Alan Furst: Spies of the Balkans

Well, Zannis thought later, I tried. He’d put one arm around the man, held him up, and walked him along a step at a time, meanwhile carrying the briefcase in his other hand. It was awkward and slow; by the time they reached the street that led to the customshouse, dawn had turned the sky a dark gray. There they were lucky-a taxi was cruising slowly along the corniche, looking for the last revelers of the night. Zannis waved it down and settled the German in the backseat and the driver sped off, reaching the hospital only a few minutes later. And when they pulled up to the emergency entrance a doctor showed up right away and climbed into the back of the taxi. But then, the doctor shook his head and said, “Can’t help him here. You might as well take him to the morgue, or maybe you want us to use the ambulance.”

“You’re sure?”

The doctor nodded and said, “I’m sorry.”

By ten the next morning he was on the phone with Vangelis, who said, after hearing a brief version of the story, “And what was in the briefcase?”

“Photographs. Seventy photographs. And a sketch, in sharp pencil, a freehand map of the area around Fort Rupel.”

“How do you know it was Fort Rupel?”

“It’s labeled. Printed in Roman letters. The pictures were taken from a distance: roads, barbed wire, the fort itself.” The line hissed, finally Zannis said, “Hello?”

“Yes. I’m here.” A conventional answer, but the tone was sad and grim.

Zannis repeated what he’d said to Saltiel in the car. “Maybe just the war, coming south.” Fort Rupel protected the Rupel Pass on the Bulgarian border, directly north of Salonika. The invasion route from there, down the Struma valley, was more than two thousand years old. Farmers’ plows turned up spearheads, broken swords, bayonets, and bones.

“Not yet,” Vangelis said. “The Nazis don’t care about us. Yet. What are you doing about the Renault?”

“Saltiel never could catch him, but he did get the license plate number. Local car, so all I have to do is call the clerk.”

“All right, Costa, just proceed as you think best.”

“I called some friends at the newspapers-German tourist found dead on the sidewalk near his hotel. Heart attack the apparent cause. I gave them the information on the passport: Albert Heinrich, domiciled in Essen, fifty-three years old.” He paused, then said, “You wouldn’t prefer a spy scandal, would you?”

Vangelis snorted and said, “Oh fine! Good idea!” then added a version of a local Albanian expression. “Let’s fart up Hitler’s nose. We’ll have them down here in no time at all.”

“I thought you would see it that way. As for the photographs, what’s your pleasure?”

“Drop them off here, I’ll send them over to the army.”

“And Spiraki?”

“I was afraid you’d ask that. Tell him what happened; write him a report-he’ll like that; have your clerk type it up, on Salonika police stationery. And Costa? Make damn sure you get rid of the passport before you contact Spiraki-those people love passports.”

“It should go to the German consulate.”

“It must. Tell me, was it really a heart attack? You didn’t, ah, do anything to him, did you? Not that I’d blame you if you did.”

“No, sir, he did it to himself. He was scared-afraid of being caught, afraid of failure-he was running around up there like a rat. Falling down the stairs didn’t help, but if I had to have a theory I’d say he frightened himself to death.”

Vangelis’s voice was disgusted. “Miserable business,” he said. Then, “Oh well, keep me informed.”

When he’d hung up, Zannis took a piece of paper from his drawer and began to write the first draft of a report to Spiraki. Formerly an Athenian lawyer, Spiraki ran the local office of the Geniki Asphalia, the State Security Bureau. It had changed names several times, becoming the Defense Intelligence Bureau in 1936; then, a few months later, as the Metaxas dictatorship took hold, the General Directorate of Foreign Citizens, but most people still called it “state security.”

Zannis found Spiraki himself not so easy to deal with. Tall, heavy, balding, somber, with a thick mustache, he was given to light-blue suits, formal language, and cold-eyed stares. He never responded immediately to anything you said, there was always a dead moment before he spoke. On the other hand, he could’ve been worse. His office was supposed to ensure obedience to the dictatorship’s morality laws, forbidding hashish and prostitution, the traditional targets, and they’d tried to go beyond that, prohibiting lewd music, the rembetika -filthy, criminal, passionate, and very dear to Salonika’s heart. But Spiraki didn’t insist, and the police were tolerant. You couldn’t stop these things, not in this city. And, after four hundred years of Turkish occupation, it was unwise to press Greeks too hard.

The gray sky wouldn’t go away, seagulls circled above the port, their cries doing nothing to disperse the melancholy. Saltiel showed up at eleven, tired and slumped, and he and Zannis tried to finish up the investigation. The clerk at the city hall found the plate number, to her great delight. It belonged to a Renault registered by one K. L. Stacho. Zannis knew who he was, a Bulgarian undertaker, third-generation proprietor of a funeral home that buried Bulgarians, Albanians, Serbs, and Vlachs, who died with sufficient regularity to provide Stacho with a handsome villa in Salonika’s wealthy neighborhood, by the sea east of the city.

Zannis telephoned and Saltiel drove them out there ten minutes later. Poor Madam Stacho, red-eyed, a balled-up handkerchief clenched in her fist, Zannis felt sorry for her. Her husband had left the house, to take care of some unspecified business, long after midnight. And he never returned. She’d been frantic of course but, at eight in the morning, a neighbor had come knocking at her door to say that Stacho had telephoned and asked her to relay a message: he would not be coming home. Not for a long time. He was well, she was not to worry. Beyond that, Madam Stacho didn’t know a thing.

So, did Mr. Stacho have German friends?

Not as far as she knew.

A camera?

Well, yes, he did have one, photography was a hobby of his.

For how long, a hobby. Years?

No, only a few months.

And, please, Madam Stacho, excuse us, we’re only doing our job, may we take a look around the house?

No answer, a wave of the hand, Do what you like, I don’t care any more .

They did take a look. Rooms crowded with heavy furniture, thick drapes, tiled floors, a frightened maid, but no undertaker in a closet or beneath a bed.

When they returned to the parlor, Madam Stacho wondered what her husband had done to provoke the interest of the police.

They couldn’t tell her, but he might have information they needed for an investigation that was currently under way.

“And that’s all?” she said, obviously brightening.

“Is that not enough?”

“When he left, when I learned he wasn’t coming home …”

“Yes?”

“I thought it was a woman.”

“Nothing like that.”

Now she was very close to beaming, held Zannis’s hand warmly at the door. “Thank you, gentlemen,” she said. “Thank you.”

“Perhaps you would notify us, if he returns; he can clear his name by answering a few questions.”

Oh definitely, surely, absolutely, no doubt about it.

In the Skoda, Zannis had Saltiel drive him back to the alley behind the Albala spice warehouse.

But the umbrella was gone.

That night, he was supposed to take Roxanne to the movies, a Turkish Western -Slade Visits Wyoming was his attempt at translation-but by the time he reached the Pension Bastasini, the hotel where she lived, he was in another kind of mood. His love affair with Roxanne Brown had gone on for more than a year and had reached that pleasantly intimate plateau where plans were casually made and just as easily changed. “Perhaps the Balthazar,” he suggested. The name of a taverna but it meant much more than that.