Alan Furst: Spies of the Balkans

Zannis thanked her, then retrieved his Walther and ammunition and headed for the Via Egnatia. They’re already here , he thought. And I must be high on their list .

At the office, he hung up his coat and left his umbrella open so it would dry. Then he said, “I think today’s the day, Sibylla. For getting rid of the files.”

She agreed. “It’s any time now, the Yugoslavs have mobilized.”

“I haven’t seen the papers.”

“Well, all the news is bad. The German army is now at the border between Hungary and Yugoslavia. Though the Hungarians, according to the newspaper, have issued a protest.”

“To who?”

“I don’t know, maybe just to the world, in general.” She started to go back to work, then stopped. “Oh, before I forget, two men showed up here yesterday, asking for you.”

“Who were they?”

“Greek-speaking foreigners. Polite enough. Were you expecting them?”

“No.”

“What if they return?”

“You know nothing about me, get rid of them.”

It took, for Sibylla to understand, only a beat or two. Then she said, “Germans? Already?”

Zannis nodded. “It doesn’t matter,” he said. “And we have work to do.” He began to take his five-by-eight card files out of the shoebox. “We’ll have to burn the dossiers as well,” he said.

“You read the name,” Sibylla said, “and I’ll pull them.”

He looked at the first card- ABRAVIAN, Alexandre, General Manager, Shell Petroleum Refinery -and said, “Abravian.”

In time, they carried the first load down the stairs. Out in the tiny courtyard, enclosed by high walls, the sound of the rain pattering on the stone block had a strange depth to it, perhaps an echo. One of the rusty old barrels Zannis had chosen was half full, so he decided to use the other one. He crumpled up pages from Sibylla’s newspaper and stuffed them in the bottom, knelt, and used a rusted-through slit to start the fire. Burning papers, that ancient tradition of invaded cities, turned out to be something of an art-best to drop them in a few at a time so you didn’t starve the fire of oxygen. A grayish-white smoke rose into the sky, along with blackened flakes of ash that floated back down into the puddles on the floor of the courtyard.

It took more than an hour, Sibylla working with mouth set in a grim line. She was very angry-this had been her work and she had done it with care and precision-and they didn’t converse, beyond the few words necessary to people who are working together, because there was nothing to say.

When they were done, they returned to the office. Zannis stayed for a time, making sure there was nothing there for the Germans to exploit, then put on his coat. As he was doing up the buttons, the telephone rang and Sibylla answered. “It’s for you,” she said.

“Who is it?” He didn’t want to be late getting back to the hotel.

“The commissioner’s secretary. I think you’d better talk to her.”

Zannis took the phone and said, “Yes?”

The voice on the other end was strained, and barely under control-somewhere between duty and sorrow. “I’m afraid I have bad news for you. Commissioner Vangelis has died, by his own hand. At one-thirty this afternoon, he used his service revolver.”

She waited, but Zannis couldn’t speak.

“He left,” she took a deep breath, “several notes, there’s one for you. You’re welcome to come over here and pick it up, or I can read it to you now.”

“You can read it,” Zannis said.

“‘Dear Costa: you have been a godson to me, and a good one. I have known, over the years, every sort of evil, but I do not choose to tolerate the evil that is coming to us now, so I am leaving before it arrives. As for you, you must go away, for this is not the time and not the place to give up your life.’ And he signs it, ‘Vangelis.’ Shall I keep the note for you?”

After a moment, Zannis said, “Yes, I’ll come by and pick it up. Tomorrow. What about the family?”

“They’ve been told.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “He was-”

She cut him off and said, “There will be a service, we don’t know where, but I’ll let you know. And now, I have other calls to make.”

“Yes, of course, I understand,” Zannis said and hung up the phone.

5 April. 8:20 p.m. The captain of the tramp steamer Bakir had six passengers for Alexandria and no empty cabins, so he showed them to the wardroom. At least they could share the battered couches for the two-day trip across the Mediterranean-it was the best he could do and he knew it really didn’t matter. The other five passengers-an army officer, a naval officer, and three civilians-had obtained passage, Zannis suspected, the same way he had: by means of the discreet yellow envelope. One of the civilians was prosperously fat, with a pencil-thin mustache, very much the Levantine, all he needed was a tarboosh. The second, thin and stooped, might have been a university professor-of some arcane discipline-while the third was not unlike Zannis; well-built, watchful, and reserved. They spoke a little, the man knew who Zannis was and had worked, he said, for Spiraki. And where was Spiraki? Nobody knew. He said. And if they were surprised to find that a woman, a woman like Demetria, was joining them, they did not show it. What the British did, they did, they had their reasons, and here we all are.

At twenty minutes to nine, the captain appeared in the wardroom. Zannis stood up-if the ship was about to sail, he had to get off. “You can sit back down,” the captain said. “We’re not going anywhere. Not tonight we’re not, problems in the engine room. We’ll get it fixed by about eight, tomorrow morning, so, if you and your wife, or any of you, want to spend the night ashore, you may do that.”

Zannis and Demetria looked at each other, then Zannis gestured toward the passageway. He picked up Demetria’s two suitcases, one of which was very heavy. “Silver,” she’d told him when he asked. “Something you can always sell.”

Back at the Lux Palace, Suite 601 had not been taken, so Zannis and Demetria rode back up on the elevator. The flowers were gone. “Likely the maids took them home,” Demetria said. “I hope so, anyhow.”

“Are you hungry?”

“No. The opposite.”

“Me too.”

“I was ready to leave,” she said. “Now this.”

Zannis sat on the sofa. “Well, a few more hours together,” he said. He certainly didn’t regret it.

She managed a smile, weak, but a smile. Without saying anything, they agreed that the idea of making love one last time did not appeal to either of them, not at that moment it didn’t. They talked for a while, and eventually undressed and tried to sleep, without much success, lying silent in the darkened room. And they were still awake at dawn, as early light turned the clouds to pearl gray, when the first bombs fell on Salonika.

The first one hit somewhere near the hotel-they could feel the explosion and the sound was deafening-and sent Zannis rolling onto the floor, pulling the blankets on top of him. He struggled to his knees and looking across the bed saw Demetria-the same thing had happened to her-staring back at him. He got to his feet and headed for the window, which had cracked from corner to corner. She was immediately behind him, her arms wrapped around his chest, her body pressed against his back. Down on the waterfront he was able, after searching the line of docked ships, to find the Bakir . She was tilted awry, with a column of heavy black smoke rising from the foredeck. “Can you see the Bakir?” he said.

She looked over his shoulder. “Which one is it?”

“The one on fire. I mean, the second one on fire, in the middle.”