Thou canst not be my blessing or my curse:

guards" "No worry there," Mallory said grimly. "They never expected to see Dusty and myself again. . . . They kept a poor watch." He turned round to look at Brown, now hobbling across the floor. "How's the leg, Casey?" "Fine, sir." Brown brushed it aside as of no importance. "I got through to Cairo, to-night, sir. The report" "It'll have to wait, Casey. We must get out as fast as we can. You all right, Louki?" "I am heart-broken, Major Mallory. That a countryman of mine, a trusted friend" "That, too, will have to wait. Come on!" "You are in a great hurry," Andrea protested mildly. They were already out in the passage, stepping over the cell guard lying in a crumpled heap on the floor. "Surely if they're all like our friend here" "No danger from, this quarter," Mallory interrupted impatiently. "The soldiers in the townthey're bound to know by now that we've either missed Panayis or disposed of him. In either case they'll know that we're certain to come hot-footing out here. Work it out for yourself. They're probably half-way here already, and if they do come . . ." He broke off, stared at the smashed generator and the ruins of Casey Brown's transmitter set lying in one corner of the entrance hail. "Done a pretty good job on these, haven't they?" he said bitterly. "Thank the Lord," Miller said piously. "All the less to tote around, is what I say. If you could only see the state of my back with that damned generator" "Sir!" Brown had caught Mallory's arm, an action so foreign to the usually punctilious petty officer that Mallory halted in surprise. "Sir, it's terribly importantthe report, I mean. You must listen, sir!" The action, the deadly earnestness, caught and held Mallory's fully attention. He turned to face Brown with a smile. "O.K., Casey, let's have it," he said quietly. Things can't possibly be any worse than they are now." "They can, sir." There was something tired, defeated about Casey Brown, and the great, stone hail seemed strangely chill. "I'm afraid they can, sir. I got through to-night. First-class reception. Captain Jensen himself, and he was hopping mad. Been waiting all day fbr us to come on the air. Asked how things were, and I told him that you were outside the fortress just then, and hoped to be inside the magazine in an hour or so." "Go on." "He said that was the best news he'd ever had. He said his information had been wrong, he'd birmingham camera digital repair been fooled, that the invasion fleet didn't hold up overnight in the Cyclades, that they had come straight through under the heaviest air and E-boat escort ever seen in the Med., and are due to hit the beaches on Kheros some time before dawn to-morrow. He said our destroyers had been waiting to the south all day, moved up at dusk and were waiting word from him to see whether they would attempt the passage of the Maidos Straits. I told him maybe something could go wrong, but he said not with Captain Mallory and Miller inside and besides he wasn'the couldn't risk the lives of twelve hundred men on Kheros just on the off chance that he might be wrong." Brown broke off suddenly and looked down miserably at his feet. No one else in the hail moved or made any sound at all. "Go on." Mallory repeated in a whisper. His face was very pale. "That's all, sir. That's all there is.. The destroyers are coming through the Straits at midnight." Brown looked down at his luminous watch. "Midnight. Four hours to go." "Oh, God! Midnight!" Mallory was stricken, his eyes for the moment unseeing, ivory-knuckled hands clenched in futility and despair. "They're coming through at midnight! God help them! God help them all now!" CHAPTER 15 2000-2115 Eight-thirty, his watch said. Eight-thirty. Exactly half an hour to curfew. Mallory flattened himself on the roof, pressed himself as closely as possible against the low retaining wall that almost touched the great, sheering sides of the fortress, swore softly to himself. It only required one man with a torch in his hand to look over the top of the fortress walla catwalk ran the whole length of the inside of the wall, four feet from the topand it would be the end of them alL The wandering beam of a torch and they were bound to be seen, it was impossible not to be seen: he and Dusty Millerthe American was stretched out behind him and clutching the big truck battery in his armswere wide open to the view of anyone who happened to glance down that way. Perhaps they should have stayed with the others a couple of roofs away, with Casey and Louki, the one busy tying spaced knots in a rope, the other busy splicing a bent wire hook on to a long bamboo they had torn from a bamboo hedge just outside the town, where they had hurriedly taken shelter as a convoy of three trucks had roared past them heading for the castle Vygos. Eight thirty-two. What the devil was