Greeks Bearing Gifts

THIRTY-FIVE

It was almost five p.m. when I got back to the office to check my messages and telephone Lieutenant Leventis after driving Elli to her own office at the ministry on Amerikis Street. It seemed we both had to work late that night.

“Call me,” she’d said. “30931. Extension 134. Maybe we can go and have a drink tomorrow. Or we could go dancing at Kalabokas, perhaps. That’s a club I know. Do you dance?”

“It depends.”

“On what?”

“On who’s pulling the strings. The way I see it, when you’ve got to dance you’ve got to dance.”

“Next stop Broadway, huh?”

“As soon as I can get out of Greece.”

“Don’t be in too much of a hurry. That kiss this afternoon. I liked it. I’d like some more.”

“Good. Extension 134. I’ll arrange it.”

Telesilla had gone home but Garlopis was still there. He looked more nervous than was normal even for him.

“Mr. Dietrich received your telegram, sir. He is going to telephone again, at five o’clock his time, six ours. So I thought I’d better wait in case you needed any help with the international operator.”

“Kind of you. He telephoned before?”

“Twice. At three and at four. It seemed to be urgent.”

“Good. He must have discovered something important.”

“And did you find anything important when you were in Ermioni?”

“Yes, I think so. I’ve got some evidence that Siegfried Witzel and his friends on the Doris weren’t looking for sunken treasure any more than they were looking for the lost city of Atlantis. I think they were involved in an illegal weapons deal with Alois Brunner. Neff, too, for all I know. Trading black market Greek and Egyptian sculptures to obtain guns for Colonel Nasser and his Muslim Brotherhood for their war against the Israelis. Frankly it’s just the kind of cause that would attract an anti-Semite like Brunner. But from the way things panned out he must have figured he was being double-crossed and decided to wind up the partnership. Permanently.”

“These are troubled times we live in, sir.”

“That’s always been the rumor.”

“But surely this is good news. It means you’ve got something concrete to tell Lieutenant Leventis, doesn’t it? Enough to get him off your back, perhaps. Off both our backs.”

“Perhaps.”

Garlopis grinned sheepishly. “How did you get on with Miss Panatoniou?”

“Yes, that was interesting. We were followed all the way there and back.”

“By who?”

“Two men in a black sedan.”

“They were working for Leventis, perhaps.”

“Perhaps.”

“Did you tell her?”

“God, no. I didn’t want to distract her from me. She did an excellent job of paying me a great deal of probably unwarranted attention.”

“You think she was playing you?”

“My strings are still humming. But I have no idea what her game is. At least not while she’s using that chest of hers to breathe. It’s kind of distracting. She says she does a little extra work for Dimitri Papakyriakopoulos. Meissner’s lawyer. It seems he’s curious as to why I should want to meet with his client. And because he’s curious she is, too. Of course, she says it’s more than that. She says she likes me. But.”

“Of course.”

“Right now I’m trying to limit things between us to something platonic; the only trouble is that making love is so much more entertaining.”

Garlopis chuckled. “You’re absolutely right there, sir. Who was it that said a woman is like a tortoise; once she’s on her back you can do what you want with her.”

“It doesn’t sound much like Zeno.”

“No, perhaps you’re right. Anyway, you look like a man who knows what he’s doing.”

“That’s an easy mistake to make. You see, I’ve met her kind before. She’s a mortar bomb in a tight blouse. A man needs a tin hat and a lorry load of sandbags just to be near a girl like that. The trick is being somewhere else when she goes off.”

“She does have a remarkable figure, sir. Just what the doctor ordered, I’d have thought.”

“Always supposing that one can afford a doctor like that.”

Our discussion of Elli Panatoniou was all the excuse Garlopis needed to find a bottle of Four Roses in the desk drawer and pour us a couple while we waited for Dumbo’s call. There are some subjects, like analytic geometry and spiric sections, for which you need a drink and Elli’s figure was one of them; she had the most interesting curves since Diocles described a cissoid. After a while I sat down at Telesilla’s desk to type out a report on the day’s activities for Lieutenant Leventis. I saw no reason not to take his previous threat seriously. I mentioned the name of Spiros Reppas on the assumption he’d already heard it in connection with the house in Pritaniou; and I told Leventis that I’d been followed by two men in a dark sedan—I even gave him the license plate, just to be insolent. I didn’t say anything in my report about kissing Elli Panatoniou, but I figured that if the men following us had been his, they could tell him that themselves. Of course, the report was more or less pointless and mostly demonstrated that I was badly out of practice with a typewriter. But Leventis was right about one thing: It did make me feel like a cop again.

Garlopis read my report and smiled sadly.

“Perhaps next time I could type this for you, sir? In Greek. There are many mistakes. Perhaps the lieutenant will be more inclined to be sympathetic if your report is in Greek.”

“Next time.”

At last the phone rang. Garlopis answered it, said something in Greek to the operator, and then handed me the receiver.

“Munich,” he said, and pressed his head close to the backside of the earpiece so he could hear. His hair smelled of limes.

“Christof Ganz speaking.”

“About time. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day, Ganz. Where the hell have you been?”

Dietrich’s voice was testy and irritable like maybe he’d forgotten how much money I’d saved the company since taking up my employment. I swallowed the rest of my drink; it sounded as if I was going to need it. Garlopis smoothly refilled the glass.

“I’ve been out of the office, sir.”

“No kidding.”

“Like I said before, the Greek police are proving to be less than helpful. Did you ever try to adjust a claim with a dead body on the floor? It’s not so easy doing the paperwork.”

“I get that. It’s an awkward situation right enough. Naturally we feel bad having landed you in this situation. But sometimes that’s how it is. Adjusting a claim can be a tricky process. A claims man has to expect the unexpected. That’s what this business is all about. And sometimes the unexpected is a little more unpredictable than can reasonably be expected, especially when there’s a lot of money involved.”

“Did you find Max Merten?”

“No. I didn’t.” Dietrich sighed. “Look here, Ganz, the word from on high is that you’re to drop this whole thing. Right now. I’ve retained those lawyers in Piraeus on your behalf and told them to deal with the police through the usual channels. We will assist you in any way we can. Bail money, fines, legal fees, none of that is a problem. We’ll bring you home, right enough. You’ve just got to be patient and let the lawyers handle it now. But this whole line of inquiry needs to end. Siegfried Witzel’s claim for the Doris has been disallowed and that’s the end of it as far as MRE is concerned.”

“Is that what Mr. Alzheimer says?”

“Mr. Alzheimer, me, and God almighty. In that order, see? You’re not a cop anymore, you’re a goddamned insurance man. It’s time you started acting like one.”

“What’s the idea?”

“There isn’t any idea. There’s just orders. From upstairs. You’re to drop this inquiry like it was red-hot toilet paper. When you’re back home we’ll go out somewhere like the Hofbräuhaus and I’ll buy you a cheap dinner to celebrate.”

“An invitation like that I can hardly refuse.”

“Good.” Dietrich was oblivious to my sarcasm.

“Sure, boss. Anything you say.” It wasn’t what I felt like saying to Dumbo but it sounded a lot better than Go and fuck yourself. Working for MRE was still a good job for a man like me, with a car and expenses and what I most craved, which was a quiet life with a little respectability. I was determined to keep the job, in spite of what the big mouth in my square head felt like doing. My father would have been proud of me; he always did want me to go into something respectable like insurance. I picked up my glass and then drained it, a second time. “Was there anything else, sir?”

“No, that’s it, Ganz. Take care now. See you soon.”

I handed Garlopis the receiver and he dropped it on the cradle and shrugged. “Dale Carnegie he is not.”

“Dumbo’s usually all right. For an office man. But it sounds to me like someone’s been shaking his pram.”

“Perhaps it was Mr. Alzheimer.”

“Could be. In which case maybe someone leaned on Mr. Alzheimer.”

“Like who?”

“Frankly I’d rather not know. But I do know that in pride of place in Alzheimer’s office is a framed photograph of him looking very cozy with our own dear Konrad Adenauer. If, as Lieutenant Leventis says, Alois Brunner does have good connections in the current German government, then maybe Adenauer asked his old friend Alzheimer to have me lay off the case.”

“If you don’t mind me saying so, sir, none of that fits with Brunner being involved in selling arms illegally to the Egyptians. I mean why would the West German government, a NATO member for only a couple of years, risk upsetting its new allies by doing something like that? It doesn’t make sense. Unless anti-Semitism is still the policy of the German government.”

“Leventis said he thought maybe Brunner had been working for the German Federal Intelligence Service, the BND. So maybe he still is. Maybe this was an undercover operation. I don’t know. The minute you get the peekers involved, then the screen ripples in front of you like a mirage and before you know it Red Riding Hood turns out to be the wolf.” I lit a cigarette. “It’s beginning to look as though I’ll need to bribe that cop after all. Did you speak to your cousin at the Alpha Bank? About cashing that certified check?”

“Yes. And he tells me that he can make this happen quite easily. Now all we have to do is bribe someone at the Ministry of Public Order with a much smaller sum to provide you with a fake identity card in the name of Siegfried Witzel.”

“Will this do?”

I handed over the identity card that the Ermioni harbormaster had found floating in the sea at the spot where the Doris had gone down. The card was in poor condition but all the pertinent details were more or less legible.

“Oh, this will do very well,” said Garlopis. “Where did you find it?”

I explained where it had come from.

“The picture is so faded that it actually looks a bit like you.”

“That’s hardly a surprise. I’m a bit faded myself. Or more accurately, worn away like the relief on some ancient temple.”

“He suggests cashing the check at the bank in Corinth where he has a good friend who owes him a favor. That’s less than an hour’s drive north of here. It’s perfect for us. Nothing ever happens in Corinth. At least not since the earthquake of 1928 and the great fire of 1933.”

“Sounds like a poor choice of place to build a bank.”

Garlopis smiled. “We could go there the day after you visit Arthur Meissner in Averoff Prison, perhaps. On Saturday. Banks are always quiet on a Saturday.”

“Yes, that should help us focus on what we’re doing very nicely. There’s nothing like planning a serious crime to give an extra thrill to a prison visit.”