Thomas Greanias - The 34th Degree

“The British must have scores of secret agents in Athens,” Andros told Prestwick. “Are none of them up to this task?”

“Several British agents have approached von Berg’s mistress,” Prestwick explained. “She hasn’t turned any of them in, but she’s rebuffed all efforts to help us, no doubt fearing for her family.”

Andros asked, “She’s Greek, then?”

“Yes.”

“A collaborator?”

Prestwick nodded.

Andros stood up to leave and said, “Then she should be shot.”

“She very well may be, by German or Greek, I couldn’t predict,” Prestwick remarked. “But we were hoping it wouldn’t come to that.” He pulled a photo from the file and handed it to Andros. “After all, she is such a beautiful girl, wouldn’t you agree?”

To Andros’s astonishment, he was looking at Aphrodite’s face. “This is a joke.”

Prestwick’s face was serious as he shook his head.

Andros shoved the photograph back. “Then it is a lie.”

“No lie, Chris.” Prestwick took the picture but didn’t put it away. “It seems she’s been no more forthright with you than you’ve been with her.”

Andros felt sick. The Germans might as well have blown up the Parthenon or desecrated the Sistine Chapel. His knees gave way, and he sank back into the pew next to Prestwick, his mind swirling in confusion.

“Apparently, the Baron and his men moved into her family estate in Kifissia after the invasion,” Prestwick explained matter-of-factly. “She had to cooperate unless she wanted to wake up one morning and find her family had disappeared- Nacht und Nebel, Night and Fog, as the Nazis call it-at the hands of the Gestapo. Frankly, I don’t think she had much choice.”

Andros managed a weak laugh. “You obviously don’t know Aphrodite,” he said. “With her, it’s always a choice. She would rather die than be forced to do something against her will.”

“All I know,” said Prestwick in a patronizing tone, “is that the Baron protects her and her family not only from the Gestapo but from those Greeks who would just as soon hang them out to dry for collaborating. That is why she has shunned all approaches from British SOE agents in Athens, even though she secretly helps the families of the Greek Resistance through the Red Cross. That is why you must go back to Greece. You were born for this mission.”

Andros recoiled at the suggestion. He had fought too hard to escape the complicated political situation in Greece and his father’s legacy to go back now. He had invested too much of himself into his new life in America and into carving out his own future and sense of identity to throw it all away. That was what this man was asking him to do, however lofty the vernacular. And for what? To be a spy. Spies, Andros knew, were a lower form of life, held in contempt by men such as his father and his West Point comrades.

“Think about it, Chris,” said Prestwick. “In a few weeks or months you could be one of hundreds of thousands embarking on the largest invasion in human history, a human guinea pig to test the enemy’s defenses. Or you could be the one who paves the way for the invasion’s success, saving tens of thousands of lives, perhaps millions. You might even win us the war.”

Andros wasn’t thinking about the war or his sense of duty or even his desire for revenge against the Germans; if anything, his father’s folly in chasing the Great Idea had taught him to distrust any overt appeal to boyish pride. He was thinking about Aphrodite as he looked again at the photo Prestwick was holding. Those clever eyes, seductive lips, and long, dark, shiny hair were all he had left in this life. No mother. No father. Not even his precious honor. All the medals and glory in the world would be worthless if Aphrodite wasn’t there for him to embrace when this war was finally over.

He was also thinking about von Berg. It did not surprise Andros that this monster had risen from the primordial ooze of the Kriegsmarine that had murdered his mother. Nor that he belonged to the same fraternity of murderers who had invaded his homeland and slaughtered his father. But the thought that this beast could be lying in the same bed with Aphrodite filled him with a rage he never would have believed possible. It was a rage he would have to control, he realized, if he hoped to kill the rabid animal.

Andros knew what he had to do. He looked Prestwick in the eye and, in a firm voice, said, “When do I go in?”

“Four days,” said Prestwick, who expressed no surprise at the decision. “In the meantime, we’re sending you to the Farm for some special advanced training.”

“‘The Farm?’”

“Our most elite school for spies,” Prestwick explained. “We’re bringing in an instructor especially for you, to prepare you for your mission. We won’t have much time, but hopefully, we can break some of the traditional military habits you’ve picked up here at West Point and teach you a few new tricks as well. Now the MP outside will escort you to your quarters to pack your belongings. You will speak to nobody.”

Andros rose to his feet. “You don’t waste any time.”

“At this point in the war, we can’t afford to,” said Prestwick, replacing his papers in his briefcase.

Andros nodded. “Then I’ll be going.”

Prestwick watched Andros walk up the aisle to the back of the chapel and disappear. He then closed his briefcase and went into the chaplain’s office, where Major General Francis B. Wilby was sitting with Andros’s official West Point file.

“He’s no spy,” said Wilby. “He’s a soldier, the best I’ve seen in years. That crazy outfit of yours is no place for a man like him.”

“Nonsense, Superintendent,” Prestwick replied, taking the file from Wilby. “He’s an accomplished liar and will serve us well.”

Prestwick struck a match, touched it to the corner of the file, and dropped it into the metal wastebasket. “The name of Chris Andros shall be struck from every record, Superintendent. West Point’s top cadet never existed.”

H is decision to drop out of Harvard and enroll in the United States Military Academy even before America entered the war would have shocked his American friends and relatives-had he told them. But Chris Andros felt it was his duty to uphold the honor of his family’s name, a name that to Greeks was synonymous with war and greatness.

Chris Andros was named after his great-great-grandfather, a legendary merchant skipper of the Greek islands during the war of independence. A master in the saltwater sport of fireboating, the old sea dog would approach Turkish warships at night in dispensable vessels packed with gunpowder, pitch, and sulfur. Once they were close enough, he and his crew would light the powder train, cast off in their longboat, and enjoy the fireworks from a distance. His end came at Missolonghi. Surrounded by Turks, he and the remaining defenders set fire to the ammunition stores and blew themselves up, taking their enemies with them. This act propelled an inspired Anglo-French fleet to sink the Turkish navy in the Battle of Navarino in 1827 and thus secure the birth of modern Greece.

Chris’s great-grandfather Byron and, later, his grandfather Basil built the Andros Shipping dynasty, chiefly through hard work and fortuitous marriages that consolidated some of Greece’s most prosperous shipping lines. On rare occasions they engaged in smuggling, not for money but on principle, sending arms to those who fought for freedom in various parts of the world. Eventually, his uncle Dimitri brought the family’s business to America, anchoring Andros Shipping West in Boston Harbor.

His father, Nicholas, however, chose a different path. He shunned the family trade altogether and, against the wishes of Basil, chose to train at the Kriegsakademie in Berlin as a military officer. Inspired by the idea of a greater Greece, he returned to Athens to take his commission in the Hellenic Royal Army. But to make peace with Basil, he announced that he would take Anastasia Rassious of the Rassious shipping family as his wife.