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"I expect you're right," I said. "About the coincidence. But it's giving me an itch that I guess I'll have to keep on scratching for a while. Either way I've already decided—more or less—to delay settling Herr Witzel's claim. There's too much here that doesn't bear scrutiny. At least, that's what I'm going to tell Dumbo at head office, so later on today I'll need to send a telegram. Not that I'm planning to tell Siegfried Witzel any of this. At least I don't think so—not yet. And not without a bulletproof vest." "I'm very relieved to hear it, sir. Myself, I want to be as far away as possible from that man when he hears any bad news." "Having said all that, Mr. Garlopis, I do want to see his reaction when we surprise him at that address in Pritaniou. Which is where we're going now. If you're game, that is. Who knows? Perhaps we'll get lucky and find the professor there, locked in the bedroom. And he can tell us what really happened to the _Doris_. Seriously, though, I've an idea that our just being there will provoke Witzel to say something out of turn or make a mistake."
Achilles Garlopis bit his knuckle, crossed himself, and grimaced. "That's what I'm afraid of, sir. Look here, now that you know his address, couldn't you write to him and tell him that you're delaying settlement? The man's obviously dangerous." "What can I tell you? You might be right. You can wait outside in the car, if you like. I'll handle it. In which case maybe I'll tell him after all. It wouldn't exactly be the first time I've been the bearer of bad news." "If you don't mind me asking, aren't you scared?" "Since the Ivans got the bomb? All the time. But of Witzel, no. Besides, disappointing people is what I'm good at. I've had a lifetime of practice." We drove back into Athens and to the old town at the base of the Acropolis. The green Simca was there but I told Garlopis to find another street and park. He drove down a few streets and pulled up on the sidewalk behind an empty police car and opposite what he said was the old Roman marketplace, although if he'd told me it was the Parthenon, I wouldn't have known any different. Of late I'd been neglecting my studies of late Bronze Age Hellenism.
"Why don't you stay here and watch the car?" I told Garlopis. "Maybe some Hungarian beggars will turn up and you can shoo them away before I get back." "And suppose you don't come back?" I pointed at the empty police car. "You could tell the cops." "And if they leave before you return? What then? I should feel obliged to go and look for you, _on my own_. No, sir, I think it's better that I accompany you now. Then I'll know for sure that you're all right, or that you're not, and I won't be presented with a difficult decision like that. At least this way there's some safety in numbers." "Suppose he shoots both of us," I said as we left the car behind. "Please don't joke about such matters. I'll be quite honest with you, Herr Ganz, and I'm only a little bit ashamed to admit it, but I am a coward, sir. All my life I've had to live down my given name: Achilles. For that reason I prefer to be called Garlopis, or Mr. Garlopis. But not Achilles. I am not nor ever could be a hero. Bravery is admirable but it belongs only to the brave and it often seems to me that the cemeteries are full of such brave men and not many cowards. Especially in Greece, where heroes are often as troublesome and combative as the gods themselves. It's my opinion that heroes often come to what the English call 'a sticky end.' Theirs is a most creative language. It paints a picture, does it not? A sticky end?"
"I've seen a few of those in my time. In German and in English." Garlopis talked all the way up the hill and onto the corner of Pritaniou, and he even talked while we watched the house at number 11 for a cautious ten minutes from behind the corner of a little church. The street was empty, as if the rocky outcrop supporting the citadel above had been a volcano that was about to erupt. The Greek was nervous, of course, and why not? It was me who was at fault. I was the one taking risks that were beginning to feel almost unnecessary. Garlopis was acting in the way one would always have expected an insurance agent to act: with extreme caution, and wisely reluctant to leave the safety of his desk and his captain's chair and the care of his voluptuous flame-haired secretary. But me—I suppose you could just say that old habits die hard. It was fun behaving like a cop again, to feel the sidewalk underneath my Salamanders as I watched a suspect's house. I wasn't worried about Witzel's gun. When you've been around guns all your life they don't seem quite so intimidating. Then again, that's probably one reason why, sometimes, people get shot.
We approached the shabby, double-height door. There was no bell and no knocker and I was just about to bang on the woodwork when I noticed that the wrought-iron gate immediately next to it wasn't locked, though it had been on my earlier visit. I pushed it open to reveal a narrow flight of stone steps that led underneath the bough of the evil-eye olive tree and up the side of the house and, thinking that this might afford us with the chance to spy on Witzel before we announced our presence, I went through the gate, tugging a reluctant Garlopis behind me. I might have left him but for the fact that he was easily the largest thing in the street. Anyone opening one of the upper-floor shutters and glancing down would have noticed him immediately. In his baggy green suit he might have been mistaken for Poseidon clothed in seaweed, but to anyone else he looked suspiciously like a man playing lookout for a burglar. At the top of the steps we found a whitewashed wall with a wooden door that felt as if it was locked. Hauling myself up to check what was on the other side I saw a small courtyard with a door that was only bolted, a sleeping cat, a dry fountain, and several cracked terra-cotta pots that were home to some even drier plants. If the place was occupied it was by someone who cared very little about it. A rusted motorcycle lay in a state of disassembly underneath a vine on which the grapes had almost fossilized. I climbed over the wall, dusted myself down, and then unbolted the gate to admit Garlopis. By now he was the same color as his suit. Meanwhile the cat stood up, stretched a bit, and then left.
Ignoring what looked like the kitchen door I led the way down a couple of wooden steps to a pair of French windows that were so dusty they were almost opaque. One of the windows was ajar and, mindful of Witzel's gun, I slowly pushed it all the way open before stepping inside the house. Under the stairs was a large plastic bag full of sponges. The radio was on, but low so that it was just a murmur. The place smelled of cigarettes and ouzo, Sportsman aftershave, and something more acrid and combustible perhaps, and there was a heavily stained Louis XV–style caned sofa with half the seat stuffing hanging down on the floor like a bull's pizzle. An Imray sea chart lay open on a Formica-topped table next to a bottle of Tsantali, a packet of Spuds, and the cashier's check I'd handed him back at the office. On one wall was a collection of cheap plaster masks of the kind you could have bought in any local souvenir shop and which featured a variety of grotesque gray and green rictus faces that might have had something to do with Greek tragedy. But what they certainly had in common was their close resemblance to the man lying on the floor whose face was distinguished by its empty eye sockets and gaping mouth, not to mention a very definite look of abbreviated pain. Abbreviated by his death, that is. It was Siegfried Witzel and he'd been shot twice. I knew that because each shot had gone through an eyeball.
Garlopis covered his mouth and turned quickly away. " _Gamiméno kólasi_ ," he exclaimed. _"O ftochós."_ "If you're going to throw up, do it outside," I said. "Why would someone do that?" "I don't think it was his cologne. Although it is quite pungent. But I expect they had their reasons." The first bullet looked like it had come clean out of the back of Witzel's skull and hit a framed photograph of a racehorse; the spent bullet had cracked the glass and stained it ever so slightly with blood and brain matter. I bent down beside the body to take a closer look. The second bullet had been fired at closer range when the man was already lying on the floor; you could tell that from the amount of blood and gelatinous aqueous humor that had erupted out of Witzel's eye socket. From what I saw that second shot had been gratuitous and an act of pure sadism, designed, perhaps, to inflict an extra level of punishment and humiliation. Because if Siegfried Witzel had a next of kin it would be hard for them to stomach the sight of him like this. A closed coffin, then. No last kisses for Siegfried. Not without him wearing a pair of dark glasses.
Pressing my finger into the blood on the moth-eaten Persian carpet and then into the dead man's mouth, I said, "The blood's dry but the body's not yet cold. I'd say he's been dead for no more than a couple of hours." I opened his jacket; the holster was still there but the gun was gone and when I lifted his heavy, muscular arm to check for any sign of rigor and lividity I saw that the Rolex Submariner was still on his wrist. "I think we can discount the possibility that this was a robbery. He's still wearing his diver's watch. By the look of things the killer's long gone. It appears as if you might have been right about the Jews after all, Garlopis. That maybe this was a revenge killing. I don't know, but that's not my problem. The local cops can try to figure out a motive. Which means we'd better make ourselves scarce. It would certainly make a nice tidy parcel if the cops could blame the murder of one German on another." I was talking to myself. Garlopis had returned to the backyard and was already smoking a cigarette to steady his nerves.
I wiped my fingers on the dead man's jeans and instinctively checked his pockets. All of them. As a beat cop in Berlin it was common practice to supplement your meager wages with some of what you found in a murder victim's billfold and it was only after I made detective that I stopped doing it, but old habits die hard, and anyway, Witzel's pockets were empty of everything except the keys for the Simca and what looked like the front door. Besides, this time I was only looking for information, but if he'd possessed a wallet I couldn't see it. I stood up and took another look around; on the floor I found a spent brass case for an automatic: it was rimless, tapered, probably from a 9-mill automatic, and I'd seen a thousand of them before. I dropped it back onto the floor and went over to the table. The map open on the table was a different chart from the larger-scale one we'd spread out back in Garlopis's office. This one was for the Saronic and Argolic Gulfs, and had been marked up with ink, which wasn't all there was on it. There was blood on the chart, too, and it didn't look like it was spatter from the head shots; this was one large globular spot that looked as if it had dripped onto the waterproof paper while someone had been leaning over it.
I called out to Garlopis. "There's one good thing about this, I suppose," I said. "It means we can relax. My job's over. With all due respect to your country, I can go and see the Parthenon now and then return home to Munich. Even if I was inclined to settle his claim there's no one here to pay. It's not our fault if Siegfried Witzel wouldn't give us the name of his next of kin, or a lawyer. Dumbo will be delighted, of course. Not to mention Mr. Alzheimer. There's nothing those guys like better than adjusting a loss to zero. This will probably make their weekend." Garlopis didn't answer. I looked out the French window and saw him standing stiffly in the garden with his arms by his sides, like a statue; he seemed shocked and bewildered, as if he was more upset about Witzel's death than I would ever have imagined. But perhaps it was just the sight of a dead body, after all. I didn't blame him for that. Even in the land of Oedipus and Jocasta it's not everyone who can tolerate the sight of a man without eyes.
"What's your problem?" I asked, hoping to help restore him to his previous good humor. "You never liked the guy anyway. At least now you don't have to worry about him shooting _you_. This is one loss that nobody can adjust. So we're done. You can go back to ogling that secretary of yours. And why not? She's very nice. I might ogle her myself for a couple of minutes if you've no objection." I lit a cigarette and moved closer to the French windows but froze when I saw an arm with a revolver pointed squarely at the Greek's head. I turned around to see if I could locate Witzel's own gun before deciding what to do but stopped and put myself in aspic jelly when I saw that there was a loaded Smith & Wesson pointed at me, too. I knew the gun was loaded because I was staring right down the barrel, as if the first shot might have gone through my own eye. I let the cigarette drop from my mouth. The last thing I wanted the man with the gun to think was that I didn't take him or it very seriously. And just in case I'd forgotten, there was a body on the floor to remind me of just what a large-caliber revolver can do at close range. At the same time I wasn't at all sure if I was relieved or alarmed to see that it was a uniformed police officer holding it.
TWENTY-TWO – After we'd been searched, the cops sat us on the disemboweled couch. There were three of them and it looked like they'd heard us coming over the back wall and had hidden in the kitchen until they were ready to make their move. Garlopis was already talking too much, in Greek, so I told him to shut up, in German, at least until we knew if the police were disposed to treat us as suspects or not. That's in the Bible so it must be true: Be sensible and keep your mouth shut: Proverbs 10:19. The officer in charge was a tall man whose dark, high-cheekboned face was part boxer, part Mafia don, and part Mexican revolutionary with more than a hint of Stanley Kowalski—at least until he found a pair of thick-framed, lightly tinted glasses and put them on, at which point he stopped looking dim-witted and thuggish and started to look thoughtful and smart. "Find anything interesting?" The Greek's German wasn't nearly as good as that of Garlopis, but it wasn't bad either because it's not the end of the world when you don't use the best grammar. He had our wallets in his hands and so he already knew our names.
"Just the guy on the floor. And you, of course." "Where are you staying, Herr Ganz?" "Me, I'm at the Mega. In Constitution Square." "You should have stayed at the Grande Bretagne. But I suppose either one of them would be convenient for the old Gestapo building in Merlin Street." I grinned, trying to enjoy his joke. "His cousin works at the Mega," I said, looking at Garlopis. "So I guess that's just my bad luck." "So what are you two doing here?" "If I told you we were selling insurance you'd probably think I was being sarcastic and I can't say as I would blame you very much. But that's not so far from the truth. I'm a claims adjustor. The dead man is a German called Siegfried Witzel. He owned a boat called the _Doris_ that was insured with my company for almost a quarter of a million drachmas. I have a business card in my wallet that will help to establish those credentials. You can telegraph my office in Munich and they'll vouch for me and for Herr Garlopis. Witzel's boat caught fire and sank, he made a claim, and we came here today to tell him I thought there was something fishy about it."
"Do you always climb over the back wall to sell insurance?" "I do when I've become aware that the insured party carries a gun. Frankly, I wanted to see what kind of company he was keeping before I said hello again. Especially as I was now the bearer of bad news. In view of what's happened here I would say that my caution was well founded, wouldn't you?" "You speak any Greek?" "No." Garlopis started talking in Greek again. The Greeks have a word for it. So the saying goes. In fact, they usually had several words for it, too many in fact, and Achilles Garlopis was no exception. The man could talk without stopping for hours, the way a Belgian could ride a bicycle. So I told him to shut up, again. "Why do you tell him to shut up?" "The usual reason. Because he talks too much." "It's every citizen's duty to help the police. Perhaps he's just trying to be helpful." "Yes," said Garlopis. "I am." "I can see how that might help you," I told the police officer. "But I think you're smart enough to see how that might not help us. You're a busy man and you've got a murder to solve. And right now, in the absence of anyone else, you think we might be good for that."
"I think it would be smart if you were to tell us everything you know about this man." "Oh, sure. Look, I know what to say. I just don't know if I should say it. That's just smart getting wise." The officer lit a cigarette and blew some of the smoke my way, which I didn't like. "Do you speak English?" he said. "My English is better than my German." "You're doing all right so far," I said in English. "What, were you a cop during the war?" "Right now, I'm the one asking the questions, okay?" "Sure. Anything you say, Captain." "Lieutenant. So why were you going to turn down his claim?" "There were too many inconsistencies in his story. There was that and the gun he was carrying." "We didn't find a gun. Not yet." "Maybe not. But he's not wearing a shoulder holster because his wallet was so heavy. I think he was scared of someone, and it wasn't Munich RE." "Like who maybe?" "That's obvious. Like the man who killed him, I expect." "Funny guy." "With all due respect, 'like who' is your job, not mine. But Garlopis here tells me the boat—the _Doris_ —was confiscated by the Nazis from some Jews during the war and sold to Witzel. Maybe those Jews or their relations decided if they couldn't get their property back legally, then they would just get even. Sometimes getting even is the best kind of compensation there is. But motive isn't something I usually bother with in my line of work. If there's evidence of fraud I turn down the claim and take the verbal battering. It's as simple as that. Generally speaking, I don't have to look too hard for a reason. On the whole people much prefer their insurance company losing money to doing it themselves. My job is to try to prevent that from happening. Which is why I was about to say no to Mr. Witzel's claim. But at this present moment I wouldn't say no to a cigarette."
The lieutenant thought about it for a moment and then had one of his men uncuff us, and I got my Karelias back. There's nothing as bad as the craving you get for a cigarette because they've been taken away by someone in authority. Someone who smokes. I expect the Greek cop knew that. And the greater the privation that precedes their return, the better the first one tastes. The liberty cigarette. Even Garlopis agreed with this empirical observation; I could tell by the way he hoovered down his first drag. Okay, we weren't out of the forest yet, but things were starting to relax, a little. Or at least as much as that's even possible when there's a dead body lying eyeless on the rug and someone has a gun on you. "Would you mind telling your men to put their guns away? I had a good wine with my lunch and I wouldn't want to spill any of it on this floor. We're not armed and you know who we are, so we're not about to try to escape." The German-speaking policeman said something and the other two policemen holstered their weapons.
"Thank you." "Tell me more about his insurance claim." "If his boat was attacked and sunk 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. I think maybe he was trying to prevent us from finding that out." "And you'll have lots of paperwork back at the office to substantiate this story." "Not just there. If you look on the table you'll find a certified cashier's check from my company that was a small interim payment for his loss." The lieutenant stepped carefully over Witzel's body, went to the table, and looked down at the check without touching it. "I thought you said you weren't going to pay up." "On the main claim? No. I think you'll agree there's a hell of a difference between the amount printed on that check and a quarter of a million drachmas." "You know what I also think?" said the cop, turning back to look at me. "I think you've been around dead bodies before, Mr. Ganz."
"After the war we just lived through, that wouldn't be so unusual." "No, this was different. I was watching you both from the stairs. And listening to some things you said. Garlopis here, he behaved like a normal person. Saw the body, felt a bit queasy, and went outside to get some fresh air. But you—you were different. From what I could understand of what you said, you were looking at the body the way I do. Like a man with no eyes didn't bother you that much. And as if you expected this crime scene to yield some answers. The way you knew about the speed with which blood dries. That kind of behavior tells me something." "And what does it tell you?" "For a moment back there I thought you might be one of the answers. Now I think that maybe you are or were some kind of a cop." "I told you. I'm a claims adjustor for an insurance company. Which is a kind of a cop, I suppose. One that gets to go home at five o'clock, perhaps." "You must think I'm stupid, Mr. Ganz. And you're a long way from home. Who the hell do you think you're dealing with? I've done this job for twenty years. I can smell a cop the way an elephant can smell water. So don't make me have to hit you to get some straight answers. If I hit you, I can promise you'll write me a thank-you letter afterward. In Greek."
"I've been hit before." "I can believe that. But let me tell you, I've slapped enough punks in my life to know the ones who'll hit back from the ones who'll learn to appreciate it. Metaphorically speaking, of course. Because the fact is, I don't need to hit you. We both know I can hold you for as long as I want. I can throw you both in jail or I can take away your passport. This is Greece, not the General Assembly of the United Nations." "All right. I used to be a cop. So what? With all the men killed during the war a lot of German companies can't afford to be fussy about the kind of people they take on these days. It seems to me that they'll employ just about anyone who can get the job done. Even if that means giving a job to some retired dumb cop like me." "Now that I don't believe. That you were ever a dumb cop." "I'm alive I guess." "What kind of a cop were you?" "The honest kind. Most of the time." "What does that mean?" "Like I said, Lieutenant, I stayed alive. That should tell you something."
"Something else tells me that you know a little bit about murder." "All Germans know about murder. As a Greek you should know that." "True, but since there's a dead German on the floor I now have the crazy idea that a German ex-cop like you could help me solve this case. Is that unreasonable?" "Why would I want to do that?" "Because by not helping me, you'd be in my way. We've got laws against obstructing the police." "Name one." "Come on, Mr. Ganz. You're at the scene of a murder. There's blood on your fingers and your prints are on that spent round of ammunition you were handling earlier. You didn't even come in through the front door. Until I find someone better than you, you're all I've got. You even knew the dead man. You're a German, like him. Your card was in the victim's wallet. So I might even be disposed to call each of you a suspect. How does that word sound?" "Except that you were here first." "Haven't you heard of the murderer who returns to the scene of the crime?" "Sure. I've heard of Father Christmas, too, but I've never actually seen him myself."
"You don't think it happens?" "I think it helps a lot of writers get themselves out of a tight spot. But I'd have to be pretty dumb to come back here if I killed this man." "A lot of criminals are stupid." "That's right. They are. But I never counted on that when I was a cop. Not only that but it looks bad when cops don't catch those criminals. Bad for the reputation of cops everywhere." "All right. Let's work on the assumption that this killer isn't stupid. Why do you think he shot your man in the eyes? Why would someone do something like that?" "How should I know?" "Humor me, please. I have my own theory on this but I'd still like to hear what even an ex-detective has to say about it." He flicked the cigarette he was smoking out the French windows. "I am right, aren't I? That you were once a detective?" "Yes. All right, I was. A long time ago." "Where and doing what?" "I was a Murder Commission detective in Berlin for the best part of ten years." "And you held what kind of rank?" "I was a police commissar. That's like a captain, I suppose."
"So you were the man in charge of a murder investigation?" "You might think that, yes. But back in Germany there was really only one man in charge all that time. And his name was Adolf Hitler." "Good. Now we're getting somewhere. So tell me, Commissar Ganz, why do you think Mr. Witzel was shot in the eyes?" "Your guess is as good as mine. My own guess is it was a revenge thing, maybe. That the killer is probably a sadist who enjoys not just killing people but humiliating them, too." "I agree. About the sadism, I mean. I have another question. Was Witzel by any chance a German Jew?" "No," I said. "I'm quite certain he wasn't." "May I ask how you know?" "He'd told us he was in the German navy during the war. It's highly unlikely he could have served if he'd been Jewish." "I see. Look, Herr Commissar, I think maybe we can help each other out here. My name is Lieutenant Leventis and I'll guarantee to keep you both out of jail if you hand over your passport and agree to help me. In a purely advisory role, of course."
"Of course." "Two heads are better than one. Especially a head as gray as yours, Commissar." "Don't think my gray hairs make that head wise, Lieutenant. They just make me old. And tired. That's why I'm in insurance." "If you say so. But make no mistake, Commissar, Greece was never a country for young men. Not like Germany. It's old heads that have always mattered here." "All right. I'll do it." I glanced at Garlopis. "But didn't Cerberus have three heads?" Garlopis pulled a face and then straightened his bow tie. "You don't expect me to help, I hope. Really, sir, I don't think I can. Especially now, with a dead body lying at my feet. I think I told you before that I'm a coward, sir. I may have misled you there. I'm an abject coward. I'm the kind of man who gives cowards a bad name. I joined the insurance business because the debt-collection business was too hazardous. People kept on threatening to hit me, sir. But that now seems to be a very small thing, given the condition of poor Herr Witzel. And by the way, Cerberus was killed. By Hercules."
"Only in some versions. And I can hardly help the lieutenant without your invaluable assistance, Garlopis." "That's right," said the lieutenant. "Your German is fluent, I think. And certainly more fluent than my English. So you're in. It's that or a drive to the Haidari Barracks, where at least one of you will feel very much at home. During the war it was the local concentration camp run by the SS and the Gestapo. We will leave you there on remand, while I look for evidence to prosecute you for Witzel's murder." Garlopis chuckled nervously. "But there isn't any." "True. Which means it could take a while to look for it. Perhaps several months. We still use Block Fifteen at Haidari for keeping lefty prisoners in isolation." "He's right," I said. "Better helping him on the outside than being inside." Garlopis winced. "It's Scylla and Charybdis," he said. "Choosing between two evils. Which, if you'll forgive me, is no choice at all." "Good, then that's settled," said Lieutenant Leventis. "So. If you'll both come with me, there are some pictures at police headquarters I'd like the commissar to take a look at."
TWENTY-THREE – On the way to police headquarters we made a detour. The Athens Gendarmerie was located on Mesogeion Avenue in a pleasantly large park. Surrounded with trees and grass, it was a three-story, cream-colored building with a red pantile roof and a series of arched windows and doors that were painted, patriotically, blue and white to match the flags that hung limply on either side of the main door. Lieutenant Leventis parked his car beside a row of squat palm trees that resembled a display of giant pineapples and went inside for a moment, he said, to hand over the spent brass we'd found at the murder scene to his ballistics people. Since I was handcuffed to Garlopis in the backseat I don't suppose he was too worried about either one of us running away; besides, Garlopis didn't look like much of a runner. "What is this place?" I asked after a few moments. "This is the police Gendarmerie, which has connections to the Greek army. Leventis belongs to the City Police, which is something different. They cooperate, of course. At least, that's the rumor. In Athens, the City Police are headquartered at the Megaron Pappoudof, immediately opposite the Grande Bretagne Hotel, on the corner of Kifisias Street and Panepistimiou. Which is where we're headed next, I think." He looked at his watch. "I hope this isn't going to take long. I'm worried about the car. My cousin will be less than pleased if something happens to it."
"I wouldn't worry about the car. Worry about us." "But why? The lieutenant said we'd be all right so long as we cooperate with him. By which he means you, of course. I don't think there's very much help that I can provide." "You're helping me to help him and that's enough. I don't want there to be any misunderstandings with him." "Well, now I'm worried that you're worried. May I ask why you're worried?" "Because cops will say anything to ensure someone cooperates with them, especially when there's a murder to solve. Take it from me, you can't trust cops any more than you can trust their clients. Even now he might be booking us a nice quiet cell in this Haidari Barracks he mentioned." "There are no nice cells in Haidari. It's still the most notorious prison in all of Greece. Many heroes of the Greek resistance were tortured and killed there. And many Jews, of course. Although for them it was more of a transit camp to somewhere even more unpleasant. From Thessaloniki to Auschwitz." "That's a comforting thought. Look, I hope I'm wrong. What kind of man is this lieutenant, anyway?"
"Leventis? He struck me as quite a fair man, actually. A bit better than the average police lieutenant, perhaps, so I'm not absolutely sure if he's the type who can be bribed or not. But I've yet to see him write anything down, so he could still release both of us without having to explain why. For the right consideration." "I like the way you said 'both of us.' It gives me confidence in our professional association. How do you bribe a cop in Greece anyway?" "The best way is with money, sir." "Is that a fact? You sound like you've done that kind of thing before." "Yes, but not for anything important, you understand. Traffic violations, mostly. And once on behalf of a cousin of mine who was accused of stealing a lady's handbag. But this is something different. At least it feels that way. Have you got much money?" "That depends on the cop, doesn't it? I don't know how it works in Greece but generally speaking we don't bribe cops in West Germany because Germans can't hide behind a sense of humor if it goes wrong."
"The Greek police do not have a sense of humor, either. If they had, they would not have become policemen in the first place. But they do like money. Everyone in Greece likes money. It was the Greeks who invented the use of money, so old habits die hard. Especially for the Attica police." Lieutenant Leventis appeared in the doorway of the Gendarmerie and walked back toward the car. Garlopis watched him with narrowed eyes. "Against this man being bribed is the fact that he shaved this morning. And for another, he's wearing a clean shirt. The car we're sitting in is a Ford Popular, which is the cheapest car in Europe. Also the watch on his wrist is just a cheap Russian model and he smokes Santé, which is a ladies' brand of cigarette. No man in Greece smokes these unless he's trying to save money." "Maybe he likes the lady on the packet." "No, sir. If you'll forgive me, this is a man living within his means. Besides, he walks too quickly for a man who'd take money. Like he has a purpose. I tend to think that corruption moves much more slowly in a country like this."
"You should have been a cop yourself, Garlopis." "Not me, sir. As well as a coward I have always had very bad feet. You can't become a policeman if you have bad feet. Standing around and doing nothing all day is very hard on the feet." The lieutenant got back into the front seat and we drove into the center of Athens; we made quick progress, too. As a way of getting around Athens I'd certainly recommend being driven by a policeman, even in a Ford Popular. The Megaron Pappoudof faced the north side of the Greek parliament and the northeastern corner of Constitution Square and was set back from the main road, behind a tall wrought-iron railing. Overlooked by the St. Isidore Church on the highest rock in Athens, which dominates the city like a Christian riposte to the Acropolis, the four- or five-story building with its central pillared pediment was the Athenian equivalent of Munich's Police Praesidium, or the old Alex in Berlin. Leventis parked the car around the corner, uncuffed us, and then led the way through the main gate and up the marble steps to the entrance. Inside was almost a relief from the noise and smell of buses taking Greeks home from work and we were immediately faced with a color portrait of King Paul, who was holding a pair of white gloves, just in case he was obliged to shake anyone's hand or take a bribe. We climbed to the third floor.
Police headquarters are the same the world over: impersonal, worn, malodorous, busy—and already I felt very much at home. In spite of this, I would happily have turned around and walked over to my hotel for a bath and a drink, even if it wasn't as good as the Grande Bretagne. The notice board in the corridor outside the lieutenant's office was all in Greek but I knew exactly what it said because they'd had the same noticeboard at the Alex twenty years ago. Crime's more or less the same in any language. Garlopis and I sat down in front of a cheap wooden desk under the watchful eye of another cop who was leaning against the green-painted wall smoking a cigarette, and waited while Leventis fetched some files from a battered steel cabinet. It was a large office with green linoleum, a high ceiling with a stationary fan, a glass door, a water cooler, and another portrait of the king wearing a monocle, which really did make me feel at home. Somehow, and no matter where it hails from, royalty always manages to look a bit German. I expect it's something to do with the Prussian grenadier's ramrod they all shove up their arses before they have their portraits done.
"Do you like Greece, Herr Ganz?" said Leventis as he riffled through his case files. "It seems very nice to me." "Our women?" "Those I've seen seem very nice, too." "How about our wine?" he murmured. "I like it. At least I do when I manage to get over the taste of the stuff. It tastes more like tree sap than actual wine. Still, the effect seems to be much the same and after the first bottle you hardly notice the difference." Garlopis smiled. "That's very good," he said. "Most amusing." I didn't think Leventis was really listening, but I carried on anyway: "They say the Romans used to make wine in the same way. That would certainly explain the decline and fall of the Roman Empire." He didn't answer and, after a while, I said, "You know why we were at the house in Pritaniou. Why were you there, Lieutenant?" "This morning one of the neighbors reported hearing the sound of an argument, followed by two shots. A patrol car found the body and then summoned me. The witness, who was cleaning the Glebe Holy Sepulchre Church opposite number 11, claims she saw two men leaving the house just before midday but couldn't describe them in any useful way."
"Any idea yet who owns that house?" "The neighbor thinks that Witzel might have been living there without the owner's knowledge. Squatting. It may even be that the owner has died. We're investigating." Leventis came back to his desk and sat down, smiling, but this time there was no cruelty in his smile, which made a nice change; only he wasn't yet through with threatening us. "All of what I'm about to tell you now is confidential," he said. "I should hate to read about any of this in a newspaper. If I did I should certainly assume that one of you was responsible and have you both sent to Haidari Barracks. My captain—Captain Kokkinos, would insist on it." "We won't breathe a word of what you tell us, Lieutenant. Will we, Herr Ganz? You have our word. And let me just add that we're very happy to cooperate with you and Captain Kokkinos in any way you see fit." Leventis ignored him as he would probably have ignored a mosquito, or the relentless sound of Greek traffic. "If," persisted Garlopis, "earlier on I gave you the impression that I was less than happy to help I should like to correct that now. We'll do anything we can to make sure that this murderer is caught, and soon. Anything. Including, might I add, paying a small fine or compensation for the illegal entry we made at the house in Pritaniou. In cash, of course. And whatever amount you think is appropriate. You yourself might give it to the owner when eventually he is found."
"That won't be necessary," said Leventis. He knew perfectly well what was being suggested but, generously, he chose to ignore that, too. "Now then, to business. About a week ago, a lawyer was found murdered. In the suburb of Glyfada. His name was Dr. Samuel Frizis." "I think maybe I read about that in _The Athens News_ ," I said. "Yes," said Leventis. "But the paper didn't publish any specific details. We've been keeping those back deliberately. You see, Dr. Frizis was shot through both eyes, just like your friend Siegfried Witzel." "I wish you'd stop calling him our friend. Neither of us liked him, did we, Garlopis?" "Indeed no. He was a most disagreeable fellow. Very bad-tempered. We were both afraid he might shoot one of us. Ironic when you think about it. Given what happened. But life's like that sometimes, isn't it?" Leventis handed me a sheaf of color photographs from the file. They showed a man lying dead on a plush-looking couch. There were several autopsy shots, which made for unpleasant viewing. All the blood in his head had drained away from his blackened eyes onto one shoulder of his tweed suit, while the other shoulder was quite unspoiled. On the marble table in front of the sofa was a little bronze statue of the goddess Diana holding a spear. It almost looked as if she might have inflicted the damage to the dead lawyer's eyes. Cruelly, I offered one of the photographs to Garlopis, who shook his head and then looked away uncomfortably.
"The killer used a rimless, tapered, 9-mill round just like the one that you found on the floor at the house in Pritaniou Street. My guess is that the ballistics people back at the Gendarmerie will find they were fired from the same gun. Most likely a Luger pistol, they tell me. We've been through Frizis's client list and appointment book and found nothing of any interest. So this new murder is a break for us, since it's very likely these two murders are connected. Although I really don't have any idea how. "Back at the house in the old town you suggested that Witzel was possibly killed by Jews, in revenge for the confiscation of their property by the Nazis. But I must tell you that I think it's unlikely that Dr. Frizis was murdered by Jews, not least because he himself was a Jew. And until Witzel was killed we had even considered the possibility that Dr. Frizis might have been murdered _because_ he was a Jew. I am sorry to tell you that this is becoming quite an anti-Semitic country. Anyway, Siegfried Witzel's murder also puts paid to that particular theory."
"What kind of a lawyer was he anyway?" I asked. "He must have been a good one if he could afford to live in Glyfada," said Garlopis. "That's the most expensive part of town. Everyone in Athens aspires to living in Glyfada." "He may have been a good lawyer," said Leventis, "but he wasn't particularly honest." "You won't hear me arguing that one down," I said. "No good lawyer is particularly honest, in my experience. But dispensing with a lawyer is usually more straightforward. Withholding payment will do the job most effectively." Leventis took off his glasses and raised a finger. "Fortunately, I have another theory. It's about who killed him, if not why he was killed. It's a little bit far-fetched, perhaps, but, well, see what you think, Commissar. But first I need to tell you a story." TWENTY-FOUR – "I'm not a Jew but I was born in Salonika and lived there as a boy and had many Jewish school friends until I was thirteen years old, when my father got a job with the Commercial Credit Bank here in Athens. To some extent, I've always regarded Salonika as my real home. Whenever I go back, it's almost as if I once had another life, that I've been two people: that I had a Salonikan childhood and an Athenian manhood, and the two seem entirely without connection. Now, whenever I'm back there, I can't help thinking that life isn't just about working out who we are and what makes us tick, it's also about understanding why we aren't where we ever expected to be. That things might have been very different. It's the best antidote to nostalgia I know."
I nodded silently. This was the Greek lieutenant's story but, in this particular respect at least, it was mine as well, and for a fleeting second I felt a strong, almost metaphysical connection with this man I hardly knew. He looked distant for a moment—as if his mind was back in Salonika—and rubbed his jaw thoughtfully. The hair on his head was dark and shiny, with just a hint of silver, and, in the light from the tall office window, it resembled the skin of a mackerel. I guessed he was about forty-five. His speaking voice, which sounded like dark honey, relied a great deal on his hairy hands, as if he'd been trying to negotiate the price of a rug. The tunic of his uniform was tailored and it was a while before I perceived the size of the shoulders it was concealing. They were strong shoulders and probably capable of delivering great violence—a true copper's shoulders. "As a boy I wanted to play basketball for Aris Thessaloniki—to be like my hero, Faidon Matthaiou. Not to become a policeman in Athens."
"A great player," agreed Garlopis. "The patriarch of Greek basketball." "But here I am. A long way from home." "I know what you mean, Lieutenant," I said, hoping to push us all back onto the path of his story. "Salonika was established by Alexander the Great's brother-in-law, Ptolemy of Aloros, to be the main port for Macedonia; it's also been of central importance to Greece, Serbia, Bulgaria, even the Austro-Hungarian Empire. But most lastingly, for five centuries it was the Ottoman Turks who controlled the city and gave it a near autonomous status that allowed the Jews to become its most dominant group, with the result that, at the turn of the century, of the hundred and twenty thousand people who lived in Salonika, between sixty and eighty thousand were Jews. This was perhaps one of the largest numbers of European Jews to be found outside Poland; certainly it was the oldest community of Jews in Europe. And it's not an exaggeration to say that Salonika was the Jerusalem of the Balkans, perhaps even the Mother of Israel, since so many who once lived there are now in Palestine.
"I won't detain you, Commissar, by trying to explain how, over the many centuries, so many Jews in the diaspora, fleeing one persecution after another, ended up in Salonika; nor will I take up your time to explain what happened between the two wars and how Salonika became Thessaloniki and Greek, but in this most ancient city where change was a way of life, everything changed when the German army arrived and, I'm sorry to say, that change became a way of death. The alacrity with which the Nazis began to take action against Salonika's Jews was astonishing even to the Greeks who, thanks to the Turks, know a bit about persecution, but for the Jews it was devastating. The Nuremberg Laws were immediately implemented. Prominent Jewish citizens, including some friends of my own father, were arrested, Jewish property was subject to confiscation, a ghetto was built, and all Jews were subjected to violent abuse and sometimes summary execution. But of course much worse was to come. "Following a series of military disasters for the Axis powers, Hitler reorganized his Balkan front and, as part of this process, it was decided to 'pacify' Salonika and its hinterland. _Pacify_ : you Germans have always had a peculiar talent for euphemism. Like 'resettlement.' The Jews of Salonika soon found out that these words meant something very different in the mouth of a German. A decision was made at the highest level that the Jews of Salonika should be removed and deported to Riga and Minsk, for eventual resettlement in the Polish death camps. The city's Jewish community now came under the direct control of the SS and the SD in the person of an officer called Adolf Eichmann. He and several other SD and German army officers set themselves up in some style in a confiscated Jewish villa on Velissariou Street. The villa had a cellar they used as a torture chamber. There, wealthier Jews were interrogated as to where they'd hidden their wealth. Among these was a banker by the name of Jaco Kapantzi in whom the local SD took a special interest since he was also one of the richest men in Salonika. It infuriated these sadists that Kapantzi steadfastly refused to reveal where he'd hidden his money, so they decided to have him transferred by train to Block 15 at the Haidari Barracks in Athens. There, a notorious SS torturer by the name of Paul Radomski could go to work on Kapantzi night and day.
"But something must have happened on the Athens train to infuriate the SD and, in front of several other rail passengers, Kapantzi, still wearing his pajamas and dressing gown, was shot. Perhaps he tried to escape, perhaps he said something, I'm not entirely sure what, but I think perhaps Kapantzi had probably realized that his best chance to escape further torture was to provoke the SD captain in whose custody he was traveling from Salonika into killing him. With his gun in his hand and the body still bleeding on the floor the SD officer asked the other passengers if anyone had seen anything and of course nobody had. The officer got off the train at the next stop and returned to Salonika. When the train eventually arrived in Athens, the man's dead body was still lying on the floor of the carriage, and there it became the responsibility of the Attica City Police. "Obviously a murder had been committed and I was one of the investigating officers. Of course, we all knew it was the German SD who'd killed the man and for this reason there was no chance that we'd be able to do anything about it. We might as well have tried to arrest Hitler himself.
"But we still had to go through the motions and I managed to track down one of the other passengers. Eventually, I persuaded him to make a witness statement that I agreed to keep off the file until after the war and I quietly made it my business to find out more about the young SD captain who'd murdered Jaco Kapantzi in case one day I was in a position to bring him to justice. "Perhaps this will sound strange to you now, Commissar. 'Why bother?' I hear you say. After all, what's the fate of one man when more than sixty thousand Greek Jews died at Auschwitz and Treblinka? Well, to paraphrase Stalin—and believe me, there's a lot of that in Greece—it's the difference between a tragedy and a statistic, perhaps. And the point is this: Jaco Kapantzi was my case, my responsibility, and I've come to believe that in life it's best to live for a purpose greater than oneself. And before you suggest there's something in this for me, a promotion, perhaps, there isn't. Even if no one ever knows that I have done this I would do it because I want to do something for Greece and I believe this is good for my country."
It had been a while since I'd had any thoughts like that myself, but I found I could still appreciate finding them in the heart of another man even if it was a cop who was threatening to put me in jail. "And if all that wasn't enough, my father had worked for Jaco Kapantzi before moving to Athens. Indeed, it had been Mr. Kapantzi who'd generously helped my father get his new job and even loaned him his moving expenses. So you might also say I took his death personally." Leventis lit a cigarette; his voice had lowered now as if he was drawing on something deep in himself, and I saw that it wouldn't be a good idea to make an enemy of this man. "There's no statute of limitations when it comes to murder in Greece. And the killing of Jaco Kapantzi remains open to this day. I'll never know the names of the men who participated in the murders of my fellow countrymen in Auschwitz and Treblinka and besides, those crimes happened hundreds of miles north of here. But I do know the name of the individual SD captain who murdered Jaco Kapantzi on a Greek train. His name was Alois Brunner. Another German officer, an army captain, witnessed what happened, but I don't suppose we'll ever know who he was, only that my witness reports that he expressed some amused astonishment at Brunner's behavior and advised that they should both leave the train. It's said that all detectives have a case that gives them a lifetime of sleepless nights. I'm sure you had yours, Commissar. Alois Brunner is mine.
"Not much is known about him. What I do know has taken me the best part of ten years to find out. Brunner was just thirty-one years old when he murdered Jaco Kapantzi on that train. Born in Austria he was an early recruit to the Nazi Party and having joined the SD in 1938, he was assigned to the Central Office for Jewish Emigration in Vienna, where he became Eichmann's close collaborator in the murder of thousands of Jews. After his time in Salonika, Brunner was named commander of the Drancy internment camp near Paris. This was in June 1943. "I don't know how much you know about this kind of thing, Commissar—more than you'll ever admit, I expect, if the rest of your countrymen are anything to go by—but Drancy was the place where more than sixty-seven thousand French Jews were first confined and then deported to the extermination camps for resettlement. Seven years ago I took a short vacation in Paris and managed to find someone who'd been in Drancy—a German-Jewish woman who'd been hiding from the Nazis in the South of France until she was arrested. Her name was Charlotte Bernheim and somehow she survived Drancy and Auschwitz before returning to France. She remembered Brunner very well: short, poorly built, skinny—hardly your master-race type. She told me he seemed to have a physical detestation of Jews because once she saw a prisoner touch him accidentally and Brunner pulled out his pistol and shot him dead. Through both his eyes. And it was this particular detail that caught my attention because Jaco Kapantzi was also shot through the eyes.
"You begin to see my interest in the murders of Dr. Frizis and Siegfried Witzel. Of course, Frizis didn't prick my curiosity until we found Witzel's body and began to see the German connection, and then of course you mentioned how Witzel's boat had been confiscated from a Salonikan Jew, which intrigues me even more. That and the killer's modus operandi, of course. It begins to look like a sort of homicidal signature. The idea that Brunner may even be back in Greece is of course enormously important to me. I'd love to catch this man and see him face the death penalty. Yes, we still execute our murderers, unlike you West Germans who seem to have discovered a new squeamishness about killing criminals. I'd give anything to see this man meet the end he deserves. These days we shoot murderers, but we used to send them to the guillotine. For a man like Brunner I'd start a petition to bring the guillotine back. "But to continue with the story. In September 1944, Brunner was transferred from Drancy to the Sered Concentration Camp in Czechoslovakia, where he was tasked with the deportation of all the camp's remaining Jews—some thirteen thousand people—before the camp was finally liberated by the Red Army in March 1945. I've not found anyone alive from Sered who remembers Brunner. You Germans did your work too well there. After the war, Brunner disappeared. For a while it was even thought he was dead, executed by the Allies in Vienna in May 1946. But this was a different Brunner. It was Anton Brunner, who conveniently also worked for Eichmann in Vienna, who was executed. And my friends in the National Intelligence Service of Greece tell me that they strongly suspect that the American CIA and the German Federal Intelligence Service—the BND—may have deliberately helped to muddy the waters around Anton Brunner's end to protect Alois Brunner's postwar work for Germany's own intelligence services. Yes, that's right, it's not just German insurance companies that employ old Nazis."
"I was never a Nazi," I said. "No, of course not," said Leventis. But it was clear he didn't believe me. "What's more certain is that Brunner is still alive and that he has good connections in the current German government. According to my sources in the Greek NIS, it's strongly believed that Brunner is presently working undercover for the German BND. Meanwhile a French court tried Brunner for war crimes in absentia in 1954 and sentenced him to death. And he's one of the most wanted war criminals in the world." Lieutenant Leventis opened another file and took out a black-and-white photograph, which he now handed to me. "A friend of mine in the Greek NIS managed to obtain this from his opposite number in the French intelligence services, one of the only known photographs of Alois Brunner, taken in France sometime during the summer of 1944." I was looking at a man by a wooden fence in a field, wearing a belted leather trench coat, with a hat and gloves in his left hand and, as far as I could see, without even a badge in his lapel that might have helped to identify the man as a Nazi Party official. It was a good leather coat; I'd once owned one very like it myself before it had been stolen by a Russian POW guard. The man in the grainy picture didn't look like a mass murderer, but then nobody ever does. I'd met enough murderers in my time to know that they nearly always look like everyone else. They're not monsters and they're not diabolical, they're just the people who live next door and say hello on the stairs. This man was slim, with a high forehead, a narrow nose, neat dark hair, and an almost benign expression on his face; it was the kind of picture he might have sent to his girlfriend or wife, supposing he ever had one. On the back of the picture there was a description of the photograph, written in French: _A photograph believed to be of Alois Brunner, born 8th April, 1912–, taken August 1944, property of the Direction Centrale des Renseignements Généraux_.
"Alois Brunner would now be almost forty-five years old," said Leventis. "Which is the same age as me. Perhaps that's another reason why I take a special interest in him." Lieutenant Leventis continued talking for a while longer but I was hardly listening now; I kept looking at the thin man in the black-and-white photograph. Immediately I knew for sure that I'd met the man before, but it hadn't been during the war and he hadn't been calling himself Alois Brunner. I was quite certain of this. In fact, I still had the man's business card in my pocket. The man in the photograph was the same Austro-Hungarian cigarette salesman who had struck up a conversation with me in the bar at the Mega Hotel. TWENTY-FIVE – There was a police radio on somewhere or maybe I was just hearing a few garbled, half-heard, barely understood words through the white noise that was my own thoughts. In the lieutenant's office, men and a few women came and went like the crew on a ship, handing him reports, which mostly he ignored. Eventually he got up and closed the frosted-glass door. With his glasses off Leventis looked a bit punchy; but with them on, his eyes missed nothing. He had seen my own eyes linger on Brunner's photograph for a little too long, perhaps. The man I'd met in my hotel bar was a war criminal. And not just any war criminal but one of the most wanted war criminals in Europe. It was sometimes a shock to realize that I wasn't the only German with a past. But I hardly wanted to confess to having met the man until I knew what he'd been after. Especially as he'd been a colleague of Adolf Eichmann. I'd met Eichmann once or twice myself, and I hardly wanted to admit this either. Not to some Greek cop I hardly knew. I liked Leventis. But I didn't trust him.
"You recognize him, Commissar?" "No." "You looked like you know him, maybe." "I was taking a good look at him, that's all, just in case I did. I'm an ex-cop, remember? So old habits die hard. I was stationed in Paris for a while during the war and I was thinking it was at least possible that I'd met your man, Brunner. But our dates don't match. By June 1943 I'm afraid I was back in Germany. Besides, people look different when they're not in uniform. Behave differently, too. This fellow looks like he's on vacation." "You could help me to find him." "I already said I would, if I could." "Yes, but maybe you were just saying that to get your passport back and save yourself a trip to jail. The fact as I see it, Commissar, is that you have a moral duty to help me." "How's that?" "Because you need to play your part in restoring your country's reputation. In the weeks and months after Germany invaded Greece this city was systematically starved by the Germans. Tens of thousands died. There were bodies of children lying dead in front of this very police headquarters and nothing any of us could do about it. And yet here we are, more than ten years after the end of the war and Germany has yet to pay a penny in reparations to the Greek government for what happened. But it's not just about money, is it? Germany's got plenty of that now, thanks to your so-called economic miracle. No, I believe collective guilt can be reduced more meaningfully by individual action. In this case, yours. At least, that's the way I look at it. This would be a more worthwhile kind of atonement than a mere bank transfer, Commissar, for what you Nazis did to Greece."
"For years I succeeded in not being a Nazi," I said. "It was difficult, sometimes dangerous—especially in the police. You've no idea. But now that I'm here I discover I was a Nazi all along. Next time I come to your office I'll wear an SS uniform and a monocle, carry a riding whip, and sing the Horst Wessel song." "That might help. In any Greek tragedy death is always dressed in black. But seriously, Commissar, for most Greeks there is no difference between a German and a Nazi. The very idea of a good German is still strange to us. And perhaps it always will be." "So maybe a Greek killed Siegfried Witzel, after all. Maybe he was killed _because_ he was a German. Maybe we've all got it coming." "You won't find anyone in Greece arguing against an opinion like that. But I'm thinking that as a German you might have some insights with this case that I couldn't possibly have. Let's not forget that two men have been murdered in Athens. And one of them was your insured claimant." We were talking but only half of me was listening to what Leventis was saying; the larger part of my mind was still trying to work out exactly why Alois Brunner had struck up a conversation at the bar of the Mega Hotel. Was it possible that Brunner had made me his stooge to help him find Siegfried Witzel so he could murder him? It would certainly explain why Witzel had been carrying a gun and why he'd been so reluctant to tell us his address: he was afraid. Still stalling for time I said, "I'll help you, Lieutenant, okay?"
Even as I spoke my fingers were holding the same business card in my pocket that Brunner had given me himself. Georg Fischer: That was what he was calling himself now. What would happen if I called the number on the card? Was the number even real? And who'd told Brunner that I was at the Mega Hotel? That I might lead him to Witzel? Not Garlopis, although in that stupid blue Olds he'd have been easy to tail to and from the airport. Perhaps someone back in Germany had told Brunner I was on the way to Athens. Someone from Munich RE. Maybe Alzheimer himself. After all, Alzheimer knew Konrad Adenauer—there was that photograph of the two men on his desk. And if Alzheimer knew the Old Man, then perhaps he also knew someone in the German BND. But it was almost as if Brunner had been expecting me. "But since you mentioned moral duty, Lieutenant, I feel obliged to say that it cuts two ways. If I am going to help you, I'll need some kind of written assurance that you'll keep your word and let us go. But supposing this _was_ nothing to do with Brunner or supposing he's already left Greece, what then? I'd hate to find that you were more interested in your clear-up rate than in our innocence."
"All right. That's fair enough." Leventis leaned across his desk and pointed a forefinger as thick as a rifle barrel straight at my head. "But first I need you to ante up, to show me that you're in the game. And then we'll talk about immunity from prosecution." "Like a suggestion from one detective to another, perhaps?" "That might work." "I'm trying to think of something." "Then let me help you. There's a German interpreter who's currently on trial in Athens for war crimes." "Arthur Meissner. I read about that in the paper. Yes. Maybe he knows something that might help. Maybe he knew Brunner." "As a matter of fact, he did. He knew all of the Nazis who controlled Greece—Eichmann, Wisliceny, Felmy, Lanz, Student. But under Greek law I'm forbidden from trying to interrogate him now that he's on trial. Or to offer him any kind of a deal." "He might speak to me. Because I'm not a Greek." "I had the same thought." "Where is he now?" "In Averoff Prison." "Look, you'll forgive me for saying so, Lieutenant, but a man who was merely a Greek interpreter doesn't sound like the worst war criminal I ever heard of. My own boss in the Berlin Criminal Police, General Arthur Nebe, was a very career-minded man who commanded a killing unit that massacred more than forty-five thousand people. That's what I call a war criminal."
"To be perfectly honest with you, Commissar, Meissner's merely a man who was unwise enough to cooperate a little too enthusiastically with the occupation authorities. More of a collaborator than a war criminal. But it's a subtle difference in Greece. Too subtle for most people, given the fact that there are no German war criminals who've ever been tried for their crimes here in Greece. That's right. None at all. A few were tried for so-called hostage crimes committed in southeast Europe, but those trials were only in Germany. And most of those convicted were released years ago, pardoned at the instigation of the Americans and the British, who established the Greek federal republic as a bulwark against the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War. Among these men was Wilhelm Speidel, the military governor of Greece from 1943, the man responsible for numerous directives authorizing mass murders, including the massacre in Kalavryta. He was released from the Landsberg Prison in 1951. He was originally sentenced to a twenty-year prison term."
"That's truly shocking," said Garlopis. "Isn't it, Herr Ganz?" "So you'll forgive me for saying so, Commissar, but the trial of Arthur Meissner is as near as we've ever got to any kind of a war crimes trial here in Greece. Maybe now you understand why I was talking about your moral duty to help me find Brunner." "I can certainly see why you would put it in those terms, Lieutenant," said Garlopis. "And may I say that as a Greek who loves his country I will do all I can to assist Herr Ganz in any way he sees fit." Resisting the obvious temptation again to tell Garlopis to shut up, I put a cigarette in my mouth—it was the last one from the packet Alois Brunner himself had given me—and lit up, which gave me enough time to consider my situation in a little more detail. I wanted nothing to do with what Leventis was suggesting; keeping far away from any of my old comrades was a top priority for Bernhard Gunther. And I had no more time for moral duty than I had for taking early retirement. But I needed to string Leventis along; to make him think I was helping him without getting myself too involved. After all, like Brunner, I was also living under a false name, with a false passport to go with that.
"Well, what exactly did he do?" I asked. "This Meissner fellow." "It's certain that he helped himself to the property of Greeks and Greek Jews. Some of the other charges—rape and murder—look rather more difficult to prove." "Is a deal possible? Would you at least be prepared to speak up in court on his behalf if he was to provide some information leading to the capture of Alois Brunner?" "I'd have to speak to the state prosecutor. But maybe." "I'll need more than that if I do speak to Meissner. Even if he can't deliver information on Brunner it's possible he might give up someone else just as important. Come on, Lieutenant. This man needs some life insurance." "I will say this: If we were to catch a whale like Brunner, it would certainly take all the attention off a sprat like Meissner. And if he helped us to do it, I wouldn't be surprised if we let him go." "So let me speak to Meissner in private, at the prison. Just the two of us. It may be that I can persuade him to talk." Leventis looked at his watch. "If we're quick we can just catch Papakyriakopoulos. That's the name of Meissner's lawyer. Every Friday evening, after a week in court, he always goes for a drink at an old bar called Brettos, which is about a ten-minute walk from here. I doubt he'll speak to me, but he might unload something to you."
TWENTY-SIX – Brettos was in a district of touristy Athenian backstreets called Plaka, and from the outside unremarkable; inside, the whole back wall was a virtual skyscraper of brightly lit liquor bottles and, given its proximity to the Acropolis, it felt like the world's most ancient bar. It was easy to imagine Aristotle and Archimedes drinking ice-cold martinis there in search of the final, clear simplicity of an alcoholic aphorism after a hard day of philosophical debate. Seated on a high stool at a marble counter beneath a brandy barrel, Arthur Meissner's lawyer, Dr. Papakyriakopoulos, was a shrewd-looking man in his thirties, with a neat mustache, dark marsupial eyes, and a profile like an urgent signpost. Lieutenant Leventis made the introductions and then discreetly withdrew, leaving me and Garlopis to order a round and to make the case for a meeting with Arthur Meissner at the court where he was being tried or at Averoff Prison, where he was being held on remand. Leventis said he'd wait for us at the café across the narrow street. The Greek lawyer listened politely while I quickly outlined my mission. Sipping a drink that looked and smelled more medicinal than alcoholic, he lit a small cigar and then, patiently, explained his client's situation, in perfect English:
"My client is of no importance in the scheme of things," he said. "This is the whole basis of his defense. That he was nobody." "Is that nobody like Odysseus was nobody? To trick the cyclops? Or nobody in a more existential sense? In other words, was he a cunning nobody or a modest, indefinite nobody?" "You're a German, Herr Ganz? Which were you?" Dr. Papakyriakopoulos was Greek but he was still the kind of lawyer I disliked most: the slippery kind. As slippery as an otter with a live fish in its paws. "That's a good question. The former, I'd say. It certainly took a lot of cunning for me to stay alive while the Nazis were in power. And just as much afterward." "In Arthur Meissner's case he was the sort of existential nobody that you describe, Herr Ganz. If you ever met my client you would see a simple man incapable of stratagem. You would meet a man who took no decisions, did not offer counsel, committed no crimes, was never a member of a right-wing organization, was not an anti-Semite, and had little or no knowledge of anything other than what was said to him in German and which he was obliged to simultaneously translate into Greek, nothing of which he remembers now. I imagine Mr. Garlopis here would tell you that with simultaneous translation it's often impossible to keep any memory of the translations you made just a few minutes ago."
"Oh, that's very true, sir," said Garlopis. "Unless one keeps notes, of course. I myself often kept notes to assist with simultaneous translations. But I always threw those away afterwards. The handwriting is all but illegible even to me sometimes, such is the speed with which one is obliged to write." "There you are," said Dr. Papakyriakopoulos. "Straight from the horse's mouth, so to speak. I could have used you in court the other day, Mr. Garlopis. As an expert witness. The fact is that for most of the occupation period when my client was employed by the Nazis he had no real acquaintance with the men for whom he was translating other than the fact that they wore Nazi uniforms and had the power of life and death over all Greek citizens, including him, of course. In short, he is a scapegoat for the failings of the Greek nation then and now. For Arthur Meissner to admit that he knew this German whom Lieutenant Leventis is looking for might prejudice his defense. He was just obeying orders and hoping to stay alive, and any evidence of his criminality has, so far, turned out to be little more than circumstantial or worse still, worthless hearsay. Nevertheless, he is a loyal Greek citizen, and I will put it to him tomorrow that you are willing to help him. It may be that he agrees to meet you, and it may be that he does not. But might I ask, what is your interest here?"
"The lieutenant seems to think that as a German I have a moral duty to assist the police with their inquiry. I'm not so sure about that, to be honest. I work for an insurance company but before the war I was a policeman. I came to Greece to adjust an insurance claim made by a German policy holder called Siegfried Witzel. Witzel was found murdered earlier today in circumstances that lead Leventis to suppose that his death may be connected with a murder that took place during the war, and also with the recent murder of an Athenian lawyer." "Dr. Samuel Frizis." "Yes. Did you know him?" "Quite well." "If I assist Leventis with his murder investigation—if I can persuade Arthur Meissner to talk to me, for instance, in confidence—then he may be prepared to speak up in court for your client." "Samuel Frizis was a friend of mine. We were at law school together. Naturally I should like to see his murderer caught. This puts a different complexion on the matter under discussion. He's a decent man, Stavros Leventis. An idealist. But what kind of a policeman were you, may I ask?"
"A detective. I was a commissar with the Berlin Criminal Police." "At the risk of being facetious, all the German police who were in Greece seem to have been criminals. That was certainly my client's experience." "There's some truth in that, yes." "I'm glad you say so." He sipped his ouzo and seemed to catch the eye of a woman carrying a briefcase who was standing in the open doorway like a cat, wondering if she should come in or not. She looked worth catching, too, and not just her eye. "I read a lot of German history, Herr Ganz. I'm fascinated with this whole period, and not just because of this case. Correct me if I'm wrong but it's my information that the Berlin Criminal Police came under the control of the Reich Main Security Office in 1939. That you were in effect under the control of members of the SS. And that you often worked in conjunction with members of the Gestapo. Is that right?" He paused. "If I sound curious about this it's because I like to know exactly who I'm dealing with. And exactly how they might be of assistance in mounting an effective defense. For example, it's also my information that many members of Kripo were operationally obliged to become members of the SD. In other words, when you were put into uniform, you were only obeying orders. Much like my client."
"Take a walk, would you?" I asked Garlopis. "A walk? But I haven't finished my drink. Oh, I see. Yes, of course, sir." Garlopis stood up awkwardly. "I'll wait in that café across the street, with Lieutenant Leventis." Garlopis went out of the bar looking like a sheepish schoolboy who had been told to play somewhere else. I told myself I was going to have to make it up to him later. "You're well informed, Dr.—" I shook my head. "I don't think I'll even try to pronounce your name." "I try to be. Where did you see active service? It wasn't Greece, I'll be bound. If you'd been here you'd hardly have come back." "France, the Ukraine, Russia. But not Greece, no. I wasn't a Party member, you understand. And I think you're right. Germany behaved abominably in this country. The man Leventis is looking for—the one who committed a murder during the war—he was also in the SD. That's why Leventis thinks I can help." "Set a fox to catch a fox, eh?" "Something like that. If I'm leveling with you now it's so you know that I'll do the same with Arthur Meissner."
"Well, I appreciate your honesty. And as I said, I'm very keen to help catch the murderer of Samuel Frizis. Although connecting it with a murder that took place during the occupation looks like a much more difficult task. After all, there were so many." "True, but there's no doubt in my mind or his that catching this particular fox would take a great deal of the heat off your client. Not to say all of it." "Interesting idea." Dr. Papakyriakopoulos nodded at the woman in the doorway, who seemed to have been awaiting his permission, and she came inside the bar. "What kind of a lawyer was he?" I asked. "He was my friend. But he wasn't a good lawyer. To be precise, he was the kind of lawyer who gives lawyers a bad name. The rich, cut-corners kind of lawyer who was much more interested in money than in justice. And not above a bit of bribery." "The kind of bribery that might go wrong if it didn't work?" "Enough to get him killed, you mean? I don't know. Perhaps. I suppose it would depend on the size of the bribe."
"Any German connections?" "Like me, he didn't speak a word of it. And he lived in Athens all his life." "But how could he do that? He was a Jew, wasn't he?" "Someone hid him, for almost two years. There was a lot of that here in Greece. Jews were never unpopular until more recently, when our governments started to become much more right-wing. This new fellow we've got now, Karamanlis, is a populist who talks about Greece's European destiny, whatever that is. He sees himself as the Greek version of your Chancellor Adenauer." The woman who'd come into the bar approached us, and Dr. Papakyriakopoulos got off his stool, kissed her on both cheeks, spoke in Greek with her for a minute or two, and then introduced us. "Herr Ganz, this is Miss Panatoniou. She's also a lawyer, albeit one who works for a government ministry. Elli, Herr Ganz is an insurance man, from Germany." "Pleased to meet you, Herr Ganz." She said this in German I think but I hardly noticed because it seemed to my eyes that she reached into me with hers and strolled around the inside of my head for a while picking up things that didn't belong to her and generally handling all there was to find. Not that I minded very much. I'm generally inclined to let curious women behave exactly how they want when they're riffling through the drawers and closets of my mind. Then again, this was probably just my imagination, which always slips into overdrive when a voluptuously attractive woman in her thirties gets near my passenger seat. I shook her hand. And the two spoke some more in Greek before Papakyriakopoulos came back to me in English.
"Well, look, it was good to meet you, Herr Ganz. And I'll certainly speak to my client about what you have proposed. Where are you staying?" "At the Mega." Clearly he wanted Miss Panatoniou all to himself, and I couldn't blame him for that. Every part of her was perfectly defined. Each haunch, each shoulder, each leg, and each breast. She reminded me of a diagram in a butcher's shop window—one of those maps concerning which cut comes from where, and I felt hungry just looking at the poor woman. I finished my drink and quickly went outside before I was tempted to take a bite of her. Garlopis had gone to fetch the Oldsmobile and, after a brief talk with the lieutenant, during which I agreed that he should look after my passport and he agreed not to arrest me for a while, I hailed a cab back to the hotel. Unlike Berlin taxi drivers, who never want to take you anywhere, Greek taxi drivers were always full of good ideas as to where they might drive you after they'd cut through the knotty problem of delivering you to your stated destination. This one suggested that he should drive me to the Temple of Zeus, where he would wait and then drive me back to the hotel, and maybe come back for me again later on and take me to a nightclub called Sarantidis, on Ithakis Street, where I could be entertained by some lovely ladies for a very special price. Unreasonably, he thought, I declined his kind invitation and went back to the Mega, where I took a much-needed bath and called up the Athenian telephone number on Fischer's business card—80227—but it was out of order. At least that's what I think the Greek operator was saying to me. After some time in Greece I'd decided that it wasn't just the Trojan War that had lasted ten years but Homer's telling the story of it, too.
TWENTY-SEVEN – If Captain Alois Brunner was back in Greece this was hardly my concern, in spite of what Lieutenant Leventis had said, albeit rather admirably, too: moral duty was something for philosophers and schoolmasters, not blow-in insurance men like me. All I wanted to do now was get back to Munich with my pockets full of expense receipts and before I managed to find myself with more trouble than I could reasonably handle. To this end I'd decided I urgently needed Dumbo Dietrich to go and find Professor Buchholz in Munich and get his side of what had happened on the _Doris_. Because it seemed obvious now that the loss of the _Doris_ and the murder of Siegfried Witzel were intimately connected and probably only Buchholz could shed light on that. If he was still alive. Already I had more than a few doubts on this particular score. So when I went into the office the following morning I sent a telegram to MRE, after which I apologized to poor Garlopis for the peremptory way I'd spoken to him in Brettos.
"That's quite all right, sir," he said. "And I don't blame you in the least for that. It's my experience of speaking to the police that any situation can quickly become a whore's fence post, as we say in Greece. This cop could make your life a real roller skate if you're not careful. Your life _and_ mine." "Let me buy you a drink and I'll feel better about it." "Just a quick one, perhaps. It wouldn't do to be drunk before lunch." "I might agree if lunch didn't involve Greek food." "You don't like Greek food?" "Most of the time. Lunch is usually a little much like dinner for my taste. But with a drink inside me that doesn't seem to matter so much." We went along to the bar at the Mega not because it was better than any other I'd been in but because I was still keeping an eye out for Georg Fischer and because after lunching out of a bottle I was planning to read the newspaper and then take a nap in my room, like a good salaryman. Garlopis had one and then got up to leave while I was ordering another gimlet.
"I'd best go back," he explained. "Just in case head office decides to answer your telegram." "Good idea. But I'll wait here." "Herr Ganz?" Garlopis smiled politely. "Forgive me for saying so. You're able to consume cocktails during the day and still do your job?" "I've always had irregular habits, my friend. Back when I was a detective we used to pull an all-night shift at a crime scene and go for a drink at six o'clock in the morning. Being a cop changes your life forever like that. And not in a good way. More than ten years after I left the Murder Commission my liver still behaves like it's close to a badge and a gun. Besides, this is the only one of my irregular habits that doesn't get me into trouble." Garlopis bit his lip at the mention of a gun and then left me in the care of Charles Tanqueray. I waited a while but there was no sign of the man who'd called himself Georg Fischer so I called the barman over and tried some questions, in English. "The other night. I was in here. Do you remember?"
"Yes, sir. I remember." "There was another man at the bar. He spoke pretty good Greek. Do you remember him, too?" "Yes. He was German, too, I think. Like you. What about him?" "Ever see him in here before?" "Maybe." "With anyone?" "I can't remember." "Anything you can tell me about him?" "He learned his Greek in the north, sir. Not here in Athens. Okay, now I remember something else. One time he was in here with some guys and maybe they were speaking French and Arabic. Egyptians maybe. I dunno. One of them had a newspaper—a copy of _Al-Ahram_. It's an Egyptian newspaper. The Egyptian embassy is not far away, opposite the parliament, and some of those guys come in here for a drink." "Anything else? Anything at all." The barman shook his head and went back to polishing glasses, which he was certainly better at than making cocktails. Having tasted his gimlet I figured mixing paint was more his forte than mixing alcohol. I was just about to finish work at the bar when in she walked, Elli Panatoniou, the probable siren of Dr. Papakyriakopoulos.
Nobody had warned me about this woman, or tied me to the mast of my ship, but when I looked at her a second time the parts of my brain usually allocated to thinking seemed to have been affected by some strong aphrodisiac. Normally I'd have called this alcohol, especially as there was still a glass in my hand at the time but I won't entirely discount the scent of her perfume, the glint in her eyes, and the well-stocked baker's tray she had out in front of her. Still carrying her briefcase, she moved toward me like Zeno's arrow in that there were parts of her that seemed quite at rest and others that were perpetually in motion. There are small breasts and there are large breasts—which were almost a joke if the cartoonist in _Playboy_ was anything to go by—there are high breasts with nipples that are almost invisible and there are low breasts that could feed a whole maternity ward, there are breasts that need a brassiere and breasts that just beg for a wet T-shirt, there are breasts that make you think of your mother and breasts that make you think of Messalina and Salome and Delilah and the Ursuline nuns of Loudun, there are breasts that look wrong and ungainly and breasts calculated to make a cigarette fall from your mouth, like the breasts that belonged to Miss Panatoniou—perfect breasts that anyone who liked drawing impressive landscapes like the hills of Rome or the Heights of Abraham could have admired for days on end. Just looking at them you felt challenged to go and mount an expedition to conquer their summits, like Mallory and Irvine. Instead, I climbed politely off my bar stool, told myself to get a grip of what laughingly I called a libido, tore my eyes off the front of her tight white blouse, and took her outstretched hand in mine. She was trying hard to make it seem accidental, her walking into the bar like that, but the fact is she wasn't as surprised to see me in the Mega Bar as I was to find myself there at lunchtime. Then again, I'm a suspicious son of a bitch since they started selling losing lottery tickets. But when I decide to make myself look like an idiot there's very little that can prevent me. Seeing her in front of me and holding her hand in mine made it very hard to use my head at all, except to think about her.
"This is a surprise, Miss—?" "Panatoniou. But you can call me Elli." "Christof Ganz. Elli. Short for Elisabeth? Or are you named after the Norse goddess who defeated Thor in a wrestling match?" "It's Elisabeth. But why were they fighting?" "They were Germans. We're like the English. We never need much of a reason to fight. Just a couple of drinks, a few yards of no-man's-land, and some half-baked mythology." "We've got plenty of that in Greece. This whole country's rotten with mythology. And most of it was written after 1945." She was wearing a tailored two-piece black business suit with piano keyboard lapels and a gathered waist, and a long pencil skirt that fitted her like the black gloves on her hands and she looked and sounded very smart indeed. She was tall and her dark brown hair was as long as Rapunzel's and I was seriously thinking of weaving it into a ladder so that I might climb up and kiss her. "Are you here to see me or do you just like this bar?" She gave me and then the bar a withering look of pity and sat down, adjusting herself for comfort a couple of times, which gave me a second to appraise her nicely shaped backside; that was perfect, too.
"My boss is having a meeting with someone upstairs and I was bringing him some business papers he claimed he needed. We both work for the Ministry of Economic Coordination, on Amerikis Street. This hotel has always been popular with journalists and all sorts of people in the government, for all sorts of reasons and not all of them respectable. It's just as convenient as the Grande Bretagne but a lot cheaper." "Well, I should fit right in. Expensive things don't interest me. Except when I don't have them, of course." "How did you happen to pick this place, anyway?" "My colleague picked it." "He must really dislike you. In case you didn't know, this is the kind of hotel where not a lot of sleeping gets done. It's not a complete flophouse but if a man wants to meet his mistress for a couple of hours and wants her to think well of him, then he brings her here. In other words it's expensive without being too expensive. Also it's where a member of parliament comes when he needs to have a meeting in secret with another member of parliament but he doesn't really want it to be a secret—if you know what I mean—then he arranges a meeting in the bar here. That's why my boss is here. He wants the prime minister to think he's thinking of switching political parties, which of course he's not. This place is like a talking drum."
"Won't the PM know this is what your boss is up to?" "Of course. It's my boss's way of sending Karamanlis an important message without sending him a memo and without it being held against him later on. A memo would formalize his dissatisfaction. A meeting in here just hints at it, politely." "I'd no idea that Greek politics were so subtle." "You've heard that war is the continuation of politics by other means. Of course you have, you're German. Well, politics is just another way of being Greek. Aristotle certainly thought so and he should know. He invented politics. If I were you I'd move to the GB. It's much more comfortable. But don't move there before you've bought me a drink." I waved the barman over and she said something to him in Greek; until then she'd been speaking to me in German. "You speak good Greek. For a German." She laughed. "You're just being kind. For a German." "No, really. Your German is all right. Especially your accent. Which is to say you have no accent at all. That's good, by the way. German always sounds better when it's spoken by a nice-looking woman."
She took that one on the chin and let it go, which was the right thing to do; it had been a while since I'd been equal to the task of speaking to any kind of woman at all, least of all to the task of handing out compliments. My mouth was too small for my wit, as if my tongue had grown too big and ungainly like some slavering Leonberger. "My father worked for North-German Lloyd," she said. "The shipping company. Before the war he was the chief officer on the SS _Bremen_. When it caught fire and sank, in 1941, he came home to Greece. He taught me German because he thought you were going to win the war and rule in Europe." "Hey, what happened there? I know I should remember." "You may have lost the war but—and this is a first, I think—it looks like you're going to win the peace. Germany is still going to help rule Europe as part of this new EEC. Greece is already desperate to join. We've been trying to be good Europeans since the fall of Constantinople. And mostly succeeding, too, I'm happy to say, otherwise I'd probably be wearing a veil and covering my face."
"That would be a tragedy." "No, but it would be a hardship, for me at least. In Greece, tragedies usually involve someone being murdered. We practically invented the idea of the noble hero brought low by some flaw of character." "In Germany we've got plenty of those to go around." "This is Greece, Herr Ganz. We're not about to forget any of those." "And yet you still want to join our club?" "Of course. We invented hypocrisy, too, remember? As a matter of fact I'm hoping to be part of the Greek delegation in Brussels when we lobby the Germans and the French for membership next year. My French is good. On account of how my mother is half-French. But you're wrong about my German. I make lots of mistakes." "Maybe I can help you there." "I didn't know it was possible to insure against those kinds of mistakes." "If it was I certainly wouldn't be your man, Elli. I don't sell insurance. I just check the claims. Disappointing people is usually part of my job description. But only when they've disappointed me. There's something about insurance that brings out the worst in people. Some people can just smell dishonesty. I'm one of those, I guess."
"Papakyriakopoulos said you used to be a cop. In Berlin. Not a German-language teacher." "That's right. But I wouldn't mind talking to you, Elli. In German or in French. We might meet from time to time and share a cup of coffee or a drink. In here since it's so public. When you're not too busy, of course. We could have some German conversation." "That's one I certainly haven't heard before. Hmm." "Does that mean you're thinking about it?" "You amuse me, Herr Ganz." "Next time I'll wear a straw hat and carry a cane if it will help." "I bet you would, too. If you thought I'd like that." She should have said no, of course. Or at the very least she should have made me work a little harder for the pleasure of her company. She could have asked me what the German was for "pushy" and I wouldn't have minded in the slightest because she'd have been right. I was being pushy. So I let her off the hook for a moment wondering if she'd hitch up her skirts and wriggle her way back onto it. "But what about your father? Don't you speak German to him?"
"He's dead, I'm afraid." "Sorry." "But maybe you're right. We could meet, perhaps. For a little conversation." "Those are the best kind." "You don't like to talk?" "It depends." "On what?" "On who I'm talking to. Lately I've gotten out of the habit of saying very much." "I find that rather hard to believe." "It's true. But with you I could make an exception." "Somehow I don't feel flattered." "Haven't you heard? There's nothing like speaking a language with a native to get better at it. You could think of yourself as the horse and me as the emperor Charles V." Still testing her. The insult was deliberate. She laughed. "Didn't he have an unfeasibly large jaw?" "Yes. In those days you didn't get to be a king unless there was something strange about you. Especially in Germany." "That probably explains our own kings. They're Germans, too, originally. From Schleswig-Holstein. And they have the biggest mouths in Greece. But as it happens, you're right. There's not much German conversation to be had here in Greece. For obvious reasons."
"Lieutenant Leventis speaks quite reasonable German. Almost as well as you. Maybe we could ask him along to our little class." "Lieutenant Leventis?" Elli smiled. "I couldn't meet him without half of Athens getting to hear about it and drawing the wrong conclusion. Besides, his wife might object. Not to mention the fact that he and I hold very different political opinions, so we'd probably spend most of the time arguing. He's rather more to the right than I am. Only don't tell anyone. I try to keep a lid on my politics. Konstantinos Karamanlis is hardly a great friend of the left." "There's no film in my camera, Elli. Politics don't interest me. And in Greece they're beyond my understanding. The left most of all." "Maybe it could work," she said, persuading herself some more. "Why not? I might even get to understand the German people a little better." "I know that feeling." "You don't think it's possible?" "I'm not sure. But let me know when you think you've got a handle on us. I'd love to get a few clues as to why we are who we are."
"My father used to say that only the Austrians are really suited to being Germans; he said that the Germans themselves make excellent Englishmen, even though they all secretly wish they could be Italians. That this was their tragedy. But he liked Germans a lot." "He sounds like a great guy." "He was." The barman brought her something green and cold in a glass and she toasted me pleasantly. "Here's to the new Europe," she said. "And to me speaking better German." I toasted her back. "You really believe in this EEC?" "Of course. Don't you?" "I quite liked the old Europe. Before people started talking about a new Europe the last time. And the time before that." "It's only by doing away with the idea of nation states that we can put an end to fascism and to war." "As someone who's fought in all three, I'll drink to that." "Three?" "The Cold War is all too real, I'm afraid." "We've nothing to fear from the Russians. I'm sure of that. They're just like us." I let that one go. The Russians were not like anyone, as anyone in Hungary and East Germany would have told you. If Martians ever did make it across the gulf of space to our planet with their inhuman plans for conquest and migration they'd feel quite at home in Soviet Russia.
"But if we meet," she added, "for conversation, let's avoid politics. And let's not make it in here." "Your boss?" "What about him?" "He might see you." She stared at me blankly, as if she had no idea what I was talking about. But that could just have been my German. "In here," I added. "With me. Having a conversation." "Yes. You're right. That would never do." "So. You suggest somewhere. Somewhere that isn't cheap. I have an expense account and no one to take to dinner this weekend except Mr. Garlopis. He's MRE's man in Athens. But he's a man. A fat man with an appetite. So it will make a nice change. These days I'm alone so much that I'm surprised when I find someone in the mirror in the morning." "If he's the one who booked you into the Mega then I'd say you should have him fired. I bet he's got a cousin in the hotel business." "Yes. How did you know?" "Everyone in Greece has a cousin. That's how this country works. Take my word for it." But I didn't know if I would. Seated at the very bar where I'd already been duped by one liar, I wasn't sure I believed what she'd told me but she seemed like a nice girl and nice girls didn't come my way that often. Then again, the truth is never best and seldom kind so what did it really matter why she was there? A lot of lies are just the oil that keeps the world from grinding to a halt. If everyone suddenly started being scrupulously honest there'd be another world war before the end of the month. If Miss Panatoniou wanted me to think our meeting again was purely accidental then that was her affair. Besides I could hardly see what there was in it for this woman to deceive me. It wasn't like Siegfried Witzel was alive or that she had an insurance claim against MRE I might settle in her favor. I really didn't have any money or any powerful friends. I didn't even have a passport. Nor was I about to persuade myself that she was just one of those younger women who are attracted to much older men because they're looking for a father figure. I was attracted to her, sure, why not? She was very attractive. But the other way around? I didn't buy that. So I searched her briefcase when she went to the ladies' room, like you do and, to my surprise, I found something more lethal than a few critical reports about the Greek economy. I'd been around guns all my life and about the only thing I didn't like about them was when they were hidden in a woman's bag. Suddenly everyone in town seemed to have a gun except me. This one was a six plus one, a .25-caliber with a tip-up barrel and it was still wrapped in the original greaseproof paper, presumably to protect the lining of her bag from gun oil. They were called mouse guns because they were small and cute. At least that was always the rumor. My own feeling about this was somewhat different. Finding a woman with a Beretta 950 was like discovering that she was the cat and that maybe I was the mouse. I figured there were plenty of moths around to put holes in my clothes without finding one in my guts as well.
When she came back to the bar smelling of soap and yet more perfume I thought about mentioning the Beretta and decided not to bother. Who could blame her if she was carrying a Bismarck? By all accounts Greek men weren't very good at taking no for an answer, so maybe she needed it to defend those magnificent breasts. I told myself everything would be fine between us just as long as I didn't try to put my hands on those, and that her little mouse gun would certainly stop me making a fool of myself, which was probably a good thing. So I ordered another round of drinks and while I was looking at the barman I tried to twist my eyes to the farthest corners of their sockets so that I might at least look down the front of Miss Panatoniou's cleavage, but discreetly, so she wouldn't notice what I was up to, and shoot me simply for being the swine I undoubtedly was. In March of 1957 that was what I called my sex life. TWENTY-EIGHT – On Monday, March 25, West Germany, France, Belgium, Italy, Luxembourg, and the Netherlands signed the Treaty of Rome, creating the European Economic Community. I suppose it made a welcome change from a peace treaty bringing a war to an end and maybe it would even prevent another one from happening, as Elli Panatoniou had told me it would. But only four years after the end of the Korean War and another briefer conflict more recently concluded in Egypt, I found it impossible to have much faith that the EEC heralded a new era of European peace; wars were easy to begin but, like making love, very hard to stop. The community of economic self-interest seemed almost irrelevant to what real people needed.
More important for me and Garlopis, Philipp Dietrich telephoned the MRE office in Athens, as arranged by Telesilla. While I took the call at Garlopis's desk I watched him out of the corner of my eye flirting with her like an overweight schoolboy. I couldn't hear what was said but the redhead was laughing and, in spite of his earlier denials, I formed the strong impression that they were a lot closer than he wanted me to believe. Not that it was any of my business. For all I cared he could have been flirting with Queen Jocasta. "I got your telegram," said Dietrich. "This Athenian cop, Leventis, sounds like a real pain in the ass. Are you sure you and Garlopis don't need a lawyer?" "No thanks, I think we're all right for now. If we start throwing lawyers at him he'll probably just toss us in jail and I could be stuck here for months. He'd be justified in doing it, too. Almost. Right now we're both at liberty. At least we are as long as I play detective and help him find the killer." "Is that even possible?"
"I don't know. But I can certainly persuade him I'm trying. And that's probably good enough. He's not a bad sort, really. From what I've learned since I came here, the Greeks had a pretty rough time of it during the war. He figures I owe him some personal reparation. Because I'm German, I guess." I thought I'd leave Alois Brunner out of our conversation; Nazi war criminals were still a very sensitive subject in Germany for the simple reason that almost everyone had known one. I'd known quite a few myself. "What the hell happened anyway?" "Garlopis and I went to an address where we believed the insured party was living, to tell him that we were going to disallow his claim pending further investigation. Witzel carried a gun so, under the circumstances, we were a little concerned for our safety and went in the back door, which is when and where we found his body. He'd been shot dead." "Jesus." "On our way from the house, the cops turned up and arrested us both on suspicion. We were in the wrong place at the wrong time, that's all. It's an old story and any Bavarian court of law would throw it out in five minutes. But my being German hardly helps the situation here. With the Greek love for cosmic irony they'd be delighted if they could pin this on another German."
"I'll bet they would. Murderous Germans are all the rage these days. You can't go to a movie theater without seeing some sneering Nazi torturing a nice girl. Look, do whatever you think is necessary, Christof. Mr. Alzheimer is delighted with the way you've handled this so far." I didn't doubt that for a minute; a saving of thirty-five thousand deutschmarks would have put a smile on anyone's face, even a sneering Nazi's. "We're just sorry that this has been more difficult for you than we thought it would be. That it's landed you in trouble with the police." "Don't worry about me, boss. I can handle a certain amount of trouble with the police. That's one of the only advantages of being a German. We're used to cops throwing their weight around." "All the same, if you change your mind about that lawyer, I'm told by our legal department that you should contact Latsoudis & Arvaniti, in Piraeus. They're a good firm. We've used them before." I picked up a pen and wrote the name down, just in case. Then I wrote down Buchholz's name and underlined it, willing Dietrich to get to the point. I also wrote out the name of Walther Neff, to prompt me, courteously, to ask a little later on, how my sick colleague at MRE was doing.
"I've got a feeling you'll need them anyway on account of what I've found out here in Munich," added Dietrich. "I don't think it will help." "You spoke to Professor Buchholz?" "I did." "And what did he say?" "Not much. Nothing I could understand, anyway, on account of the fact that he had a massive stroke before Christmas and it has left him paralyzed down one side of his body. He can hardly speak. He's in Schwabing Hospital right now and is not expected to recover much." I drew a small rectangle around Buchholz's name. It was a rectangle that was shaped like a coffin, a toe-pincher like the ones they'd shipped to the Western front in their hundreds before an advance on the enemy trenches, to encourage the men's morale. "But that's not all," continued Dietrich. "I also went to the Glyptothek Museum, where he was assistant director, and they told me they have absolutely no knowledge of any expedition to Greece. None. Nor of any deal done with this museum in Piraeus. Frankly, it's impossible to see how Buchholz could arrange a taxi home, let alone a boat charter for Witzel and the _Doris._ I also spoke to his wife and she showed me his passport. The professor hasn't been out of Germany in over a year. The last Greek stamp on his passport was in June 1951. Either Siegfried Witzel was lying about him or someone has been impersonating Buchholz. He's a goddamned vegetable."
"So maybe that's why someone picked him off the stall." "How do you mean?" "You remember that break-in at the museum?" "I remember. Yes." "The cops never found out who was responsible. Kids, they thought. But at the time I had my doubts about that." "Are you saying these two cases are connected?" "They were kids who broke into the assistant director's desk and left the cash box alone. Which is a kite that simply doesn't fly. I'm thinking that it was maybe his office stationery someone was after. Business cards, headed notepaper. That and a few small pieces of marble that no one could be bothered to claim for." "For what purpose?" "Perhaps this person wanted to persuade the authorities here in Greece that they were mounting a proper expedition to recover bigger, more valuable historical artifacts. Some official German paperwork and a few bits of bronze and marble might have helped that story stay afloat. And I think your first guess was probably accurate. Either there's been a local invasion of the body snatchers or someone has been impersonating Professor Buchholz. The question is, who? If I can find that out, then maybe the Greek police will let me come home. Look, sir, see what else you can dig up on Siegfried Witzel. War record. Wives. This underwater movie he made. Anything at all."
"All right." "By the way, how's Neff?" "That's the damnedest thing. He discharged himself from hospital and has since disappeared. The police are looking for him, but so far without result." "That is strange." "Even stranger than you imagine. His wife reckons a cop from the Praesidium came to visit him at home the day before he suffered his heart attack, only they don't seem to know anything about it." I hadn't ever met Walther Neff, but his sudden disappearance made me uneasy, as if somehow it might be connected with what had happened in Athens. "As a matter of interest, which hospital was he in?" "The Schwabing. Same as Buchholz." "What does _his_ wife have to say about it?" "Not much. She seems as puzzled as the rest of us. Listen, take care of yourself. And let me know if there's anything else you need." I started to say something else only there was a click and Dietrich had disappeared. But that wasn't strange at all. TWENTY-NINE – "Did you know Walther Neff well?" "He came to Greece on a number of occasions, sir," said Garlopis.
"That doesn't answer my question." "I knew him well enough. Better than he was aware of, perhaps." "What was your opinion of him?" Garlopis looked awkward. He opened his desk drawer and closed it again, for no apparent reason. It was the morning after my conversation with Dietrich and I was in the MRE office with Garlopis. "You can speak freely. I've hardly ever met the man, so I don't care if your opinion is good or bad. I just want to know what it is." "I don't think he liked Greeks very much. Or anyone else for that matter. Anyone else who wasn't German." "You mean he was still a bit of a Nazi." "I think that about covers it, sir. Once or twice he made a casual remark about the Jews and how they'd brought their own misfortunes on themselves. And once he came across an old copy of _Time_ magazine that had a picture of David Ben-Gurion on the cover, and his face was a study of loathing. I'd never seen hate that was so visceral. But why do you ask?" "He's disappeared from the hospital in Munich. Checked himself out and then just walked into the darkness, so to speak. The cops are looking for him. But—well, I don't think they'll find him. I'm afraid this sort of thing happens a lot in Germany."
"Why's that?" "Because someone's ghost recognizes someone else from the war. Millions of people died, but people forget that plenty of people survived, too. Thirty thousand people came out of Dachau. Thirty thousand witnesses to mass murder. But there are probably just as many people in Germany right now who are not who they say they are." "You mean they're living under a false name? Because of something they did during the war?" "Exactly. My guess is that Walther Neff had a secret history like so many other of my countrymen. Maybe he was already living under a false name. And someone discovered this and threatened to do something about it. So Neff took off before it could cause him any more problems. These days that's a very common story." Was it possible that Neff had even faked his own heart attack after reading the article I'd written on the subject at Alzheimer's request in the company newspaper? "But I thought Adenauer was pursuing a policy of amnesty and integration," said Garlopis. "That many Nazi war criminals had been released. As many as thirty-five thousand people, wasn't it? Why would anyone fear discovery now, after your government has called a halt to denazification?"
"Lots of reasons. The amnesty only applies in Germany. It wouldn't apply if a Nazi came here, for example. And of course some of the left-of-center newspapers can still make life difficult for old Nazis. Not everyone in Germany agrees with the Old Man's policy. There's that and there are the Israeli Defense Forces, of course. There's no telling what they're capable of. Five years ago the right-wing Herut Party tried to assassinate the Old Man. No, I imagine that sometimes it's just best to adopt another name and disappear. Just like this fellow Alois Brunner that Lieutenant Leventis is after." Garlopis was silent for a moment. Then he got up and closed the door to the outside office, where Telesilla was typing letters. "I don't say that all Germans are bad," he said. "Not a bit of it. As you know, my own father was a German after all." "What happened to him anyway?" "He died a few years ago. He was eating breakfast at the time." "I suppose you finished it for him." Garlopis winced. "I'm sorry, Achilles, that was uncalled for. I apologize. My only excuse is that I'm a Berliner. Cruelty just comes naturally to us on account of how we were the last pagans in Europe. So go ahead and tell your story. You were going to tell me a story. That's why you closed the door, isn't it?"
"Yes." Garlopis gathered himself. "A few years ago—it was the summer of 1954, I think—I accompanied Mr. Neff to the Greek island of Corfu to adjust another shipping claim. Corfu is very popular with Italians due to its proximity to the Italian coast. Italians were part of the Axis forces of course but no one in Greece holds that against them now. Unlike you Germans, they were never very enthusiastic in their occupation of Greece. And of course, ultimately, many of them were also victims of the Nazis. In a way, that's been to their moral advantage. "One evening Mr. Neff and I were sitting outside a café in Corfu Old Town and a man at another table kept staring at Neff. Neff tried to ignore it but after a while the man came over and identified himself as an Italian from a village near Bologna—called Marzabotto, I think it was. He proceeded to accuse Neff of being an SS man who had participated in the massacre of almost two thousand civilians in late 1944. Neff denied it, of course. Said he'd never been in the SS. But the man was adamant it was him and started to tell everyone in the café that there was a Nazi war criminal in our midst. Neff got very flustered and angry and left in a bit of a hurry, with me in pursuit. Later on he said he'd never been in Italy and yet by then I already knew this was a lie. For one thing he spoke a bit of Italian. And for another he had even told me how much he loved Bologna. So I knew what the man in the café said had to be true. Another thing was that Neff only ever investigated insurance claims in Greece and France, never in Italy. And once, when it was really hot and he'd taken his shirt off, I saw that he had the letters AB tattooed on the underside of his left upper arm, near his armpit. Later on I learned from a magazine article that this must be his blood group and that all Waffen-SS men had such a tattoo." He lit a cigarette and added carefully: "I imagine that this would help to identify Brunner, if ever Leventis manages to catch up with him."
"I imagine you're right." It was almost an uncomfortable moment although not as uncomfortable as the moment when, with the Red Army just a few days away from Königsberg and a German surrender inevitable, I had burned off my own blood group tattoo. Thinking it best to change the subject now, I said, "That reminds me. I need to speak to Lieutenant Leventis. No offense to your cousin but this afternoon I'm going to move over to the Grande Bretagne Hotel." "None taken. And I have to confess the Mega is not what it was. Even my cousin admits this. Much cheaper of course, but I suppose if MRE is paying then why not stay at the Grande Bretagne? I should have thought of that before. But the fact is, Mr. Neff always preferred the Mega. That's the main reason why I booked you in there. It was his choice." "Did he say why he liked it?" "The Grande Bretagne has just finished adding four floors, of course. So it's only recently reopened. But according to my cousin, I think Neff had some little fraud going on with the Mega management that enabled him to claim more on expenses than he actually paid. My cousin also had the impression Neff knew some of the other hotel regulars."
In view of the revelation about Neff's Waffen-SS past I wondered if these other acquaintances of his might have included Alois Brunner, but I still saw no good reason to tell Garlopis about meeting Brunner in the Mega bar. It would only have scared him the way it had scared me. I collected my coat and went to the door. "Are you going somewhere?" "I thought I'd walk over to the Megaron Pappoudof and tell Leventis in person that I'm moving hotels. Just to make him feel as if I'm taking him seriously. Policemen like that kind of attention to the umlauts." "You are taking him seriously, aren't you, sir?" "Sure. I want to come out of this in one piece. Any talk about firing squads worries me." "I'm delighted to hear it. I'd hate to end up in Haidari among all those awful criminals." "I've known a lot of criminals and I can tell you that, with the exception of the ones like Alois Brunner, most are just ordinary people like you and me. They lack imagination, that's all. Crimes are committed when men take an idea that seems like a good idea and then can't think of enough good reasons why it might not be a good idea."
"All the same, I'd rather avoid the Haidari, if possible. For the sake of my children, you understand. They're at the Lycée Léonin, one of the best schools in Athens. It takes a dim view of parents who don't measure up to the rigorous moral standards set by the monks who run the school. That's the only reason my wife has not yet divorced me. Would you like me to accompany you, sir?" "No, I want you to stay here and telephone Dr. Lyacos at the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus and arrange for us to see him again. I need to speak to him about Professor Buchholz. And see if you can find out from that lawyer, Papakyriakopoulos, if Arthur Meissner has agreed to see me yet. I'll be back in an hour. At least I hope I will." "Well done, sir. We'll make a Greek out of you yet. Your pronunciation of his very complicated name was faultless." "I'm German, Mr. Garlopis. We have some very complex words of our own to practice on. Some German words take so long to say that they have their own damn timetables."
THIRTY – In his office at the Megaron Pappoudof I told Lieutenant Leventis I was changing hotels. "Is that all you came here to tell me, Commissar? That you're going to the GB? I'm disappointed." "I thought you'd like to know in case you wanted to buy me breakfast one morning. You can probably look out of your office window and see into my bathroom, if it helps make that happen." "Good idea. But are you sure no one is dead in it?" "Just my love life, probably. When they find that body you can arrest me all over again." "Why bother? You're still my number-one suspect in the Witzel case." "Clearly you're not very good with numbers. You already told me the name of your number-one suspect. At best I'm number three." "Who's number two?" "Garlopis." "That's not very loyal of you, Commissar." "No, it isn't. But his home is in Greece. Mine's in Germany. And I want to get back there one day. Which is why I'm in here writing my room number on your handkerchief in lipstick." "Anything else you want to talk about?"
"Not a damn thing." "I told you, Commissar. I'm blind here and I want you to be my dog. So bark a little, will you?" I lit up a cigarette and blew some smoke at the high ceiling. The fan wasn't moving, which was how I knew it was still officially winter in Athens. Otherwise it seemed quite warm in his office. Leventis leaned back on his chair, looking at me steadily all the time, waiting for me to say something more, and then nodded when I didn't. "You keep your mouth shut unless you've got something to say. All right. Not many people can do that judiciously. Especially in here. You've a talent for saying not very much, Commissar." "I never learned much by listening to myself." "No? Then maybe I can tell you something interesting." "That'll make a nice change." "Don't forget your position here, Ganz." He wagged his finger at me like I was a naughty schoolboy and grinned. "You're a little impertinent for a suspect." "That's just my manner. It doesn't work with everyone. Only with people, not cops. Look, I said I'd cooperate with you, Leventis, not crown you with wild olive. And we both know I'm a poor choice of suspect. On account of how I turned up at the murder scene _after_ the murder. Garlopis, too. It's time you admitted that, copper, or else you're dumber than I thought you were."
"My name isn't copper, it's Stavros P. Leventis. But you can call me lieutenant. And in here I don't have to admit to a damn thing. I leave that to other people. What's dumb about that?" "Nothing at all. What does the _P_ stand for, anyway?" "Patroclus. Only keep that quiet." "I'll lend it someone else's armor if it will help get me out of this damn country. Tell me what's so interesting, Pat." "Last night, the City Police picked up a local burglar by the name of Tsochaztopoulos, only everyone calls him Choc." "Now that I can understand." "He put his hands up to a whole string of burglaries across the city, but here's where it starts to get interesting." "I was hoping it might." "He claims he was put up to robbing Frizis's office in Glyfada. Says the job was to take one client file and to cover his tracks so that the lawyer didn't even know he'd been there. Says he was paid to do it by a man he met in a nightclub. The Chez Lapin in Kastella." "Sounds like a real hole. Did this man have a name?"
"Just Spiros." "That narrows it down nicely. And what was the client's name?" Leventis grinned patiently. "Spiros told Choc to look for a client file in the name of Fischer. Georg Fischer. He did the job as asked. Went in and out without a trace. Took the client file back to the club a few hours later, and got paid." "So everyone was happy." "Now it just so happens that Frizis's diary contains an appointment with a Mr. Fischer just a few days before he was murdered." "Well, it would if he was a client." "Fischer is a German name." "That's right." "I was hoping you might have a theory on that one." "It's the fourth most common German surname there is. That narrows it down." "Come on, Ganz. You can do better than that. Whose side are you on here?" "Whose side? I don't know the names of the teams that are on the pitch here. And even if I did I certainly couldn't pronounce them." "You know, I think I must have left my sense of humor in my other uniform." "The clean one?" "I'd hate to kick you on the leg, Ganz. I'd probably get gangrene. What kind of commissar were you, anyway?"
"I wore a shirt and tie, turned up for work every day, carried a warrant disc, and sometimes they let me arrest people. But none of the bosses really gave a shit about me detecting any crimes because they were too busy committing crimes themselves. Nothing serious. Crimes against humanity and that kind of thing. Look, Pat—Lieutenant—I was making a living and trying to stay alive, not preaching the First Crusade. Let me ask you this. Did you show this Choc fellow your photograph of Brunner? The one you showed me?" "Yes, but he's quite sure it wasn't him who put him up to the job." "Hmm." "What does that mean?" "Hegel said it once. It's German for 'I'm thinking.'" After a while I shook my head for emphasis, just to let him know I'd finished the thought. "What do you think you're dealing with here? An insurance claim? Look, I know you know more than you're saying. I can see it written on your face." "Now you know why I stopped being a criminal and became a cop instead. All right. Maybe I do know something. But don't get mad when I tell you. I only just figured this out myself. And I'd feel better about telling you what that is if we walked across the street and you let me buy you a drink."
Leventis picked up his cap and walked toward the office door, buttoning his tunic. "Two things I can smell from a hundred meters away. My mother's _giouvetsi_ lamb stew and a lying cop." "I keep telling you. I'm in the insurance business." "It's my guess your company hired you because you're an ex-cop and you've got a dirty mind. I'm just doing the same as them. Detection is in your blood, Ganz, as if it was a disease." "If you mean it's one that I can't seem to shake off, then you're right. It's like leprosy. I keep winding bandages around my face but nothing seems to work. One day I'm afraid I'm going to lose my nose." "That's an occupational hazard for all detectives." His secretary handed him his gloves and a little swagger stick and we went downstairs and outside. Behind the long marble bar at the Grande Bretagne was an old tapestry as big as the fire screen on a theater stage, depicting the triumph of some ancient Greek who probably wasn't Hector on account of the fact that he was riding in a chariot instead of being dragged behind one. It was a nice quiet bar; the prices were fixed to make sure of that, like heavily armed hoplites. Facing the tapestry were eight tall stools and sitting at the bar was like watching a large projection screen with just one stationary, rather dull picture, a bit like Greek television. They had so many bottles behind the bar I guessed they must have some navy-strength gin and since the barman evidently knew the difference between a fresh lime and the liquid green sugar that came in a bottle I ordered a gimlet and the lieutenant ordered iced raki.
We sipped our drinks politely but I was already ordering another and a packet of butts. "All excuses sound better after a drink. So now you've had yours, start talking, Commissar." "All right. When you showed me Brunner's picture, I took my time about it, right? That was me, racking my brains, trying to remember where I'd seen him before. France, Germany, the Balkans—it's taken me until now to realize I was opening the wrong drawers. I couldn't remember him because he wasn't in my memory. He was at the end of a bar. This bar." I only told Leventis this small lie because I didn't want him asking about Fischer at the bar of the Mega Hotel and discovering I'd already asked questions about him myself. "You mean Brunner was in here? In this hotel?" "That's right. In this very bar. About a week ago we got to talking, the way two men do when they discover they're both from the same part of the world. He told me his name was Georg Fischer and that he was a tobacco salesman. Gave me a packet of Karelia to try. There's not much more to it than that. I didn't remember him right away because he's almost fifteen years older than that picture you showed me. Less hair. Put on a little weight, perhaps. Gruff voice like he gargles with yesterday's brandy. I mean, you don't connect a wanted Nazi war criminal with a friendly guy you meet in an Athens bar. Well, when you mentioned the name Georg Fischer back in your office I suddenly put two and two together and came up with the man I'd met in this bar."
"This story you're telling—you spread it on a field of sugar beet, not Lieutenant Stavros P. Leventis." "It happens to be true. People look different when they're in uniform. I mean, looking at you anyone would think you know what the hell you're doing. He struck up a conversation because I figure he'd been keeping an eye on me ever since I arrived in Athens. My guess is that he was looking for Siegfried Witzel and that he was hoping I might help him. Unwittingly, of course." "I guess that's your own middle name, Commissar." "My guess is that he waited for Witzel to show up at MRE's offices around the corner, and then followed me when I followed Witzel to the place where he'd been lying low ever since the _Doris_ sank. Went back a bit later and then killed him. He and Witzel probably knew each other from before the war. I'm not sure but I think Witzel was involved in some scheme to look for ancient Greek artifacts that he could sell on the black market. Assuming there is a black market for that kind of thing."
"Sure there is. It's a thriving one, too. There are lots of museums and private collectors who want a bit of Greek history on the cheap. Not just ours. Roman treasures, too." "I'm still working on that. I'm hoping I'll have a little more information after I've spoken to the director of the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus. It looks like there was some agreement between the museum in Piraeus and a museum in Munich to share any discoveries. But that might just have been a cover. Maybe Brunner wanted a share, too. Or maybe it was a revenge thing. I don't know. But if I had to guess some more—" "You do." "Then I'd say that Brunner might have had something to do with the sinking of the boat. I have no idea how. Not yet." "Tell me more about Fischer." "Good suit. Gold watch, nice lighter, even nicer manners. He looked like he was doing all right for himself. He spoke Greek. Or at least as far as I was able to tell. What I mean to say is that he was reading a Greek newspaper and he seemed to speak to the barman fluently enough. He said he liked it here. And I got the impression he was in Greece a lot."
"Is that all?" "Look, I've got lots of faults but protecting Nazi war criminals isn't one of them." "Says you." "Frequently." "And Meissner? Has he agreed to meet you, yet?" "Right now that's a maybe, too." "You've got a lot of maybes, Commissar. Enough to operate a roulette wheel, maybe. Certainly many more than your old bosses in Germany would ever have tolerated. From what I've read of the SS and the Gestapo they didn't much like maybes. They preferred results. We have that in common at least. In case you've forgotten, my own boss is a man called Captain Kokkinos and he's an impatient man. He thinks I should bring you in and sweat you and your fat friend, Garlopis. He's been hitting the walls because I don't." "I've seen your walls. And I don't think your decorator will care." "Because then I'd have to waste time listening to your lies. So I tell you what I'm going to do, Ganz. From now on, you're gonna tell me every move you make. Anything you do, I want a report. Just like you were a cop again. You can have your secretary type it. If you don't, I'll make sure they bury you in the deepest cell in Haidari. Solitary confinement for as long as it takes to break you. I don't much care about Garlopis. He'll say anything to stay out of prison. But you're another story. You'll be talking to yourself inside a fortnight. Because no one will be listening. Not even me. I'll forget all about you, maybe. This is the home of democracy but we can behave in some very undemocratic ways when we put our minds to it. So you can take your choice. But you need to start confiding in me like I'm your father confessor. Only then can you get absolution. And only then can you go home."

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