Spies of the Balkans (8 page)

"What's wrong?"

"I have to get to the airport. But there isn't a taxi to be found in the whole city, and my friends with cars don't answer their phones, or they're driving somebody to Athens, or--or
something!"

"Roxanne ..."

"What?"

"Calm down."

"Sorry, I've just had--"

"There's no point in going to the airport, all commercial flights are canceled; we're at
war
--the military has taken over out there. Now, tell me where you need to go and I'll see what I can do."

"I need to go to the airport. Please."

"Are we going to fight about this? You think I didn't tell you the truth?"

"Costa, can you borrow a car? Or get one from the police?"

After a moment, he said, in a different tone of voice, "What is this?"

"A favor. I have never asked you for a favor, not ever, but I'm asking now. And part of the favor is not trying to make me explain on the telephone, because I have to be there right away."

"Hold on." He turned to Saltiel and said, "Gabi, may I use your car for an hour?"

Saltiel stared at him.
I don't let anyone drive my car
. "Well, I guess you can, if you need it." He was clearly not happy.

"Did you hear that?" Zannis said, on the phone.

"Yes."

"I'll pick you up in ten minutes."

It was a rough ride to the airport, some fifteen miles east of the city. Convoys of army trucks were rolling west, toward them, headed for the roads that went up to the Albanian border. And, being army convoys on the first day of a war, saw no reason, in the national interest, not to use both lanes. So more than once Zannis had to swerve off the road, the Skoda bumping over a rocky field. Teeth clamped together, he waited for the blown-out tire or the broken spring, though it happened, over and over again, only in his imagination. But that was bad enough.

Meanwhile, from Roxanne, stony silence, broken occasionally by English oaths,
bloody
this and
bloody
that, delivered under her breath every time the trucks came at them. Finally, answering the unasked question, she said, "If you must know, it's just some friends who want me
out
of here."

"Powerful friends," Zannis said. "Friends with airplanes."

"Yes, powerful friends. I know you have them; well, so do I."

"Then I'm happy for you."

"Bloody ..."
A muttered syllable followed.

"What?"

"Never mind. Just drive."

Coming around a curve, they were suddenly confronted by a pair of gasoline tankers, side by side, horns blaring. Zannis swung the wheel over, the back end broke free, and they went skidding sideways into a field. The car stalled, Zannis pressed the ignition button, the Skoda coughed, then started. But the army wasn't done with them. Just before they reached the airport, a long convoy came speeding right at them--and this time they almost didn't make it. The car idled by the side of the road, pebbles hit the windshield, soldiers waved, Roxanne swore, Zannis fumed.

The airport was deserted. The Royal Hellenic Air Force--about a hundred planes: a few PZL P.24s, Polish-built fighters, and whatever else they'd managed to buy over the years--was operating from air-bases in the west. A sign on the door of the terminal building said
ALL FLIGHTS CANCELED,
and the only signs of life were a small group of soldiers on guard duty and a crew gathered beside its antiaircraft gun. They'd built a fire and were roasting somebody's chicken on a bayonet.

Roxanne had only a small valise--Zannis offered to carry it but she wouldn't let him. They walked around the terminal building and there, parked in a weedy field by the single paved runway, was a small monoplane, a Lysander, with a British RAF roundel on the fuselage. The pilot, sitting on the ground with his back against the wheel, was smoking a cigarette and reading a Donald Duck comic book. He stood when he saw them coming and flicked his cigarette away. Very short, and very small, he looked, to Zannis's eyes, no more than seventeen.

"Sorry I'm late," Roxanne said.

The pilot peered up at the gathering darkness and strolled back toward the observer's cockpit, directly behind the pilot's--both were open, no canopies to be seen. "Getting dark," he said. "We'd better be going."

Roxanne turned to Zannis and said, "Thank you."

He stared at her and finally said, "You're not going to England, are you."

"No, only to Alexandria. I may well be back; it's simply a precaution."

"Of course, I understand." His voice was flat and dead because he was heartsick.
"Now,"
he added, "I understand."
And how could I have been so dumb I never saw it?
The British government didn't send Lysanders to rescue the expatriate owners of ballet schools, they sent them to rescue secret service operatives.

Her eyes flashed; she moved toward him and spoke, intensely but privately, so the pilot wouldn't hear. "It wasn't to do with you," she said. "It wasn't to do with you."

"No, of course not."

Suddenly she grabbed a handful of his shirt, just below the collar, and twisted it, her knuckles sharp where they pressed against his chest. It surprised him, how strong she was, and the violence was a shock--this hand, in the past, had been very nice to him. "Wasn't," she said. Her eyes were dry, but he could see she was as close to tears as she ever came. And then he realized that the hand clutching his shirt wasn't there in anger, it was furiously, almost unconsciously, trying to hold on to something it had lost.

The pilot cleared his throat. "Getting dark," he said. He knotted his fingers, making a cup out of his hands, nodded up at the observer cockpit, and said, "Up we go, luv."

Zannis walked with Roxanne the few feet to the plane. She turned and looked at him, then rested her foot on the waiting hands and was hoisted upward, floundered for a moment, skirt rising to reveal the backs of her thighs, then swung her legs over into the cockpit. The pilot smiled at Zannis, a boyish grin which made him look even younger than seventeen, and said, "Don't worry, mate, I'm good at this." He handed Roxanne her valise, jumped up on the wheel housing, and climbed into the pilot's cockpit. A moment later, the engine roared to life and the propeller spun. Zannis watched the Lysander as it taxied, then lifted into the air and turned south, heading out over the Aegean toward Egypt.

*

Back in the office, a yellow sheet of teletype paper lay on his desk. From Lazareff in Sofia.

COSTA: DO US ALL A FAVOR AND CHASE THESE BASTARDS BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM

The message was in Bulgarian, but Zannis had grown up in Salonika, "a city where even the bootblacks speak seven languages," and was able to figure it out. Normally, he would have enjoyed Lazareff's gesture, but now he just sat there, his mood dark and melancholy, and stared at the wall.

He came to believe, after going back over their time together, that Roxanne hadn't lied, that he'd not been the target of a British spy operation. He could not recall a single time when she'd asked him anything that might touch on the sort of information that spies sought. So, in fact, it wasn't to do with him. He'd had a love affair with a woman who'd been sent to Salonika as part of an intelligence operation. Then, when war came, when occupation by an Axis force was more than possible, they'd snatched her away. Or maybe she simply did have friends in high places, friends with the power to organize an RAF Lysander flight to Greece. No, she'd actually confessed. "It wasn't to do with you." The
it
. To do with somebody else. The Germans, the Italians, the Vichy French consul; there were many possibilities.

Should he tell somebody? What, exactly, would he tell? And to who? Spiraki? Never. Vangelis? Why? His job was discretion; his job was to keep things quiet. Well, he would. And if she returned? It might be easier if she didn't. At the least, they'd have to come to some sort of understanding. Or pretend it had never happened? Slowly, he shook his head.
This war--look what it does
. In truth, he missed her already. Maybe they weren't in love but they'd been passionate lovers--she'd been his warm place in a cold world. And now he had to go up north and kill Italians, so maybe he was the one who wouldn't be coming back.

The telephone rang and Saltiel answered it, said, "I see" and "very well" a few times, made notes, and hung up.

"What was that?" Zannis said.

"The mayor's chief assistant." He rubbed his hands back through his hair and sighed. "Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry."

Sibylla looked up from her sweater.

"It seems the mayor has a niece, a favorite niece, recently married; she lives out by Queen Olga Street."

"I know who she is," Zannis said. "Pretty girl."

"Well, maybe she was distracted by the war, maybe, I don't know, something else. Anyhow, this afternoon she went to feed her pet bird, a parakeet. And, unfortunately, she left the door of the cage open, and it flew away."

Zannis waited a moment, then said, "And that's it?"

"Yes."

Sibylla turned away, and, as she started to knit, made a small noise--not a laugh, but a snort.

"It's true? You're not just saying this to be funny?"

"No. It's true."

Now it was Zannis's turn to sigh. "Well, I guess you'll have to call her," he said. "And tell her ... what? Put an advertisement in the newspaper? We can't go out and look for it."

"Tell her to leave the window open," Sibylla said, "and the door of the cage, and have her put some of its food in there."

Saltiel made the call, his voice soothing and sympathetic, and he was on for a long time. Then, ten minutes later, the telephone rang again and, this time, it
was
the General Staff.

8:35
P.M
. It began to rain, softly, no downpour, just enough to make the pavement shine beneath the streetlamps. Still, it meant that it would be snowing in the mountains. Zannis waited on the corner of the Via Egnatia closest to Santaroza Lane, a canvas knapsack slung on his shoulder. The Vardari, the wind that blew down the Vardar valley, was sharp and Zannis turned away from it, faced the port and watched the lightning as it lit the clouds above the sea. Moments later the thunder followed, distant rumblings, far to the south.

He'd had a hectic time of it since he left the office. Had taken a taxi back to Santaroza Lane, packed some underwear, socks, and a sweater, then threw in his old detective's sidearm, the same detective's version of the Walther PPK that Saltiel had, and a box of bullets. Then he changed into his reservist's uniform, a close cousin to what British officers wore, with a Sam Browne belt that looped over one shoulder. He searched for, and eventually found, inside a valise, his officer's cap, and, Melissa by his side, hurried out the door to find another taxi.

Up at his mother's house in the heights, the mood was quiet and determined--basically acceptance. They fussed over Melissa, fed her and set out her water bowl and blanket, and gave Zannis a heavy parcel wrapped in newspaper--sandwiches of roast lamb in pita bread--which he stowed in his knapsack atop the gun and the underwear. For some reason, this brought to mind a scene in Homer, dimly remembered from school, where one of the heroes prepares to go to war. Probably, Zannis thought, given some version of the lamb and pita, though that didn't get into the story. After he buckled the knapsack, his brother, mother, and grandmother each embraced him; then his grandmother pressed an Orthodox medal into his hand. "It saved your grandfather's life," she said. "Keep it with you always. You promise, Constantine?" He promised. Melissa sat by his side as he was saying a final good-bye, and, last thing before he went out the door, he bent over and she gave him one lick on the ear. She knew.

On the corner, Zannis looked at his watch and shifted his feet. Well, he thought, if you had to go to war you might as well leave from the Via Egnatia. An ancient street, built first in the second century
B.C.
as a military road for the Roman Empire. It began as the Via Appia, the Appian Way, in Rome, went over to Brindisi, where one crossed the Adriatic to Albanian Durres and the road took the name Via Egnatia. Then it ran down to Salonika and went east, eventually reaching Byzantium--Constantinople. Thus it linked the two halves of the Byzantine Empire, Roman Catholic and Italian in the west, Eastern Orthodox and Greek in the east. Sixteen hundred years of it, until the Turks won a war.

Zannis lit a cigarette and looked at his watch again, then saw a pair of headlights coming toward him down the street. A French-built staff car, old and boxy, a relic, with a blue-and-white Greek pennant flown from the whippy radio aerial. When the car drew up in front of him, a General Staff captain in the passenger seat opened the back door from inside. "Lieutenant Zannis," he said. Zannis saluted and climbed in; two other men in the backseat moved over and made room for him. It was smoky in the car, and rain dripped through a tear in the canvas top.

The driver worked hard, winding up into the mountains on dark roads, the wiper brushing across the windshield. He was employed, he said, by the telephone company in Salonika, as a maintenance supervisor, "but I spent years working on the lines, relay stations, the whole system." The other two men simply gave their names and, still civilians, shook hands, though they were sergeants, and Zannis, who'd been assigned to a reserve unit as an officer in the police department, a lieutenant. The captain was a real serving captain, very smart-looking in his uniform, with a small mustache and eyeglasses. "I'm in signals," he said, "communications of all sorts," and let it go at that.

For a time, the mountain roads were deserted; then, climbing a steep grade that curved sharply to the right, they came up behind an army truck. The headlights revealed soldiers, rifles between their knees, sitting on two benches that ran the length of the truck bed. One of them waved.

"Evzones,"
the captain said. The word meant sharpshooters. Their ceremonial uniforms--white kilt and hat with tassel--were derived from the klephts who'd fought the Turks. In fact, once the ceremonial uniforms were changed for traditional battlefield dress, the Evzones were the elite combat units of the army. "I don't think," the captain said, "the Italians will be glad to see them coming."