“Were you not a soldier, Mr. Carey?”
“I was a bomber pilot. I don’t remember ever feeling particularly happy about it.”
“Ah, no-but the air is different from soldiering. You do not see the enemy you kill. A machine war. Impersonal.”
“It was personal enough for me,” George said; but the remark went unheard. There was the light of reminiscence in the Colonel’s eyes.
“You missed much in the air, Mr. Carey,” he said dreamily. “I remember once, for example…”
He was off.
He had taken part, it seemed, in numerous British raids on German garrisons on Greek territory. He went on to describe in great detail what he obviously felt to be some of his more amusing experiences. Judging by the relish with which he recalled them, he had indeed had a happy time.
“… splashed his brains over the wall with a burst from a Bren gun… put my knife low in his belly and ripped it open to the ribs… the grenades killed all of them in the room except one, so I dropped him out of the window… ran away without their trousers, so we could see what to shoot at… tried to come out of the house to surrender, but he was slow on his feet and the phosphorus grenade set him alight like a torch… I let him have a burst from the Schmeisser and nearly cut him in two…”
He spoke rapidly, smiling all the time and gesturing gracefully. Occasionally he broke into French. George made little attempt to follow. It did not matter, for the Colonel’s whole attention now was concentrated on Miss Kolin. She was wearing her faintly patronizing smile, but there was something more in her expression besides-a look of pleasure. If you had been watching the pair of them without knowing what was being said, George thought, you might have supposed that the handsome Colonel was entertaining her with a witty piece of cocktail-party gossip. It was rather disconcerting.
The Lieutenant came back into the room with a tattered folder of papers under his arm. The Colonel stopped instantly and sat up straight in his chair to receive the folder. He looked through it sternly as the Lieutenant made his report. Once he rapped out a question and received an answer which appeared to satisfy him. Finally he nodded and the Lieutenant went out. The Colonel relaxed again and smirked complacently.
“It will take time to check the lists of prisoners,” he said, “but, as I hoped, we have some other information. Whether it will be of help to you or not, I cannot say.” He glanced down at the bundle of torn and greasy papers before him. “This ambush you mention was most likely one of several operations undertaken in that week by an ELAS band based in the hills above Florina. There were thirty-four men, most of them from Florina and the villages about there. The leader was a Communist named Phengaros. He came from Larisa. A German army truck was destroyed in the action. Does that sound like the case you know of?”
George nodded. “That’s it. There were three trucks. The first hit a mine. Does it say anything about any prisoners?”
“Prisoners would not be reported, Mr. Carey. Fortunately, however, you can ask.”
“Ask whom?”
“Phengaros.” The Colonel grinned. “He was captured in ’48. We have him under lock and key.”
“Still?”
“Oh, he was released under an amnesty, but he is back now. He is a Party member, Mr. Carey, and a dangerous one. A brave man, perhaps, and a good one for killing Germans, but such politicals do not change their ways. You are lucky he has not long ago been shot.”
“I was wondering why he wasn’t.”
“One could not shoot all of these rebels,” the Colonel said with a shrug. “We are not Germans or Russkis. Besides, your friends in Geneva would not have liked it.”
“Where can I see this man?”
“Here in Salonika. I shall have to speak to the commandant of the prison. Do you know your Consul here?”
“Not yet, but I have a letter to him from our Legation in Athens.”
“Ah, good. I will tell the commandant that you are a friend of the American Minister. That should be sufficient.”
“What exactly is this man Phengaros in prison for?”
The Colonel referred to the folder. “Jewel robbery, Mr. Carey.”
“I thought you said he was a political prisoner.”
“In America, Mr. Carey, your criminals are all capitalists. Here in these times they are occasionally Communists. Men like Phengaros do not steal for themselves, but for the Party funds. Of course, if we catch them they go to the criminal prison. They cannot be sent to the islands as politicals. They have made some big coups lately. It is quite traditional. Even the great Stalin robbed a bank for the Party funds when he was a young man. Of course, there are some of these bandits from the hills who only pretend to rob for the Party, and keep what they get for themselves. They are clever and dangerous and the police do not catch them. But Phengaros is not of that kind. He is a simple, deluded fanatic of the type that always gets caught.”
“When can I see him?”
“Tomorrow perhaps. We shall see.” He pressed the button again for the Lieutenant. “Tell me,” he said, “are you and Madame by chance without an engagement this evening? I should so much like to show you our city.”
Twenty minutes later George and Miss Kolin left the building and came again into the heat and glare of a Salonika afternoon. George’s excuse that he had a long report to write that evening had been accepted with ready understanding. Miss Kolin had seemed to have rather more difficulty in evading the Colonel’s hospitality. The conversation, however, had been conducted in Greek and George had understood nothing of it.
They crossed to the shade on the other side of the street.
“How did you manage to get out of it?” he asked as they turned towards the hotel.
“I explained that my stomach was upset by the food and the flies and that I should probably be sick all night.”
George laughed.
“I spoke the truth.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you think you ought to see a doctor?”
“It will pass off. You have no stomach trouble yet?”
“No.”
“It will come later. This is a bad place for the stomach when one is not used to it.”
“Miss Kolin,” George said after a while, “what did you really think of Colonel Chrysantos?”
“What can one think of such a man?”
“You didn’t like him? He was very helpful and obliging.”
“Yes, no doubt. It soothes his vanity to be helpful. There is only one thing that pleases me about that Colonel.”
“Oh?”
She walked on several paces in silence. Then she spoke quietly, so quietly that he only just heard what she said.
“He knows how to deal with Germans, Mr. Carey.”
It was at that moment that George received the first intimations of coming discomfort in his stomach and intestines. At that moment, also, he forgot about Colonel Chrysantos and Germans.
“I begin to see what you mean about the food and the flies,” he remarked as they turned the corner by the hotel. “I think, if you don’t mind, that we’ll call in at a drugstore.”
The following day the Colonel’s Lieutenant arrived at their hotel in an army car and drove them out to the prison.
It was a converted barracks built near the remains of an old Turkish fort on the western outskirts of the city. With its high surrounding wall and the Kalamara Heights across the bay as a background, it looked from the outside rather like a monastery. Inside, it smelt like a large and inadequately tended latrine.
The Lieutenant had brought papers admitting them and they were taken to the administration block. Here they were introduced to a civilian official in a tight tussore suit, who apologized for the absence of the commandant on official business and offered coffee and cigarettes. He was a thin, anxious man, with a habit of picking his nose, of which he seemed to be trying, none too successfully, to break himself. When they had had their coffee, he took a
