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I was wrong about that. ELEVEN – "Do you know where the Glyptothek is, Christof?" "I know where it is," I told Dietrich. "I'm not sure what it is." "It's Munich's oldest public museum and the only one in the world solely dedicated to ancient sculpture. There was a break-in last night and I'd like you to go and see what's been stolen. Which is another way of me telling you to find out if they're going to make a claim. If they are—check them out for contributory negligence, that kind of thing. Something that might affect a payout. Did someone leave a door unlocked or a window open? You know." "I know." And I did. Before joining Berlin's Murder Commission I'd attended enough burglaries to feel confident and even quite nostalgic about investigating this for Munich RE. It was about a thirty-minute walk southwest to the museum on the north side of Königsplatz; the Glyptothek had been badly damaged in 1943–44 and restoration was now almost complete but there was still scaffolding on the side of the west wing and I wondered if this was where the break-in had occurred. Behind a portico of Ionic columns with two wings adorned with niches were the exhibition rooms deriving their light from a central court and, in a way, the place reminded me of the offices of Munich RE, which said a lot more about the insurance business than it did about the plastic arts, at least in Germany. The marble group on the pediment featured a one-armed Athena ordering around a bunch of workers who couldn't have looked more indifferent to her protection, which made me think they were already members of a trade union—and very probably English, since none of them seemed to be doing much. Outside the entrance was a police car; inside were a lot of Greek and Roman marble sculptures, most of them too big to steal or already too badly damaged to notice if they'd been damaged, so to speak. A uniformed cop asked me who I was and I gave him one of my new business cards, which seemed to satisfy him. They certainly satisfied me; it was several years since I'd had a business card and this one was as stiff as a starched wing collar.
The cop told me the break-in had taken place on the floor above and, noting an alarm bell as big as a dinner gong and a ladder under the stairs, I followed the sound of voices as I climbed to a suite of offices on the second floor of the west wing. A detective was inspecting a cracked window that looked as if it had been forced open, while another was listening to a man with glasses and a chin beard, whom I took to be someone from the museum. "It's very odd," said the man from the museum, "but as far as I can see almost nothing was taken. Just a few very small pieces, I think. When I think of all the treasures they could have stolen, or vandalized, my blood runs cold. The Rondanini Medusa or the Barberini Faun, for example. Not that it would be easy to move such a thing as our treasured Faun. It weighs several hundred kilograms." "Was anything damaged?" asked the detective. "Only the desk in my office. Someone forced it open and had a good rake around in the drawers." "Probably kids," said the detective, "looking for some easy cash."
It was about now that they both noticed me and I stepped forward with my business card and introduced myself. The detective was an inspector called Seehofer and the Fritz from the museum was Dr. Schmidt, the deputy assistant director. "It looks as if you've had a wasted journey, Herr Ganz," said Seehofer. "It seems that nothing has been recently damaged or taken." I wasn't convinced about that. "Is that where they got in? These kids." "Yes, it looks as if they climbed up the scaffolding." I walked over to the window. "Mind if I take a look?" I asked the detective inspector. "Be my guest." I put my head out the window. There were fresh-looking footprints on some planks stacked nearby. They might have been a builder's footprints but I'd already seen a similar footprint on the carpet by the office door. A big fellow by the look of it and not kids at all, I thought. But I didn't contradict the detective inspector. I decided it was best to keep on the right side of him for now. "Do you get many visitors in this museum?" I asked Dr. Schmidt.
"It's February," he said. "Things are always a bit quiet in February." "What about the alarm?" I asked. "Why didn't it go off?" "What alarm?" asked Seehofer. "There's an alarm?" "I don't know," said Dr. Schmidt, as if he'd only just thought of it, and clearly he hadn't mentioned it to the detective inspector, who looked slightly irritated to discover the existence of such a thing now. "If you could show me where the bell is, sir?" said Seehofer, a little too late to fill any insurance investigator's heart with confidence. We went back downstairs, crossed the hall, and looked up at the bell that was mounted on the wall about a meter above our heads. From where we were standing it wasn't going to reveal very much and after a while I felt obliged to move things along a bit and fetched the ladder from under the stairs. "I should be doing that, you know," said Seehofer as I mounted the ladder, which, now that I was working for an insurance company, felt a bit less than safe on the polished marble floor.
I nodded and came back down without a word, happy not to take the risk. I wasn't about to get paid my twenty-five marks a week if I fell off a ladder. Seehofer went up the ladder, looked down precariously several times, and finally managed to reach eye level with the bell, where his powers as a detective really started to kick in. "That explains it," he said. "There's a piece of folded card between the bell and the clapper." "Then don't for Christ's sake pull it out," I said. "What's that?" he asked, and pulled it out. The bell began to ring, very loudly, almost causing Seehofer to fall off the ladder. Losing his nerve for the height he was at, he came quickly down again. "Can you turn it off, sir?" I shouted at Dr. Schmidt. "I'm not sure I know how," he admitted. "Who does?" "The security guard." "Where's he?" "Er, I fired him when I discovered the break-in. I imagine he's gone home." Since none of us could now hear ourselves think, let alone speak, I felt obliged to take the piece of card from Seehofer's nervous fingers, go back up the ladder myself, and replace it between clapper and bell, but not before unfolding it to reveal that it was actually an empty packet of Lucky Strike cigarettes.
I came back down and said, "Why is this ladder here?" "It was up all day yesterday," said Schmidt. "One of the builders was using it to replace the lightbulbs in the ceiling fixtures." "So it might have been left unattended for some length of time." "Yes." "Then my guess is that whoever broke in here last night came into the museum as a visitor yesterday and, seeing an opportunity, went up the ladder and disabled the alarm with that empty cigarette packet." Seehofer murmured, "Lucky Strike. But not for some," which hardly endeared him to Dr. Schmidt, whose sense of humor was understandably absent that morning. "It looks very opportunistic," I said. "Like our man saw his chance to disable the alarm on the spur of the moment and used the first object that came to hand." "Which makes it all the more surprising that nothing was stolen," said Schmidt. "I mean, this was planned. I can't see kids going to that amount of trouble. Or with that amount of foresight. Can you?" "Could I see inside those desk drawers?" I asked him. "If you don't mind, sir."
"Certainly, but there's nothing to see. Just some museum stationery and some guidebooks. Perhaps a few very small artifacts that were kept in a desk drawer. I'm not sure exactly. It's not my desk. It's the assistant director's." "Maybe we could ask him what's missing, if anything." "I'm afraid not. He's been ill for some time now. In fact, I doubt he'll be coming back at all." "I see." We went back across the hall, which was when we caught a glimpse of a large marble statue in a Pantheon of a room by itself, and if this caught our eye it was not because it had been damaged but because of what it was: a life-sized statue of a Roman faun or Greek satyr, legs akimbo—one of them at a right angle to the rock he was seated upon—who looked like he was suffering after a late night in the Hofbräuhaus. The indecorous statue was extremely well rendered and left nothing to the imagination. "Christ," said Seehofer. "For a moment I thought he was the real thing. It's very—very realistic, isn't it?" "That's the Barberini Faun I was telling you about," said Schmidt. "Greek. Possibly restored by Bernini after being badly damaged during an attack by the Goths almost a thousand years earlier."
"It seems that history is always repeating itself," I said, momentarily picturing those previous Germans in some desperate fight to the death. Back in the office I took a look inside the desk. "Anything stolen from in here?" I asked. "A cash box, perhaps." "No, not so much as a ticket roll." "Then why do you keep it locked?" "Habit. Sometimes I leave my own valuables in there. A gold pen. A nice cigarette lighter. My wallet. But not on this occasion. Not when I go home. Really. It's most extraordinary. Everything looks just fine." I might have agreed with that but for something I'd seen on the desk that didn't look as if it belonged anywhere except in an ashtray. It was a half-chewed cigar projecting at a right angle from the edge of the desk like the leg of the Barberini Faun. TWELVE – What should I have done? Told Detective Inspector Seehofer that a cop I knew who'd murdered two people had broken into Munich's oldest museum and stolen—nothing? A cop he would probably know, too? So I said—nothing. A lot of the time nothing is the best thing to say. Especially in a new job when you're still trying to make an impression. An acquaintance with murderers and crooked policemen doesn't inspire the confidence of any insurance company. All the same I did wonder what Detective Schramma had been up to. Of course, it might have been someone else who was the true culprit. But deep in my gut I knew it was he who'd broken into the Glyptothek, just as I'd known with absolute certainty that the Barberini Faun was a man. If I'd been a detective myself and not a claims adjustor I might have taken the cigar butt for analysis and possibly matched it to the one found in the dead general's house in Bogenhausen: The cops had found those bodies now and, according to the newspapers, they weren't saying very much, which was the same thing as saying they hadn't a clue who was responsible. Which suited me fine. The last thing I wanted was to see Schramma any time soon. Whatever he was up to now wasn't any of my business. And helping the cops wasn't part of my new job description.
In truth, however, the job was very boring and seemed to involve a lot of staring out the window. Most days I did a lot of that. Frankly I couldn't have felt more bored at Munich RE if I'd spent a couple of hours trying to guess the speed of the grass growing in the office back garden. A week or two passed in this way. A pile of claims files started to accumulate on my desk. I was supposed to read these, looking out for anything suspicious before passing them on to Dietrich with recommendations. Car fires that might have been arson, burst water pipes that had been deliberately sabotaged—we got a lot of those in the early spring—family heirlooms lost or damaged on purpose, bogus personal injuries, fraudulent loss-of-earnings claims. But there was nothing that raised so much as an eyebrow, really. After Dietrich's explanation of his opinion of some of our clients, I felt disappointed to say the least. I prayed I might find something suspicious just to alleviate the boredom. And then Ares, the Greek god of war, violence, bloodshed, and the insurance industry, answered my prayer with a juicy life claim.
Now this was how life insurance worked: An insurance company and the policy holder made a simple contract where, in exchange for an annual premium, the insurer promised to pay a designated beneficiary a sum of money upon the death or serious injury of the insured person. But after many years with Kripo in Berlin, the whole idea of one person profiting from another person's death just looked suspicious to me. It was ignorant of me, really—life insurance was one of the most profitable parts of Munich RE's business—but old habits die hard. I guess it's true what they say: Detectives are simple people who persist in asking obvious or even stupid questions, but I figured that was what I was being paid for and, like I say, I was very bored. Besides, a substantial amount of money was involved. The facts were that a thirty-nine-year-old man had fallen to his death under the train to Rosenheim at Holzkirchen Station. He'd had a three-star policy with MRE since July of the previous year for which he'd been paying four marks a month: death, personal injury, and loss of earnings. The widow's name was Ursula Dorpmüller, age thirty-one, and she was our claimant; she lived in Nymphenburg, at Loristrasse number 11, top flat. The husband was Theo Dorpmüller; he'd owned a cabaret bar on Dachauerstrasse and the police said he'd fallen off the railway platform because he was drunk. In other words, they were perfectly satisfied that his death had been accidental; then again, they weren't facing a large insurance claim. There was a receipt in the dead man's coat pocket for a five-deutschmark dinner for two at the Walterspiel, which ruled out suicide in my mind. You don't normally eat and drink so well when you're planning to kill yourself. Frankly, that was the only real reason the cops thought he was drunk in the first place: On the bill were two bottles of champagne and a bottle of the best burgundy. Maybe he was drunk, I don't know, but if the policy paid out, Ursula Dorpmüller was set to make twenty thousand deutschmarks, which would have made her the original merry widow. Twenty thousand buys an awful lot of handkerchiefs and a whole ocean of deepest sympathy. Ursula worked as an air hostess for Trans World Airlines on Briennerstrasse and made an excellent salary. Before that she'd been a nurse. She was away in America, visiting her sick mother, when her husband, Theo, was killed. She played the church organ every Sunday at St. Benno's just up the street from her apartment and was on the committee of the Magnolia Ball—a charity event arranged by the German-American Women's Club. She also did a lot of work with another charity, which helped East German and Hungarian refugees, and she sounded like a thoroughly decent woman. I might never have raised her case with Dietrich if I hadn't remembered that I'd heard the name Dorpmüller before and recently, too; it took me several nagging days to remember from where. Finally it came to me. And when it did I went straight to see Dietrich.
"Timothy Q. Mouse and I need to have a word in Dumbo's ears," I said. "What about?" "The Dorpmüller claim," I said. "I don't like it." "She seems like a decent enough woman." "Yes, she does, doesn't she? And that's precisely what I don't like about her. She's a saint. She's Hildegard of Bingen, that's who she is, and let me tell you, saints don't normally collect twenty thousand deutschmarks free of income tax." "I take it you've got something more substantial for saying this than your gut feel." "Before I got this job I was working at Schwabing Hospital, as you know." "I figured that's where you got your concern for your fellow man." "While I was there they brought in some people who had been seriously injured after an unexploded bomb went off." "I read about that. Not one of ours, fortunately. The policy, I mean. Not the bomb." "Actually, you're wrong about that. One of the injured was the Fritz who went under the train. Theo Dorpmüller." "Was he now? Badly injured?" I pictured the man in the wheelchair I'd taken to the mortuary with Schramma, to identify Johann Bernbach.
"Not badly. A few burns. But certainly enough to have a week off work." "My ears just started to flap. And Timothy says, 'Hello.'" "My point is this: He didn't make a claim for loss of earnings. The man has a three-star policy for death and personal injury and he didn't claim a penny. Why?" "Timothy says, 'Hello again,' and, 'Are you sure it was the same Fritz?'" "I'm sure. I'm also sure that it means just one thing." "That he didn't know he had a three-star policy with Munich RE. He couldn't have done. Because if he'd known about it he would certainly have claimed for loss of earnings." "Exactly." "Good work, Christof." "I think you and Timothy need to check out Ursula Dorpmüller." "Not going to happen. Just look at this desk. That's the trouble with this business: too much paper. I'm chained to this office like that fellow with the liver and the eagle. I just don't have the time to check her out. But you, Diogenes, you could take her on. You've just made this case in my eyes, and now you need to run with it."
"All right. But how should I handle it?" "Like this. Make the woman believe we're going to pay off on the policy without any problem. That you're satisfied with her claim but that you just want to check out a few petty details. Get her to sign a few useless bits of paper. You need a copy of her passport. Her driving license if she has one. Her birth certificate. Her marriage certificate. Keep stringing her along. Any moment now the check will be raised by our accounts department and the minute it is, you say you'll hand it to her in person. Really, it's just a formality. The twenty thousand is as good as in the bank. If it's taking so long it's because it's such a large amount. Be as nice to her as if she was your mother, assuming you had one. Butter her up like a Christmas goose. Make love to her if you have to. But in private I want you to treat her like she's Irma Grese. And see what's in Irma's kit bag." Irma Grese had been an SS guard hanged for war crimes by the British in 1945; by all accounts she'd been known as the "beautiful blond beast" of Belsen.
"I get the picture. It's an ugly one but I can see exactly how to play it. Good cop, bad cop, Jekyll and Hyde." "Maybe. But Timothy Q. Mouse likes that Fritz in Shakespeare better. The one who plays Othello for an idiot." "Iago." "Yes, him. On her side, but not on her side. You gain her confidence and hope you can trip her up." "All right." I frowned. "If that's how you want it. You're the boss." "What's the matter? You don't look convinced by my strategy." "No, it's not that. I was just thinking." "About what?" "For one thing, we're talking about premeditated murder here. And a conspiracy. Someone must have pushed Dorpmüller off that station platform. My guess is the person he had dinner with. A friend. A good friend, given the cost of dinner." "According to the police report, it was late at night, dark, with just Dorpmüller on that platform." "So someone already thinks they got away with it." "The widow?" "The widow has an iron-clad alibi. She was in America when her husband was killed." "Yes, that's right. Which means she must have had an accomplice. A co-conspirator."
"Exactly." "I can tell there's a lot more on your very dirty mind, Christof." "Look, Herr Dietrich, I've been here at Munich RE for five minutes. So I don't want to step on anyone's toes." "That's all right, they're probably insured." "Not against this kind of thing. No one is insured against the escape of something dangerous from another man's mouth." "Spit it out, whatever it is. You've done pretty well so far." "All right. How well do you know the salesman who sold Dorpmüller the policy?" Dietrich flicked open the file and consulted the names on the insurance certificate. "Friedrich Jauch," he said. "I've known him since he came here about two years ago. Smart fellow. Good-looking, too. Used to be an auctioneer at Karl & Faber before he joined MRE. As a matter of fact he applied for your job." "As a claims adjustor?" "That's right. Only he's too smart for the sales department to let him go. Makes them too much money. So the top floor made me turn him down." "When was this?" "A month or two ago."
"Then long after he sold Dorpmüller his policy?" "Yes, I suppose so." "Interesting." "You think he might be involved?" "If Dorpmüller didn't know he had the policy, then who signed those application forms? That's what I'd like to know. I'm thinking it was Frau Dorpmüller? Maybe with the connivance of Friedrich Jauch." "And maybe more than that." "Could be. Could be someone pushed Dorpmüller off that railway platform. Could be that someone was Friedrich Jauch. Could be that's why he applied for a job in claims. Just so that he could scupper a possible investigation by this department. Think about that for a moment. It's a nice sweet scheme, investigating a claim on a policy that he'd sold himself." "You have got a dirty mind, haven't you. Now I come to think about it I was a little surprised he applied for the job in the first place. It's not just MRE who make money from Friedrich Jauch's salesmanship. It's him, too. What with commission, becoming a claims adjustor would have meant a substantial pay cut."
"Did you ask him about that?" "Yes. He said he was getting a little tired of shaking hands and smiling all day. That he'd been thinking a job in claims might suit him better." "How did he take it when you turned him down?" "Just fine. They sweetened his deal as a salesman. Gave him a company car and another percentage point on his commission. He could hardly turn up his nose at that." "Not without it drawing attention to himself." "Of course, there is another possibility. It could be that Dorpmüller just didn't get around to claiming for his time off work. That he was too busy." "You don't believe that. And nor does Timothy Q. Mouse." "But I _want_ to believe it," said Dietrich. "There's a subtle difference. Friedrich Jauch is almost a friend of mine." "Look, it's not like Dorpmüller's premium would have gone up if he'd claimed. He was covered for that, too." "You noticed that, as well? You learn fast, Christof." "I've learned not to make allegations like this without evidence. And the evidence is all written in that file you're holding. I've read it, cover to cover. And I'm still walking away with something bad on my shoe."
"So what would you suggest?" "It's the widow who'll be expecting the Irma Grese treatment. After all, she's the one in line for the big payday. Not Friedrich Jauch. So why don't I tail him for a couple of days? See what I come up with. If they are in this together he'll be keeping his head low for now. If they had any sense they'll have made an agreement not to contact each other until after the check is paid over. So all the trust is on his side. Especially after she has the money. Which means that maybe we can flush him out like a rabbit." Even as I was talking to Dietrich I felt I was sharpening my blunted forensic skills like a razor's edge on a leather strop. "Yes. That might work. Here's what I'd like you to consider." "I'm listening." "I'd like you to speak to the accounts department and have them raise a certified check for twenty thousand deutschmarks, payable to Ursula Dorpmüller." "After all you said? You disappoint me." "But here's the thing. Get them to date the check a week ago. And to let you have a photostat."
"What are you planning?" "To test the age-old theory that there's no honor among thieves and even less among murderers." THIRTEEN – It probably took a German to invent the idea of an archduke. A German duke, that is, not satisfied with being an ordinary duke. It was much the same, I supposed, with German insurance men: According to Friedrich Jauch's job title he was the Chief Senior Sales Executive in Charge of New Business Development. As if to match his long title, he was very tall and straight and thin; in his pale gray suit and light green tie he most resembled an aspen tree. I suppose he was in his mid-thirties, although his boyishly styled fair hair and lisping, high-pitched voice made him appear even younger. Young enough and stupid enough to see murder as an easy solution to a common problem: money and the lack of it. We'd met a couple of times before but this time I engineered it so that I seemed to meet him accidentally, on the broad marble staircase leading down to the magnificent main hall in MRE, just a couple of days after I'd first shared my suspicions about him with Dietrich. He was on his way out somewhere, wearing a hunter-green loden coat and a hat with half a badger attached to the crown.
"Good afternoon, how are you?" I said brightly. "Well, thanks. How are you settling in here at MRE? How's Dumbo?" "Is he always so grumpy?" "Always." "I think he believes he's all that stands between this company and financial ruin. By the way, maybe you'd like to know, we paid off on the Dorpmüller life claim." "You did? Right. Good. At least I think it's good. It was a lot of money, as I recall." "That's right. It is. I looked into all the facts but we couldn't see anything suspicious about it. Much to Dietrich's irritation. As you can probably imagine. He hates paying up on a claim of that size. Anyway, I delivered the check myself. As a matter of fact I have a photostat here in this file. Perhaps you'd like to see it. If it was payable to me I'd probably have it framed." I opened the file under my arm and showed him the copy of a check for twenty thousand deutschmarks made payable to Ursula Dorpmüller, hoping he would notice the date. "Look at that," I said. "Twenty thousand deutschmarks. What I couldn't do with money like that."
"It's a lot of money, all right." "I didn't want to trust it to the postal service, given how much it was. So I delivered it to the widow personally. Took it round to her apartment in Nymphenburg, just a few days ago. I'm still finding my feet a little around here and I'm still not exactly sure how the bureaucracy of insurance works, but anyway, I thought you'd like to know." I closed the file and offered him my friendliest smile, as if he were one of my best friends at MRE. "Right, right. Thanks a lot. I'm glad you did." "That's a very nice-looking woman, you know. Frau Dorpmüller, I mean." "I suppose she is." "I certainly thought so. Sometimes I wonder if good-looking women know the effect they have on men. Mostly I try not thinking about them at all. For my sake and theirs. The women close to me have not had the best of luck, one way or another. Leaving the female of the species alone has, for me, come to seem like a kind of valor." "Is that so? You surprise me. Perhaps you're more dangerous than you look."
"I hope so." His smile was as thin as his parchment skin. Aspens are suited to colder climates and the wood is famously hard to burn but as I chatted Friedrich Jauch's pale neck started to turn bright red, as if his whole body were slowly catching fire. Clearly our conversation was having the effect I'd hoped for. Any doubts about his guilt were now gone. In my time as a cop in Berlin I'd interrogated some of the great Grand Master Liars, and Friedrich Jauch wasn't one of those. His guilt and greed for a share of the settlement made him more transparent to me than some bloodless deep-ocean fish. The fact was I'd only just returned from handing over the check to Ursula Dorpmüller at her apartment in Nymphenburg, but I wanted Jauch to suspect she might have double-crossed him and was holding out on whatever deal they'd previously made. Even if they'd agreed not to meet for a while he would probably insist on a meeting now, as a result of what I was telling him—had to, and he'd certainly assume she was lying when she told him that she'd only just received the check. As soon as that seed of doubt took root in his mind I was betting their conspiracy would start to unravel like the wool of a cheap sweater.
"Well, thanks for letting me know, Christof. I appreciate it. But I can't stand here chatting. I'd better get on. Clients to meet. Sales to make." "Nice talking to you," I said, and carried on up the stairs to where I'd left my coat lying on a hand-carved fauteuil. I grabbed it, went back down to the hall, watched him turn right out of the colonnade onto Königinstrasse, and then followed. It had been a while since I'd tailed a suspect, and I was looking forward to repeating the experience. Frankly the chase made me feel young again, like I was a junior detective back at the Alex when the commissars used to train us like bloodhounds. It was the best training in the world, as a matter of fact. I once followed a man for three days without him knowing I was there, and he didn't even have a letter _M_ chalked on the back of his coat. Ideally I would have had a partner to follow Jauch effectively but then he was by now probably too much preoccupied with doubt and suspicions concerning his co-conspirator to be looking out for a tail. Besides, I had done this a thousand times, whereas for him this was probably his first time being followed by a trained detective. If I was right it would probably be the last time he was followed, too.
I shadowed him to the corner of Galeriestrasse, where he stepped into a telephone box and made a call. A few minutes later he came out, crossed onto Ludwigstrasse, and took a cab from the taxi rank. First rule if you think you're being tailed: Never take a cab from the taxi rank unless it's the only one free. Here there were three, which meant it was easy for me to jump in another and follow him to wherever he was going. A few minutes later, in the south part of central Munich, his cab stopped and he got out on Sendlinger Tor Platz. But I stayed in my cab for a moment and watched. This area, extending from the Marienplatz beyond Rindermarkt, had been almost entirely destroyed during the war and was being rebuilt on new and uniformly modern lines; recent demolitions had laid bare the Löwenturm, one of the towers of the old town wall, and clear views were to be had across several empty spaces. It was easy to keep Jauch in sight. He couldn't have made it easier for me wearing a hat like that. It was a Gamsbart, a Tyrolean hat with a beard that was supposed to make the wearer look like a character. He might as well have been carrying a Nazi flag. After a few moments he ducked into a cinema and I followed.
At the ticket desk I smiled at the toucan-faced cashier behind the glass and said, "That fellow who came in with the stupid hat—the Gamsbart. Where's he sitting? I want to make sure I'm not behind him." "Stalls," she said. I smiled again. "Give me a seat in the front dress circle, will you? Just in case he keeps it on." "Film's just about to start," she said, handing me my ticket before going back to her nails and her copy of _Film Revue_. I went in and found my seat a few minutes before the lights went down, just in time to spot Friedrich Jauch, alone in the middle of the stalls, almost immediately beneath the front row of the dress circle where I'd positioned myself, not close enough to hear anything of what he might say, but close enough to notice if anyone sat anywhere near him. He put the hat on the seat next to him where it sat, quite noticeably, like a much-loved pet. I sat forward and, leaning my chin on the red velvet parapet, I found I was able to flick my eyes between the screen—the film was _Bhowani Junction_ —and Friedrich Jauch without even moving my head. The cinema was more or less empty; a film about the British Empire was hardly a popular subject in Germany. I lit a cigarette and settled down to wait for the other show I'd come for.
I'd always enjoyed going to the cinema, even when Dr. Goebbels was pretending to be Louis B. Mayer. Being part of a cinema audience felt like something attractively infernal to me. There was the darkness and the smoke, of course; there was the grandiose architecture, the gold curtains and the cheap marble and the red velvet; there was the paradox of being anonymous among a group of people; and there was the drama taking place on the big screen, like watching the gods struggle and screw up badly. It was as if real life had been suspended or abruptly curtailed in some antechamber of purgatory. There was all of that and the fact that I'd always wanted to die in a cinema, for the simple reason that a movie would give me something better to think about than the actual business of breathing my last. Ava Gardner looking down on me with those emerald eyes of hers, not to mention the sight of her ample chest in a slightly too-tight British army shirt, was much better than some muttering po-faced priest every time.
It was only now I realized that it was Ava who Ursula Dorpmüller had reminded me of. Meeting her at the apartment in Nymphenburg it had been all too easy to imagine poor Friedrich Jauch falling in with this seductive siren's plans; the wonder was how she'd ended up being married to a slob like Theo Dorpmüller in the first place. Maybe she'd married the poor bastard because it's easier getting generous amounts of life insurance when you're still in your thirties. I felt sorry for him. I even felt sorry for Friedrich Jauch. I hoped he'd enjoyed her body because where he was probably going they didn't allow conjugal visits. West Germany might not have had the death penalty like France and Great Britain but from my own experience I knew that Landsberg Prison was no holiday camp. After a while I tore my greedy eyes away from Ava's chest and noticed that the seat immediately behind Jauch was now occupied by a figure wearing a fur coat and a lilac head scarf. The two lovers were pretending not to talk but then Jauch turned around and took her hand, which clinched it in my eyes. These two couldn't have looked more guilty if they'd been Ava Gardner and Frank Sinatra. Now all I had to do was get to a telephone and call Dumbo Dietrich.
I went through the fire exit and ran downstairs, and outside. If the cops were quick they could pick them both up, one after the other, when they left the movie theater like two strangers in the night. It was true that most of the evidence against them was circumstantial, but an experienced detective would easily break them down under interrogation; the only question was which of them would crack first. I had my own theory about that. Jauch had carried out the murder, so he had the most to lose—and she would rat him out. She wouldn't be able to help it. That's just what women do. On the west side of Sendlinger Tor Platz, in front of the Nussbaum Gardens, was the Matthäuskirche, a soulless Protestant church built in 1953 with a high red-brick square tower that looked like somewhere to train firemen or, more likely, kill them. If he'd been looking, God must have thought German architects had lost all sense of reason. Nearby was a row of phone booths with more character than the church, and from one of these I called Dumbo. There were a couple of East German refugees begging in front of the church and I tossed a couple of coins their way when I came out of the phone booth. It wasn't looking at refugees that upset me; it didn't. It was them looking back that bothered me: one German staring at another and seeming to say, _Why me and not you?_ The worst thing was how so many of the younger ones still managed to look like the blond, blue-eyed master race.
I hurried back to the cinema, where I bought another ticket, this time for the stalls. I breathed a sigh of relief. The lovers were seated together now where I'd left them, quite unaware of the disaster that was about to turn their world upside down. Ava fixed her big green eyes on me and shook her head as if to say, _How could you betray them, you rotten bastard? They couldn't help it. That life insurance money was the only way they could make their love work_. Or some such crap. But then Ava was trouble. Anyone could see that. That was probably the reason I loved her. And it was just as well for us both that I'd promised myself to leave Ava alone. FOURTEEN – Time passed, slowly, and then one freezing day near the middle of March, I got the summons to go upstairs for an audience with Mr. Alois Alzheimer himself—the kind of summons for which a bottle of oxygen might almost have been required, such was the rarefied atmosphere that existed on the fourth floor. When I got there Dietrich was already seated in a brown leather Biedermeier bergère and, for a moment, until I saw the bottle of Canadian Club in Alzheimer's hand, I thought I was in some sort of trouble. That comes naturally to anyone who has as much to hide as I do.
"And here he is," said Alzheimer, pouring me a large one in a crystal glass the size of a small goldfish bowl. "The man who saved us twenty thousand deutschmarks." Everything in the office was of the finest quality. There was so much oak paneling on the walls it was like being a Cuban cigar in a humidor, while the gray carpet under my feet felt like a mattress protector. In the stone fireplace a log the size of a trench mortar was smoking quietly. Next to a little Meissen desk set and an impressive photograph of Alzheimer with Konrad Adenauer in a silver frame was an RCA Victor clock radio, and among the many leather-bound volumes on the bookshelf were a Slim Jim portable TV and an Argus slide projector; outside the door, Alzheimer's secretary's fingers were busy on an IBM electric typewriter that sounded like a light machine gun. Clearly he was a man who had very simple tastes, for whom the best was probably quite good enough. I glanced over at Dietrich, who was already nursing a glass. "They finally admitted it?"
"We just heard from the police. They both put their hands up to everything." "Took longer than I thought," I said, raising my glass to the news. "In my day we'd have had a confession within forty-eight hours. And I'm not talking about any strong-arm stuff, either. You keep someone awake for twenty-four hours with a Kaiser lamp in their face and pretty soon they'll forget even the most well-rehearsed story." "These days criminals have rights, unfortunately," said Alzheimer. "And don't forget, Frau Dorpmüller suffered a heart attack," said Dietrich. "The police weren't allowed to question her until she was out of the hospital." I pulled a face and laughed. "You think she was putting it on?" asked Alzheimer. "There are plenty of ways to feign a heart attack," I said. "Especially when you're an experienced nurse like she was. I think she was stalling for time until she'd got her story straight. Or until she found an opportunity to escape. Probably both. I'm surprised the cops still have her in custody."
"That's right," said Dietrich. "She was a nurse, wasn't she?" "As a matter of interest," said Alzheimer, "how would you pull something like that off? I mean it sounds like something we ought to be aware of in our industry, don't you think, Philipp?" For a moment I hesitated to tell them the full story; it wasn't one of my proudest moments as a Berlin detective, but then there weren't many of us who'd lived through the war who didn't have something to hide. According to Max Merten, Alois Alzheimer and MRE's previous chairman, Kurt Schmitt, had been close friends of Hermann Göring and were both taken into custody by the Americans after the war; it was generally held that Schmitt had even been in the SS, so it really didn't seem the moment to be coy about my own record. I swallowed the whiskey and prepared to open the ancient Gunther family crypt just a crack. "I was once obliged to arrest a doctor for being a Quaker," I said. "This would have been 1939, probably. He was a pacifist, you see. We had him in custody and then he had his heart attack, so-called. Very convincing he was, too. We were completely fooled and took him to hospital, where they confirmed our diagnosis. But he'd faked it. Mostly it's down to your breathing. You breathe fast deep breaths through the mouth, not the nose, and you hyperventilate and poison yourself with too much CO2. Chances are you'll faint, like he did. When you come to, you pretend to mix up your words, complain of a pain in the arm and the throat, but crucially not the chest, and maybe affect the paralysis of an eyelid, or even your tongue. Once he was in hospital, a doctor friend got hold of some adrenaline and used it to keep up the deception. At least until the doctor's wife, who'd decided she didn't like him or the Quakers anymore, showed us a paper he'd written on the subject of feigning a heart attack in order to avoid military service, which he'd been handing out to students at Humboldt University, in Berlin. Luckily for him we weren't yet at war, which meant he narrowly escaped the death penalty, for which I admit I was relieved. As it was he got two years in prison. I wasn't a Nazi myself but I fought in the trenches during the first lot and so I've always strongly disagreed with pacifism. When it comes to war I tend to think in terms of 'my country, right or wrong.'"
Ignoring this mention of the Nazis—nobody ever mentioned the Nazis unless it was absolutely unavoidable, especially in Munich—Alzheimer said, "Your candor is very much appreciated. And may I say, admired. I had no idea that such a thing was even possible. Did you, Philipp?" Dietrich smiled. "No, but I'm not surprised, sir. You know what a cynic I am. Still, people never cease to surprise me. The things they'll do to make a quick mark. I was, however, surprised about Friedrich Jauch. The man came to my home on more than one occasion. I must say I feel very let down by him." "So do we all, Philipp, so do we all. His had been a most promising career. They'll certainly miss him in sales." "To think I even offered him a job in claims. I thought I was a good judge of character." "But you are," insisted Alzheimer. "It was you who found Herr Ganz, was it not?" "I suppose so." "Which is in itself a subject for congratulation, given that Herr Ganz here has taken to the insurance business with such obvious alacrity. One door closes and another opens. It's most opportune. You must certainly write something for the company magazine on this fake heart attack business. Don't you think so, Philipp?"
"Absolutely he must, sir." "I'm asking myself if there is anything else we might learn from him. What do you say, Herr Ganz? Can you teach two old dogs like Dietrich and me something new?" I swallowed more of the whiskey, let Alzheimer refill my glass, and lit one of his cigarettes. "I wouldn't presume to teach you your business, sir." "Presume away," he said. "No one learns without making mistakes." "You might care to consider having all new life policies witnessed by a third party. Ursula Dorpmüller was paying her husband's policy in cash, which was how he knew nothing about it, so you might also consider the use of direct debits in the future. To avoid the possibility of fraud." "Those are both good ideas," said Alzheimer. "I'm beginning to wonder why we didn't think to employ an ex-detective in the claims department before now. Are you a religious man, Herr Ganz?" "Not really, no." "Good. Because that enables me to speak freely. As a businessman it always seems to me that every company needs its own Jesus. Not necessarily the man in charge but another man who gets things done, who works miracles, if you like. I'm beginning to think that you could be such a man, Herr Ganz. Wouldn't you say so, Philipp?"
"I would, sir." "I was just doing my job." But Alzheimer was not to be denied his opportunity to talk and to be generous. "We should find some way of rewarding his vigilance, Philipp. But for him this company should be poorer to the tune of twenty thousand deutschmarks. Not to mention the fact that we would still be employing a murderer in sales." "I agree, sir. Perhaps a raise in pay." "By all means a raise in pay. Let's say another five marks a week. And since Friedrich Jauch is no longer employed by us, let us also reward Herr Ganz by giving him the man's company car. Plus expenses. How does that sound, Herr Ganz? I take it you can drive." "Yes, I can drive. And thank you. A car would be very welcome. Especially in this weather." We all looked at the window and at the snow that was once more blowing through the gray air outside; through the glass it looked like interference on a poorly tuned television set. But the thought of not having to walk or catch a tram to work again filled me and my shoe leather with joy.
"And tell me, do you speak any other languages?" "Russian, French—fluently, English, and a bit of Spanish." "You don't speak Greek, I suppose." "No." "Pity. Because I do believe a working holiday in Greece might also be in order. As a reward of sorts, for work very well done. It will be an opportunity for you to stay in a nice hotel and in a more agreeable climate. Perhaps even to enjoy yourself for a couple of days. We were thinking you might perform a routine investigative service for MRE at the same time. You may or may not know that one of our more important business sectors is in marine insurance. However, Walther Neff—our leading average adjustor—has been taken ill. Like I say, it's a routine matter, more or less. A German vessel, the _Doris_ , was lost off the coast of Greece after catching fire. We have a local man, Achilles Garlopis, who knows about ships and who will do most of the actual donkeywork, of course. And Dietrich will tell you what else has to be done, in detail. But we do urgently need someone to go down there to check out a few things—such as if the owner has appointed his own general average adjustor, if we're looking at an actual total loss or a constructive total loss—to ensure that everything proceeds smoothly and according to our own guidelines, and to authorize any expenditure, of course, pending a final settlement. Someone trustworthy. _Someone German_."
"Sir, the one thing I know about ships is that it only takes a small leak to sink a large one. After the _Titanic_ and the _Gustloff_ , I'm amazed that anyone will insure them at all." "That's why the marine insurance business makes so much money. The larger the risk, the bigger the premium. Besides, it's not ships that are giving us any cause for concern here, Herr Ganz, it's the Greeks themselves. The plain fact of the matter is that when it comes to matters involving money—our money—the Greeks are not to be relied upon. These goat bangers are probably the most profligate race in Europe. With them, lying and dishonesty are ingrained habits. When Odysseus finally returns to Ithaca, so accustomed is he to lying that he lies to his own wife, Penelope, he lies to his elderly father, he even lies to the goddess Athena. And she herself is no less glibly tongued. They simply can't help it. The possibilities for fraud are endless. But with a man with a keen eye such as yourself, MRE stands a good chance of adjusting this claim to our satisfaction."
He refilled my glass with Canadian Club, only this time not as much, as if he'd already judiciously calculated my limit, which was more than I'd ever done myself; still, I thought it was nice to know he was looking out for my welfare. But later on, to celebrate my promotion, I bought a whole bottle of the stuff to celebrate and found out exactly why this whiskey was called Canadian Club. "These are interesting times," said Alzheimer, sitting on the edge of his desk in a way that made me think I was expected to listen. "MRE is expanding into Europe thanks to this new treaty Adenauer and Hallstein are about to sign in Rome in a few weeks' time. It will result in the progressive reduction of customs duties throughout a new economic trading area comprising Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, West Germany, and France—so I think your French will be useful. Of course, the French think they are to become the dominant force in Europe but, as time will prove, their ridiculous attempts to maintain their ragged colonies in Algeria and Indochina will be a great disadvantage to them economically. This will leave modern Germany very much in the driving seat. Again. And all of this done without an army this time. Just some new European laws. Which will be a nice change, don't you think? And very much cheaper for all concerned."
I could raise my glass to that, just about. I supposed the treaty of wherever it was could be seen as a declaration of good intentions: Germany would try its best to be nice to everyone and, in the interests of making money, everyone else would try their best to forget what Germany had done during the war. Bureaucracy and trade were to be my country's new method of conquering Europe, and lawyers and civil servants were to be its foot soldiers. But if Konrad Adenauer was anything to go by, it was really a coup d'état by a group of politicians who did not believe in democracy, and we were being guided toward a Soviet system of Europe without anyone understanding what was planned. Hitler could certainly have taken a lesson from the Old Man. It was not the men with guns who were going to rule the world but businessmen like Alois Alzheimer and Philipp Dietrich with their slide rules and actuarial tables, and thick books full of obscure new laws in three different languages. Of course, what Alzheimer had said about the Greeks was unforgivable; I suppose his only excuse was—as I was about to discover for myself—that it was also true.
FIFTEEN – From Frankfurt I flew on a DC-6B to Hellenikon Airport in Athens. Including a refueling stop it was a nine-and-a-half-hour journey. It wasn't hot in Athens, not in March, but it was a lot warmer than Munich. I was met inside the airport building by a fat man carrying a sign for MUNICH RE. He had a drooping mustache and was wearing a well-rendered bow tie that might have looked smart but for the fact that it was green and, even worse, matched his tweed suit—and, very slightly, his teeth—and the overall impression, apart from the one that the suit had been made by a trainee taxidermist, was of a jovial Irishman in some sentimental John Ford film. It was an impression enhanced by the enamel shamrock in his lapel which, he later explained, was due to a lifelong enthusiasm for a local football team called Panathinaikos. "Did you have a good flight, sir?" asked Achilles Garlopis, MRE's man in Athens. "We didn't crash, if that's what you mean. After nine hours on a plane I feel like Amy Johnson."
"It's not a civilized way to travel," he said, taking my bag politely. "Nor a natural one. Ships and trains—these are kinder to human beings, gentler. You won't find a Greek who disagrees with you, Herr Ganz. After all it was a Greek, Icarus, who first dared to conquer the skies and look what happened to him." Garlopis managed to make Icarus sound like one of the Wright brothers but there was nothing wrong with his German; it was near perfect. "The gods dislike aviators as they dislike all blasphemy. Myself, I never disrespect the gods. I am a very pagan sort of man, sir." He chuckled. "I would sacrifice chickens if the priests did not object to it. For a religion based on bloodshed, Christianity is most peculiar in its attitude to animal sacrifice." "It doesn't keep me awake at night," I admitted, hardly taking him seriously, yet. "Not much does." "How is Mr. Neff, sir? He had a heart attack, did he not?" "You know Mr. Neff?" "Yes. He's been here on several occasions. We're old friends, Walther and I."
"I believe he's recuperating. But for a while back there he wasn't so good." Garlopis crossed himself in the Greek Orthodox way and then kissed his thumb. "I shall pray for him. Send him my regards the next time you see him." He walked me out of the airport to his car, a powder-blue Oldsmobile with an accent stripe and whitewall tires. He noted my surprise at seeing the big American car as he placed my bag in the bedroom-sized trunk. "It's not my car, sir. I borrowed it from my cousin Poulios, who works at Lefteris Makrinos car hire, on Tziraion Street. He will give you a very good rate on any automobile you like. Including this one." "I'd prefer something a little less noticeable. Like a Sherman tank, perhaps." "Of course, sir. I perfectly understand. But this was all he could spare me today while my own car is in the workshop. Rest assured, your hotel is much more discreet. The Mega, on Constitution Square. Not as good as the Grande Bretagne, but not nearly as expensive. Many of the rooms, including yours, have their own baths and showers. I have another cousin who works there who has made sure you have the best room and the best rate. You'll be living on velvet. It's also very convenient for the post office on Nikis Street, from where you may send telegrams to head office at ten drachmas a word, at all hours and on all days of the week. For anything else, you may contact me at my office on Stadiou Street, number 50, next to the Orpheus Cinema."
Garlopis handed me a business card and eased his bulk behind the white steering wheel of the Oldsmobile while I lit a cigarette and climbed in beside him, settling onto the matching white leather upholstery. On the blue dashboard was a little silver-framed icon and a small plaster statuette of an owl. "What's with the towels on the backseat?" "Habit, I'm afraid. It gets very hot in the summer, sir. And I do sweat a lot. So it protects the leather." He started the engine and smiled. "The new Rocket engine. Alert, eager, power when you need it, thrifty economy when you want it. I must confess to an absurd and rather boyish enthusiasm for this car. Ever since I was young I have loved all things American. What a country that must be to make such cars. Driving this I find it all too easy to imagine myself on a space rocket to the moon." "You wouldn't like the food," I said, observing his girth. "There isn't any." Garlopis put the car in gear and we moved off smoothly. After a while he pressed a switch to operate the car's electric windows.
"Electric windows. Isn't it wonderful? You look at a car like this and you think of America and the future. When Americans talk about the American dream it's not a dream about the past. That's the difference between the American dream and a British one, or a French one, or a Greek one. Ours is a dream that's always about the past; and theirs is a dream that's always about the future. A better tomorrow. Not only that but I sincerely believe they're prepared to guarantee that future for us all, by force of arms. Without NATO we'd all be playing balalaikas." "Yes, that's probably true." "I can assure you there are lots of American cars in Athens, sir. They're not quite as noticeable as you think." "All the same I'd still like you to change it." "Certainly, sir." Garlopis was silent for a moment while he played with the electric windows some more. But after a while he changed the subject. "Since you mentioned food," he said, over the noise of the Rocket engine, "the best restaurant in all of Athens is Floca's, on Venizelos Street, where they will give you a very good price if you say you are a friend of mine. You should expect to pay a maximum of twenty-five drachmas for a good lunch."
"Another cousin of yours?" "My brother, sir. A most talented man in the kitchen, if unlucky in life. He has a gorgon of a wife who would terrify the Colossus of Rhodes. But do not mistake Floca's for Adam's restaurant, which is next door. That is not a good restaurant. It pains me to say so because I have a cousin who works there also and the stories he tells me would make your hair curl with horror." Smiling, I pushed my elbow out the open window and tried to relax a little after the flight, although this was difficult, given the Greek's erratic driving. I hoped we wouldn't have need of the icon's protection. "You speak excellent German, Herr Garlopis." "My father was German, sir. From Berlin. Garlopis is my mother's maiden name. My father came to Greece as the foreign correspondent for a German newspaper, married my mother, and stayed, at least for a while. His name was Göring, which we changed during the war for obvious reasons. My mother had eight aunts and uncles and all of those cousins of mine are on her side. You are from Germany, yes?"
"Yes. From Berlin, originally." "And do you travel very much, Herr Ganz?" I thought of my recent trips to Italy, Argentina, Cuba, and the South of France, to say nothing of the eighteen months I'd spent in a Soviet POW camp, and then shook my head. "Hardly ever." "I'm not a well-traveled man, myself. I've been to head office a couple of times. And once I went to Salzburg. But there was something about Salzburg I didn't like." "Oh? What was that?" "Austrians, mainly. A cold, disagreeable people, I thought. Hitler was an Austrian, was he not?" "We keep mentioning that in Germany, in the hope people will remember. Austrians most all, of course. But they don't seem to." "I wonder why," said Garlopis in the voice of one who didn't wonder at all. "If I may make a polite inquiry, sir? What other languages do you speak besides German?" I told him. "Why?" "You'll forgive me for saying so, sir, but finding yourself alone and in need of help it would be best in all circumstances if you were to speak English, sir. Or even French. It's not that Germans are disliked, sir. Or that the English are popular. Far from it. It's just that so soon after the war there are some who are jealous of West Germany's economic miracle, sir. Who feel that our own economy has performed, shall we say, less than miraculously, sir. Indeed, that it has stagnated. Myself, I believe that Germany's success is good for all of Europe, including Greece, no matter how unjust it might seem to those of us who suffered so horribly under the thoughtless brutality of the Nazis. Only a strong Germany can help to guarantee that Europe doesn't become communist, as Greece almost did after the war. But please speak English whenever possible, sir. And exercise a degree of caution before admitting your true origins. To say you are Swiss would always be better than to say you are just German. After the terrible civil war we fought, Athens is not without hazards, sir, even for a Greek."
"So I see." I touched the large blue eye that was hanging on the end of the chain attached to the car key. "That's for the evil eye, isn't it?" "It is indeed, sir. I don't think one can be too careful in the insurance business, do you? I'm a great believer in minimizing all manner of risk." "And the owl?" He looked sheepish. "The goddess Athena is often accompanied by an owl, which traditionally symbolizes knowledge and wisdom. You can't have too much of that, can you? I have a silver coin in my pocket, a tetradrachm, that also depicts an owl, for good luck." "How about the icon?" "Saint George, sir. Been looking after me and for that matter, this country, since I was born." I flicked my cigarette away. "So tell me about this ship that was lost. The _Doris_. I guess they weren't so well prepared for disaster as you seem to be, Mr. Garlopis." "To business. I like that. If I may say so, this is commendably German of you. Forgive me for talking so much. That is very Greek of me. From my mother's side."
"Don't apologize. I like to talk myself. That's from my human side. But right now I just want to talk about the ship. After all, it's the only reason I'm here." "As I think you know, the ship is German and so is the owner. The insured value was thirty-five thousand deutschmarks, which is two hundred and fifty thousand drachmas. Siegfried Witzel is a German diving expert who makes underwater films. One of these, _The Philosopher's Seal_ , was about Mediterranean monk seals, first described by Aristotle, and for some reason it won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Don't ask me why. All I know about monk seals is that they're very rare. The _Doris_ sank on an expedition looking for ancient Greek artifacts: statues, pottery, that kind of thing. Which are much less rare, at least in Greece. The ship was en route from Piraeus—the main port of Athens—to the island of Hydra when it caught fire off the coast of Dokos, which is another island near there. The small crew abandoned ship and made for the mainland in the life raft. The Hellenic Coast Guard in Piraeus is now investigating the loss, as is the Mercantile Marine Ministry here in Athens, but being Greek both of these bodies are slow and bureaucratic, not to say sclerotic. And to be quite frank with you, sir, their enthusiasm for investigating the loss of any German ship is unfortunately small. Which is perhaps not surprising, given that in the war Greece lost a total of 429 ships, most of them sunk by the Germans. But even at the best of times—and speaking of it as a purely investigative body—the Hellenic Coast Guard is slow; it's still looking into the loss of the _Lycia_ , a British ship that ran aground off Katakolon last February, and also of the _Irene_ , a Greek coaster that foundered southeast of Crete last September."
"So we're on our own, investigatively speaking." "That's about the size of it, unfortunately." "Tell me about this fellow Witzel." "I think it's possible the gods sank his ship because they were angry with him, but I doubt they could have been more angry than he has been with me. In short, he is a man with a most violent temper. Rude, disagreeable, and impatient. He makes Achilles seem like a model of good grace." "Why do you say so?" "I've tried to explain to him that nothing was going to happen until someone arrived from head office to adjust his claim against MRE but he's not much disposed to listen to me, a mere Greek. Since then I've been threatened with violence on more than one occasion." "By Witzel?" "By Witzel. He's very tough, very fit, you see. As you might expect from someone who is a professional diver. He doesn't seem to suffer fools gladly, and Greek fools like me, not at all. Frankly, I'm glad you're here so you can deal with him. One German with another. Poseidon himself would find this man frightening. Not least because he carries a gun."
"Oh?" "And a switchblade." "Interesting. What kind of gun?" "An automatic pistol. In a leather shoulder holster. Many Greeks do carry weapons, of course. Because of the Nazis. And before them, the Ottoman Turks. On Crete, it's quite common for men to carry handguns. But then Cretans are a law to themselves." "But Witzel is a German, you said. Not Greek." "Although not as noticeably as you, sir. He speaks our language fluently. As you might expect of someone who was living here before the war." "In my own experience carrying a gun tends to calm a man down. You can't afford to lose your temper more than once when you have a Bismarck in your pocket. The police don't like it." "Well, I thought I should mention it." "I'm glad you did. I'll certainly remember that if I try to adjust his claim. What else can you tell me about him?" "It's true that the man has lost his home as well as his livelihood, since he also claims to have been living on the ship. So this might account for his behavior. However, I have also found him inclined to be evasive as well as angry. For example: in my opinion he has failed to supply an adequate explanation for how the fire on board the _Doris_ might have occurred. I say _might have_ occurred since I only ever asked him to speculate on what _could_ have happened, which did not seem unreasonable, given the size of his claim. After all, one has to write something down on the loss report. Also, about the company that chartered the _Doris_ to look for antiquities, he has been less than forthcoming."
"Is it possible that they were looking for these antiquities illegally?" "On the contrary. All of the permissions were obtained at the highest level. And I do mean the highest. The exploration license was signed by Mr. Karamanlis, no less." Konstantinos Karamanlis was the Greek prime minister. "Mr. Witzel seems to think that this trumps the need for all explanations. As if Karamanlis were Zeus himself." "Do you think his claim might be fraudulent? That he might have scuttled his own ship to get the money?" "That's not for me to say, sir. I'm not a loss adjustor. Just a loss adjustor's humble agent." "Perhaps, but when he sent me down here, Alois Alzheimer, MRE's chairman, described you as our local shipping expert." This was a lie, of course. But a little flattery couldn't do any harm. "He did? Mr. Alzheimer said that?" "Yes." "That is most gratifying, sir. To think that a man like Mr. Alzheimer knows a man like me even exists. Yes, that is most gratifying." "I'm new at this game, Mr. Garlopis. I'm afraid I know nothing about ships. And even less about Greece. I'm here to cover for Mr. Neff. So your own opinions about what happened to the _Doris_ are more important than you might think. You tell me to authorize payment and I'll recommend we authorize payment. But if you tell me the case has only got one shoe we'll take a walk around and look for the other. Thirty-five thousand is a lot of money. Take it from me, people have killed for a lot less."
"It's kind of you to say so, Mr. Ganz. And I appreciate your honesty, sir." Mr. Garlopis chuckled. "There are logical explanations for almost everything, of course. I accept that. But for several years I was a merchant seaman myself and I can tell you that the men who go to sea, especially here in Greece, hold many irrational beliefs, to put it mildly. Our own explanations for everything that happens here in Greece might not meet with much sympathy among our masters in Munich." "Try me." "You'll only laugh, sir, and think me a very credulous fool." "No, not even if I thought so." Garlopis talked some more and I shortly formed the impression he was one of the most superstitious men I'd ever encountered, but no less likable for that. To my surprise he believed supernatural beings continued to inhabit the country's mountains, ancient ruins, and forests. The sea was no different, for he also believed in the Nereids—sea nymphs that did the will of Poseidon—and seemed more than willing to attribute all manner of disasters to their interference. This struck me as unusual in an insurance agent and I wondered how Mr. Alzheimer would react if I sent him a telegram explaining that the _Doris_ had been sunk by a sea nymph.
"Sometimes," said Garlopis, "that's as good an explanation as any. The waters around these islands are strange and treacherous. It's not every ship that disappears that can be properly accounted for. You'll forgive me, sir, if I suggest that it's a fault of you Germans to believe that absolutely everything has a logical explanation." "Sure, only it was the Greeks who invented logic, wasn't it?" "Ah yes, sir, but if you'll forgive me again, it's you Germans who have taken logic to its most extreme. Dr. Goebbels, for example, when he made a speech advocating the waging of total war—in 1943, was it not? "Yes, I know, you'll tell me he was just echoing von Clausewitz. Nevertheless, it can be argued that it was this mentality that condemned Germany to a futile squandering of life on an unprecedented scale when the reality is—you should have surrendered." I certainly couldn't argue with that. For a superstitious man, Achilles Garlopis was also an educated one. "In this case, however," added Garlopis, "I'm sure we'll find a better explanation for what happened to the _Doris_ , one that will suit Mr. Alzheimer and Mr. Dietrich."
"Let's hope so. Because I think the only monster Mr. Alzheimer believes in is probably Mrs. Alzheimer." "You've met her?" "I saw a picture of her on his desk. And I think she was probably frozen for millions of years before he found her." Garlopis smiled. "I've taken the liberty of asking Mr. Witzel to come to the office at ten o'clock tomorrow. You can question him then and form your own conclusions. I'll come by the hotel at nine and walk you there. Will you require an early-morning call, sir?" "I don't need an early-morning call, Mr. Garlopis. I've got my bladder." SIXTEEN – The Mega Hotel was in Constitution Square, named after the constitution the first Greek king, Otto, had been obliged to grant to the leaders of a popular uprising in 1843. It was situated opposite the Old Royal Palace, which now housed the Greek parliament, and the Grande Bretagne Hotel, which was a lot nicer than the one I was in. I took a walk around the tree-lined square after Garlopis had left me, to stretch my legs, see a bit of Athens, and get a lungful of the local carbon monoxide. The eastern side of the square was higher than the western and was dominated by a set of marble steps that led up to the parliament, as if you might have to make some kind of effort getting to democracy. In front of this lemon-colored building a couple of soldiers called evzones were making fools of themselves to the delight of a group of American tourists, only they called it changing the guard. Dressed like Pierrots, they made a very big thing out of not doing very much, regular as clockwork. I guess it was no more ridiculous than anything you could have seen performed by soldiers of the National People's Army outside the New Guardhouse on Unter den Linden in what was now East Berlin, but somehow like a lot of things in Greece, it was. Call me a xenophobe but there seemed to be something inherently comic about two very tall men each wearing a fez, a white kilt, and red leather clogs with black pompoms marking time and waving their legs in the air with an almost tantalizing uncertainty; indeed, it was almost as if these two were trying to send up the whole ceremony, which only seemed to make it all the more amusingly photogenic.
I bought some Luckys, a map, and a copy of _The Athens News_ —the only English-language newspaper (there wasn't a German one)—and took these back to the bar at the Mega to have a drink and a smoke and to acquaint myself with what was happening in the ancient Greek capital. A lawyer in Glyfada had been murdered. There had been a spate of burglaries in Amaroussion. Some Greek cops from police headquarters had been arrested for taking bribes. The Hellenic Police Internal Affairs Division reported that ninety-six percent of the population believed the Greek police were corrupt. And a German called Arthur Meissner was about to go on trial accused of war crimes. Apart from the relentlessly cheerful Greek music on some speakers above the bar, I felt quite at home. Even more than I might have expected. "How do you like those smokes?" said a voice speaking German. "They're all right. I've been smoking them for so long I hardly notice, except when I have to smoke something else." "So you'd smoke something else if you liked them better?"
"There are a lot of things I might do if I liked them better," I said. "I just don't know what they are yet." The man at the opposite end of the bar was German, or perhaps Austrian, and in his mid-to-late forties. He was slim with a thin hooked nose, a short mustache and a chin beard, a high forehead, eyes with a strong hint of oyster, and, as far as I could tell, he wasn't very tall. He was wearing a Shetland sport jacket and whipcord trousers. His Adam's apple was the most pronounced I'd ever seen and shifted around above his plaid-gingham shirt collar like a Ping-Pong ball in a shooting gallery. His voice was a quiet nasal baritone with a lot of patience on the edge. It sounded like the low growl of a house-trained leopard. "I'm reading an English newspaper and spoke English to the barman. So how did you mark me out as a German?" "You're not a Tommy and you're not American, that much is obvious from when you spoke. And the only way you'd be smoking Luckys would be if you were a German living in the American zone. Munich, probably. Frankfurt, maybe. The label on the inside of your jacket says Hugo Boss, so I guess they've finally been denazified. Good thing, too. That poor Fritz was just a tailor. Trying to make a living and stay alive. You might as well try to denazify the doormen at the Adlon."
"You should have been a cop." He smiled. "Not really. I was just kidding. As a matter of fact I saw you checking in a while ago. Heard you speaking German to the other fellow. The one with the flashy American car. And but for the war I would have been a lot of things. Hungarian, probably. I guess I'm lucky to be Austrian, otherwise I'd be living under the damn communists and scratching my ass with a hammer and a sickle. The name is Georg Fischer. I'm in the tobacco business. And at the risk of sounding like a lousy commercial, here, friend, try one of these." He pushed a packet of cigarettes along the marble-topped bar. "They're Greek, or Turkish, depending on how you look at these things." "Karelia. Sounds like they should come from the Baltic." "Fortunately they don't smoke that way. If there's one thing I hate, it's Russian smokes." He blinked his lashless eyes slowly; they looked like smaller versions of his almost hairless skull. "That's for sure." "Karelia is the oldest and largest tobacco company in Greece. Based in Kalamata, down south. But the tobacco comes from the Black Sea coast. Sokhoum. The leaves are almost like those in a cigar. Sweet on the tongue and cool on the throat."
I lit one, liked it, and nodded my genuine appreciation. "Life's full of surprises. The name's Christof Ganz. And thanks." "No, thank _you_. It's certainly nice to speak a bit of German again, Herr Ganz. Sometimes that's not such a good idea in this town. Not that you can blame the Greeks very much after the hell we inflicted on this damn country during the war. Hard to credit now. But I'm told that during the first year of the Nazi occupation there were children's bodies lying on the sidewalk in front of this hotel. Can you imagine it?" "I'm trying not to. I try not to think about the war now if I can possibly avoid it. Besides, we've paid for it since, don't you think? Or at least half of us have paid. The eastern half. I think they're going to be paying for it for the rest of their lives." "Could be you're right." He was staring straight ahead of him at a bar that contained so many bottles it looked like a cathedral organ. "I get a bit homesick sometimes." "Sounds like you've been here a while."
"My friend, I've been here so long I've started smashing the crockery when I'm in a good mood." "And when you're in a bad mood?" "Who can be in a bad mood in a country like this? Maybe the Greeks are feckless. But in summer this is the best country in the world. And the women are very nice, too. Even the lookers." I pushed the pack back along the bar. "Keep the pack," he said. "I've a suitcase full of them in my room." "You said you're Austrian?" "From a village called Rohrbrunn, near the Styrian border in what used to be Hungary, so we used to call it Nádkút. But I lived in Berlin for a year or two. Before the war. So. What line of business are you in, Herr Ganz?" "Insurance." "Selling it? Or paying it out?" "Neither, I hope. I'm a claims adjustor. Buy you a drink?" Fischer nodded at the barman. "Calvert on the rocks." I ordered another gimlet. "Insurance is a nice respectable German business," said Fischer. "We all need a business like that, where you can take a pause and draw breath, especially after everything that happened."
He didn't say what but then he was Austrian so he didn't have to say it; I knew what he meant. Any German would have known. "It's only when there's a pause that you can hear yourself think." "Nothing much ever happens in the insurance business. I like that. It's the only way you can get a handle on life." "I know exactly what you mean. Tobacco's a bit like that, too. Steady. Unspectacular. Unchanging. Harmless. Guilt-free. I mean, people are always going to smoke, right? My company is about to start exporting these cigarettes to Germany." "You just made a customer." "At least we are just as soon as the Greeks sign up for this new European Economic Community." "Any other tips? Besides not speaking German in Greece?" He toasted me with the whiskey he'd ordered. "Just one. Don't drink the tap water. They'll tell you it's safe. That it's made by the Americans. And it is—made by the Amis. Ulen & Monks; they own the Marathon Dam. But I'd stick to bottled if I were you. Unless you want to lose weight and fast."
I toasted him back. He handed me his business card. "Sounds like good advice." "If you get into trouble or you need my help, then call this number. We Germans have to stick together, right? What does the proverb say? Caught together, hanged together." SEVENTEEN – "What's the movie they're showing across the street?" Garlopis came to the open window of his office on Stadiou and glanced down at the poster on the front of the Orpheus Cinema. He had fetched me from my hotel more than an hour earlier and now we were awaiting the arrival of Siegfried Witzel, our insurance claimant. He was late. " _The Ogre of Athens_ ," he said. "Do you like going to the cinema, Herr Ganz?" "Yes." "It's quite a popular film here in Greece. At least it is now. It's about a quiet little man who is mistaken for a murderer called Drakos. Enjoying this mistake, he rules over the underworld until the other crooks start to see their error." It sounded a lot like Hitler, but I shook my head. "Not my kind of film. I prefer Westerns."
"Yes, there's something about a Western that's pleasantly timeless." He glanced at his wristwatch. "Which would seem to be a concept with which Mr. Witzel is also familiar. Where is he, I wonder?" Outside the cinema a priest wearing a black surplice was cleaning his scooter; the whole city was plagued with them, like thousands of noisy, brightly colored insects. I watched him polishing the red clamshell body of the scooter and winced as its distant relation came buzzing along the street, while out of the corner of my eye I could see Mr. Garlopis feeling my struggle with the din of Athens and politely waiting to see if he should intervene on my behalf. When finally he did and closed the window, I almost breathed a sigh of relief. "Athens is very loud after Munich," I said. "Yes," he said. "The gods are the friend of silence. Which is why they chose to live on mountaintops. And why rich men who wish to emulate them buy houses on hills, I suppose." On the walls were a large map of Greece and several photographs of the past and present Panathinaikos football team, and through the open door could be heard the sound of a secretary's fingers tickling the keys on a big typewriter.
"How long have you been working for MRE, Herr Garlopis?" "Five or six years. During the war I was an interpreter and then after that I worked for my cousin's debt-collection agency. But that work is not without hazard. Bad debt is always a very sensitive subject." He looked at his watch again and tutted loudly. "Where is that man?" "Does Herr Witzel have far to come?" I asked. "I really don't know. He's been most evasive about his present address. He told me that since the boat was also his home he's been sleeping on the floors of various friends in the city. Although with his temper the idea that Herr Witzel has any friends at all seems wholly improbable. Would you like some Greek coffee, Herr Ganz?" "No thanks. If I drink any more coffee I'll fly out this window. Has he got a lawyer?" "He didn't mention one." "We'll need some sort of an address if we're going to pay out thirty-five thousand deutschmarks. His girlfriend's floor, Athens, won't satisfy our accounts department." "That's what I've been telling him, sir."
"May I see the file on the ship?" I came back to the desk and Garlopis handed me the details on the _Doris._ While I glanced over the contents, he summarized the vessel's specifications: "The _Doris_ was a two-masted schooner, thirty meters long, with a beam of eight and a half meters, and a maximum draft of 3.8 meters. She had a single six-hundred-horsepower diesel engine with a cruising speed of twelve knots. Built in 1929 as the _Carasso_ , with five cabins, she was all wood in her construction, which probably explains why the fire took hold so fiercely." There was a single color picture of a ship at sea with about eight sails; to someone like me who knew nothing about ships, it looked handsome enough, I suppose, and according to the file had been the subject of a recent refit. From what was written down I couldn't have said if the ship was seaworthy, but on a sea as smooth and blue as the one in the photograph she certainly looked that way. "There's also a list of things kept on board that were lost that he's claiming for," added Garlopis. "Diving equipment, cameras, furniture, personal effects. More than twenty thousand drachmas' worth of stuff. Fortunately for him, he seems to have been quite scrupulous in keeping us up-to-date with receipts."
A few minutes later we heard footsteps on the wooden stairs outside the office door and Garlopis nodded at me. "That must be him now. Remember what I said, sir. About not provoking him. He's probably armed." A tall, bearded man, with wavy hair as thick and yellow as a field of corn on a windy day and eyes as blue as Thor's, opened the door and bowed stiffly. He had a round, tanned face, a bee-stung lower lip, and on his forehead above a slightly broken nose was an angry knot of muscles. He reminded me strongly of a painting I'd once seen by Dürer of an unidentified burgher: authoritarian, distrustful, severe—Witzel's was a very German face. He wore a blouse-type jacket made of pale leather with wool knit sleeves and collar, wheat denim jeans, brown polo boots, and a brown suede cap. On his wrist was a Rolex Submariner with a black rubberized wristband, and between his heavily stained fingers was a menthol cigarette. He smelled strongly of Sportsman aftershave, which made a pleasant change from the whiff of Garlopis's body odor that stuck to the Greek's familiar green suit like the smell of naphthalene.
"Herr Witzel, how nice to see you again," said Garlopis. "This is Herr Ganz, from head office in Munich. Herr Ganz, this is Herr Witzel." We shook hands in wary silence, like two chess players about to do battle. His hand was strong but quickly rotated over mine so that his palm was facing down and mine up, as if he meant to show that he intended to have the upper hand during our meeting. That was all right by me; this was only a conversation about insurance after all. "Please, gentlemen, sit down," said Garlopis. Witzel sat down in front of the desk, crossed his legs nonchalantly, and tossed a packet of Spud and some keys onto an Imray nautical chart of Greece and the Peloponnese, which was when I noticed that in one of his ears was a little hearing aid about the size of a mint. And I wondered about the keys; for a man who claimed to be sleeping on a friend's floor, there were several on the key ring besides the evil-eye fob that everyone in Greece but me seemed to possess and a little brass ship's wheel.
"In order to process your claim, Herr Witzel, I'm going to need some more details about your business and what happened to your ship. I know this is a matter of great urgency to you, but please try to be patient. I have many questions. At the end of our conversation I hope to be able to issue you with—at the very least—a provisional check, to cover your immediate expenses." "I'm glad to hear it." As he spoke Witzel stared daggers in the direction of poor Garlopis, as if reproaching him for not doing the same earlier on. "You're a diver, aren't you?" I said. "That's right." "How did you get into that business?" "During the war I was in the German navy. With the Division Brandenburg, better known as the ocean warriors. Before that I trained with the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS, who were the leaders in the field of underwater combat." He tapped the ear with the hearing aid. "That's how I damaged this ear. A mine went off when I was in the water. After the war I bought the _Doris_ , and stayed on down here, making underwater films, which was always my passion."
"Under the circumstances that seems like a brave decision. For a German, I mean." "Not really. I did nothing during the war to feel ashamed of." Clearly the concept of collective guilt didn't feature in Witzel's way of thinking. "Besides, I speak fluent Greek and Italian, and I've always gone out of my way to show the Greeks that I was certainly no Nazi." I nodded attentively but I wondered exactly how you went about doing something like that. "As a result I always lived on the ship without any problems. Except for the usual ones, when you're a filmmaker: a lack of money. All filmmaking is expensive. Underwater, especially so." "What was the purpose of this specific voyage? I'm not yet clear about that." "It was a private charter. I'd found a few small marble and bronze artifacts on a previous dive in some waters off the island of Dokos—on what looked to be possibly the wreck of an old Greek trireme—and, thinking I might make some money out of this discovery, I contacted the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus with a view to fitting out an expedition to look for more. Not my usual kind of thing but I needed the money. Like I said, filmmaking is expensive. Anyway, they told me that at present, financing is tight for that kind of thing—it's not like Greece has a shortage of archaic bronzes and marbles, but they suggested that if I could find a German museum willing to put up the money, they would organize all of the necessary permissions in return for half of what we found. So I did exactly that. Professor Buchholz is a leading German Hellenist, and an old friend of a friend—someone I knew when I was at university in Berlin. Simple as that, really. Or at least it seemed it was until my ship sank."
"You're a Berliner?" "Yes. From Wedding." "Me too. What did you study?" "Law, at Humboldt. To please my father, of course. It's a very German story. But he died halfway through my studies and I switched to zoology." "Like Humboldt." "Exactly." Witzel stubbed out his cigarette and then hung another on his lower lip like a clothes-peg. Meanwhile I unfolded the chart, turned it toward him, and came around the desk to look over his shoulder. "Perhaps you could show me on the map where the _Doris_ sank." "Surely." Witzel leaned over the map and moved his forefinger down the Greek coast, about thirty or forty miles south of Piraeus, as the crow flies. While he leaned over the map I had an excellent view of what looked like an automatic in a leather shoulder holster under his left arm. Quite why a man who was diving for archaic Greek bronzes felt the need to carry a gun was anyone's guess. "It was just about here when we discovered the fire," he said. "Latitude 37.30 north, longitude 23.40 east, off the eastern Peloponnese coast. It was late at night and dark, and so we put out an SOS; and while we fought the fire we tried to reach the mainland, but it quickly became clear that we would have to take to the life raft. The _Doris_ is made entirely of wood, you see. She sank here in about two hundred and fifty meters of water. Too deep to dive for, unfortunately, otherwise I'd hire some equipment and go down to get some personal effects that are still on board.
"In the life raft, we put in at Ermioni. Myself, two crew, and Professor Buchholz. Then we contacted the local coast guard and told them not to bother looking for the _Doris_ as it was already gone." I folded up the map again. "Now, about the fire. Any idea of the cause?" "The oil in the engine caught fire. No doubt about it. The engine was an American two-stroke diesel—a Winton, recently overhauled in the shop, and normally very reliable. But the Adrianos shipyard in Piraeus I used to take her to went bust and I had to get someone else in Salamis to do the most recent overhaul. My guess is that they cut a few corners to save money, that they used a cheap, low-viscosity oil instead of a more expensive, high-viscosity one, which was what you need for an engine like that. And the oil simply couldn't deal with the high temperatures. Typical Greeks. You have to watch them like a hawk or they'll rip you off. Of course, knowing that is one thing; proving it is something else. You'd be surprised at how quickly these bastards will close ranks when a non-Greek starts alleging incompetence. Especially a German. I don't mind telling you, we've a lot to live down in this country."
"I suppose so. This shipyard you used. What's the name of it?" "A shipyard in Megara. Megara Shipyards, I think they're called." "And the artifacts you found. Where are they now?" "They were on the ship. The _Doris_ was my home. I kept everything of value there. Diving equipment, cameras, you name it." "I notice that you didn't put a value on the artifacts. In fact, they're the only thing you didn't put on the list of things for which you intend to make a claim." "No, I didn't." "All the same, they must have been quite valuable if they inspired an expedition to return to this old shipwreck." "I suppose so. But it hardly matters now, does it? I mean I don't have the paperwork to prove I ever had them. Or even what they were." "Oh, I don't think that would be a problem," I said helpfully. "Surely this Professor Buchholz could provide a value, couldn't he? After all, he must have seen the pieces when you were looking to get the expedition financed. To whet his appetite. We can ask him. I'll need to speak to him anyway, just in case he decides to make a claim against you, for whatever reason."
"Why would he do that?" "Oh, I don't know. But rest assured, you're covered for that, too." "He won't be making a claim." "You seem very sure of that, sir. May I ask why?" "He just won't be. Take my word for it." "Did he have an insurance policy of his own?" "I don't know. But if he had, it's nothing to do with me." "You might think that. But if he claims against his insurance then they might easily make a claim against Munich RE. I wouldn't be doing my job if I didn't try to speak with him. Just to make sure of what you say. Where can I get in touch with him?" "I don't really know." "You must have had his address—when he first came to Greece." "I believe he was staying at the Acropolis Palace, here in Athens." "Well, perhaps he's there now." "Perhaps. But I think he may already have gone back to Germany." "No matter. I can contact him there just as easily. I'm going back to Germany myself just as soon as I've settled your claim." "So you are going to settle it, then?" he sneered. "Instead of just asking a lot of damn-fool questions."
"I'm surprised to hear you say that, given the sum of money involved." "Look, about the artifacts, let's forget about them, shall we? I don't want to claim for those. Not least because I don't want the museum in Piraeus chasing me for half their value. You can understand that, can't you?" "I can understand. But it doesn't change anything. They might not chase you for half the value. But they might feel differently about chasing your insurance company." Until now I'd seen little sign in Siegfried Witzel of the ill temper Garlopis had mentioned, but this was about to change. Witzel was already grimacing and shaking his head irritably, which made Garlopis look nervous. "Look, what is all this shit? I expect the runaround from him." Witzel jerked his head at Garlopis. "He's a damned Greek. But not from a fellow German. I've told you all I know." "You might think so. But it's also my job to find out the things you don't know. To put the umlauts over everything. You're an educated man, you understand that, surely."
"Don't patronize me, Herr Ganz." "It could even be that with your cooperation I find enough evidence to sue the shipyard in Megara for negligence." "I don't want to sue anyone. Look, friend, I have to live here. Imagine how things would be if I started suing these people. We Germans have a bad enough name already." "Yes, I take your point. But I'm just doing my job. Looking after my employer's interests. As well as yours." "I've been a good customer. I've paid my premiums, regular as clockwork. And I've never made a claim before. You must be aware of _that_. The trouble with pen pushers like you, Herr Ganz, is that you think you can push people around just as easily as that Pelikan in your hand." "I don't push people around. Not even when I want to. But if I did, I'd think it better to be pushed around with a pen instead of with a gun like the one under your arm." Witzel smiled sheepishly. "Oh. That." "Yes. That. Frankly, it makes me wonder a bit about you. The Bismarck, I mean. Not many of our claimants carry guns, Herr Witzel."
"I've a license for it, I can assure you." He shook his head. "When you're in seaports late at night as often as I am, you might carry a gun or a knife in the same way that another man might carry a pen. Fishermen play rough. And not just them. Eight years after a civil war just as bitter as the one fought in Spain, it's wise to go carefully on a strange island or in a big city. Fifty thousand people were killed in this country." "I'll buy that." "I'm not selling it. That's just a fact. Take it or leave it." "What I would like to take is your present address. Or the name and address of your lawyer, if you have one. And please, the address for Professor Buchholz." "I can't give you my own address right now. I'm staying with friends, which means I'm almost never in the same place twice. Until I get some damn money out of you people, I can't afford a hotel." "In which case you should appoint a lawyer to look after your interests. So that we can get in touch with you." "Very well. If you think it's necessary."
"And Professor Buchholz? Where can I find him?" Witzel looked vague. "Somewhere in Munich. My address book with all his contact details was on the _Doris_ , I'm afraid." "No matter. If he is a leading Hellenist like you say, he should be easy enough to get in touch with." I opened my briefcase and took out the certified check for twenty-two thousand five hundred drachmas payable to Siegfried Witzel that I'd had drawn up before leaving Munich. "What's this?" he asked. "Pending any adjustment of your claim this is an interim payment on account to help tide you over. You can afford a hotel now." "About time." "I'll need to see some identification in order to give you this." "Of course," he said, and handed me his passport, which was how I learned his age: he was forty-three, but looked a little older. The sight of the check seemed to soften him a little and he even tried smiling, for once. "Look, Herr Ganz," he said, "as one German to another, I'm asking you to forget about the artifacts that were lost on the _Doris_. I give you my word that no one is going to make a claim for them. Least of all me or the professor. People don't always behave at their best when a ship is sinking. I'll admit that neither I nor the professor conducted ourselves with any great credit and the fact is that he and I exchanged some pretty strong words before we parted, in Poros. I'm not the most even-tempered man, as you may have noticed. You see, when the time came to abandon ship I told everyone to bring something important to the life raft. I asked the professor to bring some water, a flashlight, and the Very pistol. Which he neglected to do. I was angry about that and even angrier when I found some of the artifacts in the professor's pockets when we were on the life raft. I don't suppose I would have minded about that quite so much if he'd also remembered the flare pistol and the water. It was dark when we abandoned the _Doris_. I had no way of knowing how long we were going to be in the boat, so the Very pistol and the flashlight might have helped with our rescue. Anyway, I was rough with him; I slapped him about a bit and accused him of stealing. A struggle ensued and the artifacts were lost over the side. He's hardly likely to treat any questions about me kindly now. In fact, the chances are he'll put the phone down the minute he hears my name. So save yourself the trouble of asking him."
"Well, thank you for your very commendable honesty." "I'll find a lawyer and be in touch," he said. "There's a good one on the floor below," said Garlopis. "Herr Trikoupis. I can vouch for him." Witzel smiled thinly. He put the check in his back pocket, picked up his cigarettes and his keys, and went out of the office. EIGHTEEN – "Commendable honesty?" Mr. Garlopis chuckled quietly. "I must confess to a certain amount of incredulity when I heard you say that, sir. And I don't mean to tell you your business. But please don't tell me you believe that man's story?" "No, of course I don't believe his story," I said, grabbing my coat. "What you've said about him from the beginning seems perfectly accurate. I've seen foxes who were less evasive than Herr Witzel." "I'm very relieved to hear you say that, sir. It was all I could do not to laugh out loud when he was trying to persuade you not to contact Professor Buchholz. There's much more to this than meets the eye. I fear even a cyclops could see the flaws in his story. And did you notice the way he didn't contradict you when you talked about suing the shipyard in Megara after he'd already said it was in Salamis? I take it that was deliberate. If so it was a masterstroke, sir. I take my hat off to you. And the way you brought up the gun. I should never have dared even mention it. No, the man's story has more holes in it than the present government's political manifesto."
I went onto the landing outside the office door and, peering over the wrought-iron banister, I watched Witzel go down the stairs. "That's why I'm going to follow him. In my experience it's sometimes the quickest way to see how much of what a man has told you is on the level." I was thinking of the way I'd followed Friedrich Jauch in Munich, and how that had worked well for me; perhaps following Witzel would prove equally productive. "At the very least I'd like find out where he's living right now, and with whom. That might tell us something on its own." "But forgive me, sir, you don't know the city. Supposing you get lost?" "That's the thing about tailing a guy. It's impossible to get lost. After all, he's bound to lead me somewhere and even if I don't know where that is, I can probably find it again." "Seriously, sir. I have to say, this doesn't sound like a good idea at all. I can't imagine Herr Neff ever doing such a thing as following one of our insurance claimants. Suppose Witzel sees you? Have you forgotten that he's armed?"
"I'll be all right." I smiled. Part of me—the part that was still a detective—was already looking forward to what I had in mind. I'd enjoyed following Jauch, almost childishly so. "Then would you like me to drive you, sir? I'm parked just around the corner and entirely at your disposal." "In that car of your cousin's? I might as well try to follow him with a couple of motorcycle outriders. No, I want you to stay here and try to arrange for us to meet with someone from the Archaeological Museum this afternoon. And see what else you can find out about that boat of his. You said it was called the _Carasso_ before it was the _Doris_? So why'd he change the name? And when did that happen? Presumably the Mercantile Marine Ministry in Piraeus must have some information on that kind of thing." "New owner. New name. That's usually how it works, sir. It's not everyone who believes a new name brings bad luck to a ship. Although in this case it would seem that it has. Poseidon's ledger of the deep and all that." He shook his head sheepishly. "Pure superstition, of course. But sometimes it has to be admitted that these old customs are not without their foundations."
"All the same. I'm curious." "Of course, sir. I'll get right on it. I've a cousin in the ministry who owes me a favor. An impossible and very conceited man but he might be able to help. In fact, I'll insist on it. If it wasn't for me he'd still be the janitor at the American Farm School in Thessaloniki." I heard the front door open and close and I went downstairs and out onto the street in time to see Witzel walking southeast down Stadiou toward Constitution Square, in the same direction as the roaring Athenian traffic. I was already looking for a taxi and, not seeing one, was wondering if I'd made the right decision in dispensing with Garlopis and the blue Oldsmobile, which was parked right in front of a florist's on Santaroza and immediately behind a pistachio-green Simca that Witzel had stopped beside. I told myself to remind Garlopis to get rid of the American car. As Witzel opened the Simca's door I quickly crossed the road and, speaking English, offered the young priest polishing the scooter outside the cinema a hundred drachmas if he would follow the Simca with me on the back. There was a banknote already vertical in my hand and he took it without a word, lifted the scooter off its stand, started the engine, and nodded over his shoulder for me to get on board. A minute later we were in the midst of the choking Athenian traffic and in heart-stopping pursuit of the Simca as it headed west along Mitropoleos.
"You American?" asked the priest, whose name was Demetrius. "Swiss," I yelled. "Like the cheese." "Why are you following this man?" "He stole some money from some friends of mine. I want to find out where he lives so I can fetch the cops." "Attica cops? They're as bad as the thieves. You'd be better off going to church and asking God to get it back for you." "Let's hope it doesn't come to that. I hear he often asks a savior's fee. Like your immortal soul." Blasphemy is never a good idea when you're riding on the back of a scooter in Athens. I braced myself and closed my eyes for a second as we came perilously close to the wheels of an ice truck. Then I felt a strong jolt as the smallish wheels of the scooter hit a pothole and, out of fear that we would bounce off the road, I grabbed on to the priest's black cassock, which smelled strongly of incense and cigarettes in marked contrast to the stinky blue smoke that filled the streets, but the scooter stayed upright and about thirty meters right behind the Simca. Now that I was riding pillion I realized a scooter was perfect for following someone in Athens, if not for my nerves; the city traffic was so chaotic and undisciplined that I might never have kept up with Witzel in a yellow cab. Demetrius made light work of the pursuit and even found time to point out a building on our left.
"That's the old Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens where I work. Come in sometime and say hello to me and to Saint Philothei, whose reliquary is in there. She was beaten to death by Turkish Muslims for giving shelter to four women who'd escaped from a harem." "A lot of guys take that kind of thing much too personally these days. Especially when they've had a drink or two. At least I always think so. But please, keep your eyes on the road. We can do the sightseeing later. Better still, you can hear my confession now, while I'm riding pillion. That way we can kill two birds with one stone." The Simca turned abruptly south in the general direction of the Acropolis and we followed. Witzel was as angry a driver as he was an insurance claimant; a couple of times he extended all the fingers on his hand at other motorists, which, Demetrius assured me, was an obscene gesture called the _moutza_. The young priest didn't tell me what it meant; he didn't have to: in any language, an obscene gesture isn't usually meant to be an invitation to a waltz.
Witzel went left in front of some ancient ruins and we did the same, heading up the hill along a narrowing street with the Acropolis and whatever was on top of it now firmly in sight. Then, in front of a café, Witzel stopped the Simca, got out, and walked up the hill toward the Acropolis. For a moment I didn't appreciate that he had actually parked the car because this was Greek parking and a thousand kilometers from the way people parked their cars in Germany, which was neatly and legally and with a certain amount of consideration for other people. Without being instructed to do so Demetrius hung back a little, keeping the two-stroke engine running, and I more or less hid behind him to prevent Witzel from seeing me. This was easy; the priest was as tall as a Doric column and just as wide. He made the red scooter he was seated on look like a cocktail cherry. I climbed off the back of the scooter and tried to steady my trembling legs; they say you learn something every day but all I'd learned so far was that I liked riding scooters even less than I liked being on the back of a wild mustang. Demetrius stroked his beard and promised to wait for as long as it took to smoke the cigarette I'd given him, so I gave him another for the back of his ear and, when I was sure Witzel was almost out of sight, I followed him on foot.
It was a quiet neighborhood of empty tourist cafés, winding narrow streets, and neat little white stucco houses—the sort of old town neighborhood you imagine probably exists only on a Greek island and not jumbled around the base of the Acropolis. Bouzouki music spilled out of windows like electronic signals sent by some frantic space traveler. Up ahead, a few intrepid Japanese tourists who had braved the Athenian morning cold were shopping for souvenirs. Like almost everyone else in Europe, Witzel paid the Japanese no attention. They were fortunate that way; fortunate that their own war crimes had been committed against the Chinese, the British, and the Australians in faraway places like Nanking and Burma. They could tour the historical sites of Greece without fear of assault, unlike myself. And maybe they just didn't give a damn the way we Germans did. Witzel stopped for a moment to light one of his revolting menthol cigarettes, which gave me enough time to gain a little ground on him and, from the doorway of a shop selling cheap plaster models of the Parthenon, I watched him carefully to see where he would end up. A few moments later he paused in front of a dilapidated three-story house with an almost opaque carriage lamp and shabby brown louvered shutters, produced his keys, and unlocked the narrow double-height door. A Greek flag was visible in a window on the uppermost floor and, behind a wrought-iron gate, an evil eye had been painted over an old wound in a gnarled tree trunk that was scratching itself against the wall like a mangy dog. I took a good look at the house, noted the address, which was helpfully recorded on a street sign behind the carriage lamp, and then decided to go back to the priest and his scooter. I might have stayed a bit longer but the house had a very private, closed-up look that made me think I wouldn't learn anything by just standing outside and keeping a watch on the place. I wanted to return to number 11 Pritaniou and surprise Siegfried Witzel later on, when maybe I'd gathered a little more information about the _Doris_ and the diving expedition from the Mercantile Marine Ministry and the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus. Enough at least to contradict whatever cock-and-bull story he'd cooked up to make sure his insurance claim was settled. I was looking forward to that. But halfway down the gently sloping street, I was obliged to stop for a moment outside the Scholarhio café.
It's one of life's miracles that—most of the time—you don't notice your heartbeat. To that extent it's like being on a ship; when the sea is rough you can't help but pay attention to it. My heart had put in a couple of extra beats, like a virtuoso jazz drummer, just for the hell of it, perhaps, and then stopped for an unnerving fraction of a second, or so it seemed, which left me reaching to lean upon the whitewashed wall of the café—as if the ship's deck had shifted ominously under my feet—before it kicked in again, so strongly that I almost went down on one knee and which I now considered doing anyway because this always seems to be the best position to adopt when uttering a prayer. Somehow I stayed silent, even inside my own skull, for fear that I might hear God laugh at my mortal cowardice. I felt a pain in my back, as though from some infernal turn of the screw, and it began expanding through my trembling torso. Beads of sweat studded my face and chest like scales on a crocodile and my breathing quickened. I thought of Walther Neff and the heart attack that had put him in the hospital and me in his place representing MRE in Athens, and I almost smiled as I considered the irony of me dying in Greece, doing his job, while he recuperated safely at home in Germany. But straightaway I knew what needed to be done: I lurched into the café, ordered a large brandy, and lit a cigarette but not before snapping off the filter to smoke it plain and get my breath. The old remedies are usually best. Throughout both wars it was a strong cigarette and a tot of something warm that kept the nerves in check, especially when the shells were falling around you like rocks at a Muslim stoning. Once the nerves were sorted, the bullets wouldn't touch you; and if they did, you hardly cared.
"Are you all right?" asked Demetrius, when I returned to the red scooter. A handsome man, he looked like a house-trained Rasputin, at least before Yusupov invited him to dinner at his palace. "You look a little pale, even for a Swiss." "I'm fine," I said, a little breathlessly. "Apart from having just had a near-fatal heart attack, I feel as well as I always do. But you might hear my confession now: I'm not really sure scooters agree with me. So thanks all the same, Demetrius, but I'll take a taxi back. Or I might even walk. If I'm going to die in Athens I'd prefer it to happen while I'm not actually in fear for my life." NINETEEN – Telesilla, the not unattractive red-haired woman whom Achilles Garlopis employed as a secretary, had narrow green eyes that were made narrower by the thickness of her eyebrows, the breadth of her nose, and, perhaps, the knowledge that I was a German. She knew who I was but still regarded me with what felt very like suspicion, which probably explained her obvious hesitancy in permitting me to await the return of Garlopis to his office. She told me he'd gone to the ministry in Piraeus, offered me a coffee that I declined out of respect for my delinquent heart, closed a filing cabinet that Garlopis had left open, and then went back to an adjoining office to sit at a typewriter beneath a large photograph of King Paul dressed in a British army uniform and wearing more stars on his chest than a Russian grand admiral, leaving me to take her employer's chair, where I was faced by a phalanx of photographs on the desk that showed a younger Garlopis with his large wife and even larger children. It was a very uxorious display and a little at odds with a recent copy of _Playboy_ I found under the blotter. I leafed through it idly, ignoring some probably worthy articles on jazz, Mexico, and women in business in favor of Miss January, a voluptuous redhead called June Blair who managed to promise a great deal while showing very little of what had made her the Playmate of the Month. You could probably have seen more on any German beach, even in winter, and this made me think that it took a certain kind of genius to persuade men to pay for a magazine like this: the American kind, probably. After a while I closed my eyes. I was feeling tired after my walk back from the Acropolis and I may even have slept a little. In my experience there's nothing quite like an office chair to make a man feel that he needs to take a nap. Especially when Miss January's shapely image is still imprinted on the insides of his eyelids.
A bit later on I heard the slow footsteps of a big man coming upstairs and, opening my eyes, I concluded that Garlopis had finally returned. "How did you get on, sir?" he asked breathlessly. "Did you find out where he's been living?" I stood up, left him to his own captain's chair, and went and sat facing the desk on a chair where I imagined Telesilla taking dictation under the lubricious eyes of Garlopis and, now that I considered the matter further, it occurred to me that she was not unlike the flame-haired playmate in the centerfold underneath the blotter. Maybe that was the reason Garlopis had bought the magazine in the first place. Either that or Telesilla had only been in the job since January. "Pritaniou, number eleven, in the old town at the base of the Acropolis. I couldn't tell if he's living alone there or not. But at least now we know where to find him. And you? Did you see your cousin at the Mercantile Marine Ministry?" "I did." Garlopis adjusted his bow tie and allowed himself a smile. "And the news is—well, interesting to say the least, in that it provides us with a possible motive for a case of arson. I only say possible, sir. That's for you to decide, of course. But people have long memories in this country. With the many centuries of history we have, we need long memories."
He found a cigarette, rattled a box of matches, lit up, and removed a piece of paper from his pocket. "As we know, the _Doris_ was formerly registered as the _Carasso._ I discovered that the previous owner was a Jewish merchant in Salonika, which, as you know, is now our second city, Thessaloniki. The Jewish merchant's name was Saul Allatini and he bought and sold coffee. Before the war, Thessaloniki was home to a large number of Jews. Possibly as many as there existed anywhere in Europe outside of Poland. Sephardic Jews mostly, from Spain; but also a great many who had fled from Muslim persecution in the Ottoman Empire. But unlike most countries, Greece, I'm proud to say, gave its Jews full citizenship, and they thrived. As a result of all this, perhaps the majority of people in Thessaloniki—at least sixty thousand—were Jews. "Anyway, I don't want to embarrass you, sir, with a lachrymose tale of Jewish suffering in Greece—you being a German n'all—so, to cut a long story short, most of the Jews in Thessaloniki were deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and gassed to death. Meanwhile their property was subject to confiscation and resale by the collaborationist Hellenic government of Ioannis Rallis. Which is how the unfortunate Mr. Allatini's three vessels—two of them merchantmen, and one his own private yacht, the _Carasso_ —were sold to Greeks and to Germans at bargain-basement prices. Or rather to one particular German. The _Carasso_ was bought by Siegfried Witzel for a pittance and he renamed it the _Doris_ , and sailed it to Piraeus, where it remained after the war." Garlopis paused and puffed at his cigarette for a moment. "Those Jews who survived the camps—less than two thousand, it would seem—returned to Thessaloniki and found their homes and property in the possession of Greek Christians who had bought them in good faith from the Germans. And any attempts at Jewish property restitution quickly failed when a British-backed right-wing anti-communist IPE government came to power in Athens. None of these men had much time for the Jews, and of course Greece collapsed into civil war soon afterwards. A civil war that lasted three years. Since when there has been little appetite to open up these scars and say who owns what. Certainly the ministry has no record of anyone from the Allatini family as having petitioned it for the return of the _Doris_. At least none that my cousin was able to find.
"In defense of my country I should also mention that this regrettable situation is complicated by the fact that many of the properties bought by Jews long before the war had themselves been owned by Muslims previous to the so-called diaspora that followed the Greco-Turkish war of 1919–1922. Many Muslims were obliged to sell up at knockdown prices and emigrate to Turkey, while many Turks, including thousands of Jews, were obliged to leave their Turkish homes and go to Thessaloniki. So you see that nothing in this part of the world is simple. No, not even the status of the marble friezes taken from the Parthenon by the Turks, and sold to the British Lord Elgin for seventy thousand British pounds during the Greek war of independence that was fought against the Ottoman Empire. My own opinion, for what it's worth, is that Greece should set an example to the British and restore as much previously owned Jewish property as possible, regardless of the cost. But until that happens, this situation causes a great deal of bitterness among those few Jews who continue to live in Greece."
"Enough for someone to set a ship on fire, perhaps?" "It's certainly possible, yes," admitted Garlopis. "But here your guess is as good as mine." "It might explain why Herr Witzel feels the need to carry a gun. It may be that he's been threatened before." Garlopis nodded and stubbed out his cigarette in a Hellas pottery ashtray. "In this particular context it's also worth mentioning that because of the civil war, the _Doris_ was never insured against acts of terrorism. If it could be proved that the ship had been attacked for political reasons by Jewish activists, then this would certainly fall under the umbrella of war risk exclusions which, according to the terms of the policy, are considered fundamentally uninsurable." "And it would certainly be in Witzel's interest to allege that the engine caught fire because of a shipyard's negligence." "Exactly, sir." "What does the coast guard have to say about the incident? Is there any way of proving that the ship really did sink out at sea where he said it did?"
"I'm afraid not, sir." "It's a pity we can't speak to this Professor Buchholz, in order to corroborate Witzel's story." "With that in mind, sir, after I'd been to the ministry, on Kolokotronis Street, I went just around the corner, to the Archaeological Museum and set up an appointment later on this week for us to go and see the assistant director, Dr. Lyacos. At three o'clock, to be precise." Garlopis looked at his watch. "But while we're in Piraeus we should certainly make time to go to Vassilenas." "What's that?" "The best restaurant in Piraeus, sir." "By the way, I don't suppose you have a cousin in the Attica police; I made a note of the license plate on the car Witzel was driving." "No, sir. I'm afraid not." We went outside and walked to the Olds, where a beggar woman had taken up position, no doubt in the mistaken belief that the owner was a rich American. I knew quite a bit about being on the streets myself so I gave the woman twenty lepta and got into the car. But even the small change, which was made of aluminum, had holes in it.
"By the way," I said, "I told you to get rid of this car, didn't I? It's hard to move around quietly in this thing. And it's a magnet for beggars." "You're so right, of course," he said as we drove away. "And I will. Just as soon as my cousin is back in the office." "When will that be?" "He took a couple of days off, sir. So perhaps the day after tomorrow. By the way, sir. If I could ask you not to give money to the beggars. It only encourages them. They're Hungarians, mostly, sir. Refugees from last year's terrible and abortive uprising. There's plenty of work for them in Greece—picking cotton—but they won't take it if people keep on giving them money, sir. It's bad for them and it's bad for us. In my opinion they're too proud for their own good." "It's only excessive pride that the gods punish, isn't it? Hubris? Which leads to nemesis?" "Yes, indeed, that's quite true. And you do well to remind me of that, sir. But for my own hubris I might still be married—to Mrs. Nemesis." "If you don't mind me asking, what went wrong?"
"In a word, Telesilla. She's what went wrong. She's what always goes wrong for a man such as myself. My head was turned, sir. The wrong way, too. Nothing actually happened between her and me, you understand. But I imagined it might and, unfortunately, in a moment of sheer delusion, I led my poor wife to believe that I was enamored of Telesilla. Telesilla herself was entirely blameless and remains happily married. And she's a very good secretary. Which is why I couldn't bring myself to dismiss her. I mean, it would seem rather pointless now that Mrs. Garlopis is no longer au courant." Garlopis smiled sadly. "And for you, sir? Is there a Frau Ganz?" "No. That particular chapter of my life has now closed—forever, I think. Especially now that I'm working in insurance. You wouldn't know it to look at me but I've had an interesting life. That's one of the reasons I like this insurance business. It feels like a nice quiet pew at the back of an empty church." TWENTY – A few days later, after a very good lunch indeed, we went to the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus. Built by Themistocles at the beginning of the fifth century BC, the town was home to almost half a million people. It was the center of Greek coastal shipping and the industrial heartland of Greece, with spinning factories, flour mills, distilleries, breweries, soap factories, and chemical manure plants. It certainly smelled that way. About a twenty-minute drive from Athens, the town had no important ancient monument thanks to the Spartans, who'd destroyed the original fortifications, and the Romans, who'd destroyed much else besides. That's the most comforting thing about history: you find out that it's not always the Germans who are to blame. Next to the museum was a virtual builder's yard of assorted archaic marble torsos that almost made me think I was back in the mortuary at the Schwabing Hospital. But inside the two-story building there were many fine treasures, including a bronze statue of Athena that was as tall as a giraffe; she had one hand held out in supplication, as if she was begging for some small change, and, but for the rakishly worn hoplite's helmet, she reminded me of the Hungarian woman I'd tipped earlier on.
We found Dr. Stavros Lyacos, the assistant director of the museum, in the basement, next to the laboratories for the maintenance of clay, metal, and stone objects. His office had a large marble eye on the wall and, lying on the desk, was a Greek fertility goddess rather more attractive than the morbidly obese German fertility goddess found at Willendorf. Even Dr. Lyacos was more attractive than her. He was tall and thin with a small tight mouth, sharp heavy-lidded eyes, and half-moon glasses on the bridge of a pointy Pinocchio nose that helped to make his face look more fastidious than comically mendacious. He wore a generously cut double-breasted gray flannel suit with lapels as wide as a pair of scimitars, and a blue-striped bow tie. The red carnation in his buttonhole made him look as if he were going to a wedding and since he clearly wasn't, it made me think he was a man in possession of a large mirror and for whom the marble eye mounted on the wall was something of a personal statement. Smoking a cherrywood pipe, Dr. Lyacos listened politely and smiled without any great warmth while I introduced myself and explained my mission, and then he went to fetch a file from a cabinet that stood between a headless marble lion and the torso of a young man who was missing most of his genitals and—not that it would have mattered in those tragic circumstances—both of his hands. Lyacos had no German nor very much English and, later on, Garlopis told me that he spoke a Greek that was full of ancient words, which was always the sign of an educated man.
He said that he'd met with both Siegfried Witzel and Professor Buchholz, that both men spoke fluent Greek, and that their permissions were gold-plated, in evidence for which he returned from the filing cabinet with a variety of official paperwork. These showed that the Germans' expedition had the blessing of no less a figure than the Greek interior minister, Dimitrios Makris, in the form of a handwritten letter on parliamentary notepaper, as well as all the proper consents and approvals from the Ministry of Public Works on Karageorgi Servias Street. There were also several forms stamped by the Naval Ministry on Paparigopoulou Street and the Greek coast guard in Piraeus. It seemed that Professor Buchholz had been most charming and even presented Dr. Lyacos with a signed copy of his book on Hellenistic art, which he might have read had it not been in German. When I asked if he still had a copy of the book, Dr. Lyacos said he had, removed it from a drawer in his desk, and laid it in front of me. The book, published by C. H. Beck and lavishly illustrated, was called _Hellenism: The Rise and Fall of a Civilization_ and, as Lyacos had told me, was indeed signed by Professor Philipp Buchholz and inscribed in German and Greek: _To Stavros Lyacos, in gratitude for his generous help and assistance_. Lyacos proceeded to explain that the arrangement between the two museums had been that anything found by the expedition would be shared, with the museum in Piraeus having first pick and the museum in Munich having the remainder.
"Tell me, doctor, is it usual for all these permissions to be granted so quickly?" I asked, noting the close proximity of the dates on the official paperwork. "All of this seems to have happened with a rapidity that, if you'll both forgive me for saying so, seems a little remarkable even in Greece." Not usual at all, was the doctor's answer; then again, the Ministry of the Interior had crabs in its pockets when it came to funding archaeology in modern Greece, which meant that it was stingy; this was the first Greek-German cooperation in the field of archaeology since 1876, when the Greek Archaeological Society had worked with Heinrich Schliemann at the royal graves site in Mycenae, so perhaps there was a hope that this might prove to be just as successful as that. It was, after all, Schliemann who'd discovered the famous golden mask of Agamemnon, now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. The two Germans had been very respectful and accommodating, Lyacos concluded. I looked at Garlopis and shook my head. "I can't see anything wrong here, can you? Everything sounds very proper."
Garlopis shrugged and then translated what I'd just said for Dr. Lyacos. "Well, not everything, perhaps," said Garlopis, interpreting what Lyacos now said. "But after all, he says, this is Greece, so how could it be?" "Like what, for instance?" Lyacos puffed his pipe, looked uncomfortable for a moment, and then started to speak. "He doesn't wish to say anything against a man as distinguished in the field of Hellenism as Professor Buchholz," explained Garlopis. "Even so, the small artifacts found on the wreck site by Herr Witzel had been identified by the professor as late Helladic when in the opinion of Dr. Lyacos they were actually much earlier. Late Bronze Age, probably. But it's not uncommon for experts on antiquity to disagree about such things, so he doesn't think it's important." "Nevertheless," I said, "he sounds like he was a bit surprised by that." "He was, I think. Especially as there are some very similar late Bronze Age artifacts in the professor's book that are correctly identified."
Lyacos turned the illustrated pages to reveal a photograph of a bronze tripod, a golden ring, and a little statue of a snake goddess. "These," said Lyacos. I nodded and then closed the book. "How do you go about getting the permission of someone like Mr. Makris to look for this kind of stuff, anyway?" Garlopis spoke to Lyacos for a second and then answered that he wouldn't know. "Is he sure about that?" The two Greeks spoke for almost a minute, during which time they laughed several times, and then Garlopis said, "He says he believes that the minister of the interior, Takos Makris, has always done what Konstantinos Karamanlis tells him to do. And I have to say I agree with him there. Mr. Makris is married to the niece of Mr. Karamanlis, Doxoula, so it's certain that the two men are very close. After a man like Mr. Makris gave his permission it's certain that everyone else in the government must have sat up and paid attention." Idly, I opened the book on Hellenism again—C. H. Beck was one of Germany's most prestigious publishing houses—and glanced over what had been written about Professor Buchholz in the author's biography on the flyleaf.
And it was then I noticed what I'd been too dumb to notice before: that Professor Buchholz was the assistant director at the Glyptothek Museum, in Munich. It was certainly a coincidence that my first job as a claims adjustor working for MRE had been to investigate a break-in at the Glyptothek, but a remarkable one? There had been a time when I had strongly believed that a good detective was merely a man who collected coincidences—a perfectly respectable activity since Pascal and Jung—with the aim of connecting one or two of them until they looked like something more meaningful and concurrent. Of course, it's no great surprise that over a long period of time, as fortune takes its course, many coincidences should occur. But here the question was this: Did the several weeks that had elapsed since the break-in at the Glyptothek count as a long period of time and therefore enough to discount coincidence? Or, to put this in a less mathematically naïve way, could I smell a rat? TWENTY-ONE – "Given our maritime history, we Greeks are much more likely to talk about smelling fish than rats," said Garlopis, when we'd left the museum.
"Rats, fish, what's the difference? They both smell the same way when they're not where they're supposed to be." "But to answer your earlier question," he continued, "I don't happen to believe in simple coincidences very much. I have the whole of Greek tragedy there to back me up on this. What you Germans call coincidence Greeks like Sophocles tend to ascribe to the _Moirai_ —the Three Fates. Divine weavers of a tapestry dictating the destiny of men." "It's always the females that seal a man's fate. That's certainly been my own experience." We were walking back to the car which, as before, had attracted a couple of expectant beggars and, as before, I handed out a few hollow coins. If the gods were watching I hoped they would see this act of kindness and reward my charity—that a muse, or whatever Garlopis might have called it, would provide some divine inspiration as to the connection, if any, between the Glyptothek in Munich and the Glyptothek in Piraeus. Stranger things had happened in Greece, surely.

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