Thomas Greanias - The 34th Degree

Tsatsos was now arguing with the commander of the Italian gun crew, Lieutenant Lamas, a thin fellow in uniform with a thin nose and thin mustache. They were leaning over the chart table, going over the route to Piraeus, when there was a shout from the deck.

Tsatsos looked up from his charts. Coming up the quay was a man in civilian clothes flanked by two Italian officers-the convoy commander and the port officer.

“What is it now?” he complained to Lamas. “The holds are full, and the deck is already a hazard with all the extra stores.”

“Easy, old man,” said the Italian. “I’ll go see what they want.”

Lamas went down the ladder, and Tsatsos watched him greet the party on the deck. They were too far away for Tsatsos to hear anything, but there was something about the civilian that seemed familiar to the old sea captain. He turned to his first mate, the clean-cut Karapis. “Give me your field glasses.”

Tsatsos took the glasses and fixed the sights on the civilian. He could hardly believe his eyes. “Look!” he cried. “It is Christos Andros.”

“The son of General Andros?” Karapis said. “Impossible. He’s in America, been there for years.”

“Heh?” Tsatsos pulled down the glasses and gave his first mate a sharp look. “I was sailing ships when you were bathed in a tub by your mother. You don’t tell me it’s impossible. Look for yourself.” He was about to hand Karapis the field glasses when Lieutenant Lamas returned to the bridge.

“You have a passenger,” the Italian announced. “A diplomat, it seems. The naval escorts can’t take him because he’s a civilian. Regulations. He says he would like to lie down and get some rest.”

Tsatsos exchanged glances with Karapis. “My cabin is his, Lieutenant.”

The Italian disappeared, and the old captain looked at his first mate and said, “Diplomat, my eye, Karapis. I taught that boy how to play his first rembetika song on the bouzouki. You think I can’t recognize him? It is Christos Andros, I tell you.”

A ndros woke up when one of the ship’s mates came in with coffee on a brass tray.

“South American,” the sailor said, setting the tray down on the captain’s desk. He offered Andros a cup. “Compliments of the captain.”

Andros sat up on his bunk and took a sip. The cabin was quite spacious, with wood-paneled walls and a blackened porthole behind the desk.

“You’ve slept for hours,” the sailor observed. “Captain Tsatsos sent me. He invites you to the bridge.”

Old Tsatsos, here? Andros thought. The news was as much a shock for him as seeing the Independence flying the Italian flag. So much of a shock that Andros realized he wasn’t as prepared as he had thought he was to see these faces from the past. Even now motion sickness, or something worse, was setting in. Perhaps it was the faint scent of hashish Andros detected in the room. Old Tsatsos was a smoker, one who refused to permit trifles like the law to stand in the way of his simple pleasures.

“All right,” Andros replied, taking a gulp of coffee. “Let’s go.”

A baby-blue dawn was coming up over the sea when Andros went up on deck. They had just passed through the Corinth Canal, which was situated at the narrow bridge of land that connected the Peloponnese to the rest of Greece. Behind them was the Ionian Sea and before them the Aegean.

He found the captain on the bridge, standing behind the helmsman, barking orders as the ship’s engines shifted below them. Tsatsos looked as crusty as ever.

“And how is our special guest the diplomat?” the captain asked playfully, fixing a knowing smile on Andros.

“Some motion sickness.”

“You never liked the sea,” Tsatsos said cautiously.

“You never sailed still waters…”

Tsatsos burst into a smile and embraced him. “ Yassou, Christos!”

“You old sea dog!” Andros lifted his cup of coffee. “I see the war hasn’t deprived you of the finer things. Where did you get this?”

“Why, that comes courtesy of Yanis Darprou of the Minos.”

“The Minos?” asked Andros. “But that ship is under Swiss registry. Where on earth did you link up?”

“Last month in Trieste,” Tsatsos explained. “The Minos had just come back from Brazil with a shipment of groundnuts and coffee beans for the Swiss. Whenever we’re in the same port with another Andros ship, no matter what flag it flies, we trade.”

“Under the noses of the Axis?”

The old rogue grinned. “All things are possible once you acquire a working knowledge of the black markets, young Christos. Bribery and other practices we regard as dishonorable are the everyday norm for these Axis officials. Indeed, not only can the disciples of the New Order be bought for a price, but they even pay us to keep our mouths shut, doubling our profits.”

“Pay you?” Andros asked. “Whatever for?”

“Those groundnuts bound for Switzerland? The crates were transferred to the Independence while we were docked in Trieste. We brought them with us into Piraeus. The sentries patrolling the docks, the customs agents, they all turned a blind eye. So did we, for a price.”

Andros said, “Sounds like a lot of trouble to smuggle groundnuts.”

“Ah, but those crates did not have just groundnuts,” said Tsatsos. “I checked for myself, I did. This wasn’t the first time I carried mislabeled crates from Trieste into Greece.”

Andros was fascinated by what old Tsatsos was telling him. “And what did you find?”

“Metallic uranium deposits,” Tsatsos said. “For what, I have no idea. It’s bad enough knowing we have explosives on board half the time without worrying what else we might be carrying. I can only hold my breath and pray we don’t blow up. At least with your father, there was a reason for such madness.”

“There was?” asked Andros, uncertain of what Tsatsos was saying.

“The arms from Germany we slipped to Franco, to fight the Communists,” Tsatsos explained. “Your grandfather Basil, he would have none of it, but your father, he knew better.”

“Always,” Andros replied dryly.

“It is his example that has given us the hope to go on.” Tsatsos took off his hat in solemn remembrance. “Why, it was two years ago this Saturday that he died on Crete during the German invasion.” He paused and then looked at Andros. “But enough of these sad songs. Even now Athens is alive with rumors of an Allied invasion. Your uncle Mitchell says the Germans confirm their fear with troop movements and defense buildups along the coastal areas.”

“Is that so?” asked Andros. “Uncle Mitchell…he’s at the house in Kifissia?”

“Moved in with the rest of the family as soon as your father died, before the Germans could requisition it without bloodshed.”

“I see.”

Tsatsos stopped, his face serious. “But tell me, what is the reason for this dangerous journey? Why now?”

Andros paused, remembering his childhood trips to the docks with the old captain and the mournful rembetika songs Tsatsos taught him to play on the bouzouki before his upper-crust grandfather took away the stringed instrument and forbade him to play the blues music of the Greek lower classes. But things were different now. He was supposed to be different. However much he wanted to be himself with his old friend, he couldn’t. So he said, “I’m afraid it’s not mine to say, Captain. Not now. Perhaps not ever. You must accept this.”

Tsatsos wasn’t pleased. Andros could see it in the old captain’s eyes. But Tsatsos was one who knew better than to ask questions. He simply pointed and said, “Look, we’ve come!”

Andros followed the old man’s thick finger as it stretched out over the blue waters of the Saronic Gulf. There, behind the veil of morning mist, was the harbor of Piraeus, and beyond it, Athens.