–
A warm afternoon in Athens and Garlopis was spent behind the wheel of the Rover, which suited me very well, given the homicidal impatience of other Greek drivers. To drive around Constitution Square was to invite an assault by car horn and amounted to the clearest demonstration of jungle law since Huxley battered Bishop Wilberforce on his pate with a blunt copy of On the Origin of Species. No ordinary human could ever have enjoyed seeing Athens from the front seat of a car any more than he could have enjoyed trying to fly off the ski jump at Garmisch. Even Garlopis was a different man behind the wheel of a car—as different as if he’d shared a couple of Greek coffees with Dr. Henry Jekyll. We reached Averoff Prison, about three kilometers northeast of the office, in a matter of minutes and a fug of burnt rubber. He could have found the place on Alexandras Avenue in his sleep because it was close to the Apostolis Nikolaidis Stadium, the home ground of Panathinaikos, the Athens football team supported enthusiastically by Garlopis and, he said, the winner of the Greek Cup as recently as 1955. He parked the car and switched off the engine, and at last I was able to let out a breath.
“I was never so glad to see a prison,” I said, looking out the car window at a grim, castellated gray brick building that was shrouded with palm trees. I lit a Karelia from a packet I’d bought and tried to compose myself.
But Garlopis was looking serious.
“I’m sorry, sir, but I’m afraid I won’t be going in there. You see, there’s something I need to tell you. You’re not the only one with a past. I mean, a past I’d rather not be reminded of.”
“Don’t tell me, you were a cop, too.”
“No, but during the war I was a translator for the Occupation Force, just like Arthur Meissner. First for the Italians and then the Germans. So far I’ve managed to conceal this fact. And for obvious reasons you’re the one person with whom I feel I can share this information now. I certainly wouldn’t tell anyone Greek. Meissner worked in Thessaloniki while I was based here in Athens but he and I met several times at the Gestapo building in Merlin Street. And I’d much prefer it if we didn’t meet again. He might try to blackmail me, to share the blame, if you like. I certainly didn’t murder or rob anyone, which is what he’s accused of doing by no less a figure than Archimedes Argyropoulos; he’s a general and a Greek military hero, so his evidence has been very damaging to Meissner’s case. No, all I did was to be part of a pool of translators. I even tried to ameliorate some of the general’s orders. Nevertheless, in Greek eyes this makes me a collaborator.”
“Collaborator is just another word for survivor,” I said. “In a war staying alive is a bit like playing tennis. It looks a lot easier when you’ve never had to play yourself. Take it from one who can boast a pretty useful backhand.”
“That’s kind of you to say. Unfortunately there are plenty of Greeks who would like to see a rat like me disqualified. Permanently.”
“Forget it. I think you’re a pretty nice guy—for a rat.”
“You’re too kind, sir.”
“I don’t mean to be. Tell me, when you were working for the Third Reich did you ever meet this SD Captain Brunner that Lieutenant Leventis has decided to make his life’s personal Jean Valjean?”
“On one of the few occasions I met Meissner he was accompanied by some SD officers and perhaps one of them might have been Brunner, but I really don’t know for sure. There were so many. And men in uniform all look alike to me. Frankly I’d never even heard the name Brunner until Leventis mentioned him in his office.” Garlopis shook his head. “What I did know was to stay away from Thessaloniki. You have to understand that things were much harder there because the SD were in charge. There it was all about persecuting the Jews. Here, in Athens, things were easier. Besides, Brunner was a mere captain. Mostly I worked for the military governor, a Luftwaffe general called Wilhelm Speidel who Lieutenant Leventis mentioned to you when we were in his office. This is the real reason I try to encourage people not to stay at the Grande Bretagne Hotel, sir. During the war it was taken over by the German general staff. Speidel’s headquarters were in a suite on the top floor. Hitler once stayed at the GB; Himmler, and Göring, too. I actually saw Hermann Göring drinking champagne with Rommel in the hotel bar. I was often in and out of the place to meet with General Speidel and I don’t like to go back there in case I’m ever recognized.
“Then, in April 1944, Speidel was transferred back to Germany and I went to stay with a cousin of mine in Rhodes, until I judged it safe to come back to Athens. When Leventis mentioned Speidel and the massacre in Kalavryta, you could have knocked me sideways. Frankly I had no idea he’d ever had a hand in such a thing. I always found him to be very kind, very thoughtful, and a real gentleman. When he left Greece he even gave me a nice fountain pen. His own Pelikan.”
“That’s something you learn about life. Sometimes the nicest folk do the most horrible things. Especially in Germany. Along with the Japs we virtually own the monopoly on very kind, very thoughtful mass murderers. People are always surprised that we also like Mozart and small children.”
“I just wanted you to know the truth.”
“It’s a tough world for honest men. But don’t tell any of them.”
“No, indeed. I shall wait for you here, sir. I shall close my eyes and get some beauty sleep.”
“Try a coma. Then it might actually work.”
Leaving Garlopis to his nap I stepped out of the car and walked toward the gate wondering just how much of what Garlopis had told me was true. Knowing him as I did, I half-suspected that I might have got more information from the Greek insurance man about Alois Brunner than I was ever likely to get out of Arthur Meissner.
The sentry waved me through the gate to the main door, where I rang the bell as if I’d been selling brushes, and waited. After a moment or two, a smaller door opened in the bigger one and I showed the prison guard a letter Leventis had written for me. Then I was taken to a small windowless room where I was searched carefully and ushered through several locked cage doors, to a room with four chairs and a table. There I sat down and waited, nervously. I’d been in enough prison cells in my time to get a sick feeling in my stomach just being there. The only window was about three meters above the floor and on the wall was a cheap picture of the Parthenon. A temple dedicated to the goddess Athena seemed a long way from a squalid room in Averoff Prison. After a while the door opened again to admit a small dark handsome man in his forties and I stood up.
“Herr Meissner?”
When he nodded I offered him a cigarette and when he took one I told him to keep the pack. That’s just good manners when you’re meeting anyone behind bars. He smelled strongly of prison, which as anyone who’s been a convict could tell you is a cloying mixture of cigarettes, fried potatoes, fear, sweat, and only one shower a week.
“You’re Christof Ganz?”
“Yes.”
“I’m here because Papakyriakopoulos told me I had nothing to lose by meeting with you,” said Meissner, pocketing the pack for later. “But I can’t see that I’ve got anything much to gain either. After all, it’s not like you’re anyone important in this fucking country.”
Meissner spoke German with a slight Berlin accent—his father’s, probably, and very like my own.
“That’s rather the point, I think. I’m not with the police. And I’m not a member of the legal profession. I’m just a private citizen. I’m only here because Lieutenant Leventis has my balls in his hand and, because I used to be a cop in Berlin, he thinks that you might have something to tell me that you wouldn’t tell him. And perhaps since you can tell me in German I guess he believes you can speak in confidence. I don’t know. But you could even say I’m an honest broker. Beware of Greeks bearing gifts, and all that shit.”
“So what does he want me to say to the good German?”
“I’ll come to that. What he wants me to say first is that he thinks you’re small fry.”
“Tell that to the judge.”
“That there are more important fish out there still to be caught.”
“You got that right, Fritz. I’ve been saying that for months, but no one ever listens. Look, for your information, I was just a translator. A mouth for hire. I never murdered anyone. And I never robbed anyone. And nor did my girlfriend, Eleni. Yes, I took a few bribes. Who didn’t? This is Greece. Everyone takes bribes in this fucking country. Some of those bribes I took were to bribe a few Germans, to help people, Jews included. This fellow Moses Natan, who says he bribed me to help his family. Well, I really did try to help him, but the way he talks now you’d think my help came with guarantees. If you were a cop, then you must know what that was like. Sometimes you tried and succeeded, but more often you tried and failed. None of the people I succeeded in helping have turned up to speak on my behalf. Just the ones I failed.
“As for those rape charges. They’re nonsense. The cops know that, too. The trouble is that I’m the only one they’ve ever managed to put on trial in this fucking country for what happened during the occupation. Me. The translator. You might as well charge some of those women who were chambermaids at the Grande Bretagne Hotel when the German High Command was living there. The barmen and the fucking porters, too. But the Greeks want someone to blame. And right now I’m the only scapegoat they can find. So they’re throwing the book at me. I’m charged with twelve thousand murders. Did you know that? Me, a man who’s never even held a gun. The way they’re talking I’m the man who told Hitler to invade Greece. As if the Germans would ever have listened to me. It’s a fucking joke. All those Nazi officers—Speidel, Student, Lanz, Felmy—they’re the ones who should be on trial here, not me.”
“Oh, I get that. And look, I won’t say I’m on your side. But I kind of am because getting you to talk might put me in good odor with Leventis. Helping you helps me. He can’t come out and say so to you in person—that would be political suicide for him, not to mention illegal—but he’s assured me that if you assist him, he’ll speak to Mr. Toussis.”
Toussis was the name of the man prosecuting Meissner’s case in court.
“Get the charges reduced,” I added. “Thrown out, maybe.”
“That’s all very well, but right now it’s possible I might be safer in here than I would be on the outside. Seriously, Ganz. I’m a dead man the minute I leave this place. I’ve got less chance of going back to my house in Elefsina than I have of becoming the Greek prime minister.”
“Safe conduct on a plane to Germany. I’ll even go with you myself. I want out of here as much as you do. How does that sound?”
“It sounds great. But look, here’s the biggest obstacle to making all that happen. I don’t know that I know anything very important. If I did I would have spilled my guts before now, believe me.”
“Leventis is after someone in particular. One of those big fish. A man called Alois Brunner. He was a captain in the SD. Remember him?”
“Yes. I could hardly forget him. No one could. Brunner was a memorable man, Herr Ganz. Him and Wisliceny and Eichmann. All driven by hatred of the Jews. But unlike Eichmann, Brunner was a real sadist. He liked inflicting pain. A couple of times I was present when Alois Brunner tortured a man at the Villa Mehmet Kapanci—that was the Gestapo headquarters on Vasilissis Olgas Avenue, in Thessaloniki. And clearly he enjoyed it. I didn’t want to be there, of course, but Brunner took out his gun and pressed it up against my eyeball and told me I could translate for him or I could bleed on the floor. Those were his exact words. Like I say, you don’t forget a man like Brunner. But I haven’t seen nor heard of him since the summer of 1943, thank God. And I wouldn’t have any idea of how to find him.”
“Brunner is back in Greece.”
“He wouldn’t dare. I don’t believe it. Says who?”
“Says me. I met him here in Athens, although I didn’t know it at the time. He’s using an assumed name.”
“Jesus. How about that? Now there’s someone who really does have a lot to answer for in this country. But for Brunner and Wisliceny, the Jews of Thessaloniki might still be alive. Almost sixty thousand of them died in Auschwitz. It was Brunner’s job to get them on the trains out of Salonika. Maybe that’s why Brunner feels it’s safe to come back. Because there’s no one around to identify him.”
“There’s you.”
“Sure. And tell Leventis I will identify him if it gets me out of here. No problem. Now all you have to do is find the bastard.”
“So what else can you tell me about Brunner?”
“Let’s see now. There was a hotel in Thessaloniki he liked, the Aegaeon. And another one where he took his Greek mistress, the Luxembourg. Her name was Tzeni, I think. Or Tonia. No, Tzeni. I’m not so sure he didn’t murder her before he left Greece. A couple of times I accompanied him to Athens and he stayed at the Xenias Melathron, on Jan Smuts. There was a restaurant he liked, too—the Kissos on Amerikis Street. I doubt he’d risk going back to Thessaloniki, but Athens would be different. He wasn’t here that often.” Meissner paused. “How did you know it was him?”
“Because Lieutenant Leventis showed me a photograph and I recognized him as the man who’d been talking to me earlier on in my hotel bar. Calls himself Fischer now, Georg Fischer, and he claims to be a tobacco salesman.”
“You say he spoke to you?”
“That’s right. He initiated a conversation when he realized I was German.”
“Was he just making conversation or did he want something? If he did, then make sure you give it to him. That man likes to kill people. And not just Jews.”
“So I hear. At first I figured it was just two Germans a long way from home—that kind of thing. But later on I realized he was looking for someone. He hoped I might lead him to the man. Because unwittingly I did, that someone is now dead.”
“Who?”
“Fellow named Siegfried Witzel.”
“Never heard of him.”
“He worked for a man named Max Merten.”
“Max Merten.” Meissner stood up and lit one of the cigarettes I’d given him. He walked around the room for a moment, nodding quietly to himself.
“That name mean something to you?”
“Oh yes.”
“What can you tell me about Max Merten?”
“Wait a minute. You said this Witzel fellow worked for Merten?”
“Yes.”
“When was that?”
“Now. This year. I think Merten’s in Greece, too.”
Meissner grinned. “Now it’s starting to make sense. Why Brunner would dare come back to Greece. Wisliceny is dead—hanged by the Czechs, I think. And Eichmann, well, he’s disappeared. In Brazil, if he knows what’s good for him. So that leaves Merten and Brunner. It figures.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“People remember Eichmann, Wisliceny, and Brunner because they were all SD and they think all of the really bad men were in the SS because the SS were specifically tasked with killing the Jews, but the fact is Merten was in charge of the whole shooting match.”
“But he was just an army captain, wasn’t he?”
“True. Which would have made it a lot easier for him to stay beneath the radar. But Merten was the chief of military administration for the whole Salonika-Aegean theater. The Wehrmacht let him do what the fuck he wanted because they were mostly all in Athens and they didn’t give a shit about Thessaloniki. For one thing, there wasn’t a really good hotel like the GB. And for another, they preferred to keep their gentlemen’s consciences away from the SD myrmidons and what they had planned. But in Thessaloniki if you wanted a truck, a train, a ship, a building, you had to go through Merten. You wanted a hundred Jewish workers to build a road, you had to ask Merten. He was the boss of everything. Even Eichmann had to go through Max Merten. Now there’s someone who the Greeks should put on trial. The stories I could tell you about Max Merten. He lived like a king in Thessaloniki. And not just any king. Like Croesus, probably. He had a villa with a swimming pool, girls, cars, servants, the best food and wine. He even had his own cinema theater. And nobody bothered him.” Meissner shook his head bitterly. “But of course there’s only one real story about Max Merten. If you ask me that’s probably what your Greek lieutenant is really interested in. Putting Alois Brunner on trial is just a smokescreen. If Max Merten is in Greece, then there can be only one reason. And I daresay Alois Brunner knows that, too.”