“That’s truly shocking,” said Garlopis. “Isn’t it, Herr Ganz?”
“So you’ll forgive me for saying so, Commissar, but the trial of Arthur Meissner is as near as we’ve ever got to any kind of a war crimes trial here in Greece. Maybe now you understand why I was talking about your moral duty to help me find Brunner.”
“I can certainly see why you would put it in those terms, Lieutenant,” said Garlopis. “And may I say that as a Greek who loves his country I will do all I can to assist Herr Ganz in any way he sees fit.”
Resisting the obvious temptation again to tell Garlopis to shut up, I put a cigarette in my mouth—it was the last one from the packet Alois Brunner himself had given me—and lit up, which gave me enough time to consider my situation in a little more detail. I wanted nothing to do with what Leventis was suggesting; keeping far away from any of my old comrades was a top priority for Bernhard Gunther. And I had no more time for moral duty than I had for taking early retirement. But I needed to string Leventis along; to make him think I was helping him without getting myself too involved. After all, like Brunner, I was also living under a false name, with a false passport to go with that.
“Well, what exactly did he do?” I asked. “This Meissner fellow.”
“It’s certain that he helped himself to the property of Greeks and Greek Jews. Some of the other charges—rape and murder—look rather more difficult to prove.”
“Is a deal possible? Would you at least be prepared to speak up in court on his behalf if he was to provide some information leading to the capture of Alois Brunner?”
“I’d have to speak to the state prosecutor. But maybe.”
“I’ll need more than that if I do speak to Meissner. Even if he can’t deliver information on Brunner it’s possible he might give up someone else just as important. Come on, Lieutenant. This man needs some life insurance.”
“I will say this: If we were to catch a whale like Brunner, it would certainly take all the attention off a sprat like Meissner. And if he helped us to do it, I wouldn’t be surprised if we let him go.”
“So let me speak to Meissner in private, at the prison. Just the two of us. It may be that I can persuade him to talk.”
Leventis looked at his watch. “If we’re quick we can just catch Papakyriakopoulos. That’s the name of Meissner’s lawyer. Every Friday evening, after a week in court, he always goes for a drink at an old bar called Brettos, which is about a ten-minute walk from here. I doubt he’ll speak to me, but he might unload something to you.”
TWENTY-SIX
–
Brettos was in a district of touristy Athenian backstreets called Plaka, and from the outside unremarkable; inside, the whole back wall was a virtual skyscraper of brightly lit liquor bottles and, given its proximity to the Acropolis, it felt like the world’s most ancient bar. It was easy to imagine Aristotle and Archimedes drinking ice-cold martinis there in search of the final, clear simplicity of an alcoholic aphorism after a hard day of philosophical debate.
Seated on a high stool at a marble counter beneath a brandy barrel, Arthur Meissner’s lawyer, Dr. Papakyriakopoulos, was a shrewd-looking man in his thirties, with a neat mustache, dark marsupial eyes, and a profile like an urgent signpost. Lieutenant Leventis made the introductions and then discreetly withdrew, leaving me and Garlopis to order a round and to make the case for a meeting with Arthur Meissner at the court where he was being tried or at Averoff Prison, where he was being held on remand. Leventis said he’d wait for us at the café across the narrow street. The Greek lawyer listened politely while I quickly outlined my mission. Sipping a drink that looked and smelled more medicinal than alcoholic, he lit a small cigar and then, patiently, explained his client’s situation, in perfect English:
“My client is of no importance in the scheme of things,” he said. “This is the whole basis of his defense. That he was nobody.”
“Is that nobody like Odysseus was nobody? To trick the cyclops? Or nobody in a more existential sense? In other words, was he a cunning nobody or a modest, indefinite nobody?”
“You’re a German, Herr Ganz? Which were you?”
Dr. Papakyriakopoulos was Greek but he was still the kind of lawyer I disliked most: the slippery kind. As slippery as an otter with a live fish in its paws.
“That’s a good question. The former, I’d say. It certainly took a lot of cunning for me to stay alive while the Nazis were in power. And just as much afterward.”
“In Arthur Meissner’s case he was the sort of existential nobody that you describe, Herr Ganz. If you ever met my client you would see a simple man incapable of stratagem. You would meet a man who took no decisions, did not offer counsel, committed no crimes, was never a member of a right-wing organization, was not an anti-Semite, and had little or no knowledge of anything other than what was said to him in German and which he was
