He’d had a hectic time of it since he left the office. Had taken a taxi back to Santaroza Lane, packed some underwear, socks, and a sweater, then threw in his old detective’s sidearm, the same detective’s version of the Walther PPK that Saltiel had, and a box of bullets. Then he changed into his reservist’s uniform, a close cousin to what British officers wore, with a Sam Browne belt that looped over one shoulder. He searched for, and eventually found, inside a valise, his officer’s cap, and, Melissa by his side, hurried out the door to find another taxi.
Up at his mother’s house in the heights, the mood was quiet and determined-basically acceptance. They fussed over Melissa, fed her and set out her water bowl and blanket, and gave Zannis a heavy parcel wrapped in newspaper-sandwiches of roast lamb in pita bread-which he stowed in his knapsack atop the gun and the underwear. For some reason, this brought to mind a scene in Homer, dimly remembered from school, where one of the heroes prepares to go to war. Probably, Zannis thought, given some version of the lamb and pita, though that didn’t get into the story. After he buckled the knapsack, his brother, mother, and grandmother each embraced him; then his grandmother pressed an Orthodox medal into his hand. “It saved your grandfather’s life,” she said. “Keep it with you always. You promise, Constantine?” He promised. Melissa sat by his side as he was saying a final good-bye, and, last thing before he went out the door, he bent over and she gave him one lick on the ear. She knew.
On the corner, Zannis looked at his watch and shifted his feet. Well, he thought, if you had to go to war you might as well leave from the Via Egnatia. An ancient street, built first in the second century B.C. as a military road for the Roman Empire. It began as the Via Appia, the Appian Way, in Rome, went over to Brindisi, where one crossed the Adriatic to Albanian Durres and the road took the name Via Egnatia. Then it ran down to Salonika and went east, eventually reaching Byzantium-Constantinople. Thus it linked the two halves of the Byzantine Empire, Roman Catholic and Italian in the west, Eastern Orthodox and Greek in the east. Sixteen hundred years of it, until the Turks won a war.
Zannis lit a cigarette and looked at his watch again, then saw a pair of headlights coming toward him down the street. A French-built staff car, old and boxy, a relic, with a blue-and-white Greek pennant flown from the whippy radio aerial. When the car drew up in front of him, a General Staff captain in the passenger seat opened the back door from inside. “Lieutenant Zannis,” he said. Zannis saluted and climbed in; two other men in the backseat moved over and made room for him. It was smoky in the car, and rain dripped through a tear in the canvas top.
The driver worked hard, winding up into the mountains on dark roads, the wiper brushing across the windshield. He was employed, he said, by the telephone company in Salonika, as a maintenance supervisor, “but I spent years working on the lines, relay stations, the whole system.” The other two men simply gave their names and, still civilians, shook hands, though they were sergeants, and Zannis, who’d been assigned to a reserve unit as an officer in the police department, a lieutenant. The captain was a real serving captain, very smart-looking in his uniform, with a small mustache and eyeglasses. “I’m in signals,” he said, “communications of all sorts,” and let it go at that.
For a time, the mountain roads were deserted; then, climbing a steep grade that curved sharply to the right, they came up behind an army truck. The headlights revealed soldiers, rifles between their knees, sitting on two benches that ran the length of the truck bed. One of them waved.
“Evzones,” the captain said. The word meant sharpshooters. Their ceremonial uniforms-white kilt and hat with tassel-were derived from the klephts who’d fought the Turks. In fact, once the ceremonial uniforms were changed for traditional battlefield dress, the Evzones were the elite combat units of the army. “I don’t think,” the captain said, “the Italians will be glad to see them coming.”
“Well, I am,” said the man next to Zannis. In his late forties, he’d served in the army as a wireless/telegraph operator. “But that was years ago,” he said. “Now I work in a pharmacy.”
The curve in the road seemed to go on forever, jagged walls of stone rising above them in silhouette against the night sky. When at last the road straightened out, the driver swung over into the left lane and tried to pass the crawling truck. A foot at a time, the staff car gained ground.
“Can we do this?” the captain said.
“Skata,” the driver said. “My foot is on the floor.”
As they drew even with the cabin of the truck, its driver rolled down his window, turned and grinned at them, stuck his hand out and waved it forward with comic impatience: faster, faster. Zannis watched the horizon for headlights coming toward them but there was nothing out there. “A snail race,” said the man next to Zannis. The driver of the army truck leaned out the window and shouted.
The captain said, “What did he say?”
“Move your ass,” Zannis said.
The captain laughed. “Poor old thing, she fought in France.”
They were rounding another curve before they finally got back into the right lane. “Can you tell us where we’re going?” Zannis asked.
“Can’t be sure,” the captain said. “Right now, we’re supposed to be based in Trikkala, but that might change. As of five this afternoon, the Italians-the Alpini division, the mountain troops-have advanced ten miles into Greece. They are going for Janina, supported by a tank column, the center of a three-pronged attack which will cut the only rail line and the two main roads-that would mean no reinforcements from Macedonia. It’s the plan you draw up in military school, however-” He paused as the staff car skidded and the driver swore and fought the wheel. When the car steadied he said, “However, I doubt they’ll reach Janina, and likely not Trikkala.”
“Why not?” the wireless operator said.
“Oh … let’s just say we knew they were coming. Not when, but we knew where and how. So we prepared … a few things.”
The silence following that admission was appreciative. The wireless operator said, “Hunh,” which meant something like that’s the way. Then he said, “Fucking makaronades.” Greek for macaronis, the national insult name for the Italians. There was a sneer in the expression, as though their ancient enemies, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Turks, were at least serious opponents, whereas the attack by Italy was somehow worthy of contempt. In August, off the island of Tenos, an Italian submarine had torpedoed the cruiser Helle, in harbor, in full view of the people on the island, and on a religious holiday. This was seen more as cowardice than aggression, a Roman Catholic attack on an Eastern Orthodox religious festival, thus especially dishonorable. Not that they hadn’t disliked the Italians before that. They had, for centuries.
A few minutes later, the driver stopped the car-there was nowhere to pull over-and, shoulder to shoulder, they all peed off the side of the mountain. It was a long way down, Zannis saw, a long, long way. As he rebuttoned his fly, the truck carrying the Evzones came chugging up the road, its engine laboring hard. When the driver saw the staff car, he swung around it and, passing close to the men standing at the edge of the mountain, and observing what occupied them, he blew a mighty blast on his klaxon horn, which echoed off the mountainside. Then it was the turn of the soldiers who, as their truck rumbled away, called out a variety of suggestions and insults, all of them obscene.
The driver, standing next to Zannis, swore and said, “Now I’ll have to pass them all over again.”
“Oh well,” the captain said, giving himself a couple of shakes, “the fortunes of war.”