Judgment on Deltchev (23 page)

‘Still as an interpreter?’

‘Still as an interpreter. Only by now he has a bastard sort of uniform and is working in a DP camp near Munich. He worked under an American Major named Macready. I had business there, and that’s where I first saw Georghi and got to know about him.’

‘What was your business?’

‘Intelligence – the British lot.’ He caught a glance I gave him. ‘Oh dear me, no! Not any more. I was just the wartime variety, uniform and everything. I was liaising with an
American who was on the same job as me – checking up on the bad boys who’d gone to earth in the DP camps and then digging them out – and it was this man who told me about Georghi. Another drink?’

‘I think I will.’

‘That’s good. There’s another bottle in there if we run short or if Georghi comes home. All right, then. We go back to the time Georghi went over to the Americans in Cairo. Almost the first thing that happened was that he was sent up to a small hill town in the Lebanon with a Lieutenant, a Tech Sergeant, and an enlisted man. The job was to operate a radio station monitoring an intelligence network operating in the Balkans. I believe there was some short-wave oddity that determined their position, but that’s not important. The thing was that our Georghi was stuck out in the wilderness for nearly a year with three Americans who didn’t like it either and talked about home. I don’t know anything about the Sergeant and the enlisted man, but the Lieutenant was a radio engineer named Kromak and he came from Passaic, Jersey. Do you know the Lebanon?’

I shook my head.

‘In the evenings the sky is like wine and the shadows falling across the terraces have purple edges to them. Overhead, vines – grape and other things with big flowers and a wonderful smell. Everything is very still and warm and soft. It’s the kind of atmosphere in which myths are born and the pictures in your mind’s eye seem more real than the chair you’re sitting on. I wax lyrical, you see. However, the point is that Lieutenant Kromak talked about Passaic, New Jersey, and read aloud his wife’s letters while Georghi listened. He heard about Molly’s graduation and
Michael’s camp counsellor, about Sue’s new baby and the seeding of the front lawn. He heard about the new refrigerator and the shortage of gasoline, about his friend Pete Staal, the dentist, and the Rotary Anns. He heard about the mouse in the cedar closet and the new screens that had been bought for the porch. And when the weekly letter was exhausted, the reminiscences would begin. “Pete Staal, Pete Staal,” Kromak would say dreamily, “a good dentist and a lovable son-of-a-bitch, but what a crazy guy! I remember the night Kitty and me, the Deckers, and the Staals went to Rossi’s – that’s an Italian restaurant at the far end of Franklin Street – and had ravioli. Ever had ravioli? At Rossi’s they make the best ravioli in the world. Well, we didn’t want to take two cars, so we rode down in mine. A Dodge I had then. Well, right after we’d eaten, Helen said she wanted to go over to the Nutley Field Club. That made Pete mad and he said that if she was going to Nutley he was going to fly down to Wilmington to see his mother. Of course, he knew what Helen really wanted – to see Marie and Dane Schaeffer – I told you about them, remember? Well …” And on he went while Georghi listened and drank it in. Do you know Passaic, New Jersey?’

‘No.’

‘Chemical plants and some light industry and the homes of the people who have to work there. But to Georghi Pashik, looking through the eyes of Lieutenant Kromak, who wanted so much to be back with the wife and kids, it must have represented a paradise of domestic security and gracious living. You know how it is? Lots of quite intelligent Europeans have fantastic notions about the way most Americans live. Sitting on that terrace in a Lebanon hill town, poor, unhappy, exiled Georghi must have been a
pushover for the American way of life. Just to put it in terms of food – reason might tell him that the ravioli he’d get in Rossi’s on Franklin Street, Passaic, would not be as good as he’d eaten already in Rome and Florence, but Rossi’s ravioli had become the desirable ones. They had the approval of those legendary figures the Staals, the Deckers, and the Schaeffers, and that was what mattered. He began to understand why the Americans didn’t like the Lebanese they came in contact with. Lebanese standards of sanitation and behaviour are not those of Passaic, New Jersey. Georghi heard local ways that he had accepted or failed even to notice condemned quite angrily. He was troubled and began to question himself. You see what was happening, of course? Along with his dream of Passaic, New Jersey, he was beginning to acquire an American conscience.’

He paused for a moment to swallow another drink and fill my glass.

‘How much are you embroidering this story?’ I asked.

He shrugged. ‘Not much. But the man who told me was an American and he could reproduce that Kromak stuff so you’d think you were really listening to him. I just give you the bits I remember and fill in the rest. The effect’s the same, though. Anyway, after nearly a year of the American Way and Purpose according to Lieutenant Kromak, Georghi was shifted back to Cairo. Americans again, only this time the high priest was a dairy chemist from Minnesota and the dream was in a slightly higher income bracket. Georghi read the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution of the United States and the Gettysburg Address. After that there was a filling-station proprietor from Oakland, California. He was followed by
an insurance man from Hagerstown, Maryland. Then came 1944 and the surrender negotiations between Deltchev and the Anglo-American representatives. There was a British military mission operating with the partisans in Macedonia at that time. They controlled quite a large area and had a landing strip, so it wasn’t too difficult to arrange the meetings. The Anglo-Americans flew in from Foggia. Deltchev travelled overland somehow. They met in a village schoolroom. Georghi was one of the interpreters. It was after the second meeting that Georghi’s little cap went over the windmill.’

‘Wait a minute. Had he known Deltchev before?’

‘Known of him, that’s all. Well now, we get to the second meeting. They had their meeting all right, but storms delayed their return and they had to wait for twenty-four hours in the village. The atmosphere of the negotiations had been quite friendly and the wait produced a lot of general conversation about conditions inside the country, the problems, what was to be done about them, and so on. The man who told me this was on that trip. Anyway, one of the subjects discussed was the Officer Corps Brotherhood. Deltchev was very frank about the problem and the difficulties of dealing with it. Some of his revelations, in fact, were deeply shocking to the Anglo-American brass and they didn’t hesitate to tell him so. Deltchev must have wished he hadn’t mentioned the thing. But that night Georghi went to see him privately. It must have been a curious meeting. After extracting from Deltchev a lot of secrecy and immunity pledges, Georghi revealed that he was a member of the Officer Corps Brotherhood, had been one since he had returned to the land of his fathers from Italy in ’37. I told you he’d had
peculiar ideas then about the way things ought to be. He’d expressed them by joining the Brotherhood. But now, he told Deltchev, all that was changed. He’d seen the light of Western democracy – all the way from Passaic, New Jersey, to Hagerstown, Maryland, he might have added – and wanted to make reparation. The long and short of it was that the Provisional Government’s big clean-up of the Brotherhood was made possible because Georghi turned stool pigeon.’

‘How do you know?’

‘Because the man who told me was the officer Deltchev went to for a check-up on Georghi. The old man’s first idea, of course, had been that Georghi was either an
agent provocateur
or crazy. So he was very careful. But after the next meeting he had another talk with Georghi and a plan was made.’ Sibley grinned. ‘You know, Georghi did a very brave thing really, when you come to think of it. He could have stayed safely with the Americans. Instead he asked them to lend him to Deltchev and came back here. The risk was really appalling, when you think. For all he knew, the Brotherhood might have already condemned him as a traitor. He’d not stayed to collaborate. He’d been in the service of a foreign army. And now he’d turned up again, safe and sound at a time when for a civilian the journey from Athens was all but impossible. However, he took the risk and got away with it. I suppose that outside this place the Brotherhood’s intelligence system didn’t operate, and in all the confusion nobody bothered to ask many questions. Georghi rejoined his cell and the game began. There were ten Brothers to a cell. Georghi would turn in the names of seven of them to Deltchev. Then the three survivors, Georghi among them, would attach themselves to
another cell and in the next cell purge the survivors of the first one would go with the rest. All except Georghi. He was the permanent survivor. But because of the secret way the Brotherhood was organized, nobody could know how many purges our man had survived. He always arrived with the credentials and code words of the cell just betrayed and he’d always see that those who came with him were at the top of his next list. So there was never anyone to say that where he went disaster followed. It was always the first time with him. But still risky. After a time the word got round that there was treachery, and the remainder of the Brotherhood disintegrated. As a safety measure, Georghi had himself arrested on suspicion and then released. He’d done all he could. Deltchev had him quietly shipped back to the Americans. That’s when I met him.’

‘But why didn’t you recognize him at once?’

‘He had a moustache then and, as I told you, a uniform. As a matter of fact, he was so American it was difficult to believe that he’d never been out of Europe. His boss in Germany, Colonel Macready, was the last of the prophets as far as Georghi was concerned. He came from Texas. You know that seersucker suit Georghi wears? Macready gave it to Georghi as a going-away present. It came from a department store in Houston. It was also a kind of consolation prize. Georghi had tried every way he could to get a quota number for America, but it was no good. So he came back here and claimed his reward.’ He paused.

‘What do you mean?’

‘Well, just think. Four or five years ago he came back here without a penny to his name. Now he’s got this place, which I can tell you is quite expensive by local standards,
and an established press agency with a dollar income. How did he do it?’

‘He’s quite efficient.’

‘But no genius. Besides, the Pan-Eurasian was a going concern long before the war.’

‘You know the answer?’

‘Yes. I did a bit of checking up. The Pan-Eurasian was originally a French company incorporated in Monaco. It took a bit of doing, but I managed to find out all about it through our Paris office. I got word today from them. Like a little surprise?’

‘Yes.’

‘All right, then. All the shares in the Pan-Eurasian Press Service were purchased in 1946 from the French syndicate that owned them. Forty-nine per cent of them are in the name of Georghi Pashik. All of them were bought with a draft signed by the person who owns the other fifty-one per cent.’ He stopped and grinned again.

‘Well, who is it?’

‘Madame Deltchev.’

My mind turned a somersault. ‘Are you sure?’

‘Sure? Of course I’m sure.’

‘She’d be a nominee, of course.’

He laughed. ‘Nominee? That woman? Don’t be silly. She ran Papa Deltchev as if he were a family business. And if you’ve fallen for that holier-than-thou line of hers, you’d better think again. I’m a newspaper reporter, Foster, dear, and I’ve met some very tough ladies and gentlemen, but that one is up near the top of the list. When I was here two years ago, she was running the country. If there were any nominees around they were her husband and that secretary of his, Petlarov. She did the thinking. She wrote
the speeches. She made the policy. Do you think that dried-up little lawyer could have got to power on his own? Not on your life! The only thing he ever did without consulting her was to make a damn-fool radio speech that virtually handed over the whole country to the People’s Party. Papa Deltchev? Don’t make me laugh! They’re not trying a man in that courtroom. It’s a legend they’re after and I bet she’s still fighting like a steer to preserve it. Why shouldn’t she? It’s her work. She’s the only Deltchev they’re sitting in judgment on.’

I shook my head. ‘Oh no, she isn’t.’

He stared. ‘No?’

‘No. You may be right about her husband, but she didn’t control all the Deltchevs.’

‘What are you talking about?’

‘Her son, Philip. He’s a member of the Brotherhood. He was recruited by Pazar. And he’s the Deltchev who was the leader of the conspiracy against Vukashin. You see, they’re using the evidence against the son to convict the father and they know it.’

Sibley stared at me, his face sagging.

‘What’s more,’ I went on dully, ‘the conspiracy is still in existence. And Philip Deltchev is still alive. I carried a letter from his sister, Katerina, to him. The address was Patriarch Dimo 9 and instead of Philip I found Pazar shot through the back of the head. Then Pashik turned up. Where he is in this I don’t know. But he turned up and took me to see a man named Aleko, who says he is of the secret police, but isn’t. In fact he’s a professional assassin who makes a habit of shooting people through the back of the head. He seemed to be in charge of the whole affair. Philip Deltchev was there under the name of Jika. The
Patriarch Dimo thing was explained to me as part of a cunning police trap to catch the man who tried to kill Deltchev before he was arrested. I pretended to accept that and agreed not to make any further visits to the Deltchev house. Of course, they didn’t want me to ask Katerina any questions. Pashik warned me privately too.’

‘But, all the same, you went?’ Sibley’s face was the colour of dirty chalk.

‘Yes.’

‘And you wonder why they tried to kill you?’

‘Not any more. Of course, if the fact that Philip Deltchev was the Deltchev of the evidence were known it would make the trial look rather silly.’

He jumped up.

‘Rather silly!’ His voice rose. ‘You poor bloody fool! Don’t you know anything about this country? Don’t you see what’s happened? The People’s Party has taken over the whole conspiracy. Aleko’s
their
man, not the Brotherhood’s, and he’s going to do the shooting. Young Deltchev’s only the scapegoat.’