The Cretan nodded. ‘In the Sixties, workers found a safe in the foundations of a building scheduled for demolition near the harbour front.’
‘The German headquarters?’
Mikis raised his head in denial. ‘That had been thoroughly checked years before. No, this was a private house. The owners had been Jews, but there weren’t many left after the Germans had finished with them.’
‘And the silver was in the safe?’
Mikis shrugged. ‘So some people said. The problem was, it disappeared a week after it was found.’
Mavros sat back in his chair, unsure where this information left him.
‘You mentioned Mr Kersten,’ Mikis said, waving for the bill. ‘Some people, the few around here who don’t like him — maybe egged on by Waggoner — say he got hold of the safe’s contents and that his collection of silver came from it.’
‘And what does your father think about that? What do you think?’
The Cretan counted out banknotes, brushing away Mavros’s attempt to pay. ‘I’ll tell you what I know. After he came to live here, Rudolf Kersten spent a lot of his own money buying up silver ritual objects and ornaments that had belonged to the Chania Jews. He contributed towards a museum to their memory — it’s only a couple of streets from here — and he donated the pieces he’d bought.’
They walked up the quiet lanes. Mikis’ story had been fascinating, though it hadn’t added anything to the Maria Kondos case. But it had provided more background to the curious relationship between Rudolf Kersten and David Waggoner, as had the meeting between the former SOE man and the dubious antiquities trader.
After parting from Mikis, Mavros looked up into the star-dotted night between the balconies. He had the distinct feeling that he was on the verge of a momentous discovery, not necessarily one that would do anything for his peace of mind.
He tried to sleep in Nondas’ and Anna’s wide bed but, after rolling about for what seemed like hours, he gave up. Booting up his laptop, he checked his emails. There were some more attachments from The Fat Man, but they didn’t tell him anything else suggestive about Kersten or Waggoner. He sent a message asking for information about the EAM operative known as Kanellos. The Communist Party archives were hard to access, even for a long-standing member like Yiorgos, but he had no option. Pandelis Pikros, the disaffected old comrade he used to tap as a source, had died a few months ago.
Mavros went on to the Internet and typed ‘Kersten Jewish Museum Chania’ into a search engine. All he found was short reference in a local newspaper article about the opening of the museum in 1987. Rudolf Kersten had been present at the ceremony as a major donor, but had declined to comment. That squared with Mavros’s take on the former Fallschirmjager’scharacter — he wasn’t the type to go courting praise.
He tried to find more details about the silver hoard in the mountains, but there was nothing. He wasn’t surprised — stories like that tended not to be written down. Then he tried ‘Waggoner Silver Hoard’ and was directed to an extract from David Waggoner’s Where the Eagle Flies, his memoir of the war in Crete.
‘. . on November 1st 1943. With great difficulty, I had convinced Captain Dhiavolos that the silver would cause nothing but internecine strife if it remained on the island. Runners were sent out to the Abbot of St Athanasios and to the men guarding the cave, while radio contact with Cairo resulted in a submarine being dispatched four nights later — when the moon was only two days beyond new.
Although I had studied Cretan archaeology at Cambridge, much of the silver was beyond my ken. There were around fifty Hellenistic coins and over a hundred Roman, the former ranging from Armenia to Sicily and the latter mainly from the late Empire. But the majority of pieces were even later — ranging from the Arab occupation of Crete in the ninth and tenth centuries, to the Byzantine reconquest of the island, to the Venetian period of rule, to the Ottoman domination that followed. I had no idea of the coins’ value, but it must have been considerable. There was no question of the hoard being split up amongst uneducated mountain villagers, even if the leaders of the andartespermitted that.
Although I found the coins interesting, it was the prehistoric pieces that caught my imagination most. They comprised thirty-two double-headed axes, the primary symbol of the Minoans. I had visited Knossos several times before the war and was aware that the labryshad great religious significance. The Minoans seem to have worshipped a mother goddess, the religion being largely administered by females, and it was said that the priestesses used the axes to sacrifice animals. Some of the pieces were about six inches across, while others were much smaller, presumably votary objects. I have since learned that gold labryswere prevalent in other areas, but for some reason no doubt lost in history, our hoard had only silver examples. According to some scholars, the curved shape of the opposed blades represented the waxing and waning moon, which doubtless was one manifestation of the deity’s power. Less inspiring had been the use of the labrysby the pre-war Greek dictator Metaxas as a symbol of his regime’s integrity. For that reason, the andarteshad no interest in the axes.
I reached the rendezvous with my men in the late afternoon. The Abbot, Father Christodhoulos, was his usual charming self, plying us with bread, olives, goat’s cheese and raki. Shortly after dark, the sound of muffled hooves could be heard on the steep path leading down the gorge. Captain Dhiavolos burst into the monastery, bellowing for food and drink, his men apparently unaffected by the long and dangerous trip.
The submarine was expected at midnight, but such operations rarely went according to plan, the southern coast of Crete being a perilous place even in daylight. At last, one of the lookouts spotted the brief flashing of a red light out to sea and we prepared to greet the crew in their inflatable dinghy.
The German is a patient hunter. They waited until we were all on the narrow, stony beach before the lights from the patrol boat came on and the machine guns on it and on dry land opened up. I later learned that HMS Whale Sharktried unsuccessfully to torpedo the enemy craft before turning back to Alex. Andartesfell all around me, Captain Dhiavolos’s chest riddled with bullets. I was knocked to the ground by a round in my left shoulder, but two of my surviving men managed to drag me out of the lights and up a steep defile. I later heard that Father Christodhoulos and his six monks had been shot against the wall of St Athanasios.
I have no doubt that the ambush was a result of treachery by the EAM man known as Kanellos. I first met him during the Battle of Crete, when he tried to dissuade Greek gendarmes and local people from taking part in the attack on Galatsi. At the time, I thought he was a coward and denounced him as such to the people. From then he worked tirelessly to undermine both my efforts and those of my fellow SOE officers. He had the deluded idea that passive resistance would be more effective and less costly in terms of Cretan lives. Fortunately, the islanders left him in no doubt as to their feelings on that issue. After the Germans slaughtered us on the beach and took their savage revenge on the churchmen, Kanellos disappeared from Crete. No doubt he returned to the mainland and continued to sow the seeds of dissension that led the country to civil war after the Nazis had been defeated. Such men are dangerous beyond their station — the one known as Kanellos was of scarcely medium height, with a great hook for a nose and unnaturally bright blue eyes. May the earth lie heavy on his bones and those of his vicious, misguided comrades. As for the silver, it was lost to the occupier and probably ended up in the cellars of the arch-thief Goring.’