“I’ll tell you all I know.”
“Not that much. Just what you’ve learned about Alois Brunner.”
THIRTY-EIGHT
–
After giving her a lot of extra background detail about Munich RE and the Doris that was mostly intended to furnish a supererogatory demonstration of my cooperation and prevent my getting shot, I said:
“But look here, it’s my impression that Meissner is a nobody. He’s not even German, just a poor Greek translator with a Kraut name who’s been left in the smokehouse by the Greek police in the absence of fish that are worth eating. Although he claims not to have seen Alois Brunner since the war, he did at least know him. And he told me some of Brunner’s favorite haunts here in Athens. I’ll write them down if you like.” Carefully I put my hand inside my coat, took out a notepad, and started to write. “One of those places might actually be relevant, given that I saw Brunner a few days ago in the bar at the Mega Hotel, on Constitution Square. Or maybe you already know about that from whoever it is at the Megaron Pappoudof who’s been feeding you information about what Lieutenant Leventis is up to.”
“I only know that you saw him. What does Brunner look like these days?”
“Not much different from an old photograph Leventis showed me. Thin, like before, not very tall, mid-forties, a heavy smoker, very deliberate manner, Austrian accent, badly bitten fingernails, gravelly voice, narrow dead eyes as if he’d been staring into a hurricane, a hooked nose, a short gray mustache and a chin beard, like an artist, you know. He was wearing a Shetland sport jacket, whipcord trousers, a plaid-gingham shirt, and a little cravat. A good watch, now I come to think of it; gold, maybe it was a Jaeger. And a gold signet ring on his right hand. He drank Calvert on the rocks and wore an aftershave. I can’t remember what brand. Oh, and he was reading a novel. There was a book on the bar. Something by Frank Yerby. Maybe there was a little hat on the stool beside him. I’m not sure.” I shook my head. “That’s about all.”
“And the conversation? Tell me about that, please.”
I tore off the note I’d written and handed it to her.
“I was having a drink and he started up a conversation. Just one German to another. In spite of what you said, we’re friendlier than people think, you know. But I never saw him before in my life. He told me his name was Georg Fischer and that he was a tobacco salesman for Karelia cigarettes. Gave me a pack of nails and this business card.” I handed it over. “Don’t bother calling the number, it’s out of order. I think he just hands it out for show. To make people like me think he’s a regular Fritz. But Leventis believes Brunner is behind two local murders on account of how the modus operandi is the same as an old murder that took place on a train between Salonika and Athens in 1943, when Brunner shot a Jewish banker called Jaco Kapantzi through both eyes.”
I paused for a moment considering the magnitude of what I’d said; talking about that brought back the memory of Siegfried Witzel lying on the floor of the house in Pritaniou, and probably looking not much better than I would look if the bandit queen’s marksman opened fire.
“One of these local murders was a boat owner called Siegfried Witzel who’d filed a claim for the loss of a ship. That’s where I fit into this whole damn mess. I came down here from Munich to adjust the insurance claim and got rather more than I bargained for. Story of my life, for what it’s worth.”
The lady from Ha’Mossad who wasn’t a lady nodded. “That Brunner likes to shoot his victims in their eyes is also my information. At the transit camp of Drancy, in Paris, in 1944, Brunner shot a man called Theo Blum in this same way. Brunner’s mother, Ann Kruise, may or may not have worked for an optometrist, in Nádkút. I know, it’s not exactly Sophocles. But there may be a psychological explanation for why he kills people in this manner that goes beyond simple sadism. I suspect we’ll only know for sure after we have him safely in a cell in Ayalon Prison. Go on, please.”
“Siegfried Witzel and a Munich-based lawyer named Dr. Max Merten—”
“He’s another person we’re interested in.”
“Those two had gone to a lot of trouble to convince the Greek government that they were going to dive in the Aegean for lost art treasures. Museum stuff. The gas mask of Agamemnon for all I know. Until this afternoon I’d started to believe that what they were really after was weapons. That the whole thing was a cover for an illegal arms deal. I was working on the assumption that Brunner was on board to supply stolen Egyptian and Assyrian art treasures in return for guns that could be secretly shipped to Nasser.”
I told her about the Hellenic horse’s head that had been delivered to the Doris.
“That makes sense, too. Almost certainly Brunner is involved with the Egyptian Mukhabarat. Our rivals, so to speak. An agent in Cairo reported Brunner had several meetings with a man named Zakaria Mohieddin, who was until quite recently the director of the Egyptian Intelligence
