Spies of the Balkans

down and held his head in his hands. Not far from him, he saw what he thought were the captain’s boots, heels apart, toes pointing in. Zannis looked away, tried to rub his ankle, and discovered his hand was wet. Blood was running from beneath his trouser cuff, across the top of his foot, and into the gray powder that covered the street. Very well, he would go to the hospital but, when he tried to stand, he couldn’t, so he sat there, holding his head, in front of the burning school.

He wasn’t hurt so much. They told him that later, in a dentist’s office where the lightly wounded had been taken because the town clinic-there was no hospital in Trikkala-was reserved for the badly injured. The reservists lay on the floor of the reception area, the dentist had tried to make them comfortable by putting the pillows of his waiting room couch under their heads. Zannis could hear out of one ear now, a wound in his leg had been stitched up, and there was something wrong with his left wrist. He kept opening and closing his hand, trying to make it better, but motion only made the pain worse.

As dusk fell, he realized he was tired of being wounded and decided to seek out whatever remained of his unit. In the street, people noticed him, likely because a nurse had cut off the leg of his trousers. Zannis met their eyes and smiled-oh well-but the people looked sorrowful and shook their heads. Not so much at a soldier with a bare leg and one shoe. At the bombing of their school and the men who’d been killed, at how war had come to their town.

And it wasn’t done with them. And they knew it.

Two days later, Zannis went to the clinic to see Pavlic. Some of the wounded lay on mattresses on the floor, but Pavlic had one of the beds, a wad of gauze bandage taped to one side of his face. He brightened when he saw Zannis, now fully dressed. After they shook hands he thanked Zannis for coming. “It is very boring here,” he said, then thanked him also, as he put it, “for everything else.”

Zannis simply made a dismissive gesture: we don’t have to talk about it.

“I know,” Pavlic said. “But even so, thanks.”

“Here,” Zannis said. He handed Pavlic three packs of cigarettes, a box of matches, the morning newspaper from Athens, and two magazines. German magazines. Pavlic held one of them up to admire it; Brunhilde, naked, full-breasted and thickly bushed, had been photographed in the act of serving a volleyball. Pavlic said, “Modern Nudist. Thanks, I’ll share these.”

“You should see what we have in Salonika.”

“I can imagine. What becomes of you now?”

“Back home, so they tell me. I’ve lost the hearing in one ear. And they say I might get a little medal if there are any left. And you?”

“A concussion, cuts and bruises.” He shrugged. “I have to stay for a few days, then I’m ordered back to Zagreb. I suspect they don’t think what I was doing was so important. They’d rather I keep the police cars running.”

“Marko,” Zannis said. Something in his voice made Pavlic attentive. “I want to ask you to do something.”

“Go ahead.”

Zannis paused, then said, “We have Jews coming into Salonika now. Fugitives from Germany, in flight. At least some of them have disappeared on the way. Where I don’t know.”

“I thought they went to the port of Constanta.”

“Some of them do,” Zannis said.

“But the way things are going in Roumania these days, it may be easier for them to get away if they try from Greece.”

“As long as I’m there, it will be. And we have more ships, and more smugglers. For Europe, it’s like slipping out the back door.” After a moment, he said, “What do you think about it, this flight?”

Pavlic said, “I don’t know,” then hesitated, finally adding, “God help them, I guess that’s the way I’d put it.”

“Would you help them?”

For a time, Pavlic didn’t answer. He was still holding the nudist magazine. “Costa, the truth is I never thought about-about something like that. I don’t know if I …, no, that’s not true, I could, of course I could. Not by myself, maybe, but I, I have friends.”

Zannis said, “Because-” but Pavlic cut him off. “I don’t know about you, but I saw this coming. Not what you’re talking about, exactly, but something like it. That was in ‘thirty-eight, September. When Chamberlain made a separate peace with Hitler. I remember very well, I thought, So much for Czechoslovakia, who’s next? It’s going to be our turn, sooner or later. So, what do I do if we’re occupied? Nothing?” The word produced, from Pavlic, the thin smile of a man who’s been told a bad joke.

“Well,” he went on, “‘nothing’ doesn’t exist, not for the police. When somebody takes your country, you help them or you fight them. Because they will come after you; they’ll ask, they’ll order: ‘Find this man, this house, this organization. You’re from Zagreb-or Budapest, or Salonika-you know your way around; give us a hand.’ And if you obey them, or if you obey them during the day and don’t do something else at night, then-”

“Then?”

For a moment, Pavlic was silent. Finally he said, “How to put it? You’re ruined. Dishonored. You won’t ever be the same again.”

“Not everybody thinks that way, Marko. There are some who will be eager to work for them.”

“I know, you can’t change human nature. But there are those who will resist. It goes back in time forever, how conquerors and the conquered deal with each other. So everyone-well, maybe not everyone, but everyone like you and me-will have to take sides.”

“I guess I have,” Zannis said, as though he almost wished he hadn’t.

“How would you do it, Berlin to Vienna? Cross into Hungary, then down through Yugoslavia into Greece? That’s by rail, of course. If you went city to city you’d have to transit Roumania, I mean Budapest to Bucharest, and if you did that you’d better have some dependable contacts, Costa, or a lot-and I mean a lot-of money. And even then it’s not a sure thing, you know; the way life goes these days, if you buy somebody they’re just liable to turn around and sell you to somebody else.”

“Better to stay west of Roumania,” Zannis said. “The rail line goes down through Nis and into Salonika. Or even go from Nis into Bulgaria. I have a friend in Sofia I think I can count on.”

“You don’t know?”

“You never know.”

“How do we communicate? Telephone?” He meant that it was beneath consideration.

“Does your office have a teletype machine?”

“Oh yes, accursed fucking thing. The Germans wished it on us-never shuts up, awful.”

“That’s how. Something like, ‘We’re looking for Mr. X, we think he’s coming into Zagreb railway station on the eleven-thirty from Budapest.’ Then a description. And if somebody taps into the line, so what? We’re looking for a criminal.”

Pavlic’s expression was speculative: could this work? Then, slowly, he nodded, more to himself than to Zannis. “Not bad,” he said. “Pretty good.”

“But, I have to say this, dangerous.”

“Of course it is. But so is crossing the street.”

“Do you know your teletype number?”

Pavlic stared, then said, “No idea. So much for conspiracy.” Then he added, “Actually, a typist works the thing.”

“I know mine,” Zannis said. “Could I borrow that for a moment?”

Pavlic handed over the Modern Nudist. Zannis took a pencil from the pocket of his tunic and flipped to the last page, where a group of naked men and women, arms around one another’s shoulders, were smiling into the camera below the legend SUNSHINE CHUMS, DUSSELDORF. Zannis wrote 811305 SAGR. “The letters are for Salonika, Greece. You use the rotary dial on the machine. After it connects, the machine will type the initials for ‘who are you’ and you type the ‘answer-back,’ your number.” He returned the magazine to Pavlic. “Perhaps you shouldn’t share this.”