The Silver Stain

by Paul Johnston

  ‘This is not over,’ the inspector said. ‘We’ll be checking your movements very carefully, you Athenian scumbag. And, by the way, I understand English. If you get in the way of my investigation or step out of line by a millimetre, you’re dog food.’

  ‘My things, please.’ Mavros got back his phone, wallet and notebook.

  ‘By the way,’ Margaritis said, with a sharp smile. ‘You should be careful. I hear the Kornariates want to drink your blood.’

  Mavros raised his shoulders. ‘If you people had done your job, Kornaria would be a normal, law-abiding village.’

  The inspector’s eyes opened wide, but he managed to keep his mouth shut. Mavros went back to the widow.

  ‘Come, I’ll take you home,’ he said softly.

  ‘No, I’m going . . . I’m going with Rudi,’ she protested, but eventually allowed herself to be steered out of the trees.

  Mikis was standing with Yerasimos beside the Mercedes that had brought Rudolf Kersten to his place of ending. Hildegard headed for the big car, dismissing the driver who had brought her.

  ‘Follow us,’ Mavros said to Mikis. ‘I think I’m going to need you.’

  In the limousine, Hildegard sank back in the leather and inhaled. ‘I can smell my Rudi,’ she said, then steeled herself. ‘Whatever the police and their idiot doctors say, I know Rudi was murdered. You will help me, Alex?’

  ‘It’s rather out of my area of expertise.’ He was still troubled by his anger against the dead man but, even if he had taken part in the massacre, Hildegard was in no way to blame.

  ‘If money is the problem . . .’

  ‘No, no, you’ve already shown how generous you can be.’ Mavros looked through the tinted glass at the villas alongside the road, then turned back to her. ‘I’ll need to ask some difficult questions.’

  The widow looked at him unwaveringly. ‘I have no secrets from you, Alex.’

  ‘Did your husband keep any secrets from you?’

  ‘No,’ she said emphatically. ‘What do you want to know?’

  Mavros took out his notebook, and then closed it. After its recent confiscation by Margaritis, he didn’t want to put anything potentially incriminating in it.

  ‘All right,’ he said, ‘assuming it is murder, who do you think could have done it and why?’

  ‘David Waggoner,’ she said, without hesitation. ‘He has always hated Rudi.’

  ‘Why?’

  Hildegard gave him a sharp look. ‘Because of the war, of course.’

  ‘Yes, but specifically?’

  ‘Oh, because of the massacre at Makrymari. You know about it?’

  Mavros nodded. ‘Your husband took part in it.’

  ‘No!’ she cried, causing Yerasimos to look in the mirror. ‘I’m sorry. No, Alex, that isn’t true. He was forced by a vile captain to stand in the firing squad, but he had suffered a serious head wound and he collapsed when the execution started.’

  ‘He told you that?’

  ‘Yes, but he also wrote it down as a kind of memoir. It’s in the safe back at the hotel. It’s in German.’

  They had already established that he didn’t speak the language.

  ‘Is there anything about Waggoner in it?’

  ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘That’s just the point. Rudi was in the battle at Galatsi and he describes a fair-haired and stocky British officer in a tank. He later saw the same man shooting wounded Germans in the head.’

  Jesus, Mavros thought. The Battle of Crete was like a tumour in the island’s entrails, a stain on its history that contaminated the present.

  ‘How did your husband survive the fighting?’

  ‘He was saved by that woman, the one known as Black Katina. On the day he landed, he had avoided killing her.’

  Now Mavros understood Rudolf Kersten’s actions at the memorial wall and his words to Cara Parks before the recreation of the massacre. He felt ashamed of his anger.

  ‘Why would Waggoner wait for so many years?’ he asked.

  ‘Because he’d been blackmailing Rudi since we came to Crete. How do you think he could afford that house up in the mountains? He hasn’t worked since he was drummed out of the British Army. Now we have little except the apartment, which is on a lifelong peppercorn lease. The resort has been sold and all our property in Germany liquidated. Rudi told him there would be no more money last month.’

  ‘Not quite everything,’ Mavros said. ‘There’s the coin collection.’

  ‘Yes, there is. Rudi’s precious silver. I never liked his collecting those objects. He should have given them all to museums.’

  ‘As he did with the Jewish relics.’

  Hildegard looked at him. ‘You already know much about us.’

  ‘Not enough, apparently.’ He told her about Waggoner’s location during the film shoot.

  ‘Ach, that is nothing. He would have used the grandson of one of his andartes in the war.’

  ‘Maybe. Have you considered that your own grandson might be involved?’

  She stared at him with undisguised horror, as the Mercedes stopped at the gate of the Heavenly Blue. ‘Oskar? No . . . it’s impossible. He doesn’t have the nerve to do something so awful.’

  ‘He has some unpleasant friends.’

  ‘Those fools with the shaven heads and the big boots? Straw men, all of them. They wouldn’t dare.’

  ‘Your grandson did steal those thirty coins.’

  ‘He’s lazy – a leech. His father died when he was three and his mother spoiled him, not that she ever had much. He grew up in the East after reunification – she found some man there, a spendthrift who tried to get money from Rudi. He was always strict with Franziska, so they never got more than the minimum to supplement their benefits. And before you ask, both our daughter and he are dead, in a car crash ten years ago.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Mavros said, getting out of the car. Yerasimos held the door open for Hildegard. ‘Is there someone you can call to sit with you?’

  ‘We have many friends on Crete, but I prefer to be on my own now.’ The widow gave him a brief smile. ‘Don’t worry, I’m not what the police doctors would call suicidal. Knock on the door or call if you need anything.’ She kissed his cheek.

  ‘Thank you, Alex. You don’t know how much this means to me.’

  Mavros watched her go, the weight of her sorrow pressing down on him. Then he remembered something and ran after her.

  ‘One more thing,’ he said. ‘Do you know a Tryfon Roufos?’

  ‘Horrible man!’ Hildegard exclaimed. ‘He’s been badgering Rudi for months about the silver collection. Only a few days ago, they had words on the telephone.’ She walked towards the apartment door, the staff bowing to her, their faces tear-stained.

  Mikis appeared at his shoulder. ‘This is terrible. I can’t believe Mr Kersten killed himself.’

  ‘He didn’t. Let’s go and find the fuckers who made it look like he did.’

  ‘So, left or right?’ Mikis asked, as they went past the resort gate in the Jeep.

  ‘Left for Chania,’ Mavros replied. ‘Now that Maria Kondos is out of the clinic, what are your pals up to?’

  ‘Their jobs. Why? Do you need them again?’

  ‘Maybe later. I’ve found out some interesting things.’ He told the Cretan about Waggoner’s blackmailing of the Kerstens and Roufos’s attempts to buy his silver collection.

  ‘I always thought the Englishman was a piece of shit,’ Mikis said, accelerating past a tractor. ‘I’ve seen plenty of those guys at the battle celebrations and they’re friendly enough – even the Germans. But Waggoner always seemed to be on his own, as if even his former comrades didn’t like his smell.’

  ‘You know anything about the communists on Crete during the war?’ Mavros asked, wondering again about his father’s role.

  ‘Not much. There weren’t many of them to start with and those that stayed were pretty well boxed in by the resistance leaders and the British.’

  ‘Waggoner claimed he was betrayed
by one of them.’

  ‘That cache of silver was to be shipped to Egypt. According to my grandfather, who was a shepherd in Selino, with contacts in the resistance, the Germans killed most of the andartes, as well as the monks at Ayios Athanasios, and grabbed the loot.’

  ‘That’s right. According to Waggoner, an EAM operative known as Kanellos tipped off the occupiers.’

  ‘No, that’s rubbish,’ the driver said, slowing as they reached the city limits. ‘The informer was one of Waggoner’s own Cretans. He killed the man himself after he came back from Egypt. My grandfather knew the guy – he’d been tortured by the Germans and his family had been threatened. Standard occupiers’ tactics.’

  Mavros blinked away the sudden film of tears that had covered his eyes. So his father hadn’t been a rat. He’d never really believed he was, but the confirmation made him feel much better. It also showed that David Waggoner had lied in his memoir. Was he embarrassed about shooting one of his own men – his admission to such an act earlier made that unlikely – or by his lack of judgement in trusting the man?

  ‘Shit, I’ve just remembered something.’ Mikis pulled to the side without warning, provoking a blast on the horn from the driver behind, and took out his phone. ‘Hey, Dad,’ he said, after speed-dialling. He ran through the story and then asked where the traitor had come from. ‘OK, thanks, see you later,’ he signed off, turning to Mavros. ‘Thought as much. The traitor was from Kornaria.’

  ‘What a surprise,’ Mavros said, with a wry smile.

  ‘Yeah. Achilleas Kondoyannis was his name.’

  ‘Kondoyannis? What the hell?’

  Mikis nodded. ‘The name the guy in the kafeneion gave us.’

  ‘A relative? People called Kondoyannis emigrating to the USA might easily have shortened their name to Kondos.’

  ‘Right,’ the Cretan said, smiling at the pun – ‘kondos’ was Greek for ‘short’. ‘Maria Kondos. You think that’s why she was up there? Some kind of payback for the disgrace some relative brought on the village?’

  ‘The village where, as we know, vendettas are a speciality. It certainly needs to be checked out. Let’s get back to the Heavenly Blue and talk to the less-than-talkative Maria.’

  ‘I thought she’d started speaking again.’

  ‘Not much.’

  Mikis applied full lock and turned the Jeep back the way they’d come.

  In the hotel, Mavros ran up to his room and booted up his laptop. A search for ‘Kondoyannis USA’ brought up numerous references, though not as many as ‘Kondos USA’. Cross-referencing them would be a long job. He was about to give up and go in search of Maria when a newspaper headline caught his eye – ‘Florida Mobster Kondoyannis Jailed’. Maybe the surname hadn’t been changed, after all. The article was dated January 17th 2003 and described the end of the trial of Michael ‘the Bat’ Kondoyannis, fifty-seven, boss of one of northern Florida’s ‘most vicious’ criminal organizations. Born in Tallahassee, ‘the Bat’, so named for his use of a metal alloy baseball bat to deal with his enemies, had risen to the top of a gang run by Greek immigrants, originally from the island of Crete. Initially, they had been involved in illegal gambling and robberies, but in the last twenty years had controlled a significant part of the drugs trade in the South. Scrolling down, Mavros found a photograph of the mobster, a bull-chested man with short black curly hair. His features, including heavy rings beneath the eyes, were certainly Greek. He had been convicted of heroin, marijuana and hashish trafficking, using shipping containers supposedly full of olive oil, and of two murders. It was suspected he had links with organized crime in Sicily and other parts of the Mediterranean. Then there was another photo, this time of ‘the Bat’ with his family before his arrest. Next to a short, plump woman stood a figure with long black hair – his daughter Maria. There was no doubt that she was Cara Parks’ assistant. Presumably she had changed her name when she went to Hollywood. That was one of several things he needed urgently to ask her.

  Before he could get out of the door, his phone rang.

  ‘Alex, it’s Cara.’

  ‘Oh, hi. Is your assistant with you?’

  ‘That’s just it. I expected she’d be in my suite when I came back from the shoot – she stayed there to handle the backlog of fan mail – but she wasn’t. I still have a card to her suite, so I checked. She isn’t there. I’ve asked at reception and no one has seen her, even though she’s still in that wheelchair. Apparently the shift changed. They’re contacting the people who were on duty, but no news yet.’

  ‘Here we go again. Tell me, did you know that Maria’s father is a recently jailed Florida mobster of Cretan stock?’

  ‘What? You must be joking.’ The actress sounded genuinely surprised.

  ‘No, I’m not. The question is, was she involved in the family business?’

  ‘That’s ridiculous, Alex. She wouldn’t have time . . .’

  ‘Really? Might only take a few phone calls a day to ensure the drugs were running into LA smoothly.’

  There was a pause. ‘And that mountain village she was in grows dope, doesn’t it?’

  ‘Kornaria? Oh, yes, in a big way. And guess what – David Waggoner’s got a house up there. Are you sure you never saw them in conversation?’

  This time there was a longer silence. ‘I don’t know. Maybe when we were preparing for the Galatsi battle scenes.’

  ‘Any raised voices?’

  ‘I . . . I don’t know. I don’t remember.’

  ‘All right.’

  ‘Alex, you will find Maria, won’t you? You will finish the case?’

  He said he would try and hung up. It looked like all roads led to Kornaria, where the locals would shoot him before saying ‘Kali mera’.

  SIXTEEN

  Before going any further, Mavros called Niki. She sounded tired.

  ‘What is it, my love?’

  ‘The job, of course,’ she said sharply, then, ‘I’m sorry, Alex. Sometimes it’s too much, the endless stream of people coming to Greece, thinking their lives will improve overnight. There’s a limit to the jobs I can find them.’ She took a deep breath. ‘Anyway, when are you coming home?’

  He’d been expecting the question. ‘You’re not going to believe this – the woman I found has disappeared again.’

  ‘And there I was thinking you’d got yourself involved in the Rudolf Kersten death. Some of the news bulletins are hinting there was foul play.’

  Mavros had been hoping Niki wouldn’t have seen the news – she didn’t always watch it as she thought most journalists were liars.

  ‘I don’t know,’ he said. ‘The cops here are saying it was probably suicide.’

  ‘So you are involved?’

  ‘Well, the widow has asked me to help find the killer – if there was one.’

  There was a pause as she filled her lungs. ‘Get back here, Alex Mavro. You know how these cases end – with you facing death and your bill unpaid. Come back tomorrow. Tonight, if they’ll give you their stupid Learjet.’

  ‘That’s not going to happen, Niki,’ he said firmly. ‘You’ve got to let me do my job.’

  ‘Oh, fine. And what am I supposed to do? Sit here waiting to hear that some lunatic Cretan villagers have chopped you to pieces?’

  He gave a weak laugh. ‘Don’t be ridiculous. It’s not like that down here on the coastal strip.’

  ‘Alex, please. Come back home. I miss you.’

  ‘I’ll get back as soon as I can. Promise. I’ve got to run now. Love you.’ He cut the connection, disturbed by how close Niki’s imagination was to reality. All he’d done was buy himself some time – she’d be back on his case tomorrow.

  He rang the Fat Man.

  ‘I see the German’s dead,’ Yiorgos said, after they’d exchanged unpleasantries. ‘You wouldn’t happen to be involved in that case too, would you?’

  Mavros filled him in.

  ‘Sounds to me like you’ve got too much on your plate. Maybe I should come down.’

&nb
sp; The idea of the Fat Man stomping around antagonizing people in the luxury resort wasn’t appealing, though he might have been useful in Kornaria.

  ‘No, thanks.’ He told him about Michael ‘the Bat’ Kondoyannis. ‘See if you can dig up anything about him and Crete. His family came from Kornaria.’

  ‘He was a drug dealer and he came from Afghanistan, Crete? It wouldn’t take a genius to work out where he got his supplies.’

  ‘Some of them, at least. But I want more than deductions, Fat Man. See if you can dig up something concrete about him.’

  ‘Concrete, as in the stuff the mob puts on people’s feet before chucking them overboard?’

  ‘Very funny. I found out something else.’ He told Yiorgos what Mikis had told him about his father when he had been known as Kanellos, and the lie told by Waggoner.

  ‘So an agent of the imperial power sets up a Communist. How unusual. I take it you’ll be having words with the shit-head.’

  ‘Soon enough. In the meantime, I’ve got a rendezvous with a Hollywood starlet.’

  ‘Screw you,’ the Fat Man said harshly. ‘Then again, if she does that, Niki will hang your intestines from your mother’s balcony.’

  ‘Over and out,’ Mavros said, heading for the door.

  The man on the other side was wearing black clothes and a matching balaclava. Only the long knife in his right hand provided any contrast. Its point pierced Mavros’s T-shirt before he walked rapidly backwards into his room.

  From The Descent of Icarus:

  I came round in another field hospital, this one in the grounds of a Cretan prison. The inmates were all gone, most of them, I learned, killed when they joined the locals in the battles against the mountain troops who had flooded the west of the island from Maleme. My head was pounding and every movement provoked worse pain. I slid my hand up slowly and felt a bandage swathing my skull.

  ‘Ah, the brave paratrooper has woken up,’ said a sardonic voice.

  I looked up at the doctor who was standing by my bed. His white hair was cut short at the sides and he wore a moustache like Himmler’s – clearly the kind of martinet who wished he was in the SS but had been deemed too old. The army was less choosy.