Greeks Bearing Gifts

FORTY-THREE

Elli came back downstairs and shook her head.

“Nothing,” she said. “There’s plenty of that lying around. I used to wonder what it might be like in one of these little houses next to the Acropolis. Well, now I know. This place is a mess.”

Reppas dragged hard on the cigarette and exhaled slowly through his twisted nostrils. In their mangled state, it looked as if the ruins of his nose were still smoldering after a small explosion in the center of his face. I handed him another cigarette and he lit it with the butt and then looked for an ashtray; it was a fastidiousness that bordered on the absurd, given the state of the carpet. Garlopis fetched one from somewhere and presented it to him as gravely as if he’d been a butler offering his master a silver salver. Elli took one, too, and let him light her.

“No one said you could stop talking,” I told Reppas.

“Sometimes my German is not so good,” he said. “The boss spoke Greek to me when he was sober and German when he was drunk. Which was quite a lot of the time. When I realized you were German, I thought you were working for Brunner. That’s why I pulled the knife on you. With a man like that it doesn’t pay to take any chances. I’m sorry. This was my late sister’s house. Nobody lives here or even knows about this place. At least, that’s what I thought. So when you just appeared in the bedroom like that I thought you were here to kill me. Next time, knock on the door or bring a parrot to speak some Greek for you. Otherwise one day you’re going to end up dead.”

“Maybe I would have done if Witzel hadn’t already met his maker here. And if his murderer wasn’t still at large. And if the cops who were supposed to be keeping an eye on this place hadn’t vanished. All of that tends to make an insurance man a little cautious.”

“Sure, I can understand that. I’ve been a bit cautious myself since the ship sank: lying low at my house in Spetses. Merten was flat against Siegfried coming back to Athens to make the claim until we were quite sure it was safe. They argued about it when we were still in the dinghy. He said Brunner would surely be looking for us. It was Brunner who sank the Doris, see? Some sort of delayed-action incendiary device. But the boss wouldn’t hear of not coming back here to make the claim as soon as possible; he said the ship was his whole world and unless the insurance company paid up he stood to lose everything, not just some gold he never had in the first place. The Doris wasn’t just his livelihood, it was also his home, see? So he figured it was worth the risk. Besides, the boss could always look after himself. And we figured it was safe him coming here, given that no one knew about this house. I inherited it from my sister a few months ago. She lived in Thessaloniki and, well, you can see I haven’t got around to doing very much with it.”

“Now I can refuse the insurance claim with a clear conscience. But back up a bit. I said I knew that the real purpose of the expedition was to find some sunken Jewish gold, but I want the full story. Take it from the beginning. The whole alpha to omega. How did Max Merten know your boss in the first place?”

“From before the war. In Berlin. Siegfried Witzel started out as a lawyer and then changed to studying zoology. Don’t ask me how that works. During the war he was a member of a combat diving unit in the German navy called the Division Brandenburg. But he’d already trained with the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS, who were the leaders in underwater warfare. That’s where he got this passion for scuba work and that’s how I got to know him; I’m part Italian myself. In the last months of the war he bought himself the Doris. I think Merten had something to do with that. And then almost as soon as he could he came back down to Greece and the two of us went into business together making underwater films. One of them even won an award at the Cannes Film Festival. That went to the bottom of the sea, as well as all our cameras.

“Anyway, a few weeks ago Merten shows up with another German. A fellow named Schramma. Christian Schramma. Except that there wasn’t anything very Christian about him. He was a thug, from Munich, and I think Merten brought him along for security.”

“I was wondering if he’d make an appearance in this story.”

“Only a brief one. He’s dead, by the way. Brunner shot him. But before Brunner turned up to spoil the show, Merten and the boss seemed to have it all worked out; we were going to sail to some shallow waters off the Peloponnesian coast, dive to the wreck of the Epeius, and bring up part of the Jewish gold under the cover of an expedition to find ancient Greek artifacts. You know about that, right?”

I nodded. “As much as I need to know, for now.”

“Not all of the gold, you understand. Just as much as we could get in a week or two—perhaps a couple of hundred bars—using just one diver: the boss. Everything looked perfect. We had the proper permissions from museums and ministries, which Merten, passing himself off as some important German professor of archaeology, had previously arranged. I have to admit he was very thorough. We were all set to sail when this fellow calling himself Georg Fischer shows up. He came aboard the ship while we were still moored at the marina in Piraeus, cool as you like, and it was obvious he and Merten knew each other, and that Merten was afraid of him. It soon became clear that Merten and Fischer had once been partners and that Fischer—it was only when we got to Spetses that I found out his real name was Alois Brunner—had been double-crossed by Max Merten during the war. Along with some other SS officers they’d stolen the gold from the Jews together. Now Brunner told Merten that he wanted his share and that he’d decided to come along on the expedition with us, just to keep an eye on things, but that he’d also decided to give himself an insurance policy by lodging a letter with a local lawyer explaining what Merten was really up to. If something happened to him and he didn’t return to Athens within thirty days, the letter would be sent to the Greek authorities. Merten agreed; well, he didn’t have much choice. Brunner said he’d even provide us with a genuine artifact to help with our cover story—just in case the coast guard showed up and started asking questions—because, conveniently for us, he was in the business of exporting art treasures. So we took delivery of a packing case with a Greek horse’s head inside, and that’s probably how we ended up taking the incendiary on board.

“As soon as Brunner left the boat the boss asked me to follow him and I tailed him back to his hotel, the Xenon, in Piraeus. Later on, I went back there again and, for a few drachmas, the hotel operator showed me all the telephone calls Brunner had made from his room. By ringing them, one after the other, I managed to find the name of Brunner’s lawyer in Glyfada, Dr. Samuel Frizis. The boss knew this local burglar called Tsochaztopoulos and we met up with him at the Chez Lapin club in Kastella. The boss gave him fifteen hundred drachmas to break into the lawyer’s office and steal Brunner’s letter, only he was supposed to do it without the lawyer ever finding out. Simple as that. Just find the file for a client named Fischer and steal what was in it. I waited outside the office while Choc went inside. Took him no time at all. Said it was the easiest fifteen hundred he’d made in a long while.

“I brought the letter back to the ship and we waited for Brunner to join us, as previously arranged. The plan was that by the time the lawyer discovered the letter was missing from his office Brunner would be at sea with us and we’d just chuck him over the side with the horse’s head tied to his feet. But something went wrong. I think Brunner had some thugs of his own and one of them saw me following him to his hotel. Anyway, the bastard smelled a rat and before joining us on board he asked his lawyer to check to see if he still had the letter. And when the lawyer couldn’t find it, Brunner must have figured he was going to be double-crossed by Merten a second time, because he came aboard secretly the night before we were to sail. Schramma disturbed him and the two exchanged gunshots. Schramma was killed and Brunner hightailed it off the ship and onto the quayside in Piraeus. Not long after that we set sail, and so it ended up being Christian Schramma’s weighted body we dropped over the side.”

“That’s the first bit of good news I’ve heard in a while.”

“You knew him?”

“Yes. And well enough to say he got what was coming to him. He murdered two people in Munich and got away with it, thanks to Max Merten. And I have to say, to me as well. I made a mistake there. I thought I was protecting Merten. I thought Merten was innocent. But he wasn’t. He never was.”

“Merten’s a crafty one, and no mistake. After we set sail we decided that since Brunner hadn’t any clue as to the area we’d planned to dive in—and don’t ask me where that is, honestly, I don’t know. Merten kept the exact longitude and latitude to himself for fear that we would double-cross him and now I realize why—we could lie low in Spetses for a while, just in case Brunner had blown the whistle on us. Then, when we judged things were safe, we’d go and look for the gold as planned. None of us had a clue that before he’d shot Christian Schramma and left the ship Brunner had activated some sort of delayed-action incendiary device in the packing case beside the horse’s head. Probably that was the real purpose of his coming aboard in the night. Anyway, it was a couple of hours before the thing went off. By which time we were far out to sea. We’d just finished sending Schramma to the bottom when we discovered we were on fire. We tried to get it under control but it was impossible; the boss reckoned the incendiary was made of phosphorus and there was no putting it out.

“We started to sink and so we had to abandon ship. We grabbed a few things, came ashore in the dinghy, and Merten and I took a taxi and then a ferry to Spetses, while the boss caught the ferry to Piraeus. Said he would make contact with us as soon as he could, and for several days the telegrams kept coming. But when the boss stopped sending them I decided to come up to Athens on my motorcycle and find out what had happened to him. And here I am.”

“So Merten is alone at your house in Spetses?”

“Not entirely alone. There’s a local woman who comes in every other day to cook and clean.”

“Is he armed?”

“Yes. He has Schramma’s own Walther pistol.”

“I shall want the door key.”

“In my coat pocket you’ll find another key with an address label on it.” He pointed at the coat lying on the floor at my feet and I nodded.

“Get it.”

He picked up the coat, found the key, and handed it over.

“Is your house on the telephone?” I asked.

Reppas paused, and waved his fingers in the air. “I have to think of the way to say some of these things in German. Merten only ever speaks Greek to me. Speaking German like this, it’s tiring, you know. The only telephone in Spetses is at the hotel. But it’s not working right now. This is island life in Greece. Lots of things don’t work like they’re supposed to. They’ve only just discovered the wheel on Spetses. Priests cross themselves when they walk past a bar with a jukebox. Or see a woman wearing a bathing costume.”

“I’m kind of religious about that myself. How did you get the telegrams from Witzel?”

“I had to go to Kosta on the ferry and collect them from the post office in the town.”

“How long will Merten stay put down there? Before he figures out that you’re not coming back. Which you’re not. Not for several weeks, if you’ve got any sense.”

“I have a nephew in Thessaloniki. I shall stay with him.” He tried to look thoughtful, but it came off as something grotesque, like a gargoyle trying to solve a crossword puzzle. “But Merten? I don’t know for sure. I do know he’s scared. Every time he heard the door open he thought it was Brunner and grabbed Schramma’s Walther. My guess is that he’ll be staying put for a while. Originally, I was going to travel back the day after tomorrow, even if I didn’t find the boss here.”

“Where were you planning to look for him?”

“I was going to check out some of our old haunts in Piraeus. Bars and brothels mostly. The boss liked a drink and a girl, usually in that order. So maybe you have several days to go down to Spetses yourself, right? And do whatever it is you say you’re going to do. Cops or killing, it makes no difference to me now. But for Merten, my friend would still be alive and we’d still be in the scuba business.”

Reppas finished his second cigarette and stubbed it out. All his previous belligerence was now gone. He dabbed his nose and inspected the towel for another red mark, like a woman checking her lipstick.

“Are you really intending to let me walk out of here?”

“Sure. Why not? You’re a fish I’m throwing back, Spiros. It’s Merten I want to make a lot of trouble for, not you. He’s the real criminal here. You can even take your gun with you.” I picked up the barrel and handed over the empty Webley and a handful of bullets. “You might even need it. For all I know Brunner might still be in Athens. He strikes me as the kind of fellow who isn’t easily scared off. It could be that he thinks he owes you a bullet in lieu of a share of the gold. If I were you I’d keep away from some of your old haunts in Piraeus. He’s already murdered that lawyer whose office you burgled in Glyfada—Dr. Frizis.”

Reppas put the Webley and the ammunition in his coat pocket. “Thanks for the advice,” he said.

“Tell me, why did your boss go along with Merten’s scheme in the first place? He was a marine biologist, an important filmmaker who’d won a prize at the Cannes Festival. He didn’t strike me as a Nazi. Surely he’d left that world behind.”

“Clearly you don’t know much about filmmaking.” Spiros Reppas shrugged. “Making any kind of film is expensive but underwater films, more so. And it doesn’t pay that well. It’s not like they were queuing around the block to see our little movie, right? Who goes to see a film like The Philosopher’s Seal, about Mediterranean monk seals?”

“I must admit I missed it myself.”

“He sold it to a few television companies and that was it. He was in debt. And he needed to raise money to make our next documentary—a film about the lost city of Atlantis. You don’t have to be a Nazi to be greedy for money. There was that. And then there was all of that Jewish gold lying in only fifteen fathoms of water just waiting for someone to come and salvage it. Millions and millions of dollars’ worth of gold melted down and recast as gold bars by a foundry Max Merten had specially built in Katerini, sometime in the spring of 1943. According to Merten, all of the bars on the Epeius carried a specially faked date and stamp from the Weigunner foundry at Essen.”

“How does that help?”

“The significance of this smelt is that it’s dated 1939, which predates both the invasion of Greece and the murder of Europe’s Jews. It looks like prewar Reichsbank gold bullion. All of which makes it much easier to move on the world’s bullion markets. Well, who can resist a story like that? Not me, and not Siegfried Witzel. But maybe there was one more thing, I don’t know. I think there was maybe something about the way the Doris had come into Witzel’s possession that Merten knew about and which he was prepared to exploit.”

“There was,” I said. “Like the gold, the ship was originally confiscated from the Jews of Salonika, and Merten sold it to Witzel, in 1943, for a knockdown price. He changed the name of the ship to make sure this remained secret.”

“Yes,” said Reppas, “that would explain a lot. It was always stick and carrot with Merten; sometimes he was leading the boss on with estimates of how much gold was down there—each time more than the last—and sometimes he was threatening to tell the police about how the boss had acquired the ship in the first place.”

“One more question: Did Max Merten discover exactly how Brunner found out about your expedition? After all, it was fourteen years since Merten double-crossed Brunner and arranged for the Epeius to be scuttled. And twelve since the end of the war. Max Merten has been living openly as a lawyer in Munich all this time. The Americans offered to extradite him to Greece in 1945 but the Greek government said he wasn’t wanted in connection with any war crimes. He’s been a model citizen in Munich, a man with friends in the West German government. By contrast, Alois Brunner is a hunted war criminal living under a false name. The Greeks want him, as do the Israelis, and so I imagine do the French. How did he find out that Merten had come back to Greece?”

Spiros Reppas frowned. “Like I said, sometimes my German is not so good. I understand German when someone speaks to me and I can see their lips moving. Overheard is not so easy for me. Also the longer compound words are difficult. But I think maybe I heard Merten tell Witzel that someone close to Adenauer must have told Brunner that he, Merten, was coming to Greece. And that Brunner wouldn’t be the first old Nazi to go to work for the new German government.”

Reppas took a superhuman drag on the cigarette and threw up his hands in defeat.

“That’s it, mister. Every damn thing I know. I’ve no idea what’s to become of me now.” He sighed. “I’ve lost my best friend and I’ve lost my livelihood. Can I ask you a question?”

“Fire away.”

“Diving can be dangerous. The boss always said that if anything ever happened to me while he was diving the Doris would be mine. I don’t suppose there’s any chance you’ll reconsider your decision on the insurance money. That you could make out a check to me instead of him. I’d be more than happy to accept a reduced figure. Ten cents on the dollar, perhaps. After all the ship was old and probably not worth half of what the boss said it was.”

“Sorry, no. My employers are kind of funny about paying out in cases involving arson. They don’t do it, as a rule. But if you can find a last will and testament naming you as my client’s sole heir, you could always take them on in the courts. I wouldn’t give much for your chances, mind. Even in Germany there’s probably some small print that discriminates against the kind of people who go after millions in stolen Jewish gold.” I took out my wallet and handed him some money. I decided I could probably afford it out of the twenty thousand I was going to have when we cashed the certified check on the way to Spetses in the morning. “But to show you there are no hard feelings, here’s fifty. Get yourself a new nose.”