When in Greece

by Emma Lathen

  There was no reply.

  “Well, isn’t it?” he pressed.

  “What? Oh, yes, there’s no doubt he knows more than he’s telling.” Thatcher brushed Chiros aside. “But I was thinking of something else. Has it occurred to you Everett how unlikely it is that Nicolls has the papers these leftists are looking for?”

  Gabler snorted. “It always has been unlikely. Anyone who wasn’t demented would have realized that.”

  “I don’t think you can assume these leftists of yours are demented. They must have some reason for going to all this trouble. And, remember, the Army’s story is that a whole wagonload of prisoners escaped. Suppose that the genuine courier who went to the Salonika station to meet Ziros spotted the trap. He might have planted the papers on Nicolls. Then, after his escape, he reported to his superiors and they started the hue and cry.”

  “Possibly,” Gabler conceded, “but it doesn’t really matter to us, does it?”

  Thatcher persisted. “I think it does. What do we know so far? The people at that Red Cross station say that Nicolls was masquerading as a college boy. When he realized the pursuit was being extended to relief stations he decamped, probably assuming another disguise. He seems to be shedding clothes all along his route. Somehow he lost his wallet because we have it. The Army still has his passport and the suitcase that they seized in Salonika. The leftists have everything from his hotel room. Is it likely that having lost everything else, Nicolls is somewhere in the Greek countryside clutching a manila folder of papers that don’t belong to him?”

  “Certainly not!” Gabler’s eyes brightened combatively. “These people are demented. Nicolls is under no obligation to safeguard their possessions. If he acquired these papers involuntarily—”

  The phone rang, cutting off what promised to be an extensive review of the rights and duties of the involuntary bailee. Thatcher eyed it with misgiving. Nowadays the phone seemed a conduit for only the most bizarre communications. Bracing himself, he lifted the receiver.

  The hotel switchboard, which inclined toward magniloquence, announced: “For Mr. Thatcher, it is the Dr. Jenkins calling from the American Academy.”

  Thatcher had time to wonder briefly what this outpost of American scholarship wanted of him when an exuberant woman’s voice took charge.

  “Mr. Thatcher? Cardy told us you were coming!”

  Cardy? Classicists? It took a minute for the penny to drop. Professor Cardwell Carlson, Laura’s father-in-law, obviously abandoned formality among his colleagues in the field. “How lucky that I caught you,” the voice continued. “We’re having some people in for drinks this evening. I hope you can come.”

  Thatcher began a polite refusal. Then before Everett’s reproving eyes he changed his mind. He had a colleague with him he said. Would it be an imposition if they both came?

  “Not at all,” the voice reassured him. “There will be one or two photographers here. Cardy told us you were interested in taking color slides.”

  Thatcher murmured his thanks and as he rang off reminded himself to have a word or two with Professor Carlson. His attention was immediately claimed by the voice of outrage.

  “John! I am shocked! Is now the time for us to go to cocktail parties?”

  “It is precisely the right time!” Thatcher countered briskly. “The more people we meet in the American community the better. Everett have you stopped to think what we’re going to do with young Nicolls if he manages to get through to Athens?”

  Gabler did not hesitate. In spite of his budding career as a mass murderer he still thought along conventional lines.

  “Complain to the authorities!” he said roundly. “Their behavior has been disgraceful. Throughout! They allow Nicolls to be hounded over the length and breadth of Greece through no fault of his own.” In his heat Everett was abandoning the axiomatic culpability of the young. “They permit me to be kidnapped in broad daylight. They start the whole deplorable situation by arresting Nicolls in the first place . . .”

  His voice died away into a thoughtful silence. Then he resumed, more slowly: “Perhaps on the whole it would be wiser to ship Nicolls off to New York and then complain to the authorities.”

  Thatcher said, “The Army still has his passport. We couldn’t simply bundle him aboard the first plane out. At worst, he might be arrested. At best, there would be delay. Tell me Everett, did those leftists seem to be at all interested in the other men the Army arrested? Or were they simply making a dead set at Nicolls?”

  “They mentioned only Nicolls to me. And they seemed certain he had something of theirs. But I have no idea of how much they really knew. They may have put undue emphasis on the fact that Ziros was carrying Nicolls’ business card. After all, the police questioned that, too.”

  “They may not know anything. We certainly don’t.” Thatcher drummed his fingers in irritation. “These leftists may simply be covering the field. They may be breaking into homes and slitting up clothing all over Athens. But I don’t want Nicolls sitting around this hotel for days, at the mercy of the first comer. Our task this evening is to meet as many Americans as possible—resident Americans with apartments and houses. And remember, Everett, we’re out to make friends!”

  Everett said that he would.

  “What an attractive apartment you have,” Gabler said stolidly. “And spacious as well!”

  Lorna Jenkins looked at her surroundings as if seeing them for the first time. “Do you like it?” she asked doubtfully. “Kate and I are subletting it from a movie producer.”

  Everett relaxed slightly. Presumably he was required to produce no further paeans to the chromed steel and glass against which he was barking his shins. The apartment lay high up in one of Athens’ deluxe modern apartment buildings in Kolonaki. International contemporary, it could have been found in any major capital of the world. Although contemporary was becoming something of a misnomer. The living room might have been lifted bodily from the Barcelona Exhibition of 1929. Gabler had hated it on sight. Apparently his hostess did too. He looked at her with dawning approval.

  Lorna Jenkins was worth looking at. Although she was well over fifty-five there was distinction in every line of her body. She was a tall exceptionally slight woman fine-boned from head to toe. Her white hair was cut into a sleek crop that followed the delicate molding of the skull. A black dress set off her alert blue eyes and long elegant legs.

  Gabler was notoriously uninterested in legs. But he did recognize a lady when he saw one. Before leaving the hotel he had been prepared for bohemian academics. Upon sighting the building he had shifted to international riff-raff. Instead he was getting a whiff of an older, statelier past.

  “This is very unlike our home in Princeton,” Dr. Jenkins continued in a kindly attempt to follow her guest’s interest, “but Kate says it does us good to have a change.”

  She nodded across the room where Kate—otherwise Dr. Mary Katherine Murphy, Fellow of the Royal Archaeological Society, Fellow of the American Academy, Reith Lecturer—was propelling a reluctant John Thatcher into conversational amenities with two enthusiastic photographers of the Greek landscape.

  “Yes, I can see how you would like to get out into the country when you can find the time, but it must be a relief to get back to your apartment in Athens, or your house,” he said keeping an eye on business.

  “Find the time!” Kate Murphy exploded indignantly. “We have nothing but time these days. Do you realize these colonels won’t let us dig on our Island? I suppose they’re using it for another one of their prisons!”

  There was a short interval for abuse of the current government, very specialized abuse relating to interference with archaeological sites.

  “Not just archaeological sites. Archaeologists too! Do you know they have arrested the finest erasure man in Greece?” an untidy zealot named Ingraham demanded scornfully.

  “Erasure man?” Thatcher asked although it was against his policy to let the conversation stray into unrewarding side-channels.
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  “When you have a blank tablet, he tells you if an inscription has been erased,” Ingraham explained with primer simplicity.

  “And we promised steady work to the diggers,” Kate Murphy continued her lament. “Now it looks as if we won’t be able to get to work all summer.”

  She was not a woman made for lamentation. Plump and cheerful, with a bird’s-nest of short black curls, she faced the world with an expression of pleased expectancy. She had dignified the occasion by donning a hit-or-miss collection of garments.

  “Well, it’s all terrible,” said the photographer, “but there’s no point in wasting free time. I’m leaving for Sparta tomorrow. I’m going to try movies this time. Nobody has really done Sparta. Not that there’s much of Sparta to do.”

  “Movies!” Ingraham was disdainful. “No composition, no definition. That’s for amateurs, Mr. Thatcher. What you should do is come and see some of my slides.”

  “I’d like to,” said Thatcher perjuring his immortal soul. Kate Murphy looked up from a stain that had unaccountably appeared on the sleeve of her velvet jacket. “You really should,” she said as if detecting some underlying insincerity. “Carl has the largest set-up I’ve ever seen. An enormous room with an enormous screen. It’s like an auditorium.”

  Carl Ingraham was abashed. “I suppose it is overdone,” he confessed. “But I planned it as an antidote to my work. You spend the day microfilming and you don’t want to spend your nights with anything pint-sized.”

  “Miniaturization!” the other photographer scoffed.

  “That’s the cry nowadays. Have you seen some of the cameras the Germans are putting out? I don’t say it isn’t a technical achievement, but who wants a camera that’ll go through the eye of a needle?”

  “But microfilm is different.” Kate Murphy spoke with the authority of a scholar. “Every library is running short of storage space.”

  “Because they’re not selective. That’s what’s wrong with the entire intellectual community.” This familiar war-cry drew a chorus of response.

  Thatcher was grateful when his hostess led him off. They left as somebody was mourning the present-day academic’s reliance on technical gadgets.

  An hour later, Thatcher, circulating clock-wise, met Everett Gabler coming from the opposite direction.

  “Not bad,” he summed up. “I’ve collected eight names and addresses of residents, plus two specific invitations.”

  Gabler produced his own modest haul. He had fallen in with a nest of epigraphists. “And Dr. Jenkins she wants us to come and have dinner next week.”

  Thatcher surveyed his subordinate admiringly. Really, there was no limit to Everett’s capabilities once he was on his mettle. First he overpowered whole congregations of leftists; now he was fascinating the rather rarefied Dr. Jenkins.

  Thatcher would not have been so pleased if he could have overheard the exchange between the two ladies as they emptied ashtrays later that evening.

  “Kate! I told Mr. Gabler we’d like to have them to dinner.”

  “Gabler? That was the skinny one with John Thatcher wasn’t it?”

  Lorna Jenkins nodded. An ashtray remained in midair as she continued thoughtfully: “They’re up to something. Why on earth were they stalking everybody in sight? Even poor Huttlemayer. Most people run when they see Huttlemayer.”

  Kate Murphy continued to look pleased. “I thought there was something fishy about them too. Did you hear all those innocent questions about apartments?”

  The ladylike Dr. Jenkins suddenly snickered.

  “I bet I can find out what it is.”

  “Yes.” A low chuckle. “You usually can. But it’ll have to wait till next week Lorna. Remember, we’re going north tomorrow.”

  Thatcher and Gabler returned to the Britannia pleased with their undercover work.

  “That was not a bad idea,” Everett said handsomely as they stepped out of the elevator. It took more than a Huttlemayer to deflect Everett Gabler.

  “And no one suspects a thing,” said Thatcher. “We may never need these contacts, but if we do, we can probably arrange a bolt-hole for Nicolls on several hours’ notice.”

  Gabler shared this assurance. “I shall be relieved when we can get young Nicolls under cover. Your point about his not having the papers any longer—if he ever did have them—eluded me at first. But I can see that these leftists might be very difficult to convince on that point.”

  “Particularly as they must know that the Government doesn’t have them.”

  Everett frowned as they stopped outside Thatcher’s door. “How do they know that?”

  Fumbling for his key, Thatcher expanded. “To judge by the stir everybody is making, these papers are important, some action hinges on them. If the Government got them, then presumably there would be arrests or seizures or . . . Good heavens, get down Everett!”

  The next few seconds were a confused medley of cries and thuds. A dull shape dimly outlined against the window, had risen from one of the chairs. Thatcher threw himself sharply to the right. Gabler with no choice had thrown himself to the left, colliding with an end table and lamp. Only when a familiar voice was heard did Thatcher flip the light switch.

  “I’m terribly sorry, Mr. Thatcher,” said Bill Riemer advancing to disentangle Gabler from the extension cord. “I guess I must have startled you.”

  “You did,” Thatcher snapped. He was letting the atmosphere of the Hellenus project go to his head. But after abductions in Omonia Square was it too extreme to expect assassins in the hotel room?

  Having helped Gabler to a chair, Riemer was embarrassed, in his turn. “I suppose it was an unnecessary precaution. But I was hoping nobody would see me with you. So I got one of the maids to bring me up the service stairs and let me into your room.”

  Thatcher raised his eyebrows aggressively. “Have we become suspicious associates?”

  “No, no! But I think I may know where Nicolls is. I was afraid to send a written message and I didn’t want to use the phone. And I thought it might be a good idea if no one realized you’d gotten sudden news from the Embassy.”

  Riemer was surrendering something to diplomacy. Ever since yesterday’s declaration about seizing the offensive, Riemer had been expecting to hear that Thatcher was caught up in some situation unworthy of an American businessman abroad, perfectly without fault of course. The Sloan seemed to specialize in innocent dramatics and after Gabler’s performance Riemer wouldn’t put anything past them.

  Thatcher had things on his mind other than his public image. “Do you seriously think the phones are tapped?”

  Riemer shrugged. “I don’t know. But Nicolls seems to think so.”

  “Ah! You were going to tell us about Nicolls.”

  “It’s another of these mysterious phone calls. I didn’t take it myself. It was made to my home by a woman speaking Greek. My cook took the message, and she’s very reliable.”

  Thatcher and Gabler leaned forward eagerly, silently indicating their willingness to trust the cook.

  “The woman said that Nicolls was afraid to try to phone in English or to reach the Embassy directly because the exchange might be watched. But he wanted me to know that he was staying in Elasson over the store that this woman owns. The buses and roads are being watched to prevent his reaching Athens. He doesn’t know why. She said he intends to stay where he is, if he can, until we get to him.” Riemer came to the close of his message and looked at his audience hopefully. It was not approval that he wanted; it was explanation.

  He received neither. Thatcher and Gabler looked at each other, one thought in common.

  “Elasson.” Gabler let the word fall suggestively. “I don’t know where it is, but it’s not Larissa, where Chiros said the wallet was found.”

  “Let’s be fair Everett. Nicolls seems to have been wandering around a good deal.”

  “I suppose the thing to do is go and get him,” Riemer said disapprovingly. Makris was also an American business entitled to the protec
tion of the Embassy and what’s more an American business that seemed to eschew the sensational approach favored by the Sloan.

  “I’m sure we can manage that end of it Mr. Riemer,” Thatcher said. “We do want to thank you for all you’ve done. Not only relaying the message, but the care you’ve taken to do so discreetly.”

  Riemer knew when he was being dismissed. And he was not sorry to go. He had liked Nicolls and he would be happy to have him back in the land of the living. But if these two desperadoes were going to the rescue with shotguns blazing, then the less he knew about it, the better.

  “You were rather short with him, John,” Everett commented. “He’s done all he can.”

  “Never mind that now,” said Thatcher. “I daresay he was glad to be rid of us. While he was here, I remembered something I heard at that party. We have been gigantic fools imagining Nicolls or Dr. Ziros, for that matter wandering around with a great swatch of papers. Dr. Ziros, Everett, was an archivist!”

  Gabler looked up from caressing his maltreated knee. “And what does that mean?”

  “That he worked in a library where every bit of paper they get their hands on is microfilmed!”

  “Microfilm!” Gabler straightened. “Microfilm! But that means only a tiny strip of celluloid. It could be anywhere.”

  “I’ll make you a bet Everett,” Thatcher said with heavy, pleasantry. “I’ll bet it’s where it’s been all along. Right under our noses!”

  Chapter 16

  The Trojan Women

  Everett followed the direction of Thatcher’s forefinger. It was pointing to the desk drawer in which they had nominally secured Nicolls’ wallet. Nominally because a flimsy desk lock was scarcely proof against the marauders who made free with the Hotel Britannia. On the evidence of past form if balked by the lock they would simply cart off the desk.

  “Nicolls’ wallet?” Gabler asked. “Oh come now John. You don’t believe that a total stranger could march up to him and say: ‘Here, please let me put this microfilm in your wallet for safe-keeping.’”