“In order to process your claim, Herr Witzel, I’m going to need some more details about your business and what happened to your ship. I know this is a matter of great urgency to you, but please try to be patient. I have many questions. At the end of our conversation I hope to be able to issue you with—at the very least—a provisional check, to cover your immediate expenses.”
“I’m glad to hear it.” As he spoke Witzel stared daggers in the direction of poor Garlopis, as if reproaching him for not doing the same earlier on.
“You’re a diver, aren’t you?” I said.
“That’s right.”
“How did you get into that business?”
“During the war I was in the German navy. With the Division Brandenburg, better known as the ocean warriors. Before that I trained with the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS, who were the leaders in the field of underwater combat.” He tapped the ear with the hearing aid. “That’s how I damaged this ear. A mine went off when I was in the water. After the war I bought the Doris, and stayed on down here, making underwater films, which was always my passion.”
“Under the circumstances that seems like a brave decision. For a German, I mean.”
“Not really. I did nothing during the war to feel ashamed of.”
Clearly the concept of collective guilt didn’t feature in Witzel’s way of thinking.
“Besides, I speak fluent Greek and Italian, and I’ve always gone out of my way to show the Greeks that I was certainly no Nazi.”
I nodded attentively but I wondered exactly how you went about doing something like that.
“As a result I always lived on the ship without any problems. Except for the usual ones, when you’re a filmmaker: a lack of money. All filmmaking is expensive. Underwater, especially so.”
“What was the purpose of this specific voyage? I’m not yet clear about that.”
“It was a private charter. I’d found a few small marble and bronze artifacts on a previous dive in some waters off the island of Dokos—on what looked to be possibly the wreck of an old Greek trireme—and, thinking I might make some money out of this discovery, I contacted the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus with a view to fitting out an expedition to look for more. Not my usual kind of thing but I needed the money. Like I said, filmmaking is expensive. Anyway, they told me that at present, financing is tight for that kind of thing—it’s not like Greece has a shortage of archaic bronzes and marbles, but they suggested that if I could find a German museum willing to put up the money, they would organize all of the necessary permissions in return for half of what we found. So I did exactly that. Professor Buchholz is a leading German Hellenist, and an old friend of a friend—someone I knew when I was at university in Berlin. Simple as that, really. Or at least it seemed it was until my ship sank.”
“You’re a Berliner?”
“Yes. From Wedding.”
“Me too. What did you study?”
“Law, at Humboldt. To please my father, of course. It’s a very German story. But he died halfway through my studies and I switched to zoology.”
“Like Humboldt.”
“Exactly.”
Witzel stubbed out his cigarette and then hung another on his lower lip like a clothes-peg. Meanwhile I unfolded the chart, turned it toward him, and came around the desk to look over his shoulder.
“Perhaps you could show me on the map where the Doris sank.”
“Surely.” Witzel leaned over the map and moved his forefinger down the Greek coast, about thirty or forty miles south of Piraeus, as the crow flies. While he leaned over the map I had an excellent view of what looked like an automatic in a leather shoulder holster under his left arm. Quite why a man who was diving for archaic Greek bronzes felt the need to carry a gun was anyone’s guess.
“It was just about here when we discovered the fire,” he said. “Latitude 37.30 north, longitude 23.40 east, off the eastern Peloponnese coast. It was late at night and dark, and so we put out an SOS; and while we fought the fire we tried to reach the mainland, but it quickly became clear that we would have to take to the life raft. The Doris is made entirely of wood, you see. She sank here in about two hundred and fifty meters of water. Too deep to dive for, unfortunately, otherwise I’d hire some equipment and go down to get some personal effects that are still on board.
“In the life raft, we put in at Ermioni. Myself, two crew, and Professor Buchholz. Then we contacted the local coast guard and told them not to bother looking for the Doris as it was already gone.”
I folded up the map again. “Now, about the fire. Any idea of the cause?”
“The oil in the engine caught fire. No doubt about it. The engine was an American two-stroke diesel—a Winton, recently overhauled in the shop, and normally very reliable. But the Adrianos shipyard in Piraeus I used to take her to went bust and I had to get someone else in Salamis to do the most recent overhaul. My guess is that they cut a few corners to save money, that they used a cheap, low-viscosity oil instead of a more expensive, high-viscosity one, which was what you need for an engine like that. And the oil simply couldn’t deal with the high
