“The Ogre of Athens,” he said. “Do you like going to the cinema, Herr Ganz?”
“Yes.”
“It’s quite a popular film here in Greece. At least it is now. It’s about a quiet little man who is mistaken for a murderer called Drakos. Enjoying this mistake, he rules over the underworld until the other crooks start to see their error.”
It sounded a lot like Hitler, but I shook my head. “Not my kind of film. I prefer Westerns.”
“Yes, there’s something about a Western that’s pleasantly timeless.” He glanced at his wristwatch. “Which would seem to be a concept with which Mr. Witzel is also familiar. Where is he, I wonder?”
Outside the cinema a priest wearing a black surplice was cleaning his scooter; the whole city was plagued with them, like thousands of noisy, brightly colored insects. I watched him polishing the red clamshell body of the scooter and winced as its distant relation came buzzing along the street, while out of the corner of my eye I could see Mr. Garlopis feeling my struggle with the din of Athens and politely waiting to see if he should intervene on my behalf. When finally he did and closed the window, I almost breathed a sigh of relief.
“Athens is very loud after Munich,” I said.
“Yes,” he said. “The gods are the friend of silence. Which is why they chose to live on mountaintops. And why rich men who wish to emulate them buy houses on hills, I suppose.”
On the walls were a large map of Greece and several photographs of the past and present Panathinaikos football team, and through the open door could be heard the sound of a secretary’s fingers tickling the keys on a big typewriter.
“How long have you been working for MRE, Herr Garlopis?”
“Five or six years. During the war I was an interpreter and then after that I worked for my cousin’s debt-collection agency. But that work is not without hazard. Bad debt is always a very sensitive subject.” He looked at his watch again and tutted loudly. “Where is that man?”
“Does Herr Witzel have far to come?” I asked.
“I really don’t know. He’s been most evasive about his present address. He told me that since the boat was also his home he’s been sleeping on the floors of various friends in the city. Although with his temper the idea that Herr Witzel has any friends at all seems wholly improbable. Would you like some Greek coffee, Herr Ganz?”
“No thanks. If I drink any more coffee I’ll fly out this window. Has he got a lawyer?”
“He didn’t mention one.”
“We’ll need some sort of an address if we’re going to pay out thirty-five thousand deutschmarks. His girlfriend’s floor, Athens, won’t satisfy our accounts department.”
“That’s what I’ve been telling him, sir.”
“May I see the file on the ship?”
I came back to the desk and Garlopis handed me the details on the Doris. While I glanced over the contents, he summarized the vessel’s specifications:
“The Doris was a two-masted schooner, thirty meters long, with a beam of eight and a half meters, and a maximum draft of 3.8 meters. She had a single six-hundred-horsepower diesel engine with a cruising speed of twelve knots. Built in 1929 as the Carasso, with five cabins, she was all wood in her construction, which probably explains why the fire took hold so fiercely.”
There was a single color picture of a ship at sea with about eight sails; to someone like me who knew nothing about ships, it looked handsome enough, I suppose, and according to the file had been the subject of a recent refit. From what was written down I couldn’t have said if the ship was seaworthy, but on a sea as smooth and blue as the one in the photograph she certainly looked that way.
“There’s also a list of things kept on board that were lost that he’s claiming for,” added Garlopis. “Diving equipment, cameras, furniture, personal effects. More than twenty thousand drachmas’ worth of stuff. Fortunately for him, he seems to have been quite scrupulous in keeping us up-to-date with receipts.”
A few minutes later we heard footsteps on the wooden stairs outside the office door and Garlopis nodded at me.
“That must be him now. Remember what I said, sir. About not provoking him. He’s probably armed.”
A tall, bearded man, with wavy hair as thick and yellow as a field of corn on a windy day and eyes as blue as Thor’s, opened the door and bowed stiffly. He had a round, tanned face, a bee-stung lower lip, and on his forehead above a slightly broken nose was an angry knot of muscles. He reminded me strongly of a painting I’d once seen by Dürer of an unidentified burgher: authoritarian, distrustful, severe—Witzel’s was a very German face. He wore a blouse-type jacket made of pale leather with wool knit sleeves and collar, wheat denim jeans, brown polo boots, and a brown suede cap. On his wrist was a Rolex Submariner with a black rubberized wristband, and between his heavily stained fingers was a menthol cigarette. He smelled strongly of Sportsman aftershave, which made a pleasant change from the whiff of Garlopis’s body odor that stuck to the Greek’s familiar green suit like the smell of naphthalene.
“Herr Witzel, how nice to see you again,” said Garlopis. “This is Herr Ganz, from head office in Munich. Herr Ganz, this is Herr Witzel.”
We shook hands in wary silence, like two chess players about to do battle. His hand was strong but quickly rotated over mine so that his palm was facing down and mine up, as if he meant to show that he intended to have the upper hand during our meeting. That was all right by me; this was only a conversation about insurance after all.
“Please, gentlemen, sit down,” said Garlopis.
Witzel sat
