Max Merten smiled a decayed smile, which served to remind me of just how rotten his soul was. Among all Merten’s rotten teeth his single gold incisor resembled a tiny nugget found in the dirt on some grizzled Klondike prospector’s pan and, in his brutally cynical mouth, gold couldn’t have seemed less precious.
FIFTY
–
Thanks to Elli, life seemed as if it was a bit more worthwhile, especially now I’d eliminated my earlier suspicion that she was pursuing her own secret agenda. Even after the incident with the Beretta she continued to show every sign that she was a little stuck on me and I now realized, like a very stupid dog, that I liked her, too, although not as much perhaps. In truth I still couldn’t understand why she was attracted to me but I’d stopped worrying about it. Looking a gift horse in the mouth never looked so pointless. She made me feel good again, the way you felt when you’d tanked up on schnapps, like you felt when a beggar blessed you for giving him money or when you were in church and you thought there was just a smidgen of a chance that God was actually there. With her around there was a bit more room for optimism. This wasn’t to say that I saw a real future with her but I could at least see a future for myself. For the first time in a long time it felt like I had a friend; maybe a bit more than just a friend. And to think I’d almost chased her off with my paranoid suspicions. Even as I caught her eye she smiled back at me, as if wondering why I was smiling so warmly at her. I was never much of a smiler.
“What?” she said.
“No, it’s nothing.”
“You’re laughing at me.”
“No. Really. I’m not.” But for the benefit of the large German in the backseat of the Rover I added a moderating lie: “I’m just pleased to have got off that island before Brunner could catch up with us.”
“Oh, him,” she said, as if that name was of no account and, for the first time since speaking to the bandit queen, I wondered where Brunner was. Still hiding out in Athens, perhaps. Or back in West Germany. Or possibly in Egypt, working for Nasser, at the behest of Germany’s intelligence service. But wherever he was I judged him still a threat.
“Yes, him. That’s why we’re in a hurry, sugar.”
“I hope I never see that man again,” admitted Merten. “I once saw Brunner shoot a man on a train because he asked him for a drink of water.”
“This would be the train from Salonika to Athens. In 1943.”
“Yes. How did you know?”
“And the victim was a banker called Jaco Kapantzi. Brunner shot him through the eyes. Same as poor Siegfried Witzel and that Greek lawyer you fingered. I told you. For that murder alone Brunner is a wanted man in Greece.”
Elli shivered. “He scares me.”
“He scares me, too, sugar.”
She held out her hand and to reassure her that everything would turn out all right, I took it and squeezed it affectionately.
As soon as I’d done it—done it in front of Merten, that is—I realized I’d made a mistake.
We were on the road north, back to Athens, and making good time; I estimated we’d be back in the capital city before lunchtime, but before we arrived I planned to make a telephone call when we stopped for gas—to the Megaron Pappoudof, to warn Lieutenant Leventis that I was bringing in Max Merten. For the German’s sake I didn’t want him arrested, at least not right away; I wanted to make it clear to Leventis that Merten was handing himself in as a witness in the trial of Arthur Meissner; that would be something in his favor when the Greeks charged him with war crimes.
“This is a nice car, Christof,” said Merten.
“It’s a rental,” I said. “And by the way, Elli knows my real name. She even knows I was in the SS.”
“That was brave of you. Telling her.”
“Not really.”
“British, isn’t it? The car, I mean.”
“Yes. A Rover.”
“How romantic. Their cars have names and our cars have numbers. It’s good. But not as good as a Mercedes-Benz. Nothing is as good as a Mercedes-Benz.” He sighed. “Sometimes I wonder how we ever lost the war. I mean we make the best cars, the best washing machines, the best radios. The British might have won the war but there’s no doubt that they’re already losing the peace. In ten years from now they’ll be eating our dust and you won’t be able to find a British car anywhere in Greece. With this new EEC, Germany can be what it was always meant to be: the undisputed master of Europe. You have to hand it to the Old Man. He’s done what Hitler could never have done. In fifty years Britain and France will be asking our permission to go to the bathroom. We’ll make the French pay, too. A franc just to take a piss.”
“You’re more of a Nazi than I thought,” I said.
“That’s not Nazism. That’s just capitalism.”
“What’s the difference?”
“If you genuinely believe that, then you’re more of a lefty than I thought.”
“Temperamentally, perhaps. But not at the ballot box.”
“Poor Bernie. As if voting ever changed anything.” Merten lit another cigarette. “So, Elli. May I call you Elli?”
“Yes.”
“Short for Elisabeth?”
“Yes.”
“How did you meet Bernie Gunther?”
“I picked him up in a bar,” she said. “In Athens.”
“Which one?”
“The Mega Hotel bar. I went there to have a meeting with someone else. And saw
