The little crewman next to him started tugging at his sleeve and pointing. Lockhart looked through his binoculars to see the dim light of a blinking flashlight.

“Get the captain to take us in,” Lockhart ordered under his breath.

As the crewman made his way aft, Lockhart tried to discern anything around the light, but it was too dark. He should have been helping to ready the dinghy, but something wasn’t right. And then he realized the obvious: the flashlight was blinking four times. He looked again. There was no doubt—it was the wrong signal. Bugger. It could be a German trap or, just as easily, a simple mistake. He went aft to find the captain.

“Bad news,” Lockhart announced. “It’s the wrong bloody signal.”

“Christ,” the captain sighed, shutting his eyes and pinching the bridge of his nose. It had been a long night, and he still had to get back to Cairo.

“It’s flashing four times instead of three. I’m sure my man knows the drill—he’s done this before.”

“Your Cretan friend probably can’t count.”

“And you can barely sail, so why don’t you just shut up and do as you’re told?”

Lockhart glowered at him, detecting a small, cynical smile through the captain’s dark ginger beard. Lockhart held his stare.

“All right then, sir,” the captain said. “What would you like to do, then?”

Lockhart paused. The captain was making him bloody-minded. He didn’t want to stay on board, but a decision made in anger could see him trussed up in the back of a German truck, en route to a bloodstained cell in Heraklion. Sod it, thought Lockhart, Manoli had probably just made a mistake.

He looked the captain straight in the eye.

“I’m going ashore.”

The captain snorted. “Whatever you say.”

Lockhart regretted his decision as soon as he went back on deck. He had let some damn-fool sailor wind him up. He bet Theseus never had this problem when he sailed to Crete. Lockhart tried remembering his Plutarch—what was the name of Theseus’s pilot? He had read it only the other day, thinking that he too should have sacrificed a goat to Aphrodite before he left.

He looked through his binoculars again. There, still, were those same four confident flashes. He felt perversely reassured. If the Germans had discovered the location of the landing point, then they would have known the correct signal too. Was he trying to justify his rash decision? Perhaps. But he had come too far now. It would be too much of a climbdown to go back.

The crewmen were readying the dinghy. Onto it was lowered food, weapons and ammunition, a radio, clothing, and—most crucially for those spending the winter stuck in small mountain caves—spirits and cigarettes. As Christmas was coming up, the supply officer had even slipped in a Christmas pudding at Lockhart’s request.