by Alan Furst
She turned out the lamp and they undressed, she down to bra and panties while he, following her example, stayed in his underwear. She took his hand and led him to the bed, they crawled under the covers--exquisitely soft and fluffy in there--held each other, and fell asleep. For an hour. Then he woke, because she had unbuttoned the front of his underpants and was holding him in her hand.
Later, they really slept. And the next thing he knew she'd woken him by kissing him on the forehead. "What time is it?" she said, urgency in her voice.
He reached a hand toward the night table, found his watch, put on his glasses, and said, "Eight minutes after six."
"Something I want to see, so don't go back to sleep."
They waited until six-thirty; then she led him to the window. From here--standing naked, side by side and holding hands--they could look out over the span of the harbor. Down at the dock, the white ship sounded its horn, two blasts, and moved slowly out into the Aegean. "There it goes," she said.
They put it off--a certain conversation, the inevitable conversation. Were very determined to leave it in the future, because they meant to have as much of this love affair as they could. So they made love in the late afternoon--first one kind of seduction, then another--decided to see every movie in Salonika, and ate everything in sight. A taverna he knew, one she knew, why hold back? Not now, they wouldn't, and money no longer mattered. They ate spiced whipped feta, they ate calamari stuffed with cheese, they ate grilled octopus and grilled eggplant and mussels with rice pilaf and creamy thick yogurt with honey. Zannis didn't go to the office on the first day, he just didn't, and then he did it again. They walked along the sea, over to the amusement park in the Beschinar Gardens and rode the Ferris wheel. Of course, being out in the streets, there were traps laid for them: newspaper headlines in thick black print, posted on the kiosks. Reflexively, he started to comment on one of them but she put a finger to his lips and her eyes were fierce. So much warrior in Demetria, it surprised him. They weren't so different.
Finally, after two lost days, he went to the Via Egnatia on the third of April. No more than a raised eyebrow from Sibylla. "A certain Englishman has been frantic to reach you," she told him. "He called and called and then, yesterday morning, he showed up here. Escovil, is that the name? Anyhow, he had a valise with him, and he left you an envelope. On your desk."
Zannis sat in his chair and stared at it, an oversize yellow envelope, thick paper, you couldn't buy a more expensive envelope than that, he thought. Still, fancy as it was, only a paper envelope, and, with thumbs and forefingers, you could rip it in half. Sibylla was busy typing something, clackety-clack, what the hell had she found to do as the world came to an end? In his mind, he saw himself as he tore the envelope in two; then he opened it. A single sheet of notepaper, the message handwritten in Greek. "This is for 5 April; you won't be able to travel after that." No signature. And what was "this"? The hand of the gods, Zannis said to himself. Because it was a steamship ticket for, of all ships, the Bakir out of Galata, Istanbul, the same tramp steamer that had brought a German spy to Salonika last October. A Turkish ship, the ship of a neutral nation, thus safe from German submarines and bound, at 2100 hours on 5 April, for Alexandria, Egypt.
So now they would have to have the conversation. Zannis, the ticket folded up in the inside pocket of his jacket, walked slowly, as slowly as he could, back to the Lux Palace. It just wasn't far enough away, not at that moment it wasn't, and, too soon, he rode the ancient grilled elevator to the sixth floor. At his knock, Demetria swept the door wide and gestured with the hand of a stage magician. Presto! Believe your eyes if you can! She had bought at least two dozen vases, no, more, and filled each of them with flowers, red and yellow, white and blue, anemones, roses, carnations, an entire flower stall it seemed. The air was dense with aroma. "I took two hotel porters to the market," she said. "And I could have used another. We staggered."
Enchanting. Well, it was. He touched a finger to the steamship ticket in his pocket, but he couldn't show it to her now--not when she'd done all this. Demetria circled around him and slid his jacket down his arms. "Come sit with me on the sofa," she said. "And behold! Demetria's garden."
4 April. 7:20 A.M. Half awake, he reached out for her--he would stroke her awake, and he would do more than that. But he found only a warm place on her side of the bed, so opened one eye halfway. She was all business, getting dressed. "Where are you going?"
"To St. Cyril's, to the eight o'clock mass."
"Oh."
Soon he watched her go out the door, then fell back to a morning doze. But fifteen minutes later, she reappeared, looking grim and disappointed. "What happened?" he said.
"Jammed. Packed solid. I couldn't even get in the door."
Finally, at mid-morning, as they lazed around the suite, it was time. He'd let it go for a day, but now the moment had come; she would have only that day and the next--the Bakir was due to sail at nine in the evening--to prepare to leave. She was reading in an easy chair by the window--they'd found other uses for that chair--and he retrieved the ticket from his jacket and laid it on the table by her side.
"What's that, Costa?"
"Your steamship ticket."
She was silent for a time, then said, "When?"
"Tomorrow night."
"What makes you think I'll use it?"
"You must, Demetria."
"Oh? And you?"
"I have to stay."
She stared at the ticket. "I guess I knew it would be this way."
"What did you intend to do, if the war came here?"
"Stay in Salonika. Even if we lose, and the Germans take the city, it won't be so bad. They say Paris isn't bad."
"This isn't Paris. To the Germans, it's closer to Warsaw, and Warsaw is very bad. No food. No coal. But that isn't the worst of it. You are a very beautiful and desirable woman. When you walk down the street, every man turns his head, and such women are like ... like treasure, to an occupying army, and they take treasure."
"I can dye my hair."
From Zannis, a very rueful half-smile: as though that would matter.
She thought for a time, started to say something, thought better of it, then changed her mind again. "I thought you would protect me." From Vasilou, from the world.
"I would try, but ..." He left it there, then said, "And they will come after me, they have a score to settle with me, and these people settle their scores. So I will work against them, but I believe I'll have to go up to one of the mountain villages and fight from there. Not right away, the war could go on for six months, maybe more. Look what we did with the Italians."
"These are not Italians, Costa."
"No, they're not. So ..." He nodded toward the ticket. "It isn't forever. I'll find you, we'll be together again, no matter what it takes."
"I love you, Costa, with all my heart I love you, but I am Greek, and I know what goes on when we fight in the mountains." She reached out and gripped his hand. "As God wills," she said, "but I can only hope, to see you again." She looked away from him, out the window, then down at the floor. Finally, her eyes turned back to his. "I won't resist," she said quietly. "I'll go, go to"--she squinted at the ticket--"to Alexandria. Not Istanbul?"
"The ship is going to Alexandria."
"Won't I need a visa?"
"Too late. The Egyptians will give you one when you land; you'll have to pay for that but they'll do it."
She nodded, then let go of him and covered her eyes with her hands, as though she were very tired. "Just fuck this horrible world," she said.
And then, it all came apart.
They decided that Demetria would repack for the voyage: take what was valuable, then bring the rest out to the house in Kalamaria and say good-bye to her mother. Meanwhile, Zannis had several things to do, and they agreed to meet back at the hotel at three.
Zannis went first to his apartment, to retrieve the Walther--better to carry it, now. The weather had turned to gray skies and drizzling rain,
so the ladies were not out on their kitchen chairs, but one of them must have been watching at her window. Upstairs, he wandered around the apartment, coming slowly to understand that all was not as it should be. Had he been robbed? He didn't think so; he could find nothing missing. Still, the door to the armoire was ajar, had he left it like that? Usually he didn't. He tried to remember, but that night was a blur; he'd hurried away when Demetria called, so ... But then, a chair was pushed up close to the table--a neat and proper position for a chair, but not its usual place.
As he poked around, he heard a hesitant knock at the door. It was one of his neighbors. He asked her in, but she remained on the landing and said, "I just wanted to tell you that some friends of yours came to see you yesterday."
"They did?"
"Yes. Two men, well dressed; they didn't look like thieves. We saw them go into the house, and my friend on the first floor wasn't home, so they must have been ... waiting for you. That's what we decided."
"How long were they here?"
"An hour? Maybe a little less."
"Any idea who they were?"
"No, not really. I don't think they were Greek, though."
"You ... overheard them speak?"
"It's not that, they didn't say anything, just ... something about them. I'm probably wrong, perhaps they came from Athens."
Zannis thanked her, then retrieved his Walther and ammunition and headed for the Via Egnatia. They're already here, he thought. And I must be high on their list.
At the office, he hung up his coat and left his umbrella open so it would dry. Then he said, "I think today's the day, Sibylla. For getting rid of the files."
She agreed. "It's any time now, the Yugoslavs have mobilized."
"I haven't seen the papers."
"Well, all the news is bad. The German army is now at the border between Hungary and Yugoslavia. Though the Hungarians, according to the newspaper, have issued a protest."
"To who?"
"I don't know, maybe just to the world, in general." She started to go back to work, then stopped. "Oh, before I forget, two men showed up here yesterday, asking for you."
"Who were they?"
"Greek-speaking foreigners. Polite enough. Were you expecting them?"
"No."
"What if they return?"
"You know nothing about me, get rid of them."
It took, for Sibylla to understand, only a beat or two. Then she said, "Germans? Already?"
Zannis nodded. "It doesn't matter," he said. "And we have work to do." He began to take his five-by-eight card files out of the shoebox. "We'll have to burn the dossiers as well," he said.
"You read the name," Sibylla said, "and I'll pull them."
He looked at the first card--ABRAVIAN, Alexandre, General Manager, Shell Petroleum Refinery--and said, "Abravian."
In time, they carried the first load down the stairs. Out in the tiny courtyard, enclosed by high walls, the sound of the rain pattering on the stone block had a strange depth to it, perhaps an echo. One of the rusty old barrels Zannis had chosen was half full, so he decided to use the other one. He crumpled up pages from Sibylla's newspaper and stuffed them in the bottom, knelt, and used a rusted-through slit to start the fire. Burning papers, that ancient tradition of invaded cities, turned out to be something of an art--best to drop them in a few at a time so you didn't starve the fire of oxygen. A grayish-white smoke rose into the sky, along with blackened flakes of ash that floated back down into the puddles on the floor of the courtyard.
It took more than an hour, Sibylla working with mouth set in a grim line. She was very angry--this had been her work and she had done it with care and precision--and they didn't converse, beyond the few words necessary to people who are working together, because there was nothing to say.
*
When they were done, they returned to the office. Zannis stayed for a time, making sure there was nothing there for the Germans to exploit, then put on his coat. As he was doing up the buttons, the telephone rang and Sibylla answered. "It's for you," she said.
"Who is it?" He didn't want to be late getting back to the hotel.
"The commissioner's secretary. I think you'd better talk to her."
Zannis took the phone and said, "Yes?"
The voice on the other end was strained, and barely under control--somewhere between duty and sorrow. "I'm afraid I have bad news for you. Commissioner Vangelis has died, by his own hand. At one-thirty this afternoon, he used his service revolver."
She waited, but Zannis couldn't speak.
"He left," she took a deep breath, "several notes, there's one for you. You're welcome to come over here and pick it up, or I can read it to you now."
"You can read it," Zannis said.
"'Dear Costa: you have been a godson to me, and a good one. I have known, over the years, every sort of evil, but I do not choose to tolerate the evil that is coming to us now, so I am leaving before it arrives. As for you, you must go away, for this is not the time and not the place to give up your life.' And he signs it, 'Vangelis.' Shall I keep the note for you?"
After a moment, Zannis said, "Yes, I'll come by and pick it up. Tomorrow. What about the family?"
"They've been told."
"I'm sorry," he said. "He was--"
She cut him off and said, "There will be a service, we don't know where, but I'll let you know. And now, I have other calls to make."
"Yes, of course, I understand," Zannis said and hung up the phone.
5 April. 8:20 p.m. The captain of the tramp steamer Bakir had six passengers for Alexandria and no empty cabins, so he showed them to the wardroom. At least they could share the battered couches for the two-day trip across the Mediterranean--it was the best he could do and he knew it really didn't matter. The other five passengers--an army officer, a naval officer, and three civilians--had obtained passage, Zannis suspected, the same way he had: by means of the discreet yellow envelope. One of the civilians was prosperously fat, with a pencil-thin mustache, very much the Levantine, all he needed was a tarboosh. The second, thin and stooped, might have been a university professor--of some arcane discipline--while the third was not unlike Zannis; well-built, watchful, and reserved. They spoke a little, the man knew who Zannis was and had worked, he said, for Spiraki. And where was Spiraki? Nobody knew. He said. And if they were surprised to find that a woman, a woman like Demetria, was joining them, they did not show it. What the British did, they did, they had their reasons, and here we all are.
At twenty minutes to nine, the captain appeared in the wardroom. Zannis stood up--if the ship was about to sail, he had to get off. "You can sit back down," the captain said. "We're not going anywhere. Not tonight we're not, problems in the engine room. We'll get it fixed by about eight, tomorrow morning, so, if you and your wife, or any of you, want to spend the night ashore, you may do that."
Zannis and Demetria looked at each other, then Zannis gestured toward the passageway. He picked up Demetria's two suitcases, one of which was very heavy. "Silver," she'd told him when he asked. "Something you can always sell."
Back at the Lux Palace, Suite 601 had not been taken, so Zannis and Demetria rode back up on the elevator. The flowers were gone. "Likely the maids took them home," Demetria said. "I hope so, anyhow."
"Are you hungry?"
"No. The opposite."
"Me too."
"I was ready to leave," she said. "Now this."
Zannis sat on the sofa. "Well, a few more hours together," he said. He certainly didn't regret it.
She managed a smile, weak, but a smile. Without saying anything, they agreed that the idea of making love one last time did not appeal to either of them, not at that moment it didn't. They talked for a while, and eventually undressed and tried to sleep, without much success, lying silent in the darkened room. And they were still awake at dawn, as early light turned the clouds to pearl gray, when the first bombs fell on Salonika.
The first one hit somewhere near the hotel--they c
ould feel the explosion and the sound was deafening--and sent Zannis rolling onto the floor, pulling the blankets on top of him. He struggled to his knees and looking across the bed saw Demetria--the same thing had happened to her--staring back at him. He got to his feet and headed for the window, which had cracked from corner to corner. She was immediately behind him, her arms wrapped around his chest, her body pressed against his back. Down on the waterfront he was able, after searching the line of docked ships, to find the Bakir. She was tilted awry, with a column of heavy black smoke rising from the foredeck. "Can you see the Bakir?" he said.
She looked over his shoulder. "Which one is it?"
"The one on fire. I mean, the second one on fire, in the middle."
"What should we do?"
Toward the eastern end of the city, the smoke and thunder of an explosion; then, two seconds later, another one, closer, then, two seconds, another, each one marching toward them as bombs tumbled down from the clouds. Her arms tightened around him--all they could do was watch and, silently, count. Three blocks away, the roof of a building flashed and a wall fell into the street. One second, two. But there it stopped. From the far end of the corniche, long strings of orange tracer rounds floated upward, aimed at a dive-bomber headed directly at the battery. The gunners didn't stop, the pilot didn't pull up, and the plane caught fire just before it crashed into the guns.
After that, silence. Well to the east, where the oil storage tanks were located, the rolling black smoke of burning oil had climbed high into the air. "The railway station," Zannis said. "Our only chance." They dressed quickly and took the stairs down to the first floor, Zannis carrying Demetria's suitcases.
In the lobby, the hotel staff and a few guests were gathered around a radio. "The Germans have set Belgrade on fire," the bell captain said, "and they're attacking Fort Rupel with paratroops, but the fort still holds."
The Rupel Pass, Zannis thought, fifty miles north of Salonika. He'd found photographs of the fort carried by a German spy in the Albala spice warehouse, back in October. Now, if the Wehrmacht broke through, they'd be in the city in a few days. "Is there a train this morning?" Zannis said. "Headed east?"