“I would try, but …” He left it there, then said, “And they will come after me, they have a score to settle with me, and these people settle their scores. So I will work against them, but I believe I’ll have to go up to one of the mountain villages and fight from there. Not right away, the war could go on for six months, maybe more. Look what we did with the Italians.”
“These are not Italians, Costa.”
“No, they’re not. So …” He nodded toward the ticket. “It isn’t forever. I’ll find you, we’ll be together again, no matter what it takes.”
“I love you, Costa, with all my heart I love you, but I am Greek, and I know what goes on when we fight in the mountains.” She reached out and gripped his hand. “As God wills,” she said, “but I can only
“The ship is going to Alexandria.”
“Won’t I need a visa?”
“Too late. The Egyptians will give you one when you land; you’ll have to pay for that but they’ll do it.”
She nodded, then let go of him and covered her eyes with her hands, as though she were very tired. “Just fuck this horrible world,” she said.
And then, it all came apart.
They decided that Demetria would repack for the voyage: take what was valuable, then bring the rest out to the house in Kalamaria and say good-bye to her mother. Meanwhile, Zannis had several things to do, and they agreed to meet back at the hotel at three.
Zannis went first to his apartment, to retrieve the Walther-better to carry it, now. The weather had turned to gray skies and drizzling rain, so the ladies were not out on their kitchen chairs, but one of them must have been watching at her window. Upstairs, he wandered around the apartment, coming slowly to understand that all was not as it should be. Had he been robbed? He didn’t think so; he could find nothing missing. Still, the door to the armoire was ajar, had he left it like that? Usually he didn’t. He tried to remember, but that night was a blur; he’d hurried away when Demetria called, so … But then, a chair was pushed up close to the table-a neat and proper position for a chair, but not its usual place.
As he poked around, he heard a hesitant knock at the door. It was one of his neighbors. He asked her in, but she remained on the landing and said, “I just wanted to tell you that some friends of yours came to see you yesterday.”
“They did?”
“Yes. Two men, well dressed; they didn’t look like thieves. We saw them go into the house, and my friend on the first floor wasn’t home, so they must have been … waiting for you. That’s what we decided.”
“How long were they here?”
“An hour? Maybe a little less.”
“Any idea who they were?”
“No, not really. I don’t think they were Greek, though.”
“You … overheard them speak?”
“It’s not that, they didn’t say anything, just … something about them. I’m probably wrong, perhaps they came from Athens.”
Zannis thanked her, then retrieved his Walther and ammunition and headed for the Via Egnatia.
At the office, he hung up his coat and left his umbrella open so it would dry. Then he said, “I think today’s the day, Sibylla. For getting rid of the files.”
She agreed. “It’s any time now, the Yugoslavs have mobilized.”
“I haven’t seen the papers.”
“Well, all the news is bad. The German army is now at the border between Hungary and Yugoslavia. Though the Hungarians, according to the newspaper, have issued a protest.”
“To who?”
“I don’t know, maybe just to the world, in general.” She started to go back to work, then stopped. “Oh, before I forget, two men showed up here yesterday, asking for you.”
“Who were they?”
“Greek-speaking foreigners. Polite enough. Were you expecting them?”
“No.”
“What if they return?”
“You know nothing about me, get rid of them.”
It took, for Sibylla to understand, only a beat or two. Then she said, “Germans? Already?”
Zannis nodded. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “And we have work to do.” He began to take his five-by-eight card files out of the shoebox. “We’ll have to burn the dossiers as well,” he said.
“You read the name,” Sibylla said, “and I’ll pull them.”
He looked at the first card-
In time, they carried the first load down the stairs. Out in the tiny courtyard, enclosed by high walls, the sound of the rain pattering on the stone block had a strange depth to it, perhaps an echo. One of the rusty old barrels Zannis had chosen was half full, so he decided to use the other one. He crumpled up pages from Sibylla’s newspaper and stuffed them in the bottom, knelt, and used a rusted-through slit to start the fire. Burning papers, that ancient tradition of invaded cities, turned out to be something of an art-best to drop them in a few at a time so you didn’t starve the fire of oxygen. A grayish-white smoke rose into the sky, along with blackened flakes of ash that floated back down into the puddles on the floor of the courtyard.
It took more than an hour, Sibylla working with mouth set in a grim line. She was very angry-this had been her work and she had done it with care and precision-and they didn’t converse, beyond the few words necessary to people who are working together, because there was nothing to say.
When they were done, they returned to the office. Zannis stayed for a time, making sure there was nothing there for the Germans to exploit, then put on his coat. As he was doing up the buttons, the telephone rang and Sibylla answered. “It’s for you,” she said.
“Who is it?” He didn’t want to be late getting back to the hotel.
“The commissioner’s secretary. I think you’d better talk to her.”
Zannis took the phone and said, “Yes?”
The voice on the other end was strained, and barely under control-somewhere between duty and sorrow. “I’m afraid I have bad news for you. Commissioner Vangelis has died, by his own hand. At one-thirty this afternoon, he used his service revolver.”
She waited, but Zannis couldn’t speak.
“He left,” she took a deep breath, “several notes, there’s one for you. You’re welcome to come over here and pick it up, or I can read it to you now.”
“You can read it,” Zannis said.
“‘Dear Costa: you have been a godson to me, and a good one. I have known, over the years, every sort of evil, but I do not choose to tolerate the evil that is coming to us now, so I am leaving before it arrives. As for you, you must go away, for this is not the time and not the place to give up your life.’ And he signs it, ‘Vangelis.’ Shall I keep the note for you?”
After a moment, Zannis said, “Yes, I’ll come by and pick it up. Tomorrow. What about the family?”
“They’ve been told.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. “He was-”
She cut him off and said, “There will be a service, we don’t know where, but I’ll let you know. And now, I have other calls to make.”
“Yes, of course, I understand,” Zannis said and hung up the phone.
5 April. 8:20 p.m. The captain of the tramp steamer
