THIRTY-FIVE
–
It was almost five p.m. when I got back to the office to check my messages and telephone Lieutenant Leventis after driving Elli to her own office at the ministry on Amerikis Street. It seemed we both had to work late that night.
“Call me,” she’d said. “30931. Extension 134. Maybe we can go and have a drink tomorrow. Or we could go dancing at Kalabokas, perhaps. That’s a club I know. Do you dance?”
“It depends.”
“On what?”
“On who’s pulling the strings. The way I see it, when you’ve got to dance you’ve got to dance.”
“Next stop Broadway, huh?”
“As soon as I can get out of Greece.”
“Don’t be in too much of a hurry. That kiss this afternoon. I liked it. I’d like some more.”
“Good. Extension 134. I’ll arrange it.”
Telesilla had gone home but Garlopis was still there. He looked more nervous than was normal even for him.
“Mr. Dietrich received your telegram, sir. He is going to telephone again, at five o’clock his time, six ours. So I thought I’d better wait in case you needed any help with the international operator.”
“Kind of you. He telephoned before?”
“Twice. At three and at four. It seemed to be urgent.”
“Good. He must have discovered something important.”
“And did you find anything important when you were in Ermioni?”
“Yes, I think so. I’ve got some evidence that Siegfried Witzel and his friends on the Doris weren’t looking for sunken treasure any more than they were looking for the lost city of Atlantis. I think they were involved in an illegal weapons deal with Alois Brunner. Neff, too, for all I know. Trading black market Greek and Egyptian sculptures to obtain guns for Colonel Nasser and his Muslim Brotherhood for their war against the Israelis. Frankly it’s just the kind of cause that would attract an anti-Semite like Brunner. But from the way things panned out he must have figured he was being double-crossed and decided to wind up the partnership. Permanently.”
“These are troubled times we live in, sir.”
“That’s always been the rumor.”
“But surely this is good news. It means you’ve got something concrete to tell Lieutenant Leventis, doesn’t it? Enough to get him off your back, perhaps. Off both our backs.”
“Perhaps.”
Garlopis grinned sheepishly. “How did you get on with Miss Panatoniou?”
“Yes, that was interesting. We were followed all the way there and back.”
“By who?”
“Two men in a black sedan.”
“They were working for Leventis, perhaps.”
“Perhaps.”
“Did you tell her?”
“God, no. I didn’t want to distract her from me. She did an excellent job of paying me a great deal of probably unwarranted attention.”
“You think she was playing you?”
“My strings are still humming. But I have no idea what her game is. At least not while she’s using that chest of hers to breathe. It’s kind of distracting. She says she does a little extra work for Dimitri Papakyriakopoulos. Meissner’s lawyer. It seems he’s curious as to why I should want to meet with his client. And because he’s curious she is, too. Of course, she says it’s more than that. She says she likes me. But.”
“Of course.”
“Right now I’m trying to limit things between us to something platonic; the only trouble is that making love is so much more entertaining.”
Garlopis chuckled. “You’re absolutely right there, sir. Who was it that said a woman is like a tortoise; once she’s on her back you can do what you want with her.”
“It doesn’t sound much like Zeno.”
“No, perhaps you’re right. Anyway, you look like a man who knows what he’s doing.”
“That’s an easy mistake to make. You see, I’ve met her kind before. She’s a mortar bomb in a tight blouse. A man needs a tin hat and a lorry load of sandbags just to be near a girl like that. The trick is being somewhere else when she goes off.”
“She does have a remarkable figure, sir. Just what the doctor ordered, I’d have thought.”
“Always supposing that one can afford a doctor like that.”
Our discussion of Elli Panatoniou was all the excuse Garlopis needed to find a bottle of Four Roses in the desk drawer and pour us a couple while we waited for Dumbo’s call. There are some subjects, like analytic geometry and spiric sections, for which you need a drink and Elli’s figure was one of them; she had the most interesting curves since Diocles described a cissoid. After a while I sat down at Telesilla’s desk to type out a report on the day’s activities for Lieutenant Leventis. I saw no reason not to take his previous threat seriously. I mentioned the name of Spiros Reppas on the assumption he’d already heard it in connection with the house in Pritaniou; and I told Leventis that I’d been followed by two men in a dark sedan—I even gave him the license plate, just to be insolent. I didn’t say anything in my report about kissing Elli Panatoniou, but I figured that if the men following us had been his, they could tell him that themselves. Of course, the report was more or less pointless and mostly demonstrated that I was badly out of practice with a typewriter. But Leventis was right about one thing: It did make me feel like a cop again.
Garlopis read my report and smiled sadly.
“Perhaps next time I could type this for you, sir? In Greek. There are many mistakes. Perhaps the lieutenant will be more inclined to be sympathetic if your report is in Greek.”
“Next time.”
At last the phone rang. Garlopis answered it, said something in Greek to the operator, and then handed me the receiver.
“Munich,” he said, and pressed his head close to the backside of the earpiece so he could hear. His hair smelled of limes.
“Christof Ganz speaking.”
“About time. I’ve been trying to get hold of you all day, Ganz. Where the hell have you been?”
Dietrich’s voice was testy and irritable like maybe he’d forgotten how much money I’d saved the company since taking up my employment. I swallowed the rest of my
