Thomas Greanias - The 34th Degree

“But I told you last night,” she insisted, “only Ludwig knows the combination.”

“Not if my friends are listening.”

She didn’t understand what he was saying and suddenly felt light-headed. “Too fast, Christos. Things are moving too fast. I can’t keep up with you.”

“That’s okay, as long as von Berg can’t, either,” he replied. “The hallway to the library is too well lit and guarded. If I’m going to have any chance at all of getting in, it will have to be from the garden outside, through the French doors. I noticed last night that von Berg had a man posted on the patio.”

“Yes,” she said. “Hans and Peter share guard duties during parties.”

“Hans and Peter?” he asked, raising an eyebrow. “I didn’t know you were on such intimate terms with your captors.”

“They’re not as bad as you make them out to be,” she found herself saying. “They didn’t ask to be in the Baron’s employment, and Hans happens to be a wonderful dancer.”

“Is that so?” he said, looking somewhat annoyed. “When do they rotate shifts?”

“There are three shifts of guards. Hans usually relieves Peter at nine.”

“When it’s Hans’s turn to relieve Peter, make sure you two are dancing together like everybody else,” said Chris. “Meanwhile, I’ll go upstairs to your room and change into the SS uniform you will have placed in the bottom drawer of your dresser.”

“An SS uniform? How am I supposed to-”

“Your maids do the washing for von Berg’s staff, don’t they? Give me one that’s waiting to be washed. I don’t need anything immaculate. It will be dark enough when I climb down from your bedroom balcony to the garden. You know the drill-we practiced it often enough as teenagers.”

“But Peter will still be on the patio outside the library, waiting for Hans to relieve him.”

“Perhaps, if he hasn’t gone to fetch him. Otherwise, I’ll relieve him.”

“Relieve him?” she asked nervously. “How?”

“Don’t worry about me. Just keep Hans so happy that he forgets the time. I need at least five minutes to get in and out.”

The audacity of Chris’s proposal began to sink in, and it was all she could do to persuade him to stop the madness. “But Ludwig will know something is up.”

“He’ll be too busy with his Red Cross guests.”

“It won’t work.”

“Von Berg won’t notice anything is missing until morning,” he reassured her. “By then you and I and our families will be long gone.”

“Gone?”

“We’re going to Cairo to get married.” Chris put his hands on her shoulders, gently but firmly. “You still want to marry me, don’t you?”

Aphrodite’s heart skipped a beat at the thought that such a dream was still possible in this miserable life. “More than anything, Christos,” she said, looking into his longing eyes. “But if something goes wrong…my brother…”

“Your brother will be just fine,” he said. “Von Berg won’t back out of any international understanding he’s reached. If something goes wrong, I’ll be in trouble, not you or your family.”

Despite the danger, a wave of relief swept over her. Chris really was on the Allies’ side. He was not a collaborator after all. Perhaps the end to their suffering was at hand. “So the invasion comes soon, like they say?”

Chris shrugged. “Like I said, a lot depends on you.”

She looked at him and felt like a little girl again. Her anger from the night before had vanished. Only fear remained, fear and a drop of doubt that she was as important to Chris as what was inside Ludwig’s safe. “Christos, I’m scared.”

“That makes two of us.”

She felt his finger reach under her chin and lift her face toward his. She closed her eyes and let their lips touch. The world around them seemed to melt like the setting sun. He still loves me, she thought. Chris truly loves me and has come for me.

D usk was already falling across the forty acres of park when Andros had Nasos deliver him to the Royal Gardens for his rendezvous with the SOE. Children were still at play in the shadows of the Parliament and Hotel Grande Bretagne while German soldiers strolled about in small groups.

He was buoyed by the joy of his reconciliation with Aphrodite. The masks had been dropped, their true feelings confessed. They were of one mind. She hadn’t let him down. All he had to do was make sure he didn’t let her down.

He passed an old Greek in a tattered army uniform, selling rotten chestnuts beneath a canopy of trees. The man was resting on a wooden leg, having lost his own in the war, though from the looks of the veteran, Andros suspected it was the Great War. He reached into his pocket and tossed the veteran a silver sovereign. Then he wandered down a path that opened into a flower circle. There by an ancient stone seat was a row of shoe shiners, mostly young boys and a few old men.

How anybody could make money shining shoes these days in Athens seemed impossible to Andros, until he noticed a couple of German soldiers walk up to the first boy in line. One of them put his jackboot on the small pedestal and pointed to it with a thick finger. The boy started shining as if his life depended on it.

“Shoe shine, shoe shine!” said the fourth boy down the row as Andros walked by. “Shoe shine, mister?”

The boy himself had no shoes, only a smiling face black with soot and two large animated eyes. Andros stopped to look. The street kid started to perform all sorts of acrobatics with his brushes, juggling them in the air with a spin and catching them behind his back.

“Where is your family?” Andros asked.

The boy shrugged as if to say he didn’t have any.

“Where do you live?”

“Everywhere. Do you want a shine or not?”

Andros paused, wondering why the SOE would resort to using children instead of some of the older men down the line. With some hesitation, he proceeded to place his shoe on the stand. “Like a glass darkly.”

The boy smiled. “But soon face-to-face.”

The boy started scrubbing away, and Andros looked about the park and its ponds, green with thousands of exotic plants Queen Amalia had brought in from all parts of Greece and Italy in the 1840s.

When the boy finished, Andros paid him not in hyperinflated drachmas but with a silver sovereign. The boy responded by giving him change in drachmas. Pasted on one coin was a note instructing Sinon to follow the path to his right to a certain fountain.

Andros had started to leave when he heard an argument. He turned. The two soldiers had refused to pay the first boy for shining their boots, and now the boy was tagging along, demanding payment. The one German swung his heavy hand across the boy’s face, sending him to the ground. The other soldier laughed, and they both walked on. But the shoe-shine boy was determined to get his drachmas. He got up and ran after the big German, wrapping himself around his leg. For several paces, he was dragged across the pavement before biting the German’s leg.

“Ach!” cried the German, and hit him on the head. The boy, like a little dog, kept clinging.

To save the boy from dying from another blow to the head, Andros approached them. “See here,” he said to the boy. “I’ll pay you.”

He handed the boy a silver sovereign, and the little boy, more dirty and bloodied than ever, grabbed it. Before he could run, the German gripped his wrist and squeezed until the boy screamed and opened his tiny fist. The coin dropped with a dull clink, and the other soldier picked it up.

“You rob little children now?” Andros asked, barely able to suppress his rage at the sight of the boy being beaten by these animals.

“Save yourself, man,” said the big German in broken Greek.