Greeks Bearing Gifts

TWENTY-FIVE

There was a police radio on somewhere or maybe I was just hearing a few garbled, half-heard, barely understood words through the white noise that was my own thoughts. In the lieutenant’s office, men and a few women came and went like the crew on a ship, handing him reports, which mostly he ignored. Eventually he got up and closed the frosted-glass door. With his glasses off Leventis looked a bit punchy; but with them on, his eyes missed nothing. He had seen my own eyes linger on Brunner’s photograph for a little too long, perhaps. The man I’d met in my hotel bar was a war criminal. And not just any war criminal but one of the most wanted war criminals in Europe. It was sometimes a shock to realize that I wasn’t the only German with a past. But I hardly wanted to confess to having met the man until I knew what he’d been after. Especially as he’d been a colleague of Adolf Eichmann. I’d met Eichmann once or twice myself, and I hardly wanted to admit this either. Not to some Greek cop I hardly knew. I liked Leventis. But I didn’t trust him.

“You recognize him, Commissar?”

“No.”

“You looked like you know him, maybe.”

“I was taking a good look at him, that’s all, just in case I did. I’m an ex-cop, remember? So old habits die hard. I was stationed in Paris for a while during the war and I was thinking it was at least possible that I’d met your man, Brunner. But our dates don’t match. By June 1943 I’m afraid I was back in Germany. Besides, people look different when they’re not in uniform. Behave differently, too. This fellow looks like he’s on vacation.”

“You could help me to find him.”

“I already said I would, if I could.”

“Yes, but maybe you were just saying that to get your passport back and save yourself a trip to jail. The fact as I see it, Commissar, is that you have a moral duty to help me.”

“How’s that?”

“Because you need to play your part in restoring your country’s reputation. In the weeks and months after Germany invaded Greece this city was systematically starved by the Germans. Tens of thousands died. There were bodies of children lying dead in front of this very police headquarters and nothing any of us could do about it. And yet here we are, more than ten years after the end of the war and Germany has yet to pay a penny in reparations to the Greek government for what happened. But it’s not just about money, is it? Germany’s got plenty of that now, thanks to your so-called economic miracle. No, I believe collective guilt can be reduced more meaningfully by individual action. In this case, yours. At least, that’s the way I look at it. This would be a more worthwhile kind of atonement than a mere bank transfer, Commissar, for what you Nazis did to Greece.”

“For years I succeeded in not being a Nazi,” I said. “It was difficult, sometimes dangerous—especially in the police. You’ve no idea. But now that I’m here I discover I was a Nazi all along. Next time I come to your office I’ll wear an SS uniform and a monocle, carry a riding whip, and sing the Horst Wessel song.”

“That might help. In any Greek tragedy death is always dressed in black. But seriously, Commissar, for most Greeks there is no difference between a German and a Nazi. The very idea of a good German is still strange to us. And perhaps it always will be.”

“So maybe a Greek killed Siegfried Witzel, after all. Maybe he was killed because he was a German. Maybe we’ve all got it coming.”

“You won’t find anyone in Greece arguing against an opinion like that. But I’m thinking that as a German you might have some insights with this case that I couldn’t possibly have. Let’s not forget that two men have been murdered in Athens. And one of them was your insured claimant.”

We were talking but only half of me was listening to what Leventis was saying; the larger part of my mind was still trying to work out exactly why Alois Brunner had struck up a conversation at the bar of the Mega Hotel. Was it possible that Brunner had made me his stooge to help him find Siegfried Witzel so he could murder him? It would certainly explain why Witzel had been carrying a gun and why he’d been so reluctant to tell us his address: he was afraid. Still stalling for time I said, “I’ll help you, Lieutenant, okay?”

Even as I spoke my fingers were holding the same business card in my pocket that Brunner had given me himself. Georg Fischer: That was what he was calling himself now. What would happen if I called the number on the card? Was the number even real? And who’d told Brunner that I was at the Mega Hotel? That I might lead him to Witzel? Not Garlopis, although in that stupid blue Olds he’d have been easy to tail to and from the airport. Perhaps someone back in Germany had told Brunner I was on the way to Athens. Someone from Munich RE. Maybe Alzheimer himself. After all, Alzheimer knew Konrad Adenauer—there was that photograph of the two men on his desk. And if Alzheimer knew the Old Man, then perhaps he also knew someone in the German BND. But it was almost as if Brunner had been expecting me.

“But since you mentioned moral duty, Lieutenant, I feel obliged to say that it cuts two ways. If I am going to help you, I’ll need some kind of written assurance that you’ll keep your word and let us go. But supposing this was nothing to do with Brunner or supposing he’s already left Greece, what then? I’d hate to find that you were more interested in your clear-up rate than in our innocence.”

“All right. That’s fair enough.” Leventis leaned across his desk and pointed a forefinger as thick as a rifle barrel straight at my head. “But first I need you to ante up, to show me that you’re in the game. And then we’ll talk about immunity from prosecution.”

“Like a suggestion from one detective to another, perhaps?”

“That might work.”

“I’m trying to think of something.”

“Then let me help you. There’s a German interpreter who’s currently on trial in Athens for war crimes.”

“Arthur Meissner. I read about that in the paper. Yes. Maybe he knows something that might help. Maybe he knew Brunner.”

“As a matter of fact, he did. He knew all of the Nazis who controlled Greece—Eichmann, Wisliceny, Felmy, Lanz, Student. But under Greek law I’m forbidden from trying to interrogate him now that he’s on trial. Or to offer him any kind of a deal.”

“He might speak to me. Because I’m not a Greek.”

“I had the same thought.”

“Where is he now?”

“In Averoff Prison.”

“Look, you’ll forgive me for saying so, Lieutenant, but a man who was merely a Greek interpreter doesn’t sound like the worst war criminal I ever heard of. My own boss in the Berlin Criminal Police, General Arthur Nebe, was a very career-minded man who commanded a killing unit that massacred more than forty-five thousand people. That’s what I call a war criminal.”

“To be perfectly honest with you, Commissar, Meissner’s merely a man who was unwise enough to cooperate a little too enthusiastically with the occupation authorities. More of a collaborator than a war criminal. But it’s a subtle difference in Greece. Too subtle for most people, given the fact that there are no German war criminals who’ve ever been tried for their crimes here in Greece. That’s right. None at all. A few were tried for so-called hostage crimes committed in southeast Europe, but those trials were only in Germany. And most of those convicted were released years ago, pardoned at the instigation of the Americans and the British, who established the Greek federal republic as a bulwark against the Soviet Union at the beginning of the Cold War. Among these men was Wilhelm Speidel, the military governor of Greece from 1943, the man responsible for numerous directives authorizing mass murders, including the massacre in Kalavryta. He was released from the Landsberg Prison in 1951. He was originally sentenced to a twenty-year prison term.”

“That’s truly shocking,” said Garlopis. “Isn’t it, Herr Ganz?”

“So you’ll forgive me for saying so, Commissar, but the trial of Arthur Meissner is as near as we’ve ever got to any kind of a war crimes trial here in Greece. Maybe now you understand why I was talking about your moral duty to help me find Brunner.”

“I can certainly see why you would put it in those terms, Lieutenant,” said Garlopis. “And may I say that as a Greek who loves his country I will do all I can to assist Herr Ganz in any way he sees fit.”

Resisting the obvious temptation again to tell Garlopis to shut up, I put a cigarette in my mouth—it was the last one from the packet Alois Brunner himself had given me—and lit up, which gave me enough time to consider my situation in a little more detail. I wanted nothing to do with what Leventis was suggesting; keeping far away from any of my old comrades was a top priority for Bernhard Gunther. And I had no more time for moral duty than I had for taking early retirement. But I needed to string Leventis along; to make him think I was helping him without getting myself too involved. After all, like Brunner, I was also living under a false name, with a false passport to go with that.

“Well, what exactly did he do?” I asked. “This Meissner fellow.”

“It’s certain that he helped himself to the property of Greeks and Greek Jews. Some of the other charges—rape and murder—look rather more difficult to prove.”

“Is a deal possible? Would you at least be prepared to speak up in court on his behalf if he was to provide some information leading to the capture of Alois Brunner?”

“I’d have to speak to the state prosecutor. But maybe.”

“I’ll need more than that if I do speak to Meissner. Even if he can’t deliver information on Brunner it’s possible he might give up someone else just as important. Come on, Lieutenant. This man needs some life insurance.”

“I will say this: If we were to catch a whale like Brunner, it would certainly take all the attention off a sprat like Meissner. And if he helped us to do it, I wouldn’t be surprised if we let him go.”

“So let me speak to Meissner in private, at the prison. Just the two of us. It may be that I can persuade him to talk.”

Leventis looked at his watch. “If we’re quick we can just catch Papakyriakopoulos. That’s the name of Meissner’s lawyer. Every Friday evening, after a week in court, he always goes for a drink at an old bar called Brettos, which is about a ten-minute walk from here. I doubt he’ll speak to me, but he might unload something to you.”