Mavros noted the date of the book — it had been published in 1957. Waggoner wouldn’t have known about the discovery of the safe in the Jewish home at that time, and Kersten’s donations to the museum were still far in the future. Which didn’t mean that he wasn’t in full possession of those facts now.
His eyes getting heavy, Mavros logged off and lay back on the bed. He was uneasier than he had been before going on the Internet, but this time he was repressing thoughts that were trying to break through, even though he knew there was no future in that. The vendetta wasn’t exactly helping, either.
He fell into the sleep of the anxious, thinking before he went under that he was only the latest in the long line of intruders into Cretan history to be wondering if he’d leave the island in one piece.
Mavros was woken by the sound of a key in the lock. He had left his own in there, so the door would not open. Still semi-submerged in sleep, he stumbled out of the bedroom,
‘Who is it?’
‘Ah, Mr Alex, it is you?’
Barba-Yannis stood on the landing, a tattered straw hat on the back of his head. ‘I always come on Thursdays to water the plants on the back balconies. I wasn’t sure if. .’
‘Don’t worry,’ Mavros said, admitting the old man. ‘It’s time I was up anyway. Would you like coffee?’
‘I should be making you coffee, Mr Alex.’
‘No, no. You do your watering and I’ll make the coffee. How do you take it?’
‘ Varyglyko, my child. I always had a sweet tooth.’
Mavros had a quick shower, then found the briki. He made the old man’s sugar-laden brew in the long-handled metal pot first, followed by his own unsweetened cup. He found Barba-Yannis sitting at a small table on the balcony to the rear of the living room, water dripping off the marble floor to the unused space below.
‘Thank you, my child,’ the old man said, drinking from the glass of water Mavros had brought with the coffee. ‘I can hardly walk down the street now without needing to sit down.’
‘You look very well.’
Barba-Yannis threw up his wrinkled arms. ‘I am on my own, like many of my generation. My wife died last year and my children and grandchildren are in Germany. They have done very well. They say I will soon be a great-grandfather.’
‘May they live for you,’ Mavros said, calculating that the old man would have been in his early twenties during the war. ‘Tell me, why did they go to that country?’
‘I went there first myself,’ Barba-Yannis said. ‘In the Fifties things were not good here and I had a record — I was in EAM during the war. I wasn’t a communist, mind — I never liked the party’s hard-line stance. But it was better to be absent for some years, especially since there were jobs in the factories up there.’
Mavros looked into the rheumy brown eyes. ‘But didn’t you feel bad after everything the Germans did here?’
‘Of course I felt bad!’ the old man said, slapping the balcony rail. ‘I lost relatives and friends — comrades. .’ His voice failed.
‘I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to upset you.’
Barba-Yannis drew his forearm across his eyes. ‘No, my child, it is good to remember the past. The younger generations do not like to — they prefer to make money rather than honour our sacrifices. Besides, there is no benefit in hating. The German soldiers paid a heavy price too.’
‘One of them even put back a lot into the local economy.’
‘You mean Rudolf Kersten? Yes, he is greatly admired.’
Mavros caught a hint of disapproval. ‘But?’
The old Cretan rubbed his thinning hair. ‘But some people say he took part in one of the massacres. Even though he denies it, I’ve never been able to see him as the repentant do-gooder most people do.’
‘Makrymari,’ Mavros said, in a low voice.
‘You’ve been doing your homework, my boy,’ Barba-Yannis said, nodding in approval.
‘I’m trying,’ Mavros smiled. ‘I hear there was a Jewish population in Chania.’
‘Ach, the Jews. They kept themselves to themselves, but we didn’t mind them.’ The old man lowered his head. ‘You can imagine what happened to them.’
‘Sent to the camps?’ Mavros said, aware that many thousands of mainland Greek Jews had been gassed.
‘Worse. They were loaded on a ship in Iraklio with Italian soldiers who had surrendered. For years, it was thought that the Germans had sunk it themselves, but not long ago I heard it was torpedoed by a British submarine. No survivors.’
A chill ran through Mavros. War really was hell, not only because of the slaughter of combatants and non-combatants, but because of the ghastly twists of fate leading to ‘accidents’ that destroyed the lives of countless families — including those left to mourn.
He roused himself. Barba-Yannis was a potentially useful source about resistance activities.
‘Did you know an EAM man called Kanellos?’
‘Did I know Kanellos?’ the old man asked, with a gap-toothed smile.
‘Kanellos was that rare thing — a hero who cared about other people. After the first days of the invasion, he swore he would never fire a gun again.’
‘What happened?’
‘I wasn’t here — I’d been sent with a message to the EAM commander in Rethymno the day before the landings started and got caught up in the fighting there. But what we heard was that Kanellos was in the killing grounds outside the city with a band of fighters. They slaughtered the paratroopers with knives when they landed and then took their own weapons to fire on them. I still don’t understand how the airfield at Maleme was lost. The British generals were fools.’
Barba-Yannis emptied his water glass, and Mavros passed his across.
‘Thank you, my son. And then Kanellos was at the village of Galatsi. Almost all his men had been killed. The British — well, most of the fighting men were those big New Zealanders — decided to charge the Germans up the main street, with a couple of tin-can tanks at the front.’
Waggoner, Mavros thought. There was mention of his role in the battle on the Internet sites he’d trawled and in extracts from his books.
‘Kanellos realized from the start that it was a suicide mission, because the Germans had landed thousands of men by then. He tried to talk the gendarmes and the local citizens out of taking part, saying their efforts and their lives would be much more valuable in the future.’ The old Cretan blinked away tears. ‘He was right about that. The initial charge was a success, but within an hour they had all been cut down by Germans on the higher ground. Apart from a few wounded British at the rear, there were hardly any survivors. It was a tragedy and it is to Kanellos’s honour that he tried to avert it.’
‘Presumably Kanellos wasn’t his real name,’ Mavros said, his voice unsteady.
‘Of course not. The senior men all used aliases, even before the war.’
Mavros nodded. ‘And after that? Kanellos stayed throughout the occupation?’
‘Till the German surrender in Chania.’
Mavros looked across the space to the flat opposite, trying to keep calm. An old woman in a nightgown was playing listlessly with an overweight cat.
‘Did you ever hear of a hoard of silver that was found in a cave up in the mountains?’
Barba-Yannis gave him a sharp look. ‘How do you know about that, Mr Alex?’
Mavros gave him a shortened version of the story in Waggoner’s memoir.
‘Kanellos betrayed them?’ the old man said, his voice breaking. ‘Ridiculous. He would never have done a thing like that. He worked by persuasion, not betrayal. Some of those British agents were madmen,’ he continued. ‘Lambis — Waggoner — was one of the worst. He used to come down from the mountains and shoot Germans with the andartes. There were many reprisals.’
‘I thought the Cretans generally were prepared to make the ultimate sacrifice to get rid of the Germans?’
Barba-Yannis looked at him thoughtfully. ‘You know, that’s the kind of bravado the mountain men still come out with. Of course, people were prepared to die for the cause of freedom. But not everyone agreed with old men and boys being put against a wall. That was Kanellos’s message: no sabotage unless it was a major target — most of those were so well guarded that you couldn’t get near them — and no civilian lives to be put at risk. Some of the British — Waggoner, especially — had different priorities.’