Greeks Bearing Gifts

by Philip Kerr

  “Then, a few months ago, Merten chartered a ship belonging to a German scuba diver called Siegfried Witzel. That ship, the Doris, was insured by my company. Lots of ships are. MRE is a very good company. Perhaps the best in Germany. It’s my guess Merten and Witzel were planning to sail to the place where the Epeius went down to try to recover the gold. It’s also my guess that Brunner was tipped off by someone in the BND that Max Merten was planning to return to Greece and decided to try to reestablish their original partnership. But something went wrong, most likely another double-cross. Old habits die hard. The Doris sank—I’m not sure why, exactly—and the partnership was dissolved a second time, and with equally lethal effect. Brunner murdered Witzel and may be looking for Merten to murder him, too. I think maybe he just likes killing people. Then again, he’s a German.”

  I shook my head with uncomfortable vigor, wondering how it looked at the cross point of the sniper’s reticle and noticing the bandit queen’s perfume now, which was her only concession to femininity. I couldn’t identify it beyond the fact that it was paradoxically vanilla and flowery in its base notes, which seemed like the very opposite of her.

  “That’s it. The whole lousy story. For all I know Merten and Brunner aren’t even in Greece anymore. After what I just learned from Meissner, I’m surprised they had the nerve to come back at all.”

  “That’s not so surprising, perhaps,” said the bandit queen. “It’s been suggested that there are some in this new Greek government who were informers for the Nazis and who were rewarded with businesses and property confiscated from Thessaloniki’s Jews. That could be why Merten chose to come back now. Perhaps he’s been able to blackmail some of these people.” She shrugged. “On the other hand, it’s not just this government that has failed Salonika’s Jews so dismally. In 1946 the Americans arrested Merten, locked him up in Dachau, and offered him for extradition to Greece. Incredibly, the Tsaldaris government said it had no interest in him. So after ten years of living openly in Munich, Max Merten may have decided that he was perfectly safe here after all. And who could blame him? You Germans have managed to draw a very thick line under the war and to start over again. The Old Man’s miracle, they call it. The Old Man’s whitewash, more like. It makes me sick. There’s no justice. Small wonder we’re forced to take the law into our own hands.”

  She sneered and then looked away, as if she didn’t want to get any blood on her jacket after all.

  “I certainly didn’t vote for him,” I said. “And please don’t give me a dirty look. I’m liable to get a headache. Speaking for myself, I never disliked Jews as much as I disliked a great many of my fellow Germans.”

  “I’ve heard of the unicorn, the griffin, the great auk, the tart with a heart, and little green men from outer space. I’ve even heard of the good German, but I never thought to see one myself. You never voted for the Nazis and you never liked Hitler. I suppose there was even a Jew you helped to survive the war. You hid him in your lavatory for a couple of days. And of course some of your best friends were Jews. It amazes me how so many of us died.”

  “I wouldn’t say I did anything to feel proud of, if that’s what you mean. But I’ll live with that.”

  She lifted the fist with the red handkerchief and wiggled it meaningfully. “You hope.”

  “You seem to have an appetite for revenge that makes me glad I’m not on your menu.”

  “A menu? Oh, I see what you mean. Yes, we do have one. You know, getting Max Merten might almost be as good as catching up with Alois Brunner.”

  “If I meet him again, I’ll let you know.”

  “Again?”

  “I knew him slightly before the war, when he was an ambitious young lawyer in Berlin, and then I met him again a couple of months ago. As a matter of fact it was Merten who helped to get me my job at Munich RE.”

  “And they talk about Jews sticking together. You Germans could teach us a thing or two about looking after your own.”

  “Believe me, if I see him I’m just liable to kill him myself. I had a nice quiet job in a Munich hospital before I thought to try and improve myself by joining the hazardous world of insurance. The people I was working with at Schwabing were as honest as the day is long. Never had any trouble with any of them.” I bit my lip. “But the minute I put a tie on again it’s like I started having to make compromises with myself. So. Can I go now? It’s getting a little chilly up here. But for the waves of hate coming off you I might need a coat. As it is I badly need a change of underwear.”

  “Yes, you can go, Herr Ganz. You’re an interesting man. No doubt about it. There’s a lot more to you than meets the eye. You’re staying at the Grande Bretagne, right? Perhaps you have Hermann Göring’s bedroom. Or Himmler’s. That should make you feel at home. You’ll find the car is still waiting. My men will give you a ride.”

  “No thanks. I’d prefer to walk if you don’t mind. It will give me a chance to clear my head of the idea that it’s about to receive an unwelcome visitor.” I stood up, carefully, with one eye on the red handkerchief in her hand. “Wasn’t it Sophocles who said that the end justifies any evil? I read that on a souvenir tea towel. Well, take it from one who knows. It doesn’t. It never does. Germany learned this the hard way. I sincerely hope you don’t have to learn the same lesson we did.”

  The bandit queen shot me a sarcastic smile. “Go on. Get out of here. Take care of yourself, okay?”

  “I’m German. That’s what we’re good at.”

  THIRTY-NINE

  –

  I took a cab back to the office but there was no sign of Garlopis, so I found some cigarettes and a bottle in his drawer, typed a two-page report for Lieutenant Leventis on Telesilla’s English machine concerning my visit to see Arthur Meissner, and then, on my way back to the hotel, handed it in at the Megaron Pappoudof. Not being arrested and detained in Haidari seemed almost as important as not being plugged between the eyes by some trigger-happy kibbutznik. In my report I’d told the lieutenant nearly all of what I’d already told the bandit queen but since it asked more questions than it answered I didn’t think it was going to be enough to get my passport back. I was never much for paperwork, even when I was in the Murder Commission. Anyway, I didn’t mention the bandit queen; I wasn’t sure that would have helped my cause.

  Constitution Square was the usual human menagerie of lottery-ticket salesmen, pretzel vendors, cops, soldiers, pickpockets, beggars, musicians, and office workers hurrying to their bad-tempered buses and then home. Athens’s answer to Alexanderplatz had everything to divert the unwary citizen and I stopped for a short while to watch as a skilled pavement artist sketched out a grotesque picture in chalk that made me think of a picture by George Grosz and served to remind me only of how much I missed the old Berlin with its Biberkopfs and Berbers, its bear and its beer. There’s no one quite like George Grosz to make you think you need a stiff drink or, for that matter, that you’ve already had one. I knew this better than anyone, given my old acquaintance with George Grosz. I hurried into the hotel and found Achilles Garlopis waiting on one of the big sofas under a crystal chandelier. He got up like a beetle struggling to right itself and walked nimbly across the marble floor to greet me.

  “Thank God you’re all right,” he said, crossing himself in the Greek way. “When those men picked you up outside Averoff Prison I did my best to follow them in the Rover, but they lost me at the traffic lights. Not that I’d have known what to do if I had caught up with them. They were a tough-looking bunch.”

  “That they were.”

  “They didn’t look like police.”

  “No. They weren’t police.” I didn’t offer any further explanation; the less he knew about the bandit queen the better it would be for him. “Look, let’s just forget it, can we?”

  “Surely, sir, surely.”

  “No, let’s get a drink. I have a craving to shrink my liver. Walking here just now it was al
l I could do not to drink the contents of my cigarette lighter.”

  “Then let me buy you one. On second thoughts, let me buy you two.”

  “At these prices? We’ll have MRE pay for the damage. It’s what they’re good at.”

  We sat down at the horn of alcoholic plenty that was the GB bar and summoned a waiter, whereupon I pointed at the tapestry of Alexander the Great. A boy on an elephant was holding up a hip flask and a couple of slaves were walking beside the chariot with what looked like a large pitcher full of wine on a stretcher. Another fellow with red hair was sucking on a golden bottle of Korn and trying to pretend it was a trumpet, the way you do after a good night out. Alexander himself was smiling and trying to stay upright and Great in the chariot he was standing in, like he’d already downed a glass or two of something warming.

  “I’ll have what he’s having,” I told the barman.

  “I’ll have the same,” said Garlopis, and then ordered two large whiskeys on the rocks, which seemed likely to produce the equivalent result.

  “Did Meissner tell you anything important? Anything useful? Anything that will satisfy Lieutenant Leventis?”

  “No, nothing that will help us. I fear we’re going to have to bribe the bastard after all. Either that or I use the money to buy myself a new passport.”

  The drinks arrived and almost immediately we ordered two more, as insurance.

  “A Greek passport? I wouldn’t know how to help you do that, sir. Every Greek is equal to the task of giving or taking a bribe to a public official. Indeed no one would regard such a thing as criminal. But obtaining a false passport is something else, sir.”

  “Then we’d better just stick to a bit of honest bribery.”

  “So we’ll cash the company’s certified check tomorrow,” said Garlopis. “We’ll drive to the Alpha Bank in Corinth, like we planned.”

  “You’re sure the banks are open on a Saturday?”

  “From nine until twelve, sir. I think you’ll enjoy it in Corinth.” He chuckled. “Especially when we’ve cashed the check and we’re on the road back to Athens.”

  “What’s wrong with bribing Leventis on Sunday?”

  “Oh no, sir. That wouldn’t do at all. You couldn’t bribe someone on a Sunday. Not in Greece. Never on a Sunday. No Greek could tolerate that. And it will have to be done with great skill and diplomacy. Indeed, it’s my considered opinion that we should bribe this man not just with money but with appreciation and esteem. We’ll have to polish his ego with a soft cloth. ‘I wouldn’t insult you, Lieutenant, by offering you a few hundred, or a thousand,’ that kind of thing. ‘For a man like you, Lieutenant, one would feel obliged to offer five thousand.’ That would not be an insult. Five thousand would be respect. Five thousand would be diplomacy. He will understand this kind of figure.”

  “Suppose he wants more.”

  “Of course, we can pay ten thousand. We should keep this in the toga sleeve, so to speak. Believe me, sir, for any more than ten thousand we could get the minister of justice himself. But like any Greek official, Lieutenant Leventis is wise enough to know his true value. One more thing. If you’ll permit me to say so, I think it’s best a Greek such as myself handles this matter. Speaking as a translator, it’s been my experience that when you’re paying a man his fakelaki it’s best there’s no linguistic room for doubt. And no loss of face. One Greek bribing another is commonplace, but somehow a German doing it seems unpatriotic.”

  “Sure. I’ll buy that.”

  “Let us hope we can buy our peace of mind.”

  We had a couple more drinks and then I said good night and went upstairs. As I walked back to my room I wondered if Heinrich Himmler really had stayed at the GB or if it was a rumor; Greece had plenty of those. I had a hot bath—I could see the Megaron Pappoudof from the window after all—went to bed, read a book for three minutes before it fell from my hand, closed my eyes, and found myself somewhere blacker than mere darkness, as if death itself had swallowed me whole and I was struggling for breath. That was when Göring walked into the room with a lion cub under one chubby arm and demanded I move to another hotel. He was wearing a sleeveless green leather hunting jacket, a white flannel shirt, white drill trousers, and white tennis shoes. He was insisting that the room was always his whenever he came to Athens and that if I didn’t leave he’d have his personal sniper shoot me when I was next taking a bath. Naturally I refused, at which point the telephone started ringing and Göring explained that it was probably the hotel management offering me Himmler’s room instead. The Reichsführer-SS was still in Berlin or dead and wouldn’t need it. I reached across the bed in the slowly clearing darkness, and answered it and found it was only Garlopis calling to tell me something about the house in Acropolis Old Town, 11 Pritaniou. I sat up, switched on the light, tried to clear my head, told him I was asleep even though I was awake, gulped some air into the tar pits I called my lungs and with it, some more sense into my sleep-confused brain.

  “I said, one of my aunts left a message for me earlier on this evening,” repeated Garlopis. “It’s about the house at 11 Pritaniou. In Acropolis Old Town. Remember when we went there and found Herr Witzel’s body and Lieutenant Leventis?”

  “Maybe I can remember if I try very hard.”

  “He said a witness who was cleaning the Glebe Holy Sepulchre Church around the corner had reported seeing two men at the house. That witness was my aunt Aspasia, who lives not very far away from there. She’s been cleaning the Holy Sepulchre church for thirty years. I didn’t say so at the time because I didn’t want to cause her any problems with the cops that might have been occasioned by my being related to her. They might have thought there was something fishy about that.”

  “How many goddamn relations have you got, Garlopis? I never knew a man with so many cousins.”

  “If you take a minute to think about this, sir, you’ll realize that every one of my cousins must have a mother. And every one of those mothers is an aunt to Achilles Garlopis. Aunt Aspasia is the mother of my cousin Poulios, who works at Lefteris Makrinos car hire, on Tziraion Street, the same people from whom we hired the Rover. I have six aunts and uncles on my mother’s side and seven on my father’s. And for the record I have twenty-eight cousins. This is normal in Greece. But listen, sir, my aunt Aspasia, she left a message that there is someone in the house in Pritaniou again. Now. That’s why I’m calling you so late. And she is sure it’s not the police or the Gendarmerie.”

  “How is she sure?”

  “Because she doesn’t like the police, sir. Not since the civil war. She thinks they’re all thieves. And because she doesn’t trust them she keeps a careful eye on them, too. She only reported hearing the shots that killed Witzel because she felt she had to. Since then, when the police were at the house in Pritaniou they had a uniformed man guarding the front door. And now there’s no one. Also, there’s a motorcycle parked in front—a red Triumph with a burst saddle that she thinks might belong to the owner.”

  “Is that so?” I sat up, wide awake now, and looked at my watch. “Can you pick me up outside the hotel?”

  “I’ll be there in twenty minutes, sir.”

  I went into the bathroom, ran my head under a cold shower, drank a glass of water, and dressed hurriedly. I was just on my way out the door when the telephone rang again and I answered it, thinking it was Garlopis to say he’d arrived a bit early. But it wasn’t Garlopis. It was Elli Panatoniou and her voice felt like ambrosia in my ear.

  “Hey, I thought we’d arranged to go dancing.”

  I looked at my watch again. It was still almost midnight. Suddenly I felt very old indeed. “We did? At this time?”

  “This is Athens. Nothing happens in Athens before eleven o’clock. Still, you’re right. It wasn’t a firm arrangement. But I thought I’d drop by anyway. I just wanted to see you.”

  “I’ll be down in two minutes.”

&
nbsp; “I could come up to your room if you like. But you’ll have to call the front desk and tell them.”

  I cursed my fortune. It’s not every night that a beautiful young Greek woman offers to come up to an old German’s hotel bedroom. Suddenly things felt a lot like the two jars that Homer says Zeus kept by his office door, one containing good things and the other bad; he gave a mixture to some men and to others only evil, but to some he gave good that felt like it had been simultaneously snatched away in the course of the same beguiling late-night telephone call. For now I would have to deal with it as best I could, which gave me a new understanding of the concept of the heroic outlook. Suddenly I wanted to stick a javelin between a Trojan’s ribs.

  “No, I can’t do that. As a matter of fact I just got a telephone call from Achilles Garlopis, and I have to go out, but now that you’re here maybe you could come along with us. And perhaps we could do something afterwards.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know. Look, I’m coming downstairs. We’ll discuss it then.”

  I had a pretty good idea of what we could do afterwards—especially as she’d already volunteered to come up to my hotel room—but I thought it best I give her another suggestion, one that didn’t sound like I was taking anything for granted.

  “A drink,” I said to myself, as I rode the elevator car down to the hotel lobby. “But it might be best if it’s not here. It might look a bit obvious if you were to suggest the bar here. Look, she’s bound to know a late-night bar somewhere hereabouts. She’ll suggest this hotel if she’s comfortable with coming up to your room again. Always supposing she’s on the level. Either way Garlopis can drop us off and then we’ll see what we’ll see. That’s nice of you, Gunther. You can be a real gentleman when you think it might get you somewhere. I can call you Gunther, now that we’re on our own again, don’t you think?”