Greeks Bearing Gifts

by Philip Kerr

I put a cigarette in my mouth, fired it up, and guided it between her lips.

  “Thanks.”

  A minute later we took a bend in the road a little too quickly, which had Merten sprawled onto my lap for a moment. I pushed him away roughly.

  “There might be capital punishment in Greece, Bernie. But the Greeks don’t much care for killing people. Unlike Germans. Germans like you, that is. Because this is where the story starts to become really unpleasant, Elli. I’m afraid I can’t help that.”

  “I wish you would shoot him, Bernie. It’s what he deserves, not just for stealing that gold but for being such a bore. I’m tired of listening to his voice. We should shoot him and throw his body in a ditch.”

  “Then Bernie’s your man, Elisabeth. Perhaps you already know something about the mass murders that took place in Russia and the Ukraine during the summer of 1941. Bernie had volunteered to join another senior policeman, his old Berlin friend Arthur Nebe, as part of a police battalion attached to what was called an SS einsatzgruppe. This is not an easy thing to translate, my dear Elisabeth. It means the group was tasked with just one special action. Can you imagine what that was? Yes. That’s right. I can see you’ve guessed it. There was only one sentence that those SS men were obliged to carry out: the sentence of death. In short, Einsatz Group B was a mobile death squad operating behind Army Group Center, and tasked with the extermination of Jews and other undesirables such as communists, Gypsies, the disabled, mental retards, hostages, and generally speaking anyone they didn’t much like, in order to terrorize the local population. They operated in and around Minsk, and were very successful. Nebe and Gunther here were good at mass murder and managed to fill enough mass graves to render that part of Ukraine Jew-free in double-quick time.”

  “I didn’t murder anyone in Minsk. But you have my word, Max, that I really don’t mind killing you.”

  “Why then you wouldn’t get your precious passport back. Not that it’s worth much since it’s in a false name. Ask yourself why that should be the case, Elisabeth. How it is that I’m here with a passport in my real name, and Bernie has a passport in a false name? Anyone might conclude that he has more to hide than me. It might just have something to do with the fact that between July and November 1941, Group B managed to kill almost fifty thousand men, women, and children. Fifty thousand. Try to imagine what kind of men they were who could do such a thing, Elli. I’ve often tried myself and again and again I find myself without an answer. It’s inexplicable.” Merten smiled. “What’s the matter, Bernie? Is the truth too much for you? I think it’s getting to be too much for poor Elli.

  “After the horrors of Minsk, Arthur Nebe and Bernie returned to Berlin and were both decorated for a job well done. Didn’t Martin Bormann give you the Coburg Badge, Germany’s highest civilian order, for services to Hitler? That must have been a proud moment. Bernie was even a guest at Heydrich’s country house in Prague, a few weeks before his assassination. Again, quite an honor. Meanwhile Nebe and Bernie resumed their more routine duties with the Criminal Police, and even worked for Interpol, this in spite of the fact that they had just helped to perpetrate the crime of the millennium. The arrogance of it simply beggars belief, does it not?”

  “The only thing that beggars belief,” she said, “is your arrogance.”

  “I, on the other hand,” he persisted, “a humble army captain and no one’s idea of an entertaining Nazi houseguest, was sent here, to Greece. Please note the fact that I was never in the SS or in the SD or the Gestapo. Nor did I receive any medals or promotions. This much is easily verified. Even Bernie will admit that much, surely. It’s true I stole some gold from SS men who’d already stolen it from Salonika’s Jews. But that’s the limit of my felony. I never killed anyone. The only time I ever saw anyone get shot was when Alo Brunner killed that poor man on the train from Salonika. Meanwhile, Bernie went on to do special work for Heydrich and the minister of propaganda, Josef Goebbels himself, no less; he was even sent to Croatia with some sort of carte blanche from the minister in his pocket. You would think he’d had enough killing but not a bit of it; in Croatia he assisted the fascist Ustase in murdering many thousands of Serbs and Gypsies, to say nothing of Yugoslavia’s Jews.”

  “You’re good, Max. Smearing me in the hope that some of this mud sticks.”

  “It’s exactly what any unscrupulous lawyer would do,” said Elli. “If he was really desperate.”

  “You know I really do think she loves you, Bernie. Or at least she thinks she does. Look, Elisabeth, I can see that it might be hard to accept all of what I’ve just told you about a man you’re fond of. I can’t say I blame you. Believe me, after the war many German wives had the same problem. Could my dear Mozart-loving husband Fritz really have murdered women and children? Tell me you didn’t shoot any children, dear husband mine. Please, tell me you had nothing to do with that.”

  “Didn’t you hear me, you lying malaka?” she said loudly. “I don’t believe a word of it.”

  “But you can certainly believe this, Elisabeth dear: Bernie also has a wife. Perhaps he’s already told you about her? She lives in Berlin. You didn’t know? No, I thought not. In which case you’re in for an even bigger surprise. You might say it’s a coincidence and maybe a convenient one at that—since he should have no trouble remembering your name. I expect it was hard enough remembering his own, or at least the one written on his passport. You see his wife’s name is Elisabeth, just like yours.”

  FIFTY-THREE

  –

  Elli had stopped the car and switched off the engine. We were in a western suburb of Athens and surrounded by a strange landscape of fuel tanks and gasometers. In the distance we could just see the range of mountains that guarded the peninsula of Attica like the giant walls of a more ancient Troy. A beggar came to the window of the Rover and Elli shook her head angrily, which sent him away. She gripped the steering wheel firmly and stared straight ahead of her as if she’d been planning to crash into one of the storage tanks so that we could all die in the explosion like the final scene of White Heat. She probably found my silence even more deafening. I know I did. Merten stayed silent, too. He’d done his worst and this was all that was required; it was obvious to everyone in the car that anything else said by him would have been redundant, not to mention the fact that it would have earned him a punch in the mouth. It was also obvious that Elli was upset. There was anger in her eyes and her voice sounded hoarse, like she was getting a cold. Suddenly I was feeling pretty cold myself.

  “Is it true?” she asked, after a while. “Do you have a wife in Berlin?”

  “Yes, but we’re estranged.”

  Even before I’d finished this short sentence Elli had got out of the car. She collected her bag off the passenger seat, slammed the door behind her, leaned back on the wing, and lit a cigarette angrily. I followed her outside.

  “She left me more than a year ago while I was living in France, and went home to Berlin. Unlike her, I can’t ever go back there. At least not while the communists are in charge. The Stasi is every bit as bad as the Gestapo. Worse, probably. Anyway, the last conversation I had with my wife she told me she wanted a divorce. And for all I know she’s already got one. Given the fact that the city is surrounded by the GDR, communication is difficult, to say the least, so we haven’t spoken in a long while. A letter I had last year turned out to be a put-up job by the communists trying to lure me back to Berlin.”

  “And is her name Elisabeth? Like that Nazi bastard said it was?”

  “Yes.”

  She stared down at the ground for almost a minute while I stumbled, badly, through the rest of my explanation: since my wife and I hadn’t seen each other in months I’d ceased to think of myself as married and so, I imagined, had she; we’d known each other as friends for more than twenty years; we’d married for the sake of convenience as much as anything else since we both needed to escape from Berlin at around the same ti
me; this wasn’t very long ago—1954—which ought to have provided a useful snapshot of just how inconvenient the convenience of our marriage had become when, finally, she lit out for Germany and home. It wasn’t much of an explanation, but it was the only one I had.

  “When were you thinking of telling me?” she asked. “If at all?”

  “I should have mentioned it before,” I admitted.

  “Yes, you should. You could have mentioned it last night, for instance. Before we checked into a double room at the Poseidonian Hotel. But you didn’t. You were oddly silent about your wife back then.”

  “You’re right. But in my own defense, yesterday I still half-believed you were going to shoot me with your little Beretta. I’d only just started to believe in you and me so it didn’t seem to be that important. It felt like a small thing. At least while I was trying to put that rat Merten in the bag. As if I couldn’t concentrate wholly on you, the way you deserved, until Max Merten was properly out of the picture. But I would certainly have told you eventually. When we were both back in Athens. Made a better job of it, too, with dinner and chocolates and flowers. I could still do that, you know.”

  “Flowers wouldn’t have helped this.”

  When she said nothing more, I felt obliged to add an explanation about everything else Merten had told her.

  “As for the rest of what he said, there was less than ten percent truth in any of it. I was a detective at police headquarters in Berlin and I did work for the Nazis but only under considerable duress, and while I did meet some of those people he talked about I never murdered anyone, Elli.”

  “Damn that man,” she said angrily. “Damn him for finding the weak spot. And not yours. This is my weak spot. That’s the irony. He was looking for yours and he found mine. Look, I’m sorry but I don’t like married men. Especially when they’re married to someone else. Maybe I should have mentioned that last night. A few years ago I had an affair with a married man, someone in the ministry, and I swore then I would never get involved with a married man again. That’s not your fault. But it’s just how it is, do you see?”

  “I told you; we’re separated. And we’re getting a divorce.”

  “That one’s as old as the Odyssey,” she said. “You should read it sometime. In the end Ulysses goes back to his wife. I have to say that this is what happened to me.”

  “That isn’t going to happen with me.”

  “Like everything else, I’ve only got your word for it.”

  “And my word won’t do, I guess.”

  “If you didn’t happen to be a man it would probably do just fine.”

  “So where does this leave us?” I asked.

  “I’m not sure where it leaves you, Bernie, or whatever your real name is, but I already know the way out of this particular labyrinth. Me, I’m going home. On my own. Leaving you and your fat friend to sort things out between you.”

  “You’re reading this all wrong, sugar. I was fixing to stay on in Greece a while, just to be with you. With the hope of making that stick.”

  “That’s going to take a box of tools you neither own nor know how to use.”

  “Tell me where to get them and I’ll try to make this work.”

  “I’m standing on higher ground than you, Bernie. I already see what you can’t. I was brought up Greek Roman Catholic and we believe in dead wives, not in divorced ones. Which reminds me. I’m pretty sure you told me your wife died eight years ago, in Munich.”

  “Kirsten. That’s right.” I thought it best not to mention that I’d had a wife before Kirsten. I figured there were only so many ex-wives, dead or living, that poor Elli could take.

  “That explains but doesn’t excuse it. Not in my book. When you changed your name, maybe you forgot that women don’t change quite as easily as that. In fact, most of them don’t change at all. Most of us want the same things: a nice handbag and a husband we can trust, but we’ll generally settle for one or the other.”

  “I’m sorry you feel that way.”

  “You don’t know the half of how I feel. Honestly, it’s not even your fault. I’m that kind of woman and you’re just that kind of guy. A survivor. I guess maybe the war did that to you. Perhaps you had standards once, and lived up to them, too. I don’t know but I have standards, too. My only regret about all this is that I threw away my father’s Beretta. Probably just as well. If I had it now I might even shoot you. Maybe I wouldn’t kill you. What you’ve done to me isn’t so bad in the great scheme of things that you need killing. I can’t answer for the rest of humanity. But you’d always have a little hole to remember me by.”

  “I suspect I’ll have one anyway. I’m not likely to forget you, Elli.”

  “I think you’d best try,” she said, and walked quickly away.

  I watched her go. I felt a pang of regret seeing her go. There was a real possibility that it might have worked between us. Then again, we might just have been friends and it wasn’t like I had many of those. You can never tell how these things will play themselves out. But if I’m honest I have to admit I also felt a degree of relief that she had walked out on me. The age difference was only one thing. There was something else, too, and again it wasn’t her fault: The fact was I didn’t have the patience for any woman, not anymore, and not just her. I’d probably been on my own for too long and I guess I preferred it that way.

  I kept on watching Elli for a while thinking she might look back, but of course she didn’t and I didn’t really expect her to. I watched her until I couldn’t see her anymore and then turned to look at Max Merten still seated in the back of the Rover. I pulled the Bismarck from under my waistband and waved him out and when he stayed put I opened the door and, ignoring the pain in my arm, hauled him out by the scruff of the neck.

  “Move.”

  “You’re not going to shoot me?”

  His eye was nervously on the ditch behind him and the gun in my hand as well it might have been. I had killed people—he’d been right about that much, at least, although arguably most of them had needed killing. But it had been a while since I had shot anyone and although it would have paid him back for his lawyer’s smart mouth, I knew it wouldn’t have solved anything very much. It never does. It certainly wouldn’t have brought Elli running back.

  “No, I’m not going to shoot you,” I said. “I want you to drive. Drive the car, Max.”

  “Sure. Whatever you say, Bernie. Just say where to.”

  He slipped behind the steering wheel and I got into the front passenger seat.

  “Police headquarters. Constitution Square. Next to the Grande Bretagne Hotel.”

  “Right away.” He checked my expression nervously and then said, “She’ll be back. Just as soon as she’s calmed down a bit.”

  “Not this one.”

  “It’s not their fault. They’re irrational creatures in need of protection from themselves—all of them ruled by their ovaries. Take my word for it, Bernie. She’ll get over it. Maybe not today. Maybe not tomorrow. But soon. Look, women are sensitive beings. Like children. They feel things more than us men. Especially Greek women. They’re very excitable. All they need is firm guidance and direction. You see a woman like that and you can understand Aristophanes. I tell you, she’ll think better of whatever it was she said to you and then come crawling back. They always do.”

  “I don’t think so and neither do you.”

  “Maybe you should have listened to me.”

  “I think that’s where the problem lies, Max. Look where listening to you has brought us today.”

  “I did warn you. Look, you might still have had her if you hadn’t wanted me as well. You could have let me go and held on to that lovely girl without any difficulty. But you were greedy.”

  “Don’t talk to me about greed, Max. Better not say that again. And don’t even think of apologizing, because then I really will do something I�
�ll regret.”

  Max ground the car into gear and we set off. On the way we passed Elli walking along the street, and when we drove by her it was like she was wearing blinkers and we weren’t even there. She paid us less regard than if we’d been just another couple of racehorses coming up on the outside in a big steeplechase. I think that was the moment I knew I was right about her: she wasn’t coming back, not ever, and I let out a sigh they could have heard on Mount Olympus. Merten heard it, too, and must have concluded he needed to say something—anything—to take my mind off her.

  “However did you catch Gormann anyway?” asked Merten. “I always meant to ask.”

  I suppose he was asking in order to avoid having me smack him in the mouth with the pistol. It was certainly what I felt like doing, and if ever a man needed to lose teeth, it was Max Merten. But since the gift horse had already bolted, I saw little point in fixing his rotten dentistry. So I answered him as calmly as I was able, which was a very useful way of controlling my own violent temper.

  “There was nothing to it. My whole reputation around the Alex wasn’t built on anything very substantial. The key to being a good detective is to find time to do nothing, which runs counter to the whole idea of being German. Teutonic efficiency seems to cry out for someone to be busy. That’s the problem with Germany—we worship industry—but avoiding work, or at least what other people perceived to be work, was the only way I had time to think. I would close the door, clear away the reports, take the phone off the hook with orders that under no circumstances was I to be disturbed. Only that way did I ever find the time to think. You’re wasting your time if you don’t find time to waste. Letting your mind wander above the clouds like Caspar David Friedrich is what makes a detective any good. That’s what I mean by doing nothing. Doing nothing is usually the best thing to do, at least until you have worked out something better to do. Just like now. My first instinct when she got out of the car and stalked off like Achilles in a sulk was to put a bullet in your face, Max. Only I am not going to do that. In fact, I am going to do nothing to you I wasn’t going to do before she left.”