“You could help me to find him.”
“I already said I would, if I could.”
“Yes, but maybe you were just saying that to get your passport back and save yourself a trip to jail. The fact as I see it, Commissar, is that you have a moral duty to help me.”
“How’s that?”
“Because you need to play your part in restoring your country’s reputation. In the weeks and months after Germany invaded Greece this city was systematically starved by the Germans. Tens of thousands died. There were bodies of children lying dead in front of this very police headquarters and nothing any of us could do about it. And yet here we are, more than ten years after the end of the war and Germany has yet to pay a penny in reparations to the Greek government for what happened. But it’s not just about money, is it? Germany’s got plenty of that now, thanks to your so-called economic miracle. No, I believe collective guilt can be reduced more meaningfully by individual action. In this case, yours. At least, that’s the way I look at it. This would be a more worthwhile kind of atonement than a mere bank transfer, Commissar, for what you Nazis did to Greece.”
“For years I succeeded in not being a Nazi,” I said. “It was difficult, sometimes dangerous—especially in the police. You’ve no idea. But now that I’m here I discover I was a Nazi all along. Next time I come to your office I’ll wear an SS uniform and a monocle, carry a riding whip, and sing the Horst Wessel song.”
“That might help. In any Greek tragedy death is always dressed in black. But seriously, Commissar, for most Greeks there is no difference between a German and a Nazi. The very idea of a good German is still strange to us. And perhaps it always will be.”
“So maybe a Greek killed Siegfried Witzel, after all. Maybe he was killed because he was a German. Maybe we’ve all got it coming.”
“You won’t find anyone in Greece arguing against an opinion like that. But I’m thinking that as a German you might have some insights with this case that I couldn’t possibly have. Let’s not forget that two men have been murdered in Athens. And one of them was your insured claimant.”
We were talking but only half of me was listening to what Leventis was saying; the larger part of my mind was still trying to work out exactly why Alois Brunner had struck up a conversation at the bar of the Mega Hotel. Was it possible that Brunner had made me his stooge to help him find Siegfried Witzel so he could murder him? It would certainly explain why Witzel had been carrying a gun and why he’d been so reluctant to tell us his address: he was afraid. Still stalling for time I said, “I’ll help you, Lieutenant, okay?”
Even as I spoke my fingers were holding the same business card in my pocket that Brunner had given me himself. Georg Fischer: That was what he was calling himself now. What would happen if I called the number on the card? Was the number even real? And who’d told Brunner that I was at the Mega Hotel? That I might lead him to Witzel? Not Garlopis, although in that stupid blue Olds he’d have been easy to tail to and from the airport. Perhaps someone back in Germany had told Brunner I was on the way to Athens. Someone from Munich RE. Maybe Alzheimer himself. After all, Alzheimer knew Konrad Adenauer—there was that photograph of the two men on his desk. And if Alzheimer knew the Old Man, then perhaps he also knew someone in the German BND. But it was almost as if Brunner had been expecting me.
“But since you mentioned moral duty, Lieutenant, I feel obliged to say that it cuts two ways. If I am going to help you, I’ll need some kind of written assurance that you’ll keep your word and let us go. But supposing this was nothing to do with Brunner or supposing he’s already left Greece, what then? I’d hate to find that you were more interested in your clear-up rate than in our innocence.”
“All right. That’s fair enough.” Leventis leaned across his desk and pointed a forefinger as thick as a rifle barrel straight at my head. “But first I need you to ante up, to show me that you’re in the game. And then we’ll talk about immunity from prosecution.”
“Like a suggestion from one detective to another, perhaps?”
“That might work.”
“I’m trying to think of something.”
“Then let me help you. There’s a German interpreter who’s currently on trial in Athens for war crimes.”
“Arthur Meissner. I read about that in the paper. Yes. Maybe he knows something that might help. Maybe he knew Brunner.”
“As a matter of fact, he did. He knew all of the Nazis who controlled Greece—Eichmann, Wisliceny, Felmy, Lanz, Student. But under Greek law I’m forbidden from trying to interrogate him now that he’s on trial. Or to offer him any kind of a deal.”
“He might speak to me. Because I’m not a Greek.”
“I had the same thought.”
“Where is he now?”
“In Averoff Prison.”
“Look, you’ll forgive me for saying so, Lieutenant, but a man who was merely a Greek interpreter doesn’t sound like the worst war criminal I ever heard of. My own boss in the Berlin Criminal Police, General Arthur Nebe, was a very career-minded man who commanded a killing unit that massacred more than forty-five thousand people. That’s what I call a war criminal.”
“To be perfectly honest with you, Commissar, Meissner’s merely a man who was unwise enough to cooperate a little too enthusiastically with the occupation authorities. More of a collaborator than a war criminal. But it’s a subtle difference in Greece. Too subtle for most people, given the fact that there are no German war criminals who’ve
