by Nick Carter
"Come on in and meet Mr. Minourkos," I said.
We went into the room, and Erika stared at the corpse on the floor. Minourkos was leaning against a nearby wall. He straightened when he saw Erika.
"Miss Erika Nystrom," I introduced them. "Of Israeli intelligence."
Minourkos' eyes narrowed. He looked over at me. "And you?"
"The name is Carter. Nick Carter. I'm employed by the US government in the same capacity as Miss Nystrom. We came here to free you and to get Adrian Stavros."
Minourkos moved away from the wall. "I see. Well, Mr. Carter, the first thing I want as a free man is contact with the authorities." His tone had taken on that of a business tycoon speaking to his subordinates. "Then I will deal with Adrian Stavros in my own way."
"Mr. Minourkos," I said slowly, "there is absolutely no reason for you to do anything at this point. All that can result is a bundle of red tape and delay. I would prefer that you let us handle it."
"How do I know you are who you claim to be?" He sounded annoyed.
"You know that we risked our lives to free you. As a matter of fact, we lost a man," I answered acidly. "I would think that would give us the benefit of the doubt."
His face sagged from sudden weariness. "You're right. Please forgive me. I have been through a great deal."
"As for your handling Stavros alone, Mr. Minourkos," I continued, "that's pretty impractical. The man has an army around him."
Minourkos raised his eyebrows and blew his cheeks out "All right, all right, Mr. Carter. I will go along with you and the girl. But if I see, at any point along the way, that your methods are not working I will take command of the situation."
I smiled briefly. "That sounds fair," I replied. "Were you abducted from Athens by Stavros?"
Minourkos got the straight-back chair he had been sitting on when I broke into the room. He sat down on it, facing us.
"You would not believe the cleverness of the man," he began slowly. "I do not consider myself an innocent, Mr. Carter, but I have never met anyone like Adrian Stavros. I had been pursuing the idea of building a fleet of computer-run, underwater oil tankers. Stavros found out about this and wanted to help me with it — or so he said.
"At first I would not even see him, but he sent me a letter outlining some very good ideas. I finally invited him to my penthouse in Athens. We had a long talk.
" 'Mr. Minourkos, I recall him saying to me, 'I have the same plan as you. If you will just allow me, I will make you immortal in the annals of shipping history. He was very persuasive.
" 'But, Mr. Stavros, I said, 'there are complex engineering problems to be solved.
" 'I have two engineers who can do it, he told me. Underneath the charm, even then, I saw something else in the man's face, something I did not like, but I passed it off as undue excitement about the project."
"Did he bring the engineers to you?" I asked.
"Oh, yes. They had imaginative ideas, too. I was convinced that they might have the skills to make it all happen. At that point, Mr. Carter, I let my guard down. He asked for a private meeting at the penthouse and I granted it. There were only my personal secretary and another aide present. He brought two men with him that I had not seen previously."
"Is that when it happened?" Erika asked.
"Well, at first I suspected nothing," Minourkos said, his face ashen as he remembered. "Then, almost without warning, Stavros asked my aides to go into another room. One of Stavros' men followed. There were two gunshots." Minourkos fell silent.
"He murdered them right there?" I asked.
"In cold blood. His henchmen knocked me down and kicked me almost unconscious. They took me into that other room and made me look at the bloody bodies. I will never forget it.
"Salaka, my secretary, lay in a pool of his own blood. The other fellow's face was blown off. Stavros said I could expect the same thing if I did not cooperate."
"What happened after that?"
"The next day they brought in a man who looked exactly like Salaka Madoupas. The man even spoke like Salaka and affected all his mannerisms. It was incredible, really incredible. It was like an awful nightmare."
"Did they have a man to impersonate you?" Erika asked.
"No, they did not have to. I am rarely seen, except by close business associates. They brought in a recorder and played several tapes of my voice that they had recorded without my knowledge at previous meetings. Stavros pointed a gun at my head and said he could kill me right there and nobody would know for a very long time. But, he said, I would live if I did not give them too much trouble. They needed me, he said, for further recordings and for putting letters and such into my own words and thoughts. So they put me aboard a private plane and abducted me to this Godforsaken place."
"Did Stavros tell you what he was going to do?" Erika asked, perplexed.
Minourkos grunted out a dry laugh. "He was quite candid. He said that they intended to overthrow the government of Greece in my name, that they would call upon my friends in the military and other fields by using the man who was impersonating my secretary to make phone calls and personal contacts. Because I have been a private person, nobody would think it unusual that I did not meet personally with them. And if someone insisted on seeing me, they might fly me to Athens and force me to meet with him and say things that they wanted me to say.
"They showed me another man who could forge my signature exactly. This man would write checks on my various accounts and spend my money for military coups that they were going to organize."
"Did he give you any details?" I asked.
"Mr. Stavros, whom I am ashamed to admit has Greek ancestry, spoke freely to me, both in Athens and here. He said his plan is divided into three parts. First, he intends to get rid of the ruling junta and place men in power who feel an allegiance to me. They will feel this allegiance not because they are friends, for most of them will not be, but because Stavros will have promised them power and glory in my name."
"Very clever," I remarked.
"Secondly, his plan will involve forcing these new generals and colonels to demand that I, Nikkor Minourkos, be named president with full power over the junta. Stavros indicated that I might be used for this part of the plan, since my privacy would have to be abandoned at that point That is, I would be used if it was clear that Stavros could trust me to keep quiet about what was really going on. If not, he would find another imposter, this time for me."
"It would work, too," Erika commented. "Very few people know your face well enough to detect a slight difference between your features and those of an imposter."
"Exactly," Minourkos said. "It's incredible that my pursuit of privacy has contributed to this horror. Anyway, the third phase of the plan would involve using me or the imposter as president of Greece for a short time, during which period I would appoint Stavros vice president He would be a citizen by then and his name would have been gradually introduced to the people of Greece. He would then be seen as the hero behind the coup. Then, announcing ill health, I would step down in favor of Stavros as president."
Minourkos fell silent "It's wild," I said. "What makes Stavros think that the Greeks will stand by and watch something like that happen?"
"Why not?" Minourkos asked, his face lined with fatigue. "Remember what happened in April, 1967, when the junta was formed? That was not a bloody coup, but it was a coup. The government of the king was overthrown by force. Many articles of the constitution were suspended by the junta's decree. It is ironic, is it not, that a man like this appears just when the constitution has been restored and when the junta has become more moderate and is setting up general elections for next year. If Stavros' plan to grab power succeeds, Greece could end up with a tyranny more complete than Hitler's or Stalin's."
Erika looked from Minourkos to me. "Then we must stop him, mustn't we?"
Minourkos studied Erika's face. "Yes. We must!" The stout Greek stood up and thrust his square chin forward. "This man is even using my family aga
inst my homeland. He boasts that my brother-in-law, General Vassilis Kriezotou, thinks I am behind this ugly plot and has thrown his support behind it because he thinks I want it. Yes, I will help you in any way I can. What do we do first?"
"We go to Athens," I said. "That's where we find and stop Stavros."
Six
Less than forty-eight hours later we arrived in the capital of Greece. I booked adjoining rooms in a small hotel called the Odeon at 42 Pireos, just a short distance from Omonia Square. The weather was balmy and a pleasant relief from the heat of Paracatu.
The newspapers in Athens were full of commentary on the quickly changing political scene. News had sifted back from Rhodesia that my friend Alexis Salomos had been killed, and speculation was rife. It was generally known that there had been an attempt on his life before he had left for Rhodesia. One paper in particular, however, had avoided any mention of the death of Salomos. It was also running regular editorials denouncing the leadership of the ruling junta, attacking a leading general or colonel in almost every issue. Salomos had mentioned to me that this publisher was unscrupulous and had been the first to support the original hard-line junta after the coup in 1967.
"It is quite clear that the publisher has been bought off with my money," Minourkos remarked, sitting on a reclining chair in my room on the sunny afternoon of our arrival. "And look at this headline in another paper: MINOURKOS DECRIES JUNTA COMMUNIST AFFILIATIONS. Mr. Stavros has been busy."
Erika took a cup of thick Greek coffee from a tray that had been brought to us and served it to Minourkos. He accepted it with a somber face. Erika took a cup herself and sat beside me on a short sofa.
"I just hope nobody has seen you yet," I said to Minourkos, "particularly one of his men. Your life wouldn't be worth a drachma if Stavros learned you were here in Athens."
"He will find out as soon as he contacts Paracatu," Minourkos reminded me.
"Yes, but that might not be for several days, if we're lucky. And even then he wouldn't know definitely that something was wrong without sending somebody there from Rio. That somebody would have to be a subordinate because Ubeda is dead."
"What do we do first, Nick?" Erika asked. "We can't just storm the penthouse the way we did the plantation. It will be too well protected."
"I could place a call to the penthouse," Minourkos suggested, "to see how they are handling contacts with outsiders. But they would recognize my voice."
I handed him a napkin from the tray. "Raise the tone of your voice and speak through this. Tell them you want to speak to yourself. When they refuse, ask for your secretary, Salaka Madoupas. Tell them you are a visiting newspaper editor from Salonika, and you would like a statement about Nikkor Minourkos' political ambitions."
Minourkos smiled at my plan, then he put the call through. He placed the napkin over his mouth and tried to change his voice. In a moment he was speaking to someone at the penthouse. He asked for Nikkor Minourkos, and then listened to their excuse. He asked to speak to Madoupas. There was more talk and he insisted. Then he was speaking to the man who was posing as Madoupas, an Athenian actor whose real name, Stavros had told Minourkos, was Yianis Tzanni. Minourkos asked the questions about himself and waited for the pat answers and then asked if he might make a date for a personal interview with Mr. Minourkos. He was refused, and the conversation was over. He hung up and looked at us.
"It is like a bad dream," he said. "It is as if I really am at the penthouse and Madoupas is answering the phone for me as he always did. They know my habits well. And this Tzanni's voice is exactly that of my dead friend Salaka."
"Who answered the phone first?" I asked.
"Some young man. He was not a Greek. Probably one of Stavros' hoodlums."
"It sounds as if they're well entrenched," Erika said.
"Yes, it does," I agreed. "With all of Athens thinking it's Nikkor Minourkos up there in that penthouse, it's a serious situation. Stavros may even have police protection up there. Or soldiers from his growing private army."
"If I just go to the police, or to the junta itself, and tell them what happened," Minourkos said, "they will have to believe me. Even if they think I have suddenly gone mad, they will be obligated to check out my story. They will then find out what has happened."
"It could be dangerous," Erika said.
"She's right," I agreed. "At this point, we don't know how many friends Stavros had made in his own name. Anyway, if we just throw this out into the open, we'll force Stavros to make a move — probably a big one. He might just decide to try a coup without your name behind it. He has a military group in readiness and a lot of ambitious military leaders around him who don't care who is behind a takeover. And even if he made a move and failed, there would be blood spilled. A lot of it. No, Mr. Minourkos. We're going to sneak up on Stavros. In my country, this is the part we call in-fighting. Erika here has orders to execute Stavros, and so do I. If our mission succeeds, that's exactly what will happen to him. If it fails the authorities will be much more civilized with him. And God help you if they can't stop him in time."
"All right, Mr. Carter," Minourkos said. "I put myself in your capable hands. How do we sneak up on Mr. Stavros?"
I smiled at Erika, and she returned it. "I think you mentioned that Stavros boasted about using one of your relatives, a brother-in-law named Kriezotou who's a general in the army?"
"Yes," Minourkos said. "He is not a strong man, I must say. He married my younger sister before I had made my fortune, and they have a fine marriage. But Vassilis would have remained at some lesser rank in the army if it had not been for my influence. He feels indebted to me, rightfully, for what he has in life. So it would be natural for him to go along with any scheme I would propose.
"Stavros found this out. He is a thorough man, Mr. Carter, a man not to be taken lightly. He must have made a tape of some kind to play to Vassilis on the telephone, and then sent the man posing as Salaka Madoupas, my secretary. The imposter must have then convinced Vassilis that I was depending on him."
"Do you know how Stavros may have used the general?"
"He hinted that Vassilis would be asked to organize and train a secret force of soldiers and to convince other military men to join the conspiracy."
"Yes," I mused. "Very neat. Does your brother-in-law live here in Athens?"
"He does," Minourkos said. "On the outskirts of the city to the north."
"Will you take us to him?" I asked.
"It will be my pleasure," Minourkos replied.
I called a cab, and we drove out to General Kriezotou's residence in the early evening. I made Minourkos wear a hat that covered part of his face until we got there. The general's house was a small mansion in a rich suburb of Athens, with a winding gravel drive to the house. I was impressed with what Minourkos could do for an ordinary man.
When the general met us at the door, Minourkos removed the hat. Kriezotou just stared for a very long moment. Then he threw his arms wide to embrace Minourkos.
"Nikkor!" he exclaimed, clasping Minourkos warmly. He was a tall, gray-haired man with kind of De Gaulle face and soft eyes. He was wearing a tan uniform with braid on the shoulders and ribbons strung across the front.
"Kali mera sas, Vassilis," Minourkos said warmly, returning the embrace. "Sigha, sigha. It is all right."
"It is so good for you to visit," Vassilis said. "Come. Come in." His gesture included all of us.
We stepped into a large hall with a winding staircase at its rear and urns decorating its walls. The general then led us into an oak-paneled library with thick carpeting and many soft leather chairs. We all sat down, and the general asked if we cared for a drink, which we declined. Minourkos introduced Erika and me by our last names only.
"This is a great shock, Nikkor," Kriezotou said. "I wish Anna were here. She is visiting her cousin in Piraeus."
"It is perhaps better this way, Vassilis," Minourkos said.
"Dhen katalave no," Kriezotou remarked. "Is everything all right with y
ou? You appear pale."
"I am fine," Minourkos answered. "Thanks to these people."
The general glanced at us. "Nikkor, all this has been so strange. Your refusing to see me when you started your — may I speak freely?"
"Yes, freely," Minourkos said.
"Well, I did not understand your asking help in such an important mission without a personal meeting. Frankly, I have been quite upset about all this. I am not convinced of the advisability of a…"
"Coup?" Minourkos completed the sentence.
Kriezotou glanced at us again. "Well, yes." He kneaded his big knuckles. "I have given instructions to the men at the special camps at Delphi and Mykonos, and I have persuaded Adelria and others that your new cause is just, but…"
"But you don't believe it yourself?"
Minourkos asked hopefully.
Kriezotou lowered his head. "Me sinhori te, Nikkor," he said. "I am sorry, but I do not think Greece needs another coup. I have done what you asked, but I have wanted to speak with you about all this, person to person, from the beginning those many weeks ago."
"Do not worry, Vassilis," Minourkos said in a soothing voice. "I do not wish a coup."
Kriezotou's face registered shock for the second time in a brief period. "No?" he said. "You have changed your mind?"
"Vassilis, I have to explain something to you, and I want you to listen carefully," Minourkos said.
Kriezotou sat back in a big chair and listened as Minourkos told him the whole story. Kriezotou did not interrupt once, although incredulity passed across his big face a few times. When Minourkos was finished, Kriezotou just sat there and shook his head slowly. He reached into a pocket and produced a string of worry beads and began thumbing them through his fingers.
"Incredible!" he finally said.
"But true," Minourkos said.
"General, we're here to stop this man for good, and we need your help. Only you can give us last minute inside information on Stavros," I said.
