Spies of the Balkans (3 page)

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

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

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

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

That did it.

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

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

"You're sure?"

The doctor nodded and said, "I'm sorry."

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

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

"How do you know it was Fort Rupel?"

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

"Yes. I'm here." A conventional answer, but the tone was sad and grim.

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

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

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

"All right, Costa, just proceed as you think best."

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

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

"I thought you would see it that way. As for the photographs, what's your pleasure?"

"Drop them off here, I'll send them over to the army."

"And Spiraki?"

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

"It should go to the German consulate."

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

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

Vangelis's voice was disgusted. "Miserable business," he said. Then, "Oh well, keep me informed."

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

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

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

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

So, did Mr. Stacho have German friends?

Not as far as she knew.

A camera?

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

For how long, a hobby. Years?

No, only a few months.

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

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

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

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

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

"And that's all?" she said, obviously brightening.

"Is that not enough?"

"When he left, when I learned he wasn't coming home ..."

"Yes?"

"I thought it was a woman."

"Nothing like that."

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

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

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

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

But the umbrella was gone.

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

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

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

"No," she said. "I prefer depravity."

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

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

"Am I invited to the recital?" he asked.

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

"Do you perform?"

"In tights? I think not."

"Don't tell
me
you can't wear tights."

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

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

"Perhaps we will."

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

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

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

"Did you ever eat it?"

"No."

"Best not."

"Oh?"

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

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