“I have to hand it to you, sugar. You picked a nice spot. It’s kind of romantic here.”
“Do I have your attention?”
“Undivided.”
“Good.”
“So what happens now?”
“Just this,” she said, and hurled the gun into the sea before coming around the car. “Do you still think I’m planning to shoot you?”
I put down my hands and breathed a sigh of relief; people who think a shot from a ladies’ gun won’t necessarily kill you are almost right; but a little Beretta will fire six or seven in very quick succession and, close up, six or seven will kill you just as effectively as a single bullet from a 9-mill Luger.
“Not unless you’re an expert climber and a hell of a swimmer.”
Elli shook her head, then took my face in her hands and planted a big kiss on my mouth.
“Well, that’s more like it,” I said, and was about to kiss her some more but she stopped me and said:
“No, listen. Until I met you I’d never even heard of Max Merten, okay? But if he’s anything like you, he’s so deaf I doubt he’ll even hear you knock on his door. Like I told you already, that Beretta was for my own personal protection on account of how a lot of men don’t listen when a woman tells them something important such as ‘No, I don’t want to sleep with you,’ or ‘I carry a gun because I was nearly raped and I intend to make sure it doesn’t happen again.’ Just like you, Merten probably won’t be listening when you tell him to give himself up to the police, or try to arrest him. Although how you propose to do that I’m really not sure. But I’m certainly looking forward to seeing you try.”
“Me too. Especially now you’ve got rid of our only weapon. I was counting on you backing me up with your little pistol if we found ourselves in a tight spot.”
Elli frowned. “I thought you said you were afraid I was going to shoot you.”
“Not really,” I lied. “Like you said, why would you want to shoot me? No, I just wanted to see if you still had it with you.”
She managed to contain her momentary irritation with me and the loss of her Beretta. She had my sympathy, too; I always liked the little ladies’ pistol and often a lot more than the ladies who carried one.
“So, Christof Ganz, what’s your real name? And please don’t tell me it’s Martin Bormann.”
“Bernie. Bernie Gunther.”
“Sure about that?”
“Pretty sure.”
“I really don’t know what you’re going to say next. I think that you just might be the most unpredictable man I’ve ever met. Bernie. And, on occasion, quite the most infuriating, too. Maybe that’s why I find you attractive. But, on reflection, I should have shot you when I had the chance. Bernie.”
“You know, a lot of people have said that, and somehow I’m still here.”
“They must have liked your sense of humor as much as I do. But I shall miss having that little gun.”
“I’ll buy you another, for Christmas.”
FORTY-SEVEN
–
We parked the Rover in Kosta and then traveled by water taxi to Spetses, a journey that took all of ten minutes. I wanted to leave Max Merten with the impression that we were escaping the island by the skin of our teeth, so I paid the boatman approximately five times the going rate on the understanding that he would be waiting on the quayside before six the following morning for the return trip to the mainland. It was a beautiful island and I was sorry not to stay longer, especially with Elli, who told me she’d been to the island several times before because, in summer, it was a popular bathing resort much frequented by Athenians, which was also why there was a first-class hotel on the island, the Poseidonian, with a hundred beds and a good restaurant, which had recently opened again after being closed for the winter. We checked in, and while I kept a low profile by staying in the room—I hardly wanted to run into Max Merten on the street—Elli went out to buy a little flashlight and to reconnoiter the address Spiros Reppas had given us.
“I walked past the house several times in case anyone was watching, the way you told me,” said Elli, while, later on, we ate a dinner that might have been described as typically Greek except that it was good. “It’s a small fisherman’s cottage with two floors, and more or less typical of the houses on the island. A little dilapidated. The curtains were drawn and no one went in and no one came out, but there was wood smoke coming out of the chimney and there was a light burning in one of the bedrooms. By the way, I’m certain it’s someone German in there.”
“How did you work that out?”
“Because there was a washing line in the little front garden, and one of the shirts still drying on it had a German label, from somewhere called C&A.”
“That was smart of you.”
“Don’t worry, I didn’t actually go in the garden, I just leaned over the front wall and took a quick look. It was quite a large shirt, too. You said Merten is fat? The collar on the shirt was a size forty-five. And not well-washed
