by Philip Kerr
“You’re Christof Ganz?”
“Yes.”
“I’m here because Papakyriakopoulos told me I had nothing to lose by meeting with you,” said Meissner, pocketing the pack for later. “But I can’t see that I’ve got anything much to gain either. After all, it’s not like you’re anyone important in this fucking country.”
Meissner spoke German with a slight Berlin accent—his father’s, probably, and very like my own.
“That’s rather the point, I think. I’m not with the police. And I’m not a member of the legal profession. I’m just a private citizen. I’m only here because Lieutenant Leventis has my balls in his hand and, because I used to be a cop in Berlin, he thinks that you might have something to tell me that you wouldn’t tell him. And perhaps since you can tell me in German I guess he believes you can speak in confidence. I don’t know. But you could even say I’m an honest broker. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, and all that shit.”
“So what does he want me to say to the good German?”
“I’ll come to that. What he wants me to say first is that he thinks you’re small fry.”
“Tell that to the judge.”
“That there are more important fish out there still to be caught.”
“You got that right, Fritz. I’ve been saying that for months, but no one ever listens. Look, for your information, I was just a translator. A mouth for hire. I never murdered anyone. And I never robbed anyone. And nor did my girlfriend, Eleni. Yes, I took a few bribes. Who didn’t? This is Greece. Everyone takes bribes in this fucking country. Some of those bribes I took were to bribe a few Germans, to help people, Jews included. This fellow Moses Natan, who says he bribed me to help his family. Well, I really did try to help him, but the way he talks now you’d think my help came with guarantees. If you were a cop, then you must know what that was like. Sometimes you tried and succeeded, but more often you tried and failed. None of the people I succeeded in helping have turned up to speak on my behalf. Just the ones I failed.
“As for those rape charges. They’re nonsense. The cops know that, too. The trouble is that I’m the only one they’ve ever managed to put on trial in this fucking country for what happened during the occupation. Me. The translator. You might as well charge some of those women who were chambermaids at the Grande Bretagne Hotel when the German High Command was living there. The barmen and the fucking porters, too. But the Greeks want someone to blame. And right now I’m the only scapegoat they can find. So they’re throwing the book at me. I’m charged with twelve thousand murders. Did you know that? Me, a man who’s never even held a gun. The way they’re talking I’m the man who told Hitler to invade Greece. As if the Germans would ever have listened to me. It’s a fucking joke. All those Nazi officers—Speidel, Student, Lanz, Felmy—they’re the ones who should be on trial here, not me.”
“Oh, I get that. And look, I won’t say I’m on your side. But I kind of am because getting you to talk might put me in good odor with Leventis. Helping you helps me. He can’t come out and say so to you in person—that would be political suicide for him, not to mention illegal—but he’s assured me that if you assist him, he’ll speak to Mr. Toussis.”
Toussis was the name of the man prosecuting Meissner’s case in court.
“Get the charges reduced,” I added. “Thrown out, maybe.”
“That’s all very well, but right now it’s possible I might be safer in here than I would be on the outside. Seriously, Ganz. I’m a dead man the minute I leave this place. I’ve got less chance of going back to my house in Elefsina than I have of becoming the Greek prime minister.”
“Safe conduct on a plane to Germany. I’ll even go with you myself. I want out of here as much as you do. How does that sound?”
“It sounds great. But look, here’s the biggest obstacle to making all that happen. I don’t know that I know anything very important. If I did I would have spilled my guts before now, believe me.”
“Leventis is after someone in particular. One of those big fish. A man called Alois Brunner. He was a captain in the SD. Remember him?”
“Yes. I could hardly forget him. No one could. Brunner was a memorable man, Herr Ganz. Him and Wisliceny and Eichmann. All driven by hatred of the Jews. But unlike Eichmann, Brunner was a real sadist. He liked inflicting pain. A couple of times I was present when Alois Brunner tortured a man at the Villa Mehmet Kapanci—that was the Gestapo headquarters on Vasilissis Olgas Avenue, in Thessaloniki. And clearly he enjoyed it. I didn’t want to be there, of course, but Brunner took out his gun and pressed it up against my eyeball and told me I could translate for him or I could bleed on the floor. Those were his exact words. Like I say, you don’t forget a man like Brunner. But I haven’t seen nor heard of him since the summer of 1943, thank God. And I wouldn’t have any idea of how to find him.”
“Brunner is back in Greece.”
“He wouldn’t dare. I don’t believe it. Says who?”
“Says me. I met him here in Athens, although I didn’t know it at the time. He’s using an assumed name.”
“Jesus. How about that? Now there’s someone who really does have a lot to answer for in this country. But for Brunner and Wisliceny, the Jews of Thessaloniki might still be alive. Almost sixty thousand of them died in Auschwitz. It was Brunner’s job to get them on the trains out of Salonika. Maybe that’s why Brunner feels it’s safe to come back. Because there’s no one around to identify him.”
“There’s you.”
“Sure. And tell Leventis I will identify him if it gets me out of here. No problem. Now all you have to do is find the bastard.”
“So what else can you tell me about Brunner?”
“Let’s see now. There was a hotel in Thessaloniki he liked, the Aegaeon. And another one where he took his Greek mistress, the Luxembourg. Her name was Tzeni, I think. Or Tonia. No, Tzeni. I’m not so sure he didn’t murder her before he left Greece. A couple of times I accompanied him to Athens and he stayed at the Xenias Melathron, on Jan Smuts. There was a restaurant he liked, too—the Kissos on Amerikis Street. I doubt he’d risk going back to Thessaloniki, but Athens would be different. He wasn’t here that often.” Meissner paused. “How did you know it was him?”
“Because Lieutenant Leventis showed me a photograph and I recognized him as the man who’d been talking to me earlier on in my hotel bar. Calls himself Fischer now, Georg Fischer, and he claims to be a tobacco salesman.”
“You say he spoke to you?”
“That’s right. He initiated a conversation when he realized I was German.”
“Was he just making conversation or did he want something? If he did, then make sure you give it to him. That man likes to kill people. And not just Jews.”
“So I hear. At first I figured it was just two Germans a long way from home—that kind of thing. But later on I realized he was looking for someone. He hoped I might lead him to the man. Because unwittingly I did, that someone is now dead.”
“Who?”
“Fellow named Siegfried Witzel.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He worked for a man named Max Merten.”
“Max Merten.” Meissner stood up and lit one of the cigarettes I’d given him. He walked around the room for a moment, nodding quietly to himself.
“That name mean something to you?”
“Oh yes.”
“What can you tell me about Max Merten?”
“Wait a minute. You said this Witzel fellow worked for Merten?”
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
“Now. This year. I think Merten’s in Greece, too.”
Meissner grinned. “Now it’s starting to make sense. Why Brunner would dare come back to Greece. Wisliceny is dead—hanged by the Czechs, I think. And Eichmann, well, he’s disappeared. In Brazil, if he knows what’s good for him. So that leaves Mer
ten and Brunner. It figures.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“People remember Eichmann, Wisliceny, and Brunner because they were all SD and they think all of the really bad men were in the SS because the SS were specifically tasked with killing the Jews, but the fact is Merten was in charge of the whole shooting match.”
“But he was just an army captain, wasn’t he?”
“True. Which would have made it a lot easier for him to stay beneath the radar. But Merten was the chief of military administration for the whole Salonika-Aegean theater. The Wehrmacht let him do what the fuck he wanted because they were mostly all in Athens and they didn’t give a shit about Thessaloniki. For one thing, there wasn’t a really good hotel like the GB. And for another, they preferred to keep their gentlemen’s consciences away from the SD myrmidons and what they had planned. But in Thessaloniki if you wanted a truck, a train, a ship, a building, you had to go through Merten. You wanted a hundred Jewish workers to build a road, you had to ask Merten. He was the boss of everything. Even Eichmann had to go through Max Merten. Now there’s someone who the Greeks should put on trial. The stories I could tell you about Max Merten. He lived like a king in Thessaloniki. And not just any king. Like Croesus, probably. He had a villa with a swimming pool, girls, cars, servants, the best food and wine. He even had his own cinema theater. And nobody bothered him.” Meissner shook his head bitterly. “But of course there’s only one real story about Max Merten. If you ask me that’s probably what your Greek lieutenant is really interested in. Putting Alois Brunner on trial is just a smokescreen. If Max Merten is in Greece, then there can be only one reason. And I daresay Alois Brunner knows that, too.”
THIRTY-SEVEN
–
I strolled out of the Averoff Prison door and through the main gate with some air under my blue suede Salamanders because prison always affected me that way. Whichever 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 first Olympic Games of the modern era might be held here in 1896. That Greek’s name was George Averoff.” She smiled a wily, gap-toothed smile. “I imagine his name is not unfamiliar to you, Herr Ganz.”
“I’ve heard of him. He seems to have been a very civic-minded sort of man, for a Greek. Although speaking for myself I’d much prefer to have my own name on a park bench or on a check made out to cash than on a prison or warship.”
“I’d forgotten about the warship. You’re well informed.”
“No, not even a bit. For example, I don’t even know who you are or what you want. Just for future reference it’s normal practice for the muscle with the gun to introduce the bully who’s trying to look tough.”
“It’s not important who I am,” she said.
“You underestimate yourself, lady.”
&n
bsp; “Better make sure you don’t make the same mistake. And in case you hadn’t already worked it out, I’m not a lady.”
“It’s probably not very polite of me but I can’t disagree with you there.”
“If you do it certainly won’t matter. That’s the great thing about this place. With sixty-six thousand empty seats we can make a scene and no one will even notice. More important than who I am is your conversation with Arthur Meissner at Averoff Prison. I’d like to know all of what he said. Every detail.”
“What’s it to you?”
“This will help to answer that question, perhaps,” she said, and pulling up the sleeve of her shirt she revealed a number tattooed on her forearm.
“It helps a little. But I need a little more to work with here. I’m German. Imagination was never my strong suit. I think I’ll have to see this picture in full Technicolor.”
“Very well. If you insist. Until 1943 I lived in Thessaloniki. My family were Sephardic Jews originally from Spain, who left there in 1492, after the Alhambra Decree ordering our expulsion. For four hundred and fifty years Jews like me and my family lived and prospered in Thessaloniki, and persecution seemed like a distant memory until July 1942 and the Black Sabbath, when the Germans arrived and rounded up all of the men in the city center. Ten thousand Jewish men of all ages were drafted for forced labor but first these men were obliged to prove that they were fit for work. This was not done for humanitarian reasons, of course, but so the SS could have some fun. After the long journey from Germany, they were bored and needed amusement. And what could be more amusing than a bit of old-fashioned Jew-baiting. So for the rest of the day, ten thousand Jewish men were made to do hard physical exercise, at gunpoint. Those who refused were beaten half to death or had Alsatian dogs set on them. It wasn’t cool like it is now; no, this was midsummer and the temperature was over thirty degrees centigrade. Many of them died, including my own grandfather. We didn’t know it then but he was lucky, for much worse was to come, and over the next few months almost sixty thousand Jews were deported to the death camps of Eastern Europe. Along with seventeen members of my family, I was sent to Auschwitz, which is where I learned to speak German. But subsequently I also learned this: that I was the only member of my family who survived and not because I was a doctor—the Nazis had no use for a doctor who was a Jew. No, I survived because of a simple clerical error. You were put to work if your age at the time of your arrival in Auschwitz was between sixteen and forty. At the time I was age forty-one and so I should have been gassed along with my mother, my grandmother, and my three elder sisters. But an SS clerk at Auschwitz had incorrectly noted my year of birth as 1912 instead of 1902, and that saved my life. Because of this mistake the camp authorities believed I was under forty and that I should be put to work in Block 24, which was their brothel. I’m alive but it has to be admitted that part of me died in Auschwitz. For example, I never practiced medicine again. The things I saw doctors—German doctors—do at Auschwitz convinced me that man was unworthy of modern medicine.”