When the Devil's Idle (21 page)

“
I do
unto others because it was done unto me.”

“
Exactly. Who knows what drove Bech? Maybe he was like the men
Diels spoke of: the tendency was always there and the war provided
him with the opportunity to act on it. All I know is evil visited
that place. Evil visited Aghios Stefanos.”

“
This
is where we came in, Father, you and me. The nature of evil. If God
exists, which I seriously doubt, he has a lot to answer
for.”

The priest
paused, stick in hand, and looked up at Patronas. “It seems we
worship at different altars,” he said.

“
Father, you know me. I don’t worship at all.”

“
You’re not alone.” Returning to his drawing, the priest made a
face with his stick. “There are those who argue God died in
Auschwitz, that He went up the chimney with the millions put to
death there, that there was no point in religious faith or prayer.
Some even go so far as to say hope has no meaning either, that it’s
a plague on humanity and serves no useful purpose, stops us from
acting on our own behalf. ‘It will be water coming out of that
showerhead. I know it will, I know it will. It has to be. I haven’t
done anything to these men. Why would they kill
me?’ ”

He drew another
stick figure, this one with a smile on its face. It seemed
grotesque, given the nature of their conversation. Then he drew
another and another and put a showerhead above them. Patronas
understood what he was doing. Hope. He was showing him
hope—malignant, pestilent hope.

“
And
where was God then?” Patronas said. “I ask you. Why was it gas, not
water?”

The priest
sighed, his face a mask of sadness. “I don’t know. I think about
these things, too, Yiannis. And the only answer I’ve come up with,
given my unwavering belief that God is benevolent and just, is that
evil, too, exists and that it works independently of Him. Point,
counterpoint, as it were.”

As if for
emphasis, he threw the stick in the water.

Night was fast
approaching, and it had become very dark by the river. Helping the
priest to his feet, Patronas led him back to the car. “Come on,
Father. The others are waiting for us. We need to go.”

“
I
think sometimes God made a mistake,” the priest whispered. “The
older I get, the more convinced I am.”

“
What?
Mankind?”

“
Yes.
Some of it.”

“
Ach,
Father. We’re not alone in nature. Other animals
eat
their
young.”

“
Yes,
but they don’t defile them first.”

The four of them
discussed the case as they drove to Ioannina. They planned to
interview the two people Christos Vouros had named in person while
they were there. Patronas had already spoken to them on the phone
and knew it would be a waste of time. One was bedridden with
Parkinson’s disease and the other had suffered a stroke the
previous month. As he’d expected, the two people in Ioannina were
able to account for themselves at the time of the killing and had
witnesses who would testify to that effect—caretakers and nurses, a
daughter who never left the stroke victim’s side.

A dead
end.

“
Maria
Georgiou is our only suspect,” Patronas said as they got back in
the car.

“
You
going to arrest her?” Tembelos asked.

“
I
don’t know. I’ll interview her again and go from there. I never had
a case like this. What did you call it, Giorgos? ‘The geriatic
killing?’ Those two old people. Jesus, their combined ages must be
over one hundred and seventy. You would think they’d be done with
the war by now.”

“
You
heard what happened,” Tembelos said. “How could they be
done?”

“
If
Bech had been in a wheelchair, would she still have killed him? If
he’d been bedridden? Palsied or comatose? At some point you have to
let it go. She was younger than him. With any luck, she would have
outlived him. Why didn’t she just wait?”

All that was left
of the food the priest had brought was the bag of sugar, so they
ate in Ioannina before starting back to Athens. The interviews had
taken longer than they’d anticipated and Patronas figured they’d
probably have to drive all night. They had money left from the
stipend Stathis had given them and ordered freely at a
tsipouradika,
a taverna that specialized in
tsipouro,
a potent local drink.

Feeling
adventurous, Tembelos ordered two of the local specialties, cabbage
with sausages and peppers and a pie called
pepeki
, made with
yogurt and cheese. Patronas was too hungry to experiment and stuck
to food he knew
, pastitsio
, a casserole of pasta and meat
and
horta,
stewed greens.

Papa Michalis, as
expected, ordered half a kilo of mackerel, the only fish available,
and did not offer to share.

The restaurant
was lively, Greeks of all ages eating outside at tables next to the
famed lake of Ioannina, Pamvotis. Patronas was glad they’d chosen a
place without tourists, that there were no Germans nearby. He
didn’t want to hear that language tonight, didn’t want those people
anywhere near him.

The air was very
still and the lights of the city were reflected in the waters of
the lake, the image wavering in the current.

Patronas poured a
shot of
tsipouro
and drank it down. He could feel it burning
and welcomed the heat. After downing another shot, he passed the
bottle over to Tembelos, who poured some out for Papa Michalis and
himself. Evangelos Demos, who would be driving the rest of the way
to Athens, was drinking Coke Zero.

Tembelos proposed
a toast to the victims of the war in Aghios Stefanos, living and
dead, and they drank.

“
May
their memory be eternal,” the priest said.

They drank the
rest of the
tsipouro
and Patronas signaled the waiter for
more. Stathis wasn’t expecting them until tomorrow; they could
drink as much as they wanted, take their time and enjoy themselves.
God knows, after Aghios Stefanos, they needed it.

“
I
like
tsipouro,
” Tembelos said. His face was starting to get
rosy, his cheeks glowing like apples. “After my father died, we
used to lead musicians to his grave whenever there was a
celebration in the village and have them play for him, pour a glass
of
raki
into the soil there so he could join the party. When
my time comes, I hope someone will do that for me.”

“
I’ll
do it, Giorgos,” Patronas said, tossing back more
tsipouro.
“I’ll douse your grave in
tsipouro
, kick up my heels and
dance
zebekiko
on your tombstone.”

“
I
hope when I die there’s
tsipouro
in heaven,” Tembelos said.
He’d begun to slur his words.

“
What
makes you think you’re going to heaven?” Patronas asked.

Bleary eyed,
Tembelos peered at him. “Being a cop has to count for something. If
not in this life, then in the next.”

They both
laughed.

“
Heaven’s not that important,” Tembelos continued, “just a
bunch of pious old farts. But hell, now, hell’s the thing in my
mind. We mess up as cops, Satan will see to it that the evil doers
get punished.” He raised his glass in a symbolic toast. “Here’s to
hellfire and damnation.”

Patronas nodded,
a bad idea, as the movement made him dizzy. He clinked his glass
against Tembelos’. “Here’s to hellfire and damnation.”

Ah, alcohol, it’s
like Calypso in The Odyssey, the goddess who cast a spell on
Ulysses’ crew and turned them all to pigs. Patronas smiled, pleased
with himself. Calypso and pigs. Not a bad analogy for alcohol. He
was more than a little drunk himself.

“
Here’s to Satan,” Tembelos said.

The priest had a
pained look on his face. “Blasphemy,” he kept muttering. “Pure
blasphemy.”

“
Tembelos says you need hell for the evil doers,” Patronas
said, suddenly becoming serious. “But what of the good? What of
them? Will heaven be enough of a reward for what they
suffered?”

Patronas passed
the six-hour journey to Athens in a drunken haze, sleeping and
talking intermittently to Papa Michalis and Tembelos, who were in
similar shape in the back seat. He vaguely remembered leaving
Ioannina, but everything else was a blur. Road, bridge, road. At
some point, he thought they’d stopped and Tembelos had endeavored
to pee out the window, being too drunk to open the car door, but he
couldn’t be sure. His friend might not even have made it to the
window. He vaguely remembered him aiming at the dashboard and
Evangelos yelling at him
.

Stathis was
waiting for them in his office in Athens. “Gerta Bechtel was
attacked last night,” he said. “Only bruises, nothing serious. She
says she didn’t see the assailant.”

“
Maria
Georgiou?” Patronas asked. He’d sobered up, but just barely, a
worrisome position to find oneself in with Stathis.

His boss glared
at him. “Obviously,” he said.

Patronas quickly
briefed him on what they’d discovered in Aghios Stefanos—Gunther
Bech’s ugly history. “Given what he did, I’m surprised he lived as
long as he did, that nobody killed him sooner.”

Stathis studied
the four of them. “A Gestapo agent. You’re sure about
that?”

“
A
pedophile and a sadist,” Patronas said. “I have witnesses who will
testify to it in court.”

“
Good,
good. If it goes to trial, the case will remind the world of what
we suffered under the Germans. Give us some leverage with Merkel.”
He straightened his uniform as if readying himself for an invisible
camera.

“
As
soon as you get back to Patmos, I want you to arrest Maria Georgiou
and charge her with the murder of Gunther Bech,” Stathis
instructed. “I want this finished.”

Patronas and the
others boarded the boat to Patmos early that same afternoon, a Blue
Star Ferry making a circuit around the Dodecanese Islands. Two
coast guard officers were in the process of removing a group of
gypsies traveling in the hold of the boat, ostensibly with a
truckload of potatoes. The potatoes, upon inspection, had proven to
be only one layer thick and the rest of the truck full of
contraband—lace tablecloths and cigarettes—neither of which the
gypsies had permits to sell and all of which had to be off-loaded.
The gypsies refused to comply, and by the time the coast guard got
the stand-off resolved and the truck moved, four hours had
passed.

They eventually
left, but by then the wind had picked up, waves pounding the boat
like artillery. The tourists got sick first, then Patronas and the
other three succumbed, clutching the plastic bags the crew had
distributed and burying their heads in them. Sickest of all had
been Patronas. Any sicker and he’d have found out firsthand if
heaven existed. Hell, he was pretty sure, he was already
experiencing.

It was a Greek
version of the
Perfect Storm,
only with tourists.

They reached
Patmos around five a.m. Had he been alone, Patronas would have
kissed the ground.

T
embelos reported that he had found documentation on
the Internet verifying that Gunther Bech had indeed been a Gestapo
agent in Epirus at the time of the massacre. “He was known for his
thoroughness,” he said wryly. “Apparently the Nazis had mixed
feelings about the massacre after it was all over. One of them
called it a
Schweinerei
, a disgrace, unbefitting the German
army. Another officer complained that it had placed an unfair
burden on the conscience of his men.”

“
An
‘unfair burden’?” Patronas said.

They were in the
police station and Patronas was leaning over his friend’s shoulder,
reading from the screen. “Interesting choice of words.”

“
Wait,
there’s more.”

Tembelos had been
on the computer all morning, seeking evidence before they arrested
Maria Georgiou.

After a lengthy
discussion, the four of them had decided that Patronas and the
priest would first interview Gerta Bechtel about the assault in the
garden, after which they would seize the Greek woman.

The same local
policeman was keeping an eye on her, Evangelos reported. She
wouldn’t escape.

Tembelos
continued to read aloud. “One man, interviewed by a German
newspaper, said and I quote, ‘I used to shoot at everything, not
just military targets. Women pushing strollers. It was kind of a
sport, really.’ Another bastard boasted of burning people alive in
a church. ‘They barricaded themselves in, so what could we do? We
had no choice but to burn them out.’ ”

“
Any
references to Aghios Stefanos?”

“
None
that I could find. They questioned some men in his unit about the
massacre, but they denied all knowledge. ‘Never heard of it.’ ‘Must
have been another division.’ ”

“
So
Bech was there—we got proof of that—but no evidence that he killed
people?”