Now, like Friar Bacon's Brazen Head, I've spoken,

see I'm busy?" he asked surlily. He stopped short at the sight of the German and scowled again, irritably. "And what does this haifling want?" "Our passes and letters of authority from Herr General. They're down below." Andrea disappeared, grumbling deep in his throat. A rope was thrown ashore, the stern pulled in against the sluggish current and the papers passed over. The papersa set different from those to be used if emergency arose in Navaroneproved to be satisfactory, eminently so. Mallory would have been surprised had they been anything else. The preparation of these, even down to the photostatic facsimile of General Graebel's signature, was all in the day's work for Jensen's bureau in Cairo. The soldier folded the papers, handed them back with a muttered word of thanks. He was only a kid, Mallory could see nowif he was more than nineteen, his looks belied him. A pleasant, open-faced kidof a different stamp altogether from the young fanatics of the S.S. Panzer Divisionand far too thin. Mallory's chief reaction was one of relief: he would have hated to have to kill a boy like this. But he had to find out all he could. He signalled to Stevens to hand him up the almost empty crate of Moselle. Jensen, he mused, had been very thorough indeed: the man had literally thought of everything. . . . Mallory gestured lazily in the direction of the old watch-tower. "How many of you are up there?" he asked. The boy was instantly suspicious. His face had tightened up, stified in hostile surmise. "Why do you want to know?" he asked stiffly. Mallory groaned, lifted his hands in despair, turned sadly to Andrea. "You see what it is to be one of them?" he asked in mournful complaint. "Trust nobody. Think everyone is as twisted as. . . ." He broke off hurriedly, turned to the soldier again. "It's just that we don't want to have the same trouble every time we come in here," he explained. "We'll be back in Samos in a couple of days, and we've still another case of Moselle to work through. General Graebel keeps hisahspecial envoys well supplied. . . . It must be thirsty work up there in the sun. Come on, now, a bottle each. How many bottles?" The reassuring mention that they would be back again, the equally reassuring mention of Graebel's name, plus, probably, the attraction of the offer and his comrades' reaction if he told them he had refused it, tipped the pawn digital camera with no software balance, overcame scruples and suspicions. "There are only three of us," he said grudgingly. "Three it is," Mallory said cheerfully. "We'll bring you some Hock next time we return." He tilted his own bottle. "Prosit!" he said, an islander proud of airing his German, and then, more proudly still, "Auf Wiedersehen!" The boy murmured something in return. He stood hesitating for a moment, slightly shame-faced, then wheeled abruptly, walked off slowly along the river bank, clutching his bottles of Moselle. "So!" Mallory said thoughtfully. "There are only three of them. That should make things easier" "Well done, sir!" It was Stevens who interrupted, his voice warm, his face alive with admiration. "Jolly good show!" "Jolly good show!" Miller mimicked. He heaved his lanky length over the coaming of the engine hatchway. "'Good' be damned! I couldn't understand a gawddamned word, but for my money that rates an Oscar. That was terrific, boss!" "Thank you, one and all," Mallory murmured. "But I'm afraid the congratulations are a bit premature." The sudden chill in his voice struck at them, so that their eyes aligned along his pointing finger even before he went on. "Take a look," he said quietly. The young soldier had halted suddenly about two hundred yards along the bank, looked into the forest on his left in startled surprise, then dived in among the trees. For a moment the watchers on the boat could see another soldier, talking excitedly to the boy and gesticulating in the direction of their boat, and then both were gone, lost in the gloom of the forest. "That's torn it!" Mallory said softly. He turned away. "Right, that's enough. Back to where you were. It would look fishy if we ignored that incident altogether, but it would look a damned sight fishier if we paid too much attention to it. Don't let's appear to be holding a conference." Miller slipped down into the engine-room with Brown, and Stevens went back to the little for'ard cabin. Mallory and Andrea remained on deck, bottles in their hands. The rain had stopped now, completely, but the wind was still rising, climbing the scale with imperceptible steadiness, beginning to bend the tops of the tallest of the pines. Temporarily the bluff was affording them almost complete protection. Mallory deliberately shut his mind to what it must be like outside. They had to put out to seaSpandaus permittingand that was that. "What do you