Greeks Bearing Gifts

  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 f
rom 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.