Stern shook his head. He sighed.
You haven’t got it right, Joe. You just haven’t.
Joe smiled and signaled for two more cognacs. He took one of Stern’s cheap cigarettes and rolled it from one side of his mouth to the other.
Haven’t I now, Father? Is that the judgment today from the confessional? Well all I know is I’ve got it the way it is around here, pretty much the way it is. Maybe not the way the good book says it’s supposed to be but still the way it is. So why don’t we stop being sentimental on Christmas Eve and get down to talking about guns and money?
He raised his tumbler.
Doesn’t bother you does it, Stern? It shouldn’t, don’t worry about it. Until I find something better to do I’ll run guns to your Arab and Jewish and Christian country that doesn’t exist and be happy doing it, what do I care that it’s never going to exist. And you’ll get good value from me, you know that. Just no more shit about somewhere being someplace because it isn’t, I don’t have a homeland anymore. My last home was in Jericho with a woman who left me.
He grinned.
Cold in Jerusalem wouldn’t you say? It seems to be snowing in the land of milk and honey, do you see it now. So here’s to your kind of power and mine. Here’s to you, Father Stern.
Stern slowly raised his glass.
To you, Joe.
In the spring of 1922 Stern was in Smyrna to meet with his principle contact in Turkey, a wealthy secret Greek activist. The man’s chief interest was in seeing Constantinople returned to the Greeks, for which a Greek army was then fighting Kemal and the Turks in the interior. But he had been working with Stern for ten years helping him smuggle arms to nationalist movements in Syria and Iraq, ever since his and Stern’s aims had come to coincide during the Balkan wars.
In fact it was Sivi who frequently provided Stern with the money he was always so desperately lacking, the same Sivi who had once befriended Maud and helped her with money after the death of her husband Yanni, his much younger half-brother.
In addition the notorious old man, now seventy, was the undisputed queen of sexual excess in Smyrna, where he always appeared at the opera dressed in flowing red gowns and a large red hat spilling with roses to be plucked off and tossed to his friends when he made his entrance into his box, his ruby rings flashing and a long unlit cigar firmly fixed between his teeth. Because of the reputation of his father as one of the founding statesmen of the modern Greek nation, because of his own eccentric manner and wealth and because of Smyrna’s importance as the most international city in the Middle East, he was an extremely effective agent with influential connections in many places, particularly in the numerous Greek communities found everywhere.
He lived alone with his secretary, a young Frenchwoman once educated in a convent but long since seduced by the sensual air of Smyrna society and the salon Sivi ran there. Stern’s meeting with him, as usual, was at three o’clock in the morning since Sivi’s entertainments ran late. Stern left his hotel ten minutes before that and strolled along the harbor to see that he wasn’t being followed. At three he slipped into an alley and walked quickly around to the back door of the villa. He knocked quietly, saw the peephole open and heard the bolt slide. The secretary closed the door gently behind him.
Hello, Theresa.
Hello again. You look tired.
He smiled. Why not, the old sinner will never meet me at a decent hour. How’s he been lately?
In bed. His gums.
What about them?
He says they hurt, he won’t eat.
Oh that, don’t worry about it, it happens every three or four years. He gets it into his head his teeth are falling out and becomes afraid he might have to make a public appearance without his cigar in place. It only lasts a week or two. Have the cook send in soft-boiled eggs.
She laughed. Thank you, doctor. She rapped on the bedroom door and there was a soft thump on the other side. Stern raised his eyebrows.
A rubber ball, she whispered, it means come in. No unnecessary words. It seems opening his mouth to fresh air might hasten the ravaging of his gums. I’ll see you before you leave.
Sivi was sitting in bed propped up by an immense pile of red satin pillows. He wore a thick red dressing gown and a swath of red flannel that entirely covered his head and was tied under his chin. The large olive wood logs crackling in the fireplace gave the only light in the room. Stern pulled aside a drape and found all the windows locked and shuttered against the mild spring night. He stripped off his jacket in the oppressive heat and sat down on the edge of the bed. He felt the old man’s pulse while Sivi sniffed at a pan of steaming water on the night table.
Terminal?
Surprisingly, no. In fact the flesh isn’t even cold yet.
Don’t joke about it. I may well go within the hour.
How can you breathe in here?
I can’t, it’s one of my difficulties. The oxygen to my head has been cut off. Who did you say you were?
A laborer. I load tobacco on the pier in front of your villa.
The one to the left or the right?
Left.
Excellent. Keep up the good work but watch out for your back. Heavy lifting can damage the back. Is it day or night out?
Day.
I thought so. I can feel that unhealthy sunshine creeping along the shutters trying to ooze inside. Winter or summer, did you say?
Winter. It’s snowing.
Preposterous, I was sure of it, I’ve been feverish for hours.
You know when your jaw falls off that flannel sling won’t be any help.
Nonsense, all illusions are helpful.
You know something else? In your declining years you’re beginning to look more and more like that portrait downstairs of your paternal grandmother.
The old man wagged his head.
I wouldn’t mind that particularly, it’s an admirable proposition. She was a pious and honorable and hardworking woman as well as the mother of one of the heroes of Greek independence, who was a good friend of Byron by the way, you probably know that. But what you don’t know is that the last time I was in Malta, I hired as my valet none other than the grandson of Byron’s Venetian gondolier, his favorite pimp and catamite. The grandfather, Tito, led an Albanian regiment in our war and then later was stranded in Malta, destitute, through a series of scandalous misadventures involving his former occupations. What, this intriguing news from a Maltese grandson doesn’t interest you? Well tell me what’s new in the outside world then. I’ve been bedridden since the Mahdi took Khartoum.
That phallus you’re using as a knocker on the back door is new. It’s awful.
Sivi laughed happily and sniffed his pan of steaming water.
It does add a touch, doesn’t it. Well naturally there’s no reason to hide the general state of affairs around here and anyway, I have a certain reputation to maintain. My father had a son at the age of eighty-four and although that’s not my line, virility is in our blood.
Stern handed him a piece of paper and he fixed his pince-nez to study the figures.
Ah, my eyesight is deteriorating.
Degenerating.
Damascus this time.
Yes.
When?
By the middle of June if you can do it.
Easily.
And I’d like to set up a meeting here in September.
I don’t blame you at all, it’s a lovely place to be in September. Who is going to have the pleasure of visiting here and meeting me?
A man who works for me in Palestine.
Fine, guests from the Holy Land are always especially welcome. Is he on your Arab side or your Jewish side?