Page 109 of Villa of Secrets

Tears raged down my face. ‘He ordered me to do it.’ I sobbed helplessly.

Then we both heard a muffled cry coming from the rear of the house.

‘That’s Josie!’ I jumped to my feet, hope rising in my chest. I glanced at Nathanial and remembered how he helped me to come to terms with Irini’s death. Poor Josie, her heart would break.

We raced around the debris, following the pleas for help, until I realised they were coming from the cellar grill.

Kopay sniffed and scrabbled in the wreckage, looking up occasionally with an excited bark.

‘Josie! Are you there?’

‘Help us, we’re in the basement! The ceiling’s collapsing and we can’t get out.’

Kopay whimpered, twisting in agitated circles.

An explosive crack of masonry splitting apart, followed by more dust billowing out of the vent.

‘Quickly!’ Josie cried. ‘It’s crumbling around us.’

Tassos and I lobbed great chunks of sandstone off the small iron grill until Tassos managed to drag it free.

We hauled Josie out, and then the German, whose hands and feet were still tied. Josie told us she had gone down with food for the soldier when the bomb exploded and I realised that trivial kindness had saved her life.

She sat on the ground, her head in her hands, then looked over the demolished building. ‘A direct hit. Is anyone else . . .?’

I shook my head. ‘Sorry, Josie.’

‘Nathanial?’

‘Sorry, Josie, he’s gone. We must leave. We’ll return in the morning. I just need to speak with Tassos, then we’ll go to the hut.’

The full moon had passed its zenith. Pine trees swayed in the breeze, their long, thin shadows moving back and forth across the pale dust and rubble. Ghostly fingers of death caressing the final resting place of the Andartes of Rhodes.

My friends were buried together in a mass grave. This was what war did. It destroyed lives, families, homes, and the children’s future. My own family came to mind. The German was around the same age as Danial.

‘I’ll shoot that Nazi bastard,’ Tassos said viciously, drawing his pistol from its holster.

I shook my head. ‘No! He’s hardly more than a boy, Tassos, younger than you. Haven’t we had enough killing? I’m sick of it. We’ve seen too many lives lost here. Think about it. What difference will it make if we let him go?’

‘We have to kill him to avenge Nathanial! A life for a life.’ He raised the gun level with the soldier’s head.

I pulled my pistol out of the saddlebag and pointed it at Tassos’s head.

‘I said NO! Nathanial’s struggle was for peace, not murder. Our fight isn’t about killing as many of the enemy as possible.’

Tassos stared at me. ‘It’s not?’

‘No, of course it isn’t. It’s about saving lives and ending the war as soon as we can. I won’t be party to senseless acts of barbarism, but if you shoot him, I swear, I’ll shoot you. As you said, a life for a life.’

‘But he’ll tell them about us.’

‘You really believe so? What do you think he’s going to say? A little girl crept up and shot his partner, a dog got his machine gun off him, and a beautiful woman fed him home-made food while he was tied to a chair?’

The soldier spoke in Italian. ‘I won’t make trouble for you. I swear on my mother’s life.’

‘What’s your name and how old are you?’ I demanded.

‘Gustave Merkle. I’m eighteen, from Berlin.’