And floating alone with the tide.

warhe was in the regular army. They tell me the Italians went in terror of himhis long-range patrols against the 'Iulia division, the Wolves of Tuscany, did more to wreck the Italian morale in Albania than any other single factor. Fve heard a good many stories about themnot from Andreaand they're all incredible. And they're all true. But it was afterwards I met him, when we were trying to hold the Servia Pass. I was a very junior liaison lieutenant in the Anzac brigade at the time. Andrea"he paused deliberately for effect"Andrea was a lieutenant-colonel in the 19th Greek Motorised Division." "A what?" Miller demanded in astonishment. Stevens and Brown were equally incredulous. "You heard me. Lieutenant-colonel. Outranks me by a fairish bit, you might say." He smiled at them quizzically. 'Puts Andrea In rather a different light, doesn't it?" They nodded silently but said nothing. The genial, hail-fellow Andreaa good-natured, almost simpleminded buffoona senior army officer. The idea had come too suddenly, was too incongruous for easy assimilation and immediate comprehension. But, gradually, it began to make sense to them. It explained many things about Andrea to themhis repose, his confidence, the unerring sureness of his lightning reactions, and, above all, the implicit faith Mallory had in him, the respect he showed for Andrea's opinions whenever he consulted him, which was frequently. Without surprise now, Miller slowly recalled that he'd never yet heard Mallory give Andrea a direct order. And Mallory never hesitated to pull his rank when necessary. "After Servia," Mallory went on, "everything was pretty confused. Andrea had heard that Trikkalaa small country town where his wife and three daughters livedhad been flattened by the Stukas and Heinkels. He reached there all right, but there was nothing he could do. A land-mine had landed in the front garden and there wasn't even rubble left." Mallory paused, lit a cigarette. He stared through the drifting smoke at the fading outlines of the tower. "The only person he found there was his brother-in-law, George. George was with us in Cretehe's still there. From George he heard for the first time of the Bulgarian atrocities in Thrace and Macedoniaand his parents lived there. So they dressed in German uniformsyou can imagine how Andrea got thosecommandeered a German army truck and drove to Protosami." The cigarette in Mallory's hand snapped suddenly, was sent spinning over the side. Miller was vaguely surprised: emotion, or gray market digital cameras rather, emotional displays, were so completely foreign to that very tough New Zealander. But Mallory went on quietly enough. "They arrived in the evening of the infamous Protosami massacre. George has told me how Andrea stood there, clad in his German uniform and laughing as he watched a party of nine or ten Bulgarian soldiers lash couples together and throw them into the river. The first couple in were his father and stepmother, both dead." "My Gawd above!" Even Miller was shocked out of his usual equanimity. "It's just not possible" "You know nothing," Mallory interrupted impatiently. "Hundreds of Greeks in Macedonia died the same waybut usually alive when they were thrown in. Until you know how the Greeks hate the Bulgarians, you don't even begin to know what hate is. . . . Andrea shared a couple of bottles of wine with the soldiers, found out that they had killed his parents earlier in the afternoonthey had been foolish enough to resist. After dusk he followed them up to an old corrugated-iron shed where they were billeted for the night. All he had was a knife. They left a guard outside. Andrea broke his neck, went inside, locked the door and smashed the oil lamp. George doesn't know what happened except that Andrea went berserk. He was back outside in two minutes, completely sodden, his uniform soaked in blood from head to foot. There wasn't a sound, not even a groan to be heard from the hut when they left, George says." He paused again, but this time there was no interruption, nothing said. Stevens shivered, drew his shabby jacket closer round his shoulders: the air seemed to have become suddenly chili. Mallory lit another cigarette, smiled faintly at Miller, nodded towards the watch-tower. "See what I mean by saying we'd only be a liability to Andrea up there?" "Yeah. Yeah, I guess I do," Miller admitted. "I had no idea, I had no idea. . . . Not all of them, boss! He couldn't have killed" "He did," Mallory interrupted flatly. "After that he formed his own band, made life hell for the Bulgarian outposts in Thrace. At one time there was almost an entire division chasing him through the Rhodope mountains. Finally he was betrayed and captured, and he, George and four others were shipped to Stavrosthey were to go on to Salonika for trial. They overpowered their guardsAndrea got loose among them on deck at nightand sailed the boat to Turkey. The Turks tried to intern himthey might as weli