Читать онлайн «A New Kind of War»

The eagle continued its effortless wheeling and gliding far above them, like a spotter-plane safely out of range, as the last echoes of gunfire finished knocking from peak to peak below it. Obviously, the bloody bird had heard a machine-gun before, and possibly from the same godforsaken hillside. In fact, it was probably just biding its time, waiting for its supper.

‘Do eagles eat dead bodies?’ As Fred watched, another eagle swept into view. So that meant they bloody did, for sure, and years of war had taught them to steer towards the sound of the guns, with the prospect of succulent glazed eyeballs for an hors d’oeuvre.

‘Eh?’ Kyriakos had been busy studying the tree-line on the crest of dummy4

the ridge above the path. ‘What was that?’

‘I said “So much for your bloody truce”, Captain Michaelides. ’

Fred was conscious of his own as yet unglazed eyeballs as he stared reproachfully at Kyriakos.

‘You didn’t say that. ’ The Greek transferred his attention to the track below them. ‘But . . . not my truce, old boy – your bloody truce. ’

The track was empty, and the mountains were as silent as they had been before that sudden burst of machine-gun fire had startled them. And even allowing for acoustic tricks the sound had come from over the ridge, certainly; and from far away, hopefully; and possibly even accidentally? Some peasant lad shooting his foot off? Or impressing his girl-friend?

‘Not my bloody truce. ’ A tiny green shoot of hope poked through the arid crust of Fred’s experience: when things were not as bad as they seemed that was usually because they were preparing to be worse. But this returning silence was encouraging.

Kyriakos chuckled, and then coughed his smoker’s cough. ‘A tourist?’

‘You were going to show me Delphi, as I recall. ’ As Kyriakos himself began to relax, Fred’s miraculous green shoot flowered.

Back in Athens they had said that there’d be eagles over Delphi, so maybe it was just a welcoming party up there. ‘That makes me a tourist. ’

‘If that’s what you wish to be . . . ’ The Greek shrugged. ‘But I was dummy4

actually going to introduce you to Mother as one of our liberators.

Just like Lord Byron, I would have told her –