Greek Fire by Winston Graham

drachmae and I know why the bank hasn’t yet put the screw on him. Maurice Taksim’s wife is divorcing him and he is fixing up a crooked deal in oil. Jon Manos has a big reputation in law—of the wrong sort—and is trying to needle Stavrides out of second place in EMO. I know about George Lascou, his finances and his plans, but nothing about you.… Turn right here?”
    â€œYes. We follow the sea and fork off at Eleusis.”
    The sun had not quite soaked up the night mists, but the water of the gulf was a rich cobalt with coppery rocks at its brim. In the distance and behind rose the ghosts of the Peloponnesian mountains.
    She said: “ My father and mother came from Smyrna. Is that what you want to know?”
    â€œIt’s a beginning.”
    â€œBut already you know so much. You know that I am—what is it?—innocent-looking but hard-boiled. What more is there necessary to understand about any woman?”
    He said: “ Isn’t it the Greeks of Smyrna who consider their blood purer than the Greeks of the mother country?”
    â€œâ€¦ My father’s family had been there for over four hundred years, if that is what you mean.”
    â€œWhen did he come to Greece?”
    â€œIn 1922.”
    â€œThe exchange of populations?”
    â€œYes.”
    He waited. “ Go on.”
    â€œOh, you will know the background.”
    â€œI can hear it again.”
    â€œMy father and mother were of that number of hundreds of thousands forcibly transferred after the defeat of Greece by Turkey. My father had not then finished his training as a doctor, but with what he was able to save from the catastrophe he finished his studies here, and in 1929 he married my mother. I was born three years later. My father was foolish enough to practise for many years among the refugees and dispossessed, his countrymen; and so we too were quite poor. When the Germans came he continued his work in Athens. Twice he was in prison for short periods for helping the Resistance, but the Germans soon let him go because they had need of doctors. Then when the Germans left, the Communists occupied our part of the city.”
    He waited. “Is that the end?”
    â€œYes, so far as they were concerned, it is. Because my father had influence in all his district ELAS told him he must publicly join the party. When he said he had no party, but only disease to fight, they shot him and stigmatised him as a collaborator. My mother they took away a month later as a hostage and I never saw her again. She is buried in the north. A priest hid me at that time, in the altar of his church—you know in Greece there are doors to the altar—and he kept me there and fed me for three weeks.”
    â€œâ€¦ I’m very sorry.”
    â€œIt is stale history now. All it has left me with is a dislike of the smell of incense.”
    They passed Eleusis and took the main road to the north, crossing the great plain with its ancient distorted olive trees and red-brown earth.
    He said: “I was in Greece all that time, and in Athens too.”
    â€œWhat time? During the occupation?”
    â€œYes. The war against the Germans became my war very early.”
    â€œBecause of Greece?”
    â€œIn the main, yes. I was here when the Germans came but got out in time. Then I came back and stayed around.”
    â€œDoing what?”
    â€œI just stayed around. And noted how the various resistance groups were trending.”
    â€œELAS?”
    â€œWell, there were dozens of different groups to begin with. But after a time ELAS became much the biggest and it was soon pretty clear that they were more interested in making an eventual Communist state in Greece than in wasting their ammunition on the Germans. At least it was. clear to a few people but not to those outside.… Perhaps you know all this as well as I do?”
    â€œI was ten or eleven at the time. It is not always easy to