The Athens Assignment

by David Boyle

  “I’m afraid I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  There was no point in giving everything away to anyone who asked.

  “You know the Myrmiddons came from here?”

  Why was she constantly being told this?

  “So I’ve been told.”

  “Well, I’m Achilles,” said the visitor. “I’ve been waiting for you.”

  “Then, tell me, Achilles,” said Xanthe, excited that things were somehow now going right. “If I was the person you were waiting for, how would I know you?”

  “I would tell you about the rabbits in the south of Spain.”

  “Well, as they say, it never snows in Ibiza,” she said, checking for a look of recognition.

  He shook her hand with enthusiasm.

  “Delighted to meet you, my dear.”

  It was impossible to work out how old he was.

  “How did you know where to find me?”

  “You were asking for me back in the early hours of the morning in Pachia Rachi, I believe. You weren’t hard to trace. Now, have you got the stuff?”

  “I do. Can you take it? Can you get it to the… right destination?”

  “Yup. Sooner the better, I think.”

  She reached into her haversack and extracted the four pieces, wrapped in cloth, that would fit together into an imitation Enigma machine – three pieces plus a make-do set of rotors, rather amateur versions of the one with which she had killed Stumpf in Berlin.

  “Thank you,” he said, depositing the pieces in a muddy sack. “All will be in place when you arrive. We’ll take it over tonight. In fact, you can come too…”

  “No thanks. I’m an American correspondent. I can’t be too cloak and dagger.”

  “Pfff, that’s what they all say,” said Brown, rudely.

  “Was that a dig at the foreign policy of my country?” said Xanthe defensively, racking her brains to think of what the US government had done, actively, on behalf of an embattled Europe. “May I remind you of Lend-Lease…”

  Brown spread his hands out innocently. “Nothing could be further from my mind,” he said.

  They both laughed, then he shushed them.

  “It’s siesta time,” he whispered. “No point in making ourselves conspicuous.”

  “Then next time, don’t be rude about my president,” said Xanthe teasingly. “The US army is delayed. In the meantime, you’ll have to make do with me.”

  *

  When Brown had gone, she reached back into her bag with a great sense of relief and pulled out her portable typewriter again. It was time to begin her first despatch all over again. How would Mollie Panter-Downes do it? She would start as if in the middle of a conversation.

  Xanthe imagined herself talking to Turing about her brief time in Greece, how would she tell him? She began to type:

  “The trouble with being invaded is that nothing is quite what you expect and, because of that, almost nothing works. No shopping, no banks, no money – at least no reliable money: you suddenly need to have ‘occupation marks’, which have to be printed and brought in with the first troops…”

  She had, in fact, already heard complaints about the occupation marks. They were in short supply because, or so she heard, the Germans had not yet brought the printer in yet.

  She scribbled the date on her draft – 22 May – and began to fall asleep. It had been a long night and she felt completely drained.

  She was woken by a knock on the door. Outside was the young temporary commandant. He bowed and clicked his heels.

  “Fraulein, my apologies for this disturb,” he said. “My boat is at your disposal. I remain here. But you are welcome to join my men who are on their way to Piraeus.

  “I’m quite grateful,” said Xanthe sleepily. “Have I got time to pack?”

  “We leave in one hour precisely, Fraulein. I will say farewell to you at the harbour.”

  He bowed and was gone. Xanthe felt a sense of disappointment which she put down to exhaustion. She was leaving the island earlier than she had expected but had already met enough characters to populate a book of collected articles. Yet also, she could think of little except Indy in his cot back home – but what home? She was still living at a secret cryptographic establishment, about five thousand miles or so way from Indy’s only other blood relatives outside Nazi Germany. He depended on her ability to get home safe. It was going to be a quick trip to Athens, find the safe house, send the signal, then back out again the way she had come.

  *

  As she walked up the gangway onto the docks at Piraeus, Xanthe was surprised to get a salute and a wink from the sailors. How very strange life is, she said to herself, returning the salute like a visiting queen.

  But the harbour itself was something of a shock, once she was on solid ground. There was rubble everywhere and sunken ships and boats cluttering the sea lanes with their masts and superstructure pointing sadly above the water. For a moment, it reminded her of what she was supposed to be doing. Civilisation was under threat, from the kind of barbarism she had seen in the London Blitz and some of the behaviour she had encountered in Berlin. But at least it meant there was a purpose to this intense risk.

  The key question now was how to get into Athens, and she had only just asked herself the question when a young man popped up alongside her and took her arm.

  “Madam, if you will permit me. I have been asked by Mr Brown and by my friend Argyris, if I would accompany you today and take you wherever you want to go. My name is Giorgios.

  “Giorgios, you are a godsend. Thank you so much. What do we do now if we want to get into Athens? I also need to find a Western Union office to send my article, if at all possible. Oh, and I need to get to the US embassy.”

  “In that case, we will take this bus.”

  Xanthe had noticed the mode of transport that he indicated, but it was no kind of bus that she recognised. It was a cart with fruit and another goat, but he helped her up with dignity and she didn’t like to complain. After a hurried conversation in Greek, the driver motioned his horse forward with the flick of a wrist. Then they were off.

  “I expect this is not your normal bus, madam,” said Giorgios, smiling, “but it is the most reliable. There are taxis, but they are jackals, and not very many of them.”

  “Tell me, Giorgios. What do you know about occupation marks? And please call me Shirley.”

  Giorgios laughed. She warmed to him. He was not much younger than she was herself.

  “They are worth nothing. They bring them in great quantities, and when they run out, they just go and print some more. I have seen them do so. It is strange, is it not, just to make the money you need? Perhaps also arrogant…”

  “Perhaps criminal,” she said.

  Xanthe began to calculate that the cart was averaging about two miles an hour. If she had walked, she would have got into Athens at least twice as fast. But then she would have arrived tired, hungry and conspicuous. On this cart, with its fruit and vegetables wilting in the heat, and with her hair dyed dark to match her passport photo, she looked like every other young woman in Greece – at least at first sight.

  An hour or so later, the cart stopped near the Acropolis, and Giorgios shouted his thanks and held out his arm for Xanthe to descend. The planes were still in the air above them, though not quite so many of them. She wondered how the Greek army was managing in Crete, assuming that was their target, let alone the British and their Australian and New Zealand allies. There were many more field grey uniforms in the centre of the city.

  They drew up outside an office with an American flag.

  “This is the US consulate,” said Giorgios.

  “Thank you so much, I am so grateful to you.”

  She felt elated that everything had been unexpectedly easy.

  “Will I see you again?” he said. “Perhaps by the harbour for your return?”

  “I hope so, Giorgios. I’m not sure right now…”

  *

  The consul
ate building was crowded, mainly with Americans but there were other, more ragged people who had obviously made their way here through Romania and Yugoslavia, often because they were Jewish families trying to get an exit visa, or perhaps because they were simply refugees, with all their savings in a small bag, desperately trying to escape the war or the Nazis, or both.

  “Thank you, Paul,” an intelligent-looking woman in slacks was saying to an official, in a loud voice. “At eleven p.m. tonight if you can make it – that’s six p.m. in New York? What would I do without your voice, eh – pfff!”

  She laughed ruefully.

  “Excuse me,” said Xanthe as the woman passed by in a flurry of papers. “I wonder if you can direct me to the Western Union office in this town?”

  “Sure thing, honey,” said the woman. “Say, are you a reporter? I thought I knew all of us here, but I seem to have missed you. Where have you been hiding – and I mean that quite literally?”

  “I’ve been on Aegina for the last few weeks. I’m here for the New Yorker.”

  “Betty Wason, CBS.”

  “Fantastic to meet you! I know one of your colleagues – Bill Shirer.”

  “You know Bill! Well, any friend of Bill’s, as they say. To be frank, I’m just having a bit of trouble with my bosses back home. They say women don’t have the right ‘gravitas’ to broadcast about the war, and – well, let me show you this…”

  She rootled around in her handbag and pulled out a battered telegram. It confirmed her story.

  Betty didn’t wait for Xanthe to express an opinion. “Honestly – what a schmuck!” she said.

  Xanthe laughed, outraged.

  “The result is, I have to get poor old Paul to actually do the broadcasts for me. It’s difficult enough getting to the radio office as well as getting a line out and forcing it through the censors. Then I have to get one of the embassy staff to help me read it! Still,” she said, drawing breath, “enough about my troubles – what are you looking for here? I’m surprised to see you, I have to say. Pleased though! Delighted, in fact!”

  “Oh, colour pieces. You know. New Yorker stuff. Joe Liebling’s back in the states. Somebody needs to report on the war for the magazine readers of New York City.”

  Betty was suddenly serious.

  “To be honest, I don’t think they are going to stand for us much longer. I’m expecting us to be flung out any time. It is hard to be here more than a day or two and stay unbiased. There’s only a few of us left here – Wes and George, and me, of course.”

  Xanthe nodded as if she knew them. As always, she was feeling as if she stood out like a sore thumb in her adopted profession. She was uncomfortably aware that she did not have as much experience as she normally would need, to be catapulted into a war zone as a reporter or feature writer.

  “I’m something of a beginner, I’m afraid,” she confessed. She liked Betty immediately and wanted to deceive her as little as possible. She also kicked herself. Would an American have made such a declaration? She should have brazened it out with the best of them. She was becoming too English…

  “Oh, come on, honey. We’re all beginners here. Some of the old-timers haven’t been able to take it and they shipped off home months ago. It takes a different kind of guts to report on an occupation and I’ve only been doing it a few weeks, since the Schmazis arrived.”

  Xanthe laughed, immensely relieved.

  “Say, where are you staying? You don’t know? Well, come along with me and stay at my flat. But you’d better register with the censor if you want to stay the right side of the pigs… Sorry, you knew I meant the Nazis, didn’t you?”

  She guffawed.

  *

  For a defeated city, Athens was strangely alive. There was almost no food, no real money, no jobs and no transport, but the place seemed to pulsate in an exciting way – especially at night, when the shadowy reality of the city became clear, people nipping in and out, avoiding the Nazi patrols. But there was no sign of any contact from Mr Brown, so Xanthe worried. She sweated profusely at night and felt feverish. She had already gone through her spare knickers.

  After a night on Betty’s couch, Xanthe sought out the censor at the Stadtkommandatur. She even managed to send her telegram with her first despatch. She was very aware, as she walked past the Hotel Grand Bretagne later in the day, where the senior Nazis had set up headquarters, that the man she had come to impersonate – the Luftwaffe general – was probably inside. Or that he might pass her at any moment.

  As she thought this, a large man in Luftwaffe uniform did skip up the steps next to her. He ignored her completely. It was an uncomfortable moment, and the experience reminded her forcefully that she needed to find her contact via the Athens underground. She had made the connection with Mr Brown, and he had said quite clearly that she would be contacted as soon as she arrived in Athens. She was pretty conspicuous – an American woman reporter going about her business – but nobody had made contact.

  She kicked herself for not pushing Giorgios on the subject. Had she been supposed to say something to him? Why had she not? She would wait until the following morning and then, she had been given emergency instructions for making contact if all else failed, but she was not keen to do so unless she absolutely had to.

  She walked around the block then swiftly towards Betty’s flat, as she had told Betty she would. Then she looked at her watch: Indy would be having his lunchtime feed. She ached to hold him again. She had been gone nearly a week already; how stupid of her to get so miserable. There was no point in waiting. Those were her orders, in any case – to make this signal with all speed. If there were delays, she must circumvent them.

  She turned round and headed for the cathedral.

  *

  The Metropolitan Cathedral of Athens was looking beautiful, with its perfect arches shining in the sun. Up the steps she went, trying to look more confident than she felt, and found herself in the most extraordinary arched paradise, full of golden mosaics and patterns.

  It was surprisingly bright and it felt a calm oasis in the insanity of occupied Europe. She had never been inside an Orthodox church before, let alone a cathedral, and she was fascinated by the icons. She tried to orientate herself. Where were the confessionals?

  She chose the confessional nearest to the high altar on the right. She brushed past the black curtain and sat down. There was nobody else there. No, there was somebody. She peered through the grill.

  “Bless me, father, for I have sinned,” she said, tentatively, and using her best Midwestern accent.

  “Your name, child?” said the priest behind the screen.

  “Shirley. Some call me Snow in Ibiza.”

  “God be with you, Shirley. You have my absolution. Now, my instructions are to direct you to where they are waiting for you. Go to the right, outside the main door, take the second road to the left. Pentelis Street. Knock once, just once, on the door numbered twenty-six and wait there. Behold, I stand at the door and knock,” he said with a little giggle. “God be with you.”

  “Thank you, father,” said Xanthe, wondering as she did so if you were supposed to call Orthodox priests “father”.

  She wandered, somewhat dreamily, out into the intense sunlight of the day. She was beginning to feel weak again and told herself she must conserve her energy.

  As she slipped back down the cathedral steps, a German military patrol marched past in their ubiquitous field grey. She stood still, chastened, and let them pass.

  Fifteen minutes later, making sure she was not being followed, she had passed by the address twice – desperately trying to be certain it was not also being watched.

  As certain as she could be, she took a deep breath and knocked on the door.

  The door was opened almost immediately and she was pulled inside, so quickly that she lost her footing and sprawled on the floor, on the old linoleum.

  “My apologies,” said a voice from the shadows. Xanthe looked up and saw a young woman with curly black hair, attract
ive but harassed. “Please come with me, quickly if you can. You should not have come to the door in daylight.”

  “Sorry, but…”

  There was no time to finish the sentence. Xanthe was then rushed through the house, through the back door, across a courtyard and into a house across the way.

  “Miss Xanthe, we have been expecting you. It is good to meet,” said another voice and Xanthe found herself before an older man, his skin raddled by years in the sun. He must be some kind of farmer, she thought.

  “And you are?”

  “I am known as Achilles. I have a message for you. I’m afraid you will have to be patient. Robin will meet you here in two days. Come in the evening, please, after dark. He will be here.”

  “Who is Robin?”

  “One of our British friends. With a radio.”

  5

  Athens, May 1941

  Two days! How could she wait two days? She and Fleming both had their reasons for wanting speed, but it was not clear to her now, how to make things develop faster. If the radio operator was going to take two days to arrive then, well, there was nothing to be done but wait. But she could see a bit more of occupied Athens for her other job.

  “Come on then,” said Betty. “I’ll show you the city.” They were in her home at 14 Odos Patriarchou Joachim, and it was Xanthe’s first taste of it – the flat seemed to be full of people. “They cancelled me again at Deutsches Athens, where I broadcast from, so there’s nothing to be done. I’ve told Paul. So come on – get a move on: Athens is a beautiful city, as long as you don’t look too closely at the swastika flying above the Acropolis.”

  The two women wandered down to Piraeus, sat in a café there and listened to the stories that seemed to come from all directions.

  “It’s a journalist’s paradise,” said Betty. “As long as you don’t feel homesick – then you get to feeling kinda trapped.”

  “Tell me about it!” said Xanthe, but she had realised – if she had time – this was something she could write about, even if it had to wait until she was back in London.