“You’re very observant. And you saw all this in the dark?”
“There’s a small bar opposite, which was closing up, but all the lights were on.”
“Anyone suspicious hanging around?”
“Only me.”
“Were you seen near the cottage?”
“No. I got a couple of comments on the seafront, but any girl expects that in Greece.”
“You’re not any girl. Not in my eyes. If Paris was here now he’d sling you across his shoulder and leg it for the ships.”
“You need to get out more.”
“Take the compliment. Please. Was there anyone suspicious in the town? Anyone like me?”
“You mean any Germans? No.” She sipped at a glass of white wine and then frowned, but not because of the taste; it was a good Mosel we were drinking. “I wish I knew what you’re going to do. I expect you want me to stay here in the hotel safely out of the way. Well, try and get it through your square German head, I’m not going to do that. Not now that I’ve come all this way. I’m in this until the end.”
“I didn’t see it happening any other way.”
“Besides, it’s the only way I can be sure of killing you both with my spare gun. Brunner, too, if he should decide to put in an appearance while we’re there.”
“Another present from your father, no doubt.”
“I was never one for playing with dolls.”
“Just make sure you shoot to kill, sugar. Brunner’s not the type you can only wound.”
“Of course. There’s no other way with a rat like that. But just for the record, schnucki, I shall regret having to shoot you. Schnucki. Did I say that right?”
“Sure. By the way, your German is much improved.”
“I’ve a good teacher. Shame I’ll have to end the lessons, and so abruptly, too. What does it mean anyway? Schnucki.”
“It doesn’t mean anything very much except that you don’t want to shoot me, schnucki. It’s generally held to be a term of affection.”
We went to bed and after a few hours we got up early, very early, which is to say at the kind of uncivilized hour the Gestapo—and you don’t get more uncivilized than them—used to favor when they decided to make an arrest, because experience had demonstrated that people put up less resistance to the police when they’re still fast asleep.
Leaving the Poseidonian Hotel we walked through the necropolis-like white town and along a narrow street and then up a steep hill to the address Elli had already reconnoitered. The front of the gray cottage belonging to Reppas was covered with a lot of bright blue tiles and on top of the twin gate pedestals were a couple of crouching stone lions painted yellow; it looked like a cut-price Ishtar Gate. There were no lights and the shirt with the German label was still hanging motionless on the line where Max Merten had left it, as described by Elli. Behind the gatepost was a cardboard box containing several empty schnapps bottles, which led me to suppose that Merten hadn’t been entirely wasting his time on the island.
As soon as I opened the front door with the key Spiros Reppas had given me and I moved the flashlight around a bit I knew for sure Merten was living there. The place was pungent with the smell of the same distinctive Egyptian-style Fina cigarettes Merten had been smoking back in Munich. There was a copy of an old German magazine called Capital on the floor by the sofa and a half-empty bottle of Schladerer on the coffee table. There was a hat and an overcoat with Munich labels lying on the sofa, but no gun in the pocket. On the wall was a picture of King Paul, and a framed Imray chart of Greece and its islands. There was plenty of light through the window—enough to conduct a search of the place—and I whispered to Elli to look around for the Walther automatic that Spiros Reppas had mentioned back in Athens; then I headed for the carpeted stairs. Every step was furnished with a pile of books, as if the cottage belonged to a keen reader who didn’t own any shelves; most of the books were cheap paperbacks, crime novels and thrillers by English and American writers for whom choosing a red wine with fish was probably the kind of clue that would reveal the socially maladroit murderer’s identity to the very clever detective. I wondered if any of them had advice on how to approach a sleeping man with a gun. I placed my foot on the first step and tested it for sound with my weight. The wooden step stayed silent so I tried another; and then another, until I was at the top of the stairs with my heart in my mouth. I turned and looked down and saw Elli standing there looking up at me; she shook her head as if to say No gun, and I nodded back and prepared to open one of the bedroom doors in the knowledge that Merten probably had the gun on the bedside table; that was certainly where I would have left mine if Alois Brunner had been looking for me. And you didn’t have to be much of a shot with a Walther to hit someone coming through your bedroom door. A three-legged cat could have made a shot like that.
The master bedroom was empty, but had recently been occupied by Spiros Reppas; there was a picture of him and Witzel on the bedside table and, on the wall, a small icon
