The 34th Degree

101

The platia was ablaze with searchlights trained on the taverna as Andros rolled by in the lorry. The SS had sealed off the entire square and were searching every house and assembling all the men between sixteen and sixty in the street, holding the crowd in check with armored cars and automatic weapons.

Andros drove past the town hall and rounded a corner. At the checkpoint on the edge of town, several armored cars and SS men were waiting.

“I hope this pass works,” Andros muttered to himself as he slowed down. He called back to Stavros and Erin in the rear, “Get down!” He braked to a halt while a young SS captain approached with his pistol. With him was a Greek policeman.

“Identification, please,” the SS officer demanded.

Andros pulled out the identification card Eliot had given him back at Theo’s and handed it to the German. “What’s going on?”

“Communists.”

“Oh, I see.”

The SS officer eyed him closely. “What’s your name?”

“Troumboulas.”

The German turned to the Greek gendarme. “Check that name against our list of popular pseudonyms used by British agents.”

The gendarme did as he was told and shook his head to indicate there was no match.

Still the German wasn’t satisfied. He flashed his light in Andros’s face. “Where are you going?”

“Kalamata,” Andros answered. “Grains for shipment. I’m late, you know.”

“It is not my concern if you spend too much time at the taverna, you lazy pig,” said the German. “It will cost you two sacks.” He turned to the gendarme, with whom Andros presumed he split the black-market proceeds. “Does that sound right?”

The gendarme nodded nervously. Meanwhile, three German guards walked around to the back of the lorry and poked their flashlights among the sacks. Andros watched them disappear in the rearview mirror and froze in his seat, expecting the worst. Instead he heard a voice say in German, “Carry on.”

Andros started the engine. It was only when the lorry moved toward the gate that Andros looked again in his rearview mirror and realized there was nobody behind the truck. The German guards were gone. Only the SS captain and the Greek gendarme stood in the street, equally bewildered, until the German realized what had happened and pulled his gun. “Stop them!” he shouted to the guardhouse, and had started firing when a burst of machine-gun fire from the back of the lorry cut him and his Greek friend to the ground.

Andros took his eyes off the rearview mirror in time to see the swing bar dropping in front of the windshield. He hit the accelerator and crashed through. Suddenly they were out of Sparta and in the open foothills.