Spies of the Balkans

“Does the message move on a telephone line?”

“Telegraph. Through the post office in Athens.”

“I think I’d better have the typist teach me how to do it.”

“Someone you trust?”

Pavlic thought it over and said, “No.”

Pushing a cart with a squeaky wheel, a nurse was moving down the aisle between the beds. “Here’s lunch,” Pavlic said.

Zannis rose to leave. “We ought to talk about this some more, while we have the chance.”

“Come back tonight,” Pavlic said. “I’m not going anywhere.”

7 December, Salonika.

Zannis wasn’t sorry to be home, but he wasn’t all that happy about it either. This he kept hidden; why ruin the family pleasure? His mother was very tender with him, his grandmother cooked everything she thought he liked, and, wherever he went that first week, room to room or outdoors, Melissa stayed by his side-she wasn’t going to let him escape again. As for his brother, Ari, he had exciting news, which he saved during the first joyous minutes of homecoming, only to be upstaged by his mother. “And Ari has a job!” she said. With so many men away at the fighting, there was work for anybody who wanted to work, and Ari had been hired as a conductor on the tram line.

And, he insisted, this was something his big brother had to see for himself. So Zannis had ridden the Number Four trolley out to Ano Toumba and let his pride show-sidelong glances from Ari made certain Zannis’s smile was still in place-as Ari collected tickets and punched them with a silver-colored device. He was extremely conscientious and took his time, making sure to get it right. Inevitably, some of the passengers were rushed and irritable, but they sensed that Ari was one of those delicate souls who require a bit of compassion-was this a national trait? Zannis suspected it might be-and hardly anybody barked at him.

So Zannis returned to daily life, but a certain restless discomfort would not leave him. Able to hear out of only one ear, he was occasionally startled by sudden sounds, and he found that to be humiliating. A feeling in no way ameliorated by the fact that, just before he returned to Salonika, the Greek army had managed to find him a little medal, which he refused to wear, being disinclined to answer questions about how he came to have it. And, worst of all, he felt the absence of a love affair, felt it in the lack of commonplace affection, felt it while eating alone in restaurants, but felt it most keenly in bed, or out of bed but thinking about bed, or, in truth, all the time. In the chaos that followed the bombing of the Trikkala school, whatever goddess had charge of his mortality had brushed her lips across his cheek and this had, he guessed, affected that part of him where desire lived. Or maybe it was just the war.

On the evening of the seventh, Vangelis threw him a welcome-home party. Almost all were people Zannis knew, if, in some cases, only distantly. Gabi Saltiel, grayer and wearier than ever, was still driving an ambulance at night but traded shifts with another driver and brought his wife to the party. Sibylla, her helmet of hair highly lacquered for the occasion, was accompanied by her husband, who worked as a bookkeeper at one of the hotels. There were a couple of detectives, a shipping broker, a criminal lawyer, a prosecutor, two ballet teachers he’d met through Roxanne, an economics professor from the university, even a former girlfriend, Tasia Loukas, who worked at the Salonika city hall.

Tasia-for Anastasia-showed up late and held both his hands while he got a good strong whiff of some very sultry perfume. She was small and lively, dressed exclusively in black, had thick black hair, strong black eyebrows, and dark eyes-fierce dark eyes-that challenged the world from behind eyeglasses with gray-tinted lenses. Did Vangelis have something in mind for him when he invited Tasia? Zannis wondered. He’d had two brief, fiery love affairs with her, the first six years earlier, the second a few months before he’d met Roxanne. Very free, Tasia, and determined to remain so. “I’ll never marry,” she’d once told him. “For the truth is, I like to go with a woman from time to time-I get something from a woman I can never get with a man.” She’d meant that to be provocative, he thought, but he wasn’t especially provoked and had let her know that he didn’t particularly care. And he truly didn’t. “It’s exciting,” she’d said. “Especially when it must be kept a secret.” A flicker of remembrance had lit her face as she spoke, accompanied by a most deliciously wicked smile, as though she were smiling, once again, at the first moment of the remembered conquest.

Vangelis gave famously good parties-excellent red wine, bottles and bottles of it-and had stacks of Duke Ellington records. As the party swirled around them, Zannis and Tasia had two conversations. The spoken one was nothing special-how was he, fine, how was she-the unspoken one much more interesting. “I better go say hello to Vangelis,” she said, and reluctantly, he could tell, let go of his hands.

“Don’t leave without telling me, Tasia.”

“I won’t.”

She was replaced by the economics professor and his lady friend, who Zannis recollected was a niece or cousin to the poet Elias. They’d been hovering, waiting their turn to greet the returning hero. Asked about his war, Zannis offered a brief and highly edited version of the weeks in Trikkala, which ended, “Anyhow, at least we’re winning.”

The professor looked up from his wineglass. “Do you really believe that?”

“I saw it,” Zannis said. “And the newspapers aren’t telling lies.”

From the professor, a low grumbling sound that meant yes, but. “On the battlefield, it’s true, we are winning. And if we don’t chase them back into Italy, we’ll have a stalemate, which is just as good. But winning, maybe not.”

“Such a cynic,” his lady friend said gently. She had a long intelligent face. Turning to the table at her side, she speared a dolma, an oily, stuffed grape leaf, put it on a plate and worked at cutting it with the side of her fork.

“How do you mean?” Zannis said.

“The longer this goes on,” the professor said, “the more Hitler has to stop it. The Axis can’t be seen to be weak.”

“I’ve heard that,” Zannis said. “It’s one theory. There are others.”

The professor sipped his wine; his friend chewed away at her dolma.

Zannis felt dismissed from the conversation. “Maybe you’re right. Well then, what can we do about it?” he said. “Retreat?”

“Can’t do that either.”

“So, damned if we do, damned if we don’t.”

“Yes,” the professor said.

“Don’t listen to him,” the professor’s friend said. “He always finds the gloomy side.”

The warrior in Zannis wanted to argue-what about the British army? Because if Germany attacked them, their British ally would arrive in full force from across the Mediterranean. To date, Britain and Germany were bombing each other’s cities, but their armies, after the debacle that ended in Dunkirk, had not engaged. Hitler, the theory went, had been taught a lesson the previous autumn, when his plans to invade Britain had been thwarted by the RAF.

But the professor was bored with politics and addressed the buffet-“The eggplant spread is very tasty,” he said, by way of a parting shot. Then gave way to one of Zannis’s former colleagues from his days as a detective- insider jokes and nostalgic anecdotes-who in turn was replaced by a woman who taught at the Mount Olympus School of Ballet. Had Zannis heard anything from Roxanne? No, had she? Not a word, very troubling, she hoped Roxanne wasn’t in difficulties.

Minutes later, Zannis knew she wasn’t. Francis Escovil, the English travel writer and, Zannis suspected, British spy, appeared magically at his side. “Oh, she’s perfectly all right,” Escovil said. “I had a postal card, two weeks ago. Back in Blighty, she is. Dodging bombs but happy to be home.”

“I’m glad to hear it.”

“Yes, no doubt busy as a bee. Likely that’s why you haven’t heard from her.”

“Of course,” Zannis said. He started to say give her my best but thought better of it. That could, in a certain context, be taken the wrong way. Instead, he asked, “How do you come to know Vangelis?”

“Never met him. I’m here with Sophia, who teaches at the school.”

“Oh.” That raised more questions than it answered, but Zannis knew he’d never hear anything useful from