It was a quiet neighborhood of empty tourist cafés, winding narrow streets, and neat little white stucco houses—the sort of old town neighborhood you imagine probably exists only on a Greek island and not jumbled around the base of the Acropolis. Bouzouki music spilled out of windows like electronic signals sent by some frantic space traveler. Up ahead, a few intrepid Japanese tourists who had braved the Athenian morning cold were shopping for souvenirs. Like almost everyone else in Europe, Witzel paid the Japanese no attention. They were fortunate that way; fortunate that their own war crimes had been committed against the Chinese, the British, and the Australians in faraway places like Nanking and Burma. They could tour the historical sites of Greece without fear of assault, unlike myself. And maybe they just didn’t give a damn the way we Germans did.
Witzel stopped for a moment to light one of his revolting menthol cigarettes, which gave me enough time to gain a little ground on him and, from the doorway of a shop selling cheap plaster models of the Parthenon, I watched him carefully to see where he would end up. A few moments later he paused in front of a dilapidated three-story house with an almost opaque carriage lamp and shabby brown louvered shutters, produced his keys, and unlocked the narrow double-height door. A Greek flag was visible in a window on the uppermost floor and, behind a wrought-iron gate, an evil eye had been painted over an old wound in a gnarled tree trunk that was scratching itself against the wall like a mangy dog. I took a good look at the house, noted the address, which was helpfully recorded on a street sign behind the carriage lamp, and then decided to go back to the priest and his scooter. I might have stayed a bit longer but the house had a very private, closed-up look that made me think I wouldn’t learn anything by just standing outside and keeping a watch on the place. I wanted to return to number 11 Pritaniou and surprise Siegfried Witzel later on, when maybe I’d gathered a little more information about the Doris and the diving expedition from the Mercantile Marine Ministry and the Archaeological Museum in Piraeus. Enough at least to contradict whatever cock-and-bull story he’d cooked up to make sure his insurance claim was settled. I was looking forward to that. But halfway down the gently sloping street, I was obliged to stop for a moment outside the Scholarhio café.
It’s one of life’s miracles that—most of the time—you don’t notice your heartbeat. To that extent it’s like being on a ship; when the sea is rough you can’t help but pay attention to it. My heart had put in a couple of extra beats, like a virtuoso jazz drummer, just for the hell of it, perhaps, and then stopped for an unnerving fraction of a second, or so it seemed, which left me reaching to lean upon the whitewashed wall of the café—as if the ship’s deck had shifted ominously under my feet—before it kicked in again, so strongly that I almost went down on one knee and which I now considered doing anyway because this always seems to be the best position to adopt when uttering a prayer. Somehow I stayed silent, even inside my own skull, for fear that I might hear God laugh at my mortal cowardice. I felt a pain in my back, as though from some infernal turn of the screw, and it began expanding through my trembling torso. Beads of sweat studded my face and chest like scales on a crocodile and my breathing quickened. I thought of Walther Neff and the heart attack that had put him in the hospital and me in his place representing MRE in Athens, and I almost smiled as I considered the irony of me dying in Greece, doing his job, while he recuperated safely at home in Germany. But straightaway I knew what needed to be done: I lurched into the café, ordered a large brandy, and lit a cigarette but not before snapping off the filter to smoke it plain and get my breath. The old remedies are usually best. Throughout both wars it was a strong cigarette and a tot of something warm that kept the nerves in check, especially when the shells were falling around you like rocks at a Muslim stoning. Once the nerves were sorted, the bullets wouldn’t touch you; and if they did, you hardly cared.
“Are you all right?” asked Demetrius, when I returned to the red scooter. A handsome man, he looked like a house-trained Rasputin, at least before Yusupov invited him to dinner at his palace. “You look a little pale, even for a Swiss.”
“I’m fine,” I said, a little breathlessly. “Apart from having just had a near-fatal heart attack, I feel as well as I always do. But you might hear my confession now: I’m not really sure scooters agree with me. So thanks all the same, Demetrius, but I’ll take a taxi back. Or I might even walk. If I’m going to die in Athens I’d prefer it to happen while I’m not actually in fear for my life.”
NINETEEN
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Telesilla, the not unattractive red-haired woman whom Achilles Garlopis employed as a secretary, had narrow green eyes that were made narrower by the thickness of her eyebrows, the breadth of her nose, and, perhaps, the knowledge that I was a German. She knew who I was but still regarded me with what felt very like suspicion, which probably explained her obvious hesitancy in permitting
