Spies of the Balkans: A Novel

by Alan Furst

Up at his mother's house in the heights, the mood was quiet and determined--basically acceptance. They fussed over Melissa, fed her and set out her water bowl and blanket, and gave Zannis a heavy parcel wrapped in newspaper--sandwiches of roast lamb in pita bread--which he stowed in his knapsack atop the gun and the underwear. For some reason, this brought to mind a scene in Homer, dimly remembered from school, where one of the heroes prepares to go to war. Probably, Zannis thought, given some version of the lamb and pita, though that didn't get into the story. After he buckled the knapsack, his brother, mother, and grandmother each embraced him; then his grandmother pressed an Orthodox medal into his hand. "It saved your grandfather's life," she said. "Keep it with you always. You promise, Constantine?" He promised. Melissa sat by his side as he was saying a final good-bye, and, last thing before he went out the door, he bent over and she gave him one lick on the ear. She knew.

  On the corner, Zannis looked at his watch and shifted his feet. Well, he thought, if you had to go to war you might as well leave from the Via Egnatia. An ancient street, built first in the second century B.C. as a military road for the Roman Empire. It began as the Via Appia, the Appian Way, in Rome, went over to Brindisi, where one crossed the Adriatic to Albanian Durres and the road took the name Via Egnatia. Then it ran down to Salonika and went east, eventually reaching Byzantium--Constantinople. Thus it linked the two halves of the Byzantine Empire, Roman Catholic and Italian in the west, Eastern Orthodox and Greek in the east. Sixteen hundred years of it, until the Turks won a war.

  Zannis lit a cigarette and looked at his watch again, then saw a pair of headlights coming toward him down the street. A French-built staff car, old and boxy, a relic, with a blue-and-white Greek pennant flown from the whippy radio aerial. When the car drew up in front of him, a General Staff captain in the passenger seat opened the back door from inside. "Lieutenant Zannis," he said. Zannis saluted and climbed in; two other men in the backseat moved over and made room for him. It was smoky in the car, and rain dripped through a tear in the canvas top.

  The driver worked hard, winding up into the mountains on dark roads, the wiper brushing across the windshield. He was employed, he said, by the telephone company in Salonika, as a maintenance supervisor, "but I spent years working on the lines, relay stations, the whole system." The other two men simply gave their names and, still civilians, shook hands, though they were sergeants, and Zannis, who'd been assigned to a reserve unit as an officer in the police department, a lieutenant. The captain was a real serving captain, very smart-looking in his uniform, with a small mustache and eyeglasses. "I'm in signals," he said, "communications of all sorts," and let it go at that.

  For a time, the mountain roads were deserted; then, climbing a steep grade that curved sharply to the right, they came up behind an army truck. The headlights revealed soldiers, rifles between their knees, sitting on two benches that ran the length of the truck bed. One of them waved.

  "Evzones," the captain said. The word meant sharpshooters. Their ceremonial uniforms--white kilt and hat with tassel--were derived from the klephts who'd fought the Turks. In fact, once the ceremonial uniforms were changed for traditional battlefield dress, the Evzones were the elite combat units of the army. "I don't think," the captain said, "the Italians will be glad to see them coming."

  "Well, I am," said the man next to Zannis. In his late forties, he'd served in the army as a wireless/telegraph operator. "But that was years ago," he said. "Now I work in a pharmacy."

  The curve in the road seemed to go on forever, jagged walls of stone rising above them in silhouette against the night sky. When at last the road straightened out, the driver swung over into the left lane and tried to pass the crawling truck. A foot at a time, the staff car gained ground.

  "Can we do this?" the captain said.

  "Skata," the driver said. "My foot is on the floor."

  As they drew even with the cabin of the truck, its driver rolled down his window, turned and grinned at them, stuck his hand out and waved it forward with comic impatience: faster, faster. Zannis watched the horizon for headlights coming toward them but there was nothing out there. "A snail race," said the man next to Zannis. The driver of the army truck leaned out the window and shouted.

  The captain said, "What did he say?"

  "Move your ass," Zannis said.

  The captain laughed. "Poor old thing, she fought in France."

  They were rounding another curve before they finally got back into the right lane. "Can you tell us where we're going?" Zannis asked.

  "Can't be sure," the captain said. "Right now, we're supposed to be based in Trikkala, but that might change. As of five this afternoon, the Italians--the Alpini division, the mountain troops--have advanced ten miles into Greece. They are going for Janina, supported by a tank column, the center of a three-pronged attack which will cut the only rail line and the two main roads--that would mean no reinforcements from Macedonia. It's the plan you draw up in military school, however--" He paused as the staff car skidded and the driver swore and fought the wheel. When the car steadied he said, "However, I doubt they'll reach Janina, and likely not Trikkala."

  "Why not?" the wireless operator said.

  "Oh ... let's just say we knew they were coming. Not when, but we knew where and how. So we prepared ... a few things."

  The silence following that admission was appreciative. The wireless operator said, "Hunh," which meant something like that's the way. Then he said, "Fucking makaronades." Greek for macaronis, the national insult name for the Italians. There was a sneer in the expression, as though their ancient enemies, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Turks, were at least serious opponents, whereas the attack by Italy was somehow worthy of contempt. In August, off the island of Tenos, an Italian submarine had torpedoed the cruiser Helle, in harbor, in full view of the people on the island, and on a religious holiday. This was seen more as cowardice than aggression, a Roman Catholic attack on an Eastern Orthodox religious festival, thus especially dishonorable. Not that they hadn't disliked the Italians before that. They had, for centuries.

  A few minutes later, the driver stopped the car--there was nowhere to pull over--and, shoulder to shoulder, they all peed off the side of the mountain. It was a long way down, Zannis saw, a long, long way. As he rebuttoned his fly, the truck carrying the Evzones came chugging up the road, its engine laboring hard. When the driver saw the staff car, he swung around it and, passing close to the men standing at the edge of the mountain, and observing what occupied them, he blew a mighty blast on his klaxon horn, which echoed off the mountainside. Then it was the turn of the soldiers who, as their truck rumbled away, called out a variety of suggestions and insults, all of them obscene.

  The driver, standing next to Zannis, swore and said, "Now I'll have to pass them all over again."

  "Oh well," the captain said, giving himself a couple of shakes, "the fortunes of war."

  THE BACK DOOR TO HELL

  POOR MUSSOLINI.

  He, like everybody else in Europe who went to the movies, had seen the Pathe newsreels. First a title, in the local language, flashed on a black screen: GERMANY INVADES POLAND! Followed by combat footage, the Panzer tanks of the Wehrmacht charging across the Polish steppe, accompanied by dire and dramatic music. Loud music. And the words of a narrator with a rich, deep, theatrical voice. The effect was powerful--here was history being made, right before your eyes.

  Mussolini hated it, couldn't get the images out of his mind. For he sensed that whatever made Hitler look powerful made him look meagre, but, fifteen months later, here came a chance to put things right--he'd had more than enough of being mocked as the conqueror of ... Nice! Now he'd show the world who was who and what was what. Because he had tanks of his own, an armoured formation known as the Centauri Division, named for the mythic Greek figure called the centaur, half man, half horse. Shown always as the top of the man and the back of the horse, though there were those who suggested that, in the case of Mussolini's army, it should be the other way
round.

  Mussolini paced the rooms of his palace in Rome and brooded. Was the lightning attack known as Blitzkrieg the private property of Adolf Hitler? Oh no it wasn't! He would storm into Greece just as Hitler's Panzers had done in Poland. And his generals, whose politics carefully conformed with his own, encouraged him. The Centauri would smash through the vineyards and olive groves of southern Greece; nothing could stop them, because the Greek army hadn't a single tank, not one. Hah! He'd crush them!

  Alas, it was not to be. The problem was the geography of northern Greece, massive ranges of steep jagged mountains--after all, this was the Balkans, and "balkan" meant "mountain" in Turkish. So Mussolini's Blitzkrieg would have to attack down the narrow valleys, protected by Alpini troops occupying the heights above them. Which might have worked out but for the Evzones, one regiment of them opposing the Alpini division.

  The Greeks, contrary to Italian expectations, fought to the death.

  Took terrible casualties, but defeated the Alpini, who broke and fled back toward the Albanian border. Now the Greeks held the mountains and when the Centauri came roaring down the valleys two things happened. First, many of the tanks plunged into a massive ditch that had been dug in their path, often winding up on their backs, and second, those that escaped the ditch were subject to shelling from above, by short-barreled, high-wheeled mountain guns. These guns, accompanied by ammunition, had been hauled over the mountains by mules and then, when the mules collapsed and died of exhaustion, by men.

  As the first week in November drew to a close, it was clear that the Italian invasion had stalled. Mussolini raged, Mussolini fired generals, Greek reinforcements reached the mountain villages, and it began to snow. The unstoppable Axis had, for the first time, been stopped. And of this the world press took notice: headlines in boldface, everywhere in Europe. Which included Berlin, where these developments were viewed with, to put it mildly, considerable irritation. Meanwhile, poor Mussolini had once again been humiliated, and now the Greek army was poised to enter Albania.

  In Trikkala, an ancient town divided by a river, the snow-capped peaks of the Pindus Mountains were visible when the sun came out. Which, fortunately, the first week in November, it did not do. The sky stayed overcast, a solid mass of gray cloud that showered down an icy rain. The sky stayed overcast, and the Italian bomber pilots, at the airfields up in Albania, played cards in their barracks.

  The Salonika communications unit was at least indoors, having bivouacked in the local school along with other reservists. They'd stacked the chairs against the wall and slept on the floor. Dry, but bored. Each member of the unit had been armed for war by the issue of a blanket, a helmet, and a French Lebel rifle made in 1917. The captain took Zannis aside and said, "Ever fire one of these?"

  "No, never."

  "Too bad. It would be good for you to practice, but we can't spare the ammunition." He chambered a bullet, closed the bolt, and handed the weapon to Zannis. "It has a three-round tube. You work the bolt, look through the sight, find an Italian, and pull the trigger. It isn't complicated."

  There was, that first week, little enough to do. The General Staff was based in Athens, with a forward position in Janina. But if things went wrong at Janina they would have to serve as a relay station, take information coming in over the telephone--the lines ended at Trikkala--and transmit it to front-line officers by wireless/telegraph. "We are," the captain said, "simply a reserve unit. And let's hope it stays that way."

  As for Zannis, his liaison counterpart from the Yugoslav General Staff was apparently still trying to reach Trikkala. Where he, if and when he ever showed up, could join the unit in waiting around. Yugoslavia had not entered the war. In the past, Greeks and Serbs had been allies in the First Balkan War in 1912, and again in the Balkan campaigns against Germany, Bulgaria, and Turkey in the 1914 war, and greatly respected each other's abilities on the battlefield. But now, if Yugoslavia attacked Mussolini, it was well understood that Hitler would attack Yugoslavia, so Belgrade remained on alert, but the army had not mobilized.

  Meanwhile, they waited. Early one morning, Spyro, the pharmacist-turned-wireless-operator, sat at a teacher's desk and tapped out a message. He had been ordered to do this, to practice daily, and send one message every morning, to make sure the system worked. As Zannis watched, he sent and received, back and forth, while keeping a record on a scrap of paper. When he took off the headset, he smiled.

  "What's going on?" Zannis said.

  "This guy up in Metsovon ..." He handed Zannis the paper. "Here, take a look for yourself."

  TRIKKALA REPORTING 9 NOVEMBER.

  WHY DO YOU SEND ME MESSAGES?

  I AM ORDERED TO SEND ONCE A DAY.

  DON'T YOU KNOW WE'RE BUSY UP HERE?

  I HAVE TO FOLLOW ORDERS.

  WHAT SORT OF MAN ARE YOU?

  A SOLDIER.

  THEN COME UP HERE AND FIGHT.

  THAT WOULD BE FINE WITH ME.

  LOOKING FORWARD TO SEEING YOU.

  Every day it rained, and every day long lines of Italian prisoners moved through Trikkala, on their way to a POW camp somewhere south of the town. Zannis couldn't help feeling sorry for them, cold and wet and miserable, eyes down as they trudged past the school. When the columns appeared, the reservists would bring out food or cigarettes, whatever they could spare, for the exhausted Greek soldiers guarding the prisoners.

  Late one afternoon, Zannis walked along with one of the soldiers and gave him a chocolate bar he'd bought at the market. "How is it up there?" he said.

  "We try not to freeze," the soldier said. "It's gotten to a point where fighting's a relief."

  "A lot of fighting?"

  "Depends. Sometimes we advance, and they retreat. Every now and then they decide to fight, but, as you can see, much of the time they just surrender. Throw away their rifles and call out, 'Bella Grecia! Bella Grecia!'" When he said this, one of the prisoners turned to look at him.

  "Beautiful Greece?"

  The soldier shrugged and adjusted the rifle strap on his shoulder. "That's what they say."

  "What do they mean? That Greece is beautiful and they like it and they never wanted to fight us?"

  "Maybe so. But then, what the fuck are they doing down here?"

  "Mussolini sent them."

  The soldier nodded and said, "Then fuck him too." He marched on, tearing the paper off his chocolate bar and eating it slowly. When he was done he turned and waved to Zannis and called out, "Thank you!"

  By the second week in November, Greek forces had crossed the Albanian border and taken the important town of Koritsa, several small villages, and the port of Santi Quaranta, which meant that Greece's British ally could resupply the advance more efficiently. At the beginning of the war, they'd had to bring their ships into the port of Piraeus. Also, on Tuesday of that week, Zannis's Yugoslav counterpart showed up. He was accompanied by a corporal who carried, along with his knapsack, a metal suitcase of the sort used to transport a wireless/telegraph. The two of them stood there, dripping on the tiles just inside the doorway of the school.

  "Let's go find a taverna," Zannis said to the officer. "Your corporal can get himself settled in upstairs."

  Zannis led the way toward the main square, a waterproof groundcloth draped over his head and shoulders. The reservists had discovered that their overcoats, once soaked, never dried out, so they used what was available and walked around Trikkala looking like monks in green cowls.

  "I'm called Pavlic," the officer said. "Captain Pavlic. Reserve captain, anyhow."

  "Costa Zannis. Lieutenant Zannis, officially."

  They shook hands awkwardly as they walked. Zannis thought Pavlic was a few years older than he was, with a weatherbeaten face, sand-colored hair, and narrow eyes with deep crow's-feet at the corners, as though he'd spent his life at sea, perpetually on watch.

  "Your Greek is very good," Zannis said.

  "It should be. I grew up down here, in Volos; my mother was half Greek and my father worked for her fa
mily. I guess that's why I got this job." They walked for a time, then Pavlic said, "Sorry I'm so late, by the way. I was on a British freighter and we broke down--had to go into port for repairs."

  "You didn't miss anything, not too much happens around here."

  "Still, I'm supposed to report in, every day. We have another officer in Janina, and there's a big hat, a colonel, at your General Staff headquarters in Athens. It's all a formality, of course, unless we mobilize. And, believe me, we won't do any such thing."

  In the taverna, rough plank tables were crowded with local men and reservists, the air was dense with cigarette smoke and the smell of spilled retsina, and a fire of damp grapevine prunings crackled and sputtered on a clay hearth. It didn't provide much heat but it was a very loud fire, and comforting in its way. The boy who served drinks saw them standing there, rushed over and said, "Find a place to sit," but there was no table available so they stood at the bar. Zannis ordered two retsinas. "The retsina is good here," he said. "Local." When the drinks came, Zannis raised his glass. "To your health."

  "And to yours." When he'd had a sip, Pavlic said, "You're right, it is good. Where are you from?"

  "Salonika. I'm a policeman there."

  "No!"

  "Don't like the police?"

  "Hell, it isn't that, I'm one also."

  "You are? Really? Where?"

  "Zagreb."

  "Skata! A coincidence?"

  "Maybe your General Staff did it on purpose."

  "Oh, yes, of course you're right. You can trust a policeman."

  From Pavlic, a wry smile. "Most of the time," he said.

  Zannis laughed. "We do what we have to, it's true," he said. "Are you a detective, in Zagreb?"

  "I was, for twenty years, and I expect you know all about that. But now, the last year or so, I'm in charge of the cars, the motor pool."

  "Your preference?"

  "Not at all. It was a, how should I put this, it was a political transfer. The people who run the department, the commissioner and his friends at city hall, were reached."