The Resistance

IT was the start of that season in Crete when the sirocco blew like a curse day and night. Stunned mountain air brandished the burn of the desert. The old guide led Henry Ainsworth through an almond grove bordered with dry-leafed cypresses and poppies dotting the earth like fresh blood. In the twilight glow, barking dogs herded sheep. Village women and children, all shoulders and heart, worked in the fields with pitchforks and hoes. At the sight of Henry’s Nazi uniform, women turned their backs. Young boys stilled their shovels and stared. Even they had curved knives in their belts. The path steepened and narrowed to vein-thin goat tracks smothered in talcum-like dust. Henry and his guide left the villages behind.

Henry followed, climbing to the crown of a steep-sided ravine. The night sky appeared to brighten. The crescent moon was near enough to grasp. The higher terrain was treeless and bleak and covered in loose rocks, making it hard to gain a foothold. Wild goats scampered across the crags and out of sight. Black vultures with narrow wings breasted the fiery wind. There were no villagers or German command posts, no Zundapp motorcycles scarring the rocks.

The old man marched with a pitched forward gait, throwing his weight over his walking staff. He had a permanent squint, drawing his features together as if in the throes of childbirth. He clenched his teeth as sweat wicked off his face. Hair and beard were thick and curly as a gypsy’s, not a strand of gray, though the man was older than Moses. He was dressed in local garb—faded black shirt, embroidered wine-colored vest, fringed black scarf wrapped round his head with bobbles that danced on his forehead. His dusty blue breeches had a baggy crotch; Henry called the breeches crap-catchers. A curved long-handled knife hung from his belt and the handle of a revolver poked above his boot. The sole of one boot was attached to the upper covering of his foot with a piece of rusty wire. Henry didn’t know his real name, only his code name, Lancelot. The look in Lancelot’s eyes appeared distant, absent. He was lost in a world of his own.

He wasn’t the fastest lead, but along these vertical escarpments in the White Mountains, Henry trusted Lancelot knew true north. What choice did he have? He was in the middle of no-man’s land, trudging up these crags in stolen, too-small jackboots. He was on his way to a monastery for a rendezvous on his next mission. Henry had not been told the aim of the mission. He would be told when it became necessary. But he knew it was huge. He was told it was as bold a commission as he would ever get in this war, and to arrive as a Nazi. He would be rubbing shoulders with the enemy. Henry couldn’t afford to be late. If he didn’t make it by first light he would have to stay put until it was dark again. He’d wrenched his ankle on the way up the ravine, but kept the lacerating pain to himself. If the old man saw him limp, who knows—these Cretans are ferocious—he might leave him here.

Christ. What now? The last time he’d stopped, Lancelot squatted behind a mandráki bush, and then back-kicked rocks to hide his turds like a dog. Lancelot paused atop the ravine. He turned toward Henry, aimed his hickory staff at the front of his sweat-soaked Nazi tunic and jabbed at the pockets. In this very spot a guide who turned out to be a traitor killed a fellow Brit. Treachery and betrayal were often a half-turn away. Fucksake. Was he trying to push him back inside the ravine? Henry grabbed the staff. Lancelot spat at the ground. Henry palmed his revolver. Lancelot swung his staff toward a pile of rocks, tunneled the staff under the flat-top rock and flipped it over. He breathed hard in the wind-borne heat, squatted behind a...