Spies of the Balkans

DYING IN BYZANTIUM

In Autumn, the rains came to Macedonia.

The storm began in the north-on the fifth day of October in the year 1940-where sullen cloud lay over the mountain villages on the border of Bulgaria and Greece. By midday it had drifted south, heavier now, rolling down the valley of the Vardar River until, at dusk, it reached the heights of the city of Salonika and, by the time the streetlamps came on, rain dripped from the roof tiles in the ancient alleyways of the port and dappled the surface of the flat, dark sea.

Just after six in the evening, Costa Zannis, known to the city as a senior police official-whatever that meant, perhaps no more than a suit instead of a uniform-left his office on the top floor of an anonymous building on the Via Egnatia, walked down five flights of creaky wooden stairs, stepped out into the street, and snapped his umbrella aloft. Earlier that day he’d had a telephone call from the port captain, something to do with the arrival of the Turkish tramp freighter Bakir-“an irregularity” was the phrase the captain used, adding that he preferred to pursue the matter in person. “You understand me, Costa,” he’d said. Oh yes, Zannis understood all too well. At that moment, Greece had been ruled by the Metaxas dictatorship since 1936-the length of women’s skirts was regulated; it was forbidden to read aloud the funeral oration of Pericles-and people were cautious about what they said on the telephone. And, with much of Europe occupied by Nazi Germany, and Mussolini’s armies in Albania, on the Greek frontier, one wasn’t sure what came next. So, don’t trust the telephone. Or the newspapers. Or the radio. Or tomorrow.

Entering the vast street market on Aristotle Square, Zannis furled his umbrella and worked his way through the narrow aisles. Rain pattered on the tin roofing above the stalls, fishmongers shouted to the crowd, and, as Zannis passed by, the merchants smiled or nodded or avoided his eyes, depending on where they thought they stood with the Salonika police that evening. A skeletal old woman from the countryside, black dress, black head scarf, offered him a dried fig. He smiled politely and declined, but she thrust it toward him, the mock ferocity of her expression meaning that he had no choice. He tore the stem off, flicked it into the gutter, then ate the fig, which was fat and sweet, raised his eyebrows in appreciation, said, “It’s very good, thank you,” and went on his way. At the far end of the market, a sponge peddler, a huge sack slung over his shoulder, peered anxiously out at the rain. Marooned, he could only wait, for if his sponges got wet he’d have to carry the weight for the rest of the night.

The customshouse stood at the center of the city’s two main piers, its function stated on a broad sign above the main entry, first in Greek, then with the word Douane. On the upper floor, the port captain occupied a corner office, the sort of office that had over the years become a home; warm in the chilly weather, the still air scented with wood smoke and cigarettes, one of the port cats asleep by the woodstove. On the wall behind the desk hung a brightly colored oleograph of Archbishop Alexandros, in long black beard and hair flowing to his shoulders, hands clasped piously across his ample stomach. By his side, formal photographs of a stern General Metaxas and a succession of port officials of the past, two of them, in fading sepia prints, wearing the Turkish fez. On the adjoining wall, handsomely framed, were the wife and children of the present occupant, well fed, dressed to the hilt, and looking very dignified.

The present occupant was in no hurry; a brief call on the telephone produced, in a few minutes, a waiter from a nearby kafeneion-coffeehouse-with two tiny cups of Turkish coffee on a brass tray. After a sip, the captain lit a cigarette and said, “I hope I didn’t get you down here for nothing, Costa. In such miserable fucking weather.”

Zannis didn’t mind. “It’s always good to see you,” he said. “The Bakir, I think you said. Where’s she berthed?”

“Number eight, on the left-hand side. Just behind a Dutch grain freighter-a German grain freighter now, I guess.”

“For the time being,” Zannis said.

They paused briefly to savor the good things the future might hold, then the captain said, “Bakir docked this morning. I waited an hour, the captain never showed up, so I went to find him. Nothing unusual, gangplank down, nobody about, so I went on board and headed for the captain’s office, which is pretty much always in the same place, just by the bridge. A few sailors at work, but it was quiet on board, and going down the passageway toward the bridge I passed the wardroom. Two officers, gossiping in Turkish and drinking coffee, and a little man in a suit, with shiny shoes, reading a newspaper. German newspaper. Oh, I thought, a passenger.”

“See his face?”

“Actually I didn’t. He was behind his newspaper-Volkischer Beobachter? I believe it was. Anyhow, I didn’t think much about it. People get around these days any way they can, and they don’t go anywhere at all unless they have to.”

“Submarines.”

The captain nodded. “You may just have to swim. Eventually I found the captain up on the bridge-a man I’ve known for years, by the way-and we went back to his office so I could have a look at the manifest. But-no passenger. So, I asked. ‘Who’s the gent in the wardroom?’ The captain just looked at me. What a look!”

“Meaning …?”

“Meaning Don’t ask me that. Life’s hard enough these days without this sort of nonsense.”

Zannis’s smile was ironic. “Oh dear,” he said.

The captain laughed, relieved. “Don’t be concerned, you mean.”

From Zannis, a small sigh. “No, but it’s me who has to be concerned. On the other hand, as long as he stays where he is … What’s she carrying?”

“In ballast. She’s here to load baled tobacco, then headed up to Hamburg.”

“You didn’t happen to see the passenger come this way, did you?”

“No, he hasn’t left the ship.”

Zannis raised an eyebrow. “You’re sure?”

“I’ve had a taxi waiting out there all afternoon. If he tries to enter the city, two beeps on the horn.”

This time the sigh was deeper, because Zannis’s plans for the evening had vanished into the night. “I’ll use your telephone,” he said. “And then I’ll take a little walk.”

Zannis walked past the taxi on the pier-the driver awake, to his surprise-then continued until he could see the Bakir. Nothing unusual; a rust-streaked gray hull, a cook tossing a pail of kitchen garbage into the bay. He’d thought about ordering up a pair of detectives, then decided not to get them out in the rain. But now the rain had stopped, leaving in its place a heavy mist that made halos around the streetlamps. Zannis stood there, the city behind him quiet, a foghorn moaning somewhere out in the darkness.

He’d turned forty that summer, not a welcome event but what could you do. He was of average height, with a thick muscular body and only an inch of belly above his belt. Skin a pale olive color, not bad-looking at all though more boxer than movie star, a tough guy, in the way he moved, in the way he held himself. Until you looked at his face, which suggested quite a different sort of person. Wide generous mouth and, behind steel-framed eyeglasses, very blue eyes: lively eyes. He had dry black hair which, despite being combed with water in the morning, was tousled by the time he reached the office and fell down on his forehead and made him look younger, and softer, than he was. All in all, an expressive face, rarely still-when you spoke to him you could always see what he thought about whatever you said, amusement or sympathy or curiosity, but always something. So, maybe a tough guy, but your friend the tough guy. The policeman. And, in his black suit and soft gray shirt, tie knot always pulled down and the collar button of the shirt open, a rather gentle version of the breed. On purpose, of course.

He’d certainly never meant to be a cop. And-once he fell into being a cop-never a detective, and-once promoted to that position-never what he was now. He’d never even known such a job existed. Neither of his parents had been educated beyond the first six years; his grandmother could neither read nor write, his mother doing so only with difficulty. His father had worked his way into half ownership of a florist shop in the good part of Salonika, so the family was never poor; they managed, pretty much like everyone else he knew. Zannis wasn’t much of a student, which didn’t matter because in time he’d work in the shop. And, until 1912, Salonika had remained a part of the Ottoman Empire-Athens and the western part of the nation having fought free of the Turks in 1832-so to be Greek was to know your place and the sort of ambition that drew attention wasn’t such a good idea.

By age twelve, as the Greek army marched in to end the Second Balkan War, Zannis’s private dreams had mostly involved escape; foreign places called to him, so maybe work on a ship or a train. Not unusual. His mother’s brother had emigrated to America, to a mysterious place called Altoona, in the state of Pennsylvania, from whence postal cards arrived showing the main street or the railway station. Until 1912, at times when the money ran out, the Zannis family considered joining him, working in his diner, a silvery building with rounded corners. Yes, maybe they should go there; they’d have to talk about it. Soon.

And, six years later, they did leave, but they didn’t go to Altoona. In 1917, as Anglo-French and Greek forces fought the Bulgarians in Macedonia, a sideshow to the war in France, Salonika burned, in what came to be known as the Great Fire. The Zannis house, up in the heights by the ancient battlements, survived, but the florist shop did not, and there was no money to rebuild. Now what?

It was his father’s brother who saved the day. He had, as a young man, involved himself in fighting the Turks, with a pistol, and the day came when, threatened with life in a Turkish prison, he had to run away. He ran to Paris, mostly walking or riding trains without a ticket until they threw him off, but in time he got there.

And, with luck and determination, with playing cards for money, and with the advent of a jolly French widow of a certain age, he had managed to buy a stall in the flea market in Clignancourt, in the well-visited section known as Serpette. “Forget Alteena,” he wrote in a letter to his brother. “I need you here.” A little money was sent and the Zannis family, parents and grandmother, Costa and his younger brother-an older sister had earlier married an electrician and emigrated to Argentina-got on a fruit ship and worked their way to Le Havre. And there, waving up at them from the wharf, was the benevolent uncle and his jolly wife. On the train, Zannis’s heart rose with every beat of the rails.

Two hours later, he’d found his destiny: Paris. The girls adored him-soon enough he fell in love-and he had a lot of money for a seventeen-year-old boy from Greece. He worked for his uncle as an antiquaire, an antiques dealer, selling massive armoires and all sorts of junk to tourists and the very occasional Parisian. They had a magnificent old rogue with a great white beard who turned out Monets and Rubenses by the yard. “Well, I can’t say, because it isn’t signed, maybe you should have somebody look at it, but if the nice lady comes back in twenty minutes, as she swore she would, we’ll have to sell it, so if I were you …”

The happiest time of his life, those twelve years.

At least, he thought later, it lasted that long. In 1929, as the markets crashed, Zannis’s father went to bed with what seemed like a bad cold then died a day later of influenza, while they were still waiting for the doctor. Bravely, Zannis’s mother insisted they stay where they were-Costa was doing so well. By then he spoke good French-the lingua franca of Salonika-and he’d taken courses in German and learned to speak it well: some day the stall would be his, he’d met a woman, Laurette, a few years older than he and raising two children, and he was enchanted with her. A year earlier they’d started living together in Saint-Ouen, home to the Clignancourt market. But, as winter turned to spring, his mother’s grief did not subside and she wanted to go home. Back to where she could see her family and gossip with friends.

She never said it aloud but Zannis, now head of the household, knew what she felt and so they went home. Laurette could not, or would not, leave with him, would not take her children to a foreign place, so her heart was broken. As was his. But family was family.

Back in Salonika, and urgently needing to make a living, he took a job as a policeman. He didn’t much care for it, but he worked hard and did well. In a city where the quarter known as the Bara held the largest red-light district in eastern Europe, in a city of waterfront dives and sailors of every nation, there was always plenty of work for a policeman. Especially the tolerant sort of policeman who settled matters before they got out of hand and never took money.

By 1934 he was promoted to detective and, three years later, to, technically, the rank of sub-commander, though nobody ever used that title. This advancement did not just happen by itself. An old and honored expression, from the time of the Turkish occupation, said that it was most fortunate to have a barba sto palati, an uncle in the palace, and it turned out, to Zannis’s surprise, that he had that very thing. His particular talent, a kind of rough diplomacy, getting people to do what he wanted without hitting them, had been observed from on high by the head of the Salonika police, a near mystic presence in the city. Vangelis was at least eighty years old, some said older, with the smile of a saint-thus St. Vangelis, at least to those who could appreciate irony and veneration in the same phrase. For fifty years, nothing had gone on in Salonika that the old man didn’t know about, and he’d watched Zannis’s career with interest. So in 1937, when Zannis decided to resign his position, Vangelis offered him a new one. His own office, a detective, a clerk, and a greatly improved salary. “I need someone to handle these matters,” Vangelis told him, and went on to describe what he needed. Zannis understood right away and in time became known to the world at large as a senior police official, but to those with knowledge of the subterranean intricacies of the city’s life, and soon enough to the Salonika street, he was simply “Zannis.”

Was the Belgian consul being blackmailed by a prostitute? Call Zannis.

Had the son of an Athenian politician taken a diamond ring from a jeweler and “forgotten” to pay for it? Call Zannis.

Did a German civilian arrive “unofficially” in Salonika on the freighter of a neutral nation?

When Zannis walked back to the foot of the pier he found his assistant, Gabriel-Gabi-Saltiel, waiting for him, smoking a cigarette, leaning back in the driver’s seat. Saltiel loved his car, a hard-sprung black Skoda 420, built by the Czechs for Balkan roads. “Pull over behind the wall, Gabi,” Zannis said. “Out of sight, where we can just see the pier.”

Saltiel pushed the ignition button, the engine rumbled to life, and he swung the car around and headed for the customshouse. A gray fifty-five, Saltiel, tall and shambling, slump-shouldered and myopic, who viewed the world, with a mixture of patience and cynicism, through thick-framed eyeglasses. A Sephardic Jew, from the large community in Salonika, he’d somehow become a policeman and prospered at the job because he was intelligent, sharp, very smart about people-who they really were-and persistent: a courteous, diffident bulldog. On the day that Vangelis offered Zannis the new job, saying, “And find somebody you can work with,” he had telephoned Gabi Saltiel, explained what he’d be doing, and asked Saltiel to join him. “What’s it called, this department?” Saltiel said. “It doesn’t need a name,” Zannis answered. Ten seconds passed, a long time on the telephone. Finally, Saltiel said, “When do I start?”

Now Zannis headed for the taxi, gave the driver some money, thanked him, and sent him home. When Zannis slid into the passenger seat of the Skoda, Saltiel said, “So, what’s going on?”

Zannis repeated the port captain’s story, then said, “As long as he doesn’t enter the city, we leave him alone. We’ll give him a few hours to do something, then, if he’s still holed up in the ship, I’ll get some detectives to replace us.”

“What if he waits until morning, strolls down here and shows a passport to the control officer?”

“Follow him,” Zannis said. “I don’t want him running loose in the city.”

“German, you said.”

“Reads a German newspaper, who knows what he is.”

“A spy, you think?”

“Could be. The Turkish captain more or less said he was. With a look.”

Saltiel laughed. “The Levant,” he said. “A look indeed-I wouldn’t live anywhere else.” After a moment he added, “What’s a spy after in Salonika? Any idea?”

“Who knows. Maybe just the war, coming south.”

“Don’t say such things, Costa. Down here, at the ass-end of the Balkans, who cares?”

“Not Hitler. Not according to the newspapers. And he has to know what goes on here, up in the mountains, when we’re occupied.”

Saltiel looked thoughtful. “Still,” he said.

“What?”

“Well, I have a nephew who teaches at the technical school. Geography, among other things. A smart boy, Manni, he says that as long as Hitler stays allied with the Russians, we’re safe. But, if he attacks them, we could be in for it. On the map of Europe we’re the right flank-if somebody’s headed east, the right flank that goes to the Caucasus, for the oil. Anyhow, that’s Manni’s theory.”

“Believe it?”

Saltiel shrugged. “Hitler’s cunning, I wouldn’t say intelligent, but cunning. Jews he attacks, Russians he leaves alone.”

Zannis nodded, it sounded reasonable. “Before I forget,” he said, “did you bring what I asked for?”

“In the glove box.”

Zannis opened the glove box and took out a Walther PPK automatic, the German weapon preferred by Balkan detectives. There were bright metal scratches on the base of the grip. “What have you been doing with this?”

“Hanging pictures,” Saltiel said. “The last time I saw my hammer, one of the grandkids was playing with it.”

“Kids,” Zannis said, with a smile.

“I’m blessed,” Saltiel said. “You ought to get busy, Costa, you’re not getting any younger.”

Zannis’s smile widened. “With Roxanne?” he said, naming his English girlfriend.

“Well …,” Saltiel said. “I guess not.”

8:20 P.M. It had started to rain again, a few lightning flashes out in the Aegean. “You awake?” Zannis said.

“Just barely.”

“You want a nap, go ahead.”

“No thanks. Maybe later.”

10:30 P.M. “By the way,” Zannis said, “did you telephone Madam Pappas?”

“This morning, about eleven.”

“And she said?”

“That she hated her husband and she’s glad he’s dead.”

“That’s honest.”

“I thought so.”

“Anything else?”

“No, she was getting ready to scream at me, so I got off the phone-you said to go easy.”

Zannis nodded. “Let the detectives deal with her.”

“She kill him?”

“She did.”

“Naughty girl.”

1:15 A.M.

Quiet, in the city behind them. Only faint music from the tavernas on the seafront corniche and the creaking of the pier as the tide worked at the pilings. The sound was hypnotic and Zannis fought to stay awake. He took a cigarette from the flat box in his pocket-a Papastratos No. 1, top of the line in Greece-and struck a wooden match alight with his thumbnail. Expensive, these things, so a luxury for him. He made good money now, Vangelis had seen to that, but good money for a cop, which wasn’t very much, not with four people to feed. His younger brother Ari, for Aristotle, sometimes made a few drachmas by carrying messages in the city. Poor soul, he did the best he could but he wasn’t quite right, had always been “different,” and the family had long ago accepted him for who he was.

It was getting smoky in the car and Saltiel rolled down the window. “Do you think there are men on the moon?” he said.

“I don’t know. I suppose anything’s possible.”

“They were arguing about it, yesterday, in the barbershop.”

“Little green men? With one eye? Like in Buck Rogers?”

“I guess so.”

“Somebody in your barbershop thinks those movies are true?”

“That’s what it sounded like.”

“I’d change barbers, if I were you.”

3:30 A.M.

“Wake up, Gabi.”

“I wasn’t sleeping. Not really.”

“Here he comes.”

Of medium height, the man wore a raincoat and carried a briefcase. He had a hard, bony, chinless face beneath a hat with the brim tilted over his eyes. As he neared the end of the pier, Zannis and Saltiel ducked down below the windshield. By now they could hear footsteps, determined and in a hurry, that approached, then faded away from them, headed around the east side of the customshouse, toward the city-to the west lay the warehouse district and the railway station. Zannis made sure of the Walther in the pocket of his jacket, slid out of the passenger seat, and was careful not to slam the door, leaving it ajar. “Give me thirty seconds, Gabi,” he said. “Then follow along, nice and slow, headlights off, and keep your distance.”

Zannis walked quickly to the east side of the customshouse, paused at the corner, and had a quick look around it. Nobody. Where the hell had he gone? There was only one street he could have taken, which served the warehouses. Zannis, moving at a fast trot, reached the street, turned the corner, and there he was-there somebody was-about two blocks away. Now Zannis realized he was getting wet, put up his umbrella, and moved into the shelter of the high brick wall of the first warehouse. Up ahead the German sped on, with long strides, as though, Zannis thought, he was taking his evening constitutional on a path in some Deutschland forest. A few seconds later the Skoda turned the corner behind him and Zannis signaled, waving his hand backward, for Saltiel to stay where he was. Zannis could hear the engine idling as the Skoda rolled to a stop. Could the German hear it? Doubtful, especially in the rain, but Zannis couldn’t be sure-the street was dead silent.

Then the German glanced over his shoulder and turned right, down a narrow alley. He’d likely seen Zannis, but so what? Just a man with an umbrella, trudging along, shoulders hunched, on a miserable night. Zannis walked past the alley, ignoring it, eyes on the ground ahead of him, until he passed the far corner and moved out of sight. He didn’t stop there but went farther down the street-if he could hear the German, the German could hear him-then looked for a place to hide. He saw a loading dock across from him and moved quickly, soaking one foot in a puddle between broken cobblestones, hurried up the steps and stood in the angle of the shuttered entryway and the wall, which was blind from the street-as far as the alley, anyhow. The German wasn’t going anywhere, Zannis realized, not from this alley, where, a few years earlier, a porter had stabbed Hamid the moneylender in an argument over a few lepta-not even a drachma-and it was blocked by a high stone wall covered with a wisteria vine. Hamid had staggered as far as the wall and pulled at the wisteria, thinking to climb over, but the vine came away from the crumbling stone and he died right there. The porter covered him up with the vine but in a few hours-it was summertime-Hamid had made his presence known and the crime was discovered. A sad business, Zannis thought, the moneylenders preyed on the waterfront laborers like hawks on pigeons. Was this a law of nature? Perhaps it was. A real hawk had once tried to get at one of his little brother’s canaries, in a cage on the windowsill, and bent the hell out of the wire frame.

Zannis looked at his watch, 3:39, and settled down to wait. This was a meeting, of course, and somebody was going to show up, sooner or later. If he was dumb enough to walk past the idling Skoda, they’d get both of them. If not, just the German, though Saltiel would likely take off after the second man. Woman? Maybe, anything was possible.

3:48 A.M. Hurry up, you bastards, have your fucking meeting and let me go home to bed. After arrest, and a trip to the police station, where they’d get what they could, then run him back to the ship. After all, he hadn’t done much-entered Salonika without having his passport stamped. No point in keeping him. The German consul would squawk, Vangelis would be irritated, the hell with it.

4:00 A.M. What was the German doing down there? Was there a way through to another street that Zannis didn’t know about? Oh, a fine thing that would be! I stood there in the rain until dawn but I never saw him again. Zannis sighed, shifted from his wet foot to his dry one, and thought about Roxanne, about making love, which was what they did. Sure, a restaurant now and … Suddenly, his mind snapped back to full attention.

From the other end of the street, at the corner of a distant alley, headlights-no car yet, just beams probing the mist. What? Could you get through down there? Zannis didn’t know, but obviously somebody did because the lights swung left into the street and now pointed directly at him. He scurried along the iron shutter to the opposite corner and wound up facing the Skoda. What would Saltiel do? Nothing. The lights stayed off. Good, Gabi, that’s the way.

And next, he thought, addressing the unseen driver of the car, you’ll turn into the alley. It was a Renault sedan that muttered past him, going very slowly, but his prediction was off. The Renault paused at the alley, moved forward a few feet, and backed in. Clever, Zannis thought, ready for a fast getaway. What was this? Another murder in the alley? Was it cursed? Was this long, boring, stupid night going to end in melodrama?

Whatever happened down there didn’t take long. It happened in the alley and it happened quickly and it happened where Zannis couldn’t see it. A car door slammed, an engine roared, and the Renault reappeared, taking a fast left turn into the street and speeding off. Zannis squinted into the rain, trying to see through the cloudy rear window-someone in the passenger seat? No, he didn’t think so. As he hurried down the steps from the loading dock, he watched the Renault as it flew past the Skoda. Count: one, two, three, four; then the Skoda’s lights came on and Saltiel made a nice easy turn and followed the Renault, which had turned east up the deserted corniche.

As Zannis approached the alley, the German came out. They stopped dead, facing each other, maybe thirty feet apart, then the German, like Hamid the moneylender, went scuttling back down the alley. Heading for the wisteria vine? No, he had a better idea, because by the time Zannis entered the alley, he’d disappeared. The magic German. Where? Zannis trotted along the sheer wall, very tense about some sort of unseen cover at his back, very certain that he was about to be shot. But then, just at the foot of the alley, a door. A door that, he guessed, would lead into the office of the warehouse. Had he forgotten it? Had it even been there, back then?

Walther. Yes, the time had come, work the slide, arm it, assume Gabi kept it loaded, assume he’d put the bullets back in the clip when he’d got done hanging up his picture. For he’d surely unloaded it, knowing full well that banging loaded weapons on hard surfaces wasn’t such a good idea-the very least you could hope for was embarrassment and it got quickly worse from there. Grampa! The cat! No, Gabi had done the right thing because Gabi always did the right thing. No?

Zannis closed the umbrella and set it by the wall, freed the Walther’s clip, found it fully loaded and locked it back in place. Then he stood to one side of the door and, making sure of his balance, raised his foot and kicked at the knob, intending to make it rattle on the other side. No bullets from inside so he reached over, turned the knob, and opened the door. Unlocked. Always unlocked? Unlocked at the moment. Keeping to the cover of the wall as much as he could, he swung the door wide, waited a beat, then rushed in low, Walther pointed ahead of him.

He’d expected an office, and hoped for a telephone. Right, then wrong. It was an office, open to the warehouse floor-filing cabinets, two desks, and an old-fashioned telephone, no dial, on the wall. But the line had been cut a few inches below the wooden box. Cut years ago? Or thirty seconds ago? He didn’t know. But he did know where he was-the Albala spice warehouse. The air was thick with scent; a dense compound of fennel, opium poppies, foul silk cocoons, and Mediterranean herbs; sage and thyme and the rest. Stacked in burlap-covered bales and wooden crates out in the darkness, ready to be shipped.

He listened for a time, but heard only silence. Then waited, hoping his eyes would adjust to the darkness but the only light in the warehouse seeped through closed louvers, set high on the walls. One hand ahead of him, he moved forward, but he knew it was hopeless, he wasn’t going to find the German crouched behind a bale of fennel. So he returned to the office, took hold of the door handle, and slammed it shut, then walked out into the darkness, making no attempt to move quietly.

Something moved, something much bigger than a rat. The sound, weight shifting on boards, came from somewhere above him. He waited, changed gun hands, and wiped his sweaty palm on his pants leg. Again he heard it, almost directly above his head. So, the second floor. How did one get up there? No idea. He reached in his pocket, lit a match, discovered he was in an aisle with stacked bales on both sides. Lighting a second match, he saw what looked like a stairway on the far wall.

It wasn’t a stairway but a wooden ramp and, when he got there, he found what he was looking for. At the foot of the ramp was a metal cabinet with a lever affixed to one side. He pulled the lever down and the lights went on. Not a lot of light, a few bare bulbs in outlets screwed to the boards of the ceiling, and only on the first floor, but enough. Whatever was up there moved again, fast, running, then stopped.

Zannis was finding it hard to breathe-how the hell did people work in here? — the air was so charged, so chemically sharp, his eyes were watering and he had to take his glasses off and wipe away the tears. Then, in a crouch, he scurried up the ramp and dove flat at the top, his head just below floor level. Quickly, he raised up to get a look but, even with some ambient light from the first floor, the gloom at the top of the ramp quickly faded into darkness. He sniffed-this place was really reaching him-then spoke, not loud and not angry, in German. “Sir, please come out from wherever you’re hiding, and let me see your hands. Please. You won’t be harmed.”

That did it.

Running footsteps on the far side of the second floor, then a series of thumps punctuated by a cry of panic, and, after a few beats of silence, a moan. Using two matches to reach the opposite wall, Zannis realized what had happened. There was another ramp over there but, if you didn’t want to use it, there was an alternative; a square cut in the floor with a narrow and very steep set of stairs, almost a ladder, that descended to the floor below. The German’s descent had clearly taken him by surprise and he was lying face down with his head on the boards and his feet on the steps above-Zannis saw that he was wearing green socks-briefcase still clutched in one hand. Carefully, Walther still held ready for use, Zannis walked down the stairs. The German said something-it sounded as though he were pleading but his voice was muffled and Zannis couldn’t make out the words. He checked for weapons, found none, then took the German under the arms, turned him over, hauled him upright, and managed to get him seated on a step. For a moment he just sat there, eyes shut, nose bleeding, then he pressed a hand to the center of his chest and said, “Hospital. Hospital.”

Well, Zannis thought later, I tried. He’d put one arm around the man, held him up, and walked him along a step at a time, meanwhile carrying the briefcase in his other hand. It was awkward and slow; by the time they reached the street that led to the customshouse, dawn had turned the sky a dark gray. There they were lucky-a taxi was cruising slowly along the corniche, looking for the last revelers of the night. Zannis waved it down and settled the German in the backseat and the driver sped off, reaching the hospital only a few minutes later. And when they pulled up to the emergency entrance a doctor showed up right away and climbed into the back of the taxi. But then, the doctor shook his head and said, “Can’t help him here. You might as well take him to the morgue, or maybe you want us to use the ambulance.”

“You’re sure?”

The doctor nodded and said, “I’m sorry.”

By ten the next morning he was on the phone with Vangelis, who said, after hearing a brief version of the story, “And what was in the briefcase?”

“Photographs. Seventy photographs. And a sketch, in sharp pencil, a freehand map of the area around Fort Rupel.”

“How do you know it was Fort Rupel?”

“It’s labeled. Printed in Roman letters. The pictures were taken from a distance: roads, barbed wire, the fort itself.” The line hissed, finally Zannis said, “Hello?”

“Yes. I’m here.” A conventional answer, but the tone was sad and grim.

Zannis repeated what he’d said to Saltiel in the car. “Maybe just the war, coming south.” Fort Rupel protected the Rupel Pass on the Bulgarian border, directly north of Salonika. The invasion route from there, down the Struma valley, was more than two thousand years old. Farmers’ plows turned up spearheads, broken swords, bayonets, and bones.

“Not yet,” Vangelis said. “The Nazis don’t care about us. Yet. What are you doing about the Renault?”

“Saltiel never could catch him, but he did get the license plate number. Local car, so all I have to do is call the clerk.”

“All right, Costa, just proceed as you think best.”

“I called some friends at the newspapers-German tourist found dead on the sidewalk near his hotel. Heart attack the apparent cause. I gave them the information on the passport: Albert Heinrich, domiciled in Essen, fifty-three years old.” He paused, then said, “You wouldn’t prefer a spy scandal, would you?”

Vangelis snorted and said, “Oh fine! Good idea!” then added a version of a local Albanian expression. “Let’s fart up Hitler’s nose. We’ll have them down here in no time at all.”

“I thought you would see it that way. As for the photographs, what’s your pleasure?”

“Drop them off here, I’ll send them over to the army.”

“And Spiraki?”

“I was afraid you’d ask that. Tell him what happened; write him a report-he’ll like that; have your clerk type it up, on Salonika police stationery. And Costa? Make damn sure you get rid of the passport before you contact Spiraki-those people love passports.”

“It should go to the German consulate.”

“It must. Tell me, was it really a heart attack? You didn’t, ah, do anything to him, did you? Not that I’d blame you if you did.”

“No, sir, he did it to himself. He was scared-afraid of being caught, afraid of failure-he was running around up there like a rat. Falling down the stairs didn’t help, but if I had to have a theory I’d say he frightened himself to death.”

Vangelis’s voice was disgusted. “Miserable business,” he said. Then, “Oh well, keep me informed.”

When he’d hung up, Zannis took a piece of paper from his drawer and began to write the first draft of a report to Spiraki. Formerly an Athenian lawyer, Spiraki ran the local office of the Geniki Asphalia, the State Security Bureau. It had changed names several times, becoming the Defense Intelligence Bureau in 1936; then, a few months later, as the Metaxas dictatorship took hold, the General Directorate of Foreign Citizens, but most people still called it “state security.”

Zannis found Spiraki himself not so easy to deal with. Tall, heavy, balding, somber, with a thick mustache, he was given to light-blue suits, formal language, and cold-eyed stares. He never responded immediately to anything you said, there was always a dead moment before he spoke. On the other hand, he could’ve been worse. His office was supposed to ensure obedience to the dictatorship’s morality laws, forbidding hashish and prostitution, the traditional targets, and they’d tried to go beyond that, prohibiting lewd music, the rembetika-filthy, criminal, passionate, and very dear to Salonika’s heart. But Spiraki didn’t insist, and the police were tolerant. You couldn’t stop these things, not in this city. And, after four hundred years of Turkish occupation, it was unwise to press Greeks too hard.

The gray sky wouldn’t go away, seagulls circled above the port, their cries doing nothing to disperse the melancholy. Saltiel showed up at eleven, tired and slumped, and he and Zannis tried to finish up the investigation. The clerk at the city hall found the plate number, to her great delight. It belonged to a Renault registered by one K. L. Stacho. Zannis knew who he was, a Bulgarian undertaker, third-generation proprietor of a funeral home that buried Bulgarians, Albanians, Serbs, and Vlachs, who died with sufficient regularity to provide Stacho with a handsome villa in Salonika’s wealthy neighborhood, by the sea east of the city.

Zannis telephoned and Saltiel drove them out there ten minutes later. Poor Madam Stacho, red-eyed, a balled-up handkerchief clenched in her fist, Zannis felt sorry for her. Her husband had left the house, to take care of some unspecified business, long after midnight. And he never returned. She’d been frantic of course but, at eight in the morning, a neighbor had come knocking at her door to say that Stacho had telephoned and asked her to relay a message: he would not be coming home. Not for a long time. He was well, she was not to worry. Beyond that, Madam Stacho didn’t know a thing.

So, did Mr. Stacho have German friends?

Not as far as she knew.

A camera?

Well, yes, he did have one, photography was a hobby of his.

For how long, a hobby. Years?

No, only a few months.

And, please, Madam Stacho, excuse us, we’re only doing our job, may we take a look around the house?

No answer, a wave of the hand, Do what you like, I don’t care any more.

They did take a look. Rooms crowded with heavy furniture, thick drapes, tiled floors, a frightened maid, but no undertaker in a closet or beneath a bed.

When they returned to the parlor, Madam Stacho wondered what her husband had done to provoke the interest of the police.

They couldn’t tell her, but he might have information they needed for an investigation that was currently under way.

“And that’s all?” she said, obviously brightening.

“Is that not enough?”

“When he left, when I learned he wasn’t coming home …”

“Yes?”

“I thought it was a woman.”

“Nothing like that.”

Now she was very close to beaming, held Zannis’s hand warmly at the door. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Perhaps you would notify us, if he returns; he can clear his name by answering a few questions.”

Oh definitely, surely, absolutely, no doubt about it.

In the Skoda, Zannis had Saltiel drive him back to the alley behind the Albala spice warehouse.

But the umbrella was gone.

That night, he was supposed to take Roxanne to the movies, a Turkish Western-Slade Visits Wyoming was his attempt at translation-but by the time he reached the Pension Bastasini, the hotel where she lived, he was in another kind of mood. His love affair with Roxanne Brown had gone on for more than a year and had reached that pleasantly intimate plateau where plans were casually made and just as easily changed. “Perhaps the Balthazar,” he suggested. The name of a taverna but it meant much more than that.

“Then we shan’t be visiting Wyoming? With Effendi Slade?” This in English, but for the Turkish title. Her Greek was close to perfect but she knew how her English voice affected him. Prim, upper-class, clipped, and chilly, a voice perfectly suited to her firm horsewoman’s body, weathered face, mouth barely touched with lipstick.

“Perhaps we could go later. Or now, if you prefer.”

“No,” she said. “I prefer depravity.”

Balthazar, tucked away in a cellar beneath lowlife Vardar Square, wasn’t far away so they walked, protected by her umbrella, a hideous thing with pink polka dots on a green field. Very much a couple; his arm reached around her shoulders-they were just about the same height-hers around his waist. “Is the world being good to you, this week?” he said.

“Not too bad. The school has a recital coming up this weekend but I refuse to worry about it.” Arriving in Salonika in 1938, by way of expatriate years spent first in southern France, then in Capri, she had purchased the Mount Olympus School of Ballet and, once every eight weeks, the daughters of the city’s bourgeoisie, all shapes and sizes, twirled around the stage to Tchaikovsky. As rendered by a Victrola that ran, in its old age, not as fast as it once did, so the dance was perhaps a little on the stately side, which frankly suited some of the statelier daughters.

“Am I invited to the recital?” he asked.

She pressed her cheek against his. “Many things I might ask of you, my dear, but …”

“Do you perform?”

“In tights? I think not.”

“Don’t tell me you can’t wear tights.”

“That is for you to look at, not the butcher and his wife.”

Balthazar was delighted to see them and offered a solemn bow. “So pleased,” he said, “it’s been too long,” and led them to a very small, very private room. Filled with ottomans, wool carpets, and low brass tables, the soft, shadowy darkness barely disturbed by a spirit lamp flickering in one corner. Balthazar lit some incense, then prepared two narghilehs, each with a generous lump of ochre-colored hashish. “You will eat later?” he said. “A nice meze?” Small appetizers-eggplant, feta, hummus.

“Perhaps we will.”

He well knew they would but didn’t make a point of it, saying only, “As you wish,” and closing the door carefully-their privacy his personal responsibility.

Music would have been nice and, as it turned out, music there was. If not from Balthazar itself, from the taverna next door, a bouzouki band and a woman singer, muffled by the wall, so just the right volume. They sat on a low loveseat, shoulders and hips touching, and leaned over a worked-brass table. When Zannis inhaled, the water in the narghileh bubbled and took the harsh edge off the hashish so he could hold the smoke in for a long time.

They were silent for a while, but eventually she said, “Quite nice tonight. The smoke tastes good, like … what? Lemon and lime?”

“Did you ever eat it?”

“No.”

“Best not.”

“Oh?”

“Very powerful. It will take you, ah, far away. Far, far away.”

“I’m rather far away as it is.” After a moment she said, “You see that little lamp in the corner? It reminds me of Aladdin, I believe it might have been in a book I had, as a child.” She stared into the distance, then said, “Do you suppose, if I rubbed it …?”

“You’d burn your fingers, the genie keeps it hot.”

“Doesn’t want to come out?”

“Not in this weather.”

She giggled. “Not in this weather.” She tossed the tube of the narghileh on the table, turned sideways, rested her head on his shoulder, and began to unbutton his shirt. That done, she spread it apart and laid her cheek on his chest-hairless and smooth, with broad, flat plates. Putting her lips against his skin, she said, “You smell good.”

“I do? I took a bath, maybe it’s the soap.”

“No, it isn’t soap, it’s something about you, something sweet.”

For a time they drifted, then, returning from wherever he’d been, he said, “Would you like to sit on my lap?”

“I always like that.” She stood, hiked up her dress, settled herself on his thighs, leaned her weight against him, and raised her knees, so that, as if by magic, his hand covered her bottom. On the other side of the wall, the singer’s voice grew plaintive. That made them both laugh, as though she could see through the wall. “Can you understand the lyric?” he said.

She shook her head.

“She’s singing about her flower.”

“In her garden?”

He moved her top knee a little and said, “No, this one.” The tips of his index and middle fingers rested on tight cotton. She was, he thought, so very clever, wearing white cotton panties, just right for a proper Englishwoman, but they were cut to provide a snug fit, and the cotton felt very fine, very soft, to his fingers. After a few moments, a breath escaped her; he could feel it and he could almost, but not quite, hear it. Delicately, he moved his fingers, not ambitious, simply savoring the warm reception, and much more pleased than proud.

On. And on. Until she raised her head and spoke quietly by his ear, in the King’s English: “Let’s have those off, shall we?”

Later, after Zannis had gone out into the public room and Balthazar had brought them-now famished-the meze, she scooped up some hummus with a triangle of pita bread and said, “Strange, but it just now occurs to me that the ottoman is an extraordinary piece of furniture, ingenious.”

“Yes?”

“Oh yes. Because you can, you know, also sit on it.”

After such a night, going back to work the next day was something like a punishment. Sibylla, the office clerk, always starched and taut, was wound especially tight that morning-neither Saltiel nor Zannis would admit it but they were both afraid of her. She stood straight as a stick, with fair hair set every Wednesday in a warrior’s helmet. And warrior was, at the moment, the very word, for she had come to work in a bad mood and was taking it out on the files.

Of these, there were two distinct sets. The first lived in a row of wooden filing cabinets in what was called the other room-there were two, with a bathroom in the hall-and included all the various paper that flowed through a government bloodstream: directions from on high, carbons of correspondence, letters from the citizenry, and various oddments, like newspaper clippings, that got themselves into the files and stayed there. Though sometimes-as witness Sibylla’s attack du jour-not forever.

“Gabi,” she said, holding a paper so that Saltiel could read it, “is this important?”

Saltiel didn’t want to read it. “Probably not.”

“A memorandum, from Station Six. It seems to concern the cemetery.”

“Which one?”

“The old Turkish one. The subject is ‘Copulation at Night.’”

“By the living?”

“If not, keep it,” Zannis said, looking up from his desk. They couldn’t really get Sibylla to laugh, but they never stopped trying.

Instead, a sigh. What bad boys they were. “Dated 10 September, 1938.”

“By now, they’re likely done copulating,” Saltiel said. “Get rid of it.”

The other file was maintained by Zannis, on five-by-eight cards in shoeboxes, and, taken altogether, was a working map of the power centers-and there were many-of Salonika. Thus it included cards for shipowners and bankers, Greek Orthodox prelates, consuls, spies, resident foreigners, journalists, politicians, high-class criminals, and courtesans-anybody who mattered. For an official whose job was to work behind the scenes, it was crucial to keep track of the cast of characters.

The files, both sets, played a central role in the unnamed office on the Via Egnatia, with support from three typewriters, three telephones, and one more device which, from time to time, would remind them of its presence by ringing a little bell. As it did at that moment, producing a mumbled “Skata,” from Zannis-the Greek equivalent of the French merde-by which he meant now what. The device, on its own private table in the corner, was a Model 15 Siemens teleprinter, and now, all by itself, it began to type, fast and furious, a page rising slowly from a slot above its keyboard. Zannis stood by the table and read the text as it appeared.

AS PER YOUR QUERY 6 OCTOBER 1940 STOP MAIN BORDER STATIONS REPORT NO RECORD RENAULT MODEL UNKNOWN LICENSE SK 549 ENTERING BULGARIA LAST 48 HOURS STOP NO RECORD GREEK NATIONAL K L. STACHO THIS OFFICE STOP SIGNED LAZAREFF END

The teleprinter waited, making its thucka-thucka-thucka sound, for thirty seconds, then shut down. Well, Zannis thought, I gave it a try. On a hunch that Stacho had fled up to Bulgaria, he’d had Sibylla send a teletype to his old friend, Ivan Lazareff, in Sofia. If he’d thought that Stacho was spying for Bulgaria-a perfectly reasonable assumption-he wouldn’t have done it, but the undertaker, a Greek citizen of Bulgarian descent, was spying for Germany, or at least for a man carrying German documents, so he’d taken a chance. And why not? He’d known Lazareff for years; they’d had plenty of good times in Greek and Bulgarian bars back when they’d both been detectives. At one time they’d talked on the telephone-mostly in German-but now that Zannis was a police official and Lazareff a chief of detectives, they communicated back and forth by teletype.

Logically, the purchase of the Siemens equipment should have been animated by some urge for progress, but it wasn’t so. As German power surged in Europe, German corporations drove deep into the Balkans, buying up raw materials at preferential prices and selling-often trading-technology in return. Roumanian wheat moved west; back the other way came Leica cameras, aspirin, harmonicas, and, in some of the police stations in the cities and towns of southern Europe, teletype systems. In many cases, the purchase wasn’t optional, was instead dictated by a very apprehensive foreign policy-we must appease these people, buy the damn machine! And yes, there were stories of hens nesting atop teleprinters in Serbian villages, and no, you really weren’t going to hunt down the goat thief sought by a Roumanian police officer, but the system did work and, soon enough, some Balkan policemen found that it had its uses.

10 October. Hotel Lux Palace, Salonika.

Maybe just the war, moving south.

The end of her cigarette was marked with lipstick, dark red, a color that emphasized her black hair and pale skin. Stunning, Zannis thought, was the word for her. And seductive, future delights suggested in the depths of her glance. And a liar, because she had no intention of going to bed with him or anybody else. She was important, this woman; she would never do such things. She was, however, scared, and not used to it, so she flirted a little with the handsome policeman, because she needed help.

He was here, in the best suite the best hotel in the city had to offer, at Saltiel’s suggestion. No, request, though put mildly enough. This was a Jewish matter, originating with some pillar of the Sephardic community who knew to reach Zannis by way of Saltiel.

She ordered coffee, sat Zannis in a brown velvet armchair, turned the chair that went with the escritoire halfway and perched on its edge, facing him. Heels together, posture erect. “Frau Krebs is terribly formal,” she said, her voice in cultured and well-modulated German. “Everybody calls me Emmi, for Emilia.”

“And I’m Costa, for Constantine. My last name is Zannis. And they are?”

He referred to two children, the boy seven, he guessed, the girl perhaps nine, in a staged tableau beyond the open bedroom door. They were perfectly dressed, Jewish by their looks, the girl reading a book, the boy coloring with crayons.

“Nathanial and Paula.” The girl looked up from her book, smiled at Zannis, then went back to reading-or pretending to read.

“Attractive children, no doubt you’re proud of them.”

Silence. She hesitated, a shall-I-lie hesitation that Zannis had seen many times before. She inhaled her cigarette, tapped it above the ashtray, and finally said, “No.”

“Not proud?” He smiled, of course she meant no such thing.

“They’re not my children.” Then, regret. “Does it matter?” She was worried that she’d made a mistake.

“It doesn’t matter, but it is interesting. I’m sure you’ll explain.”

The waiter arrived, bringing croissants, butter, jam, Greek pastry, and coffee. In ordering, she’d covered all the possibilities. “I thought you might like something to eat.”

“Maybe later.”

The tray was set on a table and she tipped the waiter.

“Two days ago, I arrived at the Turkish border on what used to be called the Orient Express. But we were turned back by a customs officer, so here we are, in Salonika.”

“A Turkish customs officer?” he said. Then made the classic baksheesh gesture, thumb rubbed across the first two fingers, and raised his eyebrows.

She appreciated the theatre. “Oh, I tried, but I somehow managed to find the only honest official in the Levant.”

“For what reason, Emmi, turned back?”

“Some question about papers.”

“Are they legitimate?”

“I thought they were. I was told they were.”

“By …?”

“A lawyer in Berlin. I paid him to obtain the right papers, Turkish entry visas, but what I got were-um, cooked up. False papers. That’s what the officer said.”

“And then you offered a bribe.”

“I started to but, oh, you should have seen his face. I think he might have put us in prison.”

Sympathetic, Zannis nodded. “Always best, we think here, to avoid time in Turkish prisons. Emmi, if they’re not your children, whose are they?”

“A friend’s. An old school friend. A Jewish friend. She can’t get out of Germany; she asked for help, I volunteered to take the children out. To Istanbul-where there are people who will take care of them.”

“And where you will live.”

Slowly, she shook her head, then put her cigarette out, pressing the end against the glass. “No, I will go back.”

“Forgive me, I assumed you were Jewish.”

“I am.”

Zannis didn’t answer. It was properly hushed on the top floor of the Lux Palace; from the corridor outside the room he could hear the whir of a vacuum cleaner. He stood up, walked over to the window and looked out to sea, at a steamship and its column of smoke against the sky. As he returned to the chair she met his eyes. Stunning, he thought again, and hard, much harder than he’d first thought. What have I stumbled on? Back in the chair, he leaned forward and spoke quietly. “You don’t have to say anything, if you don’t want to. I’ll still help you.”

She nodded, grateful for his understanding. In the bedroom, the boy said, his voice just above a whisper, “Should this be green?”

“No, blue,” the girl said.

Emilia Krebs bent toward him and lowered her voice. “It was very hard for them. They couldn’t go to school, they couldn’t really go outdoors-Berlin is brutal now. Do you understand?”

His expression said that he understood perfectly.

“So, my friend asked me to get them out, somewhere safe. Because she knew I could go in and out of Germany. Krebs is Colonel Hugo Krebs, my husband, and a very powerful man.”

“In the party?” He meant the Nazi party, and kept his voice light and neutral.

“Never.” She was offended that he could even suggest such a thing, and her voice knew how to be offended. “No, he isn’t like that. He’s a career officer; he serves on the General Staff of the Wehrmacht, a manager of logistics-trains getting where they’re needed on time, enough socks-it’s not glamorous, but it is quite important.”

“I know what it is,” Zannis said. “Is there a J stamped in your passport?” That was now a legal requirement in Germany, a J for Juden, Jew.

“Oh no, not mine; they wouldn’t dare.”

“No, likely they wouldn’t, not with you married to a man in his position, and he’s probably not Jewish-he couldn’t be, the way things are in Germany.”

“A Lutheran, from a solid old family, though nothing special. We met, we fell in love, and we married-he’s a wonderful man. We were never able to have children, but we lived a good life, then Hitler came to power. Hugo would have resigned his commission but he realized that, with a Jewish wife, it was better for us if he stayed where he was.”

Zannis nodded, acknowledging an unfortunate truth. And, he thought, logistics is the word. How to get this woman and the two children to Turkey? “Could you tell me how, once you reached Istanbul, you planned to return to Berlin?”

“I didn’t see it as a problem,” she said, hesitant, not sure what he had in mind.

“By steamship?”

“Heavens no. It’s faster to fly. From Istanbul to Bucharest, then on to Berlin. Lufthansa has routes to all the neutral countries.”

“But you didn’t fly to Istanbul. I imagine, with two children, it would have been expensive.”

“It wasn’t that, I don’t care about money. Hugo and I thought the three of us might be a little too noticeable at Tempelhof-Gestapo everywhere, at the airport-so better to go on the train. By stages, you see, first to Vienna, then Budapest, Belgrade, Sofia, and on to Istanbul. We got as far as the border control at Edirne, in Turkey.”

“But you came back to Salonika.”

“Because I knew there were Jews in Salonika-‘the Jerusalem of the Balkans,’ all that.”

“Yes, at one time a majority here, and still a large community.”

“I couldn’t think what else to do. Going back to Berlin was out of the question, of course.”

“Why?”

“Because”-she paused, then said-“that would have been, well, failure.”

“And you don’t fail.”

“How could I?” With a shift of her eyes, she referred to the children in the bedroom.

Zannis thought for a moment; then he said, “There is one thing I wondered about.”

“Anything.” She encouraged him with a smile; certainly they had become, almost, friends, she hoped.

“You said, ‘I don’t care about money,’ and I don’t mean to pry, but I suspect you weren’t talking about the pay of an army colonel.”

“You don’t mean to pry?” Arch and amused.

Zannis’s turn to smile.

“I have money of my own. I am Emilia Krebs but I used to be, I guess I still am, Emilia Adler. A name you might recognize, if you were German. Emilia Adler, of the Frankfurt Adlers, private bankers since the Middle Ages and very, very rich. There, it’s out.”

Zannis was puzzled and showed it. “Now? Under the Nazis? My impression was that they’d stolen all the Jewish money in Germany, forced the sale of Jewish businesses, prevented funds from leaving the country. Not true?”

“Not quite. Because once the Nazis got hold of the money they had to do something with it. Much of it went to Switzerland, but a substantial amount was deposited with my grandfather, at the Adler Bank in Frankfurt. That’s because he pays interest of twelve percent-which the Swiss, believe me, don’t.”

Zannis was impressed. “Twelve percent.”

“There’s no way he can invest at that level, of course, though the Nazis think he can-the cunning Jew, working in secret…. But, in fact, the money is coming from his own resources, it is a rather elegant form of bribery.”

After a moment, Zannis said, “Forever?”

“No. But for a time, maybe a year, maybe more. He knew they would come after him, in 1936, he knew, so he went after them. Gently. He is on the surface a very gentle man, though he’s not really like that.”

“Nor are you.”

“Nor am I.”

“And your father, works for the bank?”

“My father died ten years ago.”

“I’m sorry.”

“In Persia, where we held bonds for the building of water systems.”

“Of … an illness?”

“Of passion. A heart attack in a bordello. We like to believe he died happy. So there, Herr Zannis, now you have it all.”

“Almost. I’d like to know how you managed to secure exit papers for the children.”

“The lawyer did do that-at least he got something right.”

“How was it done? Do you know?”

“With a bribe, according to the lawyer. Fifty thousand reichsmark. Anyhow, that’s what I paid him, besides his fee, but all I have is his word.” She shrugged. “It might have been less.”

Zannis raised his eyebrows-a lot of money. “What, in dollars: twenty-five thousand? People could live on that for years.”

“Closer to twenty, I believe. Still, a substantial sum; this kind of transaction has become very expensive in the Reich. The Nazis are vicious and criminal but, thank God, they are also venal. The ideology, for many of them, is only skin-deep-they like power, and they love money.”

“Well, I’ll need the exit papers, for a day or two, maybe longer.”

As she went for her purse, Zannis rose to his feet and said, “Now I think I will have a coffee-may I pour one for you?”

“Please.”

“Nathanial?” Zannis said. “Paula? Would you like a pastry?”

12 October. The Club de Salonique.

It was the place in the city, so much so that even the mighty Vangelis had had a difficult time getting Zannis a membership. “Not only did I have to put my thumb in a certain place,” the old man told him, “but I had to press hard.” Nonetheless, it was crucial for Zannis to belong, because some of the most important business in Salonika was done there, in the club’s own building on the fancy end of the corniche. The atmosphere in the dark mahogany dining room, with its view over the sea and its hushed luncheon ritual-subdued conversation, just the barest music of china and silverware-was privilege transcendent.

Just the setting for Celebi, the Turkish consul. Easily a film version of the diplomat, Celebi-silver hair, serene smile, ivory cigarette holder; Roxanne had once described him as debonair. The waiter arrived, they ordered indifferently-the food was too polite to be good-and Zannis was properly grateful for Celebi’s seeing him on such short notice. Aperitifs were served, Zannis said he needed a favor, Celebi’s expression changed only slightly-oh? So it was to be a sophisticated sort of a luncheon, based on the most sophisticated sort of understanding about life and politics, though somewhat less sophisticated was the view out the window, where a merchant freighter, torpedoed that morning, burned while they dined. Mostly black smoke but, if one of your sideways glances came at just the right moment, you might catch a bright dot of fire.

“She’s a very cultivated woman,” Zannis said. “Jewish, and a person of some standing in the social world of Berlin.”

“Really?”

“So it seems.”

“She must be terribly rich, then. I’m afraid the rest of them …”

“I know.”

“She’s in difficulties?”

“In a way. She’s trying to get a friend’s children out of Berlin.”

“And into Turkey?”

“Yes. Will you have another one?”

“Oh, I don’t know …”

“Waiter?”

“Sir?”

“Two more, please.”

“I shouldn’t …”

“Let’s go to hell a little, no? A nap this afternoon …”

“Maybe you can …”

“You’re busy?”

“It’s frightful. Half the world trying to get in the door. I’m over January’s limit now, for entry visas, and my superiors in Istanbul are becoming tiresome.”

Zannis shook his head. “Damned war.”

“We could’ve done without, that’s certain. Why don’t you just smuggle them in? Everyone else does.”

“They’re kids, Ahmet. Sweet kids. I don’t want them to pee their pants every time some cop looks at them in the street.”

“Oh, yes, well, you’re right then. They’ll need real documents.”

“Can you reason with Istanbul?”

“Umm, yes and no. But, truth is, I may have to sweeten somebody.”

“Well, that won’t be a problem.”

“No?”

“No, I don’t think so.”

Celebi took a cigarette from a silver case and twisted it into his cigarette holder.

Zannis flicked a lighter and, as Celebi bent toward the flame, said, “What do you think, four hundred?”

“I assume you don’t mean drachmas.”

“Dollars.”

“Apiece?”

“Yes. An adult and two children.”

“Can she get dollars?”

“In Salonika?”

Celebi nodded, amused, to himself: of course. “I’ll send Madam Urglu along, say, tomorrow afternoon?”

“I’ll expect her. I have an envelope with me-German exit visas, you can get the information from them.”

“On the way out,” Celebi said.

Zannis nodded in agreement. So elegant, the dining room of the Club de Salonique, not a place to be passing envelopes across the table.

Blue sky, that afternoon, sparkling air after the rain, the snow-capped Mount Olympus visible across the bay. Zannis walked back to the office along the busy Via Egnatia, taking his time, pausing to look at the windows of the shops. He made a mental note to contact Emilia Krebs when he reached the office, giving her time to arrange the money for the bribe-he doubted any of it would ever reach Istanbul-so that by the following afternoon he could give an envelope to Madam Urglu.

He didn’t much care for Madam Urglu, said to be Celebi’s chief spy. In her fifties, pigeon-breasted and stout, with glasses on a chain around her neck and a sharp tongue. Spiraki at state security claimed she served as a spymaster for various secret agents-“coded wireless transmission Monday and Thursday nights,” he’d said, “from the top floor of the legation.” Probably he was right, Zannis thought, staring at a display of tennis rackets and a poster of a blond woman in mid-backhand, but he wondered what intelligence, secret intelligence, the Turks wanted in Salonika. Whatever it might be, he was hardly shocked.

After all, they’d been fighting the Turks forever-famously in Troy, in Homeric days, but that surely wasn’t the first time. The last time it started was in 1919, when the Greek armies had gone up into Turkey and occupied the coastal city of Smyrna. There was even talk in those days about getting Constantinople-Byzantium-back, the great capital of the Byzantine Empire, taken by Moslem Turks in 1453. They’d had it long enough, no?

Well, they still had it, now Istanbul. And the Turkish armies had retaken Smyrna in 1922: burned the town, slaughtered the Greek population, and changed the name to Izmir. In the following year a treaty was signed: three hundred and fifty thousand Turks left Greece, and a million and a half Greeks came to Greece from Turkey, came back home, where they hadn’t lived for a thousand years. Thus, in the autumn of 1940, there was still a taverna called Smyrna Betrayed, located on what had once been known as Basil-the-Slayer-of-Bulgars Street. Renamed the Street of the Franks, in memory of yet another conquest. Easy enough to find new names in a city where the wars outnumbered the streets.

Back at the office, he telephoned Emilia Krebs at the Lux Palace. She was very emotional, close to tears-as close as she ever came, he thought, and these would’ve been tears of relief. Yes, she had the money, and the minute she got off the phone she’d go out and buy dollars. Victory. He supposed you had to call it that: two kids off to grow up in a foreign country, perhaps never to see their parents again, but at least alive.

And late in the afternoon on 16 October, he rode in a taxi to the railway station so Emilia and the children could board the 17:20 express to Istanbul. In the waiting room, Nathanial and Paula sat quietly-too quietly, too much had happened to them-and Emilia Krebs gave him a sheet of Lux Palace notepaper with her address and telephone number in Berlin. “There may come a time,” she said, “when I can return the favor.”

“Maybe,” he said, meaning likely never.

“The way the world is going now, you can’t tell about the future.” The approaching train sounded its whistle and she put a hand on his arm. “I can never thank you enough,” she said. “For helping me.”

“You don’t have to thank me,” he said. “Who could say no?”

He left the office early that day and headed back to his apartment-two small rooms on a cobbled lane called Santaroza, between the railway station and the port. Not the best part of town, on the border of what had been the Jewish district before the Great Fire. He would play with his big mountain sheepdog, Melissa-honeybee-who would be waiting for him in the doorway after a hard day’s work in the neighborhood. This was a night, one of two or three every week, when he would go to his mother’s house for dinner. Melissa always accompanied him and would stay until he returned for the next visit.

She was a big girl, eighty pounds, with a thick soft black-and-white coat and a smooth face, long muzzle, and beautiful eyes-not unlike the Great Pyrenees. Queen of the street, she started her morning by walking him a few blocks toward the office, to a point where, instinct told her, he was no longer in danger of being attacked by wolves. Next, she returned home to protect the local kids on their way to school, then accompanied the postman on his rounds. That done, she would guard the chicken coop in a neighbor’s courtyard, head resting on massive paws. If a marauding fox didn’t show up, she’d wait until it was time to trot off to the school and see the kids safely home.

Nobody taught her any of this, it was all in her bloodline, coming from the mountains where her ancestors-perhaps descendants of Turkish Akbash dogs-guarded flocks but didn’t herd them. Thus she would never trot in front of or behind her charges, but stayed always to one side. Watchful. And independent; when Zannis had tried putting her on a leash she’d responded by lying down and refusing to move. Nonetheless, a splendid girl, from a mountain village where these dogs were highly valued. Zannis counted himself lucky to have been able to buy a puppy from a good litter.

She stood when he appeared, gave a single low bark of greeting, then had her pretty ears smoothed back, her muzzle flapped, and her ruff given a few affectionate tugs. Across the lane, two old ladies sitting on kitchen chairs-always brought out in good weather-beamed at the spectacle. Then he took her up to his apartment. There were two floors in the narrow building; he had the second. “We’re going to see Grandma tonight,” he told her. Melissa’s ears shot up. At the house in the old Turkish quarter by the battlements, Zannis’s grandmother always brought home the most succulent butcher’s scraps on the nights when Melissa came for dinner.

But the shopping didn’t end there. Accompanied by Zannis’s mother and his brother, Ari, his grandmother campaigned through the markets, coming home with fresh creamy feta, baby red mullet, calamari, or a chicken with yellow skin-the best kind of chicken, the only kind of chicken-making sure that she got extra feet for the soup pot. Oh they spoiled him rotten, begged him to stay over, which he often did, then sent him off with two of his shirts, boiled white and perfectly ironed.

17 October. Life back to normal, thank heaven. A few cases referred to the office-not much to be done with most of them. A local politician’s wife had gone missing; they could work on that, likely to discover she’d run off with her lover. Otherwise it was quiet. Strange-with half the continent occupied by Germany, and Great Britain standing alone in opposition and fighting for its life-but quiet. At one time, Zannis had received letters from Laurette, in Paris, but now, with the occupation, the letters came only once in a great while. He answered them, carefully, carefully, because they would be read by the German censor. So Laurette would know he was well, that he often thought of her, and something of the Salonika weather.

On the evening of the seventeenth, a party. At the house of a young professor of literature at the university, more Roxanne’s friend than his, but he was happy enough to go. Roxanne had a huge appetite for parties; Zannis went along, smiled, talked, looked covertly at his watch. This particular party was nothing new-Salonika’s high bohemian caste gathered for wine and retsina, seductions physical and social-but it was apparently one of the more important parties that autumn, because Elias showed up. Elias, the king of the city’s poets, and of sufficient stature and self-esteem to call himself by one name only, perhaps his first, perhaps his last, perhaps neither-maybe chosen for mellifluous sonority, who knew. Elias certainly looked like the king of the poets, with snow-white prophet’s beard and Einstein hair. “He doesn’t own a comb,” went the local witticism. “He just unscrews the bulb and sticks his finger in a lamp.” Discovering Zannis-they’d met several times-hiding in a corner, Elias rocked back on his heels and squinted his eyes, like a zoologist encountering an interesting animal. “Ah Zannis, you’re here.”

“Nice to see you, Elias.”

“So, how goes life with the bullyboys?”

“Myself, I avoid them.”

“Really? So do I.”

“Are you hard at work, these days?”

“I am, yes I am. Perhaps a new book next year.”

“I look forward to reading it.”

“Do you have the others?”

“I’ve given a couple of them as gifts, and I have one of my own. Dawn-um …”

“Dawn of the Goddess.”

“That’s it.”

“Maybe not my best. Early work.”

“I liked it,” Zannis said. “The one about the owl.”

Elias thought for a time. “‘Night in the Field’?”

“Could be. I don’t exactly remember.”

“‘In the late night, the huntress wakes to hunt’? That one?”

“Right. That one.”

“Zannis, it isn’t about an owl. It’s about-well, a woman, a woman I knew.”

You knew a woman who ate mice? Skata! “Elias,” he said, “I’m just a policeman.” He didn’t say, “just a simple policeman,” but even so Elias heard the simple, which meant that Zannis had pushed the proper button, because the word made him a worker, a worker of the world who would, in some misty future, unite.

“Well, maybe you have a point,” Elias said, his voice not unkind. “If you take it literally.”

Zannis sensed that Elias was preparing to escape, but Zannis wasn’t ready to let him go. “Tell me, Elias, do you ever go up into the mountains? See old friends?” It was said of Elias, and Zannis believed it to be true, that as a young man he’d gone to the mountains and fought alongside the klephts. This was the name given to the men from the mountain villages who’d fought the Turks-essentially resistance fighters-and who were sometimes shepherds and sometimes bandits, as well as guerrillas.

Elias changed; his party-guest hauteur vanished. “No,” he said ruefully, now the Elias of a former life. “No, I don’t. I don’t see them. I do go up there, especially in the spring, because it is so beautiful, but what you’re talking about, no, that was a long time ago.”

“True, many years ago. But I’d guess your old friends are still around. The ones who survived.”

Elias had the last sip of his wine. “Are you asking as a policeman?”

Zannis didn’t care for the question. “No, not at all. Those days are long gone, and people in my family did the same thing, against the Turks. I was only curious and, if you really want to know, I was wondering if you’d ever write about it.”

Elias shook his head. “Not me, not ever. Up there, secrecy is a religion, and even though it was long ago you keep faith with it. Not that I’d mind seeing them again; when you fight alongside people, their life is in your hands, yours in theirs; it’s beyond anything else-family, love, anything. And they aren’t like people down here. To them, freedom is everything. You know how they refer to themselves, as adespotoi. Masterless.”

“Yes, I know the word. They aren’t the only ones.”

“Well, maybe not, we’ll see.”

“We’ll see?”

“The war.”

“You think it will come here?”

“The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse, yes, all of it, and there will be cowardice and bravery.” Elias paused for a moment, then said, “Of course I hope I’m wrong. The Turkish gendarmerie was bad enough, believe me, but these people …” He looked down at his glass and said, “It appears I’m going to need some more of this.”

“I’m glad we had a chance to talk,” Zannis said.

Maybe Elias wasn’t so glad. His expression, as he nodded a brusque farewell and went off to refill his glass, was vaguely troubled. But not for long. As he reached the middle of the room, he cried out, “Helena! My heart’s desire! Where’ve you been hiding?”

People arrived, nobody left, the room grew warmer, the party got louder, somebody put on a rembetika record, a woman closed her eyes and danced without moving her feet. Zannis talked to a lawyer’s wife, to an actor-“It’s like Sophocles, only modern”-to the professor host, to the cultural attache from the German embassy in Athens-“We are madly Hellenophile; you know, we have a great passion for Greece”-and was happily engaged with a woman painter when Roxanne appeared and towed him away. “Somebody you must meet,” she said.

A tall fellow leaning against a doorframe smiled expectantly as Roxanne led Zannis toward him. Zannis knew immediately that he was English: sand-colored hair swept across a handsome forehead, lines of early middle age graven in a youthful face that made him look like an old boy.

“This is Francis Escovil,” Roxanne said. She gave the name some extra flavor, as though Zannis was expected to know who he was. “The travel writer,” she added.

“Hello,” Escovil said, smiling as he shook hands. He wore his shirt with collar open and one button undone, had an old tweed jacket draped over his shoulders, and was drinking beer from a bottle.

“Please, to meet you,” Zannis said, in his shaky English.

“I hope you’ll be patient with my Greek,” Escovil said, in Greek.

“Francis did classics at Cambridge,” Roxanne said.

“Ancient Greek,” Escovil said, apologetic. “I’m trying to learn the demotic. You’ll have to forgive me if I say odd things.”

“We all say odd things. In all sorts of languages.”

Escovil found the remark amusing. “I see why Roxanne likes you.”

“You’re writing about Salonika?”

“I believe I will. Will try.”

Zannis was puzzled. “You didn’t come here from Britain, did you?”

Escovil laughed. “Now there’s an idea! ‘Despite the war’”-with a dramatic shading of his voice he implied quotation marks-“‘I was off to old Salonika. On the merry battleship-umm, Valorious!’ No, no, when we declared war in ‘thirty-nine I happened to be in Alexandria, so I took a job with the local English newspaper. Not much of a job-it barely pays, you know-but they allow me to do the occasional travel piece.”

Out of the corner of his eye, Zannis could see that Roxanne had the glow of a woman whose two attractive male friends are getting along well. He nodded, now I understand, then said, “Still, it must be hard to find places to write about, with a war going on.”

“Only the neutrals. ‘On Skis in Frosty Switzerland!’ ‘A Visit to Sunny Spain!’ And, truth to tell, it’s hard to reach even those countries.”

“At least there is Salonika,” Zannis said. “Or anywhere in Greece, or Turkey.”

“And so I’m here. Not for the old come-and-see-it travel writing, but more wishful thinking, these days, a reminder of better times.”

“Just for readers in Alexandria?”

“Oh, I expect the pieces will appear in the British papers. In the Daily Express anyhow, they’ve always run my stories.”

“Well, if I can be of help … Where are you staying?”

“I’ve been lucky, Roxanne helped me find a place in a fishing village down on the peninsula. It’s all whitewashed houses, little alleys with stone steps, cypress trees-you know.”

“Picturesque,” Roxanne said, in English.

“Gawd, Roxy, don’t say that word.”

“It means …?” Zannis said.

“Cute.” Now she was tormenting Escovil. Then, to Zannis, “Beautiful in an old-fashioned way.”

“They are beautiful, these villages,” Zannis said. “And you can buy wonderful food from the fishermen. By the way, I meant what I said, about help. Having your own place, it sounds like you’ll be here for a while.”

“Maybe a month-it’s a kind of working vacation. And, frankly, I’m glad to get away. Alexandria’s impossible now-soldiers and sailors everywhere, a lot of the old families have left for the countryside.” He paused, reflectively, then answered a question Zannis hadn’t asked. “I did try to join up, in ‘thirty-nine, but …” He tapped his heart, then shook his head at the idiocy of it all. “Hard to believe they turned me down-I’ve climbed mountains, run for trains, ridden camels-but they say my heart’s no good.”

Liar, Zannis thought, with a sympathetic smile.

Roxanne put a hand on Escovil’s arm. “You have a perfectly fine heart, my dear.”

“I think so. Anyhow, we’re fighting the Italians now, out in the Libyan desert. Pretty much a stalemate, but if things go wrong I expect they might reconsider.”

“Until then,” Zannis said, “I hope you’ll enjoy your stay in Salonika, Mr. Escovil.”

“Please, call me Francis.”

It was very late, not long until dawn, in Roxanne’s saggy bed at the Pension Bastasini. Tired-from too many people-and groggy-from too much wine-Zannis had intended to drop Roxanne off and go back to his apartment, but she’d insisted he come up for a drink, and one thing had led to another. Parties always aroused her, so she’d been avid, and that had had a powerful effect on him. Which led in turn to her present condition: content, feline, and sleepy, her damp middle clamped to his thigh as they lay facing each other on their sides. Intimate, and warm, but temporary. In time, he knew, she would move a little, and then a little more. But not quite yet, so Zannis gazed idly at the red glow at the end of his cigarette.

“What went on with you and Elias?” she said.

“Nothing much.”

“It looked like more than gossip.”

“Oh, his misspent youth.”

“Misspent youth? Misspent entire life, you mean, the old satyr.”

“He’s tried to make love to you?”

“Of course. To every woman he meets.”

“Well, it wasn’t about that. He fought with the guerrillas, the klephts, a long time ago, and we talked about it. Briefly.”

“Hardly misspent, from the Greek point of view.”

Oh let’s talk politics. Instead of answering, Zannis yawned.

“You’re not going to sleep, are you?”

“Not yet.”

“What did you think of Francis?”

“Pleasant fellow. And a spy, of course.”

“He is? Francis?”

“Yes, can’t you tell?”

“No. How do you know?”

“Silly story, about a working vacation in the middle of a war.”

“Really.” She thought it over. “A British spy.”

“Or a secret agent. This, that, the other thing, call it whatever you like, but he’s working for one of the intelligence services, and maybe for a long time. Is he really a travel writer?”

“Oh yes, and top class. Up there with Robert Byron and Leigh Fermor and Waugh. Are they all spies?”

“It’s possible. More likely they were recruited, one, two, or all of them, after ‘thirty-eight, when it was pretty damn clear to everyone but Chamberlain that Britain was going to have to go to war.”

“Will you, I don’t know, will you watch him?”

“I doubt it. The British are our friends. In fact, the British are just about our only friends. I don’t know what he wants here, but I don’t think he, I should say they, mean us harm.” Tired of the conversation, he lowered his head and brushed her nipple with his lips. “Anyhow you’re British, and you’re my friend.”

She didn’t answer.

Instead, a luxuriant stretch and then, down below, she moved. Ran her hand beneath his arm and pressed it against his backside, drawing him closer and resettling her legs around his thigh. Said a barely audible “Mm,” and again moved, slid.

27 October. Late in the afternoon, a call from one of the detectives-detective-inspector in rank-at the CID, Salonika’s Criminal Investigation Division. One of Salonika’s most prominent citizens, a banker, had not shown up at his bank for three days. His second-in-command had telephoned, no answer, then gone out to the house and knocked on the door. Again, no answer. Back at the bank, it was discovered that a great deal of cash-large-denomination drachma notes, Swiss francs, British pounds-was missing.

Zannis knew the detective, who was young for the job, ambitious and vain, and wore a vain little mustache and a very expensive fawn-colored hat. He picked Zannis up at the office and drove him out to the city’s fanciest quarter, where, in front of a splendid villa-portico, columns-a locksmith was waiting. “Thought I’d better call him,” the detective said; this was not a neighborhood where one kicked in doors. Likely they couldn’t have kicked it in even if they’d wanted to. The villa, built by some Turkish bey around the turn of the century, was massive and well-secured.

Even better inside: dark, silent, perfectly maintained, and, Zannis’s sense of smell told him, not host to a corpse. Thank God for that. Only a note for the maids, in the kitchen. Here were two thousand drachma for each of them-a lot of money, almost two hundred dollars-thank you for being such good girls, we’ll be back some day. The money itself was gone, the house was clean, sheets covered the furniture.

They searched the rooms, finding wardrobe trunks but no hand luggage. “Do you have a theory, sir?” the detective asked. “Been stealing for years, perhaps?”

“Always possible,” Zannis said. But he knew better; he knew what this meant and the more he thought about it the more he knew. Suddenly, he didn’t feel so good, tightness in the chest. He went to the kitchen cabinet, found a glass, filled it with cold water, and drank most of it. Then he lit a cigarette. The detective went to the parlor and returned with an ashtray.

When he was done with the cigarette, they continued the search. No passports, no bankbooks, a dog’s rubber ball with a bell inside it but no dog and no dog leash. On a desk, family photographs and three empty frames. In the wife’s dresser, expensive scarves but no underwear. Fashionable dresses in the closet, and three empty hangers. “Very nice,” the detective said. “Quilted hangers.” A datebook in the desk drawer. Pages from 15 October to 5 November cut, not ripped, out.

“Carefully done,” Zannis said. “Likely reservations, a ship maybe, or hotels somewhere.”

“I suspect you’re right, sir,” the detective said. “They just took off. Left town. Because of the missing money.”

“No, I expect that when we look at his accounts we’ll find they’ve been cleaned out. The day before he left, but normal before that. I think this is somebody who decided to take his family out of Europe, now, before anything else happens. And he might have figured that this money would vanish, so why not take it for himself? One thing about flight: the more money you have, the easier it’s going to be.”

“Where do you think they went?”

“I’d say you’ll find him listed on the manifest of some ship, out of some Greek port, maybe not here, maybe Athens, or Istanbul. As to where he went, it’s anybody’s guess. Argentina? America? Mexico?”

“Anywhere safe from the guns,” the detective said. “Are you feeling better, sir?”

“I am, thanks.”

“Maybe you need a day off.” Then, “What became of the dog?”

“With the maids. You might look for a car, though if they parked it at a dock somewhere it’s probably stolen by now.”

The detective began turning off the lights. “I’ll write this up as a theft from the bank. And issue a fugitive warrant.”

“Not much else you can do,” Zannis said.

They locked up the house and walked toward the detective’s car. This banker knew it was coming, Zannis thought. Knew somebody who knew somebody, and they told him, “Get out, while you still can.” And maybe he, or she, whoever it was, nameless, faceless, wasn’t wrong. Enough, Zannis told himself. Forget it, at least for today.

But it didn’t forget him, and he wasn’t done for the day. Because when he returned to the office, Sibylla told him that the telephone operator at a hotel in Basel was trying to reach him.

So Zannis couldn’t go home. He waited at the office, Sibylla left at five-thirty, and Saltiel went home an hour later. The phone didn’t ring until after nine. On the other end of the line, “Hello? Hello?” It was a bad connection, charged with crackling and static, the woman’s voice faint. Zannis put a hand to his other ear and said, “Yes? Can you hear me?”

“Hotel Mont Blanc operator, sir. I have to send a bellman to find your caller. Please hold the line.”

“Yes, fine,” Zannis said.

Three minutes later, another distant voice. “Hello? Herr Zannis?” The woman was almost shouting.

“Yes?”

“This is Emilia Krebs.”

“Hello. Are you all right?”

“I’m in Basel. I came here in order to call you.”

“Oh?”

“It’s about the two sisters. Called Rosenblum.”

“Who?”

“Two sisters, in their forties. They were librarians, in Berlin. Have they …”

The line went dead. Zannis said, “Hello? Hello?”

Then the static returned. “… to Salonika. Hello?”

“Hello. Yes, I’m here. What did you say?”

“I gave them your name.”

You did? “Of course, I see.”

“Have they called?” Her voice was tense, barely under control.

“No, I’m sorry, they …” Again, the line went dead, and this time it stayed dead. Zannis wasn’t sure what to do. Wait for the connection to return? Or hang up so the operator could make a new call? He looked at his watch, let two minutes go by, then placed the receiver back on the cradle. What had she done? Clearly she’d sent fugitives, two Jewish women from Berlin, to Salonika. Where he was to help them. She could have asked, at least. But maybe she couldn’t, he thought. He sat there, his mind working, staring out the window at a streetlamp on the Via Egnatia. Then the phone rang and he snatched the receiver.

“Hotel operator, Mont Blanc. Your call is reconnected, one mo-…”

The static was worse on the new connection. Emilia Krebs shouted, “Hello? Herr Zannis?”

“Listen to me.” Zannis’s voice was loud and urgent and he spoke quickly. “I don’t know where these people are, they haven’t contacted me, but if they do, I’ll send you a postal card. It won’t say anything special, simply a greeting from abroad.”

“Meaning they’ve arrived safely.”

“That’s it. Now, if you want to write to me, just buy Panadon tablets, the aspirin. Are they available in Berlin?”

“Yes.”

“Melt them in cold water, then write with the water between the lines of a letter and, if you get a letter from Greece, iron it, not too hot, the writing will appear.”

“How ma-…” Again, the line went dead.

It came back a few seconds later. Zannis said, “Hello?” and started to speak, but, after a click, a new connection. Now the voice of a woman, some operator in some country, spoke angrily in a language Zannis couldn’t identify, and then, with another click, the connection was cut off. He waited at the desk until ten-thirty, staring at the telephone, but it was silent.

He would never hear from the sisters, he was almost certain of that. Evidently they’d set out from Berlin, some days earlier, trying to make their way to Salonika, where Zannis could help them get to Turkey, or Palestine, or wherever they could manage to slip over a border. Slip over, or bribe their way over, because as Jews in flight they were welcome nowhere in the world. Nowhere. Not one single country. And now, not as adept and forceful as their friend in Berlin, they had vanished. Well, lately people did. And they were never heard of again.

Back in his apartment, Zannis couldn’t sleep. He was exhausted, had expected to be dead to the world the instant his head hit the pillow, but he’d been wrong. He tossed and turned, his mind racing. What had happened to him at the banker’s villa-that tight band across the chest? He’d always been healthy, he had to be, there was no choice. Now what? Or maybe it was just nerves, which was, he thought, maybe even worse. But it had reached him, he had to admit that, the almost certain knowledge that invasion was imminent. This banker was a certain type of man, a type Zannis knew well. He had friends who knew things, and you couldn’t plan an invasion-recall soldiers from leave, resupply your army with ammunition, medical stores, and everything else-without people finding out about it. So the banker fled, and fled in a hurry-grabbed all the money he could and ran. Sauve qui peut! Run for your life! Write a note to the maids, do something about the dog, lock up the house, and go. Poor dog. They were, the dogs, considered special spirits in Greece: faithful friends, fearless guardians. I’m sure I was right about the dog, Zannis thought, flipping his pillow over. The maids, the “good girls,” would take care of it.

And they were special spirits, faithful guardians.

Thus it was Melissa who figured it out, sensed it, before he did. Zannis must have dozed because, just after dawn, she growled, a subdued, speculative sort of growl-what’s this? And Zannis woke up.

“Melissa? What goes on?”

She stood at the window, out there, turned her head and stared at him as he unwound himself from the snarled bedding. What had caught her attention, he realized, were voices, coming from below, on Santaroza Lane. Agitated, fearful voices. Somebody across the street had a window open and a radio on. It wasn’t music-Zannis couldn’t make out the words but he could hear the tone of voice, pitched low and grim.

He opened the window. One of the ladies who sat in a kitchen chair on sunny days was standing in the street, her black shawl pulled tight around her head and shoulders, gesticulating with her hands as she talked to a neighbor.

Zannis leaned out the window, called her by name, and said, “What’s going on?”

She looked up at him. “The Italians,” she said. “They’ve invaded us.”

Poor Mussolini.

Such a puffed-up, strutting horse’s ass. Not a man to be ignored, the way he saw it. And surely he had been ignored. Left standing there, shouting slogans from the balcony, thrusting his chubby fist in the air, while that sneaky Hitler conquered the world. Took Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland, France, Belgium, the Netherlands, Norway, and Denmark. Now that was an empire!

And Mussolini? And his new Roman Empire? What glory had it won? Not much. Occupied Albania, publicly scorned as “a handful of rocks.” And Ethiopia. What would you call that, a handful of mud? And Libya, a handful of sand? And oh yes, not to forget that when Hitler invaded France, Mussolini rushed in ten days later and took … Nice! So now the doorman at the Negresco would have to bow down to the might of Rome.

Ha-ha!

Said the world. But the worst thing you can do to a dictator is laugh at him-that’s contempt, not awe, and it made Mussolini mad. Well, he’d show the world, he’d take Greece. So there, still laughing? And he didn’t tell Hitler about it, he didn’t ask permission, he just went ahead and did it. And when Hitler heard the news, as dawn broke on the twenty-eighth of October, he was reportedly enraged. Known to be a teppichfresser, a carpet chewer, he’d likely gone down on his knees, once he was alone, and given his favorite rug a good thorough grinding.

Zannis got the details on his way to work, from headlines on the newspaper kiosks, from the newspaper he bought-which he read while walking-and from people in the street. Greece was at war, everybody was talking to everybody, there were no strangers that day. Least of all the soldiers, reservists called to duty, hundreds of them, many accompanied by wives and children so they could say good-bye at the railway station. And not a soul abroad that morning didn’t stop to wish them well.

“Be careful, my child.”

“Remember, keep your head down!”

“You give them a good kick in the ass for me, and don’t forget!”

“So maybe you need a little extra money? A few drachmas?”

“Here, have a cigarette. I see you’re smoking, take it anyhow, for later.”

“Good luck, take care of yourself.”

This from Zannis, looking up from his newspaper. He might well be joining them, he thought, before the day was done. In 1934, when he’d become a detective, he had automatically been assigned to a General Staff reserve unit in Salonika. If Greece went to war, the army could call up however many detective-grade officers it required because, in a small country, every male below the age of sixty had to be available to serve.

According to the paper, there had been a grand dinner party the night before, in Athens. Count Grazzi, the Italian ambassador, had invited the most important people in the city, including General Metaxas. Seated beneath the crossed flags of Italy and Greece, the guests drank “to our eternal friendship for Greece,” Count Grazzi himself having stood to propose the toast. Eventually, they all went home. But then, at three in the morning, Grazzi was driven to the home of General Metaxas, who came to the door in his dressing gown. Grazzi presented an ultimatum: Let our army march into your country and occupy the cities. Metaxas’s answer wasn’t complicated; it could be seen at the top of every front page of every newspaper.

“No.”

When Zannis opened the office door, he saw that Sibylla was knitting. She worked feverishly; hands moving quickly, needles clicking, a ball of gray wool in her lap. “By the time I got to the store,” she said, “and they had it open at six-thirty, all the khaki was gone. Imagine that! Not yet seven-thirty when I got there, and all the khaki wool bought up.”

“What will it be?”

“A sweater. One has a choice, sweater or socks, but I’m good at it, so I decided to make sweaters.”

All over the country, women were knitting warm clothes for the Greek boys who would be fighting in the cold mountains. A poor country, less than eight million in population, they had to improvise. So Sibylla’s fingers flew and, when the phone rang, she propped the receiver between chin and shoulder and never dropped a stitch. Producing, Zannis thought, a rather curious juxtaposition. “And what time did you say he was murdered?” Click, click.

Zannis tried to telephone Vangelis but the line was busy, so he looked over at Saltiel and said, “What about you, Gabi? Are you leaving today?”

“Too old to fight. Officially. For the time being, I’m to take the place of an ambulance driver who’s going up to the border with the medical corps. So I get to drive around the city at night with a siren on. So what’s new.”

“And days?”

“I’ll be here. What about you?”

“I’m waiting for orders,” Zannis said. “I’m in a reserve group, we’re a communications unit, and I’m liaison with an officer of the Yugoslav General Staff. Not really sure what that means, but I guess I’ll find out.”

It was late in the morning when he finally got through to Vangelis. “I’m waiting,” Zannis explained, “for a call or a telegram. But I could be ordered to report. Maybe even today, or tomorrow.”

“Have you given any thought to what you might do if they occupy the city?”

“No, but I suppose I should.”

“We wouldn’t want them to have the files,” Vangelis said. “After that, it will be up to you. Just remember, if you decide to work underground, be careful with your address book. Just in case.” He paused, then said, “For the moment, who will run the office?”

“Saltiel and Sibylla. They’ll do fine.”

Vangelis didn’t answer immediately, his way of saying that it wasn’t true. “I’m not sure what lies ahead, Costa, but if I need you, I may have you brought back. We’ll just have to see how it goes.”

“We may surprise them,” Zannis said.

“Yes, I think we will,” Vangelis said. “If we don’t run out of bullets.”

Late in the afternoon, a telephone call for Zannis. Not the General Staff, but Roxanne. She sounded rattled, almost desperate. This was something new-she’d been cool and composed from the first day he’d met her. “I didn’t want to call you,” she said, “but I didn’t know what else to do.”

“What’s wrong?”

“I have to get to the airport. But there isn’t a taxi to be found in the whole city, and my friends with cars don’t answer their phones, or they’re driving somebody to Athens, or-or something!”

“Roxanne …”

“What?”

“Calm down.”

“Sorry, I’ve just had-”

“There’s no point in going to the airport, all commercial flights are canceled; we’re at war-the military has taken over out there. Now, tell me where you need to go and I’ll see what I can do.”

“I need to go to the airport. Please.”

“Are we going to fight about this? You think I didn’t tell you the truth?”

“Costa, can you borrow a car? Or get one from the police?”

After a moment, he said, in a different tone of voice, “What is this?”

“A favor. I have never asked you for a favor, not ever, but I’m asking now. And part of the favor is not trying to make me explain on the telephone, because I have to be there right away.”

“Hold on.” He turned to Saltiel and said, “Gabi, may I use your car for an hour?”

Saltiel stared at him. I don’t let anyone drive my car. “Well, I guess you can, if you need it.” He was clearly not happy.

“Did you hear that?” Zannis said, on the phone.

“Yes.”

“I’ll pick you up in ten minutes.”

It was a rough ride to the airport, some fifteen miles east of the city. Convoys of army trucks were rolling west, toward them, headed for the roads that went up to the Albanian border. And, being army convoys on the first day of a war, saw no reason, in the national interest, not to use both lanes. So more than once Zannis had to swerve off the road, the Skoda bumping over a rocky field. Teeth clamped together, he waited for the blown-out tire or the broken spring, though it happened, over and over again, only in his imagination. But that was bad enough.

Meanwhile, from Roxanne, stony silence, broken occasionally by English oaths, bloody this and bloody that, delivered under her breath every time the trucks came at them. Finally, answering the unasked question, she said, “If you must know, it’s just some friends who want me out of here.”

“Powerful friends,” Zannis said. “Friends with airplanes.”

“Yes, powerful friends. I know you have them; well, so do I.”

“Then I’m happy for you.”

“Bloody …” A muttered syllable followed.

“What?”

“Never mind. Just drive.”

Coming around a curve, they were suddenly confronted by a pair of gasoline tankers, side by side, horns blaring. Zannis swung the wheel over, the back end broke free, and they went skidding sideways into a field. The car stalled, Zannis pressed the ignition button, the Skoda coughed, then started. But the army wasn’t done with them. Just before they reached the airport, a long convoy came speeding right at them-and this time they almost didn’t make it. The car idled by the side of the road, pebbles hit the windshield, soldiers waved, Roxanne swore, Zannis fumed.

The airport was deserted. The Royal Hellenic Air Force-about a hundred planes: a few PZL P.24s, Polish-built fighters, and whatever else they’d managed to buy over the years-was operating from air-bases in the west. A sign on the door of the terminal building said ALL FLIGHTS CANCELED, and the only signs of life were a small group of soldiers on guard duty and a crew gathered beside its antiaircraft gun. They’d built a fire and were roasting somebody’s chicken on a bayonet.

Roxanne had only a small valise-Zannis offered to carry it but she wouldn’t let him. They walked around the terminal building and there, parked in a weedy field by the single paved runway, was a small monoplane, a Lysander, with a British RAF roundel on the fuselage. The pilot, sitting on the ground with his back against the wheel, was smoking a cigarette and reading a Donald Duck comic book. He stood when he saw them coming and flicked his cigarette away. Very short, and very small, he looked, to Zannis’s eyes, no more than seventeen.

“Sorry I’m late,” Roxanne said.

The pilot peered up at the gathering darkness and strolled back toward the observer’s cockpit, directly behind the pilot’s-both were open, no canopies to be seen. “Getting dark,” he said. “We’d better be going.”

Roxanne turned to Zannis and said, “Thank you.”

He stared at her and finally said, “You’re not going to England, are you.”

“No, only to Alexandria. I may well be back; it’s simply a precaution.”

“Of course, I understand.” His voice was flat and dead because he was heartsick. “Now,” he added, “I understand.” And how could I have been so dumb I never saw it? The British government didn’t send Lysanders to rescue the expatriate owners of ballet schools, they sent them to rescue secret service operatives.

Her eyes flashed; she moved toward him and spoke, intensely but privately, so the pilot wouldn’t hear. “It wasn’t to do with you,” she said. “It wasn’t to do with you.”

“No, of course not.”

Suddenly she grabbed a handful of his shirt, just below the collar, and twisted it, her knuckles sharp where they pressed against his chest. It surprised him, how strong she was, and the violence was a shock-this hand, in the past, had been very nice to him. “Wasn’t,” she said. Her eyes were dry, but he could see she was as close to tears as she ever came. And then he realized that the hand clutching his shirt wasn’t there in anger, it was furiously, almost unconsciously, trying to hold on to something it had lost.

The pilot cleared his throat. “Getting dark,” he said. He knotted his fingers, making a cup out of his hands, nodded up at the observer cockpit, and said, “Up we go, luv.”

Zannis walked with Roxanne the few feet to the plane. She turned and looked at him, then rested her foot on the waiting hands and was hoisted upward, floundered for a moment, skirt rising to reveal the backs of her thighs, then swung her legs over into the cockpit. The pilot smiled at Zannis, a boyish grin which made him look even younger than seventeen, and said, “Don’t worry, mate, I’m good at this.” He handed Roxanne her valise, jumped up on the wheel housing, and climbed into the pilot’s cockpit. A moment later, the engine roared to life and the propeller spun. Zannis watched the Lysander as it taxied, then lifted into the air and turned south, heading out over the Aegean toward Egypt.

Back in the office, a yellow sheet of teletype paper lay on his desk. From Lazareff in Sofia.

COSTA: DO US ALL A FAVOR AND CHASE THESE BASTARDS BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM

The message was in Bulgarian, but Zannis had grown up in Salonika, “a city where even the bootblacks speak seven languages,” and was able to figure it out. Normally, he would have enjoyed Lazareff’s gesture, but now he just sat there, his mood dark and melancholy, and stared at the wall.

He came to believe, after going back over their time together, that Roxanne hadn’t lied, that he’d not been the target of a British spy operation. He could not recall a single time when she’d asked him anything that might touch on the sort of information that spies sought. So, in fact, it wasn’t to do with him. He’d had a love affair with a woman who’d been sent to Salonika as part of an intelligence operation. Then, when war came, when occupation by an Axis force was more than possible, they’d snatched her away. Or maybe she simply did have friends in high places, friends with the power to organize an RAF Lysander flight to Greece. No, she’d actually confessed. “It wasn’t to do with you.” The it. To do with somebody else. The Germans, the Italians, the Vichy French consul; there were many possibilities.

Should he tell somebody? What, exactly, would he tell? And to who? Spiraki? Never. Vangelis? Why? His job was discretion; his job was to keep things quiet. Well, he would. And if she returned? It might be easier if she didn’t. At the least, they’d have to come to some sort of understanding. Or pretend it had never happened? Slowly, he shook his head. This war-look what it does. In truth, he missed her already. Maybe they weren’t in love but they’d been passionate lovers-she’d been his warm place in a cold world. And now he had to go up north and kill Italians, so maybe he was the one who wouldn’t be coming back.

The telephone rang and Saltiel answered it, said, “I see” and “very well” a few times, made notes, and hung up.

“What was that?” Zannis said.

“The mayor’s chief assistant.” He rubbed his hands back through his hair and sighed. “Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”

Sibylla looked up from her sweater.

“It seems the mayor has a niece, a favorite niece, recently married; she lives out by Queen Olga Street.”

“I know who she is,” Zannis said. “Pretty girl.”

“Well, maybe she was distracted by the war, maybe, I don’t know, something else. Anyhow, this afternoon she went to feed her pet bird, a parakeet. And, unfortunately, she left the door of the cage open, and it flew away.”

Zannis waited a moment, then said, “And that’s it?”

“Yes.”

Sibylla turned away, and, as she started to knit, made a small noise-not a laugh, but a snort.

“It’s true? You’re not just saying this to be funny?”

“No. It’s true.”

Now it was Zannis’s turn to sigh. “Well, I guess you’ll have to call her,” he said. “And tell her … what? Put an advertisement in the newspaper? We can’t go out and look for it.”

“Tell her to leave the window open,” Sibylla said, “and the door of the cage, and have her put some of its food in there.”

Saltiel made the call, his voice soothing and sympathetic, and he was on for a long time. Then, ten minutes later, the telephone rang again and, this time, it was the General Staff.

8:35 P.M.

It began to rain, softly, no downpour, just enough to make the pavement shine beneath the streetlamps. Still, it meant that it would be snowing in the mountains. Zannis waited on the corner of the Via Egnatia closest to Santaroza Lane, a canvas knapsack slung on his shoulder. The Vardari, the wind that blew down the Vardar valley, was sharp and Zannis turned away from it, faced the port and watched the lightning as it lit the clouds above the sea. Moments later the thunder followed, distant rumblings, far to the south.

He’d had a hectic time of it since he left the office. Had taken a taxi back to Santaroza Lane, packed some underwear, socks, and a sweater, then threw in his old detective’s sidearm, the same detective’s version of the Walther PPK that Saltiel had, and a box of bullets. Then he changed into his reservist’s uniform, a close cousin to what British officers wore, with a Sam Browne belt that looped over one shoulder. He searched for, and eventually found, inside a valise, his officer’s cap, and, Melissa by his side, hurried out the door to find another taxi.

Up at his mother’s house in the heights, the mood was quiet and determined-basically acceptance. They fussed over Melissa, fed her and set out her water bowl and blanket, and gave Zannis a heavy parcel wrapped in newspaper-sandwiches of roast lamb in pita bread-which he stowed in his knapsack atop the gun and the underwear. For some reason, this brought to mind a scene in Homer, dimly remembered from school, where one of the heroes prepares to go to war. Probably, Zannis thought, given some version of the lamb and pita, though that didn’t get into the story. After he buckled the knapsack, his brother, mother, and grandmother each embraced him; then his grandmother pressed an Orthodox medal into his hand. “It saved your grandfather’s life,” she said. “Keep it with you always. You promise, Constantine?” He promised. Melissa sat by his side as he was saying a final good-bye, and, last thing before he went out the door, he bent over and she gave him one lick on the ear. She knew.

On the corner, Zannis looked at his watch and shifted his feet. Well, he thought, if you had to go to war you might as well leave from the Via Egnatia. An ancient street, built first in the second century B.C. as a military road for the Roman Empire. It began as the Via Appia, the Appian Way, in Rome, went over to Brindisi, where one crossed the Adriatic to Albanian Durres and the road took the name Via Egnatia. Then it ran down to Salonika and went east, eventually reaching Byzantium-Constantinople. Thus it linked the two halves of the Byzantine Empire, Roman Catholic and Italian in the west, Eastern Orthodox and Greek in the east. Sixteen hundred years of it, until the Turks won a war.

Zannis lit a cigarette and looked at his watch again, then saw a pair of headlights coming toward him down the street. A French-built staff car, old and boxy, a relic, with a blue-and-white Greek pennant flown from the whippy radio aerial. When the car drew up in front of him, a General Staff captain in the passenger seat opened the back door from inside. “Lieutenant Zannis,” he said. Zannis saluted and climbed in; two other men in the backseat moved over and made room for him. It was smoky in the car, and rain dripped through a tear in the canvas top.

The driver worked hard, winding up into the mountains on dark roads, the wiper brushing across the windshield. He was employed, he said, by the telephone company in Salonika, as a maintenance supervisor, “but I spent years working on the lines, relay stations, the whole system.” The other two men simply gave their names and, still civilians, shook hands, though they were sergeants, and Zannis, who’d been assigned to a reserve unit as an officer in the police department, a lieutenant. The captain was a real serving captain, very smart-looking in his uniform, with a small mustache and eyeglasses. “I’m in signals,” he said, “communications of all sorts,” and let it go at that.

For a time, the mountain roads were deserted; then, climbing a steep grade that curved sharply to the right, they came up behind an army truck. The headlights revealed soldiers, rifles between their knees, sitting on two benches that ran the length of the truck bed. One of them waved.

“Evzones,” the captain said. The word meant sharpshooters. Their ceremonial uniforms-white kilt and hat with tassel-were derived from the klephts who’d fought the Turks. In fact, once the ceremonial uniforms were changed for traditional battlefield dress, the Evzones were the elite combat units of the army. “I don’t think,” the captain said, “the Italians will be glad to see them coming.”

“Well, I am,” said the man next to Zannis. In his late forties, he’d served in the army as a wireless/telegraph operator. “But that was years ago,” he said. “Now I work in a pharmacy.”

The curve in the road seemed to go on forever, jagged walls of stone rising above them in silhouette against the night sky. When at last the road straightened out, the driver swung over into the left lane and tried to pass the crawling truck. A foot at a time, the staff car gained ground.

“Can we do this?” the captain said.

“Skata,” the driver said. “My foot is on the floor.”

As they drew even with the cabin of the truck, its driver rolled down his window, turned and grinned at them, stuck his hand out and waved it forward with comic impatience: faster, faster. Zannis watched the horizon for headlights coming toward them but there was nothing out there. “A snail race,” said the man next to Zannis. The driver of the army truck leaned out the window and shouted.

The captain said, “What did he say?”

“Move your ass,” Zannis said.

The captain laughed. “Poor old thing, she fought in France.”

They were rounding another curve before they finally got back into the right lane. “Can you tell us where we’re going?” Zannis asked.

“Can’t be sure,” the captain said. “Right now, we’re supposed to be based in Trikkala, but that might change. As of five this afternoon, the Italians-the Alpini division, the mountain troops-have advanced ten miles into Greece. They are going for Janina, supported by a tank column, the center of a three-pronged attack which will cut the only rail line and the two main roads-that would mean no reinforcements from Macedonia. It’s the plan you draw up in military school, however-” He paused as the staff car skidded and the driver swore and fought the wheel. When the car steadied he said, “However, I doubt they’ll reach Janina, and likely not Trikkala.”

“Why not?” the wireless operator said.

“Oh … let’s just say we knew they were coming. Not when, but we knew where and how. So we prepared … a few things.”

The silence following that admission was appreciative. The wireless operator said, “Hunh,” which meant something like that’s the way. Then he said, “Fucking makaronades.” Greek for macaronis, the national insult name for the Italians. There was a sneer in the expression, as though their ancient enemies, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Turks, were at least serious opponents, whereas the attack by Italy was somehow worthy of contempt. In August, off the island of Tenos, an Italian submarine had torpedoed the cruiser Helle, in harbor, in full view of the people on the island, and on a religious holiday. This was seen more as cowardice than aggression, a Roman Catholic attack on an Eastern Orthodox religious festival, thus especially dishonorable. Not that they hadn’t disliked the Italians before that. They had, for centuries.

A few minutes later, the driver stopped the car-there was nowhere to pull over-and, shoulder to shoulder, they all peed off the side of the mountain. It was a long way down, Zannis saw, a long, long way. As he rebuttoned his fly, the truck carrying the Evzones came chugging up the road, its engine laboring hard. When the driver saw the staff car, he swung around it and, passing close to the men standing at the edge of the mountain, and observing what occupied them, he blew a mighty blast on his klaxon horn, which echoed off the mountainside. Then it was the turn of the soldiers who, as their truck rumbled away, called out a variety of suggestions and insults, all of them obscene.

The driver, standing next to Zannis, swore and said, “Now I’ll have to pass them all over again.”

“Oh well,” the captain said, giving himself a couple of shakes, “the fortunes of war.”