Spies of the Balkans

“Where are you going?”

“It’s for work. A few days, only.”

For a time she was quiet, then she said, in a different voice, “I understand, you can’t say. But, what if you don’t come back?”

“I will, don’t worry about that.”

“Do you have a pencil?”

“Yes.”

“My friend’s number is Athens, 34-412. Her name is Theodora. Telephone her when you return.”

“Three, four? Four, one, two?”

“Yes. You don’t know when you’re leaving?”

“Days, maybe a week, maybe more. It doesn’t matter.”

“It doesn’t? What if the war comes?”

Then you will be safe only with Vasilou. On his white ship. Finally, resignation in his voice, he said, “I don’t know.”

She sighed. “Nobody knows. All they do is talk.” She regretted having asked him a question he couldn’t answer, so now they would be strong together, not like the people who just talked.

“You won’t come here now?”

“Telephone when you return,” she said firmly. “Then I’ll be ready. I’ll be waiting.”

He said he would. He told her again that he loved her, and they hung up.

Zannis looked around the office, Saltiel and Sibylla had their heads down, engrossed in their work.

On 13 March, Hitler again demanded that Yugoslavia sign the Axis pact. They didn’t say no, they said, We’re thinking about it, the “no” of diplomacy. Which might have worked, but for the weather. Spring, the war-fighting season in Europe, was just beginning: once the fields were planted, the men of the countryside would take up their weapons, as they had since the Middle Ages. The March chill receded, the rain in Central Europe and the Balkans was a light rain, a spring rain, a welcome rain. Winter was over, now it was time for action, no more speeches, no more negotiation-certain difficult matters had to be settled, once and for all. Hitler loved that phrase, “once and for all,” and so, on the nineteenth of March, he issued an ultimatum. Do what I say, or you will be bombed and invaded. Costa Zannis paced his bedroom, smoked too much, found it hard to sleep. Yes, he had papers and steamship tickets for his family, but the earliest sailing he’d been able to reserve was on 30 March. Eleven days in the future. Would Hitler wait?

On the afternoon of the twentieth, he stood on the railway platform where passengers were boarding the express to Istanbul and said good-bye to Gabi Saltiel and his wife. As the train rolled out of the station, Zannis watched it go by until the last car disappeared in the distance. He wasn’t alone, there was a line of people, all up and down the platform, who waited until the train was gone.

24 March.

Belgrade was quiet that night, people stayed home, or spent long hours in the coffeehouses. In the larger towns, special Serbian police had been assigned to ensure peace and quiet in the streets. The newspaper Politika, the most esteemed journal in the Balkans, and read by diplomats all across Europe, had that morning been forced to print an editorial supporting Yugoslavia’s signature on the Axis pact. Just before midnight, two armoured cars brought Premier Cvetkovic and his foreign minister to Topchidersko railway station so they could board a train to Vienna. There they would sign.

Costa Zannis had arrived in Belgrade that same evening, met by Pavlic and taken to the Hotel Majestic on the Knez Mihailova, the main shopping street in the city. As they drove down the avenue, Zannis saw a huge swastika flag hung from the balcony of a five-story office building. “What’s that?” he said.

“The office of the German Travel Bureau,” Pavlic said. “Getting an early start on the celebration.”

In the Majestic, Zannis stowed a small valise in his room and went downstairs to the hotel bar. There, Pavlic introduced him to a bulky pale-haired Serb called Vlatko-from the spread of his shoulders and neck, every inch a cop. “He’s from the homicide office,” Pavlic said, as the two men shook hands. “And he speaks German.”

They ordered slivovitz, then Vlatko said, “It’s quiet here, but that’s just on the surface. The people are in shock.”

“It won’t last,” Pavlic said.

“No, big trouble tomorrow.” With this he grinned. He took, Zannis realized, great pleasure, a patriot’s pleasure, from the anticipation of big trouble.

Both Pavlic and Vlatko, taking turns, told Zannis the news of the day: a terrific fistfight in the bar of Belgrade’s best hotel, the Srbski Kralj, King of Serbia. Two American foreign correspondents and an Italian woman, their translator, on one side, five Wehrmacht officers-from the German legation-on the other. The Americans ordered whiskies, the Germans ordered schnapps; the Germans demanded to be served first, the barman hesitated. Next, savage insults, tables turned over, broken dishes. The Italian woman had thrown a drink in a German’s face, he hit her on the head, then the New York Times reporter, a good-sized Texan, had fought two of the Germans. “Knocked them down,” Vlatko said, ramming a huge fist into a meaty palm for emphasis. “Out cold. On the floor.” Once again, he grinned.

“And broke his hand,” Pavlic said.

“Both hands, I heard.”

“One hand,” Pavlic said. “I hope we can do without that, tomorrow.”

Vlatko shrugged. “We shall see.”

From his inside pocket, Zannis brought out the sheet of paper Escovil had given him: a typed list of twenty- seven names. He laid it on the table and smoothed out the folds with his hands. “Here it is,” he said. “We have a day to find out the addresses.”

Pavlic and Vlatko put their heads together over the list. Vlatko said, “Who are these people? Military, some of them, I can see that.”

“Not people who get their names in the newspapers,” Zannis said.

“Traitors,” Vlatko said.

“Possible troublemakers, anyhow,” Zannis answered.

“Well, we’ll find them.”

“Tomorrow night,” Zannis said. “When they’re at home. We don’t want to arrest them at staff headquarters, we don’t want gun battles.”

“No, I guess not,” Vlatko said, bringing forward, with some effort, the sensible side of his nature. “Pavlic and I have enlisted fifteen detectives, so we’ll work in groups of three-that should be sufficient. Do these people,” he paused, then said, “form a conspiracy?”

Zannis didn’t think so. “I doubt it,” he said. “The wives won’t warn their husbands’ friends, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

“Would be best to start at seven-before people go out to restaurants or whatever it is they do.”

“They won’t go out tomorrow night,” Pavlic said. “They’ll stay home with the radio on.”

“We can’t all come here,” Zannis said. “Vlatko, can you have them meet at six? You’ll have to distribute the names this afternoon, so we’ll divide up the names now and make new lists.”

“Where do we take them?”

“There’s a holding cell,” Pavlic said, “at the prefecture near the foreign legations, on Milosha Velikog. They’re going to move their prisoners-to make room for ours.”

“Stack them one on the other,” Vlatko said. “Who cares?”

“These people might be needed later,” Zannis said. “We want them out of circulation for a day and a half-for them an anecdote, not a nightmare. We’d put them in a spa, if we could.”

Vlatko looked at him. “You’re very kind, in Salonika.”

“As long as it works, we are. If it doesn’t, then we do it the other way.”

“Really? I guess we think differently, up here.”

A group of men came laughing into the bar, calling for slivovitz. They wore-Pavlic explained in an undertone- the black fur hats of the Chetniks, the ancient Serbian resistance movement, with skull and crossbones insignia on the front.

“They’ve come in from the villages,” Pavlic said. “They’re gathering.”