Greeks Bearing Gifts

by Philip Kerr

  “How did you get on, sir?” he asked breathlessly. “Did you find out where he’s been living?”

  I stood up, left him to his own captain’s chair, and went and sat facing the desk on a chair where I imagined Telesilla taking dictation under the lubricious eyes of Garlopis and, now that I considered the matter further, it occurred to me that she was not unlike the flame-haired playmate in the centerfold underneath the blotter. Maybe that was the reason Garlopis had bought the magazine in the first place. Either that or Telesilla had only been in the job since January.

  “Pritaniou, number eleven, in the old town at the base of the Acropolis. I couldn’t tell if he’s living alone there or not. But at least now we know where to find him. And you? Did you see your cousin at the Mercantile Marine Ministry?”

  “I did.” Garlopis adjusted his bow tie and allowed himself a smile. “And the news is—well, interesting to say the least, in that it provides us with a possible motive for a case of arson. I only say possible, sir. That’s for you to decide, of course. But people have long memories in this country. With the many centuries of history we have, we need long memories.”

  He found a cigarette, rattled a box of matches, lit up, and removed a piece of paper from his pocket. “As we know, the Doris was formerly registered as the Carasso. I discovered that the previous owner was a Jewish merchant in Salonika, which, as you know, is now our second city, Thessaloniki. The Jewish merchant’s name was Saul Allatini and he bought and sold coffee. Before the war, Thessaloniki was home to a large number of Jews. Possibly as many as there existed anywhere in Europe outside of Poland. Sephardic Jews mostly, from Spain; but also a great many who had fled from Muslim persecution in the Ottoman Empire. But unlike most countries, Greece, I’m proud to say, gave its Jews full citizenship, and they thrived. As a result of all this, perhaps the majority of people in Thessaloniki—at least sixty thousand—were Jews.

  “Anyway, I don’t want to embarrass you, sir, with a lachrymose tale of Jewish suffering in Greece—you being a German n’all—so, to cut a long story short, most of the Jews in Thessaloniki were deported to Auschwitz in 1943 and gassed to death. Meanwhile their property was subject to confiscation and resale by the collaborationist Hellenic government of Ioannis Rallis. Which is how the unfortunate Mr. Allatini’s three vessels—two of them merchantmen, and one his own private yacht, the Carasso—were sold to Greeks and to Germans at bargain-basement prices. Or rather to one particular German. The Carasso was bought by Siegfried Witzel for a pittance and he renamed it the Doris, and sailed it to Piraeus, where it remained after the war.” Garlopis paused and puffed at his cigarette for a moment. “Those Jews who survived the camps—less than two thousand, it would seem—returned to Thessaloniki and found their homes and property in the possession of Greek Christians who had bought them in good faith from the Germans. And any attempts at Jewish property restitution quickly failed when a British-backed right-wing anti-communist IPE government came to power in Athens. None of these men had much time for the Jews, and of course Greece collapsed into civil war soon afterwards. A civil war that lasted three years. Since when there has been little appetite to open up these scars and say who owns what. Certainly the ministry has no record of anyone from the Allatini family as having petitioned it for the return of the Doris. At least none that my cousin was able to find.

  “In defense of my country I should also mention that this regrettable situation is complicated by the fact that many of the properties bought by Jews long before the war had themselves been owned by Muslims previous to the so-called diaspora that followed the Greco-Turkish war of 1919–1922. Many Muslims were obliged to sell up at knockdown prices and emigrate to Turkey, while many Turks, including thousands of Jews, were obliged to leave their Turkish homes and go to Thessaloniki. So you see that nothing in this part of the world is simple. No, not even the status of the marble friezes taken from the Parthenon by the Turks, and sold to the British Lord Elgin for seventy thousand British pounds during the Greek war of independence that was fought against the Ottoman Empire. My own opinion, for what it’s worth, is that Greece should set an example to the British and restore as much previously owned Jewish property as possible, regardless of the cost. But until that happens, this situation causes a great deal of bitterness among those few Jews who continue to live in Greece.”

  “Enough for someone to set a ship on fire, perhaps?”

  “It’s certainly possible, yes,” admitted Garlopis. “But here your guess is as good as mine.”

  “It might explain why Herr Witzel feels the need to carry a gun. It may be that he’s been threatened before.”

  Garlopis nodded and stubbed out his cigarette in a Hellas pottery ashtray. “In this particular context it’s also worth mentioning that because of the civil war, the Doris was never insured against acts of terrorism. If it could be proved that the ship had been attacked for political reasons by Jewish activists, then this would certainly fall under the umbrella of war risk exclusions which, according to the terms of the policy, are considered fundamentally uninsurable.”

  “And it would certainly be in Witzel’s interest to allege that the engine caught fire because of a shipyard’s negligence.”

  “Exactly, sir.”

  “What does the coast guard have to say about the incident? Is there any way of proving that the ship really did sink out at sea where he said it did?”

  “I’m afraid not, sir.”

  “It’s a pity we can’t speak to this Professor Buchholz, in order to corroborate Witzel’s story.”

  “With that in mind, sir, after I’d been to the ministry, on Kolokotronis Street, I went just around the corner, to the Archaeological Museum and set up an appointment later on this week for us to go and see the assistant director, Dr. Lyacos. At three o’clock, to be precise.” Garlopis looked at his watch. “But while we’re in Piraeus we should certainly make time to go to Vassilenas.”

  “What’s that?”

  “The best restaurant in Piraeus, sir.”

  “By the way, I don’t suppose you have a cousin in the Attica police; I made a note of the license plate on the car Witzel was driving.”

  “No, sir. I’m afraid not.”

  We went outside and walked to the Olds, where a beggar woman had taken up position, no doubt in the mistaken belief that the owner was a rich American. I knew quite a bit about being on the streets myself so I gave the woman twenty lepta and got into the car. But even the small change, which was made of aluminum, had holes in it.

  “By the way,” I said, “I told you to get rid of this car, didn’t I? It’s hard to move around quietly in this thing. And it’s a magnet for beggars.”

  “You’re so right, of course,” he said as we drove away. “And I will. Just as soon as my cousin is back in the office.”

  “When will that be?”

  “He took a couple of days off, sir. So perhaps the day after tomorrow. By the way, sir. If I could ask you not to give money to the beggars. It only encourages them. They’re Hungarians, mostly, sir. Refugees from last year’s terrible and abortive uprising. There’s plenty of work for them in Greece—picking cotton—but they won’t take it if people keep on giving them money, sir. It’s bad for them and it’s bad for us. In my opinion they’re too proud for their own good.”

  “It’s only excessive pride that the gods punish, isn’t it? Hubris? Which leads to nemesis?”

  “Yes, indeed, that’s quite true. And you do well to remind me of that, sir. But for my own hubris I might still be married—to Mrs. Nemesis.”

  “If you don’t mind me asking, what went wrong?”

  “In a word, Telesilla. She’s what went wrong. She’s what always goes wrong for a man such as myself. My head was turned, sir. The wrong way, too. Nothing actually happened between her and me, you understand. But I imagined it might and, unfortunately, in a moment of sheer delusion, I led my poor wif
e to believe that I was enamored of Telesilla. Telesilla herself was entirely blameless and remains happily married. And she’s a very good secretary. Which is why I couldn’t bring myself to dismiss her. I mean, it would seem rather pointless now that Mrs. Garlopis is no longer au courant.” Garlopis smiled sadly. “And for you, sir? Is there a Frau Ganz?”

  “No. That particular chapter of my life has now closed—forever, I think. Especially now that I’m working in insurance. You wouldn’t know it to look at me but I’ve had an interesting life. That’s one of the reasons I like this insurance business. It feels like a nice quiet pew at the back of an empty church.”

  TWENTY

  –

  A few days later, after a very good lunch indeed, we went to the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus. Built by Themistocles at the beginning of the fifth century BC, the town was home to almost half a million people. It was the center of Greek coastal shipping and the industrial heartland of Greece, with spinning factories, flour mills, distilleries, breweries, soap factories, and chemical manure plants. It certainly smelled that way. About a twenty-minute drive from Athens, the town had no important ancient monument thanks to the Spartans, who’d destroyed the original fortifications, and the Romans, who’d destroyed much else besides. That’s the most comforting thing about history: you find out that it’s not always the Germans who are to blame. Next to the museum was a virtual builder’s yard of assorted archaic marble torsos that almost made me think I was back in the mortuary at the Schwabing Hospital. But inside the two-story building there were many fine treasures, including a bronze statue of Athena that was as tall as a giraffe; she had one hand held out in supplication, as if she was begging for some small change, and, but for the rakishly worn hoplite’s helmet, she reminded me of the Hungarian woman I’d tipped earlier on.

  We found Dr. Stavros Lyacos, the assistant director of the museum, in the basement, next to the laboratories for the maintenance of clay, metal, and stone objects. His office had a large marble eye on the wall and, lying on the desk, was a Greek fertility goddess rather more attractive than the morbidly obese German fertility goddess found at Willendorf. Even Dr. Lyacos was more attractive than her. He was tall and thin with a small tight mouth, sharp heavy-lidded eyes, and half-moon glasses on the bridge of a pointy Pinocchio nose that helped to make his face look more fastidious than comically mendacious. He wore a generously cut double-breasted gray flannel suit with lapels as wide as a pair of scimitars, and a blue-striped bow tie. The red carnation in his buttonhole made him look as if he were going to a wedding and since he clearly wasn’t, it made me think he was a man in possession of a large mirror and for whom the marble eye mounted on the wall was something of a personal statement. Smoking a cherrywood pipe, Dr. Lyacos listened politely and smiled without any great warmth while I introduced myself and explained my mission, and then he went to fetch a file from a cabinet that stood between a headless marble lion and the torso of a young man who was missing most of his genitals and—not that it would have mattered in those tragic circumstances—both of his hands. Lyacos had no German nor very much English and, later on, Garlopis told me that he spoke a Greek that was full of ancient words, which was always the sign of an educated man.

  He said that he’d met with both Siegfried Witzel and Professor Buchholz, that both men spoke fluent Greek, and that their permissions were gold-plated, in evidence for which he returned from the filing cabinet with a variety of official paperwork. These showed that the Germans’ expedition had the blessing of no less a figure than the Greek interior minister, Dimitrios Makris, in the form of a handwritten letter on parliamentary notepaper, as well as all the proper consents and approvals from the Ministry of Public Works on Karageorgi Servias Street. There were also several forms stamped by the Naval Ministry on Paparigopoulou Street and the Greek coast guard in Piraeus. It seemed that Professor Buchholz had been most charming and even presented Dr. Lyacos with a signed copy of his book on Hellenistic art, which he might have read had it not been in German. When I asked if he still had a copy of the book, Dr. Lyacos said he had, removed it from a drawer in his desk, and laid it in front of me. The book, published by C. H. Beck and lavishly illustrated, was called Hellenism: The Rise and Fall of a Civilization and, as Lyacos had told me, was indeed signed by Professor Philipp Buchholz and inscribed in German and Greek: To Stavros Lyacos, in gratitude for his generous help and assistance. Lyacos proceeded to explain that the arrangement between the two museums had been that anything found by the expedition would be shared, with the museum in Piraeus having first pick and the museum in Munich having the remainder.

  “Tell me, doctor, is it usual for all these permissions to be granted so quickly?” I asked, noting the close proximity of the dates on the official paperwork. “All of this seems to have happened with a rapidity that, if you’ll both forgive me for saying so, seems a little remarkable even in Greece.”

  Not usual at all, was the doctor’s answer; then again, the Ministry of the Interior had crabs in its pockets when it came to funding archaeology in modern Greece, which meant that it was stingy; this was the first Greek-German cooperation in the field of archaeology since 1876, when the Greek Archaeological Society had worked with Heinrich Schliemann at the royal graves site in Mycenae, so perhaps there was a hope that this might prove to be just as successful as that. It was, after all, Schliemann who’d discovered the famous golden mask of Agamemnon, now in the National Archaeological Museum of Athens. The two Germans had been very respectful and accommodating, Lyacos concluded.

  I looked at Garlopis and shook my head. “I can’t see anything wrong here, can you? Everything sounds very proper.”

  Garlopis shrugged and then translated what I’d just said for Dr. Lyacos.

  “Well, not everything, perhaps,” said Garlopis, interpreting what Lyacos now said. “But after all, he says, this is Greece, so how could it be?”

  “Like what, for instance?”

  Lyacos puffed his pipe, looked uncomfortable for a moment, and then started to speak.

  “He doesn’t wish to say anything against a man as distinguished in the field of Hellenism as Professor Buchholz,” explained Garlopis. “Even so, the small artifacts found on the wreck site by Herr Witzel had been identified by the professor as late Helladic when in the opinion of Dr. Lyacos they were actually much earlier. Late Bronze Age, probably. But it’s not uncommon for experts on antiquity to disagree about such things, so he doesn’t think it’s important.”

  “Nevertheless,” I said, “he sounds like he was a bit surprised by that.”

  “He was, I think. Especially as there are some very similar late Bronze Age artifacts in the professor’s book that are correctly identified.”

  Lyacos turned the illustrated pages to reveal a photograph of a bronze tripod, a golden ring, and a little statue of a snake goddess.

  “These,” said Lyacos.

  I nodded and then closed the book.

  “How do you go about getting the permission of someone like Mr. Makris to look for this kind of stuff, anyway?”

  Garlopis spoke to Lyacos for a second and then answered that he wouldn’t know.

  “Is he sure about that?”

  The two Greeks spoke for almost a minute, during which time they laughed several times, and then Garlopis said, “He says he believes that the minister of the interior, Takos Makris, has always done what Konstantinos Karamanlis tells him to do. And I have to say I agree with him there. Mr. Makris is married to the niece of Mr. Karamanlis, Doxoula, so it’s certain that the two men are very close. After a man like Mr. Makris gave his permission it’s certain that everyone else in the government must have sat up and paid attention.”

  Idly, I opened the book on Hellenism again—C. H. Beck was one of Germany’s most prestigious publishing houses—and glanced over what had been written about Professor Buchholz in the author’s biography on the flyleaf.

  And it was th
en I noticed what I’d been too dumb to notice before: that Professor Buchholz was the assistant director at the Glyptothek Museum, in Munich.

  It was certainly a coincidence that my first job as a claims adjustor working for MRE had been to investigate a break-in at the Glyptothek, but a remarkable one? There had been a time when I had strongly believed that a good detective was merely a man who collected coincidences—a perfectly respectable activity since Pascal and Jung—with the aim of connecting one or two of them until they looked like something more meaningful and concurrent. Of course, it’s no great surprise that over a long period of time, as fortune takes its course, many coincidences should occur. But here the question was this: Did the several weeks that had elapsed since the break-in at the Glyptothek count as a long period of time and therefore enough to discount coincidence?

  Or, to put this in a less mathematically naïve way, could I smell a rat?

  TWENTY-ONE

  –

  “Given our maritime history, we Greeks are much more likely to talk about smelling fish than rats,” said Garlopis, when we’d left the museum.

  “Rats, fish, what’s the difference? They both smell the same way when they’re not where they’re supposed to be.”

  “But to answer your earlier question,” he continued, “I don’t happen to believe in simple coincidences very much. I have the whole of Greek tragedy there to back me up on this. What you Germans call coincidence Greeks like Sophocles tend to ascribe to the Moirai—the Three Fates. Divine weavers of a tapestry dictating the destiny of men.”

  “It’s always the females that seal a man’s fate. That’s certainly been my own experience.”

  We were walking back to the car which, as before, had attracted a couple of expectant beggars and, as before, I handed out a few hollow coins. If the gods were watching I hoped they would see this act of kindness and reward my charity—that a muse, or whatever Garlopis might have called it, would provide some divine inspiration as to the connection, if any, between the Glyptothek in Munich and the Glyptothek in Piraeus. Stranger things had happened in Greece, surely.