Spies of the Balkans Page 5

  “Nice to see you, Elias.”

  “So, how goes life with the bullyboys?”

  “Myself, I avoid them.”

  “Really? So do I.”

  “Are you hard at work, these days?”

  “I am, yes I am. Perhaps a new book next year.”

  “I look forward to reading it.”

  “Do you have the others?”

  “I’ve given a couple of them as gifts, and I have one of my own. Dawn—um …”

  “Dawn of the Goddess.”

  “That’s it.”

  “Maybe not my best. Early work.”

  “I liked it,” Zannis said. “The one about the owl.”

  Elias thought for a time. “‘Night in the Field’?”

  “Could be. I don’t exactly remember.”

  “‘In the late night, the huntress wakes to hunt’? That one?”

  “Right. That one.”

  “Zannis, it isn’t about an owl. It’s about—well, a woman, a woman I knew.”

  You knew a woman who ate mice? Skata! “Elias,” he said, “I’m just a policeman.” He didn’t say, “just a simple policeman,” but even so Elias heard the simple, which meant that Zannis had pushed the proper button, because the word made him a worker, a worker of the world who would, in some misty future, unite.

  “Well, maybe you have a point,” Elias said, his voice not unkind. “If you take it literally.”

  Zannis sensed that Elias was preparing to escape, but Zannis wasn’t ready to let him go. “Tell me, Elias, do you ever go up into the mountains? See old friends?” It was said of Elias, and Zannis believed it to be true, that as a young man he’d gone to the mountains and fought alongside the klephts. This was the name given to the men from the mountain villages who’d fought the Turks—essentially resistance fighters—and who were sometimes shepherds and sometimes bandits, as well as guerrillas.

  Elias changed; his party-guest hauteur vanished. “No,” he said ruefully, now the Elias of a former life. “No, I don’t. I don’t see them. I do go up there, especially in the spring, because it is so beautiful, but what you’re talking about, no, that was a long time ago.”

  “True, many years ago. But I’d guess your old friends are still around. The ones who survived.”

  Elias had the last sip of his wine. “Are you asking as a policeman?”

  Zannis didn’t care for the question. “No, not at all. Those days are long gone, and people in my family did the same thing, against the Turks. I was only curious and, if you really want to know, I was wondering if you’d ever write about it.”

  Elias shook his head. “Not me, not ever. Up there, secrecy is a religion, and even though it was long ago you keep faith with it. Not that I’d mind seeing them again; when you fight alongside people, their life is in your hands, yours in theirs; it’s beyond anything else—family, love, anything. And they aren’t like people down here. To them, freedom is everything. You know how they refer to themselves, as adespotoi. Masterless.”

  “Yes, I know the word. They aren’t the only ones.”

  “Well, maybe not, we’ll see.”

  “We’ll see?”

  “The war.”

  “You think it will come here?”

  “The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, yes, all of it, and there will be cowardice and bravery.” Elias paused for a moment, then said, “Of course I hope I’m wrong. The Turkish gendarmerie was bad enough, believe me, but these people …” He looked down at his glass and said, “It appears I’m going to need some more of this.”

  “I’m glad we had a chance to talk,” Zannis said.

  Maybe Elias wasn’t so glad. His expression, as he nodded a brusque farewell and went off to refill his glass, was vaguely troubled. But not for long. As he reached the middle of the room, he cried out, “Helena! My heart’s desire! Where’ve you been hiding?”

  People arrived, nobody left, the room grew warmer, the party got louder, somebody put on a rembetika record, a woman closed her eyes and danced without moving her feet. Zannis talked to a lawyer’s wife, to an actor—“It’s like Sophocles, only modern”—to the professor host, to the cultural attaché from the German embassy in Athens—“We are madly Hellenophile; you know, we have a great passion for Greece”—and was happily engaged with a woman painter when Roxanne appeared and towed him away. “Somebody you must meet,” she said.

  A tall fellow leaning against a doorframe smiled expectantly as Roxanne led Zannis toward him. Zannis knew immediately that he was English: sand-colored hair swept across a handsome forehead, lines of early middle age graven in a youthful face that made him look like an old boy.

  “This is Francis Escovil,” Roxanne said. She gave the name some extra flavor, as though Zannis was expected to know who he was. “The travel writer,” she added.

  “Hello,” Escovil said, smiling as he shook hands. He wore his shirt with collar open and one button undone, had an old tweed jacket draped over his shoulders, and was drinking beer from a bottle.

  “Please, to meet you,” Zannis said, in his shaky English.

  “I hope you’ll be patient with my Greek,” Escovil said, in Greek.

  “Francis did classics at Cambridge,” Roxanne said.

  “Ancient Greek,” Escovil said, apologetic. “I’m trying to learn the demotic. You’ll have to forgive me if I say odd things.”

  “We all say odd things. In all sorts of languages.”

  Escovil found the remark amusing. “I see why Roxanne likes you.”

  “You’re writing about Salonika?”

  “I believe I will. Will try.”

  Zannis was puzzled. “You didn’t come here from Britain, did you?”

  Escovil laughed. “Now there’s an idea! ‘Despite the war’”—with a dramatic shading of his voice he implied quotation marks—“‘I was off to old Salonika. On the merry battleship—umm, Valorious!’ No, no, when we declared war in ’thirty-nine I happened to be in Alexandria, so I took a job with the local English newspaper. Not much of a job—it barely pays, you know—but they allow me to do the occasional travel piece.”

  Out of the corner of his eye, Zannis could see that Roxanne had the glow of a woman whose two attractive male friends are getting along well. He nodded, now I understand, then said, “Still, it must be hard to find places to write about, with a war going on.”

  “Only the neutrals. ‘On Skis in Frosty Switzerland!’ ‘A Visit to Sunny Spain!’ And, truth to tell, it’s hard to reach even those countries.”

  “At least there is Salonika,” Zannis said. “Or anywhere in Greece, or Turkey.”

  “And so I’m here. Not for the old come-and-see-it travel writing, but more wishful thinking, these days, a reminder of better times.”

  “Just for readers in Alexandria?”

  “Oh, I expect the pieces will appear in the British papers. In the Daily Express anyhow, they’ve always run my stories.”

  “Well, if I can be of help … Where are you staying?”

  “I’ve been lucky, Roxanne helped me find a place in a fishing village down on the peninsula. It’s all whitewashed houses, little alleys with stone steps, cypress trees—you know.”

  “Picturesque,” Roxanne said, in English.

  “Gawd, Roxy, don’t say that word.”

  “It means …?” Zannis said.

  “Cute.” Now she was tormenting Escovil. Then, to Zannis, “Beautiful in an old-fashioned way.”

  “They are beautiful, these villages,” Zannis said. “And you can buy wonderful food from the fishermen. By the way, I meant what I said, about help. Having your own place, it sounds like you’ll be here for a while.”

  “Maybe a month—it’s a kind of working vacation. And, frankly, I’m glad to get away. Alexandria’s impossible now—soldiers and sailors everywhere, a lot of the old families have left for the countryside.” He paused, reflectively, then answered a question Zannis hadn’t asked. “I did try to join up, in ’thirty-nine, but …” He tapped his heart,
then shook his head at the idiocy of it all. “Hard to believe they turned me down—I’ve climbed mountains, run for trains, ridden camels—but they say my heart’s no good.”

  Liar, Zannis thought, with a sympathetic smile.

  Roxanne put a hand on Escovil’s arm. “You have a perfectly fine heart, my dear.”

  “I think so. Anyhow, we’re fighting the Italians now, out in the Libyan desert. Pretty much a stalemate, but if things go wrong I expect they might reconsider.”

  “Until then,” Zannis said, “I hope you’ll enjoy your stay in Salonika, Mr. Escovil.”

  “Please, call me Francis.”

  It was very late, not long until dawn, in Roxanne’s saggy bed at the Pension Bastasini. Tired—from too many people—and groggy—from too much wine—Zannis had intended to drop Roxanne off and go back to his apartment, but she’d insisted he come up for a drink, and one thing had led to another. Parties always aroused her, so she’d been avid, and that had had a powerful effect on him. Which led in turn to her present condition: content, feline, and sleepy, her damp middle clamped to his thigh as they lay facing each other on their sides. Intimate, and warm, but temporary. In time, he knew, she would move a little, and then a little more. But not quite yet, so Zannis gazed idly at the red glow at the end of his cigarette.

  “What went on with you and Elias?” she said.

  “Nothing much.”

  “It looked like more than gossip.”

  “Oh, his misspent youth.”

  “Misspent youth? Misspent entire life, you mean, the old satyr.”

  “He’s tried to make love to you?”

  “Of course. To every woman he meets.”

  “Well, it wasn’t about that. He fought with the guerrillas, the klephts, a long time ago, and we talked about it. Briefly.”

  “Hardly misspent, from the Greek point of view.”

  Oh let’s talk politics. Instead of answering, Zannis yawned.

  “You’re not going to sleep, are you?”

  “Not yet.”

  “What did you think of Francis?”

  “Pleasant fellow. And a spy, of course.”

  “He is? Francis?”

  “Yes, can’t you tell?”

  “No. How do you know?”

  “Silly story, about a working vacation in the middle of a war.”

  “Really.” She thought it over. “A British spy.”

  “Or a secret agent. This, that, the other thing, call it whatever you like, but he’s working for one of the intelligence services, and maybe for a long time. Is he really a travel writer?”

  “Oh yes, and top class. Up there with Robert Byron and Leigh Fermor and Waugh. Are they all spies?”

  “It’s possible. More likely they were recruited, one, two, or all of them, after ’thirty-eight, when it was pretty damn clear to everyone but Chamberlain that Britain was going to have to go to war.”

  “Will you, I don’t know, will you watch him?”

  “I doubt it. The British are our friends. In fact, the British are just about our only friends. I don’t know what he wants here, but I don’t think he, I should say they, mean us harm.” Tired of the conversation, he lowered his head and brushed her nipple with his lips. “Anyhow you’re British, and you’re my friend.”

  She didn’t answer.

  Instead, a luxuriant stretch and then, down below, she moved. Ran her hand beneath his arm and pressed it against his backside, drawing him closer and resettling her legs around his thigh. Said a barely audible “Mm,” and again moved, slid.

  27 October. Late in the afternoon, a call from one of the detectives—detective-inspector in rank—at the CID, Salonika’s Criminal Investigation Division. One of Salonika’s most prominent citizens, a banker, had not shown up at his bank for three days. His second-in-command had telephoned, no answer, then gone out to the house and knocked on the door. Again, no answer. Back at the bank, it was discovered that a great deal of cash—large-denomination drachma notes, Swiss francs, British pounds—was missing.

  Zannis knew the detective, who was young for the job, ambitious and vain, and wore a vain little mustache and a very expensive fawn-colored hat. He picked Zannis up at the office and drove him out to the city’s fanciest quarter, where, in front of a splendid villa—portico, columns—a locksmith was waiting. “Thought I’d better call him,” the detective said; this was not a neighborhood where one kicked in doors. Likely they couldn’t have kicked it in even if they’d wanted to. The villa, built by some Turkish bey around the turn of the century, was massive and well-secured.

  Even better inside: dark, silent, perfectly maintained, and, Zannis’s sense of smell told him, not host to a corpse. Thank God for that. Only a note for the maids, in the kitchen. Here were two thousand drachma for each of them—a lot of money, almost two hundred dollars—thank you for being such good girls, we’ll be back some day. The money itself was gone, the house was clean, sheets covered the furniture.

  They searched the rooms, finding wardrobe trunks but no hand luggage. “Do you have a theory, sir?” the detective asked. “Been stealing for years, perhaps?”

  “Always possible,” Zannis said. But he knew better; he knew what this meant and the more he thought about it the more he knew. Suddenly, he didn’t feel so good, tightness in the chest. He went to the kitchen cabinet, found a glass, filled it with cold water, and drank most of it. Then he lit a cigarette. The detective went to the parlor and returned with an ashtray.

  When he was done with the cigarette, they continued the search. No passports, no bankbooks, a dog’s rubber ball with a bell inside it but no dog and no dog leash. On a desk, family photographs and three empty frames. In the wife’s dresser, expensive scarves but no underwear. Fashionable dresses in the closet, and three empty hangers. “Very nice,” the detective said. “Quilted hangers.” A datebook in the desk drawer. Pages from 15 October to 5 November cut, not ripped, out.

  “Carefully done,” Zannis said. “Likely reservations, a ship maybe, or hotels somewhere.”

  “I suspect you’re right, sir,” the detective said. “They just took off. Left town. Because of the missing money.”

  “No, I expect that when we look at his accounts we’ll find they’ve been cleaned out. The day before he left, but normal before that. I think this is somebody who decided to take his family out of Europe, now, before anything else happens. And he might have figured that this money would vanish, so why not take it for himself? One thing about flight: the more money you have, the easier it’s going to be.”

  “Where do you think they went?”

  “I’d say you’ll find him listed on the manifest of some ship, out of some Greek port, maybe not here, maybe Athens, or Istanbul. As to where he went, it’s anybody’s guess. Argentina? America? Mexico?”

  “Anywhere safe from the guns,” the detective said. “Are you feeling better, sir?”

  “I am, thanks.”

  “Maybe you need a day off.” Then, “What became of the dog?”

  “With the maids. You might look for a car, though if they parked it at a dock somewhere it’s probably stolen by now.”

  The detective began turning off the lights. “I’ll write this up as a theft from the bank. And issue a fugitive warrant.”

  “Not much else you can do,” Zannis said.

  They locked up the house and walked toward the detective’s car. This banker knew it was coming, Zannis thought. Knew somebody who knew somebody, and they told him, “Get out, while you still can.” And maybe he, or she, whoever it was, nameless, faceless, wasn’t wrong. Enough, Zannis told himself. Forget it, at least for today.

  But it didn’t forget him, and he wasn’t done for the day. Because when he returned to the office, Sibylla told him that the telephone operator at a hotel in Basel was trying to reach him.

  So Zannis couldn’t go home. He waited at the office, Sibylla left at five-thirty, and Saltiel went home an hour later. The phone didn’t ring until after nine. On the other end
of the line, “Hello? Hello?” It was a bad connection, charged with crackling and static, the woman’s voice faint. Zannis put a hand to his other ear and said, “Yes? Can you hear me?”

  “Hotel Mont Blanc operator, sir. I have to send a bellman to find your caller. Please hold the line.”

  “Yes, fine,” Zannis said.

  Three minutes later, another distant voice. “Hello? Herr Zannis?” The woman was almost shouting.

  “Yes?”

  “This is Emilia Krebs.”

  “Hello. Are you all right?”

  “I’m in Basel. I came here in order to call you.”

  “Oh?”

  “It’s about the two sisters. Called Rosenblum.”

  “Who?”

  “Two sisters, in their forties. They were librarians, in Berlin. Have they …”

  The line went dead. Zannis said, “Hello? Hello?”

  Then the static returned. “… to Salonika. Hello?”

  “Hello. Yes, I’m here. What did you say?”

  “I gave them your name.”

  You did? “Of course, I see.”

  “Have they called?” Her voice was tense, barely under control.

  “No, I’m sorry, they …” Again, the line went dead, and this time it stayed dead. Zannis wasn’t sure what to do. Wait for the connection to return? Or hang up so the operator could make a new call? He looked at his watch, let two minutes go by, then placed the receiver back on the cradle. What had she done? Clearly she’d sent fugitives, two Jewish women from Berlin, to Salonika. Where he was to help them. She could have asked, at least. But maybe she couldn’t, he thought. He sat there, his mind working, staring out the window at a streetlamp on the Via Egnatia. Then the phone rang and he snatched the receiver.