Greeks Bearing Gifts

by Philip Kerr

  “Could have been worse. You might have been a lawyer. They say you’re never more than six feet from a lawyer.”

  “So now I do something different. Now I protect people, my people, in a less prophylactic way.”

  “Would it make any difference now if I said I’m sorry?”

  “Good God.” The woman next to me laughed and then covered her mouth. “That’s a surprise. I’m sorry but you’re the first German I’ve met since the war who ever said sorry. Everyone else says, ‘We didn’t know about the camps’ or ‘I was only obeying orders’ or ‘Terrible things happened to the Germans, too.’ But no one ever thinks to apologize. Why is that, do you think?”

  “An apology seems hardly adequate under the circumstances. Maybe that’s why we don’t say it more often.” I reached for my cigarettes and then remembered I’d given them to Arthur Meissner.

  “I wish that was true. But I’m not sure it is.”

  “Give us time. By the way, is there another reason we’re here? Or was it just George Averoff and a classical history lesson?”

  “Now I’m very glad you mentioned that. As you will have noticed, the stadium is open at one end, like a giant horseshoe. Anyone in one of those office buildings to the north might have a fine view of what was happening on the track, or indeed of the two of us sitting here now. Don’t you agree?”

  “Sure. And having seen Greek television I couldn’t blame anyone if they were watching us with greater interest.” I stood up for a moment and stared over the parapet; at the top, the stadium must have been twenty-five meters above ground level. “It’s lucky I’ve got a head for heights.”

  “My only interest in your head is what’s in it and if you can keep it on your shoulders. You see I have a man on one of those rooftops. And he’s not there for his own entertainment. He’s a trained marksman with a high-powered rifle who hates Germans even more than I do, if that were even possible. An American rifle with a telescopic sight, which he says has an effective range of about one thousand yards. I should estimate that it’s less than half of that to those rooftops, wouldn’t you agree? So by that standard it ought to be an easy shot for him.”

  I said nothing but I was suddenly feeling very uncomfortable, like I had a persistent itch on my scalp and all the Drene shampoo in the world wasn’t going to fix that. I sat down again, quickly. Now I really did want a cigarette.

  “Here’s how this works. If I decide that you have been anything less than totally cooperative, then I shall signal to my man and his spotter and—well, you can guess what will happen, can you not? I guarantee that you won’t leave this stadium alive, Herr Ganz.”

  “How do I know you’re telling the truth?”

  “You don’t. And let’s hope you never have to find out. It’s one of those fiendishly German questions that used to fascinate us Jews in the camps. Is there water in the showerheads, or is there not? Who knew for sure? The lies you told. The way you used language to obfuscate the truth. ‘Special treatment’ used to mean a lifesaving operation in a Swiss clinic; thanks to Germany it now means a bullet in the back of the head and a shallow grave in Ukraine. But in anticipation of your own question I brought you this small proof that I am indeed telling you the truth.”

  She handed me a rifle bullet. It was a .308 Winchester cartridge. And it was just the kind of round a sniper would have used over a distance like the one she’d described. I was trying to keep my head but the prospect of losing half of it meant I was already sweating profusely. I’d seen enough comrades hit by snipers in the trenches to know the fiendish damage a sniper could inflict.

  “I know, there’s still room for doubt,” she said. “But that’s as much proof as you’re going to get right now, short of my giving him the prearranged signal. At which point it really won’t matter, will it? This is why I’m wearing reds and browns, as a matter of fact. These are my old clothes. In case some of your blood and brains splash onto me.”

  She was smiling but I had the very distinct impression that she was perfectly serious, that she really had chosen clothes and even a color scheme that might not show a bit of arterial spray. I tried to match her cool manner but it was proving difficult.

  “Can I keep this bullet as a souvenir? It will make a nice change from an evil-eye key fob.”

  “Sure. Why not? But choose your next joke very carefully, Herr Ganz, because the next bullet won’t be quite as harmless as that one you’re holding in your hand.”

  “You know, suddenly I’m very glad that I apologized.”

  “So am I. It’s a good start for you, right enough. If you weren’t a German I might actually like you. But since you are—”

  “I take it you’re not from the International Olympic Committee.”

  “No. I’m not.”

  “And you can’t be Greek NIS. I doubt they’d murder me here in Athens. So then: You must be from the Institute. In Tel Aviv.”

  “You really are well informed. For an insurance man. Only before this you were a Berlin detective and you worked in Homicide—in the Murder Commission, which is to say you investigated murders instead of committing them, like so many of your colleagues. Many Jews met very grisly ends at the hands of German police battalions, did they not? But clearly Lieutenant Leventis has some faith in you, otherwise he would not have sanctioned you to negotiate a secret deal with Arthur Meissner. I’m reliably informed that he has done this because he has some hope of finding and arresting Alois Brunner. And that’s where I come in, because if anyone is going to arrest that bastard Brunner I want it to be me. He’s one of several major war criminals we’re looking to arrest.”

  “Are you sure you mean arrest? I say that as one who has just been informed there is a rifle pointed at my ear.”

  “Oh, very much arrest, yes. Have no fear, if he is here in Greece we’ll spirit Brunner to Israel for trial. A real trial in front of the whole world, with real lawyers and a real verdict as opposed to the shameful war crimes trials you’ve conducted in Germany. Because let’s face it, Herr Ganz, even the Nazis who were tried and convicted by Germany have had a pretty easy time of it. Why only a couple of months ago, I read an intelligence briefing that said an SS officer called Waldemar Klingelhöfer had been released in December 1956 from Landsberg Prison after serving just eight years of a death sentence imposed for the murder of almost two and half thousand Jews. No, Herr Ganz, the world owes us a proper trial. And why should you give a damn? Alois Brunner was an Austrian. Arguably not even that. His hometown is now in western Hungary, I believe. So then. We Jews want our pound of flesh. Thanks to William Shakespeare, it’s what the world expects of us anyway.”

  After everything she had said, I didn’t have to think too hard about my decision. There were several rooftops from which a sniper aiming at me would have had an easy shot. Perhaps it was my imagination but I fancied I saw the sun reflected from something on one of the more modern rooftops; it might have been a pair of binoculars or a sniper scope. The ruthless bandit queen had sold her story well, like a true intelligence officer, and I was convinced she was telling the truth. I had little doubt now that she was from the Institute for Intelligence and Special Operations in Israel, better known as the Ha’Mossad. I’d had dealings with Ha’Mossad before but only when I was someone else. If she’d known who I really was and some of the people with whom I’d hung around, she’d have dropped that handkerchief in a heartbeat.

  “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 wh
o’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 Directorate. But it is our belief that he is secretly working undercover for your own West German intelligence service, the BND, at the behest of a German government minister named Hans Globke, who might even be looking out for him. We’d like to get our hands on that bastard, too. But there’s not much chance of it happening. If Adenauer protects his state secretary and security chief as well as he protected his minister of refugees, Theodor Oberländer, then we’ve little chance of making anything stick to Hans Globke.”

  “What is it with you people?”

  The bandit queen bristled a little. “What people do you mean, Herr Ganz?”

  “Not Jews. Spies. There’s not one of you peekers knows how to walk in a straight line. Either way I now think I was wrong about all of that—about an illegal arms deal, I mean. I think it’s nothing to do with weapons. Merten and Witzel and perhaps Brunner were diving for something, all right, but it wasn’t archaic art treasures to put in a museum in Piraeus. Arthur Meissner told me a story in Averoff. And I’ll tell it to you now, if you like. Forgive me if I skip a few details but it’s hard to concentrate when a sniper has a bead on you.” I let out a breath and wiped my brow with the cuff of my shirt. I was sweating so much my coat was sticking to me like a butter wrapper. I felt like a man who’d been strapped into the electric chair.

  “I should have thought the opposite was true. It’s always been my experience that the prospect of being shot focuses the mind as sharply as if one was looking down a telescopic sight. Besides, Herr Ganz, you’re perfectly safe as long as I keep a firm grip of this red handkerchief.”

  “Well, just don’t sneeze. And don’t interrupt until I’m finished playing Homer. I wouldn’t like your rooftop pal to think you didn’t believe me. There are several holes in the rest of this story. You’ll have to forgive that on account of how I don’t want any extra holes in me.”

  “All right. Let’s hear it.”

  “According to Meissner, Alois Brunner was part of a corrupt syndicate that managed to rob Salonika’s Jews of hundreds of millions of dollars in gold and jewels in the spring of 1943. Also involved were Dieter Wisliceny and Adolf Eichmann. But the whole scheme was cooked up by Captain Max Merten, who was in charge of civilian affairs in the region. Merten made a nice friendly deal with the Jewish leaders in Salonika: that he would keep them from being deported in return for all of their hidden valuables. Fearing for their lives, the Jews paid up, only to find that they’d been double-crossed. With the help of Eichmann and Wisliceny, Merten secured the booty, and the treasure was loaded onto the Epeius. As soon as it sailed, the SS started to deport the city’s sixty thousand Jews.”

  “I’ve heard this story,” said the bandit queen impatiently. “The ship set sail, struck a mine, and sank off the northern coast of Crete, and all of the gold belonging to the Jews of Thessaloniki went to the bottom of the sea. A message to this effect was received by the Regia Marina—the Italian navy at the Salamis Naval Base, near Piraeus. And by the Kriegsmarine in Heraklion. It was all investigated and verified by the Hellenic navy immediately after the war.”

  “For all that that was worth,” I said.

  “Maybe. Well?”

  “Well, Meissner says different. Back in Salonika, Merten’s partners in the SD heard the bad news about the Epeius and began to smell a rat. Meissner says he overheard them airing their suspicions at the Villa Mehmet Kapanci; they then attempted to discover the true fate of the Epeius and found that yes, the ship had sunk, but not because it had hit a mine. Merten had double-crossed his partn
ers just like he’d double-crossed the city’s Jews and had arranged to have the ship scuttled in shallow water in the Messenian Gulf, somewhere off the Peloponnese coast, between the towns of Pylos and Kalamata.

  “The captain of the Epeius was a Greek named Kyriakos Lazaros; also on board was a German naval officer called Rainer Stückeln who Merten had cut in for a substantial share of the loot. Merten had previously arranged for a second ship, the Palamedes, to meet the lifeboat from the Epeius, and the Palamedes made its way to the western shore of Crete, where Lazaros and Stückeln and the crew transferred to another lifeboat and rowed ashore, for the sake of appearances, to report the loss of the Epeius.

  “Subsequently Stückeln murdered Lazaros and the first mate, to ensure their silence about the location of the Epeius; and then he, too, was killed, in a bombing raid in Crete, but only after he had told Merten exactly where the ship lay. But before the three SD men in Thessaloniki could do anything about it the end of the war intervened. Eichmann, Wisliceny, Brunner, and Merten soon found themselves back in Germany, arrested or on the run. Eichmann and Wisliceny and Brunner were all wanted men after the war; but Max Merten, the lowly army captain, was quickly released and has been living openly in Munich for the last ten years, no doubt waiting for the moment when he judged it was finally safe to come back to Greece and retrieve his pension pot.