Spies of the Balkans

in classical Greek-as though Shakespeare were making a speech to a platoon of East London sappers. But nobody smiled.

“Men,” the officer said, at a volume meant for the parade ground, “these crates are important. They hold antitank rifles, fifty-five-calibre weapons with tripods that are fired by a single soldier, like Bren guns. The square crates contain antitank rounds, and you will take turns carrying them, because the ammunition is heavy.”

There were two trucks for the reservists, and they managed to drive some way north on the rutted dirt roads, but with altitude the snow deepened and soon enough they were spending more time pushing their vehicles than driving them. So, unload the crates, and start walking. Which was hard work, in the snow. Zannis sweated, then shivered as the sweat dried in the icy chill of the mountain air. One reservist sprained an ankle, another had pains in the chest; none of them were really in fighting shape.

When darkness fell, Zannis rolled up in his blanket and groundcloth and slept in the snow. The wind sighed through the trees all night long and when the cold woke him up he heard wolves in the distance. In the morning he was exhausted and needed force of will to keep going. Spyro, the former pharmacist, said, “I don’t know how much longer I can do this”; then he re-gripped the rope handle at his end of the crate and the two of them plodded forward. High above them, an eagle circled in the gray sky.

They reached the village late in the afternoon, where men from the forward positions would take the antitank rifles the rest of the way. When the small cluster of houses came into view, the dogs appeared- Melissa’s cousins, Zannis thought-barking and threatening until a piercing whistle sent them trotting back home. When the column reached the center of the village, the reservists went silent. The village well, which might have been there for a thousand years, was no more-some of the stonework remained, shattered and blackened, but that was all. And the houses on either side of the well were in ruins. “A bomb,” the villagers said. They’d seen the planes above them; one of them descended toward the village and dropped a bomb. They’d watched it as it tumbled from the plane. It had killed two women, a child, and a goat, and blown up their well. “Why?” the villagers asked. “Why did they do this to us?”

At the end of October, when war came to Trikkala, Behar saw it as an opportunity. He was Albanian, his family had lived in Trikkala since the time of the Ottoman Turks, but he was no less Albanian for that. Age twenty- five when the war began, Behar had been a thief since the age of fourteen. Not that he was very good at it, he wasn’t. As a teenager he’d spent a few months in the local jail for stealing a radio and, later on, a year in prison for trying to sell stolen tires, on behalf of a man called Pappou. The name meant grampa, a nickname, not so much because he was old and gray, but because he’d been a criminal for a long time and people were afraid of him so he could call himself whatever he liked. Sometimes Pappou, just like a grampa, would help out his little Trikkala “family”: give them something to sell and let them keep some of the money. Thus, for Behar, better to stay on the good side of Pappou.

With the war, and the soldiers crowding into Trikkala, Behar thought he would prosper. These people came from cities in the south; to Behar they looked rich, and rich people spent lavishly-perhaps they’d like a nice girl to keep them warm, or maybe a little hashish. They were, it was said, going to free Albania from the Italians, but Behar had never been to Albania and couldn’t have cared less who ruled there. No, what mattered to Behar was that these people might want things or, if they didn’t, could be separated from what they had: wristwatches, for example, or rifles. One way or the other, Behar knew they were meant to put money in his empty pockets.

But the soldiers weren’t such easy targets, they were always together, they didn’t pass out drunk in an alley-at least not in the alleys where he searched for them-and they went to the brothel for their girls. After a few days, Behar began to despair, war was not going to turn out to be much of an opportunity at all.

But then, in the second week of the war, Pappou came to his rescue. Behar lived in a shack at the edge of the city, with his mother and two sisters. They never had enough wood for the stove, so they froze during the winter and waited anxiously for spring. He was lying on his cot one afternoon when a boy came with a message: he was to go and see Pappou the following day. Two o’clock, the boy said, at the barbershop Pappou owned, where he did business in the back room.

Behar was excited. He walked to the edge of Trikkala to find his eldest brother, who owned a razor, and there scraped his face. Painful, using the icy water, because his brother was not so prosperous as to own soap. Behar made sure he got to the barbershop on time. He wore his grimy old suit, the only clothing he had, but he’d combed his hair and settled his short-brimmed cap at just the proper angle, down over his left eye. It was the best he could do. On the way to the shop he looked at himself in the glass of a display window; scrawny and hunched, hands in pockets, not such a bad face, he thought, though they’d broken his nose when he’d tried to steal food in the prison.

To Behar, the barbershop was a land of enchantment, where polished mirrors reflected white tile, where the air was warmed-by a nickel-plated drum that heated towels with steam, and scented-by the luxurious, sugary smell of rosewater, used to perfume the customers when they were done being barbered. There were two men in the chairs when Behar arrived, one with his face swathed in a towel, apparently asleep, though the cigar in his dangling hand was still smoking, the other in the midst of a haircut. The barber, as he snipped, spoke to his customer in a low, soothing voice. The weather might change, or maybe not.

When Behar entered the back room, Pappou, sitting at a table, spread his arms in welcome. “Behar! Here you are, right on time! Good boy.” Sitting across from Pappou was a man who simply smiled and nodded. His friend here, Pappou explained, was not from Trikkala and needed a reliable fellow for a simple little job. Which he would explain in a minute. Again, the man nodded. “It will pay you very well,” Pappou said, “if you are careful and do exactly as you’re told. Can you do that, my boy?” With great enthusiasm, Behar said he could. Then, to his considerable surprise, Pappou stood up, left the room, and closed the door behind him. Outside, Pappou could be heard as he joked with the barbers, so he wasn’t listening at the door.

The man leaned forward and asked Behar a few questions. He was, from the way he spoke, a foreigner. Clean-shaven, thick-lipped, and prosperously jowly, he had a tight smile that Behar found, for no reason he could think of, rather chilling, and eyes that did not smile at all. The questions were not complicated. Where did he live? Did he like Trikkala? Was he treated well here? Behar answered with monosyllables, accompanied by what he hoped was an endearing smile. And did he, the foreigner wanted to know, wish to make a thousand drachma? Behar gasped. The foreigner’s smile broadened-that was a good answer.

The foreigner leaned closer and spoke in a confidential voice. Here were all these soldiers who had come to Trikkala; did Behar know where they lived? Well, they seemed to be everywhere. They’d taken over the two hotels, some of them stayed at the school, others in vacant houses-wherever they could find a roof to keep them out of the rain. Very well, now for the first part of the job. The foreigner could see that Behar was a smart lad, didn’t need to write anything down, and so shouldn’t. Mustn’t. Behar promised not to do that. An easy promise, he couldn’t have written anything down even if he’d wanted to, for he could neither read nor write. “Now then,” the foreigner said, “all you have to do is …” When he was done, he explained again, then had Behar repeat the instructions. Clearly, Behar thought, a very careful foreigner.

He went to work that very afternoon, three hundred drachma already in his pocket. A fortune. At one time he’d tried his hand-disastrously-at changing money for tourists, and he knew that a thousand drachma was equal to ninety American dollars. To Behar, that was more than a thousand drachma, that was like something in a dream, or a movie.

But then, delight was replaced by misery. As the light faded from the November afternoon, he walked the streets of Trikkala, his eyes searching the rooftops. He knew where the reservists lived, or thought he did, and went from one to the next, crisscrossing the town, but no luck. In time, he became desperate. What if the foreigner was wrong? What if the accursed object didn’t exist? What then? Give back the three hundred drachma? Well, he no longer had the three hundred drachma. Because, immediately after leaving the foreigner he had, maddened by good fortune, visited a pastry shop where he’d bought a cream-filled slice of bougatsa with powdered sugar on top. So good! And then-he was rich, why not? — another, this one with cheese, even more expensive. Now what? Make good what he’d spent? How?

Thirty minutes later, fate intervened. In, for a change, Behar’s favor, as, for the third time in an hour, he paced the street in front of the school. A building that held, for Behar, nothing but terrible memories. The reservist soldiers went in and out, busy, occupied with important military matters. Up above, the sky had grown dark as it prepared to shower down some nice cold rain. Then, just for a moment, a thick cloud drifted aside and a few rays of sun, now low on the horizon, struck the school’s chimney at just the proper angle. And Behar caught a single silver glint. Finally! There it was! Just as the foreigner had described it. A wire, run up from somewhere in the building