Alan Furst - Spies of the Balkans

But the soldiers weren’t such easy targets, they were always together, they didn’t pass out drunk in an alley-at least not in the alleys where he searched for them-and they went to the brothel for their girls. After a few days, Behar began to despair, war was not going to turn out to be much of an opportunity at all.

But then, in the second week of the war, Pappou came to his rescue. Behar lived in a shack at the edge of the city, with his mother and two sisters. They never had enough wood for the stove, so they froze during the winter and waited anxiously for spring. He was lying on his cot one afternoon when a boy came with a message: he was to go and see Pappou the following day. Two o’clock, the boy said, at the barbershop Pappou owned, where he did business in the back room.

Behar was excited. He walked to the edge of Trikkala to find his eldest brother, who owned a razor, and there scraped his face. Painful, using the icy water, because his brother was not so prosperous as to own soap. Behar made sure he got to the barbershop on time. He wore his grimy old suit, the only clothing he had, but he’d combed his hair and settled his short-brimmed cap at just the proper angle, down over his left eye. It was the best he could do. On the way to the shop he looked at himself in the glass of a display window; scrawny and hunched, hands in pockets, not such a bad face, he thought, though they’d broken his nose when he’d tried to steal food in the prison.

To Behar, the barbershop was a land of enchantment, where polished mirrors reflected white tile, where the air was warmed-by a nickel-plated drum that heated towels with steam, and scented-by the luxurious, sugary smell of rosewater, used to perfume the customers when they were done being barbered. There were two men in the chairs when Behar arrived, one with his face swathed in a towel, apparently asleep, though the cigar in his dangling hand was still smoking, the other in the midst of a haircut. The barber, as he snipped, spoke to his customer in a low, soothing voice. The weather might change, or maybe not.

When Behar entered the back room, Pappou, sitting at a table, spread his arms in welcome. “Behar! Here you are, right on time! Good boy.” Sitting across from Pappou was a man who simply smiled and nodded. His friend here, Pappou explained, was not from Trikkala and needed a reliable fellow for a simple little job. Which he would explain in a minute. Again, the man nodded. “It will pay you very well,” Pappou said, “if you are careful and do exactly as you’re told. Can you do that, my boy?” With great enthusiasm, Behar said he could. Then, to his considerable surprise, Pappou stood up, left the room, and closed the door behind him. Outside, Pappou could be heard as he joked with the barbers, so he wasn’t listening at the door.

The man leaned forward and asked Behar a few questions. He was, from the way he spoke, a foreigner. Clean-shaven, thick-lipped, and prosperously jowly, he had a tight smile that Behar found, for no reason he could think of, rather chilling, and eyes that did not smile at all. The questions were not complicated. Where did he live? Did he like Trikkala? Was he treated well here? Behar answered with monosyllables, accompanied by what he hoped was an endearing smile. And did he, the foreigner wanted to know, wish to make a thousand drachma? Behar gasped. The foreigner’s smile broadened-that was a good answer.

The foreigner leaned closer and spoke in a confidential voice. Here were all these soldiers who had come to Trikkala; did Behar know where they lived? Well, they seemed to be everywhere. They’d taken over the two hotels, some of them stayed at the school, others in vacant houses-wherever they could find a roof to keep them out of the rain. Very well, now for the first part of the job. The foreigner could see that Behar was a smart lad, didn’t need to write anything down, and so shouldn’t. Mustn’t. Behar promised not to do that. An easy promise, he couldn’t have written anything down even if he’d wanted to, for he could neither read nor write. “Now then,” the foreigner said, “all you have to do is …” When he was done, he explained again, then had Behar repeat the instructions. Clearly, Behar thought, a very careful foreigner.

He went to work that very afternoon, three hundred drachma already in his pocket. A fortune. At one time he’d tried his hand-disastrously-at changing money for tourists, and he knew that a thousand drachma was equal to ninety American dollars. To Behar, that was more than a thousand drachma, that was like something in a dream, or a movie.

But then, delight was replaced by misery. As the light faded from the November afternoon, he walked the streets of Trikkala, his eyes searching the rooftops. He knew where the reservists lived, or thought he did, and went from one to the next, crisscrossing the town, but no luck. In time, he became desperate. What if the foreigner was wrong? What if the accursed object didn’t exist? What then? Give back the three hundred drachma? Well, he no longer had the three hundred drachma. Because, immediately after leaving the foreigner he had, maddened by good fortune, visited a pastry shop where he’d bought a cream-filled slice of bougatsa with powdered sugar on top. So good! And then-he was rich, why not? — another, this one with cheese, even more expensive. Now what? Make good what he’d spent? How?

Thirty minutes later, fate intervened. In, for a change, Behar’s favor, as, for the third time in an hour, he paced the street in front of the school. A building that held, for Behar, nothing but terrible memories. The reservist soldiers went in and out, busy, occupied with important military matters. Up above, the sky had grown dark as it prepared to shower down some nice cold rain. Then, just for a moment, a thick cloud drifted aside and a few rays of sun, now low on the horizon, struck the school’s chimney at just the proper angle. And Behar caught a single silver glint. Finally! There it was! Just as the foreigner had described it. A wire, run up from somewhere in the building and fixed in place by a rock atop the cement surround that topped the stuccoed plaster. Immediately, he looked away.

The rain held off. Fortunately, for Behar, it went away and found somewhere else to fall, because, for the second part of the job, he required sunshine. Which, the following morning, poured through the window of the shack and sent him off whistling to the better part of town, that part of town where people were used to certain luxuries. But this too turned out to be a difficult search, since the little gardens behind these houses were walled, so that Behar had to find a deserted street, check for broken glass cemented to the top of the wall-he’d learned about that years ago, the hard way-get a good grip, and hoist himself up. His first few attempts were unproductive. Then, at the very end of a quiet street, he found what he was looking for: a garden with two fig trees, a clothesline strung between them, laundry out to dry. Underpants, panties, two towels, two pillowcases, and two big white sheets.

He hauled himself the rest of the way and lay on the wall. Anyone home? Should he go and knock on the front door? Does Panos live here? No. He stared at the house; shutters closed over the windows, all silent and still. He took a deep breath, counted to three, and was over the wall. Steal the underwear . But he resisted the urge, snatched one of the sheets off the line, and sprinted back to the wall. He hauled himself up, made sure the street was still deserted, and sprang down. He folded the sheet, held it inside the front of his jacket, and walked away.

Back home, he experimented. Working with concentration-the remaining seven hundred drachma shimmered in his mind-he found he could wrap the sheet around his bare upper body and then button his shirt almost to the top, as long as he didn’t tuck it into his trousers.