by Eric Ambler
It was a fantastic scene. Along the waterfront, long chains of screaming, singing people swayed and capered to music blaring from cafes and bars. The restaurants were jammed. Shrieking mobs danced on the chairs and tables. Everywhere there were groups of drunken andartes, many of them Bulgars, staggering about, shouting wildly, firing rifles into the air, and fetching women out of the brothels to dance with them in the streets. To the Sergeant, hurrying along discreetly in what shadows he could find, the city seemed like some vast orgiastic fairground.
Kyra’s shop was in a narrow street near the Eski Juma. There were no bars or cafes in it and it was relatively quiet. The shopkeepers with shutters had taken the precaution of putting them up; others had nailed boards across their windows. Kyra’s windows were protected in this way and the shop was in darkness; but there was a light in the window above it.
He was relieved at this. He had feared that she might be out taking part in the carnival in the streets, and that he would have to wait for her return. The fact that she was in also meant that she did not share in the popular rejoicing at the turn of events. That was all to the good.
He looked round carefully to see that his arrival had not been witnessed by anyone who might know him by sight; then, satisfied on this point, he rang the bell.
After a moment or two he heard her come down the stairs and cross the shop to the door. The boards prevented his seeing her. He heard her stop, but the door did not open.
“Who is it?” she said in Greek.
“Franz.”
“God in heaven!”
“Let me in.”
He heard her fumbling with the bolts and then the door opened. He stepped inside, shut the door quickly behind him, and took her in his arms. He could feel her trembling as he kissed her, and then she pressed away from him with a gasp of fear.
“What are you doing here?”
He told her what had happened to him and what he planned.
“But you cannot stay.”
“I have to.”
“No, you cannot.”
“Why not, my beloved? There is no risk.”
“I am already suspect because I have loved a German.”
“What can they do?”
“I may be arrested.”
“Absurd. If they arrested every woman in this place who has loved a German, they would need an army to guard them.”
“It is different with me. The andartes have arrested Niki.”
“What for?” Niki was her brother.
“He is accused of spying for the Germans and informing. When he has confessed and accused others, they will kill him.”
“The swine! Nevertheless, I must stay, beloved.”
“You must surrender. You would be a prisoner of war.”
“Don’t you believe it. They would cut my throat.”
“No. There are many German soldiers here. Deserters. No harm comes to them if they say they are sympathizers.”
“If they say they are Communists, you mean?”
“What does it matter?”
“You class me with these deserter swine?”
“Of course not, beloved. I wish only to save you.”
“Good. First I need food. Then a bed. I will use Niki’s room tonight. I am fit for nothing but sleep.”
“But you cannot stay here, Franz. You cannot.” She began to sob.
He gripped her arms. “No tears, my beloved, and no arguments. You understand? I give the orders. When I have eaten and rested, then we can talk. Now, you can show me what there is to eat.”
He had driven his fingers deep into her arm muscles, and when she stopped weeping he knew that he had frightened as well as hurt her. That was as it should be. There would be no more disobedience for the present.
They went up to the apartment. When she saw him in the light, she gave a cry of dismay, but he cut short her further lamentations impatiently.
“I am hungry,” he said.
She put together a meal for him and watched him while he ate it. She was silent now and thoughtful, but he scarcely noticed her. He was planning. First he would sleep, and then he would see about getting a civilian suit. It was a pity that her brother Niki was so undersized; his clothes would be far too small. She would have to buy a second-hand suit somewhere. Then she could find out exactly what papers he would need in order to move about freely. There was the language difficulty, of course; but perhaps he could overcome that by pretending to be a Bulgar or an Albanian; there would be plenty of that sort of scum about now. After that, he would have to decide where to go. It would be an awkward problem. There were not many countries left in which a German soldier would be welcomed and assisted to repatriate himself. There was Spain, of course-he might get there by sea-or Turkey…
But his head was drooping on his chest, and his eyes would no longer stay open. He roused himself sufficiently to go into the bedroom. At the bed he turned and looked back. Kyra was standing in the door watching him. She smiled reassuringly. He sank down on the bed and went to sleep.
It was still dark, and he could not have been asleep for much more than two hours, when he awoke in response to a violent shaking of his arm and a blow in the back.
He rolled over and opened his eyes.
Two men with pistols in their hands were standing looking down at him. They wore the elementary kind of uniform which he had seen on the andartes rioting about in the streets a few hours earlier. Those, however, had all been very drunk; these were very sober and businesslike. They were lean, sour-looking young men with smart belts and brassards on their arms. He guessed that they were andarte officers. One of them spoke sharply in German.
“Get up.”
He obeyed slowly, overcoming a longing for sleep more desperate than any sensation of fear. He hoped that they would kill him quickly so that he could rest.
“Your name?”
“Schirmer.”
“Rank?”
“Sergeant. Who are you?”
“You’ll find out. She says you were a paratrooper and an instructor. Is that correct?”
“Yes.”
“Where did you win your Iron Cross?”
The Sergeant was sufficiently awake now to appreciate the necessity of lying. “In Belgium,” he said.
“Do you want to live?”
“Who doesn’t?”
“Fascists don’t. They are death-lovers, so we kill them. True democrats want to live. They prove their desire by fighting with their class comrades against the Fascists and the capitalist-imperialist aggressors.”
“Who are these aggressors?”
“Reactionaries and their Anglo-American bosses.”
“I don’t know anything about politics.”
“Naturally. You have had no chance of learning about them. They are simple enough, however. Fascists die, true democrats live. You can, of course, choose freely which you are to be, but as time is short and there is much work to be done, you can have only twenty seconds to make up your mind. The usual time allowed is ten seconds, but you are an N.C.O., a skilled soldier, and a valuable instructor. Also you are not a deserter. You are entitled to think carefully before you accept the sacred responsibility which is offered to you.”
“If I claim the rights of a prisoner of war?”
“You are no prisoner, Schirmer. You have not surrendered. You are still in the thick of the fight. At present you are an enemy of Greece, and”-the andarte raised his pistol-“we have much to avenge.”
“And if I accept?”
“You will be given an early opportunity of demonstrating your political reliability, your loyalty, and your skill. The twenty seconds have long ago departed. What do you wish to say?”
The Sergeant shrugged. “I accept.”
“Then salute,” the andarte said sharply.
For an instant the Sergeant’s right arm started to move, and in that instant he saw the andarte’s finger tighten on the trigger. He clenched the fist of his left hand and raised it above his head.<
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The andarte smiled thinly. “Very good. You may come with us in a moment.” He went to the bedroom door and opened it. “But first there is another matter to attend to.”
He beckoned Kyra into the room. She walked stiffly, her face a tear-stained mask of fear. She did not look at the Sergeant.
“This woman,” the andarte said with a smile, “was good enough to inform us that you were here. Her brother was a Fascist-collaborationist spy. Her object in betraying you was to convince us that she has a true democratic spirit. What do you think about that, Comrade Schirmer?”
“I think she is a Fascist bitch,” said the Sergeant shortly.
“Excellent. That was my own thought. You will learn fast.”
The andarte glanced at his companion and nodded.
The companion’s gun jerked up. Before Kyra could scream or the Sergeant could even think of protesting, three shots had crashed out. The shock waves brought down a small piece of plaster from the ceiling. The Sergeant felt it tap his shoulder as he saw the girl, her mouth still open, slammed against the wall by the force of the heavy bullets. Then she sank to the floor without a sound.
The andarte officer looked at her intently for a moment, then nodded again and walked out of the room.
The Sergeant followed. He knew that sometime when he was not so tired and confused he would feel horror at what had just happened. He had liked Kyra.
Sergeant Schirmer served in the Democratic Army of General Markos for just over four years.
After the December rebellion of ’44 and the promotion of Markos to the command of the army, he had been sent to Albania. There, he had been an instructor in a training camp set up to discipline the guerrilla bands then being organized in larger formations, in preparation for the campaign of ’46. It was in this camp that he met Arthur.
Arthur had been in a British Commando force which had raided a German headquarters in North Africa. He had been wounded and captured. The German officer in charge had chosen to ignore the standing order about shooting captured Commando men and had put Arthur in with a batch of other British prisoners who were being sent to Germany via Greece and Yugoslavia. In Yugoslavia, Arthur had escaped and spent the rest of the war fighting with the Tito Partisans. He had not troubled to return to England when the war ended, and had been one of the instructors provided by Tito to assist Markos.
In Arthur the Sergeant found a kindred spirit. They were both professional soldiers and had both served in corps d’elite as N.C.O.’s Neither had any emotional ties with his native land. Both loved soldiering for its own sake. Above all, they shared the same outlook on matters of politics.
During his service with the Partisans, Arthur had listened to so much Marxist patter that he knew a great deal of it by heart. At moments of stress or boredom he would recite it at length and at lightning speed. It had disconcerted the Sergeant when he had heard it for the first time, and he had approached Arthur privately on the subject.
“I was not aware, Corporal,” he had said in the clumsy mixture of Greek, English, and German they used in order to converse; “I did not think that you were a Red.”
Arthur had grinned. “No? I’m one of the most politically reliable men in the outfit.”
“So?”
“So. Don’t I prove it? Look how many slogans I know. I can talk like the book.”
“I see.”
“Of course, I don’t know what this dialectical-materialism stuff means, but then I could never understand what the Bible was all about either. At school we had to say bits of the Bible. I always used to get top marks for Scripture. Here I’m politically reliable.”
“You do not believe in the cause for which we fight?”
“No more than you do, Sergeant. I leave that to the amateurs. Soldiering’s my job. What do I want with causes?”
The Sergeant had nodded thoughtfully and glanced at the medal ribbons on Arthur’s shirt. “Do you think, Corporal, that there is any possibility of our General’s plans succeeding?” he had asked. Although they both held commissions in the Markos forces, they had chosen to ignore the fact in private. They had been N.C.O.’s in proper armies.
“Could be,” Arthur said. “Depends on how many mistakes the other lot make, same as always. Why? What are you thinking about, Sarge? Promotion?”
The Sergeant had nodded. “Yes, promotion. If this revolution were to succeed, there might be big opportunities for men able to take them. I think that I, too, must take steps to become politically reliable.”
The steps he had taken had proved effective, and his qualities as a natural leader had soon been recognized. By 1947 he was commanding a brigade, with Arthur as his second-in-command. When, in 1949, the Markos forces began to disintegrate, their brigade was one of the last to hold out in the Grammos area.
But they knew by then that the rebellion was over, and they were bitter. Neither of them had ever believed in the cause for which they had fought so long and hard and skillfully; but its betrayal by Tito and the Moscow Politburo had seemed an infamous thing.
“ ‘Put not your trust in princes,’ ” Arthur had quoted gloomily.
“Who said this?” the Sergeant had asked.
“The Bible. Only these aren’t princes, they’re politicians.”
“It is the same.” A faraway look had come into the Sergeant’s eyes. “I think, Corporal, that in future we must trust only ourselves,” he had said.
Eric Ambler
The Schirmer Inheritance
11
It was just after dawn and the mountains above Florina were outlined against a pink glow in the sky when the old Renault deposited George and Miss Kolin outside the cinema where it had picked them up ten hours earlier. On George’s instructions, Miss Kolin paid the driver and arranged with him to pick them up again that evening to make the same journey. They went to their hotel in silence.
When he got to his room, George destroyed the precautionary letter he had left there for the manager and sat down to draft a cable to Mr. Sistrom.
“ CLAIMANT LOCATED IN STRANGE CIRCUMSTANCES,” he wrote, “ IDENTITY BEYOND REASONABLE DOUBT STOP COMPLEX SITUATION PREVENTS STRAIGHTFORWARD ACTION TO DELIVER HIM YOUR OFFICE STOP MAILING FULL EXPLANATORY REPORT TODAY STOP MEANWHILE CABLE IMMEDIATELY TERMS OF EXTRADITION TREATY IF ANY BETWEEN U.S. AND GREECE WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE ARMED BANK ROBBERY. CAREY.”
That, he thought grimly, should give Mr. Sistrom something to gnaw on. He read it through again, striking out the unnecessary prepositions and conjunctions, and then translated it into the code they had agreed on for highly confidential messages. When he had finished he looked at the time. The post office would not be open for another hour. He would write to Mr. Sistrom and mail the letter at the same time as he sent the cable. He sighed. It had been an exhausting night-exhausting in some unexpected ways. When the coffee and buttered rolls he had ordered from the restaurant arrived, he sat down to compose his report.
“In my last report,” he began, “I told you of the evidence I had been given my Madame Vassiotis and of my consequent decision to return home as soon as possible. Since then, as you will have gathered from my cable, the picture has completely changed. I knew, of course, that the inquiries instituted by Madame Vassiotis would reach the ears of all sorts of persons who, for one reason or another, were regarded as criminals by the authorities. I scarcely expected them to come to the attention of the man we have been looking for. Nevertheless, that is what happened. Twenty-four hours ago I was approached by a man who stated that he had friends who had information to give about Schirmer. Subsequently Miss Kolin and I took a very uncomfortable trip to a secret destination somewhere up in the mountains near the Yugoslav frontier. At the end of the journey we were taken to a house and confronted by a man who said he was Franz Schirmer. When I had explained the purpose of our visit, I asked him various pertinent questions, all of which he answered correctly. I asked him then about the ambush at Vodena and his subsequent movements. He told a fantastic story.”
George hesitated; then he erased the word “fantastic”-Mr. Sistrom would not like that sort of adjective-and typed the word “curious” in its place.
And yet it had been fantastic, to sit there in the light of the oil lamp listening to the great-great-grandson of the hero of Preussisch-Eylau telling, in his broken English, the story of his adventures in Greece. He had spoken slowly, sometimes with a faint smile at the corners of his mouth, always with his watchful grey eyes on his visitors, reading and assessing them. The Dragoon of Ansbach, George thought, must have been very much the same kind of man. Where other men would succumb to physical disaster, men like these two Schirmers would always endure and survive. One had been wounded, had put his trust in God, had deserted, and lived to become a prosperous tradesman. The other had been left for dead, had put his trust in himself, had kept his wits about him, and lived to fight another day.
What the second Sergeant Schirmer had become, however, was a question that the Sergeant himself had made no attempt to answer.
His own account of himself had ended inconclusively at the time of the closing of the Yugoslav frontier by Tito, and with a bitter complaint against the man?uvrings of the Communist politicians which had defeated the Markos forces. But George had very little doubt now about the nature of the Sergeant’s subsequent activities. They had conformed to an ancient pattern. When defeated revolutionary armies disintegrated, those soldiers who feared for political reasons to go back home, or who had no homes to go back to, turned to brigandage. And since, quite clearly, neither the Sergeant nor Arthur was, to use Colonel Chrysantos’s words, a “simple, deluded fanatic of the type that always gets caught,” their gleanings in Salonika had almost certainly gone into their own pockets, and those of their men-at-arms. It was a delicate situation. Moreover, if he were not to seem suspiciously incurious, he would have to invite them somehow to explain their set-up in their own way.
It had been Arthur who had provided the opening.
