“Yes, powerful friends. I know you have them; well, so do I.”
“Then I’m happy for you.”
“Bloody …” A muttered syllable followed.
“What?”
“Never mind. Just drive.”
Coming around a curve, they were suddenly confronted by a pair of gasoline tankers, side by side, horns blaring. Zannis swung the wheel over, the back end broke free, and they went skidding sideways into a field. The car stalled, Zannis pressed the ignition button, the Skoda coughed, then started. But the army wasn’t done with them. Just before they reached the airport, a long convoy came speeding right at them-and this time they almost didn’t make it. The car idled by the side of the road, pebbles hit the windshield, soldiers waved, Roxanne swore, Zannis fumed.
The airport was deserted. The Royal Hellenic Air Force-about a hundred planes: a few PZL P.24s, Polish-built fighters, and whatever else they’d managed to buy over the years-was operating from air-bases in the west. A sign on the door of the terminal building said ALL FLIGHTS CANCELED, and the only signs of life were a small group of soldiers on guard duty and a crew gathered beside its antiaircraft gun. They’d built a fire and were roasting somebody’s chicken on a bayonet.
Roxanne had only a small valise-Zannis offered to carry it but she wouldn’t let him. They walked around the terminal building and there, parked in a weedy field by the single paved runway, was a small monoplane, a Lysander, with a British RAF roundel on the fuselage. The pilot, sitting on the ground with his back against the wheel, was smoking a cigarette and reading a Donald Duck comic book. He stood when he saw them coming and flicked his cigarette away. Very short, and very small, he looked, to Zannis’s eyes, no more than seventeen.
“Sorry I’m late,” Roxanne said.
The pilot peered up at the gathering darkness and strolled back toward the observer’s cockpit, directly behind the pilot’s-both were open, no canopies to be seen. “Getting dark,” he said. “We’d better be going.”
Roxanne turned to Zannis and said, “Thank you.”
He stared at her and finally said, “You’re not going to England, are you.”
“No, only to Alexandria. I may well be back; it’s simply a precaution.”
“Of course, I understand.” His voice was flat and dead because he was heartsick. “Now,” he added, “I understand.” And how could I have been so dumb I never saw it? The British government didn’t send Lysanders to rescue the expatriate owners of ballet schools, they sent them to rescue secret service operatives.
Her eyes flashed; she moved toward him and spoke, intensely but privately, so the pilot wouldn’t hear. “It wasn’t to do with you,” she said. “It wasn’t to do with you.”
“No, of course not.”
Suddenly she grabbed a handful of his shirt, just below the collar, and twisted it, her knuckles sharp where they pressed against his chest. It surprised him, how strong she was, and the violence was a shock-this hand, in the past, had been very nice to him. “Wasn’t,” she said. Her eyes were dry, but he could see she was as close to tears as she ever came. And then he realized that the hand clutching his shirt wasn’t there in anger, it was furiously, almost unconsciously, trying to hold on to something it had lost.
The pilot cleared his throat. “Getting dark,” he said. He knotted his fingers, making a cup out of his hands, nodded up at the observer cockpit, and said, “Up we go, luv.”
Zannis walked with Roxanne the few feet to the plane. She turned and looked at him, then rested her foot on the waiting hands and was hoisted upward, floundered for a moment, skirt rising to reveal the backs of her thighs, then swung her legs over into the cockpit. The pilot smiled at Zannis, a boyish grin which made him look even younger than seventeen, and said, “Don’t worry, mate, I’m good at this.” He handed Roxanne her valise, jumped up on the wheel housing, and climbed into the pilot’s cockpit. A moment later, the engine roared to life and the propeller spun. Zannis watched the Lysander as it taxied, then lifted into the air and turned south, heading out over the Aegean toward Egypt.
Back in the office, a yellow sheet of teletype paper lay on his desk. From Lazareff in Sofia.
COSTA: DO US ALL A FAVOR AND CHASE THESE BASTARDS BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM
The message was in Bulgarian, but Zannis had grown up in Salonika, “a city where even the bootblacks speak seven languages,” and was able to figure it out. Normally, he would have enjoyed Lazareff’s gesture, but now he just sat there, his mood dark and melancholy, and stared at the wall.
He came to believe, after going back over their time together, that Roxanne hadn’t lied, that he’d not been the target of a British spy operation. He could not recall a single time when she’d asked him anything that might touch on the sort of information that spies sought. So, in fact, it wasn’t to do with him. He’d had a love affair with a woman who’d been sent to Salonika as part of an intelligence operation. Then, when war came, when occupation by an Axis force was more than possible, they’d snatched her away. Or maybe she simply did have friends in high places, friends with the power to organize an RAF Lysander flight to Greece. No, she’d actually confessed. “It wasn’t to do with you.” The it. To do with somebody else. The Germans, the Italians, the Vichy French consul; there were many possibilities.
Should he tell somebody? What, exactly, would he tell? And to who? Spiraki? Never. Vangelis? Why? His job was discretion; his job was to keep things quiet. Well, he would. And if she returned? It might be easier if she didn’t. At the least, they’d have to come to some sort of understanding. Or pretend it had never happened? Slowly, he shook his head. This war-look what it does. In truth, he missed her already. Maybe they weren’t in love but they’d been passionate lovers-she’d been his warm place in a cold world. And now he had to go up north and kill Italians, so maybe he was the one who wouldn’t be coming back.
The telephone rang and Saltiel answered it, said, “I see” and “very well” a few times, made notes, and hung up.
“What was that?” Zannis said.
“The mayor’s chief assistant.” He rubbed his hands back through his hair and sighed. “Sometimes I don’t know whether to laugh or cry.”
Sibylla looked up from her sweater.
“It seems the mayor has a niece, a favorite niece, recently married; she lives out by Queen Olga Street.”
“I know who she is,” Zannis said. “Pretty girl.”
“Well, maybe she was distracted by the war, maybe, I don’t know, something else. Anyhow, this afternoon she went to feed her pet bird, a parakeet. And, unfortunately, she left the door of the cage open, and it flew away.”
Zannis waited a moment, then said, “And that’s it?”
“Yes.”
Sibylla turned away, and, as she started to knit, made a small noise-not a laugh, but a snort.
“It’s true? You’re not just saying this to be funny?”
“No. It’s true.”
Now it was Zannis’s turn to sigh. “Well, I guess you’ll have to call her,” he said. “And tell her … what? Put an advertisement in the newspaper? We can’t go out and look for it.”
“Tell her to leave the window open,” Sibylla said, “and the door of the cage, and have her put some of its food in there.”
Saltiel made the call, his voice soothing and sympathetic, and he was on for a long time. Then, ten minutes later, the telephone rang again and, this time, it was the General Staff.
8:35 P.M.
It began to rain, softly, no downpour, just enough to make the pavement shine beneath the streetlamps. Still, it meant that it would be snowing in the mountains. Zannis waited on the corner of the Via Egnatia closest to Santaroza Lane, a canvas knapsack slung on his shoulder. The Vardari, the wind that blew down the Vardar valley, was sharp and Zannis turned away from it, faced the port and watched the lightning as it lit the clouds above the sea. Moments later the thunder followed, distant rumblings, far to the south.