Eric Ambler - The Schirmer Inheritance

“He was in command of those particular andartes ?”

“Yes.”

“What happened exactly?”

“He does not know. He was not there.”

“But he said-”

“He was leading an attack on the gasoline dump at the time. It was his second-in-command who caught the trucks.”

“Where is his second-in-command?”

“Dead. He was shot a few months later by the fascist murder gangs in Athens.”

“Oh. Well, ask him if he knows of any German prisoners taken from the trucks.”

Phengaros thought for a moment, then nodded.

“Yes. One.”

“Did he see this prisoner?”

“He interrogated him.”

“What rank was he?”

“A private, he thinks. The man was the driver of the truck that hit the mine. He was wounded.”

“Is he sure that there was no other prisoner?”

“Yes.”

“Tell him we have information that there were two men in that first truck who did not return and whose bodies were not found by the German party that came on the scene later. One was the driver of the truck, whom he says he interrogated. The other was the Sergeant in charge of the detachment. We want to know what happened to the Sergeant.”

Phengaros began gesturing emphatically as he talked.

“He says that he was not there, but that if there had been a German sergeant alive his men would certainly have taken him prisoner for questioning. A sergeant would have more information to give than a driver.”

“What happened to the driver?”

“He died.”

“How?”

There was a hesitation. “Of his wounds.”

“O.K., we’ll skip that. When he served in the army of General Markos, did he come across any Germans fighting with it?”

“A few.”

“Any whose names he can remember?”

“No.”

“Ask him if he knows of anyone who actually took part in the truck ambush who’s still alive.”

“He knows of nobody.”

“Surely they can’t all be dead. Ask him to try and remember.”

“He knows of nobody.”

Phengaros was no longer looking at Miss Kolin now, but staring straight ahead.

There was a pause. George felt a touch on his arm. The Lieutenant drew him aside.

“Mr. Carey, this man does not wish to give information that might compromise his friends,” he said in English.

“Oh, I see. Of course.”

“Excuse me a moment, please.”

The Lieutenant went to the official and held a whispered conversation with him. Then he returned to George.

“The information might be obtained for you, Mr. Carey,” he murmured, “but it would take time to do so.”

“How do you mean?”

“This Phengaros is a difficult man to persuade, it seems, but, if you wish, some disciplinary pressure might be applied-”

“No, no.” George spoke hastily; his knees were beginning to tremble. “Unless he gives the information quite voluntarily it can have no legal value as evidence.” It was a dishonest excuse. Phengaros’s evidence had no legal value anyway; it was the evidence of eyewitnesses (if any) that would be important. But George could think of nothing better.

“As you please. Is there anything else you wish to ask?” The Lieutenant’s manner was bored now. He had seen through George. If the inquiry could be pursued with such lily-livered timidity, it could not be of very great importance.

“I don’t think so, thanks.” George turned to Miss Kolin. “Ask this prison man if it’s against the rules to give the prisoner some cigarettes.”

The official stopped picking his nose when he heard the question. Then he shrugged. If the American wished to waste cigarettes on such an un-co-operative type he might do so; but they must be examined first.

George took out a packet of cigarettes and handed it to him. The official glanced inside, pinched the packet, and handed it back. George held it through the grille.

Phengaros had been standing there with a faint smile on his face. His eyes met George’s. With an ironic bow he took the cigarettes. As he did so be began to speak.

“I understand the feelings of embarrassment that prompt you to offer this gift, sir,” translated Miss Kolin. “If I were a criminal, I would gladly accept them. But the fate of my comrades at the hands of the fascist reactionaries already rests too lightly on the conscience of the world. If your own conscience is troubling you, sir, that is to your credit. But I am not yet so corrupted here as to allow you to ease it for the price of a packet of cigarettes. No. Much as I should have enjoyed smoking them, sir, I think that their destination must be that of all other American aid.”

With a flick of his wrist he tossed the cigarettes to the warder behind him.

They fell on the floor. As the warder snatched them up, the official began shouting to him angrily through the grille and he hastened to unlock the door.

Phengaros nodded curtly and went out.

The official stopped shouting and turned apologetically to George. “Une espèce de fausse-couche,” he said; “je vous demande pardon, monsieur.”

“What for?” said George. “If he thinks I’m a lousy crypto-fascist-imperialist lackey, he’s quite right in refusing to smoke my cigarettes.”

“Pardon?”

“He also had the good manners not to heave the cigarettes right back in my face. In his place, I might have done just that.”

“Qu’est ce que Monsieur a dit?”

The official was looking desperately at Miss Kolin.

George shook his head. “Don’t bother to translate, Miss Kolin. He won’t get it. You understand me, though, don’t you, Lieutenant? Yes, I thought so. Now, if you don’t mind, I’d like to get the hell out of here before something very in-inconvenient happens inside my stomach.”

When they got back to the hotel, there was a note from Colonel Chrysantos awaiting them. It contained the information that a search of all the relevant lists had failed to discover anybody named Schirmer who had been either killed or captured in the Markos campaign; nor had an amnesty been granted to anyone of that name.

“Miss Kolin,” George said, “what can you drink when you have this stomach thing?”

“Cognac is best.”

“Then we’d better have some.”

Later, when the experiment had been tried, he said: “When we were in Cologne my office gave me permission to go on with the investigation for three more weeks if I thought we were making progress. One of them’s gone, and all we’ve found out is that Franz Schirmer most likely didn’t get taken prisoner by the people who shot up the trucks.”

“Surely, that is something.”

“It’s mildly interesting at best. It doesn’t get us anywhere. I’m giving it one more week. If we’re no nearer the truth by then, we go home. O.K.?”

“Perfectly. What will you do with the week?”

“Do what I have an idea I should have done before. Go to Vodena and look for his grave.”

Vodena, which used to be called Edessa and was once the seat of the kings of Macedon, is some fifty miles west of Salonika. It hangs, amid lush growth of vine and wild pomegranate, fig, and mulberry trees, in the foothills of Mount Chakirka six hundred feet above the Yiannitsa plain. Sparkling mountain streams cascade lyrically down the hillsides into Nisia Voda, the tributary of the Vadar which flows swiftly past the town on its way to the parent river. The old tiled houses glow in the sun. There are no tourist hotels.

George and Miss Kolin were driven there in a car hired in Salonika. It was not an enjoyable trip. The day was hot and the road bad. The condition of their stomachs denied them even the consolations of a good lunch and a bottle of wine at their destination. While the chauffeur went off heartily in search of food and wine, they went into a café, fought the flies for long enough to drink some brandy, and then dragged themselves off dispiritedly in search of information.