by Leta Serafim
All that was left of the food the priest had brought was the bag of sugar, so they ate in Ioannina before starting back to Athens. The interviews had taken longer than they’d anticipated and Patronas figured they’d probably have to drive all night. They had money left from the stipend Stathis had given them and ordered freely at a tsipouradika, a taverna that specialized in tsipouro, a potent local drink.
Feeling adventurous, Tembelos ordered two of the local specialties, cabbage with sausages and peppers and a pie called pepeki, made with yogurt and cheese. Patronas was too hungry to experiment and stuck to food he knew, pastitsio, a casserole of pasta and meat and horta, stewed greens.
Papa Michalis, as expected, ordered half a kilo of mackerel, the only fish available, and did not offer to share.
The restaurant was lively, Greeks of all ages eating outside at tables next to the famed lake of Ioannina, Pamvotis. Patronas was glad they’d chosen a place without tourists, that there were no Germans nearby. He didn’t want to hear that language tonight, didn’t want those people anywhere near him.
The air was very still and the lights of the city were reflected in the waters of the lake, the image wavering in the current.
Patronas poured a shot of tsipouro and drank it down. He could feel it burning and welcomed the heat. After downing another shot, he passed the bottle over to Tembelos, who poured some out for Papa Michalis and himself. Evangelos Demos, who would be driving the rest of the way to Athens, was drinking Coke Zero.
Tembelos proposed a toast to the victims of the war in Aghios Stefanos, living and dead, and they drank.
“May their memory be eternal,” the priest said.
They drank the rest of the tsipouro and Patronas signaled the waiter for more. Stathis wasn’t expecting them until tomorrow; they could drink as much as they wanted, take their time and enjoy themselves. God knows, after Aghios Stefanos, they needed it.
“I like tsipouro,” Tembelos said. His face was starting to get rosy, his cheeks glowing like apples. “After my father died, we used to lead musicians to his grave whenever there was a celebration in the village and have them play for him, pour a glass of raki into the soil there so he could join the party. When my time comes, I hope someone will do that for me.”
“I’ll do it, Giorgos,” Patronas said, tossing back more tsipouro. “I’ll douse your grave in tsipouro, kick up my heels and dance zebekiko on your tombstone.”
“I hope when I die there’s tsipouro in heaven,” Tembelos said. He’d begun to slur his words.
“What makes you think you’re going to heaven?” Patronas asked.
Bleary eyed, Tembelos peered at him. “Being a cop has to count for something. If not in this life, then in the next.”
They both laughed.
“Heaven’s not that important,” Tembelos continued, “just a bunch of pious old farts. But hell, now, hell’s the thing in my mind. We mess up as cops, Satan will see to it that the evil doers get punished.” He raised his glass in a symbolic toast. “Here’s to hellfire and damnation.”
Patronas nodded, a bad idea, as the movement made him dizzy. He clinked his glass against Tembelos’. “Here’s to hellfire and damnation.”
Ah, alcohol, it’s like Calypso in The Odyssey, the goddess who cast a spell on Ulysses’ crew and turned them all to pigs. Patronas smiled, pleased with himself. Calypso and pigs. Not a bad analogy for alcohol. He was more than a little drunk himself.
“Here’s to Satan,” Tembelos said.
The priest had a pained look on his face. “Blasphemy,” he kept muttering. “Pure blasphemy.”
“Tembelos says you need hell for the evil doers,” Patronas said, suddenly becoming serious. “But what of the good? What of them? Will heaven be enough of a reward for what they suffered?”
Patronas passed the six-hour journey to Athens in a drunken haze, sleeping and talking intermittently to Papa Michalis and Tembelos, who were in similar shape in the back seat. He vaguely remembered leaving Ioannina, but everything else was a blur. Road, bridge, road. At some point, he thought they’d stopped and Tembelos had endeavored to pee out the window, being too drunk to open the car door, but he couldn’t be sure. His friend might not even have made it to the window. He vaguely remembered him aiming at the dashboard and Evangelos yelling at him.
Stathis was waiting for them in his office in Athens. “Gerta Bechtel was attacked last night,” he said. “Only bruises, nothing serious. She says she didn’t see the assailant.”
“Maria Georgiou?” Patronas asked. He’d sobered up, but just barely, a worrisome position to find oneself in with Stathis.
His boss glared at him. “Obviously,” he said.
Patronas quickly briefed him on what they’d discovered in Aghios Stefanos—Gunther Bech’s ugly history. “Given what he did, I’m surprised he lived as long as he did, that nobody killed him sooner.”
Stathis studied the four of them. “A Gestapo agent. You’re sure about that?”
“A pedophile and a sadist,” Patronas said. “I have witnesses who will testify to it in court.”
“Good, good. If it goes to trial, the case will remind the world of what we suffered under the Germans. Give us some leverage with Merkel.” He straightened his uniform as if readying himself for an invisible camera.
“As soon as you get back to Patmos, I want you to arrest Maria Georgiou and charge her with the murder of Gunther Bech,” Stathis instructed. “I want this finished.”
Patronas and the others boarded the boat to Patmos early that same afternoon, a Blue Star Ferry making a circuit around the Dodecanese Islands. Two coast guard officers were in the process of removing a group of gypsies traveling in the hold of the boat, ostensibly with a truckload of potatoes. The potatoes, upon inspection, had proven to be only one layer thick and the rest of the truck full of contraband—lace tablecloths and cigarettes—neither of which the gypsies had permits to sell and all of which had to be off-loaded. The gypsies refused to comply, and by the time the coast guard got the stand-off resolved and the truck moved, four hours had passed.
They eventually left, but by then the wind had picked up, waves pounding the boat like artillery. The tourists got sick first, then Patronas and the other three succumbed, clutching the plastic bags the crew had distributed and burying their heads in them. Sickest of all had been Patronas. Any sicker and he’d have found out firsthand if heaven existed. Hell, he was pretty sure, he was already experiencing.
It was a Greek version of the Perfect Storm, only with tourists.
They reached Patmos around five a.m. Had he been alone, Patronas would have kissed the ground.
Chapter Sixteen
Listen to it all and believe what you will.
—Greek Proverb
Tembelos reported that he had found documentation on the Internet verifying that Gunther Bech had indeed been a Gestapo agent in Epirus at the time of the massacre. “He was known for his thoroughness,” he said wryly. “Apparently the Nazis had mixed feelings about the massacre after it was all over. One of them called it a Schweinerei, a disgrace, unbefitting the German army. Another officer complained that it had placed an unfair burden on the conscience of his men.”
“An ‘unfair burden’?” Patronas said.
They were in the police station and Patronas was leaning over his friend’s shoulder, reading from the screen. “Interesting choice of words.”
“Wait, there’s more.”
Tembelos had been on the computer all morning, seeking evidence before they arrested Maria Georgiou.
After a lengthy discussion, the four of them had decided that Patronas and the priest would first interview Gerta Bechtel about the assault in the garden, after which they would seize the Greek woman.
The same local policeman was keeping an eye on her, Evangelos reported. She wouldn’t escape.
Tembelos continued to read aloud. “One man, interviewed by a German newspaper, said and I quote, ‘I used to shoot at everything, not just military t
argets. Women pushing strollers. It was kind of a sport, really.’ Another bastard boasted of burning people alive in a church. ‘They barricaded themselves in, so what could we do? We had no choice but to burn them out.’ ”
“Any references to Aghios Stefanos?”
“None that I could find. They questioned some men in his unit about the massacre, but they denied all knowledge. ‘Never heard of it.’ ‘Must have been another division.’ ”
“So Bech was there—we got proof of that—but no evidence that he killed people?”
“That’s right.”
“Keep looking. In the meantime, Papa Michalis and I are going to Chora.”
“You going to tell the Bechtels about the old man?”
Patronas shook his head. “Stathis ordered me not to. ‘Oi nekroi dikaiononta,’ he said.” One must show respect for the dead.
“Respect, huh? Stathis is a bigger ass than I thought.”
After parking in Chora, Patronas stood for a moment and looked out, astounded again by how far he could see. Far below were the white buildings and bell tower that marked the Cave of the Apocalypse. Lower still was the village of Skala.
The yellow crime scene tape was gone and all was peaceful in the garden. A pair of mourning doves were cooing in the trees. Patronas’ mother had hated them—saying they were harbingers of death—and the sound of the birds chilled him.
Gunther Bechtel greeted Patronas and the priest wanly. “You brought us news?” he asked in a tired voice. His face was more lined than Patronas remembered, and there was something missing in his eyes, as if he couldn’t quite bring them into focus. He hadn’t combed his hair or shaved in some time and there was a greasy stain down the front of his shirt.
Grief, Patronas told himself, remembering how his mother had looked in the weeks following his father’s death—how she’d been lost to him for days at a time, unable to see or hear.
“I’m here to interview your wife.”
“She’s in the back,” Gunther Bechtel said. “The Bauers are here now, too. You said you wanted to speak to them.”
“Were they here when she was attacked?”
“No. They arrived late last night.”
Patronas started with the Bauers, a heavyset couple with an avuncular manner.
“Was anything stolen from the house?” he asked after he and Papa Michalis introduced themselves.
“Stolen? No, I don’t think so,” the husband said. “Everything was as it should be.”
They had been acquainted with the gardener and Maria Georgiou for only a brief period of time, they said, and couldn’t or wouldn’t speak to either’s character. As for the victim, Walter Bechtel, they hardly knew him. A problematic house guest, the old man. He was hard of hearing and kept to himself; consequently, it was difficult to carry on a conversation.
“How long have you known the Bechtel family?” Patronas asked.
“More than twenty years,” the woman answered. “Gunther was at school with our son.”
Patronas had sent Maria Georgiou out of the kitchen while he talked to them. She returned when he gave the signal and began preparing the midday meal, peeling eggplants over the sink. Turning her head, she gave him a long, searching look.
“We will miss Maria when we leave,” the husband said, smiling in the servant’s direction. “She is a very good cook. We like the Greek food she prepares, the moussaka especially.” He smacked his lips. “Very tasty.”
“Are they all this obtuse?” Patronas asked Papa Michalis when they were back outside.
“Yes. They are known for it, the Germans.”
Gerta Bechtel was relaxing in a chair at the rear of the house, reading a German magazine. She had a bruised lip and a line of scratches down her left cheek, but otherwise appeared unharmed.
Putting her magazine aside, she stood up and greeted them. “Chief Officer, Father, good afternoon.”
Although not as lush as the garden in front, the backyard was equally pleasant, encircled with banks of bougainvillea and jasmine. A wooden fence screened it from the service area behind the kitchen, the trash cans hidden by the slats of the fence.
“I couldn’t be in the garden in front,” Gerta Bechtel said with a shudder. “The cat and then Gunther’s father … it is dangerous there, I think.”
Odd that she’d started with the cat.
“Is there another entrance?” Patronas asked, silently kicking himself. The estate was so large, they’d only searched the grounds near where the corpse had been found, hadn’t taken the back of the house into consideration.
“Yes,” she said. “There’s a door in the wall behind that fence there. A small door. You have to bend down to go through it. Maria uses it sometimes when she takes the trash out. She can show you.”
“Do you keep it locked?”
“Now, yes. We lock everything—the gate and the front door, even the small door in the back—but before, no.”
Patronas opened his notebook. “Take your time,” he said. “Tell me what happened the night you were attacked.”
“I will show you. It is better.” She smiled, embarrassed. “The English … I’m not sure I know the words.”
She led them around the house to a group of rose bushes. “I was cutting flowers here. I wanted to have a bouquet for the table to cheer us up. I was bending over and someone pushed me. I fell and they kicked me many, many times. I started crying, afraid I would die like Grobvater.”
“What happened next?”
“I screamed and they ran away.”
Patronas studied her, thinking how rehearsed it all sounded. The stilted English, the elaborate pantomime. But then she was German, and as Papa Michalis had said, Germans were nothing if not thorough.
“I did not see who did it,” she said, anticipating his next question. “The light over the door burned out and Maria hasn’t changed it.” She sounded aggrieved, as if the attack had somehow been the maid’s fault.
“Which direction did your attacker come from?”
“I am not sure. Behind me, I think.”
Patronas entered the information in his notebook. “Who was here that night?”
“Gunther and me, the children. Also Maria, she was here. She was helping with the dinner.”
“Was she in the house the whole time?”
“I cannot say. I was in the garden.”
“Did you hear anything before the attack?”
“The trash, I think. Maria was in the back with the trash.”
So Maria Georgiou was outside.
“How about after you were attacked?” He was hoping for the sound of footsteps running down the path, anything that would lead away from the Greek woman.
“No, no sounds. Nothing.”
Pushing her hair back, Gerta Bechtel showed him her lacerated cheek, then pulled up her t-shirt and pointed out the bruises on her abdomen.
“Do you want us to post a guard here until you leave? A policeman to watch over you and your family?”
She gave him a wounded smile. “No, we will be all right. But if you have a cigarette, I would be grateful.”
He gave her his pack of Karelias, after which he and Papa Michalis left. Patronas didn’t buy her story. He wondered what had really happened in the garden that night. Maybe her husband or perhaps that sullen daughter of hers had beaten her up.
Chapter Seventeen
A clear sky has no fear of lightning.
—Greek Proverb
Maria Georgiou acted as if she’d been expecting them. Perhaps someone from Aghios Stefanos had phoned her the previous day and told her the police had come to the village asking questions about her. She’d changed out of her work clothes and was wearing her blue dress again. As before, her hair was braided, pinned up neatly at the nape of her neck. She was also wearing makeup—powder and fresh lipstick.
“Come in, come in,” she said.
She treated them to baklava this time and stood by the kitchenette while they ate. She’d insisted Patron
as and Papa Michalis sit in the upholstered chairs, and when they’d finished eating, she took their dishes and pulled up a straight-backed chair for herself.
Patronas had called the police station in Skala after he’d finished the interview with Gerta Bechtel and told Evangelos Demos and Giorgos Tembelos to continue researching the dead man and let him know anything they found as soon as possible. He also told them to follow up on what Maria Georgiou had said about her time in Athens, the salon she’d worked for and the rest of it. Perhaps she’d had an accomplice. Given what Gerta Bechtel had told him, they might be able to charge Maria Georgiou with the assault, although the evidence, as with the murder, was thin and largely circumstantial.
Worried, Patronas had also called his boss, Stathis, and told him that he had reached a critical juncture in the investigation.
“Be careful,” Stathis counseled when Patronas told him what Tembelos had found on the Internet. “Tiptoe through those databases online and the newspaper files and for God’s sake, whatever you do, don’t contact the German authorities.”
“What about the Bechtels? Do we confront them with the victim’s history and see what shakes out?”
“Not yet. Remember, even if the dead man was a Gestapo agent, he was still their father and grandfather and they loved him. Don’t go blundering in, making accusations. They’re grieving now. Respect their feelings.”
After briefly outlining what they’d learned in Aghios Stefanos, Patronas started the interview with Maria Georgiou. “The victim, Gunther Bech,” he said, laying stress on the last name, “Bech, not Bechtel, was in your village, Aghios Stefanos, during the war. He played an instrumental role in the destruction of your family, the deaths of your mother and father, Petros and Anna Georgiou, and your three brothers, Constantinos, Nikos, and Philippos Georgiou.”
Her eyes filled with tears. “I’m sorry,” she said, wiping her face with the back of her hand. “You took me by surprise. I haven’t heard those names in over sixty years.”
