Greeks Bearing Gifts

  But I’d already decided on my next course of action, which was to take a drive down to Ermioni, the town on the Peloponnesian coast where Siegfried Witzel had said the lifeboat from the Doris had come ashore, and there to ask the local coast guard for more information. I didn’t know that I expected to discover anything useful but at least that way I’d be doing something better than sitting around in the office waiting for Arthur Meissner to decide if he would meet with me in Averoff Prison, or for Dumbo Dietrich to answer my latest telegram. Besides, I needed to look like I was doing something if only to keep Lieutenant Leventis off my case. I’d met a few high-pressure cops in my time—Heydrich, Nebe, and Mielke, to name but three—and while Leventis wasn’t a killer like them, in his own way he was effective. Without my passport I couldn’t leave Greece and, until it was returned to me, I was the lieutenant’s straw man just as surely as if he’d been the Kaiser and I his most slavish subject.

  “Mr. Papakyriakopoulos telephoned while we were out,” Garlopis said after Telesilla had left for the telegraph office. “Arthur Meissner has agreed to meet with us on Friday evening, sir.”

  “That’s something, I suppose. Although I really don’t know what I’m going to ask him. Or exactly how I’m going to improve his weekend. Not to mention my own.”

  “But I thought you told Lieutenant Leventis that you might be able to persuade him to tell you about Alois Brunner.”

  “I had to tell that slippery cop something. He’s the type who could find every crime in the Bible and write someone up for it. But I don’t see why Meissner would tell me anything new. Leventis isn’t offering much of a deal yet. He’ll speak up for Meissner if Meissner contributes something useful about Brunner. That wouldn’t be enough to convince me to spill my guts. And if he knows nothing, then what? We’re back to square one.”

  “Yes, I do see the problem, sir. I must say this is all quite worrying.”

  I put my hand on the Greek’s shoulder and tried to look reassuring. “Look, I don’t think Leventis is that interested in you, my friend. So I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s me he wants turning the millstone in the Gaza.”

  “Because you used to be a detective in Berlin.”

  “That’s right. A German detective to help a Greek detective solve a German murder.”

  “Yes, well, in Athens one can understand that kind of Socratic dialogue.”

  “For now what matters is that as far as he’s concerned, you’re just a nobody.”

  “It’s kind of you to say so, sir. As a matter of fact, I’ve asked around about this man, Leventis, to see if my first opinion about him—on the likelihood of his taking a bribe—might have been wrong.”

  “And?”

  “By all accounts he’s perceived to be an inflexibly honest man.”

  “They’re usually the most expensive people to try and corrupt.”

  “This is not to say that it’s impossible, sir.”

  “Yes, but the first time you saw him you said you didn’t think he could be bought.”

  “Nobody is above being bribed in Greece. Companies, judges, prime ministers, kings—them especially—everyone in Greece has to have his fakelaki, his little envelope. It’s just a case of working out what might be in it. Even a man like Stavros Leventis would probably not be above five thousand drachmas. At most ten.”

  “I might raise a thousand drachmas on expenses. But that’s it.”

  Garlopis lit a cigarette. “Is it possible that Mr. Dietrich in Munich would authorize this kind of unaccountable expenditure?”

  “I doubt it.”

  “Not even for a man who has saved them from paying out on the Doris? A quarter of a million drachmas.”

  “I don’t believe they think like that. I was just doing my job.”

  “Then we are forced to consider other methods of fund-raising. Perhaps, during the course of your inquiry, you may see the opportunity for a little bit of quiet larceny. In which case you would certainly be advised to take it.”

  “You make it sound as if there’s five thousand drachmas just lying around in this town. There isn’t.”

  “You’re wrong about that. If I might make a suggestion?”

  “Please do.”

  “The certified company check for twenty-two thousand drachmas payable to Siegfried Witzel.”

  “It was on the table at the scene of his murder in Pritaniou. Almost certainly it’s now police evidence.”

  “Almost certainly it is not.” He took out his wallet and then unfolded the same certified company check, which he handed to me with a smile. “I took the liberty of taking it when we left the murder scene. I suppose you’d like me to tell you why.”

  “Go ahead. Meanwhile I’ll try and figure out the real reason.”

  “For safekeeping, you understand. Just in case one of those uniformed policemen was tempted to steal it.”

  “You sly old dog. But how do we—?”

  “I have a cousin, sir, who works for the Alpha Bank. I think that for a small commission he might be able to help us out. Of course, we should have to be careful to cash the check at a smaller branch outside Athens, mostly probably somewhere like Heraklion, or Corinth—so that it might seem the check was presented for payment before Herr Witzel’s unfortunate death. It could also require that you should impersonate Siegfried Witzel. But then that shouldn’t be too difficult for a German, with the help of a Greek, that is.”

  “You are a man of many parts, Garlopis.”

  “Tell that to Mrs. Garlopis. Hitherto, it’s only the one part that has been of concern to her.”

  I clapped him on the shoulder. “Marriage is hell but loneliness is worse.”

  “True.”

  “I’m not saying we should bribe that cop. But we ought to have the means to do so at our disposal, just in case it proves necessary. So go ahead and make the arrangements to get the check cashed.”

  “A wise precaution, sir.”

  “Can I see that map of Greece in the drawer?” I asked.

  “Which one, sir? We have several.”

  “The Peloponnese. I’m taking a day trip to Ermioni. Maybe I can pick up some information on what happened to Witzel and his party when they came ashore after the Doris sank. At least that way I can make Leventis believe I’m actually making inquiries. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell him that’s where I’m going tomorrow.”

  “Good idea.”

  I hadn’t yet told Garlopis that I’d recognized the description given by Kalliopi in front of the cinema, that Max Merten was the Sydney Greenstreet lookalike, and that I knew him. After what Leventis had said about Garlopis I thought it best to keep him in the dark on that one—for the time being anyway. He took the map out and handed it to me. I unfolded it and spread it on the desk.

  A cursory glance at the map was explanation enough for the wars of antiquity. Greece was mostly two areas of land—a peninsula on a peninsula—separated by the Gulf of Corinth. Until 1893 and the completion of the Corinth Canal, these two peninsulas had been connected by a piece of land about six kilometers long that resembled nothing quite so much as the union of two sexually reproducing animals—the north mounting the south, or Athens mounting Sparta, depending on how you looked at these things. The rest of Greece was just hundreds of islands, which gave the country one of the longest coastlines in Europe and probably one of the most independent and ungovernable populations in the world. How Nazi Germany had ever thought it might control a country like Greece was a mystery to me and likely to the High Command, as well, which was probably why, until the fall of Mussolini, they had ceded control of the Peloponnese to the Italians. The invasion of Greece was, arguably, even greater evidence of Hitler’s madness than the invasion of the Soviet Union.

  “Ermioni,” I said, trailing my finger along the meandering coastline. “Looks like a two- or three-hour drive from here.??
?

  “We’d best get an early start,” said Garlopis.

  “I’ve made other plans. No, I think maybe you should stay here and speak to your cousin at the bank.”

  “But you’ll need someone to translate, sir. Ermioni is only a small port town. They still eat kokoretsi. Believe me, you don’t ever want to know what that is. They’re peasants. I doubt you’ll find anyone who speaks English there, let alone German.”

  “That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll be taking someone who speaks German. Someone Greek. Someone who’s a lot better-looking than you.”

  “You intrigue me, sir.”

  “I don’t mean to. And you can park that intrigue somewhere quiet, Garlopis. We’ll be back before dark, I expect.”

  “This wouldn’t be the woman from the Ministry of Economic Coordination, would it? Miss Panatoniou? The very good-looking lady who was at Brettos who, you told me, wishes to improve her German?”

  “Yes.”

  “I must say, teaching a foreign language never looked like such fun.” Garlopis grinned. “She’s a beauty. You’ll forgive me if I say so, sir, but I’m impressed.”

  “No need to be.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, sir, does she know that you’re under open arrest? That Leventis has threatened to throw you in jail unless you help him investigate Witzel’s murder?”

  “No. She doesn’t. She knows I’m investigating the loss of the Doris. And I imagine Mr. Papakyriakopoulos must have told her that I’ve asked to see his client, Arthur Meissner, but as of this moment she hasn’t mentioned that.”

  “So on the face of it, she’s going for the sheer pleasure of your company. Interesting.”

  “Isn’t it? To be perfectly honest I have absolutely no idea why she’s agreed to spend the day with me. But I’m planning to have a hell of a lot of fun finding out.”

  THIRTY-THREE

  –

  “It was the left that formed the backbone of the resistance to the German occupation,” said Elli. “And for this reason it was the left that earned the right to govern Greece after the war. But out of respect for his allies, Stalin ordered the KKE to avoid a confrontation with the Greek government in exile, led by Georgios Papandreou. The British, however, encouraged Papandreou to move against the KKE, and even sent tanks and Indian infantry units to support him against the population of Athens, which had supported the left and the KKE. As relations between the Allies deteriorated, Greece became a kind of British protectorate. The king returned to Athens, and the American CIA set about re-equipping and training the Greek army with the aim of destroying Greek communism, which was itself betrayed by Tito, in Yugoslavia.”

  The interior of the Rover P4 was all red leather and walnut veneer, quietly ticking clocks and plush thick carpets, like an exclusive English gentleman’s club. Elli Panatoniou looked good seated on the Rover’s red leather. She’d have looked good seated on a heap of worn-out car tires. I tried to keep my nice blue eyes on the twisting road to Ermioni but they kept twisting their way back to her shapely knees, the chiaroscuro edge of her black stocking tops, and the Corinth Canal that was her cleavage. The surreptitious enjoyment of all that makes a good-looking woman good-looking is perhaps the only pleasure remaining to man that is neither illegal nor unhealthy, and it’s a wonder we stayed on the road at all. It didn’t help that her Shalimar perfume was my favorite because it seemed somehow to encapsulate the delightful difference that existed between men and women; the stuff had the effect of making a woman smell like a woman and making a man want to behave like a rampaging gorilla.

  “But for Tito, Stalin would have supported the Greek uprising,” she continued. “As it was, the civil war that was fought effectively resulted in the destruction of Greek communism in 1949. Since when, the army, with the direct help and interference of the Americans, has been backing a succession of incompetent anti-communist governments. This latest one led by Mr. Karamanlis is no exception.”

  Of course, I wanted her but I was also dumb enough to wonder if this was a good idea while my liberty was under threat from Lieutenant Leventis. Instead of devoting my energies to Miss Panatoniou and the contents of her brassiere I warned myself I needed to focus all of my attention on getting out of Greece and back to Germany. At the same time I nursed a strong suspicion that Elli must be using me for something other than German conversation but so far I’d failed to see for what. In truth I probably didn’t care very much; it’s usually been my experience that if a beautiful woman is trying to take advantage of you, then you might as well relax and enjoy it while you can.

  “But make no mistake,” she said in her reasonable German. “This is a country run by the right wing and before very long the army will reveal its true hand. We may look like a democracy but underneath Greece is a very polarized society with a deep divide between the right wing and the left wing. Mark my words, the right will use the excuse of our apparent political anarchy to move against not just the left but Greek democracy as a whole, and we will end up with a military dictatorship.”

  Apart from my own suspicions, the main thing wrong with her, given that in every other respect she was perfect, was that she seemed to be a communist. Seemed, because it’s one thing talking that communist shit all the time—and she did—and quite another living under a communist government. Most of her political opinions were rubbish like that, the kind that had been rubbish in the 1930s, but were even more so now that it was generally known that the great leader, Stalin, had murdered so many in the name of brotherly love, and most of these were other communists. Whenever she started talking the left-wing janissary talk about how wonderful Russia was I kept my muzzle shut out of respect for what was going on in the Corinth Canal. But a couple of times I couldn’t resist teasing her with a glimpse of my own political underwear.

  “I thought we weren’t going to talk politics.”

  “This isn’t politics. This is history.”

  “There’s a difference?”

  “Don’t you think there is?”

  “Not in Germany. Politics is always about history. Marx certainly thought so.”

  “True.”

  “I’m a Marxist,” I said.

  “Somehow I doubt that.”

  “Sure I am. Over the years I’ve learned there’s no point in having any money or owning property, on account of how people want to take it and give it away to other people; Marxists, mostly. Or did I miss something?”

  “But surely the GDR is better than the Federal Republic,” she said. “At least they have ideals. You can’t surely believe that Adenauer’s policy of political amnesty for Nazis was the right one. West Germany is nothing more than a front for American imperialism.”

  I could have told her a lot about Russian imperialism but after twenty-five years of the right versus the left in Germany I was tired of the whole damned argument. Instead I tried to move the subject back to her, which was a subject of much greater interest.

  “Look here, if the right wing is so powerful in Greece, then how come a lefty like you gets to keep her job in a government ministry?”

  “I’m a civil servant, a lawyer, not a politician. And I keep my opinions to myself.”

  “I hadn’t noticed.”

  “One of the nicest things about speaking German with you, Christof, is that I’m able to speak freely. Isn’t that sad? I really can’t speak freely in my own language. That’s one of the reasons I agreed to come with you today. I can relax and be myself.”

  “I’m glad to hear it.”

  “Anyway, I may be a communist but I’m not a revolutionary. And I strongly believe that this new EEC is probably the best chance Greece now has to avoid a right-wing coup d’état. They simply won’t let us join if we’re not a parliamentary democracy.”

  It was a complicated world, whichever way you turned, and I was almost glad that all I had to worry about was gettin
g home again.

  “You know, you remind me of an old girlfriend of mine in Germany. She’s called Golden Lizzy and she stands on top of the Victory Column in Berlin. She’s got wings, too, and she’s meant to inspire us to do better things. At least that’s the way I always look at her.”

  “Are you partial to angels?”

  “Only the female ones.”

  “Does Lizzy have any other talents?”

  “She’s tall.”

  “I wish I knew what you thought about things. But you don’t say.”

  “I’m trying to work out why a country that produced the Parthenon and the Temple of Hephaestus doesn’t have much in the way of good modern architecture. Most of the public buildings in this country look like gas stations or high-security prisons. Vitruvius would have swallowed his set square.”

  “Money, of course. There’s not much money for public building. The civil war left us even worse off than the Nazis. Anything else you’re trying to work out?”

  “I’m German, so generally I’m working on something profoundly philosophical.”

  “And what is it right now?”

  “Lately I’ve been trying to work out why Mickey Mouse wears shorts and why Donald Duck wears a shirt, but no shorts at all. And how is it that Goofy talks and Pluto just barks? It’s a mystery to me.”

  “You’re making fun of me.”

  “No. Not at all. And maybe I just prefer to keep my opinions to myself. Anyway, they’re usually wrong. Or offensive. Or both wrong and offensive.”