Greeks Bearing Gifts

by Philip Kerr

  “And the owl?”

  He looked sheepish. “The goddess Athena is often accompanied by an owl, which traditionally symbolizes knowledge and wisdom. You can’t have too much of that, can you? I have a silver coin in my pocket, a tetradrachm, that also depicts an owl, for good luck.”

  “How about the icon?”

  “Saint George, sir. Been looking after me and for that matter, this country, since I was born.”

  I flicked my cigarette away. “So tell me about this ship that was lost. The Doris. I guess they weren’t so well prepared for disaster as you seem to be, Mr. Garlopis.”

  “To business. I like that. If I may say so, this is commendably German of you. Forgive me for talking so much. That is very Greek of me. From my mother’s side.”

  “Don’t apologize. I like to talk myself. That’s from my human side. But right now I just want to talk about the ship. After all, it’s the only reason I’m here.”

  “As I think you know, the ship is German and so is the owner. The insured value was thirty-five thousand deutschmarks, which is two hundred and fifty thousand drachmas. Siegfried Witzel is a German diving expert who makes underwater films. One of these, The Philosopher’s Seal, was about Mediterranean monk seals, first described by Aristotle, and for some reason it won a prize at the Cannes Film Festival. Don’t ask me why. All I know about monk seals is that they’re very rare. The Doris sank on an expedition looking for ancient Greek artifacts: statues, pottery, that kind of thing. Which are much less rare, at least in Greece. The ship was en route from Piraeus—the main port of Athens—to the island of Hydra when it caught fire off the coast of Dokos, which is another island near there. The small crew abandoned ship and made for the mainland in the life raft. The Hellenic Coast Guard in Piraeus is now investigating the loss, as is the Mercantile Marine Ministry here in Athens, but being Greek both of these bodies are slow and bureaucratic, not to say sclerotic. And to be quite frank with you, sir, their enthusiasm for investigating the loss of any German ship is unfortunately small. Which is perhaps not surprising, given that in the war Greece lost a total of 429 ships, most of them sunk by the Germans. But even at the best of times—and speaking of it as a purely investigative body—the Hellenic Coast Guard is slow; it’s still looking into the loss of the Lycia, a British ship that ran aground off Katakolon last February, and also of the Irene, a Greek coaster that foundered southeast of Crete last September.”

  “So we’re on our own, investigatively speaking.”

  “That’s about the size of it, unfortunately.”

  “Tell me about this fellow Witzel.”

  “I think it’s possible the gods sank his ship because they were angry with him, but I doubt they could have been more angry than he has been with me. In short, he is a man with a most violent temper. Rude, disagreeable, and impatient. He makes Achilles seem like a model of good grace.”

  “Why do you say so?”

  “I’ve tried to explain to him that nothing was going to happen until someone arrived from head office to adjust his claim against MRE but he’s not much disposed to listen to me, a mere Greek. Since then I’ve been threatened with violence on more than one occasion.”

  “By Witzel?”

  “By Witzel. He’s very tough, very fit, you see. As you might expect from someone who is a professional diver. He doesn’t seem to suffer fools gladly, and Greek fools like me, not at all. Frankly, I’m glad you’re here so you can deal with him. One German with another. Poseidon himself would find this man frightening. Not least because he carries a gun.”

  “Oh?”

  “And a switchblade.”

  “Interesting. What kind of gun?”

  “An automatic pistol. In a leather shoulder holster. Many Greeks do carry weapons, of course. Because of the Nazis. And before them, the Ottoman Turks. On Crete, it’s quite common for men to carry handguns. But then Cretans are a law to themselves.”

  “But Witzel is a German, you said. Not Greek.”

  “Although not as noticeably as you, sir. He speaks our language fluently. As you might expect of someone who was living here before the war.”

  “In my own experience carrying a gun tends to calm a man down. You can’t afford to lose your temper more than once when you have a Bismarck in your pocket. The police don’t like it.”

  “Well, I thought I should mention it.”

  “I’m glad you did. I’ll certainly remember that if I try to adjust his claim. What else can you tell me about him?”

  “It’s true that the man has lost his home as well as his livelihood, since he also claims to have been living on the ship. So this might account for his behavior. However, I have also found him inclined to be evasive as well as angry. For example: in my opinion he has failed to supply an adequate explanation for how the fire on board the Doris might have occurred. I say might have occurred since I only ever asked him to speculate on what could have happened, which did not seem unreasonable, given the size of his claim. After all, one has to write something down on the loss report. Also, about the company that chartered the Doris to look for antiquities, he has been less than forthcoming.”

  “Is it possible that they were looking for these antiquities illegally?”

  “On the contrary. All of the permissions were obtained at the highest level. And I do mean the highest. The exploration license was signed by Mr. Karamanlis, no less.”

  Konstantinos Karamanlis was the Greek prime minister.

  “Mr. Witzel seems to think that this trumps the need for all explanations. As if Karamanlis were Zeus himself.”

  “Do you think his claim might be fraudulent? That he might have scuttled his own ship to get the money?”

  “That’s not for me to say, sir. I’m not a loss adjustor. Just a loss adjustor’s humble agent.”

  “Perhaps, but when he sent me down here, Alois Alzheimer, MRE’s chairman, described you as our local shipping expert.” This was a lie, of course. But a little flattery couldn’t do any harm.

  “He did? Mr. Alzheimer said that?”

  “Yes.”

  “That is most gratifying, sir. To think that a man like Mr. Alzheimer knows a man like me even exists. Yes, that is most gratifying.”

  “I’m new at this game, Mr. Garlopis. I’m afraid I know nothing about ships. And even less about Greece. I’m here to cover for Mr. Neff. So your own opinions about what happened to the Doris are more important than you might think. You tell me to authorize payment and I’ll recommend we authorize payment. But if you tell me the case has only got one shoe we’ll take a walk around and look for the other. Thirty-five thousand is a lot of money. Take it from me, people have killed for a lot less.”

  “It’s kind of you to say so, Mr. Ganz. And I appreciate your honesty, sir.” Mr. Garlopis chuckled. “There are logical explanations for almost everything, of course. I accept that. But for several years I was a merchant seaman myself and I can tell you that the men who go to sea, especially here in Greece, hold many irrational beliefs, to put it mildly. Our own explanations for everything that happens here in Greece might not meet with much sympathy among our masters in Munich.”

  “Try me.”

  “You’ll only laugh, sir, and think me a very credulous fool.”

  “No, not even if I thought so.”

  Garlopis talked some more and I shortly formed the impression he was one of the most superstitious men I’d ever encountered, but no less likable for that. To my surprise he believed supernatural beings continued to inhabit the country’s mountains, ancient ruins, and forests. The sea was no different, for he also believed in the Nereids—sea nymphs that did the will of Poseidon—and seemed more than willing to attribute all manner of disasters to their interference. This struck me as unusual in an insurance agent and I wondered how Mr. Alzheimer would react if I sent him a telegram explaining that the Doris had been sunk by a sea
nymph.

  “Sometimes,” said Garlopis, “that’s as good an explanation as any. The waters around these islands are strange and treacherous. It’s not every ship that disappears that can be properly accounted for. You’ll forgive me, sir, if I suggest that it’s a fault of you Germans to believe that absolutely everything has a logical explanation.”

  “Sure, only it was the Greeks who invented logic, wasn’t it?”

  “Ah yes, sir, but if you’ll forgive me again, it’s you Germans who have taken logic to its most extreme. Dr. Goebbels, for example, when he made a speech advocating the waging of total war—in 1943, was it not?

  “Yes, I know, you’ll tell me he was just echoing von Clausewitz. Nevertheless, it can be argued that it was this mentality that condemned Germany to a futile squandering of life on an unprecedented scale when the reality is—you should have surrendered.”

  I certainly couldn’t argue with that. For a superstitious man, Achilles Garlopis was also an educated one.

  “In this case, however,” added Garlopis, “I’m sure we’ll find a better explanation for what happened to the Doris, one that will suit Mr. Alzheimer and Mr. Dietrich.”

  “Let’s hope so. Because I think the only monster Mr. Alzheimer believes in is probably Mrs. Alzheimer.”

  “You’ve met her?”

  “I saw a picture of her on his desk. And I think she was probably frozen for millions of years before he found her.”

  Garlopis smiled. “I’ve taken the liberty of asking Mr. Witzel to come to the office at ten o’clock tomorrow. You can question him then and form your own conclusions. I’ll come by the hotel at nine and walk you there. Will you require an early-morning call, sir?”

  “I don’t need an early-morning call, Mr. Garlopis. I’ve got my bladder.”

  SIXTEEN

  –

  The Mega Hotel was in Constitution Square, named after the constitution the first Greek king, Otto, had been obliged to grant to the leaders of a popular uprising in 1843. It was situated opposite the Old Royal Palace, which now housed the Greek parliament, and the Grande Bretagne Hotel, which was a lot nicer than the one I was in. I took a walk around the tree-lined square after Garlopis had left me, to stretch my legs, see a bit of Athens, and get a lungful of the local carbon monoxide. The eastern side of the square was higher than the western and was dominated by a set of marble steps that led up to the parliament, as if you might have to make some kind of effort getting to democracy. In front of this lemon-colored building a couple of soldiers called evzones were making fools of themselves to the delight of a group of American tourists, only they called it changing the guard. Dressed like Pierrots, they made a very big thing out of not doing very much, regular as clockwork. I guess it was no more ridiculous than anything you could have seen performed by soldiers of the National People’s Army outside the New Guardhouse on Unter den Linden in what was now East Berlin, but somehow like a lot of things in Greece, it was. Call me a xenophobe but there seemed to be something inherently comic about two very tall men each wearing a fez, a white kilt, and red leather clogs with black pompoms marking time and waving their legs in the air with an almost tantalizing uncertainty; indeed, it was almost as if these two were trying to send up the whole ceremony, which only seemed to make it all the more amusingly photogenic.

  I bought some Luckys, a map, and a copy of The Athens News—the only English-language newspaper (there wasn’t a German one)—and took these back to the bar at the Mega to have a drink and a smoke and to acquaint myself with what was happening in the ancient Greek capital. A lawyer in Glyfada had been murdered. There had been a spate of burglaries in Amaroussion. Some Greek cops from police headquarters had been arrested for taking bribes. The Hellenic Police Internal Affairs Division reported that ninety-six percent of the population believed the Greek police were corrupt. And a German called Arthur Meissner was about to go on trial accused of war crimes. Apart from the relentlessly cheerful Greek music on some speakers above the bar, I felt quite at home.

  Even more than I might have expected.

  “How do you like those smokes?” said a voice speaking German.

  “They’re all right. I’ve been smoking them for so long I hardly notice, except when I have to smoke something else.”

  “So you’d smoke something else if you liked them better?”

  “There are a lot of things I might do if I liked them better,” I said. “I just don’t know what they are yet.”

  The man at the opposite end of the bar was German, or perhaps Austrian, and in his mid-to-late forties. He was slim with a thin hooked nose, a short mustache and a chin beard, a high forehead, eyes with a strong hint of oyster, and, as far as I could tell, he wasn’t very tall. He was wearing a Shetland sport jacket and whipcord trousers. His Adam’s apple was the most pronounced I’d ever seen and shifted around above his plaid-gingham shirt collar like a Ping-Pong ball in a shooting gallery. His voice was a quiet nasal baritone with a lot of patience on the edge. It sounded like the low growl of a house-trained leopard.

  “I’m reading an English newspaper and spoke English to the barman. So how did you mark me out as a German?”

  “You’re not a Tommy and you’re not American, that much is obvious from when you spoke. And the only way you’d be smoking Luckys would be if you were a German living in the American zone. Munich, probably. Frankfurt, maybe. The label on the inside of your jacket says Hugo Boss, so I guess they’ve finally been denazified. Good thing, too. That poor Fritz was just a tailor. Trying to make a living and stay alive. You might as well try to denazify the doormen at the Adlon.”

  “You should have been a cop.”

  He smiled. “Not really. I was just kidding. As a matter of fact I saw you checking in a while ago. Heard you speaking German to the other fellow. The one with the flashy American car. And but for the war I would have been a lot of things. Hungarian, probably. I guess I’m lucky to be Austrian, otherwise I’d be living under the damn communists and scratching my ass with a hammer and a sickle. The name is Georg Fischer. I’m in the tobacco business. And at the risk of sounding like a lousy commercial, here, friend, try one of these.”

  He pushed a packet of cigarettes along the marble-topped bar.

  “They’re Greek, or Turkish, depending on how you look at these things.”

  “Karelia. Sounds like they should come from the Baltic.”

  “Fortunately they don’t smoke that way. If there’s one thing I hate, it’s Russian smokes.” He blinked his lashless eyes slowly; they looked like smaller versions of his almost hairless skull.

  “That’s for sure.”

  “Karelia is the oldest and largest tobacco company in Greece. Based in Kalamata, down south. But the tobacco comes from the Black Sea coast. Sokhoum. The leaves are almost like those in a cigar. Sweet on the tongue and cool on the throat.”

  I lit one, liked it, and nodded my genuine appreciation. “Life’s full of surprises. The name’s Christof Ganz. And thanks.”

  “No, thank you. It’s certainly nice to speak a bit of German again, Herr Ganz. Sometimes that’s not such a good idea in this town. Not that you can blame the Greeks very much after the hell we inflicted on this damn country during the war. Hard to credit now. But I’m told that during the first year of the Nazi occupation there were children’s bodies lying on the sidewalk in front of this hotel. Can you imagine it?”

  “I’m trying not to. I try not to think about the war now if I can possibly avoid it. Besides, we’ve paid for it since, don’t you think? Or at least half of us have paid. The eastern half. I think they’re going to be paying for it for the rest of their lives.”

  “Could be you’re right.” He was staring straight ahead of him at a bar that contained so many bottles it looked like a cathedral organ. “I get a bit homesick sometimes.”

  “Sounds like you’ve been here a while.”

  �
��My friend, I’ve been here so long I’ve started smashing the crockery when I’m in a good mood.”

  “And when you’re in a bad mood?”

  “Who can be in a bad mood in a country like this? Maybe the Greeks are feckless. But in summer this is the best country in the world. And the women are very nice, too. Even the lookers.”

  I pushed the pack back along the bar.

  “Keep the pack,” he said. “I’ve a suitcase full of them in my room.”

  “You said you’re Austrian?”

  “From a village called Rohrbrunn, near the Styrian border in what used to be Hungary, so we used to call it Nádkút. But I lived in Berlin for a year or two. Before the war. So. What line of business are you in, Herr Ganz?”

  “Insurance.”

  “Selling it? Or paying it out?”

  “Neither, I hope. I’m a claims adjustor. Buy you a drink?”

  Fischer nodded at the barman. “Calvert on the rocks.”

  I ordered another gimlet.

  “Insurance is a nice respectable German business,” said Fischer. “We all need a business like that, where you can take a pause and draw breath, especially after everything that happened.”

  He didn’t say what but then he was Austrian so he didn’t have to say it; I knew what he meant. Any German would have known.

  “It’s only when there’s a pause that you can hear yourself think.”

  “Nothing much ever happens in the insurance business. I like that. It’s the only way you can get a handle on life.”

  “I know exactly what you mean. Tobacco’s a bit like that, too. Steady. Unspectacular. Unchanging. Harmless. Guilt-free. I mean, people are always going to smoke, right? My company is about to start exporting these cigarettes to Germany.”

  “You just made a customer.”

  “At least we are just as soon as the Greeks sign up for this new European Economic Community.”