The Angry Hills (18 page)

“As soon as he is ready to see you.”

Mike arose as Lisa started for the door.

“Miss...”

She turned.

“Look, Helena or Mrs. Papadopoulos or whatever your name is. I know this has all been a routine thing for you but I want to thank you.”

“It isn’t necessary.”

“I’m afraid it is necessary. When someone does something nice I think they should accept thanks. I can tell you I’m grateful for my life, can’t I?”

Lisa smiled and her voice lost some of its coldness. “We have been rude to each other. I suppose it was natural under the circumstances.”

“You know something? You’re not fooling me for a minute?”

“What do you mean?” she said, half-startled.

“You aren’t half as cold as you’d like me to believe. I don’t suppose we’ll be seeing each other, so thanks again.”

“I’m afraid you’re not rid of me,” she said. “I have been assigned to check here daily.”

“Swell... See you around...”

“My name is Lisa.”

“See you around, Lisa.”

“Good-bye, Vassili.”

The long black Mercedes-Benz staff car turned down Hermes Street in the direction of Anton’s Dress Shop.

“Do you really think you are doing the right thing, Konrad?” Zervos asked.

“I believe so. Lisa must surely know by now that her time has run out. She will listen this time.”

“I don’t like it. She may run back to the Underground with the whole thing.”

“And perhaps you have a better idea?”

Zervos shrugged. Heilser and Zervos had learned from questioning the villagers of Paleachora that Morrison had been attempting to get to Athens with the aid of a man named Christos who was killed in the raid. Although Morrison had escaped farther into the hills, both of them were certain he had made or was trying to make contact in Athens. Everything now indicated his contact would be a group revolving around Papa-Panos, Dr. Thackery and a former Greek professor named Thanassis.

Anton ushered them into the office where Lisa waited.

“Good afternoon, Lisa,” Heilser said in a gentle voice. “You look tired? Have you been feeling well?”

“I am certain my health is of no concern to you.”

“On the contrary. I’m quite concerned. Did you see your children?”

“Yes, I saw them.”

Heilser paced the room a moment, then balanced himself on the edge of the desk and fiddled with Anton’s letter opener. “Tell me, Lisa. Do you know an American by the name of Dr. Harry Thackery?”

“No... Why?”

“Oh, we thought perhaps you did.”

“He’s working with your Underground. No doubt you’ll meet him sooner or later, if you already haven’t,” Zervos said.

The strange line of questioning threw her off guard.

“How about a priest named Papa-Panos?”

“I know him.”

“What do you know?”

“Only what everyone else in Athens knows.” Lisa thought, either the two of them are groping or they are on to something....

“Now, Lisa. The purpose of this is to let you realize that we are not entirely ignorant of what is going on.”

“I’m sure you’re not,” she replied.

“We are also aware of the fact that you’ve been lying to us. But I’m willing to let that be water under the bridge. What I want to know is whether or not you are willing to begin co-operation.”

“I made a bargain...”

“Just a minute,” Zervos interrupted. “You sound like a broken record. Our patience has run out. You understand what we mean without spelling it out?”

“I understand,” she whispered.

“I am going to offer you a proposition, Lisa. In exchange for some information, I will return your children to you and arrange a boat for you to Egypt.”

Lisa tried to mask her excitement.

Konrad Heilser opened his billfold and handed her a picture. It was one reproduced from the book jacket of Michael Morrison’s
Home Is the Hunter.
She stared at it....

“This man is either in Athens or will be shortly. I will give you three weeks to turn him up. If you don’t...

She handed the picture back. “Is that all?”

“That is all.”

“You may go first today,” Zervos said. “I wish to stay and purchase some dresses.”

Lisa walked from the office slowly. The eyes of Heilser and Zervos followed her. The door shut

“She knows them,” Heilser said.

“Difficult to tell about that woman—she masks her emotions so well.”

“She cannot mask that commendable trait of mother love...”

“By the way, Konrad. Do you really intend letting her go to Egypt with her children?”

“Of course not.”

“Come. Let us go to my place. I’ll show you my latest who will make you forget even Lisa.”

SIX

M
UCH OF
L
ISA’S USUAL
calm was gone now. In the quiet of her apartment she paced nervously. A half dozen times she made her decision, only to change it. Each time she made up her mind to rebuff Heilser to the end, the picture on the mantel of her two sons taunted her. How helpless, how little they were...

The man, Vassili, spoke more like an American than an Englishman. He was of great importance both to the Gestapo and the Underground. Heilser would have not made the proposition to her unless he was desperate. In their last meeting he made no attempt to persuade her to become his mistress. The man, whoever he was, must hold some great power.

But could she betray her own people? What would life be like then? Dr. Thackery, Papa-Panos and Thanassis were just as desperate to have the man escape from Greece. Yes, her sons would live, but how many other sons would die if she betrayed?

Three weeks to decide... three weeks...

The picture on the mantel—a boy of two and a boy of four. One with a bright smile on his face and the other held a little stuffed bear. Lisa lit a cigarette and sank into a chair.

Mike had no choice but to get accustomed to the pump house in Chalandri. It was obvious that the final dash from Greece was no simple chore to arrange.

He tried to read but couldn’t concentrate. He slept in snatches and waited for darkness, for darkness meant he could step outside the shack for a breath of air.

At midday the sweat poured from him. As the sun blazed hotter it would become stifling and unbearable in the house. Mike would lie flat and motionless, almost passing out from the heat.

He was alert to every sound, from the rustle of a tree to the shuffle of footsteps that came after sundown. At the sound of the footsteps he unfailingly reached for his pistol. The steps would grow louder and louder, then stop in front of the door. A dish of food and a bottle of wine would be left and the footsteps would shuffle away.

Mike couldn’t eat much, but the wine would throw him into a blessed fog for a few hours.

All through the night he would pace the dirt floor like a caged animal. The days seemed endless.

One sound outside the pump house made him sigh with relief. The soft, light footsteps of Lisa. It was only human, under these conditions, for him to look forward with renewed eagerness to her nightly visit. And it was only natural for him to spend a great deal of time thinking about her when she was gone. Mike felt that he always would have remembered her even if he had met her under ideal circumstances. There was that deep, haunting sadness in her face that seemed to give her beauty a mysterious aura.

Their visits were friendly. Each day Lisa would be more persuasive in her efforts to gain his complete confidence.

“How is it today, Vassili?”

“Great. I love it here. Do you want to hear me recite
Julius Caesar
forward or Plato’s
Republic
backward?”

“Well, now, perhaps this will cheer you up a bit.”

She opened a package and produced a razor, some blades and two books:
The Sea Wolf
and
Martin Eden.
Mike didn’t have the heart to tell her he’d read the books a half dozen times.

“Wait! There is more! Here is a surprise. Look what I have, Vassili—tobacco.”

“Tobacco...” But even his pipe did not taste good any more. “Lisa, how much longer do I have to stay here?”

“It is very difficult for Dr. Thackery to move about these days, but it should not be too much longer, Vassili, not too much longer.”

Five days passed.

Lisa began to arrive earlier and stay almost to the curfew hour. Each day he awaited her more anxiously than the last. He began to think that much of the duty and routine of her visits were disappearing and that she actually enjoyed being with him.

They would brew a pot of tea or share a bottle of wine and relax and converse. They would talk of books and music. He found her to be intelligent and highly educated. And from her Mike learned more of the tragedy that had befallen Greece.

The country was rapidly degenerating into a state of moral rot. Most Greeks were bitter in their hatred of the invaders, but there were those—as there always are—who thought it better to do business with the enemy.

One series of sledgehammer blows followed another. The area around Athens had never been self-sustaining in food. Now it was being stripped to the last kernel of wheat by the Germans. Crop taxation was in force and villages and fields were being burned wherever defiance flared up.

The Greeks fought back as best they could, only to see their citizens massacred at the rate of fifty to one. Organized resistance did not yet exist.

Mike realized now how much depended on the seventeen men on the Stergiou list who worked in the inner orbit of the Nazi Command.

The ration allowance dropped to almost starvation level. Black markets were beginning to appear. Jungle law was taking over. Schools closed for lack of attendance and children began to rove the country in packs.

This was only the beginning for Greece.

It was a strange relationship between Mike and Lisa.

Mike wanted to say so much, but he had to keep on guard always. He wanted to talk about his children and his writing and about San Francisco. Somehow Lisa seemed to fit with San Francisco.

Perhaps it was the strangeness that attracted them to each other. Then, on the seventh night, she abruptly asked if he had had an affair with Eleftheria. At that instant their relationship changed. Lisa seemed annoyed with herself; then she retreated to her original coldness.

On the eighth day she did not visit him.

The ninth day.

Lisa lifted the phone and dialed Gestapo. Her face was chalky and beads of perspiration formed on her brow. She asked for Zervos.

“Do you know who this is?” she said.

“Yes,” Zervos answered.

“Tonight at ten I shall be walking down Æolou Street past the National Bank. I may have someone with me.”

“Very well.”

Lisa hung up the receiver and clenched her teeth to fight off the uncontrollable tremors in her face.

The door to the shack opened.

Mike smiled as Lisa entered. He was so happy to see her, he was willing to forget yesterday when she did not come.

“I have good news, Vassili,” Lisa said. “We are going into Athens tonight. We have made contact with someone about your departure.”

SEVEN

T
HEY LEFT THE PUMP HOUSE.

Mike walked beside Lisa toward the tram line and he was riddled with conflicting feelings. First there was the relief of his departure from the pump house. There was excitement at the thought of getting out of Greece, and there was a little sadness in the knowledge that he’d never see Lisa again. But uppermost in his mind were the same fears that had tormented him before the train ride from Dadi to Athens.

He had seen Lisa operate coldly and efficiently. He had seen her in a warm and friendly mood. But he had never seen her act in doubt. Now she was betraying too many signs of nervousness for his comfort.

The tram rolled into the northwest corner of Athens and continued down a broad road past the large grounds of the Ceramicus.

They got off on October Street and took off afoot in the general direction of Concord Square.

It was eight-thirty.

She held his arm and at that moment much of the doubt vanished. As they strolled he became terribly aware of her nearness.

A feeling came over him that he had not had in many many years. A feeling he thought he’d never have again. His memory telescoped backward in time some eighteen years. Now he was just a fellow with his girl taking a walk, nowhere in particular—just killing a day.

A walk in the flower-filled Golden Gate Park past the concourse where the band played. Or a walk toward the Memorial Stadium in Berkeley in the fresh nip of November air before the big game between Cal and Stanford.

It may have been a week-end hike in the hills of Marin over the Golden Gate Bridge or it may have been a lazy stroll past the sun bathers at Playland at the beach.

There would always be a girl beside him and he would feel good. He felt good now with Lisa beside him and he wondered why this feeling returned after so many years and in this foreign place.

Athens was depressing. Shops that once were bursting with goods were now bare. The people looked emaciated as they ambled lifelessly through the streets.

Sinister-looking Nazis and comic-opera carabinieri replaced the happy-go-lucky khaki-clad British Expeditionary Force. Young girls, now condemned to whoredom, stood back in the shadows.

As the crowd thickened near Concord Square, Lisa suddenly stopped, then changed their direction to a quieter side street.

They seemed to be strolling aimlessly. Lisa checked her watch. It was after nine.

The street was empty.

They could hear the click of their heels as they walked through the Kolonaki section past the Church of Agioi Theodoroi.

Another block brought them to an intersection of Æolou Street. They stopped.

Mike figured that they had bypassed Concord Square and were directly below it. He looked up Æolou Street and in the distance could make out the Cable Office which he had used several times on his arrival in Athens. A bit above that stood the National Bank.

“Where do we go from here?” he asked.

Lisa took her arm from his. “Up Æolou Street,” she whispered.