Greeks Bearing Gifts

  “I was never a Nazi,” I said.

  “No, of course not,” said Leventis. But it was clear he didn’t believe me. “What’s more certain is that Brunner is still alive and that he has good connections in the current German government. According to my sources in the Greek NIS, it’s strongly believed that Brunner is presently working undercover for the German BND. Meanwhile a French court tried Brunner for war crimes in absentia in 1954 and sentenced him to death. And he’s one of the most wanted war criminals in the world.”

  Lieutenant Leventis opened another file and took out a black-and-white photograph, which he now handed to me. “A friend of mine in the Greek NIS managed to obtain this from his opposite number in the French intelligence services, one of the only known photographs of Alois Brunner, taken in France sometime during the summer of 1944.”

  I was looking at a man by a wooden fence in a field, wearing a belted leather trench coat, with a hat and gloves in his left hand and, as far as I could see, without even a badge in his lapel that might have helped to identify the man as a Nazi Party official. It was a good leather coat; I’d once owned one very like it myself before it had been stolen by a Russian POW guard. The man in the grainy picture didn’t look like a mass murderer, but then nobody ever does. I’d met enough murderers in my time to know that they nearly always look like everyone else. They’re not monsters and they’re not diabolical, they’re just the people who live next door and say hello on the stairs. This man was slim, with a high forehead, a narrow nose, neat dark hair, and an almost benign expression on his face; it was the kind of picture he might have sent to his girlfriend or wife, supposing he ever had one. On the back of the picture there was a description of the photograph, written in French: A photograph believed to be of Alois Brunner, born 8th April, 1912–, taken August 1944, property of the Direction Centrale des Renseignements Généraux.

  “Alois Brunner would now be almost forty-five years old,” said Leventis. “Which is the same age as me. Perhaps that’s another reason why I take a special interest in him.”

  Lieutenant Leventis continued talking for a while longer but I was hardly listening now; I kept looking at the thin man in the black-and-white photograph. Immediately I knew for sure that I’d met the man before, but it hadn’t been during the war and he hadn’t been calling himself Alois Brunner. I was quite certain of this. In fact, I still had the man’s business card in my pocket. The man in the photograph was the same Austro-Hungarian cigarette salesman who had struck up a conversation with me in the bar at the Mega Hotel.

  TWENTY-FIVE

  –

  There was a police radio on somewhere or maybe I was just hearing a few garbled, half-heard, barely understood words through the white noise that was my own thoughts. In the lieutenant’s office, men and a few women came and went like the crew on a ship, handing him reports, which mostly he ignored. Eventually he got up and closed the frosted-glass door. With his glasses off Leventis looked a bit punchy; but with them on, his eyes missed nothing. He had seen my own eyes linger on Brunner’s photograph for a little too long, perhaps. The man I’d met in my hotel bar was a war criminal. And not just any war criminal but one of the most wanted war criminals in Europe. It was sometimes a shock to realize that I wasn’t the only German with a past. But I hardly wanted to confess to having met the man until I knew what he’d been after. Especially as he’d been a colleague of Adolf Eichmann. I’d met Eichmann once or twice myself, and I hardly wanted to admit this either. Not to some Greek cop I hardly knew. I liked Leventis. But I didn’t trust him.

  “You recognize him, Commissar?”

  “No.”

  “You looked like you know him, maybe.”

  “I was taking a good look at him, that’s all, just in case I did. I’m an ex-cop, remember? So old habits die hard. I was stationed in Paris for a while during the war and I was thinking it was at least possible that I’d met your man, Brunner. But our dates don’t match. By June 1943 I’m afraid I was back in Germany. Besides, people look different when they’re not in uniform. Behave differently, too. This fellow looks like he’s on vacation.”

  “You could help me to find him.”

  “I already said I would, if I could.”

  “Yes, but maybe you were just saying that to get your passport back and save yourself a trip to jail. The fact as I see it, Commissar, is that you have a moral duty to help me.”

  “How’s that?”

  “Because you need to play your part in restoring your country’s reputation. In the weeks and months after Germany invaded Greece this city was systematically starved by the Germans. Tens of thousands died. There were bodies of children lying dead in front of this very police headquarters and nothing any of us could do about it. And yet here we are, more than ten years after the end of the war and Germany has yet to pay a penny in reparations to the Greek government for what happened. But it’s not just about money, is it? Germany’s got plenty of that now, thanks to your so-called economic miracle. No, I believe collective guilt can be reduced more meaningfully by individual action. In this case, yours. At least, that’s the way I look at it. This would be a more worthwhile kind of atonement than a mere bank transfer, Commissar, for what you Nazis did to Greece.”

  “For years I succeeded in not being a Nazi,” I said. “It was difficult, sometimes dangerous—especially in the police. You’ve no idea. But now that I’m here I discover I was a Nazi all along. Next time I come to your office I’ll wear an SS uniform and a monocle, carry a riding whip, and sing the Horst Wessel song.”

  “That might help. In any Greek tragedy death is always dressed in black. But seriously, Commissar, for most Greeks there is no difference between a German and a Nazi. The very idea of a good German is still strange to us. And perhaps it always will be.”

  “So maybe a Greek killed Siegfried Witzel, after all. Maybe he was killed because he was a German. Maybe we’ve all got it coming.”

  “You won’t find anyone in Greece arguing against an opinion like that. But I’m thinking that as a German you might have some insights with this case that I couldn’t possibly have. Let’s not forget that two men have been murdered in Athens. And one of them was your insured claimant.”

  We were talking but only half of me was listening to what Leventis was saying; the larger part of my mind was still trying to work out exactly why Alois Brunner had struck up a conversation at the bar of the Mega Hotel. Was it possible that Brunner had made me his stooge to help him find Siegfried Witzel so he could murder him? It would certainly explain why Witzel had been carrying a gun and why he’d been so reluctant to tell us his address: he was afraid. Still stalling for time I said, “I’ll help you, Lieutenant, okay?”

  Even as I spoke my fingers were holding the same business card in my pocket that Brunner had given me himself. Georg Fischer: That was what he was calling himself now. What would happen if I called the number on the card? Was the number even real? And who’d told Brunner that I was at the Mega Hotel? That I might lead him to Witzel? Not Garlopis, although in that stupid blue Olds he’d have been easy to tail to and from the airport. Perhaps someone back in Germany had told Brunner I was on the way to Athens. Someone from Munich RE. Maybe Alzheimer himself. After all, Alzheimer knew Konrad Adenauer—there was that photograph of the two men on his desk. And if Alzheimer knew the Old Man, then perhaps he also knew someone in the German BND. But it was almost as if Brunner had been expecting me.

  “But since you mentioned moral duty, Lieutenant, I feel obliged to say that it cuts two ways. If I am going to help you, I’ll need some kind of written assurance that you’ll keep your word and let us go. But supposing this was nothing to do with Brunner or supposing he’s already left Greece, what then? I’d hate to find that you were more interested in your clear-up rate than in our innocence.”

  “All right. That’s fair enough.” Leventis leaned across his desk and pointed a forefinger as thi
ck as a rifle barrel straight at my head. “But first I need you to ante up, to show me that you’re in the game. And then we’ll talk about immunity from prosecution.”

  “Like a suggestion from one detective to another, perhaps?”

  “That might work.”

  “I’m trying to think of something.”

  “Then let me help you. There’s a German interpreter who’s currently on trial in Athens for war crimes.”

  “Arthur Meissner. I read about that in the paper. Yes. Maybe he knows something that might help. Maybe he knew Brunner.”

  “As a matter of fact, he did. He knew all of the Nazis who controlled Greece—Eichmann, Wisliceny, Felmy, Lanz, Student. But under Greek law I’m forbidden from trying to interrogate him now that he’s on trial. Or to offer him any kind of a deal.”

  “He might speak to me. Because I’m not a Greek.”

  “I had the same thought.”

  “Where is he now?”

  “In Averoff Prison.”

  “Look, you’ll forgive me for saying so, Lieutenant, but a man who was merely a Greek interpreter doesn’t sound like the worst war criminal I ever heard of. My own boss in the Berlin Criminal Police, General Arthur Nebe, was a very career-minded man who commanded a killing unit that massacred more than forty-five thousand people. That’s what I call a war criminal.”

  “To be perfectly honest with you, Commissar, Meissner’s merely a man who was unwise enough to cooperate a little too enthusiastically with the occupation authorities. More of a collaborator than a war criminal. But it’s a subtle difference in Greece. Too subtle for most people, given the fact that there are no German war criminals who’ve ever been tried for their crimes here in Greece. That’s right. None at all. A few were tried for so-called hostage crimes committed in southeast Europe, but those trials were only in Germany. And most of those convicted were released years ago, pardoned at the instigation of the Americans and the British, who established the Greek federal republic as a bulwark against the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War. Among these men was Wilhelm Speidel, the military governor of Greece from 1943, the man responsible for numerous directives authorizing mass murders, including the massacre in Kalavryta. He was released from the Landsberg Prison in 1951. He was originally sentenced to a twenty-year prison term.”

  “That’s truly shocking,” said Garlopis. “Isn’t it, Herr Ganz?”

  “So you’ll forgive me for saying so, Commissar, but the trial of Arthur Meissner is as near as we’ve ever got to any kind of a war crimes trial here in Greece. Maybe now you understand why I was talking about your moral duty to help me find Brunner.”

  “I can certainly see why you would put it in those terms, Lieutenant,” said Garlopis. “And may I say that as a Greek who loves his country I will do all I can to assist Herr Ganz in any way he sees fit.”

  Resisting the obvious temptation again to tell Garlopis to shut up, I put a cigarette in my mouth—it was the last one from the packet Alois Brunner himself had given me—and lit up, which gave me enough time to consider my situation in a little more detail. I wanted nothing to do with what Leventis was suggesting; keeping far away from any of my old comrades was a top priority for Bernhard Gunther. And I had no more time for moral duty than I had for taking early retirement. But I needed to string Leventis along; to make him think I was helping him without getting myself too involved. After all, like Brunner, I was also living under a false name, with a false passport to go with that.

  “Well, what exactly did he do?” I asked. “This Meissner fellow.”

  “It’s certain that he helped himself to the property of Greeks and Greek Jews. Some of the other charges—rape and murder—look rather more difficult to prove.”

  “Is a deal possible? Would you at least be prepared to speak up in court on his behalf if he was to provide some information leading to the capture of Alois Brunner?”

  “I’d have to speak to the state prosecutor. But maybe.”

  “I’ll need more than that if I do speak to Meissner. Even if he can’t deliver information on Brunner it’s possible he might give up someone else just as important. Come on, Lieutenant. This man needs some life insurance.”

  “I will say this: If we were to catch a whale like Brunner, it would certainly take all the attention off a sprat like Meissner. And if he helped us to do it, I wouldn’t be surprised if we let him go.”

  “So let me speak to Meissner in private, at the prison. Just the two of us. It may be that I can persuade him to talk.”

  Leventis looked at his watch. “If we’re quick we can just catch Papakyriakopoulos. That’s the name of Meissner’s lawyer. Every Friday evening, after a week in court, he always goes for a drink at an old bar called Brettos, which is about a ten-minute walk from here. I doubt he’ll speak to me, but he might unload something to you.”

  TWENTY-SIX

  –

  Brettos was in a district of touristy Athenian backstreets called Plaka, and from the outside unremarkable; inside, the whole back wall was a virtual skyscraper of brightly lit liquor bottles and, given its proximity to the Acropolis, it felt like the world’s most ancient bar. It was easy to imagine Aristotle and Archimedes drinking ice-cold martinis there in search of the final, clear simplicity of an alcoholic aphorism after a hard day of philosophical debate.

  Seated on a high stool at a marble counter beneath a brandy barrel, Arthur Meissner’s lawyer, Dr. Papakyriakopoulos, was a shrewd-looking man in his thirties, with a neat mustache, dark marsupial eyes, and a profile like an urgent signpost. Lieutenant Leventis made the introductions and then discreetly withdrew, leaving me and Garlopis to order a round and to make the case for a meeting with Arthur Meissner at the court where he was being tried or at Averoff Prison, where he was being held on remand. Leventis said he’d wait for us at the café across the narrow street. The Greek lawyer listened politely while I quickly outlined my mission. Sipping a drink that looked and smelled more medicinal than alcoholic, he lit a small cigar and then, patiently, explained his client’s situation, in perfect English:

  “My client is of no importance in the scheme of things,” he said. “This is the whole basis of his defense. That he was nobody.”

  “Is that nobody like Odysseus was nobody? To trick the cyclops? Or nobody in a more existential sense? In other words, was he a cunning nobody or a modest, indefinite nobody?”

  “You’re a German, Herr Ganz? Which were you?”

  Dr. Papakyriakopoulos was Greek but he was still the kind of lawyer I disliked most: the slippery kind. As slippery as an otter with a live fish in its paws.

  “That’s a good question. The former, I’d say. It certainly took a lot of cunning for me to stay alive while the Nazis were in power. And just as much afterward.”

  “In Arthur Meissner’s case he was the sort of existential nobody that you describe, Herr Ganz. If you ever met my client you would see a simple man incapable of stratagem. You would meet a man who took no decisions, did not offer counsel, committed no crimes, was never a member of a right-wing organization, was not an anti-Semite, and had little or no knowledge of anything other than what was said to him in German and which he was obliged to simultaneously translate into Greek, nothing of which he remembers now. I imagine Mr. Garlopis here would tell you that with simultaneous translation it’s often impossible to keep any memory of the translations you made just a few minutes ago.”

  “Oh, that’s very true, sir,” said Garlopis. “Unless one keeps notes, of course. I myself often kept notes to assist with simultaneous translations. But I always threw those away afterwards. The handwriting is all but illegible even to me sometimes, such is the speed with which one is obliged to write.”

  “There you are,” said Dr. Papakyriakopoulos. “Straight from the horse’s mouth, so to speak. I could have used you in court the other day, Mr. Garlopis. As an expert witness. The fact is t
hat for most of the occupation period when my client was employed by the Nazis he had no real acquaintance with the men for whom he was translating other than the fact that they wore Nazi uniforms and had the power of life and death over all Greek citizens, including him, of course. In short, he is a scapegoat for the failings of the Greek nation then and now. For Arthur Meissner to admit that he knew this German whom Lieutenant Leventis is looking for might prejudice his defense. He was just obeying orders and hoping to stay alive, and any evidence of his criminality has, so far, turned out to be little more than circumstantial or worse still, worthless hearsay. Nevertheless, he is a loyal Greek citizen, and I will put it to him tomorrow that you are willing to help him. It may be that he agrees to meet you, and it may be that he does not. But might I ask, what is your interest here?”

  “The lieutenant seems to think that as a German I have a moral duty to assist the police with their inquiry. I’m not so sure about that, to be honest. I work for an insurance company but before the war I was a policeman. I came to Greece to adjust an insurance claim made by a German policy holder called Siegfried Witzel. Witzel was found murdered earlier today in circumstances that lead Leventis to suppose that his death may be connected with a murder that took place during the war, and also with the recent murder of an Athenian lawyer.”

  “Dr. Samuel Frizis.”

  “Yes. Did you know him?”

  “Quite well.”

  “If I assist Leventis with his murder investigation—if I can persuade Arthur Meissner to talk to me, for instance, in confidence—then he may be prepared to speak up in court for your client.”