The Silver Stain
( Alex Mavros - 4 )
Paul Johnston
Paul Johnston
The Silver Stain
ONE
Mavros was sitting on the large, plant-festooned balcony of his mother’s flat with the orange juice he had just squeezed. Normally a late-riser — the boon of being self-employed — he had woken before dawn, for no apparent reason, and been unable to get back to sleep. The early sun had appeared over Mount Imittos and was casting tentative rays over the grey-white apartment blocks of the Athenian sprawl. To the south, the Aegean still retained the last of its dawn darkness, stretching away towards the islands and the Peloponnesian peaks. A northerly wind ensured that the air was relatively clear, and the sound of traffic and drivers quick on their horns was already ascending the slopes of Lykavittos. The view, taking in the Acropolis and its scaffolding-clad temples, was glorious, but Mavros was struggling to come to terms with it.
Bare arms slipped round his shoulders. ‘Still missing the old flat, Alex?’ Andhroniki Glezou’s soft cheek rubbed against his stubble and then her lips sought his. Their tongues briefly touched. ‘Oh no.’ Niki said firmly. ‘I was just saying good morning. I’ve got an eight o’clock meeting.’
Mavros smiled. ‘I don’t know what you mean. I was just saying good morning too.’
‘Uh-huh. And what’s that?’ Niki pointed to his groin.
‘Don’t take it personally, my love. Morning glory answers to no woman.’
Niki slapped him on the arm. ‘Charming. You haven’t answered my question.’
Mavros looked back over the city. The flat on Pikilis, just north of the Acropolis, had become too expensive for him to continue renting at the end of 2002. That coincided with his mother suffering a stroke that had made her frail, so she had left the large flat in Kolonaki, the most exclusive area in central Athens, and moved in with Mavros’s sister in Anna in the northern suburbs.
‘If only you charged reasonable fees,’ Niki said, ‘instead of waiving them half the time.’
Mavros frowned. ‘Now you’re running my business too, are you?’ He knew as soon as he said the words that he was in trouble. Although he and Niki were closer than they had ever been, her extravagant temper was never caged for long.
‘Don’t take that tone with me,’ she said, glaring. With her dark eyes and tousled hair, she had the look of the mythical Gorgon that dealt stony death, though no part of Mavros’s body was hard any more. ‘You don’t let me run anything, never mind your business, Alex. And what kind of a business is it, exactly, tracing missing people?’
‘I seem to remember finding a girl you managed to mislay,’ he muttered.
The reference to the daughter of a Russian-Greek immigrant family that Niki had looked after as a social worker shut her up, but not for long. ‘You didn’t even charge the Tratsous the going rate.’
‘They aren’t exactly the Onassises.’
‘No, but you. . oh, what’s the point, Alex? You don’t even tell me about most of your jobs.’
Mavros shook his head. Niki’s ability to overlook the dangers his work entailed and the damaging secrets he uncovered never failed to irritate him. ‘You nearly got shot in the Tratsou case. You were in hospital with a police guard, remember?’
‘And you nearly got killed several times on that case,’ she riposted. She was leaning over him, her long legs visible to the residents of the block across the street and her shapely breasts fully in evidence to him down the neck of her T-shirt.
He laughed, never the sensible option. To his surprise, and after a pause long enough to move his hands down to protect his crotch, Niki laughed back.
‘Why do we do this?’ she murmured, cheek against his again. ‘I love you.’
‘And I love you,’ he replied. ‘We just have-’
‘Different ways of showing it.’ She kissed him on the lips. ‘I know. I’m going for a shower.’ She raised a finger. ‘And no following. Wait till tonight.’
‘So stern,’ he said, as she turned away. ‘And so desirable.’
Niki swung her hips seductively as she disappeared inside.
She was right, Mavros thought, looking back out across the city. Although his mother’s flat was large and well-appointed, he still hankered after the rundown single-bedroom place in Plaka, the rock wall of the Acropolis louring over it like a stone tsunami. He had been there for five years, but he always knew that his days were numbered. With the Olympic Games little more than a year away, owners had been taking advantage of grants to upgrade their properties and, of course, raise the rents.
He went inside. That wasn’t the only reason he had come to Kleomenous, despite his dislike for the gilded but acid-tongued neighbours. His mother Dorothy, the Scottish side of his dual heritage, was still running a successful publishing business, and owned the flat, meaning he didn’t have to pay a single Euro of rent. Not that he felt at home. He insisted on sleeping in the larger of the two guest rooms, feeling that taking over the master bedroom would make his residence permanent. That irritated Niki, despite the fact that the guest room was larger than both his old bedroom in Pikilis and the bedroom in her flat in the southern suburb of Palaio Faliro. And it was true that the exclusive address had impressed the kind of clients that he would have preferred not to work for, except he needed their money. But there was still another, more important reason.
‘Ta-dah,’ Niki said, taking a twirl in a short, well-cut skirt.
Mavros looked down at his groin. ‘No, sorry, nothing doing.’
She came at him with her bag, a large, file-filled object that he had been hit with before. He sidestepped her and grabbed her arms.
‘Tonight,’ she said, keeping her freshly painted lips out of range. ‘Tonight I’ll show you a really-’
The sound of a key turning in the front door made Niki’s eyes widen and her smile depart quicker than a bribe slipped to a tax inspector.
‘Your obese friend,’ she groaned. ‘I thought I’d seen the last of him when you moved here.’
Not for the first time, Mavros regretted having given Yiorgos Pandazopoulos a full set of keys. Then again, if he’d done what he’d often urged his mother to do and put the chain on, Niki’s tantalizing farewell wouldn’t have been so rapidly terminated.
‘Morning, Alex,’ Yiorgos said, taking in Niki’s presence. ‘Morning, Andhroniki.’ This was a recent tactic, calling her by her full Christian name. Designed to wind her up, it was highly effective.
‘Morning, Fat Man,’ Niki responded, even though Mavros had frequently told her that the nickname was for his use alone. ‘Have a busy day, the pair of you.’ She strode towards the door, her head high.
The Fat Man waited till it closed behind her. ‘What got up her-’
Mavros gave him a full-on glare.
‘Nose?’ Yiorgos completed.
‘You wouldn’t understand,’ Mavros said, wondering if Niki would now follow through on her interrupted promise.
From The Descent of Icarus, an unpublished memoir by Rudolf Kersten:
May 20th 1941 has lived with me all the days of my life since.
We were drenched in sweat, having been fully kitted up since 2 a.m. — padded parachutist helmets, flying service blouses, jump smocks over combat trousers, knee pads, machine-pistols, grenades, Lugers, bayonets and gravity knives, as well as the bulky RZ16 parachutes. I wasn’t the only one who slipped a hand inside my smock to finger the jump badge with its silvered wreath of acorn and oak leaves beneath the gilt diving eagle that was the Fallschirmjagers’ talisman. I also repeated under my breath the commandments written for us by the Fuhrer — ‘You are the elite of the Wehrmacht, for you combat shall be fulfillment. . be nimble as a greyhound,
tough as leather, hard as Krupp steel. .’
The Ju52s’ three engines started at six and we heaved ourselves on board, each of the twelve with the end of his slip cord between his teeth, like giant pirates pulling captured ships — so empowered did we feel. The canisters containing our rifles, machine guns and ammunition made the interior of the affectionately nicknamed Auntie Ju with her corrugated metal skin even more cramped. Thick red dust rose from the untreated runways and there were delays between flights, but eventually the pilot gunned the engines and we moved sluggishly away. I was seated opposite one of the windows in the fuselage, but Peter Wachter’s tall frame blocked it effectively until we were airborne and the juddering made him shake. I saw the first rays of the sun come over the mountains to the east of Athens. I may have imagined it, but I thought I caught a glimpse of the Acropolis as we climbed over the island of Salamis. It seemed like a good omen, ancient Greek civilization and its triumph of arms soon to be emulated by the spearpoint of the modern world’s greatest fighting force.
Broken-nosed Max Zielinski next to me started to sing the parachutists’ song and soon we were all bellowing it out: ‘Red shines the sun, be prepared, it may not shine for us tomorrow. .’ None of us believed that, of course — young men going into battle are as naive as the most closeted virgin. Besides, we had reason to be optimistic. The enemy forces in Crete were inadequate and had been subject to intense bombardment and strafing by our Luftwaffe comrades for many days, and the RAF had been swept from the skies. The Cretan people were said to be avidly awaiting our arrival to liberate them from the dissolute imperialism of the British. And, though we would have wished to be first on the island, glider troops had been sent ahead to secure the airfield at Maleme. No matter — there would be plenty of Churchill’s rabble left for us.
Squeezed between Max and thick-lipped Bernie Necker, and thankfully cooler at last, I saw images cascade before my eyes: my mother, filed with pride despite her damp eyes on the day I gained my jump badge, wishing that my father had survived his Western Front wound a little longer to see me in my dark-blue uniform; my old Classics teacher, Herr Feldmann, who encouraged my love of the ancient world and gave me a sad smile when I visited him after I had joined the service; slim Martha Nussbaum, kissing me for the last time before we boarded the train for the Balkans. They were all part of another less brilliant world now. I had become one with the myths that had made me strong, taken me through the Hitler Youth, driven me to undertake the hardest training in Germany’s armed forces. I had become a modern-day Icarus, one whose flight would not be interrupted by melting wax, one who would never die.
I saw the sea beyond Peter’s shoulder, the water changing from grey to pale blue. There were Auntie Jus all around and, craning forward, I saw the fine lines of Messerschmitt 109s, our fighter protection, higher in the cloudless sky. If there had been any Royal Navy ships in the area, they would have been bombed to the depths, titans defenceless beneath German firepower.
Lieutenant Bruno Schmidt, handsome as a film star, caught my eye and nodded slowly. He knew my tendency to lose concentration and had spoken to me about it before the successful drop at the Corinth Canal. I smiled and nodded back. I knew what I had to do and had shown that by saving our beloved section commander before the bridge was blown up by the British — a futile action as our engineers soon replaced it.
The engines changed pitch as the plane made a sharp left turn. Now I could see the great wall of the White Mountains, still crowned with shining snow. It was an incredible sight, but I soon forgot it as the Auntie Ju’s fuselage was pitted with holes, some of them only a few centimetres above the window. Wachter ducked his head, then I felt Zielinski’s helmet knock against mine. There was blood on his jump smock where rounds had gone right through his body.
The klaxon sounded. We hooked our jump chords to the line above us and the dispatcher pulled open the door. Lieutenant Schmidt moved forwards and shouted a few inaudible words of encouragement, before throwing himself into the air. As I moved towards the door, I saw the black blasts of anti-aircraft fire and felt the plane judder. The man before me leapt out and it was my turn to grip the vertical rails, before jumping out in the crucifix position we had practised so often. We were low, I — estimated under a hundred metres from the ground, when my parachute opened with a jerk like a kick from an elephant. Then my descent slowed and I was able to take in the scene.
To my right, an Auntie Ju was diving earthwards, smoke billowing from the fuselage. No men emerged from the door. Another aircraft’s unit was jumping, but one of its number’s parachute had snared on the tailplane. 109s were swooping over the anti-aircraft positions, machine guns rattling, but the defensive fire remained heavy. Looking around, I saw several parachutists slumped forward and motionless. Others were firing their MP40s and pistols. I struggled to bring my own weapon to bear, but the ground was approaching fast and I had to get my body into position for the forward roll on landing.
The dried up bed of the Tavronitis River, our target area, was to my right. I watched our men cutting themselves free of their chutes and racing for the weapon canisters. Many of them dropped lifeless before they made it.
And then I saw them, the Cretans who were supposed to be welcoming us as honoured guests. They were on my side of the river and they had already done for several of my comrades. There were old men with pitchforks and axes, women with heavy frying pans, and a priest who had made a spear from a long knife tied to a broom handle.
I thought the descent of Icarus was about to reach a premature end, but in fact that Cretan morning was only the beginning.
The Fat Man brought two cups of unsweetened Greek coffee on a tray to the balcony and delved into a paper bag.
‘It’s not the same,’ Mavros said, suspiciously eyeing the pastry he had just been handed.
‘So what do you want me to do?’ the Fat Man demanded. ‘Bring the old woman back from the dead?’
That terminated conversation for as long as it took Yiorgos to wolf down his double helping of galaktoboureko. His mother, Kyra Fedhra, had daily produced pastries that were the mainstay of the cafe run by the Fat Man until he too had been forced out by a ridiculous rent rise. Kyra Fedhra had expressed annoyance that her sixty-year-old son would be permanently under her feet and died of heart failure shortly afterwards — leaving the Fat Man with a valuable property on the other side of Lykavettos and nothing whatsoever to do. Although he had been a foot soldier in the Communist Party since his teens, he was no longer on good terms with the comrades after they had told him his duty was to sell the house and donate half the profits to the party.
That was the other reason Mavros had moved to his mother’s flat. Without the Fat Man’s cafe down the road, his old flat was substantially less appealing. He had used it as an office, judging potential clients by their reaction to such a downmarket place in the heart of tourist-land. And while the much-missed Kyra Fedhra had made the best pastries in Athens, Yiorgos made the best coffee, without which Mavros struggled to start the day.
Mavros finished his shop-bought galakotoboureko — which was actually not bad — and washed it down with cold water.
‘Heard anything from that cop?’ the Fat Man asked.
‘That cop who has a name?’
Yiorgos sank his chin into the soft flesh of his neck. ‘I forget. . Damis?’
‘You forget, my arse. No, I haven’t. Calm down. What you fondly imagine is your job is safe.’
Mavros swallowed a smile. Damis Ganas had been his partner for a few months the previous year, but he had returned to the island of Evia when his heroin addict girlfriend was released from psychiatric care. In the meantime, the Fat Man had combined his daily visits to provide breakfast with acting as Mavros’s unofficial secretary and office manager. Years of grinding through the Communist Party’s multiple layers of bureaucracy had made Yiorgos a remarkably competent record keeper. The fact that — with off-white shirts stretching over his paunch and threadbare trousers — h
e was hardly presentable to clients was a way of controlling his involvement in cases.
The Fat Man looked out over the opulent blocks around the park of Dhexameni. ‘What would your father have thought about you ending up in this platinum-coated sewer?’
‘Oh, thanks,’ Mavros replied, going back inside. ‘What would he have thought about you avoiding the comrades and coming here every day?’ He looked at the photographs of his family on the display table by the fireplace. His mother had taken most of them with her, but there were still portraits of his father, Spyros, with his thick black hair, hooked nose and piercing gaze: and of his brother, Andonis, a bright-faced version of the older man, who had been popular with the opposite sex from his early teens.
‘Let them go,’ the Fat Man said softly, going towards the kitchen with his tray.
Mavros thought about that. His father, a lawyer who was also a high-ranking official of the then illegal Communist Party, had died when he was five and he had few memories, mainly of a serious, prematurely aged man whose smile had been tinged with sadness, but who always greeted him with a tight hug. His brother Andonis, who disappeared during the Dictatorship aged twenty-one, had played a much larger part in his life, and was the reason he had become a missing persons specialist. But Andonis was the only failure in his career — every trace of his brother had led to dead ends and desolation.
‘I have let them go, Yiorgo,’ Mavros called. And it was true. Spyros, despite being a hero of the Party, had never been close enough to inspire him — whence his essentially apolitical stance — while Andonis had gradually ceased to influence him. Besides, he had sworn to his mother that he would concentrate on his own life and on Niki rather than his lost male relatives. ‘I have, believe me.’
The problem was, he didn’t always believe it himself.
Mavros was showered, his shoulder-length and still black hair damp on the shoulders of his denim shirt, and shaved, an activity he undertook once a week at most, when the landline rang.
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