“Oh, yes. And a lot of these antiquities come through Piraeus. Egyptian, Byzantine, Assyrian, Islamic, Greek, you name it. Mostly it ends up in the hands of private collectors in the United States, but also in smaller city museums that are looking to put themselves on the cultural map. The black market trade in antiquities is worth a lot of money and these days it’s happening on an industrial scale. A good-condition Roman bust of the second century might be worth up to fifty thousand dollars. I’ve even heard that Nasser is using ancient Egyptian art to pay for illegal weapons.” He puffed at his pipe. “Do you think that’s what this man is up to?”
“I really don’t know. I can’t see a better reason.”
“You know my secretary, Kalliopi, she spent as much time with this man as I did. She might be able to add something to what I’ve told you, Mr. Ganz.”
Lyacos picked up the telephone and summoned his secretary to his office. A few minutes later a heavy, gray-haired woman of about fifty entered the room; she was wearing black and generally resembled a poorly erected Bedouin’s tent. From a distance she looked pretty good; up close I needed to see a good optician. It wasn’t that she was ugly or even plain, only that she’d reached a time in her life when romantic love was a locked door that didn’t need a key. I explained my mission and waited. She rubbed the stubble on her face, rolled her eyes a bit, and started talking in Greek, which Garlopis translated simultaneously.
“He was a big man . . . Tall, about one hundred and eighty-five centimeters, overweight, chest about a fifty-six, waist the same as my husband’s, which is a ninety-seven . . . Wheezy, bad breath, smoked a lot, walked like a duck . . . Silver hair . . . Brown, globular eyes, with next to no eyelashes . . . Never met your eye, though . . . He had beautiful hands, which were manicured. And he was always tapping the tips of his fingers when he was thinking . . . Jacket pockets full . . . Spoke good Greek . . . Nice watch . . . She saw a poster for a movie at the cinema near where she lives, just off Epirou Street. And there’s an American man on that poster that looks exactly like Professor Buchholz. Or at least the man who said he was Professor Buchholz. Not the leading man . . . Merely a character actor . . . Not Orson Welles . . . Only she can’t remember the name of the movie.”
I looked at my watch and saw that it was getting near the museum’s closing time.
“Maybe we could run the lady home,” I said, “and then she could point the man out to us. On the poster, I mean. If Dr. Lyacos can spare her.”
About half an hour later we pulled up outside the Royal Cinema. The movie playing was The Mask of Dimitrios, with Peter Lorre and Zachary Scott. Evil genius ran the line on the poster, plundering for profit and pleasure. I hadn’t seen it. I’d had enough of evil genius to last a lifetime. But Garlopis had seen it, several times.
“This film is very popular in Athens,” he said. “I think it’s always playing somewhere in the city. Probably because it’s partly set here, and in Istanbul.”
But it wasn’t either of those two actors that Kalliopi now pointed out to us. It was a fat actor, dressed in an overcoat, a spotted silk scarf, and a bowler hat. He was holding a Luger, too. Hers had been a good description, as good as any police artist’s. But she was wrong about one thing: The fat man was the leading actor in this picture. He was an Englishman called Sydney Greenstreet.
“I believe he plays the part of Mr. Peters, sir,” said Garlopis.
And there was one more detail Kalliopi remembered before we waved her goodbye.
“The man had bad teeth,” said Garlopis, translating again. “From smoking probably. With a single gold tooth, in the front, on the upper jaw.”
“I see.”
“So it would seem we’re looking for a German version of Sydney Greenstreet,” Garlopis added, redundantly, because by now I knew exactly who had been so meticulously described, and it wasn’t Sydney Greenstreet. Kalliopi had painted a picture of a man I knew myself, the very same man who’d got me the job at MRE, in return for the favor I dealt him back in Munich.
Without a question the man she’d described to a T was Max Merten.
THIRTY-TWO
–
Back at the office in Athens, Telesilla was waiting patiently to go home with a large bag of groceries. But first she gave Garlopis his messages and then wrote out the telegram I quickly dictated asking Dietrich to try to contact Max Merten in Munich. The last time I’d seen him he’d told me he was going on vacation and I now assumed he’d meant he was planning to impersonate a German professor of Hellenism in order to mount an expedition to dive in the Aegean Sea for some ancient treasures he could sell on the black market. It was just the sort of thing German lawyers do on their holidays; that or a little quiet embezzlement. If Dumbo Dietrich didn’t find Merten, then this would tell me that maybe he was somewhere in Greece, lying low until he was sure that Alois Brunner wasn’t looking for him, or possibly trying to find another boat, unaware of the fact that his frogman-friend Witzel was now dead; but that he’d been in Greece I was now absolutely certain.
It worried me that Max Merten could have played me for a fool, although I could hardly see how, or why. But the last thing I needed was for my nice, boring, reasonably paid job to be taken away before I’d even taken delivery of the company car. Just as worrying was the possibility
