Spies of the Balkans

the port, and Commissioner Vangelis wants you there.”

Zannis was enraged. He feared Tellos would see it and covered his face with his hands. What evil fate contrived to take from him the thing he wanted most in the world?

Tellos rested a sympathetic hand on his shoulder. “I know,” he said. “This man saved Greece, and now he’s gone.”

30 January. There were no riots. The Metaxas government had never been popular; surely half the population would have preferred a republic, long championed by the noble voice of Greek democracy, Venizelos. But Venizelos had died in exile in 1936, while Metaxas, dictator though he was, had led the country well in war. Now King George II had named one Alexandros Koryzis, a former governor of the Bank of Greece, as the new prime minister. Hardly anyone had ever heard of him. Therefore, no marching in the streets. Instead, melancholy and silence. Poor Greece, no luck at all, why did fate treat them so badly?

Zannis might have had similar feelings, but there was barely room in his wretched heart for emotion about the national politics, for he had to go to Paris the following day and, if the operation went wrong, he would never again see Demetria. It tore at him, this loss. If only they’d been able to meet, if only they’d made love. Two stolen hours, was that too much to ask? So it seemed-their hours together stolen in turn by a bizarre twist of destiny: a man got tonsillitis. Zannis couldn’t stop brooding, angry and sad at the same moment.

But then he had to, because he had difficulties beyond this, and these he’d brought on himself. He knew he would be away for at least ten days, and during that time it was more than likely that a letter from Emilia Krebs would arrive at the office. And so he had no choice but to designate Gabi Saltiel-and Sibylla, she could no longer be excluded-as his deputies in running the Salonika end of the escape line. Saltiel never said a harsh word, but Zannis could tell his feelings were hurt-why hadn’t he been trusted from the beginning? As for Sibylla, feelings didn’t enter into it, she was simply intent on getting everything right.

Not all that easy. “You melt six Panadon in a glass of water and use a clean pen with a sharp point.” And the rest of it: the iron, the lawyer’s address in Berlin, the teletype numbers for the detectives in Zagreb and Budapest. “You can depend on us, chief,” Sibylla said. And, Zannis realized, she meant it.

That done, Zannis’s eye inevitably fell on the telephone. He didn’t dare. Umm, maybe he did. Oh no he didn’t! Oh but yes, he did. Vasilou would still be in Athens, and Zannis just could not bear to leave the woman he loved, perhaps forever, with no more than an unanswered knock on a door.

Very slowly, tempting fate but unable to stop, he worked the dial with his index finger, running each number around to the end. But then, at last, good fortune: it was Demetria who picked up the receiver. He spoke quickly, in case she had to hang up. “I’m sorry, I was taken away to a meeting. Because of Metaxas.”

“I see,” she said, voice breathy and tentative; the call had frightened her. “Perhaps … I could try … next week?” Then, her mind now working quickly, she added, “For another fitting.”

From the background: “Now who the hell is that?”

Skata, Vasilou!

“It’s the seamstress, dear.”

“Well, make it snappy. I’m expecting a call.”

“Yes, dear, just a minute.”

“Oh lord,” Zannis said, “I didn’t realize …”

“The hem is just too long, so-”

“I’ll be away, for ten days. I’ll call you.”

The sound of approaching footsteps. “Can’t hang up?” Vasilou shouted. “Then let me show you how it’s done!” The footsteps grew louder.

“I have to say good-bye.” Her voice wobbled. “But, please-”

The receiver was slammed down.

At Gestapo headquarters, on the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse in Berlin, Hauptsturmfuhrer Albert Hauser studied a long list of names typed on yellow paper. When a name caught his attention, he riffled through a metal tray of five- by-eight cards, where, in alphabetical order, information about each of the names was recorded. If that was insufficient, he had dossiers for most of the names, dossiers filled with pages of information obtained from surveillance, paid informants, denunciations, and interrogation. The yellow list was a sort of Who’s Who of dissidents in Berlin, all suspected-some more than suspected-of activity against the interests of the Reich. Rather loosely defined, those interests; thus it wasn’t difficult to say the wrong thing, to know the wrong person, to own the wrong book. Welcome to the list!

So then, A to Z, six and a half pages long. Some of the names had a mark next to them, Hauser’s symbolic note to himself: question mark, exclamation point-you didn’t want that! — asterisk, and others, even an X-the last, for instance, beside a couple whose names appeared early in the D section. This couple was believed, after coming under pressure from the Gestapo, to have committed suicide, but, Hauser thought, committed suicide in an irritating way, so that their bodies would not be identified when found. Spiteful, wasn’t it. To go to some distant city and manage the business in some little hotel room, having first burned one’s identity papers. Defiant even in death and, really, very annoying.

He turned the page. Beside the name GRUEN, two entries for man and wife, two question marks. On what had been meant to be their final day of freedom, missing. Fled? Fled where? One word used by these people-Jews, Communists, even aristocrats-was submerge. It meant hiding in an apartment, sharing a friend’s food obtained with ration coupons, rarely if ever going outside, and then only with borrowed or false identification.

Others, like the couple D, killed themselves. Still others contrived to flee the country-into Switzerland, if they were lucky. Or, sometimes, to the unoccupied zone of France, where the Vichy police agencies were dedicated to catching them, but not always. The trouble with the unoccupied zone, the southern part of the country, was that fugitives might make their way to Marseille. And, once in Marseille, with some money to spend, one could do just about anything. That’s how it is, Hauser thought, with port cities, like Naples. Or Odessa-even under the rule of the ruthless NKVD, for so Hauser thought of them. Where else? Hauser’s inner eye wandered over an imaginary map of Europe. Constanta, in Roumania? A long way to go, for a fugitive. Equally Varna, on Bulgaria’s Black Sea coast.

Go to work, lazybones, Hauser told himself, stop woolgathering. Where were these Gruens? He rose and walked over to the wall, where large sheets of brown paper showed diagrams of relations between the dissidents. Solid lines, dotted lines, some in red pencil: who met with who, who worked with who, who telephoned who, and on and on. Hauser located the circle containing the name GRUEN and traced the radiating lines with his index finger. Popular, weren’t they. Here was, for example, the circled name of KREBS. And who was that?

He returned to his list and flipped over to the Ks: KREBS, EMILIA, and KREBS, HUGO. The latter was marked with a triangle, which meant, in Hauser’s system, something like uh-oh. Now to the three-by-five cards. Yes, there it was, definitely worth a triangle; this Krebs was a colonel on the Oberkommando Wehrmacht, the General Staff, and not to be pestered. Scheisse! You had to be careful in this work. You had to be on your toes! Or you’d wind up in Warsaw, God forbid. Still, he wondered, and had a look at KREBS, EMILIA. Close and longtime friend of the Gruens, neighbor in Dahlem, Jew. Hunh, look at that. This Colonel Krebs must be powerful indeed to have a Jewish wife and get away with it.

He was distracted from this line of thinking by two taps on the door and the entry of the department’s chief clerk: tall, fading blond, and middle-aged. Something of a dragon, Traudl, with her stiff hair and stiff manner, but smart, and relentless in her commitment to the job. No surprise there, at one time she’d worked for some of the better-mostly Jewish, alas-law firms in the city. Then, with Hitler’s ascension, she’d seen the light and come to work for the Gestapo. “Hauptsturmfuhrer Hauser?” she said. “Pardon the intrusion, but I have brought your morning coffee.”

“Thank you, Traudl.” He set the steaming cup on his desk.

“Will there be anything else, sir?”

“No, thank you,” Hauser said. “I’ll be going out for a bit.”

He took a sip of the coffee. Real coffee, and strong-oh, the little pleasures of this job. He returned to his paperwork, drumming his fingers on the yellow list. So, who wants to see the Gestapo today? But he already knew that, some tiny clicker in his brain had decided to go out to Emilia Krebs’s house.