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"I'm serious, you idiot." And then she kissed me like William Wyler was watching us from a hydraulic camera dolly. "Just don't ask me why. I can't explain it to myself." She gave me an excited squeeze. "That's Manos Hatzidakis. Radio EIR. The best music station in Athens. Maybe that's the reason." "Must be a Greek in there," I said, suddenly aware of how much I hated Greek music. "Or maybe that's all a German could find on the dial." In front of the same shabby double-height door was the dark red Triumph Speed Twin with the stuffing coming out of the single saddle, as accurately described by Garlopis's aunt Aspasia. I touched the engine block and discovered that it was still warm. She touched it, too, and said some more crazy stuff about how she was just as warm on me. We walked on a bit, shared a cigarette in another doorway, and then walked back. It seemed quiet enough. I looked at my watch; we'd already been ten minutes. In another thirty minutes or less Garlopis would leave in the Rover. It was time to close, as the insurance salesmen were fond of saying. The evil eye in the bough of the olive tree was giving it some extra focus in the moonlight and, for a moment, I had a bad feeling about what was going to happen. I suppose that was the point of it. I steered Elli through the wrought-iron gate and onto the flight of stone steps that led up the side of the house. It smelled vaguely of cat piss.
"You stay here, sugar," I said. "When I figure it's safe, I'll come and get you." "Be careful, Christof," she said. "I'm not much of a rescue squad." I missed being Bernie sometimes, but it seemed like a small price to pay compared with missing my liberty. I walked to the top of the steps and was about to climb over the wall, as I'd done before, but then I tried the wooden door and discovered it wasn't bolted. In the yard the cat was nowhere to be seen and everything had been cleaned up: the cracked terra-cotta pots and the rusted motorcycle were gone and even the fossilized grapes had been taken off the vine. There were no lights in the basement but on the upper floor the back bedroom was brightly lit—enough to illuminate the whole yard—and the window was open with a net curtain billowing gently out like a ghost that couldn't quite make up its mind whether to haunt the place. I walked down the steps to the French windows, pushed them open, and stepped into the squalid room where Witzel had met his death.
On the floor was a kit bag full of some very dirty laundry and a copy of _Gynaika_ magazine with a picture of Marilyn Monroe on the front cover. A British Webley .38 revolver lay on the table next to a pair of old binoculars, some stale bread, and a plate of tzatziki. There were also some keys, and one of these had a little brass ship's wheel, around the edge of which was engraved the name Δώρης. It was the same type of fob that I'd seen on Witzel's key chain when I'd met him for the first time in the office on Stadiou and my new knowledge of the Greek alphabet was just about enough for me to have a vague idea that the name in Greek was "Doris." I picked up the clunky gun and broke open the top to check if it was loaded, and found it chambered with the same anemic .38-caliber rounds that had almost cost the British the last war—I could never figure out why they made a Great War showstopper like the Webley .45 into a .38—but the smaller revolver could still do plenty of damage. I didn't take the gun along on my passage through the house because now that I was an insurance man I thought I should avoid as many risks as possible and all the actuarial tables prove that when you carry a gun people get shot, even the people holding them. So I emptied the six rounds into my hand and pocketed them, just in case.
I headed upstairs, tiptoeing toward the source of the Greek music and what looked like a seaman's peacoat that had been left lying across the banister. I don't know what I thought I was going to do but I didn't think shouting hello to the house was an intelligent option; I suppose I wanted to assess the risk, as Dumbo would have said, which meant finding out exactly who I was dealing with before announcing my uninvited presence. When I got to the top of the stairs I saw the bedroom door was half-open. A Greek wearing a vest was lying on a single bed; he had his back to the door and didn't see me. He was a strong-looking man maybe in his forties, with a sea serpent tattooed on his bare shoulder. I knew he was Greek because he was reading a Greek newspaper and because he was even smellier than his laundry. He was wearing a blue seaman's cap; what with the novelty key fob downstairs and perhaps because he was smoking the same kind of revolting menthol cigarette that Witzel had smoked, I thought I was probably looking at the captain of the _Doris._
"I'm guessing your name is Spiros Reppas," I said. "Who the fuck are you, _malaka_?" He tossed the newspaper aside and jumped off the mattress, but the cigarette stayed on his lip. He had black eyebrows and a bushy gray mustache that resembled the horns on an old water buffalo. There was a largish scar on his face that almost made me regret I hadn't brought along the gun. He had small piggy eyes that were full of what was in a bottle beside the bed. The man was drunk and more dangerous than I had supposed. "Take it easy, friend. My name is Ganz. I'm a claims adjustor from the company in Munich that insured the _Doris_. If you've come here looking for Siegfried Witzel, then I'm afraid I've got some bad news for you. Your boss is dead." "Dead, huh? How'd that happen?" "He was shot, in this house. Someone murdered him." "You did it, maybe?" "Not me. Maybe you haven't noticed but I'm not holding a gun on you. No, there's a cop says it was Alois Brunner shot your friend. Although you might know him better as Georg Fischer. Like I say, I'm just a claims adjustor."
"Is that what you call it?" "That's what everyone calls it. You've heard of insurance, haven't you? It's when you pay money in case something bad happens and if it does they give you a lot more money back. I don't know, but most people seem to understand how that works." "Maybe you'll pay me to stop something bad happening to you now." "That's a different kind of insurance. That's called extortion. Look, just cool your blood a minute, I'm not here to steal anything. Just to talk. Maybe I can help you." "You've said enough already, Fritz." Speaking German had been a mistake, not because he didn't understand it—he did—but because he must have thought that my being German meant I was there to kill him. It was a reasonable assumption, given the record of my countrymen in Athens; everyone knew that most Germans were ruthless and not to be trusted. But it was much too late to fetch the two native Greek speakers I'd left outside the house to try to reassure him in his own language that I was on the level and meant him no harm. I knew it was a mistake because his hand dipped into his trouser pocket and when it came out again it was holding a pearl-handled switchblade. A nice one. I decided to buy one myself if I ever got out of the house alive. He hadn't yet pressed the button to release the blade so there was still a second or two available for common sense to prevail.
"You really don't like insurance, do you?" "Could be. But most of all I don't like you. I'll probably think of a good reason why after you're bleeding to death on the floor." "Look, friend, there's no need to be as stupid as you look. I can see you haven't yet understood the principle of risk. You'd be surprised at how many idiots are injured getting out of a bath—although that obviously wouldn't ever happen to you—or just walking across a bedroom floor. But I promise you that's exactly what's going to happen unless you put away the toothpick." "Say your prayers, _malaka_ , because you're the one who's going to get injured." FORTY-ONE – Spiros Reppas thumbed the button on the pearl handle of the switchblade and it sounded as harmless as a camera shutter, but when he came slashing and jabbing at me with the point, I guessed he didn't want me to say cheese so I turned and ran down two flights of stairs three at a time with the idea of reaching the Webley on the table by the French windows. Of course, he couldn't know the gun was empty but I wanted it because even an empty Webley will get you further than no Webley at all.
I heard his feet close behind me and, realizing I wasn't going to make it to the Webley in time, I grabbed the navy peacoat off the banister to help me try to defend myself. When we reached the bottom of the stair, I spun around and using the coat, I smothered his first and second lunge with the knife. He took a step back, feinting with the blade, which he clearly knew how to use, drunk or sober, while I twisted the coat around my left forearm and prepared to parry a third thrust. Neither of us spoke. When two men have an honest difference of opinion it's best to let them settle it with a more old-fashioned sort of dialectic than pure reason. The third time he came snarling at me like a rabid dog he went for my throat and I raised my thickly wrapped forearm to prevent his switchblade from slicing through my jugular. The navy peacoat absorbed most of the blade's sharp length but it wasn't thick enough to stop the tip of the knife from stabbing my arm. I yelled with pain, twisted my arm and the knife to one side, and then lashed at him with my right. It was a good punch, a big Schmeling uppercut that ought to have broken his jaw except that he ducked under it, clawed the coat away with the knife, and came at me again. There was fear and murder in his red-rimmed eyes and maybe just a hint of uncertainty now about the outcome; I expect I looked much the same way myself. Fortunately the knife came within reach now, a few inches from my nose, and high enough for me to clap my two hands hard on opposite sides of his arm simultaneously—one on the back of his hand and the other on the inside of his forearm—a fortunate bit of training I remembered from the Berlin police academy in the days when it seemed every punk on the streets thought he was Mackie Messer. I got lucky. Luckier than I deserved, given the injury to my own forearm. My right hand stopped his wrist from moving and my left smacked hard on the back of his big hairy paw, forcing the Greek's fingers to open suddenly so that the knife flew out of his fist and clattered onto the floor. It was his turn to yell with pain; I might even have broken his right wrist but he stayed on his feet and even barged past me to grab the Webley off the table with his left.
Instinctively I took a step back and raised my hands long enough to discover blood was dripping down my left arm from where he'd managed to stick me. I knew I was going to need some stitches in a hospital, which would certainly spoil the rest of my evening and reduce my chances of sleeping with Elli. And that irritated me. But I let him think he had the upper hand for a minute in the hope of learning something more before I showed him the error of his ways and punched him very hard on the nose—the nose was probably best, there's nowhere that can end things quite as abruptly as a good punch on the nose, especially when you're least expecting it. "So where is Professor Buchholz?" I asked. Reppas thumbed back the hammer of the Webley as if he really meant to shoot me. I knew that all six rounds were safely in my pocket but even when you know a gun is empty it still makes you feel uncomfortable to have one pointed at you by someone who wants to murder you. You ask yourself if you really did empty every chamber, or if someone else might have reloaded the weapon while you were out of the room. Crazy stuff like that.
"Or shall we say Max Merten? What about him? My guess is that you and he have been lying low somewhere since the _Doris_ went down. But where? Somewhere near Ermioni? Kosta, perhaps? Does he even know that his partner is dead? And that there won't be any insurance money now." "I hope you're insured, _malaka_ ," said the Greek. "Siegfried Witzel came back to Athens to claim on the insurance for the _Doris_ , didn't he? Leaving the pair of you safely down there. And he said he'd call you when he'd completed the paperwork. But when he didn't, you got impatient or curious or even worried and so you decided to come and look for him. Is that how it was? Look, I didn't shoot him. But the cops want the man who did on account of how he also killed a lot of Jews during the war." The next second Reppas pulled the trigger—I heard another harmless camera-shutter sound—and at that point I felt the hammer come down on my own shortening temper. "I take that very personally," I said. Even while he was glancing dumbly at the Webley and realizing what had happened, I stepped forward and smashed his nose with the heel of my hand, which saves a lot of unnecessary wear and tear on the knuckles. The blow carried him across the table and through the open French window. He lay still for a moment in an untidy heap of bloody nose and broken glass and I cursed Bernhard Gunther's stupidity for giving the man a fair chance in the first place.
_You should have put the Bismarck to his thick head and saved yourself the bother. The old tried-and-tested ways are the best. You do it to the other guy before he does it to you. When are you going to realize that there's nothing to be gained in trying to be decent in a situation like this? The war should have taught you that much, anyway._ Malaka _is right. This has cost you a good suit. Not only that but now you're going to have to wait around until he's stopped bleeding to get some answers._ I shook some life back into my stunned hand, took off my jacket, and checked the wound on my left forearm—which, while it wasn't quite as bad as it felt, was still going to need a few stitches—and then collected the gun and the knife off the floor. I pocketed the knife and slid the lozenge-shaped barrel of the Webley under the waistband of my trousers. If there had been a clean towel to hand I might have wrapped it around my arm. Outside Reppas was groaning a little too loudly for comfort so I picked up a foot and started to drag him back into the house, just in case his neighbors were the sort of Greeks to complain about noise. What with the Persians burning the Acropolis and raping the priestesses in the temple they ought to have been used to it. Probably they thought it was just the sound of Reppas smashing some dinner plates at the end of a jolly evening, the way Greeks do when they're having a good time. It makes you wonder what might happen if they ever got upset about something. As I pulled, his boat shoe came off, which meant I dropped his leg for a moment. So I picked it up again and, in spite of his horribly stinking sock, folded his foot under my arm and finished bringing him back into the house. I closed the French windows, switched on the light, took a close look at the strawberry jam mess I'd made of the captain's face, and then his right wrist, which wasn't broken after all. Concluding he no longer posed much of a threat, I searched his trouser pockets and, finding nothing, went to fetch his peacoat. I found his wallet, stepped out of the front door, and walked around to the side of the house, to speak to Elli.
She threw away the cigarette she'd been smoking, stood up, and took my arm gently. "You're hurt," she said. "It's really just a scratch." Even as I said it, I doubted that it was true. "Must have been some cat. What happened in there?" "Not a cat. A shark with pearly white teeth bit me, dear. It's my suit that's ruined, not me. You didn't hear anything?" "No." "Good." "So who is it in the house? The Nazi?" "No such luck. It's Spiros Reppas. The captain of the _Doris_." "You didn't kill him, did you? Only, there's quite a lot of blood on your hands." She was a cool one, all right. The way she spoke made me think that it wouldn't have bothered her very much if I had killed him. "He won't be sniffing any roses soon, but otherwise he's fine. Just a headache and a broken nose." "Thank God for that. In my experience the Greek police take a pretty dim view of murder." "Look, go and fetch Garlopis, will you, angel?" "All right. But I don't like it here. This is hardly my idea of a night out. We could have been having a lot of fun if you weren't an ex-cop."
"I'm sorry about that. But we can't leave. Not quite yet. I need to ask our seafaring friend some questions first. Up until now we were just exchanging blows. He's been pacified so tell Garlopis the danger is over but that I need those clean towels he keeps on the car seats. I have to use one of them on my arm and the other on the captain's face. And be nice. For a coward Garlopis is actually quite a decent fellow when you get to know him. I should know. Like I already told you, I'm often a coward myself." "I sincerely doubt that." "It's true. The only reason I went in there was because I was afraid of what might happen if I didn't. Believe me, sometimes bravery is just the very small space that exists between two kinds of fear: his and mine. Now go and get him like a good girl. And the towels. Don't forget to bring those towels." FORTY-TWO – I threw one of the clean towels at Spiros Reppas, who was now seated quietly on the battered sofa, and waited for him to wipe his ruined face; his nose looked like a butcher's elbow and his eyes were full of whatever protein-filled plasma fills them when you rearrange a man's face for the worse. Aqueous humor, I suppose, but nobody was laughing. With my left forearm wrapped in another towel, I was seated at the table and had the Webley right in front of me hoping it might underline my questions and lack of patience with the way things had gone up until now; but the gun was still unloaded because I'd shot people before who tried to murder me and I didn't want any more blood spilled. A broken nose and a cut on a forearm were enough splash for one evening.
Elli and Garlopis were hovering in the doorway beside the stairs, uncertain and uncomfortable witnesses to an interrogation they'd rather have avoided. They probably wondered if I was capable of hurting Reppas again. I was wondering the same thing. In the bedroom upstairs the radio was playing another jolly Greek tune and Elli was quietly humming along with it until I shot her a narrow-eyed, irritated look that was supposed to make her desist. She was nervous, I guess, and trying to hide it. The sight of guns and knives and quite a bit of blood will do that to some women. On the other hand, maybe she just didn't see that this was hardly the time or the place to have a song in your heart. "Why don't you go upstairs and turn that damn radio off?" I said. "It's irritating me." "Don't you like Greek music?" she asked. "Not particularly. And while you're up there, have a peek around and see what you can find." "What am I looking for?" "You'll know it if you see it." "There speaks the great detective."
"Whatever gave you that idea?" "I had the strange idea that Leventis believes you are." "Everyone looks like a great detective to a cop like him. Even an old Kraut like me." "You're not so old, for an old guy." She went upstairs. She moved like a black panther—rare, beautiful, and still steeped in unfathomable mystery—and after a while the radio went quiet, which left some room for my brain to untangle itself. I tossed the injured man's wallet to Garlopis. I'd already looked through it, but everything inside was printed in Greek. "See what this can tell us," I growled at him, still irritated but now more with myself, mostly for being irritated at Elli. Then again, someone trying to shoot you will do that sometimes. I lit a couple of cigarettes, because a cigarette is the perfect panacea for injured forearms and broken noses, a heal-all nostrum that requires no medical training and always works like magic. I tucked one between the captain's bloodstained lips and smoked in silence for a moment, remembering something Bernhard Weiss had told me when he was still the boss of the Murder Commission at Berlin's Alex:
"Make the silence work for you," he'd said. "Just look at the way Hitler makes a speech. Never in a hurry. Waits for the audience to settle, and the expectation to mount. 'When will he speak?' 'What will he say?' It's the same with a suspect. Have a cigarette, check your fingernails, stare at the ceiling, like you've got all the time in the world. Your suspect will be telling himself that he's the one who's supposed to have nothing better to do, not you. Chances are your man will say something even if it's to tell you to go and screw yourself." After a minute or two Reppas wiped his nose again, inspected the amount of blood on the towel, removed the cigarette from his mouth, and spat a scarlet gob to one side. Cigarette and psychology were evidently working well. "So what happens now, _malaka_?" "That's up to you, Captain." "Says the man with the gun." "Look, friend, it's your gun, not mine. And if you hadn't pulled the trigger on me you might still be breathing straight." "It doesn't work unless you pull the trigger."
"That was your second stupid mistake. The first was leaving it lying around where someone could come along and unload it." He looked at the gun, then at me. "So if it's not loaded then why am I sitting here and listening to you? What's to stop me throwing you out of here right now?" "Me. That's what. Look, your nose is already broken. Be a shame if I had to break your arm as well." "Maybe I'll risk it." "If you do I'd advise you to take out lots of insurance first. You're still drunk and already in quite a bit of pain. That gives me all the edge I need." Reppas nodded. "So what else do you advise?" "Only that you give me a short history lesson. Recent history. There's no need to relive the glory that was Greece. Just everything that happened since Max Merten showed up in Attica. You see, there's this cop called Lieutenant Leventis at the Megaron Pappoudof on Constitution Square, here in Athens. He's the one who found your boss dead in this house, probably murdered by Alois Brunner, also known as Georg Fischer. A tenacious sort, he's been very anxious to speak to anyone regarding Brunner's present whereabouts. So anxious that he's been strong-arming me to do some of his investigative work for him. Working a murder case is a little outside my current terms of employment but what could I do? The lieutenant can be a very persuasive fellow. He's holding my passport as collateral. I guess he concluded that since Siegfried Witzel was a fellow German and a client of my company in Munich, I could help him clear up this whole damn mess. I imagine this might be your job now. Then he can ask _you_ all the awkward pain-in-the-ass questions he's been asking me. So one possibility is for me to call him up and have him come here to arrest you. Because let's face it, you know more than I do what this is all about. I'm just a claims adjustor from Germany who wishes he'd stayed home.
"All of that is on one side of the actuarial balance sheet. Maybe you're a talker and perhaps you can gab your way out of trouble. I won't argue about it. I'll leave that to you and Lieutenant Leventis. He likes to talk, and to argue. For hours. But on the other side is that I have a small claim of my own against Max Merten. But for him I wouldn't be in this mess. So I was thinking I might be persuaded to let you walk out of this house without involving cops. I might even return your wallet and pretend you'd never been here. You could take off on that motorcycle and disappear for a few weeks, while I go and visit Max Merten. Only you'd have to tell me where I can find him. And then, when all this is over, you can come back here and pick up the pieces of your life." I shifted some of the shards of glass under my feet as if to make a metaphorical point. "If I might interrupt you, sir." Garlopis was holding up an identity card. "According to his ID this man—Spiros Reppas—he lives on Spetses. That's a small island just a few kilometers south of Kosta, which is where the taxi from Ermioni went after the _Doris_ sank. Mpotasi Street, number 22."
Garlopis continued to search the wallet. "That fits. Anything else?" "Just some money. A ferry ticket. A driving license. A business card that describes a scuba diving business, also on Spetses." "Spetses. Is that where Max Merten is hiding, Captain?" "Maybe," said Reppas. "Maybe not. Maybe you just want to kill him, too." "From what I've heard concerning what he did to the Jews of Salonika, he needs killing, badly. Only that's not up to me. I'm an insurance man, not an assassin. Frankly I'd much prefer to make a gift of Merten to the Greek people. Lieutenant Leventis tells me that he would dearly like to arrest Alois Brunner and put him on trial for war crimes. But I'm guessing that Leventis will probably settle for getting Max Merten in his place. The way I see it, if I can deliver Merten to him on a plate then it will be a big feather in his cap; he'll give me my passport back and I can go home again. Simple as that." "You'd do that? For me?" Reppas grinned a sarcastic sort of grin that almost made me want to break his nose again.
"No, not for you. But for the people of Greece, yes, I would. Only you'd better hurry up and spill your guts before my friend over there finds any more useful information in your wallet. Now that I have an address your own currency is shrinking faster than a wad of wet drachmas, Spiros." "All right, all right. But first just tell me exactly what happened to Siegfried Witzel. Please. He was my friend for twenty years. A good friend, too. For a German." "Exactly, I don't know. Like I said, I'm just the fellow from the insurance company. We came to this house to make Witzel an interim payment, pending final settlement, and found him dead on this floor. He'd been shot through both eyes. There was a cop here, too. Since when that cop's been inclined to pretend that we had something to do with it, as a means of catching the real culprit. Plugging his victims through the eyes is the signature of Alois Brunner, the Nazi war criminal. I think Brunner used me to lead him to this house because he was after Witzel. That's as much as we know about what happened here."
"What happened to the body?" "The body?" "Is Siegfried buried yet? Cremated, or what?" "I have no idea." Reppas nodded somberly. "That's a pity. He was a good friend to me." "So far this is me patiently answering your questions, Captain Reppas. What's more I've a cut on my arm that's in urgent need of repair. Not only that but it's telling me to see if I can't straighten your nose with my fist if you don't tell me what I want to know, and soon." The room was silent. Reppas gave no clue as to his thoughts. Then, just as I was about to make a fist and tap him with it, he said: "All right. I'll tell you everything." "Make sure you do. And by the way I already know the real purpose of your expedition wasn't to dive for an ancient Greek treasure but for a modern Jewish one. And I might as well tell you that it's not just the Greek police who would love to meet you, my friend. There are some Israelis in town who are interested in this story, too. You wouldn't want to meet them. Not because they're Jews. But because they're not as patient as me. Can't blame them for that, I guess. History has taught them that if it is going to repeat itself, this time they're going to be the ones with the guns and the hard faces and the bloody-minded will to come out on top."
FORTY-THREE – Elli came back downstairs and shook her head. "Nothing," she said. "There's plenty of that lying around. I used to wonder what it might be like in one of these little houses next to the Acropolis. Well, now I know. This place is a mess." Reppas dragged hard on the cigarette and exhaled slowly through his twisted nostrils. In their mangled state, it looked as if the ruins of his nose were still smoldering after a small explosion in the center of his face. I handed him another cigarette and he lit it with the butt and then looked for an ashtray; it was a fastidiousness that bordered on the absurd, given the state of the carpet. Garlopis fetched one from somewhere and presented it to him as gravely as if he'd been a butler offering his master a silver salver. Elli took one, too, and let him light her. "No one said you could stop talking," I told Reppas. "Sometimes my German is not so good," he said. "The boss spoke Greek to me when he was sober and German when he was drunk. Which was quite a lot of the time. When I realized you were German, I thought you were working for Brunner. That's why I pulled the knife on you. With a man like that it doesn't pay to take any chances. I'm sorry. This was my late sister's house. Nobody lives here or even knows about this place. At least, that's what I thought. So when you just appeared in the bedroom like that I thought you were here to kill me. Next time, knock on the door or bring a parrot to speak some Greek for you. Otherwise one day you're going to end up dead."
"Maybe I would have done if Witzel hadn't already met his maker here. And if his murderer wasn't still at large. And if the cops who were supposed to be keeping an eye on this place hadn't vanished. All of that tends to make an insurance man a little cautious." "Sure, I can understand that. I've been a bit cautious myself since the ship sank: lying low at my house in Spetses. Merten was flat against Siegfried coming back to Athens to make the claim until we were quite sure it was safe. They argued about it when we were still in the dinghy. He said Brunner would surely be looking for us. It was Brunner who sank the _Doris_ , see? Some sort of delayed-action incendiary device. But the boss wouldn't hear of not coming back here to make the claim as soon as possible; he said the ship was his whole world and unless the insurance company paid up he stood to lose everything, not just some gold he never had in the first place. The _Doris_ wasn't just his livelihood, it was also his home, see? So he figured it was worth the risk. Besides, the boss could always look after himself. And we figured it was safe him coming here, given that no one knew about this house. I inherited it from my sister a few months ago. She lived in Thessaloniki and, well, you can see I haven't got around to doing very much with it."
"Now I can refuse the insurance claim with a clear conscience. But back up a bit. I said I knew that the real purpose of the expedition was to find some sunken Jewish gold, but I want the full story. Take it from the beginning. The whole alpha to omega. How did Max Merten know your boss in the first place?" "From before the war. In Berlin. Siegfried Witzel started out as a lawyer and then changed to studying zoology. Don't ask me how that works. During the war he was a member of a combat diving unit in the German navy called the Division Brandenburg. But he'd already trained with the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS, who were the leaders in underwater warfare. That's where he got this passion for scuba work and that's how I got to know him; I'm part Italian myself. In the last months of the war he bought himself the _Doris_. I think Merten had something to do with that. And then almost as soon as he could he came back down to Greece and the two of us went into business together making underwater films. One of them even won an award at the Cannes Film Festival. That went to the bottom of the sea, as well as all our cameras.
"Anyway, a few weeks ago Merten shows up with another German. A fellow named Schramma. Christian Schramma. Except that there wasn't anything very Christian about him. He was a thug, from Munich, and I think Merten brought him along for security." "I was wondering if he'd make an appearance in this story." "Only a brief one. He's dead, by the way. Brunner shot him. But before Brunner turned up to spoil the show, Merten and the boss seemed to have it all worked out; we were going to sail to some shallow waters off the Peloponnesian coast, dive to the wreck of the _Epeius_ , and bring up part of the Jewish gold under the cover of an expedition to find ancient Greek artifacts. You know about that, right?" I nodded. "As much as I need to know, for now." "Not all of the gold, you understand. Just as much as we could get in a week or two—perhaps a couple of hundred bars—using just one diver: the boss. Everything looked perfect. We had the proper permissions from museums and ministries, which Merten, passing himself off as some important German professor of archaeology, had previously arranged. I have to admit he was very thorough. We were all set to sail when this fellow calling himself Georg Fischer shows up. He came aboard the ship while we were still moored at the marina in Piraeus, cool as you like, and it was obvious he and Merten knew each other, and that Merten was afraid of him. It soon became clear that Merten and Fischer had once been partners and that Fischer—it was only when we got to Spetses that I found out his real name was Alois Brunner—had been double-crossed by Max Merten during the war. Along with some other SS officers they'd stolen the gold from the Jews together. Now Brunner told Merten that he wanted his share and that he'd decided to come along on the expedition with us, just to keep an eye on things, but that he'd also decided to give himself an insurance policy by lodging a letter with a local lawyer explaining what Merten was really up to. If something happened to him and he didn't return to Athens within thirty days, the letter would be sent to the Greek authorities. Merten agreed; well, he didn't have much choice. Brunner said he'd even provide us with a genuine artifact to help with our cover story—just in case the coast guard showed up and started asking questions—because, conveniently for us, he was in the business of exporting art treasures. So we took delivery of a packing case with a Greek horse's head inside, and that's probably how we ended up taking the incendiary on board.
"As soon as Brunner left the boat the boss asked me to follow him and I tailed him back to his hotel, the Xenon, in Piraeus. Later on, I went back there again and, for a few drachmas, the hotel operator showed me all the telephone calls Brunner had made from his room. By ringing them, one after the other, I managed to find the name of Brunner's lawyer in Glyfada, Dr. Samuel Frizis. The boss knew this local burglar called Tsochaztopoulos and we met up with him at the Chez Lapin club in Kastella. The boss gave him fifteen hundred drachmas to break into the lawyer's office and steal Brunner's letter, only he was supposed to do it without the lawyer ever finding out. Simple as that. Just find the file for a client named Fischer and steal what was in it. I waited outside the office while Choc went inside. Took him no time at all. Said it was the easiest fifteen hundred he'd made in a long while. "I brought the letter back to the ship and we waited for Brunner to join us, as previously arranged. The plan was that by the time the lawyer discovered the letter was missing from his office Brunner would be at sea with us and we'd just chuck him over the side with the horse's head tied to his feet. But something went wrong. I think Brunner had some thugs of his own and one of them saw me following him to his hotel. Anyway, the bastard smelled a rat and before joining us on board he asked his lawyer to check to see if he still had the letter. And when the lawyer couldn't find it, Brunner must have figured he was going to be double-crossed by Merten a second time, because he came aboard secretly the night before we were to sail. Schramma disturbed him and the two exchanged gunshots. Schramma was killed and Brunner hightailed it off the ship and onto the quayside in Piraeus. Not long after that we set sail, and so it ended up being Christian Schramma's weighted body we dropped over the side."
"That's the first bit of good news I've heard in a while." "You knew him?" "Yes. And well enough to say he got what was coming to him. He murdered two people in Munich and got away with it, thanks to Max Merten. And I have to say, to me as well. I made a mistake there. I thought I was protecting Merten. I thought Merten was innocent. But he wasn't. He never was." "Merten's a crafty one, and no mistake. After we set sail we decided that since Brunner hadn't any clue as to the area we'd planned to dive in—and don't ask me where that is, honestly, I don't know. Merten kept the exact longitude and latitude to himself for fear that we would double-cross him and now I realize why—we could lie low in Spetses for a while, just in case Brunner had blown the whistle on us. Then, when we judged things were safe, we'd go and look for the gold as planned. None of us had a clue that before he'd shot Christian Schramma and left the ship Brunner had activated some sort of delayed-action incendiary device in the packing case beside the horse's head. Probably that was the real purpose of his coming aboard in the night. Anyway, it was a couple of hours before the thing went off. By which time we were far out to sea. We'd just finished sending Schramma to the bottom when we discovered we were on fire. We tried to get it under control but it was impossible; the boss reckoned the incendiary was made of phosphorus and there was no putting it out.
"We started to sink and so we had to abandon ship. We grabbed a few things, came ashore in the dinghy, and Merten and I took a taxi and then a ferry to Spetses, while the boss caught the ferry to Piraeus. Said he would make contact with us as soon as he could, and for several days the telegrams kept coming. But when the boss stopped sending them I decided to come up to Athens on my motorcycle and find out what had happened to him. And here I am." "So Merten is alone at your house in Spetses?" "Not entirely alone. There's a local woman who comes in every other day to cook and clean." "Is he armed?" "Yes. He has Schramma's own Walther pistol." "I shall want the door key." "In my coat pocket you'll find another key with an address label on it." He pointed at the coat lying on the floor at my feet and I nodded. "Get it." He picked up the coat, found the key, and handed it over. "Is your house on the telephone?" I asked. Reppas paused, and waved his fingers in the air. "I have to think of the way to say some of these things in German. Merten only ever speaks Greek to me. Speaking German like this, it's tiring, you know. The only telephone in Spetses is at the hotel. But it's not working right now. This is island life in Greece. Lots of things don't work like they're supposed to. They've only just discovered the wheel on Spetses. Priests cross themselves when they walk past a bar with a jukebox. Or see a woman wearing a bathing costume."
"I'm kind of religious about that myself. How did you get the telegrams from Witzel?" "I had to go to Kosta on the ferry and collect them from the post office in the town." "How long will Merten stay put down there? Before he figures out that you're not coming back. Which you're not. Not for several weeks, if you've got any sense." "I have a nephew in Thessaloniki. I shall stay with him." He tried to look thoughtful, but it came off as something grotesque, like a gargoyle trying to solve a crossword puzzle. "But Merten? I don't know for sure. I do know he's scared. Every time he heard the door open he thought it was Brunner and grabbed Schramma's Walther. My guess is that he'll be staying put for a while. Originally, I was going to travel back the day after tomorrow, even if I didn't find the boss here." "Where were you planning to look for him?" "I was going to check out some of our old haunts in Piraeus. Bars and brothels mostly. The boss liked a drink and a girl, usually in that order. So maybe you have several days to go down to Spetses yourself, right? And do whatever it is you say you're going to do. Cops or killing, it makes no difference to me now. But for Merten, my friend would still be alive and we'd still be in the scuba business."
Reppas finished his second cigarette and stubbed it out. All his previous belligerence was now gone. He dabbed his nose and inspected the towel for another red mark, like a woman checking her lipstick. "Are you really intending to let me walk out of here?" "Sure. Why not? You're a fish I'm throwing back, Spiros. It's Merten I want to make a lot of trouble for, not you. He's the real criminal here. You can even take your gun with you." I picked up the barrel and handed over the empty Webley and a handful of bullets. "You might even need it. For all I know Brunner might still be in Athens. He strikes me as the kind of fellow who isn't easily scared off. It could be that he thinks he owes you a bullet in lieu of a share of the gold. If I were you I'd keep away from some of your old haunts in Piraeus. He's already murdered that lawyer whose office you burgled in Glyfada—Dr. Frizis." Reppas put the Webley and the ammunition in his coat pocket. "Thanks for the advice," he said. "Tell me, why did your boss go along with Merten's scheme in the first place? He was a marine biologist, an important filmmaker who'd won a prize at the Cannes Festival. He didn't strike me as a Nazi. Surely he'd left that world behind."
"Clearly you don't know much about filmmaking." Spiros Reppas shrugged. "Making any kind of film is expensive but underwater films, more so. And it doesn't pay that well. It's not like they were queuing around the block to see our little movie, right? Who goes to see a film like _The Philosopher's Seal_ , about Mediterranean monk seals?" "I must admit I missed it myself." "He sold it to a few television companies and that was it. He was in debt. And he needed to raise money to make our next documentary—a film about the lost city of Atlantis. You don't have to be a Nazi to be greedy for money. There was that. And then there was all of that Jewish gold lying in only fifteen fathoms of water just waiting for someone to come and salvage it. Millions and millions of dollars' worth of gold melted down and recast as gold bars by a foundry Max Merten had specially built in Katerini, sometime in the spring of 1943. According to Merten, all of the bars on the _Epeius_ carried a specially faked date and stamp from the Weigunner foundry at Essen."
"How does that help?" "The significance of this smelt is that it's dated 1939, which predates both the invasion of Greece and the murder of Europe's Jews. It looks like prewar Reichsbank gold bullion. All of which makes it much easier to move on the world's bullion markets. Well, who can resist a story like that? Not me, and not Siegfried Witzel. But maybe there was one more thing, I don't know. I think there was maybe something about the way the _Doris_ had come into Witzel's possession that Merten knew about and which he was prepared to exploit." "There was," I said. "Like the gold, the ship was originally confiscated from the Jews of Salonika, and Merten sold it to Witzel, in 1943, for a knockdown price. He changed the name of the ship to make sure this remained secret." "Yes," said Reppas, "that would explain a lot. It was always stick and carrot with Merten; sometimes he was leading the boss on with estimates of how much gold was down there—each time more than the last—and sometimes he was threatening to tell the police about how the boss had acquired the ship in the first place."
"One more question: Did Max Merten discover exactly how Brunner found out about your expedition? After all, it was fourteen years since Merten double-crossed Brunner and arranged for the _Epeius_ to be scuttled. And twelve since the end of the war. Max Merten has been living openly as a lawyer in Munich all this time. The Americans offered to extradite him to Greece in 1945 but the Greek government said he wasn't wanted in connection with any war crimes. He's been a model citizen in Munich, a man with friends in the West German government. By contrast, Alois Brunner is a hunted war criminal living under a false name. The Greeks want him, as do the Israelis, and so I imagine do the French. How did he find out that Merten had come back to Greece?" Spiros Reppas frowned. "Like I said, sometimes my German is not so good. I understand German when someone speaks to me and I can see their lips moving. Overheard is not so easy for me. Also the longer compound words are difficult. But I think maybe I heard Merten tell Witzel that someone close to Adenauer must have told Brunner that he, Merten, was coming to Greece. And that Brunner wouldn't be the first old Nazi to go to work for the new German government."
Reppas took a superhuman drag on the cigarette and threw up his hands in defeat. "That's it, mister. Every damn thing I know. I've no idea what's to become of me now." He sighed. "I've lost my best friend and I've lost my livelihood. Can I ask you a question?" "Fire away." "Diving can be dangerous. The boss always said that if anything ever happened to me while he was diving the _Doris_ would be mine. I don't suppose there's any chance you'll reconsider your decision on the insurance money. That you could make out a check to me instead of him. I'd be more than happy to accept a reduced figure. Ten cents on the dollar, perhaps. After all the ship was old and probably not worth half of what the boss said it was." "Sorry, no. My employers are kind of funny about paying out in cases involving arson. They don't do it, as a rule. But if you can find a last will and testament naming you as my client's sole heir, you could always take them on in the courts. I wouldn't give much for your chances, mind. Even in Germany there's probably some small print that discriminates against the kind of people who go after millions in stolen Jewish gold." I took out my wallet and handed him some money. I decided I could probably afford it out of the twenty thousand I was going to have when we cashed the certified check on the way to Spetses in the morning. "But to show you there are no hard feelings, here's fifty. Get yourself a new nose."
FORTY-FOUR – The next morning we cashed the certified check at the Alpha Bank in Corinth, with me pretending to be Siegfried Witzel, as planned. While we were still in the bank there was a small earth tremor, which did little to make me feel better about what I was doing, although that might as easily have been the ten stitches in my left forearm—now in a black sling, as if I was in mourning—and the painkillers I was taking. But even for a self-confessed coward like Achilles Garlopis it seemed that the venetian blinds swaying gently on the bank's windows were nothing to be concerned about. "In Corinth these things happen all the time," he said, crossing himself just to be on the safe side. "Which is to say, when the gods are angry with us. I often think that earth tremors are why we believe in the gods in the first place." "I'm sure I can't think of a better reason." "Oh, I can." He nodded at the window, through which we could see the Rover and Elli sitting inside it, and smiled a mischievous smile. "At least I can when I look at Miss Panatoniou."
She was outside because I thought it best for her legal career that she should stay away from the larceny being carried out inside the Alpha Bank. Not that she seemed to care very much about that. For a lawyer she wasn't averse to taking risks. More than seemed at all judicious. "Maybe you should become a priest," I said. "A sermon like that beats anything the Lutherans have to offer." "It's strange, but she really seems to like you, sir. Women are odd creatures, aren't they? I mean, there's no accounting for a woman like this. And when she's around it's like the sun is out. The way she looks at you—it's like she's shining upon you." "A man can get burned if he stays in the sun for too long." "I don't think she's the type to burn you. Just dazzle you a bit. Always supposing such a thing is even possible." "Actually, I'm not sure it is anymore." When the tremor finally stopped the money was paid over without so much as a raised eyebrow. We hung around in Corinth afterward only long enough to meet the Alpha Bank clerk less formally in a nearby bar and to pay him the five percent handling fee that had been agreed upon with the cousin of Garlopis. The clerk was not much more than a boy with a face as cold as a marble statue. Corinth itself was equally dull and featureless, a bleak, low-lying city on the sea, with little to recommend it except the eponymous canal, which cut straight across the isthmus like the scar on my forearm. It was hard to imagine the apostle Paul bothering to send a long letter to the Corinthians except to question why they were living there and not somewhere else more interesting like Athens or Rome. More usefully, Corinth was halfway to Kosta, where there was a regular foot ferry to Spetses. Since I couldn't turn the heavy steering wheel of the Rover without my arm hurting, it was Elli who was driving the car. We took Garlopis to a bus stop so that he could travel safely back to Athens. I felt bad about involving Elli in the business with Max Merten, but not as bad as Garlopis felt about exposing himself to something he considered much more dangerous than the simple movement of the earth.
"I know this man," I told Garlopis in a last attempt to persuade him to come with us to Kosta while we waited for the bus to arrive. "Max Merten. And take it from me, I can handle him. Rough or smooth. Last time I saw him he was fat and the only danger I was in was that his liver might explode. He's a pen pusher, not a dangerous sadist like Brunner. And I've dealt with hundreds of men like him." "I know you think that, sir. But there are ten reminders stitched into your arm to suggest you might just be wrong. Besides, you heard what Spiros Reppas said. Merten has a gun and he's nervous. Which makes it all the more perplexing to me that you should have returned that Webley to Reppas. A gun might have been useful insurance against all kinds of otherwise uninsurable risks." "I can see why you believe that but take it from me, it's not. Two guns don't make a right. Just a lot of noise. A gun's a lot more risk. More risk requires a bigger premium. And I can't afford it. My soul—always supposing I have one—can't handle the payments anymore. Does that make sense?"
"I think so. But you don't strike me as a man who has much on his conscience, sir." "Don't be fooled. You might not see him, but even without his top hat the Jiminy Cricket who follows me around is six feet tall." When the blue-and-white bus finally hove into sight like a piece of outsized, metallic chinoiserie, I offered Garlopis the envelope containing the twenty thousand drachmas I'd received at the Alpha Bank. "Keep this in the office safe and put a stop on buying that cop—for the time being, anyway," I told him. "If I can pull this off with Merten, we may save ourselves some money." But of course I didn't believe this, not completely. In spite of everything I'd told Garlopis I knew there was considerable danger involved in confronting Max Merten on the island of Spetses. I certainly didn't expect Merten to quietly give himself up, not for a moment. He was going to need some friendly persuasion. Fortunately I had a plan and knew just what to say and, given half a chance, I was going to say it—if necessary, with force. A lot of it.
Garlopis shook his head. "If you don't mind, sir, I'd prefer you looked after it. Twenty thousand drachmas is a lot of money for a person of my moral caliber. The fact is, you're not the only man with a loudly spoken conscience. Mine has taught me that I can resist almost anything except real temptation. Especially when it comes in the form of a lot of banknotes in an envelope." "All the same, I still think you should take it with you. This wad of cash is not quite thick enough to stop a bullet." I looked at Elli expectantly, in the hope that I might finally have scared her, but she still seemed quite unperturbed by the prospect of the two of us going up against a potentially desperate man. "I'd hate to think it wouldn't find a good home if something did happen to me." "All right. I'll take it. But please be careful. I'm looking forward enormously to corrupting that cop. No, really, sir. There's nothing that's quite as much fun as discovering the price of a truly honest man." After the bus had left, we got back in the Rover. Elli checked her face in the rearview mirror although I could have saved her the trouble; her face looked perfect. I'd seen the faces of women before and hers was the kind to launch a whole fleet of passenger ferries in the general direction of Troy. She was wearing a short-sleeve white blouse, an under-the-bosom belt that had its work cut out, a full pink skirt with deep pleats and, underneath it, multiple layers of sheer fabric, not to mention the invisible and impertinent scouts for my very active imagination. The fawn suede driving gloves added a nice touch to the whole ensemble. She looked elegantly in control of the car and of herself, like a woman who'd meant to enter a beauty contest and ended up competing in the Mille Miglia. Humming lightly, she steered us quickly along the meanderingly scenic Greek coast and was proving to be an excellent chauffeur; with her eyes on the road and her feet on the pedals I had all the time in the world to admire her shapely calves, and sometimes her knees. Her elbows weren't so bad either and I was becoming very fond of the line of her jaw, not to mention her body's sublime, S-shaped curves. She looked like one of the Sirens, and possibly sounded like one, too.
But my admiration for Elli was accompanied by the growing suspicion that she was using me to help her exact some sort of personal revenge against the Nazis; that perhaps she was intent on murdering Alois Brunner, or Max Merten—that maybe her mother or her father had been killed during the occupation. It was the only explanation for why she was with me that made any real sense. In which case I was going to have to be very careful because I wanted Max Merten alive and for a purpose I'd only just learned to appreciate myself; nothing is more compelling to a man nearing the end of his useful days than the sudden realization that he has the chance to do one good thing. There's no sacrifice that's too great for an opportunity to do something like that. FORTY-FIVE – "Are you sure you know what you're doing?" she said. "I mean, I wouldn't like anything to happen to you." "Not you as well. I already told Garlopis, I can handle Max Merten." "Actually I was talking about your plans to bribe that policeman. Or try to. If he doesn't take the _fakelaki_ it would be all the excuse he needed to put you in prison."
"He's already got more than enough of an excuse to do just that." "I really do wonder if you know what you're getting into, that's all." "I know what I'm getting out of. This damn country, I hope." "That's not very flattering, Christof. To me or my country." "You're right. I'm sorry, sugar. Look, I just want my lousy passport back. When I can see my picture in that little green book again, maybe I'll feel a bit more comfortable about staying on for a while." Her eyes stayed on the meandering road ahead; I was glad about that; it meant she couldn't look straight through me. I glanced out the passenger window at the sumptuously appointed view; with its bright blue sky, sapphire sea, and majestic coastline, it looked like the set for some inspiring Cecil B. DeMille epic. On a road like that, and with a driver like Elli, it was easy to think of Muses and Graces and of returning home after a long journey. Munich wasn't exactly Ithaca but it would do. "Did you take a day off work?" I asked, changing the subject quickly.
"It's a Saturday." "Yes, but you said you work on a Saturday." "We have a different attitude to work than you Germans." "So I noticed." "Greeks don't believe that God will like us better because we work hard, or because we deny ourselves pleasure. We prefer to believe that God wants us to go to the beach and admire the view. That contemplation of all the Unmoved Mover's works is the highest form of moral activity there is. It's the only way of understanding him." "That doesn't sound much like Marx." Elli smiled. "It's Aristotle. Actually he has a lot more in common with Marx than just an impossibly large beard." "I'm sure he does, but please don't tell me what. I'm too busy right now, admiring the view." Elli glanced at me and saw that I was looking at her. "The view's the other way, isn't it?" "I've seen it. But you. You're always worth looking at. Garlopis was right. Looking at you is enough to make a man believe in God." "He said that?" "Even if I can't quite bring myself to believe in you, my lovely. Snow White is supposed to wait for her handsome young prince, not fall for the grizzled huntsman with an ax to grind."
"I see we're back on the age-old debate about my age and you being old." "I can see what's in it for me. That's obvious to any mirror on the wall, not only a magic one. I'm trying to figure out what's in it for you, that's all." "You think I might have an ulterior motive for choosing to spend time with you? Is that it?" "Women usually do." "Perhaps you underestimate yourself, Christof." "I just don't want to disappoint you the way I usually disappoint myself." "A woman falls for a man and maybe he falls for her. There's aesthetics and chemistry and biology and a lot of other technical stuff. Then there's what he says and how she responds to it. And let's not forget the metaphysics of it, too: the things we can't know—the time and place, and the men I've known before, and the women you've known before. I don't have a secret agenda here. I don't have a wicked stepmother or even seven friends who are dwarves. I like you. Maybe it's just as simple as that." "Maybe." "You know what your real problem is? You want to try and understand something that goes beyond understanding."
"That's the German in me, I guess." "Then we'll have to make a Greek out of you. I think you could use some cheering up. Sometimes you're just a little bit too contemplative. Like you have something else on your mind." "There usually is. The gun in your bag, perhaps—that might give anyone pause for a whole series of thoughts." "You think I'm planning to shoot you? It's an idea at that." "One that's already crossed my mind." "Why on earth would I shoot you?" "You know, I still can't think of a good reason. But I was hoping I might find one before you got around to actually doing it." "Let me know when you come up with one. It will be interesting to hear it. Who knows? Maybe it will seem like such a good reason that it will inspire me to shoot you for real. I could certainly use a little target practice." She shook her head. "Your head is a mess, do you know that? With all that suspicion it's a wonder you can think straight. I'm guessing, of course, but I think you must have had some very interesting girlfriends before me. Maybe some of them were the type to go and shoot a man."
"Then you should feel sorry for me. Besides, I'm a victim of my own upbringing. The fact of the matter is that I come from a broken home. All Germans do, you know. My home's been broken so many times it looks like the Parthenon." Elli was quiet for a while, during which time she bit her lip a lot as if she was trying to prevent herself from telling me something important and I let her alone in the hope that, eventually, she would; but when she did speak again it was to tell me something much more personal than I might have expected, and that brought a tear to her eye. "You really want to know why I carry a gun?" "Sure. But I'll settle for your explanation." "My father gave it to me." "Beats a bottle of perfume and a doll, I suppose." "He gave it to me because last year, not long before he died—on the Ochi Day, which is the national anniversary of General Metaxas telling Mussolini to go and screw himself—a man tried to rape me, in Athens. He was a much younger man than you—a _mutamassir_ , which is to say an Egyptianized Syrian who'd been living in Alexandria before being expelled from the country by Nasser. I made the mistake of trying to help him find a job with the Red Cross. He made me do things—horrible things—and he would certainly have raped me if he hadn't been interrupted by George Papakyriakopoulos."
"Meissner's lawyer." "That's right. George has been a pretty good friend to me ever since." "Glad to hear it." "There's a lot of rape these days in Greece and I carry a gun to make sure it doesn't happen again or, if it does, that I'm able to take my immediate revenge. But I also carry it in case I ever run into the bastard who almost raped me." "You didn't report it to the police?" "This is Greece. Reporting a rape, or an attempted rape, is almost as bad as the actual act. Not that I've ever seen him again. He disappeared, I'm glad to say. But if I ever do see him again I intend to kill him and to hell with the consequences. In the meantime I like older men like you because I think your sex drive isn't nearly as strong as that of younger men like him, which means you're more likely to take no for an answer. Especially if I have a gun in my hand. Does that make sense? I hope so. There. Now you know my dirty secret." FORTY-SIX – I might have laughed at the way she'd ended her story with a joke at my expense—if it was a joke. Instead I uttered an audible, sympathetic sort of sigh and handed her my handkerchief. "I'm sorry, Elli." I nodded firmly. "Makes perfect sense now that you've explained it. The men in this country being what they are."
"I don't know that they're much different anywhere else." She threw the handkerchief back at me almost as if I'd insulted her. Of course, I didn't quite believe what she'd told me. It wasn't that I doubted Elli so much as I doubted my own capacity for trusting anyone. Which is to say that I'd believed other women before. Of course, these days honesty is a joke, thanks to politicians, and men just lie because they have to in order to stay alive. But long before Hitler and Goebbels and Stalin and Mao, all women were liars and all women lie unless they're your own dear mother when they always tell you or your father the unvarnished truth even though you and he really don't want to hear it. No one could mind the gentle nurse with a heart of gold who lies out of kindness to your best friend because she can't bring herself to tell him that the shell took away both his legs and that he's never going to walk again. But the rest of them lie like Cretan Jesuits with a college degree in amphibology, and about everything, too, including why they're an hour late showing up to a restaurant, their weight, their delight at the present you just bought them, and the pleasure you gave them as a lover. There's nothing they won't lie about if they think you'll swallow it and if it advantages them in some way. But mostly women lie and they don't even know when they're doing it, or if they do, then you had surely left them with the clear and unequivocal impression that you didn't ever want to know the truth, which means it's your fault, of course; or else they simply believe they have a God-given right to lie since being a woman gives them that right whereas you are just a poor dumb fool called a man.
So there was the fact that women are just natural liars and the fact that I was German and, given everything we'd done to the Greeks in 1943, it was hard for me to imagine there were Greeks like Elli Panatoniou who were prepared to put all of that history behind them. Which is to say I didn't think it was healthy to believe her because I was going up against Max Merten and I was worried I might find a small hole in my back just because I was German like him. Knowing what I did about how Germans had behaved in Greece I could hardly have blamed her for wanting a bit of revenge. But because I had to be absolutely sure of Elli, I needed to furnish her with a motive that might make the woman reveal her true hand, if she had one, which meant telling her a dirty little secret of my own, and this had me shaking like a dice box. "Since you showed me yours then perhaps I should show you mine," I said. "Only I have to warn you, sugar, mine's a lot dirtier than yours." "Should I park now or wait to drive us off the road with shock and horror?"
"It is kind of horrible, Elli." "So don't tell me. This is a dress I'm wearing, not a surplice." "Believe me, I like it a lot. Especially with you in it." "I wonder about that." "Do you ever wonder what I did during the war?" "I'm not naïve. You're a German. I didn't think you were running an orphanage or working for Walt Disney. Just don't tell me you used to have a small mustache." "Look, I was never a Nazi but, for a while, I was a detective in the security service of the SS. I honestly didn't have much choice about it. Luckily I wasn't stationed here in Greece. But my war is not something I feel proud of. Which is why Christof Ganz isn't my real name. Things were difficult for me after the war. Changing my name was a quick way to a fresh start. Or at least that's what I hoped. I still have a lot of sleepless nights because of the war. And once or twice a bit more than just a sleepless night." "Meaning what, exactly?" "There's an old Hungarian song called 'Gloomy Sunday' that was banned by the Nazis. Goebbels thought it was bad for morale. So did the Hungarians. It was even banned by the BBC because it's been blamed for more suicides than any other song in history. But the fact is that despite Goebbels forbidding it, I used to like that song. Lots of men in uniform liked that song. You might say the song performed a useful service because some of those men aren't around anymore, if you know what I mean. But I almost wasn't around myself."
"All right. You feel bad about it. Maybe you even feel guilty. I get that. Lots of people feel guilty about what happened during the war. Even a few Greeks. What of it? Why are you telling me and not your psychiatrist?" "Let me finish my own horrible story. Then you can judge me. I joined the Berlin police not long after the Great War. The first war, that is. There was nothing great about it except perhaps the extraordinary numbers of men who fought and died. Millions. For four years I woke up every morning with the smell of death in my nostrils. Do you have any idea what that's like? Let me tell you, the amazing thing is not that so many of your comrades die, but the fact that you get used to it. Death becomes something routine. Every man who came out of the trenches was like that. Some were finished forever as human beings, their nerves shot to pieces. Others were angry and wanted to blame someone for what had happened—communists, fascists, Jews, the French, anyone. Me, I wasn't angry, but I needed to do something useful with my life. In spite of everything I'd seen in the trenches, I still believed in law and order and, yes, justice. What kind of a cop doesn't believe in that? So when people were murdered, we tried to do something about it, you know, like investigate the crime and then arrest the man who did it. That was the contract we made with the people who employed us. We protected them and when I did that, being a detective felt like something decent and good. For a long time I had a sense of pride in myself and life felt like it meant something. Well, most of the time. I had a few low spots along the way: 1928 wasn't such a good year.
"But then the Nazis came along and made nonsense out of all that, which was bad for me and bad for detectives everywhere in Germany. Because of that, it's been a long, long time since I had a chance to feel like I was on the side of anything clean and good. Too long, really. Most of the time I feel bad about myself. I don't expect you to know what that's like but I'm asking you to understand that this might be my last chance to do something about it. The fact is, I agree with Lieutenant Leventis. I want to help put a real criminal in the dock, instead of some damn Greek who was unlucky enough to speak fluent German and steal some office stationery. And I want to do it not for Leventis, not for the people of Greece, no, not even so I can get my passport back and go home; I've just realized I want to get Max Merten so that I can feel like I've done something good again. Perhaps for the last time I can feel like a real cop again. Redemption is a pretty grand idea for a Fritz like me, but that's what I'm after. So if you are after your own personal reckoning with Max Merten, I'd like to know now so I can be sure I don't get between you and your ladies' pocket pistol."
Elli pulled up at the side of the mountain road and switched off the Rover's V8 engine. She kept a hold of the wheel for a while almost as if she didn't risk letting it go in case she hit me. Then she peeled off her gloves, reached for her handbag, took out her cigarettes, and lit one; after a couple of puffs she left it on her lip, fumbled around in her handbag some more, and this time when the hand came out again it was pointing the Beretta at me. "So we can't all be good girls," she said. "You're joking." She thumbed back the hammer. "Does it look like I'm joking?" "Take it easy with that thing," I said. "At this range you could hardly miss." "Then you'd better bear that in mind. Get out of the car." I reached for the door; it was lucky for her she'd asked me nicely. I stood there dumbly for a minute with my hands in the air while she stepped out of the Rover on her side. Sometimes it feels bad to be proved right. The sea was at Elli's back; at least it was if you'd climbed down a series of jagged rocks. You could hear the waves and smell the salt in the air and the sun on my face felt like a small atom bomb; if it hadn't been for the little gun in her hand I'd have said it was an excellent place for a picnic.
"I have to hand it to you, sugar. You picked a nice spot. It's kind of romantic here." "Do I have your attention?" "Undivided." "Good." "So what happens now?" "Just this," she said, and hurled the gun into the sea before coming around the car. "Do you still think I'm planning to shoot you?" I put down my hands and breathed a sigh of relief; people who think a shot from a ladies' gun won't necessarily kill you are almost right; but a little Beretta will fire six or seven in very quick succession and, close up, six or seven will kill you just as effectively as a single bullet from a 9-mill Luger. "Not unless you're an expert climber and a hell of a swimmer." Elli shook her head, then took my face in her hands and planted a big kiss on my mouth. "Well, that's more like it," I said, and was about to kiss her some more but she stopped me and said: "No, listen. Until I met you I'd never even heard of Max Merten, okay? But if he's anything like you, he's so deaf I doubt he'll even hear you knock on his door. Like I told you already, that Beretta was for my own personal protection on account of how a lot of men don't listen when a woman tells them something important such as 'No, I don't want to sleep with you,' or 'I carry a gun because I was nearly raped and I intend to make sure it doesn't happen again.' Just like you, Merten probably won't be listening when you tell him to give himself up to the police, or try to arrest him. Although how you propose to do that I'm really not sure. But I'm certainly looking forward to seeing you try."
"Me too. Especially now you've got rid of our only weapon. I was counting on you backing me up with your little pistol if we found ourselves in a tight spot." Elli frowned. "I thought you said you were afraid I was going to shoot you." "Not really," I lied. "Like you said, why would you want to shoot me? No, I just wanted to see if you still had it with you." She managed to contain her momentary irritation with me and the loss of her Beretta. She had my sympathy, too; I always liked the little ladies' pistol and often a lot more than the ladies who carried one. "So, Christof Ganz, what's your real name? And please don't tell me it's Martin Bormann." "Bernie. Bernie Gunther." "Sure about that?" "Pretty sure." "I really don't know what you're going to say next. I think that you just might be the most unpredictable man I've ever met. _Bernie_. And, on occasion, quite the most infuriating, too. Maybe that's why I find you attractive. But, on reflection, I should have shot you when I had the chance. _Bernie_."
"You know, a lot of people have said that, and somehow I'm still here." "They must have liked your sense of humor as much as I do. But I shall miss having that little gun." "I'll buy you another, for Christmas." FORTY-SEVEN – We parked the Rover in Kosta and then traveled by water taxi to Spetses, a journey that took all of ten minutes. I wanted to leave Max Merten with the impression that we were escaping the island by the skin of our teeth, so I paid the boatman approximately five times the going rate on the understanding that he would be waiting on the quayside before six the following morning for the return trip to the mainland. It was a beautiful island and I was sorry not to stay longer, especially with Elli, who told me she'd been to the island several times before because, in summer, it was a popular bathing resort much frequented by Athenians, which was also why there was a first-class hotel on the island, the Poseidonian, with a hundred beds and a good restaurant, which had recently opened again after being closed for the winter. We checked in, and while I kept a low profile by staying in the room—I hardly wanted to run into Max Merten on the street—Elli went out to buy a little flashlight and to reconnoiter the address Spiros Reppas had given us.
"I walked past the house several times in case anyone was watching, the way you told me," said Elli, while, later on, we ate a dinner that might have been described as typically Greek except that it was good. "It's a small fisherman's cottage with two floors, and more or less typical of the houses on the island. A little dilapidated. The curtains were drawn and no one went in and no one came out, but there was wood smoke coming out of the chimney and there was a light burning in one of the bedrooms. By the way, I'm certain it's someone German in there." "How did you work that out?" "Because there was a washing line in the little front garden, and one of the shirts still drying on it had a German label, from somewhere called C&A." "That was smart of you." "Don't worry, I didn't actually go in the garden, I just leaned over the front wall and took a quick look. It was quite a large shirt, too. You said Merten is fat? The collar on the shirt was a size forty-five. And not well-washed either; there was still grime on the inside of the collar, like he'd forgotten to take a bar of soap and a stiff brush to it, the way you're supposed to. My guess is that it's a man who's living alone because there's also a burned saucepan left out on the kitchen step. A man like you, probably. And then there's the fact that a woman would have remembered to take in the washing. A woman like me, perhaps."
"You're very observant. And you saw all this in the dark?" "There's a small bar opposite, which was closing up, but all the lights were on." "Anyone suspicious hanging around?" "Only me." "Were you seen near the cottage?" "No. I got a couple of comments on the seafront, but any girl expects that in Greece." "You're not any girl. Not in my eyes. If Paris was here now he'd sling you across his shoulder and leg it for the ships." "You need to get out more." "Take the compliment. Please. Was there anyone suspicious in the town? Anyone like me?" "You mean any Germans? No." She sipped at a glass of white wine and then frowned, but not because of the taste; it was a good Mosel we were drinking. "I wish I knew what you're going to do. I expect you want me to stay here in the hotel safely out of the way. Well, try and get it through your square German head, I'm not going to do that. Not now that I've come all this way. I'm in this until the end." "I didn't see it happening any other way." "Besides, it's the only way I can be sure of killing you both with my spare gun. Brunner, too, if he should decide to put in an appearance while we're there."
"Another present from your father, no doubt." "I was never one for playing with dolls." "Just make sure you shoot to kill, sugar. Brunner's not the type you can only wound." "Of course. There's no other way with a rat like that. But just for the record, _schnucki_ , I shall regret having to shoot you. _Schnucki_. Did I say that right?" "Sure. By the way, your German is much improved." "I've a good teacher. Shame I'll have to end the lessons, and so abruptly, too. What does it mean anyway? _Schnucki_." "It doesn't mean anything very much except that you don't want to shoot me, _schnucki_. It's generally held to be a term of affection." We went to bed and after a few hours we got up early, very early, which is to say at the kind of uncivilized hour the Gestapo—and you don't get more uncivilized than them—used to favor when they decided to make an arrest, because experience had demonstrated that people put up less resistance to the police when they're still fast asleep. Leaving the Poseidonian Hotel we walked through the necropolis-like white town and along a narrow street and then up a steep hill to the address Elli had already reconnoitered. The front of the gray cottage belonging to Reppas was covered with a lot of bright blue tiles and on top of the twin gate pedestals were a couple of crouching stone lions painted yellow; it looked like a cut-price Ishtar Gate. There were no lights and the shirt with the German label was still hanging motionless on the line where Max Merten had left it, as described by Elli. Behind the gatepost was a cardboard box containing several empty schnapps bottles, which led me to suppose that Merten hadn't been entirely wasting his time on the island.
As soon as I opened the front door with the key Spiros Reppas had given me and I moved the flashlight around a bit I knew for sure Merten was living there. The place was pungent with the smell of the same distinctive Egyptian-style Fina cigarettes Merten had been smoking back in Munich. There was a copy of an old German magazine called _Capital_ on the floor by the sofa and a half-empty bottle of Schladerer on the coffee table. There was a hat and an overcoat with Munich labels lying on the sofa, but no gun in the pocket. On the wall was a picture of King Paul, and a framed Imray chart of Greece and its islands. There was plenty of light through the window—enough to conduct a search of the place—and I whispered to Elli to look around for the Walther automatic that Spiros Reppas had mentioned back in Athens; then I headed for the carpeted stairs. Every step was furnished with a pile of books, as if the cottage belonged to a keen reader who didn't own any shelves; most of the books were cheap paperbacks, crime novels and thrillers by English and American writers for whom choosing a red wine with fish was probably the kind of clue that would reveal the socially maladroit murderer's identity to the very clever detective. I wondered if any of them had advice on how to approach a sleeping man with a gun. I placed my foot on the first step and tested it for sound with my weight. The wooden step stayed silent so I tried another; and then another, until I was at the top of the stairs with my heart in my mouth. I turned and looked down and saw Elli standing there looking up at me; she shook her head as if to say _No gun_ , and I nodded back and prepared to open one of the bedroom doors in the knowledge that Merten probably had the gun on the bedside table; that was certainly where I would have left mine if Alois Brunner had been looking for me. And you didn't have to be much of a shot with a Walther to hit someone coming through your bedroom door. A three-legged cat could have made a shot like that.
The master bedroom was empty, but had recently been occupied by Spiros Reppas; there was a picture of him and Witzel on the bedside table and, on the wall, a small icon and a photograph of the _Doris_. The bathroom door was open, which left only one other room; that door was closed but, on the other side, I could hear a man snoring as loudly as an angry rhinoceros. So far everything was much as I'd imagined in my mind's eye; I told myself the Webley would only have slowed me down: With the gun in one hand and the flashlight in the other, I'd have needed a third hand to grab hold of Merten's Walther before he could use it. Taking a sleeping man alive when you also take a gun has its pitfalls and I hoped he'd had enough schnapps from his bottle to slow him down even more than deep sleep. I turned the loose doorknob and pushed firmly on through the deafening sound of the creaking hinge and my own heavy breathing, until I could see Merten's body lying on its side in the bed. How he didn't wake up I didn't know. Possibly the racket caused by his own snoring was louder than any commotion I could have made. A Panzer tank would have made less noise. At this point I might have hit him on the head with something hard to stun him while I searched for the gun but I wanted to avoid this if I could, if only because transporting a man with a head injury back to Athens might prove to be difficult. I pointed the beam from the flashlight at the bedside table, where there was a light without a shade, a copy of a novel by Ian Fleming, a pair of spectacles, a glass of something stronger than water, and, ominously, an open box of 9-millimeter ammunition.
Still looking for the gun I bent carefully over Merten's head; his loud snoring smelled strongly of cigarettes and schnapps, while his rotund body was sour with the smell of sweat. From the way his hand was under the pillow I concluded that it was probably holding the Walther, which also meant that unless he was very nervous indeed, or just foolhardy, the safety catch had to be on. The safety on a Walther was usually stiff and might give me another vital second if we had to wrestle for it. I considered rolling him out of bed unceremoniously, and then rejected the idea, thinking he might still be holding the gun when he hit the floor on the other side of the bed. I was considering my next option when the naked man stirred, let out a loud grunt, and turned onto his other side, and I caught a glimpse of something black under the pillow. As the snoring resumed I reached for the object quickly, and came up with a leather-bound New Testament, as if he'd been reading it before or after reading the copy of _Casino Royale_. I wondered if perhaps there was a useful text in there for the spiritual guidance of someone who had helped to engineer the deaths of sixty thousand Jews after robbing them blind. My father, an enthusiastic Nazi but all his life a churchgoing man, could probably have told me what it was.
I stepped back from the bed and glanced quickly around the malodorous room and this time I spotted the Walther on a table by the window, next to another bottle of Schladerer and a packet of Finas. With some relief I fetched the gun, checked the safety, and dropped it into my jacket pocket. Sweeping the table with the flashlight I also found Merten's passport and some ferry tickets as far as Istanbul, and from there, a first-class ticket aboard the Orient Express to Germany. From the dates on the tickets, Merten would have been back home in Munich in just a few days. I pocketed these, too, thinking I might use them myself if things got desperate. Feeling a little more relaxed, I switched on the overhead light, helped myself to a drink and a cigarette, sat down in the room's only armchair and while I waited for the sleeping man to stir under the glare of the bare bulb, I glanced over his passport; Merten was only forty-six but looked ten years older. Not much of a testament to a complete lack of conscience, I thought. After a minute he groaned a bit, sat up, yawned, belched, rubbed his bloodshot eyes, and frowned at me blearily. He looked like a crapulous Buddha.
"Gunther," he said, scratching his pendulous breasts and large belly. "What the hell are you doing here?" FORTY-EIGHT – "I'm the man Munich RE sent down to Athens to investigate Siegfried Witzel's insurance claim for the _Doris_." "I see. Well, no, I don't actually. You're not a marine-insurance man. You don't know one end of a ship from another. Why you, Bernie?" "Neff, the regular marine-claims adjustor, went sick, and Alois Alzheimer asked me to step into his boat shoes. Although frankly I could wish I hadn't." Merten coughed for several seconds, tapped his chest, and then pointed at the packet of Finas. "Cigarettes," he said, trying to catch his breath. I tossed them onto the bed, followed by a book of matches. Merten lit one and smoked it gratefully. "I would say it's good to see you again, but then again maybe it isn't. At this hour I get the feeling you're here to do more than adjust an insurance claim. Come now, Bernie. You have to admit it looks very odd." "Look, Max, there's not much time so you'd better listen carefully. Meanwhile I strongly suggest that you get dressed because we have to leave the island as soon as possible."
"Leave? You're joking." "I wish I was." "You'll forgive me if I ask, why? Why would I want to leave?" He exhaled a cloud of smoke and waved his hand at the barely finished room. "I'm on holiday and in spite of any evidence to the contrary I'm enjoying myself here." "It's your neck. Well, to cut a long story short, since arriving in Greece I've learned what you and your friends were up to. Spiros Reppas told me about the Jewish gold from Salonika, including the fact that since the _Doris_ went down off the Peloponnesian coast he and you had been lying low here, on this island." "Now why would Spiros say something as fanciful as that?" "Because his boss, Siegfried Witzel, is dead and I guess Spiros felt he had nothing much to lose in telling me. Someone put a bullet through each of Witzel's eyes." "Oh." "For a while a local cop thought I did it—me being a fellow German and all. Cops like things to be tidy that way—one German murders another German. They were almost right; however, it was your old pal Alois Brunner who shot Witzel, but only after torturing him for several hours. You won't believe what a man's feet smell like after they've been held to the fire, like Cortés did to that poor Aztec king, Cuauhtémoc. It's amazing how cruel a man can be when there's a lot of gold involved."
I was laying it on a bit to try to scare Merten. "I was on my way to see Spiros again—we were planning to come here last night, as a matter of fact; I'd agreed to help you out for old time's sake, but luckily for me, I saw Brunner and a couple of his thugs arriving at the house near the Acropolis and so I made a hasty withdrawal before they saw me. Of course, that wasn't so lucky for Spiros and I expect Brunner's not far behind now." "I see. When was this?" "Three or four hours ago." Merten glanced at his wristwatch and nodded thoughtfully. Then he got up slowly, fetched his trousers off the floor, and put them on. He nodded at my sling. "It seems as if you've been in the wars yourself, Bernie. What's wrong with your arm?" "A three-headed dog bit me on my way here. But it's nothing compared to what Brunner will do to us both, probably. That lawyer whose office in Glyfada you had burgled—Samuel Frizis—Brunner murdered him, too. Look, Max, I'm sure I don't have to remind you just how dangerous Brunner can be. The man's a killer and a sadist. So we need to get a move on."
Merten remained cool, however, and continued to move at a snail's pace. "He does have a most violent temper." "I can't say that I blame him where you're concerned. Spiros told me the whole story. I'm here for old times' sake, to get you safely off this island. After that I figure your best chance of staying alive is to seek the protection of the Athens police. Luckily for you I have a good contact there, a Lieutenant Leventis. He's the cop I told you about, the one who fancied me for Siegfried Witzel's murder. Those handcuffs will still fit me if he can't find anyone else for it, however, it's Brunner he wants for those two murders, if he can get him. I think it would be a real bonus for Leventis if he were to arrive here on Spetses and catch Brunner red-handed, so to speak. The red being your blood, Max. That kind of forensic evidence is a lot easier to stand up in court than some old war crimes. Finding witnesses to what Brunner did to some Jews in Salonika fourteen years ago wouldn't be so easy. Of course, we'll have to find a better reason for you seeking the protection of the Greek police than the fact that Alois Brunner is trying to kill you. That would draw attention to what you've been doing here."
"What kind of reason? I don't understand. Even supposing I wanted protection from Brunner—and I'm not saying I do—how could I get protection without telling this cop exactly why he's trying to kill me?" "It occurred to me that you might offer to be a witness yourself, on behalf of Arthur Meissner, the translator who's currently on trial in Athens for all the things Brunner and Eichmann probably did. You can tell Leventis that you were so moved by the plight of your old colleague Meissner that you came to Athens to give evidence on his behalf, but that you were also concerned that doing so might expose you to some danger from Greeks who don't like Germans, and there are certainly plenty of those." "Is everything all right?" said Elli. "Who's that?" asked Merten. "A friend. The girl who drove me here. My left arm isn't equal to much driving now." I went to the top of the stair and found her looking up at me anxiously. "Yes, everything's fine. We'll be down in just a few moments." FORTY-NINE – Back in the bedroom Merten was shaking his head.
"Walk into a Greek court of my own free will?" he said. "I don't know. Lawyers hate going into court, you should know that. Suppose they find some pretext to arrest me? Never can tell with the Greeks. Look at the way they screwed Socrates." "Why would they? You're not wanted by the Greek police for anything that happened in 1943. I already checked. You're in the clear. It's those bastards Brunner and Eichmann they want, not you. And what better proof of your innocence than making yourself a volunteer witness in Meissner's defense?" "Yes, I do see that." Merten extinguished his cigarette in an ashtray and lit another. "By the way, whatever rubbish Spiros Reppas might have told you, Bernie, I had nothing to do with what happened to those Jews. Just for the record, it was all Brunner's idea. To trick them into giving up their wealth. By the time I heard about that gold, it was already too late for those people. They were on the trains to Auschwitz and Treblinka." He sighed. "Brunner—I never met a man who was so set on getting Jews deported."
"Like I said, it was a long time ago. And none of my business." "I just wanted you to know, since you're trying to help me. For which I am very grateful." He took a puff of his cigarette and shrugged. "Why _are_ you helping me? I'm still not a hundred percent clear about that either." "You helped me, didn't you? Got me the job with MRE. Now that I'm down here it would seem ungrateful not to help you, Max." "Well, when you put it like that. I always did like you, Bernie." Merten nodded; he put on an undershirt, glanced around the room, and frowned. "Now where did I leave that clean shirt?" "It's outside. On the washing line." I looked at my watch as if Brunner really was on our tail. I'd almost managed to convince myself that he really had captured Spiros Reppas and was squeezing him for information back at the house beside the Acropolis. My plan was to drive Merten back to Athens and, once there, to persuade Lieutenant Leventis that while Max Merten wasn't Alois Brunner he was the next best thing; betraying Merten seemed to be my best option for getting my passport back and, along the way, delivering up a criminal to well-deserved justice. It was the right thing to do and yet—and yet there was something about this deception that left a sour taste in my mouth. "You need to hurry, Max. The sooner we're off this island, the better. There's a boat waiting for us on the quayside, to take us to Kosta, where I have a car."
"Yes, of course." Merten sat down to put on his stinky socks and then his shoes. "You say we have a three- or four-hour start on Brunner? Since he got hold of Spiros?" "That's right." "That might be a lot less if Spiros talks right away. Think about it. Why would he stay silent if Brunner puts his feet to the fire, like that poor Aztec, Cuauhtémoc." "While poor Spiros might easily say where you've been hiding, Max, he can hardly tell him what Brunner probably wants to know most of all, which is the true location of the _Epeius_ , and the gold. Spiros told me that only you knew where it was—that you kept the location a secret even from him and Witzel—but I can't imagine a man like Brunner will believe that story, not for a minute. Which, like I say, and unfortunately for Spiros, ought to slow Brunner down just long enough for us to put some distance between him and us." "Yes, that makes sense. Bad enough to be tortured, but to be tortured for something you don't actually know. Jesus." Merten pulled a face. "It doesn't bear thinking of, does it?"
"Then don't think about it. That should be easy for you, Max. You don't strike me as a man much troubled by conscience. But there's no time for any more delay. I'd hate it if my theory about Spiros proved to be wrong. Being here now I'm in as much danger as you are. And so is the friend I have who's waiting downstairs. She's going to drive us straight to Athens. Her name is Elli." "Short for Elisabeth, no doubt. I can't wait to meet her." "So finish dressing and come downstairs." "You know, I really appreciate you helping me like this. You were always a good man in a tight spot. Especially now that you have my gun, not to mention my tickets home. If you need a ticket home, Bernie, you only have to ask. I've more than enough money to buy you a ticket, too. In gratitude for saving my neck. Again." "That would be the money you and Schramma stole from General Heinkel in Munich, wouldn't it? Money you needed to fund this expedition." "That money was given to the general by the communists, with the intention of compromising West German politics. Money that was probably stolen from the proletariat they purport to represent. So I'm not much troubled about the origins of that money. Anyway, what do you care?"
"What I care about was the way you let me talk you into keeping it, Max. The way I was supposed to be the stooge meant to take the blame. Did you plan that, too?" "Don't be so melodramatic, Bernie. Of course not. And I certainly didn't ask Schramma to kill the general and the other Fritz who was with him. That was his own stupid idea. You know if only we'd met again sooner I could have cut you in on this instead of Christian Schramma. I never did feel comfortable with that man. There's something about Bavarians I realize I just don't like, especially now I live there. I sometimes wonder if any of us will ever get back to Berlin." "Not while the Russians are drinking our beer." "But look, let's forget all that unpleasantness. Munich and its complacent, middle-class Catholic values are a long way away. You and I, Bernie—we're both Berliners, you and I, and that makes all the difference, doesn't it? We're old comrades, _Bolle_ boys, right? So we should be straight with each other. So why don't we just forget all this nonsense about Arthur Meissner and this Lieutenant Leventis and let's talk about the real reason you came here to help me. Let's talk about that, shall we?"
Merten was wagging his finger at me with a grin on his face that made me want to slap it onto the floor. "You want a share, don't you? Of the gold. Of course you do. And why not? Have you any idea how much is down there, in just fifteen fathoms of water? Hundreds of millions of dollars' worth. Spiros and Witzel couldn't have told you how much, because even they had no conception of even half of what's there. Not in their wildest dreams. There's enough gold to keep us in tax-free, mink-lined luxury for the rest of our lives. Think of it. More gold than Cortés and his conquistadors could even dream of. Free of income tax, Bernie, free of any tax. And it's ours. All we have to do is go and get it. After which we can go and live on an island in the Caribbean. Buy one, perhaps. One each. Or go our separate ways, as you prefer." Merten took a drag on his cigarette and then used it to light another. "All right, it's a deal," he said, not waiting for my answer; his assumption that I was as greedy as Witzel or Schramma bothered me. But it bothered me more that I even paused to consider what he'd said. "So I'll cut you in for twenty-five percent. That's fair, given that all of the expenses have been mine. Also I have partners in Bonn I need to pay off. Politicians I owe favors to. But look here, instead of driving to Athens, we should head north, to Alexandroúpoli, and cross over into Turkey. Then, one day, in the not-so-distant future, when Alois Brunner has given up looking for me, we can come back down here, charter a ship, and make another attempt to retrieve the gold. I can assure you it's quite safe where it is. Safer than in any Greek bank. After all these years another few months won't make any difference."
I shook my head but I can't say I wasn't tempted. Becoming very rich has its attractions for someone with nothing in the bank, not even a bank account. "No thanks, Max." "What do you mean, no thanks? Are you mad? Don't you want to be as rich as the Count of Monte Cristo? Richer." "Not really. Not while I still have a conscience. That money is covered with the blood of sixty thousand dead Jews. My mind would be on them every time I bought myself another Caribbean island." "Think about what you're saying for a moment, Bernie. Are you seriously suggesting we just leave the gold there for the fishes to enjoy?" "So maybe you should tell someone about it. Maybe even hand it over to the Greek government so they could return it to the Jews. Besides, all your partners have an unfortunate habit of finding themselves double-crossed, or dead. I'd rather take my chances with the Greek police than go on a sea voyage with you. Frankly I wouldn't trust you on a rowing boat in the Tiergarten. Lieutenant Leventis has my passport in his desk drawer. That's all I need now. You can come back here and go diving for gold another time, and with someone else. Me, I just want to go home. Thanks to you I have a nice respectable job, a salary. I even have a company car. That and a good night's sleep are worth all the sunken treasure there is."
"For old times' sake I'll make it thirty percent." "Look, forget about the gold for now and let's get going." "Do you honestly think that those Jews would ever see a penny of that money if we just handed it over to the Greek government, or ours?" Merten uttered a scornful laugh. "No, of course not. The governments and the banks are the biggest robbers on the damn planet. They steal from people every day, only they call it taxation. Or interest on a mortgage. Or a fine imposed by a court. This new EEC they've made is just another way of robbing us all with yet more taxation and fines in the name of peace and prosperity. And those Jews, how the hell do you think they got all that gold in the first place? From lending money. By robbing us. By being bankers in their turn." "I'm afraid all that sounds very cynical, Max. But I guess I'm not surprised. You're a lawyer, after all." "You're not an educated man, Bernie. Are you? I mean you got your _Abitur_ , but you never went to university. If you had, then you'd know it's intellectually respectable to be cynical. It's the only way you can see the lies for what they are. Unless you're cynical about things you might as well give up on life. You think I'm cynical? I'm an amateur by comparison with what governments do. These respectable men—our leaders—are the same leaders, the same men who just made a war in which fifty million people died. It's never the cynical men who start wars but the virtuous, principled ones. Adenauer, Karamanlis, Eisenhower, and Eden, the leaders of the free world, but it's the same old lie called democracy."
"There was nothing virtuous about Hitler." "Yes, but it was Neville Chamberlain who declared war on Germany, wasn't it? Kind of makes my point." "Nice idea, Max. But still, thanks but no thanks." "I've misjudged you, Bernie. After everything that's happened to you is it possible you still believe in good? That you think there's some morality in this lousy world? Experience should have taught you by now that good simply doesn't exist, old friend. Not for you, not for anyone, but I have to say especially not for you. People are generally wasting their time if they think they can overcome evil. It's nonsense. In this world there is nearly always only evil and degrees of evil. Any good that exists results only when an organism such as a human being like you or me acts in his own self-interest out of biological necessity. That's how things prosper and survive. By looking out for number one. That's certainly been true for you." "I don't believe that," I said, now feeling a sense of disquiet at a vague suspicion I had that there was something in what he'd said. Wasn't I selling him to the Greeks out of my own self-interest? "I can't ever believe that."
"Pity. You know, your conscience won't bring any of those dead Jews back, Bernie. Most of those poor devils from Salonika don't have any families to whom one could return the money, even if one wanted to. Brunner and Eichmann and others like them made absolutely sure of that. They're all gone; any of the ones who survived have good reason to lie low themselves, out of shame. The only Jews who survived were the ones who did something crummy to bring that situation about. And it's not like you or I killed those people. They're just numbers now. Statistics in a history book. Emaciated faces on an old black-and-white newsreel. Poor Jew stories in _Life_ magazine. What happened happened but it's over now. No sense crying about it." Max Merten smiled a decayed smile, which served to remind me of just how rotten his soul was. Among all Merten's rotten teeth his single gold incisor resembled a tiny nugget found in the dirt on some grizzled Klondike prospector's pan and, in his brutally cynical mouth, gold couldn't have seemed less precious.
FIFTY – Thanks to Elli, life seemed as if it was a bit more worthwhile, especially now I'd eliminated my earlier suspicion that she was pursuing her own secret agenda. Even after the incident with the Beretta she continued to show every sign that she was a little stuck on me and I now realized, like a very stupid dog, that I liked her, too, although not as much perhaps. In truth I still couldn't understand why she was attracted to me but I'd stopped worrying about it. Looking a gift horse in the mouth never looked so pointless. She made me feel good again, the way you felt when you'd tanked up on schnapps, like you felt when a beggar blessed you for giving him money or when you were in church and you thought there was just a smidgen of a chance that God was actually there. With her around there was a bit more room for optimism. This wasn't to say that I saw a real future with her but I could at least see a future for myself. For the first time in a long time it felt like I had a friend; maybe a bit more than just a friend. And to think I'd almost chased her off with my paranoid suspicions. Even as I caught her eye she smiled back at me, as if wondering why I was smiling so warmly at her. I was never much of a smiler.
"What?" she said. "No, it's nothing." "You're laughing at me." "No. Really. I'm not." But for the benefit of the large German in the backseat of the Rover I added a moderating lie: "I'm just pleased to have got off that island before Brunner could catch up with us." "Oh, him," she said, as if that name was of no account and, for the first time since speaking to the bandit queen, I wondered where Brunner was. Still hiding out in Athens, perhaps. Or back in West Germany. Or possibly in Egypt, working for Nasser, at the behest of Germany's intelligence service. But wherever he was I judged him still a threat. "Yes, him. That's why we're in a hurry, sugar." "I hope I never see that man again," admitted Merten. "I once saw Brunner shoot a man on a train because he asked him for a drink of water." "This would be the train from Salonika to Athens. In 1943." "Yes. How did you know?" "And the victim was a banker called Jaco Kapantzi. Brunner shot him through the eyes. Same as poor Siegfried Witzel and that Greek lawyer you fingered. I told you. For that murder alone Brunner is a wanted man in Greece."
Elli shivered. "He scares me _._ " "He scares me, too, sugar." She held out her hand and to reassure her that everything would turn out all right, I took it and squeezed it affectionately. As soon as I'd done it—done it in front of Merten, that is—I realized I'd made a mistake. We were on the road north, back to Athens, and making good time; I estimated we'd be back in the capital city before lunchtime, but before we arrived I planned to make a telephone call when we stopped for gas—to the Megaron Pappoudof, to warn Lieutenant Leventis that I was bringing in Max Merten. For the German's sake I didn't want him arrested, at least not right away; I wanted to make it clear to Leventis that Merten was handing himself in as a witness in the trial of Arthur Meissner; that would be something in his favor when the Greeks charged him with war crimes. "This is a nice car, Christof," said Merten. "It's a rental," I said. "And by the way, Elli knows my real name. She even knows I was in the SS." "That was brave of you. Telling her."
"Not really." "British, isn't it? The car, I mean." "Yes. A Rover." "How romantic. Their cars have names and our cars have numbers. It's good. But not as good as a Mercedes-Benz. Nothing is as good as a Mercedes-Benz." He sighed. "Sometimes I wonder how we ever lost the war. I mean we make the best cars, the best washing machines, the best radios. The British might have won the war but there's no doubt that they're already losing the peace. In ten years from now they'll be eating our dust and you won't be able to find a British car anywhere in Greece. With this new EEC, Germany can be what it was always meant to be: the undisputed master of Europe. You have to hand it to the Old Man. He's done what Hitler could never have done. In fifty years Britain and France will be asking our permission to go to the bathroom. We'll make the French pay, too. A franc just to take a piss." "You're more of a Nazi than I thought," I said. "That's not Nazism. That's just capitalism." "What's the difference?" "If you genuinely believe that, then you're more of a lefty than I thought."
"Temperamentally, perhaps. But not at the ballot box." "Poor Bernie. As if voting ever changed anything." Merten lit another cigarette. "So, Elli. May I call you Elli?" "Yes." "Short for Elisabeth?" "Yes." "How did you meet Bernie Gunther?" "I picked him up in a bar," she said. "In Athens." "Which one?" "The Mega Hotel bar. I went there to have a meeting with someone else. And saw him looking miserable, so I decided to cheer him up." "I'd say you succeeded." "So would I." "And where did you learn German, Elli?" asked Merten. "From my father. He worked for North German Lloyd. The shipping company. Before the war he was the chief officer on the SS _Bremen_." "You speak it very well." "I'm getting better since I met Bernie." "Yes, there's a lot you can learn from Bernie. I don't know what kind of a teacher he is, but he's a good man in a tight spot. It's thanks to him that I came through the war with nothing very much on my conscience." For the sake of a peaceful drive back to Athens I let that one go. But did he really believe that?
"Wait," said Merten. "Didn't the _Bremen_ catch fire?" "Yes," said Elli. "It sank. In 1941." "I was stationed in Bremen in 1941 and I seem to remember there was some talk of negligence on the part of the captain." "I don't remember that," she said, bristling a little. "But my father wasn't the captain. He was the chief officer, like I said." "What was his name?" "Panatoniou. Agamemnon Panatoniou. Why?" "I'm just curious." Merten puffed his cigarette and, irritably, Elli wound down her window. "That's one of the things I love about Greece," he said. "I mean here I am, being driven by Agamemnon's daughter. And the woman who came to clean at the house in Spetses—her name was Electra. Like something out of Homer, isn't it, Bernie?" "Yes." "You shouldn't smoke so much, Herr Merten," said Elli. "It's not good for you." "You're right. But in Greece who would notice?" "I notice," she said. "Because it's not good for me." "When you've lived through what Bernie and I lived through, a small health hazard like a cigarette seems hardly worth worrying about. But you're right. I should cut down. For the sake of my family."
That was the first time I'd heard Merten mention a family. Under other circumstances I might have asked him about them. But I didn't want to think about them; not now. We stopped for gas in a small village called Sofiko, where I went into a bar and made the telephone call to leave a message for Lieutenant Leventis at police headquarters. A little to my surprise he was working on a Sunday. "I thought you'd be in church," I said. "Whatever gave you that idea? No, I usually come in on a Sunday and catch up with some paperwork. What have you got for me, Commissar?" I told him about Max Merten and the gold and its history, and how I was bringing him in so that he could be a volunteer witness in the defense of Arthur Meissner, and that I thought that this should count in his favor if Leventis decided to arrest him. "He's not Brunner," said Leventis. "I wanted Alois Brunner. He's why I started this whole investigation. I told you before, Commissar. Jaco Kapantzi, the man he killed on the train, was a friend to my father. Plus he killed Witzel and he killed Samuel Frizis. Arresting Merten doesn't help my clear-up rate."
"He's not Brunner, and he's not Eichmann, but perhaps, if you were a Jew in Salonika, Max Merten is the next best thing. He was Wehrmacht, not SS, but by all accounts they could do nothing without his say-so. Eichmann, Brunner, Wisliceny—they all had to go through him. That's what you wanted, isn't it? Someone who was in charge of things who you can put on trial. A real Nazi war criminal and certainly someone who's a lot better than a mere translator." "Yes. I suppose you're right." "Only if I bring him you're to give him every chance. In other words, you're to give him the benefit of legal advice." "What? A German is telling me about a man's legal rights in Greece?" "I'm talking about the rules of natural justice, that's all. I don't know, you Greeks probably invented them. What I mean is, this will be in the newspapers and it won't just be Max Merten you're putting on trial, it'll be Greece, too. Greece then. And Greece now. Believe me, I know what I'm talking about. Just look at the exemplary way the Allies handled those trials in Germany. Even the Russians looked like they were being fair. Besides, according to his own account, Max Merten witnessed Jaco Kapantzi's death on the train from Salonika. That means you have a useful witness if ever you do catch up with Alois Brunner."
"True. All right. I agree. He'll get a lawyer and all his rights." "One more thing. All of this. Me playing Judas, and bringing this man in." "I get it. You want your thirty pieces of silver." "Just my passport. This gets me off the hook, right? Me _and_ Garlopis." "If he's who you say he is, sure, Commissar. No problem. You bring him in and you can have your life back. If you can call it that now that you're an insurance man and no longer a detective, like me." _Not so as you'd notice_ was what I felt like saying. But I'd been smart before with cops and they usually didn't like it. Cops never like it when people are smarter than them. It reminds them of how dumb they are. I'd been a dumb cop myself on several occasions when a case wasn't coming together and I didn't like it then either. I left the bar, went back to the car, and paid for the gas. Merten wasn't there. "Where is our friend?" I asked Elli. She pointed across the deserted village square, festooned with Greek flags and filled with the smell of frying potatoes. In the distance I saw Merten sitting on a bench next to a bus stop with his valise on the dry ground beside him.
"What's he doing there?" "I imagine he's waiting for a bus." "Did you two have words?" "Not exactly. But I don't like him, Bernie." "Are you sure you didn't just tell him where to get off?" "No, nothing of the sort. He just took his bag out of the trunk, said something in German that I didn't understand, and walked off without a word." "Did he now? What did he say?" "One word. _Hündin_ , I think. What does it mean, anyway?" "Never mind." "I think he's changed his mind about coming back to Athens with us." "I think you're right. It looks like I am going to have to persuade him." "How?" "I can be very persuasive when I want to be. Give me five minutes and then drive over to fetch us." I sat in the car for a moment, checked that Merten's Walther was loaded, tucked it into my sling where it couldn't be seen, and then went to have a quiet word with him. He didn't yet know it but he was about to exchange his future for mine. FIFTY-ONE – "Surely you're not leaving us, Max?" Merten looked momentarily apologetic. "Yes, I'm sorry about that. But I was afraid you'd think me very foolish and cowardly if I told you exactly why I was running out on you like this."
"Try me." "It's what Goethe says, that's all: Precaution is better than cure. When you mentioned Jaco Kapantzi's murder in the car back there I realized that under Greek law I might easily be charged as an accessory before and after the fact. Because I was there, on the train, as you now know. And I did nothing to prevent Alo Brunner from shooting that poor devil. Not that there was anything I could have done, of course. He'd have killed me, too, if I'd interfered. When Alo's blood is up, he's a fucking Fury. By the time I knew he was going to do it, he'd done it, if you see what I mean. Yes, he always was a bit crazy that way. Quick with a gun, or to hand out a beating. So I've decided to take my chances and go it alone. Don't think I'm not grateful to you for coming to fetch me off that island, Bernie. I am. There's no telling what might happen if Alo ever does find me. The first time he showed up on the boat in Piraeus I thought he was going to shoot me then, only his appetite for a share of the gold held him back. But I don't much like the idea of walking into a Greek police station with my pants down. Think about it. Just for a minute, if you will. If the Greek state prosecutor is prepared to charge a damned interpreter with war crimes, then what chance is there for a German army captain to whom that interpreter sometimes reported? What's to stop Meissner from saying he was only obeying my orders? You see, Bernie, I remember Arthur Meissner very well. It was me who got him his houses in Athens and in Salonika. He's guilty only of being a bit greedy. A bit of larceny. That's not exactly a crime against humanity. Find me a Greek who hasn't got his fucking hand in the till, then and now. But somehow I can't see my evidence playing well in court. I can easily imagine myself in the dock instead of Meissner and I'm already thinking your cop's idea of protection might amount to the same kind as once practiced by the Gestapo. A night in the cells that turns into something altogether more permanent. By the way, have you seen Greek prisons? They're almost as bad as the fucking hotels. The Grande Bretagne excepted, but then that's virtually the Adlon. No, it was a nice idea, Bernie, but I'm afraid it simply wouldn't work. They'd make jam out of me."
"All right, Max. It's your funeral." "Don't worry about me, I can look after myself. I speak pretty good Greek. And I've more than enough money to get home to Ithaca. We'll see each other back in Munich, perhaps. I'll buy you a dinner at the Hofbräuhaus and we'll have a good laugh about this one day." "Maybe." "Sure we will. If you're good I'll even let you stroke the golden fleece." "Just out of interest, why did you call Elli a bitch?" "For the simple reason that she is a bitch. At least as far as I'm concerned. You're too blind with love to see it. Haven't you noticed the way she looks at me? It's very different from the way she looks at you, my friend. Very different. She despises me." "What did you expect? It's not like you planned to build a Greek orphanage with that gold. You and Brunner stole it for yourselves. And bitch or not, you should be glad she came, Max. Without her I'm not sure my arm would have permitted me to drive down here to save your neck." "What a romantic fool you are, Bernie. They may have different faces, but all women are the same. I thought you'd understand that by now. For your sake, I hope she's worth it."
Ignoring him, I took the ticket for the Orient Express out of my pocket, still hoping that I could get him back in the car with friendly persuasion—that my giving him his ticket might convince him that I was on the level. "I suppose you'll be wanting this back." "Keep it. You use it. Now that I've thought about it some more, Istanbul might not be such a good idea for me. Italy probably suits me better. I can get a ferry to Brindisi from Corinth and then a train to Bari, where I know another good scuba diver. Fellow from the Decima Flottiglia MAS, who trained Siegfried Witzel as a matter of fact. Of course, he's Italian, not German. But nobody's perfect." I believed very little of this; it was clear that Merten didn't trust me. I could see that in his eyes. And now that I looked at them more closely I could see that they resembled two old snails on the glass of a very green aquarium. Slow and slimy and inhuman. Not that I blamed him for not trusting me; anyone who'd double-crossed as many friends as Max Merten must have had a good nose for when he was about to be double-crossed himself. And if he was telling me he was bound for Brindisi and Bari then it was probably more likely he was going to try for the Orient Express after all. For a moment we stood there watching as Elli drove the car slowly toward us, smiling sheepishly at each other like two old friends now struck dumb by the uncomfortable realization that they weren't friends at all, not anymore and probably never had been.
Which meant there was no longer any reason not to pull the gun out of my sling and shove the business end up against the fat covering his ribs. Merten regarded the gun as if it had been ink on his shirt. "Is that my gun? It certainly looks like it." "Get in the car," I said. Ignoring the pain in my arm, I opened the rear door of the Rover, shoved Merten onto the backseat, threw his valise after him, and jumped in alongside them both. As soon as the car door was closed, Elli hit the accelerator. The Rover twisted a little on the gravel before gaining grip and then speed. Merten sat up, sighed loudly, and stared at the gun and then at me with something like pity, as if I was a tiresome schoolboy. "I was wondering when you'd reveal your true hand, Bernie," he said. "And there it is. Holding a Bismarck on me. It's very disappointing." "That's good, coming from you," I said. "I wonder if your left hand even knows what the right is doing sometimes." "Well, then, we have something in common, you and I. Double-crossers both. What's the plan? Deliver me up to the Greek police and get your passport back?"
"Something like that." "Jesus Christ, you're selling yourself a bit short, aren't you? Just listen to yourself. A passport. If you'd thrown in with me you'd have been as rich as Croesus. Still could be, if you'd only listen to sense." "Your wealth comes at the kind of price I can't afford to pay." "'Thus conscience does make cowards of us all.'" "You excepted, it would seem, Max." Merten snorted with contempt. "When did you start working for the war crimes office? Anyone would think you were a Jew yourself the way you keep mentioning them. Don't be so gloomy, Bernie. For a German you're very mixed up about all this. What do you care about the Greeks, or the Jews? Let them look after themselves. Me, I'm looking out for number one. Which reminds me, would you mind not pointing that thing at me? Greek roads aren't the best. If your lady friend hits a pothole, you might shoot me, accidentally." "And if I did, you'd probably deserve it." "What would happen to your passport then?" Merten took out his foul Egyptian cigarettes and lit one, before adopting a very serious expression.
"Listen to me carefully, Bernie," he said gravely. "This foolishness can only end badly for us both. I can assure you that whatever moral high ground you think you're standing on here is nothing but quicksand. I'm warning you, as an old friend. The way you once warned me, back in '39. Let me go right now or you'll regret it. And very much sooner than you think." "You seem to forget that I'm holding the gun, Max." "And _you're_ forgetting where you are. In the electric chair. With my hand on the switch. I can burn you to a stinking crisp in less than a minute, my friend." "I don't know what you think you've got on me, Max, but you're bluffing. Those Jews from Salonika deserve some justice and I'm going to make sure that they get it." "Justice? Don't make me laugh. Do you honestly think that the lives of sixty thousand Jews can be paid for so easily? Really, Bernie, you amaze me. Not just a romantic but an idealist, too. You're full of surprises today. There's no human justice that could ever be enough for what happened to those poor devils. And certainly none that could be got from my own humble person. So what you're proposing is absurd. Besides, I had absolutely nothing to do with their deaths. I was just a paper pusher. A bureaucrat."
"But you were prepared to profit from it." "I certainly didn't hear the dead objecting to what I did. And they've certainly not troubled my conscience since. I told you. I can't afford to have one. No, it's Eichmann and Brunner who deserve to be on trial. Not me. I was just a humble army captain. Not even a footnote in history." "Perhaps. But you'll have to do for now." "What a prig you are. What a prig and what a fool." Merten puffed his cigarette coolly, as if he didn't have a care in the world. "Be sensible. Last chance. Let me go, Bernie. You'll regret it if you don't." "Just shut up and smoke your cigarette." "I tell you what I'm going to do," he said calmly. "I'm going to smoke this cigarette to the end. And then, when it's finished, if you haven't stopped this car and let me go on my own merry way, you'll be finished, too. You have my word on that." FIFTY-TWO – Max Merten threw his cigarette out the car window and then wound it up again. He was smiling like a chess grand master who was about to make a winning move; like his witless opponent, I still couldn't see what this might be. But instead of saying anything, he stayed silent and closed his eyes for a long time and I supposed he must be asleep; when he opened them again we were only a few miles southwest of Athens.
"Almost there," said Elli. "Thanks for driving all this way," I said. "I couldn't have done it without you." "Sweet of you," she said. "I'm glad to be of help." "Well, isn't that nice?" said Merten. "You know there are some men who find other people's romances touching. Not me. When I see this kind of thing I wonder if the two parties involved really know the truth about each other. Speaking as a lawyer, I can tell you that truth has been the ruin of many a good romance. No relationship and certainly no marriage can take too much of that. Mine couldn't." "Whatever you think you know," said Elli, "I don't want to hear it." "Let me tell you something about this sweet man seated behind you, Elisabeth," he said softly. "Don't bother treating me like a jury. I'm a lawyer myself and I know all a lawyer's tricks." "Oh, it's no bother." "As far as I can see, Mr. Merten, you have only one advantage over me and it's that you never had to endure a car journey with Max Merten." "I know the real Bernie Gunther. That's one advantage."
"The number of times I've heard people say they know the real me and what they actually knew was just the me they imagined I was. The longer I live the more I realize that no one knows anyone. So do yourself a favor and save your very unpleasant breath." "But you do like him, don't you?" "Are you looking for an answer or an explanation?" "An answer." "Yes. I like him." "Why?" "Now you want an explanation. And I'm not obliged to give you one. Not obliged and certainly not inclined." "I've known this man for almost twenty years, Elisabeth. A man whose reputation around police headquarters in Berlin went before him during the thirties. For a lot of younger and impressionable men like myself Bernie Gunther wasn't just a successful detective, he was also something of a local hero." "I distinctly remember telling you I wasn't interested in anything you had to say." "You heard the lady, Max. Why don't you give it a rest?" "Famously Bernie caught Gormann the strangler, a man who murdered many aspiring young film actresses. When were those Kuhlo murders—1929? I'm not sure about that. But I think it was probably 1931 when Bernie joined the Nazi Party and became the Party's liaison officer in the Criminal Police, because it was definitely the following year when he helped to form the National Socialist Civil Service Society of the Berlin Police. Which means he was a die-hard Nazi even before Hitler came to power."
"You know I was never a Nazi. Not even in my worst nightmare." "Oh, come on, Bernie. Don't be so bashful. Let me tell you, Elisabeth, this man was one of the first in the police department who had the courage to declare his hand, politically. And because he did, many others followed. Me included, although to be quite frank I only did it to advance my career; unlike Bernie I really wasn't much interested in politics and certainly not in persecuting Jews and communists. I'm not sure what he thinks about Jews but I'm quite sure Bernie hates the communists. Then, in the autumn of 1938, your friend here caught the eye of Heinrich Himmler's number two, Reinhard Heydrich. Heydrich was a slippery sort—" "Almost as slippery as you, Max. You could spread this stuff on a field and it would grow two crops a year." "—the very embodiment of fascist evil and the architect of many atrocities, which is why later on they called _him_ the Butcher of Prague. To be fair to Bernie I expect Heydrich saw someone he could use, the way he used many others. But it was Heydrich who promoted Bernie to the rank of commissar and until Heydrich's death, Bernie was his number-one troubleshooter; the joke around headquarters was that when Bernie saw trouble he usually shot it."
As Merten laughed at his own joke I lifted my injured arm, grabbed him by the tie and twisted it, the way he was twisting the truth, but not enough to silence him. "I'm beginning to see why Alo Brunner is so keen to kill you, Max. With a mouth like yours it's a wonder how you managed to stay alive for this long." Still talking quickly, Merten retreated along the leather seat, pressing himself into the corner. "For example, in November 1938 it was rumored he murdered a doctor by the name of Lanz Kindermann, because he was homosexual. The Nazis never liked homos all that much and Bernie was certainly no exception. But by then he was exceptional in one respect and that was in the amount of license he seemed to enjoy from his pale-faced master, Heydrich, and so his crime went unpunished, as most real crimes did by then. The following year—a few months before war broke out—Bernie was even invited to Obersalzberg, to stay at Hitler's country house, the Berghof. It was Hitler's fiftieth birthday and a singular honor for anyone to be invited, let me tell you. Not many people could say as much unless they were very highly thought of. No one ever asked me there for the weekend." Merten chuckled. "Isn't that right, Bernie? You _were_ the leader's houseguest, weren't you? Tell her."
For a brief moment I considered trying to explain the real reason I'd been at the Berghof—to investigate a murder—but almost immediately I could see the futility of doing so. There was no way my being there could ever have been satisfactorily explained. So I did what any man would do when confronted with another's man barefaced lie. I laughed it off and lied straight back. "Of course I wasn't there. It's absurd even to suggest such a thing. I have to hand it to you, Max. You must be quite a good trial lawyer. Next thing you'll be trying to persuade her that Hitler was my long-lost uncle." Elli laughed. "Don't give him any ideas." "The story is actually just getting started. A couple of years later, in 1941, when Germany invaded the Soviet Union, many of Berlin's senior policemen were drafted into the SD, which was the intelligence agency of the SS, and that's how Bernie here came to be an SD captain in uniform, just like Alo Brunner. Tell me, old man, which part of _that_ isn't true?" "Shut up, Max. Shut up. I swear I'm going to crack you one with this gun if I have to listen to any more of this."
I caught Elli's eye in her rearview mirror; what I saw didn't worry me that much. She was shaking her head as if she didn't believe him. "I can see exactly what he's up to," she said. "He's a rat and like any rat he'll squeak when he's cornered." "Some rats need extermination," I said, and pressed the muzzle of the Walther up against Merten's cheek. "Go ahead and shoot," said Merten. "Do it. Put a bullet in my head. That's what you're good at, old man. You've had plenty of practice, after all. Better dead than doing life in a Greek jail." "I'm not going to shoot you, Max. But people can lose gold teeth for this kind of thing." "You mean for telling the truth? Surely this nice Greek girl deserves to know just what kind of man you really are." "Your version hasn't got much to do with truth, Max." "It's a long time since I was scared by a fairy story," said Elli. "Especially one told by some fat old Nazi." "Hey, less with the old," said Merten. "I may be putting on the pounds but I'm more than a decade younger than your friend here. Maybe you can convince her that you were a good German, Bernie, but I know better. Have you still got that SS tattoo under your arm or did you burn it off? What did you tell her it was? An old war wound?" Merten laughed.

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