‘Yeah, well.’ McCall changes gear savagely, and throws the cigarette, unsmoked, into the street. ‘She taught me the language, because we were going to go back to the old country. Her folks were from Salonika – her pop was some kind of big shipping guy but he lost his business in the Crash. Came over to Chicago and became a shoe repairman. But he sent Athena to college, and that’s where I met her. Then the war started. The paper sent me overseas and while I was in New Guinea she got sick. I, ah … I never saw her again. Kind of why I got this assignment. I thought I could find her grandparents, you know, talk about stuff. I guess that ain’t going to happen.’

‘You never know.’

‘They were old. I doubt they survived the famine. All kinds of bad stuff went on up in Salonika. I’ll try and find them, but …’ He shrugs.

‘And yet here you are,’ Tom says. ‘And so am I. It’s the curse of the observer.’ He watches a skeletal, caramel-coloured dog digging in a pile of burnt timbers.

‘Tom? Collyer! Are you ready for this, old man?’

Tom looks up. They have crossed Petro Ralli Street into the landscape of de Chirico and Delvaux. Ready? No, I’m not, Tom thinks. But now I’ve jumped. I’m falling, like the man with the failed parachute dropping down onto Salisbury Plain, trailing useless silk. A white flame. A Roman candle. ‘Go left here,’ he says aloud.

The jeep lurches into Hozanitas Street, and into the landscape of Tom’s dreams. Tiny square houses, their rough stucco making them slightly shapeless, slightly out of focus. The narrow street, sloping upwards to a shoulder of mountain the brown of a dead fox’s fur, is deserted. It was deserted that night, too, but then he’d known that the houses had been full of sleeping people. Now, in the sunshine, the place has no feeling of occupation at all. He notices at once that the trees, the young planes and spidery tamarisks, are all gone. Graffiti, the now familiar slogans of EAM-ELAS, cover the white walls like wounds. All the street’s life has drained away. It is as empty as a body on a mortuary slab.

‘What number are we looking for?’ McCall asks.

‘317.’

‘We’re just a couple of blocks away.’ I know, Tom is about to say, when there is a huffing sound above them, like giant wings being flapped. A second later the jeep’s tyres leave the road and a moment after that there is a huge explosion. ‘Jesus Christ!’ McCall bellows, wrestling with the steering wheel. ‘What the hell was that?’

‘It was a bloody big gun,’ Tom says. ‘Look over there.’ A roil of smoke and dust is rising a few streets to the north-east. ‘Must be the navy.’