Lieutenant Anastasis approaches, talking on his mobile, saying, “I think this is it, we have him, he’s apparently been spotted approaching the Turkish frontier by a Frontex patrol. In the very north, at the elbow in the Evros. They’ll intercept him very soon.”
“How’s that?” asks Evangelos. “Aren’t they sure he’s our man?”
“No, but it must be him – a man walking along the riverbank right in the military zone. The patrol’s post is on a hill; they picked him up on the infrared radar. The Turks seem to have detected his presence too: the guards on the watchtowers are observing him through binoculars.”
The radar! Of course! He’d forgotten the radar!
“But tell me, Lieutenant, what are the colours of the Frontex guys on patrol today?”
“Their colours?”
“I mean their nationality.”
“I really don’t know.”
“You weren’t just speaking to them on the phone?”
“No, it was the police station that called. Are you coming, Agent Evangelos?”
“Yes, we’re leaving right away, but I want to know which patrol is involved. Call Orestiada back right away, I want to know who’s on duty this evening.”
The lieutenant is already on the phone, and Evangelos is about to leave the pastry shop when a young man calls out to him – the one who saw Strom, still claiming his reward.
In the mist, the Jeep Cherokee looks like a sunken wreck in a pond. Lieutenant Anastasis is still on the phone; he has sent the witness packing and is holding the phone tucked into his shoulder with his chin; he pulls a face and speaks very fast: “Right away, do you hear?” Agent Evangelos tries to catch snatches of the conversation, he can hear a voice at the other end, someone shouting into the phone; it must be the captain. The jeep’s doors slam shut, the engine starts, and they’re off. The lieutenant is talking into his on-board radio; he has abandoned his phone for the radio; he is talking to Orestiada, steering with one hand as he insists, repeating, “Right away! Right away!”
Accelerating into the fog, the jeep bounces blindly over the ruts in the dirt road; it tears along, skids, and nearly slides into a ditch barely visible in the yellowish cone of the dipped headlights. The lieutenant drops the receiver and concentrates on the road. Agent Evangelos is hanging onto the strap; he too presses down his foot as if he were driving. Anastasis has turned on the flashing lights, for the jeep has reached the paved road.
Agent Evangelos wants an answer without any further delay; he repeats, “I want to know which patrol is involved.”
“The Germans, it’s the Germans from Frontex who spotted the fugitive,” the lieutenant finally answers.
“Shit! A German patrol arresting a German national; that opens the door to all kinds of problems.”
“I can imagine.”
The lieutenant is driving his Cherokee flat out; a dense fog passes overhead, turning blue with the reflection of the revolving beam.
“I don’t want them to intercept him; Strom is ours, we mustn’t let that damn Frontex patrol get to him first.”
Lieutenant Anastasis lights a cigarette, draws the cord of the radio receiver to him and calls the police station. He immediately hands the radio to Agent Evangelos, who says, “Captain, is that you, Captain? Captain, you must order the patrol to return to its observation post, yes, yes, that’s right, but they mustn’t lose sight of him, no, no, not tracking him from a distance, not on the ground, just on the radar.”
Agent Evangelos drops the radio, lets out a heavy sigh and says, hoarsely, “Please God, not the Germans.” Lieutenant Anastasis offers him his packet of cigarettes; Evangelos pokes around in it, and the two smoke silently, travelling at a hundred and sixty kilometres an hour on the road that runs next to the river, heading upstream. Outside, the fog hits the doors of the Cherokee, piles up on the bonnet, is shredded noisily by the wheels. ‘All this fog coming at the jeep, a grey mass rising over us, it’s the Evros frontier finally coming into sight.’
“Agent Evangelos? Agent Evangelos, would it bother you it if I put on some music?”
Lieutenant Anastasis hasn’t waited for an answer; he turns on the radio, and just as they reach the village of Tychero, to the music of a Cretan lyre, the Cherokee is going fast, it emerges, still dripping, from the fog, like a plane from the cloud ceiling. Just then Agent Evangelos’s mobile vibrates, and Sokratis Retzeptis’s name appears on the screen.
No doubt about it, the sun is shining. It would make sense to put down his bag. It would make sense for Nikos to hide out in this room with a view towards the river, which is obscured by a row of tall poplars. At a glance the village seems deserted. Then the bus arrives, stopping on the square; the road runs through its centre, and on it the traffic moves very fast. A girl has got off. Wearing a helmet down over her ears and with her head bobbing, she takes the first street on the right before entering a house with the only cast-iron balcony that overlooks the densely wooded hills rather than the river. A woman coughs somewhere, a rooster crows. In the bus station office, which also serves as a café, a few men are playing tavli.
Turkey is just on the opposite bank. Nikolaus can see the red roofs of houses through the trees, but he can’t see the river, only guess at its presence.
The girl in the helmet makes him think of other Greek girls, and of one especially – Christina’s daughter.
But it’s time to cross the Evros. A moment ago he had heard a helicopter and seen several police cars driving along the road. There isn’t a minute to lose; he must get off Greek soil.
Nikos leaves the village of Kastanies behind him and makes for the barrier of trees behind which he can see a red flag floating, with a white crescent and five-pointed star. The villages on the banks of the Evros know the conundrum of the river; they still must live with it. The migrants who come ashore one morning are a reminder of the unknown across the Evros. This morning there were five, sitting on the terrace of a café. But the café was closed and they were counting their remaining small change, hoping to complete the journey to the station in Alexandroupolis by bus. A week ago they were in Algiers. The charter flight to Istanbul costs a hundred dollars. The bus fare from Istanbul to Edirne costs twenty Turkish lira. The crossing of the Evros can be negotiated for six hundred dollars.
A bass voice strikes up a chant that levels out over the river, the only material frontier, as the monotonous Orthodox chant overlies the call to prayer from the great Selimiye Mosque in Edirne. An Orthodox priest is saying Mass somewhere behind him, sheltered by the roof of the little chapel built on a hillock that rises above the plain. He can see the faces of the uniformed guards, incongruous figures adhering flatly to the busy landscape. At the first fork he keeps left, following a little road that traverses some trees before reaching a shallow, turbulent stream. At this spot the water is so low that the road crosses it with no need for a bridge. The two guards have vanished. The helicopter is back. Nikos doesn’t bother to look up; advancing across open ground, he reaches the middle of the ford, leaping from stone to stone, indifferent to the cold water that sometimes reaches his knees.
Now he is across; the helicopter clatters somewhere above the trees. On the opposite shore, Nikos starts running, leaving Greece behind. His head is suddenly spinning, it’s from fatigue; he has eaten nothing for the past twenty-four hours.
Then Christina’s laughter, Christina on the riverbank, calling to him in Greek. Yes, it’s really her. No, he won’t turn around, it’s her ghost, she doesn’t exist, she’s no longer part of his life, he won’t listen to what she’s trying to tell him, and anyway he doesn’t understand the language, he speaks no Greek, for once and for all. Now he hears only Christina’s laughter, carried on the wind, which is mild for the time of year. He is leaving his mother’s country behind. In a pile on the riverbank, like luggage too heavy to carry across, he is abandoning his memories, all the contradictions, all the parts of life he has never been able to draw together, and that horrible, grimacing head.
Nikos has crossed the wall; he has crossed his personal wall. His entire story remains in a pile on the riverbank. He has evaded the Greek police and will soon be in the hands of the Turkish army. He’ll explain to them, and ask to speak to his embassy.
Once, in Athens as a child, Nikos had approached his Greek grandfather’s garden fence. Over the railing he had seen the white dust from the marble works as it settled. It was a time when he spoke both languages, a time when the world was still comprehensible. For a long time he thought he’d gone beyond his great-grandfather’s garden fence; for a long time he thought he understood Athens – it was where he was from, and for a long time he believed he was at home there, picking up scraps of his mother’s language, all those inscriptions on the city’s walls, to continue the story that began when the marble-workers’ saws fell silent that day in July 1972, two and a half hours after midday.
Today, let Christina laugh; he is no longer part of her world, he is across the placid river, without a murmur, and he allows forgetfulness to mount inside him. The landscape is becoming blurred, the green of the trees is fading, the sky is tilting. On the shore, Nikos has fallen on his knees.
Christina, why are you laughing at me like that?
On the map of Greece, says Christina, the river Arda runs in the very north. It rises, like the Evros, in the Rhodope Mountains, and finally flows into the Evros a little way after the village of Kastanies, a few metres from the Turkish frontier, just before the fork you took to avoid the Turkish guard post. At that point, as you can see, the road crosses the Arda, and leads to a narrow strip of land that joins up with the Greek bank of the Evros. You’ll see the Turkish flag floating over a watchtower on the other side, which will tell you you’re not across the Evros. Continue in the same direction and it will lead you to the village of Marasia. Soon you’ll find me there, in the square, sitting under a fruit tree with big leaves, at the midpoint between both riverbanks. There’s rarely anyone around, as you’ll see. People don’t like to live on the frontier. But you’ll like it, I’m sure. There’s a little café, like the ones where we always meet. You’re still in Greece, my love.
Nikos’s head aches. He opens his eyes. There’s no helicopter in the sky any more. His throat is dry, he is chilled to the bone, he has no strength left. He struggles to his feet and takes a few steps, but he has to sit down. Again, he almost loses consciousness; his breathing is shallow. So just like that, he has committed an error. The stretch of river he crossed wasn’t the Evros. Now he’s done for. He has come up against a wall – especially since he is no longer alone. He sees them straight ahead: a man in his fifties with a short haircut and three days’ growth of beard. He is standing there in a large overcoat, leaning against the door of a Jeep Cherokee belonging to the Greek police. The man is watching him, smoking, looking tired. He doesn’t seem like a policeman.
The jeep is stopped on some railway tracks, on a level crossing, just opposite the abandoned railway station in Marasia, a little Greek village jammed in between the Arda and the Evros, on the Turkish border.
Beyond the trees, Nikos can see Turkish sentries moving around on the top of their watchtower. He can make out the colour of the uniforms; the sunlight glints on the lenses of their binoculars.
Yes, they were waiting for him there, on the Greek side of the frontier. Any attempt to escape would be pointless. He stands up and walks towards the jeep. He reaches the man, who jettisons his cigarette. Without a word, he opens the rear door and gestures to him to get in. Inside is another, younger policeman in a black leather jacket. He doesn’t turn around, but their eyes meet in the rearview mirror. He seems tired too, but he does look like a policeman. He handcuffs Nikos.
The jeep drives one or two kilometres along the Evros, passing through Marasia. There is no sign of Christina on the village square, and Nikos can see clearly that there is no café.
But now he knows that she was right. Nikos is no foreigner, for when the man asks his name he answers in Greek. And he begins to tell him the whole story in his language, the language he shares with Christina.
It’s an extraordinary day for Athens, thinks Agent Evangelos. Outside, far below on Alexandras Avenue, the demonstrators’ numbers are swelling. From his office window, on the eighth floor of the GADA, the big cube of glass, asbestos and steel that houses the headquarters of the Attica General Police Directorate, Agent Evangelos observes the crowd. The Metro station at the corner of Panormou Avenue is surrounded by a cordon of blue-uniformed police. The riot squads are on a war footing too – at least four units, a hundred or so men in green fatigues: there are a lot of toughs wearing helmets in the streets today. Agent Evangelos sees them regrouping behind buses with shatterproof windows, carrying their shields. They have been ordered to fire tear-gas cartridges if the crowd makes the slightest breach in the security barriers. They will shoot in any case, Agent Evangelos doesn’t doubt it for a moment. Just then he reads a single slogan on the banners being unfolded on the avenue: “No Wall!”
Standing there in front of the window, Agent Evangelos is puzzled. This disturbance isn’t his problem, but he finds it difficult to comprehend. ‘So the spokesman for the Ministry of Public Order and Citizen Protection just had to announce the arrest of a German national in connection with the construction of the wall? Was such a simple announcement all that was needed to stir up so much opposition to closing the frontier to migrants? I’m more surprised than anyone,’ Agent Evangelos tells himself, ‘though I should have expected that kind of reaction.’
However, a few minutes from now, as planned, Strom will be questioned in this room.
This sudden wave of opposition to the construction of the wall doesn’t suit the government. The frontier is a business. Agent Evangelos reflects on power, on the only established power in Greece: he reflects on the power of money, thinking about one of its most influential representatives, a man who wants to control everything, who has foreseen everything – everything, that is, except the re-emergence of the “No Wall!” movement. Yet, there, beneath the windows of the police, the opposition to the wall is growing, swelling, and may very well explode in the face of power. Not that a few days of rioting in Athens are anything to fear. Power doesn’t care about the usual list of bus shelters burned or small businesses ruined. From its lofty height, it contemplates the recurrent spasms of the ailing heart of the metropolis, the inevitable confrontations that will end in the nth siege of the Athens Polytechnic, the university sanctuary where photocopiers now spit out almost nothing but pamphlets by the hundreds – an inviolable refuge where the corridors serve as an arsenal for Molotov cocktails. But power fears something entirely different, something taking the form of a more widespread citizen’s movement of opposition to the wall, something resembling an international protest.
It seems that French and Italian demonstrators are organizing a sit-in at the watchtowers on the frontier around Orestiada. The Turkish border guards must have a grandstand view. Soon, after Strom’s interrogation, Agent Evangelos will call Anastasis. He’ll tell the lieutenant: “After the migrants and Frontex, you’re going to come across a new species of fauna in the Evros natural reserve: anti-wall demonstrators chaining themselves to a strip of land between Greece and Turkey. Can’t you just imagine?” Still by the window, Evangelos hears the first shouts, a dog barking, and sees a liver-coloured dog in front of the riot squads; he recognizes it, always the same one, barking, barking.
Agent Evangelos has placed a document in a transparent sleeve on the desk: Nikolaus Strom’s statement. It has already been typed, and awaits only his signature.
His superiors have asked Agent Evangelos to make the situation clear to Strom. “The German must sign it, he has no choice. If he refuses, then…”
“Then what?” asked Evangelos.
“He’ll sign it whatever, it’s in his best interest, isn’t it?”
Yes, Strom will sign all right. But Agent Evangelos will contravene his orders. He will disobey them, for he
wants to discover the truth about the severed head; he wants to discover the killer’s identity, whether it was Polina or Nikolaus Strom; he wants to know the precise circumstances of Batsis’s decapitation. There will be a statement, which he’ll take down. ‘It’ll be up to me – me, Agent Evangelos – to write out the true account of the murder on the Evros. Then, once Strom has finished, I’ll place the other document before him, the statement prepared in advance; he will be obliged to read and sign it. The truth will remain between us two, but it will have been established, and I intend to make use of it in my own way. I’ll administer justice in my own way, the way it should have been done.’
In a few moments, Nikolaus Strom will enter the room, probably worn down by three nights and three days spent in a permanently lit cell. Agent Evangelos has made sure to soften him up. He wants him to be on tenterhooks, his nerves already frayed. But it’s an entirely different person who is brought before Evangelos a moment later; Strom is perfectly calm. He stands there, his features drawn, his eyes brilliant with fever, a man marked by fatigue, but calm, seemingly at peace, as if relieved, greeting him in Greek with a smile, not a defiant smirk – no, a confident smile, the smile of a man who seems to have been looking forward to this moment.
“Sit down! Officer, remove his handcuffs!”
Outside, the clamour of the crowd is rising. A gust of fresh air enters through the half-open window. The officer has closed the door behind him. Agent Evangelos sits across from Nikolaus Strom. He looks at him, he looks at the man and thinks to himself, ‘It’s true, he’s a bit Greek. He’s half Greek, I tend to forget that.’
“Do you feel up to speaking Greek? Maybe you’d prefer English?”
The Greek Wall Page 17
