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the air towards us. Barcelona acted promptly, caught it as it fell and hurled it back whence it had come.
    There was the sound of an explosion, then a flash of light.
    ‘Amateurs,’ said Barcelona, coolly. ‘Can’t even throw a hand grenade properly.’
    The unmistakable, trumpeting voice of Tiny came to our ears. From somewhere nearby, in the darkness of the undergrowth, there were the sounds of a violent struggle. Loud oaths in German and Russian. The noise of snapping twigs, and of steel clashing against steel. Someone choked and gurgled. Then silence. We stood waiting, wondering what the outcome had been.
    ‘That’s the first one dealt with,’ said Tiny, making a brief appearance before joyously plunging off again.
    There came the sound of running footsteps, and then a shot.
    ‘What’s going on round here?’ demanded Heide, furiously.
    ‘Better go and take a look . . . spread out and watch your step,’ commanded the Old Man.
    In the bushes, we tripped over a corpse. Porta knelt down to inspect it.
    ‘Strangled,’ he said, briefly.
    It was one of the two young Russians. By his side we found a pouch of grenades. Enough to wipe out an entire company.
    ‘Meant for us, presumably . . . just as well you did stay behind,’ conceded the Old Man. ‘Though, mind you,’ he added, ‘that still doesn’t in any way excuse your behaviour. The Lieutenant’s hopping mad, and I don’t blame him.’
    The Legionnaire gave a superior smile.
    ‘Lieutenants don’t know everything. If I’d relied on lieutenants all my life, I doubt if I should still be here to tell the tale.’
    ‘Anyway,’ I said to Barcelona, ‘it looks as if you were right about those kids being NKVD.’
    ‘Course I was right,’ he rejoined, scornfully. ‘I’ve been around a bit. I know a thing or two.’
    ‘And like he said,’ added Porta, jerking a thumb at the Legionnaire, ‘lieutenants don’t know everything. Not by a long bleeding chalk they don’t.’
    We stood in silence a while, straining our ears in the darkness but hearing no further sound from the direction in which Tiny had disappeared, and then the Old Man turned to the Legionnaire with a question which had obviously been troubling him for some time.
    ‘How did you find out what they had in mind?’
    ‘Who? The NKVD lads?’ The Legionnaire shrugged. The girl told us. Just before we left.’
    The Old Man narrowed his eyes.
    ‘She told you?’
    That’s what I said . . . she told us.’
    ‘Why? What she do that for? Why’d she want to go and shop her own countrymen?’
    The Legionnaire raised a cold eyebrow in the face of the Old Man’s obvious suspicions.
    ‘Do you know, I didn’t stop to ask her . . . I can only assume she didn’t like the look of them. They weren’t all that pretty.’
    Porta laughed, cynically.
    ‘More likely you held a pistol at her head!’
    ‘Such things have been known,’ agreed the Legionnaire, smoothly. ‘Only as it happened, in this case it wasn’t necessary. She volunteered the information.’
    ‘She must be nuts,’ I said. ‘Any of her mates find out and she’ll be for the chopper.’
    ‘That’s her problem,’ said the Legionnaire, indifferently.
    There was the sound of heavy footsteps and of deep breathing somewhere behind us, and we instantly held our rifles at the ready, peering through the darkness and expecting God knows what to burst upon us, a herd of wild animals or an enemy platoon at the very least, but it was only Tiny.
    ‘Shit got away from me! These flaming fir trees could hide a whole bleeding regiment and you’d never be able to find ’em . . . Anyway, I got his gun off of him. I’m pretty sure I hit him, but he still managed to give me the slip.’
    The Old Man took the heavy pistol from Tiny and weighed it thoughtfully in his hand.
    ‘A Nagan, eh? Well, that smacks of the NKVD if anything does.’
    ‘What we said right at the start,’ said Porta, in disgust. I tell you, if people only listened to us a