“All right. When you showed me Brunner’s picture, I took my time about it, right? That was me, racking my brains, trying to remember where I’d seen him before. France, Germany, the Balkans—it’s taken me until now to realize I was opening the wrong drawers. I couldn’t remember him because he wasn’t in my memory. He was at the end of a bar. This bar.”
I only told Leventis this small lie because I didn’t want him asking about Fischer at the bar of the Mega Hotel and discovering I’d already asked questions about him myself.
“You mean Brunner was in here? In this hotel?”
“That’s right. In this very bar. About a week ago we got to talking, the way two men do when they discover they’re both from the same part of the world. He told me his name was Georg Fischer and that he was a tobacco salesman. Gave me a packet of Karelia to try. There’s not much more to it than that. I didn’t remember him right away because he’s almost fifteen years older than that picture you showed me. Less hair. Put on a little weight, perhaps. Gruff voice like he gargles with yesterday’s brandy. I mean, you don’t connect a wanted Nazi war criminal with a friendly guy you meet in an Athens bar. Well, when you mentioned the name Georg Fischer back in your office I suddenly put two and two together and came up with the man I’d met in this bar.”
“This story you’re telling—you spread it on a field of sugar beet, not Lieutenant Stavros P. Leventis.”
“It happens to be true. People look different when they’re in uniform. I mean, looking at you anyone would think you know what the hell you’re doing. He struck up a conversation because I figure he’d been keeping an eye on me ever since I arrived in Athens. My guess is that he was looking for Siegfried Witzel and that he was hoping I might help him. Unwittingly, of course.”
“I guess that’s your own middle name, Commissar.”
“My guess is that he waited for Witzel to show up at MRE’s offices around the corner, and then followed me when I followed Witzel to the place where he’d been lying low ever since the Doris sank. Went back a bit later and then killed him. He and Witzel probably knew each other from before the war. I’m not sure but I think Witzel was involved in some scheme to look for ancient Greek artifacts that he could sell on the black market. Assuming there is a black market for that kind of thing.”
“Sure there is. It’s a thriving one, too. There are lots of museums and private collectors who want a bit of Greek history on the cheap. Not just ours. Roman treasures, too.”
“I’m still working on that. I’m hoping I’ll have a little more information after I’ve spoken to the director of the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus. It looks like there was some agreement between the museum in Piraeus and a museum in Munich to share any discoveries. But that might just have been a cover. Maybe Brunner wanted a share, too. Or maybe it was a revenge thing. I don’t know. But if I had to guess some more—”
“You do.”
“Then I’d say that Brunner might have had something to do with the sinking of the boat. I have no idea how. Not yet.”
“Tell me more about Fischer.”
“Good suit. Gold watch, nice lighter, even nicer manners. He looked like he was doing all right for himself. He spoke Greek. Or at least as far as I was able to tell. What I mean to say is that he was reading a Greek newspaper and he seemed to speak to the barman fluently enough. He said he liked it here. And I got the impression he was in Greece a lot.”
“Is that all?”
“Look, I’ve got lots of faults but protecting Nazi war criminals isn’t one of them.”
“Says you.”
“Frequently.”
“And Meissner? Has he agreed to meet you, yet?”
“Right now that’s a maybe, too.”
“You’ve got a lot of maybes, Commissar. Enough to operate a roulette wheel, maybe. Certainly many more than your old bosses in Germany would ever have tolerated. From what I’ve read of the SS and the Gestapo they didn’t much like maybes. They preferred results. We have that in common at least. In case you’ve forgotten, my own boss is a man called Captain Kokkinos and he’s an impatient man. He thinks I should bring you in and sweat you and your fat friend, Garlopis. He’s been hitting the walls because I don’t.”
“I’ve seen your walls. And I don’t think your decorator will care.”
“Because then I’d have to waste time listening to your lies. So I tell you what I’m going to do, Ganz. From now on, you’re gonna tell me every move you make. Anything you do, I want a report. Just like you were a cop again. You can have your secretary type it. If you don’t, I’ll make sure they bury you in the deepest cell in Haidari. Solitary confinement for as long as it takes to break you. I don’t much care about Garlopis. He’ll say anything to stay out of prison. But you’re another story. You’ll be talking to yourself inside a fortnight. Because no one will be listening. Not even me. I’ll forget all about you, maybe. This is the home of democracy but we can behave in some very undemocratic ways when we put our minds to it. So you can take your choice. But you need to start confiding in me like I’m your father confessor. Only then can you get absolution. And only then can you go home.”
I nodded, full of compliance and cooperation, like I was the most craven informer ever to be bullied by a policeman. But I could already see I was going to need the firm of lawyers in Piraeus that Dietrich had recommended and later that day I called them and made an appointment on the same day we were scheduled to see Dr. Lyacos again.
THIRTY-ONE
–
Latsoudis & Arvaniti were located on the corner of Themistocles Street, in a modern building overlooking the main port of Piraeus, from where I could easily have taken a ferry to one of the Greek islands. After my conversation with Lieutenant Leventis I was seriously considering it.
Garlopis had at last swapped the Oldsmobile for a smaller Rover P4 and while he parked it I waited in the yellow church on the square and, but for the idea that there were other mugs who tried it already, I might have prayed. When he fetched me, he said the church was built on the ruins of the Temple of Venus, and being a bit of a pagan and generally fond of goddesses, I said it didn’t look like much of an improvement.
We went up to the firm’s offices and met with two lawyers, neither of whom was called Latsoudis or Arvaniti, who told us in a mixture of Greek and English and the pungent smoke of Turkish cigarettes that we had their sympathy, that one of them would gladly represent us in court, that what had happened was entirely typical of Athens, and that the Attica police were little better than the Greek army, and fascists to boot, for whom torture and the abuse of human rights were second nature, and that Captain Kokkinos fancied himself to be a man with a political future, not to say a potential dictator. It was best, they advised, that we do exactly what we were told, otherwise we should end up like many communist DSE fighters and KKE members and find ourselves sent to the island of Makronisos or, worse, imprisoned in Block 15, where lawyers were not allowed and conditions were nothing short of barbaric, even by Nazi standards. None of this was reassuring to me but as we left, Garlopis said that I should take nothing of what they had said too seriously and that the view of these lawyers was only representative of the kind of people who lived in Piraeus, who had no love for the people of Athens, which came as something of a surprise to me since Piraeus was only five kilometers from the center of the Greek capital.
“To my mind we would be better off being represented by a local firm,” said Garlopis as we made our way to the Archaeological Museum and our second meeting with Dr. Lyacos. “Such as the one I recommended to poor Mr. Witzel.”
“Another cousin, no doubt.”
“No. Although I do have a relation in the legal profession. My wife’s uncle Ioannis is a lawyer in Corinth, but I shouldn’t wish my worst enemy to be represented by him. Pegasus himself would take flight before retaining a man like Ioannis Papageorgopoulos.”
“There’s a bra
ss nameplate I’d hate to have to engrave.”
“Look, I’m sure Mr. Dietrich is correct, that Latsoudis & Arvaniti are a perfectly good and highly respectable firm of lawyers. But if it was my money, I’d prefer a firm in Attica. Such as the one in our own office building.”
“Why the hell didn’t he recommend them, then?” I asked.
“Because outsiders don’t appreciate the antipathy that exists between Piraeus and Athens. No one could who doesn’t live here. Yes, Piraeus is on the doorstep of Athens, but it might as well be a hundred kilometers away, such is the loathing between these two cities. A man who lives in Athens would never be represented by a firm in Piraeus, or the other way round. But perhaps you would like me to explain this to you, sir.”
“Not today,” I said.
“Oh, it would take a lot longer than that.”
“I figured as much. It sounds a lot like the hatred between Munich and Berlin. Nobody else gets that either. Nobody else that matters, anyway. Only Germans.”
Things were quiet at the museum again. We were a bit early for our meeting with Dr. Lyacos so we walked around for a few minutes looking at the museum’s many exhibits. While it crossed my mind that the Nazis had managed to make all classical statuary look just a bit fascist—any one of the outsized bronze figures at the museum in Piraeus might easily have been banged out on Hitler’s orders by a stooge like Arno Breker—I wasn’t really looking; I was still preoccupied with what Lieutenant Leventis had said and for the first time in months I felt as if I needed an all-risks insurance policy.
Dr. Lyacos was wearing a yellow carnation in the lapel of a beige cotton suit, and a yellow bow tie. His previously grayish hair had a lot more yellow in it than before, as if freshly stained with nicotine, which made him look like some hennaed Sufi mystic or perhaps the oldest boy soprano in the church choir. Even the smoke from his cherrywood pipe looked vaguely yellow. All in all there was much too much yellow in the room. It was like staring through a bottle of brilliantine.
“It’s good of you to see us again, sir,” I said, and then explained how the real Professor Buchholz could not possibly have met with him in Piraeus, at which point Lyacos stared at me over the top of his half-moon glasses with the look of a dyspeptic judge. Garlopis translated from the Greek.
“Are you calling me a liar?” said Lyacos.
“No, sir. Not at all. What I’m saying is that the man you met was an impostor. That he was impersonating the real Professor Buchholz.”
“Well, who was he then?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out. I wondered if you could provide me with a physical description of the man you met.”
Lyacos took off his glasses, folded them into a box, and rubbed the end of his pencil-like nose. “Let’s see now. About sixty years old. Large. Overweight. Tall. About as tall as you, perhaps. Silver hair. Large. Trousers too high on his waist—I mean, the man’s trousers were virtually on his chest. Spoke good Greek, for a German.” He lit his pipe and considered the matter some more. “A little self-satisfied, perhaps. Large. I don’t know. Maybe not as old as sixty. Fifty, probably.”
I nodded. “Anything else?”
Lyacos shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. That’s about it, I’m afraid. But look, there was nothing wrong with his permissions. Those came straight from the ministry. And the signatures were impeccable. They couldn’t possibly have been fraudulent. Unless—”
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s not unknown for government officials in this country to take a bribe. Not that I’m saying anyone did, mind you. That’s up to you to determine. We’ve got used to the idea of our leaders lying to us and being corrupt; for most Greeks it doesn’t matter that they’re corrupt. We expect it. Why else would they enter office in the first place? But you surprise me. The man who sat in your chair seemed very polished. And exactly like a man who was a professor. Shall we say he was a gentleman? Yes. An academic sort of fellow, anyway. Well read, I should say. I mean he was quite convincing. Of course, it does explain the mistake he made about the small artifacts found on the wreck site by Herr Witzel. If you remember, I did mention before that these were identified by the professor as late Helladic when they were very definitely much earlier.”
“Thanks for your help,” I said. “Can I ask you one last thing? Assuming that this man meant to cheat your museum out of its share of any treasures found in the sea, can you tell me if there is much of a market in this kind of thing? I mean is there real money to be made?”
“Oh, yes. And a lot of these antiquities come through Piraeus. Egyptian, Byzantine, Assyrian, Islamic, Greek, you name it. Mostly it ends up in the hands of private collectors in the United States, but also in smaller city museums that are looking to put themselves on the cultural map. The black market trade in antiquities is worth a lot of money and these days it’s happening on an industrial scale. A good-condition Roman bust of the second century might be worth up to fifty thousand dollars. I’ve even heard that Nasser is using ancient Egyptian art to pay for illegal weapons.” He puffed at his pipe. “Do you think that’s what this man is up to?”
“I really don’t know. I can’t see a better reason.”
“You know my secretary, Kalliopi, she spent as much time with this man as I did. She might be able to add something to what I’ve told you, Mr. Ganz.”
Lyacos picked up the telephone and summoned his secretary to his office. A few minutes later a heavy, gray-haired woman of about fifty entered the room; she was wearing black and generally resembled a poorly erected Bedouin’s tent. From a distance she looked pretty good; up close I needed to see a good optician. It wasn’t that she was ugly or even plain, only that she’d reached a time in her life when romantic love was a locked door that didn’t need a key. I explained my mission and waited. She rubbed the stubble on her face, rolled her eyes a bit, and started talking in Greek, which Garlopis translated simultaneously.
“He was a big man . . . Tall, about one hundred and eighty-five centimeters, overweight, chest about a fifty-six, waist the same as my husband’s, which is a ninety-seven . . . Wheezy, bad breath, smoked a lot, walked like a duck . . . Silver hair . . . Brown, globular eyes, with next to no eyelashes . . . Never met your eye, though . . . He had beautiful hands, which were manicured. And he was always tapping the tips of his fingers when he was thinking . . . Jacket pockets full . . . Spoke good Greek . . . Nice watch . . . She saw a poster for a movie at the cinema near where she lives, just off Epirou Street. And there’s an American man on that poster that looks exactly like Professor Buchholz. Or at least the man who said he was Professor Buchholz. Not the leading man . . . Merely a character actor . . . Not Orson Welles . . . Only she can’t remember the name of the movie.”
I looked at my watch and saw that it was getting near the museum’s closing time.
“Maybe we could run the lady home,” I said, “and then she could point the man out to us. On the poster, I mean. If Dr. Lyacos can spare her.”
About half an hour later we pulled up outside the Royal Cinema. The movie playing was The Mask of Dimitrios, with Peter Lorre and Zachary Scott. Evil genius ran the line on the poster, plundering for profit and pleasure. I hadn’t seen it. I’d had enough of evil genius to last a lifetime. But Garlopis had seen it, several times.
“This film is very popular in Athens,” he said. “I think it’s always playing somewhere in the city. Probably because it’s partly set here, and in Istanbul.”
But it wasn’t either of those two actors that Kalliopi now pointed out to us. It was a fat actor, dressed in an overcoat, a spotted silk scarf, and a bowler hat. He was holding a Luger, too. Hers had been a good description, as good as any police artist’s. But she was wrong about one thing: The fat man was the leading actor in this picture. He was an Englishman called Sydney Greenstreet.
“I believe he plays the part of Mr. Peters, sir,” said Garlopis.
And there was one more detail Kalliopi remembered before we waved her goodbye.
“The man had bad teeth,” said Garlopis, translating again. “From smoking probably. With a single gold tooth, in the front, on the upper jaw.”
“I see.”
“So it would seem we’re looking for a German version of Sydney Greenstreet,” Garlopis added, redundantly, because by now I knew exactly who had been so meticulously described, and it wasn’t Sydney Greenstreet. Kalliopi had painted a picture of a man I knew myself, the very same man who’d got me the job at MRE, in return for the favor I dealt him back in Munich.
Without a question the man she’d described to a T was Max Merten.
THIRTY-TWO
–
Back at the office in Athens, Telesilla was waiting patiently to go home with a large bag of groceries. But first she gave Garlopis his messages and then wrote out the telegram I quickly dictated asking Dietrich to try to contact Max Merten in Munich. The last time I’d seen him he’d told me he was going on vacation and I now assumed he’d meant he was planning to impersonate a German professor of Hellenism in order to mount an expedition to dive in the Aegean Sea for some ancient treasures he could sell on the black market. It was just the sort of thing German lawyers do on their holidays; that or a little quiet embezzlement. If Dumbo Dietrich didn’t find Merten, then this would tell me that maybe he was somewhere in Greece, lying low until he was sure that Alois Brunner wasn’t looking for him, or possibly trying to find another boat, unaware of the fact that his frogman-friend Witzel was now dead; but that he’d been in Greece I was now absolutely certain.
It worried me that Max Merten could have played me for a fool, although I could hardly see how, or why. But the last thing I needed was for my nice, boring, reasonably paid job to be taken away before I’d even taken delivery of the company car. Just as worrying was the possibility that Criminal Secretary Christian Schramma had been Merten’s spanner all along, even when I thought he’d been working a double-cross; that perhaps the murders in Bogenhausen of GVP Party donor General Heinrich Heinkel and his Stasi friend had been ordered by Merten himself. And I’d been the mug who’d insisted the lawyer should keep the money, which was probably what he’d been after from the very beginning. No questions asked and money to help fund a little expedition in Greece, because chartering a boat is expensive, even when it was a boat that had been stolen from Jews.