from her lap and Zannis saw that it sagged, as though it carried something heavy. What was in there? A gun? “I have to say good night now,” she said. “My evening continues.”
He walked her as far as the top of the stairway. “Tell me one more thing,” he said. “When you came to Salonika, was it me you were after? A target? A recruit? It doesn’t matter now, you can tell me, I won’t be angry.”
She stopped, two steps below him, and said, “No, what I told you at the airfield was the truth-I was in Salonika for something else. Then I met you and what happened, happened.” She stayed where she was, and when at last she spoke her voice was barely audible and her eyes were cast down. “I was in love with you.”
As she hurried down the stairs, Zannis returned to his kitchen and lit another cigarette. In the street below, an engine started, lights went on, and the sedan drove away.
1 March. Zannis and Saltiel went to lunch at Smyrna Betrayed and ate the grilled octopus, which was particularly sweet and succulent that afternoon. Always, a radio played by the cash register at the bar, local music, bouzouki songs, an undercurrent to the noisy lunch crowd. Zannis hardly noticed the radio but then, as the waiter came to take away their plates, he did. Because-first at the bar, next at the nearby tables, finally everywhere in the room-people stopped talking. The restaurant was now dead silent, and the barman reached over and turned up the volume. It was a news broadcast. King Boris of Bulgaria had signed the Axis pact; German troops were moving across the Danube on pontoon bridges constructed during the last week in February. The Wehrmacht was not there as an occupying force, King Boris had stated, because Bulgaria was now an ally of Germany. They were there to assure stability “elsewhere in the Balkans.” Then the radio station returned to playing music.
But the taverna was not as it had been. Conversation was subdued, and many of the customers signaled for a check, paid, and went out the door. Some of them hadn’t finished their lunch. “Well, that’s that,” Saltiel said.
“When are you leaving, Gabi? Are you, leaving?”
“My wife and I, yes,” Saltiel said. “Is your offer, of Turkish visas, still possible?”
“It is. What about your kids?”
“My sons talked it over, got their money out of the bank, and now they have Spanish citizenship. It was expensive, in the end I had to help, but they did it. So they can go and live in Spain, though they have no idea how they will support their families, or they can remain here, because they believe they’ll be safe, as Spanish citizens, if the Germans show up.”
Zannis nodded-that he understood, not that he agreed-and started to speak, but Saltiel raised his hands and said, “Don’t bother, Costa. They’ve made their decision.”
“I’ll go to the legation this afternoon,” Zannis said.
“What about your family?”
“That’s next.”
“Let’s get out of here,” Saltiel said.
They paid the check and returned to the Via Egnatia. At the office, Zannis draped his jacket over his chair and prepared to work but then, recalling something he’d meant to do for a while, went back down the five flights of stairs. On the ground floor he passed beneath the staircase to a door that opened onto a small courtyard. Yes, it was as he remembered: six metal drums for the garbage. Two of them had been in use for a long time and their sides had rusted through in places, so there would be a flow of air, just in case you wanted to burn something.
Late that afternoon, the bell on the teletype rang and, as Zannis, Saltiel, and Sibylla turned to watch it, the keys clattered, the yellow paper unrolled, and a message appeared. It was from Pavlic, in Zagreb. Zannis had been worrying about him over the last few days because he’d sent Pavlic a teletype-in their coded way requesting a meeting-the morning after Roxanne said, “Make certain of your friends,” but there had been no answer. Now Pavlic explained, saying he’d received the previous communication but had been unable to respond until their machine was repaired. However, as he put it: PER YOUR REQUEST OF 23 FEBRUARY WILL ALERT LOCAL AUTHORITIES TO APPREHEND SUBJECT PANOS AT ARRIVAL NIS RAILWAY STATION 22:05 HOURS ON 4 MARCH
Zannis had only inquired if they could meet, but Pavlic had sensed the import of Zannis’s query and set a time for the meeting. Nis was seven hours by rail from Zagreb and four hours from Salonika, but this business had to be done in person.
At six o’clock, on the evening of the first of March, Zannis joined the jostling crowd at a newspaper kiosk and eventually managed to buy an evening edition. In the five hours since he’d heard the report on the taverna radio, the situation had changed: armoured Wehrmacht divisions were said to be moving south, to take up positions on the Greek border. Well, as Saltiel had put it, that was that, and Zannis could no longer postpone telling his family they would have to leave Salonika. Newspaper in hand, he went looking for a taxi.
As the driver wound his way through the old Turkish quarter, past walled courtyards and ancient fountains, Zannis rehearsed what he would say, but there was no way to soften the blow. Still, in the event, it was not as bad as he’d feared. His mother insisted on feeding him, and then he explained what had to be done. The family must go to Alexandria, and go soon. There was a large Greek community in the city and he would give his mother enough money to secure an apartment in that quarter where, as he put it, “there are Greek shops and Orthodox churches and our language is spoken everywhere.”
However, he would soon enough be fighting in the mountains of Macedonia, and he would not be able to send them any more money. He didn’t say the word
Back at Santaroza Lane, as he stroked Melissa’s great, noble head, his voice was gentle. “Well, my good girl, you will be going on a sea voyage.”
Melissa wagged her tail.
There was yet one more soul he cared for, but, once again that day, no letter in his mailbox, and the telephone, no matter how hard he stared at it, was silent.
4 March.
Nis was an ancient city, a crossroads on the trade routes that went back to Roman times. A certain darkness in this place-as the Turks had built a White Tower to frighten their subjects in Salonika, here, in the nineteenth century, they had built a tower of skulls, employing as construction material the severed heads of Serbian rebels.
The station buffet was closed, an old woman on her knees was attempting, with brush and bucket, to remove the day’s-the month’s, the century’s-grime from what had once been a floor of tiny white octagonal tiles. Zannis, his train an hour late getting in, found Pavlic sitting on a wooden bench, next to a couple guarding a burlap sack. Pavlic was wearing a suit and tie but was otherwise as Zannis remembered him: brush-cut, sand-colored hair; sharp crow’s-feet at the corners of narrow, watchful eyes. He looked up from his newspaper, then stood and said, “Let’s go somewhere else, I’m getting a little weary of this.” He nodded toward the burlap sack from which, as he gestured, there came a single emphatic cluck.
Seeking privacy, they walked out to the empty platform; no more trains were running that night, some of the people in the crowded station were waiting for the morning departures, others were there because they had nowhere else to go. On the platform, Zannis and Pavlic found a wooden handcart that would serve as a bench. They were, without saying much, pleased to see each other; the closer war came, the more conspiracy was a powerful form of friendship. They chatted for a time-the fugitive Jews coming from Berlin, the Germans in Bulgaria-then Zannis said, “I’ve heard that if the Cvetkovic government signs the pact, it may be overthrown.”
“So they say. In every coffeehouse and bar. ‘Pretty soon we’ll kick those bastards out!’ They’ve been saying it for ten years, maybe more.”
“It’s the British, saying it this time.”
Pavlic took a moment to think that over. There had to be a good reason Zannis put him on a train for seven
