by Joseph Badal
Bob couldn’t hold her gaze. The guilt he felt over not being with his family when they needed him was already like a bleeding wound. The lost look in Liz’s eyes only made him feel worse.
“First, you have to eat something,” he said. “I need you strong and well. Then we’ll figure something out. No one’s going to keep our baby from us.”
Bob’s words seemed to bring Liz all the way back for a moment. She turned to the wall. “Look at his face, so trusting. We’ve got to find Michael before it’s too late.” Then she devolved into sobs and sank to the floor.
Bob knelt and wrapped her in his arms. “We’ll find him, honey. You can count on it,” he said. He wanted to believe what he’d said with every fiber of his body and soul.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
Stefan and Vanja took turns sleeping and watching the child. They twice gave the boy milk, but the sedative they’d given him kept him asleep most of the time. At midnight, they left their hiding place in the forest, carrying the child through the trees. When they approached the border, they squatted down behind a cluster of boulders. It was almost 1:00 a.m.
“It’s cold, Stefan. How long do we have to stay here?”
“Until I damn well tell you to move,” he rasped. “Now keep your mouth shut. If the border guards hear you, we’re finished.”
Stefan timed the guards. The Greek guards walked past from right to left at fifteen minutes before the hour and, ten minutes later, walked in the other direction. Because of the dark and the distance, he couldn’t see the Bulgarian guards on the other side of the border wire. But he heard them. He saw the glow of their cigarettes. They patrolled on the half-hour, also reversing course ten minutes later.
Vanja tugged at Stefan’s sleeve. “I don’t know how much longer the boy will stay asleep,” she whispered. “We have no more pills to give him.”
“The Greeks should pass by again in fifteen minutes. We’ll cross over after that. Calm down; you’ll wake him.”
Stefan studied the obstacles they’d have to cope with when they emerged from the trees. It would be a simple matter to slip through the barbwire fence running down the middle of the deforested strip of land. The trip wires on either side of that fence were another matter. He would have to use the flashlight even though its beam might give them away. If the guards on either side changed the interval of their inspections. . ..
Radko thought about the hundreds of times he’d hidden in forests, risking his life for profit. He remembered his days as a haidouk, a guerrilla – a fancy name for a bandit really – during World War II, fighting the Nazis. He’d joined a Communist guerilla cell, not because of any affinity for the Communists, but because the Communist guerillas operated close to where he lived. They ambushed German military convoys and looted the vehicles and the bodies of the soldiers they killed. He’d first come in contact with the Bulgarian Intelligence Agency during that time. His relationship with the BIA had lasted ever since.
Ten minutes after the next Greek patrol passed, Stefan rose from the ground. Vanja stood and grunted with Michael’s weight in her arms.
“Stay right behind me,” Stefan ordered. He set out at a slow pace, bent over, with the flashlight beam pointed at the ground and his hand cupped around its lens. Fifteen paces, sixteen paces . . . twenty-nine paces. He froze. “See here,” he whispered to Vanja. A trip wire in the short grass gleamed under the flashlight beam.
They stepped carefully over it and proceeded as before, slowly, quietly, encountering a second trip wire just before reaching the barbed wire fence marking the border.
Stefan lifted the top strand of barbed wire and put his foot on the middle strand. Vanja put the sleeping baby on the ground and slipped through the opening Stefan made for her. Stefan picked up Michael in Greece and handed him to Vanja in Bulgaria. Then he stepped through and joined her. They were fifteen minutes beyond the border before Michael woke and started to wail.
Stefan stepped out of the shadows and walked to the guard shack outside the People’s Home for Orphans’ entrance gate. He saw a man leaning against the shack suddenly come alert, drop his cigarette, and fumble with his rifle.
Quickly moving into the cone of light coming from a flood lamp attached to the shack’s roof, Stefan raised his arms and said, “Take it easy. It’s me, Radko, to see Headmistress Vulovich. I’ve got a delivery for her.”
The man used the telephone in the guard shack to call the office in the massive stone building beyond the gate. After a short conversation on the telephone, he unlocked the tall wrought iron gate.
“She’s expecting you. Go on up.”
Stefan and Vanja followed the long gravel walkway to a stone staircase that climbed to a pair of huge double wooden doors. Michael started crying again.
“Can’t you shut him up?” Stefan growled while lifting the iron knocker on the right door panel and letting it drop.
The door opened, creaking as it moved slowly, exposing the ornate marble-floored entryway under a massive five-tiered chandelier.
“Ah, Stefan,” Katrina Vulovich said. “What have you and Vanja brought me this trip?”
“A little boy, Katrina. I brought you a little boy. I think you will be pleased.”
“Come into the light,” Katrina said. “Let me have a look at him.”
Stefan and Vanja stepped through the doorway and into the brightly lit foyer.
Katrina gasped and clasped her hands together against her chest. “He’s beautiful,” she said.
“How can you tell,” Stefan asked, “with him screaming like that?”
“You just don’t know how to handle children, Stefan. Give him to me.” Katrina took the boy from Vanja. His screams subsided into whimpers when she hugged him to her breast.
“Did you have any trouble?” Katrina asked.
“No, everything went smoothly,” Stefan lied.
“Good.” She walked over to a side table and picked up an envelope. “Here’s your fee, Stefan. Ten American one hundred-dollar bills. Your little business is going to make you rich. How many has it been?”
“Twenty-seven with this one,” Stefan said. “It’s good doing business with you, Comrade Vulovich.”
“When can I expect to see you again, Stefan?” Katrina asked.
“In less than a month.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
Few people would be able to tell from looking at Franklin Meers that he was the U.S. Embassy’s Chief of Intelligence in Greece. He had wire-rimmed glasses, pale skin, and an Ichabod Crane-like Adam’s apple. Tall and gawky, in a preppie way, he looked more like a thirty-five-year-old professor than a spook. His physical appearance lent credence to most people’s opinion of him: Someone devoid of feeling, just another low-level bureaucrat doing grunt work for Uncle Sam. They didn’t know the real Franklin Meers. Just because he had learned to hide his emotions well didn’t mean he wasn’t passionate or capable of acting out his passion. Now seated across a table from Bob and Liz Danforth, Meers was damned upset and having a tough time not showing it.
They sat at a corner table shielded from the hot afternoon sun by a blue canvas umbrella with Campari printed on it in big white letters. The tables near them were unoccupied. Thank God for the Greek siesta, Meers thought. Most of Athens is probably asleep.
“Captain Danforth, Mrs. Danforth, what I’m about to tell you is classified,” he said, keeping his voice down. “Even with the kidnapping of your child, technically you don’t have a need to know. Providing you with this information could get me in trouble.”
The tortured look on Liz Danforth’s face when she stared at him tugged at Meers’ heart. She nodded.
“I want you to bear with me while I provide some history,” Meers said, “then I’ll explain what may have happened to Michael.” At his mention of the boy’s name, a grim look came over both of the young parents’ faces.
“When the Germans invaded Greece during World War II, Greek partisans took to the mountains and forged a resistance movement. Allied go
vernments – principally England and the United States – supported many of the resistance units. The U.S., for example, infiltrated OSS agents into Greece to facilitate the provision of supplies and equipment to the partisans and to gather intelligence on Nazi activities.”
“What’s the OSS?” Liz asked.
“The Office of Strategic Services,” Meers said. “Effectively, the forerunner to the CIA. Its information gathering focused not only on Nazis, but also on Communist resistance groups. The U.S. and Greek governments were concerned about Stalin’s plans for Greece once the war ended.”
“But what has this to do with getting Michael back?” Bob interjected.
“Maybe a lot!” Meers said. “You need to let me finish. Then you’ll understand.” He removed his glasses and wiped them with his handkerchief. “The Soviets also supported resistance groups, whose members often murdered members of non-Communist guerrilla units who threatened their influence over an area. You can’t imagine the atrocities the Greek Communists visited on their own countrymen.”
Meers sketched a rough map of Greece and the Balkans on a paper napkin. “The Communists concentrated their activities in these areas,” he said, jabbing at the map with his pen, “along Greece’s border with Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Albania. The West suspected Stalin of planning to extend his control to the Balkan countries and beyond after the war ended. Once Soviet troops occupied all the Balkans, the only obstacle to their influence over the Aegean and the Ionian Seas would have been Greece.
“Anyway, after the war, a revolution began in Greece. The Soviets backed the Greek Communists. It was touch and go for awhile, but the Communists were finally run out of the country. Many escaped across the border and settled in Yugoslav and Bulgarian villages.
“This is where the story gets sinister . . . and where it might have touched you. Stalin ordered the fleeing Communists to take every child they could get their hands on to villages across the border. Most of the villagers who lived on the Greek side of the border were simple, uneducated farmers and craftsmen. The Communists told them, because they lived in what had been Communist-controlled territory that the Nationalists would sweep through their area and exact reprisals against them and their children. Even many who were anti-Communist believed the story. Hundreds of parents entrusted their children to the Communists. They assumed they’d eventually get their kids back when things cooled off. Instead, most never saw their sons and daughters again. Many of those who resisted were killed, their children kidnapped.”
“What did Stalin want with those children?” Bob asked. “And what does this have to do with our son?”
“I’m getting there,” Meers responded sympathetically. “The Communists have always impressed me in one aspect. Where we worry about the short-term – the next election or the next quarterly report – those Russian bastards think generations, even centuries ahead. Stalin wanted to indoctrinate thousands of Greek kids, to turn those kids into rabid Communists who could be integrated back into Greece years later as spies and, ultimately, as leaders of a Communist Greece.” Meers shook his head as though to clear it of the distasteful information he had just conveyed and shrugged, spreading his hands in a palms-up gesture, adding, “Of course, taking the children also had a very effective psychological component.”
Bob opened his mouth to ask a question, but Meers cut him off with another hand gesture.
“They took those kids to villages in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, raised them as Greeks, and trained them as Communists. This program must have pleased Stalin. He ordered the Communist leadership in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria to continue kidnapping Greek children – infants and kids up to age two or three. Each year since the Greek Revolution, the Greek government has investigated reports from police departments across the country about mysterious child abductions. But no one could discover who took the children or why. Until five years ago.
“Greek Intelligence arrested a twenty-six-year-old man who offered to pay a Greek Air Force officer for information about U.S. nuclear missile sites in Greece. Under interrogation, he told of his training as an intelligence agent for Bulgaria and gave up an incredible amount of information about ties between the Soviet and Bulgarian Intelligence agencies. But he really shocked the interrogators when he said he’d been born in Greece and, at six years of age, after the revolution that followed World War II, had been kidnapped and taken to Bulgaria. He said babies were still being kidnapped at the time he was interrogated – often by Gypsies who delivered them to Bulgaria for cash payments.”
“Why would they take an American child?” Liz asked.
Meers shrugged. “Think about it. You live in a Greek neighborhood. Your son is dark-haired and could pass for Greek.”
Bob leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair. He exhaled loudly. “I want to see all the files you’ve got at the Embassy on these kidnappings. And I want to read the file on this Greek who spied for the Bulgarians.”
“I understand what you’re going through. Change that. I can only imagine what you’re going through,” Meers said. “But there’s no way I can give you the files. If anyone discovered I helped you, I’d be up the creek. Besides, what would you do with the information, even if I let you see it?”
“If we can figure out where these kids have been taken, I can go there and find Michael.”
“Do you have any clue how dangerous that would be?” Meers said. “You don’t speak Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, or Albanian, do you?”
Bob shook his head.
“Your position in the U.S. military means you’d be shot as a spy if you’re captured in Bulgaria . . . after they interrogated you. The Bulgarians would love to get their hands on you. It’s not like U.S. Army officers with Top Secret-Crypto security clearances show up in Bulgaria every day.”
“You need to understand something, Mr. Meers,” Liz said. “With or without your help, we’re going to do whatever it takes to find our son.”
“Including,” Bob added, “talking to the press about these kidnappings that have been going on for years. The press will love the story.”
Meers looked from Liz to Bob, deciding. The last thing the U.S. State Department would want was an international incident over these child abductions. Embarrassing the Soviets and their Eastern European vassal states would disrupt strategic arms talks then going on between Washington and Moscow. He stood and stared down at them. “Okay,” he finally said. “Be at your home tomorrow morning at 9:00.”
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
Janos’ wife, Demetria, helped him give his delivery truck its weekly cleaning. Demetria directed a steady spray of water from a hose into the corners of the cargo area, trying to wash out black, slimy remnants of lettuce leaves. The force of the water pushed aside a loose heap of them, revealing a small blue garment. She shut off the water, put down the hose, and lifted the filthy piece of clothing with her thumb and forefinger. A child’s shirt. She turned toward Janos, holding it out to him. “What’s this?” she asked.
The wide-eyed look on Janos’ face made Demetria’s heart leap to her throat. “What’s wrong? What’s going on?”
Janos turned his gaze away from her and took a broom from where it leaned against the side of the truck wall. Looking at the floor of the truck bed, he said, “How do I know? It’s just trash.”
Demetria walked over to Janos and grabbed his arm. “Don’t lie to me, Janos. I always know when you’re not telling the truth.”
Still not making eye contact, Janos shook her hand off his arm. He yelled, “I told you, it’s nothing!”
She grasped his arm again and spun him around. “Janos!” she screamed, her mouth so close spittle sprayed his face. “Tell me the truth! What’s going on?” She held the shirt in front of his nose and shook it at him. “Why is a baby’s shirt in your truck?” Then a horrid thought speared Demetria’s brain and she felt her throat constrict as blood seemed to gush from her heart to her head. “Oh my God,” she said. “It’s the same color as the c
lothes the radio said that kidnapped American child wore.”
Janos’ Adam’s apple bobbed as he tried to swallow his panic. “I don’t know how it got in my truck, Deme,” he said.
“Don’t you Deme me! What have you gotten yourself into?”
Janos turned his back on his wife, jumped down from the back of the truck, and hurried into the apartment building. Demetria followed him, demanding an answer. She kept after him even after they entered their apartment. Still, he would not explain the presence of the shirt.
Stefan could hear a woman shouting. He climbed the apartment house staircase, turned the corner at the third floor, walked down the hall to Janos’ door, and knocked. The shouts suddenly ceased. When a young woman opened the door, he pushed his way inside.
“Well, well,” he said, sneering, “what do we have here? A lovers’ spat?”
Janos sat on the sofa, appearing close to tears. He gave his uncle a dirty, squint-eyed look. “What are you doing here?” he said in a spiritless voice.
Demetria, too angry to be afraid, glared at Stefan and asked, “Who the hell are you?”
“Is that any way to greet your uncle, my dear? I’m shocked my nephew hasn’t told you all about me,” Stefan said.
“If you’re related to this kolokithas, I don’t want you here,” she said. “Get out!”
Stefan stepped towards her, smiling. Demetria stood her ground. She pointed her finger at him and again ordered him to leave. He struck her in the face with his open hand. The force of the blow drove her backward against the wall. She slumped to the floor, her hand to her cheek. She stared at Stefan, tears flooding her eyes. A trickle of blood ran from the corner of her mouth.
Janos leaped from the couch, ran to Demetria, and reached down to help her to her feet. But she slapped his hand away. He then turned toward Stefan. “You sonofabitch!” he yelled. “I’ll kill–” The sudden appearance of a knife in Stefan’s hand cut off his threat.
