by Alan Furst
“What cargo?”
“You’ll tell your friend there? Whoever he is?”
“What friend?”
“Ha-ha-ha!”
More Mastika, tasting like anise, and lethal.
“By the way,” Lazareff said, “the situation in Roumania is a little worse than the newspapers are letting on. We calculate six hundred and eighty thousand troops, maybe sixty Wehrmacht divisions, artillery, tanks, all of it. They have to be fed, it isn’t cheap, so they’re obviously there for a reason. Probably they’re meant to intimidate us or, if it comes to that, invade. Or maybe they’re there to threaten the Serbs, or maybe Greece. Our response, so far, has been to tell Hitler that we’re not quite ready to sign his pact.”
“Not quite ready?”
“Not quite. We’ve destroyed the bridges over the Danube.”
“That would be a message, I’d think.”
“A tantrum. We’ve seen the matériel, struts and floats, that can be assembled into pontoon bridges.”
“I appreciate your telling me,” Zannis said.
“I expect your generals know all about it,” Lazareff said. “But I think you should know also, Costa, so you can make your own, personal … arrangements. If you see what I mean.”
From there, they’d moved to lunchtime conversation. And by midafternoon, after Zannis had telephoned Escovil, and with exit visas provided by Lazareff, Zannis and Byer were on the train to Salonika. At six-thirty in the evening, Byer was delivered to Escovil at the Pension Bastasini. “How did you get here so quickly?” Escovil said, accusation in his voice.
“It’s a long story,” Zannis said. “For another time.”
“You didn’t travel on the trains,” Escovil said. It wasn’t a question.
“You were watching, weren’t you.”
“Of course. So we’ll want you to explain.”
“Later,” Zannis said. “I’m going to see my family.” He was exhausted, at the last available edge of patience. Escovil knew what came next, so left it there and, a brief taxi ride later, Melissa came to the door to greet the returning hero.
Back at his apartment, the hero was exhausted—threw the mail on the kitchen table, washed his hands, and flopped down on the bed. But then, his mind charged with the images of the past few days, he realized he was not going to be able to sleep any time soon, so took off his shoes and socks and covered himself with a blanket. He tried to return to Inspector Maigret, waiting on his night table, but memories of the real Paris intruded and the book lay open on his chest while he brooded about them. Uncle Anastas was a shining example of survival, even prosperity, in an occupied city, but that was Anastas, who could deal with anything. So could he, come to that, but his family couldn’t. According to Lazareff, time was growing short, the Balkans would be overrun, and Zannis had to make plans to save his family. Where could they go? How, once he became involved in resistance and likely in hiding, would he support them? The Germans would eventually figure out who had shot their SS officer, would they dare to come after him in Greece? Maybe not, but they would be looking for him the day they entered the city.
For these problems he had no solutions, so tried Maigret again but couldn’t concentrate—Madame Cavard was who? Time was running short—so why was he alone on this bed? What was Demetria doing? In bed herself? In bed with Vasilou? What a bastard, the bully he’d heard on the telephone. So, there was also Demetria to save. What if he telephoned …?
He woke with a start, then turned off the lamp. While he’d slept, Maigret had disappeared. No, there he was, under the blanket.
ESCAPE FROM SALONIKA
10 FEBRUARY, 1941.
Well before dawn, Costa Zannis woke from a night of bizarre and frightening dreams. He lay there with his eyes open, supremely grateful that none of it was real and so, fearing that further horrors awaited him if he went back to sleep, forced himself to get out of bed. He washed, dressed for work, let Melissa out the door, and walked down to the waterfront corniche, to a kafeneion that stayed open all night for the stevedores and sailors of the port. There he drank coffee, smoked cigarettes and stared out the window, where the sky was streaked with red cloud as the sun, coming up over the Aegean, lit the whitecaps in the bay and the snow on Mount Olympus in the distance. The fishing caïques were headed out to sea, attended by flocks of seagulls, their cries sharp in the morning silence.
The kafeneion was quiet, only the sleepy waiter, a fiftyish prostitute with dyed-red hair, and a man dressed in merchant seaman’s sweater and wool watch cap. Zannis took a morning paper from the counter and looked at the headlines: somebody had taken a potshot at the mayor, the bullet punching a hole in his briefcase and coming to rest in the sheaves of official paper packed inside.
The prostitute was watching Zannis as he read and said, “Terrible thing.”
Zannis mumbled an assent—it was too early in the morning to talk, and, once he went to work, a full day’s talking lay ahead of him.
Turning to the seaman, she said, “Don’t you think? Shooting at a mayor?”
The man raised his hands and shrugged; he did not understand Greek.
“Always something here,” the waiter said. “They never catch them, people like that.”
But, Zannis found when he reached the office, they already had. Sort of. “What they say in the papers”—Saltiel had his feet up on the desk, his jacket over the back of the chair—“is that he was shot at, yesterday morning, while getting into his car. True, as far as it goes. But the detective who questioned the mayor told me that he was getting into the backseat, because he has a driver, and his left foot was up on the floorboard as he bent over to go through the door, with his briefcase in his left hand, swung slightly behind him. Try it, Costa, and you’ll see what went on.”
“What?”
“The way the detective sees it, somebody tried to shoot him in the backside.”
“A warning?”
“More like a lesson. I talked to some people, especially the mayor’s secretary, who knows all, and what happened is that the mayor’s wife caught him in bed with his girlfriend and made him cut her loose. Girlfriend doesn’t like it—she thought she was the one and only—so she goes out and hires somebody to pop him one in the ass. Or maybe she did it herself. She’s nobody to fool with, according to the secretary.”
“The mayor never turned around? Never saw anybody?”
“At the time they thought, the mayor and the driver, they’d heard a car backfire. Or at least that’s what they told the detectives.” Saltiel raised his eyebrows. “According to the mayor, he didn’t realize he’d been shot at until he got to his desk and opened the briefcase. The bullet stopped right in the middle of Papadopoulos v. City of Salonika.”
“So, case closed,” Zannis said.
“Not around here, it isn’t. The mayor can’t have that in the newspapers, so the investigation is transferred to this office and we’re supposed to question a few Communists, or Macedonian terrorists, or whatever we can think up. At least tell the press we’re doing it.”
“Maybe a disappointed office seeker,” Zannis said.
“Yes, that’s good. Or a lunatic.”
“Well, we’re not going hunting for lunatics, but somebody better talk to the girlfriend and tell her not to try that again.”
“Somebody?” Saltiel said.
“All right, Gabi, get me a telephone number.”
There was more that had gone on in his absence. Saltiel opened his desk drawer and handed Zannis a message from Emilia Krebs. In ochre letters above the lines of the typed commercial paragraphs she said that three men and two women would be leaving Berlin on the eleventh of February, adding that she had no knowledge of the man seen on the platform of the Skoplje railway station. The secret writing was far more legible than what Zannis had been able to produce. “Who heated the letter?” he asked Saltiel.
“Sibylla. I never used an iron in my life.”
“Well done, Sibylla,” Zannis said. “Did you
send the teletypes?”
“I did,” Sibylla said. “They were confirmed, and I made copies for you.”
“Thank you,” Zannis said. “And I mean it.”
“Oh, you’re welcome,” she said, both surprised and pleased that Zannis was so grateful. “I’ll do the next one too, if you like.”
As Saltiel returned to his desk, Zannis prepared to telephone Demetria’s house. He’d almost done it the night before, because the time he’d spent in Paris—the Germans, the shooting, the escape—had had its effect on him. On the flight to Sofia he’d thought, in fact told himself, your time is running out, and more than once. Now he was going to reach for her, any way he could, and to hell with the consequences. But, as his hand moved toward the telephone, it rang.
“Yes? Hello?”
“Hello. I’m calling from the Bastasini.”
Escovil. “And?”
“I understand you were tired last night, but I would like to talk to you, as soon as possible.” Escovil was trying to sound casual, but his voice was strained and tense.
“I can’t, right now,” Zannis said, cold as ice. “I’m busy.”
The line hissed. “Some people I know are very, concerned.”
“Why? They got what they wanted.”
“They’d like to know—the details.”
“Ask him.”
“Um, he isn’t sure how it worked. So they’re, well, anxious to hear your story. And this would be better in person, not on the telephone.”
Instead of attacking Escovil, because the urge to do that was very powerful, Zannis took a deep breath. “You know where I am.”
“Yes.”
“I’ll see you downstairs, in the vestibule, in ten minutes. There’s something I have to do first, so you may have to wait for me.”
When Escovil answered, it sounded as though he were reading a sentence he’d written out beforehand. “Actually, my friends would like to meet you. To thank you. In person.”
“Come over here in ten minutes, and come alone. Understood?”
Escovil hesitated, then said, “I’m on my way.”
Zannis hung up, but didn’t leave the receiver on the cradle long enough for a dial tone, so had to do it again.
A maid answered.
“Is Madam Vasilou there?”
“Gone away.” This was a different maid; she barely spoke Greek.
“What do you mean, ‘gone away’?”
She tried harder, raising her voice. “They gone.”
“Where did they go?”
“Gone away,” the maid said, and hung up.
Zannis made himself wait ten minutes, then walked down the stairs. He couldn’t believe what had happened; where were they? Had they left the country? He wanted to break something. And here, on top of it all, was Escovil. Who hadn’t put on a coat, had instead looped a woolen scarf around his neck, stuffed the ends inside his buttoned jacket, and turned the collar up. With the addition of brown leather gloves, he looked like a country squire going up to London on an autumn day.
If Escovil was already anxious about the meeting, the expression on Zannis’s face did nothing to reassure him. “I hurried straight over,” he said.
“What do you want from me?” Zannis said.
“Byer told us you flew from Paris to Sofia. How did you manage that?” After a moment he added, “The people I work for would like to know how you did it.” It isn’t me.
“I was helped by some friends in Paris, people I met when I lived there.”
“And they are …?”
“Friends in Paris. And now, let me ask you something. Who had the idea that I should go to a restaurant? Because I’m sure Byer told you what happened.”
Escovil hesitated. “A senior person, in London, felt you should act like a visitor. The original idea was the Eiffel Tower, but the time didn’t work. So, a brasserie.”
“Very clever,” Zannis said. “Except that it wasn’t.”
“We need to know about the airplane,” Escovil said, desperation in his voice. “It could be very important, very important.”
“Well, you know as much as I’m going to tell you. I understand what your people want, they want to be able to use what I used, any spy service would, but they’ll have to find their own way.”
“Would you at least meet with them?”
Zannis stared at Escovil. “No,” he said.
A muscle ticked in Escovil’s cheek. He half-turned toward the door, then turned back to face Zannis. “I’m serving in a war, Zannis. And so are you, no matter whether you like it or not.” He reached the door in two strides and, over his shoulder, said, “I’d think about that if I were you.”
It was just after six when Zannis got back to Santaroza Lane. As he took Melissa’s butcher scraps from his tiny refrigerator, he saw the mail he’d tossed on the table when he’d come home the night before. He fed Melissa, then, looking for anything commonplace to make him feel, if not better, at least occupied, he began to look through the pile of envelopes. A few bills, an invitation to a formal party, a letter. No return address. Inside, a single sheet of paper:
5 February
C.
We have left Salonika and gone to Athens. I have said my mother is ill and I had to come here, to Kalamaria, to take care of her. She has a telephone, 65-245. I don’t know how long I can stay here, and I don’t know where you are. I hope you read this in time.
D.
He called immediately and was out the door minutes later. Kalamaria wasn’t far away, maybe ten miles south, down the peninsula. Out on the corniche he found a taxi and paid the driver extravagantly to take him to the village, where, Demetria had told him, there was only one hotel, the Hotel Angelina. He arrived at seven-ten and took a room. The hotel was barely open, in February, but a boy led him up to Room 3—likely their finest, since Zannis was their only guest—and lit a small oil heater in the corner. It produced a loud pop and a flash, and the boy swore as he jumped aside, but the thing worked and, ten minutes later, the room began to warm up.
The Hotel Angelina was on the bay and the room had one large window that faced west, over the sea. Not so bad, the room. Whitewashed stucco walls, a narrow bed with a winter blanket, a lamp on a night table, a wooden chair, and an armoire with two hangers. Zannis hung his trench coat and jacket on one, and left the other for his guest. He tried sitting in the chair, then lay on the bed, set his glasses on the night table, and waited. There were rain squalls on the bay that night, accompanied by a gusting wind that sighed and moaned and rattled the window. Eight o’clock came and went. Eight-fifteen. Where was she? Eight-twenty.
Two light knocks on the door.
When he opened it, there she was. Beautiful, yes, but unsmiling and, he sensed, maybe a little scared. He’d planned to embrace her—finally, at last!—but something told him not to, so he rested a light hand on her shoulder and guided her into the room. “Hello, Demetria,” said the passionate lover. “May I take your coat?” She nodded. He could smell her perfume on the collar as as he hung it up in the armoire.
Sitting on the edge of the bed, she wore a heavy slate-colored wool sweater and skirt, with thick black cotton stockings and lace-up shoes. “Oh lord,” she said.
“Yes, I know.”
“You can sit down,” she said.
He was standing there, hesitant, and as tense as she was. “I can go downstairs. Maybe there’s some retsina, or wine.”
She brightened. “Whatever they have. It’s cold in here.”
He went downstairs. The hotel didn’t exactly have a bar; a shelf with bottles stood above a square plank table. The door by the table was ajar, Zannis could hear a radio. “Hello?” he said. When the woman who had rented him the room came out, he bought a bottle of retsina and she gave him two cloudy glasses, then said, “Good night, sir.”
Demetria was sitting exactly where he’d left her, rubbing her hands.
“What a night,” Zannis said. He poured retsina into the glasses and gave her o
ne. When he sat by her side, the bed sagged beneath them.
Demetria laughed. “Ah, Kalamaria.”
“Did you live here? As a child?”
“No, my mother came here after my father died. Returned. It was her home village.”
“Is she actually ill?”
“Oh no, not her. Never. Not that I can remember.”
“You told her, ah, what you’re doing?”
From Demetria, a tight smile. “She knows, Mama does. Knows her daughter.”
They clinked their glasses together and drank. The retsina was strong.
“Not so bad,” Zannis said.
“No, not bad at all. A good idea.” She put her glass on the floor and rubbed her hands, trying to get warm.
“Shall we get drunk and forget our woes?”
“Not that drunk.”
When she again picked up her glass, Zannis saw that she wasn’t wearing her wedding ring. And she’d pulled her hair back with an elaborate silver clip.
“I called your house, this morning,” he said. “I came home last night but I didn’t see your letter until just before I called you.”
“I knew … I knew you would call. I mean, I knew you would call to the house in Salonika, so I telephoned, from Athens. Nobody answered….” She put her glass on the floor, rubbed her hands and said, “My hands are so cold.” You dumb ox.
“Give them to me.” He held her hands, which weren’t all that cold, and said, “You’re right. They need to be warmed up.” He took her left hand in both of his and rubbed the back, then the palm.
After a time she said, just the faintest trace of a hitch in her voice, “That’s better.” With her free hand, she drank some retsina, then put her glass back on the floor.
“Now the other. You were saying?”
“That I called, from Athens….”
He worked on her hand, his skin stroking hers. “And?”
She leaned toward him a little. “And you … weren’t home.”
“No.” He noticed that the dark shade of lipstick she wore flattered her olive skin. “No … I wasn’t.”
