Greeks Bearing Gifts

THIRTY-SEVEN

I strolled out of the Averoff Prison door and through the main gate with some air under my blue suede Salamanders because prison always affected me that way. Whichever way you walk out of the cement—innocent or guilty—you’re always grateful. I was planning on having a hot bath and a drink and a square meal, and maybe an evening on the dance floor with a nice girl and all the other things they take away from you when you’re inside. When you’ve done time, you never again take time for granted. I guess all that nostalgia made me a little preoccupied and unprepared for what happened next. Besides, it was a professional-looking operation, the way the navy-blue Pontiac pulled up with the big doors opening smoothly before the Goodyears had squealed to a stop, and how the two innocent bystanders approaching me from opposite ends of the sidewalk turned out to have neat little pocket automatics almost hidden in their hands and were not quite so innocent as they’d seemed. The next minute I was in the back of the car with four men who looked much fitter than I was and we were heading east on Tsocha, and then southwest on Vasileos Konstantinou. No one said anything, not even me when they frisked me for a Bismarck. It was a different car but I wondered if these were the same guys who’d followed me to Ermioni. I figured that one or more of the usual things were probably about to happen—some threats, a beating, a little physical torture, something worse—and there was no point in protesting too much, not yet; none of them was even listening, anyway. I was just a package to move from A to B and so far, they’d done it very well. It was a story I already knew by heart and I only hoped they could understand German or English when and if it was my turn to speak. I wondered what Garlopis had made of it. Had he even noticed what happened? If he’d seen me being snatched off the street, would he call Leventis? And if he hadn’t because he was asleep, how long would he stay napping before he realized I was late coming back to the car? How long would he wait before knocking on the prison door to inquire in his obsequious but somehow endearing way if they’d decided to keep me there overnight? None of that worried me, particularly. What with the Colt .25s pressed against each of my overworked kidneys and the cold expressions on all four faces, I had enough to worry about on my own account.

On Vasileos Konstantinou, the Pontiac stopped in front of an impressive, horseshoe-shaped stadium that resembled a set from Demetrius and the Gladiators and the car doors opened again. I was obliged to get out and walk, and with one or two citizens still around I felt able to protest my treatment, a little, even with a small gun discreetly in my side.

“I feel it’s only fair to warn you boys I was at the Berlin Olympics in ’36. I managed to get around the stadium and up to my seat in under fifteen minutes. A world record at the time.”

Without reply they walked me to the bottom of the first tier and pointed up to the top one, where high above the track a tiny figure was seated like the only spectator at the matinee.

“Go up there,” said one of the men. “Now. And best not to keep the lady waiting, eh?”

“I never do if I can help it,” I said, and started to climb.

This wasn’t as easy as it looked, since the first marble-clad step was much higher than seemed appropriate; probably this was an easy step to take if you’d been wearing a short tunic or maybe nothing at all, ancient Greek style, but to anyone else it was a bit of a stretch. After that the going was easy; at least it was if you didn’t mind climbing up the stadium’s forty-four levels. I counted them because it helped to stop me from getting angry at the way I’d been summoned to meet a woman I’d never met before and a woman I didn’t find attractive—there was nothing wrong with my eyes; she was much too old for me, which is to say she was about my age. I made a description of her for the police artist inside my head as, ignoring the excellent views of the Acropolis and the Royal Gardens, I completed the rest of the climb: A tall, striking woman with a large mane of dark gray hair gathered in a loose plait at the back of her neck like a Greek caryatid’s. She wore a short dark red silk jacket, a mustard-yellow shirt, a long brown skirt, and soft leather boots. Her face was strong and mannish and as brown as a berry. She carried no handbag and wore no jewelry, just a man’s watch, and in her hand was a red handkerchief. She looked like a bandit queen.

“What, no friends?” I said.

“No friends.”

“Don’t you get lonely, sitting by yourself?”

“I never get lonely—not since I learned what other people are like.”

She spoke fluent German, although I also recognized that this wasn’t her first language.

“You’re right. It’s only when we’re young that we need friends and think they’re important. When you get to our age you realize friends are just as unreliable as anyone else. For all that, it’s been my experience that the people who never get lonely are the loneliest people of all.”

“Come and sit down.” She patted the marble seat next to her as if it might actually be comfortable. “Impressive, isn’t it? This place.”

I sat down. “I can hardly contain my excitement.”

“It’s the Panathenaic Stadium, in case you were wondering,” she said. “Built in 330 BC, but only faced in marble in the second century AD. The Greeks ran races here and the Romans mounted gladiatorial shows. Then for hundreds of years it was just a quarry, until 1895 when, at the expense of a rich Alexandrian Greek, it was restored to what you see now, so that the first Olympic Games of the modern era might be held here in 1896. That Greek’s name was George Averoff.” She smiled a wily, gap-toothed smile. “I imagine his name is not unfamiliar to you, Herr Ganz.”

“I’ve heard of him. He seems to have been a very civic-minded sort of man, for a Greek. Although speaking for myself I’d much prefer to have my own name on a park bench or on a check made out to cash than on a prison or warship.”

“I’d forgotten about the warship. You’re well informed.”

“No, not even a bit. For example, I don’t even know who you are or what you want. Just for future reference it’s normal practice for the muscle with the gun to introduce the bully who’s trying to look tough.”

“It’s not important who I am,” she said.

“You underestimate yourself, lady.”

“Better make sure you don’t make the same mistake. And in case you hadn’t already worked it out, I’m not a lady.”

“It’s probably not very polite of me but I can’t disagree with you there.”

“If you do it certainly won’t matter. That’s the great thing about this place. With sixty-six thousand empty seats we can make a scene and no one will even notice. More important than who I am is your conversation with Arthur Meissner at Averoff Prison. I’d like to know all of what he said. Every detail.”

“What’s it to you?”

“This will help to answer that question, perhaps,” she said, and pulling up the sleeve of her shirt she revealed a number tattooed on her forearm.

“It helps a little. But I need a little more to work with here. I’m German. Imagination was never my strong suit. I think I’ll have to see this picture in full Technicolor.”

“Very well. If you insist. Until 1943 I lived in Thessaloniki. My family were Sephardic Jews originally from Spain, who left there in 1492, after the Alhambra Decree ordering our expulsion. For four hundred and fifty years Jews like me and my family lived and prospered in Thessaloniki, and persecution seemed like a distant memory until July 1942 and the Black Sabbath, when the Germans arrived and rounded up all of the men in the city center. Ten thousand Jewish men of all ages were drafted for forced labor but first these men were obliged to prove that they were fit for work. This was not done for humanitarian reasons, of course, but so the SS could have some fun. After the long journey from Germany, they were bored and needed amusement. And what could be more amusing than a bit of old-fashioned Jew-baiting. So for the rest of the day, ten thousand Jewish men were made to do hard physical exercise, at gunpoint. Those who refused were beaten half to death or had Alsatian dogs set on them. It wasn’t cool like it is now; no, this was midsummer and the temperature was over thirty degrees centigrade. Many of them died, including my own grandfather. We didn’t know it then but he was lucky, for much worse was to come, and over the next few months almost sixty thousand Jews were deported to the death camps of Eastern Europe. Along with seventeen members of my family, I was sent to Auschwitz, which is where I learned to speak German. But subsequently I also learned this: that I was the only member of my family who survived and not because I was a doctor—the Nazis had no use for a doctor who was a Jew. No, I survived because of a simple clerical error. You were put to work if your age at the time of your arrival in Auschwitz was between sixteen and forty. At the time I was age forty-one and so I should have been gassed along with my mother, my grandmother, and my three elder sisters. But an SS clerk at Auschwitz had incorrectly noted my year of birth as 1912 instead of 1902, and that saved my life. Because of this mistake the camp authorities believed I was under forty and that I should be put to work in Block 24, which was their brothel. I’m alive but it has to be admitted that part of me died in Auschwitz. For example, I never practiced medicine again. The things I saw doctors—German doctors—do at Auschwitz convinced me that man was unworthy of modern medicine.”

“Could have been worse. You might have been a lawyer. They say you’re never more than six feet from a lawyer.”

“So now I do something different. Now I protect people, my people, in a less prophylactic way.”

“Would it make any difference now if I said I’m sorry?”

“Good God.” The woman next to me laughed and then covered her mouth. “That’s a surprise. I’m sorry but you’re the first German I’ve met since the war who ever said sorry. Everyone else says, ‘We didn’t know about the camps’ or ‘I was only obeying orders’ or ‘Terrible things happened to the Germans, too.’ But no one ever thinks to apologize. Why is that, do you think?”

“An apology seems hardly adequate under the circumstances. Maybe that’s why we don’t say it more often.” I reached for my cigarettes and then remembered I’d given them to Arthur Meissner.

“I wish that was true. But I’m not sure it is.”

“Give us time. By the way, is there another reason we’re here? Or was it just George Averoff and a classical history lesson?”

“Now I’m very glad you mentioned that. As you will have noticed, the stadium is open at one end, like a giant horseshoe. Anyone in one of those office buildings to the north might have a fine view of what was happening on the track, or indeed of the two of us sitting here now. Don’t you agree?”

“Sure. And having seen Greek television I couldn’t blame anyone if they were watching us with greater interest.” I stood up for a moment and stared over the parapet; at the top, the stadium must have been twenty-five meters above ground level. “It’s lucky I’ve got a head for heights.”

“My only interest in your head is what’s in it and if you can keep it on your shoulders. You see I have a man on one of those rooftops. And he’s not there for his own entertainment. He’s a trained marksman with a high-powered rifle who hates Germans even more than I do, if that were even possible. An American rifle with a telescopic sight, which he says has an effective range of about one thousand yards. I should estimate that it’s less than half of that to those rooftops, wouldn’t you agree? So by that standard it ought to be an easy shot for him.”

I said nothing but I was suddenly feeling very uncomfortable, like I had a persistent itch on my scalp and all the Drene shampoo in the world wasn’t going to fix that. I sat down again, quickly. Now I really did want a cigarette.

“Here’s how this works. If I decide that you have been anything less than totally cooperative, then I shall signal to my man and his spotter and—well, you can guess what will happen, can you not? I guarantee that you won’t leave this stadium alive, Herr Ganz.”

“How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

“You don’t. And let’s hope you never have to find out. It’s one of those fiendishly German questions that used to fascinate us Jews in the camps. Is there water in the showerheads, or is there not? Who knew for sure? The lies you told. The way you used language to obfuscate the truth. ‘Special treatment’ used to mean a lifesaving operation in a Swiss clinic; thanks to Germany it now means a bullet in the back of the head and a shallow grave in Ukraine. But in anticipation of your own question I brought you this small proof that I am indeed telling you the truth.”

She handed me a rifle bullet. It was a .308 Winchester cartridge. And it was just the kind of round a sniper would have used over a distance like the one she’d described. I was trying to keep my head but the prospect of losing half of it meant I was already sweating profusely. I’d seen enough comrades hit by snipers in the trenches to know the fiendish damage a sniper could inflict.

“I know, there’s still room for doubt,” she said. “But that’s as much proof as you’re going to get right now, short of my giving him the prearranged signal. At which point it really won’t matter, will it? This is why I’m wearing reds and browns, as a matter of fact. These are my old clothes. In case some of your blood and brains splash onto me.”

She was smiling but I had the very distinct impression that she was perfectly serious, that she really had chosen clothes and even a color scheme that might not show a bit of arterial spray. I tried to match her cool manner but it was proving difficult.

“Can I keep this bullet as a souvenir? It will make a nice change from an evil-eye key fob.”

“Sure. Why not? But choose your next joke very carefully, Herr Ganz, because the next bullet won’t be quite as harmless as that one you’re holding in your hand.”

“You know, suddenly I’m very glad that I apologized.”

“So am I. It’s a good start for you, right enough. If you weren’t a German I might actually like you. But since you are—”

“I take it you’re not from the International Olympic Committee.”

“No. I’m not.”

“And you can’t be Greek NIS. I doubt they’d murder me here in Athens. So then: You must be from the Institute. In Tel Aviv.”

“You really are well informed. For an insurance man. Only before this you were a Berlin detective and you worked in Homicide—in the Murder Commission, which is to say you investigated murders instead of committing them, like so many of your colleagues. Many Jews met very grisly ends at the hands of German police battalions, did they not? But clearly Lieutenant Leventis has some faith in you, otherwise he would not have sanctioned you to negotiate a secret deal with Arthur Meissner. I’m reliably informed that he has done this because he has some hope of finding and arresting Alois Brunner. And that’s where I come in, because if anyone is going to arrest that bastard Brunner I want it to be me. He’s one of several major war criminals we’re looking to arrest.”

“Are you sure you mean arrest? I say that as one who has just been informed there is a rifle pointed at my ear.”

“Oh, very much arrest, yes. Have no fear, if he is here in Greece we’ll spirit Brunner to Israel for trial. A real trial in front of the whole world, with real lawyers and a real verdict as opposed to the shameful war crimes trials you’ve conducted in Germany. Because let’s face it, Herr Ganz, even the Nazis who were tried and convicted by Germany have had a pretty easy time of it. Why only a couple of months ago, I read an intelligence briefing that said an SS officer called Waldemar Klingelhöfer had been released in December 1956 from Landsberg Prison after serving just eight years of a death sentence imposed for the murder of almost two and half thousand Jews. No, Herr Ganz, the world owes us a proper trial. And why should you give a damn? Alois Brunner was an Austrian. Arguably not even that. His hometown is now in western Hungary, I believe. So then. We Jews want our pound of flesh. Thanks to William Shakespeare, it’s what the world expects of us anyway.”

After everything she had said, I didn’t have to think too hard about my decision. There were several rooftops from which a sniper aiming at me would have had an easy shot. Perhaps it was my imagination but I fancied I saw the sun reflected from something on one of the more modern rooftops; it might have been a pair of binoculars or a sniper scope. The ruthless bandit queen had sold her story well, like a true intelligence officer, and I was convinced she was telling the truth. I had little doubt now that she was from the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations in Israel, better known as the Ha’Mossad. I’d had dealings with Ha’Mossad before but only when I was someone else. If she’d known who I really was and some of the people with whom I’d hung around, she’d have dropped that handkerchief in a heartbeat.

“I’ll tell you all I know.”

“Not that much. Just what you’ve learned about Alois Brunner.”