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DR. PALANDIOS HAD BEEN a wry and witty correspondent, abreast of his own times as well as the past. And he lived exceedingly well, I realized the moment the apartment door was opened to me. Madame Palandios came at once, a jeweled hand extended. She was past middle-age, superbly groomed and, her dark eyes set off by the crown of white hair, one suspected she was more nearly beautiful now than at any other time in her life. Wealth and taste, I thought, the carpet soft beneath my feet. I promised myself a better look at the paintings later, and followed my hostess through to where the other guests were having drinks on the balcony. To me she spoke English with an accent which was not Greek as I had known it, to the others French. I suspected she would find my Greek common and wonder how I had come to acquire it. I resolved to keep it to myself.
Palandios, a bald gnome of a man in his sixties, shook my hand warmly and introduced me around. It was not until dinner that I came somewhat to know these people, but it was obvious from the start that our hostess had a knack of mixing guests who were not likely to come together otherwise.
Looking down on the city—it seemed like the whole of Athens, the lights of its great avenues strung like pearls, Lykabettos and the Acropolis rising and disappearing with the alternate crescendo and diminuendo of light like magic islands in the sea of night—I complimented my host on his home and its vista.
“Not bad for a pedant, eh?” He pulled me down to where he could speak in mock confidence. “A rich wife. Every scholar should have one.”
“At least one,” I said.
The talk was small and pleasant, the drinks large so that even I went in to dinner with a feeling of companionable ease.
I was seated near our host between a female novelist named Elsa Storme and the wife of the Greek Minister of Education, a cozy, plump little mother who laid her hand on mine every time she spoke. The novelist’s husband, Shepherd Storme—who would be likely to forget that name?—sat across the table and down, an ascetic Englishman whose specialty was seals and signets.
Dr. Palandios himself was an authority on Byron sources. He acquired a dubious fame some years ago for having perpetrated a deliberate hoax: he suggested to a gullible newspaper reporter that the famous Byron autobiography had not been destroyed at all and that he knew where it was. He estimated its value at a million dollars. Shortly after the story was published and before the retraction appeared—attributed to misinterpretation of language: he had meant to say that if the manuscript were extant—three hitherto undisclosed caches of Byron letters became available. I asked him about these letters.
“Every last piece went to where the money is, America.” He snorted his disapproval. What could he have expected with the device he had used to flush them? “But better there than in a mouldy trunk,” he added. “What put you onto him, Eakins?”
“My mother,” I said without hesitation. It was true. One of my most vivid childhood memories was of her nightly reading to me from Childe Harold and Don Juan, the latter of which, I presently realized, she was censoring heavily. The most omnivorous of my adolescent reading was tracking down the omissions.
Palandios raised his eyes to the ceiling. “If I knew you better I should inquire about your father.”
“And if I knew you better, sir, I should tell you.”
He laughed heartily.
At that point Mrs. Storme said, “Do you think Byron was a homosexual?”
It served us right for having talked across her. Her husband lifted his wine glass to the light and studied it.
“Why not? He was everything else,” I said lightly.
“I think it’s important that we know,” she said.
I was defeated, but our host, a mischievous lilt in his voice, said, “Have you ever dreamt of Byron, Mrs. Storme?”
“Good God, no!”
“Ah, but that’s a pity. Many women have, I’m told, and they all know the answer.”
The lady colored. Palandios patted her hand and signaled for more wine.
Her husband, still turning the glass in his hand, said, “It was his money the Greeks wanted, wasn’t it? Money and arms. That’s all they’ve ever wanted from Britain, more’s the pity. When it came to government they turned to the French for their law.”
“Well! Would we not have been the great fools to turn to the French for money?” Palandios said.
At table also were the Minister of Education, who sat to the right of our hostess, a Greek lawyer named Constantin Helmi, and a stunning young actress, Elena Kondylis, who seemed wasted seated between the lawyer and the British antiquarian. The male-dominated conversation drifted to the place of law in Greek life, the paucity of it in the ancient civilizations, and its prevalence under the litigious Romans. The law in Greece was not a subject on which I cared to comment.
I turned to Mrs. Storme and said with what I thought was charming humility, “I’m an ill-read fellow. What kind of novels do you write?”
“Gothic,” she said, and popped a biscuit into her mouth.
The Minister’s wife told me about the classes in needlework she conducted for marriageable young ladies. The Queen had complimented her on the work her girls were doing.
I became aware of a turn in the main conversation, catching Storme’s words: “But America would not allow you to go Communist.” He said it with an air of smugness as though nothing America did could alter the destiny of Britain.
“Which might possibly expedite things for the left,” our host suggested. “The Americans—forgive me, Eakins—are precipitate, not to say paranoiac. They interpret a growl in the belly as an imminent revolution, and set about at once to build up the counterweights. This creates an even greater disturbance in the balance, wouldn’t you say?”
Since he had deferred to me, I ventured, “And yet we saved you from Communism after the war.”
“My dear man,” the Englishman said, “we had a hand in that too. It was our chaps who put them down right here in Athens, standing at the dike as it were until you could get here.”
I began to realize why his wife had gone Gothic.
“There were a few Greeks involved also,” the Minister said dryly.
“There were,” Palandios said, “on both sides. Markos may have been a Communist, but he was first a Greek.”
“One would have thought him a patriot according to some of the press,” Storme said.
I wondered if I dared turn the discussion to focus attention on the Webb case. Was my self-control sufficient? It had to be. I said, “It would be interesting to know how such a bias—if there was one—developed. I am thinking of what happened to the correspondent who did reach Markos.”
“Alexander Webb, you mean?” Palandios said. I nodded. “There was a time my good wife forbade the subject at her dinner table; it never failed to start an argument.”
“I still forbid it,” Madame said, but smiling.
At that point Elsa Storme kept the subject open in probably the only way it could have been sustained over our hostess’s wish, and in a way of startling relevance to me. She said, “We met Webb’s widow a few days ago in Corfu. She’s the mistress of someone socially prominent. I’ve forgotten whom.”
Shepherd Storme cleared his throat.
The actress, who had spoken little until then, said, “I have met her also. She is a friend of the Princess Royal.”
“The German?” said Palandios. “I am not surprised.”
A murmur of disapproval ran round the table, the gist being that it was the Communist line to so refer to the Princess Royal.
“Was Webb’s wife German?” I asked. I knew this was not so, that Margaret was in fact English, but I could think of no other ruse to keep him on the subject.
“No, no. I’m trying to think back.” He appealed to his wife. “Helena, what do you know about her?”
“Only what one sees in the newspapers. She has always been active in charities. A beautiful woman.”
“Wasn’t there gossip at the time about her and the
American who went north with her husband?” the Minister’s wife asked.
Palandios brushed it aside: “Gossip, but no one believed it. It wasn’t that.”
I was stunned: my whole prosecution had been based on that theme and he could dismiss it as having been believed by no one.
“Something not generally known,” the Education Minister put in, “but I remember crediting the source at the time, when the boy was on trial—what the devil was his name, the American? It doesn’t matter, but Webb’s wife supposedly went to the royal family on his behalf. Is that what you had in mind, Doctor?”
Palandios shook his head. “Something else, something else.”
“I remember thinking her much younger than her husband on the occasion I met them together,” Madame Palandios went on. “It was at a relief ball sponsored by the foreign press, I think….”
Dear God, I thought, she might next conjure the memory of my dancing that night with Margaret. I drew back in my chair so that the Minister’s wife would obstruct her view of me. But she had not the slightest association. “I am never able to judge the age of Americans,” she added.
Oddly, I had not been able to judge Webb’s age either. Later I knew him to have been fifty-two at the time of his death.
“Mrs. Webb is British,” the novelist said, “and she is still beautiful.” She spoke directly to the actress: “How old do you suppose she is now?”
The actress rocked her pretty head back and forth and puckered her lips; if she knew she would not tell.
“One of the bizarre stories I heard about the case some time ago,” the Minister said, “was that Webb’s death had nothing to do with our troubles at all, that it could be laid to the British Secret Service, something to do with Iranian oil.”
“That’s it!” Palandios cried. “It comes back to me now: Webb’s wife was the daughter of one of the directors of the Anglo-Persian Oil Company. She was down there during the Ajerbaijan revolt, taken hostage by the revolutionaries. I’m not sure ‘hostage’ is the word. They alleged her to have been friendly with the German agents before Britain and the Americans occupied Iran. They held her for I don’t know how long, and if I’m not mistaken that’s how she met Webb. He was covering the Ajerbaijan business and became the intermediary in her release.”
He was not mistaken. I had not known this story when I met the Webbs, but I learned it afterwards in reading everything I could find by and about Webb. The collaborationist charge against Margaret had not gained credence in Allied circles, and obviously not with Webb since he subsequently married her, and he was no friend of the Nazis.
“Curious that he, an American, would be chosen as go-between,” the Minister said. “Unlike Greece during our trouble, that part of Iran was occupied by the Russian army. What I mean to say is: Webb would have needed to have some interesting connections, wouldn’t you say?”
“Which is nothing against him,” Palandios, an emphatic liberal, said. “A good reporter needs an open mind. He was critical of both sides in our affair, I recall.”
“But rather more of the government, you must admit, Doctor,” the lawyer Helmi said, entering this phase of the conversation for the first time.
“Who knows what he would have said of the rebels if he had lived to publish? Much was made at the time of a journal he was supposed to have had on him at the time of his death. What happened to it? It was never made clear at the trial.” Palandios took off his glasses and gestured with them for emphasis. “If anything was made clear at that trial.”
I sat, tense and straightened as though confined in a box. Even my scalp felt tight.
“As a lawyer,” Helmi said, “I would not give ten drachmas for the testimony at that trial.”
He waited, enjoying the effect his remark produced: the silent and aggressive attention of all present. That’s a bit of fancy on my part now. The words had such impact on me I am unqualified to say what the effect was on the others. But the fact was everyone did attend him, and it was also a fact that several people present had known enough of the case to remember details with increasing vividness as their memories were primed.
“I’ve had occasion to study it recently,” he went on. “As you know, I’m counsel for the newspaper, Messenger. They proposed to do a series on our troubles. I think you may find my deductions interesting.” He took a cigar from his pocket. To Madame Palandios he said, “May I smoke?”
“Please. Anyone who wishes. We shall have coffee on the terrace.”
Snipping the tip from the cigar, Helmi said, “I should tell you that if anything I say here were to appear in the public press, I would immediately say I had been misquoted.”
“It works splendidly,” Palandios said. “I have used the technique. Excuse me. Please go on, Helmi.”
“You will recall there was a Greek convicted as accessory to the murder. Keep that in mind. Now: There were two… what I shall call ‘escapes’ in the affair that defy all plausibility except in the context of civil war and one which involved forces outside the country on both sides. The first was Webb’s departure from Athens. He chose to seem to escape, taking with him the young American friend of his wife’s, named Emory….” Everyone nodded, remembering finally the name of the convicted murderer. “A curious, curious companion. Now there was no reason Webb should not have left Greece entirely and re-entered in guerrilla-held territory, say via Yugoslavia or Albania. One wonders if he was not proposing to dramatize afterwards the government restraint of the foreign press. In any case, he chose or was persuaded to leave from Athens, later picking up the Greek, Stephanou, as his liaison and guide. Stephanou testified that it was on Markos’ invitation. One wonders. Markos was a totally insular man. Stephanou was later convicted as accessory to the murder. Webb’s departure, I am now convinced, was made with the foreknowledge of our Government Intelligence, and, I believe, British and American Intelligence as well. Stephanou was possibly a double agent, who in the end was abandoned by both sides.”
There was a pause, Helmi lighting his cigar, everyone else evaluating what he said in terms of their own memory of the case. The idea of Stephanou’s having been a double agent seemed very plausible indeed.
Palandios said, “Stephanou went to prison, didn’t he? Is he still alive?”
“After a fashion, I understand,” Helmi said. “I should suppose he has long ago said all he is going to say about the case. A reporter was permitted to visit him at Averoff Prison. Stephanou refused to talk. They say he is like a dead man looking for a grave.”
Averoff: I would remember the name.
Madame Palandios shook her head. “The Greeks are cruel. We learned it from the Turks.”
“I sometimes wonder,” her husband said quietly. “Apt pupils are likely to outstrip their masters. Did these numerous Intelligences know that Webb was going to his death?”
“It is the only explanation, my dear Palandios, that to me satisfactorily accounts for the spectacular escape the night before his scheduled execution of the man convicted of Webb’s murder,” Helmi said.
“Escape to where?” I asked.
“That is the question, isn’t it? My own suspicion is that American Intelligence said, ‘He’s ours, but go ahead and try him since you can make a case. Make a good show of it. Then turn him over to us and we’ll take care of him.’ If I am right, he was an active agent in the whole affair. He walks through the case like a lamb to slaughter—except that he was not slaughtered, don’t you see?”
“I don’t see,” I said and then hastily added, “not that it matters.”
“You are quite right. It must be boring to those of you not familiar with the case.”
“It’s not boring at all,” my novelist friend said imperiously. “I want to hear the rest. I shall not leave this table until I do!”
Palandios patted her hand again and then said carefully to Helmi, “The trial then was a sham, a deliberately staged cover-up?”
“I wouldn’t say that. Not the trial itself. The evidence
before being entered was… manipulated, shaven down or blown up. The thing that stands out now was the lack of corroboration. Yet, given the times and circumstances—you must remember that Ioannina was within striking distance by the guerrillas—I believe judges, jury, even the prosecution were convinced of their own fairness.”
“And that they were trying the right man?” I said.
Some of those at the table looked at me blankly and I realized that I should not have said it.
Helmi, relighting his cigar which had gone out, murmured, “Oh, yes. There was no reason to doubt that.”
“That the American murdered Webb?”
He nodded. “Mind, it’s my own deduction entirely.”
“Then it must also be your deduction,” Dr. Palandios said slowly, “that Alexander Webb was an agent—a Soviet agent?”
“It is my deduction that his government thought this was so. Yes.”
“And connived at his murder? Ordered it, in fact?” I said. My emotion was too strong not to show in my face. I probably went white. I’m told I do under stress.
But Helmi laughed and blew a draft of smoke between us, which he fanned away, apologizing to the ladies. “The naïveté of scholars is very amusing. You are shocked, Mr. Eakins?”
Shocked was not the word. His logic could account as nothing else for my “miraculous” escape. But I had not been an agent of my government. Nor did I give a moment’s credence to the possibility that Alexander Webb had been a Soviet agent. “I suppose I am shocked,” I murmured.
“One would want to know a great deal more about Webb before subscribing to your theory,” Palandios said. “But it’s interesting, most interesting. One wonders about that journal of his….”
“If I am right it was probably in the hands of American Intelligence before ever Emory went to trial.”
“If you are right,” Palandios repeated. “I suppose you are, but it’s a pity—I’m such an excellent hand at turning up old manuscripts. But I dare say this is not the same.”
Enemy and Brother Page 3