Spies of the Balkans (21 page)

"Amen," Escovil said.

"Well, it damn near
is
amen, as you say, because early in January, Harry's Wellington is hit by flak over the Ruhr. The pilot makes a valiant effort but it's no good and the crew bails out over France. Now, luck intervenes. Some of the crew are caught right away, but Harry lands in just the right farmer's field and the French, perhaps a resistance group, or simply French, take charge of him and smuggle him up to Paris. And there he sits, as they try to make arrangements to get him out of the country.

"Now, just about here, the aristocrat is told what's become of Harry and gives forth a mighty British roar. And who do you suppose he roars at? To clean up this godawful mess? He roars at us, who else?"

Jones waited. Escovil knew he had been called on to recite, and what came to him was, "And now you're roaring at me."

Impertinent
. Wilkins said, "We're not roaring, Francis. Yet."

"So then, what shall I do?"

"Why, get him out. What else?" Jones said. There was a file folder on the table by Jones's chair. Jones opened it, withdrew a photograph, and held it out to Escovil, who had to go and retrieve it. When he'd returned to his chair, Jones said, "There he is. Taken when he reached Paris, just to make sure they have who they say they have."

In the photograph, Harry Byer looked like an owl who'd flown into the side of a barn. Owlish he had always been--hooked beak of a nose, small eyes, pursy little mouth--while the barn wall had left livid bruises by his right eye and the right-hand corner of his mouth. Injured in the airplane? Beaten up? "When was this taken?" he said. He started to rise, intending to return the photograph.

But Jones waved him back down and said, "A week or so after he landed."

"And how did, um, we come to hear about it?"

"Whoever these people are, they were in contact with an underground cell operating a clandestine radio."

"Back to London."

"Back to the French in London."

"Oh."

"Quite."

"You don't suppose the Germans are in control of them, do you? Waiting to see who shows up?"

"Haven't a clue."

Silence. Wilkins had now assumed the same posture, drink in hand, legs crossed, as his colleague. They were, Escovil thought, rather good at waiting. Finally he said, "So you'll want me to go up there."

Jones cackled. "Are you daft? Of course not, you'll send your agent, what's-his-name, the policeman."

"Constantine Zannis? He's not my agent. Who told you that?"

Wilkins leaned forward and said, "Oh damn-it-all of
course
he is." He glanced at his watch. "Has been for a while--ten minutes, I'd say, more or less."

I'd like to be in the room when you tell Zannis that
. But Escovil knew there was no point in starting an argument he couldn't win. "Paris is a long way from here. Why wouldn't you take Byer out by fishing boat, from the French coast?"

"Option closed," Jones said. "For the time being. Somebody got himself caught up there and the Germans shut it down. We'll get it back, in time, but right now you'll have to use your escape line."

"It isn't mine."

"Now it is."

Oh piss off
. "And why does
Zannis
have to go?"

"Because Byer will never make it by himself, speaks not a word of any continental language. He can read a scientific journal in German, but he can't order lunch. And, more important, if he's caught, we have to be able to show we did everything we could. We have to show we
care."

Escovil suppressed a sigh. "Very well, I'll ask him."

"No," Wilkins said, now quite irritated, "you'll
tell
him. 'Ask him' indeed."

Jones said, "Do it any way you like, but keep in mind, Francis, we don't take no for an answer." He stood, collected Wilkins's glass, then Escovil's, and poured fresh drinks. When he'd resettled himself, he said, "Now," in a tone of voice that was new to Escovil, and went on to explain how they thought the thing might actually be done. Bastards they were, to the very bone, Escovil thought, but at least, and thank heaven, smart bastards.

27 January. A telephone call from Escovil, early that afternoon. Could they meet? Privately? Zannis's instinctive reaction was to refuse, courteously or not so courteously, because the word "privately" told the tale: the spies wanted something. And it wasn't such a good day to ask Zannis
anything
, because he was miserable. He had waited for a call from Demetria, waited and waited, but it hadn't come. Five long days had crept by, his heart soaring every time the telephone rang: It's her! But it never was. Now, he would either have to assume she'd thought better of the whole thing, or was waiting for him--as he'd promised, very nearly threatened--to call her. Meanwhile, the spies were after him. Back in the autumn, in his time with Roxanne, he would have laughed. But the world had changed, the war
was
coming south, and only the British alliance might save the country.

And didn't they know it.

"It's really rather important," Escovil said. "Is there somewhere ...?"

Skata
. "You can come to the office after six," Zannis said, a sharp edge to his voice. "Do you know where it is?"

"I don't."

Oh yes you do
. Zannis gave him directions, then said, "It's very private here, once everyone's gone home, you needn't be concerned."
And the hell with your damn bookstores and empty churches
.

And so, at five minutes past six, there he was. "Hello."

He'd been drinking, Zannis could smell it on him. And there were shadows beneath his eyes, which made him seem, with his sand-colored hair swept across his forehead, more than ever a boy grown old. Beneath a soiled raincoat, the battered tweed jacket.

Once he was seated on the other side of the desk, Zannis said, "So then, what do you want?"

Such directness caused Escovil to clear his throat. "We must ask a favor of you."

We
. Well, now that was out of the way, what next? Not that he wanted to hear it.

"It has to do with your ability to bring refugees, bring them secretly, from northern Europe to Salonika."

"You know about this?"

"We do." Escovil's tone was apologetic--the secret service was what it was and sometimes, regretfully, it worked.

"And so?"

"We need to make use of it, for a fugitive of our own. An important fugitive--that is, important to the British war effort."

Zannis lit a cigarette. That done, he said, "No." Lighting the cigarette had given him an opportunity to amend his first answer, which had been,
Get out of my office
.

Escovil looked sorrowful. "Of course. That's the proper response, for you. It's what I would say, in your place."

Then good-bye
.

"You fear," Escovil went on, "that it might jeopardize your operation and the people who run it."

"It could very well destroy it, Escovil. Then what becomes of the men and women trying to get out of Germany? I'll tell you what: they're trapped, they're arrested, and then they are at the mercy of the SS. Want more?"

"No need," Escovil said, very quietly. "I know." He was silent for a time, then he said, "Which might still happen, even if you refuse to help us."

"Which
will
happen."

"Then ..."

"It's a question of time. The longer we go on, the more lives saved. And if some of our fugitives are caught, we can try to fix the problem, and we can continue. People run away all the time, and the organization designed to catch them adjusts, gets what information it can, and goes to work the next day. But if they discover an
important
fugitive, perhaps a secret agent, it suggests the existence of others, and then the organization starts to multiply--more money, more men, more pressure from above. And that's the end of us."

"He's not a secret agent."

"No?"

"No. He's a downed airman. Who, it turns out, is a scientist, and shouldn't have been allowed to join the RAF, and certainly shouldn't have been allowed to fly bomber missions. But he escaped the attention of the department which--umm,
attends
to such individuals. And now they want him back."

"And you can't get him back on your own?
You?"

"I don't like saying this, but that's what we're doing."

"And I don't like saying
this
, but you're endangering many lives."

"Well, frankly," Escovil said, "we do nothing else. We don't
want
to, we'd rather
not
, but it seems to work out that way."

Zannis thought for a time. "You have no alternative?"

"Not today."

"I'll tell you something, Escovil, if I find out you're lying to me you'll be on the next boat out of here."

"I take your point, but that won't happen. Don't you see? It's gone beyond that now. The war, everything." He paused, then said, "And I'm not lying."

"Oh, well, in that case ..."

"I'm not. And you can assure yourself that the individual is precisely who I say he is."

"Really? And how exactly would I do that?"

"Ask him."

Zannis didn't go directly home. He stopped at the neighborhood taverna, had an ouzo, then another, and considered a third but, nagged by guilt over putting off Melissa's dinner, hurried back to Santaroza Lane. Then too, the third ouzo wouldn't, he realized, have much more effect than the first two, which had had no effect whatsoever. His mind was too engaged, too embroiled, to be soothed by alcohol. It lifted briefly, then went back to work.
Sorry!

He simply could not persuade himself that Escovil was lying. Years of police work had sharpened his instincts in this area, and he trusted them more than ever. After Escovil's little surprise--"Ask him"--he'd gone on to explain the proposed operation, which was artfully conceived and made sense. Made the most perfect sense, as long as Zannis was willing to accept a certain level of danger. And who--given the time and circumstance--wouldn't? Not him. He
had
to go to Paris.
He
had to go to Paris. And do what had to be done. And that was that.

Lying on the bed in his underwear, he reached toward the night table and had a look, yet again, at the photograph he'd been given. Yes, Byer was exactly who Escovil had said he was, bruises and all. And how had Escovil's organization managed to get the photograph out of France? Escovil had claimed not to know and, as before, Zannis believed him. Next he studied the second photograph of Byer, the one in the Sardakis passport, a real passport photo, it seemed, and a real Greek passport. Perhaps for them not so difficult but, even so, impressive. So, was this a man who would murder his wife and her lover in a fit of jealousy? Well, it surely was--the owlish, seemingly harmless intellectual.
Skata!
He'd
seen
such murderers, that was exactly what they looked like!

He returned the passport and the photograph to the night table and turned his mind toward what he had to do in the morning. The gun. Why had he not replaced his Walther, lost in the Trikkala bombing? Why was he so ...

The telephone. Who would call him here, his mother? She had no telephone, but, in an emergency ... "Hello?"

"Hello, it's me."

Her!
"Demetria. Did ... did I give you this number?"

"Are you angry with me?"

"Good God no!"

"Vasilou had it, in a card index in his study."

"Is everything ... all right?"

"Better now. But it's been a terrible week, Vasilou is suddenly
affectionate
, back early from the office, wanting, you know. But poor Demetria has eaten a bad fish. He is enraged, shouting. He will buy the restaurant and fire the cook! Meanwhile, I hide in the bathroom." A memory of that moment drew from her a kind of amused snort. "Anyhow, at last I'm free to telephone. It is the servants' night out but they dawdled before they left and I realized you wouldn't be at work."

"Can you come here now? Even for a little while? Just to see you...."

"Oh Costa I can't." But with her voice she let him know how much she wanted to, and, almost better, she had never said his name before and hearing it thrilled him.

"Tomorrow?"

"The day after. He is off to Athens, the maids are going to a christening, and I told everyone I was invited to a mah-jong party. So I can see you at five, and we will have two hours, unless ..."

"Unless what?"

"I must warn you, Costa, he is a dangerous enemy, a very dangerous enemy. Some of the people who work for him, they will do ... anything."

He wondered why she thought Vasilou would discover them so quickly, then he knew. "Demetria, do you want to tell him? Now? Leave him and stay with me?"

The line whispered. Finally she said, "Not now. Not yet."

She was, he thought, testing him.
I know you will lie in bed by me, but will you stand by me?
"I am not afraid of him, Demetria."

"You are not afraid of anybody, are you."

"No. And the day, the hour, you want to leave, it's done." When she didn't speak he said, "Do you still love him?"

"No, I never did, not really. I thought I might, at one time, yes, I suppose I did think that." After a moment, she continued. "I am, you know, his third wife--he simply wanted something different, a new possession, but even so, I hoped. He was forceful, masculine, rich--who was I to refuse him as a husband? And I had been married--and all that that means in this country--so I was grateful, and he was honorable; he went to my father and asked for my hand. Very old-fashioned, very traditional, and it
affected
me. I was alone, and getting older, and here was, at least, a luxurious life."

"That can happen, I think, to anyone."

"Yes, I guess it might. And I
am
'anyone,' Costa, inside ... all this."

"I'm afraid you're not just 'anyone,' not to me."

"I know. I saw that. From the car when you and Vasilou came out of the club." She hesitated, then sighed. "I want to tell you everything, but not on the telephone." A pause, then, "You haven't told me where you live."