The Road to Ithaca

by Ben Pastor

  Bora was bluffing on the matter of escape routes, but it made sense. If he was right, there had to be people acting as go-betweens with the Cretan resistance.

  Again that frown and dark rise of blood to the cheeks, as if Sinclair’s exotic half surfaced when he was indignant. “So you may send your death squads after His Majesty’s soldiers? Supposing him still alive, I don’t know where Powell went. I wouldn’t tell you if I knew, and you can’t expect me to tell you.”

  Bora buckled the flap of his rucksack before slinging it across his left shoulder. “Well, that’s that, then. Things stop here. I will recommend that the War Crimes Bureau return the photos to your High Command to do with them as it pleases; we have nothing to do with the killing as far as I’m concerned, and I doubt that either your superiors or the International Red Cross will be able to prove otherwise.” He turned on his heel and started toward the door. “We’re mopping up the island as it is, Lieutenant. It doesn’t help your cause or mine to have Powell caught, shipped off or worse, without being able to detail his story.” Through the grid of the window, he called to the sentinel outside to have the door opened.

  Five seconds, key turning in the lock. Door yawning onto the heat of day, ten seconds. Sinclair’s voice reached him as Bora began to leave.

  “I must have your word of honour as a German officer and a gentleman super partes, that you will share the one lead I’ll give you with none of your comrades. Not even with your interpreter.”

  Bora awaited the translation. He did not turn away from the door but took one step away from it, addressing the Feldwebel with his back to Sinclair. “Tell him I give my word of honour.”

  “Latine loqueris?”

  Surprise made Bora slowly wheel around this time. “Loquor.”

  The meaningful Latin words dropped out of Sinclair. “Domenikos, qui et Minos. Sutor ad Chanioportam.” And because Bora gave a sign he understood, he added, “Quidam abiectus, turpis, indiciorum cuicumque pretio venditor.”

  Kostaridis was already waiting at the gate when Bora left the shed. Enthusiasm is difficult to conceal, so the German lost time fumbling with the straps of his rucksack to regain an acceptable appearance of self-control. Minos… He actively searched his school recollections. Wasn’t Minos the fabled Cretan king who had the labyrinth built? Stepfather of the man-eating Minotaur, an errant husband cursed by the gods to emit lethal snakes and scorpions with his ejaculation. Minos, one of the judges in Hades… The idea of a low-life informant, abject and money-hungry though he might be, and bearing such a nickname, excited him far beyond prudence. Kostaridis must know all the ruffians in town, so it was best to keep mum in his presence, and find a way to slip off in search of a man who probably had been smuggling goods and people for years.

  Buying information without cash, however, would be impossible in Crete as everywhere else, if not more. Echo paradhes, “I have money,” was the first sentence Bora had mastered after the Greek words for mineral water. But he had less than fifty marks to last him for the rest of the journey, and no contacts who might subsidize him at short notice.

  Kostaridis lifted his chin in a concise southern greeting when Bora approached the car. He stood unmoving by the open door, indicating he expected the German to enter first, a policeman’s precaution.

  The first thing Bora said, hunching his shoulders in the cramped back seat, was, “Where’s the National Bank of Greece? I need to go there.”

  Kostaridis gave him a frog stare. “Bank’s closed.”

  “Well, I need to get in, Epitropos. See that you get me in.”

  “Now?”

  “The moment we reach town, yes. Did you bring the material from the Sidheraki home?”

  “Yes.”

  While they rode back to Iraklion, the policeman lifted a few snapshots from a box of papers, line drawings, field notes from various archaeological sites. He flipped through them quickly, setting two aside. “Here,” he said, “a group shot: the English archaeologists, plus their Greek helpers. Not the best quality, sun’s on their faces. This” – he placed his forefinger on the most tanned of all, a shirtless man with a moustache and a broad smile – “is Andonis Sidheraki. You can see him in this other picture too, holding the pickaxe. He’s about your age, I’d say. Over ten years younger than his wife.”

  Next to Sidheraki, a couple of horsey blonde women in straw hats drew Bora’s attention. “Is Miss Allen one of these?”

  “No. They’re Englishwomen. She isn’t there. She must have been behind the camera.”

  “May I keep them?” Bora asked even as he slipped the snapshots inside his chest pocket, so that Kostaridis had to agree. “Tell me, is it possible that Sidheraki joined a rebel band back there?”

  “If he hasn’t left Crete, I’d expect nothing else.”

  “A communist band, maybe?”

  Kostaridis thought for a moment. “Not if it’s Satanas’.”

  “Satanas as in – the devil?”

  “Kapetanios Satanas Grikorakis. Worse, as far as Germans are concerned. No, I don’t think Sidheraki would join him. His family and the kapetanios’ folks have been feuding ever since the Turks left Crete. They may all be anti-German, but they’d as soon cut each other’s throat over matters that have nothing to do with Germans. Why do you ask?”

  Bora didn’t say. He looked out of the window towards the brilliant blue line of the sea, a belt around the land and a restriction he wasn’t yet used to. Hope and worry were tightly braided within him as he told himself it was a tall order and a dangerous one to try to find a lone man on Crete.

  As for Kostaridis, he knew a reticent witness when he saw one, so he changed the subject. “If you give me the roll of film we took from Professor Savelli, by the morning I’ll have it printed.”

  Bora handed it in. “Might as well.”

  The National Bank of Greece was housed in one of those bureaucratic constructions from the turn of the century, solid and moderately ornate. It could have faced any central street in any European city. Padlocked and awaiting German administrators, it should be off-limits to all, but Kostaridis had a crowbar, and his ways. He posted his uniformed driver at the corner to signify the official nature of the operation, and proceeded to unnail a boarded window on the side of the building, exposing a blasted grill and broken glass pane, witness to the street fighting two weeks before.

  Bora used the crowbar to knock off the jagged remnants of the glass pane and hoisted himself onto the street-level windowsill. Grasping the bars of the grill above the blasted area, he squeezed in and landed feet first onto a sea of broken glass. Kostaridis heard him curse in German from within, but it didn’t sound like he had been injured.

  “Coming in?” Bora extended his right hand out to help the policeman climb through. “I wouldn’t want you to think I’m here to steal.”

  In fact, he had no clear idea of what he wanted out of the break-in. Any ready cash in the bank must have long since disappeared. A glance at Villiger’s safety deposit box, raided by German soldiers, would not serve the investigation: if Preger’s men had merely crossed the villa’s garden, they had nothing to do with it. It stood to reason that other soldiers – those bivouacking overnight, for example – had lifted whatever of value there was, among them Villiger’s camera (or cameras), and the key to the safety deposit. Bora was following a hunch that was actually no more than his need for Greek money.

  In the vault, the built-in rows of deposit boxes had the looks of a beehive ransacked by bears. Most doors were open; the few still locked might simply be unused. Bora threw a glance at the stack of ledgers lying around. “Epitropos, would you help me look for the book of safety deposit rentals?”

  Kostaridis said nothing. He stuck a German cigarette in his mouth and before long provided the required ledger.

  The list of renters, partly typewritten, partly in longhand Greek, consisted of an alphabetical series of entries, many crossed out in red pencil or blue ink. “These,” Kostaridis explained, “indicate c
lients who withdrew their valuables a year ago, as soon as the war started.”

  Alois Villiger’s name appeared under the second letter, beta, pronounced by Greeks as a V. His last visit to the deposit box was recorded on 16 May, perhaps the same day when he had checked on the ships leaving Crete. A look at the box confirmed thieves had emptied it without forcing it; the key was still in the lock.

  Bora kept searching through the list. It was not so extensive that he couldn’t hope to find other recognizable names, and in fact under alpha he found the name of Rifat Bey Agrali, whose two boxes had been voided by the proprietor on 21 May. Under delta, only a handful of surnames were listed, one of which was French-sounding: Duvoin, Marcel Amédée. Duvoin. At first Bora passed it by. Then he recalled reading it on one of the ex libris at Ampelokastro. Another expatriate book lender of Villiger’s? Maybe more. To his great surprise, Villiger’s own name appeared as additional renter of the box. The line had not been crossed out.

  “Epitropos, have you ever run into a man called Duvoin before?”

  Kostaridis said he did not remember, but didn’t think so. “Capitano, whatever you have in mind, it’s my duty to inform you that the seals were placed on this building by your own army. Trespassing is one thing, but —”

  “Breaking and entering is more like it, Epitropos. You taught me that.”

  With the key to the Duvoin deposit box in hand, Bora walked back to the vault. The lock had not been tampered with, the key turned smoothly, and the door opened flush with the built-in shelf. Bora pulled out the long, flat metal case housed inside. A bench next to the wall provided the surface on which to rest it, so he could lift the hasp and pull back the case lid.

  Inside lay a mid-size manila envelope which, when hefted, suggested contents of folded papers or documents. Bora undid the string around the fastener to open it, and the first things that slipped out were large-denomination Reichsmark and drachma banknotes. The German marks alone amounted to a thousand, nearly six months’ peacetime pay for a captain. Bora set the currency aside, and reached in for the rest. Blank forms. One, two Swiss passports. Between their grey-blue covers, they were registered in German–French–Italian, under two different names. One of these was Duvoin, Marcel Amédée, born 1891 in Küssnacht, residence given in Lucerne, 13 Löwenstrasse. Profession: antiquarian bookseller. Entry and exit stamps indicated trips to France, England, Germany, Italy. Clipped to the back cover were a typewritten sheet, business cards from Libreria Bemporad, Antiquarian Section, in Florence; from Banca Popolare di Milano, Agenzia Macello e Scalo Bestiame; Joseph Baer & Co., Publishers and Booksellers (est. 1785), Frankfurt am Main. The other passport had been issued to one Steiger, Federico, born 1886 in Zurich and resident there on Pelikanstrasse at the Hotel Pelikan. A commercial traveller in silk textiles, he appeared to frequent trade fairs in Germany (Leipzig Fair ticket) and Italy, and it had also been stamped in Belgium, China (Shanghai city map with two streets underlined) and the Soviet Union (last exit stamp, 1930). Both passports, and the identity sheets – Legitimationskarte – stored inside them, bore Alois Villiger’s photographs.

  Bora’s mouth went dry. He put everything back in the manila envelope and down the large right pocket of his British Army shorts. He was in a hurry to be on his own and think of a way to inform his Abwehr counterpart in Athens (hopefully Major Busch) of the unexpected development.

  “Anything I should know?” Kostaridis – who might have seen him handle the papers – looked in from the door.

  “No.”

  Iraklion, late afternoon of 4 June. This important diary entry will be long. It’s being written in the room Kostaridis found me downtown off Avenue 25 August. A good thing too; I desperately needed to wash and I’m burned to a crisp besides. So much for my refusing to use Nivea cream. The furnishings are basic, the view nil, but at least I can’t be thrown out on my ear.

  My head is reeling. Whatever Villiger did for the Reichskommissar, it went far beyond the study of racial characteristics. Is that why his file has disappeared from our Berlin office? Why then isn’t the SS Central Security Service in charge of investigating his death?

  Three aliases – or two at least! A scholar’s identity is more difficult to improvise than the others (businessmen who travel widely can more easily disappear into the woodwork), so I assume that, of the three, he really was Alois Villiger. The biographical note at the foot of one of his essays (I tore out the page and took it along from his library) gives detailed information anyone could check, especially university colleagues and administrators. First studies at Basel Seminary, then Friedrich Wilhelm University, Berlin; fieldwork with Italian and German archaeologists, apprenticeship with classical luminaries Antoine Meillet and Charles Bally, the latter incidentally “private tutor to the royal princes of Greece”.

  Textiles, antiquarian books and racial studies are curious occupations for one who might have once intended to become a Catholic priest. It’s imperative that I try to contact our office in Athens, and get the ball rolling in the direction of knowing who (or what) Villiger was. The list of deposit box renters produced nothing else of worth, but – cut off from my support system as I am – it goes without saying that the money is a godsend. Especially the drachmas, which I plan to use soon.

  Summarized below are the events of the day preceding my three-way talk with Sinclair.

  1. Agrali’s potshots aside, it was an uneventful return from the countryside. Predictably, the motorized patrol from Agios Andreas denied reports about the road being mined, and we travelled it back to town without complications.

  2. The surname Duvoin, which occasioned my opening of the deposit box, surfaced as I leafed through Villiger’s books at Ampelokastro, while Kostaridis frisked the Italian in the garden. Savelli’s claims of being “stolen from” may not be unfounded: I found his name penned on the frontispiece of a handful of volumes, and other surnames as well: the above-mentioned Duvoin, Fermor, Guarducci, the ubiquitous Pendlebury. Even Frances Allen, whose middle initial, L., as I learnt, stands for Liberty. The English having done most of the excavations on the island, it isn’t surprising that their names predominate. As I keep sifting through them, a few intriguing details emerge from Villiger’s makeshift bookmarks: in addition to postcards, calling cards, plus phone numbers and addresses pencilled on pages of desk calendars (leads impossible to follow at this time), the significant items are bank deposit slips and receipts. These were issued among others by the Greek branches of Banca d’Italia and Banco di Roma, plus the Heimsauer & Bröck Handelsbank in Lucerne, where one of his aliases supposedly resides! This is a significant Swiss concern founded by Theodor “Tuck” Heimsauer, married to Great-aunt Victoria Mary Ashworth-Douglas. The bank functioned as intermediary when my grandparents divested part of their art collection during the Crisis of ’29. Keeping all three branches of the publishing house open and fully manned cost them, and that’s how some fine Renaissance paintings now hang in Berne and Geneva. Poor Great-uncle Theodor – at fifteen I toured the capitals of eastern Europe with him, and my parents were afraid I’d get in trouble, so he worried from when we flew out until the day we landed again (he could relax: girls, especially ones my age, definitely took second place to sightseeing). It would all change a few months later in Rome, but learning the ropes with a stunning thirty-year-old was hardly getting in trouble.

  Anyhow, some of Villiger’s payments (which date from 1938) up to the year 1939 were routed to Crete through Turkish banks in Rhodes such as Notrica & Menasché or Isaac Alhadeff. A clever use of Jewish-owned lending institutions: was it to circumvent possible problems and disguise Villiger’s real work for us? Of the many scholars subsidized by their governments to scrape through Hellenic ruins – important though our Aryan roots may be – our man was far better paid than most.

  A note about Rifat Bey: when I insisted, he wouldn’t describe his missing dog to me; he said he doesn’t know what happened, and doesn’t want to talk about it. I think he’s lying, but that’s no
help. Given that three or four men, presumably the Turk’s hired hands, spied on Kostaridis as he approached the house, it would have been imprudent trying to force our way in. Whether or not Rifat Bey had any role in the shooting deaths, I bet money he did more than bury the dead dog. He probably helped himself to some of Villiger’s property: one more reason not to let us indoors. At about noon, after we slogged back down from Sphingokephalo, I noticed Kostaridis had brought nothing to eat. “Feeding the hungry” being one of the acts of corporal mercy I was taught as a child, I offered some of my canned meat and zwieback. He’d have none, because on Wednesday some observant Greek Orthodox refrain from eating. Apparently it’s in remembrance of the day Our Lord was tried. I’m neither Orthodox nor excessively pious, so I dug into my ration while he smoked. German cigarettes apparently don’t fall under the commandment of fasting.

  3. Finally, as planned, I walked from Ampelokastro to Skala, the location Preger’s men supposedly reached after leaving the garden (and before being ambushed at Stavrakia). It took me twenty-two minutes one way, but I did not have all the gear they carried, and the danger of ambush must have been more serious on 30 May. Half an hour sounds about right, so it seems the paratroopers’ platoon leader told the truth about this at least.

  Now for the lead I cajoled out of the straight-shouldered Lieutenant Sinclair: this cobbler (sutor) who lives by Chanià Gate, Domenikos a.k.a. Minos, qui et Minos to use the basic Latin Sinclair and I adopted to keep the interpreter from understanding, draws me like a magnet. For him, I gave up meeting the Allen woman tonight. If the cobbler is what I think, a ruffian who sells people and information for money, I’ll get him to point me in the right direction. I remember this kind of human dregs from Poland, where the likes of him were called szmalcownicy, or something very like it. I’m pleased to say I kicked one of them down three flights of stairs in Krakow.