“And to your visit, my new friend,” Petar said as he held out his glass for a refill. “In the old days, my neighbors filled the church every Sunday, but today the only people we see are those few believers from Sofia and other far-off places. Now I just sit, remember better times, and listen to my wife and daughter sing their old songs, like Bulgarian women have done for centuries.” He paused to sip his drink and observe Belevski without actually seeing his face. “Are you going to come again?”
“Perhaps. I’m looking for a place nearby to be alone with my thoughts, and with God. Somewhere with a view of the mountains, where I can spend a little time writing,” he said. “Do you know of such a place?”
“There is a narrow staircase inside the church behind the last aisle that leads to the bell tower,” he said. “From there you can practically see from Yugoslavia to Turkey, and you’ll be a few steps higher and closer to God! Go up there, and if my memory serves me well, you’ll see a turnout way up the road toward the top of the mountain.” He took another sip of brandy before he continued.
“There you’ll find a spring and old Dimitar’s fountain, which overlooks the valley below. My grandfather set the stone pedestal and drinking fountain there when God saved my mother’s life the day I was born. The water is blessed, and no one will bother you, I’m sure. Maybe that place will serve your purpose.” His smile revealed a mouth without teeth. He held out the glass once more.
The crumbling exposed brick and mortar didn’t make the church look like much from the outside. The door was open, so Belevski walked in, but there was no one inside. While the exterior was humble, the interior was richly decorated with medieval frescos painted in the late 1200s. The realistic portraits showed saints in medieval Bulgarian clothing placing radishes, garlic, and bread on the table of the Last Supper.
The scene made Belevski wonder if his life was to end soon, too. However, when he gazed at the exquisitely painted faces of the church’s patrons, Desislava and Sebastocrator Kaloyan, and the haloed figures of King Asen and Queen Irina that adorned the walls, for a moment the doctor felt calm.
After he prayed to God to save his soul, forgive his sins, and keep his family safe, Belevski lit a few candles at the altar and dropped several coins into the collection box. Following Petar’s instructions, he climbed a narrow staircase that led to the bell tower. From there, he could see far beyond the trees the long serpentine road that led up the mountain to the turnout, which offered him a place to transmit messages to Lopié. As the doctor listened to Petar’s wife and daughter sing in the distance, he again prayed that God, Saint Sophia, and the mysterious women’s voices swirling about the church would keep him alive and his family safe.
CHAPTER 29
Belevski had been home close to a month and had yet to see anyone who looked like a Gestapo agent or a Bulgarian policeman following him. So, following his first few successful radio transmissions, he felt relieved that his new secret life remained just that. However, during the doctor’s spy training in Istanbul, Lopié must have warned him a hundred times against letting his guard down.
“Never forget procedures. Never become overconfident. Never fall into a predictable pattern. Never ignore your intuition. Above all, never panic.”
Belevski tried not to think what would happen if he didn’t follow Lopié’s advice and focused instead on why Lopié and Noverman had chosen him as their agent.
Dr. Belevski’s recent medical achievement in Istanbul brought even more prominent patients to his private clinic. Many were related in some way to Bulgarian politicians and high-ranking German officers. From the waiting room, the doctor’s medical facility appeared ordinary, but once a patient entered a treatment room, several aspects set it apart from what most Bulgarians were used to when it came to seeing a doctor.
Soft music, dim lights and a warm padded table allowed Belevski to work on his patients in a relaxed and comfortable atmosphere. It was in this serene environment that he plied a combination of ancient healing methods practiced by the Greeks, Romans, Chinese, Egyptians, Japanese and Turks with those of modern medicine. While the doctor stroked, kneaded and pounded parts of his patients’ bodies, not only did he improve their circulation, soothe their nerves, stimulate their organs, and relieve their headaches and back pain, he also probed for and harvested a plentiful crop of secrets.
Belevski often heard bits of classified information, snippets of unpublished reports about the war, or tidbits of gossip about Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring’s morphine addiction or Josef Goebbels’ womanizing—all of which might prove valuable to British or French Intelligence analysts. It didn’t take Belevski long to sift out potentially valuable information from this patients’ idle chatter. From there, he meticulously encrypted a concise Morse code and then drove to one of several locations from which he transmitted his messages to Jean Lopié in Istanbul.
As promised, Lopié transmitted his orders via short-wave radio, including the weekly code word every Friday morning at 9:00 o’clock. The message consisted of some short streams of numbers in seven columns, which the doctor quickly decoded using certain words in medical reference books.
Most of Belevski’s orders consisted of gathering intelligence concerning German troop movements, resistance actions, shifting Bulgarian political alliances, or anything else that might seem useful to military planners. In exchange, his bank account in Bern, Switzerland swelled. Belevski kept a close eye on the situation in Sofia because he promised himself that as soon as it became unsafe, he planned to send his family far away, and he would follow soon afterward.
Within a few days, a latent talent for extracting confidential information from unsuspecting sources emerged. Belevski became obsessed with the idea that he could change the course of the war as a result of his new role. In spite of the danger, or maybe even because of it, spying excited him and fanned his ego, even as much as saving a patient from death. With the special bonuses for especially useful information, Belevski was getting richer by the day.
He thought, “When I get enough money, I’ll tell Lopié to find another spy. But what about those damn photographs? Do I honestly think Lopié will just tear them up and let me go just like that? Maybe the war will end soon, and this nightmare will be over.”
Nevertheless, Belevski desperately wanted to hold on to the dream. He needed hope that there was some way for him to get out of this increasingly dangerous situation. For the time being, spying had made the doctor rich by Bulgarian standards. But Belevski knew he could fall into a trap at any time and experience its jaws clasped firmly about his neck. Fear of this moment kept him awake at night and alert to danger, but it was hope that prevented Belevski from hanging himself in the basement and pinning a sad apology to his wife and children onto his coat.
According to Lopié’s orders, each Saturday Dr. Belevski went to the Central Post Office to put an envelope with the weekly code word in box 174. Lopié warned the doctor that the less he knew about the contact in Sofia, the better, but his curiosity ate away at him until he had to find out the courier’s identity. He was determined to discover who picked up the secret mail destined for Istanbul. Using the surveillance techniques that Lopié taught him, he patiently waited and watched and discovered a partial answer.
Soon Belevski observed an elderly woman in traditional black dress, coat, and shawl covering her head open box 174. He never approached her, but merely knowing who he could turn to in case of trouble calmed his anxiety. He watched her leave the building and wondered if this was another one of his delusions. He wondered how an old woman could help him if he were arrested by the Gestapo or the Bulgarian Police. He had no answers to these questions, but she was old, and so perhaps she knew something about survival that the doctor did not.
With the next radio message from Lopié, the doctor’s concerns shifted once again to his task of collecting intelligence, but this time the risk increased tenfold. British Intelligence was worried about th
e quality of the Greeks’ defenses. Lopié’s curt order clearly expressed the critical nature of the information he wanted.
Urgent. Find out German plans to invade Greece. STOP
Everyone in Sofia was talking about the war and the possible invasion of Greece by the Germans. It was one thing to sift for relevant information amid gossip, but quite another to aggressively probe his patients for their knowledge of secret German military operations. One suspicious sounding question could prove fatal, so Belevski had to listen even more carefully than before, taking care to be interested, but not too anxious to ask about confidential information.
Belevski massaged the tense neck and back muscles of a regular patient—a German officer stationed near the border with Greece.
“Shall I see you next week for your regular appointment, Major?”
“Unfortunately no, doctor,” the officer said. “It appears as though General Metaxas has pushed the Italians as far back as central Albania, and I’ve been ordered to go there to assess the situation. God, how I hate that place!”
“I’ve read that the Metaxas Line is impregnable. Is that really true?”
“Ha! We shall see very soon who or what is impregnable to a division of German Panzers!”
“I’m sure, Major,” Belevski agreed. He made a mental note: Division of German Panzers.
If the rumors about another impending German operation were true, then the Nazi generals needed a quick and efficient solution to Mussolini’s fiasco in Greece. Lopié wanted Dr. Belevski to find out if any specific military preparations were being made in Bulgaria that might be used in Greece.
The next day, while he massaged a knot from the back of a German colonel’s wife, she told Belevski that her husband telephoned her last night from Berlin and said that Hitler was furious with Mussolini.
“The Führer is livid with that Italian buffoon! Can you imagine that he failed to consult Hitler about attacking Greece? And to make matters worse, the incompetent blowhard wants fifteen German divisions to help him out of his mess? What’s amazing is that my husband told me that Hitler is considering the Duce’s requests!”
Belevski made a mental note: Fifteen German divisions to help Mussolini.
Another German patient complained, “My husband’s entire armored division has been ordered to go to Greece. Why does he have to leave Sofia and go bail out Mussolini?”
“I’m sure that is very upsetting,” he said. “How long will he be away?” Belevski waited for her answer as he pressed the tense muscles at the base of her neck and around her shoulder blades.
“He promised me only a few weeks,” she said, “but I don’t believe it. He told me that the Greeks have no mechanized equipment, no heavy guns and only a few old planes. He said we will crush them as easily as ripe olives. But I know Operation Marita—that’s what my husband called it—will take longer than that. After all, he was the one who told me that Greece is crawling with tens of thousands of British troops.”
After each patient left his office, Belevski quickly and carefully recorded all the details of their conversation in a small notebook using a code that Lopié taught him based on medical terminology. Later he would encrypt the information—often his patients’ exact words—into Morse code messages shortly before he was ready to transmit.
However, after almost two weeks of listening and probing, Belevski still had only hints of the German plans to invade Greece, and the doctor was getting worried that Lopié would think he wasn’t trying hard enough to get specific military information.
The doctor’s luck changed, however, when Nina Angelov, the nineteen-year-old niece of General Philip Angelov, Commander of the 3rd Bulgarian Army with headquarters in Plovdiv, came into his office for an overdue treatment of “nerves.” Belevski had not seen the alluring but neurotic young woman since he had returned to Sofia.
“Good afternoon, Nina. How nice to see you again,” he said, inviting her into the treatment room. “How have you been feeling since your last visit? I hope your nerves are not troubling you again. Are you eating and sleeping regularly, as we discussed the last time you were here?”
She shrugged, walked behind the three-paneled oriental screen that stood in the corner of the room, and snatched a white cotton examination gown that hung from a hook on the wall.
“I read in the newspaper all about how you saved that boy in Istanbul,” she said.
“Ah, yes. An interesting case,” Dr. Belevski said.
She stepped from behind the screen and walked to the treatment table. Her examination gown was barely tied in back, giving Dr. Belevski a clear view of her back and bottom. The fragrance from her perfumed body filled the room.
“Actually,” she said, “I’m looking forward to feeling better now that you are back in Sofia, Doctor. Your hands are like those of a god.”
Her deep dark eyes smiled at him as she lay down on the table in preparation for her treatment.
“I felt like a new woman after my last office visit.”
Her muscle’s tensed when Belevski lightly ran his hands over her bony back and shoulders. He told her to take a deep breath, hold it for five seconds, and then exhale slowly.
“Repeat that three times. Then we will begin.”
As he watched her body rise and fall with each breath, Belevski wanted to help Nina release her sexual tensions as he had done during her last visit. But thanks to Lopié, he had another job to do, too.
“So how is your uncle, the great Bulgarian general?” Belevski asked. Nina’s father had died many years ago, and since then the general had become like a father to her.
“Does he remain with his troops in Plovdiv, or has he come home to visit his beautiful niece recently?”
He pressed his thumbs on the sensitive pressure points on either side of her spine, from her rump to the vertebrae at the base of her neck.
“Oh, Doctor,” she groaned. “He has been so angry lately. The German High Command ordered him to collect thousands of donkeys and send them to Greece. He was furious! My uncle is a man of honor. ‘Let me and my men fight real battles,’ he said. ‘We are ready to fight, but they have turned us into donkey herders.’ Can you imagine the noise, not to mention the mess that nine thousand donkeys make?”
She laughed and rocked slowly from side to side after the doctor briskly rubbed the tense muscles of her lower back and the top and sides of her hips.
“Why on earth would they want him to do that?” Dr. Belevski asked.
He probed the muscles around her protruding shoulder blades with the tips of his fingers, searching for knots and secrets. The doctor kneaded the muscles of her buttock with the palms of his hands. Her low steady groan told him that his massage was having the desired effect, and it encouraged her to speak.
“My uncle told them it is a stupid thing to do. Dr. Belevski, I worry that my uncle, even though he is a general, sometimes reveals his thoughts too freely. You never know when someone might be listening.”
She was absolutely right that the Gestapo, the Bulgarian police, or in this case, British Intelligence had its ears open wide. What were the Germans up to? Belevski thought that perhaps they wanted to use the donkeys to transport arms and men through the Rhodope Mountains and then surprise the Greeks. Lopié’s last message pushed the doctor to be more aggressive, so he probed deeper.
Using the edges of his hands, he kneaded the muscles at the top of her thighs. Her creamy white skin had turned pink where his fingers pressed into her sinewy muscles. She squirmed and moved again from side to side. He lightly slapped her buttock and legs all the way down to her feet to increase the blood circulation in her skin.
“But why collect so many donkeys? The Germans have plenty of trucks to carry their troops anywhere in Europe, I should think.”
Belevski applied pressure with his thumbs to the soles of her small feet. He squeezed her petite toes and pulled on each of them until he heard the joints pop. She moaned again. His fingers traced a path from Nina’s feet to her a
nkles, and then to the fleshy area behind her knees.
“Why do they need Bulgarian donkeys in Greece, for Christ’s sake?” he asked.
With his fingers, Dr. Belevski massaged all the sensitive areas along her sciatic nerves and femoral nerves in her back and legs. He dug his fingers deep into her tight muscles that wrapped her shoulder blades, rib cage and collarbone. She grunted and sighed, signaling the union of pain and pleasure.
“My uncle said something about how the great General Metaxas and his rabble would get the surprise of their lives when the Germans used donkeys to clear a minefield. I feel sorry for those poor animals.”
So there it was, the secret Belevski was searching for. Why not use a herd of donkeys to clear a minefield? So brilliant, so simple, and so typically German. Instead of sacrificing soldiers and weapons, the Nazis were going to use Bulgarian donkeys to do their dirty work in Greece.
Belevski’s fingers made firm circles over the thin layer of muscles that covered Nina’s skull. He massaged each vertebra along the length of her spine to her coccyx. Finally, the doctor stroked the inside of her legs where they met her buttock. Nina raised her pelvis and tensed her muscles for a few seconds. It was as though Dr. Belevski was pulling the center of her body upward with a string attached to her tailbone. Then she sighed deeply and let herself down again gently as the tension drained from her body. As she exhaled slowly, the doctor’s hand rested motionless in the delicate beads of sweat that had formed in the small of her back.
The pretty young patient wasn’t the only one who felt pleasure at that moment. Belevski, too, had a sense of satisfaction, but not from any vicarious sexual experience, like he might have in the past. Belevski hoped that Lopié and British Intelligence would be pleased with the information about Germany’s plan to use donkeys in the invasion of Greece. At that moment, for the first time since his debacle in Istanbul, Belevski actually felt powerful again, as if he held the fate of the world in his hands.
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