by Ben Pastor
Written at the Megaron, waiting for summons from Major Busch. Megaron is what the Greeks called a house’s main hall, the perfect name for a hotel. I don’t need a Greek dictionary to remember: I had top marks in Greek. In fact, if to this day I love Classical antiquity, it is in good part thanks to my teachers, especially old Professor Lohse, who died at Missolonghi like Lord Byron, albeit not fighting for Greece’s freedom: he had a heart attack, poor man, so thrilled was he to have reached that sacred ground. We boys had these verses by Hölderlin carved on his headstone: “What is it that / chains me so to the ancient / blessed shores, till I love them / more than my Fatherland?”
Speaking of poets, and Byron in particular, I must assume Kostaridis’ given name, Vairon, is actually the local spelling of the poet’s name. Curious fellow, this Kostaridis. He conceals his cleverness by pretending to be awkward; Ulysses played the harmless fool to get his way, to avoid alarming his wife’s suitors before killing them. I bet good old Vairon would be capable of ordering every bone in your body broken to make you talk, if he had to.
I can’t figure out whether he believes Preger’s men are guilty or not. He’d like to think they are, at any rate. Major Busch tells me there’s no doubt the unit was in the area. I’ll get details from the paratroopers directly, who to date haven’t been heard by the War Crimes Bureau.
The Bureau has its hands full with reports of violence carried out against us by the locals, so that’s probably why. The runner-up as most credible culprit is Rifat Bey, the violent neighbour whose anti-German feelings were explained to me as the result of a disagreement the Turk’s family supposedly had decades ago with the German owner of the Huck Hotel in Smyrna. How does Kostaridis know? His father worked as a waiter at the hotel, “the best house in town, with excursions to Pergamon and Ephesus”. That would imply that – if guilty – Rifat Bey was already hiding in the garden when the paratroopers came through. Possible: he lives next door.
Myself, I’m not discounting the possibility of a raid by Siphronia’s brothers-in-law. Ulysses slaughtered the suitors to the last man, although they hadn’t technically laid a finger on Penelope, and Grandfather Franz Augustus told us Cretan men learn to handle rifles and shotguns in the cradle. They, too, could have been coincidentally lying in wait in Villiger’s garden when Preger’s men marched in. Naturally, should Rifat Bey or Siphronia’s in-laws be culpable, it’d either mean our camera-toting Sergeant Major Powell told Sinclair a lie, or else he was mistaken. Hard to take German paratroopers for anything else but German paratroopers, though. Only after I speak to Sinclair will I have a slightly less confused vision of all this.
The detail of the dog is marginally interesting, but not to be ignored. I’m not sure, but it looks as though it was shot once through the head. The photo shows it as a fine animal, not purebred but a well-kept watchdog; no collar was visible on it, but the fur at the neck showed it had been wearing one, or had been on a lead or chain. In fact, Kostaridis says frightened dogs have been running loose ever since the attack. The pet could be significant in ways that will become clear, or simply have been an innocent animal bystander in the wrong place at the wrong time.
Kostaridis was rather less informed (or more close-mouthed) regarding Villiger’s hired hands. None of them was over twenty. I’m no judge, but I’d call them pretty boys, in a primitive manner. I won’t go further in these speculations until I speak to Major Busch again; if there’s anything beyond race-related scholarship about Villiger’s choice of menservants, he knows or knows how to know.
At any rate, the policeman showed me on the map where Ampelokastro and Sphingokephalo are located, and the “watercourse, shall we say” running between the properties. Their names sound romantic to a German ear: Vineyard Hill, Head of the Sphinx… The contended brook, unnamed on the charts, goes by Potamos (= River), as workaday as you can make it. At a second reading, Villiger’s passport is a paragon of banality. The entry and exit stamps show travels fully consistent with one who studies antiquity: Greece, Italy, Turkey. Seems to have toured mostly these countries of late, which makes sense given his work with the Ancestral Research Bureau. He hasn’t left Greece in three years. The only curious, but not altogether strange detail is that the passport was issued to him by the Swiss embassy in Athens five years ago, possibly to replace a document lost or stolen on arrival on the mainland.
Punctually at five, an orderly came to call Bora. Busch sat in a wicker chair outside the hotel, in the company of a large glass of ice water. Whether he’d recovered his pith helmet or found another one, his head was safe from the beating sun. “Have you met Kostaridis?”
“Yes.”
“And what did you think of him?”
Bora reported his impression of the policeman. “You’re wrong,” Busch stated. “He isn’t clever at all. And his feet stink.”
Bora hadn’t noticed that detail. It was possible, even probable. Kostaridis’ socks and sandals had a forlorn look of overuse. Still, despite his own severe views of shabbiness, the major’s comment struck him disagreeably. “There’s a detail the chief constable seemed reticent about,” he said, changing the subject. “Unless of course he’s uninformed, but I doubt it.”
Busch faced him with his back to the harbour, where clearing up and unloading went on side by side. Behind him the sea bristled dark blue with blinding white lacy trims in the offing, but lay wine-dark and still in the basin, with the squat Venetian fortress like a giant loaf of bread cooling in the breeze. “What, whether Villiger was queer for his farm boys?”
“Yes.”
“You read too much Winckelmann or else you have a dirty mind, Rittmeister. Villiger was married to his science.”
“Herr Major, I had to ask.”
“Naturally. I was being facetious. Of course you had to ask. It would be interesting if Villiger’s marriage to his science allowed for diversions.” They were sweeping up glass shards in front of the hotel, from the many windowpanes shattered by bombs and cannonade. Busch stood up. He gave the impression of being more interested in listening to the tinny clatter of fragments than to the conversation. The sound was cold and icy, just as the pile of glass and crystal splinters in the lobby had seemed wintery, refreshing. In fact, the heat was oppressive. “Who knows,” the major added, “maybe all those who relish Grecian antiquities do so because they have a high tolerance for male nudity. But so do soldiers, eh?”
Bora did not appreciate the comment. He spoke quickly to close the parenthesis. “An interesting question arises, at any rate. It seems that no one, not even the photographer, actually saw the shooting. I plan to listen very closely to what Lieutenant Sinclair has to say tomorrow.”
“Ah, speaking of which, you’ll have to wait until tomorrow to meet the American woman as well. We couldn’t find transportation for her past Rhethimno, where she’s stuck. It’s the way it is. What am I saying, it’s a way of life on these islands. Nothing ever works as planned; what’s not done today will be done tomorrow. Maybe. I used to work out of Rhodes before the war; believe me, I know what I’m saying.” An about-face pointed Busch toward the street. “I’m supposed to walk for my back, come along. I’ll see you across town to the Chanià Gate: it’s half a mile from here.”
On the way he acted the tourist guide. “Kalokairinou is what they call the avenue leading to the gate, but don’t expect a German-style avenue. See, that’s the Hotel Knossos. The Brits used to patronize its basement bar. Even Pendlebury, the fellow whose book I gave you. And the Allen woman. They drink like fish, these Anglo-Saxons: we found booze stacked to the ceiling. There was a gang of them, scholars and archaeologists-cum-spies.”
“Did Villiger frequent them, you think?”
“He was Swiss, he could do whatever he wanted.”
“He worked for us. Don’t we have a file on him?”
“We had one. Can’t find it at our central office in Berlin, they’re looking for it.”
A detour around the street where the house fronts had coll
apsed was taking them down alleys spared by direct sunlight.
“Looking for it?” Bora stopped in his tracks. “With a few days to solve this thing, you’d expect the Reichskommissar —”
“The Reichskommissar will squash you like a bug if it turns out the Luftwaffe killed his scholar. And then he’ll try to squash the Luftwaffe.”
“Well, that makes me feel better, Herr Major.”
They had come to a small square guarded by a modest old church, reminiscent of a mosque. Busch called it Agios Markos, but Bora had lost any interest he might have had in learning about Cretan sights. Soon enough, along narrow streets, they reached Kalokairinou. The relatively wide pavement and shopfronts seemed citified by comparison.
“The gate’s down there,” Busch said. He stopped to rest his leg, and used the pith helmet to fan himself. “Through it, you exit the Venetian walls and venture west, eventually to Chanià, hence its name. They also call it Pantocrator Gate. Pantocrator, you know: Christ, ruler of the universe, the One with the terrible frown. Not too far from town you also meet the crossroads leading south to Ampelokastro. It’s a hilly countryside, pleasant enough, but over the past two weeks we’ve fought over it tooth and nail as if it were solid gold.”
Bora stuck to business. “Sir, is there a chance I might meet Captain Preger before morning?”
“There is: at the moment he’s quartered at or near the city landing field. Tell me, why did you pull a face when you heard his name?”
“I didn’t think I pulled a face.”
“You pulled a face.”
It could have become one of those moments when you have to think on your feet and lie outright, or else act stupid. Bora was halfway into the second option when Major Busch, ever controlled in his gestures, nodded half an inch in the direction of the gate. “Speak of the devil.” Kalokairinou lay bathed in the afternoon sun; he must have anticipated or even planned the meeting because from here you couldn’t make out the faces of those sitting at a street-side cafe. “There’s Preger with some of his airborne colleagues, the self-styled Elite of the Armed Forces. I think it’s best if I leave you; the gate is just beyond, you can see it from here. Talk to the man. Should miracles happen and should your American guide make it, there’ll be time this evening to meet her at the Megaron. Forget what I told you about Kostaridis, too. You might need him to open some doors.”
Preger did not stand from his chair. Bora’s arrival, expected or not, seemed to stall him between the impulse to get the meeting over with and the desire to delay matters by ignoring his army counterpart, or pretending not to know why he’d come. Beer mugs in hand, cigarette packs on the table, his friends turned to see who it was. Among all of them, Bora included, the prudent mood was of young dogs, different in breed and size, measuring up to one another and calculating the possible outcome of a scuffle.
Preger had blond stubble and surly dark eyes set in a firm, square-jawed face and the same scowl of someone who carries a chip on his shoulder he’d had in Trakehnen, back from Madrid. The scowl had nothing to do with Ampelokastro. Suddenly, Bora was completely sure that Preger’s feelings about his old playmate had been dredged up from past memories. There was no getting around it, he had to accept that even if until this morning he’d forgotten their boyhood incident, Preger apparently had not. The taste and flavour of those wet summers in East Prussia, drawing blood by hitting with both fists, rose with a small gathering of saliva in his own mouth. It wasn’t the last scuffle he’d been in as a boy (after all, only fighting with a social inferior was anathema in General Sickingen’s eyes), but the fact that Waldo had gone off to school at his cousin’s in Königsberg afterwards made that particular row somehow final.
He and Bora greeted each other at the same time, by rank. “Will you excuse me,” Preger told his colleagues then, and their prompt rising to leave suggested they’d rehearsed the scene. He’d be the one to walk away to join Bora otherwise.
Bora sat across from the paratrooper, and no sooner had he done so than a leathery local waiter stepped out to remove bottles and half-empty mugs. Flies avidly drinking spilt beer were chased off but would return before long.
“I heard you were here on a fool’s errand.”
Preger’s first words were so clearly meant to irritate, Bora reacted by slipping into almost excessive calm. “Now less than yesterday,” he answered, “but I’ll carry on as I’m bidden.”
“Yes, I was informed by Colonel Bräuer.”
Preger’s burly arms, bare to the elbows with his sleeves rolled back, showed cuts and bruises in the thick hairiness, possibly from dropping with his parachute into shrubs or tree branches. Many paratroopers Bora had seen had similar gashes, broken fingers or wrists. In their sand-coloured uniforms every one of them looked irritable, ill-disposed because of or in spite of exhaustion. Did they really expect the island would welcome them? Without prompting him, Bora waited for Preger to say more. Intelligence reports implied similarly hopeful scenarios for some regions of Soviet Russia, especially the Ukraine. They’re waiting for us; they will greet our men as liberators. But what if they don’t? Never mind, it’ll take us two, at most three months to reach Moscow. Who’ll care then how the Reds see us?
“Frankly,” Preger took up, “I don’t get what business of yours it is to waltz in, all spiffy and without a scratch, to run after an Englishman’s nonsense.” (Being reminded that he was unhurt, as if it were his fault, stung Bora to the quick.) “In case you’re not aware, the patrol operating in that sector was ambushed the afternoon of the same day near Stavrakia. On Sunday we evacuated the troopers to the mainland with serious injuries. Not that I’d encourage them to talk to you if they were available. Have you consulted our commander, Major Walther?”
“I did.”
“Is he in favour of the enquiry?”
“No.”
“And our Group Commander?”
“Colonel Bräuer communicated he isn’t favourable either.”
“I thought so.”
Preger still spoke with the guttural low-German accent from around Stettin; if anything, he stressed it more now than in the past. His older brother had died while a prisoner of the Russians in the Great War: Bora remembered the black crepe on the gamekeeper’s door when the news came in 1920. Through his childhood, Waldo wore a black band on his sleeve, and then a black button at his lapel. That marker defined him for all times, shaping his resentment and desire for revenge. Bora had secretly envied that black button as a boy, because his father had died years earlier and not in war, and he couldn’t very well wear mourning for his Scots grandfather William George, fallen at Khartoum in 1885.
The angle of the sun at this time of day made every bit of glass and metal glint and shine; on Preger’s stocky figure, his wristwatch and the insignia on his side cap caught the light as he waved away the waiter who came to take Bora’s order.
Bora called the waiter back and asked for water. “Nerò.”
“Metallikò?”
Right, mineral water what was Busch recommended. “Metallikò,” Bora confirmed, holding his own under Preger’s stare. “My orders originate directly with Major General Student at XI Air Corps level.”
It could be the staggering blow that ended the match at the very start. Preger grabbed the cigarette packet and tapped its bottom to take out a smoke. “I know him as the commander in chief who authorized ‘reprisals and punitive expeditions to be carried out with exemplary terror’ in Crete.”
“Nonetheless, Major General Student gave me clearance.” It had been the third of the “hairy phone calls” from Busch’s office. Bora did not add that matters had been mediated by Major Count von Uxkuell, chief of divisional staff, one of those who found fault with Student’s punitive orders.
“Don’t expect any collaboration from us out in the field.”
“I don’t.”
Mineral water was set in front of Bora. With the change provided by Busch he paid, and after glancing at the filmy rim of the glass, dra
nk directly from the bottle. In their exchange thus far, Preger had bitterly swung back and forth between formal and familiar forms of address, correcting himself whenever he used du instead of Sie. Bora took the initiative of choosing informality once and for all. “Waldo, it’s neither my charge nor intention to blame the killing on our men.” (They’re not our men, Preger specified, they’re mine.) “In the unfortunate case they broke the rules, and with proofs to support it, I have a duty to bring it up. You’d do the same.”
“I wouldn’t do any such thing. And you – well, it’s you who reported that the island was poorly manned and the locals wouldn’t fight! Which side are you on, anyway?”
Provocations were best left alone. Bora tried not to take complaints against Intelligence personally, given the short notice of the attack and scarce time available to provide reliable details. Whether or not their information panned out, it was a habit with commanders at all levels to resent IC officers, even if – and especially if – they brought sobering news. He swallowed a dose of Atebrin with his next sip. “Short of meeting the rifle squad on patrol at Ampelokastro that day, I’ll need an operational report or any other available account. What do you suggest?”
Preger looked away for a long minute, as if the desolate stores across the avenue, with their shutters rolled down, were more interesting than the company he was in. Swallows shuttled back and forth very high at this hour; only their thin cries came down to earth. He moodily chewed on the unlit cigarette, and only because Bora was drinking, and kept his peace, did he at last reluctantly pull out of his pocket a map overlay of the patrol route, and a few lines pencilled by the NCO heading the eight-man rifle squad. “If I wasn’t under orders you’d never get this. You won’t find anything in it.”
Bora read. No incident of note was reported. Ampelokastro appeared among other place names. The locality had been reached at 11.00, and the next goal half an hour later. Or so wrote the NCO. If it actually took significantly less time to cover that distance, one could suspect a delay, even a stopover, a sign that the paratroopers didn’t simply walk through Ampelokastro. Bora needed his maps to make a judgement call. Granted, there are many reasons at war to lose time en route. He copied report and place names on the overlay word for word, number for number. If needed, he’d time himself walking the same distance. “Thank you.” He gave the documents back.