the rocks. Then he threw the grenade into the bowl.

Less than two seconds later it came hurtling out again. The reaction was automatic, the instinct for self-preservation overriding. Urquhart threw himself to the ground, burying his head amongst the pine needles and cones, trying to count the seconds. There came a muffled pop from the detonator, but nothing more. No blast; no ripping metal or torn flesh. Eventually he looked up to find the figure of Ross towering above him, framed in menacing silhouette against the evening sky.

‘Let me help you tae yer feet. Sir.’ Derision filled every syllable.

Urquhart waved away the proffered hand and scrambled up, meticulously thrashing the dust from his khaki uniform to hide his humiliation. He knew that every Jock in the section was mocking and by morning the tale would have filled all four corners of the officers’ mess. Ross had exacted his revenge.

A rage grew within Urquhart. Not a blind rage that blurs judgement but a wrath that burnt and whose light brought appalling clarity.

‘Fetch two jerry cans of petrol from the Champ,’ he instructed.

A soldier went scurrying.

‘What are you intending to do, Mr Urquhart?’ Ross asked, the triumph evaporated from his voice.

‘We need information or examples. Those terrorists can provide either.’

Ross noted the change in the boys’ status. ‘Examples? Of what?’

Urquhart met the other man’s gaze; he saw fear. He had regained the advantage. Then the jerry cans arrived.

‘Corporal, I want you to get around behind them. Use the cover of those rocks. Then empty the petrol into their hide.’

‘And then what?’

‘That will depend upon them.’

‘They’re nothin’ but bairns…’

‘Tell that to MacPherson. This is a war, not a tea party. So they can come out in one piece or with their tail feathers scorched. Their choice.’

‘You wouldna burn them out.’

‘I’ll give them far more chance than EOKA would.’ They knew the bloody truth of that, had both seen the blackened carcasses, hands stretched out like claws in charred agony, fathers and sons often dragged out of church or from the desperate clutches of their families, burnt, butchered. As examples. ‘And the message will get round, serve as a warning. Make it easier for us next time.’

‘But, Sir…

Urquhart cut him short, handed him a jerry can. ‘We’ll give you covering fire.’

Ross took one step back, shaking his head. ‘Ah’ll no’ burn them oot. I dinna fight that way. Against bairns.’

There was an audible stirring of support from the section’s other members. Ross was able, experienced, some of the men owed their lives to that.

‘Corporal, I am giving you a direct order. To disobey is a court-martial offence.’

‘I hae lads of my own.’

‘And if you don’t follow my orders I’ll make sure you’re locked up so long they will be grown men by the time you next set eyes on them.’

Agony had carved deep furrows across the corporal’s expression, but still he refused the jerry can. ‘Rather that, than never being able to look my boys in the eye again.’

‘This is not me ordering you, Ross, it’s your country.’

‘You do it then. If you hae the stomach fer it.’

The challenge had been struck. Urquhart looked around the others, five men in all, saw they had sided with Ross. He knew he couldn’t court-martial the entire section, it would reduce him to a laughing stock. Ross was right; if it were to be done, he would have to do it himself.

‘Give me covering fire when I’m round behind them.’ He eyed the corporal. ‘No, not you Ross. You’re under arrest.’

And he had gone. Ducking low, pacing rapidly through the trees, a can in each hand, until he was well behind the hide. He signalled and one then another of the troops opened up, sending barrages of sound across the scene. Quickly and as quietly as he was able, Urquhart edged up to one of the taller boulders, almost the height of a man which stood directly behind where the boys were hiding. The cap was off one can, he stretched and spilled all four and a half gallons of stinking fuel down the rock face and into the bowl. The next four and a half gallons followed immediately. Then he retreated.