by Ben Pastor
“You wouldn’t if you knew me.”
Neither was willing to put away his weapon first. Bora recognized the blowback pistol. M1922 Subay army model, he told himself. A good piece, related to the Browning used at Sarajevo to assassinate Franz Ferdinand and start the Great War.
While he stood still in a firing stance, from a few feet away Rifat Bey’s eyes were as sourly green as Bora’s, a six or a ten on Villiger’s chart. “German, are you? I thought you were an Englishman at first.” And “You’re no paratrooper, at any rate. Why didn’t you come to the front door like most human beings?”
“It was quicker to climb the cliff.” Bora slipped down from the parapet onto the terrace, careful not to set off the dogs once more. From where they’d been ordered to sit, they could go from the floor to his throat in seconds flat. “I was at your late neighbour’s just now.”
“So.” The Subay kept Bora under aim, although the hairy arm holding it relaxed. Rifat Bey walked around him and glanced below. “Who else is with you?”
“Epitropos Kostaridis, from Iraklion.”
“You keep such bad company?”
“And worse.”
At last, Rifat Bey stuck the handgun in his belt. “That slug. What does a frangos like you have to do with Cretan police?”
“I’m looking into what happened at Ampelokastro.”
“I wasn’t here when it happened.”
Bora slid his pistol down the holster without latching it. “You and your neighbour didn’t get along, I hear.” In his peripheral vision, behind the Turk he caught sight of food and water bowls in a corner of the terrace; and unless he was mistaken, inside the glass door there was an army rifle – a Great War era G98 – leaning on the floor against the wall.
Rifat Bey seemed aware of what had caught Bora’s attention. “I ought to set the dogs on you and the two-bit copper, the sbirro. Didn’t he tell you I wasn’t here when the Swiss died? I wasn’t here when the battle began. I was at Zimbouli.”
“And where’s that?”
“The ‘Place of Hyacinths’, my town house near Iraklion.” Seeing Bora take a step sideways, he whipped out the Subay once more. “No. Don’t you move. You stay right where you are; you’re not coming any closer to my house.”
Bora did not argue the point. Judging by the way the dogs pricked up their ears and curled back their upper lips, Kostaridis must be approaching Sphingokephalo. As he’d reckoned from below, the terrace stood on a base maybe eight feet above the level ground of the hilltop. From where he stood, an incline of agave-studded land was visible, with a path leading up to the front of the villa. The inspector laboured under the sun with the weary deliberate pace of a postman, or a door-to-door salesman. He’d covered his head with a kerchief knotted at the corners and carried the jacket draped on his left shoulder.
When he reached close enough to stand below the parapet, he called out, “Agrali, hold the dogs, I’m coming up. And thanks for leaving a few kegs to step on.”
Rifat Bey leaned out to look at him. “What d’ya want, sbirro?”
“Cool your heels, Agrali.” Kostaridis’ jacket appeared on the parapet, followed by an arm and a leg. Eventually, the entire policeman emerged. “I’m here on business, with the captain. Be neighbourly, and I’ll pretend I didn’t see what you stuck in your belt.”
“This?” The Turk grinned as he tapped the Subay. “This is my worry beads.”
“Your worry beads.” Kostaridis had removed his socks. Barefoot in his dusty sandals, to counterbalance the impression of inadequacy he put his jacket on, over his sweat-drenched shirt. “You wouldn’t know what happened to Signor Filligi and his household, those three handsome boys included?”
Rifat Bey pointed with his chin at Bora. “He already asked. What do I know? Why should I know who did it, and why?”
“We heard he’d been jittery of late,” Bora mentioned, “and was planning a trip.”
“Good! Good that he was jittery, and good that he was planning a trip. I should be so lucky, that the frangos son of a bitch would take a long trip.”
Kostaridis stepped around to shake dust from his sandals. “In a way he has – indefinitely.”
“I wipe myself of it, sbirro. German soldiers ruined my winery; this one comes up from below like a burglar. Why shouldn’t Germans have killed that water thief? I give you both one minute to turn tail and get out of my property before I let the dogs loose.”
Bora wasn’t taken in this time. It was all about intimidation. The Turk was openly aggressive, so much so that it might be a way to exaggerate and defuse his hostility at the same time, concealing other, more devious levels of dangerousness. As for Kostaridis, he kept even now an air both clandestine and submissive, the air of one who has crumpled his animosity into a lump so tight that it may be carried unseen in a pocket, so to speak, and be pulled out at the right time wholly by surprise. Preger – well, Preger’s resentment toward the world, at least the world of civilians, to which their childhood belonged – was exhibited like a proud badge. Bora wondered what impression he might give others.
“Speaking of dogs,” he said, “I noticed four bowls but only three dogs. Are you missing one of them?”
“Yes, I’m missing one of them. I also lost my winery, thanks to you.”
Bora chose the conciliatory route. “I’m sorry about your winery. It so happens I’m in the wine business myself, at present.”
“It can only mean you’re here to steal it.”
“Not even close. I’m buying it bona fide from Panagiotis in Iraklion.”
“Dishwater.”
Bora was about to reply, but then he thought it might be true, that Major Busch may not be such an expert after all.
“Panagiotis’ Mandilaria is dishwater, I’m telling you.”
“Why, are you a producer of Mandilaria?”
“No, but his is swill.”
“I’m also looking for Dafni.”
“Panagiotis doesn’t make it. And don’t trust him if he tells you he’ll buy it for you from a friend, either.” A brief toss of his head and a whistle under his breath sent the dogs filing indoors. Rifat Bey pulled the glass door closed behind them. “How much do you know about wine?”
“Enough not to make blunders when I order some at the table, but no more than that.”
“You don’t know anything about wine, I can tell. Ask the sbirro if it isn’t true what I say, that the best Dafni and Mandilaria in Iraklion are sold by the Spinthakis widow near Agia Ekaterini djamé.”
“It’s true,” Kostaridis agreed, although he turned up his nose at the way Rifat Bey still gave the old name of djamé, mosque, to St Catherine’s. “I’ll show you where it is when we go back.”
And here they were, talking about wine while the question was murder. Preliminaries, Bora understood, meant to reduce mutual hostility and clear the path for a serious conversation at some other time. “There was a dead dog at your neighbour’s,” he told Agrali.
“I know. I buried it. Not mine.”
“And did you enter the house, while you were there?”
Rifat Bey turned to Kostaridis, who had spoken the words. “The minute’s up. I’m calling the dogs.”
“And your thugs too, I saw them looking out of the windows as I climbed the path.”
“Fuck you, and my thugs too.”
Bora watched them spar, aware they wouldn’t get more from the Turk at this time. I’m not like them at all, he reasoned. My aggressiveness is not so close to the bone. Mine is a reaction. Against the wrongs done to our Fatherland after the Great War, against those nations that smother our vital space, and against demands that we keep justifying ourselves to the world as Germans. My private self gives way to the needs of my role as a soldier. What do I want, for myself? I have no time to think about it; my psychological space is all taken up. I have the young, handsome wife I desired, and that’s plenty.
“Let’s go, capitano,” Kostaridis grumbled. “Agrali, I’ll have a bone to pick wi
th you when you come to town.”
Rifat Bey sneered. “And go down the regular way, where I can see you.”
The crack of a rifle, surely the German-made weapon Bora had seen through the glass door, came from behind as they walked away from the residence along the exposed path. Bora’s first response was to turn around, a move Kostaridis prevented by grabbing his wrist before he could do so. His hold clamped hard on him like a manacle.
“Don’t look back, keep going.”
“He fired on us, are you deaf?”
“Sure, he did. In Crete you don’t show that you’re afraid.”
“I’m not afraid, I’m furious.”
“Let’s go.”
The sharp whine of a second shot pierced the air even closer. Bora hunched this time, just short of a stumble. “Christ, he nicked my head!”
“Are you hurt?”
“…No. I don’t think so.”
“Keep walking, then. He’ll respect you for it more than he would if you fired back.” In the same even-minded tone, Kostaridis added something in Greek that sounded like quiet blasphemy. “Well, the bullet did tear the skin a bit. Quite a scar you got there.”
Bora irritably rubbed the side of his head. It was the surgically stitched wound from his Polish days, when a hail of rocks had welcomed a group of German officers riding down a street in Krakow. It had bled and hurt, but was nothing compared with the retaliation that followed. He didn’t like being reminded of it. He wiped the smear of bright blood on his shirt – hardly the kind of heroic injury he darkly longed for. “A dawn will come, an evening, a midday / when someone will bereave me of life in battle…”
Regardless of what Kostaridis had advised, he glanced over his shoulder toward Sphingokephalo. From the terrace, Rifat Bey kept them under aim through the scope of the high-precision Gewehr 98.
Bora was tempted to respond with a well-directed shot, but even a Browning high power didn’t stack up to a marksman’s rifle, so he reluctantly gave up the idea.
It’s all been done for thousands of years, he thought, provocation and response, or lack thereof: Kostaridis is right in that. During the hour of Greek literature, while my schoolmates took en masse the part of the Trojan defenders, I was solidly on the side of the aggressors.
Achaeans over the people of Asia, Achilles versus Hector. Those warriors far from home, led by revenge for the rape of Helen, had all my sympathy. And notwithstanding Professor Lohse’s deeply moving declamation of Hector’s farewell to wife and child, I’ll take Achilles’ angry solitude any day.
5
IRAKLION, 4.28 P.M.
Being thrown out of doors was not an experience he was familiar with, surely not twice in the same day. Seeing his Moscow uniform, boots, briefcase and the rest of his belongings lying in a heap on the pavement in front of the hotel, Bora vaulted out of the personnel carrier even before it came to a full stop. Everything was piled there where glass from the broken windows had been swept yesterday, looking just as forlorn. A newly stencilled sign by the entrance – Headquarters, First Battalion, 1st Airborne Regiment, 7th Flieger Division – said all there was to know about his new status in Cretan society. Bora was in a rage, but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He swept up the pieces of his uniform, his briefcase, maps, what few basic toiletry items he’d brought along, and walked in to rest them on the floor just inside the hotel entrance.
As if on cue, an Air Force major – Bora was only later to know it was First Battalion Commander Walther himself – stalked out of Busch’s office wagging a “no” with his forefinger to keep him from leaving his things there. Bora saw red. He came within an inch of creating an incident but held on to his temper somehow (I’ve got a case to solve, and I’ve got Russia to invade). “And stay out!” The commander’s shouted words followed him as he recrossed the threshold.
When a never before seen Greek concierge rushed out after him to apologize, because the captain “must believe it, the hotel management had nothing to do with this”, Bora stared at the laundry bag in which the man offered to collect his odds and ends. “I’m afraid your cases of wine are gone, too. I told them it was reserved, but…” Without finishing the sentence the concierge handed him a sheet of paper folded in two and stapled together.
Here in the street, whatever they thought of the scene, the Jäger who’d driven Bora to town put their vehicles in reverse and left the way they came. A handful of paratroopers looking out from the hotel seemed to be enjoying it instead. Bora had to put on the best possible face in the presence of other Germans, and of Kostaridis besides. He removed the staples and read.
It was a telegraphic note from Busch. Unexpected urgent transfer to the mainland. Meet Lt Sinclair at 17.00 hours, Iraklion Airfield. Frances Allen under custody at the Hotel Knossos. Whatever he jotted down next, he’d comprehensively cancelled with the fountain pen, until the paper had nearly torn through. The hour of writing (8 a.m.) was marked at the close of the note, along with a meaningful, You’re on your own now. Good luck. Radio Athens if you’re in a pickle.
PS Your “Scotsman” could be as black as the jack of spades for all we know: the K in his name stands for Krishnamurti.
So, Busch had been sacked. It was conceivable that the Abwehr’s poor showing before the campaign had put in motion devious methods of retribution that cost men in the field their posts. Unless, of course, the intermediate Air Force commands chose to behead the team investigating the massacre, or other reasons (Casablanca- or Moscow-related?) were behind it. Whatever. No word on where the paperwork the major had shown him might be. With Busch gone from the island, Bora’s support system was down to nil. Anger (or else the sun beaming straight down) made the nicked side of his head throb as he looked up from the note.
Only now did he notice the luxurious, customized Italian sedan parked by the kerb, with a German airman behind the wheel and worry beads hanging from the rear-view mirror. Two feet away from the car, Kostaridis observed, “Alfa Romeo 6C, six cylinders, 2500.” He said it as if he’d stayed behind to admire the expensive piece of machinery, when he’d clearly been watching what was going on in front of the hotel.
Bora avoided his glance. He was not about to beg for help. With urgent appointments to keep, however, and an alternative base of operations to secure, his choices were limited: leaving aside the airborne troops, it was either the Jäger or the Cretan police.
“Should we see about lodgings?” Posing it as a question, Kostaridis saved him from having to ask a favour. “I can send for a car at the police station.”
Bora fretted. “I have thirty minutes before I meet the British officer who turned in the photos, and then I must reach the Hotel Knossos.”
“To stay?”
“I don’t know if I can stay there. I’m to see an American detainee, a woman called Allen.” It was more than Bora would otherwise have shared, but he was hard-pressed. He inwardly cheered when Kostaridis seized a youngster who’d been gawking at the Alfa Romeo and sent him running for support.
“They’ll be here in ten minutes,” he assured Bora. “…Allen, you said? An American married to a Greek?”
“Yes. Do you know about her?”
“I can tell you about Sidheraki, her husband. He’s been in and out of jail the past ten years, for political reasons. Belongs to the KKE of Nikos Zachariadis.”
Bora gathered his belongings and turned his back on the Megaron, the place of his public humiliation. “The communist party leader? My information is that we transferred Zachariadis to Germany when we first landed in mainland Greece, months ago.”
“Allow me to say the Metaxas government made it easy for you by having him already in custody.” Kostaridis studiously undid the knotted corners of his handkerchief so he could mop his face with it. “Make no mistake, capitano, I’m an anticommunist. Thanks to Metaxas we closed down hashish dens and got rid of rabble and bouzouki music. I realize Germany is marching along with the Soviets at this time, but a man’s ideas are a man’s ideas.�
� (If he only knew where I’ll be riding three weeks from now, Bora thought.) “So I kept an eye on Andonis Sidheraki, even though he’s settled down since he married the American. It seems her British colleagues cherished him, because he’s got an eye for antiquities; they say he can spot an ancient site better than anyone. Besides, Sidheraki follows the Siantos rather than the Zachariadis party line. ‘Old Man’ Siantos is more anti-fascist than anti-capitalist and anti-British, as Zachariadis always was. I can tell you plenty about Sidheraki, but he isn’t the man you’re looking for.”
“No, and as far as his wife is concerned, he’s in our hands.”
“You’re aware of course that he ran off the moment your troops reached the island?”
“I am.” Dignity being all he could hang on to at the time, Bora went out of his way to conceal the discomfort that sweat and sunburn were causing him on the blistering pavement. In the harbour below, the clearing of wrecks continued on and off the docking area, as if nothing but German men and machinery populated Iraklion. The sea beyond the flurry of activity lay perfectly blue, trimmed with lazy afternoon waves. He’d jump in it with his clothes on if he could. “I’m also aware,” he added, “that some less anti-communist colleagues of yours left the jail door open, and many other comrades took to the hills. Never mind; our leverage with Miss Allen is that Sidheraki is wounded and in a prison camp on the continent. What else should I know about him, just in case?”
“He’s self-taught. Could easily revert to his pre-marriage fanaticism. Daring, reputed handsome. Younger than his wife.” Amused at his own comment, Kostaridis blew the dust of the trip from his nose into the crumpled handkerchief. “To us, she swore her husband knew nothing about the arms found at their place near Knossos.”
“What arms?”
“Ah, you weren’t told. Well, six brand-new MAB 38 submachine guns.”
“Brand new as in ‘never used’, or —”
“No, not so new. Obtained somehow.”
Bora’s surprise made it difficult – even silly – to stand there ramrod straight, as if being drenched in perspiration were a natural condition for him. “I doubt she was the one collecting weapons we Germans bought from the Italians!”