Eric Ambler - The Schirmer Inheritance

“I was wondering why he wasn’t.”

“One could not shoot all of these rebels,” the Colonel said with a shrug. “We are not Germans or Russkis. Besides, your friends in Geneva would not have liked it.”

“Where can I see this man?”

“Here in Salonika. I shall have to speak to the commandant of the prison. Do you know your Consul here?”

“Not yet, but I have a letter to him from our Legation in Athens.”

“Ah, good. I will tell the commandant that you are a friend of the American Minister. That should be sufficient.”

“What exactly is this man Phengaros in prison for?”

The Colonel referred to the folder. “Jewel robbery, Mr. Carey.”

“I thought you said he was a political prisoner.”

“In America, Mr. Carey, your criminals are all capitalists. Here in these times they are occasionally Communists. Men like Phengaros do not steal for themselves, but for the Party funds. Of course, if we catch them they go to the criminal prison. They cannot be sent to the islands as politicals. They have made some big coups lately. It is quite traditional. Even the great Stalin robbed a bank for the Party funds when he was a young man. Of course, there are some of these bandits from the hills who only pretend to rob for the Party, and keep what they get for themselves. They are clever and dangerous and the police do not catch them. But Phengaros is not of that kind. He is a simple, deluded fanatic of the type that always gets caught.”

“When can I see him?”

“Tomorrow perhaps. We shall see.” He pressed the button again for the Lieutenant. “Tell me,” he said, “are you and Madame by chance without an engagement this evening? I should so much like to show you our city.”

Twenty minutes later George and Miss Kolin left the building and came again into the heat and glare of a Salonika afternoon. George’s excuse that he had a long report to write that evening had been accepted with ready understanding. Miss Kolin had seemed to have rather more difficulty in evading the Colonel’s hospitality. The conversation, however, had been conducted in Greek and George had understood nothing of it.

They crossed to the shade on the other side of the street.

“How did you manage to get out of it?” he asked as they turned towards the hotel.

“I explained that my stomach was upset by the food and the flies and that I should probably be sick all night.”

George laughed.

“I spoke the truth.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. Do you think you ought to see a doctor?”

“It will pass off. You have no stomach trouble yet?”

“No.”

“It will come later. This is a bad place for the stomach when one is not used to it.”

“Miss Kolin,” George said after a while, “what did you really think of Colonel Chrysantos?”

“What can one think of such a man?”

“You didn’t like him? He was very helpful and obliging.”

“Yes, no doubt. It soothes his vanity to be helpful. There is only one thing that pleases me about that Colonel.”

“Oh?”

She walked on several paces in silence. Then she spoke quietly, so quietly that he only just heard what she said.

“He knows how to deal with Germans, Mr. Carey.”

It was at that moment that George received the first intimations of coming discomfort in his stomach and intestines. At that moment, also, he forgot about Colonel Chrysantos and Germans.

“I begin to see what you mean about the food and the flies,” he remarked as they turned the corner by the hotel. “I think, if you don’t mind, that we’ll call in at a drugstore.”

The following day the Colonel’s Lieutenant arrived at their hotel in an army car and drove them out to the prison.

It was a converted barracks built near the remains of an old Turkish fort on the western outskirts of the city. With its high surrounding wall and the Kalamara Heights across the bay as a background, it looked from the outside rather like a monastery. Inside, it smelt like a large and inadequately tended latrine.

The Lieutenant had brought papers admitting them and they were taken to the administration block. Here they were introduced to a civilian official in a tight tussore suit, who apologized for the absence of the commandant on official business and offered coffee and cigarettes. He was a thin, anxious man, with a habit of picking his nose, of which he seemed to be trying, none too successfully, to break himself. When they had had their coffee, he took a heavy bunch of keys and led them through a series of passages with steel doors at both ends, which he unlocked and relocked as they went along. They were shown eventually into a room with whitewashed walls and a steel grille running down the middle from floor to ceiling. Through the grille they could see another door.

The official looked apologetic and mumbled something in bad French.

“Phengaros,” Miss Kolin translated, “is not a good prisoner and sometimes behaves violently. The commandant would not wish us to be exposed to any trouble. It is for that reason that the interview must take place in these uncomfortable surroundings. He apologizes for them.”

George nodded. He was not at ease. He had spent a disagreeable and exhausting night, and the smell of the place was making it difficult for him to forget the fact. Moreover, he had never been inside a prison before, and, while he had not supposed the experience would be anything but depressing, he had been unprepared for the lively sense of personal guilt that it aroused.

There was a sound from the door beyond the grille and he looked round. A Judas window had opened in it and a face was peering through. Then a key turned in the lock and the door opened. A man slowly entered the room.

The prisoner was thin and sinewy, with dark, sunken eyes and a long beak of a nose. His skin was brown and leathery as if he worked a lot in the sun. His shaven head had a black stubble of growth on it. He wore a cotton singlet and canvas trousers tied in at the waist with a strip of rag. His feet were bare.

He hesitated when he saw the faces on the other side of the grille, and the warder behind him prodded him with a club. He came forward into the light. The warder locked the door and stood with his back to it. The official nodded to George.

“Ask him what his name is,” George said to Miss Kolin.

She relayed the question. The prisoner licked his lips, his dark eyes looking beyond her at the three men, as if she were the bait in a trap of their devising. He looked from her to the official and muttered something.

“What is the game?” Miss Kolin translated. “You know my name well enough. Who is this woman?”

The official shouted something at him violently and the warder prodded him again with the club.

George spoke quickly. “Miss Kolin, explain to him in as friendly a way as you can that I am an American lawyer and that my business has nothing to do with him personally. It is a private, a legal matter. Say we only want to question him about that ambush at Vodena. There is no political angle to it. Our only object in questioning him is to confirm the death of a German soldier reported missing in 1944. Make it good.”

As she spoke, George watched the prisoner’s face. The dark eyes flickered suspiciously towards him as she went on. When she had finished, the prisoner thought for a moment. Then he answered.

“He will listen to the questions and decide whether he will answer when he has heard them.”

Behind George the Lieutenant was beginning to mutter angrily to the official. George took no notice.

“O.K.,” he said, “ask him his name. He’s got to identify himself.”

“Phengaros.”

“Ask him if he remembers the ambush of the trucks.”

“Yes, he remembers.”