Spies of the Balkans (4 page)

"You'd burn your fingers, the genie keeps it hot."

"Doesn't want to come out?"

"Not in this weather."

She giggled. "Not in this weather." She tossed the tube of the narghileh on the table, turned sideways, rested her head on his shoulder, and began to unbutton his shirt. That done, she spread it apart and laid her cheek on his chest--hairless and smooth, with broad, flat plates. Putting her lips against his skin, she said, "You
smell
good."

"I do? I took a bath, maybe it's the soap."

"No, it isn't soap, it's something about you, something sweet."

For a time they drifted, then, returning from wherever he'd been, he said, "Would you like to sit on my lap?"

"I always like that." She stood, hiked up her dress, settled herself on his thighs, leaned her weight against him, and raised her knees, so that, as if by magic, his hand covered her bottom. On the other side of the wall, the singer's voice grew plaintive. That made them both laugh, as though she could see through the wall. "Can you understand the lyric?" he said.

She shook her head.

"She's singing about her flower."

"In her garden?"

He moved her top knee a little and said, "No, this one." The tips of his index and middle fingers rested on tight cotton. She was, he thought, so very clever, wearing white cotton panties, just right for a proper Englishwoman, but they were cut to provide a snug fit, and the cotton felt very fine, very soft, to his fingers. After a few moments, a breath escaped her; he could feel it and he could almost, but not quite, hear it. Delicately, he moved his fingers, not ambitious, simply savoring the warm reception, and much more pleased than proud.

On. And on. Until she raised her head and spoke quietly by his ear, in the King's English: "Let's have those off, shall we?"

Later, after Zannis had gone out into the public room and Balthazar had brought them--now famished--the meze, she scooped up some hummus with a triangle of pita bread and said, "Strange, but it just now occurs to me that the ottoman is an extraordinary piece of furniture, ingenious."

"Yes?"

"Oh yes. Because you can, you know, also sit on it."

After such a night, going back to work the next day was something like a punishment. Sibylla, the office clerk, always starched and taut, was wound especially tight that morning--neither Saltiel nor Zannis would admit it but they were both afraid of her. She stood straight as a stick, with fair hair set every Wednesday in a warrior's helmet. And
warrior
was, at the moment, the very word, for she had come to work in a bad mood and was taking it out on the files.

Of these, there were two distinct sets. The first lived in a row of wooden filing cabinets in what was called
the other room
--there were two, with a bathroom in the hall--and included all the various paper that flowed through a government bloodstream: directions from on high, carbons of correspondence, letters from the citizenry, and various oddments, like newspaper clippings, that got themselves into the files and stayed there. Though sometimes--as witness Sibylla's attack
du jour
--not forever.

"Gabi," she said, holding a paper so that Saltiel could read it, "is this important?"

Saltiel didn't want to read it. "Probably not."

"A memorandum, from Station Six. It seems to concern the cemetery."

"Which one?"

"The old Turkish one. The subject is 'Copulation at Night.'"

"By the living?"

"If not, keep it," Zannis said, looking up from his desk. They couldn't really get Sibylla to laugh, but they never stopped trying.

Instead, a sigh. What bad boys they were. "Dated 10 September, 1938."

"By now, they're likely done copulating," Saltiel said. "Get rid of it."

The other file was maintained by Zannis, on five-by-eight cards in shoeboxes, and, taken altogether, was a working map of the power centers--and there were many--of Salonika. Thus it included cards for shipowners and bankers, Greek Orthodox prelates, consuls, spies, resident foreigners, journalists, politicians, high-class criminals, and courtesans--anybody who mattered. For an official whose job was to work behind the scenes, it was crucial to keep track of the cast of characters.

The files, both sets, played a central role in the unnamed office on the Via Egnatia, with support from three typewriters, three telephones, and one more device which, from time to time, would remind them of its presence by ringing a little bell. As it did at that moment, producing a mumbled
"Skata,"
from Zannis--the Greek equivalent of the French
merde
--by which he meant
now what
. The device, on its own private table in the corner, was a Model 15 Siemens teleprinter, and now, all by itself, it began to type, fast and furious, a page rising slowly from a slot above its keyboard. Zannis stood by the table and read the text as it appeared.

AS PER YOUR QUERY 6 OCTOBER 1940 STOP MAIN BORDER STATIONS REPORT NO RECORD RENAULT MODEL UNKNOWN LICENSE SK 549 ENTERING BULGARIA LAST 48 HOURS STOP NO RECORD GREEK NATIONAL K L. STACHO THIS OFFICE STOP SIGNED LAZAREFF END

The teleprinter waited, making its
thucka-thucka-thucka
sound, for thirty seconds, then shut down. Well, Zannis thought, I gave it a try. On a hunch that Stacho had fled up to Bulgaria, he'd had Sibylla send a teletype to his old friend, Ivan Lazareff, in Sofia. If he'd thought that Stacho was spying for Bulgaria--a perfectly reasonable assumption--he wouldn't have done it, but the undertaker, a Greek citizen of Bulgarian descent, was spying for Germany, or at least for a man carrying German documents, so he'd taken a chance. And why not? He'd known Lazareff for years; they'd had plenty of good times in Greek and Bulgarian bars back when they'd both been detectives. At one time they'd talked on the telephone--mostly in German--but now that Zannis was a police official and Lazareff a chief of detectives, they communicated back and forth by teletype.

Logically, the purchase of the Siemens equipment should have been animated by some urge for progress, but it wasn't so. As German power surged in Europe, German corporations drove deep into the Balkans, buying up raw materials at preferential prices and selling--often trading--technology in return. Roumanian wheat moved west; back the other way came Leica cameras, aspirin, harmonicas, and, in some of the police stations in the cities and towns of southern Europe, teletype systems. In many cases, the purchase wasn't optional, was instead dictated by a very apprehensive foreign policy
--we must appease these people, buy the damn machine!
And yes, there were stories of hens nesting atop teleprinters in Serbian villages, and no, you really weren't going to hunt down the goat thief sought by a Roumanian police officer, but the system did work and, soon enough, some Balkan policemen found that it had its uses.

10 October. Hotel Lux Palace, Salonika.

Maybe just the war, moving south
.

The end of her cigarette was marked with lipstick, dark red, a color that emphasized her black hair and pale skin.
Stunning
, Zannis thought, was the word for her. And seductive, future delights suggested in the depths of her glance. And a liar, because she had no intention of going to bed with him or anybody else. She was important, this woman; she would never do such things. She was, however, scared, and not used to it, so she flirted a little with the handsome policeman, because she needed help.

He was here, in the best suite the best hotel in the city had to offer, at Saltiel's suggestion. No, request, though put mildly enough. This was a Jewish matter, originating with some pillar of the Sephardic community who knew to reach Zannis by way of Saltiel.

She ordered coffee, sat Zannis in a brown velvet armchair, turned the chair that went with the escritoire halfway and perched on its edge, facing him. Heels together, posture erect. "Frau Krebs is terribly formal," she said, her voice in cultured and well-modulated German. "Everybody calls me Emmi, for Emilia."

"And I'm Costa, for Constantine. My last name is Zannis. And they are?"

He referred to two children, the boy seven, he guessed, the girl perhaps nine, in a staged tableau beyond the open bedroom door. They were perfectly dressed, Jewish by their looks, the girl reading a book, the boy coloring with crayons.

"Nathanial and Paula." The girl looked up from her book, smiled at Zannis, then went back to reading--or pretending to read.

"Attractive children, no doubt you're proud of them."

Silence. She hesitated, a shall-I-lie hesitation that Zannis had seen many times before. She inhaled her cigarette, tapped it above the ashtray, and finally said, "No."

"Not proud?" He smiled, of course she meant no such thing.

"They're not my children." Then, regret. "Does it matter?" She was worried that she'd made a mistake.

"It doesn't matter, but it is interesting. I'm sure you'll explain."

The waiter arrived, bringing croissants, butter, jam, Greek pastry, and coffee. In ordering, she'd covered all the possibilities. "I thought you might like something to eat."

"Maybe later."

The tray was set on a table and she tipped the waiter.

"Two days ago, I arrived at the Turkish border on what used to be called the Orient Express. But we were turned back by a customs officer, so here we are, in Salonika."

"A Turkish customs officer?" he said. Then made the classic baksheesh gesture, thumb rubbed across the first two fingers, and raised his eyebrows.

She appreciated the theatre. "Oh, I tried, but I somehow managed to find the only honest official in the Levant."

"For what reason, Emmi, turned back?"

"Some question about papers."

"Are they legitimate?"

"I thought they were. I was told they were."

"By ...?"

"A lawyer in Berlin. I paid him to obtain the right papers, Turkish entry visas, but what I got were--um, cooked up. False papers. That's what the officer said."

"And then you offered a bribe."

"I started to but, oh, you should have seen his face. I think he might have put us in prison."

Sympathetic, Zannis nodded. "Always best, we think here, to avoid time in Turkish prisons. Emmi, if they're not your children, whose are they?"

"A friend's. An old school friend. A Jewish friend. She can't get out of Germany; she asked for help, I volunteered to take the children out. To Istanbul--where there are people who will take care of them."

"And where you will live."

Slowly, she shook her head, then put her cigarette out, pressing the end against the glass. "No, I will go back."

"Forgive me, I assumed you were Jewish."

"I am."

Zannis didn't answer. It was properly hushed on the top floor of the Lux Palace; from the corridor outside the room he could hear the whir of a vacuum cleaner. He stood up, walked over to the window and looked out to sea, at a steamship and its column of smoke against the sky. As he returned to the chair she met his eyes. Stunning, he thought again, and hard, much harder than he'd first thought.
What have I stumbled on?
Back in the chair, he leaned forward and spoke quietly. "You don't
have
to say anything, if you don't want to. I'll still help you."

She nodded, grateful for his understanding. In the bedroom, the boy said, his voice just above a whisper, "Should this be green?"

"No, blue," the girl said.

Emilia Krebs bent toward him and lowered her voice. "It was very hard for them. They couldn't go to school, they couldn't really go outdoors--Berlin is brutal now. Do you understand?"

His expression said that he understood perfectly.

"So, my friend asked me to get them out, somewhere safe. Because she knew I could go in and out of Germany.
Krebs
is Colonel Hugo Krebs, my husband, and a very powerful man."

"In the party?" He meant the Nazi party, and kept his voice light and neutral.

"Never." She was offended that he could even suggest such a thing, and her voice knew how to be offended. "No, he isn't like that. He's a career officer; he serves on the General Staff of the Wehrmacht, a manager of logistics--trains getting where they're needed on time, enough socks--it's not glamorous, but it is quite important."

"I know what it is," Zannis said. "Is there a
J
stamped in your passport?" That was now a legal requirement in Germany, a
J
for Juden, Jew.

"Oh no, not mine; they wouldn't dare."

"No, likely they wouldn't, not with you married to a man in his position, and he's probably not Jewish--he couldn't be, the way things are in Germany."

"A Lutheran, from a solid old family, though nothing special. We met, we fell in love, and we married--he's a wonderful man. We were never able to have children, but we lived a good life, then Hitler came to power. Hugo would have resigned his commission but he realized that, with a Jewish wife, it was better for us if he stayed where he was."

Zannis nodded, acknowledging an unfortunate truth.
And
, he thought,
logistics is the word
. How to get this woman and the two children to Turkey? "Could you tell me how, once you reached Istanbul, you planned to return to Berlin?"

"I didn't see it as a problem," she said, hesitant, not sure what he had in mind.

"By steamship?"

"Heavens no. It's faster to fly. From Istanbul to Bucharest, then on to Berlin. Lufthansa has routes to all the neutral countries."

"But you didn't fly to Istanbul. I imagine, with two children, it would have been expensive."

"It wasn't that, I don't care about money. Hugo and I thought the three of us might be a little too noticeable at Tempelhof--Gestapo everywhere, at the airport--so better to go on the train. By stages, you see, first to Vienna, then Budapest, Belgrade, Sofia, and on to Istanbul. We got as far as the border control at Edirne, in Turkey."

"But you came back to Salonika."

"Because I knew there were Jews in Salonika--'the Jerusalem of the Balkans,' all that."