Monsieur Hagen bowed his head politely. “None.”
“So let me get it straight, sir. In 1944 the guerrillas- andartes you call them, do you?-the andartes killed some Germans and recruited others. Is that right?”
“Certainly.”
“So that if the German soldier I’m interested in managed to get away alive after that ambush, it would not be fantastic to give him a fifty-fifty chance of staying alive?”
“Not at all fantastic. Very reasonable.”
“I see. Thanks.”
Two days later George and Miss Kolin were in Greece.
7
“Forty-five thousand killed, including three thousand five hundred civilians murdered by the rebels and seven hundred blown up by their mines. Twice as many wounded. Eleven thousand houses destroyed. Seven hundred thousand persons driven from their homes in rebel areas. Twenty-eight thousand forcibly removed to Communist countries. Seven thousand villages looted. That is what Markos and his friends cost Greece.”
Colonel Chrysantos paused and, leaning back in his swivel chair, smiled bitterly at George and Miss Kolin. It was an effective pose. He was a very handsome man with keen, dark eyes. “And I have heard it said by the British and the Americans,” he added, “that we have been too firm with our Communists. Too firm!” He threw up his long, thin hands.