Greeks Bearing Gifts

FIFTY-FOUR

Crossing the palatial lobby of the Grande Bretagne Hotel I saw her, seated underneath an enormous gilt mirror, with her back to the wall and facing the main entrance. It was the best place to sit if you wanted to see everyone who was coming in or going out and you were professional about this kind of thing and, given that profession, very serious about staying alive, which I had no doubt she was. On this occasion she was wearing a brown two-piece business suit with square chocolate patent buttons and a little brown beret.

I thought about ignoring her and then decided against it. I thought it unlikely that she was alone and although I couldn’t see him I felt sure one of her more muscular men would have shepherded me to the empty seat beside her. So halfway across the marble floor I checked my walk and went back toward her. She stood and smiled pleasantly as if she’d been an ordinary housewife, there for a more prosaic purpose than revenge and murder, and extended a gloved hand for me to shake, which I did if only to show I was unafraid.

“Where is he?” I asked.

“Who?”

“Your sniper, of course. Behind the potted palm, I suppose. Or hidden among all of those liquor bottles in the bar. Just be careful he doesn’t put the wrong kind of optic to his eye. He’s liable to see things very differently.”

The bandit queen smiled. She was smaller than I remembered and better looking, but not so you’d have wanted to do something about that. Her brown eyes were on me and then on someone I didn’t see, someone over my shoulder who stayed out of sight for the moment. I glanced around but didn’t make him; the lobby was full of largish men in cheap suits attending an air-conditioning convention in one of the hotel’s many conference rooms, and her armed guard could have been any one of them. Now that I was about to renew my acquaintance with the bandit queen I wouldn’t have minded a little extra air myself; just looking at her gave me a tight feeling in my chest, like someone was going to put a bullet in one of my lungs.

“Good idea,” she said. “Alexander’s Bar, I mean.” She glanced at the steel Rolex on her bony wrist. “And not too early, perhaps. So. Let me buy you a drink, Herr Ganz.”

“Sure. Why not? Poison’s more discreet in a place like this.”

“If we wanted to do that you’d be dead already. Trust me on that. We’d have added a secret ingredient to your toothpaste. Radium, probably. That’s standard procedure in these circumstances. Radium adds a whole extra dimension to the idea of tooth decay. They say that victims have the cleanest teeth in the morgue.”

“Maybe I should switch brands. Nivea doesn’t seem to shift tobacco stains very well. But you know, I don’t scare so easily in this place. For one thing I’ve started to carry a gun.”

“You’ve nothing to fear from me, I can assure you.”

“I’m pleased to hear it.”

I followed her into the bar to a table in the quietest corner with a reserved sign and a waiter who was already hovering there, as if he’d been briefed to wait on us with extra vigilance. For all I knew he worked for the Ha’Mossad, too, but I couldn’t have said if he looked Jewish. As a copper who never once took a race education class under the Nazis, I wasn’t much good at identifying Jews. It has to be said that some people do look Jewish but neither the bandit queen nor the waiter did. We sat down and ordered a pair of large whiskeys. She found a packet of Tareytons in a tapestry handbag, lit one, and smoked it with what sounded like a sigh of relief, her first sign of weakness.

“I’m trying to cut down so I make myself wait until I have a drink in my hand before I can light one.”

“That’s not the way to cut down.”

“What would you recommend?”

“You could try having a drink only when you’re celebrating murdering another old Nazi.”

“To be honest we don’t do that anymore. We used to, of course. Grawitz, Giesler. Geschke. Back in the day we were very active all over Europe.”

“Did they only give you the Gs? You’re making me nervous again. My name is Ganz, remember?”

“These days we’re keen to show ourselves in a better light, as a democratic country with fair trials and proper legal procedure. That’s why we wanted Brunner, with a B. To give him a fair trial in front of the whole world before we hanged him.”

“I like your idea of justice, lady. It doesn’t suffer from any nit-picking jurisdictional doubt. Trial first. Then the hanging. And to hell with any reasonable doubt.”

“We can’t afford doubt. Not when we are surrounded by our enemies. Syria. Jordan. Egypt. Eventually we will have to defend ourselves, most likely against all three at once. This makes for a certain conviction in everything we do.”

“I noticed that about you the last time we sat down together. Tell me something. Did you really have a guy with a rifle on the rooftop? Aiming at my head?”

“We never make idle threats.”

“Nothing wrong with a little idleness. Especially in the threat department. Too many people are in a hurry to hurt other people. That’s the way I look at it. I figure we could all use a little more humanity.”

“I hope that works for you. But it didn’t work for us Jews.”

The waiter came back with the drinks and she took hers like it was nothing stronger than an infusion of tea. I sipped mine more carefully; the demon drink was best handled with care when you were drinking with a genuine demon, albeit one who was currently behaving herself very well.

“By the way, have you a name now? Or is that still not important?”

“Rahel Eskenazi.”

“Is that true?”

“Mostly.”

“But I’m right in thinking you are from the Ha’Mossad.”

“We prefer to call it the Institute. Or just Glilot. It’s more discreet.”

“As an insurance man I can certainly see the sense of that. Why take risks if you don’t have to?”

The bandit queen looked up at the ceiling and nodded. “I always liked this hotel,” she said quietly. “The German insurance business must be good if they can afford to put you up here. In what was Göring’s favorite hotel. He knew a thing or two about luxury.”

“It doesn’t spoil it for you? Knowing that?”

“Knowing what happened to Göring, no, not at all. In fact, it makes me like the place all the more. It reminds me of how quickly a moral order can be restored. More or less. I like to think of Göring in his suite upstairs quite unaware that in the next room Nemesis awaits her chance to enact retribution against those like him who succumb to hubris. Yes, that’s what I think.” She smiled wryly. “I also think a man like you is wasted in the world of insurance.”

“I get paid sufficient to drive a car, eat sausage, and drink enough beer to be drunk once a week, not necessarily in that order. In Germany we call that making a living.”

“There are not many insurance men who carry a gun.”

“They might sell a few more policies if they did.”

“A living, perhaps. But not a life. Not for you, Christof.”

I shrugged and let that one go. I figured if she was driving at something she’d pull up and let me take a peek at what was on the front seat, eventually.

“I hear you have your passport back,” she said. “And that you’re leaving Athens today.”

“That’s right. I was on my way out to visit the Acropolis when I saw you. All these weeks I’ve been here and I still haven’t been up to take a look at the thing. I hear it’s seen better days but that it’s worth a look.”

“You can see it another time. It will still be there in a thousand years.”

“Yes, but I’m not so sure I will.”

“I also hear that Max Merten has been arrested by the Greek police.”

“Not arrested. Not quite yet. But his passport has been taken away. And they’ve got him in a safe house in Glyfada. They’ll arrest him only after he starts to give evidence in Arthur Meissner’s trial. That’s the deal I made for him. Makes him look a bit better.”

“In Greece? I doubt that. But it makes you feel a bit better, and that’s important, too, right?”

“Also right.” I shrugged. “I’m only sorry I couldn’t deliver up Alois Brunner for you.”

“We’ll get him one day.”

“I hope so.”

“Do you mean that?”

“Sure. A man like Brunner gives all Germans a bad name. And who better than Germans to help find him? I can’t say I agree with Adenauer’s policy on this matter very much. I think it will come back to haunt us. That’s one of the reasons I persuaded Merten to give himself up to the Greeks.”

“We’d have hanged him for sure.”

“That’s the other reason.”