by Ben Pastor
“Well, shall we say that as a US citizen, she could have got off scot-free had she not protected him.” The frog-like smirk returned to Kostaridis’ face. “That’s wifely affection for you. What can we do? Greek men make good lovers – or so women and goddesses always think.”
“This changes things considerably. MAB 38 guns were used at Ampelokastro.”
“But Sidheraki had already left home when Signor Filligi was killed.”
“Or he simply kept out of sight. When did you search his place?”
“Let’s see. Must have been the 31st.”
“A day after the killing.”
“Yes, but I really don’t think —”
“Sidheraki must have fled in a hurry, if he didn’t bother to take the guns with him. Where do you suppose he went?”
“Capitano, you could drop 10,000 men and make them disappear on this island. There’s no way of knowing. He could have joined the bands in the interior or embarked with the British. He could be hiding in any village, or even in Iraklion. If your leverage on the American woman is to make her believe you’ve got him, you had better be able to maintain the ruse.”
Bora pressed him impatiently. “Do you have a photo of this Sidheraki fellow? If I ask her, she’ll suspect he’s not in our hands at all.”
“The photo in his police file is dated, won’t do much good. He came and went so much that we didn’t take a new one of him every time.” Kostaridis folded and refolded the wet handkerchief before driving it into his pocket. “Wait, we picked up a boxful of papers from his home. We’ll look through them when we reach the police station.”
“Epitropos, I don’t have time. And where’s your damned transportation?”
“Calma, calma. There it is.” Kostaridis pointed at a modest, unmarked car coming up the street. “Not a customized Alfa Romeo like Rifat Bey’s, but it’ll get us there.” He good-naturedly shook his head. “No wonder he was sore at you Germans; it’s the only one registered on Crete.”
The way to the airfield was littered with enemy vehicles unfit for reuse. They sat or lay there waiting to be scrapped, minus their tyres and whatever else could be unhinged, unscrewed or pulled off. The image of scavenging returned, with humans as insects whose business it is to demolish. Dusty hollyhocks, bombed-out buildings, metal roofs glaring like mirrors on both sides of the road: the geography of summer war set Bora on an anxious, imaginary bridge between his memories of Spain and the anticipation of what Russia would be soon. He rode the brief distance not knowing what to expect from Sinclair, or from himself in regards to Sinclair.
Dust billowed around the car as it sped on. One of Kostaridis’ men drove, a small fellow whose eyes in the rear-view mirror were bloodshot and slightly mad. At one point – they were past the turn-off for Knossos – the sight of wooden crates disgorged from an overturned vehicle made Bora cringe. The lost wine meant for Deputy Chairman Beria came to mind. It was no small matter: there’d be repercussions if he failed to procure sixty more bottles of the desired vintages. A bad report from Colonel Krebs, not to speak of Ambassador von der Schulenburg, could hurt his fine record thus far and haunt him into his assignment with the First Cavalry Division.
Indifferent to Bora’s and anyone else’s troubles, the sea stayed to the left of the road throughout, deep blue, true to itself.
“There.” In sight of the airfield, Kostaridis pointed out a long, single-storeyed wooden shed, windowless on the side closest to them, whose sheet-iron roof must make it into an oven at this hour. “I think that’s where you’re going.”
Bora hoped it wouldn’t be so, but of course it was.
Kostaridis let him off at the gate. “On my card you’ll find my office phone number. Call when you’re done; I’ll come and pick you up. To save time, I’ll fetch the box of Sidheraki papers and show them to you as we drive to the Hotel Knossos afterwards.”
“Grazie, eucharistò.”
It wasn’t lost on the policeman that Bora thanked him in Italian and Greek, even though he might be doing it because it annoyed him to show gratitude in his own language. “Parakalo. Where should I leave your things?”
“Please take them along. I have what I need in my rucksack.” Which was a sign of trust, if not outright esteem.
When first meeting someone (the practice embarrassed him a little, since he’d developed it long before starting counterintelligence work) Bora routinely let his interlocutor believe that he knew less than he actually did. He had no specific reason to hide his fluency in English from Sinclair. It was, rather, that penchant – less than a bad habit – typical of one trained to operate undercover.
The moment after identifying himself and his role there, he asked for an interpreter from English. The airfield being one of the places where prisoners transited, a specialist was on hand, and so Bora was flanked by a young Feldwebel with a bureaucrat’s face, who walked with him toward the guarded shed. “There were close to seventy prisoners until yesterday,” he volunteered. “We keep nabbing them in the hills and gathering them here before they go off to Galatas.” (Galatas, a postcard from his grandparents’ days. Tatties, that’s what it was. Tatties was the name of his mother’s pony.)
Tall, in his late thirties but youthful, stiff-shouldered, Lieutenant Sinclair was standing in the empty room, and turned slightly towards the door as the Germans stepped in. There was something gangling about him, like in a quality colt, but contrary to Busch’s predictions he looked every inch the British officer (or sportsman) you’d expect to see in propaganda photos, ruddiness of cheeks included – of the sort that easily becomes a flush. Only the moist, dark sheen of his eyes and his neatly trimmed hair gave him away as an Anglo-Indian. At once Bora noticed his left arm was contused; between army shorts and khaki long socks, his knees were bruised. The watch had been snatched from him, judging from the cuts and ring of pale skin around his wrist. His elbow had bled, and recently too.
They exchanged a terse military salute – palm of the hand downward in the German, outward with thumb slightly bent in the prisoner. Bora, who’d summarily dusted off the day’s grime before entering, rested his rucksack on the floor. The heat in the room reached the limit of endurance. Even with two gridded windows open, around midday it must pass this limit, and the windows were closed now. One could only admire Sinclair’s effort to keep up appearances in spite of it all: the suede of his non-regulation chukka shoes was spotless; he’d shaved immaculately and conveyed the impression of discipline and good breeding.
Bora began with the expected enquiries about the prisoner’s conditions, asking whether there was anything he could get him. As if I could get anything for anybody; I don’t even have a bed to sleep in on this island, and I’m wearing looted British Army shorts besides. The plan required that he neutrally observe his counterpart while addressing him in German and pay close attention to the interpreter, nodding only when hearing in translation what he’d caught perfectly in the original.
Sinclair answered that he did not need anything. “Not even your arm attended to, or a wristwatch?”
“No.” Despite the interpreter’s presence, Sinclair looked directly at Bora when he spoke. “Just what happened to your arm, and to your wristwatch?”
Sinclair did not reply. He was at the same time urbane and stand-offish, as you’d expect of one who is in enemy hands and on principle refuses to show cordiality, much less intimidation, in the presence of his captor. Bora sympathized, convinced as he was it could never happen to him (it would soon enough, in very different circumstances, on that Russian front he anticipated to conquer in a matter of weeks). He suspected the prisoner had been roughed up and stolen from, possibly after he resisted questioning or some treatment an officer would regard as unacceptable.
“As you may have been informed,” he said, “I’m not here to interrogate you – my Air Force colleagues will attend to that if they haven’t already. I am interested in the circumstances that occasioned your report to Dr Unger of the War Crimes Bureau, nam
ely the entrusting of a photographic camera to you, and what your fellow Briton shared regarding its contents.”
Sinclair tightened his lips before speaking. “I shan’t be able to add to what was already reported. Dr Unger took my deposition to the last detail.”
“The photographer’s full name is missing.”
“That’s because the man never told me. It was all rather frantic – you know POWs are discouraged from talking to one another. I assumed he’d found himself in some rough spot, because he was bareheaded and only wearing his undershirt (Sinclair called it vest, the British way). To me, he identified himself as Sergeant Major Powell.”
“Any other details?”
“Five nine or five ten in height, I’d say. Slight build, sandy-haired. Gloucestershire man, judging from his accent – that’s all I noticed.”
Speaking of regional accents to a German who supposedly does not understand English seemed superfluous, but then Sinclair’s own speech was faultless. Bora listened carefully. RP English, he told himself. His Anglo-Indian status notwithstanding, Sinclair must have attended good schools in the mother country, as Received Pronunciation rinses off whatever provincial inflection one might have. We were taught RP English at home, although with Grandmother Ashworth-Douglas Peter and I occasionally roll our Rs like Scotsmen. At a closer look, it was possible Sinclair had been injured during the fighting. The bleeding on his elbow could be due to recent manhandling of a scab that had just begun to heal. “That is fine,” Bora insisted, “but it will be useful for me to hear whatever else you recall that might further the enquiry.”
Sinclair must have learnt to check his temper very early; Bora recognized from experience the self-control that became second nature. “Sir,” he coolly pointed out, “you read in the report how Powell and I met. It was a matter of minutes. Men of all ranks, from different units, were herded together at gunpoint directly from the battlefield. The conditions of our exchange were such that they barely allowed him to summarize what he’d witnessed, in broken sentences at that. He seemed – well, he seemed fearful that we might all meet the same fate. No sooner had he handed me his camera than he sprinted off. There was considerable commotion and gunfire as the guards noticed the getaway. I saw Powell being struck in the arm, I don’t know how seriously, but he succeeded somehow. I was jostled, fell on my arm, and fully expected the photographic equipment would be destroyed or taken from me.” Tactfully, Sinclair did not mention his missing watch, although Bora understood it might have disappeared at that point. “Therefore, I chose to surrender the camera at once, and asked to be heard by a commanding officer.”
“So I was told. Did Powell specify where he was when he took the photos?”
“He spoke of a garden villa by a ditch or river, off the Chanià route about ten miles south of Iraklion.”
Right. That’s how the War Crimes Bureau identified the place as Ampelokastro. Bora nodded. “And how did Powell know which unit the paratroopers belonged to?”
Sinclair squared his shoulders even more, a further stiffening of his posture. “He did not. He simply said they were German paratroopers. Your command might have identified the unit from the area in which they operated. I hope you understand, Captain, that it is my intention to provide information only in the measure it’ll secure swift action against those who flout the rules of civilized war.”
It was a legitimate reaction against any attempt to force out of him sensitive data about the British Army. Bora waited until he heard the translation of Sinclair’s words before speaking in a conciliatory way. “I was hoping you’d provide information in the spirit of serving the truth.”
“That goes without saying. But truth is a debated notion.”
Yes. Yes. How did Professor Heidegger put it? It’s all about freeing oneself from a concept of truth understood as concordance.
“So. A philosopher?”
Sinclair’s dusky eyebrows joined above his nose in a frown. Between forehead and lips his features turned foreign, then just short of exotic. For the rest, he still looked like a Lowlander whose hair had been painted black. “Truth is not the exclusive province of philosophers.”
“Well, if we come to an agreed-on definition of the word for this particular instance, I’m willing to pursue the truth whatever it may turn out to be. The chips have to fall where they may, in our German backyard if they belong there.” Because the interpreter hesitated to translate the last part of the sentence, Bora irritably insisted, careful, however, not to betray his knowledge of English. “And tell the prisoner that my working definition of truth is correct representation of what happened.”
The frown stayed on Sinclair’s face. “I related what I was told by the man on the scene, whom I implicitly trust as a fellow soldier and an Englishman. Powell was shaken, I repeat. In my view, the gratuitous violence against those civilians made him most uncomfortable about captivity. Avoiding it was his aim, and naturally I would not have discouraged him. I’d have attempted an escape myself – my right and my duty as an officer at His Majesty’s service – had I not felt this criminal matter needed to be followed through.”
It took a respectable amount of fortitude to choose imprisonment over freedom – albeit a risky one – without even having seen the photos, on a runaway’s word. Bora observed the prisoner, and then looked away from him. There was pride there. Whatever difficulties Waldo Preger might have encountered or perceived as the son of a salaried man, they were nothing to what Sinclair probably still met as a half-blood. A draftee in his mid-thirties, he must have distinguished himself and have the right connections too, to serve as company officer in a British unit. Still, he couldn’t have been to military school, or else his rank would be higher. Collegial empathy was not advisable with a prisoner. Bora briefly lost himself staring at a spot in the floor planks, where, through a hole in the metal roof, a sunbeam projected a coin of fiery light (the dim study at Ampelokastro came to mind, the faces on the wall, the empty categories invented by men, the chalk mask resembling Remedios, Shepherd girl, followed by a question mark)… In lieu of sympathy, he chose a more superficial view of the man facing him. It must sting, being behind barbed wire less than two weeks after comfortably sitting with a glass of gin or ouzo in some friendly Cretan cafe, as Busch had said of the archaeologists in the basement of Hotel Knossos. Who knows, the proud-mannered lieutenant might have met Miss Allen or Pendlebury there. Sidheraki, who wasn’t British and didn’t rank as high as the rest, would have likely waited outside. Colonial ease, and dolce far niente.
Dispassion allowed Bora to regain his Abwehr mode of courteous impartiality; a full step below indifference, it danced on the verge of becoming either benevolent or inquisitorial. The heat in the shed, that until moments ago had made him physically unwell, became simply the environment in which his calm mind reasoned unperturbed. Although he already knew the answer from Busch, he did ask, “Lieutenant, were you shown the photographic prints?”
“No.”
Bora didn’t enquire whether Sinclair wanted to view them. He’d taken along the folder in his rucksack, and – given the lack of horizontal surfaces in the room – held it open so that the prisoner could see.
“Good God. A woman, young lads – it’s a slaughterhouse.”
“Yes.” It would be justifiable to point out that mutilated corpses of German paratroopers had been discovered in Crete, but Bora chose not to.
“Who were these people?”
“Civilians.” No more details were needed. Using a translator defused reactions, gave Bora extra time to calibrate his words. He shook his head as he studied the photos. “Cleaning the blood from the grout might be impossible.”
The irrelevance of the comment brought a vivid blush to Sinclair’s finely drawn cheekbones. “I don’t understand what you mean.”
“Just what I said. The spaces between floor tiles have absorbed too much blood by now.”
“Does it even matter?”
Bora faced the interpreter. “Tell t
he lieutenant there are moments when I’m literal. It is a fine floor, and in my observation badly ruined by staining.”
“A fine floor?” Sinclair’s resentment brimmed over. “I hope yours is a provocation, Captain. Whether you were called up to serve or are a professional soldier, you cannot treat a war crime so glibly!”
“If it’s a war crime.” Bora shuffled the pictures. “Believe me, I can quote by heart the articles of the Geneva Convention. You’ll find no one on this island as super partes as I am, Lieutenant Sinclair. And in case Dr Unger hasn’t informed you, the German Army itself has demanded this enquiry. I need additional details, because the fact remains that neither you nor Sergeant Major Powell did actually witness the killing. His, graphic though it is, is ex post facto evidence. The photos suggest that he first captured on film the troopers entering the garden. After the shooting, he passed by the dead dog on the front steps and walked in. He hoped, as he told you, to find the troopers ambushed to death by Greeks or Britons hiding in the villa.” Bora displayed each image and paused to allow for translation. “At the unexpected sight of civilian victims, he took a number of snapshots before leaving the way he entered. When he noticed the rear garden gate unlocked and wide open, he photographed that as well, and finally the dead dog. He must have been rather upset by then. The last image is blurred, possibly because his hands were unsteady.” He closed the folder. “That’s all we have for now, Lieutenant. Not proof, not even close to proof.”
Sinclair visibly struggled to keep his composure. “Are you proposing alternative interpretations of this massacre? The chips should fall in your backyard. I will not stand for a cover-up by Germans of a German war crime!”
“I’m sure.” That’s where Bora wanted the prisoner. In a state of heightened concern that nothing would be done. He replaced the folder in his rucksack. “Feldwebel, open the windows, it’s too hot in here. And remind the prisoner that I’m literal when I have nothing else to go by. Tell him I’m aware British officers and men, especially those who were already stationed in Crete, discussed beforehand the likely routes of withdrawal, and escape in case of capture. The best way the lieutenant can help me go beyond a literal interpretation is to tell me how I may find Sergeant Major Powell.”
