Spies of the Balkans: A Novel

by Alan Furst

  And they were special spirits, faithful guardians.

  Thus it was Melissa who figured it out, sensed it, before he did. Zannis must have dozed because, just after dawn, she growled, a subdued, speculative sort of growl--what's this? And Zannis woke up.

  "Melissa? What goes on?"

  She stood at the window, out there, turned her head and stared at him as he unwound himself from the snarled bedding. What had caught her attention, he realized, were voices, coming from below, on Santaroza Lane. Agitated, fearful voices. Somebody across the street had a window open and a radio on. It wasn't music--Zannis couldn't make out the words but he could hear the tone of voice, pitched low and grim.

  He opened the window. One of the ladies who sat in a kitchen chair on sunny days was standing in the street, her black shawl pulled tight around her head and shoulders, gesticulating with her hands as she talked to a neighbor.

  Zannis leaned out the window, called her by name, and said, "What's going on?"

  She looked up at him. "The Italians," she said. "They've invaded us."

  Poor Mussolini.

  Such a puffed-up, strutting horse's ass. Not a man to be ignored, the way he saw it. And surely he had been ignored. Left standing there, shouting slogans from the balcony, thrusting his chubby fist in the air, while that sneaky Hitler conquered the world. Took Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark. Now that was an empire!

  And Mussolini? And his new Roman Empire? What glory had it won? Not much. Occupied Albania, publicly scorned as "a handful of rocks." And Ethiopia. What would you call that, a handful of mud? And Libya, a handful of sand? And oh yes, not to forget that when Hitler invaded France, Mussolini rushed in ten days later and took ... Nice! So now the doorman at the Negresco would have to bow down to the might of Rome.

  Ha-ha!

  Said the world. But the worst thing you can do to a dictator is laugh at him--that's contempt, not awe, and it made Mussolini mad. Well, he'd show the world, he'd take Greece. So there, still laughing? And he didn't tell Hitler about it, he didn't ask permission, he just went ahead and did it. And when Hitler heard the news, as dawn broke on the twenty-eighth of October, he was reportedly enraged. Known to be a teppichfresser, a carpet chewer, he'd likely gone down on his knees, once he was alone, and given his favorite rug a good thorough grinding.

  Zannis got the details on his way to work, from headlines on the newspaper kiosks, from the newspaper he bought--which he read while walking--and from people in the street. Greece was at war, everybody was talking to everybody, there were no strangers that day. Least of all the soldiers, reservists called to duty, hundreds of them, many accompanied by wives and children so they could say good-bye at the railway station. And not a soul abroad that morning didn't stop to wish them well.

  "Be careful, my child."

  "Remember, keep your head down!"

  "You give them a good kick in the ass for me, and don't forget!"

  "So maybe you need a little extra money? A few drachmas?"

  "Here, have a cigarette. I see you're smoking, take it anyhow, for later."

  "Good luck, take care of yourself."

  This from Zannis, looking up from his newspaper. He might well be joining them, he thought, before the day was done. In 1934, when he'd become a detective, he had automatically been assigned to a General Staff reserve unit in Salonika. If Greece went to war, the army could call up however many detective-grade officers it required because, in a small country, every male below the age of sixty had to be available to serve.

  According to the paper, there had been a grand dinner party the night before, in Athens. Count Grazzi, the Italian ambassador, had invited the most important people in the city, including General Metaxas. Seated beneath the crossed flags of Italy and Greece, the guests drank "to our eternal friendship for Greece," Count Grazzi himself having stood to propose the toast. Eventually, they all went home. But then, at three in the morning, Grazzi was driven to the home of General Metaxas, who came to the door in his dressing gown. Grazzi presented an ultimatum: Let our army march into your country and occupy the cities. Metaxas's answer wasn't complicated; it could be seen at the top of every front page of every newspaper.

  "No."

  When Zannis opened the office door, he saw that Sibylla was knitting. She worked feverishly; hands moving quickly, needles clicking, a ball of gray wool in her lap. "By the time I got to the store," she said, "and they had it open at six-thirty, all the khaki was gone. Imagine that! Not yet seven-thirty when I got there, and all the khaki wool bought up."

  "What will it be?"

  "A sweater. One has a choice, sweater or socks, but I'm good at it, so I decided to make sweaters."

  All over the country, women were knitting warm clothes for the Greek boys who would be fighting in the cold mountains. A poor country, less than eight million in population, they had to improvise. So Sibylla's fingers flew and, when the phone rang, she propped the receiver between chin and shoulder and never dropped a stitch. Producing, Zannis thought, a rather curious juxtaposition. "And what time did you say he was murdered?" Click, click.

  Zannis tried to telephone Vangelis but the line was busy, so he looked over at Saltiel and said, "What about you, Gabi? Are you leaving today?"

  "Too old to fight. Officially. For the time being, I'm to take the place of an ambulance driver who's going up to the border with the medical corps. So I get to drive around the city at night with a siren on. So what's new."

  "And days?"

  "I'll be here. What about you?"

  "I'm waiting for orders," Zannis said. "I'm in a reserve group, we're a communications unit, and I'm liaison with an officer of the Yugoslav General Staff. Not really sure what that means, but I guess I'll find out."

  It was late in the morning when he finally got through to Vangelis. "I'm waiting," Zannis explained, "for a call or a telegram. But I could be ordered to report. Maybe even today, or tomorrow."

  "Have you given any thought to what you might do if they occupy the city?"

  "No, but I suppose I should."

  "We wouldn't want them to have the files," Vangelis said. "After that, it will be up to you. Just remember, if you decide to work underground, be careful with your address book. Just in case." He paused, then said, "For the moment, who will run the office?"

  "Saltiel and Sibylla. They'll do fine."

  Vangelis didn't answer immediately, his way of saying that it wasn't true. "I'm not sure what lies ahead, Costa, but if I need you, I may have you brought back. We'll just have to see how it goes."

  "We may surprise them," Zannis said.

  "Yes, I think we will," Vangelis said. "If we don't run out of bullets."

  Late in the afternoon, a telephone call for Zannis. Not the General Staff, but Roxanne. She sounded rattled, almost desperate. This was something new--she'd been cool and composed from the first day he'd met her. "I didn't want to call you," she said, "but I didn't know what else to do."

  "What's wrong?"

  "I have to get to the airport. But there isn't a taxi to be found in the whole city, and my friends with cars don't answer their phones, or they're driving somebody to Athens, or--or something!"

  "Roxanne ..."

  "What?"

  "Calm down."

  "Sorry, I've just had--"

  "There's no point in going to the airport, all commercial flights are canceled; we're at war--the military has taken over out there. Now, tell me where you need to go and I'll see what I can do."

  "I need to go to the airport. Please."

  "Are we going to fight about this? You think I didn't tell you the truth?"

  "Costa, can you borrow a car? Or get one from the police?"

  After a moment, he said, in a different tone of voice, "What is this?"

  "A favor. I have never asked you for a favor, not ever, but I'm asking now. And part of the favor is not trying to make me explain on the telephone, because I have to be there right a
way."

  "Hold on." He turned to Saltiel and said, "Gabi, may I use your car for an hour?"

  Saltiel stared at him. I don't let anyone drive my car. "Well, I guess you can, if you need it." He was clearly not happy.

  "Did you hear that?" Zannis said, on the phone.

  "Yes."

  "I'll pick you up in ten minutes."

  It was a rough ride to the airport, some fifteen miles east of the city. Convoys of army trucks were rolling west, toward them, headed for the roads that went up to the Albanian border. And, being army convoys on the first day of a war, saw no reason, in the national interest, not to use both lanes. So more than once Zannis had to swerve off the road, the Skoda bumping over a rocky field. Teeth clamped together, he waited for the blown-out tire or the broken spring, though it happened, over and over again, only in his imagination. But that was bad enough.

  Meanwhile, from Roxanne, stony silence, broken occasionally by English oaths, bloody this and bloody that, delivered under her breath every time the trucks came at them. Finally, answering the unasked question, she said, "If you must know, it's just some friends who want me out of here."

  "Powerful friends," Zannis said. "Friends with airplanes."

  "Yes, powerful friends. I know you have them; well, so do I."

  "Then I'm happy for you."

  "Bloody ..." A muttered syllable followed.

  "What?"

  "Never mind. Just drive."

  Coming around a curve, they were suddenly confronted by a pair of gasoline tankers, side by side, horns blaring. Zannis swung the wheel over, the back end broke free, and they went skidding sideways into a field. The car stalled, Zannis pressed the ignition button, the Skoda coughed, then started. But the army wasn't done with them. Just before they reached the airport, a long convoy came speeding right at them--and this time they almost didn't make it. The car idled by the side of the road, pebbles hit the windshield, soldiers waved, Roxanne swore, Zannis fumed.

  The airport was deserted. The Royal Hellenic Air Force--about a hundred planes: a few PZL P.24s, Polish-built fighters, and whatever else they'd managed to buy over the years--was operating from air-bases in the west. A sign on the door of the terminal building said ALL FLIGHTS CANCELED, and the only signs of life were a small group of soldiers on guard duty and a crew gathered beside its antiaircraft gun. They'd built a fire and were roasting somebody's chicken on a bayonet.

  Roxanne had only a small valise--Zannis offered to carry it but she wouldn't let him. They walked around the terminal building and there, parked in a weedy field by the single paved runway, was a small monoplane, a Lysander, with a British RAF roundel on the fuselage. The pilot, sitting on the ground with his back against the wheel, was smoking a cigarette and reading a Donald Duck comic book. He stood when he saw them coming and flicked his cigarette away. Very short, and very small, he looked, to Zannis's eyes, no more than seventeen.

  "Sorry I'm late," Roxanne said.

  The pilot peered up at the gathering darkness and strolled back toward the observer's cockpit, directly behind the pilot's--both were open, no canopies to be seen. "Getting dark," he said. "We'd better be going."

  Roxanne turned to Zannis and said, "Thank you."

  He stared at her and finally said, "You're not going to England, are you."

  "No, only to Alexandria. I may well be back; it's simply a precaution."

  "Of course, I understand." His voice was flat and dead because he was heartsick. "Now," he added, "I understand." And how could I have been so dumb I never saw it? The British government didn't send Lysanders to rescue the expatriate owners of ballet schools, they sent them to rescue secret service operatives.

  Her eyes flashed; she moved toward him and spoke, intensely but privately, so the pilot wouldn't hear. "It wasn't to do with you," she said. "It wasn't to do with you."

  "No, of course not."

  Suddenly she grabbed a handful of his shirt, just below the collar, and twisted it, her knuckles sharp where they pressed against his chest. It surprised him, how strong she was, and the violence was a shock--this hand, in the past, had been very nice to him. "Wasn't," she said. Her eyes were dry, but he could see she was as close to tears as she ever came. And then he realized that the hand clutching his shirt wasn't there in anger, it was furiously, almost unconsciously, trying to hold on to something it had lost.

  The pilot cleared his throat. "Getting dark," he said. He knotted his fingers, making a cup out of his hands, nodded up at the observer cockpit, and said, "Up we go, luv."

  Zannis walked with Roxanne the few feet to the plane. She turned and looked at him, then rested her foot on the waiting hands and was hoisted upward, floundered for a moment, skirt rising to reveal the backs of her thighs, then swung her legs over into the cockpit. The pilot smiled at Zannis, a boyish grin which made him look even younger than seventeen, and said, "Don't worry, mate, I'm good at this." He handed Roxanne her valise, jumped up on the wheel housing, and climbed into the pilot's cockpit. A moment later, the engine roared to life and the propeller spun. Zannis watched the Lysander as it taxied, then lifted into the air and turned south, heading out over the Aegean toward Egypt.

  *

  Back in the office, a yellow sheet of teletype paper lay on his desk. From Lazareff in Sofia.

  COSTA: DO US ALL A FAVOR AND CHASE THESE BASTARDS BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM

  The message was in Bulgarian, but Zannis had grown up in Salonika, "a city where even the bootblacks speak seven languages," and was able to figure it out. Normally, he would have enjoyed Lazareff's gesture, but now he just sat there, his mood dark and melancholy, and stared at the wall.

  He came to believe, after going back over their time together, that Roxanne hadn't lied, that he'd not been the target of a British spy operation. He could not recall a single time when she'd asked him anything that might touch on the sort of information that spies sought. So, in fact, it wasn't to do with him. He'd had a love affair with a woman who'd been sent to Salonika as part of an intelligence operation. Then, when war came, when occupation by an Axis force was more than possible, they'd snatched her away. Or maybe she simply did have friends in high places, friends with the power to organize an RAF Lysander flight to Greece. No, she'd actually confessed. "It wasn't to do with you." The it. To do with somebody else. The Germans, the Italians, the Vichy French consul; there were many possibilities.

  Should he tell somebody? What, exactly, would he tell? And to who? Spiraki? Never. Vangelis? Why? His job was discretion; his job was to keep things quiet. Well, he would. And if she returned? It might be easier if she didn't. At the least, they'd have to come to some sort of understanding. Or pretend it had never happened? Slowly, he shook his head. This war--look what it does. In truth, he missed her already. Maybe they weren't in love but they'd been passionate lovers--she'd been his warm place in a cold world. And now he had to go up north and kill Italians, so maybe he was the one who wouldn't be coming back.

  The telephone rang and Saltiel answered it, said, "I see" and "very well" a few times, made notes, and hung up.

  "What was that?" Zannis said.

  "The mayor's chief assistant." He rubbed his hands back through his hair and sighed. "Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry."

  Sibylla looked up from her sweater.

  "It seems the mayor has a niece, a favorite niece, recently married; she lives out by Queen Olga Street."

  "I know who she is," Zannis said. "Pretty girl."

  "Well, maybe she was distracted by the war, maybe, I don't know, something else. Anyhow, this afternoon she went to feed her pet bird, a parakeet. And, unfortunately, she left the door of the cage open, and it flew away."

  Zannis waited a moment, then said, "And that's it?"

  "Yes."

  Sibylla turned away, and, as she started to knit, made a small noise--not a laugh, but a snort.

  "It's true? You're not just saying this to be funny?"

  "No. It's true."

  Now it
was Zannis's turn to sigh. "Well, I guess you'll have to call her," he said. "And tell her ... what? Put an advertisement in the newspaper? We can't go out and look for it."

  "Tell her to leave the window open," Sibylla said, "and the door of the cage, and have her put some of its food in there."

  Saltiel made the call, his voice soothing and sympathetic, and he was on for a long time. Then, ten minutes later, the telephone rang again and, this time, it was the General Staff.

  8:35 P.M. It began to rain, softly, no downpour, just enough to make the pavement shine beneath the streetlamps. Still, it meant that it would be snowing in the mountains. Zannis waited on the corner of the Via Egnatia closest to Santaroza Lane, a canvas knapsack slung on his shoulder. The Vardari, the wind that blew down the Vardar valley, was sharp and Zannis turned away from it, faced the port and watched the lightning as it lit the clouds above the sea. Moments later the thunder followed, distant rumblings, far to the south.

  He'd had a hectic time of it since he left the office. Had taken a taxi back to Santaroza Lane, packed some underwear, socks, and a sweater, then threw in his old detective's sidearm, the same detective's version of the Walther PPK that Saltiel had, and a box of bullets. Then he changed into his reservist's uniform, a close cousin to what British officers wore, with a Sam Browne belt that looped over one shoulder. He searched for, and eventually found, inside a valise, his officer's cap, and, Melissa by his side, hurried out the door to find another taxi.