“Well, there seems to be some doubt as to just what has happened to him.” Monsieur Hagen seemed to be choosing his words. “The last we heard of him directly was in 1948. He then told a group of foreign journalists that, as head of the Provisional Democratic Government of Free Greece, he proposed to establish a capital on Greek soil. That was just about the time his army captured Karpenissi, I believe.”
George looked blankly at Miss Kolin.
“Markos Vafiades called himself General Markos,” she murmured. “He commanded the Greek Communist rebel army in the civil war.”
“Oh, I see.” George felt himself reddening. “I told you I didn’t know anything about the Greek set-up,” he said. “I’m afraid this kind of name-dropping misses with me.”
Monsieur Hagen smiled. “Of course, Mr. Carey. We are closer to these things here. Vafiades was a Turkish-born Greek, a tobacco worker before the war. He was a Communist of many years’ standing and had been to prison on that account. No doubt he had a respect for revolutionary tradition. When the Communists gave him command of the rebel army he decided to be known simply as Markos. It has only two syllables and is more dramatic. If the rebels had won he might have become as big a man as Tito. As it was, if you will forgive the comparison, he had something in common with your General Lee. He won his battles but lost the war. And for the same kind of reasons. For Lee, the loss of Vicksburg and Atlanta, especially Atlanta, meant the destruction of his lines of communication. For Markos, also faced by superior numbers, the closing of the Yugoslav frontier had the same sort of effect. As long as the Communists of Yugoslavia, Bulgaria, and Albania helped him, he was in a strong position. By retiring across those frontiers, he was able to break off any action that looked like developing unfavourably. Then, behind the frontier, he could regroup and reorganize in safety, gather reinforcements, and appear again with deadly effect on a weakly held sector of the government front. When Tito quarrelled with Stalin and withdrew his support of the Macedonian plan, he cut Markos’s lateral lines of communication in two. Greece owes much to Tito.”
“But wouldn’t Markos have been beaten in the end anyway?”
Monsieur Hagen made a doubtful face. “Maybe. British and American aid did much. I do not dispute that. The Greek army and air force were completely transformed. But the denial of the Yugoslav frontier to Markos made it possible to use that power quickly and decisively. In January 1949, after over two years’ fighting, the Markos forces were in possession of Naoussa, a big industrial town only eighty miles from Salonika itself. Nine months later they were beaten. All that was left was a pocket of resistance on Mount Grammos, near the Albanian frontier.”
“I see.” George smiled. “Well, there doesn’t seem to be much likelihood of my being able to talk to General Vafiades, does there?”
“I’m afraid not, Mr. Carey.”
“And even if I could, there wouldn’t be much sense in my asking him about a German Sergeant who got caught in an ambush in ’44.”