Spies of the Balkans Read Online Free PDF

always like that." She stood, hiked up her dress, settled herself on his thighs, leaned her weight against him, and raised her knees, so that, as if by magic, his hand covered her bottom. On the other side of the wall, the singer's voice grew plaintive. That made them both laugh, as though she could see through the wall. "Can you understand the lyric?" he said.
    She shook her head.
    "She's singing about her flower."
    "In her garden?"
    He moved her top knee a little and said, "No, this one." The tips of his index and middle fingers rested on tight cotton. She was, he thought, so very clever, wearing white cotton panties, just right for a proper Englishwoman, but they were cut to provide a snug fit, and the cotton felt very fine, very soft, to his fingers. After a few moments, a breath escaped her; he could feel it and he could almost, but not quite, hear it. Delicately, he moved his fingers, not ambitious, simply savoring the warm reception, and much more pleased than proud.
    On. And on. Until she raised her head and spoke quietly by his ear, in the King's English: "Let's have those off, shall we?"
    Later, after Zannis had gone out into the public room and Balthazar had brought them--now famished--the meze, she scooped up some hummus with a triangle of pita bread and said, "Strange, but it just now occurs to me that the ottoman is an extraordinary piece of furniture, ingenious."
    "Yes?"
    "Oh yes. Because you can, you know, also sit on it."
    After such a night, going back to work the next day was something like a punishment. Sibylla, the office clerk, always starched and taut, was wound especially tight that morning--neither Saltiel nor Zannis would admit it but they were both afraid of her. She stood straight as a stick, with fair hair set every Wednesday in a warrior's helmet. And warrior was, at the moment, the very word, for she had come to work in a bad mood and was taking it out on the files.
    Of these, there were two distinct sets. The first lived in a row of wooden filing cabinets in what was called the other room --there were two, with a bathroom in the hall--and included all the various paper that flowed through a government bloodstream: directions from on high, carbons of correspondence, letters from the citizenry, and various oddments, like newspaper clippings, that got themselves into the files and stayed there. Though sometimes--as witness Sibylla's attack du jour --not forever.
    "Gabi," she said, holding a paper so that Saltiel could read it, "is this important?"
    Saltiel didn't want to read it. "Probably not."
    "A memorandum, from Station Six. It seems to concern the cemetery."
    "Which one?"
    "The old Turkish one. The subject is 'Copulation at Night.'"
    "By the living?"
    "If not, keep it," Zannis said, looking up from his desk. They couldn't really get Sibylla to laugh, but they never stopped trying.
    Instead, a sigh. What bad boys they were. "Dated 10 September, 1938."
    "By now, they're likely done copulating," Saltiel said. "Get rid of it."
    The other file was maintained by Zannis, on five-by-eight cards in shoeboxes, and, taken altogether, was a working map of the power centers--and there were many--of Salonika. Thus it included cards for shipowners and bankers, Greek Orthodox prelates, consuls, spies, resident foreigners, journalists, politicians, high-class criminals, and courtesans--anybody who mattered. For an official whose job was to work behind the scenes, it was crucial to keep track of the cast of characters.
    The files, both sets, played a central role in the unnamed office on the Via Egnatia, with support from three typewriters, three telephones, and one more device which, from time to time, would remind them of its presence by ringing a little bell. As it did at that moment, producing a mumbled "Skata," from Zannis--the Greek equivalent of the French merde --by which he meant now what . The device, on its own private table in the corner, was a Model 15 Siemens teleprinter, and now, all by itself,