Greeks Bearing Gifts

way you walk out of the cement—innocent or guilty—you’re always grateful. I was planning on having a hot bath and a drink and a square meal, and maybe an evening on the dance floor with a nice girl and all the other things they take away from you when you’re inside. When you’ve done time, you never again take time for granted. I guess all that nostalgia made me a little preoccupied and unprepared for what happened next. Besides, it was a professional-looking operation, the way the navy-blue Pontiac pulled up with the big doors opening smoothly before the Goodyears had squealed to a stop, and how the two innocent bystanders approaching me from opposite ends of the sidewalk turned out to have neat little pocket automatics almost hidden in their hands and were not quite so innocent as they’d seemed. The next minute I was in the back of the car with four men who looked much fitter than I was and we were heading east on Tsocha, and then southwest on Vasileos Konstantinou. No one said anything, not even me when they frisked me for a Bismarck. It was a different car but I wondered if these were the same guys who’d followed me to Ermioni. I figured that one or more of the usual things were probably about to happen—some threats, a beating, a little physical torture, something worse—and there was no point in protesting too much, not yet; none of them was even listening, anyway. I was just a package to move from A to B and so far, they’d done it very well. It was a story I already knew by heart and I only hoped they could understand German or English when and if it was my turn to speak. I wondered what Garlopis had made of it. Had he even noticed what happened? If he’d seen me being snatched off the street, would he call Leventis? And if he hadn’t because he was asleep, how long would he stay napping before he realized I was late coming back to the car? How long would he wait before knocking on the prison door to inquire in his obsequious but somehow endearing way if they’d decided to keep me there overnight? None of that worried me, particularly. What with the Colt .25s pressed against each of my overworked kidneys and the cold expressions on all four faces, I had enough to worry about on my own account.

On Vasileos Konstantinou, the Pontiac stopped in front of an impressive, horseshoe-shaped stadium that resembled a set from Demetrius and the Gladiators and the car doors opened again. I was obliged to get out and walk, and with one or two citizens still around I felt able to protest my treatment, a little, even with a small gun discreetly in my side.

“I feel it’s only fair to warn you boys I was at the Berlin Olympics in ’36. I managed to get around the stadium and up to my seat in under fifteen minutes. A world record at the time.”

Without reply they walked me to the bottom of the first tier and pointed up to the top one, where high above the track a tiny figure was seated like the only spectator at the matinee.

“Go up there,” said one of the men. “Now. And best not to keep the lady waiting, eh?”

“I never do if I can help it,” I said, and started to climb.

This wasn’t as easy as it looked, since the first marble-clad step was much higher than seemed appropriate; probably this was an easy step to take if you’d been wearing a short tunic or maybe nothing at all, ancient Greek style, but to anyone else it was a bit of a stretch. After that the going was easy; at least it was if you didn’t mind climbing up the stadium’s forty-four levels. I counted them because it helped to stop me from getting angry at the way I’d been summoned to meet a woman I’d never met before and a woman I didn’t find attractive—there was nothing wrong with my eyes; she was much too old for me, which is to say she was about my age. I made a description of her for the police artist inside my head as, ignoring the excellent views of the Acropolis and the Royal Gardens, I completed the rest of the climb: A tall, striking woman with a large mane of dark gray hair gathered in a loose plait at the back of her neck like a Greek caryatid’s. She wore a short dark red silk jacket, a mustard-yellow shirt, a long brown skirt, and soft leather boots. Her face was strong and mannish and as brown as a berry. She carried no handbag and wore no jewelry, just a man’s watch, and in her hand was a red handkerchief. She looked like a bandit queen.

“What, no friends?” I said.

“No friends.”

“Don’t you get lonely, sitting by yourself?”

“I never get lonely—not since I learned what other people are like.”

She spoke fluent German, although I also recognized that this wasn’t her first language.

“You’re right. It’s only when we’re young that we need friends and think they’re important. When you get to our age you realize friends are just as unreliable as anyone else. For all that, it’s been my experience that the people who never get lonely are the loneliest people of all.”

“Come and sit down.” She patted the marble seat next to her as if it might actually be comfortable. “Impressive, isn’t it? This place.”

I sat down. “I can hardly contain my excitement.”

“It’s the Panathenaic Stadium, in case you were wondering,” she said. “Built in 330 BC, but only faced in marble in the second century AD. The Greeks ran races here and the Romans mounted gladiatorial shows. Then for hundreds of years it was just a quarry, until 1895 when, at the expense of a rich Alexandrian Greek, it was restored to what you see now, so that the