The first fingers of dawn paint a magnificent sky, thought Corporal Wilhelm von Klerkt as he stood at attention at his post outside the commandant's building. He would have rubbed his hands together to increase circulation if he had not heard the sound of people stirring inside the cabin. He heard his counterpart on the other side of the doorframe breathe a heavy sigh. Reinhard must be in the same boat I am in. Only a hour to go. Maybe tonight we can go to town and find some local peasant girls to amuse us. Headlights stopped at the gate to the compound, but only momentarily as its guard got a look at the passenger in the backseat. The good corporal stood a little straighter, squaring his shoulders a tad more. When the Gestapo arrived, everything was noticed and noted in a black notebook. His best bet was to be so correct as to be invisible.
The motorcar stopped directly in front of the steps to the building. A very military adjunct got out of the front passenger seat and snapped open the back door of the black sedan. A tall man wearing the dreaded SS logo on his hat and collar smartly strode up the steps. The door miraculously opened just as he reached it, and he stepped inside without so much as a glance at the guards. If either men were relieved, neither showed it.
"Heil Hitler!" The camp commandant, Colonel Peter Muller saluted the visitor.
"Heil Hitler!" The Gestapo colonel turned and dismissed his adjunct with a curt nod. He held up his hand to interrupt the commandant's offer of coffee and glanced menacingly at the orderly bearing a breakfast-laden tray.
Muller sat down at the table near the fireplace and motioned to his aide to serve him. Helping himself to two teaspoons of sugar, he cordially said, "That will be all, Neil," and watched as the door shut behind the soldier. Turning his attention to his guest, he smiled. "You always did get up on the wrong side of the bed, Hermann, even during school holidays."
"Watch yourself, brother. Times are changing. I wonder if the career soldier and his gentlemanly ways will have a place in the Third Reich."
"Gentleman or not, I know my duty. What brings you all the way to my little valley? Your telegram was quite cryptic."
"The Fuhrer himself has developed an interest in your 'little valley'. It seems to have strategic value." The Gestapo man's blue eyes almost glistened. "It has come to his attention that a road built across these mountains could expedite the movement of troops on their way to Turkey. Such a route would allow them to `protect' the soft underbelly of our great Soviet ally."
"Indeed. I am lucky to be stationed here then. It could lead to a nice promotion."
"Luck had nothing to do with it, you idiot. I have been pulling strings for months. Why do you think you have been able to easily get equipment and lumber for the bridge across the first high pass?" Hermann laughed at his brother's expression. "Typical German efficiency? Man, there's a war on!" He shook his head. "Nothing happens as planned. Delays are everywhere, everywhere but here!! I have seen to that." He reveled at the astonishment on his brother's face. "Why Mother always thought of you as her golden boy is beyond me!"
Recovering from the news of his brother's unseen influence in his career, Peter restated his earlier question. "What brings you all the way from Germany to see me?"
The younger man strode over to the fire. Warming his hands and to his topic, he made his point briefly and succinctly. "We have to do everything we can to finish ahead of schedule. I am here to organize the conscription of every abled-bodied peasant in these mountains to see that it happens. To that end, I am also here to crush the resistance movement."
"There is no `Resistance Movement' here, just a bunch of thieving Greek peddlers, stealing anything they can for the Athenian black market." The older man waved an unconcerned hand. "Don't waste your time."
Hermann snatched his brother's hand and gripped it tight. "It exists, it causes trouble, and it will be destroyed. I have it all planned out. Listen carefully."
Mercedes Tasso could not tell if the dryness of her throat and the pounding at her temples was due to the fatigue of the watch or the fear that enveloped her. From her high post among the boulders and crevices of the coastal bluff, she trained her stolen German high precision binoculars on the landscape below. Looking towards the sea, she watched that cursed paved road that ran besides it, the glimmer of its surface stretched out below her like a winding ribbon of death on the door of the bereaved. Soon a far-off glimpse of metal would signal the approach of a single jeep, maneuvering the coastal highway switchbacks.
Then, for the next ten minutes or so, she would then track the vehicle as it darted in and out of her view, drawing closer and closer until it cleared the coastal landscape. It would be when it turned onto the first of the rocky, washboard grades that led to her ancestral village, that she would be able to confirm the passengers' identities.
From the panorama that her lookout provided her, she could have easily verified that, slightly to the northeast, down below her, at the edge of a stand of trees next to the grade, stood a dilapidated hay wagon. Any motorized passer-by, official or otherwise, would give no more than a second's thought to the hapless peasant who had obviously abandoned his struggle to get a wagon up and over the steep pass.
She didn't need to look. Even at this distance, she could feel the dreadful tension of her half-hidden compatriots camouflaged in the brush. They were watching this cliff for the signal, a quick glint of mirror, a three count interval, a second flash. They would pull the wagon across the road, then take their ambush positions, the two with hand grenades hiding under the hay. The jeep would be stopped, its passengers killed, and the briefcase that the Gestapo officer carried would be theirs. Someone would hide the jeep and dispose of the bodies, someone else would take the briefcase to the British intelligence officer who tried to provide direction to a chaotic underground effort. The rest would melt into the mountains.
While she dared not turn her attention from the highway, she knew that the boy perched besides her on the boulder was nervously fingering the small Revlon compact. She could smell its powder, hear him click it open then shut, open then shut, open, shut. As much as that irritated her, she dismissed it from her mind and renewed her focus on the task at hand. After flashing the signal, the two of them had the time it would take the jeep to reach the wagon to scramble down to the highway and take a position to cut off any retreat. After months of smuggling contraband and people in and out of the country, it was hardly the some old, same old.
"Mercy, it's a quarter `til," the dark-headed teen-ager once again marked the time quietly. Not expecting a response, he stopped the incessant clicking, and heaved a great sigh. Fifteen, maybe thirty more minutes. Teo wondered if this, possibly his last hour on earth, could have been any more different than what that Coney Island fortune teller had predicted one summer: "A charmed passing, to be sure, on your cot as an old man, your grandchildren weeping in the next room."
His best friend at school, the irrepressible Jack, had alleged that she was really a hooker and that the tarot reading was just a front. But then, Jack was a Baptist who suspected that every non-Baptist woman was some kind of whore. Once Teo had thought that the all-American redheaded boy knew everything. Getting trapped in Greece during the Axis invasion had changed all that. Whatever Jack knew was of no use to him now.
War changed everything, especially what was really important, like the way a big ol' rock feels as you sit on it, the heat of it surrounding you, the smell, the colors of its different grains. With a pebble, he scraped up some dirt and rock from the radiating surface under him. Putting the compact in his teeth, he scooped the dirt into his palm. Almost reverently he sifted and stirred it, then raised his hand to eye level and regarded it solemnly.
A wisp of breeze caught the dust and peppered his face. He coughed. To his horror the compact slipped out of his mouth and rolled down his shirt, slid off his trousers, bounced twice off the boulder, then broke into pieces when it hit the rocky hillside as it fell.
Panicking, he slid down off the rock to the trail beside it, cursing.
"Teo! Stop! Teo! Teo!" Mercedes spared him an evil look. "What's the matter?" Her strong Brooklyn accent flavored her Greek in a way that once amused the local families at best and, at the usual worst, had been just one more attribute to deride. The adolescent whirled around and stared at her in disbelief. In his panic he reverted to the dangerous, forbidden English.
"I didn't mean to, it just slipped," the boy half-started to cry. "Maybe some pieces flew off when it bounced off the boulder." Watching him lower himself down the cliff face, she suddenly realized what he meant. Mercedes felt her heart freeze mid-beat. Then she pushed her disbelief aside and quickly retrained her field glasses on the road. Regardless of anything else, she had to spot that jeep. Nothing could be implemented without the basic identification. Without that, the planning of a fortnight would unravel.
"Jesus, Mary and Joseph! See if you can find just a small piece, it won't take much to catch the light!" She fought to keep down her panic in her voice and to reign in the unleashing of her imagination. Having been on the run for months, she knew where her unchecked thoughts could go. Amazingly, that rising spectre of capture by the Nazi bastards served to startle her mind into clarity.
Now, Tasso, she demanded of herself, concentrate! All is not lost, yet. We'll improvise if we lost the mirror. Teo can go warn them right now. The fellas should still have enough time to set the wagon. Too bad for anyone else that comes along. They want us to get that briefcase, at any cost.
Yet even as Mercedes made her plans, she knew she was hoping against hope. The underground fighters were good people, but fiercely independent. She knew they would vanish if a British-ordered plan strayed one iota from the original. I will have to take the Nazis down myself, she decided, and get those documents. If only the jeep was stopped... Suddenly the answer played itself out in her mind. Or slowed down! She would ambush it while it was turning off the highway onto the grade. There was that high embankment with a good view of the road they had discovered when setting up the trap scenario.
Energized, her mind raced. If I can get there in time, I can get off a couple of shots, take out the driver and a tire. That will leave the Gestapo man and the guard with no way to escape. After that, I will-- do something, whatever it takes to get those documents. Or die trying.
"It's no good, I can't find anything!" the teen-age boy's voice carried up from below her. Resignedly, Mercedes put down the field glasses, slid down to the path, and watched him climb back up to her.
"Change of plans. Go tell the guys to pull the wagon right now and hold their positions. They'll just have to stop everything on the road." Gathering up her gear, and checking her weapon, she felt sick with fear, "Once they are set, high-tail it down the road to the turnoff. Hide when you hear the jeep coming. After it passes, come on. I'll be watching for you." She waved towards the road. "We can still cut off any retreat. Hurry, we're cutting it close!"
The boy hesitated. Mercedes knew what he was thinking. "If they decide to scram, go get your father into the caves like we talked about. Knock him unconscious and drag him there if you have to."
"But what about--"
A quick check of her Timex, and Mercedes had no more time for discussion. "That jeep has turned onto the grade at five to ten after for the last two weeks. Nazi precision being what it is, today should not be any different. Now go!" Teo fled down the trail. She wondered if she would ever see him again. With a fleeting thought of home, she set off to set her ambush. New York had proven to have its dangers, but she realized now that those were mostly self-inflicted. This was jumping into the abyss.
Mercedes made her way as quickly as the rough terrain allowed, cursing the global and personal events that was directing her to a small ridge overlooking the Aegean Sea. Forced by family to return to the Old Country, she and Teo had been trapped here by the invasion of the Axis powers. At first, she had felt them rather out of harm's way, living in a northeastern mountain village, nowhere near the fighting. However, the Allies had proven ill equipped to fight the Nazi war machine. Soon the Italian and German armies began to turn their conquested Greece territory into a Nazi occupation zone.
Their sweeps through the countryside, conscripting peasants into slave labor camps, to build road and bridges, forced her and the boy into hiding. Recruited by the small local resistance movement for their English-speaking abilities, they were soon smuggling out downed Allied airmen. so far she and Teo had led a dozen or so to rendezvous points up and down the coast where small fishing boats took them towards Turkey and safety. Now, as the war progressed, British spies were being smuggled in to gather intelligence and coordinate the efforts of the Resistance. Some bought supplies, others weapons, all brought money, cigarettes, gum, and chocolate. After all, they were young, most barely out of their teens, just like her. If she hadn't been so damn scared, it might even had been fun.
Mercedes reached the highway and got into position. She checked her watch. It showed the time to be straight up ten o'clock. It had taken twelve minutes to get here: at least that part of the plan had been on target. Watching the road she tried to listen for the sound of a distant engine laboring up a hill. The time crawled. "I have got to stop looking at my watch every 20 seconds", she said outloud, "or I will get too wound up to shot straight." She giggled at her own joke and relaxed. Okay, Tasso, show these peasants what a Village--."
Suddenly, out of the corner of her eye, she caught movement on the highway, coming from the other direction. She glanced down, then did a double take. A woman, wearing some kind of black leather swimsuit with what looked to be a sword on her back, was striding along confidently in the middle of the road. Mercedes gasped and stared. She quickly recovered as she heard the long-awaited jeep, then saw it coming into view. The shimmering heat from the highway skewed the sight of the vehicle and its red black spider flags. These two opposing forces were about to meet, head on.