“To my mind we would be better off being represented by a local firm,” said Garlopis as we made our way to the Archaeological Museum and our second meeting with Dr. Lyacos. “Such as the one I recommended to poor Mr. Witzel.”
“Another cousin, no doubt.”
“No. Although I do have a relation in the legal profession. My wife’s uncle Ioannis is a lawyer in Corinth, but I shouldn’t wish my worst enemy to be represented by him. Pegasus himself would take flight before retaining a man like Ioannis Papageorgopoulos.”
“There’s a brass nameplate I’d hate to have to engrave.”
“Look, I’m sure Mr. Dietrich is correct, that Latsoudis & Arvaniti are a perfectly good and highly respectable firm of lawyers. But if it was my money, I’d prefer a firm in Attica. Such as the one in our own office building.”
“Why the hell didn’t he recommend them, then?” I asked.
“Because outsiders don’t appreciate the antipathy that exists between Piraeus and Athens. No one could who doesn’t live here. Yes, Piraeus is on the doorstep of Athens, but it might as well be a hundred kilometers away, such is the loathing between these two cities. A man who lives in Athens would never be represented by a firm in Piraeus, or the other way round. But perhaps you would like me to explain this to you, sir.”
“Not today,” I said.
“Oh, it would take a lot longer than that.”
“I figured as much. It sounds a lot like the hatred between Munich and Berlin. Nobody else gets that either. Nobody else that matters, anyway. Only Germans.”
Things were quiet at the museum again. We were a bit early for our meeting with Dr. Lyacos so we walked around for a few minutes looking at the museum’s many exhibits. While it crossed my mind that the Nazis had managed to make all classical statuary look just a bit fascist—any one of the outsized bronze figures at the museum in Piraeus might easily have been banged out on Hitler’s orders by a stooge like Arno Breker—I wasn’t really looking; I was still preoccupied with what Lieutenant Leventis had said and for the first time in months I felt as if I needed an all-risks insurance policy.
Dr. Lyacos was wearing a yellow carnation in the lapel of a beige cotton suit, and a yellow bow tie. His previously grayish hair had a lot more yellow in it than before, as if freshly stained with nicotine, which made him look like some hennaed Sufi mystic or perhaps the oldest boy soprano in the church choir. Even the smoke from his cherrywood pipe looked vaguely yellow. All in all there was much too much yellow in the room. It was like staring through a bottle of brilliantine.
“It’s good of you to see us again, sir,” I said, and then explained how the real Professor Buchholz could not possibly have met with him in Piraeus, at which point Lyacos stared at me over the top of his half-moon glasses with the look of a dyspeptic judge. Garlopis translated from the Greek.
“Are you calling me a liar?” said Lyacos.
“No, sir. Not at all. What I’m saying is that the man you met was an impostor. That he was impersonating the real Professor Buchholz.”
“Well, who was he then?”
“That’s what I’m hoping to find out. I wondered if you could provide me with a physical description of the man you met.”
Lyacos took off his glasses, folded them into a box, and rubbed the end of his pencil-like nose. “Let’s see now. About sixty years old. Large. Overweight. Tall. About as tall as you, perhaps. Silver hair. Large. Trousers too high on his waist—I mean, the man’s trousers were virtually on his chest. Spoke good Greek, for a German.” He lit his pipe and considered the matter some more. “A little self-satisfied, perhaps. Large. I don’t know. Maybe not as old as sixty. Fifty, probably.”
I nodded. “Anything else?”
Lyacos shook his head. “No, I’m sorry. That’s about it, I’m afraid. But look, there was nothing wrong with his permissions. Those came straight from the ministry. And the signatures were impeccable. They couldn’t possibly have been fraudulent. Unless—”
“Yes?”
“Well, it’s not unknown for government officials in this country to take a bribe. Not that I’m saying anyone did, mind you. That’s up to you to determine. We’ve got used to the idea of our leaders lying to us and being corrupt; for most Greeks it doesn’t matter that they’re corrupt. We expect it. Why else would they enter office in the first place? But you surprise me. The man who sat in your chair seemed very polished. And exactly like a man who was a professor. Shall we say he was a gentleman? Yes. An academic sort of fellow, anyway. Well read, I should say. I mean he was quite convincing. Of course, it does explain the mistake he made about the small artifacts found on the wreck site by Herr Witzel. If you remember, I did mention before that these were identified by the professor as late Helladic when they were very definitely much earlier.”
“Thanks for your help,” I said. “Can I ask you one last thing? Assuming that this man meant to cheat your museum out of its share of any treasures found
