“Yes, the end of the Third Reich.”
“The British should start to worry about the Russians. We are their natural allies against Stalin. We have to work out a way to work together.”
“What are you saying? You know what I think of Stalin, but in this war... Well, he made the right decision to face up to the Germans.”
“He wants Communism to spread all over Europe: Is that what you want?”
“What I don’t want is the Third Reich, that’s what I don’t want.”
“You have to think about tomorrow. Hitler is just a circumstance, an event, but we will get rid of him.”
“When, Max, when? Neither you nor your friends can decide to do anything about him.”
“That’s not true! You know it’s not true. But we can’t take the decisive step without being able to count on the support of certain generals or else we will just provoke an even worse disaster.”
“And some of these generals are scared of committing themselves, and others are fanatical Nazis, and you worry about what Stalin might do in the future. You know what I say? However much I hate Stalin, at the moment he’s a blessing.”
“Don’t say that, Amelia! Don’t say that, please.”
One afternoon, while she was waiting for Baron von Schumann to arrive at the bar, Dion came over to Amelia and spoke to her.
“A friend of yours from London would like you to visit the cathedral.”
Amelia grew nervous, but managed to control herself almost immediately.
“What are you talking about? I don’t know what you mean.”
“Trust me. I’m bringing news from Major Murray.”
When she heard his name, Amelia calmed down.
“When should I go?” she asked the waiter.
“Tomorrow, around eleven.”
“You...”
“We’ve spoken enough.”
The next day she went to visit the Metropolitan Cathedral in Athens. She walked slowly, looking around all the while. The Greeks were very sullen with the occupiers, and wherever she looked she saw only hostile faces.
Lots of officers had been billeted in the homes of Athenians, who had been forced to turn into hosts for their occupiers.
She was looking at the icons when she felt a man’s breath behind her.
“Good morning. Are you interested in our icons?” someone said in English.
She turned round and found herself face to face with a priest, a tall man with a black beard and bright eyes, and his hair tied back in a ponytail.
“Good morning. Yes, I like them and I find them surprising, they’re very different from Catholic religious paintings.”
“This is Saint Nicholas,” he said, pointing to one of the images. “You’ll find him in all our churches. And this is an icon of Saint George; look at this one, the Virgin and Child, a gem.”
There was almost nobody in the cathedral, apart from a few women who crossed themselves and lit candles and put them on the tables under the icons.
“As well as art, are you interested in Justice and Truth?” the priest asked in a husky voice.
Amelia tried to hide the surprise that she felt on hearing this question.
“Of course,” she replied.
“Well, we may have common friends.”
“I don’t know,” she murmured.
“Come with me and we will talk.”
She followed him out of the cathedral. It was cold, but the priest seemed not to feel the temperature. Amelia was shivering.
“We work with friends of yours in London, and your friends ask me if you might be interested in coming back to work with us here. Major Murray congratulates you for Rome.”
“Rome?” Amelia was shocked.
“That’s the message I was to give you, I don’t know any more.”
“Who are you?”
“Call me Yorgos. We don’t like having the Germans here. The Greeks have always fought against invaders. Ask Xerxes, or Darius.”
“Who?”
The priest laughed at having surprised her.
“We defeated the Persians when they were a great empire. Do you know what happened at Thermopylae? A small army led by a Spartan king, Leonidas, faced an immense Persian army. The king of Persia sent a messenger to Leonidas asking him to surrender, but the Spartans refused, and withstood the Persian onslaught, fighting so strongly that the Greeks were later able to defeat the Persians at Salamis. Not a single Spartan survived. If we hadn’t won at Marathon or made the sacrifice we made at Thermopylae, then you’d be wearing a veil today and praying to Mecca.”
“I can see that you’re proud to be a Greek.”
“The Western world owes its existence to Greece.”
“I hadn’t thought of that.”
“Maybe you didn’t know. And now tell me, are you ready to work with your friends again, and to work with us?”
“Yes.”
Amelia surprised herself by the determination with which she gave her answer. She knew that after she had killed Colonel Jürgens she had perhaps taken a step into the unknown. She still asked herself why she felt no remorse, why she was not tormented by visions of Jürgens’s face, why she felt like laughing when she remembered killing him.
“We may never see each other again, or we may yet. Go to Monastiraki tomorrow; look for the Café Acropolis; they’re waiting for you there.
“Who?
“A man called Agamemnon. He’ll give you instructions. Now we need to separate; I’ll point as if I were telling you the way to get somewhere. If you need to see me, come to the cathedral, I come there on some mornings, but not always, and don’t even think about asking for me.”
“But... are you a real priest?”
“A man who dedicates his life to God needs to fight the Devil. Now go away.”
She felt a secret pleasure that Major Murray wasn’t upset with her for having left the service after Poland. She had told Señora Rodríguez, Murray’s agent in Madrid, that she would never go back to spying. But killing Colonel Jürgens had given her the strength to carry on fighting in the shadows. She told herself that she couldn’t abandon it now, not with all the evil that she saw around her. She remembered what had happened in Poland, and Carla’s murder, and that aroused a potent rage within her, and a desire to kill all those who were spreading this evil.
That afternoon Baron von Schumann thought that she was distracted, as if nothing that he was telling her really interested her.
Amelia tried to avoid looking at Dion, but she couldn’t stop herself from looking at him out of the corner of her eye. It was clear that he worked for Commander Murray. And she laughed to herself when she realized that Commander Murray had never had any intention of letting her go: Not only had he sent Señora Rodríguez to Madrid to find out how she was, but he also knew perfectly well the steps he was taking.
“I’m going to go and walk in the Plaka tomorrow,” she told the baron.
“I’m sorry not to be able to spend more time with you, but I have to go to Thessaloniki tomorrow, I’ll be away for three or four days, can you look after yourself?”
“Of course I can!”
“Please, Amelia, be discreet; after what happened in Rome I am sure that they are keeping an eye on you.”
“But I had nothing to do with Jürgens, the police report absolved me of any crime.”
“But this friend of Jürgens insists that you had a meeting arranged with him.”
“Do you think that I would have arranged to meet that man?”
“No, I don’t, but...”
“This time you have to trust me.”
“I have something else to say... I hope you don’t get angry.”
“Is it about Ludovica?”
“Yes... how did you know?”
Amelia said nothing. She was not jealous of Ludovica, she knew that Max loved only her.
“As soon as she knew that I was in Greece she said she was going to come to see me. I asked her not to, not to subject
the baby to a journey in wartime, but she didn’t pay me any attention.”
“As it’s Ludovica, I suppose that means we should expect her to appear at any moment.”
“I promised her that if she did not come I would go to Berlin to see her and Friedrich.”
“You miss your son, don’t you? Friedrich is now almost a year old, isn’t he?”
“Nearly two, and I haven’t seen him much since he was born, but I love him with all my soul, as you love yours.”
“Yes, not a day goes by when I don’t think about Javier.”
“Let’s not be downcast; I just wanted you to be on your guard in case Ludovica arrives.”
“The last time I saw her was with Ulrich Jürgens in the reception of the hotel in Warsaw. They were getting along like a house on fire.”
“Let’s not think about Ludovica. Shall we eat away from the hotel tonight?”
Amelia smiled so as not to upset him, but speaking about their children, and remembering Javier, had made her sad.
She didn’t dare ask Dion where to find the café that the priest had told her to visit. She knew that she shouldn’t show any sign of familiarity with this man so as not to put them both in danger, so she left the hotel with sufficient time to walk to the Plaka and stare at the Parthenon, which stood out majestically on the top of the Acropolis. The swastika was flying high there, in spite of the continued and suicidal attempts of Greek patriots to climb the rock and replace it with the Greek flag. Only one had succeeded, paying for his exploit with his life.
Amelia was surprised that the Greeks should be patriotic, and envied them for a moment. She remembered, with a surge of anger, how Franco had classed all the people who fought for the Republic as unpatriotic, and said to herself that she would prefer to be unpatriotic rather than patriotic in the way that Franco understood the word. With these thoughts she made it to Monastiraki and, strolling through the streets without asking anyone, found the old café.
There was a man behind the bar, engaged in serving a thick coffee to one of his customers. He looked at her incuriously, and she waited for him to finish.
“Is this Agamemnon’s café?” she asked, when he turned to her and asked what she wanted.
“Yes.”
“A friend of mine, a priest, asked me to come here.”
The man made her a sign to follow him and she walked behind the counter to where a black curtain separated the bar from the tiny room where boxes and bottles were stored. They scarcely fit there.
“Your friends in London,” the man said, in English, “want you to send them all the documents you can get hold of: plans, troop movements, anything that might be of interest.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s what they want for now. Here, they gave you this. It’s a microcamera. The keys for enciphering messages are in this envelope. Be careful.”
“Where should I deliver the messages?”
“You should come here if you can’t give them to Dion. You could go to the cathedral as well, the priest goes there every now and then.”
“What else do they want in London?”
“They want you to work with us. Given your relationship with that German, you could be useful.”
“Alright.”
“We may need you very shortly for an operation.”
“Turn around,” she said.
He obeyed and she hid the camera in her brassiere. Then they took their leave of each other.
When she got back to the hotel, she went into Max’s room. It connected with hers, so this was not difficult. She looked through his wardrobe without finding anything apart from his clothes; there was nothing interesting in the desk either. She would have to wait for him to come back in order to photograph the documents that he would have with him in his briefcase. She had already done it in Warsaw, but because she was keen to start working, she wrote a summary of all the conversations she had had with Max about the progress of the war, with some strategic details that might be useful for London. She wanted to feel useful.
Max called her from Thessaloniki and said that he was going to Berlin for two days.
“I’m sorry, but they’ve ordered me back to the General Staff. Apparently they don’t like my reports, they say I’m too pessimistic. I suppose I’ll have to sweeten reality so that I don’t make them feel uncomfortable. Be careful.”
It was starting to be annoying, that Max would tell her so often to be careful. But she couldn’t blame him. He always believed her, he never mistrusted her, in spite of the evidence to the contrary.
Waiting until the baron returned, Amelia dedicated her time to familiarizing herself with the city. She walked everywhere, without stopping, acquainting herself with the intricate layout of Athens.
One afternoon, coming back from one of her walks, the concierge told her that Max von Schumann was in the hotel bar with two other officers.
Amelia went there immediately, she had missed him. Max was talking animatedly with his adjutant Major Henke and another officer she did not know. He was wearing the uniform of a naval officer.
“Ah, darling, you’re here at last!” Max could not hide his satisfaction at seeing her. “You know our dear friend Major Henke, but allow me to present you to Captain Karl Kleist.”
The naval officer clicked his heels and kissed her hand. Amelia noticed that he was an extremely attractive man.
“I have wanted so much to meet you, Fräulein Garayoa.”
“Captain Kleist helped us a great deal in Warsaw. He did great things to... well, to get you out of Pawiak,” Max said, slightly uneasily.
“No more disagreeable talk! We are in Athens! Let’s enjoy the privilege of looking at the Parthenon,” Captain Kleist interrupted him. “And please, call me Karl, I hope we are going to be friends.”
“Thank you,” Amelia replied with a smile.
The three men took up the conversation that they had been having before Amelia’s arrival. From what she could gather, the sailor went to South America frequently. At one point he referred to a recent journey to Spain, to Bilbao, and she could not avoid showing her interest.
“Do you know Spain?”
“Yes, I know your country and I like it very much. Your surname is Basque, is that right?”
“Yes, my father is Basque.”
“We have good friends there.”
Amelia didn’t ask any more. She knew that the best way of finding out information was to listen, to let the men expound and forget her presence. But Kleist was a professional and much too experienced to commit simple errors and trust a stranger; added to which, she was in his debt for the help he had given Baron von Schumann in getting her released from Pawiak.
She had to wait until she was alone with Max, in the intimacy of the night, to get a clearer idea of Captain Kleist’s activities.
“He’s a good soldier. He doesn’t approve of what is happening, he... Well, he’s always been loyal to Admiral Canaris and Captain Oster.”
“But he obeys orders just like the rest of you, is that it?”
“We’ve spoken about this before,” Max said with a tired gesture.
Amelia apologized. The last thing she needed now was to have a fight with Max. What she needed was information.
“You’re right, I’m sorry. What is it that Captain Kleist does, then?”
“Come on, Amelia! I can’t believe you couldn’t work it out!”
“He works for the secret service?”
“He has to get raw materials from South America, without which Germany would not be able to continue fighting: platinum, zinc, copper, wood, mica...”
“I didn’t know that Germany needed anything from South America, I always thought that those countries were very poor.”
“No, they’re not poor, but they have the misfortune to be run by corrupt governments. I don’t think that abandoning their colonial status has really helped them advance.”
“Well, they might have lots of raw materials like you say, but t
hey were a great financial burden for Spain,” Amelia said, just to say something.
“Well, they are rich, Amelia, very rich. They have copper, oil, precious stones, wood, zinc, quinine, antimony, platinum, mica, quartz, even liver.”
“Liver? I don’t understand...”
“I was asking Kleist to do what he could to get more liver. Haven’t I ever told you? We make a tonic out of liver extract which is extremely invigorating, and which we give to shock troops and submariners. Maybe I should bring you a bottle.”
“How horrid! I should hate to drink liver tonic.”
“Well, it does provide a great charge of energy, I wish we had enough to give some to every soldier! It’s very good against tiredness, and it is an invigorator.”
“And what about platinum? Why do you want platinum? I can’t imagine that you need to keep the jewelers supplied during wartime. Who has money to buy jewelry nowadays?”
“Platinum is for something more than rings and necklaces,” Max said, laughing. “It’s used to make nitric acid, in heating elements, in manufacturing fibres, optical lenses... I won’t bore you with a chemistry lesson about the properties of platinum. Karl Kleist told us something very funny about platinum smuggling. Some of our sailors in the Spanish merchant marine make cornerpieces, little reinforcing triangles that go on the corners of trunks or boxes. Instead of metal they use platinum, which they then paint black to hide it, so that when the boat goes through British customs at Trinidad nobody realizes that these little cornerpieces are in fact made of platinum.”
“How clever my countrymen are!”
“Yes, yes they are.”
“And Captain Kleist organizes this smuggling.”
“Yes, but Kleist is also a lucky businessman. He has set up companies in South America to guarantee the export of these raw materials. He’s a very important man, many lives depend upon him.”
Max suddenly fell silent and stood in front of Amelia, looking at her with a certain degree of worry.
“What’s wrong, Max? Why are you looking at me like that?”
“I want you... I want you not to lie to me...”