Thomas Greanias - The 34th Degree

Andros said, “I promise I’ll come back to Greece with a ring.”

But he never came back.

War broke out again in Europe, and a glory-hungry Mussolini, unwilling to remain in Hitler’s shadow, issued Metaxas an ultimatum to surrender without a fight. Metaxas hardly had time to utter his famous retort of “No!” before Italian forces in Albania advanced into Greece in overwhelming numbers. The Greek army, led by Field Marshal Papagos and General Andros, then stunned the world by driving Il Duce’s illustrious eight million bayonets back into Albania. Only Hitler’s intervention the next spring could rescue Mussolini. No match for the overwhelming force of the modern German war machine, the Greeks, even with the help of the British Expeditionary Forces, were crushed in a matter of six weeks. General Andros, who resolved to fight to the finish, died with his men on the island of Crete, but not before destroying five thousand German paratroopers in the bloodiest fighting of the war. That was of little comfort to Chris, however, who had lost his father and found himself alone in America, powerless to help and tortured with regret. Haunting him was the sense that he wasn’t there when his father, fiancee, and country had needed him most, and in missing that one crucial moment of his life, he had missed it all.

God, how he hated the Germans.

Cut off from Greece and Aphrodite by the war, cut off from his father forever, he did the only thing he could to restore any sense of honor to himself. Though America was officially neutral at the time, he asked a certain U.S. senator-who was indebted to Andros Shipping-to nominate him to West Point. One month later, he swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States with his life. Three months later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and America declared war on the Axis.

As in previous wars, the U.S. Military Academy reduced the length of its course to three years. Together with his academic credit from Harvard and his outstanding demonstration of skills in military and physical training, Andros rose to the top of his class by May 1943. At last, Andros felt, he had made something of himself. No longer was he simply a privileged heir to a Greek shipping dynasty. Now he was a second lieutenant in the United States Army. He had earned the respect of his peers, his superiors, and, most important, himself. Come June, he would graduate for assignment to combat duty, most likely to join the force long rumored to be gathering for an invasion of Europe.

Andros dreamed of landing with the Allies in Greece. He would lead his U.S. Army troops off their transports in Piraeus, vanquish the fleeing Nazis, and liberate Athens. Yes, what his father had begun in the valiant defense of Crete, he would finish by returning to Greece a conquering hero.

Now that dream was dead.

B ack in his quarters at the central cadet barracks, Andros started packing.

All that was left when he was finished was the picture of Aphrodite he kept on his desk. It was a better photograph than the one Prestwick had shown him, taken in happier times. For several minutes he gazed at her angelic face, embittered by the seeds of doubt that Prestwick had managed to sow in his heart.

“I’m coming, my love,” he said, packing the picture and frame into his sack and pulling the strings. “Just like I promised.”

Andros drew out his Colt. 45 automatic and moved to the window overlooking the parade grounds. The grass was golden with the last rays of the setting sun, and the trees cast long, thin shadows. After taking one last look out over the Hudson, he checked the bullets in his clip and rammed the clip home into the Colt’s chamber.

“I’m coming for you, too, Baron von Berg.”

A phrodite Vasilis was swimming in the mouth of the Chalikiopoulos Lagoon on the Greek island of Corfu while two of Baron von Berg’s SS bodyguards watched nervously from shore. High above them, overlooking the lagoon from its lofty hill, was the Villa Achillion, the Baron’s estate. No doubt more SS were watching her from the terrace. She knew that if she should so much as take in a mouthful of water and choke for but a moment, the Baron would have their heads when he returned to the island.

“You look so hot and uncomfortable, boys,” she called out in Greek, splashing some water, teasing them as she often did. “Don’t you want to come in?”

Hans looked like he very much wanted to join her, but Peter spoke sharply to him in German and offered him a cigarette instead. How anybody could smoke outside in the heat of the day Aphrodite could never understand, but it was an addiction her father the tobacco merchant had always encouraged.

She sighed and let her eyes drift across the sparkling water toward Pondikonissi, or Mouse Island, the farther of two islets that floated offshore. Legend said that the islet was Odysseus’s ship, the one Poseidon turned to stone. Seen from a distance, the dark mound did indeed resemble a vessel enshrouded in somber cypress trees. It was crowned at the top by a tiny whitewashed monastery from the eleventh century, the Church of the Pantokrator, an inviting refuge.

“Suit yourselves,” she called, and broke away toward the islet. They started calling out after her in angry, fearful tones, but she ignored them and made her way to the islet.

Upon reaching it, she rose from the water, wrung her long black hair, and let the beads of water roll off her bronzed body. At the foot of the whitewashed steps, she found her robe hanging on a peg along with some slippers. One look back toward shore showed Hans watching her through his Zeiss field glasses, to make sure she was all right, and Peter radioing the others on the villa’s terrace. She slipped on the robe, tied the belt, and ascended the steps that spiraled up to the treetops.

At the top of the hill, she emerged onto a cobbled terrace and entered the tiny monastery. It was to this hiding place that she often came, to shed her pretentious ways with the Baron, to light a candle for Chris, and to confess her life of sin to the Orthodox priest, whose wizened old face now nodded gravely as she began to cry once more in the dark.

“The Baron returns today, Father John,” she said. “Please grant me God’s forgiveness.”

Father John raised an eyebrow. “For what you have done, child, or what you are going to do?”

Aphrodite felt embarrassed to discuss such things with a priest who had sworn off the temptations of the flesh. Still, the old man smiled in a way that hinted that before making his vows, he had not passed through life without knowing its pleasures.

“What’s done is done,” she confessed, and told him once again-for her own justification rather than for his understanding-how she had met Baron Ludwig von Berg that summer day in ’42 when he was wheeled into her Red Cross hospital in Athens with a gunshot wound to the head.

A phrodite had been acquainted with the brutal realities of death and dismemberment ever since she joined the Greek Red Cross as a nurse, with her friend Princess Katherine, in the early days of the war. She had become a nurse because she was tired of serving no higher purpose in life other than being beautiful, a role her parents and others were content to let her play but which she despised. At that point in the war, the Greeks were whipping the Italians and morale was high, and the work helped crowd out her worries about her brother fighting at the front and her fiance far away in America. That was before the Germans invaded and she began to attend to the smashed bodies of British Royal Air Force men, Greece’s new defenders. Then came that fateful Sunday morning when the Herrenvolk finally entered Athens and hoisted the swastika over the Acropolis. The Germans ruthlessly began to clear the beds of major hospitals, throwing the wounded out on the streets to make room for their own.