Greeks Bearing Gifts

THIRTY-ONE

Latsoudis & Arvaniti were located on the corner of Themistocles Street, in a modern building overlooking the main port of Piraeus, from where I could easily have taken a ferry to one of the Greek islands. After my conversation with Lieutenant Leventis I was seriously considering it.

Garlopis had at last swapped the Oldsmobile for a smaller Rover P4 and while he parked it I waited in the yellow church on the square and, but for the idea that there were other mugs who tried it already, I might have prayed. When he fetched me, he said the church was built on the ruins of the Temple of Venus, and being a bit of a pagan and generally fond of goddesses, I said it didn’t look like much of an improvement.

We went up to the firm’s offices and met with two lawyers, neither of whom was called Latsoudis or Arvaniti, who told us in a mixture of Greek and English and the pungent smoke of Turkish cigarettes that we had their sympathy, that one of them would gladly represent us in court, that what had happened was entirely typical of Athens, and that the Attica police were little better than the Greek army, and fascists to boot, for whom torture and the abuse of human rights were second nature, and that Captain Kokkinos fancied himself to be a man with a political future, not to say a potential dictator. It was best, they advised, that we do exactly what we were told, otherwise we should end up like many communist DSE fighters and KKE members and find ourselves sent to the island of Makronisos or, worse, imprisoned in Block 15, where lawyers were not allowed and conditions were nothing short of barbaric, even by Nazi standards. None of this was reassuring to me but as we left, Garlopis said that I should take nothing of what they had said too seriously and that the view of these lawyers was only representative of the kind of people who lived in Piraeus, who had no love for the people of Athens, which came as something of a surprise to me since Piraeus was only five kilometers from the center of the Greek capital.

“To my mind we would be better off being represented by a local firm,” said Garlopis as we made our way to the Archaeological Museum and our second meeting with Dr. Lyacos. “Such as the one I recommended to poor Mr. Witzel.”

“Another cousin, no doubt.”

“No. Although I do have a relation in the legal profession. My wife’s uncle Ioannis is a lawyer in Corinth, but I shouldn’t wish my worst enemy to be represented by him. Pegasus himself would take flight before retaining a man like Ioannis Papageorgopoulos.”

“There’s a brass nameplate I’d hate to have to engrave.”

“Look, I’m sure Mr. Dietrich is correct, that Latsoudis & Arvaniti are a perfectly good and highly respectable firm of lawyers. But if it was my money, I’d prefer a firm in Attica. Such as the one in our own office building.”

“Why the hell didn’t he recommend them, then?” I asked.

“Because outsiders don’t appreciate the antipathy that exists between Piraeus and Athens. No one could who doesn’t live here. Yes, Piraeus is on the doorstep of Athens, but it might as well be a hundred kilometers away, such is the loathing between these two cities. A man who lives in Athens would never be represented by a firm in Piraeus, or the other way round. But perhaps you would like me to explain this to you, sir.”

“Not today,” I said.

“Oh, it would take a lot longer than that.”

“I figured as much. It sounds a lot like the hatred between Munich and Berlin. Nobody else gets that either. Nobody else that matters, anyway. Only Germans.”

Things were quiet at the museum again. We were a bit early for our meeting with Dr. Lyacos so we walked around for a few minutes looking at the museum’s many exhibits. While it crossed my mind that the Nazis had managed to make all classical statuary look just a bit fascist—any one of the outsized bronze figures at the museum in Piraeus might easily have been banged out on Hitler’s orders by a stooge like Arno Breker—I wasn’t really looking; I was still preoccupied with what Lieutenant Leventis had said and for the first time in months I felt as if I needed an all-risks insurance policy.

Dr. Lyacos was wearing a yellow carnation in the lapel of a beige cotton suit, and a yellow bow tie. His previously grayish hair had a lot more yellow in it than before, as if freshly stained with nicotine, which made him look like some hennaed Sufi mystic or perhaps the oldest boy soprano in the church choir. Even the smoke from his cherrywood pipe looked vaguely yellow. All in all there was much too much yellow in the room. It was like staring through a bottle of brilliantine.

“It’s good of you to see us again, sir,” I said, and then explained how the real Professor Buchholz could not possibly have met with him in Piraeus, at which point Lyacos stared at me over the top of his half-moon glasses with the look of a dyspeptic judge. Garlopis translated from the Greek.

“Are you calling me a liar?” said Lyacos.

“No, sir. Not at all. What I’m saying is that the man you met was an impostor. That he was impersonating the real Professor Buchholz.”

“Well, who was he then?”

“That’s what I’m hoping to find out. I wondered if you could provide me with a physical description of the man you met.”

Lyacos took off his glasses, folded them into a box, and rubbed the end of his pencil-like nose. “Let’s see now. About sixty years old. Large. Overweight. Tall. About as tall as you, perhaps. Silver hair. Large. Trousers too high on his waist—I mean, the man’s trousers were virtually on his chest. Spoke good Greek, for a German.” He lit his pipe and considered the matter some more. “A little self-satisfied, perhaps. Large. I don’t know. Maybe not as old as sixty. Fifty, probably.”

I nodded. “Anything else?”

Lyacos shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. That’s about it, I’m afraid. But look, there was nothing wrong with his permissions. Those came straight from the ministry. And the signatures were impeccable. They couldn’t possibly have been fraudulent. Unless—”

“Yes?”

“Well, it’s not unknown for government officials in this country to take a bribe. Not that I’m saying anyone did, mind you. That’s up to you to determine. We’ve got used to the idea of our leaders lying to us and being corrupt; for most Greeks it doesn’t matter that they’re corrupt. We expect it. Why else would they enter office in the first place? But you surprise me. The man who sat in your chair seemed very polished. And exactly like a man who was a professor. Shall we say he was a gentleman? Yes. An academic sort of fellow, anyway. Well read, I should say. I mean he was quite convincing. Of course, it does explain the mistake he made about the small artifacts found on the wreck site by Herr Witzel. If you remember, I did mention before that these were identified by the professor as late Helladic when they were very definitely much earlier.”

“Thanks for your help,” I said. “Can I ask you one last thing? Assuming that this man meant to cheat your museum out of its share of any treasures found in the sea, can you tell me if there is much of a market in this kind of thing? I mean is there real money to be made?”

“Oh, yes. And a lot of these antiquities come through Piraeus. Egyptian, Byzantine, Assyrian, Islamic, Greek, you name it. Mostly it ends up in the hands of private collectors in the United States, but also in smaller city museums that are looking to put themselves on the cultural map. The black market trade in antiquities is worth a lot of money and these days it’s happening on an industrial scale. A good-condition Roman bust of the second century might be worth up to fifty thousand dollars. I’ve even heard that Nasser is using ancient Egyptian art to pay for illegal weapons.” He puffed at his pipe. “Do you think that’s what this man is up to?”

“I really don’t know. I can’t see a better reason.”

“You know my secretary, Kalliopi, she spent as much time with this man as I did. She might be able to add something to what I’ve told you, Mr. Ganz.”

Lyacos picked up the telephone and summoned his secretary to his office. A few minutes later a heavy, gray-haired woman of about fifty entered the room; she was wearing black and generally resembled a poorly erected Bedouin’s tent. From a distance she looked pretty good; up close I needed to see a good optician. It wasn’t that she was ugly or even plain, only that she’d reached a time in her life when romantic love was a locked door that didn’t need a key. I explained my mission and waited. She rubbed the stubble on her face, rolled her eyes a bit, and started talking in Greek, which Garlopis translated simultaneously.

“He was a big man . . . Tall, about one hundred and eighty-five centimeters, overweight, chest about a fifty-six, waist the same as my husband’s, which is a ninety-seven . . . Wheezy, bad breath, smoked a lot, walked like a duck . . . Silver hair . . . Brown, globular eyes, with next to no eyelashes . . . Never met your eye, though . . . He had beautiful hands, which were manicured. And he was always tapping the tips of his fingers when he was thinking . . . Jacket pockets full . . . Spoke good Greek . . . Nice watch . . . She saw a poster for a movie at the cinema near where she lives, just off Epirou Street. And there’s an American man on that poster that looks exactly like Professor Buchholz. Or at least the man who said he was Professor Buchholz. Not the leading man . . . Merely a character actor . . . Not Orson Welles . . . Only she can’t remember the name of the movie.”

I looked at my watch and saw that it was getting near the museum’s closing time.

“Maybe we could run the lady home,” I said, “and then she could point the man out to us. On the poster, I mean. If Dr. Lyacos can spare her.”

About half an hour later we pulled up outside the Royal Cinema. The movie playing was The Mask of Dimitrios, with Peter Lorre and Zachary Scott. Evil genius ran the line on the poster, plundering for profit and pleasure. I hadn’t seen it. I’d had enough of evil genius to last a lifetime. But Garlopis had seen it, several times.

“This film is very popular in Athens,” he said. “I think it’s always playing somewhere in the city. Probably because it’s partly set here, and in Istanbul.”

But it wasn’t either of those two actors that Kalliopi now pointed out to us. It was a fat actor, dressed in an overcoat, a spotted silk scarf, and a bowler hat. He was holding a Luger, too. Hers had been a good description, as good as any police artist’s. But she was wrong about one thing: The fat man was the leading actor in this picture. He was an Englishman called Sydney Greenstreet.

“I believe he plays the part of Mr. Peters, sir,” said Garlopis.

And there was one more detail Kalliopi remembered before we waved her goodbye.

“The man had bad teeth,” said Garlopis, translating again. “From smoking probably. With a single gold tooth, in the front, on the upper jaw.”

“I see.”

“So it would seem we’re looking for a German version of Sydney Greenstreet,” Garlopis added, redundantly, because by now I knew exactly who had been so meticulously described, and it wasn’t Sydney Greenstreet. Kalliopi had painted a picture of a man I knew myself, the very same man who’d got me the job at MRE, in return for the favor I dealt him back in Munich.

Without a question the man she’d described to a T was Max Merten.