by Alan Furst
Hauser, on a frosty day in mid-January, looked nothing like the photograph. He was heavily, powerfully built, with blunt features, hair worn Prussian-army style: near-shaved on the sides, an inch long on top. Hauser smoked cigars, an old habit from his days as a detective in Dusseldorf, an antidote to the smell of death, sweetish and sickening, that nobody ever got used to. But a policeman's lot was murder, suicide, and week-old corpses who'd died alone, so Hauser smoked cigars.
He'd been very good at his job in Dusseldorf, but as his family grew in the mid-1930s he needed more money. "You should come and work for us," a former colleague told him. "Join the SS, then work for the Gestapo, we are always keen to hire talented men." Hauser didn't much care for politics, he liked quiet evenings at home, and membership in the SS seemed to entail quite a bit of marching and singing, attendance at Nazi rallies, and riotous drinking in beer halls. Though none of this appealed to Hauser, he applied to the SS, was welcomed, and discovered that they didn't insist on marching and singing, they simply wanted his skills: his ability to discover crime, to investigate, and to hunt down criminals and arrest them. Working for the Gestapo, of course, the criminals were different from those he'd pursued in Dusseldorf. No longer burglars, or thieves, or murderers, they were instead Jews and Communists who broke the political laws of the new Nazi state. Laws that concerned flight and false documents, nonpayment of special taxes levied on Jews, and, in the case of the Communists, agitation and propaganda intended to undermine the state. To Hauser, it didn't matter; laws were laws--you simply had to learn how they worked--and those who broke them were criminals. Nothing could be simpler. By January of 1941 he'd risen quickly to the rank of Hauptsturmfuhrer, captain, and by his standards was paid very well indeed.
At nine-thirty that morning he stubbed out his cigar--an expensive cigar, for now he could afford such things--and slipped his arms into the sleeves of his overcoat, an expensive overcoat, so nice and warm. From his office on the third floor, he walked down to the Prinz-Albrechtstrasse, where his partner, a thin, rather bitter fellow called Matzig, waited behind the wheel of a Mercedes automobile. He had to work with Matzig, formerly a detective in Ulm, but didn't much care for him, a man who took his membership in the Nazi party quite seriously, reading, in fact studying, certain books and going endlessly to meetings. Oh well, to each his own, and he didn't see all that much of Matzig, working mostly by himself. But today they were going to make an arrest, a couple called Gruen, a lawyer and his wife, Jews, suspected of affiliation with Communists. His department in the Gestapo had a long list of such people, wealthy Berlin intellectuals for the most part, and was, at a steady pace, arresting and jailing them for interrogation, so that they might be persuaded to confess to their crimes, provide names of others, be tried, and imprisoned.
Matzig drove cautiously, much too slowly for Hauser's taste--the little shrimp was irritating in so many little ways--but soon enough they were in the garden district of Dahlem, one of Berlin's finest neighborhoods, where many on Hauser's list were resident. Matzig parked the car and, as they walked up the path to the Gruen doorway, Hauser instinctively made sure of his sidearm, a Walther PPK, the smaller version of the standard police pistol. Not that he'd need it. These arrests were easy, you had only to open the back door of the car and the criminals climbed in. Not like the old days: much calmer and, important to a family man like Hauser, much safer.
Matzig pressed the button by the door and they heard, from within the house, the sound of a chime.
A FRENCH KING
STORMS, IN JANUARY. SNOW COVERED THE MOUNTAIN VILLAGES. Down in Salonika, windswept rain came sheeting across the corniche, where the locals staggered along, struggling with their umbrellas and scowling each time a gust hit them. When, after work, Zannis returned to Santaroza Lane, a welcoming Melissa shook off a great spray that decorated the wall of the vestibule and the apartment was filled with the musky aroma of wet dog. Lately, Zannis was often alone there--Tasia Loukas didn't visit very often. She sensed in him a certain distraction and she was right. For, again and again, his imagination replayed the scene on the street in front of the Club de Salonique. Behind the window of a white Rolls-Royce, a vision, olive skin and golden hair, then, from perfect composure, the smile of an actress.
Idiot, he called himself. For indulging in such fantasies. But nothing new, he thought. Down through the endless halls of time, forever, there wasn't a man in the world who hadn't wanted what he'd never have. "Do you know Vasilou?" he asked Tasia. "And his wife, what's-her-name?"
"Demetria, you mean? The goddess?"
"Yes."
"I know him by sight, he doesn't mix with people like me. What do you want with him?"
"I was just wondering."
"Not about her. Were you, little boy?"
"No."
"Better not."
So, he thought, Demetria.
And schemed. Absurdly--Oh no, the house is on fire, I'll have to carry you out. Or, not so absurdly--A cocktail party? I'd love to.
Meanwhile, much realer schemes absorbed his day, schemes involving the Balkan railways and Turkish documents. As the Gruens left for Istanbul, six new refugees--a couple, a single man, a family of three--appeared at Salonika railway station. For reasons of economy, and because the management was sympathetic, Zannis housed them in the Tobacco Hotel, a weary but functional relic of the nineteenth century. There, gray and exhausted, they tried to recover from long days and nights on the escape route. Tried to recover from the slow brutal succession of torments experienced as Jews living in Nazi Germany. Seven years of it.
As for the final link in the chain, Ahmet Celebi had had his fill of the indifferent food at the Club de Salonique, and now Zannis dealt exclusively with Madam Urglu, nominally a deputy to the commercial attache, in fact the Turkish legation's intelligence officer. An intimidating presence, Madam Urglu, with her opaque, puffy face, her eyeglasses on a chain, and her--well, inquisitive nature. They met at a taverna owned by Greek refugees who'd come to Salonika in the great population exchange, thus called Smyrna Betrayed, where, in the winter damp, Madam Urglu was partial to the fish stew.
"So," she said, "this turns out to be an ongoing, um, project. One might as well call it an 'operation,' no?"
"It is," Zannis said. "Someone has to help these people."
"Can they not remain in Salonika?"
"They would be welcome, this city has always taken in refugees." Zannis tore a piece of bread in half. "But the Wehrmacht is in Roumania--maybe it won't stop there."
"We hope they don't go into Bulgaria. That puts them on our border."
"Only tourists in Bulgaria, right now," Zannis said. "Very fit young men, in pairs, with expensive cameras. Tourists with a passion for the ancient Bulgar culture, like airfields, and port facilities."
Madam Urglu smiled. "Such finesse," she said. "Our Teutonic friends." She retrieved a mussel from her stew, open perhaps a third of the way, stared at it for a moment, then set it beside her bowl. "But at least they're not in Greece. And the English are doing what they can." There were now sixty thousand British Commonwealth troops, divisions from Australia and New Zealand, on the island of Crete.
"We're grateful," Zannis said. "But we can't be sure how Hitler sees it. Provocation? Deterrent? And Mussolini must be screaming at him, because the RAF is bombing the Italians in Albania."
"Which we applaud. Unofficially, of course. And it isn't just a feint, I see they've put shore artillery in Salonika." She gestured with her head toward the waterfront, where long cannon were now facing the Aegean.
"They have."
"One wonders if more is coming."
"It's possible," Zannis said, preparing for the attack.
"Perhaps more guns. Or, even, an RAF squadron."
"We'd be happy to have them," Zannis said.
"You haven't heard?"
"I'm not told such things, Madam Urglu. I'm only a policeman."
"Oh, please. Don't go being coy, not with me."
"Truly, I don't know."
"But I'm sure you could find out. If you cared to."
"Not even that. I expect the military would be informed, but they're known to be secretive."
For just a bare instant, a look of irritation, compressed lips, darkened Madam Urglu's face. Then she said, "Naturally," and with some resignation added, "they are. Still, it would be something of an achievement, for me, to learn of such plans. One always wants to do well in one's job."
"And who doesn't?" Zannis said, meaning no offense taken.
"You would like to see me do well, wouldn't you?"
"You know I would."
"Then, maybe sometime, if you should discover ..."
"Understood," Zannis said. "It's not impossible."
"Ah me," Madam Urglu said, gently rueful, how the world goes around.
Zannis smiled, yes, it does. Then he said, "I'll need six visas, this time."
"Six!"
"Yes, it's more desperate every day, up north."
"My, my. Would five help you?"
"Madam Urglu, please."
"All right then, six. It's five hundred dollars each. I trust you have the money with you."
"It was four apiece, the last time."
"I know, but our friend in Istanbul ..."
"Why don't I give you two thousand, four hundred today, and I'll make up the remainder at our next meeting."
"Oh very well," she said. "If I must. I'll send the papers over when they're ready."
"Thank you, Madam Urglu," Zannis said, meaning it.
"Of course they could be free," she said. "It wouldn't take much. Really. It wouldn't."
Her face softened. She was--Zannis saw it--almost pleading. He nodded, sympathy in his eyes. "Yes," he said. "I know."
As to what exactly he knew, he didn't say. Perhaps that it was a hard machine, national interest, which would in time destroy both of them. She was, without doubt, perfectly aware that he would never spy on his British ally--no? Not that he couldn't--and Madam Urglu understood precisely his standing in the politics of Salonika--because he could. He'd seen, of all things, a memorandum from the traffic office of the police department. "Interruption of traffic planned to begin on 2 February, for important waterfront construction." A new municipal garden, perhaps? But he would not, could not, reveal such things, no matter how little it would mean for the Turks to know in advance about the additional armament. They'd see it, eventually. But eventually was the active word. Until then, well, one didn't spy on a faithful friend, it just wasn't done.
All that much.
The commissionaire--doorman, porter, messenger--at the Tobacco Hotel was a straight-backed old fellow who'd fought valiantly, in his day, against the Turkish gendarmerie. Very solemn and courtly, in the old-world manner. The assistant manager had found for him somewhere, probably in the markets, a doorman's overcoat from some bygone hotel. The epaulets were ragged--more than a few gold braids missing--three of the gold buttons had been replaced, and the original owner had obviously been taller and heavier than the present one. Still, it was the uniform he had, and he wore it with pride.
He was more than aware of the new guests, who spoke German, and who'd clearly had a hard time of it. One in particular touched his heart--she was thin as a rail, with iron-gray hair cut quite short. Likely an aristocrat, in the past, who never failed to give him a gratuity, a pitiful coin or two, when he went out to get her something to eat. Yes, pitiful, but the best she could do, and she never failed him.
Going to work one morning he took a detour through the market, and there was his young nephew, a sweet boy, working at a flower stall. They gossiped for a few minutes and then, as they parted, his nephew handed him a small bouquet and said, "Here, Uncle, take this. Brighten up your room." He said thank you and then, later, on a sudden impulse, took the bouquet up to the nice lady's room. "Please," he said, fixing the bouquet in a water glass. "To brighten up your room." Oh how she was moved, by this generous act. And he would not accept the coin she offered him.
Instead, they talked. Or at least she did. He would not sit down, but stood by the door as she told him her story. She came from Berlin, from a prominent family, at one time, but then the odious Hitler had risen to power and their circumstances declined quickly. Most of them had left, years earlier, and she finally had to follow them. But it had been a dreadful trip, into Hungary and down through the Balkans: unheated railway cars, almost nothing to eat, and police controls every day. Fortunately, some people had helped her, and for this she was grateful. She was no more explicit than that. He said he would hope for, on her behalf, a better future, and left with a nod of the head that suggested a bow. And the flowers did, indeed, brighten up the room.
Two days later, he had his weekly meeting with the British travel writer, not long resident in the city, called Escovil. They met, as usual, in one of the old Byzantine churches, and there the commissionaire passed along bits of gossip about the city and various doings at the hotel--Escovil was always curious about foreign guests. For this the commissionaire was paid a small stipend, money which, given his meagre salary, made all the difference in the way he lived.
Was it wrong? He didn't find it so. He would never have given information to a German, or even a Frenchman, but the British: that was another story. They had been good friends to Greece, as far back as the nineteenth century when the great English poet, Lordos Vyronos himself, Lord Byron, had come to fight in their wars of independence; and the British had fought and died in the hills of Macedonia, in 1917, where they'd faced the Bulgarian army.
That afternoon, the commissionare told the travel writer about the aristocratic German lady and her difficult passage to Salonika. Was she, Escovil wanted to know, the only one? No, there were a few others, and, he'd heard, more were expected. And a good thing too. In these times of war, people didn't travel so often, and there were too many empty rooms at the hotel. And these rooms were paid for in full, promptly, by the well-regarded police official himself, Constantine Zannis, from an old Salonika family.
Escape line!
Francis Escovil hurried back to the room he kept at the Pension Bastasini, where his predecessor in Salonika, Roxanne Brown, had stayed. There he wrote a report of his contact with the commissionaire, then drove his car out to a house on the Chalkidiki peninsula, where his assistant encrypted the message and sent it on to London by wireless/telegraph.
The following night, the Secret Intelligence Service wired back. And very excited they were! Could he get at least one name? One true name? There had been, for some years, contact with anti-Nazi Germans in Berlin: intellectuals, lawyers, Communist workers, and aristocrats; some Jewish, some not. Were the people using the escape line from that group? Or another, that they didn't know about? Were "the friends"--operatives of the Jewish agencies in Palestine--involved? Could this policeman Zannis be recruited? Bribed? Coerced? Intimidated? Find out more! Most urgent!
Escovil was, despite himself, almost amused. Hit a tender spot, have I? It reminded him of something he'd heard about Churchill, who, excited by some new discovery, would head his minutes, memoranda, with the phrase Action this day. Escovil's assistant was less amused; the five-digit groups of numbers took a long time to decrypt. "The hell have you done?" he grumbled. To the fishing village outside the cottage, he was known as Plato, a deaf-mute taken to be Escovil's intimate companion. In fact his name was Geary, formerly a corporal in the Irish Guards and a famous pub brawler. Once, to emphasize the nature of the companionship, Escovil had taken his hand as they walked through the village. This was a practice common enough between any and all Greek men, but Geary didn't like it and said, in an undertone, "Let go me fookin' hand, you damned poofter." To Escovil, a Greek woman radio operator would have been a more credible arrangement, but there weren't any such to be found, so "Plato" had to serve.
In any event, the message radioed back to London wasn't so long. He would try to learn a name. Zannis could be asked to help, but any sort of pressure wou
ldn't work.
On 18 January, a hand-carried envelope reached Zannis at his office. The message within was typewritten: Colonel Simonides, of the Royal Hellenic Army General Staff, requested his presence at a meeting of "certain residents of Salonika" at a house in the officers' quarters of the army base, east of the city. The meeting was to take place the following day, at six in the evening, and this invitation was, Zannis realized as he reread it, very close to an order. He took a taxi to the base, where he had to show his identity papers to a lieutenant, list in hand, at the guardhouse by the gate. He was then escorted to the residence of, apparently, a senior officer, with fine though well-worn furnishings. On entering a large parlor, Zannis saw that many of the guests had preceded him, to what looked like a social gathering: a number of Salonika's rich and powerful, some with their wives; the city's chief rabbi was there, as was Spiraki, head of the local State Security Bureau; and Vangelis, who waved to him from across the room. In one corner, a professor at the university was talking to a well-regarded journalist. There were, Zannis estimated, close to fifty people in the crowded room, sitting, standing, and drinking coffee, available at a table to one side of the doorway.
A uniformed officer--harsh, slightly reddened face, black mustache--tapped a spoon on a coffee cup to get their attention. As Zannis looked over the crowd he saw, obscured by two large guests, a flash of golden hair. Was Vasilou there? Of course, he would be. So then, was that who he thought it was? Could it be? His heart raced, and he started to move to a position where he could get a better view.