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I nodded, full of compliance and cooperation, like I was the most craven informer ever to be bullied by a policeman. But I could already see I was going to need the firm of lawyers in Piraeus that Dietrich had recommended and later that day I called them and made an appointment on the same day we were scheduled to see Dr. Lyacos again. THIRTY-ONE – Latsoudis & Arvaniti were located on the corner of Themistocles Street, in a modern building overlooking the main port of Piraeus, from where I could easily have taken a ferry to one of the Greek islands. After my conversation with Lieutenant Leventis I was seriously considering it. Garlopis had at last swapped the Oldsmobile for a smaller Rover P4 and while he parked it I waited in the yellow church on the square and, but for the idea that there were other mugs who tried it already, I might have prayed. When he fetched me, he said the church was built on the ruins of the Temple of Venus, and being a bit of a pagan and generally fond of goddesses, I said it didn't look like much of an improvement.
We went up to the firm's offices and met with two lawyers, neither of whom was called Latsoudis or Arvaniti, who told us in a mixture of Greek and English and the pungent smoke of Turkish cigarettes that we had their sympathy, that one of them would gladly represent us in court, that what had happened was entirely typical of Athens, and that the Attica police were little better than the Greek army, and fascists to boot, for whom torture and the abuse of human rights were second nature, and that Captain Kokkinos fancied himself to be a man with a political future, not to say a potential dictator. It was best, they advised, that we do exactly what we were told, otherwise we should end up like many communist DSE fighters and KKE members and find ourselves sent to the island of Makronisos or, worse, imprisoned in Block 15, where lawyers were not allowed and conditions were nothing short of barbaric, even by Nazi standards. None of this was reassuring to me but as we left, Garlopis said that I should take nothing of what they had said too seriously and that the view of these lawyers was only representative of the kind of people who lived in Piraeus, who had no love for the people of Athens, which came as something of a surprise to me since Piraeus was only five kilometers from the center of the Greek capital.
"To my mind we would be better off being represented by a local firm," said Garlopis as we made our way to the Archaeological Museum and our second meeting with Dr. Lyacos. "Such as the one I recommended to poor Mr. Witzel." "Another cousin, no doubt." "No. Although I do have a relation in the legal profession. My wife's uncle Ioannis is a lawyer in Corinth, but I shouldn't wish my worst enemy to be represented by him. Pegasus himself would take flight before retaining a man like Ioannis Papageorgopoulos." "There's a brass nameplate I'd hate to have to engrave." "Look, I'm sure Mr. Dietrich is correct, that Latsoudis & Arvaniti are a perfectly good and highly respectable firm of lawyers. But if it was my money, I'd prefer a firm in Attica. Such as the one in our own office building." "Why the hell didn't he recommend them, then?" I asked. "Because outsiders don't appreciate the antipathy that exists between Piraeus and Athens. No one could who doesn't live here. Yes, Piraeus is on the doorstep of Athens, but it might as well be a hundred kilometers away, such is the loathing between these two cities. A man who lives in Athens would never be represented by a firm in Piraeus, or the other way round. But perhaps you would like me to explain this to you, sir."
"Not today," I said. "Oh, it would take a lot longer than that." "I figured as much. It sounds a lot like the hatred between Munich and Berlin. Nobody else gets that either. Nobody else that matters, anyway. Only Germans." Things were quiet at the museum again. We were a bit early for our meeting with Dr. Lyacos so we walked around for a few minutes looking at the museum's many exhibits. While it crossed my mind that the Nazis had managed to make all classical statuary look just a bit fascist—any one of the outsized bronze figures at the museum in Piraeus might easily have been banged out on Hitler's orders by a stooge like Arno Breker—I wasn't really looking; I was still preoccupied with what Lieutenant Leventis had said and for the first time in months I felt as if I needed an all-risks insurance policy. Dr. Lyacos was wearing a yellow carnation in the lapel of a beige cotton suit, and a yellow bow tie. His previously grayish hair had a lot more yellow in it than before, as if freshly stained with nicotine, which made him look like some hennaed Sufi mystic or perhaps the oldest boy soprano in the church choir. Even the smoke from his cherrywood pipe looked vaguely yellow. All in all there was much too much yellow in the room. It was like staring through a bottle of brilliantine.
"It's good of you to see us again, sir," I said, and then explained how the real Professor Buchholz could not possibly have met with him in Piraeus, at which point Lyacos stared at me over the top of his half-moon glasses with the look of a dyspeptic judge. Garlopis translated from the Greek. "Are you calling me a liar?" said Lyacos. "No, sir. Not at all. What I'm saying is that the man you met was an impostor. That he was impersonating the real Professor Buchholz." "Well, who was he then?" "That's what I'm hoping to find out. I wondered if you could provide me with a physical description of the man you met." Lyacos took off his glasses, folded them into a box, and rubbed the end of his pencil-like nose. "Let's see now. About sixty years old. Large. Overweight. Tall. About as tall as you, perhaps. Silver hair. Large. Trousers too high on his waist—I mean, the man's trousers were virtually on his chest. Spoke good Greek, for a German." He lit his pipe and considered the matter some more. "A little self-satisfied, perhaps. Large. I don't know. Maybe not as old as sixty. Fifty, probably."
I nodded. "Anything else?" Lyacos shook his head. "No, I'm sorry. That's about it, I'm afraid. But look, there was nothing wrong with his permissions. Those came straight from the ministry. And the signatures were impeccable. They couldn't possibly have been fraudulent. Unless—" "Yes?" "Well, it's not unknown for government officials in this country to take a bribe. Not that I'm saying anyone did, mind you. That's up to you to determine. We've got used to the idea of our leaders lying to us and being corrupt; for most Greeks it doesn't matter that they're corrupt. We expect it. Why else would they enter office in the first place? But you surprise me. The man who sat in your chair seemed very polished. And exactly like a man who was a professor. Shall we say he was a gentleman? Yes. An academic sort of fellow, anyway. Well read, I should say. I mean he was quite convincing. Of course, it does explain the mistake he made about the small artifacts found on the wreck site by Herr Witzel. If you remember, I did mention before that these were identified by the professor as late Helladic when they were very definitely much earlier."
"Thanks for your help," I said. "Can I ask you one last thing? Assuming that this man meant to cheat your museum out of its share of any treasures found in the sea, can you tell me if there is much of a market in this kind of thing? I mean is there real money to be made?" "Oh, yes. And a lot of these antiquities come through Piraeus. Egyptian, Byzantine, Assyrian, Islamic, Greek, you name it. Mostly it ends up in the hands of private collectors in the United States, but also in smaller city museums that are looking to put themselves on the cultural map. The black market trade in antiquities is worth a lot of money and these days it's happening on an industrial scale. A good-condition Roman bust of the second century might be worth up to fifty thousand dollars. I've even heard that Nasser is using ancient Egyptian art to pay for illegal weapons." He puffed at his pipe. "Do you think that's what this man is up to?" "I really don't know. I can't see a better reason." "You know my secretary, Kalliopi, she spent as much time with this man as I did. She might be able to add something to what I've told you, Mr. Ganz."
Lyacos picked up the telephone and summoned his secretary to his office. A few minutes later a heavy, gray-haired woman of about fifty entered the room; she was wearing black and generally resembled a poorly erected Bedouin's tent. From a distance she looked pretty good; up close I needed to see a good optician. It wasn't that she was ugly or even plain, only that she'd reached a time in her life when romantic love was a locked door that didn't need a key. I explained my mission and waited. She rubbed the stubble on her face, rolled her eyes a bit, and started talking in Greek, which Garlopis translated simultaneously. "He was a big man . . . Tall, about one hundred and eighty-five centimeters, overweight, chest about a fifty-six, waist the same as my husband's, which is a ninety-seven . . . Wheezy, bad breath, smoked a lot, walked like a duck . . . Silver hair . . . Brown, globular eyes, with next to no eyelashes . . . Never met your eye, though . . . He had beautiful hands, which were manicured. And he was always tapping the tips of his fingers when he was thinking . . . Jacket pockets full . . . Spoke good Greek . . . Nice watch . . . She saw a poster for a movie at the cinema near where she lives, just off Epirou Street. And there's an American man on that poster that looks exactly like Professor Buchholz. Or at least the man who said he was Professor Buchholz. Not the leading man . . . Merely a character actor . . . Not Orson Welles . . . Only she can't remember the name of the movie."
I looked at my watch and saw that it was getting near the museum's closing time. "Maybe we could run the lady home," I said, "and then she could point the man out to us. On the poster, I mean. If Dr. Lyacos can spare her." About half an hour later we pulled up outside the Royal Cinema. The movie playing was _The Mask of Dimitrios_ , with Peter Lorre and Zachary Scott. _Evil genius_ ran the line on the poster, _plundering for profit and pleasure_. I hadn't seen it. I'd had enough of evil genius to last a lifetime. But Garlopis had seen it, several times. "This film is very popular in Athens," he said. "I think it's always playing somewhere in the city. Probably because it's partly set here, and in Istanbul." But it wasn't either of those two actors that Kalliopi now pointed out to us. It was a fat actor, dressed in an overcoat, a spotted silk scarf, and a bowler hat. He was holding a Luger, too. Hers had been a good description, as good as any police artist's. But she was wrong about one thing: The fat man _was_ the leading actor in this picture. He was an Englishman called Sydney Greenstreet.
"I believe he plays the part of Mr. Peters, sir," said Garlopis. And there was one more detail Kalliopi remembered before we waved her goodbye. "The man had bad teeth," said Garlopis, translating again. "From smoking probably. With a single gold tooth, in the front, on the upper jaw." "I see." "So it would seem we're looking for a German version of Sydney Greenstreet," Garlopis added, redundantly, because by now I knew exactly who had been so meticulously described, and it wasn't Sydney Greenstreet. Kalliopi had painted a picture of a man I knew myself, the very same man who'd got me the job at MRE, in return for the favor I dealt him back in Munich. Without a question the man she'd described to a T was Max Merten. THIRTY-TWO – Back at the office in Athens, Telesilla was waiting patiently to go home with a large bag of groceries. But first she gave Garlopis his messages and then wrote out the telegram I quickly dictated asking Dietrich to try to contact Max Merten in Munich. The last time I'd seen him he'd told me he was going on vacation and I now assumed he'd meant he was planning to impersonate a German professor of Hellenism in order to mount an expedition to dive in the Aegean Sea for some ancient treasures he could sell on the black market. It was just the sort of thing German lawyers do on their holidays; that or a little quiet embezzlement. If Dumbo Dietrich didn't find Merten, then this would tell me that maybe he was somewhere in Greece, lying low until he was sure that Alois Brunner wasn't looking for him, or possibly trying to find another boat, unaware of the fact that his frogman-friend Witzel was now dead; but that he'd been in Greece I was now absolutely certain.
It worried me that Max Merten could have played me for a fool, although I could hardly see how, or why. But the last thing I needed was for my nice, boring, reasonably paid job to be taken away before I'd even taken delivery of the company car. Just as worrying was the possibility that Criminal Secretary Christian Schramma had been Merten's spanner all along, even when I thought he'd been working a double-cross; that perhaps the murders in Bogenhausen of GVP Party donor General Heinrich Heinkel and his Stasi friend had been ordered by Merten himself. And I'd been the mug who'd insisted the lawyer should keep the money, which was probably what he'd been after from the very beginning. No questions asked and money to help fund a little expedition in Greece, because chartering a boat is expensive, even when it was a boat that had been stolen from Jews. But I'd already decided on my next course of action, which was to take a drive down to Ermioni, the town on the Peloponnesian coast where Siegfried Witzel had said the lifeboat from the _Doris_ had come ashore, and there to ask the local coast guard for more information. I didn't know that I expected to discover anything useful but at least that way I'd be doing something better than sitting around in the office waiting for Arthur Meissner to decide if he would meet with me in Averoff Prison, or for Dumbo Dietrich to answer my latest telegram. Besides, I needed to _look_ like I was doing something if only to keep Lieutenant Leventis off my case. I'd met a few high-pressure cops in my time—Heydrich, Nebe, and Mielke, to name but three—and while Leventis wasn't a killer like them, in his own way he was effective. Without my passport I couldn't leave Greece and, until it was returned to me, I was the lieutenant's straw man just as surely as if he'd been the Kaiser and I his most slavish subject.
"Mr. Papakyriakopoulos telephoned while we were out," Garlopis said after Telesilla had left for the telegraph office. "Arthur Meissner has agreed to meet with us on Friday evening, sir." "That's something, I suppose. Although I really don't know what I'm going to ask him. Or exactly how I'm going to improve his weekend. Not to mention my own." "But I thought you told Lieutenant Leventis that you might be able to persuade him to tell you about Alois Brunner." "I had to tell that slippery cop something. He's the type who could find every crime in the Bible and write someone up for it. But I don't see why Meissner would tell me anything new. Leventis isn't offering much of a deal yet. He'll speak up for Meissner if Meissner contributes something useful about Brunner. That wouldn't be enough to convince me to spill my guts. And if he knows nothing, then what? We're back to square one." "Yes, I do see the problem, sir. I must say this is all quite worrying." I put my hand on the Greek's shoulder and tried to look reassuring. "Look, I don't think Leventis is that interested in you, my friend. So I wouldn't worry too much. It's me he wants turning the millstone in the Gaza."
"Because you used to be a detective in Berlin." "That's right. A German detective to help a Greek detective solve a German murder." "Yes, well, in Athens one can understand that kind of Socratic dialogue." "For now what matters is that as far as he's concerned, you're just a nobody." "It's kind of you to say so, sir. As a matter of fact, I've asked around about this man, Leventis, to see if my first opinion about him—on the likelihood of his taking a bribe—might have been wrong." "And?" "By all accounts he's perceived to be an inflexibly honest man." "They're usually the most expensive people to try and corrupt." "This is not to say that it's impossible, sir." "Yes, but the first time you saw him you said you didn't think he could be bought." "Nobody is above being bribed in Greece. Companies, judges, prime ministers, kings—them especially—everyone in Greece has to have his _fakelaki_ , his little envelope. It's just a case of working out what might be in it. Even a man like Stavros Leventis would probably not be above five thousand drachmas. At most ten."
"I might raise a thousand drachmas on expenses. But that's it." Garlopis lit a cigarette. "Is it possible that Mr. Dietrich in Munich would authorize this kind of unaccountable expenditure?" "I doubt it." "Not even for a man who has saved them from paying out on the _Doris_? A quarter of a million drachmas." "I don't believe they think like that. I was just doing my job." "Then we are forced to consider other methods of fund-raising. Perhaps, during the course of your inquiry, you may see the opportunity for a little bit of quiet larceny. In which case you would certainly be advised to take it." "You make it sound as if there's five thousand drachmas just lying around in this town. There isn't." "You're wrong about that. If I might make a suggestion?" "Please do." "The certified company check for twenty-two thousand drachmas payable to Siegfried Witzel." "It was on the table at the scene of his murder in Pritaniou. Almost certainly it's now police evidence." "Almost certainly it is not." He took out his wallet and then unfolded the same certified company check, which he handed to me with a smile. "I took the liberty of taking it when we left the murder scene. I suppose you'd like me to tell you why."
"Go ahead. Meanwhile I'll try and figure out the real reason." "For safekeeping, you understand. Just in case one of those uniformed policemen was tempted to steal it." "You sly old dog. But how do we—?" "I have a cousin, sir, who works for the Alpha Bank. I think that for a small commission he might be able to help us out. Of course, we should have to be careful to cash the check at a smaller branch outside Athens, mostly probably somewhere like Heraklion, or Corinth—so that it might seem the check was presented for payment before Herr Witzel's unfortunate death. It could also require that you should impersonate Siegfried Witzel. But then that shouldn't be too difficult for a German, with the help of a Greek, that is." "You are a man of many parts, Garlopis." "Tell that to Mrs. Garlopis. Hitherto, it's only the one part that has been of concern to her." I clapped him on the shoulder. "Marriage is hell but loneliness is worse." "True." "I'm not saying we should bribe that cop. But we ought to have the means to do so at our disposal, just in case it proves necessary. So go ahead and make the arrangements to get the check cashed."
"A wise precaution, sir." "Can I see that map of Greece in the drawer?" I asked. "Which one, sir? We have several." "The Peloponnese. I'm taking a day trip to Ermioni. Maybe I can pick up some information on what happened to Witzel and his party when they came ashore after the _Doris_ sank. At least that way I can make Leventis believe I'm actually making inquiries. Perhaps you'd be kind enough to tell him that's where I'm going tomorrow." "Good idea." I hadn't yet told Garlopis that I'd recognized the description given by Kalliopi in front of the cinema, that Max Merten was the Sydney Greenstreet lookalike, and that I knew him. After what Leventis had said about Garlopis I thought it best to keep him in the dark on that one—for the time being anyway. He took the map out and handed it to me. I unfolded it and spread it on the desk. A cursory glance at the map was explanation enough for the wars of antiquity. Greece was mostly two areas of land—a peninsula on a peninsula—separated by the Gulf of Corinth. Until 1893 and the completion of the Corinth Canal, these two peninsulas had been connected by a piece of land about six kilometers long that resembled nothing quite so much as the union of two sexually reproducing animals—the north mounting the south, or Athens mounting Sparta, depending on how you looked at these things. The rest of Greece was just hundreds of islands, which gave the country one of the longest coastlines in Europe and probably one of the most independent and ungovernable populations in the world. How Nazi Germany had ever thought it might control a country like Greece was a mystery to me and likely to the High Command, as well, which was probably why, until the fall of Mussolini, they had ceded control of the Peloponnese to the Italians. The invasion of Greece was, arguably, even greater evidence of Hitler's madness than the invasion of the Soviet Union.
"Ermioni," I said, trailing my finger along the meandering coastline. "Looks like a two- or three-hour drive from here." "We'd best get an early start," said Garlopis. "I've made other plans. No, I think maybe you should stay here and speak to your cousin at the bank." "But you'll need someone to translate, sir. Ermioni is only a small port town. They still eat _kokoretsi_. Believe me, you don't ever want to know what that is. They're peasants. I doubt you'll find anyone who speaks English there, let alone German." "That's all right," I said. "I'll be taking someone who speaks German. Someone Greek. Someone who's a lot better-looking than you." "You intrigue me, sir." "I don't mean to. And you can park that intrigue somewhere quiet, Garlopis. We'll be back before dark, I expect." "This wouldn't be the woman from the Ministry of Economic Coordination, would it? Miss Panatoniou? The very good-looking lady who was at Brettos who, you told me, wishes to improve her German?" "Yes." "I must say, teaching a foreign language never looked like such fun." Garlopis grinned. "She's a beauty. You'll forgive me if I say so, sir, but I'm impressed."
"No need to be." "If you don't mind me asking, sir, does she know that you're under open arrest? That Leventis has threatened to throw you in jail unless you help him investigate Witzel's murder?" "No. She doesn't. She knows I'm investigating the loss of the _Doris_. And I imagine Mr. Papakyriakopoulos must have told her that I've asked to see his client, Arthur Meissner, but as of this moment she hasn't mentioned that." "So on the face of it, she's going for the sheer pleasure of your company. Interesting." "Isn't it? To be perfectly honest I have absolutely no idea why she's agreed to spend the day with me. But I'm planning to have a hell of a lot of fun finding out." THIRTY-THREE – "It was the left that formed the backbone of the resistance to the German occupation," said Elli. "And for this reason it was the left that earned the right to govern Greece after the war. But out of respect for his allies, Stalin ordered the KKE to avoid a confrontation with the Greek government in exile, led by Georgios Papandreou. The British, however, encouraged Papandreou to move against the KKE, and even sent tanks and Indian infantry units to support him against the population of Athens, which had supported the left and the KKE. As relations between the Allies deteriorated, Greece became a kind of British protectorate. The king returned to Athens, and the American CIA set about re-equipping and training the Greek army with the aim of destroying Greek communism, which was itself betrayed by Tito, in Yugoslavia."
The interior of the Rover P4 was all red leather and walnut veneer, quietly ticking clocks and plush thick carpets, like an exclusive English gentleman's club. Elli Panatoniou looked good seated on the Rover's red leather. She'd have looked good seated on a heap of worn-out car tires. I tried to keep my nice blue eyes on the twisting road to Ermioni but they kept twisting their way back to her shapely knees, the chiaroscuro edge of her black stocking tops, and the Corinth Canal that was her cleavage. The surreptitious enjoyment of all that makes a good-looking woman good-looking is perhaps the only pleasure remaining to man that is neither illegal nor unhealthy, and it's a wonder we stayed on the road at all. It didn't help that her Shalimar perfume was my favorite because it seemed somehow to encapsulate the delightful difference that existed between men and women; the stuff had the effect of making a woman smell like a woman and making a man want to behave like a rampaging gorilla. "But for Tito, Stalin would have supported the Greek uprising," she continued. "As it was, the civil war that was fought effectively resulted in the destruction of Greek communism in 1949. Since when, the army, with the direct help and interference of the Americans, has been backing a succession of incompetent anti-communist governments. This latest one led by Mr. Karamanlis is no exception."
Of course, I wanted her but I was also dumb enough to wonder if this was a good idea while my liberty was under threat from Lieutenant Leventis. Instead of devoting my energies to Miss Panatoniou and the contents of her brassiere I warned myself I needed to focus all of my attention on getting out of Greece and back to Germany. At the same time I nursed a strong suspicion that Elli must be using me for something other than German conversation but so far I'd failed to see for what. In truth I probably didn't care very much; it's usually been my experience that if a beautiful woman is trying to take advantage of you, then you might as well relax and enjoy it while you can. "But make no mistake," she said in her reasonable German. "This is a country run by the right wing and before very long the army will reveal its true hand. We may look like a democracy but underneath Greece is a very polarized society with a deep divide between the right wing and the left wing. Mark my words, the right will use the excuse of our apparent political anarchy to move against not just the left but Greek democracy as a whole, and we will end up with a military dictatorship."
Apart from my own suspicions, the main thing wrong with her, given that in every other respect she was perfect, was that she seemed to be a communist. Seemed, because it's one thing talking that communist shit all the time—and she did—and quite another living under a communist government. Most of her political opinions were rubbish like that, the kind that had been rubbish in the 1930s, but were even more so now that it was generally known that the great leader, Stalin, had murdered so many in the name of brotherly love, and most of these were other communists. Whenever she started talking the left-wing janissary talk about how wonderful Russia was I kept my muzzle shut out of respect for what was going on in the Corinth Canal. But a couple of times I couldn't resist teasing her with a glimpse of my own political underwear. "I thought we weren't going to talk politics." "This isn't politics. This is history." "There's a difference?" "Don't you think there is?" "Not in Germany. Politics is always about history. Marx certainly thought so."
"True." "I'm a Marxist," I said. "Somehow I doubt that." "Sure I am. Over the years I've learned there's no point in having any money or owning property, on account of how people want to take it and give it away to other people; Marxists, mostly. Or did I miss something?" "But surely the GDR is better than the Federal Republic," she said. "At least they have ideals. You can't surely believe that Adenauer's policy of political amnesty for Nazis was the right one. West Germany is nothing more than a front for American imperialism." I could have told her a lot about Russian imperialism but after twenty-five years of the right versus the left in Germany I was tired of the whole damned argument. Instead I tried to move the subject back to her, which was a subject of much greater interest. "Look here, if the right wing is so powerful in Greece, then how come a lefty like you gets to keep her job in a government ministry?" "I'm a civil servant, a lawyer, not a politician. And I keep my opinions to myself."
"I hadn't noticed." "One of the nicest things about speaking German with you, Christof, is that I'm able to speak freely. Isn't that sad? I really can't speak freely in my own language. That's one of the reasons I agreed to come with you today. I can relax and be myself." "I'm glad to hear it." "Anyway, I may be a communist but I'm not a revolutionary. And I strongly believe that this new EEC is probably the best chance Greece now has to avoid a right-wing coup d'état. They simply won't let us join if we're not a parliamentary democracy." It was a complicated world, whichever way you turned, and I was almost glad that all I had to worry about was getting home again. "You know, you remind me of an old girlfriend of mine in Germany. She's called Golden Lizzy and she stands on top of the Victory Column in Berlin. She's got wings, too, and she's meant to inspire us to do better things. At least that's the way I always look at her." "Are you partial to angels?" "Only the female ones." "Does Lizzy have any other talents?"
"She's tall." "I wish I knew what you thought about things. But you don't say." "I'm trying to work out why a country that produced the Parthenon and the Temple of Hephaestus doesn't have much in the way of good modern architecture. Most of the public buildings in this country look like gas stations or high-security prisons. Vitruvius would have swallowed his set square." "Money, of course. There's not much money for public building. The civil war left us even worse off than the Nazis. Anything else you're trying to work out?" "I'm German, so generally I'm working on something profoundly philosophical." "And what is it right now?" "Lately I've been trying to work out why Mickey Mouse wears shorts and why Donald Duck wears a shirt, but no shorts at all. And how is it that Goofy talks and Pluto just barks? It's a mystery to me." "You're making fun of me." "No. Not at all. And maybe I just prefer to keep my opinions to myself. Anyway, they're usually wrong. Or offensive. Or both wrong and offensive."
"Try me. I'm really quite broad-minded." I wondered about that. "You asked for it. Well, when a woman says she wishes she knew what some man is thinking it's because she can't understand why he hasn't made a pass at her." Elli laughed. "Is that what I'm thinking?" "Probably. But I figure you'll tell me what you're thinking on that score soon enough. I'm not about to waste either of my two remaining wishes on trying to work it out on my own." "What happened to the third wish?" "You're here in this car, aren't you?" Elli looked out the window and smiled, and we were silent for a couple of minutes while I negotiated a winding stretch of high mountain road. "Aren't you just a bit interested to know if I want you to make a pass at me, or not?" "Not anymore. You just satisfied my curiosity on that one." "And?" "Now I'd like to get back to Mickey and Donald." Elli laughed again. "You are the most infuriating man I've ever met. Do you know that?" "Yes. I'm what you lawyers would call incorrigible." She put her cool hand on the back of my neck, where it felt good.
"You're also very nice. Much more human than I would ever have thought possible. You're really rather a considerate sort of man, I think." "My fatal charm. It never fails. Except when I'm relying on it to get me out of a jam such as my whole life since 1945." "What did you do during the war, Christof?" "Not enough. But here's a useful tip when you're speaking German in Brussels. Unless you're talking to Bertolt Brecht or Albert Einstein never ever ask a German what he did during the war. Not everyone appreciates it when they're told barefaced lies." THIRTY-FOUR – Ermioni was a small port town on the Aegean Sea that resembled every picture postcard of a Greek village I'd ever seen—all blueberry sea and robin's-egg sky, sugar-lump houses and paper-white caïques. We parked the Rover and stretched our legs for a bit. It felt as if we were at the very edge of the known world, the kind of almost forgotten place where Themistocles, with one eye on the two islands of Hydra and Dokos that occupied the horizon like the gray clouds of an approaching storm, could once have sat on some high colonnaded terrace writing about an improbable victory over the Persians. Walrus-faced fishermen tugged on cigarettes and pipes as big as clay pots while they mended their nets and watched us with ancient eyes that might have witnessed the Greek navy boarding their biremes and triremes to fight mad King Xerxes. Flesh-colored squid dried in the sun like wet swimming costumes on sagging lines and stray cats dozed on the quayside or wandered between the tables of cafés as if waiting upon the day's customers, who probably weren't going to come. The late-morning air tasted of salt and smelled of Greek coffee and tobacco, and the otherwise perfect stillness was periodically jangled with the spilling-cutlery sound of a distant bouzouki. It was a long way from Berlin; I couldn't have felt more German if I'd had a black eagle with red legs perched on my shoulder and a snarling Alsatian on a length of piano wire.
We had a drink in one place where we stroked the cats and spoke to a man with a face that was a sunbaked mosaic of cracks and fissures and who informed us that there was no coast guard's office in Ermioni and that we'd best ask at the local harbormaster's office in the main square, where all boat owners tying up in Ermioni were supposed to pay their mooring fees. The office was a rusticated white building with a blue door and shutters and a Greek flag out front just in case the color scheme left room for doubt regarding anyone's patriotism. The front door was guarded by a pair of seagulls as big as pterodactyls and probably just as fierce; certainly they showed no fear of a large black Labrador that lay asleep or possibly dead on the porch. The harbormaster himself belonged to a species that was different from Ermioni's other archaic humans, having a face with skin that hadn't been supplied by the local leather factory. His name was Athanassios Stratis and he wore a black wool cap with a peak that was only a little less long and hairy than his nose. Explaining that I was from the ship's insurance company in Munich, Elli did all the talking, and after a minute or two Mr. Stratis opened an ancient wooden filing cabinet that was as big as a coffin while she explained to me that he remembered the _Doris_ and the German who'd owned it very well.
"He's quite sure there was actually a ship that sank near here?" "Several other people saw them coming ashore in the life raft that's still moored to the quayside where they left it," said Elli. "He's been wondering what to do about it. He says he sailed his own boat out to the position given by the German the day after, to make sure that the wreck was not a hazard to local shipping, and found some flotsam—some debris in the water that had not been deliberately thrown overboard and was consistent with there having been some kind of accident. But the water is deep there and he thinks there's zero chance of salvage." Mr. Stratis found a file in his cabinet and glanced over a handwritten report he'd made of the incident while he rescued a half-smoked cigarette that had got lost behind his ear and lit it again. But his every other look was reserved for Elli; she was that kind of woman—the kind that could cause a traffic accident merely by standing at a bus stop. Every time I looked at her I almost skidded to a halt myself.
"He says there were three men who came ashore in the raft," continued Elli. "Two Germans and a Greek. One of the Germans was the boat owner, Mr. Witzel. The Greek was the ship's captain, Mr. Spiros Reppas. Mr. Stratis says the other man didn't give his name and said nothing very much." "Ask him if one of the men on the boat—one of the Germans—could have been this man," I said, and provided a description of the man who'd posed as Professor Buchholz, Max Merten. After a while Stratis nodded and said that it sounded like it was the same man. Then he and she talked a while and laughed and that was fine, too, because he was only a man after all and it made me think that she'd get more out of him if she made him feel like one. It had certainly worked on me. "What happened to them after they left this office?" "One of them, Witzel—he caught the ferry to Piraeus. That's the quickest and least expensive way. The other two took a taxi farther down the coast somewhere. He doesn't know where. But he thinks the driver would probably remember. His name is Christos Kammenos and we'll find him sitting in a black Citroën on the other side of the peninsula, in front of the local chandler's shop."
I thought for a moment. "The flotsam," I said. "This debris he found floating on the surface of the sea at the place where the _Doris_ went down. Anything interesting there?" "Some papers, that's all," said Elli. "He dried them and kept them in case they were important." Stratis produced a large waterproof envelope from the drawer. "If he likes, I'll look after those," I said. The harbormaster handed them over without demur, but to Elli. I asked some more questions but learned nothing new and so we thanked him and went outside; the seagulls had gone but the dog performing the great dead-animal act was still there; as soon as I saw its diaphragm move I found myself stifling a yawn and envying the creature. It was a two- or three-hour drive from Athens. And a two- or three-hour drive back there. She handed me the envelope. The papers were all in Greek and Elli looked at them and said they were nothing important, just Siegfried Witzel's identity card and some invoices. But being German and therefore punctilious about these things I asked her to describe the invoices in detail and found she was right—they _were_ nothing important, mostly bills for food and drink and scuba tanks full of oxygen, which I supposed was quite important if you happened to be underwater at the time. But one of these wasn't an invoice at all and its importance was immediately obvious, at least to me. It was a waybill for a consignment sent to the _Doris_ at the Marina Zea, in Piraeus, by none other than Mr. Georg Fischer, and which gave his address as Constitution Square in Athens, and while the waybill didn't actually identify the hotel, I recognized the Mega's telephone number: 36604. Clearly Alois Brunner was more often in the Mega Hotel than I'd been led to believe. The contents of the consignment were very interesting, too: Witzel had taken delivery of a bronze Hellenistic horse's head from about 100 BC which was, I told Elli, the equivalent of bringing owls to Athens.
"That's a real German phrase?" she asked. "Absolutely." "You're making fun of me." "No, I'm really not. And the reason I'm saying this is because the specific purpose of Witzel's expedition was to sail to the site of a sunken ship and there to dive for ancient Greek artifacts. Which begs the question why someone had such an artifact sent to the _Doris_ on the day _before_ he sailed. It seems the wrong way round." I frowned. "And here's another thing. Witzel didn't ever mention this horse on his insurance claim with MRE. But it was almost two thousand years old. Yesterday, Dr. Lyacos at the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus said that a good Roman bust of the second century might be worth as much as fifty thousand dollars. This horse has to be worth some serious money, too. So why didn't he make a claim for that, I wonder?" We started to walk up the hill to cross over to the other side of the Ermioni peninsula; the little winding streets were deserted and quiet, which made me quiet while I thought about this latest discovery.
"Unless the whole expedition was only meant to be a cover for something else," I said after a while. "Like what?" "There were some smaller artifacts that Witzel didn't want to claim for, either. And I thought this was because he was trying to prevent me from contacting Professor Buchholz. But now I'm thinking that maybe there was an extra reason. Dr. Lyacos told me there's a thriving trade in black market antiquities through the port of Piraeus. Museums in small American cities want them to keep up with their richer neighbors. Apparently there's nothing like a marble bust of Socrates to make people think that Boise, Idaho, is the cultural equal of New York and Washington. Lyacos told me he'd even heard that Colonel Nasser was using ancient Egyptian art to pay for illegal weapons. Now that he's nationalized the canal he's going to have to force people to pay to go through it, I guess. So maybe that's what they were up to. Maybe there were some other antiquities already on the _Doris_. Maybe they were taking those somewhere quiet to exchange them for weapons destined for Nasser. German weapons, I shouldn't wonder. On a remote island, perhaps. Greece has got lots of those."
On the south side of the peninsula we found Christos the taxi driver, who rubbed a chin that might have doubled as a magnet for iron filings and then said he didn't remember a German traveling with a Greek, at least until I gave him a few drachmas. I didn't blame him for his poor memory; it looked like he'd had a lean morning of it. Pocketing the note he told us that he'd driven two men to Kosta, which was another small port town, about twenty kilometers south of Ermioni. "Anything interesting or important about Kosta?" "Nothing much," came the answer, via Elli. "But there's a small private airport near there, in Porto Heli." "But he didn't drive them there," I said. "Or he'd have said so." "No," said Elli, "he says he dropped them in the center of town. At a hotel in the main square." We got in the back of the Citroën and told him to take us to Kosta. It seemed quicker than finding the place ourselves. Besides, MRE was paying. The Citroën was a Traction Avant, beloved of the Gestapo in Paris, and for a moment or two it was easy enough to imagine myself back there in the summer of 1940; Elli was as beautiful and smelled as good as any Frenchwoman I'd ever seen, or inhaled. I smiled at her a couple of times and she smiled back and once she took my hand and squeezed it; it seemed as if I was making more progress with her than I was with the case.
It took us less than half an hour to find ourselves in another Greek port town that was a little less picturesque than Ermioni. The harbor looked more sheltered than the one we'd just left behind and was perhaps shallower, too, as the sight of a boat that was only half-sunk in the water seemed to confirm. At the main hotel we asked about Professor Buchholz and his Greek friend and learned only that they'd stayed just one night. Where they'd gone after leaving, the proprietor had no idea and it was clear she didn't care to speculate, either, when she heard Elli speaking German to me. We had Christos drive us back along the meandering coast to Ermioni and there we ate a simple lunch at a little restaurant facing the calm sea on the south quay with more cats for company and enjoyed the pleasant change in the weather almost as much as we enjoyed some Greek food and wine. "So how is this trip connected with Arthur Meissner?" she asked. "I was wondering when you'd ask me about that. Tell me something first: what's _your_ connection with this whole flea circus?"
"Dimitri Papakyriakopoulos. Meissner's lawyer. I help him out sometimes, doing a bit of legal work to make some extra cash." "Is that all you do for him?" "So far. He's curious, that's all. I'm kind of curious myself." "No, I think you're just fine. In spite of the fact that you're a lawyer and a bureaucrat." "What I am above all is a single woman, Christof. I need the money. Economic coordination doesn't pay very well in this country. Greeks tend to resist most kinds of coordination. Yes, we gave the world democracy but people tend to forget we also gave the world anarchy." "I've always been a bit of an anarchist myself. It was easy enough when we had a ruler like Hitler and authority like the Nazis. But lately I've been slipping. I'm seriously thinking of hanging up the black flag and getting myself socially stratified. I think I might enjoy it." "Anyway, that's not why I came today. I mean, I didn't come to pump you for information about your interest in Arthur Meissner. I just fancied a day off, in a nice car, with a nice man."
"To be perfectly honest, I don't know that I am interested in Meissner," I said, ignoring the compliment, at least for the moment. "But that cop, Leventis, is pressuring me to try and help him solve a case." "Samuel Frizis." "Yes." "Why does he think you can help? Because you were a cop?" "There's that, yes. And the fact that I'm German. Witzel, my claimant and fellow countryman, got himself murdered and Leventis seems more inclined to make me a suspect instead of a witness. Either I help him or I don't get my passport back." "As a lawyer I have to tell you that he has that power." "I know. I spoke to another lawyer already." "Anyone I know?" "A firm in Piraeus." "Piraeus. That doesn't sound very promising. You'd better let me help you out if you get into any trouble." "Sounds better. Thanks. I appreciate it." "But where's the connection between Frizis and Witzel?" "I can't tell you that. Leventis wouldn't like it. But there is one." "Fair enough." "So why _did_ you come today?" "I told you. I came along for the German. And I don't mean the grammar."
"I should warn you about my grammar, Elli. Like everything else I have it's a little old and out-of-date. This is your teacher telling you now. So listen. I'm much too old for you, Elli. I drool when I sleep and sleep when I ought to be awake, and my heart feels like it needs a wheelchair to get around." "You should let me be the judge of that." "I'm serious. I look at my wristwatch and I don't see what time it is, I see the time that was." "Or perhaps you just don't like me." "I'd probably like you a lot more if I disliked myself a little less." "You're better than you think you are. Anyway, whatever happens, we're having a good time, aren't we? I know I am. Nothing else seems to matter right now. Being here today is lovely." "I don't disagree about that. The last time I enjoyed myself this much, a witch was baking my sister Gretel in a pie." "It's great to be out of the ministry for a while. To be away from Athens. It really does feel a lot like spring. Makes you feel lucky to be alive." She was right. It did feel like spring and I did feel lucky to be alive, which was not unusual for me, and this might be why, on the short walk back to where I'd left the Rover, I kissed Elli Panatoniou under an ancient olive tree and maybe it was also why she let me.
It had been a long, cold, lonely winter. THIRTY-FIVE – It was almost five p.m. when I got back to the office to check my messages and telephone Lieutenant Leventis after driving Elli to her own office at the ministry on Amerikis Street. It seemed we both had to work late that night. "Call me," she'd said. "30931. Extension 134. Maybe we can go and have a drink tomorrow. Or we could go dancing at Kalabokas, perhaps. That's a club I know. Do you dance?" "It depends." "On what?" "On who's pulling the strings. The way I see it, when you've got to dance you've got to dance." "Next stop Broadway, huh?" "As soon as I can get out of Greece." "Don't be in too much of a hurry. That kiss this afternoon. I liked it. I'd like some more." "Good. Extension 134. I'll arrange it." Telesilla had gone home but Garlopis was still there. He looked more nervous than was normal even for him. "Mr. Dietrich received your telegram, sir. He is going to telephone again, at five o'clock his time, six ours. So I thought I'd better wait in case you needed any help with the international operator."
"Kind of you. He telephoned before?" "Twice. At three and at four. It seemed to be urgent." "Good. He must have discovered something important." "And did _you_ find anything important when you were in Ermioni?" "Yes, I think so. I've got some evidence that Siegfried Witzel and his friends on the _Doris_ weren't looking for sunken treasure any more than they were looking for the lost city of Atlantis. I think they were involved in an illegal weapons deal with Alois Brunner. Neff, too, for all I know. Trading black market Greek and Egyptian sculptures to obtain guns for Colonel Nasser and his Muslim Brotherhood for their war against the Israelis. Frankly it's just the kind of cause that would attract an anti-Semite like Brunner. But from the way things panned out he must have figured he was being double-crossed and decided to wind up the partnership. Permanently." "These are troubled times we live in, sir." "That's always been the rumor." "But surely this is good news. It means you've got something concrete to tell Lieutenant Leventis, doesn't it? Enough to get him off your back, perhaps. Off both our backs."
"Perhaps." Garlopis grinned sheepishly. "How did you get on with Miss Panatoniou?" "Yes, that was interesting. We were followed all the way there and back." "By who?" "Two men in a black sedan." "They were working for Leventis, perhaps." "Perhaps." "Did you tell her?" "God, no. I didn't want to distract her from me. She did an excellent job of paying me a great deal of probably unwarranted attention." "You think she was playing you?" "My strings are still humming. But I have no idea what her game is. At least not while she's using that chest of hers to breathe. It's kind of distracting. She says she does a little extra work for Dimitri Papakyriakopoulos. Meissner's lawyer. It seems he's curious as to why I should want to meet with his client. And because he's curious she is, too. Of course, she says it's more than that. She says she likes me. But." "Of course." "Right now I'm trying to limit things between us to something platonic; the only trouble is that making love is so much more entertaining."
Garlopis chuckled. "You're absolutely right there, sir. Who was it that said a woman is like a tortoise; once she's on her back you can do what you want with her." "It doesn't sound much like Zeno." "No, perhaps you're right. Anyway, you look like a man who knows what he's doing." "That's an easy mistake to make. You see, I've met her kind before. She's a mortar bomb in a tight blouse. A man needs a tin hat and a lorry load of sandbags just to be near a girl like that. The trick is being somewhere else when she goes off." "She does have a remarkable figure, sir. Just what the doctor ordered, I'd have thought." "Always supposing that one can afford a doctor like that." Our discussion of Elli Panatoniou was all the excuse Garlopis needed to find a bottle of Four Roses in the desk drawer and pour us a couple while we waited for Dumbo's call. There are some subjects, like analytic geometry and spiric sections, for which you need a drink and Elli's figure was one of them; she had the most interesting curves since Diocles described a cissoid. After a while I sat down at Telesilla's desk to type out a report on the day's activities for Lieutenant Leventis. I saw no reason not to take his previous threat seriously. I mentioned the name of Spiros Reppas on the assumption he'd already heard it in connection with the house in Pritaniou; and I told Leventis that I'd been followed by two men in a dark sedan—I even gave him the license plate, just to be insolent. I didn't say anything in my report about kissing Elli Panatoniou, but I figured that if the men following us had been his, they could tell him that themselves. Of course, the report was more or less pointless and mostly demonstrated that I was badly out of practice with a typewriter. But Leventis was right about one thing: It did make me feel like a cop again.
Garlopis read my report and smiled sadly. "Perhaps next time I could type this for you, sir? In Greek. There are many mistakes. Perhaps the lieutenant will be more inclined to be sympathetic if your report is in Greek." "Next time." At last the phone rang. Garlopis answered it, said something in Greek to the operator, and then handed me the receiver. "Munich," he said, and pressed his head close to the backside of the earpiece so he could hear. His hair smelled of limes. "Christof Ganz speaking." "About time. I've been trying to get hold of you all day, Ganz. Where the hell have you been?" Dietrich's voice was testy and irritable like maybe he'd forgotten how much money I'd saved the company since taking up my employment. I swallowed the rest of my drink; it sounded as if I was going to need it. Garlopis smoothly refilled the glass. "I've been out of the office, sir." "No kidding." "Like I said before, the Greek police are proving to be less than helpful. Did you ever try to adjust a claim with a dead body on the floor? It's not so easy doing the paperwork."
"I get that. It's an awkward situation right enough. Naturally we feel bad having landed you in this situation. But sometimes that's how it is. Adjusting a claim can be a tricky process. A claims man has to expect the unexpected. That's what this business is all about. And sometimes the unexpected is a little more unpredictable than can reasonably be expected, especially when there's a lot of money involved." "Did you find Max Merten?" "No. I didn't." Dietrich sighed. "Look here, Ganz, the word from on high is that you're to drop this whole thing. Right now. I've retained those lawyers in Piraeus on your behalf and told them to deal with the police through the usual channels. We will assist you in any way we can. Bail money, fines, legal fees, none of that is a problem. We'll bring you home, right enough. You've just got to be patient and let the lawyers handle it now. But this whole line of inquiry needs to end. Siegfried Witzel's claim for the _Doris_ has been disallowed and that's the end of it as far as MRE is concerned."
"Is that what Mr. Alzheimer says?" "Mr. Alzheimer, me, and God almighty. In that order, see? You're not a cop anymore, you're a goddamned insurance man. It's time you started acting like one." "What's the idea?" "There isn't any idea. There's just orders. From upstairs. You're to drop this inquiry like it was red-hot toilet paper. When you're back home we'll go out somewhere like the Hofbräuhaus and I'll buy you a cheap dinner to celebrate." "An invitation like that I can hardly refuse." "Good." Dietrich was oblivious to my sarcasm. "Sure, boss. Anything you say." It wasn't what I felt like saying to Dumbo but it sounded a lot better than _Go and fuck yourself_. Working for MRE was still a good job for a man like me, with a car and expenses and what I most craved, which was a quiet life with a little respectability. I was determined to keep the job, in spite of what the big mouth in my square head felt like doing. My father would have been proud of me; he always did want me to go into something respectable like insurance. I picked up my glass and then drained it, a second time. "Was there anything else, sir?"
"No, that's it, Ganz. Take care now. See you soon." I handed Garlopis the receiver and he dropped it on the cradle and shrugged. "Dale Carnegie he is not." "Dumbo's usually all right. For an office man. But it sounds to me like someone's been shaking his pram." "Perhaps it was Mr. Alzheimer." "Could be. In which case maybe someone leaned on Mr. Alzheimer." "Like who?" "Frankly I'd rather not know. But I do know that in pride of place in Alzheimer's office is a framed photograph of him looking very cozy with our own dear Konrad Adenauer. If, as Lieutenant Leventis says, Alois Brunner does have good connections in the current German government, then maybe Adenauer asked his old friend Alzheimer to have me lay off the case." "If you don't mind me saying so, sir, none of that fits with Brunner being involved in selling arms illegally to the Egyptians. I mean why would the West German government, a NATO member for only a couple of years, risk upsetting its new allies by doing something like that? It doesn't make sense. Unless anti-Semitism is still the policy of the German government."
"Leventis said he thought maybe Brunner had been working for the German Federal Intelligence Service, the BND. So maybe he still is. Maybe this was an undercover operation. I don't know. The minute you get the peekers involved, then the screen ripples in front of you like a mirage and before you know it Red Riding Hood turns out to be the wolf." I lit a cigarette. "It's beginning to look as though I'll need to bribe that cop after all. Did you speak to your cousin at the Alpha Bank? About cashing that certified check?" "Yes. And he tells me that he can make this happen quite easily. Now all we have to do is bribe someone at the Ministry of Public Order with a much smaller sum to provide you with a fake identity card in the name of Siegfried Witzel." "Will this do?" I handed over the identity card that the Ermioni harbormaster had found floating in the sea at the spot where the _Doris_ had gone down. The card was in poor condition but all the pertinent details were more or less legible. "Oh, this will do very well," said Garlopis. "Where did you find it?"
I explained where it had come from. "The picture is so faded that it actually looks a bit like you." "That's hardly a surprise. I'm a bit faded myself. Or more accurately, worn away like the relief on some ancient temple." "He suggests cashing the check at the bank in Corinth where he has a good friend who owes him a favor. That's less than an hour's drive north of here. It's perfect for us. Nothing ever happens in Corinth. At least not since the earthquake of 1928 and the great fire of 1933." "Sounds like a poor choice of place to build a bank." Garlopis smiled. "We could go there the day after you visit Arthur Meissner in Averoff Prison, perhaps. On Saturday. Banks are always quiet on a Saturday." "Yes, that should help us focus on what we're doing very nicely. There's nothing like planning a serious crime to give an extra thrill to a prison visit." THIRTY-SIX – A warm afternoon in Athens and Garlopis was spent behind the wheel of the Rover, which suited me very well, given the homicidal impatience of other Greek drivers. To drive around Constitution Square was to invite an assault by car horn and amounted to the clearest demonstration of jungle law since Huxley battered Bishop Wilberforce on his pate with a blunt copy of _On the Origin of Species_. No ordinary human could ever have enjoyed seeing Athens from the front seat of a car any more than he could have enjoyed trying to fly off the ski jump at Garmisch. Even Garlopis was a different man behind the wheel of a car—as different as if he'd shared a couple of Greek coffees with Dr. Henry Jekyll. We reached Averoff Prison, about three kilometers northeast of the office, in a matter of minutes and a fug of burnt rubber. He could have found the place on Alexandras Avenue in his sleep because it was close to the Apostolis Nikolaidis Stadium, the home ground of Panathinaikos, the Athens football team supported enthusiastically by Garlopis and, he said, the winner of the Greek Cup as recently as 1955. He parked the car and switched off the engine, and at last I was able to let out a breath.
"I was never so glad to see a prison," I said, looking out the car window at a grim, castellated gray brick building that was shrouded with palm trees. I lit a Karelia from a packet I'd bought and tried to compose myself. But Garlopis was looking serious. "I'm sorry, sir, but I'm afraid I won't be going in there. You see, there's something I need to tell you. You're not the only one with a past. I mean, a past I'd rather not be reminded of." "Don't tell me, you were a cop, too." "No, but during the war I was a translator for the Occupation Force, just like Arthur Meissner. First for the Italians and then the Germans. So far I've managed to conceal this fact. And for obvious reasons you're the one person with whom I feel I can share this information now. I certainly wouldn't tell anyone Greek. Meissner worked in Thessaloniki while I was based here in Athens but he and I met several times at the Gestapo building in Merlin Street. And I'd much prefer it if we didn't meet again. He might try to blackmail me, to share the blame, if you like. I certainly didn't murder or rob anyone, which is what he's accused of doing by no less a figure than Archimedes Argyropoulos; he's a general and a Greek military hero, so his evidence has been very damaging to Meissner's case. No, all I did was to be part of a pool of translators. I even tried to ameliorate some of the general's orders. Nevertheless, in Greek eyes this makes me a collaborator."
"Collaborator is just another word for survivor," I said. "In a war staying alive is a bit like playing tennis. It looks a lot easier when you've never had to play yourself. Take it from one who can boast a pretty useful backhand." "That's kind of you to say. Unfortunately there are plenty of Greeks who would like to see a rat like me disqualified. Permanently." "Forget it. I think you're a pretty nice guy—for a rat." "You're too kind, sir." "I don't mean to be. Tell me, when you were working for the Third Reich did you ever meet this SD Captain Brunner that Lieutenant Leventis has decided to make his life's personal Jean Valjean?" "On one of the few occasions I met Meissner he was accompanied by some SD officers and perhaps one of them might have been Brunner, but I really don't know for sure. There were so many. And men in uniform all look alike to me. Frankly I'd never even heard the name Brunner until Leventis mentioned him in his office." Garlopis shook his head. "What I did know was to stay away from Thessaloniki. You have to understand that things were much harder there because the SD were in charge. There it was all about persecuting the Jews. Here, in Athens, things were easier. Besides, Brunner was a mere captain. Mostly I worked for the military governor, a Luftwaffe general called Wilhelm Speidel who Lieutenant Leventis mentioned to you when we were in his office. This is the real reason I try to encourage people not to stay at the Grande Bretagne Hotel, sir. During the war it was taken over by the German general staff. Speidel's headquarters were in a suite on the top floor. Hitler once stayed at the GB; Himmler, and Göring, too. I actually saw Hermann Göring drinking champagne with Rommel in the hotel bar. I was often in and out of the place to meet with General Speidel and I don't like to go back there in case I'm ever recognized.
"Then, in April 1944, Speidel was transferred back to Germany and I went to stay with a cousin of mine in Rhodes, until I judged it safe to come back to Athens. When Leventis mentioned Speidel and the massacre in Kalavryta, you could have knocked me sideways. Frankly I had no idea he'd ever had a hand in such a thing. I always found him to be very kind, very thoughtful, and a real gentleman. When he left Greece he even gave me a nice fountain pen. His own Pelikan." "That's something you learn about life. Sometimes the nicest folk do the most horrible things. Especially in Germany. Along with the Japs we virtually own the monopoly on very kind, very thoughtful mass murderers. People are always surprised that we also like Mozart and small children." "I just wanted you to know the truth." "It's a tough world for honest men. But don't tell any of them." "No, indeed. I shall wait for you here, sir. I shall close my eyes and get some beauty sleep." "Try a coma. Then it might actually work." Leaving Garlopis to his nap I stepped out of the car and walked toward the gate wondering just how much of what Garlopis had told me was true. Knowing him as I did, I half-suspected that I might have got more information from the Greek insurance man about Alois Brunner than I was ever likely to get out of Arthur Meissner.
The sentry waved me through the gate to the main door, where I rang the bell as if I'd been selling brushes, and waited. After a moment or two, a smaller door opened in the bigger one and I showed the prison guard a letter Leventis had written for me. Then I was taken to a small windowless room where I was searched carefully and ushered through several locked cage doors, to a room with four chairs and a table. There I sat down and waited, nervously. I'd been in enough prison cells in my time to get a sick feeling in my stomach just being there. The only window was about three meters above the floor and on the wall was a cheap picture of the Parthenon. A temple dedicated to the goddess Athena seemed a long way from a squalid room in Averoff Prison. After a while the door opened again to admit a small dark handsome man in his forties and I stood up. "Herr Meissner?" When he nodded I offered him a cigarette and when he took one I told him to keep the pack. That's just good manners when you're meeting anyone behind bars. He smelled strongly of prison, which as anyone who's been a convict could tell you is a cloying mixture of cigarettes, fried potatoes, fear, sweat, and only one shower a week.
"You're Christof Ganz?" "Yes." "I'm here because Papakyriakopoulos told me I had nothing to lose by meeting with you," said Meissner, pocketing the pack for later. "But I can't see that I've got anything much to gain either. After all, it's not like you're anyone important in this fucking country." Meissner spoke German with a slight Berlin accent—his father's, probably, and very like my own. "That's rather the point, I think. I'm not with the police. And I'm not a member of the legal profession. I'm just a private citizen. I'm only here because Lieutenant Leventis has my balls in his hand and, because I used to be a cop in Berlin, he thinks that you might have something to tell me that you wouldn't tell him. And perhaps since you can tell me in German I guess he believes you can speak in confidence. I don't know. But you could even say I'm an honest broker. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, and all that shit." "So what does he want me to say to the good German?" "I'll come to that. What he wants me to say first is that he thinks you're small fry."
"Tell that to the judge." "That there are more important fish out there still to be caught." "You got that right, Fritz. I've been saying that for months, but no one ever listens. Look, for your information, I was just a translator. A mouth for hire. I never murdered anyone. And I never robbed anyone. And nor did my girlfriend, Eleni. Yes, I took a few bribes. Who didn't? This is Greece. Everyone takes bribes in this fucking country. Some of those bribes I took were to bribe a few Germans, to help people, Jews included. This fellow Moses Natan, who says he bribed me to help his family. Well, I really did try to help him, but the way he talks now you'd think my help came with guarantees. If you were a cop, then you must know what that was like. Sometimes you tried and succeeded, but more often you tried and failed. None of the people I succeeded in helping have turned up to speak on my behalf. Just the ones I failed. "As for those rape charges. They're nonsense. The cops know that, too. The trouble is that I'm the only one they've ever managed to put on trial in this fucking country for what happened during the occupation. Me. The translator. You might as well charge some of those women who were chambermaids at the Grande Bretagne Hotel when the German High Command was living there. The barmen and the fucking porters, too. But the Greeks want someone to blame. And right now I'm the only scapegoat they can find. So they're throwing the book at me. I'm charged with twelve thousand murders. Did you know that? Me, a man who's never even held a gun. The way they're talking I'm the man who told Hitler to invade Greece. As if the Germans would ever have listened to me. It's a fucking joke. All those Nazi officers—Speidel, Student, Lanz, Felmy—they're the ones who should be on trial here, not me."
"Oh, I get that. And look, I won't say I'm on your side. But I kind of am because getting you to talk might put me in good odor with Leventis. Helping you helps me. He can't come out and say so to you in person—that would be political suicide for him, not to mention illegal—but he's assured me that if you assist him, he'll speak to Mr. Toussis." Toussis was the name of the man prosecuting Meissner's case in court. "Get the charges reduced," I added. "Thrown out, maybe." "That's all very well, but right now it's possible I might be safer in here than I would be on the outside. Seriously, Ganz. I'm a dead man the minute I leave this place. I've got less chance of going back to my house in Elefsina than I have of becoming the Greek prime minister." "Safe conduct on a plane to Germany. I'll even go with you myself. I want out of here as much as you do. How does that sound?" "It sounds great. But look, here's the biggest obstacle to making all that happen. I don't know that I know anything very important. If I did I would have spilled my guts before now, believe me."
"Leventis is after someone in particular. One of those big fish. A man called Alois Brunner. He was a captain in the SD. Remember him?" "Yes. I could hardly forget him. No one could. Brunner was a memorable man, Herr Ganz. Him and Wisliceny and Eichmann. All driven by hatred of the Jews. But unlike Eichmann, Brunner was a real sadist. He liked inflicting pain. A couple of times I was present when Alois Brunner tortured a man at the Villa Mehmet Kapanci—that was the Gestapo headquarters on Vasilissis Olgas Avenue, in Thessaloniki. And clearly he enjoyed it. I didn't want to be there, of course, but Brunner took out his gun and pressed it up against my eyeball and told me I could translate for him or I could bleed on the floor. Those were his exact words. Like I say, you don't forget a man like Brunner. But I haven't seen nor heard of him since the summer of 1943, thank God. And I wouldn't have any idea of how to find him." "Brunner is back in Greece." "He wouldn't dare. I don't believe it. Says who?"
"Says me. I met him here in Athens, although I didn't know it at the time. He's using an assumed name." "Jesus. How about that? Now there's someone who really does have a lot to answer for in this country. But for Brunner and Wisliceny, the Jews of Thessaloniki might still be alive. Almost sixty thousand of them died in Auschwitz. It was Brunner's job to get them on the trains out of Salonika. Maybe that's why Brunner feels it's safe to come back. Because there's no one around to identify him." "There's you." "Sure. And tell Leventis I will identify him if it gets me out of here. No problem. Now all you have to do is find the bastard." "So what else can you tell me about Brunner?" "Let's see now. There was a hotel in Thessaloniki he liked, the Aegaeon. And another one where he took his Greek mistress, the Luxembourg. Her name was Tzeni, I think. Or Tonia. No, Tzeni. I'm not so sure he didn't murder her before he left Greece. A couple of times I accompanied him to Athens and he stayed at the Xenias Melathron, on Jan Smuts. There was a restaurant he liked, too—the Kissos on Amerikis Street. I doubt he'd risk going back to Thessaloniki, but Athens would be different. He wasn't here that often." Meissner paused. "How did you know it was him?"
"Because Lieutenant Leventis showed me a photograph and I recognized him as the man who'd been talking to me earlier on in my hotel bar. Calls himself Fischer now, Georg Fischer, and he claims to be a tobacco salesman." "You say he spoke to you?" "That's right. He initiated a conversation when he realized I was German." "Was he just making conversation or did he want something? If he did, then make sure you give it to him. That man likes to kill people. And not just Jews." "So I hear. At first I figured it was just two Germans a long way from home—that kind of thing. But later on I realized he was looking for someone. He hoped I might lead him to the man. Because unwittingly I did, that someone is now dead." "Who?" "Fellow named Siegfried Witzel." "Never heard of him." "He worked for a man named Max Merten." "Max Merten." Meissner stood up and lit one of the cigarettes I'd given him. He walked around the room for a moment, nodding quietly to himself. "That name mean something to you?" "Oh yes." "What can you tell me about Max Merten?"
"Wait a minute. You said this Witzel fellow worked for Merten?" "Yes." "When was that?" "Now. This year. I think Merten's in Greece, too." Meissner grinned. "Now it's starting to make sense. Why Brunner would dare come back to Greece. Wisliceny is dead—hanged by the Czechs, I think. And Eichmann, well, he's disappeared. In Brazil, if he knows what's good for him. So that leaves Merten and Brunner. It figures." "I'm glad you think so." "People remember Eichmann, Wisliceny, and Brunner because they were all SD and they think all of the really bad men were in the SS because the SS were specifically tasked with killing the Jews, but the fact is Merten was in charge of the whole shooting match." "But he was just an army captain, wasn't he?" "True. Which would have made it a lot easier for him to stay beneath the radar. But Merten was the chief of military administration for the whole Salonika-Aegean theater. The Wehrmacht let him do what the fuck he wanted because they were mostly all in Athens and they didn't give a shit about Thessaloniki. For one thing, there wasn't a really good hotel like the GB. And for another, they preferred to keep their gentlemen's consciences away from the SD myrmidons and what they had planned. But in Thessaloniki if you wanted a truck, a train, a ship, a building, you had to go through Merten. You wanted a hundred Jewish workers to build a road, you had to ask Merten. He was the boss of everything. Even Eichmann had to go through Max Merten. Now there's someone who the Greeks should put on trial. The stories I could tell you about Max Merten. He lived like a king in Thessaloniki. And not just any king. Like Croesus, probably. He had a villa with a swimming pool, girls, cars, servants, the best food and wine. He even had his own cinema theater. And nobody bothered him." Meissner shook his head bitterly. "But of course there's only one real story about Max Merten. If you ask me that's probably what your Greek lieutenant is really interested in. Putting Alois Brunner on trial is just a smokescreen. If Max Merten is in Greece, then there can be only one reason. And I daresay Alois Brunner knows that, too."
THIRTY-SEVEN – I strolled out of the Averoff Prison door and through the main gate with some air under my blue suede Salamanders because prison always affected me that way. Whichever way you walk out of the cement—innocent or guilty—you're always grateful. I was planning on having a hot bath and a drink and a square meal, and maybe an evening on the dance floor with a nice girl and all the other things they take away from you when you're inside. When you've done time, you never again take time for granted. I guess all that nostalgia made me a little preoccupied and unprepared for what happened next. Besides, it was a professional-looking operation, the way the navy-blue Pontiac pulled up with the big doors opening smoothly before the Goodyears had squealed to a stop, and how the two innocent bystanders approaching me from opposite ends of the sidewalk turned out to have neat little pocket automatics almost hidden in their hands and were not quite so innocent as they'd seemed. The next minute I was in the back of the car with four men who looked much fitter than I was and we were heading east on Tsocha, and then southwest on Vasileos Konstantinou. No one said anything, not even me when they frisked me for a Bismarck. It was a different car but I wondered if these were the same guys who'd followed me to Ermioni. I figured that one or more of the usual things were probably about to happen—some threats, a beating, a little physical torture, something worse—and there was no point in protesting too much, not yet; none of them was even listening, anyway. I was just a package to move from A to B and so far, they'd done it very well. It was a story I already knew by heart and I only hoped they could understand German or English when and if it was my turn to speak. I wondered what Garlopis had made of it. Had he even noticed what happened? If he'd seen me being snatched off the street, would he call Leventis? And if he hadn't because he was asleep, how long would he stay napping before he realized I was late coming back to the car? How long would he wait before knocking on the prison door to inquire in his obsequious but somehow endearing way if they'd decided to keep me there overnight? None of that worried me, particularly. What with the Colt .25s pressed against each of my overworked kidneys and the cold expressions on all four faces, I had enough to worry about on my own account.
On Vasileos Konstantinou, the Pontiac stopped in front of an impressive, horseshoe-shaped stadium that resembled a set from _Demetrius and the Gladiators_ and the car doors opened again. I was obliged to get out and walk, and with one or two citizens still around I felt able to protest my treatment, a little, even with a small gun discreetly in my side. "I feel it's only fair to warn you boys I was at the Berlin Olympics in '36. I managed to get around the stadium and up to my seat in under fifteen minutes. A world record at the time." Without reply they walked me to the bottom of the first tier and pointed up to the top one, where high above the track a tiny figure was seated like the only spectator at the matinee. "Go up there," said one of the men. "Now. And best not to keep the lady waiting, eh?" "I never do if I can help it," I said, and started to climb. This wasn't as easy as it looked, since the first marble-clad step was much higher than seemed appropriate; probably this was an easy step to take if you'd been wearing a short tunic or maybe nothing at all, ancient Greek style, but to anyone else it was a bit of a stretch. After that the going was easy; at least it was if you didn't mind climbing up the stadium's forty-four levels. I counted them because it helped to stop me from getting angry at the way I'd been summoned to meet a woman I'd never met before and a woman I didn't find attractive—there was nothing wrong with my eyes; she was much too old for me, which is to say she was about my age. I made a description of her for the police artist inside my head as, ignoring the excellent views of the Acropolis and the Royal Gardens, I completed the rest of the climb: A tall, striking woman with a large mane of dark gray hair gathered in a loose plait at the back of her neck like a Greek caryatid's. She wore a short dark red silk jacket, a mustard-yellow shirt, a long brown skirt, and soft leather boots. Her face was strong and mannish and as brown as a berry. She carried no handbag and wore no jewelry, just a man's watch, and in her hand was a red handkerchief. She looked like a bandit queen.
"What, no friends?" I said. "No friends." "Don't you get lonely, sitting by yourself?" "I never get lonely—not since I learned what other people are like." She spoke fluent German, although I also recognized that this wasn't her first language. "You're right. It's only when we're young that we need friends and think they're important. When you get to our age you realize friends are just as unreliable as anyone else. For all that, it's been my experience that the people who never get lonely are the loneliest people of all." "Come and sit down." She patted the marble seat next to her as if it might actually be comfortable. "Impressive, isn't it? This place." I sat down. "I can hardly contain my excitement." "It's the Panathenaic Stadium, in case you were wondering," she said. "Built in 330 BC, but only faced in marble in the second century AD. The Greeks ran races here and the Romans mounted gladiatorial shows. Then for hundreds of years it was just a quarry, until 1895 when, at the expense of a rich Alexandrian Greek, it was restored to what you see now, so that the first Olympic Games of the modern era might be held here in 1896. That Greek's name was George Averoff." She smiled a wily, gap-toothed smile. "I imagine his name is not unfamiliar to you, Herr Ganz."
"I've heard of him. He seems to have been a very civic-minded sort of man, for a Greek. Although speaking for myself I'd much prefer to have my own name on a park bench or on a check made out to cash than on a prison or warship." "I'd forgotten about the warship. You're well informed." "No, not even a bit. For example, I don't even know who you are or what you want. Just for future reference it's normal practice for the muscle with the gun to introduce the bully who's trying to look tough." "It's not important who I am," she said. "You underestimate yourself, lady." "Better make sure you don't make the same mistake. And in case you hadn't already worked it out, I'm not a lady." "It's probably not very polite of me but I can't disagree with you there." "If you do it certainly won't matter. That's the great thing about this place. With sixty-six thousand empty seats we can make a scene and no one will even notice. More important than who I am is your conversation with Arthur Meissner at Averoff Prison. I'd like to know all of what he said. Every detail."
"What's it to you?" "This will help to answer that question, perhaps," she said, and pulling up the sleeve of her shirt she revealed a number tattooed on her forearm. "It helps a little. But I need a little more to work with here. I'm German. Imagination was never my strong suit. I think I'll have to see this picture in full Technicolor." "Very well. If you insist. Until 1943 I lived in Thessaloniki. My family were Sephardic Jews originally from Spain, who left there in 1492, after the Alhambra Decree ordering our expulsion. For four hundred and fifty years Jews like me and my family lived and prospered in Thessaloniki, and persecution seemed like a distant memory until July 1942 and the Black Sabbath, when the Germans arrived and rounded up all of the men in the city center. Ten thousand Jewish men of all ages were drafted for forced labor but first these men were obliged to prove that they were fit for work. This was not done for humanitarian reasons, of course, but so the SS could have some fun. After the long journey from Germany, they were bored and needed amusement. And what could be more amusing than a bit of old-fashioned Jew-baiting. So for the rest of the day, ten thousand Jewish men were made to do hard physical exercise, at gunpoint. Those who refused were beaten half to death or had Alsatian dogs set on them. It wasn't cool like it is now; no, this was midsummer and the temperature was over thirty degrees centigrade. Many of them died, including my own grandfather. We didn't know it then but he was lucky, for much worse was to come, and over the next few months almost sixty thousand Jews were deported to the death camps of Eastern Europe. Along with seventeen members of my family, I was sent to Auschwitz, which is where I learned to speak German. But subsequently I also learned this: that I was the only member of my family who survived and not because I was a doctor—the Nazis had no use for a doctor who was a Jew. No, I survived because of a simple clerical error. You were put to work if your age at the time of your arrival in Auschwitz was between sixteen and forty. At the time I was age forty-one and so I should have been gassed along with my mother, my grandmother, and my three elder sisters. But an SS clerk at Auschwitz had incorrectly noted my year of birth as 1912 instead of 1902, and that saved my life. Because of this mistake the camp authorities believed I was under forty and that I should be put to work in Block 24, which was their brothel. I'm alive but it has to be admitted that part of me died in Auschwitz. For example, I never practiced medicine again. The things I saw doctors—German doctors—do at Auschwitz convinced me that man was unworthy of modern medicine."
"Could have been worse. You might have been a lawyer. They say you're never more than six feet from a lawyer." "So now I do something different. Now I protect people, my people, in a less prophylactic way." "Would it make any difference now if I said I'm sorry?" "Good God." The woman next to me laughed and then covered her mouth. "That's a surprise. I'm sorry but you're the first German I've met since the war who ever said sorry. Everyone else says, 'We didn't know about the camps' or 'I was only obeying orders' or 'Terrible things happened to the Germans, too.' But no one ever thinks to apologize. Why is that, do you think?" "An apology seems hardly adequate under the circumstances. Maybe that's why we don't say it more often." I reached for my cigarettes and then remembered I'd given them to Arthur Meissner. "I wish that was true. But I'm not sure it is." "Give us time. By the way, is there another reason we're here? Or was it just George Averoff and a classical history lesson?" "Now I'm very glad you mentioned that. As you will have noticed, the stadium is open at one end, like a giant horseshoe. Anyone in one of those office buildings to the north might have a fine view of what was happening on the track, or indeed of the two of us sitting here now. Don't you agree?"
"Sure. And having seen Greek television I couldn't blame anyone if they were watching us with greater interest." I stood up for a moment and stared over the parapet; at the top, the stadium must have been twenty-five meters above ground level. "It's lucky I've got a head for heights." "My only interest in your head is what's in it and if you can keep it on your shoulders. You see I have a man on one of those rooftops. And he's not there for his own entertainment. He's a trained marksman with a high-powered rifle who hates Germans even more than I do, if that were even possible. An American rifle with a telescopic sight, which he says has an effective range of about one thousand yards. I should estimate that it's less than half of that to those rooftops, wouldn't you agree? So by that standard it ought to be an easy shot for him." I said nothing but I was suddenly feeling very uncomfortable, like I had a persistent itch on my scalp and all the Drene shampoo in the world wasn't going to fix that. I sat down again, quickly. Now I really did want a cigarette.
"Here's how this works. If I decide that you have been anything less than totally cooperative, then I shall signal to my man and his spotter and—well, you can guess what will happen, can you not? I guarantee that you won't leave this stadium alive, Herr Ganz." "How do I know you're telling the truth?" "You don't. And let's hope you never have to find out. It's one of those fiendishly German questions that used to fascinate us Jews in the camps. Is there water in the showerheads, or is there not? Who knew for sure? The lies you told. The way you used language to obfuscate the truth. 'Special treatment' used to mean a lifesaving operation in a Swiss clinic; thanks to Germany it now means a bullet in the back of the head and a shallow grave in Ukraine. But in anticipation of your own question I brought you this small proof that I am indeed telling you the truth." She handed me a rifle bullet. It was a .308 Winchester cartridge. And it was just the kind of round a sniper would have used over a distance like the one she'd described. I was trying to keep my head but the prospect of losing half of it meant I was already sweating profusely. I'd seen enough comrades hit by snipers in the trenches to know the fiendish damage a sniper could inflict.
"I know, there's still room for doubt," she said. "But that's as much proof as you're going to get right now, short of my giving him the prearranged signal. At which point it really won't matter, will it? This is why I'm wearing reds and browns, as a matter of fact. These are my old clothes. In case some of your blood and brains splash onto me." She was smiling but I had the very distinct impression that she was perfectly serious, that she really had chosen clothes and even a color scheme that might not show a bit of arterial spray. I tried to match her cool manner but it was proving difficult. "Can I keep this bullet as a souvenir? It will make a nice change from an evil-eye key fob." "Sure. Why not? But choose your next joke very carefully, Herr Ganz, because the next bullet won't be quite as harmless as that one you're holding in your hand." "You know, suddenly I'm very glad that I apologized." "So am I. It's a good start for you, right enough. If you weren't a German I might actually like you. But since you are—"
"I take it you're not from the International Olympic Committee." "No. I'm not." "And you can't be Greek NIS. I doubt they'd murder me here in Athens. So then: You must be from the Institute. In Tel Aviv." "You really are well informed. For an insurance man. Only before this you were a Berlin detective and you worked in Homicide—in the Murder Commission, which is to say you investigated murders instead of committing them, like so many of your colleagues. Many Jews met very grisly ends at the hands of German police battalions, did they not? But clearly Lieutenant Leventis has some faith in you, otherwise he would not have sanctioned you to negotiate a secret deal with Arthur Meissner. I'm reliably informed that he has done this because he has some hope of finding and arresting Alois Brunner. And that's where I come in, because if anyone is going to arrest that bastard Brunner I want it to be me. He's one of several major war criminals we're looking to arrest." "Are you sure you mean arrest? I say that as one who has just been informed there is a rifle pointed at my ear."
"Oh, very much arrest, yes. Have no fear, if he is here in Greece we'll spirit Brunner to Israel for trial. A real trial in front of the whole world, with real lawyers and a real verdict as opposed to the shameful war crimes trials you've conducted in Germany. Because let's face it, Herr Ganz, even the Nazis who were tried and convicted by Germany have had a pretty easy time of it. Why only a couple of months ago, I read an intelligence briefing that said an SS officer called Waldemar Klingelhöfer had been released in December 1956 from Landsberg Prison after serving just eight years of a death sentence imposed for the murder of almost two and half thousand Jews. No, Herr Ganz, the world owes us a proper trial. And why should you give a damn? Alois Brunner was an Austrian. Arguably not even that. His hometown is now in western Hungary, I believe. So then. We Jews want our pound of flesh. Thanks to William Shakespeare, it's what the world expects of us anyway." After everything she had said, I didn't have to think too hard about my decision. There were several rooftops from which a sniper aiming at me would have had an easy shot. Perhaps it was my imagination but I fancied I saw the sun reflected from something on one of the more modern rooftops; it might have been a pair of binoculars or a sniper scope. The ruthless bandit queen had sold her story well, like a true intelligence officer, and I was convinced she was telling the truth. I had little doubt now that she was from the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations in Israel, better known as the Ha'Mossad. I'd had dealings with Ha'Mossad before but only when I was someone else. If she'd known who I really was and some of the people with whom I'd hung around, she'd have dropped that handkerchief in a heartbeat.
"I'll tell you all I know." "Not that much. Just what you've learned about Alois Brunner." THIRTY-EIGHT – After giving her a lot of extra background detail about Munich RE and the _Doris_ that was mostly intended to furnish a supererogatory demonstration of my cooperation and prevent my getting shot, I said: "But look here, it's my impression that Meissner is a nobody. He's not even German, just a poor Greek translator with a Kraut name who's been left in the smokehouse by the Greek police in the absence of fish that are worth eating. Although he claims not to have seen Alois Brunner since the war, he did at least know him. And he told me some of Brunner's favorite haunts here in Athens. I'll write them down if you like." Carefully I put my hand inside my coat, took out a notepad, and started to write. "One of those places might actually be relevant, given that I saw Brunner a few days ago in the bar at the Mega Hotel, on Constitution Square. Or maybe you already know about that from whoever it is at the Megaron Pappoudof who's been feeding you information about what Lieutenant Leventis is up to."
"I only know that you saw him. What does Brunner look like these days?" "Not much different from an old photograph Leventis showed me. Thin, like before, not very tall, mid-forties, a heavy smoker, very deliberate manner, Austrian accent, badly bitten fingernails, gravelly voice, narrow dead eyes as if he'd been staring into a hurricane, a hooked nose, a short gray mustache and a chin beard, like an artist, you know. He was wearing a Shetland sport jacket, whipcord trousers, a plaid-gingham shirt, and a little cravat. A good watch, now I come to think of it; gold, maybe it was a Jaeger. And a gold signet ring on his right hand. He drank Calvert on the rocks and wore an aftershave. I can't remember what brand. Oh, and he was reading a novel. There was a book on the bar. Something by Frank Yerby. Maybe there was a little hat on the stool beside him. I'm not sure." I shook my head. "That's about all." "And the conversation? Tell me about that, please." I tore off the note I'd written and handed it to her.
"I was having a drink and he started up a conversation. Just one German to another. In spite of what you said, we're friendlier than people think, you know. But I never saw him before in my life. He told me his name was Georg Fischer and that he was a tobacco salesman for Karelia cigarettes. Gave me a pack of nails and this business card." I handed it over. "Don't bother calling the number, it's out of order. I think he just hands it out for show. To make people like me think he's a regular Fritz. But Leventis believes Brunner is behind two local murders on account of how the modus operandi is the same as an old murder that took place on a train between Salonika and Athens in 1943, when Brunner shot a Jewish banker called Jaco Kapantzi through both eyes." I paused for a moment considering the magnitude of what I'd said; talking about that brought back the memory of Siegfried Witzel lying on the floor of the house in Pritaniou, and probably looking not much better than I would look if the bandit queen's marksman opened fire.
"One of these local murders was a boat owner called Siegfried Witzel who'd filed a claim for the loss of a ship. That's where I fit into this whole damn mess. I came down here from Munich to adjust the insurance claim and got rather more than I bargained for. Story of my life, for what it's worth." The lady from Ha'Mossad who wasn't a lady nodded. "That Brunner likes to shoot his victims in their eyes is also my information. At the transit camp of Drancy, in Paris, in 1944, Brunner shot a man called Theo Blum in this same way. Brunner's mother, Ann Kruise, may or may not have worked for an optometrist, in Nádkút. I know, it's not exactly Sophocles. But there may be a psychological explanation for why he kills people in this manner that goes beyond simple sadism. I suspect we'll only know for sure after we have him safely in a cell in Ayalon Prison. Go on, please." "Siegfried Witzel and a Munich-based lawyer named Dr. Max Merten—" "He's another person we're interested in." "Those two had gone to a lot of trouble to convince the Greek government that they were going to dive in the Aegean for lost art treasures. Museum stuff. The gas mask of Agamemnon for all I know. Until this afternoon I'd started to believe that what they were really after was weapons. That the whole thing was a cover for an illegal arms deal. I was working on the assumption that Brunner was on board to supply stolen Egyptian and Assyrian art treasures in return for guns that could be secretly shipped to Nasser."
I told her about the Hellenic horse's head that had been delivered to the _Doris_. "That makes sense, too. Almost certainly Brunner _is_ involved with the Egyptian Mukhabarat. Our rivals, so to speak. An agent in Cairo reported Brunner had several meetings with a man named Zakaria Mohieddin, who was until quite recently the director of the Egyptian Intelligence Directorate. But it is our belief that he is secretly working undercover for your own West German intelligence service, the BND, at the behest of a German government minister named Hans Globke, who might even be looking out for him. We'd like to get our hands on that bastard, too. But there's not much chance of it happening. If Adenauer protects his state secretary and security chief as well as he protected his minister of refugees, Theodor Oberländer, then we've little chance of making anything stick to Hans Globke." "What is it with you people?" The bandit queen bristled a little. "What people do you mean, Herr Ganz?" "Not Jews. _Spies_. There's not one of you peekers knows how to walk in a straight line. Either way I now think I was wrong about all of that—about an illegal arms deal, I mean. I think it's nothing to do with weapons. Merten and Witzel and perhaps Brunner were diving for something, all right, but it wasn't archaic art treasures to put in a museum in Piraeus. Arthur Meissner told me a story in Averoff. And I'll tell it to you now, if you like. Forgive me if I skip a few details but it's hard to concentrate when a sniper has a bead on you." I let out a breath and wiped my brow with the cuff of my shirt. I was sweating so much my coat was sticking to me like a butter wrapper. I felt like a man who'd been strapped into the electric chair.
"I should have thought the opposite was true. It's always been my experience that the prospect of being shot focuses the mind as sharply as if one was looking down a telescopic sight. Besides, Herr Ganz, you're perfectly safe as long as I keep a firm grip of this red handkerchief." "Well, just don't sneeze. And don't interrupt until I'm finished playing Homer. I wouldn't like your rooftop pal to think you didn't believe me. There are several holes in the rest of this story. You'll have to forgive that on account of how I don't want any extra holes in me." "All right. Let's hear it." "According to Meissner, Alois Brunner was part of a corrupt syndicate that managed to rob Salonika's Jews of hundreds of millions of dollars in gold and jewels in the spring of 1943. Also involved were Dieter Wisliceny and Adolf Eichmann. But the whole scheme was cooked up by Captain Max Merten, who was in charge of civilian affairs in the region. Merten made a nice friendly deal with the Jewish leaders in Salonika: that he would keep them from being deported in return for all of their hidden valuables. Fearing for their lives, the Jews paid up, only to find that they'd been double-crossed. With the help of Eichmann and Wisliceny, Merten secured the booty, and the treasure was loaded onto the _Epeius._ As soon as it sailed, the SS started to deport the city's sixty thousand Jews."
"I've heard this story," said the bandit queen impatiently. "The ship set sail, struck a mine, and sank off the northern coast of Crete, and all of the gold belonging to the Jews of Thessaloniki went to the bottom of the sea. A message to this effect was received by the Regia Marina—the Italian navy at the Salamis Naval Base, near Piraeus. And by the Kriegsmarine in Heraklion. It was all investigated and verified by the Hellenic navy immediately after the war." "For all that that was worth," I said. "Maybe. Well?" "Well, Meissner says different. Back in Salonika, Merten's partners in the SD heard the bad news about the _Epeius_ and began to smell a rat. Meissner says he overheard them airing their suspicions at the Villa Mehmet Kapanci; they then attempted to discover the true fate of the _Epeius_ and found that yes, the ship had sunk, but not because it had hit a mine. Merten had double-crossed his partners just like he'd double-crossed the city's Jews and had arranged to have the ship scuttled in shallow water in the Messenian Gulf, somewhere off the Peloponnese coast, between the towns of Pylos and Kalamata.
"The captain of the _Epeius_ was a Greek named Kyriakos Lazaros; also on board was a German naval officer called Rainer Stückeln who Merten had cut in for a substantial share of the loot. Merten had previously arranged for a second ship, the _Palamedes_ , to meet the lifeboat from the _Epeius_ , and the _Palamedes_ made its way to the western shore of Crete, where Lazaros and Stückeln and the crew transferred to another lifeboat and rowed ashore, for the sake of appearances, to report the loss of the _Epeius_. "Subsequently Stückeln murdered Lazaros and the first mate, to ensure their silence about the location of the _Epeius_ ; and then he, too, was killed, in a bombing raid in Crete, but only after he had told Merten exactly where the ship lay. But before the three SD men in Thessaloniki could do anything about it the end of the war intervened. Eichmann, Wisliceny, Brunner, and Merten soon found themselves back in Germany, arrested or on the run. Eichmann and Wisliceny and Brunner were all wanted men after the war; but Max Merten, the lowly army captain, was quickly released and has been living openly in Munich for the last ten years, no doubt waiting for the moment when he judged it was finally safe to come back to Greece and retrieve his pension pot.
"Then, a few months ago, Merten chartered a ship belonging to a German scuba diver called Siegfried Witzel. That ship, the _Doris_ , was insured by my company. Lots of ships are. MRE is a very good company. Perhaps the best in Germany. It's my guess Merten and Witzel were planning to sail to the place where the _Epeius_ went down to try to recover the gold. It's also my guess that Brunner was tipped off by someone in the BND that Max Merten was planning to return to Greece and decided to try to reestablish their original partnership. But something went wrong, most likely another double-cross. Old habits die hard. The _Doris_ sank—I'm not sure why, exactly—and the partnership was dissolved a second time, and with equally lethal effect. Brunner murdered Witzel and may be looking for Merten to murder him, too. I think maybe he just likes killing people. Then again, he's a German." I shook my head with uncomfortable vigor, wondering how it looked at the cross point of the sniper's reticle and noticing the bandit queen's perfume now, which was her only concession to femininity. I couldn't identify it beyond the fact that it was paradoxically vanilla and flowery in its base notes, which seemed like the very opposite of her.
"That's it. The whole lousy story. For all I know Merten and Brunner aren't even in Greece anymore. After what I just learned from Meissner, I'm surprised they had the nerve to come back at all." "That's not so surprising, perhaps," said the bandit queen. "It's been suggested that there are some in this new Greek government who were informers for the Nazis and who were rewarded with businesses and property confiscated from Thessaloniki's Jews. That could be why Merten chose to come back now. Perhaps he's been able to blackmail some of these people." She shrugged. "On the other hand, it's not just this government that has failed Salonika's Jews so dismally. In 1946 the Americans arrested Merten, locked him up in Dachau, and offered him for extradition to Greece. Incredibly, the Tsaldaris government said it had no interest in him. So after ten years of living openly in Munich, Max Merten may have decided that he was perfectly safe here after all. And who could blame him? You Germans have managed to draw a very thick line under the war and to start over again. The Old Man's miracle, they call it. The Old Man's whitewash, more like. It makes me sick. There's no justice. Small wonder we're forced to take the law into our own hands."
She sneered and then looked away, as if she didn't want to get any blood on her jacket after all. "I certainly didn't vote for him," I said. "And please don't give me a dirty look. I'm liable to get a headache. Speaking for myself, I never disliked Jews as much as I disliked a great many of my fellow Germans." "I've heard of the unicorn, the griffin, the great auk, the tart with a heart, and little green men from outer space. I've even heard of the good German, but I never thought to see one myself. You never voted for the Nazis and you never liked Hitler. I suppose there was even a Jew you helped to survive the war. You hid him in your lavatory for a couple of days. And of course some of your best friends were Jews. It amazes me how so many of us died." "I wouldn't say I did anything to feel proud of, if that's what you mean. But I'll live with that." She lifted the fist with the red handkerchief and wiggled it meaningfully. "You hope." "You seem to have an appetite for revenge that makes me glad I'm not on your menu."
"A menu? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, we do have one. You know, getting Max Merten might almost be as good as catching up with Alois Brunner." "If I meet him again, I'll let you know." "Again?" "I knew him slightly before the war, when he was an ambitious young lawyer in Berlin, and then I met him again a couple of months ago. As a matter of fact it was Merten who helped to get me my job at Munich RE." "And they talk about Jews sticking together. You Germans could teach us a thing or two about looking after your own." "Believe me, if I see him I'm just liable to kill him myself. I had a nice quiet job in a Munich hospital before I thought to try and improve myself by joining the hazardous world of insurance. The people I was working with at Schwabing were as honest as the day is long. Never had any trouble with any of them." I bit my lip. "But the minute I put a tie on again it's like I started having to make compromises with myself. So. Can I go now? It's getting a little chilly up here. But for the waves of hate coming off you I might need a coat. As it is I badly need a change of underwear."
"Yes, you can go, Herr Ganz. You're an interesting man. No doubt about it. There's a lot more to you than meets the eye. You're staying at the Grande Bretagne, right? Perhaps you have Hermann Göring's bedroom. Or Himmler's. That should make you feel at home. You'll find the car is still waiting. My men will give you a ride." "No thanks. I'd prefer to walk if you don't mind. It will give me a chance to clear my head of the idea that it's about to receive an unwelcome visitor." I stood up, carefully, with one eye on the red handkerchief in her hand. "Wasn't it Sophocles who said that the end justifies any evil? I read that on a souvenir tea towel. Well, take it from one who knows. It doesn't. It never does. Germany learned this the hard way. I sincerely hope you don't have to learn the same lesson we did." The bandit queen shot me a sarcastic smile. "Go on. Get out of here. Take care of yourself, okay?" "I'm German. That's what we're good at." THIRTY-NINE – I took a cab back to the office but there was no sign of Garlopis, so I found some cigarettes and a bottle in his drawer, typed a two-page report for Lieutenant Leventis on Telesilla's English machine concerning my visit to see Arthur Meissner, and then, on my way back to the hotel, handed it in at the Megaron Pappoudof. Not being arrested and detained in Haidari seemed almost as important as not being plugged between the eyes by some trigger-happy kibbutznik. In my report I'd told the lieutenant nearly all of what I'd already told the bandit queen but since it asked more questions than it answered I didn't think it was going to be enough to get my passport back. I was never much for paperwork, even when I was in the Murder Commission. Anyway, I didn't mention the bandit queen; I wasn't sure that would have helped my cause.
Constitution Square was the usual human menagerie of lottery-ticket salesmen, pretzel vendors, cops, soldiers, pickpockets, beggars, musicians, and office workers hurrying to their bad-tempered buses and then home. Athens's answer to Alexanderplatz had everything to divert the unwary citizen and I stopped for a short while to watch as a skilled pavement artist sketched out a grotesque picture in chalk that made me think of a picture by George Grosz and served to remind me only of how much I missed the old Berlin with its Biberkopfs and Berbers, its bear and its beer. There's no one quite like George Grosz to make you think you need a stiff drink or, for that matter, that you've already had one. I knew this better than anyone, given my old acquaintance with George Grosz. I hurried into the hotel and found Achilles Garlopis waiting on one of the big sofas under a crystal chandelier. He got up like a beetle struggling to right itself and walked nimbly across the marble floor to greet me. "Thank God you're all right," he said, crossing himself in the Greek way. "When those men picked you up outside Averoff Prison I did my best to follow them in the Rover, but they lost me at the traffic lights. Not that I'd have known what to do if I had caught up with them. They were a tough-looking bunch."
"That they were." "They didn't look like police." "No. They weren't police." I didn't offer any further explanation; the less he knew about the bandit queen the better it would be for him. "Look, let's just forget it, can we?" "Surely, sir, surely." "No, let's get a drink. I have a craving to shrink my liver. Walking here just now it was all I could do not to drink the contents of my cigarette lighter." "Then let me buy you one. On second thoughts, let me buy you two." "At these prices? We'll have MRE pay for the damage. It's what they're good at." We sat down at the horn of alcoholic plenty that was the GB bar and summoned a waiter, whereupon I pointed at the tapestry of Alexander the Great. A boy on an elephant was holding up a hip flask and a couple of slaves were walking beside the chariot with what looked like a large pitcher full of wine on a stretcher. Another fellow with red hair was sucking on a golden bottle of Korn and trying to pretend it was a trumpet, the way you do after a good night out. Alexander himself was smiling and trying to stay upright and Great in the chariot he was standing in, like he'd already downed a glass or two of something warming.
"I'll have what he's having," I told the barman. "I'll have the same," said Garlopis, and then ordered two large whiskeys on the rocks, which seemed likely to produce the equivalent result. "Did Meissner tell you anything important? Anything useful? Anything that will satisfy Lieutenant Leventis?" "No, nothing that will help us. I fear we're going to have to bribe the bastard after all. Either that or I use the money to buy myself a new passport." The drinks arrived and almost immediately we ordered two more, as insurance. "A Greek passport? I wouldn't know how to help you do that, sir. Every Greek is equal to the task of giving or taking a bribe to a public official. Indeed no one would regard such a thing as criminal. But obtaining a false passport is something else, sir." "Then we'd better just stick to a bit of honest bribery." "So we'll cash the company's certified check tomorrow," said Garlopis. "We'll drive to the Alpha Bank in Corinth, like we planned." "You're sure the banks are open on a Saturday?"
"From nine until twelve, sir. I think you'll enjoy it in Corinth." He chuckled. "Especially when we've cashed the check and we're on the road back to Athens." "What's wrong with bribing Leventis on Sunday?" "Oh no, sir. That wouldn't do at all. You couldn't bribe someone on a Sunday. Not in Greece. Never on a Sunday. No Greek could tolerate that. And it will have to be done with great skill and diplomacy. Indeed, it's my considered opinion that we should bribe this man not just with money but with appreciation and esteem. We'll have to polish his ego with a soft cloth. 'I wouldn't insult you, Lieutenant, by offering you a few hundred, or a thousand,' that kind of thing. 'For a man like you, Lieutenant, one would feel obliged to offer five thousand.' That would not be an insult. Five thousand would be respect. Five thousand would be diplomacy. He will understand this kind of figure." "Suppose he wants more." "Of course, we _can_ pay ten thousand. We should keep this in the toga sleeve, so to speak. Believe me, sir, for any more than ten thousand we could get the minister of justice himself. But like any Greek official, Lieutenant Leventis is wise enough to know his true value. One more thing. If you'll permit me to say so, I think it's best a Greek such as myself handles this matter. Speaking as a translator, it's been my experience that when you're paying a man his _fakelaki_ it's best there's no linguistic room for doubt. And no loss of face. One Greek bribing another is commonplace, but somehow a German doing it seems unpatriotic."
"Sure. I'll buy that." "Let us hope we can buy our peace of mind." We had a couple more drinks and then I said good night and went upstairs. As I walked back to my room I wondered if Heinrich Himmler really had stayed at the GB or if it was a rumor; Greece had plenty of those. I had a hot bath—I could see the Megaron Pappoudof from the window after all—went to bed, read a book for three minutes before it fell from my hand, closed my eyes, and found myself somewhere blacker than mere darkness, as if death itself had swallowed me whole and I was struggling for breath. That was when Göring walked into the room with a lion cub under one chubby arm and demanded I move to another hotel. He was wearing a sleeveless green leather hunting jacket, a white flannel shirt, white drill trousers, and white tennis shoes. He was insisting that the room was always his whenever he came to Athens and that if I didn't leave he'd have his personal sniper shoot me when I was next taking a bath. Naturally I refused, at which point the telephone started ringing and Göring explained that it was probably the hotel management offering me Himmler's room instead. The Reichsführer-SS was still in Berlin or dead and wouldn't need it. I reached across the bed in the slowly clearing darkness, and answered it and found it was only Garlopis calling to tell me something about the house in Acropolis Old Town, 11 Pritaniou. I sat up, switched on the light, tried to clear my head, told him I was asleep even though I was awake, gulped some air into the tar pits I called my lungs and with it, some more sense into my sleep-confused brain.
"I said, one of my aunts left a message for me earlier on this evening," repeated Garlopis. "It's about the house at 11 Pritaniou. In Acropolis Old Town. Remember when we went there and found Herr Witzel's body and Lieutenant Leventis?" "Maybe I can remember if I try very hard." "He said a witness who was cleaning the Glebe Holy Sepulchre Church around the corner had reported seeing two men at the house. That witness was my aunt Aspasia, who lives not very far away from there. She's been cleaning the Holy Sepulchre church for thirty years. I didn't say so at the time because I didn't want to cause her any problems with the cops that might have been occasioned by my being related to her. They might have thought there was something fishy about that." "How many goddamn relations have you got, Garlopis? I never knew a man with so many cousins." "If you take a minute to think about this, sir, you'll realize that every one of my cousins must have a mother. And every one of those mothers is an aunt to Achilles Garlopis. Aunt Aspasia is the mother of my cousin Poulios, who works at Lefteris Makrinos car hire, on Tziraion Street, the same people from whom we hired the Rover. I have six aunts and uncles on my mother's side and seven on my father's. And for the record I have twenty-eight cousins. This is normal in Greece. But listen, sir, my aunt Aspasia, she left a message that there is someone in the house in Pritaniou again. _Now._ That's why I'm calling you so late. And she is sure it's not the police or the Gendarmerie."
"How is she sure?" "Because she doesn't like the police, sir. Not since the civil war. She thinks they're all thieves. And because she doesn't trust them she keeps a careful eye on them, too. She only reported hearing the shots that killed Witzel because she felt she had to. Since then, when the police were at the house in Pritaniou they had a uniformed man guarding the front door. And now there's no one. Also, there's a motorcycle parked in front—a red Triumph with a burst saddle that she thinks might belong to the owner." "Is that so?" I sat up, wide awake now, and looked at my watch. "Can you pick me up outside the hotel?" "I'll be there in twenty minutes, sir." I went into the bathroom, ran my head under a cold shower, drank a glass of water, and dressed hurriedly. I was just on my way out the door when the telephone rang again and I answered it, thinking it was Garlopis to say he'd arrived a bit early. But it wasn't Garlopis. It was Elli Panatoniou and her voice felt like ambrosia in my ear.
"Hey, I thought we'd arranged to go dancing." I looked at my watch again. It was still almost midnight. Suddenly I felt very old indeed. "We did? At this time?" "This is Athens. Nothing happens in Athens before eleven o'clock. Still, you're right. It wasn't a firm arrangement. But I thought I'd drop by anyway. I just wanted to see you." "I'll be down in two minutes." "I could come up to your room if you like. But you'll have to call the front desk and tell them." I cursed my fortune. It's not every night that a beautiful young Greek woman offers to come up to an old German's hotel bedroom. Suddenly things felt a lot like the two jars that Homer says Zeus kept by his office door, one containing good things and the other bad; he gave a mixture to some men and to others only evil, but to some he gave good that felt like it had been simultaneously snatched away in the course of the same beguiling late-night telephone call. For now I would have to deal with it as best I could, which gave me a new understanding of the concept of the heroic outlook. Suddenly I wanted to stick a javelin between a Trojan's ribs.
"No, I can't do that. As a matter of fact I just got a telephone call from Achilles Garlopis, and I have to go out, but now that you're here maybe you could come along with us. And perhaps we could do something afterwards." "Like what?" "I don't know. Look, I'm coming downstairs. We'll discuss it then." I had a pretty good idea of what we could do afterwards—especially as she'd already volunteered to come up to my hotel room—but I thought it best I give her another suggestion, one that didn't sound like I was taking anything for granted. "A drink," I said to myself, as I rode the elevator car down to the hotel lobby. "But it might be best if it's not here. It might look a bit obvious if you were to suggest the bar here. Look, she's bound to know a late-night bar somewhere hereabouts. She'll suggest this hotel if she's comfortable with coming up to your room again. Always supposing she's on the level. Either way Garlopis can drop us off and then we'll see what we'll see. That's nice of you, Gunther. You can be a real gentleman when you think it might get you somewhere. I can call you Gunther, now that we're on our own again, don't you think?"
Elli slipped off the big sofa in the hotel lobby and smiled a smile that was as bright as the chandelier above her head. Her perfume already had me by the knot in my tie and was gently kicking my brain around inside my skull. Sometimes trouble can smell good, especially the expensive kind they keep stoppered up in little jars and bottles and sell to women, or to the men dumb enough to buy it for them. She was wearing black slacks, a clinging black pullover, and red shoes that looked like she really had been serious about dancing after all. The black leather bag she was holding looked big enough to carry a grand piano. Her hair seemed to have grown some and it was even more lustrous than before, as if she'd licked every bit of it clean herself. If I'd been around I could have saved her the trouble. She held me tight for a moment and kissed me fondly on both cheeks, and I came away thinking I was a lucky boy; too lucky probably but I was working on that, slowly. In Greece, it's just standard practice to look a gift horse in the mouth.
"Where are we going?" she asked. "The owner of that boat we checked out in Ermioni," I said. "Siegfried Witzel." "I received a telephone call a few minutes ahead of yours. From Achilles Garlopis. It seems there's someone poking around at the house where he got himself murdered. And it isn't the cops. Could be the murderer come back to look for his monogrammed cuff links—a Nazi named Alois Brunner. Or maybe it's another Nazi called Max Merten. Then again, it might just be Witzel's ghost with nothing better to do than haunt the house. I don't know. There's a lot I don't know. I may never know what I don't know. That's a given with a case like this. I could be the dumbest claims adjustor since Woodrow Wilson signed off on the Treaty of Versailles. But I thought I'd go and check it out. Only it might be dangerous, angel. If it is Brunner or Merten, they won't like us turning up and asking questions or threatening them with cops. Could be you should stay in the car." At this point most normal girls would have cried off and pleaded an urgent appointment with a bottle of shampoo and a favorite book, but not Elli Panatoniou, who it seemed was made of the same Styx-dipped stuff as Achilles—although not, perhaps, Achilles Garlopis. And I certainly hadn't forgotten the little Beretta in her briefcase she'd been carrying in the bar at the Mega Hotel.
"Okay," she said simply, as if I'd just proposed nothing more dangerous than a late-night shopping trip or a visit to the local cinema. Before, I'd been merely doubtful of her motives in befriending me; now I was as suspicious as if she'd been a shy blond spinster sent to my hotel by Alfred Hitchcock. FORTY – If Garlopis was surprised to see Elli Panatoniou coming out the hotel front door with me he didn't show it. Instead he smiled politely, wished her a good evening, and opened the car door for her while I ducked silently into the Rover's front seat. But I could see he was nervous. Both of us knew that whoever it was at 11 Pritaniou, Greek or German, it probably spelled danger in either language. Near the Acropolis I told him to drive around a bit so that we could scout the area for police cars, but all we saw was an army truck near the entrance to the ancient citadel. "The Parthenon is guarded at night by a small troop of soldiers," he explained, "in case the Persians turn up and try to burn it again."
"That's the official reason," added Elli. "The reality is that Greeks were stealing pieces of the temple and selling it. My own grandfather has a piece on his desk." Nearer the Acropolis we saw a few rough sleepers. "Not so long ago it was the Armenians who fled to Greece," explained Garlopis. "Then it was Turkish Greeks. This year, it's the Hungarians and the Coptic Christian refugees who fled from Alexandria when the Israelis invaded the Sinai last October. Who knows who'll come here next?" "Why the Copts?" "Whenever there's a problem with Israel the Muslims take it out on the Copts. So they get on a boat—any kind of boat—and come to Greece. And to here in particular, where the tourist pickings are better." Elli said something in the backseat about British imperialists and Suez but I couldn't have cared less. The older I got the less I cared about anything. Besides, it was much too late for politics. About twenty-five years too late in my case; but in Athens it was never too late for politics and it wasn't long before Garlopis and Elli were arguing, in Greek.
"Park here," I told him above Elli's voice. "And not the Greek way either. Do it neatly. Like you're trying to pass your driving test. So as not to draw any attention to this car." Garlopis nodded and pulled up next to a row of small souvenir shops that had finally closed for the night. We were five minutes' walk from the house on Pritaniou but caution dictated a bit of distance. Just because Aunt Aspasia said there were no cops around didn't mean there were no cops around. They might have been watching the house from another address. It's what I'd have done if I'd been the detective working the Witzel case. Garlopis switched off the engine and took out his cigarettes. "If you don't mind, sir," he said, "I'll stay here, in the Rover. The last time we went in that house the police were waiting and we got ourselves arrested. My nerves couldn't take being arrested again. Not to mention Herr Witzel's dead body. I don't like the sight of blood any more than I like having a gun pointed at me." He picked up one of the towels he kept in the car and mopped his brow with it.
"Coward," said Elli. "Perhaps," said Garlopis. "But in youth and beauty, wisdom is but rare." Elli laughed. " _Coward_ ," she said again. "What the hell made you so hard-bitten?" I asked her. "Suppose you get into trouble. Suppose you need help. What kind of Achilles is it that stays in the car because he's afraid? No wonder this country is in such a disastrous state if men like this are called Achilles." "Leave him alone," I told her. "He's all right. And just for the record I don't give a shit about Suez or British imperialists, or anything else for that matter. Look, I think maybe you'd best stay here, too." "With him?" Elli's tone was scornful, and she was already getting out of the backseat of the car. "I don't think so." She slammed the Rover's rear door loudly and suddenly I wanted to slap her in the mouth: I was already regretting bringing her along for the ride. Instead I found myself pointing my forefinger at her, as if she'd been an unruly child. It wasn't that she was anything like a child, it was more that I wasn't anything like a boyfriend. I was old enough to be her father and felt guilty about the difference between our ages. Someone should have been pointing at my gray hairs and reminding me of what a chump I was. They'd have been right, too.
"Behave yourself," I told her. "Not everyone is cut out for this kind of trouble. But with me it's almost a full-time job, see? Garlopis is a salaryman. An office Fritz. So stop rubbing his nose into his conscience. And if you are coming along, you'd best do as you're told. Got that?" She took hold of my forefinger, kissed it fondly, and then nodded, but there was still mischief in her eyes; I felt like the floor manager in a casino—the guy that watches the customers to make sure they don't crook the house—only I still couldn't tell how she was doing it and how much she was getting away with. "Whatever you say, sir." "If we're not back in thirty minutes, go home," I told Garlopis. He looked bitterly at Elli. "With pleasure." Elli shot him a hard look that was replete with accusation, and I pulled her away before she could utter another reproachful remark. I didn't like her making cracks at Garlopis; that was my job. We walked up the street. Above us the rock on which the Acropolis was built was so sheer that you couldn't actually see the floodlit Parthenon on top. And I realized I hadn't actually seen it yet. Not close up. If there'd been more time I might have suggested we walk there. As it was I just wanted to close the books on the _Doris_ and get the hell out of the city and back to Germany. But I'd begun to see it might actually be a good thing to have Elli along if the address really was under surveillance.
"What have you got against that poor guy anyway?" "Oh, nothing very much," she said. "I suppose he reminds me of my own elder brother. He could amount to something if it wasn't for his lack of courage." "Don't be fooled. I'm a bona fide coward, just like Garlopis." Elli grinned. "Whatever you say, Christof." "I mean it. I haven't stayed alive all this time by collecting police medals." "So who do you think it will be that we find?" she asked. "I don't know. But then ignorance is man's natural state. It's not just ex-cops like me who are ill-equipped to separate the true from the false. But no matter how anonymous he or she might be, every murdered man had a family, friends, acquaintances, colleagues, and I'm hoping to run into one of these—someone who can tell me something new so that I know more than I knew before. Detective work is nothing more than uncovering a chain with the murdered man at one end and at the other, his murderer." "You make it sound like anyone could do it." "Anyone could and those anyones are called policemen. We'll walk past the address a couple of times before we go in. But first we'll act like we're a romantic couple out for a late-night stroll in one of the most romantic cities in the world, just in case anyone's watching."
Elli threaded her arm through mine and pressed her head against my shoulder. As we reached the Glebe Holy Sepulchre Church on the corner of Pritaniou, we turned the corner and slowed our pace to a crawl. Outside number 11 I stopped and took her in my arms. Behind the shutters on the top floor there was a light on and I could hear the sound of radio music. But the rest of the street looked as if the Persians had just left. "That's the idea," I murmured into her ear. "Give it plenty. The whole Lee Strasberg. Try to act like we don't have eyes for anything except each other." "Who's acting? No, really. I've decided. I like you, Christof. I like you a lot. You're not like Greek men. There's a lot more to you than what's floating around on the surface. They're all so shallow. You're—interesting." "Of course I am, sugar. I was Scab Professor of Philosophy and Mind at Himmler University from 1945 to 1950. Then president of the Diogenes Society until someone stole my barrel. You should read my book sometime about my work for nuclear disarmament."

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