by Alan Furst
The bell captain looked at his watch. "It's gone. Should have left twenty minutes ago but who knows, this morning. Still, if they can run they will, that's how it is with us."
Zannis picked up Demetria's suitcases. As he did he saw Sami Pal, sitting in a chair in the corner, reading a newspaper, a cup of coffee by his side. Sami Pal? The Hungarian gangster? At the Lux Palace? But Sami seemed to be doing well, wore an expensive sky-blue overcoat, and, absorbed in his reading, apparently did not see Zannis.
Out in the street, a carpet of shattered glass sparkled in the early light. "Off we go," Zannis said. There were no taxis, no cars of any kind, though he could hear sirens in the distance. Demetria and Zannis moved at a fast trot, taking the corniche, coughing from the acrid smoke that hung in the air. "Are you all right?" Zannis said.
Demetria nodded, breathing hard, a line of soot around her mouth and below her nostrils. "We'll get there," she said.
It took fifteen minutes. The station had been hit--a hole in the roof and a black crater in the floor of the platform--but there was a train. Perhaps it had been scheduled to leave but people were still trying to jam themselves into the cars. A conductor stood by the door of one of the coaches. "Where's it going?" Zannis said.
"It's the Athens-Alexandroupolis Express, one stop at Kavala, but it may go all the way to Turkey."
"Why would it go to Turkey?" Demetria said.
"Because it's a Turkish train. Eventually it goes to Edirne, but, today ..."
"Do we need tickets?" Zannis said.
The conductor laughed. "We don't care this morning, try to get on if you can."
The train was packed. At the far end, only four people were standing on the steps of the coach and there was room for one more. Demetria forced her way onto the first step, then put a foot on the second. Above her, a large angry man shoved her back. "No room up here," he said. His face--pitted skin, a well-trimmed beard--was knotted with rage.
"Make a space for the lady, sir," Zannis said. He started to help Demetria up to the step, but this time the man pushed with both hands on her shoulders. Zannis led her back down onto the platform, then turned, climbed on the first step and hit the man in the throat. The man made a choking noise, a woman screamed, and Zannis hit him again, knuckles extended, between the ribs, in the heart, and he folded in two. The woman next to him had to grab him or he would have fallen. "Now make room," Zannis said. "Or I will finish this."
The man moved aside, Demetria stood with one of the suitcases upended between her legs. Zannis was wondering what to do with the other suitcase when Demetria reached down and grabbed him by the lapel. "Please don't leave me here," she said. Beside her, the bearded man was staring at her with pure hatred. Zannis climbed up on the first step and held on to the railing, straddling the second suitcase. He would, he thought, get off at Kavala. When the train jerked forward, Zannis stumbled, put one foot on the platform, and, using the handrail, hauled himself back on. The train jerked again, the crowd on the platform was still trying to find a way to board. Somebody yelled, "The roof! Get on the roof!" Slowly, the train picked up speed. One more man climbed on the bottom step, forcing Zannis against the railing. "Beg pardon," the man said.
"Can't be helped," Zannis said.
An hour passed, then another. They crossed from Macedonia into the province of Thrace, the train chugged past flat farm fields, always twelve miles from the coast. The Turks had built this railroad in the days of the Ottoman Empire and set the tracks inland so that military transport trains could not be bombarded by enemy naval vessels. Zannis hung on every time the train rounded a curve, the gravel by the track only inches from his feet, his hand freezing where it gripped the iron railing. They would soon be in Kavala, where he'd intended to leave the train, but he had two problems. The bearded ape above him, swaying next to Demetria, and the Turkish border post--if the train went that far. Demetria had no entry visa and Zannis well remembered what had happened to Emilia Krebs when she'd tried to bribe her way past the customs officials.
In the event, it was the train's engineer who made the decision. He did not slow down for Kavala, he sped up. Zannis soon saw why. On the station platform, a huge mob of people yelled and waved as the train rumbled past them.
And then, another two hours on, at Alexandroupolis station, the same.
"Where's he taking us?" the man next to Zannis said.
"Edirne. Turkey."
"Well, my wife is waiting for me in Alexandroupolis. She will be extremely annoyed."
Zannis shrugged. "We're at war," he said.
Edirne. 3:50 P.M. Slowly, the passengers climbed down off the train and joined a long snake of a line, maintained by Greek and Turkish gendarmes who tapped their palms with wooden batons by way of enforcing discipline. Rumors ran up and down the line--some people had visas, and they were allowed to enter Turkey. Those who didn't were being sent back to Greece. This was apparently the case, since a crowd of passengers, looking weary and defeated, began to gather on the Greek side of the customs post.
"Will we get in?" Demetria said.
"We'll try."
"Do you need money?"
"I have Swiss francs, more than enough." If they'll take them.
But they wouldn't.
When Zannis and Demetria approached the desk, the Turkish officer said, "Passports and visas, please."
"Here are the passports," Zannis said. "We have no visas."
"You will return to Greece. Next!"
Zannis brought his hand from his pocket, holding a wad of Swiss francs. The officer met his eyes and began to tap a pencil on his table. "If you dare--" he said.
"Excuse me." This was reeled off in several languages: German, Spanish, French, and English, by a man who had somehow appeared at the table. The officer stared at him--what did he want? Who was he? Bald, with a fringe of dark hair, eyeglasses, and a sparse mustache, he wasn't much: a short, inconsequential little fellow in a tired suit, Mr. Nobody from Nowhere. Now that he had their attention, he consulted a slip of paper in his hand and, speaking to Zannis in French, said, "You are Strathos?"
"No, Zannis. Constantine Zannis."
The man studied the paper. "Oh, of course, my mistake, you're Zannis. Strathos is somebody else." He turned to the officer, drew an envelope from the inside pocket of his jacket, slid out a letter typed in Turkish, and showed it to the officer. Who stood, saluted Zannis, and said, "Forgive me, Captain Zannis, but I didn't realize.... You are not in uniform. The lady is with you?"
"She is."
"Please," he said, his hand extended, welcoming them to Turkey.
As the little man led them toward a dusty Renault, Zannis said, "Captain Zannis?"
"That's right. You're an officer in the British army. Didn't you know?"
"I didn't," Zannis said.
"Oh well," said the little man. "Always surprises, in this life."
Once the suitcases had been put in the trunk and they were under way, the little man got around to introducing himself. "S. Kolb," he said. "That's what some people call me, though most don't call me anything at all. And, unfortunately, there are those who call me terrible names, but I try, when that happens, to be elsewhere."
Zannis translated for Demetria, sitting in the backseat. Then said to Kolb, "We're going south, not to Istanbul."
"We're going to Smyrna, I mean, Izmir. I can never get used to that."
He was a woeful driver, gripping the wheel as though he meant to choke it, squinting through the cloudy window, slow as a snail and impervious to the horns honking behind him. After battling his way around a gentle curve, he said, "You'll work there, in Smyrna--ah, Izmir. Though I think they meant for you to be in Alexandria, to begin with. Meetings, you know, with the big brass."
"We couldn't get to Alexandria, a bomb hit the ship at the dock." Zannis wondered, briefly, how Kolb knew he'd come to Edirne by rail, then recalled Sami Pal, sitting in the lobby of the Lux Palace.
"The Bakir?"
"Yes."
"I haven't."
"Well, there's a big British expatriate community, and you'll find a way to get along with the Turks, no?"
"Of course," Zannis said.
"You'll have to sign a few papers, but there's time for that."
Zannis turned halfway around in the seat, hung his arm over the back, and told Demetria what Kolb had said. "Smyrna, of all places," was her only response, though she took his hand for a moment. A small gesture, for a couple who had indulged themselves in every possible intimacy, but it meant something, that late afternoon in Turkey, we're safe for the moment, safe from a brutal world, and together, something like that.
*
On 27 April, 1941, Wehrmacht forces occupied Athens and, at 8:35 that morning, German motorcycle troops appeared at the Acropolis and raised the swastika flag. Some weeks later, at the end of May, two Athenian teenagers slipped past German sentries and took it down.
From the Tulsa Star-Tribune, 5 June, 1942:
A new bookstore is coming to town. Two of our newer residents, the sisters Hedy and Frieda Rosenblum, will be opening The Bookmark tomorrow at 46 S. Cheyenne Ave. next to Corky's Downtown Cafe. The Rosenblum sisters, who've been working at the library, were brought to town under the sponsorship of Dr. Harry Gutmann, a local dentist, from New York City. Before that, they managed to escape from Hitler's Nazis and are writing a book about their experiences. The Bookmark will carry all the latest bestsellers and will have a special section for children's books.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
ALAN FURST is widely recognized as the master of the historical spy novel. Now translated into seventeen languages, he is the author of Night Soldiers, Dark Star, The Polish Officer, The World at Night, Red Gold, Kingdom of Shadows, Blood of Victory, Dark Voyage, The Foreign Correspondent, and The Spies of Warsaw. Born in New York City, he now lives on Long Island. Visit the author's website at www.alanfurst.net.
Spies of the Balkans is a work of fiction. All incidents and dialogue, and all characters with the exception of some well-known historical and public figures, are products of the author's imagination and are not to be construed as real. Where real-life historical or public figures appear, the situations, incidents, and dialogues concerning those persons are entirely fictional and are not intended to depict the actual events or to change the entirely fictional nature of the work. In all other respects, any resemblance to persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.
Copyright (c) 2010 by Alan Furst
Map copyright (c) 2010 by Anita Karl and Jim Kemp
All rights reserved.
Published in the United States by Random House, an imprint of The Random House Publishing Group, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.
RANDOM HOUSE and colophon are registered trademarks of Random House, Inc.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Furst Alan.
Spies of the Balkans : a novel / Alan Furst.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-679-60370-2
1. World War, 1939-1945--Underground movements--Greece--Fiction. 2. Greece--History--1917-1944--Fiction. 3. Thessalonike (Greece)--Fiction.
PS3556.U76S73 2010
813'.54--dc22 2010007755
www.atrandom.com
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