The Angry Hills - Leon Uris [75]
Each morning dead men were pulled from the tank.
From one of the two small windows Mike could look down into the center courtyard of Averof. Twenty-four hours a day horrible torture sessions went on. Each dawn a firing squad eliminated another batch of “saboteurs”—men who stood shivering against the gray stone wall. Each dawn the guard Hans would select some “saboteur” from Mike’s tank for execution. He would line up all the prisoners in the corridor and taunt them as he limped up and down the line, an insane smirk on his face.
On the fourth morning, Elpis was dragged to the stone wall in the courtyard. Her screams were feeble but they still reached her husband’s ears. The girl was beyond recognition. They strapped her to a post. And as the firing squad lined up, Hans, in the corridor outside the cell, screamed taunts at Yichiel. He boasted that he had been one of the fifty guards who had raped her the night before.
Ben and Mike kept a suicide watch over the bereaved Palestinian.
Four days passed. Michael Morrison was no longer afraid. A seething, boiling anger inside him would not let him be still. But each day brought him closer to the moment when he must come face to face with Konrad Heilser. His mind worked desperately on a plan to avoid the meeting. Perhaps he would feign sickness—perhaps he would try to make a break enroute to Gestapo headquarters—perhaps he would take a crack at Hans and be thrown into solitary...
A thousand ideas passed through his mind. All of them except one seemed hopeless.
The one slim hope was Ben’s connection with the outside world—a Greek guard named Axiotis. He was one of the very few in Averof inherited by the Germans. The ancient jailer ran a profitable business of smuggling out messages and smuggling in bread, wine and tobacco. Hans was aware of it, but allowed it to continue as long as he received a portion of Axiotis’ take.
Ben knew a dozen women on the outside who kept him and Mike and Yichiel in food and tobacco. Mike kept close watch, waiting for Axiotis to pull a doublecross, but the old jailer delivered every time Ben sent him on a mission.
But whom could Mike contact? He did not know where to reach Lisa, and there was the remote possibility that Lisa had been mixed up in his capture. He tried to drive the thought from his mind but it persisted.
Contact Chesney? No. Mike was certain that Chesney had played out a game to lull him into security and staged the capture with such adroitness as to remove any taint of suspicion from himself. After all, Antonis had not showed the least concern. He had acted almost as if he expected to be picked up by the patrol boat. And where was Antonis now? All new prisoners came through Hans’ cell block, and he had not seen Antonis. Most likely Antonis was preparing another batch of British soldiers for capture.
Ben insisted on taking the blame, certain that in his drunkenness the night before sailing he had spilled to someone. But Mike could not be sure of that.
Contact Dr. Thackery? He couldn’t. Lisa had said that Thackery had been forced into hiding. Even so, the American Archaeological Society was certain to be under the scrutiny of the Gestapo.
One thread remained. It was as fragile as the rest, but he’d have to try it.
Each day brought him closer to Konrad Heilser. Ben looked forward to it for it meant transfer to the P.O.W. side of Averof.
On the fifth day Yichiel was removed from the cell. The sixth day passed.
“Have you ever been across the sea to Ireland?”
Ben Masterton had resorted to singing Irish ballads.
“Quiet in there!”
“When maybe at the closin’ of the day...”
“Schweinhund!”
“You can sit and watch the sun come over Claddock...”
“I’ll kill you if you don’t quiet down!”
“Trouble with Hans, Jay, he’s got no soul for culture... And watch the barefoot gosels at their play.”
Hans stopped his raving suddenly. Ben’s voice continued bellowing....
“If there’s ever to be a life hereafter, and faith, now, sure I know there’s going to be...”
At the end of the corridor,