by David Boyle
The consulate 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, attractive 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.
She had been staggered, as they walked down the shopping streets, to find most of the shops open but almost no food on sale at all. Betty told her that the invading troops had confiscated all the canned goods and any farmyard animals. A friend of hers had a cow that was about to give birth. When the soldiers came to shoot it, they begged them to let it live until it had given birth. It gave birth that night, but the next day the soldiers were back – they shot the cow and the calf died too because it had no milk. “It really is a tragedy. The whole thing. Greece will die,” said Betty sadly.
As they walked back through the city in the heat, they were passed by lorry after lorry, driving fresh troops down to the docks or the airfield. In the other direction, they saw large numbers of wounded troops going towards the city hospitals. One lorry was emitting groans of agony from inside. Clearly, the battle was now in full fury in Crete.
As for the locals, those who had not been arrested still crowded into the cafés, though they had nothing to supply their customers with. Betty explained that even those who were a bit better off were also suffering because the main effect of the occupation marks was to cause rampant inflation.
The same seemed to be true of some of the new arrivals. They saw soldiers in their uniforms, going door to door, begging for food and alcohol. They saw Austrian soldiers singing The Blue Danube, drunk on ouzo. And they saw small groups of Greek civilians, singing instead, their own satirical song, Coroido Mussolini.
“Oh yes, I do know what it means,” said Betty. “It isn’t that inspiring, to be honest. It just means ‘Mussolini, you fool’. Infectious tune though, isn’t it? You have to try and stop yourself whistling it. It can get you into trouble, though even the German soldiers sing it these days!”
And all the time, the sun baked them and baked the heads of the women dressed in black, praying at the shrines.
“What is this Chicago they’re all advertising?” said Xanthe, suddenly homesick also for the Midwest.
“Oh, it used to be ice cream, nuts and chocolate sauce. But there’s practically none left. The recipe corroded somewhat before the last hint of chocolate sauce disappeared.”
Xanthe liked Betty enormously. She felt she could risk a question about their common profession.
“Betty, can I ask you: how can you find anything meaningful to say in your broadcasts that won’t be censored?”
“Well, it’s tough. I mean, you could write about Zonars, the popular bar – not so popular now, of course, now it’s full of Nazi soldiers. It used to be a gay old place, with the RAF flyers in there. Now, it’s – I don’t know – sort of humourless. Unless the locals come, but they don’t seem to… On second thoughts, you wouldn’t get that past the censor either.”
“It’s frustrating isn’t it,” said Xanthe, sensing Betty’s rising irritation.
“I mean, I’m supposed to be doing serious broadcasts about geopolitics, like Shirer does – or to watch the bombs falling around St Paul’s like Murrow. And I’m not allowed to do either. And even if I did, my stupid editor won’t let me read it – in case my ‘girly’ voice somehow undoes the seriousness of the subject. It’s enough to make me take up knitting.”
They had nearly reached her flat. They were nearly at the door, but Betty held back.
“Oh, shoot,” she said.
Xanthe followed where she nodded.
“What is it?”
Up ahead was a good-looking man in a long military-style coat, waiting outside her door.
“It’s Jurgen. I don’t trust him. He keeps coming round with flowers and other little presents. He speaks five languages and…”
“He sounds lovely,” said Xanthe laughing.
“Shhh, he’ll hear.”
“Ah, Fraulein!” said a voice from up ahead. It was too late. He had seen them.
“How delightful. You have a friend with you. Now I have brought a small gift.”
He brandished a leg of lamb. Xanthe knew this was absolutely unobtainable in Athens for anyone except the secret police.
“May I humbly request that I might come inside for a moment?” He shone them a winning smile. Xanthe glanced nervously at Betty, willing her to refuse.
“Yes, come inside,” said Betty, somewhat aggressively. “I’ve been having trouble with my telephone and could do with your advice.”
She winked quickly at Xanthe. Then she opened the door and let him in.
“The thing is,” said Betty, as they filed up her stairs to the flat, “it keeps ringing and there is nobody there. It is almost as if there was somebody listening in.”
“I understand, Fraulein. I have a little influence and will ask to have the line tested. In the meantime, I have bought you a bottle of ouzo. Tonight, we will party and make merry.”
Betty was immediately apologetic.
“Oh, Jurgen, I am sorry. My friend and I both have articles to write tonight, to take to the censor tomorrow. What a pity. Another time perhaps.”
Jurgen’s eyes lit up.
“Ah yes, your friend. Tell me about yourself, Fraulein – um, Shirley?”
Xanthe coloured for a moment. She had not prepared herself for questioning. Or lying.
“Well, I have been here, and stuck on Aegina, for weeks now, writing for the New Yorker. I don’t have the kind of responsibilities that Betty has here. I just write colour pieces.”
“Colour pieces by a colourful lady,” said Jurgen, with a little bow. “Ah yes, the New Yorker. I am surprised that it has the resources to send a young girl out to cover a war that is no longer happening. You have an interest in military operations perhaps? We have had great difficulties here with the fifth columnists. I would hate to feel that you had any – let me say it like this – had any sympathy with them…”
“I’m just a writer,” said Xanthe simply, looking him full in the face. “I’ve always wanted to write about the world. There were few
enough volunteers for this job. It narrowed the field and I was then lucky enough to get chosen.”
“I’m so sorry we have to see you out,” said Betty with determination.
“That is understandable,” said Jurgen, recovering something of his savoir-faire and allowing himself to be herded towards the door. They could hear his metal-tipped shoes clicking down the street outside the window.
“Ugh, that man gives me the creeps,” whispered Betty as soon as he had gone.
Xanthe burst into giggles again.
“Shhh, Shirley! He’ll be listening outside. The man can’t see a keyhole without putting his ear to it.”
“What do you think he’s after?”
“I’ll give you one guess,” said Betty. “What do you think? He’s just highly sexed and has a thing about American women. I’m very sorry I introduced you.”
*
Xanthe had experienced London under attack. She had experienced wartime Berlin. But somehow the picture of the Greek capital city, down but not out, invaded physically but not mentally conquered, was moving and instructive. She knew now what she would write, if and when she got home; it was not something that the censor would pass here.
The trouble was that she had already been gone a week – a week away from Indigo at such an important time – and all she had managed to do so far was find herself bundled into a safe house, only to find she had to wait two whole days for the wireless operator. Time must be running out and there were still at least thirty-six hours before Robin was due to arrive. That was thirty-six hours before the occupying forces began to cotton on about who and what she really was doing in Athens.
Added to which, the Bismarck would not wait in harbour forever. For all she knew, those fifteen-inch guns she had not really read enough about on the flight would even now be battering British and allied shipping in mid-Atlantic, with all the death and destruction, the burnings and drownings, that would happen as a result.
There was her new friendship with Betty, which was a plus. Betty knew Sigrid Schultz from the Chicago Tribune, as it turned out – still reporting from Berlin, though Xanthe did not explain why her name was familiar. Also, somewhere in Athens, were George Weller from the Chicago Daily News and Wes Gallagher from Associated Press. Both of them, experienced hard news reporters. What was a feature writer from the New Yorker, the gentle magazine that employed James Thurber, supposed to be doing in quite such peril in the war zone? They were bound to ask the question and wonder why she was supposed to have been on a small island, so far from the action, throughout the three weeks of the German blitzkrieg on Greece. She was just going to have to stick close to Betty and keep a low profile.
