Spies of the Balkans

THE BACK DOOR TO HELL

Poor Mussolini.

He, like everybody else in Europe who went to the movies, had seen the Pathe newsreels. First a title, in the local language, flashed on a black screen: GERMANY INVADES POLAND! Followed by combat footage, the Panzer tanks of the Wehrmacht charging across the Polish steppe, accompanied by dire and dramatic music. Loud music. And the words of a narrator with a rich, deep, theatrical voice. The effect was powerful-here was history being made, right before your eyes.

Mussolini hated it, couldn’t get the images out of his mind. For he sensed that whatever made Hitler look powerful made him look meagre, but, fifteen months later, here came a chance to put things right-he’d had more than enough of being mocked as the conqueror of … Nice! Now he’d show the world who was who and what was what. Because he had tanks of his own, an armoured formation known as the Centauri Division, named for the mythic Greek figure called the centaur, half man, half horse. Shown always as the top of the man and the back of the horse, though there were those who suggested that, in the case of Mussolini’s army, it should be the other way round.

Mussolini paced the rooms of his palace in Rome and brooded. Was the lightning attack known as Blitzkrieg the private property of Adolf Hitler? Oh no it wasn’t! He would storm into Greece just as Hitler’s Panzers had done in Poland. And his generals, whose politics carefully conformed with his own, encouraged him. The Centauri would smash through the vineyards and olive groves of southern Greece; nothing could stop them, because the Greek army hadn’t a single tank, not one. Hah! He’d crush them!

Alas, it was not to be. The problem was the geography of northern Greece, massive ranges of steep jagged mountains-after all, this was the Balkans, and “balkan” meant “mountain” in Turkish. So Mussolini’s Blitzkrieg would have to attack down the narrow valleys, protected by Alpini troops occupying the heights above them. Which might have worked out but for the Evzones, one regiment of them opposing the Alpini division.

The Greeks, contrary to Italian expectations, fought to the death.

Took terrible casualties, but defeated the Alpini, who broke and fled back toward the Albanian border. Now the Greeks held the mountains and when the Centauri came roaring down the valleys two things happened. First, many of the tanks plunged into a massive ditch that had been dug in their path, often winding up on their backs, and second, those that escaped the ditch were subject to shelling from above, by short-barreled, high-wheeled mountain guns. These guns, accompanied by ammunition, had been hauled over the mountains by mules and then, when the mules collapsed and died of exhaustion, by men.

As the first week in November drew to a close, it was clear that the Italian invasion had stalled. Mussolini raged, Mussolini fired generals, Greek reinforcements reached the mountain villages, and it began to snow. The unstoppable Axis had, for the first time, been stopped. And of this the world press took notice: headlines in boldface, everywhere in Europe. Which included Berlin, where these developments were viewed with, to put it mildly, considerable irritation. Meanwhile, poor Mussolini had once again been humiliated, and now the Greek army was poised to enter Albania.

In Trikkala, an ancient town divided by a river, the snow-capped peaks of the Pindus Mountains were visible when the sun came out. Which, fortunately, the first week in November, it did not do. The sky stayed overcast, a solid mass of gray cloud that showered down an icy rain. The sky stayed overcast, and the Italian bomber pilots, at the airfields up in Albania, played cards in their barracks.

The Salonika communications unit was at least indoors, having bivouacked in the local school along with other reservists. They’d stacked the chairs against the wall and slept on the floor. Dry, but bored. Each member of the unit had been armed for war by the issue of a blanket, a helmet, and a French Lebel rifle made in 1917. The captain took Zannis aside and said, “Ever fire one of these?”

“No, never.”

“Too bad. It would be good for you to practice, but we can’t spare the ammunition.” He chambered a bullet, closed the bolt, and handed the weapon to Zannis. “It has a three-round tube. You work the bolt, look through the sight, find an Italian, and pull the trigger. It isn’t complicated.”

There was, that first week, little enough to do. The General Staff was based in Athens, with a forward position in Janina. But if things went wrong at Janina they would have to serve as a relay station, take information coming in over the telephone-the lines ended at Trikkala-and transmit it to front-line officers by wireless/telegraph. “We are,” the captain said, “simply a reserve unit. And let’s hope it stays that way.”

As for Zannis, his liaison counterpart from the Yugoslav General Staff was apparently still trying to reach Trikkala. Where he, if and when he ever showed up, could join the unit in waiting around. Yugoslavia had not entered the war. In the past, Greeks and Serbs had been allies in the First Balkan War in 1912, and again in the Balkan campaigns against Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey in the 1914 war, and greatly respected each other’s abilities on the battlefield. But now, if Yugoslavia attacked Mussolini, it was well understood that Hitler would attack Yugoslavia, so Belgrade remained on alert, but the army had not mobilized.

Meanwhile, they waited. Early one morning, Spyro, the pharmacist-turned-wireless-operator, sat at a teacher’s desk and tapped out a message. He had been ordered to do this, to practice daily, and send one message every morning, to make sure the system worked. As Zannis watched, he sent and received, back and forth, while keeping a record on a scrap of paper. When he took off the headset, he smiled.

“What’s going on?” Zannis said.

“This guy up in Metsovon …” He handed Zannis the paper. “Here, take a look for yourself.”

TRIKKALA REPORTING 9 NOVEMBER.

WHY DO YOU SEND ME MESSAGES?

I AM ORDERED TO SEND ONCE A DAY.

DON’T YOU KNOW WE’RE BUSY UP HERE?

I HAVE TO FOLLOW ORDERS.

WHAT SORT OF MAN ARE YOU?

A SOLDIER.

THEN COME UP HERE AND FIGHT.

THAT WOULD BE FINE WITH ME.

LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU.

Every day it rained, and every day long lines of Italian prisoners moved through Trikkala, on their way to a POW camp somewhere south of the town. Zannis couldn’t help feeling sorry for them, cold and wet and miserable, eyes down as they trudged past the school. When the columns appeared, the reservists would bring out food or cigarettes, whatever they could spare, for the exhausted Greek soldiers guarding the prisoners.

Late one afternoon, Zannis walked along with one of the soldiers and gave him a chocolate bar he’d bought at the market. “How is it up there?” he said.

“We try not to freeze,” the soldier said. “It’s gotten to a point where fighting’s a relief.”

“A lot of fighting?”

“Depends. Sometimes we advance, and they retreat. Every now and then they decide to fight, but, as you can see, much of the time they just surrender. Throw away their rifles and call out, ‘Bella Grecia! Bella Grecia!’” When he said this, one of the prisoners turned to look at him.

“Beautiful Greece?”

The soldier shrugged and adjusted the rifle strap on his shoulder. “That’s what they say.”

“What do they mean? That Greece is beautiful and they like it and they never wanted to fight us?”

“Maybe so. But then, what the fuck are they doing down here?”

“Mussolini sent them.”

The soldier nodded and said, “Then fuck him too.” He marched on, tearing the paper off his chocolate bar and eating it slowly. When he was done he turned and waved to Zannis and called out, “Thank you!”

By the second week in November, Greek forces had crossed the Albanian border and taken the important town of Koritsa, several small villages, and the port of Santi Quaranta, which meant that Greece’s British ally could resupply the advance more efficiently. At the beginning of the war, they’d had to bring their ships into the port of Piraeus. Also, on Tuesday of that week, Zannis’s Yugoslav counterpart showed up. He was accompanied by a corporal who carried, along with his knapsack, a metal suitcase of the sort used to transport a wireless/telegraph. The two of them stood there, dripping on the tiles just inside the doorway of the school.

“Let’s go find a taverna,” Zannis said to the officer. “Your corporal can get himself settled in upstairs.”

Zannis led the way toward the main square, a waterproof groundcloth draped over his head and shoulders. The reservists had discovered that their overcoats, once soaked, never dried out, so they used what was available and walked around Trikkala looking like monks in green cowls.

“I’m called Pavlic,” the officer said. “Captain Pavlic. Reserve captain, anyhow.”

“Costa Zannis. Lieutenant Zannis, officially.”

They shook hands awkwardly as they walked. Zannis thought Pavlic was a few years older than he was, with a weatherbeaten face, sand-colored hair, and narrow eyes with deep crow’s-feet at the corners, as though he’d spent his life at sea, perpetually on watch.

“Your Greek is very good,” Zannis said.

“It should be. I grew up down here, in Volos; my mother was half Greek and my father worked for her family. I guess that’s why I got this job.” They walked for a time, then Pavlic said, “Sorry I’m so late, by the way. I was on a British freighter and we broke down-had to go into port for repairs.”

“You didn’t miss anything, not too much happens around here.”

“Still, I’m supposed to report in, every day. We have another officer in Janina, and there’s a big hat, a colonel, at your General Staff headquarters in Athens. It’s all a formality, of course, unless we mobilize. And, believe me, we won’t do any such thing.”

In the taverna, rough plank tables were crowded with local men and reservists, the air was dense with cigarette smoke and the smell of spilled retsina, and a fire of damp grapevine prunings crackled and sputtered on a clay hearth. It didn’t provide much heat but it was a very loud fire, and comforting in its way. The boy who served drinks saw them standing there, rushed over and said, “Find a place to sit,” but there was no table available so they stood at the bar. Zannis ordered two retsinas. “The retsina is good here,” he said. “Local.” When the drinks came, Zannis raised his glass. “To your health.”

“And to yours.” When he’d had a sip, Pavlic said, “You’re right, it is good. Where are you from?”

“Salonika. I’m a policeman there.”

“No!”

“Don’t like the police?”

“Hell, it isn’t that, I’m one also.”

“You are? Really? Where?”

“Zagreb.”

“Skata! A coincidence?”

“Maybe your General Staff did it on purpose.”

“Oh, yes, of course you’re right. You can trust a policeman.”

From Pavlic, a wry smile. “Most of the time,” he said.

Zannis laughed. “We do what we have to, it’s true,” he said. “Are you a detective, in Zagreb?”

“I was, for twenty years, and I expect you know all about that. But now, the last year or so, I’m in charge of the cars, the motor pool.”

“Your preference?”

“Not at all. It was a, how should I put this, it was a political transfer. The people who run the department, the commissioner and his friends at city hall, were reached.”

“Reached.” Such things happened all the time, but Zannis couldn’t stop himself from being shocked when he heard about it. “Bribed?”

“No, not bribed. Intimidated? Persuaded? Who knows, I don’t. What happened was that I didn’t hold back, in fact worked extra hard, investigating certain crimes. Crimes committed by the Ustashi-Croatian fascists, and great friends with Mussolini; they take money from him. Maybe you’re aware of that.”

“I’m not. But it’s no surprise.”

“Of course they consider themselves patriots, fighters in the struggle for Croatian independence-they sing about it, in the bars-but in fact they’re terrorists, Balkan Nazis. And when it was reported that they’d beaten somebody up, or burned his house down, or murdered him in front of his family-their favored method, by the way-I went after them. I hunted them down. Not that they stayed in jail, they didn’t, but it was a matter of honor for me. And not just me. There were plenty of us.”

Zannis’s face showed what he felt: disgust. “Still,” he said, after a moment, “it could have been worse.”

“That’s true. I’m lucky to be alive. But you know how it goes-you can’t take that into account, not when you do what we do.”

“No, you can’t. At least I can’t. I’m a fatalist, I guess.” Zannis drank the last of his retsina, caught the eye of the woman behind the bar, raised his empty glass and wiggled it. The woman quickly brought two more. Pavlic started to pay but Zannis beat him to it, tossing coins on the bar. “I’m the host,” he said. “Here in scenic Trikkala.”

“All right. My turn next time.” Pavlic raised his glass to Zannis, drank some retsina, reached into the inside pocket of his uniform tunic, and brought out a packet of cigarettes. “Do you smoke? Try one of these.”

On the packet, a bearded sailor looked out through a life preserver. “Players,” Zannis said. “English?”

“Yes. I got them on the freighter.” Pavlic lit their cigarettes with a steel lighter. “What do you do, in Salonika?”

“I run a small office where we take care of … special cases. We deal with the rich and powerful, foreigners, diplomats-whatever’s a little too sensitive for the regular detectives. I report to the commissioner, who’s been a good friend to me, for a long time.”

“Lucky.”

“Yes.”

“But you have something similar to the Ustashi: the IMRO-they used to work together, if I have my history right. What is it, Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization?”

“It is. And founded in Salonika, back in the last century. They’re Slavic Macedonians, Bulgarians mostly, who think they’re going to have a separate Macedonia. But, thank heaven, they’ve been quiet for a few years.”

“More luck-especially for your Salonika Jews. Because our Jews, in Zagreb, are right at the top of the Ustashi list. They’d like to get rid of the Serbs, and the Croat politicians who oppose them, but they really have it in for the Jews. If the Ustashi ever took control of the city, well …”

Zannis heard the words our Jews as though Pavlic had emphasized them. For some reason, a fleeting image of Emilia Krebs crossed his mind. “That won’t happen in Salonika,” he said. “Not with IMRO, not with anybody.”

“It’s a damn shame, what’s being done to them, up in Germany. And the police just stand there and watch.” Pavlic’s face showed anger, his policeman’s heart offended by the idea of criminals allowed to do whatever they wanted. “Politics,” he said, as though the word were an oath.

For a time they stood in silence, sipping their retsinas, and smoked their English cigarettes. Then Pavlic nodded toward the window and said, “Here’s some good news, anyhow.”

Through the cloudy glass, past the dead flies on the windowsill, Zannis saw that the wet street in front of the tavern was steaming. “At last,” he said. “It’s been raining for days.”

Pavlic stubbed out his cigarette, making ready to leave the taverna. “Once my corporal gets his wireless running, I’ll let them know up in Belgrade: ‘Pavlic reporting. The sun’s come out.’”

Zannis smiled as he followed Pavlic through the door. The captain stopped for a moment and closed his eyes as he raised his face to the sun. “By the way,” he said, “I’m called Marko.”

“Costa,” Zannis said. And they headed back to the school.

The officers did their best to keep the reservists busy-calisthenics, marching drills, whatever they could think up-but the soldiers were there to wait until they were needed, waiting was their job, and so time passed very slowly. At night, as the chill of the schoolroom floor rose through his blanket, Zannis found it hard to sleep. He thought about Roxanne, reliving some of their warmer moments together: the way her face looked at climax; times when she’d thought something up that particularly, spontaneously, excited her. Or maybe such ideas came to her when she was by herself, lost in fantasy, and she tried them out when she got the chance. That was true of him, likely true of her as well. A lot of love got made when lovers were apart, he thought.

But, with snoring men on either side of him, fantasy of this sort led nowhere. Instead, his mind drifted back to recent life in Salonika, which now seemed remote and distant. He sometimes recalled the German agent; more often Emilia Krebs and the two children. But, most often, the Rosenblum sisters he’d heard about during the frantic, disrupted telephone call from Switzerland. Unmarried sisters, he guessed: older, librarians. Helpless, vulnerable, trying to make their way through some dark night in Budapest, or wherever they’d been caught. No ability whatever to deal with clandestine life, with border patrols, police raids, informers, or conscientious fascist citizens who knew a Jew when they saw one, no matter the quality of their false papers.

Could he have helped them? How? He was absolutely sure that Emilia Krebs would not stop what she was doing-Germany was now the very essence of hell; continuous torment, no escape. And so her fugitives would be taken by the machine built to hunt them down. Again and again. This thought reached a very sore place inside him, and he could not stop thinking it.

The military population of Trikkala began to thin out as reservists were sent up to the fighting to replace the dead and wounded. Pavlic and Zannis worked together, Zannis receiving situation reports from the captain and handing them on to Pavlic for translation and transmission to the Yugoslav General Staff. Now and then Pavlic wanted to know more, and now and then Zannis went to the captain and requested more, and now and then clarification or expansion was provided. Mostly the reports included the daily numbers-enemy dead, wounded, and captured-and names-villages, rivers, and positions, taken or abandoned-as the Greek infantry labored over the snow-covered mountains of Albania. The Yugoslavs read the reports, but their support wasn’t needed, and so they did nothing. What help the Greeks had came from their British ally.

A senior officer, for example, who appeared with a truck one morning, a truck stacked with wooden crates. Almost a stage presence, this officer, who stood ramrod straight, had a splendid cavalry mustache, and lacked only the monocle. Some forty reservists, Zannis among them, were organized to move the truck’s cargo up to a village a few miles behind the front lines. The reservists stood in front of the school while the British officer addressed them in classical Greek-as though Shakespeare were making a speech to a platoon of East London sappers. But nobody smiled.

“Men,” the officer said, at a volume meant for the parade ground, “these crates are important. They hold antitank rifles, fifty-five-calibre weapons with tripods that are fired by a single soldier, like Bren guns. The square crates contain antitank rounds, and you will take turns carrying them, because the ammunition is heavy.”

There were two trucks for the reservists, and they managed to drive some way north on the rutted dirt roads, but with altitude the snow deepened and soon enough they were spending more time pushing their vehicles than driving them. So, unload the crates, and start walking. Which was hard work, in the snow. Zannis sweated, then shivered as the sweat dried in the icy chill of the mountain air. One reservist sprained an ankle, another had pains in the chest; none of them were really in fighting shape.

When darkness fell, Zannis rolled up in his blanket and groundcloth and slept in the snow. The wind sighed through the trees all night long and when the cold woke him up he heard wolves in the distance. In the morning he was exhausted and needed force of will to keep going. Spyro, the former pharmacist, said, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this”; then he re-gripped the rope handle at his end of the crate and the two of them plodded forward. High above them, an eagle circled in the gray sky.

They reached the village late in the afternoon, where men from the forward positions would take the antitank rifles the rest of the way. When the small cluster of houses came into view, the dogs appeared-Melissa’s cousins, Zannis thought-barking and threatening until a piercing whistle sent them trotting back home. When the column reached the center of the village, the reservists went silent. The village well, which might have been there for a thousand years, was no more-some of the stonework remained, shattered and blackened, but that was all. And the houses on either side of the well were in ruins. “A bomb,” the villagers said. They’d seen the planes above them; one of them descended toward the village and dropped a bomb. They’d watched it as it tumbled from the plane. It had killed two women, a child, and a goat, and blown up their well. “Why?” the villagers asked. “Why did they do this to us?”

At the end of October, when war came to Trikkala, Behar saw it as an opportunity. He was Albanian, his family had lived in Trikkala since the time of the Ottoman Turks, but he was no less Albanian for that. Age twenty-five when the war began, Behar had been a thief since the age of fourteen. Not that he was very good at it, he wasn’t. As a teenager he’d spent a few months in the local jail for stealing a radio and, later on, a year in prison for trying to sell stolen tires, on behalf of a man called Pappou. The name meant grampa, a nickname, not so much because he was old and gray, but because he’d been a criminal for a long time and people were afraid of him so he could call himself whatever he liked. Sometimes Pappou, just like a grampa, would help out his little Trikkala “family”: give them something to sell and let them keep some of the money. Thus, for Behar, better to stay on the good side of Pappou.

With the war, and the soldiers crowding into Trikkala, Behar thought he would prosper. These people came from cities in the south; to Behar they looked rich, and rich people spent lavishly-perhaps they’d like a nice girl to keep them warm, or maybe a little hashish. They were, it was said, going to free Albania from the Italians, but Behar had never been to Albania and couldn’t have cared less who ruled there. No, what mattered to Behar was that these people might want things or, if they didn’t, could be separated from what they had: wristwatches, for example, or rifles. One way or the other, Behar knew they were meant to put money in his empty pockets.

But the soldiers weren’t such easy targets, they were always together, they didn’t pass out drunk in an alley-at least not in the alleys where he searched for them-and they went to the brothel for their girls. After a few days, Behar began to despair, war was not going to turn out to be much of an opportunity at all.

But then, in the second week of the war, Pappou came to his rescue. Behar lived in a shack at the edge of the city, with his mother and two sisters. They never had enough wood for the stove, so they froze during the winter and waited anxiously for spring. He was lying on his cot one afternoon when a boy came with a message: he was to go and see Pappou the following day. Two o’clock, the boy said, at the barbershop Pappou owned, where he did business in the back room.

Behar was excited. He walked to the edge of Trikkala to find his eldest brother, who owned a razor, and there scraped his face. Painful, using the icy water, because his brother was not so prosperous as to own soap. Behar made sure he got to the barbershop on time. He wore his grimy old suit, the only clothing he had, but he’d combed his hair and settled his short-brimmed cap at just the proper angle, down over his left eye. It was the best he could do. On the way to the shop he looked at himself in the glass of a display window; scrawny and hunched, hands in pockets, not such a bad face, he thought, though they’d broken his nose when he’d tried to steal food in the prison.

To Behar, the barbershop was a land of enchantment, where polished mirrors reflected white tile, where the air was warmed-by a nickel-plated drum that heated towels with steam, and scented-by the luxurious, sugary smell of rosewater, used to perfume the customers when they were done being barbered. There were two men in the chairs when Behar arrived, one with his face swathed in a towel, apparently asleep, though the cigar in his dangling hand was still smoking, the other in the midst of a haircut. The barber, as he snipped, spoke to his customer in a low, soothing voice. The weather might change, or maybe not.

When Behar entered the back room, Pappou, sitting at a table, spread his arms in welcome. “Behar! Here you are, right on time! Good boy.” Sitting across from Pappou was a man who simply smiled and nodded. His friend here, Pappou explained, was not from Trikkala and needed a reliable fellow for a simple little job. Which he would explain in a minute. Again, the man nodded. “It will pay you very well,” Pappou said, “if you are careful and do exactly as you’re told. Can you do that, my boy?” With great enthusiasm, Behar said he could. Then, to his considerable surprise, Pappou stood up, left the room, and closed the door behind him. Outside, Pappou could be heard as he joked with the barbers, so he wasn’t listening at the door.

The man leaned forward and asked Behar a few questions. He was, from the way he spoke, a foreigner. Clean-shaven, thick-lipped, and prosperously jowly, he had a tight smile that Behar found, for no reason he could think of, rather chilling, and eyes that did not smile at all. The questions were not complicated. Where did he live? Did he like Trikkala? Was he treated well here? Behar answered with monosyllables, accompanied by what he hoped was an endearing smile. And did he, the foreigner wanted to know, wish to make a thousand drachma? Behar gasped. The foreigner’s smile broadened-that was a good answer.

The foreigner leaned closer and spoke in a confidential voice. Here were all these soldiers who had come to Trikkala; did Behar know where they lived? Well, they seemed to be everywhere. They’d taken over the two hotels, some of them stayed at the school, others in vacant houses-wherever they could find a roof to keep them out of the rain. Very well, now for the first part of the job. The foreigner could see that Behar was a smart lad, didn’t need to write anything down, and so shouldn’t. Mustn’t. Behar promised not to do that. An easy promise, he couldn’t have written anything down even if he’d wanted to, for he could neither read nor write. “Now then,” the foreigner said, “all you have to do is …” When he was done, he explained again, then had Behar repeat the instructions. Clearly, Behar thought, a very careful foreigner.

He went to work that very afternoon, three hundred drachma already in his pocket. A fortune. At one time he’d tried his hand-disastrously-at changing money for tourists, and he knew that a thousand drachma was equal to ninety American dollars. To Behar, that was more than a thousand drachma, that was like something in a dream, or a movie.

But then, delight was replaced by misery. As the light faded from the November afternoon, he walked the streets of Trikkala, his eyes searching the rooftops. He knew where the reservists lived, or thought he did, and went from one to the next, crisscrossing the town, but no luck. In time, he became desperate. What if the foreigner was wrong? What if the accursed object didn’t exist? What then? Give back the three hundred drachma? Well, he no longer had the three hundred drachma. Because, immediately after leaving the foreigner he had, maddened by good fortune, visited a pastry shop where he’d bought a cream-filled slice of bougatsa with powdered sugar on top. So good! And then-he was rich, why not? — another, this one with cheese, even more expensive. Now what? Make good what he’d spent? How?

Thirty minutes later, fate intervened. In, for a change, Behar’s favor, as, for the third time in an hour, he paced the street in front of the school. A building that held, for Behar, nothing but terrible memories. The reservist soldiers went in and out, busy, occupied with important military matters. Up above, the sky had grown dark as it prepared to shower down some nice cold rain. Then, just for a moment, a thick cloud drifted aside and a few rays of sun, now low on the horizon, struck the school’s chimney at just the proper angle. And Behar caught a single silver glint. Finally! There it was! Just as the foreigner had described it. A wire, run up from somewhere in the building and fixed in place by a rock atop the cement surround that topped the stuccoed plaster. Immediately, he looked away.

The rain held off. Fortunately, for Behar, it went away and found somewhere else to fall, because, for the second part of the job, he required sunshine. Which, the following morning, poured through the window of the shack and sent him off whistling to the better part of town, that part of town where people were used to certain luxuries. But this too turned out to be a difficult search, since the little gardens behind these houses were walled, so that Behar had to find a deserted street, check for broken glass cemented to the top of the wall-he’d learned about that years ago, the hard way-get a good grip, and hoist himself up. His first few attempts were unproductive. Then, at the very end of a quiet street, he found what he was looking for: a garden with two fig trees, a clothesline strung between them, laundry out to dry. Underpants, panties, two towels, two pillowcases, and two big white sheets.

He hauled himself the rest of the way and lay on the wall. Anyone home? Should he go and knock on the front door? Does Panos live here? No. He stared at the house; shutters closed over the windows, all silent and still. He took a deep breath, counted to three, and was over the wall. Steal the underwear. But he resisted the urge, snatched one of the sheets off the line, and sprinted back to the wall. He hauled himself up, made sure the street was still deserted, and sprang down. He folded the sheet, held it inside the front of his jacket, and walked away.

Back home, he experimented. Working with concentration-the remaining seven hundred drachma shimmered in his mind-he found he could wrap the sheet around his bare upper body and then button his shirt almost to the top, as long as he didn’t tuck it into his trousers.

Now for the hard part. He stayed home through the early evening, going out only after the bell in the town hall rang midnight. When he reached the school, the street was empty, though there were lights shining in the windows on both floors. But he had no intention of going in there, there wasn’t a bluff in the world that would get him past all those soldiers. No, for the Behars of the world there was only the drainpipe, at a corner toward the back of the building. He knew these pipes, fixed together in flanged sections, the flanges extending from the curve every three feet or so, he’d climbed them many times in his stealthy life. First, shoes off-the soles worn so thin and smooth he’d get no traction at all. He had no socks, so he climbed barefoot, his toes pressed against the flange, his fingers pulling him up to the next level.

In a few minutes he was on the roof. He crouched down, keeping his silhouette below the sight line from the street, and crawled over to the chimney. Yes, here was the wire. He wanted to touch it, this ribbon of metal worth a thousand drachma, but he had no idea what it might be for; perhaps it was charged with some mysterious form of electrical current and would burn his fingers with its magic. It was certainly a secret wire-that much he’d sensed in the voice of the foreigner-so, leave it alone. He took off his jacket and shirt, unwound the sheet, and laid it flat on the roof.

What if the wind … He searched the dark rooftop, looking for weight, but found only some loose stucco where a crack ran along one corner. He pried up a few pieces, not very heavy, and distributed them at the corners of the sheet. They would have to do. Below him, on the second floor of the school, he could hear voices, a laugh, another voice, another laugh. He scuttled back to the drainpipe, descended to the ground, put on his shoes, and, feeling better than he’d felt in a long time, walked home. What did it mean, the sheet on the roof? He didn’t know, he didn’t care, he knew only what it meant to him.

The following morning he hurried off to the barbershop. In the back room, Pappou was cold and frightening. “Is it done? Whatever it is-done properly?” Behar said yes. Pappou sat still, his eyes boring into Behar’s soul, then he picked up the telephone and made a brief call. Asked for somebody with a Greek name, waited, finally said, “You can have your hair cut any time you want, the barber is waiting for you.” That was all. The foreigner appeared ten minutes later, and Pappou went out into the shop.

The foreigner asked where he’d found the wire; Behar told him. “Maybe I’ll go up to the roof myself,” he said. “What will I see?”

“A big white sheet, sir.”

“Flat?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Behar.” A pause. “If you ever, ever, tell anybody about this, we will know. Understand?” With a slow, meticulous grace he drew an index finger across his throat, a gesture so eloquently performed that Behar thought he could actually see the knife. “Understand?” the foreigner said again, raising his eyebrows.

A frightened Behar nodded emphatically. He understood all too well. The foreigner held his eyes for a time, then reached into his pocket and counted out seven one-hundred-drachma notes.

28 November.

For Costa Zannis, it began as a normal day, but then it changed. He was standing next to the captain in the school’s narrow cloakroom, which, with the addition of a teacher’s desk, had been turned into what passed for a liaison office. Pavlic was just about to join them, it was the most common moment imaginable; pleasant morning, daily chore, quiet talk. Zannis and the captain were looking down at a hand-drawn map, with elevations noted on lines indicating terrain, of some hilltop in Albania.

Then the captain grabbed his upper arm. A grip like a vise-sudden, instinctive.

Zannis started to speak-“What …”-but the captain waved him into silence and stood frozen and alert, his head cocked like a listening dog. In the distance, Zannis heard a drone, aircraft engines, coming toward them. Coming low, not like the usual sound, high above. The captain let him go and ran out the door, Zannis followed. From the north, two planes were approaching, one slightly above the other. The captain hurried back into the school and grabbed the Bren gun that stood, resting on its stock, in one corner of the entry hall. The windows rattled as the planes roared over the rooftop and the captain took off toward the street, Zannis right behind him. But the captain shouted for him to stay inside, Zannis followed orders, and stopped in the doorway, so lived.

In front of the school, the captain searched the sky, swinging the Bren left and right. The sound of the planes’ engines faded-going somewhere else. But that was a false hope, because the volume rose sharply as they circled back toward the school. The captain faced them and raised the Bren, the muzzle flashed, a few spent shells tumbled to the ground, then machine guns fired in the distance, the captain staggered, fought for his balance, and sank to his knees.

What happened next was unclear. Zannis never heard an explosion, the world went black, and when his senses returned he found he was lying on his stomach and struggling to breathe. He forced his eyes open, saw nothing but gray dust cut by a bar of sunlight, tried to move, couldn’t, and reached behind him to discover that he was pinned to the floor by a beam that had fallen across the backs of his legs. In panic, he fought free of a terrible weight. Then he smelled fire, his heart hammered, and he somehow stood up. Get out. He tried, but his first step-it was then he discovered his shoe was gone-landed on something soft. Covered with gray dust, a body lying face down. Somebody ran past him, Zannis could see he was shouting but heard nothing. He turned back to the body. Let it burn? He couldn’t. He grabbed the feet, and, as he pulled, the body gave a violent spasm. Now he saw that one of the legs was bleeding, so he took the other leg which, as he hauled, turned the body over and he saw it was Pavlic.

As he pulled Pavlic’s body toward the entry, there was a grinding roar and the rear section of the second story came crashing down onto the first floor. Zannis heaved again, Pavlic’s body moved. He could see an orange flicker now and then, and could feel heat on the skin of his face. Was Pavlic alive? He peered down, found his vision blurred, realized his glasses weren’t there, and was suddenly infuriated. He almost wanted-for an instant a scared ten-year-old-to look for them, almost, then understood he was in shock and his mind wasn’t quite working. He took a deep breath, which burned in his chest and made him cough, steadied himself, and dragged the body out of the building, the back of Pavlic’s head bouncing down the steps that led to the doorway. Immediately there was someone by his side, a woman he recognized, who worked in the post office across from the school. “Easy with him,” she said. “Easy, easy, I think he’s still alive.” She circled Zannis and took Pavlic under the arms and slid him across the pavement.

With one bare foot, and unable to see very much of anything, he headed back toward the school. As he entered the building, a reservist came crawling out of the doorway, and Zannis realized there were still people alive inside. But the smoke blinded him completely and the heat physically forced him backward. In the street, he sat down and held his head in his hands. Not far from him, he saw what he thought were the captain’s boots, heels apart, toes pointing in. Zannis looked away, tried to rub his ankle, and discovered his hand was wet. Blood was running from beneath his trouser cuff, across the top of his foot, and into the gray powder that covered the street. Very well, he would go to the hospital but, when he tried to stand, he couldn’t, so he sat there, holding his head, in front of the burning school.

He wasn’t hurt so much. They told him that later, in a dentist’s office where the lightly wounded had been taken because the town clinic-there was no hospital in Trikkala-was reserved for the badly injured. The reservists lay on the floor of the reception area, the dentist had tried to make them comfortable by putting the pillows of his waiting room couch under their heads. Zannis could hear out of one ear now, a wound in his leg had been stitched up, and there was something wrong with his left wrist. He kept opening and closing his hand, trying to make it better, but motion only made the pain worse.

As dusk fell, he realized he was tired of being wounded and decided to seek out whatever remained of his unit. In the street, people noticed him, likely because a nurse had cut off the leg of his trousers. Zannis met their eyes and smiled-oh well-but the people looked sorrowful and shook their heads. Not so much at a soldier with a bare leg and one shoe. At the bombing of their school and the men who’d been killed, at how war had come to their town.

And it wasn’t done with them. And they knew it.

Two days later, Zannis went to the clinic to see Pavlic. Some of the wounded lay on mattresses on the floor, but Pavlic had one of the beds, a wad of gauze bandage taped to one side of his face. He brightened when he saw Zannis, now fully dressed. After they shook hands he thanked Zannis for coming. “It is very boring here,” he said, then thanked him also, as he put it, “for everything else.”

Zannis simply made a dismissive gesture: we don’t have to talk about it.

“I know,” Pavlic said. “But even so, thanks.”

“Here,” Zannis said. He handed Pavlic three packs of cigarettes, a box of matches, the morning newspaper from Athens, and two magazines. German magazines. Pavlic held one of them up to admire it; Brunhilde, naked, full-breasted and thickly bushed, had been photographed in the act of serving a volleyball. Pavlic said, “Modern Nudist. Thanks, I’ll share these.”

“You should see what we have in Salonika.”

“I can imagine. What becomes of you now?”

“Back home, so they tell me. I’ve lost the hearing in one ear. And they say I might get a little medal if there are any left. And you?”

“A concussion, cuts and bruises.” He shrugged. “I have to stay for a few days, then I’m ordered back to Zagreb. I suspect they don’t think what I was doing was so important. They’d rather I keep the police cars running.”

“Marko,” Zannis said. Something in his voice made Pavlic attentive. “I want to ask you to do something.”

“Go ahead.”

Zannis paused, then said, “We have Jews coming into Salonika now. Fugitives from Germany, in flight. At least some of them have disappeared on the way. Where I don’t know.”

“I thought they went to the port of Constanta.”

“Some of them do,” Zannis said.

“But the way things are going in Roumania these days, it may be easier for them to get away if they try from Greece.”

“As long as I’m there, it will be. And we have more ships, and more smugglers. For Europe, it’s like slipping out the back door.” After a moment, he said, “What do you think about it, this flight?”

Pavlic said, “I don’t know,” then hesitated, finally adding, “God help them, I guess that’s the way I’d put it.”

“Would you help them?”

For a time, Pavlic didn’t answer. He was still holding the nudist magazine. “Costa, the truth is I never thought about-about something like that. I don’t know if I …, no, that’s not true, I could, of course I could. Not by myself, maybe, but I, I have friends.”

Zannis said, “Because-” but Pavlic cut him off. “I don’t know about you, but I saw this coming. Not what you’re talking about, exactly, but something like it. That was in ‘thirty-eight, September. When Chamberlain made a separate peace with Hitler. I remember very well, I thought, So much for Czechoslovakia, who’s next? It’s going to be our turn, sooner or later. So, what do I do if we’re occupied? Nothing?” The word produced, from Pavlic, the thin smile of a man who’s been told a bad joke.

“Well,” he went on, “‘nothing’ doesn’t exist, not for the police. When somebody takes your country, you help them or you fight them. Because they will come after you; they’ll ask, they’ll order: ‘Find this man, this house, this organization. You’re from Zagreb-or Budapest, or Salonika-you know your way around; give us a hand.’ And if you obey them, or if you obey them during the day and don’t do something else at night, then-”

“Then?”

For a moment, Pavlic was silent. Finally he said, “How to put it? You’re ruined. Dishonored. You won’t ever be the same again.”

“Not everybody thinks that way, Marko. There are some who will be eager to work for them.”

“I know, you can’t change human nature. But there are those who will resist. It goes back in time forever, how conquerors and the conquered deal with each other. So everyone-well, maybe not everyone, but everyone like you and me-will have to take sides.”

“I guess I have,” Zannis said, as though he almost wished he hadn’t.

“How would you do it, Berlin to Vienna? Cross into Hungary, then down through Yugoslavia into Greece? That’s by rail, of course. If you went city to city you’d have to transit Roumania, I mean Budapest to Bucharest, and if you did that you’d better have some dependable contacts, Costa, or a lot-and I mean a lot-of money. And even then it’s not a sure thing, you know; the way life goes these days, if you buy somebody they’re just liable to turn around and sell you to somebody else.”

“Better to stay west of Roumania,” Zannis said. “The rail line goes down through Nis and into Salonika. Or even go from Nis into Bulgaria. I have a friend in Sofia I think I can count on.”

“You don’t know?”

“You never know.”

“How do we communicate? Telephone?” He meant that it was beneath consideration.

“Does your office have a teletype machine?”

“Oh yes, accursed fucking thing. The Germans wished it on us-never shuts up, awful.”

“That’s how. Something like, ‘We’re looking for Mr. X, we think he’s coming into Zagreb railway station on the eleven-thirty from Budapest.’ Then a description. And if somebody taps into the line, so what? We’re looking for a criminal.”

Pavlic’s expression was speculative: could this work? Then, slowly, he nodded, more to himself than to Zannis. “Not bad,” he said. “Pretty good.”

“But, I have to say this, dangerous.”

“Of course it is. But so is crossing the street.”

“Do you know your teletype number?”

Pavlic stared, then said, “No idea. So much for conspiracy.” Then he added, “Actually, a typist works the thing.”

“I know mine,” Zannis said. “Could I borrow that for a moment?”

Pavlic handed over the Modern Nudist. Zannis took a pencil from the pocket of his tunic and flipped to the last page, where a group of naked men and women, arms around one another’s shoulders, were smiling into the camera below the legend SUNSHINE CHUMS, DUSSELDORF. Zannis wrote 811305 SAGR. “The letters are for Salonika, Greece. You use the rotary dial on the machine. After it connects, the machine will type the initials for ‘who are you’ and you type the ‘answer-back,’ your number.” He returned the magazine to Pavlic. “Perhaps you shouldn’t share this.”

“Does the message move on a telephone line?”

“Telegraph. Through the post office in Athens.”

“I think I’d better have the typist teach me how to do it.”

“Someone you trust?”

Pavlic thought it over and said, “No.”

Pushing a cart with a squeaky wheel, a nurse was moving down the aisle between the beds. “Here’s lunch,” Pavlic said.

Zannis rose to leave. “We ought to talk about this some more, while we have the chance.”

“Come back tonight,” Pavlic said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

7 December, Salonika.

Zannis wasn’t sorry to be home, but he wasn’t all that happy about it either. This he kept hidden; why ruin the family pleasure? His mother was very tender with him, his grandmother cooked everything she thought he liked, and, wherever he went that first week, room to room or outdoors, Melissa stayed by his side-she wasn’t going to let him escape again. As for his brother, Ari, he had exciting news, which he saved during the first joyous minutes of homecoming, only to be upstaged by his mother. “And Ari has a job!” she said. With so many men away at the fighting, there was work for anybody who wanted to work, and Ari had been hired as a conductor on the tram line.

And, he insisted, this was something his big brother had to see for himself. So Zannis had ridden the Number Four trolley out to Ano Toumba and let his pride show-sidelong glances from Ari made certain Zannis’s smile was still in place-as Ari collected tickets and punched them with a silver-colored device. He was extremely conscientious and took his time, making sure to get it right. Inevitably, some of the passengers were rushed and irritable, but they sensed that Ari was one of those delicate souls who require a bit of compassion-was this a national trait? Zannis suspected it might be-and hardly anybody barked at him.

So Zannis returned to daily life, but a certain restless discomfort would not leave him. Able to hear out of only one ear, he was occasionally startled by sudden sounds, and he found that to be humiliating. A feeling in no way ameliorated by the fact that, just before he returned to Salonika, the Greek army had managed to find him a little medal, which he refused to wear, being disinclined to answer questions about how he came to have it. And, worst of all, he felt the absence of a love affair, felt it in the lack of commonplace affection, felt it while eating alone in restaurants, but felt it most keenly in bed, or out of bed but thinking about bed, or, in truth, all the time. In the chaos that followed the bombing of the Trikkala school, whatever goddess had charge of his mortality had brushed her lips across his cheek and this had, he guessed, affected that part of him where desire lived. Or maybe it was just the war.

On the evening of the seventh, Vangelis threw him a welcome-home party. Almost all were people Zannis knew, if, in some cases, only distantly. Gabi Saltiel, grayer and wearier than ever, was still driving an ambulance at night but traded shifts with another driver and brought his wife to the party. Sibylla, her helmet of hair highly lacquered for the occasion, was accompanied by her husband, who worked as a bookkeeper at one of the hotels. There were a couple of detectives, a shipping broker, a criminal lawyer, a prosecutor, two ballet teachers he’d met through Roxanne, an economics professor from the university, even a former girlfriend, Tasia Loukas, who worked at the Salonika city hall.

Tasia-for Anastasia-showed up late and held both his hands while he got a good strong whiff of some very sultry perfume. She was small and lively, dressed exclusively in black, had thick black hair, strong black eyebrows, and dark eyes-fierce dark eyes-that challenged the world from behind eyeglasses with gray-tinted lenses. Did Vangelis have something in mind for him when he invited Tasia? Zannis wondered. He’d had two brief, fiery love affairs with her, the first six years earlier, the second a few months before he’d met Roxanne. Very free, Tasia, and determined to remain so. “I’ll never marry,” she’d once told him. “For the truth is, I like to go with a woman from time to time-I get something from a woman I can never get with a man.” She’d meant that to be provocative, he thought, but he wasn’t especially provoked and had let her know that he didn’t particularly care. And he truly didn’t. “It’s exciting,” she’d said. “Especially when it must be kept a secret.” A flicker of remembrance had lit her face as she spoke, accompanied by a most deliciously wicked smile, as though she were smiling, once again, at the first moment of the remembered conquest.

Vangelis gave famously good parties-excellent red wine, bottles and bottles of it-and had stacks of Duke Ellington records. As the party swirled around them, Zannis and Tasia had two conversations. The spoken one was nothing special-how was he, fine, how was she-the unspoken one much more interesting. “I better go say hello to Vangelis,” she said, and reluctantly, he could tell, let go of his hands.

“Don’t leave without telling me, Tasia.”

“I won’t.”

She was replaced by the economics professor and his lady friend, who Zannis recollected was a niece or cousin to the poet Elias. They’d been hovering, waiting their turn to greet the returning hero. Asked about his war, Zannis offered a brief and highly edited version of the weeks in Trikkala, which ended, “Anyhow, at least we’re winning.”

The professor looked up from his wineglass. “Do you really believe that?”

“I saw it,” Zannis said. “And the newspapers aren’t telling lies.”

From the professor, a low grumbling sound that meant yes, but. “On the battlefield, it’s true, we are winning. And if we don’t chase them back into Italy, we’ll have a stalemate, which is just as good. But winning, maybe not.”

“Such a cynic,” his lady friend said gently. She had a long intelligent face. Turning to the table at her side, she speared a dolma, an oily, stuffed grape leaf, put it on a plate and worked at cutting it with the side of her fork.

“How do you mean?” Zannis said.

“The longer this goes on,” the professor said, “the more Hitler has to stop it. The Axis can’t be seen to be weak.”

“I’ve heard that,” Zannis said. “It’s one theory. There are others.”

The professor sipped his wine; his friend chewed away at her dolma.

Zannis felt dismissed from the conversation. “Maybe you’re right. Well then, what can we do about it?” he said. “Retreat?”

“Can’t do that either.”

“So, damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”

“Yes,” the professor said.

“Don’t listen to him,” the professor’s friend said. “He always finds the gloomy side.”

The warrior in Zannis wanted to argue-what about the British army? Because if Germany attacked them, their British ally would arrive in full force from across the Mediterranean. To date, Britain and Germany were bombing each other’s cities, but their armies, after the debacle that ended in Dunkirk, had not engaged. Hitler, the theory went, had been taught a lesson the previous autumn, when his plans to invade Britain had been thwarted by the RAF.

But the professor was bored with politics and addressed the buffet-“The eggplant spread is very tasty,” he said, by way of a parting shot. Then gave way to one of Zannis’s former colleagues from his days as a detective-insider jokes and nostalgic anecdotes-who in turn was replaced by a woman who taught at the Mount Olympus School of Ballet. Had Zannis heard anything from Roxanne? No, had she? Not a word, very troubling, she hoped Roxanne wasn’t in difficulties.

Minutes later, Zannis knew she wasn’t. Francis Escovil, the English travel writer and, Zannis suspected, British spy, appeared magically at his side. “Oh, she’s perfectly all right,” Escovil said. “I had a postal card, two weeks ago. Back in Blighty, she is. Dodging bombs but happy to be home.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Yes, no doubt busy as a bee. Likely that’s why you haven’t heard from her.”

“Of course,” Zannis said. He started to say give her my best but thought better of it. That could, in a certain context, be taken the wrong way. Instead, he asked, “How do you come to know Vangelis?”

“Never met him. I’m here with Sophia, who teaches at the school.”

“Oh.” That raised more questions than it answered, but Zannis knew he’d never hear anything useful from the infinitely deflective Englishman. In fact, Zannis didn’t like Escovil, and Escovil knew it.

“Say, could we have lunch sometime?” Escovil said, trying to be casual, not succeeding.

What do you want? “We might, I’m pretty busy myself. Try me at the office-you have the number?”

“I think I might …”

I’ll bet you do.

“… somewhere. Roxanne put it on a scrap of paper.”

Escovil stood there, smiling at him, not going away.

“Are you writing articles?” Zannis asked, seeking safe ground.

“Trying to. I’ve been to all sorts of monasteries, got monks coming out of my ears. Went to one where they haul you up the side of a cliff; that’s the only way to get there. Just a basket and a frayed old rope. I asked the priest, ‘When do you replace the rope?’ Know what he said?”

“What?”

“When it breaks!” Escovil laughed, a loud haw-haw with teeth showing.

“Well, that’s a good story,” Zannis said, “as long as you’re not the one in the basket.” Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Tasia was headed toward him. “We’ll talk later,” he said to Escovil, and turned to meet her.

“I’m going home,” she said.

“Could you stay a while?”

“I guess I could. Why?”

“I’m the guest of honor, I can’t leave yet.”

“True,” she said. She met his eyes, no smile to be seen but it was playing with the corners of her mouth. “Then I’ll stay. But not too long, Costa. I don’t really know these people.”

He touched her arm, lightly, with two fingers. “Just a little while,” he said.

She had a large apartment, near the city hall and obviously expensive. One always wondered about Tasia and money but she never said anything about it. Maybe her family, he thought. Once inside, she fed her cats, poured two small glasses of ouzo, and sat Zannis on a white couch. Settling herself at the other end, she curled into the corner, kicked off her shoes, rested her legs on the cushions, said, “Salut,” and raised her glass.

After they drank she said, “Mmm. I wanted that all night-I hate drinking wine. Take your shoes off, put your feet up. That’s better, right? Parties hurt your feet? They do mine-high heels, you know? I’m such a peasant. Oh yes, rub harder, good … good … don’t stop, yes, there … ahh, that’s perfect, now the other one, wouldn’t want it to feel neglected … yes, just like that, a little higher, maybe … no, I meant higher, keep going, keep going … … no, don’t take them all the way off, just down, just below my ass … there, perfect, you’ll like that later. Remember?”

He was tired the following day, and nothing seemed all that important. It had been a long while between lovers for Tasia, as it had for Zannis, they were both intent on making up for lost time, and did. But then, a little after eleven, on what seemed like just another morning at work, he got something else he’d wanted. Wanted much more than he’d realized.

A letter. Carried by the postman, who appeared at the door of the office. Not his usual practice, the mail was typically delivered to a letter box in the building’s vestibule, but not that day, that day the postman hauled his leather bag up five flights of stairs, came to Zannis’s desk, took a moment to catch his breath, held up an envelope, and said, “Is this for you?”

Obviously a business letter, the return address printed in the upper left corner:

Hofbau und Sohn Maschinenfabrik GmbH

28, Helgenstrasse

Brandenburg

DEUTSCHLAND

With a typewritten address:

Herr C. N. Zannis

Behilfliches Generaldirektor

Das Royale Kleidersteller

122, Via Egnatia

Salonika

HELLAS

“Yes,” Zannis said. “That’s for me.” The letter was from, apparently, a manufacturer of industrial knitting machines in Brandenburg-not far from Berlin-to the assistant general manager of the Royale Garment Company in Salonika. Well done, he thought.

The postman leaned toward Zannis and spoke in a confidential voice. “I don’t care if you want to do this kind of thing. These days … well, you know what I mean. But I almost took this back to the post office, so in future leave me a note in the letter box, all right?”

“I will,” Zannis said. “But if you’d keep an eye out for, for this sort of arrangement, I’d appreciate it.”

The postman winked. “Count on me,” he said.

As the postman left, Zannis slit the envelope with a letter opener, carefully, and slid out a single sheet of folded commercial stationery; the address printed at the top of the page, the text typewritten below.

30 November 1940

Dear Sir:

I refer to your letter of 17 November.

We are in receipt of your postal money order for RM 232.

I am pleased to inform you that 4 replacement motors, 11 replacement spindles, and 14 replacement bobbins for our model 25-C knitting machine have been shipped to you by rail as of this date.

Thank you for your order. Hofbau und Sohn trusts you will continue to be satisfied with its products.

Yours truly,

S. Weickel

“Sibylla?” Zannis said. He was about to ask her about an iron. Then he stopped cold. She said, “Yes?” but he told her it was nothing, he’d take care of it himself.

Because he saw the future.

Because there was some possibility that the darkest theories of the war’s evolution were correct: Germany would rescue the dignity of her Italian partner and invade Greece. Yes, the British would send an expeditionary force, would honor her treaty with an ally. But Zannis well knew what had happened in Belgium and France-the chaotic retreat from Dunkirk. So it hadn’t worked then, and it might not work this time. The Greek army would fight hard, but it would be overwhelmed; they had no answer to German armour and aircraft. Salonika would be occupied, and its people would resist. He would resist. And that meant, what? It meant clandestine leaflets and radio, it meant sabotage, it meant killing Germans. Which would bring reprisal, and investigation, and interrogation. Saltiel and Sibylla might be questioned, so he could not, would not, compromise them, endanger them, with information they should not have. If they knew, they were guilty.

So Zannis left the office at noon, walked down to the market, found a stall with used irons in every state of age and decay, and bought the best electric model they had. “It works good,” the stall owner said.

“How do you know?”

“I can tell,” the man said. “I understand them. This one was left in the Hotel Lux Palace, and the settings are in English.”

Zannis walked back to his apartment, set the iron on his kitchen table, returned to the office, couldn’t bear to wait all afternoon, and went home early.

First, he practiced, scorched a few pieces of paper, finally set the dial on WARM. Then he laid the letter flat on a sheet of newspaper on the wooden table in the kitchen and pressed the iron down on the letter’s salutation. Nothing. He moved to the text in the middle-“I am pleased to inform you that 4 replacement motors”-but, again, nothing. No! A faint mark had appeared above the p of “pleased.” More heat. He turned the dial to LOW, waited as the iron warmed, pressed for a count of five, and produced parts of three letters. He tried once more, counting slowly to ten, and there it was: “… ress KALCHER UND KRO …”

Ten minutes later he had the whole message, in tiny sepia-colored block letters between the lines of the commercial text:

Reply to address KALCHER UND KRONN, attorneys, 17, Arbenstrasse, Berlin. Write as H. H. STRAUB. 26 December man and wife traveling under name HARTMANN arrive Budapest from Vienna via 3-day excursion steamer LEVERKUSEN. He 55 years old, wears green tie, she 52 years old, wears green slouch hat. Can you assist Budapest to Belgrade? Believe last shipment lost there to Gestapo agents. Can you find boat out your port? Please help.

Last shipment meant the Rosenblum sisters, he thought, unless there had been others he didn’t know about. Also lost. Budapest? How the hell could he help in Budapest? He didn’t know a soul in Hungary; why would he? Why would Emilia Krebs think he did? What was wrong with this woman? No, calm down, he told himself. It isn’t arrogance. It is desperation. And, on second thought, there might be one possibility. Anyhow, he would try.

He never really slept, that night. Staring at the ceiling gave way to fitful dozing and awful dreams which woke him, to once again stare at the ceiling, his mind racing. Finally he gave up and was at the office by seven-thirty. December weather had reached them: the clammy chill of the Mediterranean winter, the same grisaille, gray days, gray city, that he’d come to know in Paris. He turned on the lights in the office and set out his box of five-by-eight cards. Yes, his memory had not betrayed him: Sami Pal. His real-as far as anybody knew-Hungarian name, Pal not an uncommon surname in Hungary. Or, perhaps, a permanent alias.

Szamuel “Sami” Pal. Born Budapest 1904. Hungarian passport B91-427 issued 3 January, 1922, possibly counterfeit or altered. Also uses Nansen passport HK33156. Resident in Salonika since 4 May, 1931 (renewable visa) at various rooming houses. Operates business at 14, Vardar Square, cellar room rented from tenant above, Madame Zizi, Fortune Teller and Astrologer. Business known as Worldwide Agency-Confidential Inquiries. Telephone Salonika 38-727.

According to Salonika police records: investigated (not charged) for removal of documents from office of French consul, May ‘33. Arrested, September ‘34, accused by British oil executive R. J. Wilson of espionage approach to valet. Released, valet refused to testify, likely bribed. Arrested June ‘38, accused of selling stolen passport. Released when witness could not be found. Investigated by State Security Bureau (Spiraki) November ‘39. (Salonika police consulted.) No conclusion reported to this office.

Previous to arrival in Salonika, Sami Pal is thought to have escaped from prison, city unknown, country said to be Switzerland by local informant, who claims Pal deals in merchandise stolen from port storage, also in stolen passports and papers.

9 December. For this interview, Zannis borrowed an interrogation room at the police station in the Second District-his last headquarters when he’d worked as a detective. His old friends were pleased to see him. “Hey Costa, you fancy sonofabitch, come back to join the slaves?”

Sami Pal was waiting on a bench in the reception area-had been waiting for a long time, Zannis had made sure of that-amid the miserable crowd of victims and thugs always to be found in police stations. For the occasion, Zannis had chosen two props: a shoulder holster bearing Saltiel’s automatic-his own weapon having disappeared in the collapse of the Trikkala school-and a badge, clipped to his belt near the buckle, where Sami Pal was sure to see it.

Summoned by telephone the previous afternoon, Sami was looking his best. But he always was. A few years earlier, he’d been pointed out by a fellow detective in a taverna amid the bordellos of the Bara and, as the saying went, Zannis had seen him around. Natty, he was, in the sharpest cheap suit he could buy, a metallic gray, with florid tie, trench coat folded in his lap, boutonniere-a white carnation that afternoon-worn in the buttonhole of his jacket, a big expensive-looking watch that might have been gold, a ring with what surely wasn’t a diamond, and a nervous but very brave smile. As Zannis got close to him-“Hello, Sami, we’ll talk in a little while”-he realized from the near-dizzying aroma of cloves that Sami had visited the barber. To Zannis, and to the world at large, Sami Pal, with the face of a vicious imp, was the perfection of that old saying, “After he left, we counted the spoons.”

The interrogation room had a high window with a wire grille, a battered desk, and two hard chairs. Zannis introduced himself by saying, “I’m Captain Zannis,” lowering his rank for the interview.

“Yes, sir. I know who you are, sir.”

“Oh? Who am I, Sami?”

Sami’s prominent Adam’s apple went up, then down. “You’re important, sir.”

“Important to you, Sami. That’s the truth.”

“Yes, sir. I know, sir.”

“You like it here, in Salonika?”

“Um, yes. Yes, sir. A fine city.”

“You plan on staying here?”

After a pause, Sami said, “I’d like to, sir.”

Zannis nodded. Who wouldn’t want to stay in such a fine city? “Well, I think it’s possible. Yes, definitely possible. Do you have enough work?”

“Yes, sir. I keep busy. Always husbands and wives, suspecting the worst, it’s the way of love, sir.”

“And passports, Sami? Doing any business there?”

Once again, the Adam’s apple rose and fell. “No, sir. Never. I never did that.”

“Don’t lie to me, you-” Zannis let Sami Pal find his own word.

“Not now, sir. Maybe in the past, when I needed the money, I might’ve, but not now, I swear it.”

“All right, let’s say I believe you.”

“Thank you, sir. You can believe Sami.”

“Now, what if I needed a favor?”

Sami Pal’s face flooded with relief, this wasn’t about what he’d feared, and he’d had twenty-four hours to consider his recent sins. He fingered his carnation and said, “Anything. Anything at all. Name it, sir.”

Zannis lit a cigarette, taking his time. “Care for one of these?” He could see that Sami did want one but was afraid to take it.

“No, sir. Many thanks, though.”

“Sami, tell me, do you have any connections in Budapest?”

Sami Pal was stunned; that was the very last thing he’d thought he might hear, but he rallied quickly. “I do,” he said. “I travel up there two or three times a year, see a few friends, guys I grew up with. And my family. I see them too.”

“These friends, they work at jobs? Five days a week? Take the pay home to the wife? Is that what they do?”

“Some of them … do that. They’re just, regular people.”

“But not all.”

“Well …” Sami’s mouth stayed open, but no words came out.

“Sami, please don’t fuck with me, all right?”

“I wasn’t, I mean, no, yes, not all of them, do that. One or two of them, um, make their own way.”

“Criminals.”

“Some would say that.”

“This is the favor, Sami. This is what will keep you in this fine city. This is what may stop me from putting your sorry ass on a train up to Geneva. And I can do that, because you were right, I am important, and, just now, very important to you.”

“They are criminals, Captain Zannis. It’s how life goes in that city, if you aren’t born to a good family, if you don’t bow down to the bosses, you have to find a way to stay alive. So maybe you do a little of this and a little of that, and the day comes when you can’t go back, your life is what it is, and your friends, the people who protect you, who help you out, are just like you, outside the law. Well, too bad. Because you wind up with the cops chasing you, or, lately, some other guy, from another part of town, putting a bullet in your belly. Then, time to go, it’s been great, good-bye world. That’s how it is, up there. That’s how it’s always been.”

“These friends, they’re not what you’d call ‘lone wolves.’”

“Oh no, not up there. You won’t last long by yourself.”

“So then, gangs? That the word? Like the Sicilians?”

“Yes, sir.”

“With names?”

Sami Pal thought it over, either preparing to lie or honestly uncertain, Zannis wasn’t sure which. Finally he said, “Sometimes we use the-um, that is, sometimes they use the name of a leader.”

This errant pronoun we interested Zannis. One end of a string, perhaps, that could be carefully pulled until it led somewhere, maybe stolen merchandise or prostitutes traveling between the two cities. And not years ago, this week. But the clue was of interest only to Zannis the detective, not to Zannis the operator of a clandestine network. So he said, “And which one did you belong to, Sami? Back in the days when you lived up there?”

Sami Pal looked down at the desk. Whatever he was, he wasn’t a rat, an informer. Zannis’s first instinct was to show anger, but he suppressed it. “He won’t be investigated if you tell me his name, Sami. You have my word on that.”

Sami Pal took a breath, looked up, and said, “Gypsy Gus.”

“Who?”

“Gypsy Gus. You don’t know Gypsy Gus?”

“Why would I? He’s a Gypsy?”

Sami Pal laughed. “No, no. He left Hungary, when he was young, and became a wrestler, a famous wrestler, in America, captain, in Chicago. I thought maybe you would know who he was, he was famous.”

“Then what’s his real name?”

After a moment Sami Pal said, “Gustav Husar.”

Zannis repeated the name, silently, until he felt he’d memorized it. He was not going to write anything down in front of Sami Pal, not yet. “Tell me, what do they do, Husar and his friends.”

“The usual things. Loan money, protect the neighborhood merchants, help somebody to sell something they don’t need.”

Zannis had a hard time not laughing at the way Sami Pal thought about crime. Boy scouts.

“That’s the way it used to be, anyhow.” In the good old days.

“And now?”

“There’s bad blood now. Didn’t use to be like that, everybody kept to their own part of town, everybody minded their own business. But then, about three years ago, some of the, well, what you call gangs got friendly with a few individuals on the police force, maybe money changed hands, and the idea was to help certain people and maybe hurt some other people. It was after Hitler took over in Germany, sir, we had the same thing in Budapest, guys in uniforms, marching in the streets. There were some people in the city who liked what Hitler said, who thought that was the way life should go in Hungary. But not my crowd, captain, not my crowd.”

“Why not, Sami? Why not your crowd?”

“Well, we were always over in Pest, across the river from the snobs in Buda. Pest is for the working class, see? And when the politics came in, that’s the way we had to go. We’re not reds, never, like the Russians, but we couldn’t let these other guys get away with it. That meant fighting. Because if the workers were just having a drink somewhere, and here came some guys with iron bars, looking to cause trouble, we helped out. Maybe one of our guys had a gun, and he knew how to use it, understand?”

Gold! But Zannis merely nodded. “What about the Jews, in Budapest?”

Sami shrugged. “What about them?”

“What does … your crowd, think about them?”

“Who cares? There was one who used to work with us, he’s in jail now, but it didn’t matter to anybody, what he was.” After a pause, Sami Pal said, “We knew he was a Jew, but he didn’t have sidelocks or a beard or anything, he didn’t wear a hat.”

Zannis drummed his fingers on the desk. Would it work? “This Gypsy Gus, Gustav Husar,” he said. “He looks like a Gypsy?”

“No, sir.” Sami Pal grinned at the idea. “They made him a Gypsy because he came from Hungary, he’s got the photographs. Big mustache, like an organ-grinder, a gold hoop in his ear, and he wore a fancy sort of a shirt, and that little hat. You know, captain, Gypsy Gus.”

“And where would I find him, if I went to Budapest?”

Sami Pal froze. In his mind’s eye, he saw his old boss taken by the police-guns drawn, handcuffs out-and all because it was Sami Pal who’d sold him to the cops in Salonika.

Zannis read him perfectly. With hand flat, palm turned toward the desk, he made the gesture that meant calm down. And softened his voice. “Remember my promise, Sami? I meant it. Nobody’s going to do anything to your friend, I only want to talk to him. Not about a crime, I don’t care what he’s done, I need his help, nothing more. You know the sign on your door, in Vardar Square? It says CONFIDENTIAL INQUIRIES? Well, now you’ve had one.” He paused to let that sink in, then continued. “And I mean confidential, Sami, secret, forever, between you and me. You don’t go blabbing to your girlfriends, you don’t go playing the big shot about your friend on the police force. Understand?”

“Yes, sir. I have your promise.” He sounded like a schoolboy.

“And …?”

“It’s called Ilka’s Bar. When Gypsy Gus was a strong man in the circus, in Esztergom, before he went to Chicago, Ilka was his, um, assistant, on the stage, with a little skirt.”

Now Zannis set pad and pencil on the desk in front of Sami Pal. “Write it down for me, Sami, so I don’t forget. The name of the bar and the address.”

“I can only write in Hungarian, captain.”

“Then do that.”

Zannis waited patiently while Sami Pal carved the letters, one at a time, onto the paper. “Takes me a minute,” Sami said. “I don’t know the address, I only know it’s under the Szechenyi Bridge, the chain bridge, on the Pest side, in an alley off Zrinyi Street. There’s no sign, but everybody knows Ilka’s Bar.”

“And how does it work? You leave a message at the bar?”

“No, the bar is his … office, I guess you’d call it. But don’t show up until the afternoon, captain. Gypsy Gus likes to sleep late.”

11 December. Now for the hard part. He had to tell Vangelis. He could do what he meant to do behind the back of the entire world-all but Vangelis. Zannis telephoned, then walked up to the office in the central police headquarters on the same square as the municipal building. Vangelis was as always: shaggy white hair, shaggy white mustache stained yellow by nicotine because he’d smoked his way through a long and eventful life, and more and more mischief in his face, in his eyes and in the set of his mouth, as time went by-I know the world, what a joke. Vangelis had coffee brought from a kafeneion, and they both lit Papastratos No. 1 cigarettes.

They spent a few minutes on health and family. “Your brother makes a wonderful tram conductor, doesn’t he?” Vangelis said, his pleasure in this change of fortune producing a particularly beatific, St. Vangelis smile. Which vanished when he said, “The mayor is still telephoning me about his niece, Costa. The lost parakeet?”

Zannis shook his head. “Write another report? That we’re still looking?”

“Anything, please, to get that idiot off my back.”

Zannis said he would write the report, then told Vangelis what he was going to do. No names, no specifics, just that he intended to help some of the fugitives moving through the Balkans, and to that end he might be spending a day or two in Budapest.

Vangelis didn’t react. Or perhaps his reaction was that he didn’t react. He took a sip of coffee, put the cup down and said, “A long time, the train to Budapest. If it’s better for you not to be away from your work for so long, perhaps you ought to fly. The planes are flying again, for the moment.”

“I don’t think I have the money for airplanes.”

“Oh. Well. If that’s all it is.” He reached into the bottom drawer of his desk and brought out a checkbook. As he wrote, he said, “It’s drawn on the Bank of Commerce and Deposit, on Victoros Hougo Street, near the Spanish legation.” Carefully, Vangelis separated the check from the stub and handed it to Zannis. The signature read Alexandros Manos, and the amount was for one thousand Swiss francs. “Don’t present this at the cashier’s window, Costa. Take it to Mr. Pereira, the manager.”

Zannis looked up from the check and raised his eyebrows.

“Did you know Mr. Manos? A fine fellow, owned an umbrella shop in Monastir. Been dead for a long time, sorry to say.”

“No, I didn’t know him,” Zannis said, echoing the irony in Vangelis’s voice.

“One must have such resources, Costa, in a job like mine. They’ve been useful, over the years. Crucial.”

Zannis nodded.

“And, Costa? Gun and badge for your trip to Hungary, my boy, servant of the law, official business.”

“Thank you, commissioner,” Zannis said.

“Oh, you’re welcome. Come to think of it, maybe the time has come for you to have one of these accounts for yourself, considering … your, intentions. Now, let, me, see …” Vangelis thought for a time, leaning back in his chair. Then he sat upright. “Do you know Nikolas Vasilou?”

“I know who he is, of course, but I’ve never met him.” Vasilou was one of the richest men in Salonika, likely in all Greece. He was said to buy and sell ships, particularly oil tankers, like penny candy.

“You should meet him. Let me know when you return and I’ll arrange something.”

Zannis started to say thank you once more but Vangelis cut him off. “You will need money, Costa.”

Zannis sensed it was time to go and stood up. Vangelis rose halfway from his chair and extended his hand. Zannis took it-frail and weightless in his grasp. This reached him; he never thought of the commissioner as an old man, but he was.

Vangelis smiled and flipped the backs of his fingers toward the door, shooing Zannis from his office. Now go and do what you have to, it meant, a brusque gesture, affectionate beyond words.

He was busy the following day. For one thing, because of absent personnel-the war, the fucking war, how it manifested itself-the office had to handle a few commonplace criminal investigations. So now they’d been assigned a murder in Ano Toumba, a dockworker found stabbed to death in his bed. Nobody had any idea who’d done this, or why. By noon, Zannis and Saltiel had talked to the stevedores on the wharf, then some of the man’s relatives. He wasn’t married, couldn’t afford it, didn’t gamble or patronize the girls up in the Bara, gave no offense to anybody. He worked hard, played dominoes in the taverna, such was life. So, why? Nobody knew, nobody even offered the usual dumb theories.

After lunch he cashed Vangelis’s check, visited the Hungarian legation and was given a visa, then bought a ticket at the TAE office: up to Sofia, then Lufthansa to Budapest. The ticket in his hand was not unexciting-he’d never flown in an airplane. Well, now he would. He wasn’t afraid, not at all.

It was after six by the time he got to his front door, greeted the waiting Melissa, trudged up the stairs, and found his door unlocked and Tasia Loukas naked in his bed. “I remembered your key,” she said. “Above the door.” She was propped on one elbow, wearing her tinted glasses and reading the Greek version of one of Zannis’s French spy novels, The Man from Damascus. “You aren’t sorry to see me, are you?”

He drew the sheet down to her waist and kissed her softly, twice, by way of answer. Then he went into the kitchen, gave Melissa a mutton bone, a hunk of bread, and two eggs. “I have to take a shower,” he said as he returned to the bedroom. “Really I have to, it’s been that kind of day.”

“I have a surprise for you,” Tasia said.

“Oh?”

“But not until later. At eleven we have to go back out.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see. It’s a nice surprise.”

He began to unbutton his shirt, she watched attentively as he undressed.

“I see you’re ironing your own clothes now,” she said.

The iron was still sitting on the table in the kitchen. “Yes,” he said. “A small economy.”

“I’d like to watch you do it,” she said, amused at the idea. “Can you?”

“I’m learning,” he said. He stepped out of his underpants and bent over to pick them up.

“Come and sit with me for a little,” she said. “I don’t care if you smell.”

How to say no?

He sat on the edge of the bed, she began to stroke him, observing the result like an artist. “I daydreamed all day, at work,” she said, voice tender. “A little voice in my head. It kept saying, ‘Tasia, you need a good fucking,’ so here I am. Did you think you were too tired?”

“I did wonder.”

“But you are not, as we can see.”

He woke up suddenly and looked at his watch. 9:33. He could hear rain pattering down on Santaroza Lane, a gentle snore from Melissa, which now stopped abruptly because she’d also woken up, the instant after he had. She always knew. How? A dog mystery. Tasia was asleep on her stomach, arm beneath the pillow, mouth open, face delicately troubled by a dream. Her lips moved, who was she talking to? As he watched, one eye opened. “You’re awake,” she said.

“It’s raining.” The first attack of a campaign to stay home.

She sat up, sniffed, then got out of bed and, haunches shifting, walked to the bathroom, closed the door almost all the way, and called out, “What time is it?”

“Nine-thirty.”

“Hmm.”

When she emerged, she began to sort through her clothes, which lay folded on a chair. “I have a funny story for you,” she said, stepping into her panties.

Oh no, she still wants to go out. They had eaten nothing, so he’d have to take her somewhere, though, for him, making love was a substitute for food. “You do?”

“I forgot to tell you,” she said.

He waited as she put on her bra, hooking it in front then twisting it around.

“I have a little nephew. A cute kid, maybe four years old. And you know what he did? You won’t believe it when I tell you.”

“What?”

“He tried to kill Hitler.”

“He what?”

“Tried to kill Hitler. Really. They have one of those shortwave radios, and they were listening to some music program. Eventually the news came on and there was Hitler, shouting and screaming, the crowd cheering. You know what it sounds like. Anyhow, the kid listens for a while, then he picks up a pencil and shoves it into the speaker.”

Tasia laughed. Zannis laughed along with her and said, “That’s funny. It really happened?”

“It did,” she said. She put on a black sweater, combing her hair back in place with her fingers once she had it on. “Aren’t you hungry?” she said.

The surprise was, in truth, a surprise. They left the apartment, then stopped at a taverna for fried calamari and a glass of wine, and Tasia told him what she’d planned. A friend of hers owned the movie theatre in what had been, until the population exchange of 1923, a Turkish mosque, and he had gotten hold, somehow, of a print of Charlie Chaplin’s The Great Dictator. “It won’t have subtitles,” she said, “but you understand English, don’t you?”

“Some. Not much.”

“Never mind, you’ll manage. He’s showing it for friends, so we’ll at least have a chance to see it. Otherwise, we’d have to wait a long time, for the official release.”

The film was accompanied by considerable whispering, as people asked their neighbors to explain the dialogue, but that didn’t matter. Hitler was called Adenoid Hynkel, Mussolini appeared as Benzino Napaloni, which Zannis supposed was amusing if you spoke English. Mussolini teased and tormented and manipulated his fellow dictator-that didn’t need translation either. Still, even though it was Chaplin’s first talking picture, the physical comedy was the best part. Everybody laughed at the food fight and applauded Hitler’s dance with an inflated globe, literally kicking the world around. The political speech at the end was spoken out in Greek by the theatre owner, who stood to one side of the screen and read from notes.

Zannis didn’t find it all that funny, the way Mussolini provoked Hitler. The movie was banned in Germany, but Hitler would no doubt be treated to a private screening-trust that little snake Goebbels to make sure he saw it. Hitler wouldn’t like it. So, some comedian thought the Axis partners were comic? Perhaps he’d show him otherwise. When the movie was over, and the crowd dispersed in front of the mosque, Zannis wasn’t smiling. And in that, he saw, he wasn’t alone.

“So!” said a triumphant Tasia. “What will Adolf think of this?”

“I wouldn’t know,” Zannis said. “I’ll ask him when he gets here.”

14 December. The Breguet airplane bumped and quivered as it fought the turbulence above the mountains. Zannis was alarmed at first, then relaxed and enjoyed the view. Too soon they descended above Sofia airport, then zoomed toward the runway-too fast, too fast-and then, just as the wheels bounced on the tarmac and Zannis held a death grip on the arms of his seat, something popped in his left ear and the sound of the engines got suddenly louder. He could hear in both ears! He was overjoyed, smiling grandly at a dour Bulgarian customs official, which made the officer more suspicious than usual.

It was dusk when they landed in Budapest. Zannis took a taxi to the railway station and checked into one of the travelers’ hotels across the square. In his room, he looked out the window. Looked, as big windblown snowflakes danced across his vision, at the people hurrying to and from their trains, holding on to their hats in the wind. Looked for surveillance, looked for men watching the station. What happened to the fugitives who came here? Who was hunting them? How was it managed?

The following day, he waited until one in the afternoon, rode a taxi across the Szechenyi Bridge, and made his way to Ilka’s Bar. Which was small and dark and almost deserted-only one other customer, a tall attractive woman wearing a hat with a veil. She was not a casual patron but sat nervously upright, staring straight ahead, a handkerchief twisted in her hands.

As for Gustav Husar, he was nowhere to be seen. Except on the walls: a glossy publicity photograph of a menacing Gypsy Gus applying a headlock to a bald fellow in white spangled tights, and framed clippings from newspapers: Gypsy Gus with his arm around a blond actress, a cigarette holder posed at an angle in her gloved hand; Gypsy Gus flanked by four men who could only have been Chicago gangsters; Gypsy Gus sitting on another wrestler as the referee raised his hand to slap the canvas, signaling a pin.

Zannis had a cup of coffee, and another. Then, some forty-five minutes after he’d arrived, two men strolled into the bar, one with a slight bulge beneath the left-hand shoulder of his overcoat. He nodded to the barman, glanced at the woman, and had a long look at Zannis, who stared into his coffee cup. As the other man left, the barman took an orange, cut it in half, and began squeezing it in a juicer. Very quiet at Ilka’s, the sound of juice splashing into a glass seemed quite loud to Zannis.

The barman’s timing was exquisite-so that Gustav Husar, entering the bar, could take his glass of orange juice to a table in the corner. Zannis started to rise, but the tall woman was already hurrying toward the table. There was not much to be seen of the wrestling Gypsy, Zannis realized, only the rounded shoulders and thick body of a man born to natural strength, now dressed in a cashmere overcoat and a stylish silk scarf. On his huge head, where only a fringe of graying hair remained, a black beret. He had blunt features and, flesh thickened at the edges, cauliflower ears. His eyes were close-set and sharp. Cunning was the word that came to Zannis.

As Husar and the woman spoke in hushed tones, she reached beneath her veil and dabbed at her eyes with the handkerchief. Husar patted her arm, she opened her purse, and took out an envelope. This she handed to Husar, who slid it in the pocket of his overcoat. Then she hurried out the door, head held high but still dabbing at her eyes. The man with the bulging overcoat was suddenly at Zannis’s table and said something in Hungarian. Zannis indicated he didn’t understand. “I can speak German,” he said in that language. “Or maybe English.” Foreseeing the difficulties of a Greek needing to speak with a Hungarian, he had studied his English phrasebook, working particularly on words he knew he’d require.

The man turned, walked over to Husar, and spoke to him briefly. Husar stared at Zannis for a time, then beckoned to him. As Zannis seated himself, Husar said, “You speak English?”

“Some.”

“Where you from? Ilka’s in the office, she speaks everything.”

“Greek?”

“Greek!” Husar gazed at him as though he were a novelty, produced for Husar’s amusement. “A cop,” he said. “All the way from Greece.”

“How do you know I’m a cop?” Zannis said, one careful word at a time.

Husar shrugged. “I know,” he said. “I always know. What the hell you doing up here?”

“A favor. I need a favor. Sami Pal gave me your name.”

Husar didn’t like it. “Oh?” was all he said, but it was more than enough.

“Sami gave me the name, Mr. Husar, nothing else.”

“Okay. So?”

“A favor. And I will pay for it.”

Husar visibly relaxed. A corrupt cop. This he understood. “Yeah? How much you pay?”

“Two thousand dollars.”

Husar swore in Hungarian and his eyes widened. “Some favor! I don’t kill politicians, mister-”

“Zannis. My first name is Costa.”

“Your right name? I don’t care, but-”

“It is.”

“Okay. What you want from me?” I’m going to say no, but I want to hear it.

“You know people escape from Germany?”

“Some, yeah. The lucky ones.”

“I help them.”

Husar gave him a long and troubled look. Finally he said, “You are, maybe, Gestapo?”

“No. Ask Sami.”

“Okay, maybe I believe you. Say I let you give me two thousand dollars, then what?”

“People come off the …” For a moment, Zannis’s English failed him; then it worked. “People come off the excursion steamer from Vienna and get on the train to Yugoslavia. Zagreb, maybe Belgrade. You hide them, help them safe on the train.”

Husar puffed his cheeks and blew out a sound, pouf, then looked uncertain. “Not what I do, mister. I run business, here in Budapest.”

“This is business.”

“It ain’t business, don’t bullshit me, it’s politics.”

Zannis waited. Husar drank some of his juice. “Want some orange juice?”

“No, thank you.”

“Why I said Gestapo is, they’re around, you understand? And they play tricks, these guys. Smart tricks.” He leaned forward and said, “The Germans try to take over here. And there’s Hungarians want to help them. But not me. Not us, see? You got this problem? In Greece?”

“No.”

“We got it here.” He drank more juice, and made a decision. “How I find out what you want? What people? When? Where?”

“You own a cop here, Mr. Husar?”

“Gus.”

“Gus.”

“Yeah, sure, I do. I own a few.”

“We send him … It’s like a telegram, a police telegram.”

“Yeah? Like a ‘wanted’ notice?”

“Yes. It must be a detective.”

“I got that. It’s easy.”

“Just give me a name.”

“First the dollars, mister.”

“In a week.”

“You don’t have with you?”

Zannis shook his head.

Husar almost laughed. “Only a cop-”

“You will have the money.”

“Okay. Come back here tonight. Then, maybe.”

Zannis stood up. Husar also rose and they shook hands. Husar said, “It’s not for me, the money. Me, I might just do it for the hell of it, because I don’t like the Germans, and they don’t like me. So, let’s see about you, I’ll call Sami today.”

“I’ll be back tonight,” Zannis said.

It snowed again that evening, big slow flakes drifting past the streetlamps, but Ilka’s Bar was warm and bright and crowded with people. A thieves’ den, plain to be seen, but the sense of family was heavy in the air. Gustav Husar laughed and joked, rested a big arm across Zannis’s shoulders, marking him as okay in here, among Husar’s boys. Thugs of all sorts, at least two of them with knife scars on the face, their women wearing plenty of makeup. There was even a kid-size mascot, likely still a teenager, with dark skin and quick dark eyes, who told Zannis his name was Akos. He spoke a little German, did Akos, and explained that his name meant “white falcon.” He was proud of that. And, Zannis sensed, dangerous. Cops knew. Very dangerous. But, that night, friendly as could be. Zannis also met Ilka, once beautiful, still sexy, and it was she who gave him a piece of paper with the name of a detective, a teletype number, and a way to send the money-by wire-to a certain person at a certain bank.

Very organized, Zannis thought, Sami Pal’s crowd.

19 December. Vangelis might have waited weeks to connect Zannis with secret money, and Zannis wouldn’t have said a word, but there were newspaper headlines every morning, and speeches on the radio, and talk in the tavernas, so nobody waited weeks for anything, not any more they didn’t.

Thus Vangelis telephoned on the morning of the nineteenth; come to lunch, he said, at the Club de Salonique at one-thirty, yes? Oh yes. The twenty-sixth of December, when the “Hartmanns” would be leaving Berlin, was closing in fast, and Zannis knew he had to get the two thousand dollars into the account Husar controlled in Budapest.

Zannis was prompt to the minute, but he’d got it wrong-his first thought, anyhow. From the glasses on the table and the ashtray, he could see that Vangelis and Nikolas Vasilou had been there for a while. Then, as both men rose to greet him, Zannis realized this was simply St. Vangelis at work, making time to say things to Vasilou about him that couldn’t be said once he’d arrived. “Am I late?” Zannis said.

“Skata! My memory!” Vangelis said. Then, “It’s all my fault, Costa. But no matter, here we are.”

Vasilou was taller than Zannis, lean and straight-backed, with a prominent beak of a nose, sharp cheekbones, ripples of oiled silver hair combed back from his forehead, and a thin line for a mouth. “Very pleased to meet you,” he said, his eyes measuring Zannis. Friend? Foe? Prey?

They ordered a second bottle of retsina, with lamb and potatoes to follow, and they talked. The war, the local politics, the city, the weather, the war. Eventually the main course showed up and they talked some more. Zannis contributed little, his status well below that of his partners at luncheon. Smiled at their quips, nodded at their insights, tried not to get food on his tie. Finally, as triangles of tired-looking baklava arrived on the club’s French china, Vangelis excused himself to go to the bathroom.

The businessman Vasilou wasted no time. “The commissioner tells me that you need, how shall we say … private money? A secret fund?”

“That’s true,” Zannis said. He sensed that Vasilou had not made up his mind, so the instinct to persuade, to say more, to say too much, was strong inside him but, with difficulty, he fought it off.

“Money that cannot, he tells me, come from the city treasury.”

Zannis nodded. After a moment he said, “Would you like me to explain?”

“No, not the details,” Vasilou said, protecting himself. “How much are we talking about?”

Zannis gave the number in drachma, two hundred and fifty thousand, his tone neutral, and not dramatic. “It will have to be paid out in dollars,” he said, “the way life works in Europe these days.”

“A lot of money, my friend. Something short of twenty-five thousand dollars.”

“I know,” Zannis said, looking gloomy. “Perhaps too much?”

Vasilou did not take the bait and play the tycoon. He looked, instead, thoughtful-what am I getting myself into? The silence grew, Zannis became aware of low conversation at other tables, the discreet music of lunch in a private dining room. Vasilou looked away, toward the window, then met Zannis’s eyes and held them. “Can you confirm,” he said, “that this money will be spent for the benefit of our country?”

“Of course it will be.” That was a lie.

And Vasilou almost knew it, but not quite. “You’re sure?” was the best he could do.

“You have my word,” Zannis said.

Vasilou paused, then said, “Very well.” Not in his voice, it wasn’t very well, but he’d been trapped and had no way out.

Vangelis returned to the table but did not sit down. “I’ve got to forgo the baklava,” he said, glancing at his watch.

“They will wrap it up for you,” Vasilou said, looking for the waiter.

“No, no. Another time. And I really shouldn’t.” Vangelis shook hands with both of them and made his way out of the dining room.

“A valued friend,” Vasilou said. “He speaks well of you, you know.”

“I owe him a great deal. Everything. And he believes in … what I’m doing.”

“Yes, I know he does, he said he did.” Vasilou paused, then said, “He also told me you might some day become commissioner of police, here in Salonika.”

“Far in the future,” Zannis said. “So I don’t think about things like that.” But you’d better.

Vasilou reached inside his jacket-revealing a swath of white silk lining-and took out a checkbook and a silver pen. “Made out to you? In your name?” he said. “You can convert this to dollars at the bank.” Vasilou wrote out the check, signed it, and handed it to Zannis.

They spoke briefly, after that, a reprise of the lunch conversation, then left the club together. Walked down the stairs and out the front door, where a white Rolls-Royce was idling at the curb. As they said good-bye, Zannis looked over Vasilou’s shoulder. The face of the woman, staring out the window of the backseat, was the most beautiful thing he’d ever seen. Olive skin, golden hair-truly gold, not blond-pulled straight back, eyes just barely suggesting an almond shape, as though wrought by a Byzantine painter.

Vasilou turned to see what Zannis was looking at and waved to the woman. For an instant her face was still, then it came alive, like an actress before the camera: the corners of the full lips turned up, but the rest of the perfect face remained perfectly composed. Flawless.

“Can we drop you somewhere?” Vasilou said. He didn’t mean it; Zannis had had from him all he was going to get for one day.

“No, thanks. I’ll walk.”

Slowly, the window of the Rolls was lowered. She was wearing a bronze-colored silk shirt and a pearl necklace just below her throat. “Can you get in front, darling?” she said. “I’ve got packages in back.”

Vasilou gave Zannis a certain look: women, they shop. A chauffeur slid from behind the wheel, circled the car, and opened the front door.

“Again, thank you,” Zannis said.

Vasilou nodded, brusque and dismissive, as though Zannis, by taking his money, had become a servant. Then walked quickly to his car.

26 December. Berlin.

Only the wealthy could afford to live in the Dahlem district of Berlin, a neighborhood of private homes with gardens. The houses were powerfully built, of sober stone or brick, often three stories high, sometimes with a corner tower, while the lawns and plantings were kept with the sort of precision achieved only by the employment of gardeners. However, in the last month of 1940, hidden here and there-one didn’t want to be seen to acknowledge shortage-were the winter remains of vegetable gardens. Behind a fieldstone wall, a rabbit hutch. And the rising of the weak sun revealed the presence of two or three roosters. In Dahlem! But the war at sea was, in Berlin and all of Germany, having its effect.

At five-thirty, on a morning that seemed to her cruelly cold, wet, and dark, Emilia Krebs rang the chime on the door of the Gruen household. She too lived in Dahlem, not far away, but she might have driven had not gasoline become so severely rationed. When the door was answered, by a tall distinguished-looking gentleman, Emilia said, “Good morning, Herr Hartmann.” That was Herr Gruen’s new name, his alias for the journey to Salonika.

He nodded, yes, I know, and said, “Hello, Emmi.”

Emilia carried a thermos of real coffee, hard to find these days, and a bag of freshly baked rolls, made with white flour. Stepping inside, she found the Gruen living room almost barren, what with much of the furniture sold. On the walls, posters had been tacked up to cover the spaces where expensive paintings had once hung. The telephone sat on the floor, its cord unplugged from the wall-the Gestapo could listen to your conversation if the phone was plugged in. She greeted Frau Gruen, as pale and exhausted as her husband, then went to the coat closet in the hall and opened the door. The Gruens’ winter coats, recently bought from a used-clothing stall, were heavily worn but acceptable. They mustn’t, she knew, look like distressed aristocracy.

Emilia Krebs tried, at least, to be cheerful. The Gruens-he’d been a prominent business attorney-were old friends, faithful friends, but today they would be leaving Germany. Their money was almost all gone, their car was gone, soon the house would be gone, and word had reached them from within the Nazi administration-from Herr Gruen’s former law clerk-that by the end of January they would be gone as well. They were on a list, it was simply a matter of time.

Frau Gruen poured coffee into chipped mugs but refused a roll. “I can’t eat,” she said, apology in her voice. She was short and plump and had, in better times, been the merriest sort of woman-anyone could make her laugh. Now she followed Emilia’s eyes to a corner of the living room where a green fedora-like slouch hat rested on a garden chair. “Let me show you, Emmi,” she said, retrieving the hat and setting it on her head, tilting the brim over one eye. “So?” she said. “How do I look?”

Like a middle-aged Jewish woman. “You look perfect,” Emilia said. “Very Marlene Dietrich.”

The hat was meant to provide a kind of shadow, obscuring her friend’s face, but if the Gruens, traveling as the Hartmanns, ran into difficulties, it would be because of the way Frau Gruen looked. Their papers, passports and exit visas, were excellent forgeries, because resistance friends of Emilia’s had managed to link up with a Communist cell-they left anti-Nazi leaflets in public buildings-and with this very dangerous connection had come one of the most desirable people to know these days in Berlin: a commercial printer.

Emilia and the Gruens drank their mugs of coffee in silence, there was nothing more to say. When they were done, Emilia said, “Would you care for company on the way to the tram?”

“Thank you, Emmi,” Herr Gruen said, “but we’ll go by ourselves, and say farewell to you now.”

And so they did.

They left early, seeking the most crowded trains, and they were not disappointed. During the run to Dresden, two and a half hours, they stood in the corridor, packed in with people of all sorts, many with bulky parcels and suitcases. Their own luggage was a simple leather valise, packed for the eyes of customs officers. On this leg of the journey they were ignored, and the passport control on the German side of the Czech border was perfunctory. They were on their way to Vienna, part of the Reich, and so were most of the other passengers. Not quite so smooth was the entry control on the other side of the border-by then it was two-thirty. The officers here were Sudeten Germans, newly empowered, and so conscientious. One of them had a good long look at Frau Gruen, but was not quite so discourteous as to mention that he thought she looked like a Jew. He stared, but that was it, and so failed to notice the thin line of perspiration at her husband’s hairline-on a frigid afternoon. But their papers were in order and the officer stamped their visas.

Vienna was a long way from Prague, some eight hours on the express train. Here the Hartmanns were in a first-class compartment, where passengers were rarely subject to unscheduled security checks by Gestapo detectives. One didn’t want to annoy powerful people. The Gruens, in preparatory conversation with Emilia and her friends, had determined that friendly chitchat was dangerous, better to remain silent and aloof. But certain travelers, especially the newly prosperous, felt that first-class status was an opportunity to converse with interesting people and were not so easily turned aside. Thus a woman in the seat across from Frau Gruen, who said, “What takes you to Vienna?”

“Unfortunately, my wife’s mother has passed away,” Herr Gruen said. “We’re going for the funeral.” After that they were left alone.

A useful lie, they thought. How were they to know that this woman and her mouse of a husband would be on the Leverkusen, the excursion steamer to Budapest?

In the war of 1914, the German and Austro-Hungarian empires had fought as allies. After surrender in 1918, Hungary became a separate state but Germany, with a new war on the horizon in the late 1930s, sought to rekindle the alliance, courting the Hungarians in the hope they would join up with Hitler in the planned conquest of Europe. We must be friends, said German diplomacy, accent on the must, so commercial links of all sorts became important. For example, the round-trip excursion steamer that sailed up and down the Danube between Vienna and Budapest. True, it crossed the border of the Reich, but not the border of national amity. It was fun. A band played on the dock in Vienna, another on the dock in Budapest. The food aboard the Leverkusen, even in time of rationing, was plentiful-as much potato as you liked. Not that there wasn’t a passport control, there was, beneath great swastika banners, but the Austrian SS men kept their Alsatian shepherds muzzled and at a distance, and the officers, on the border with a new ally, were under orders to be genial. “The ice on the river is not too bad, not yet,” one of them said to Herr Gruen, who for the occasion wore a Nazi party pin in his lapel.

“One can be glad of that,” Herr Gruen said, with his best smile.

“You’ll have a jolly time in Budapest, Herr Hartmann.”

“We expect to. Then, back to work.”

“In Berlin, I see.”

“Yes, we love it there, but, always good to get away for a bit.”

The officer agreed, stamped the exit visa, raised his right arm, and said, amiably, “Heil Hitler.”

“Sieg Heil,” said the Gruens, a duet. Then, relieved, they climbed the gangway.

Standing at the rail of the steamer, watching the passengers as they filed past the border control, was the woman from the train and her husband. “Isn’t that …?” she said. She had to raise her voice, because the oompah of the tuba in the dockside ensemble was particularly emphatic.

“It is, my dear.”

“Very curious, Hansi. He said they were going to a funeral. In Vienna.”

“Perhaps you didn’t hear properly.”

“No, no. I’m sure I did.” Now she began to suspect that the pleasure of her company had been contemptuously brushed aside, and she started to get mad.

Poor Hansi. This could go on for days. “Oh, who knows,” he said.

“No, Hansi,” she said sharply. “They must explain themselves.”

But, where were they?

The Gruens had taken a first-class cabin for the overnight trip to Budapest and planned to hide there. Hunger, however, finally drove Herr Gruen to the dining room, where he ate quickly and ordered a cheese sandwich to take back to the cabin. As he left the dining room, here was the woman from the train. Her husband was nowhere to be seen, but she was sitting on a lounge chair just outside the door and rose when she saw him. “Sir,” she said.

“Yes?”

“Excuse me, but did you not say on the train that you were attending the funeral of your wife’s mother, in Vienna?”

Herr Gruen flinched. Why had this terrifying woman, cheeks flushed, arms folded across her chest, suddenly attacked him? He did not answer, looking like a schoolboy caught out by a teacher, said, “Well,” to gain time, then “I did, meine Frau, say that. I’m afraid I did not tell the truth.”

“Oh?” This was a threat.

“I did not mean to trouble you, meine Frau, but I felt I could not honorably respond to your question.”

“And why not?” The admission had not appeased her; the prospect of a really nasty confrontation apparently provoking her to a sort of sexual excitement.

“Because we are married, but not to each other.”

The woman’s mouth opened, but no words came out.

“We are in love, meine Frau, so much in love, we are.” He paused, then said, “Tragically.”

Now she went scarlet, and stuttered an apology.

For her, he thought, just as good as a fight. Humiliation. Possibly better. It wasn’t until he was back inside the cabin that he realized his shirt was soaked with sweat.

27 December. In the sunless light of a winter morning, the Gypsy musicians on the Danube dock seemed oddly out of place, as though they’d become lost on their way to a nightclub. Still, they sawed away on their violins and strummed their guitars as the passengers disembarked from the Leverkusen. Holding hands as they walked down the gangplank, the Gruens were as close to peace of mind as they’d been for a long, long time. True, their train to Belgrade didn’t leave until the morning of the twenty-ninth, so they would have to spend two nights in a hotel. This didn’t bother them at all-they were no longer on German soil, and the hotel would be luxurious. A Hungarian officer stamped their passports in the ship’s dining room, and they’d begun to feel like normal travelers as they headed for the line of taxis waiting at the pier.

But they were, just then, intercepted.

By a strange creature, small and dark and vaguely threatening, who wore a narrow-brim brown hat with a card stuck in the hatband that said Hotel Astoria. Not a bad hotel, but not where they were going. “Hello, hello,” said the creature.

“Good morning,” said Herr Gruen. “We’re not at the Astoria, we’re booked at the Danube Palace.”

The Gruens started to walk away, but the creature held up a hand, stop. “No,” he said, “you can’t go there.” His German was rough but functional.

“Excuse us, please,” Herr Gruen said, perhaps less courteous now.

The creature seemed puzzled. “You’re the Hartmanns, right? Green tie, green hat?”

Herr Gruen’s eyes widened. Frau Gruen said, “Yes, we are. And?”

“I’m called Akos, it means ‘white falcon.’ I’m sent by your friend in Salonika, and I’m here to tell you that if you set foot in the Palace, well, that’s the end of you.”

Herr Gruen said, “It is?”

“A big fancy hotel, Herr Hartmann, so Germans all over the place, and they’ve bribed every waiter, every porter, every maid. You won’t last an hour because they know, they know fugitives when they see them.”

“So it will be the Astoria?”

“What? Oh, I forgot.” Akos took off his hat, slipped the card from the hatband and put it in his pocket. “No, I got this just for the dock. It’s not so nice where I’m taking you, but you’ll be safe.” He glanced sideways, at something that had caught his attention, something he didn’t like. “Let’s go,” he said. “And let’s make it look good,” he added, taking the valise from Herr Gruen. They walked to the line of taxis, then past it, to a taxi parked in a side street just off the waterfront. Akos opened the door for the Gruens, then stared toward the dock as they settled themselves in the backseat.

The taxi sped away, cornering through side streets as Akos, from time to time, turned the rearview mirror so he could see out the back window. The driver said something in Hungarian, Akos answered him briefly. They crossed a bridge, then drove for a few minutes more, entering a narrow street with dead neon signs over nightclub doors. “It gets busy here at night,” Akos explained. Midway down the block they stopped in front of a hotel-an old building two windows wide, brick stained black with a century of soot. “Here we are,” Akos said. The Gruens peered out the window-here? “Don’t worry,” Akos said. “You’ll survive. Wait till you get to Serbia!”

The smell inside was strong: smoke, drains, garlic, God only knew what else. There was no clerk-a bell on the desk, a limp curtain over a doorway-and Akos led them upstairs, up three flights past silent corridors. The room was narrow, so was the bed, with a blanket over a mattress, and the paint had been peeling off the walls for years. “If you want food,” Akos said, “just go downstairs and ring the bell, somebody will get you something, but you don’t leave the hotel.” He stood to one side of the window, moved the curtain an inch with his index finger, and muttered to himself in Hungarian. It sounded like an oath. To the Gruens he said, “I’ll be back. Something I have to take care of.”

Gus wanted these people kept safe, and Akos was proud that he’d been chosen for the job. But now he had a problem. A man he’d spotted at the dock had stared at every passenger leaving the Leverkusen, then a taxi followed his own through a maze of back streets, and now the hotel was being watched by the same man. Not young, with the sort of head that looks like it’s been squeezed flat, a brush mustache and waxy complexion, he wore a grimy pearl-gray overcoat. Who was he? A policeman? Akos didn’t think so. The guy definitely didn’t act like a detective; he was furtive, and he was alone. He was, more likely, some miserable little sneak who sold fugitives for cash-cash from the Budapest cops, or even from the Germans.

These people he’d hidden in the hotel were on the run, surely using false papers. And how did the sneak know that? Because when people ran from the Nazis they ran through Budapest, and when you see something often enough you learn to recognize it; you can smell it. And if the guy was wrong, so what? He was still some cop’s lapdog, next time he’d get it right. Cops lived off informers; that was how they did their work. They’d tried it with Akos, but only once: he shrugged, he didn’t know anything, I’m the dumbest guy in town. In the gang Gus ran, no rats allowed, there were stories, bad stories, better to be loyal. Akos left the hotel, made a sharp turn away from the man in the doorway of an abandoned store, then, head down, in a hurry, he walked around the block, coming up on the man from behind.

Akos carried a little knife, simple thing, a cheap wood handle and a three-inch blade. But that was all you needed, if you knew what you were doing. Only a three-inch blade but he kept it sharp as a razor, so it had to be protected by a leather sheath. As he neared the man, he took the knife out of its sheath and held it behind his leg. What to do? Slide it in and out? That would be that. Put it in the right place and the victim never made a sound, just fell down, as though the air had been let out of him. But now you had a corpse, now you had a murder, so there would be cops on the street, sniffing around. They would search the hotel.

Akos dropped his hand on the man’s left shoulder and, as he turned in that direction, circled around on his blind side. Startled, the man opened his mouth, ready to tell some tale but he never got it out. What an ugly tie, Akos thought. Maroon, with a gray knight-on-horseback in the middle. Who would wear such a thing? He took the bottom of the tie between thumb and forefinger as though to study it, then the knife flashed, so fast the guy never saw it, just below the knot. Ah, but maybe Akos wasn’t as deft as he thought, because the blade not only sliced off the tie but took a shirt button as well, which flew up in the air, landed with a click on the pavement, and rolled away. Still holding the bottom of the tie, Akos folded it in half and stuck it in the pocket of the man’s shirt. The man whinnied with fear.

“Could’ve been an ear,” Akos said. “I think maybe you should go back wherever you came from. And forget what happened. Because if you don’t …” Akos put the knife away.

The man said, “Yes, sir. Yes, sir,” turned, and hurried off.

29 December.

The train was classified as an express, but it never sped up, just chugged slowly south across the Hungarian plain, past snow-covered fields where crows waited on the bare branches of the trees, through mist and fog, like a countryside in a poem or a dream. The Gruens were nine hours from Belgrade, in the neutral nation of Yugoslavia, as Germany faded away with every beat of the rails.

And so, slowly, they began to believe that they had escaped. The wretched hotel in Budapest had been frightening; neither of them had ever been in such a place. But with the appearance of the little gangster Akos-what a character! — a hand had reached out to protect them. Now all they had to do was watch the scenery and talk about the unknown future, a life different from anything they’d ever contemplated, but at least a life. This optimism, however, proved to be unfounded.

They passed easily through Hungarian customs; then the train stopped in Subotica, the first town in Serbian Yugoslavia, for border control. Ten officers boarded the train and took the Gruens, and many other passengers, into the station. The officers were ferocious-why? Why? What had they done? One or two of the officers spoke some German but they didn’t explain; that was the ancient prerogative of border guards. They gestured violently, shoved the passengers, swore in Serbian, and took all documents away for examination behind the closed doors of the stationmaster’s office. The passengers were forced to stand facing a wall. For more than an hour.

When the officers returned, they took Frau Gruen and two other women into the office and made them undress, down to their slips, while two men in suits and ties ran their hands over every seam and hem in their clothing, then slit the shoulder pads in their dresses and jackets. But, Frau Gruen realized, Emilia Krebs had saved her, had told them both not to think, even, of sewing jewels or coins or papers or anything in their clothing. And, apparently, the clothing of the other women also hid nothing. As the search proceeded, the women’s eyes met: why are they doing this to us? Later, Frau Gruen learned that her husband and several other men had been subjected to the same treatment. And one man, the passengers thought, had been taken away.

They weren’t sure. When they were permitted to reboard the train, they gathered in the corridor of the first-class car and, as the engine jerked forward and the station fell away, they argued. Had there not been a fat man with red hair? Perhaps he had simply left the train, perhaps he lived in Subotica. No, one of the passengers didn’t think so; she had spoken with this man, and he’d said he was Polish. Well, yes, perhaps he was, but did that mean he didn’t live in Subotica? As the train made slow progress through a frozen valley, the dispute went on and on. No one claimed to have actually seen him being led away, but somebody said, “That’s the way it’s done!” and again they could not agree. Mysterious disappearance? Public arrest? The passengers had stories to tell, had seen arrests, had heard of disappearances. In time, they returned to their compartments, in accord on only one point: the man was gone.

Twenty minutes later, a woman came to see the Gruens. She had been taken into the office alone, an afterthought. While she was there, a senior officer, speaking halting German, had attempted to telephone an office in Berlin. In his hand, she said, was a piece of paper with the name Hartmann, and what she thought were passport numbers. “I don’t know your name,” she said, “but I am telling everybody who was searched.” The Gruens were silent; could do no more than stare at her. “Don’t worry,” she said. “He never got through. Something wrong with the line, maybe a storm in the north. He shouted and carried on, then the operator got tired of him and cut him off.” After a moment, Herr Gruen, his heart pounding, admitted they were the Hartmanns, and thanked her. Later he wondered, Was that safe? It was surely the decent thing to do but, perhaps, a mistake.

When the train stopped in Novi Sad, the station before Belgrade, a uniformed police lieutenant opened the door of the Gruens’ compartment, as though searching for an empty seat. When Herr Gruen looked up, the lieutenant made eye contact with him and gestured, a subtle nod of the head, toward the corridor. He waited there until Herr Gruen joined him; then they walked along the car together. He had a friend in Zagreb, he explained, who’d asked him to see “the Hartmanns” safely through the police control in the Belgrade railway station. He knew they would be changing trains there, for the line that ran south to Nis, not far from the Greek border.

So when they left the train at Belgrade station, the lieutenant accompanied them, spoke briefly to the officers, and the Gruens were waved past. In the station waiting room, he bought a newspaper and sat nearby, keeping an eye on them. When the train for Nis was announced, he followed them along the platform and, once they found seats, paused at the window and gave them a farewell nod.

The train to Nis was slow and dirty and crowded. There was no first-class car. Across the aisle from the Gruens, a woman was traveling with two rabbits in a crate, and at the far end of the car, a group of soldiers got drunk, sang for a time, then went looking for a fight. To the Gruens, none of this mattered at all-they had traveled deep into the Balkans, now far from central Europe, thus the rabbits, the soldiers, the women in black head scarfs, meant safety, meant refuge.

In Skoplje, capital of Yugoslavian Macedonia, they sat in the waiting room all night and, in a slow rain that came with the dawn, boarded the train that followed the Vardar River down to the customs station at Gevgelija, then across the border to Greece, at Poly-kastro. At last on Greek soil, in sight of the blue-and-white flag, Frau Gruen broke down and wept. Herr Gruen comforted her as best he could while Greek soldiers, manning machine guns and an antiaircraft cannon, stared at them. Greece was at war, and the border guards were courteous but thorough. As the Gruens walked toward the waiting train, a man in civilian clothes was suddenly by their side. “My name is Costa Zannis,” he said, adding that he was an officer of the Salonika police, would escort them into Salonika, and arrange for their passage to Turkey. Frau Gruen took his hand in both of hers, again close to tears. “I know,” he said gently. “A long journey.” He took his hand back and smiled, saying, “We’d better get on the train.”

A very old train, that ran to Salonika. Each compartment spanned the width of the car and had its own door to the exterior, where a narrow boardwalk allowed the conductor to move between compartments as he collected tickets. Brass oil lamps flanked the doors and the seats were made of wood, with high curved backs. As the train rattled along, Zannis took a pad and pencil from the pocket of his trench coat. “Forgive me,” he said. “I can see you are exhausted, but I must ask you questions, and you must try to be as accurate as possible.” He turned to a fresh page on the pad. “It is for the others,” he said. “The others who will make this journey.”

In Berlin, at the Gestapo headquarters on Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, Hauptsturmfuhrer Albert Hauser kept a photograph of his father on his desk. It had been taken in a portrait studio during the Great War, but it looked older than that, like a portrait from the previous century: a rotund, solemn man, sitting at attention on the regal chair provided by the studio. The subject wore a white handlebar mustache, a Prussian-style helmet, and a uniform, for he had been, like Hauser himself, a police officer in the city of Dusseldorf. A good policeman, the elder Hauser, stern and unrelenting and, in much the same way, a good father. Whose son had followed him into the profession.

Hauser, on a frosty day in mid-January, looked nothing like the photograph. He was heavily, powerfully built, with blunt features, hair worn Prussian-army style: near-shaved on the sides, an inch long on top. Hauser smoked cigars, an old habit from his days as a detective in Dusseldorf, an antidote to the smell of death, sweetish and sickening, that nobody ever got used to. But a policeman’s lot was murder, suicide, and week-old corpses who’d died alone, so Hauser smoked cigars.

He’d been very good at his job in Dusseldorf, but as his family grew in the mid-1930s he needed more money. “You should come and work for us,” a former colleague told him. “Join the SS, then work for the Gestapo, we are always keen to hire talented men.” Hauser didn’t much care for politics, he liked quiet evenings at home, and membership in the SS seemed to entail quite a bit of marching and singing, attendance at Nazi rallies, and riotous drinking in beer halls. Though none of this appealed to Hauser, he applied to the SS, was welcomed, and discovered that they didn’t insist on marching and singing, they simply wanted his skills: his ability to discover crime, to investigate, and to hunt down criminals and arrest them. Working for the Gestapo, of course, the criminals were different from those he’d pursued in Dusseldorf. No longer burglars, or thieves, or murderers, they were instead Jews and Communists who broke the political laws of the new Nazi state. Laws that concerned flight and false documents, nonpayment of special taxes levied on Jews, and, in the case of the Communists, agitation and propaganda intended to undermine the state. To Hauser, it didn’t matter; laws were laws-you simply had to learn how they worked-and those who broke them were criminals. Nothing could be simpler. By January of 1941 he’d risen quickly to the rank of Hauptsturmfuhrer, captain, and by his standards was paid very well indeed.

At nine-thirty that morning he stubbed out his cigar-an expensive cigar, for now he could afford such things-and slipped his arms into the sleeves of his overcoat, an expensive overcoat, so nice and warm. From his office on the third floor, he walked down to the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, where his partner, a thin, rather bitter fellow called Matzig, waited behind the wheel of a Mercedes automobile. He had to work with Matzig, formerly a detective in Ulm, but didn’t much care for him, a man who took his membership in the Nazi party quite seriously, reading, in fact studying, certain books and going endlessly to meetings. Oh well, to each his own, and he didn’t see all that much of Matzig, working mostly by himself. But today they were going to make an arrest, a couple called Gruen, a lawyer and his wife, Jews, suspected of affiliation with Communists. His department in the Gestapo had a long list of such people, wealthy Berlin intellectuals for the most part, and was, at a steady pace, arresting and jailing them for interrogation, so that they might be persuaded to confess to their crimes, provide names of others, be tried, and imprisoned.

Matzig drove cautiously, much too slowly for Hauser’s taste-the little shrimp was irritating in so many little ways-but soon enough they were in the garden district of Dahlem, one of Berlin’s finest neighborhoods, where many on Hauser’s list were resident. Matzig parked the car and, as they walked up the path to the Gruen doorway, Hauser instinctively made sure of his sidearm, a Walther PPK, the smaller version of the standard police pistol. Not that he’d need it. These arrests were easy, you had only to open the back door of the car and the criminals climbed in. Not like the old days: much calmer and, important to a family man like Hauser, much safer.

Matzig pressed the button by the door and they heard, from within the house, the sound of a chime.