Spies of the Balkans

“Just in case,” Zannis said.

Keeping Byer on his left-the side away from the Citroen-and the gun in his hand in his coat pocket, Zannis walked through the hotel door. The shutter was rolled up to reveal an old Peugeot sedan, the metal rims around the headlights spotted with rust. He thought he might get away with it: the SS officer hadn’t seen him in his trench coat, the seductive Didi wasn’t with him, and the people in the Citroen wouldn’t be able to see much of anything through the cloudy windows.

On the first try, wrong key-trunk key, of course-then the driver’s door opened, Zannis unlocked the back door, and Byer, as ordered, lay flat on the floor. As Zannis settled behind the wheel, the driver’s door of the Citroen swung open and the baby-faced SS he’d seen at the brasserie started to get out, then turned his head as though somebody in the backseat had spoken to him. Zannis searched for the starter button, found it, and pressed it with his thumb. Nothing. Betrayed. By night-clerk malice, or by an old car on a damp night, it came to the same thing.

“What’s going on?” Byer said.

Zannis pressed again.

Now the other SS officer climbed out of the Citroen. From the Peugeot’s engine, a single, rather discreet, cough. The SS man heading for the garage wasn’t in a hurry. A little unsteady on his feet, he kept one hand out of sight behind his leg. Zannis held the button down, which produced a second cough, another, and one more. Then the engine grumbled and came to life. Zannis shoved the clutch pedal to the floor and put the car in what he thought was first gear. It wasn’t. As the clutch pedal came up, the Peugeot stalled. The SS man, now ten feet away, was amused and shook his head-a world populated by fools, what was one to do?

The starter worked once again and this time Zannis found first gear and gave the engine as much gas as he dared. The SS man’s hand came out from behind his leg, Luger pistol held casually, barrel facing down. He changed direction in order to block the Peugeot and held up his other hand-the amiable traffic cop. Zannis slammed on the brake, the Peugeot lurched to a stop and then, looking sheepish and embarrassed, he cranked the window down. He had almost hit a German officer, what was wrong with him?

The SS man smiled, that’s better, and, obviously very drunk from the way he walked, approached the driver’s side of the car. He was just starting to bend over so he could have a word with the driver when Zannis shot him in the face. He staggered backward, his hat fell off, blood ran from his nostrils, and Zannis fired twice more; the first clipping off the top of his ear, the second in the right eyebrow. That did it, and he collapsed.

Zannis hit the gas pedal, first gear howling. As he swung into the street, the baby-faced SS scrambled out of the Citroen. Idiot. Zannis snapped off two shots but the car was moving and he didn’t think he’d hit him. Or maybe he had, because the last Zannis saw of him he was limping back to his car. Just as, in the rearview mirror, Zannis saw the two puffy blondes take off like rabbits, high-heeled shoes in hand, running for their lives down the dark street. Go fuck Germans and see where it gets you, Zannis said to himself.

From the back, Byer said, “What happened? What happened?”

Zannis didn’t answer. Finally put the Peugeot into second gear-he could smell burning clutch-then third, and turned hard right into a side street, then right again, so that he was now headed north, toward the Porte de Clignancourt.

Slowly, Zannis worked his way through the back streets, which angled off the main boulevards, so, a series of diagonals. But Zannis couldn’t have gone much faster if he’d had to-the untaped headlights were turned off, and it was hard to see in the blacked-out city. After ten minutes of driving, he stopped the Peugeot so Byer could move to the passenger seat and Zannis told him the details. Byer took it well enough; after everything he’d been through since the Wellington went down, this was but one more nightmare. As Zannis again drove north, he heard the high- low sirens in the distance, converging on the hotel, but he was well away from it. A few blocks on he passed a pair of French policemen, in their long winter capes, pedaling easily on their bicycles. One of them gave him a sour look, and Zannis wondered if Paris was under curfew, often the case in occupied cities. He didn’t know but, if it was, it was a German curfew, and the policemen couldn’t be bothered to stop him.

Of course that would change, violently, in the morning. The Gestapo and the French Surete would turn Paris upside down, looking for him-they’d have a good description-and for the Peugeot. Maybe, he thought, he should have tied the clerk to a chair, evidence that the man wasn’t complicit in the crime, but he hadn’t thought of it and he’d been intent on escaping from the hotel. In any event, the escape south by railway was no longer possible, he’d have to find another way to get out of the country.

He reached Saint-Ouen soon enough, wondering if Laurette, his lover when he’d lived here, was still in the apartment they’d shared. It didn’t matter if she was; he couldn’t go anywhere near her. Moments later, at the edge of Saint-Ouen, he entered the vast flea market, a labyrinth, endless twisting lanes lined by shuttered stalls. Clignancourt didn’t precisely have borders, it faded away to the north in a maze of alleys and storage sheds, and here Zannis found an open courtyard behind a workshop with boarded-up windows. He parked the car and lit a cigarette. Dawn was still hours away, and ten in the morning farther yet. He was very tired, nothing more than that, and, in time, both he and Byer dozed, woke up, and dozed again.

10:15 A.M.

Zannis left Byer in the Peugeot and made his way to stall number fifty-five of the section known as Serpette. The market was nearly deserted, many of the stalls unopened, only a few shoppers wandering listlessly among the aisles, past old chinaware, old clothes, old maps and books, antlers for the wall above the fireplace, a collapsible opera hat. You had to be clever here, to find that priceless object, its value unknown to the owner of the booth, then you had to bargain hard to get the meagre price lower, so the antiquaire never suspected you were cheating him out of a fortune. Day in, day out, year in, year out, the devious customers carried off their treasures, displayed them in their parlors, and boasted to their friends.

Zannis was relieved to find his uncle, seeing him from behind as he sat with two friends, playing cards on a mahogany tabletop held up by three upended fruit crates. Zannis’s heart lifted-that bald pate, freckled and scarred, with its fringe of wiry gray hair, could belong to no one else. “Anastas?”

His uncle turned, his eyes widened with disbelief, then he shouted, “Constantine!” rose to his feet, and embraced his nephew. Strong as an ox, Uncle Anastas, who held him tight while Zannis felt, on his cheek, tears from his uncle’s eyes. “Oh my God, I thought I’d never see you again,” Anastas said. Then took him by the arms, stepped back, stared at him lovingly, and said, “Constantine, my own nephew, what the fuck are you doing here?”

“A long story, uncle.”

“My brother’s son,” Anastas said to his friends. “Look at him.”

“A handsome boy,” one of them said, in Greek.

“Are you still playing, Anastas?” said the other.

“I fold my cards,” Anastas said, wiping his eyes.

Uncle Anastas wanted to show him off at the antiquaires’ cafe but Zannis told him, as gently as he could, that they should close the booth and speak inside, so Anastas shooed his friends off, lowered the shutter over the front of the stall, then went to the cafe and returned carrying coffees spiked with Calvados. Zannis had meanwhile discovered-lying on a demilune table artfully coated with dust-a copy of that morning’s Le Matin. On the front page a headline: SS MAJOR SHOT BY JEWISH GANGSTERS!

His uncle, having had time to think things over on his walk to the cafe, was good and worried by the time he returned. He waited one sip of coffee, then said, “You better tell me the story, Constantine.”

Zannis held up the newspaper.

“Skata! You’re not a Jew.”

“Not a gangster either.”

Anastas switched on a lamp with a colored-glass shade, read the first few sentences of the article, then said, “Well, it’s in the Zannis blood. I got my first Turk when I was sixteen. A gendarme, but only a corporal, not a major.”

“I remember the story,” Zannis said.

Anastas put the paper down and looked puzzled. “But tell me something, why did you have to come all the way to Paris to do this thing? You could’ve waited, you know, they’ll be in Greece soon enough.”