Tom looks up at the sky again. ‘How are things in there, Sergeant?’ he calls. No answer except for more clanking. The country is almost silent around them. Now and again a bird pipes up and goat bells clank a little way off. Strange that the quiet of the road, the birds singing in the trees, should be upsetting after the battle, Tom thinks. He lights a cigarette, holds the packet up for Kerr.

‘Oh, God, thanks,’ the second lieutenant breathes. He looks far too young to be here. His hand is unsteady as he lights a match, sucks the flame into the tobacco. ‘Where do you think they are?’ he asks.

‘Who?’ Tom realises that he is thinking about the classrooms at Chelsea, of turpentine, of fleshy older women lying naked and bored.

‘The Jerries.’

‘Well, they’re not here, and that’s all that matters.’ Tom looks up. The sky is terrifyingly blue. Damn it, he thinks. He’s got me at it now. ‘You know that isn’t going to do a bloody thing against a Stuka, don’t you?’

Kerr pats the gun. ‘Psychological. Better than nothing.’

‘Fair enough.’

‘Righto,’ says the sergeant, straightening up. ‘I think that’s done it. If you’d start her, sir …’

The engine turns over and fires at Tom’s third push of the starter. The sergeant, whose name is Taylor, pulls on his shirt and battledress top and slides behind the wheel. ‘We’re off,’ he says jauntily, as if he were driving his children to the seaside on a bank holiday. Tom hears the click of steel against steel behind him, and he knows that Kerr is looking up into the empty blue, his fingers working the bolt. Psychological.

Of course it is Kerr who sees the plane. He throws himself forward between the seats, pointing up and ahead at the long, thin shadow that has appeared against the blue.

‘Bf 110,’ says Taylor automatically. The sergeant’s knuckles whiten momentarily around the wheel, then relax.

‘He’s going away from us, Kerr,’ Tom reassures the young man – Not much younger than me, he thinks. He carefully slips his hands beneath his thighs so that the others can’t see them shake. Christ, he thinks, all the effort it takes just to look as if I’m in charge. ‘Marathon isn’t far now, I don’t think. What did that last signpost say, twenty-five kilometres?’

‘You’ve got to drive to Athens as well. And back,’ Taylor reminds him, too calmly.

Tom chooses to ignore this. ‘Been in Athens before, Sergeant?’

‘Landed there, sir. Had a nice picture taken of me and some mates up on the Parthenon.’

‘The Parthenon …’

‘Can’t miss it, sir,’ the sergeant says, kindly. ‘Load of old stones up on a cliff.’

‘Look! The bastard hit something,’ says Kerr, pointing to where, a mile and a half away, a spiral of familiar, greasy smoke is winding up from the road.