by Alan Furst
There had, of course, been a few problems. One of the subjects, having gone for a pistol in a desk drawer, had been knocked senseless. Several bribes had been offered, and there’d been a number of arguments and threats. One of the detectives had been bitten by a dog, another had been scratched on the face. “By his woman,” the detective said, “so we arrested her, and now she’s in with the rest of them.” On two occasions, Pavlic was asked, “What will become of these people?”
“According to the plan, they are to be released in a day or so,” Pavlic said, and left it at that.
Many of the detectives stayed at the bar; this was an important night in the national history and they wanted to savor their part in it. Zannis encouraged them to eat and drink whatever they liked—the hotel kitchen produced roast chickens, the slivovitz flowed freely—as the money provided for the operation would easily cover the bill. At two in the morning, while the celebration raged around him, Zannis used the telephone at the bar and called the number he’d been given. A woman’s voice answered on the first ring. “Yes? Who’s speaking?” Her voice had a foreign accent but Zannis couldn’t place it.
“This is Zannis. We have twenty-two of twenty-seven. Locked up in prefecture.”
“Names, please.”
Zannis worked his way down the list.
“Wait,” she broke in. “You say Szemmer doesn’t exist?”
“No record. He is Serbian?” Zannis had wondered about the name.
“A Slovene. And he does exist. He is very dangerous.”
“They couldn’t find him. You know where to look, I’ll go myself.”
“No. Captain Franko Szemmer, that’s all we know.”
“Maybe, an office?”
“Where are you?”
“The bar, at the Hotel Majestic.”
“If I can find something, you’ll be contacted.”
After the telephone call, Zannis decided to go outside for a time, have a smoke, look at the stars, try to calm down. The front door was locked but the bolt turned easily and Zannis stepped out onto the sidewalk.
Half a block away, up at the cross street, somebody else had the same idea, on a tense night in Belgrade, and Zannis saw the red dot of a cigarette. There was one difference, between Zannis and his fellow star-gazer, the latter was sitting on the turret of a tank, its long gun pointing down the Knez Mihailova.
Zannis finished his cigarette and returned to the bar. “Maybe bad news,” he said. “There’s a tank out there.”
Pavlic swore, a nearby detective noticed the exchange and asked if something had gone wrong. Pavlic told him. “It could be,” he said, “that Cvetkovic has called out the army.”
Very quickly, the word spread. “If that’s true,” one of the detectives said, “we’re in for it.” He rose, went outside to see for himself, then came back looking more than worried. He spoke rapidly, Pavlic telling Zannis what he’d said. “I think we’d better find the back door.” As most of the detectives left, a heavy engine went rumbling past the hotel and the floor trembled. Zannis went to the door, then said, “Another one. Now they’ve got the street blocked off.”
Vlatko stood up, finished his drink, and said, “I’m going to find out what’s going on.” A few minutes later he returned. “They won’t talk to me,” he said. “Just told me not to ask questions.”
Zannis called the telephone number. When the woman answered, he said, “There are tanks here, blocking Knez Mihailova.”
“I will see,” said the woman, who took the telephone number, and hung up.
Out in the lobby of the hotel, by the overstuffed chairs and potted rubber trees, a large Philco radio stood on a table. Pavlic turned it on and searched for a station, but all he got was a low, buzzing drone.
Zannis stayed up until four-fifteen, waiting by the telephone, but it didn’t ring. The hell with it, he thought, and decided to go to bed. The faithful Vlatko, the last of the Serbian detectives in the bar, wished him a good night, and headed for a kitchen door that led to a back alley.
26 March. 7:30 A.M. Zannis had taken off his shoes, set his eyeglasses and Walther on the night table, and dozed. The roar of engines and rattle of tank treads woke him again and again, and finally he just gave up. He wouldn’t desert his post, but if the army had been called out that was the end of the coup d’état, and he’d have to slip away somehow and make his way back to Salonika. Soon enough, somebody would discover the Cvetkovic loyalists at the prefecture and then, he hadn’t a doubt in the world, they would enlist their own thugs and come looking for him. So, no trains. Perhaps, he thought, he could steal a car. He would, at least, propose the idea to Pavlic, whose problem was severely worse than his own; he might well have to leave the country. Skata! Well, they had tried, and now he would have company on the run. Where to go? East to Bulgaria was closer than south to Greece, but he well remembered the swastika flag flown by the Bulgarian legation. Would Lazareff help them? Maybe. Maybe not. Maybe, more than wouldn’t, couldn’t.
He walked down the corridor and knocked on Pavlic’s door. Pavlic answered immediately, wearing only his underwear, and holding his own Walther PPK by his side. “Oh, it’s you,” he said. “Well, good morning. Any news?”
“No. We’ll have to run for it, I’m afraid. Marko, I—” He’d started to apologize, but Pavlic waved him off.
“Don’t bother. I knew what I was getting into. Let’s try to find out what’s going on, at least, before we take off.”
He waited while Pavlic shaved—very much his own inclination at difficult moments. If you were going to face danger, even death, better to shave. After Pavlic got dressed, they went downstairs together and found the lobby deserted; no guests, no clerk, eerie silence. Pavlic unlocked the hotel door and they took a walk up the street. The tank crews were sitting on their machines, waiting for orders, content to relax while they had the opportunity.
Pavlic talked to the soldiers, his Serbo-Croatian much too fast for Zannis to follow. Brave sonofabitch, he really laid into them. Finally the sergeant commander got tired of him, sauntered off, and returned with an officer. Pavlic’s tone now altered—serious and straightforward, as though saying, come now, we’re fellow countrymen, you shouldn’t keep me in the dark. But, no luck. The officer spoke briefly, then walked away, back toward a wall of sandbags stacked across a doorway—the barrel of a machine gun poking out of a space that left it room to traverse.
“Well, what did he say?”
Pavlic’s face was alight. More than a smile—the cat had not only eaten the canary, he’d drunk up a pitcher of cream and got laid in the bargain. So, there was a joke all right, but Pavlic wasn’t ready to share it. “He didn’t say much, only that it would all be cleared up as the day went on.”
Zannis was puzzled; one certain detail had provoked his curiosity. “Tell me,” he said. “Why was the officer wearing a blue uniform?”
Pavlic jerked his head back toward the hotel and, as they began to walk, he put an arm around Zannis’s shoulders. “He wore a blue uniform, my friend, because he is in the air force.”
•
As instructed, Zannis left as soon as he could—the first train out at midday. But they made slow progress; stopped for a herd of sheep crossing the track, stopped because of overheating after a climb up a long grade, slowed to a crawl in a sudden snowstorm, stopped for no apparent reason at a town on the river Morava, somewhere north of Nis, the name on the station not to be found on the timetable. It was the fault of the engineer, someone said; who had halted the train for a visit with his girlfriend. Late at night, Zannis arrived in Nis, where the train that was to take him south was long gone.
At two-thirty on the afternoon of 27 March, he was again under way, headed for Skoplje. On this train he discovered—wedged into a space beside the seat where it blocked a savage draft—a Greek newspaper, printed early that morning. A new government in Yugoslavia! A coup led by General Simovich and the officer corps of the air force, joined by an army tank brigade. Being a Greek n
ewspaper, it spoke from the heart: the people of this proud Balkan nation were “defiant,” they had “defied the Nazis,” and would continue to “defy” them—the journalist couldn’t get enough of it! “Hitler denied a victory,” “fury in Berlin,” “a defeat for Fascism,” Yugoslav “bravery,” “determination,” and, here it came again, “defiance.”
On the front page, a grainy photograph: a street packed with marching Serbs, their mouths open in song, some carrying flags and banners, others with pictures, taken down from walls and mantelpieces, of Prince Peter. Whose radio speech from the afternoon of the twenty-sixth was excerpted in a separate story on page two:
Serbs, Croats, Slovenes! In this moment so grave for our people, I have decided to take the royal power into my own hands…. The Regents have resigned…. I have charged General Simovich with the formation of a new government…. The army and the navy are at my orders….
The newspaper story carried supportive statements from American and British politicians. The Americans were passionate and blunt, while the British, as was their custom, were rather more reserved.
•
That same day, in Berlin, the newspapers wrote about Yugoslav “criminals and opportunists,” claiming that ethnic German minorities in northern Serbia and the Banat region were being attacked by Serbian bandits: their houses burned down, their shops looted, their women raped. This was handwriting on the wall. Because such falsehoods had by now become a kind of code: used first in Poland, then in Czechoslovakia, as pretexts for invasion. So the fate of Yugoslavia was that morning already in preparation, and stated openly, for all to see.
One of the people who saw it was Emilia Krebs. She had done no more than skim the newspaper, being occupied with the departure of yet one more friend who had come to the attention of the Gestapo. This was a tall gray-haired woman of Polish descent, the eminent ethnologist and university professor known simply as Ostrova. You know he studied with Ostrova. We went to a lecture by Ostrova. But now, eminence had failed her, and her situation had become perilous. Thus, by eight-thirty, Emilia Krebs had served rolls and coffee, handed Ostrova a set of false documents, and wished her safe journey. Surely the news that morning was disquieting, and they’d talked it over. Yes, there would be war in the Balkans, but not yet. Maybe in a week, they thought. “So I’d better leave today,” Ostrova said and, if the Hungarians had been forced to close the border, she would find a way through the countryside. The two women embraced, and a determined Ostrova set out for the train to Vienna.
Twenty minutes later, Emilia Krebs was having a second cup of coffee when she heard the chime of the doorbell. Now who could be calling at this hour? Likely one of her fellow conspirators, she guessed, properly afraid to trust the telephone.
However, when she opened the door she faced a man she knew she’d never seen before. Heavily built, with a Prussian haircut, he wore steel-rimmed eyeglasses and looked, she thought, something like a mathematics teacher at a military academy. But he wasn’t that. He announced himself as “Herr Albert Hauser,” but, as it turned out, he wasn’t that either, not quite. What he was, he revealed as he sat on her couch, was Hauptsturmführer Albert Hauser, of, as he put it, “the Geheime Staatspolizei.” An official title, the secret state police, simply one more government organization. But in Germany it was common usage to abbreviate this title, which came out “Gestapo.”
“Oh, that name, it’s become so …,” he said, hunting for a polite word but not finding one, and instead finishing, “… you know what I mean, Frau Krebs.”
She did.
“I called because I was wondering if you could shed some light on the whereabouts of a certain couple. Herr and Frau Gruen?”
Ah yes, she’d known them.
“Good friends of yours?”
Acquaintances.
“Well, it was reported to the local police that they’d disappeared, back in December this was, and when the detectives made no progress, it became my … concern.”
Not case, she thought. Concern. This Gestapo man seemed quite the gentle soul. Perhaps one could be, umm, forthcoming with him.
In a pig’s eye.
Emilia’s hands lay modestly folded in her lap, because she didn’t want Hauser to see that they were trembling.
“Unfortunately,” Hauser said, “I must consider the possibility that they met with foul play. They haven’t been seen since then, and there’s no record of their having—emigrated.”
They ran for their lives, you Nazi filth. No, she hadn’t heard that they’d emigrated, but still, they might’ve done so. Could the records be at fault?
“Our records, Frau Krebs?”
“Yes, Hauptsturmführer. Yours.”
“I would doubt that.”
Very well. In that case, there was little she could add.
“Please, Frau Krebs, do not misunderstand the nature of this inquiry. We both know that the Gruens were … of the Jewish faith. But, even so, our security institutions are responsible for the protection of all our German citizens, no matter what people say.”
What people say. Do you mean that you are Jew murderers and should roast in hell for all eternity—that sort of thing? “Yes, I’m aware of what people say, Herr Hauptsturmführer. Some people.”
“What can we do, meine Frau?”
You poor thing.
It went on, but not for long, and Hauser’s exterior never showed the slightest fissure—he was, certainly, beyond courteous. Still, there he was, in her living room, the coffee cup of the fugitive Ostrova sitting on the kitchen counter. He hadn’t come in uniform, with three fellow officers, he hadn’t kicked down the door, he hadn’t smacked her face. Yet, nonetheless, there he was. And, as he prepared to leave, her hands shook so hard she had to clasp them behind her back.
“I wish you a good day, Frau Krebs. I hope I have not intruded.”
He closed the door behind him, it clicked shut, she called an office at the General Staff headquarters, and Hugo was home twenty minutes later. It was the worst conversation they ever had. Because they had to part. She was obviously a suspect, so obviously under surveillance but, as long as he stayed where he was, she was safe, she could leave Germany. If they were to attempt to leave together, they would both be arrested.
She took the train to Frankfurt that afternoon. Was she watched? Impossible to know, but she assumed she was. At the grand house in which she’d been raised, she spoke with her grandfather, and together they made their plans. If, he said, it was time for her to leave, then it was also time for him. Since the rise of Hitler in 1933 he’d hoped for the sort of catastrophe that always, sooner or later, brought such people down, but it hadn’t happened. Instead, triumph followed triumph. So now came the moment to abandon such folly, as Emilia’s grandfather put it, “and leave these people to their madness.” The next morning, with a single telephone call, he procured exit visas for a week-long vacation in Basel. He did not have to visit an office, he simply sent a clerk over for the papers. “The general’s aide asked that I convey the general’s warmest wishes for a pleasant stay in Switzerland,” said the clerk, as he handed Adler a manila envelope. No more than expected, from this general, for Adler had made him a very wealthy general indeed.
It was a long drive, ten hours, from Frankfurt to the Swiss border, but Emilia Krebs and her grandfather were comfortable in the luxurious Mercedes automobile. The cook, saddened because she suspected she would never see them again, had made up a large packet of sandwiches, smoked liverwurst and breast of chicken, and filled a large thermos with coffee. The cook knew what they knew: that even traveling in a chauffeur-driven Mercedes, and looking like powerful and protected people, it was better not to stop. There were Nazi luminaries everywhere along the way and when they drank, which was often, they were liable to forget their manners. The chauffeur drove steadily through the gusty March weather, Emilia Krebs and her grandfather watched the towns go by and, even though the glass partition assured them privacy, only conversed now and then.
“I believe it was forty, at least that. We lost one man who was arrested at the Hungarian border, we never learned why, and a pair of sisters, the Rosenblum sisters, who simply vanished. They were librarians, older women; God only knows what happened to them. But that was in the early days, we managed better later on.”
“I am proud of you, Emmi, do you know that? Forty people.”
“We did our best,” she said.
And then, for a time, they did not speak, lost in their own thoughts. Emilia didn’t cry, mostly she didn’t, she held it in, and kept a handkerchief in her hand for the occasional lapse. Her grandfather was, in his way, also brokenhearted. Seven hundred years of family history in Germany, gone. Finally he said, some minutes later, “It was the honorable thing to do.”
She nodded, in effect thanking him for kind words. But we pay a price for honor, she thought.
So now she paid, so did her husband, so did her grandfather, and, for that matter, so would the Yugoslavs, and the Greeks. Such a cruel price. Was it always thus? Perhaps, it was something she couldn’t calculate, life had somehow grown darker, at times it did. Perhaps that was what people meant by the phrase the world is coming apart. But mostly you couldn’t question what they meant, because mostly they said it to themselves.
Hours later, they reached the Swiss border. The German customs officer glanced at their papers, put two fingers to the brim of his cap, and waved them through. The Swiss officer, as the striped barrier bar was lowered behind them, did much the same. And then they drove on, a few minutes more, into the city of Basel.
29 March. There was little to do in the office—only Sibylla and Zannis there now, and Saltiel’s bare desk, his photographs gone. The telephone rang now and then, the Salonika detective units continuing to work because they might as well, while they were waiting. Zannis read the newspaper as long as he could stand it, then threw it in the wastebasket. German troop formations moving south, diplomats said this and that; now it was only a matter of time.
