Broken-nosed Max Zielinski next to me started to sing the parachutists’ song and soon we were all bellowing it out: ‘Red shines the sun, be prepared, it may not shine for us tomorrow. .’ None of us believed that, of course — young men going into battle are as naive as the most closeted virgin. Besides, we had reason to be optimistic. The enemy forces in Crete were inadequate and had been subject to intense bombardment and strafing by our Luftwaffe comrades for many days, and the RAF had been swept from the skies. The Cretan people were said to be avidly awaiting our arrival to liberate them from the dissolute imperialism of the British. And, though we would have wished to be first on the island, glider troops had been sent ahead to secure the airfield at Maleme. No matter — there would be plenty of Churchill’s rabble left for us.
Squeezed between Max and thick-lipped Bernie Necker, and thankfully cooler at last, I saw images cascade before my eyes: my mother, filed with pride despite her damp eyes on the day I gained my jump badge, wishing that my father had survived his Western Front wound a little longer to see me in my dark-blue uniform; my old Classics teacher, Herr Feldmann, who encouraged my love of the ancient world and gave me a sad smile when I visited him after I had joined the service; slim Martha Nussbaum, kissing me for the last time before we boarded the train for the Balkans. They were all part of another less brilliant world now. I had become one with the myths that had made me strong, taken me through the Hitler Youth, driven me to undertake the hardest training in Germany’s armed forces. I had become a modern-day Icarus, one whose flight would not be interrupted by melting wax, one who would never die.
I saw the sea beyond Peter’s shoulder, the water changing from grey to pale blue. There were Auntie Jus all around and, craning forward, I saw the fine lines of Messerschmitt 109s, our fighter protection, higher in the cloudless sky. If there had been any Royal Navy ships in the area, they would have been bombed to the depths, titans defenceless beneath German firepower.
Lieutenant Bruno Schmidt, handsome as a film star, caught my eye and nodded slowly. He knew my tendency to lose concentration and had spoken to me about it before the successful drop at the Corinth Canal. I smiled and nodded back. I knew what I had to do and had shown that by saving our beloved section commander before the bridge was blown up by the British — a futile action as our engineers soon replaced it.
The engines changed pitch as the plane made a sharp left turn. Now I could see the great wall of the White Mountains, still crowned with shining snow. It was an incredible sight, but I soon forgot it as the Auntie Ju’s fuselage was pitted with holes, some of them only a few centimetres above the window. Wachter ducked his head, then I felt Zielinski’s helmet knock against mine. There was blood on his jump smock where rounds had gone right through his body.
The klaxon sounded. We hooked our jump chords to the line above us and the dispatcher pulled open the door. Lieutenant Schmidt moved forwards and shouted a few inaudible words of encouragement, before throwing himself into the air. As I moved towards the door, I saw the black blasts of anti-aircraft fire and felt the plane judder. The man before me leapt out and it was my turn to grip the vertical rails, before jumping out in the crucifix position we had practised so often. We were low, I — estimated under a hundred metres from the ground, when my parachute opened with a jerk like a kick from an elephant. Then my descent slowed and I was able to take in the scene.
To my right, an Auntie Ju was diving earthwards, smoke billowing from the fuselage. No men emerged from the door. Another aircraft’s unit was jumping, but one of its number’s parachute had snared on the tailplane. 109s were swooping over the anti-aircraft positions, machine guns rattling, but the defensive fire remained heavy. Looking around, I saw several parachutists slumped forward and motionless. Others were firing their MP40s and pistols. I struggled to bring my own weapon to bear, but the ground was approaching fast and I had to get my body into position for the forward roll on landing.
The dried up bed of the Tavronitis River, our target area, was to my right. I watched our men cutting themselves free of their chutes and racing for the weapon canisters. Many of them dropped lifeless before they made it.
And then I saw them, the Cretans who were supposed to be welcoming us as honoured guests. They were on my side of the river and they had already done for several of my comrades. There were old men with pitchforks and axes, women with heavy frying pans, and a priest who had made a spear from a long knife tied to a broom handle.
I thought the descent of Icarus was about to reach a premature end, but in fact that Cretan morning was only the beginning.
The Fat Man brought two cups of unsweetened Greek coffee on a tray to the balcony and delved into a paper bag.
‘It’s not the same,’ Mavros said, suspiciously eyeing the pastry he had just been handed.
‘So what do you want me to do?’ the Fat Man demanded. ‘Bring the old woman back from the dead?’
That terminated conversation for as long as it took Yiorgos to wolf down his double helping of galaktoboureko. His mother, Kyra Fedhra, had daily produced pastries that were the mainstay of the cafe run by the Fat Man until he too had been forced out by a ridiculous rent rise. Kyra Fedhra had expressed annoyance that her sixty-year-old son would be permanently under her feet and died of heart failure shortly afterwards — leaving the Fat Man with a valuable property on the other side of Lykavettos and nothing whatsoever to do. Although he had been a foot soldier in the Communist Party since his teens, he was no longer on good terms with the comrades after they had told him his duty was to sell the house and donate half the profits to the party.
That was the other reason Mavros had moved to his mother’s flat. Without the Fat Man’s cafe down the road, his old flat was substantially less appealing. He had used it as an office, judging potential clients by their reaction to such a downmarket place in the heart of tourist-land. And while the much-missed Kyra Fedhra had made the best pastries in Athens, Yiorgos made the best coffee, without which Mavros struggled to start the day.
Mavros finished his shop-bought galakotoboureko— which was actually not bad — and washed it down with cold water.
‘Heard anything from that cop?’ the Fat Man asked.
‘That cop who has a name?’
Yiorgos sank his chin into the soft flesh of his neck. ‘I forget. . Damis?’
‘You forget, my arse. No, I haven’t. Calm down. What you fondly imagine is your job is safe.’
Mavros swallowed a smile. Damis Ganas had been his partner for a few months the previous year, but he had returned to the island of Evia when his heroin addict girlfriend was released from psychiatric care. In the meantime, the Fat Man had combined his daily visits to provide breakfast with acting as Mavros’s unofficial secretary and office manager. Years of grinding through the Communist Party’s multiple layers of bureaucracy had made Yiorgos a remarkably competent record keeper. The fact that — with off-white shirts stretching over his paunch and threadbare trousers — he was hardly presentable to clients was a way of controlling his involvement in cases.
The Fat Man looked out over the opulent blocks around the park of Dhexameni. ‘What would your father have thought about you ending up in this platinum-coated sewer?’
‘Oh, thanks,’ Mavros replied, going back inside. ‘What would he have thought about you avoiding the comrades and coming here every day?’ He looked at the photographs of his family on the display table by the fireplace. His mother had taken most of them with her, but there were still portraits of his father, Spyros, with his thick black hair, hooked nose and piercing gaze: and of his brother, Andonis, a bright-faced version of the older man, who had been popular with the opposite sex from his early teens.