Free Spies of the Balkans by Alan Furst Page A

collar, and twisted it, her knuckles sharp where they pressed against his chest. It surprised him, how strong she was, and the violence was a shock--this hand, in the past, had been very nice to him. "Wasn't," she said. Her eyes were dry, but he could see she was as close to tears as she ever came. And then he realized that the hand clutching his shirt wasn't there in anger, it was furiously, almost unconsciously, trying to hold on to something it had lost.
    The pilot cleared his throat. "Getting dark," he said. He knotted his fingers, making a cup out of his hands, nodded up at the observer cockpit, and said, "Up we go, luv."
    Zannis walked with Roxanne the few feet to the plane. She turned and looked at him, then rested her foot on the waiting hands and was hoisted upward, floundered for a moment, skirt rising to reveal the backs of her thighs, then swung her legs over into the cockpit. The pilot smiled at Zannis, a boyish grin which made him look even younger than seventeen, and said, "Don't worry, mate, I'm good at this." He handed Roxanne her valise, jumped up on the wheel housing, and climbed into the pilot's cockpit. A moment later, the engine roared to life and the propeller spun. Zannis watched the Lysander as it taxied, then lifted into the air and turned south, heading out over the Aegean toward Egypt.
    *
    Back in the office, a yellow sheet of teletype paper lay on his desk. From Lazareff in Sofia.
COSTA: DO US ALL A FAVOR AND CHASE THESE BASTARDS BACK WHERE THEY CAME FROM
    The message was in Bulgarian, but Zannis had grown up in Salonika, "a city where even the bootblacks speak seven languages," and was able to figure it out. Normally, he would have enjoyed Lazareff's gesture, but now he just sat there, his mood dark and melancholy, and stared at the wall.
    He came to believe, after going back over their time together, that Roxanne hadn't lied, that he'd not been the target of a British spy operation. He could not recall a single time when she'd asked him anything that might touch on the sort of information that spies sought. So, in fact, it wasn't to do with him. He'd had a love affair with a woman who'd been sent to Salonika as part of an intelligence operation. Then, when war came, when occupation by an Axis force was more than possible, they'd snatched her away. Or maybe she simply did have friends in high places, friends with the power to organize an RAF Lysander flight to Greece. No, she'd actually confessed. "It wasn't to do with you." The it . To do with somebody else. The Germans, the Italians, the Vichy French consul; there were many possibilities.
    Should he tell somebody? What, exactly, would he tell? And to who? Spiraki? Never. Vangelis? Why? His job was discretion; his job was to keep things quiet. Well, he would. And if she returned? It might be easier if she didn't. At the least, they'd have to come to some sort of understanding. Or pretend it had never happened? Slowly, he shook his head. This war--look what it does . In truth, he missed her already. Maybe they weren't in love but they'd been passionate lovers--she'd been his warm place in a cold world. And now he had to go up north and kill Italians, so maybe he was the one who wouldn't be coming back.
    The telephone rang and Saltiel answered it, said, "I see" and "very well" a few times, made notes, and hung up.
    "What was that?" Zannis said.
    "The mayor's chief assistant." He rubbed his hands back through his hair and sighed. "Sometimes I don't know whether to laugh or cry."
    Sibylla looked up from her sweater.
    "It seems the mayor has a niece, a favorite niece, recently married; she lives out by Queen Olga Street."
    "I know who she is," Zannis said. "Pretty girl."
    "Well, maybe she was distracted by the war, maybe, I don't know, something else. Anyhow, this afternoon she went to feed her pet bird, a parakeet. And, unfortunately, she left the door of the cage open, and it flew away."
    Zannis waited a moment, then said, "And that's