Later, when the experiment had been tried, he said: “When we were in Cologne my office gave me permission to go on with the investigation for three more weeks if I thought we were making progress. One of them’s gone, and all we’ve found out is that Franz Schirmer most likely didn’t get taken prisoner by the people who shot up the trucks.”
“Surely, that is something.”
“It’s mildly interesting at best. It doesn’t get us anywhere. I’m giving it one more week. If we’re no nearer the truth by then, we go home. O.K.?”
“Perfectly. What will you do with the week?”
“Do what I have an idea I should have done before. Go to Vodena and look for his grave.”
8
Vodena, which used to be called Edessa and was once the seat of the kings of Macedon, is some fifty miles west of Salonika. It hangs, amid lush growth of vine and wild pomegranate, fig, and mulberry trees, in the foothills of Mount Chakirka six hundred feet above the Yiannitsa plain. Sparkling mountain streams cascade lyrically down the hillsides into Nisia Voda, the tributary of the Vadar which flows swiftly past the town on its way to the parent river. The old tiled houses glow in the sun. There are no tourist hotels.
George and Miss Kolin were driven there in a car hired in Salonika. It was not an enjoyable trip. The day was hot and the road bad. The condition of their stomachs denied them even the consolations of a good lunch and a bottle of wine at their destination. While the chauffeur went off heartily in search of food and wine, they went into a café, fought the flies for long enough to drink some brandy, and then dragged themselves off dispiritedly in search of information.
Almost immediately luck was with them. A sweetmeat pedlar in the market not only remembered the ambush well, but had actually been working in a near-by vineyard at the time. He had been warned to keep clear by the andartes, who had arrived an hour before the German trucks came.
When the chauffeur returned they persuaded the pedlar to leave his tray of flyblown titbits with a friend and guide them to the scene.