by Ben Pastor
To my questions, “Was he wounded? Did he have a photographic camera with him?” he answers he doesn’t know if he had a camera, the man had his back to him. Pressed for details, he adds he doesn’t believe the man was wounded, but “walking in a daze” (Cowell’s own words, according to Geoffrey Caxton).
Suspecting that an ambush of sorts has taken place in his neighbour’s property, Rifat Bey stealthily approaches the garden. Once past the front gate, he spots the dead dog. “Inside, you know what there was. I took a look from the door and backed out.”
By this time, he is confused as to what he has just witnessed. As he leaves Villiger’s garden, fully intending to pretend ignorance about the whole affair, he’s startled by a last pistol shot.
Because it comes from the north, the direction taken by the dazzled Briton, his immediate thought is that the man has killed himself.
Looking up from the page, Bora interrupted his furious pencilling. “Where are we?”
“Voutes.”
“Ah. You had better kill me, then. That’s not far from Iraklion.”
Rifat Bey pointed with his chin to Bora’s diary. “You should add that I barred doors and windows and when some of yours came knocking the following day I made them think there was nobody home. I only drove to Iraklion later that day, with a case of Malvasia for my friends in town so they’d all swear I’d been at Zimbouli on the thirty-first.”
“‘Some of mine’ were military judges looking into the shooting. You would have done well to have let them in and told them what you told me.”
“What for? It’s not like I care who killed that son of a bitch of a neighbour.”
On both sides of the road more and more German vehicles and buildings requisitioned by Germans now appeared. Paratroopers and mountain Jäger sat in the shade sipping beer and clear liquor.
“Did you get your wine?”
Bora put away his diary. It annoyed him to admit it had been stolen and drunk by other Germans, but his silence spoke of some difficulty in that regard. Rifat Bey grinned under his moustache. “You should have listened to me and gone to buy from the Spinthakis widow near Agia Ekaterini. It’s too late now. Some local patriot decided to cut her throat because she did business with you all, and smash everything she had in her shop.”
“I’ll buy what I find.”
“You’ll have to.”
Before entering the Chanià Gate, Rifat Bey nodded for Bora to leave. “Get down. I don’t want to be seen in town with a German.”
Bora opened the door, jumped off and shouldered his rucksack. By the side of the road, a giant opuntia shrub stretched its blooming paddles, yellow buds against the blue bar of the sea. The afternoon air was thick with the odour of brine.
As he started walking to town, for a while the truck kept up with him. With his elbow out of the driver’s side Rifat Bey watched him from above. He could yet fire a shot into my head, Bora thought, just as I am about to enter the last frantic hours in Crete. He looked up at the cab, so that he wouldn’t be killed unawares if Rifat Bey had a mind to.
Nothing of the kind.
From his Lucifer-coloured truck, the Turk said before giving it some gas, “You think you’re so smart. Why don’t you ask yourself if my wives died a natural death?”
7 JUNE, 4.40 P.M., IRAKLION
Kostaridis looked like a frog that had sighted a dragonfly too large to swallow. He stood up from behind his desk, and – too clever to manifest his surprise – greeted Bora as if they’d left each other ten minutes earlier. Only a strangled flush stayed on his face. He wore an off-white shirt, assuming it wasn’t just dirty, and a tie like a rat’s tail.
“Capitano.”
On his walk to the police station, Bora had mentally gone from the strange lull of the truck ride to a near-desperate state of alacrity. For two days he’d been as if spellbound, and now there seemed to be not enough time in the world for him to get things done before leaving Crete.
Which was why he couldn’t enjoy the moment of Kostaridis’ wonder. “Epitropos.”
“Anything I can help you with?”
“I’ll let you know after I see the British prisoner again. Take me there.”
“Take you where? He’ll have been transferred back to the Galatas camp!”
“Not if I didn’t leave word I was done with him. He had better be still under guard at the airfield. Take me there; I don’t have time to call ahead.”
A lesser man would have observed something obvious but inopportune, like “Where’s the American woman?” or “Have you taken a look at yourself?” Kostaridis grabbed his jacket from the back of his chair, and the car keys from his desk. “Let’s go.” He cracked open an inner door, said something in Greek to a subordinate, and followed Bora outside.
On the doorstep, he seemed to recall something. “Two days ago the International Red Cross was here asking for you.”
Bora turned. “Asking for me? How would they know I was the one looking into Villiger’s death?”
“They didn’t. Their information was that Major Voos was handling matters, so they went to the Megaron, and the German Air Force commander routed them here. I believe that’s where your name was first mentioned. Major Voos’ replacement hasn’t arrived yet, so I had to escort them to Ampelokastro, although there’s even less left in the house than when you and I went.” Kostaridis let Bora into the car, and sat behind the wheel. “No, they found nothing useful.”
“And what did you tell them about me?”
“Forgive me, but that’s police business.”
“What did you tell them about me?”
“Not knowing where you were, I said you were out of town. They had a flight out the same evening, so they had to content themselves with that. I explained I don’t speak German, which kept them from further enquiries. Anything else?”
“No.”
It was all they said during the trip to the airfield. Bora moodily picked burs and bits of straw from his socks, as if that would make a difference to the sorry state of his outfit. Something like a dark mountain, so high he couldn’t see its top, stood between him and the morning. He was so afraid of raising his eyes and really seeing it that he didn’t even look at the road, instead busy removing prickly bits from the wool. Meeting Sinclair. Radioing Bruno Lattmann in Athens… Then I must confer with Kostaridis. And then acquaint Preger with the unofficial version of the story. Find out when the next flight out will be. Write my report. And the wine? Hell, I mustn’t forget the wine. I must get the wine too.
The German airmen at the gate wouldn’t let Kostaridis through, so – on the promise that the inspector would wait there for him – Bora left the car, and crossed the perimeter under the curious stares of the guards.
It relieved him to hear that Sinclair was still being held at the airfield, although he’d been transferred to more liveable quarters. “The Red Cross gave us grief about it,” the same Feldwebel who’d escorted Bora the previous time informed him. “First thing in the morning the prisoner is due for transport to the mainland, where the IRC will oversee his treatment. A few more hours, sir, and you’d have missed him.”
“Is he alone?”
“He’s alone.”
“Leave me with him.”
“Don’t you need an interpreter?”
Sinclair was confined to an inner service room, with a cot, table and chair. When Bora entered, the prisoner was standing in the middle of the floor, where a naked light bulb cast enough glare on the newspaper he was reading.
“I’m here to thank you, Lieutenant.” The opening of the door had not induced Sinclair to look up from the printed page; the greeting did.
“Your English is much improved.”
Bora had no time to exchange quips. He gave a crisp salute and took one step forward, careful, however, to remain just outside the lit centre of the room. The worn appearance of his uniform had nothing to do with it: his experience as an interrogator, ever since the Polish days, made him automatically seek the
shade.
“Following your directions, I obtained the eyewitness’ written statement about the deaths at Ampelokastro.”
“That’s quite impossible.”
“That’s quite possible. I am about to forward it to the War Crimes Bureau and the International Red Cross.”
The newspaper was a month-old issue with headlines in English on the German invasion of Yugoslavia and Greece. Sinclair doubled it over, looking at Bora with the same spare, polite aloofness of their first meeting. His watch had not been returned to him, but in the three days since then, the bruises on his elbow and wrist had been attended to. “Won’t you take a seat, Captain?”
“No.”
One had to admire his aplomb. Bora said, “I also bring regards from your old fellow student Geoffrey Caxton, to whom I’m indebted for the right spelling of the NCO’s surname. It’s Cowell. Albert ‘Bertie’ Cowell. Not Powell, as you told me.”
“Forgive me.” The newspaper was carefully folded once more. “I don’t know who Mr Caxton is, and the man I spoke to, the man with the camera, was a Sergeant Major Powell.”
In the back of his mind, Bora knew he was inches away from giving in to exhaustion. It might show, if Sinclair offered him a chair. A verbal skirmish was the last thing he needed. Without raising his voice, he chose to change tactics. “Speaking of surnames, at this time I will need those of the brave men in your unit who stayed behind with you. I have reason to believe they came to grief not far from Ampelokastro, but as they were missing identification discs, their bodies were regrettably interred in nameless graves.”
Sinclair seemed genuinely surprised. “It was wrongly reported to you: the two men were not in my unit, I merely enrolled them on the spot to carry out the delaying action. And they were nowhere near the place you call Ampelokastro when they died.”
“They were, and so was Raj. Or at least, that’s what Caxton calls your dog.”
“I’m not acquainted with Mr Caxton, and never owned a dog named Raj. It would be banal for an Anglo-Indian to choose such a name for a pet.” Under the light, Sinclair’s impeccable dark hair flashed with a blue sheen when he turned to toss the tightly folded newspaper onto the cot. “The men and I held the rearguard near Gazi, west of Iraklion. Whatever else these individuals, Caxton and Cowell, told you is a fabrication or a mistake.”
If he closed his eyes, Bora could see the steep mountainside roll before him, and felt unbalanced. A reaction of the nerves, but in a manner of speaking he was still going downhill without a certain destination. “Well, Sergeant Cowell apparently told the truth when he said you speak German.”
“I do not speak it.”
“Then how would you understand what the soldiers manning the queue were discussing? With a few others, Cowell attempted a getaway after they heard you say the guards planned to shoot the prisoners en route. And all despite already having a pistol shot in his arm.”
“Pure nonsense. Why are you saying these things? Powell was fired on by the guards.”
I could show him Caxton’s notes, but I want him to think Cowell is still alive, and in a position to confront him in person. “It’ll be your word against his – and Caxton’s.”
Sinclair straightened up and set his shoulders a little, like a patient schoolmaster who begins to feel annoyance at a pupil’s chatter. “If any of this were true, Captain, you would have brought your witnesses here. This ingenious tale, patently concocted to clear your fellow Germans of a war crime, will not stand up in any court, military or civilian. Without me, the massacre would have never come to the attention of the authorities. Without me, you would have nothing to go by.”
“Yes, yes. Domenikos qui et Minos. The cobbler tried to kill me. But you warned me he was unsavoury.”
“I also took it upon myself to alert the Red Cross representatives, when they visited on Thursday, that you might be under orders to supply an alternative reconstruction of those odious deaths. The IRC will no doubt be curious to hear you out, seeing that British soldiers had no motive to murder local civilians and a Swiss national in cold blood.”
A motive? There was no motive. Bora played it by ear, trying not to lose his assuredness. He was like one who opens a door and finds there’s a drop yawning in front of him. He’s clever, to the extent of committing small inaccuracies that make him appear sincere. Unless he is.
The need to grasp something solid and keep from falling became anxiously physical. If I could only trust Geoffrey Caxton more than I’m tempted to trust a brother officer… Caxton had a written statement, but could have lied about the rest. Cambridge is a place where intelligence fishes for agents. With us, sincerity and what is expedient to say are the same thing. It’s all in freeing oneself from a concept of truth as “concordance with the facts”.
“I agree,” he forced himself to say. “That’s not exactly what happened at Ampelokastro. If anything, the British Army has been wronged in this matter as much as our own paratroopers. That’s the detail I am striving to clarify.” The sense of being off balance made him seek proof that he was still in his body, and in touch with reality. Driving his hands deeply into his pockets, Bora rubbed the splinters in his fingertips against the cloth, awakening small throbs of pain up his arms. Despite the lack of windows, from the runway the rumble of a cargo plane taking off reached the room, and he shamelessly wished he were on it.
In the pool of artificial light, Sinclair relaxed his shoulders. “I see you’re frustrated.” He came as close to expressing collegial sympathy as a British officer was likely to do, with a tinge of condescension. “Believe me, Captain, I appreciate your dilemma. In my present state, frustration daily threatens to get the better of me. But as soldiers we can’t give in to emotional responses, even when confronted with failure.”
“How do you know the nationality of the dead man? I never told you.”
“How? The Red Cross representatives informed me.”
“I will verify that.”
“Please do. But they’re not well-disposed towards you.”
He’s an operative. Bora looked from the imaginary threshold at the void below him, trying to judge if it was unfathomable. He decided it wasn’t. Whose he is, and why he’s here, I don’t know, but I’d bet my life on it. He’s not military counter-espionage. The gulf could be crossed, but he had to wait before jumping.
Sinclair had been granted cigarettes, the same German issue that Bora and Frances Allen had used as exchange goods in the mountains. He pulled out a pack and lifted it questioningly to Bora, who shook his head. He then placed a cigarette in his mouth, lit it with a match (another concession), and when he tilted back his head to blow out smoke, the ruddiness of his western countenance formed such a contrast with his dusky hair, he seemed to consist of two mismatched people in one. He observed Bora as one would a slightly younger acquaintance, judging whether it is worth measuring oneself against him.
“I’m looking at months, perhaps years of detention in a prison camp. Ahead of you, Captain, there’s the privilege of whatever the war will bring.” He glanced away from his interlocutor as the cargo plane roared overhead. “I think you and I know what privilege is. Who has it, who does not, and what it means. How detestable it is having privileges denied, or taken away. Count your blessings. I am Prometheus, bound to the rock for the duration. You are Ulysses, ready to unfurl your sails —”
“Maybe not,” Bora interrupted him. “I work at the German Embassy in Moscow.”
As from a newly safe perch, he watched the seemingly neutral statement kill the metaphor on the prisoner’s lips. The word “Moscow” was a calling card, a sign of mutual recognition that apparently said nothing but implied everything. It did not demolish but made irrelevant the boundary between truth and lie. It did not abolish categories: it went beyond them.
Moscow was where games were played, and only players were invited. Sinclair’s hesitation (like Busch’s when he’d heard Bora had never been to Crete, or Bora’s when Kostaridis had surprised him by offe
ring his services) told him he’d done the equivalent of scoring the surface of one diamond with another. That line, barely scratched, thinner than a hair, was wide enough for Bora’s confidence to drive a steel wedge through it.
“And whomever you work for, Lieutenant, you are behind the deaths at Ampelokastro. The woman and the field hands were incidental victims; as a soldier, I understand that. What disgusts me is that you lured away two men unawares from your unit to carry out your plans. Did they become suspicious along the way that you might be trying to desert, or give yourself up? Or did they really believe you needed them – and the faithful mascot – to ‘hold the rear’? Their submachine guns were what you needed, and to get them you didn’t hesitate to dispose of the men after they’d accompanied you nearly to your destination. As luck would have it, Sten and MAB 38 models both use 9×19 Parabellum cartridges, so – like everybody else – I assumed MAB 38s had been used: after all, we had photos of German paratroopers marching into the garden with those weapons. By the way, at what point did you take the collar off Raj’s neck? Before or after stripping your soldiers of all identification? The dog still trusted you, followed you, and you killed it on the doorstep before barging into the house.” Bora took out and showed Cowell’s ID disc and the deformed bullet. “I promise you, for your men’s deaths if not for the others, I will make sure the War Crimes Bureau and the Red Cross and the British Army are fully informed, demanding if need be that Cowell and your men be exhumed, along with the unit mascot.”
“And what would my motive be for this mayhem?” Sinclair sounded no more than surprised. The sight of the two objects left him unconcerned. Others would have stepped back or aside, fled the circle of artificial light: he stood at the centre of it as before. The only discordant element in his scrupulous self-control was that he spoke with the cigarette in his mouth, like Frances Allen. “Without a motive it’s all preposterous rubbish. I am shocked and advise you against making empty threats when you can’t prove any of it.”