“Anyway,” Alex went on, expelling a plume of smoke, “whatever the reason, von Braun took it upon himself to seek retribution, make an example, in the same way the Nazis did in many occupied villages. He probably wanted to prove that he wasn’t just some soft, incompetent idiot sent to the middle of nowhere to keep him out of harm’s way. He rounded up four teenage boys—the same number the soldier had counted—and had them shot just over there.” Alex pointed to where the main street met the quayside. “Two of them had actually been involved; the other two were innocent. None of them was my father.”

The German tourists laughed at something one of the women had said and called Andrea to order more beer. They were already pretty drunk in Banks’s opinion, and there’s not much worse than a drunken German, unless it’s a drunken English football fan.

Alex ignored them and went on. “My father was guilt-stricken for not speaking up, as was his friend, but what could they have done? The Nazis would probably have shot them in addition to the four others they had chosen. It was what the Americans call a no-win situation. He carried that shame and that guilt with him all his life.”

“Is he still alive?”

“He’s been dead for years now. But the point is, von Braun was one of the minor war criminals tried after the war, and do you know what? My father went to the trial. He’d never left the island before in his life, except for one visit to Athens to have his appendix removed, but he had to go. To bear witness.”

Banks felt oppressed by Alex’s story and the weight of history, felt as if there was nothing he could say that would not be inappropriately light. Finally, he found his voice. “Are you trying to tell me you think I ought to go back?”

Alex looked at him and smiled sadly. “I’m not the one who thinks you ought to go back.”

“Ah, shit.” Banks lit a cigarette and tilted the ouzo bottle again. It was nearly empty.

“Am I right?” Alex persisted.

Banks looked out at the sea, dark now, twisting the lights reflected on its shimmering surface, and nodded. There was nothing he could do tonight, of course, but Alex was right; he would have to go. He had been carrying his guilty secret around for so long now that it had become a part of him, and he could no more put the discovery of Graham Marshall’s bones out of his mind than he could all the other things he had thought he’d left behind: Sandra and her pregnancy, Annie Cabbot, the Job.

He watched a pair of young lovers, arms around each other, stroll along the quayside and felt terribly sad because he knew it was all over now, this brief sojourn in paradise, knew that this would be the last time he and Alex spent a companionable evening together in the Greek warmth, with the waves lapping against the ancient stone quay and the smell of Turkish tobacco and salt and rosemary in the air. He knew that tomorrow he had to go down to the harbor early, take the morning ferry to Piraeus and get on the first flight home. And he wished to hell he didn’t.