The Silver Stain

THIRTEEN

As it turned out, the food in the small taverna Mikis knew was excellent, the lamb succulent and the mountain greens a subtle blend of sweet and bitter. The owner’s casked wine had a faint taste of flowers to it and they got through a kilo quickly.

‘OK,’ Mavros said. ‘Time to talk.’

Mikis grinned and discarded a toothpick. ‘If I wasn’t such a pushover, I’d be charging you for this.’

Mavros had a vision of the fight on the way back from Kornaria. ‘“Pushover” isn’t the word that immediately comes to mind. Anyway, I can pay you, as I did before. One thing you can say for the production is that there’s plenty of cash around.’

‘Except this doesn’t directly concern the film people,’ Mikis said.

‘Really?’

‘But it may have something to do with that mismatched pair we saw round the corner.’

‘Roufos and Waggoner? I’m all donkey’s ears.’

‘I was going to ask you about that,’ the Cretan said, laughing. ‘All right, here it is. I got this from my old man, among others. The story goes that during the war, in late 1943 after the Italians had surrendered and the Germans got even more jumpy, a group of resistance fighters found a hoard of silver — ancient stuff, coins and other things — in a cave up in the White Mountains.’

‘Has this got something to do with Rudolf Kersten?’

Mikis held up his hand. ‘I’ll get to that. And before you ask, it wasn’t near Kornaria.’

Mavros let him continue, taking notes.

‘The andartes wanted to rebury it and split it up after the war was over — at least, that was what their leaders ordered them to do. They were from different villages, so there was some dispute.’

Mavros imagined the half-starved mountain men, few of whom would have possessed more than a coin or two after years of fighting, coming to blows over this sudden source of wealth.

‘And then other people got to hear of the find.’ Mikis raised an eyebrow suggestively.

‘David Waggoner.’

‘One out of two. It wasn’t his area, but the British commander there had been sent back to Egypt after being wounded and Waggoner — Lambis — was temporarily in charge.’

Mavros nodded. ‘And the other guy?’

‘A Communist, one of the few EAM people with any influence in western Crete. He was known as Kanellos. Maybe he had cinnamon-coloured hair.’ Mikis drained his glass. ‘As you can imagine, he was keen on the silver being used for the good of the people.’

‘Meaning, not divided amongst the andartes.’

‘Correct.’

‘So then what happened?’

‘You should ask Waggoner.’

Mavros gave him a stony look. ‘Maybe I will. But he’s not the one sitting opposite me.’

‘All right, all right. What I heard was that Lambis wanted to send the hoard to Alexandria on a submarine. He ordered it to be brought to a monastery called St Athanasios that’s in the middle of nowhere on the south coast, just a few hundred metres from a small beach that had been used for landings more than once.’

‘And?’

‘The Germans were waiting for them. Over twenty andartes were killed, while Waggoner managed to get away with a bullet in his shoulder. The silver was taken to the German headquarters building in Chania and that was the last anyone heard of it. The rumour was that Kanellos had betrayed the mountain men and Waggoner rather than lose the silver to the British imperialists.’

Mavros knew there had been such betrayals during the occupation. He looked at Mikis. ‘There’s more?’

The Cretan nodded. ‘In the Sixties, workers found a safe in the foundations of a building scheduled for demolition near the harbour front.’

‘The German headquarters?’

Mikis raised his head in denial. ‘That had been thoroughly checked years before. No, this was a private house. The owners had been Jews, but there weren’t many left after the Germans had finished with them.’

‘And the silver was in the safe?’

Mikis shrugged. ‘So some people said. The problem was, it disappeared a week after it was found.’

Mavros sat back in his chair, unsure where this information left him.

‘You mentioned Mr Kersten,’ Mikis said, waving for the bill. ‘Some people, the few around here who don’t like him — maybe egged on by Waggoner — say he got hold of the safe’s contents and that his collection of silver came from it.’

‘And what does your father think about that? What do you think?’

The Cretan counted out banknotes, brushing away Mavros’s attempt to pay. ‘I’ll tell you what I know. After he came to live here, Rudolf Kersten spent a lot of his own money buying up silver ritual objects and ornaments that had belonged to the Chania Jews. He contributed towards a museum to their memory — it’s only a couple of streets from here — and he donated the pieces he’d bought.’

They walked up the quiet lanes. Mikis’ story had been fascinating, though it hadn’t added anything to the Maria Kondos case. But it had provided more background to the curious relationship between Rudolf Kersten and David Waggoner, as had the meeting between the former SOE man and the dubious antiquities trader.

After parting from Mikis, Mavros looked up into the star-dotted night between the balconies. He had the distinct feeling that he was on the verge of a momentous discovery, not necessarily one that would do anything for his peace of mind.

He tried to sleep in Nondas’ and Anna’s wide bed but, after rolling about for what seemed like hours, he gave up. Booting up his laptop, he checked his emails. There were some more attachments from The Fat Man, but they didn’t tell him anything else suggestive about Kersten or Waggoner. He sent a message asking for information about the EAM operative known as Kanellos. The Communist Party archives were hard to access, even for a long-standing member like Yiorgos, but he had no option. Pandelis Pikros, the disaffected old comrade he used to tap as a source, had died a few months ago.

Mavros went on to the Internet and typed ‘Kersten Jewish Museum Chania’ into a search engine. All he found was short reference in a local newspaper article about the opening of the museum in 1987. Rudolf Kersten had been present at the ceremony as a major donor, but had declined to comment. That squared with Mavros’s take on the former Fallschirmjager’s character — he wasn’t the type to go courting praise.

He tried to find more details about the silver hoard in the mountains, but there was nothing. He wasn’t surprised — stories like that tended not to be written down. Then he tried ‘Waggoner Silver Hoard’ and was directed to an extract from David Waggoner’s Where the Eagle Flies, his memoir of the war in Crete.

‘. . on November 1st 1943. With great difficulty, I had convinced Captain Dhiavolos that the silver would cause nothing but internecine strife if it remained on the island. Runners were sent out to the Abbot of St Athanasios and to the men guarding the cave, while radio contact with Cairo resulted in a submarine being dispatched four nights later — when the moon was only two days beyond new.

Although I had studied Cretan archaeology at Cambridge, much of the silver was beyond my ken. There were around fifty Hellenistic coins and over a hundred Roman, the former ranging from Armenia to Sicily and the latter mainly from the late Empire. But the majority of pieces were even later — ranging from the Arab occupation of Crete in the ninth and tenth centuries, to the Byzantine reconquest of the island, to the Venetian period of rule, to the Ottoman domination that followed. I had no idea of the coins’ value, but it must have been considerable. There was no question of the hoard being split up amongst uneducated mountain villagers, even if the leaders of the andartes permitted that.

Although I found the coins interesting, it was the prehistoric pieces that caught my imagination most. They comprised thirty-two double-headed axes, the primary symbol of the Minoans. I had visited Knossos several times before the war and was aware that the labrys had great religious significance. The Minoans seem to have worshipped a mother goddess, the religion being largely administered by females, and it was said that the priestesses used the axes to sacrifice animals. Some of the pieces were about six inches across, while others were much smaller, presumably votary objects. I have since learned that gold labrys were prevalent in other areas, but for some reason no doubt lost in history, our hoard had only silver examples. According to some scholars, the curved shape of the opposed blades represented the waxing and waning moon, which doubtless was one manifestation of the deity’s power. Less inspiring had been the use of the labrys by the pre-war Greek dictator Metaxas as a symbol of his regime’s integrity. For that reason, the andartes had no interest in the axes.

I reached the rendezvous with my men in the late afternoon. The Abbot, Father Christodhoulos, was his usual charming self, plying us with bread, olives, goat’s cheese and raki. Shortly after dark, the sound of muffled hooves could be heard on the steep path leading down the gorge. Captain Dhiavolos burst into the monastery, bellowing for food and drink, his men apparently unaffected by the long and dangerous trip.

The submarine was expected at midnight, but such operations rarely went according to plan, the southern coast of Crete being a perilous place even in daylight. At last, one of the lookouts spotted the brief flashing of a red light out to sea and we prepared to greet the crew in their inflatable dinghy.

The German is a patient hunter. They waited until we were all on the narrow, stony beach before the lights from the patrol boat came on and the machine guns on it and on dry land opened up. I later learned that HMS Whale Shark tried unsuccessfully to torpedo the enemy craft before turning back to Alex. Andartes fell all around me, Captain Dhiavolos’s chest riddled with bullets. I was knocked to the ground by a round in my left shoulder, but two of my surviving men managed to drag me out of the lights and up a steep defile. I later heard that Father Christodhoulos and his six monks had been shot against the wall of St Athanasios.

I have no doubt that the ambush was a result of treachery by the EAM man known as Kanellos. I first met him during the Battle of Crete, when he tried to dissuade Greek gendarmes and local people from taking part in the attack on Galatsi. At the time, I thought he was a coward and denounced him as such to the people. From then he worked tirelessly to undermine both my efforts and those of my fellow SOE officers. He had the deluded idea that passive resistance would be more effective and less costly in terms of Cretan lives. Fortunately, the islanders left him in no doubt as to their feelings on that issue. After the Germans slaughtered us on the beach and took their savage revenge on the churchmen, Kanellos disappeared from Crete. No doubt he returned to the mainland and continued to sow the seeds of dissension that led the country to civil war after the Nazis had been defeated. Such men are dangerous beyond their station — the one known as Kanellos was of scarcely medium height, with a great hook for a nose and unnaturally bright blue eyes. May the earth lie heavy on his bones and those of his vicious, misguided comrades. As for the silver, it was lost to the occupier and probably ended up in the cellars of the arch-thief Goring.’

Mavros noted the date of the book — it had been published in 1957. Waggoner wouldn’t have known about the discovery of the safe in the Jewish home at that time, and Kersten’s donations to the museum were still far in the future. Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t in full possession of those facts now.

His eyes getting heavy, Mavros logged off and lay back on the bed. He was uneasier than he had been before going on the Internet, but this time he was repressing thoughts that were trying to break through, even though he knew there was no future in that. The vendetta wasn’t exactly helping, either.

He fell into the sleep of the anxious, thinking before he went under that he was only the latest in the long line of intruders into Cretan history to be wondering if he’d leave the island in one piece.

Mavros was woken by the sound of a key in the lock. He had left his own in there, so the door would not open. Still semi-submerged in sleep, he stumbled out of the bedroom,

‘Who is it?’

‘Ah, Mr Alex, it is you?’

Barba-Yannis stood on the landing, a tattered straw hat on the back of his head. ‘I always come on Thursdays to water the plants on the back balconies. I wasn’t sure if. .’

‘Don’t worry,’ Mavros said, admitting the old man. ‘It’s time I was up anyway. Would you like coffee?’

‘I should be making you coffee, Mr Alex.’

‘No, no. You do your watering and I’ll make the coffee. How do you take it?’

‘Varyglyko, my child. I always had a sweet tooth.’

Mavros had a quick shower, then found the briki. He made the old man’s sugar-laden brew in the long-handled metal pot first, followed by his own unsweetened cup. He found Barba-Yannis sitting at a small table on the balcony to the rear of the living room, water dripping off the marble floor to the unused space below.

‘Thank you, my child,’ the old man said, drinking from the glass of water Mavros had brought with the coffee. ‘I can hardly walk down the street now without needing to sit down.’

‘You look very well.’

Barba-Yannis threw up his wrinkled arms. ‘I am on my own, like many of my generation. My wife died last year and my children and grandchildren are in Germany. They have done very well. They say I will soon be a great-grandfather.’

‘May they live for you,’ Mavros said, calculating that the old man would have been in his early twenties during the war. ‘Tell me, why did they go to that country?’

‘I went there first myself,’ Barba-Yannis said. ‘In the Fifties things were not good here and I had a record — I was in EAM during the war. I wasn’t a communist, mind — I never liked the party’s hard-line stance. But it was better to be absent for some years, especially since there were jobs in the factories up there.’

Mavros looked into the rheumy brown eyes. ‘But didn’t you feel bad after everything the Germans did here?’

‘Of course I felt bad!’ the old man said, slapping the balcony rail. ‘I lost relatives and friends — comrades. .’ His voice failed.

‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’

Barba-Yannis drew his forearm across his eyes. ‘No, my child, it is good to remember the past. The younger generations do not like to — they prefer to make money rather than honour our sacrifices. Besides, there is no benefit in hating. The German soldiers paid a heavy price too.’

‘One of them even put back a lot into the local economy.’

‘You mean Rudolf Kersten? Yes, he is greatly admired.’

Mavros caught a hint of disapproval. ‘But?’

The old Cretan rubbed his thinning hair. ‘But some people say he took part in one of the massacres. Even though he denies it, I’ve never been able to see him as the repentant do-gooder most people do.’

‘Makrymari,’ Mavros said, in a low voice.

‘You’ve been doing your homework, my boy,’ Barba-Yannis said, nodding in approval.

‘I’m trying,’ Mavros smiled. ‘I hear there was a Jewish population in Chania.’

‘Ach, the Jews. They kept themselves to themselves, but we didn’t mind them.’ The old man lowered his head. ‘You can imagine what happened to them.’

‘Sent to the camps?’ Mavros said, aware that many thousands of mainland Greek Jews had been gassed.

‘Worse. They were loaded on a ship in Iraklio with Italian soldiers who had surrendered. For years, it was thought that the Germans had sunk it themselves, but not long ago I heard it was torpedoed by a British submarine. No survivors.’

A chill ran through Mavros. War really was hell, not only because of the slaughter of combatants and non-combatants, but because of the ghastly twists of fate leading to ‘accidents’ that destroyed the lives of countless families — including those left to mourn.

He roused himself. Barba-Yannis was a potentially useful source about resistance activities.

‘Did you know an EAM man called Kanellos?’

‘Did I know Kanellos?’ the old man asked, with a gap-toothed smile.

‘Kanellos was that rare thing — a hero who cared about other people. After the first days of the invasion, he swore he would never fire a gun again.’

‘What happened?’

‘I wasn’t here — I’d been sent with a message to the EAM commander in Rethymno the day before the landings started and got caught up in the fighting there. But what we heard was that Kanellos was in the killing grounds outside the city with a band of fighters. They slaughtered the paratroopers with knives when they landed and then took their own weapons to fire on them. I still don’t understand how the airfield at Maleme was lost. The British generals were fools.’

Barba-Yannis emptied his water glass, and Mavros passed his across.

‘Thank you, my son. And then Kanellos was at the village of Galatsi. Almost all his men had been killed. The British — well, most of the fighting men were those big New Zealanders — decided to charge the Germans up the main street, with a couple of tin-can tanks at the front.’

Waggoner, Mavros thought. There was mention of his role in the battle on the Internet sites he’d trawled and in extracts from his books.

‘Kanellos realized from the start that it was a suicide mission, because the Germans had landed thousands of men by then. He tried to talk the gendarmes and the local citizens out of taking part, saying their efforts and their lives would be much more valuable in the future.’ The old Cretan blinked away tears. ‘He was right about that. The initial charge was a success, but within an hour they had all been cut down by Germans on the higher ground. Apart from a few wounded British at the rear, there were hardly any survivors. It was a tragedy and it is to Kanellos’s honour that he tried to avert it.’

‘Presumably Kanellos wasn’t his real name,’ Mavros said, his voice unsteady.

‘Of course not. The senior men all used aliases, even before the war.’

Mavros nodded. ‘And after that? Kanellos stayed throughout the occupation?’

‘Till the German surrender in Chania.’

Mavros looked across the space to the flat opposite, trying to keep calm. An old woman in a nightgown was playing listlessly with an overweight cat.

‘Did you ever hear of a hoard of silver that was found in a cave up in the mountains?’

Barba-Yannis gave him a sharp look. ‘How do you know about that, Mr Alex?’

Mavros gave him a shortened version of the story in Waggoner’s memoir.

‘Kanellos betrayed them?’ the old man said, his voice breaking. ‘Ridiculous. He would never have done a thing like that. He worked by persuasion, not betrayal. Some of those British agents were madmen,’ he continued. ‘Lambis — Waggoner — was one of the worst. He used to come down from the mountains and shoot Germans with the andartes. There were many reprisals.’

‘I thought the Cretans generally were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to get rid of the Germans?’

Barba-Yannis looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You know, that’s the kind of bravado the mountain men still come out with. Of course, people were prepared to die for the cause of freedom. But not everyone agreed with old men and boys being put against a wall. That was Kanellos’s message: no sabotage unless it was a major target — most of those were so well guarded that you couldn’t get near them — and no civilian lives to be put at risk. Some of the British — Waggoner, especially — had different priorities.’

Mavros looked down. ‘Kanellos — describe him, will you?’

‘Medium height, thick black hair brushed back from his forehead, a hooked nose and a thick moustache.’ The old man raised a hand. ‘But most striking of all were his eyes — they were dark-blue and penetrating. You felt they could see all the way inside your soul. He was a wonderful man. I never saw him again after he left the island.’

Mavros’s phone chirruped. There was a message from the Fat Man asking him to call urgently. Mavros didn’t need to. He already knew Kanellos’s real name.