Zoë runs across Karaiskaki Street and into the alley opposite. She keeps running until she comes to the next main street. Crouching on the corner, she looks up and down. South, towards Ermou, she sees a line of British tanks and a group of soldiers in red berets. Perfect, she thinks, but then a machine gun begins firing and the soldiers take cover. One of the tanks reverses into the middle of the street; its gun turns in her direction. She runs back the way she has come, turns north towards the Central Market and Omonia Square, slows to a walk. The flag hangs limply over her arm. Leaving Psiri, she heads towards the sound of a loudspeaker which is broadcasting something in English. A Blenheim bomber circles overhead. Although there are clusters of civilians here and there, peering out of shopfronts or crouched by standpipes, she has the strange feeling that she is completely alone in the city. She keeps going, sometimes rushing between doorways, sometimes waiting with other people to cross a road where there might be a sniper. As she gets closer to the market, she finds herself alone again. And there, parked beneath a plane tree next to a small church, are two British Bren carriers. She gives a sigh of relief, though in a way she would prefer to keep walking. Towards the sea, or the mountains. But she holds up her flag and yells out the first thing she can think to say in English: ‘Excuse me!’

She sees faces turn towards her as, waving the flag resolutely above her head, she steps out into the road. A shot echoes nearby and she crouches and begins to run towards the Bren carriers. She is almost next to them when she sees that the men hunkered down by the caterpillar tracks of the carriers are not wearing British uniforms but a mixture of civilian clothes and Wehrmacht tunics. And on the arm of the nearest man, the man pointing his sub-machine gun straight at her, is a white armband on which a black X and a crown show up all too plainly.

‘Come here, my pretty,’ he says, and the other men begin to laugh.

‘I’m … looking for a doctor,’ Zoë stammers.

‘We’re all doctors here, aren’t we, lads?’ The man grins, yellow teeth beneath black moustache. ‘And we’ve got the cure for communist sluts.’

She could run. How far would she get? Two steps? Three? She puts up her hands. ‘I’m no one,’ she begins to say. ‘My friend is sick …’ And then she sees two more people step out from behind the church. She knows them both immediately. One is the killer of Christos Vlessas: Captain Ioannis Pandelis. The other, thin peroxide-blonde hair trailing from under an old Metaxas-era gendarme’s cap decorated with an X badge, is Feathers.