Chris had mixed feelings about his father. He admired the man, even though he was something of a fascist, dealing ruthlessly with those who represented “security threats” in Greece. But Chris resented his father’s legacy. Being the son of General Andros was the worst of all worlds. Family friends would compare him to his father and invariably find him lacking. Meanwhile, political enemies would confuse him with his father’s fascism. They would threaten him in order to even old scores with Nicholas or attempt to convert him to their self-aggrandizing politics in order to embarrass his father.
By the time he was twelve, Chris Andros despised the intrigues of Greek politics, having visited his cousins in America for the first time and come back with the realization that the outside world offered a saner, more pleasant existence-in particular, baseball, jazz, and blondes, all of which were rare commodities in Athens. So the next year, after the death of Basil, who had spoiled him rotten and whom he adored, Chris persuaded his father to allow him to attend a preparatory school in America. That way, he reasoned, he could escape his father’s legacy and become his own man.
He had met her at a dance one summer night in Athens when he was home from school on vacation: Aphrodite Vasilis. She was the daughter of a wealthy tobacco merchant-an Andros Shipping client, in fact-and the most beautiful girl he had ever seen. Eyes of amber, hair shining black, and a soft mouth that simply begged to be kissed outside under the moon and mango trees. That she was Greek only added to her value in his eyes.
She had so completely turned his head that even life in America couldn’t compare with her company, and he made every excuse to come home to visit his father during school breaks. It was a magical time in his life, despite the arrival of the Depression in America and the regime known as the Fourth of August in Greece. Even he had to admit that under the dictator Metaxas, some stability had returned to Greece. Andros Shipping flourished under the leadership of his uncle Mitchell Rassious; his father found some fulfillment in modernizing the Greek army with German weapons; and his own love for Aphrodite cast a spell of enchantment over his adolescent years.
Finally, in the summer of 1939, after his first year at Harvard, it was her turn to visit him, and together they went to New York for the World’s Fair. They wandered through the effervescent architecture of the futuristic exhibition buildings, astounded at demonstrations of a new medium called television, 3-D movies, and other visions of the World of Tomorrow. The Futurama exhibit in the General Motors Building particularly fascinated Andros as their comfortable electrically driven chairs took them on a simulated airplane flight across the future America of 1960, crisscrossed by an intricate highway network carrying thousands of automobiles. “This highway thing will never work in Greece,” he told her afterward. “Too many mountains. I can assure my uncle Mitchell our shipping business is safe for now.”
With America coming out of the Depression and the arrival of such modern high technology, life seemed to open up before Andros. For here was American optimism, a bright future and the woman of his dreams to share it with. The ominous thunder of war rumbling across Europe seemed so far away. Standing there before the fair’s trademark spike-and-ball centerpiece-the soaring six-hundred-foot Trylon and great geospheric Perisphere-with the glittering Manhattan skyline as a backdrop, he asked Aphrodite to marry him. She replied with an enthusiastic yes, and they pledged their unwavering loyalty to each other.
Andros said, “I promise I’ll come back to Greece with a ring.”
But he never came back.
War broke out again in Europe, and a glory-hungry Mussolini, unwilling to remain in Hitler’s shadow, issued Metaxas an ultimatum to surrender without a fight. Metaxas hardly had time to utter his famous retort of “No!” before Italian forces in Albania advanced into Greece in overwhelming numbers. The Greek army, led by Field Marshal Papagos and General Andros, then stunned the world by driving Il Duce’s illustrious eight million bayonets back into Albania. Only Hitler’s intervention the next spring could rescue Mussolini. No match for the overwhelming force of the modern German war machine, the Greeks, even with the help of the British Expeditionary Forces, were crushed in a matter of six weeks. General Andros, who resolved to fight to the finish, died with his men on the island of Crete, but not before destroying five thousand German paratroopers in the bloodiest fighting of the war. That was of little comfort to Chris, however, who had lost his father and found himself alone in America, powerless to help and tortured with regret. Haunting him was the sense that he wasn’t there when his father, fiancee, and country had needed him most, and in missing that one crucial moment of his life, he had missed it all.
God, how he hated the Germans.
Cut off from Greece and Aphrodite by the war, cut off from his father forever, he did the only thing he could to restore any sense of honor to himself. Though America was officially neutral at the time, he asked a certain U.S. senator-who was indebted to Andros Shipping-to nominate him to West Point. One month later, he swore an oath to defend the Constitution of the United States with his life. Three months later, the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, and America declared war on the Axis.
As in previous wars, the U.S. Military Academy reduced the length of its course to three years. Together with his academic credit from Harvard and his outstanding demonstration of skills in military and physical training, Andros rose to the top of his class by May 1943. At last, Andros felt, he had made something of himself. No longer was he simply a privileged heir to a Greek shipping dynasty. Now he was a second lieutenant in the United States Army. He had earned the respect of his peers, his superiors, and, most important, himself. Come June, he would graduate for assignment to combat duty, most likely to join the force long rumored to be gathering for an invasion of Europe.
Andros dreamed of landing with the Allies in Greece. He would lead his U.S. Army troops off their transports in Piraeus, vanquish the fleeing Nazis, and liberate Athens. Yes, what his father had begun in the valiant defense of Crete, he would finish by returning to Greece a conquering hero.
Now that dream was dead.
21
B ack in his quarters at the central cadet barracks, Andros started packing.
All that was left when he was finished was the picture of Aphrodite he kept on his desk. It was a better photograph than the one Prestwick had shown him, taken in happier times. For several minutes he gazed at her angelic face, embittered by the seeds of doubt that Prestwick had managed to sow in his heart.
“I’m coming, my love,” he said, packing the picture and frame into his sack and pulling the strings. “Just like I promised.”
Andros drew out his Colt. 45 automatic and moved to the window overlooking the parade grounds. The grass was golden with the last rays of the setting sun, and the trees cast long, thin shadows. After taking one last look out over the Hudson, he checked the bullets in his clip and rammed the clip home into the Colt’s chamber.
“I’m coming for you, too, Baron von Berg.”
22
A phrodite Vasilis was swimming in the mouth of the Chalikiopoulos Lagoon on the Greek island of Corfu while two of Baron von Berg’s SS bodyguards watched nervously from shore. High above them, overlooking the lagoon from its lofty hill, was the Villa Achillion, the Baron’s estate. No doubt more SS were watching her from the terrace. She knew that if she should so much as take in a mouthful of water and choke for but a moment, the Baron would have their heads when he returned to the island.
“You look so hot and uncomfortable, boys,” she called out in Greek, splashing some water, teasing them as she often did. “Don’t you want to come in?”