«And now it's the turn of Kheros?»

«Yes.» Jensen shook out a pair of cigarettes, sat silently until Mallory had lit them and sent the match spinning through the window towards the pale gleam of the Mediterranean lying north below the coast road. «Yes, Kheros is for the hammer. Nothing that we can do can save it. The Germans have absolute air superiority in the Aegean… .»

«But — but how can you be so sure that it's this week?»

Jensen sighed.

«Laddie, Greece is fairly hotching with Allied agents. We have over two hundred in the Athens-Piraeus area alone and—»

«Two hundred!» Mallory interrupted incredulously. «Did you say—»

«I did.» Jensen grinned. «A mere bagatelle, I assure you, compared to the vast hordes of spies that circulate freely among our noble hosts in Cairo and Alexandria.» He was suddenly serious again. «Anyway, our information is accurate. An armada of caiques will sail from the Piraeus on Thursday at dawn and island-hop across the Cyclades, holing up in the islands at night.» He smiled. «An intriguing situation, don't you think? We daren't move in the Aegean in the daytime or we'd be bombed out of the water. The Germans don't dare move at night. Droves of our destroyers and M.T.B.s and gunboats move into the Aegean at dusk: the destroyers retire to the South before dawn, the small boats usually lie up in isolated islands creeks. But we can't stop them from getting across. They'll be there Saturday or Sunday — and synchronise their landings with the first of the airborne troops: they've scores of Junkers 52s waiting just outside Athens. Kheros won't last a couple of days.» No one could have listened to Jensen's carefully casual voice, his abnormal matter-of-factness and not have believed him.