Greeks Bearing Gifts

THIRTY-TWO

Back at the office in Athens, Telesilla was waiting patiently to go home with a large bag of groceries. But first she gave Garlopis his messages and then wrote out the telegram I quickly dictated asking Dietrich to try to contact Max Merten in Munich. The last time I’d seen him he’d told me he was going on vacation and I now assumed he’d meant he was planning to impersonate a German professor of Hellenism in order to mount an expedition to dive in the Aegean Sea for some ancient treasures he could sell on the black market. It was just the sort of thing German lawyers do on their holidays; that or a little quiet embezzlement. If Dumbo Dietrich didn’t find Merten, then this would tell me that maybe he was somewhere in Greece, lying low until he was sure that Alois Brunner wasn’t looking for him, or possibly trying to find another boat, unaware of the fact that his frogman-friend Witzel was now dead; but that he’d been in Greece I was now absolutely certain.

It worried me that Max Merten could have played me for a fool, although I could hardly see how, or why. But the last thing I needed was for my nice, boring, reasonably paid job to be taken away before I’d even taken delivery of the company car. Just as worrying was the possibility that Criminal Secretary Christian Schramma had been Merten’s spanner all along, even when I thought he’d been working a double-cross; that perhaps the murders in Bogenhausen of GVP Party donor General Heinrich Heinkel and his Stasi friend had been ordered by Merten himself. And I’d been the mug who’d insisted the lawyer should keep the money, which was probably what he’d been after from the very beginning. No questions asked and money to help fund a little expedition in Greece, because chartering a boat is expensive, even when it was a boat that had been stolen from Jews.

But I’d already decided on my next course of action, which was to take a drive down to Ermioni, the town on the Peloponnesian coast where Siegfried Witzel had said the lifeboat from the Doris had come ashore, and there to ask the local coast guard for more information. I didn’t know that I expected to discover anything useful but at least that way I’d be doing something better than sitting around in the office waiting for Arthur Meissner to decide if he would meet with me in Averoff Prison, or for Dumbo Dietrich to answer my latest telegram. Besides, I needed to look like I was doing something if only to keep Lieutenant Leventis off my case. I’d met a few high-pressure cops in my time—Heydrich, Nebe, and Mielke, to name but three—and while Leventis wasn’t a killer like them, in his own way he was effective. Without my passport I couldn’t leave Greece and, until it was returned to me, I was the lieutenant’s straw man just as surely as if he’d been the Kaiser and I his most slavish subject.

“Mr. Papakyriakopoulos telephoned while we were out,” Garlopis said after Telesilla had left for the telegraph office. “Arthur Meissner has agreed to meet with us on Friday evening, sir.”

“That’s something, I suppose. Although I really don’t know what I’m going to ask him. Or exactly how I’m going to improve his weekend. Not to mention my own.”

“But I thought you told Lieutenant Leventis that you might be able to persuade him to tell you about Alois Brunner.”

“I had to tell that slippery cop something. He’s the type who could find every crime in the Bible and write someone up for it. But I don’t see why Meissner would tell me anything new. Leventis isn’t offering much of a deal yet. He’ll speak up for Meissner if Meissner contributes something useful about Brunner. That wouldn’t be enough to convince me to spill my guts. And if he knows nothing, then what? We’re back to square one.”

“Yes, I do see the problem, sir. I must say this is all quite worrying.”

I put my hand on the Greek’s shoulder and tried to look reassuring. “Look, I don’t think Leventis is that interested in you, my friend. So I wouldn’t worry too much. It’s me he wants turning the millstone in the Gaza.”

“Because you used to be a detective in Berlin.”

“That’s right. A German detective to help a Greek detective solve a German murder.”

“Yes, well, in Athens one can understand that kind of Socratic dialogue.”

“For now what matters is that as far as he’s concerned, you’re just a nobody.”

“It’s kind of you to say so, sir. As a matter of fact, I’ve asked around about this man, Leventis, to see if my first opinion about him—on the likelihood of his taking a bribe—might have been wrong.”

“And?”

“By all accounts he’s perceived to be an inflexibly honest man.”

“They’re usually the most expensive people to try and corrupt.”

“This is not to say that it’s impossible, sir.”

“Yes, but the first time you saw him you said you didn’t think he could be bought.”

“Nobody is above being bribed in Greece. Companies, judges, prime ministers, kings—them especially—everyone in Greece has to have his fakelaki, his little envelope. It’s just a case of working out what might be in it. Even a man like Stavros Leventis would probably not be above five thousand drachmas. At most ten.”

“I might raise a thousand drachmas on expenses. But that’s it.”

Garlopis lit a cigarette. “Is it possible that Mr. Dietrich in Munich would authorize this kind of unaccountable expenditure?”

“I doubt it.”

“Not even for a man who has saved them from paying out on the Doris? A quarter of a million drachmas.”

“I don’t believe they think like that. I was just doing my job.”

“Then we are forced to consider other methods of fund-raising. Perhaps, during the course of your inquiry, you may see the opportunity for a little bit of quiet larceny. In which case you would certainly be advised to take it.”

“You make it sound as if there’s five thousand drachmas just lying around in this town. There isn’t.”

“You’re wrong about that. If I might make a suggestion?”

“Please do.”

“The certified company check for twenty-two thousand drachmas payable to Siegfried Witzel.”

“It was on the table at the scene of his murder in Pritaniou. Almost certainly it’s now police evidence.”

“Almost certainly it is not.” He took out his wallet and then unfolded the same certified company check, which he handed to me with a smile. “I took the liberty of taking it when we left the murder scene. I suppose you’d like me to tell you why.”

“Go ahead. Meanwhile I’ll try and figure out the real reason.”

“For safekeeping, you understand. Just in case one of those uniformed policemen was tempted to steal it.”

“You sly old dog. But how do we—?”

“I have a cousin, sir, who works for the Alpha Bank. I think that for a small commission he might be able to help us out. Of course, we should have to be careful to cash the check at a smaller branch outside Athens, mostly probably somewhere like Heraklion, or Corinth—so that it might seem the check was presented for payment before Herr Witzel’s unfortunate death. It could also require that you should impersonate Siegfried Witzel. But then that shouldn’t be too difficult for a German, with the help of a Greek, that is.”

“You are a man of many parts, Garlopis.”

“Tell that to Mrs. Garlopis. Hitherto, it’s only the one part that has been of concern to her.”

I clapped him on the shoulder. “Marriage is hell but loneliness is worse.”

“True.”

“I’m not saying we should bribe that cop. But we ought to have the means to do so at our disposal, just in case it proves necessary. So go ahead and make the arrangements to get the check cashed.”

“A wise precaution, sir.”

“Can I see that map of Greece in the drawer?” I asked.

“Which one, sir? We have several.”

“The Peloponnese. I’m taking a day trip to Ermioni. Maybe I can pick up some information on what happened to Witzel and his party when they came ashore after the Doris sank. At least that way I can make Leventis believe I’m actually making inquiries. Perhaps you’d be kind enough to tell him that’s where I’m going tomorrow.”

“Good idea.”

I hadn’t yet told Garlopis that I’d recognized the description given by Kalliopi in front of the cinema, that Max Merten was the Sydney Greenstreet lookalike, and that I knew him. After what Leventis had said about Garlopis I thought it best to keep him in the dark on that one—for the time being anyway. He took the map out and handed it to me. I unfolded it and spread it on the desk.

A cursory glance at the map was explanation enough for the wars of antiquity. Greece was mostly two areas of land—a peninsula on a peninsula—separated by the Gulf of Corinth. Until 1893 and the completion of the Corinth Canal, these two peninsulas had been connected by a piece of land about six kilometers long that resembled nothing quite so much as the union of two sexually reproducing animals—the north mounting the south, or Athens mounting Sparta, depending on how you looked at these things. The rest of Greece was just hundreds of islands, which gave the country one of the longest coastlines in Europe and probably one of the most independent and ungovernable populations in the world. How Nazi Germany had ever thought it might control a country like Greece was a mystery to me and likely to the High Command, as well, which was probably why, until the fall of Mussolini, they had ceded control of the Peloponnese to the Italians. The invasion of Greece was, arguably, even greater evidence of Hitler’s madness than the invasion of the Soviet Union.

“Ermioni,” I said, trailing my finger along the meandering coastline. “Looks like a two- or three-hour drive from here.”

“We’d best get an early start,” said Garlopis.

“I’ve made other plans. No, I think maybe you should stay here and speak to your cousin at the bank.”

“But you’ll need someone to translate, sir. Ermioni is only a small port town. They still eat kokoretsi. Believe me, you don’t ever want to know what that is. They’re peasants. I doubt you’ll find anyone who speaks English there, let alone German.”

“That’s all right,” I said. “I’ll be taking someone who speaks German. Someone Greek. Someone who’s a lot better-looking than you.”

“You intrigue me, sir.”

“I don’t mean to. And you can park that intrigue somewhere quiet, Garlopis. We’ll be back before dark, I expect.”

“This wouldn’t be the woman from the Ministry of Economic Coordination, would it? Miss Panatoniou? The very good-looking lady who was at Brettos who, you told me, wishes to improve her German?”

“Yes.”

“I must say, teaching a foreign language never looked like such fun.” Garlopis grinned. “She’s a beauty. You’ll forgive me if I say so, sir, but I’m impressed.”

“No need to be.”

“If you don’t mind me asking, sir, does she know that you’re under open arrest? That Leventis has threatened to throw you in jail unless you help him investigate Witzel’s murder?”

“No. She doesn’t. She knows I’m investigating the loss of the Doris. And I imagine Mr. Papakyriakopoulos must have told her that I’ve asked to see his client, Arthur Meissner, but as of this moment she hasn’t mentioned that.”

“So on the face of it, she’s going for the sheer pleasure of your company. Interesting.”

“Isn’t it? To be perfectly honest I have absolutely no idea why she’s agreed to spend the day with me. But I’m planning to have a hell of a lot of fun finding out.”