Spies of the Balkans (12 page)

"Well," he went on, "'nothing' doesn't exist, not for the police. When somebody takes your country, you help them or you fight them. Because they will come after you; they'll ask, they'll
order:
'Find this man, this house, this organization. You're from Zagreb--or Budapest, or Salonika--you know your way around; give us a hand.' And if you
obey
them, or if you obey them during the day and don't do something else at night, then--"

"Then?"

For a moment, Pavlic was silent. Finally he said, "How to put it? You're ruined. Dishonored. You won't ever be the same again."

"Not everybody thinks that way, Marko. There are some who will be eager to work for them."

"I know, you can't change human nature. But there are those who will resist. It goes back in time forever, how conquerors and the conquered deal with each other. So everyone--well, maybe not everyone, but everyone like you and me--will have to take sides."

"I guess I have," Zannis said, as though he almost wished he hadn't.

"How would you do it, Berlin to Vienna? Cross into Hungary, then down through Yugoslavia into Greece? That's by rail, of course. If you went city to city you'd have to transit Roumania, I mean Budapest to Bucharest, and if you did
that
you'd better have some dependable contacts, Costa, or a lot--and I mean a
lot
--of money. And even then it's not a sure thing, you know; the way life goes these days, if you buy somebody they're just liable to turn around and sell you to somebody else."

"Better to stay west of Roumania," Zannis said. "The rail line goes down through Nis and into Salonika. Or even go from Nis into Bulgaria. I have a friend in Sofia I think I can count on."

"You don't know?"

"You never know."

"How do we communicate?
Telephone?"
He meant that it was beneath consideration.

"Does your office have a teletype machine?"

"Oh yes, accursed fucking thing. The Germans wished it on us--never shuts up, awful."

"That's how. Something like, 'We're looking for Mr. X, we think he's coming into Zagreb railway station on the eleven-thirty from Budapest.' Then a description. And if somebody taps into the line, so what? We're looking for a criminal."

Pavlic's expression was speculative:
could this work?
Then, slowly, he nodded, more to himself than to Zannis. "Not bad," he said. "Pretty good."

"But, I have to say this, dangerous."

"Of course it is. But so is crossing the street."

"Do you know your teletype number?"

Pavlic stared, then said, "No idea. So much for conspiracy." Then he added, "Actually, a typist works the thing."

"I know mine," Zannis said. "Could I borrow that for a moment?"

Pavlic handed over the
Modern Nudist
. Zannis took a pencil from the pocket of his tunic and flipped to the last page, where a group of naked men and women, arms around one another's shoulders, were smiling into the camera below the legend
SUNSHINE CHUMS, DUSSELDORF
. Zannis wrote 811305 SAGR. "The letters are for Salonika, Greece. You use the rotary dial on the machine. After it connects, the machine will type the initials for 'who are you' and you type the 'answer-back,' your number." He returned the magazine to Pavlic. "Perhaps you shouldn't share this."

"Does the message move on a telephone line?"

"Telegraph. Through the post office in Athens."

"I think I'd better have the typist teach me how to do it."

"Someone you trust?"

Pavlic thought it over and said, "No."

Pushing a cart with a squeaky wheel, a nurse was moving down the aisle between the beds. "Here's lunch," Pavlic said.

Zannis rose to leave. "We ought to talk about this some more, while we have the chance."

"Come back tonight," Pavlic said. "I'm not going anywhere."

7 December, Salonika. Zannis wasn't sorry to be home, but he wasn't all that happy about it either. This he kept hidden; why ruin the family pleasure? His mother was very tender with him, his grandmother cooked everything she thought he liked, and, wherever he went that first week, room to room or outdoors, Melissa stayed by his side--she wasn't going to let him escape again. As for his brother, Ari, he had exciting news, which he saved during the first joyous minutes of homecoming, only to be upstaged by his mother. "And Ari has a job!" she said. With so many men away at the fighting, there was work for anybody who wanted to work, and Ari had been hired as a conductor on the tram line.

And, he insisted, this was something his big brother had to see for himself. So Zannis had ridden the Number Four trolley out to Ano Toumba and let his pride show--sidelong glances from Ari made certain Zannis's smile was still in place--as Ari collected tickets and punched them with a silver-colored device. He was extremely conscientious and took his time, making sure to get it right. Inevitably, some of the passengers were rushed and irritable, but they sensed that Ari was one of those delicate souls who require a bit of compassion--was this a national trait? Zannis suspected it might be--and hardly anybody barked at him.

So Zannis returned to daily life, but a certain restless discomfort would not leave him. Able to hear out of only one ear, he was occasionally startled by sudden sounds, and he found that to be humiliating. A feeling in no way ameliorated by the fact that, just before he returned to Salonika, the Greek army
had
managed to find him a little medal, which he refused to wear, being disinclined to answer questions about how he came to have it. And, worst of all, he felt the absence of a love affair, felt it in the lack of commonplace affection, felt it while eating alone in restaurants, but felt it most keenly in bed, or out of bed but thinking about bed, or, in truth, all the time. In the chaos that followed the bombing of the Trikkala school, whatever goddess had charge of his mortality had brushed her lips across his cheek and this had, he guessed, affected that part of him where desire lived. Or maybe it was just the war.

On the evening of the seventh, Vangelis threw him a welcome-home party. Almost all were people Zannis knew, if, in some cases, only distantly. Gabi Saltiel, grayer and wearier than ever, was still driving an ambulance at night but traded shifts with another driver and brought his wife to the party. Sibylla, her helmet of hair highly lacquered for the occasion, was accompanied by her husband, who worked as a bookkeeper at one of the hotels. There were a couple of detectives, a shipping broker, a criminal lawyer, a prosecutor, two ballet teachers he'd met through Roxanne, an economics professor from the university, even a former girlfriend, Tasia Loukas, who worked at the Salonika city hall.

Tasia--for Anastasia--showed up late and held both his hands while he got a good strong whiff of some very sultry perfume. She was small and lively, dressed exclusively in black, had thick black hair, strong black eyebrows, and dark eyes--fierce dark eyes--that challenged the world from behind eyeglasses with gray-tinted lenses. Did Vangelis have something in mind for him when he invited Tasia? Zannis wondered. He'd had two brief, fiery love affairs with her, the first six years earlier, the second a few months before he'd met Roxanne. Very free, Tasia, and determined to remain so. "I'll never marry," she'd once told him. "For the truth is, I like to go with a woman from time to time--I get something from a woman I can never get with a man." She'd meant that to be provocative, he thought, but he wasn't especially provoked and had let her know that he didn't particularly care. And he truly didn't. "It's exciting," she'd said. "Especially when it must be kept a secret." A flicker of remembrance had lit her face as she spoke, accompanied by a most deliciously wicked smile, as though she were smiling, once again, at the first moment of the remembered conquest.

Vangelis gave famously good parties--excellent red wine, bottles and bottles of it--and had stacks of Duke Ellington records. As the party swirled around them, Zannis and Tasia had two conversations. The spoken one was nothing special--how was he, fine, how was she--the unspoken one much more interesting. "I better go say hello to Vangelis," she said, and reluctantly, he could tell, let go of his hands.

"Don't leave without telling me, Tasia."

"I won't."

She was replaced by the economics professor and his lady friend, who Zannis recollected was a niece or cousin to the poet Elias. They'd been hovering, waiting their turn to greet the returning hero. Asked about his war, Zannis offered a brief and highly edited version of the weeks in Trikkala, which ended, "Anyhow, at least we're winning."

The professor looked up from his wineglass. "Do you really believe that?"

"I saw it," Zannis said. "And the newspapers aren't telling lies."

From the professor, a low grumbling sound that meant
yes, but
. "On the battlefield, it's true, we are winning. And if we don't chase them back into Italy, we'll have a stalemate, which is just as good. But
winning
, maybe not."

"Such a cynic," his lady friend said gently. She had a long intelligent face. Turning to the table at her side, she speared a dolma, an oily, stuffed grape leaf, put it on a plate and worked at cutting it with the side of her fork.

"How do you mean?" Zannis said.

"The longer this goes on," the professor said, "the more Hitler has to stop it. The Axis can't be seen to be weak."

"I've heard that," Zannis said. "It's one theory. There are others."

The professor sipped his wine; his friend chewed away at her dolma.

Zannis felt dismissed from the conversation. "Maybe you're right. Well then, what can we do about it?" he said. "Retreat?"

"Can't do that either."

"So, damned if we do, damned if we don't."

"Yes," the professor said.

"Don't listen to him," the professor's friend said. "He always finds the gloomy side."

The warrior in Zannis wanted to argue--
what about the British army?
Because if Germany attacked them, their British ally would arrive in full force from across the Mediterranean. To date, Britain and Germany were bombing each other's cities, but their armies, after the debacle that ended in Dunkirk, had not engaged. Hitler, the theory went, had been taught a lesson the previous autumn, when his plans to invade Britain had been thwarted by the RAF.

But the professor was bored with politics and addressed the buffet--"The eggplant spread is very tasty," he said, by way of a parting shot. Then gave way to one of Zannis's former colleagues from his days as a detective--insider jokes and nostalgic anecdotes--who in turn was replaced by a woman who taught at the Mount Olympus School of Ballet. Had Zannis heard anything from Roxanne? No, had she? Not a word, very troubling, she hoped Roxanne wasn't in difficulties.

Minutes later, Zannis knew she wasn't. Francis Escovil, the English travel writer and, Zannis suspected, British spy, appeared magically at his side. "Oh, she's perfectly all right," Escovil said. "I had a postal card, two weeks ago. Back in Blighty, she is. Dodging bombs but happy to be home."

"I'm glad to hear it."

"Yes, no doubt busy as a bee. Likely that's why you haven't heard from her."

"Of course," Zannis said. He started to say
give her my best
but thought better of it. That could, in a certain
context
, be taken the wrong way. Instead, he asked, "How do you come to know Vangelis?"

"Never met him. I'm here with Sophia, who teaches at the school."

"Oh." That raised more questions than it answered, but Zannis knew he'd never hear anything useful from the infinitely deflective Englishman. In fact, Zannis didn't like Escovil, and Escovil knew it.

"Say, could we have lunch sometime?" Escovil said, trying to be casual, not succeeding.

What do you want?
"We might, I'm pretty busy myself. Try me at the office--you have the number?"

"I think I might ..."

I'll bet you do
.

"... somewhere. Roxanne put it on a scrap of paper."

Escovil stood there, smiling at him, not going away.

"Are you writing articles?" Zannis asked, seeking safe ground.

"Trying to. I've been to all sorts of monasteries, got monks coming out of my ears. Went to one where they haul you up the side of a cliff; that's the only way to get there. Just a basket and a frayed old rope. I asked the priest, 'When do you replace the rope?' Know what he said?"

"What?"

"When it breaks!" Escovil laughed, a loud
haw-haw
with teeth showing.

"Well, that's a good story," Zannis said, "as long as you're not the one in the basket." Out of the corner of his eye, he saw that Tasia was headed toward him. "We'll talk later," he said to Escovil, and turned to meet her.

"I'm going home," she said.

"Could you stay a while?"

"I guess I could. Why?"

"I'm the guest of honor, I can't leave yet."

"True," she said. She met his eyes, no smile to be seen but it was playing with the corners of her mouth. "Then I'll stay. But not too long, Costa. I don't really know these people."

He touched her arm, lightly, with two fingers. "Just a little while," he said.

She had a large apartment, near the city hall and obviously expensive. One always wondered about Tasia and money but she never said anything about it. Maybe her family, he thought. Once inside, she fed her cats, poured two small glasses of ouzo, and sat Zannis on a white couch. Settling herself at the other end, she curled into the corner, kicked off her shoes, rested her legs on the cushions, said,
"Salut,"
and raised her glass.

After they drank she said, "Mmm. I wanted that all night--I hate drinking wine. Take your shoes off, put your feet up. That's better, right? Parties hurt your feet? They do mine--high heels, you know? I'm such a peasant. Oh yes, rub harder, good ... good ... don't stop, yes, there ... ahh, that's perfect, now the other one, wouldn't want it to feel neglected ... yes, just like that, a little higher, maybe ... no, I meant higher, keep going, keep going ... ... no, don't take them all the way off, just down, just below my ass ... there, perfect, you'll like that later. Remember?"