Spies of the Balkans Read online

  “And where you will live.”

  Slowly, she shook her head, then put her cigarette out, pressing the end against the glass. “No, I will go back.”

  “Forgive me, I assumed you were Jewish.”

  “I am.”

  Zannis didn’t answer. It was properly hushed on the top floor of the Lux Palace; from the corridor outside the room he could hear the whir of a vacuum cleaner. He stood up, walked over to the window and looked out to sea, at a steamship and its column of smoke against the sky. As he returned to the chair she met his eyes. Stunning, he thought again, and hard, much harder than he’d first thought. What have I stumbled on? Back in the chair, he leaned forward and spoke quietly. “You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to. I’ll still help you.”

  She nodded, grateful for his understanding. In the bedroom, the boy said, his voice just above a whisper, “Should this be green?”

  “No, blue,” the girl said.

  Emilia Krebs bent toward him and lowered her voice. “It was very hard for them. They couldn’t go to school, they couldn’t really go outdoors—Berlin is brutal now. Do you understand?”

  His expression said that he understood perfectly.

  “So, my friend asked me to get them out, somewhere safe. Because she knew I could go in and out of Germany. Krebs is Colonel Hugo Krebs, my husband, and a very powerful man.”

  “In the party?” He meant the Nazi party, and kept his voice light and neutral.

  “Never.” She was offended that he could even suggest such a thing, and her voice knew how to be offended. “No, he isn’t like that. He’s a career officer; he serves on the General Staff of the Wehrmacht, a manager of logistics—trains getting where they’re needed on time, enough socks—it’s not glamorous, but it is quite important.”

  “I know what it is,” Zannis said. “Is there a J stamped in your passport?” That was now a legal requirement in Germany, a J for Juden, Jew.

  “Oh no, not mine; they wouldn’t dare.”

  “No, likely they wouldn’t, not with you married to a man in his position, and he’s probably not Jewish—he couldn’t be, the way things are in Germany.”

  “A Lutheran, from a solid old family, though nothing special. We met, we fell in love, and we married—he’s a wonderful man. We were never able to have children, but we lived a good life, then Hitler came to power. Hugo would have resigned his commission but he realized that, with a Jewish wife, it was better for us if he stayed where he was.”

  Zannis nodded, acknowledging an unfortunate truth. And, he thought, logistics is the word. How to get this woman and the two children to Turkey? “Could you tell me how, once you reached Istanbul, you planned to return to Berlin?”

  “I didn’t see it as a problem,” she said, hesitant, not sure what he had in mind.

  “By steamship?”

  “Heavens no. It’s faster to fly. From Istanbul to Bucharest, then on to Berlin. Lufthansa has routes to all the neutral countries.”

  “But you didn’t fly to Istanbul. I imagine, with two children, it would have been expensive.”

  “It wasn’t that, I don’t care about money. Hugo and I thought the three of us might be a little too noticeable at Tempelhof—Gestapo everywhere, at the airport—so better to go on the train. By stages, you see, first to Vienna, then Budapest, Belgrade, Sofia, and on to Istanbul. We got as far as the border control at Edirne, in Turkey.”

  “But you came back to Salonika.”

  “Because I knew there were Jews in Salonika—‘the Jerusalem of the Balkans,’ all that.”

  “Yes, at one time a majority here, and still a large community.”

  “I couldn’t think what else to do. Going back to Berlin was out of the question, of course.”

  “Why?”

  “Because”—she paused, then said—“that would have been, well, failure.”

  “And you don’t fail.”

  “How could I?” With a shift of her eyes, she referred to the children in the bedroom.

  Zannis thought for a moment; then he said, “There is one thing I wondered about.”

  “Anything.” She encouraged him with a smile; certainly they had become, almost, friends, she hoped.

  “You said, ‘I don’t care about money,’ and I don’t mean to pry, but I suspect you weren’t talking about the pay of an army colonel.”

  “You don’t mean to pry?” Arch and amused.

  Zannis’s turn to smile.

  “I have money of my own. I am Emilia Krebs but I used to be, I guess I still am, Emilia Adler. A name you might recognize, if you were German. Emilia Adler, of the Frankfurt Adlers, private bankers since the Middle Ages and very, very rich. There, it’s out.”

  Zannis was puzzled and showed it. “Now? Under the Nazis? My impression was that they’d stolen all the Jewish money in Germany, forced the sale of Jewish businesses, prevented funds from leaving the country. Not true?”

  “Not quite. Because once the Nazis got hold of the money they had to do something with it. Much of it went to Switzerland, but a substantial amount was deposited with my grandfather, at the Adler Bank in Frankfurt. That’s because he pays interest of twelve percent—which the Swiss, believe me, don’t.”

  Zannis was impressed. “Twelve percent.”

  “There’s no way he can invest at that level, of course, though the Nazis think he can—the cunning Jew, working in secret…. But, in fact, the money is coming from his own resources, it is a rather elegant form of bribery.”

  After a moment, Zannis said, “Forever?”

  “No. But for a time, maybe a year, maybe more. He knew they would come after him, in 1936, he knew, so he went after them. Gently. He is on the surface a very gentle man, though he’s not really like that.”

  “Nor are you.”

  “Nor am I.”

  “And your father, works for the bank?”

  “My father died ten years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “In Persia, where we held bonds for the building of water systems.”

  “Of … an illness?”

  “Of passion. A heart attack in a bordello. We like to believe he died happy. So there, Herr Zannis, now you have it all.”

  “Almost. I’d like to know how you managed to secure exit papers for the children.”

  “The lawyer did do that—at least he got something right.”

  “How was it done? Do you know?”

  “With a bribe, according to the lawyer. Fifty thousand reichsmark. Anyhow, that’s what I paid him, besides his fee, but all I have is his word.” She shrugged. “It might have been less.”

  Zannis raised his eyebrows—a lot of money. “What, in dollars: twenty-five thousand? People could live on that for years.”

  “Closer to twenty, I believe. Still, a substantial sum; this kind of transaction has become very expensive in the Reich. The Nazis are vicious and criminal but, thank God, they are also venal. The ideology, for many of them, is only skin-deep—they like power, and they love money.”

  “Well, I’ll need the exit papers, for a day or two, maybe longer.”

  As she went for her purse, Zannis rose to his feet and said, “Now I think I will have a coffee—may I pour one for you?”

  “Please.”

  “Nathanial?” Zannis said. “Paula? Would you like a pastry?”

  12 October. The Club de Salonique.

  It was the place in the city, so much so that even the mighty Vangelis had had a difficult time getting Zannis a membership. “Not only did I have to put my thumb in a certain place,” the old man told him, “but I had to press hard.” Nonetheless, it was crucial for Zannis to belong, because some of the most important business in Salonika was done there, in the club’s own building on the fancy end of the corniche. The atmosphere in the dark mahogany dining room, with its view over the sea and its hushed luncheon ritual—subdued conversation, just the barest music of china and silverware—was privilege transcendent.

  Ju
st the setting for Celebi, the Turkish consul. Easily a film version of the diplomat, Celebi—silver hair, serene smile, ivory cigarette holder; Roxanne had once described him as debonair. The waiter arrived, they ordered indifferently—the food was too polite to be good—and Zannis was properly grateful for Celebi’s seeing him on such short notice. Aperitifs were served, Zannis said he needed a favor, Celebi’s expression changed only slightly—oh? So it was to be a sophisticated sort of a luncheon, based on the most sophisticated sort of understanding about life and politics, though somewhat less sophisticated was the view out the window, where a merchant freighter, torpedoed that morning, burned while they dined. Mostly black smoke but, if one of your sideways glances came at just the right moment, you might catch a bright dot of fire.

  “She’s a very cultivated woman,” Zannis said. “Jewish, and a person of some standing in the social world of Berlin.”

  “Really?”

  “So it seems.”

  “She must be terribly rich, then. I’m afraid the rest of them …”

  “I know.”

  “She’s in difficulties?”

  “In a way. She’s trying to get a friend’s children out of Berlin.”

  “And into Turkey?”

  “Yes. Will you have another one?”

  “Oh, I don’t know …”

  “Waiter?”

  “Sir?”

  “Two more, please.”

  “I shouldn’t …”

  “Let’s go to hell a little, no? A nap this afternoon …”

  “Maybe you can …”

  “You’re busy?”

  “It’s frightful. Half the world trying to get in the door. I’m over January’s limit now, for entry visas, and my superiors in Istanbul are becoming tiresome.”

  Zannis shook his head. “Damned war.”

  “We could’ve done without, that’s certain. Why don’t you just smuggle them in? Everyone else does.”

  “They’re kids, Ahmet. Sweet kids. I don’t want them to pee their pants every time some cop looks at them in the street.”

  “Oh, yes, well, you’re right then. They’ll need real documents.”

  “Can you reason with Istanbul?”

  “Umm, yes and no. But, truth is, I may have to sweeten somebody.”

  “Well, that won’t be a problem.”

  “No?”

  “No, I don’t think so.”

  Celebi took a cigarette from a silver case and twisted it into his cigarette holder.

  Zannis flicked a lighter and, as Celebi bent toward the flame, said, “What do you think, four hundred?”

  “I assume you don’t mean drachmas.”

  “Dollars.”

  “Apiece?”

  “Yes. An adult and two children.”

  “Can she get dollars?”

  “In Salonika?”

  Celebi nodded, amused, to himself: of course. “I’ll send Madam Urglu along, say, tomorrow afternoon?”

  “I’ll expect her. I have an envelope with me—German exit visas, you can get the information from them.”

  “On the way out,” Celebi said.

  Zannis nodded in agreement. So elegant, the dining room of the Club de Salonique, not a place to be passing envelopes across the table.

  Blue sky, that afternoon, sparkling air after the rain, the snow-capped Mount Olympus visible across the bay. Zannis walked back to the office along the busy Via Egnatia, taking his time, pausing to look at the windows of the shops. He made a mental note to contact Emilia Krebs when he reached the office, giving her time to arrange the money for the bribe—he doubted any of it would ever reach Istanbul—so that by the following afternoon he could give an envelope to Madam Urglu.

  He didn’t much care for Madam Urglu, said to be Celebi’s chief spy. In her fifties, pigeon-breasted and stout, with glasses on a chain around her neck and a sharp tongue. Spiraki at state security claimed she served as a spymaster for various secret agents—“coded wireless transmission Monday and Thursday nights,” he’d said, “from the top floor of the legation.” Probably he was right, Zannis thought, staring at a display of tennis rackets and a poster of a blond woman in mid-backhand, but he wondered what intelligence, secret intelligence, the Turks wanted in Salonika. Whatever it might be, he was hardly shocked.

  After all, they’d been fighting the Turks forever—famously in Troy, in Homeric days, but that surely wasn’t the first time. The last time it started was in 1919, when the Greek armies had gone up into Turkey and occupied the coastal city of Smyrna. There was even talk in those days about getting Constantinople—Byzantium—back, the great capital of the Byzantine Empire, taken by Moslem Turks in 1453. They’d had it long enough, no?

  Well, they still had it, now Istanbul. And the Turkish armies had retaken Smyrna in 1922: burned the town, slaughtered the Greek population, and changed the name to Izmir. In the following year a treaty was signed: three hundred and fifty thousand Turks left Greece, and a million and a half Greeks came to Greece from Turkey, came back home, where they hadn’t lived for a thousand years. Thus, in the autumn of 1940, there was still a taverna called Smyrna Betrayed, located on what had once been known as Basil-the-Slayer-of-Bulgars Street. Renamed the Street of the Franks, in memory of yet another conquest. Easy enough to find new names in a city where the wars outnumbered the streets.

  Back at the office, he telephoned Emilia Krebs at the Lux Palace. She was very emotional, close to tears—as close as she ever came, he thought, and these would’ve been tears of relief. Yes, she had the money, and the minute she got off the phone she’d go out and buy dollars. Victory. He supposed you had to call it that: two kids off to grow up in a foreign country, perhaps never to see their parents again, but at least alive.

  And late in the afternoon on 16 October, he rode in a taxi to the railway station so Emilia and the children could board the 17:20 express to Istanbul. In the waiting room, Nathanial and Paula sat quietly—too quietly, too much had happened to them—and Emilia Krebs gave him a sheet of Lux Palace notepaper with her address and telephone number in Berlin. “There may come a time,” she said, “when I can return the favor.”

  “Maybe,” he said, meaning likely never.

  “The way the world is going now, you can’t tell about the future.” The approaching train sounded its whistle and she put a hand on his arm. “I can never thank you enough,” she said. “For helping me.”

  “You don’t have to thank me,” he said. “Who could say no?”

  •

  He left the office early that day and headed back to his apartment—two small rooms on a cobbled lane called Santaroza, between the railway station and the port. Not the best part of town, on the border of what had been the Jewish district before the Great Fire. He would play with his big mountain sheepdog, Melissa—honeybee—who would be waiting for him in the doorway after a hard day’s work in the neighborhood. This was a night, one of two or three every week, when he would go to his mother’s house for dinner. Melissa always accompanied him and would stay until he returned for the next visit.

  She was a big girl, eighty pounds, with a thick soft black-and-white coat and a smooth face, long muzzle, and beautiful eyes—not unlike the Great Pyrenees. Queen of the street, she started her morning by walking him a few blocks toward the office, to a point where, instinct told her, he was no longer in danger of being attacked by wolves. Next, she returned home to protect the local kids on their way to school, then accompanied the postman on his rounds. That done, she would guard the chicken coop in a neighbor’s courtyard, head resting on massive paws. If a marauding fox didn’t show up, she’d wait until it was time to trot off to the school and see the kids safely home.

  Nobody taught her any of this, it was all in her bloodline, coming from the mountains where her ancestors—perhaps descendants of Turkish Akbash dogs—guarded flocks but didn’t herd them. Thus she would never trot in front of or behind her charges, but stayed always to one side. Watchful. And independent; when Zannis ha
d tried putting her on a leash she’d responded by lying down and refusing to move. Nonetheless, a splendid girl, from a mountain village where these dogs were highly valued. Zannis counted himself lucky to have been able to buy a puppy from a good litter.

  She stood when he appeared, gave a single low bark of greeting, then had her pretty ears smoothed back, her muzzle flapped, and her ruff given a few affectionate tugs. Across the lane, two old ladies sitting on kitchen chairs—always brought out in good weather—beamed at the spectacle. Then he took her up to his apartment. There were two floors in the narrow building; he had the second. “We’re going to see Grandma tonight,” he told her. Melissa’s ears shot up. At the house in the old Turkish quarter by the battlements, Zannis’s grandmother always brought home the most succulent butcher’s scraps on the nights when Melissa came for dinner.

  But the shopping didn’t end there. Accompanied by Zannis’s mother and his brother, Ari, his grandmother campaigned through the markets, coming home with fresh creamy feta, baby red mullet, calamari, or a chicken with yellow skin—the best kind of chicken, the only kind of chicken—making sure that she got extra feet for the soup pot. Oh they spoiled him rotten, begged him to stay over, which he often did, then sent him off with two of his shirts, boiled white and perfectly ironed.

  17 October. Life back to normal, thank heaven. A few cases referred to the office—not much to be done with most of them. A local politician’s wife had gone missing; they could work on that, likely to discover she’d run off with her lover. Otherwise it was quiet. Strange—with half the continent occupied by Germany, and Great Britain standing alone in opposition and fighting for its life—but quiet. At one time, Zannis had received letters from Laurette, in Paris, but now, with the occupation, the letters came only once in a great while. He answered them, carefully, carefully, because they would be read by the German censor. So Laurette would know he was well, that he often thought of her, and something of the Salonika weather.

  On the evening of the seventeenth, a party. At the house of a young professor of literature at the university, more Roxanne’s friend than his, but he was happy enough to go. Roxanne had a huge appetite for parties; Zannis went along, smiled, talked, looked covertly at his watch. This particular party was nothing new—Salonika’s high bohemian caste gathered for wine and retsina, seductions physical and social—but it was apparently one of the more important parties that autumn, because Elias showed up. Elias, the king of the city’s poets, and of sufficient stature and self-esteem to call himself by one name only, perhaps his first, perhaps his last, perhaps neither—maybe chosen for mellifluous sonority, who knew. Elias certainly looked like the king of the poets, with snow-white prophet’s beard and Einstein hair. “He doesn’t own a comb,” went the local witticism. “He just unscrews the bulb and sticks his finger in a lamp.” Discovering Zannis—they’d met several times—hiding in a corner, Elias rocked back on his heels and squinted his eyes, like a zoologist encountering an interesting animal. “Ah Zannis, you’re here.”