The 34th Degree

82

N asos was waiting by the car and opened the rear door for Andros. Once behind the wheel, he started the engine and looked in the rearview mirror. Andros nodded numbly and they began to move slowly down the drive to the gate, where the sentry raised the bar and let them through.

“Everything go as planned?” Nasos asked.

Nothing had gone as planned; Andros was still sorting out what had just happened. But he could see his driver’s anxious eyes in the mirror and knew he had to provide some reassurance if they were to complete the last leg of this escapade.

“Not quite, Nasos, but we’ll see.”

The lights of the Vasilis estate faded behind the stately cypress trees as they moved on into the darkness. Kifissia was silent this time of night. A few minutes later, Nasos looked up into the rearview mirror and said, “We are being followed.”

Andros turned and could see two headlights in the distance. “You know the plan.”

Nasos nodded. “Yes, next bend in the road, you jump out and I drive on home. Later, I slip out through the back on foot.”

“You sure you won’t join us in Cairo?”

“I will join Colonel Psarros’s men in the hills,” Nasos replied. “I still have some thrasos left in me.”

Andros sensed both sadness and strength in the voice of his father’s faithful driver. He put his hand on the old man’s shoulder. “Take care, my friend.”

They came around the bend, and Nasos slowed momentarily while Andros opened the door and jumped out. He barely made it into the shrubs and ducked before the lights of the oncoming car passed over his head and moved on.

He sat there waiting. A moment later, he could hear the low hum of a car and saw the two flashes of light as the Gestapo car that had picked him up the night before in the Royal Gardens came around the corner and braked to a halt.

Lieutenant Jeffrey was behind the wheel. The rear door opened, and Eliot poked his head out. “Come on, inside now. We’ll barely make it to Piraeus in time as it is.”

As they moved off, Eliot looked at Andros and saw the wine-soaked shirt. “Good God, Andros, you’re bleeding.”

“Relax, it’s not mine.”

“Did you find the text?”

“Found where it is, among other things.”

“That will have to do,” Eliot said, handing over several envelopes. “Here are the orders you are to pass out when you reach the EOE base. And here are your false identity papers for the ship, just in case there’s a last-minute dock inspection, and some stevedore’s clothing. Change now.”

“I want to wait for Aphrodite,” Andros said, unbuttoning his dress shirt. He knew she’d said she wasn’t coming. But there was always a chance she’d change her mind. “She might be right behind us with her family.”

Eliot glared at him. “I told you not to muck things up, Andros. What if, in attempting to escape, she tips off von Berg? Where will that put us when we arrive in Piraeus?”

Andros thought of Werner and Hans on the floor of von Berg’s study, of the film negative that von Berg was sure to miss, and finally, of the determined look in Aphrodite’s eyes when she told him she wasn’t coming.

“You needn’t worry,” Andros replied. “I don’t think things could get any more mucked up than they already are.”