The room was silent. Reppas gave no clue as to his thoughts. Then, just as I was about to make a fist and tap him with it, he said: “All right. I’ll tell you everything.”
“Make sure you do. And by the way I already know the real purpose of your expedition wasn’t to dive for an ancient Greek treasure but for a modern Jewish one. And I might as well tell you that it’s not just the Greek police who would love to meet you, my friend. There are some Israelis in town who are interested in this story, too. You wouldn’t want to meet them. Not because they’re Jews. But because they’re not as patient as me. Can’t blame them for that, I guess. History has taught them that if it is going to repeat itself, this time they’re going to be the ones with the guns and the hard faces and the bloody-minded will to come out on top.”
FORTY-THREE
–
Elli came back downstairs and shook her head.
“Nothing,” she said. “There’s plenty of that lying around. I used to wonder what it might be like in one of these little houses next to the Acropolis. Well, now I know. This place is a mess.”
Reppas dragged hard on the cigarette and exhaled slowly through his twisted nostrils. In their mangled state, it looked as if the ruins of his nose were still smoldering after a small explosion in the center of his face. I handed him another cigarette and he lit it with the butt and then looked for an ashtray; it was a fastidiousness that bordered on the absurd, given the state of the carpet. Garlopis fetched one from somewhere and presented it to him as gravely as if he’d been a butler offering his master a silver salver. Elli took one, too, and let him light her.
“No one said you could stop talking,” I told Reppas.
“Sometimes my German is not so good,” he said. “The boss spoke Greek to me when he was sober and German when he was drunk. Which was quite a lot of the time. When I realized you were German, I thought you were working for Brunner. That’s why I pulled the knife on you. With a man like that it doesn’t pay to take any chances. I’m sorry. This was my late sister’s house. Nobody lives here or even knows about this place. At least, that’s what I thought. So when you just appeared in the bedroom like that I thought you were here to kill me. Next time, knock on the door or bring a parrot to speak some Greek for you. Otherwise one day you’re going to end up dead.”
“Maybe I would have done if Witzel hadn’t already met his maker here. And if his murderer wasn’t still at large. And if the cops who were supposed to be keeping an eye on this place hadn’t vanished. All of that tends to make an insurance man a little cautious.”
“Sure, I can understand that. I’ve been a bit cautious myself since the ship sank: lying low at my house in Spetses. Merten was flat against Siegfried coming back to Athens to make the claim until we were quite sure it was safe. They argued about it when we were still in the dinghy. He said Brunner would surely be looking for us. It was Brunner who sank the Doris, see? Some sort of delayed-action incendiary device. But the boss wouldn’t hear of not coming back here to make the claim as soon as possible; he said the ship was his whole world and unless the insurance company paid up he stood to lose everything, not just some gold he never had in the first place. The Doris wasn’t just his livelihood, it was also his home, see? So he figured it was worth the risk. Besides, the boss could always look after himself. And we figured it was safe him coming here, given that no one knew about this house. I inherited it from my sister a few months ago. She lived in Thessaloniki and, well, you can see I haven’t got around to doing very much with it.”
“Now I can refuse the insurance claim with a clear conscience. But back up a bit. I said I knew that the real purpose of the expedition was to find some sunken Jewish gold, but I want the full story. Take it from the beginning. The whole alpha to omega. How did Max Merten know your boss in the first place?”
“From before the war. In Berlin. Siegfried Witzel started out as a lawyer and then changed to studying zoology. Don’t ask me how that works. During the war he was a member of a combat diving unit in the German navy called the Division Brandenburg. But he’d already trained with the Italian Decima Flottiglia MAS, who were the leaders in underwater warfare. That’s where he got this passion for scuba work and that’s how I got to know him; I’m part Italian myself. In the last months of the war he bought himself the Doris. I think Merten had something to do with that. And then almost as soon as he could he came back down to Greece and the two of us went into business together making underwater films. One of them even won an award at the Cannes Film Festival. That went to the bottom of the sea, as well as all our cameras.
“Anyway, a few weeks ago Merten shows up with another German. A fellow named Schramma. Christian Schramma. Except that there wasn’t anything very Christian about him. He was a thug, from Munich, and I think Merten brought him along for security.”
“I
