Neil Olson - The Icon

Captain Elias shook these thoughts from his mind, took the boy by the shoulders, and turned him north.

SPRING 2000

The tables around them in the cramped airport bar were empty. No one would know what to make of such an odd tale in any case, Matthew figured. He had not wasted the opportunity of Andreas’ coming to Kennedy to meet his flight, but had dragged the old man to the nearest quiet spot available and demanded whatever part of the story he was still missing.

“The exchange went off?”

Andreas sipped his ginger ale before answering.

“Yes. Stefano delivered the message. Müller was willing to make the deal, even then. The soldier we killed at the church meant nothing to him, he was gathering his riches. Many of the German officers were doing the same. Merten, the one in charge of Salonika, sank fifty cases of stolen Jewish gold off Kalamata, thinking he would retrieve it after the war.”

“I read about that.”

“Müller wasn’t after gold. Art, especially religious art, was his calling. He had heard about the icon somewhere, from his father most likely. Art theft was a family tradition. I learned this later, when I was hunting him. He had himself stationed in Greece just to find it. Between Göring, the art lover, and the Nazi obsession with the occult, I imagine the story of a painting with supernatural powers got him some attention. Maybe one of them even sent him to retrieve it, a birthday present for the Führer, what do you think?”

The old man’s tone was cynical, but Matthew felt the depth of his suspicion and disgust, felt a chill enter his own body. Was such a guess really so outlandish?

“Epiros was in the Italian occupation zone,” Andreas continued, “so Müller had to bide his time. Even once the Germans came in, there were all those villages in all those hills. Needle in a haystack, you say, yes? Greeks love to gossip, but no one could tell him the truth about the Holy Mother. Many villages had old icons, all of them liked to claim theirs was the famous one. Nobody knew where our icon had gone. After we beat back the Italians, before the Germans attacked, my brother had it walled up in a secret space near the altar, behind the iconostásis. A good spot. Only Mikalis, the carpenter, and I knew where it was.”

“Not Fotis?”

“No. That is why he had to come to me. Müller understood the political split among the guerrillas. The communists were strongest, so contacts developed between the Germans and the other groups. We were fighting them, too, especially in Epiros where that fat-assed Zervas commanded the republicans. But mostly Zervas was watching the communists, watching the royalists, whom he hated even more, until he made peace with them. As the war went on, and we knew the Germans would leave soon, everyone started to think about postwar politics.”

“Including you.”

“Yes. I was a republican at heart, didn’t give a damn about the king. I wanted a president, like in America. But your godfather and I served the government-in-exile, and that made us royalists. Better royalists, better anyone than the communists. Fotis and I agreed on that, and at a certain point it became the focus of our thinking. We fought the Germans, though, killed many, lost good men. Watched villages burn. My people fought.”

The old man sipped at his small glass again and seemed to go far away.

“So Müller came to you.”

“To Fotis. Fotis was our regional commander. He is from Epiros, too, from Ioannina, and went to Athens for training years before me. He was already an instructor when I got there. A very clever fellow, and strong, hardened in some way, as I wanted to be. We were Patriótis, so of course we became friends. I’m sorry, you know all of this already?”

“Most, but go ahead.”

“After the Germans cut off our army, we volunteered to go back to Epiros. The government was leaving Athens, and men were going out to every region to organize. Most never made it. The resistance sprang up locally, on its own, and the communists did the best job. Fotis and I worked with the British, brought letters and gold to Zervas. Can you believe it, they had to pay him to fight? Even then he delayed. Fotis was patient, but I needed something to do. The men from my area had formed a guerrilla group, and I joined. They lost their captain, and chose me to lead them.”

“You were very young for that.”

“Older than most. I had been in the army, and my father led guerrillas against the Turks, years before. That meant a lot to them, fathers, grandfathers. As if a hero could not father a drunken sot, or the other way around. Anyway, Müller contacted Fotis. Two men of the world. The icon for guns. Fotis persuaded me to go along with it. We needed weapons, ours were old and poor. Zervas was stockpiling what the English gave him, and we didn’t even know whose side he would be on in the end. The icon had vanished as far as anyone knew. To me, it already seemed a sort of…mythological creature. I was a modern man.”

Andreas’ words were sour, and Fotis’ defense echoed in Matthew’s mind. How could it have been my plan? To burn a church? To trade a work of such holy love and beauty? His godfather always told a lie with a piece of the truth. It was how he managed to be so convincing.

“Burning the church was Stamatis’ idea,” said Matthew.

“Yes.”

“And Fotis never meant to give the icon to the German.” He spoke the thoughts as soon as they came to him, as if translating for his unconscious. “The whole thing was an excuse for him to find out where it was. To get you to tell him. For all you know, it was he who approached Müller, and not the other way around.”

Andreas was silent a long time, staring past Matthew to the streaked glass wall and busy runways beyond.

“I have thought about those things all these years,” he said at last. “I had suspicions from the start. It was why I made the plan myself, which went all to hell. It was why I kept Stamatis’ note to myself, made the final exchange myself. I wanted to know what Fotis’ game was, but we killed the two men who could have told me. He, the father; me, the son. And as time passed I became less certain that I wanted to know. Because to know the truth might put my brother’s death on his head, as well as my villagers. And then I would have to decide what to do about that.”

“What about the villagers?”

Andreas clenched his teeth once or twice, the false ones clicking.

“Müller shot them.”

“What, after you gave him the icon?”

“The next morning. He took the icon and let me walk away, and we retrieved the guns that night. A good take, fifty rifles, a few machine guns, crates of ammunition. Fotis knew nothing until it was over. I made up a story about someone seeing Kosta, tracking him down, how I had to act swiftly to save my villagers. He was angry, deeply angry, but made a show of congratulating me. We still had to work together. The next morning Müller shot twenty people. He had been able to delay a day, but his men could not accept that there would be no retribution. It was part of their system; I should have anticipated that. He probably thought he was being generous, twenty instead of forty or fifty. Two of them were cousins of mine, one a woman, I would call her girl today. Glykeria. Her parents wanted me to marry her. She was shot with her father. Another was my messenger, Stefano.”

Matthew thought of photographs he’d seen, fallen, twisted figures in an olive grove, the entire male population of a village, lined up and shot; a German officer walked among them with a pistol, finishing off the wounded. It was Crete, he remembered, but it could have been anywhere in Greece. The death of Mikalis the priest became absorbed in those other deaths, like a drop of water in the sea.