When in Greece

by Emma Lathen

  “And what does that mean?”

  “The post-mortem revealed that Dr. Ziros was shot with a rifle from a considerable distance.”

  “A rifle at a distance?” Bacharias was surprised and hastened to cover his surprise. “I did not know that. It is not a city murder somehow.”

  Captain Philopoulos was far too able an officer to allow his grin to surface. So the man from the Ministry thought he knew everything did he? Well he was not alone in his surprise. The police, too, had expected to learn that Dr. Ziros had been shot by a service revolver held to his head.

  “There is no reason to suppose that Mr. Nicolls acquired armaments during the brief period in which he was last seen and the body was discovered,” the Captain continued sedately. “Particularly as he was a stranger in the city, unfamiliar with our language.”

  “I should think not!” Gabler said roundly. Nicolls might be young and wayward, but Everett was not going to sit still while it was suggested that members of the Sloan passed the interval of waiting for trains in playful sniping. “This simply confirms my original contention. There is no connection between Dr. Ziros’ murder and Mr. Nicolls’ disappearance. How then do you explain the latter?”

  Captain Philopoulos rolled his eyes at Bacharias like an imploring dog. Now, if ever, was the time for support. Faithful to his instructions Bacharias intervened. “We could consider the situation at the railroad station in greater detail later on, perhaps. But there is one element in the problem with which you may not be familiar, Mr. Gabler. There was a major earthquake in northern Greece on the night of April 23. If Mr. Nicolls did, in fact, leave the Salonika station, then his subsequent disappearance becomes much more readily explainable.”

  Now in Manhattan, the earthquake had been characterized as a severe tremor. In Turkey, where they know about earthquakes and take a parochial pride in the home product, the newspapers had spoken of slight tremors. Gabler knew perfectly well that city structures had not been crashing to the ground. But he was fully alive to the tension between Philopoulos and Bacharias.

  And he was growing more alarmed about Nicolls. He had expected to find incompetence, face-saving, and genuine ignorance as to the whereabouts of the Sloan’s missing employee. Instead he was met with evasion, palpable red herrings, and furtive glances. Very well. If certain information would not be forthcoming in the police captain’s presence, he was ready to dispense with that presence as soon as possible. Therefore, he launched into expressions of gratitude, listened in noncommittal silence to promises of further efforts, and was shaking hands with the relieved Captain Philopoulos within ten minutes.

  As soon as the door closed, he turned to Bacharias. “We were going to discuss conditions in the railroad station,” he said uncompromisingly.

  Bacharias retained his posture of alert cooperation, but his glance at Riemer was a mirror of Philopoulos’ earlier appeal. Riemer rubbed his hands over his red-rimmed eyes before he spoke.

  “You know, Mr. Bacharias,” he said at length. “Even here in Athens, there have been rumors about what was going on in that railroad station.”

  Bacharias accepted the inevitable. After all, most of the people in the station had been en route to Athens. It was too much to hope that the scandal would remain localized. Carefully neutral he described the descent of the Army, the six or seven arrests, and the sudden departure of everyone involved. There were rumors he admitted sadly that several foreigners had been included in the haul.

  Now that he was receiving information Everett was far too experienced to interrupt. True, his face assumed an expression of shocked disapproval. But, then, that was the expression it normally wore.

  “Please accept my assurance, Mr. Gabler,” Bacharias said earnestly, “I would never have suggested that Mr. Nicolls contemplate traveling that day if there had not been every indication normalcy had been restored.”

  Everett did not reply. He knew full well that an unforthcoming response will often elicit information. A nervous speaker will talk to banish silence. His tactics paid off. Bacharias unbent still further, his stiffness yielding before the desire to justify himself.

  “The trains were being permitted to run. This meant that Colonel Papadopoulos regarded the crisis as over. There was no longer any need to seal off Athens. Everyone in that railroad station considered it safe to travel. I did not imagine that a businessman, particularly an American, would have any difficulty.” He spread his hands. “I was not alone in my error. It seems that even leftists did not think there would be trouble.”

  Gabler abandoned the glasses he had been industriously polishing. “Leftists?” he asked.

  “Dr. Ziros.” Bacharias spoke reluctantly as if he had said more than he intended. “It is officially reported that he was a socialist. They say he was an agitator, an anti-monarchist.”

  “We are not interested in Greek politics. We merely wish to locate Mr. Nicolls,” said Gabler, returning to his point with the tenacity of a terrier.

  Bacharias shook his head mournfully. “I can only offer you every good wish and promise you our sincere cooperation. But, alas, I cannot hold out high hopes. It is now the 28th, and there has been no word.”

  Sad-eyed resignation had never been Everett’s strong point. At his most militant he replied: “We are certainly not going to let the situation rest here. Our investigation has only just started.”

  And apparently it was starting right now. What Bacharias had assumed to be the end of his ordeal was only the beginning. With impeccable politeness Gabler cross-examined him about his last moments with Nicolls. An hour later the man from the Ministry was only too happy to escape on a final wave of condolences.

  His departure brought the first expression of the morning to Riemer’s tired face. Amusement tinged his voice as he said: “You’ll get more out of Bacharias than any foreigner ever has before. He’s on the defensive now and I expect you mean to keep him there.”

  Gabler shook aside these irrelevancies. “But we haven’t learned anything useful. In fact, we don’t seem to have learned anything you didn’t already know.” Everett paused to examine Riemer. He was prepared to modify his preconceived opinion of the Embassy. As he frequently said, he lived in a world of babbling imbeciles. Riemer’s ability to hold his tongue was outstanding. But Gabler withheld judgment. It might turn out that the man was simply asleep on his feet.

  “Oh, I wouldn’t say that,” said Riemer thoughtfully. “I didn’t know that Dr. Ziros was a socialist.”

  “Why wasn’t the Sloan informed of this disgraceful scene at Salonika?” Everett shot out suddenly.

  Riemer shook his head gently. “We didn’t know ourselves until yesterday.”

  There was a long silence. Finally Gabler paid the enormous compliment of asking an opinion. “Do you think the Army’s actions in the railroad station explain Nicolls’ disappearance? We have no evidence that he was one of the men arrested.”

  Now that they were all in the family, so to speak, Riemer allowed himself the luxury of a gigantic yawn and stretch. Then he slumped in his swivel chair and examined the ceiling. “I’m afraid that there is one more point which I didn’t want to raise before our visitors.” He tapped a pencil unseeingly on his fingernails. “There is an American engineer up at the Hellenus project. He came in to see me yesterday. In fact, he’s the source of the rumors about the arrests in the station. But he had another item of information. On the morning of April 24, the Greek Army sent a patrol car out to Hellenus, looking for Nicolls.”

  “And the people at Hellenus never saw fit to mention this?”

  “Be reasonable, Mr. Gabler. There were a lot of people asking Hellenus about Nicolls on the 24th. We were ourselves. They probably thought it was just routine. But by the time the rumors reached Cliff Leonard, he began to put two and two together. He didn’t like what he came up with.”

  Gabler digested this information. “But,” he said in exasperation, “but that implies . . .”

  “Yes.” Riemer was almos
t apologetic. “It implies that, if the Army ever had Nicolls, they seem to have lost him.”

  Gabler returned to the Britannia in a far less buoyant frame of mind than he had left it. He wanted time to mull over his discoveries of the morning. He wanted to dispel the vision of Nicolls disappearing into a bog of inexplicable circumstances. He wanted to recharge the batteries of his spleen. Most of all, he wanted an opponent. Allies never did Gabler half as much good as a target.

  He received unexpected help as soon as he set foot in the lobby. The manager awaited him, with half a dozen aides-de-camp spread out in battle formation. The manager was a small man who normally comported himself with a stately dignity. Now he was literally dancing with suppressed fury that struck answering sparks from Gabler before a word had been spoken.

  “Aha! I have been waiting. I have to report to you an unparalleled outrage!” The manager rang up the curtain with slow, venomous articulation.

  “Yes?” Gabler saved his powder.

  “After breakfast the maid, Cassandra, comes to me in unimaginable woe!” 3,000 years of dramatic tradition brought the manager to an artful pause. Then, he picked up his tale on a quickened tempo. “She tells me that Mr. Nicolls’ room has again been broken into. She describes to me the horror, the devastation! She tells me of her shock and terror. She weeps!”

  Gabler had no time for Cassandra’s sensibilities. He was urging his numbed faculties into attack. “Again? But this is outrageous, Mr. Tsaras!”

  “It is indeed an outrage of which we speak,” Tsaras hissed. “Who is this Mr. Nicolls? Is the Hotel Britannia then a den of thieves? Do we cater for gangsters and mobsters? Mr. Nicolls has been absent for a week, and twice, twice, brigands have broken down our doors!”

  Gabler met fire with ice. “I am shocked that you can speak of a repetition of this event as if it were in any way Mr. Nicolls’ fault.”

  “Repetition!” Tsaras paused, and then gave an affected laugh. “Ha! It is more than a repetition. This time there has been outright theft, wanton destruction. It is a progression! Who can tell what these assassins will do next! Will I arrive to find Cassandra and Iphigenia slaughtered? Lying in their gore? I announce to you that I can no longer be responsible!”

  “That will scarcely alter the situation. You have already been irresponsible.” Gabler did a little artful pausing himself. “There has been grossly inadequate surveillance of valuable personal property.”

  Tsaras sucked in his breath sharply. The litany of all hotel managers on such occasions rose automatically to his lips. “Guests are requested to deposit valuables in the hotel safe.”

  “That in no way relieves the manager of the duty to take ordinary precautions,” Gabler said sternly. He instantly followed up his advantage. “I myself will view the scene. If necessary I shall demand a police investigation with full publicity. I may even speak to the Greek Tourist Bureau.”

  Tsaras paled. He knew he had gone too far.

  “You will see with your own eyes,” he promised. “Then you, too, shall weep. It is not a robbery, it is a desecration.”

  Everett did not go so far as to weep. But the scene on the third floor speedily wiped away his satisfaction at having routed Tsaras. The Britannia’s clean-up operation had gone into effect too soon for him to view the aftermath of the first ransacking of Nicolls’ room. But he had received descriptions. The first effort had dumped out the contents of drawers and closets, rolled up the carpet, pulled down window shades and reversed mattresses.

  But, as Tsaras truthfully reported, this was not a repetition, but a progression. Of Nicolls’ possessions, there was not a sign. Clearly they had been bundled into his suitcases and carted off bodily. Of the hotel’s possessions, there was plenty of sign. Every upholstered piece of furniture had been torn apart completely. The floor was inches deep in tufts of white stuffing. Mattresses, curtains, and denuded chairs lay about like the jetsam of an immense tidal wave. Even the television set had been gutted.

  In the shock of actually seeing this destruction, resentment and hostility drained away. Gabler and the manager stared at each other blankly.

  “But it must have taken hours!” said Gabler involuntarily.

  “Yes,” said Tsaras grimly, “either that or very many men.”

  Within three hours Everett Gabler was sitting in the Athens office of Makris. This interview was the direct result of his internal communings after he had retreated to his own room at the Britannia. By now Everett had firmly rejected any straightforward explanation of Nicolls’ disappearance. He could have been seized innocently by the Greek Army on the night of April 23. He could, even though this required a greater stretch of the imagination, have been shot by them. But that would have been the end of the episode.

  Instead there was a continuous and feverish interest in Nicolls and his belongings. There were inquiries at the project site hours after his fate should have been known to the Greek Army. There were these repeated intrusions into his hotel room, capped by the wholesale removal of his belongings. And, most disturbing of all in Gabler’s eyes, there was the failure of the Hellenus people to report Army interest in Nicolls at a critical time.

  While Hellenus was a patchwork of many interests, at the site north of Salonika there were only three principals—the Greek Government, the Sloan, and Makris. Two of them were actively looking for Nicolls on the morning of April 24. Did the third already know where he was?

  “And so we are naturally disturbed, very disturbed,” Gabler was saying after a suitably edited recital of the search for Nicolls and the second invasion of the Britannia. He had rigidly suppressed all reference to the Army search for Nicolls.

  The chief representative of Makris in Athens met even Everett’s standards of orthodoxy. Conservative tailoring, fluent English, and dignified restraint were all just as they ought to be. Perversely, this only increased Gabler’s suspicions. By rights, the office of a Greco-American adventurer, however successful, should smack of flamboyance. No one would ever accuse Peter Chiros of flamboyance.

  “We had heard of the first search of Mr. Nicolls’ room,” Chiros now murmured, “but not of the second. It is understandable that you should be distressed.”

  This was not very helpful. Gabler probed further. “It has been suggested to us by the Greek Government that Mr. Nicolls might have met with an accident during the final stages of the coup, on the night of April 23, to be precise.”

  Chiros, sitting squarely at his desk with blazing white cuffs exposed to the correct quarter of an inch, did not indulge in restive movements or involuntary signs of emotion.

  Nor did he shake his head when he replied. “I do not think that is reasonable. Even supposing that the Greek Government were responsible for his death, in the long run it would be less embarrassing to produce his body, with a carefully embroidered explanation of course, than to permit the affair to drag itself out.”

  “And you think that enough time has passed for that?” Gabler had resigned himself to the fact that Chiros would answer questions; he would not volunteer explanations of his own.

  “You have heard the statements of the junta. They say they are anxious to encourage American investment, is that not so?”

  “So I understand.”

  “This would not be the way to do it.”

  “So you don’t think the Greek Government has anything to do with this?” Gabler persisted.

  Chiros raised his eyebrows deliberately. “I do not think you believe it, Mr. Gabler, and I agree with you.”

  Agreement was not what Everett Gabler was looking for. “Then there is the matter of the hotel room. You called them searches.”

  “Certainly,” said Chiros calmly. “Even if Mr. Nicolls’ possessions have now been stolen, it is apparent that somebody is looking for something.”

  “But what could he have that would interest anybody? All his Hellenus papers were duplicates freely available to everyone concerned.”

  “Mr. Gabler, I think it would be rash to assu
me that anybody except Mr. Nicolls knows exactly what he had.”

  Gabler could finish the unspoken half of the sentence for himself: exactly what he had or exactly what he was up to. Automatically Gabler rose to the defense of a colleague. “Mr. Nicolls stands in very high repute with the Sloan. We are assured that he would act always in the best interests of the Sloan.”

  Chiros prepared to rise. “That may be true. But doubt might exist as to what those interests are. I am sorry not to have been of further help to you. We share your concern at these mysterious events. And we would certainly share your relief if Mr. Nicolls were to reappear in Athens.”

  Chiros escorted his visitor down in the elevator to the front door with undiminished courtesy. If Gabler cared to inspect the project site, every attention would be paid to his wishes. Makris would be delighted to arrange a tour.

  “No, Mr. Chiros,” said Gabler grimly. “I do not anticipate leaving Athens for some time. Certainly not until Ken Nicolls has been located.”

  Rarely had Everett Gabler made such an erroneous prediction. Mulling over suspicions roused by this desire to remove him to the north, he approached the curb of the crowded street and signaled to a taxi on the other side. The taxi driver abandoned his inspection of passengers alighting from a bus just behind him and waved his accord. The gesture drew the attention of several of the passengers. Thus there was a multitude of witnesses for what happened next.

  Without any warning a black Fiat that had been idling at the curb half a block down from the entrance to Paul Makris & Son shot forward until it was directly under Everett Gabler’s nose. As if synchronized by a stop watch, two doors flung open and two men appeared. The one in front of Gabler threw a blanket over his head and fell back into the car. The one in the rear thrust Gabler into the back seat and hurled himself on top of the writhing blanket. With the same smooth motion, both doors closed and the driver, who had not budged throughout, shot the car forward under the bemused stare of Peter Chiros, the taxi driver, and a dozen assorted bus passengers.