The Silver Stain am-4

by Paul Johnston

  ‘Here,’ Mikis said, handing the Colt to Mavros. ‘If they move, shoot them in the knee. At this range, they’ll lose a leg, but they’ll still have time to spill their guts.’

  Mesner and the shaven-headed Cretan sat stiller than statues, even when Mikis went round corners. Ten minutes later they were out of the urban sprawl and in another ten were bumping over a rough track between lines of olive trees. Mikis stopped the Jeep in a small clearing and went to the back of the vehicle. He returned with two spades.

  ‘Out!’ he said, hauling the Greek from the back seat.

  Mesner followed meekly, his eyes bulging.

  Mikis led them into the beam of the headlights and cut the tape from their wrists, laughing as they winced when he ripped the strips off. Mavros was to the rear, covering them with the pistol. Mikis gave each of the captives a spade and stepped back.

  ‘Start digging,’ he ordered, and then made the appropriate movement to enlighten Mesner. ‘Don’t look so surprised,’ he said, in English. ‘Your fucking soldiers made resistance fighters and civilians do this often enough in the war.’

  Mesner looked at Mavros for help, but all he got was a stony stare. He couldn’t speak as the gags were still in their mouths, but the sounds he made were piteous.

  ‘Dig!’ Mikis said, examining the clasp knife he had just opened. ‘Or I’ll cut your eyelids off.’

  They dug, flinging up spadefuls of dusty earth and small stones. After ten minutes, Mavros nodded to Mikis, who told the skinhead to stop.

  ‘You keep going,’ he said to the German. ‘That grave isn’t nearly deep enough for two.’

  A dark stain appeared in Mesner’s groin and he sobbed through the gag as he dug on, Mikis standing near him with the second spade in his hands.

  ‘On your knees,’ Mavros ordered the other man, lowering the pistol till it was pointed at his face. Then he leaned forward and pulled out the handkerchief.

  ‘Please,’ the Cretan gasped, ‘please, I’ll tell you. . anything you want to know.’

  ‘I have no doubt about that,’ Mavros said. ‘The question is, will it be enough to keep you out of that hole?’

  The skinhead looked over his shoulder at Mesner, who was up to his knees in the earth. ‘Anything,’ he pleaded. ‘Ask me anything.’

  ‘Name?’

  ‘Petros Lagoudhakis.’

  ‘Who told you to cut me?’

  The man’s head dropped. ‘They’ll kill me,’ he mumbled. ‘And then they’ll kill you.’

  ‘Wrong. I’ll kill you and then take my chances.’ He paused and looked over at Mikis. ‘Actually, we won’t kill you.’

  Relief flooded the skinhead’s face.

  ‘The weight of the sweet Cretan earth will.’

  The man’s head dropped again. ‘Roufos,’ he muttered. ‘Tryfon Roufos.’

  Mavros hadn’t been expecting the antiquities dealer to be so directly involved. ‘No one else?’ he asked, thinking of David Waggoner.

  ‘No.’

  ‘How did Roufos find you?’

  ‘He. . he’s involved in our organization. He gives money.’

  That was less of a surprise. Tryfon Roufos was exactly the kind of slimeball who would use far-right crazies to do his dirty work — he probably agreed with their vile ideology as well.

  ‘And did he give you a reason?’

  The skinhead looked up. ‘Didn’t need one. I was in the Black Eagle when you and your heavy caused chaos the other night. We’ve been looking for you ever since.’

  ‘Where’s Roufos staying?’

  ‘Don’t know.’ The defeated tone convinced Mavros he was telling the truth.

  ‘How does he contact you?’

  ‘From public phones.’

  The sleazy Athenian knew how to handle himself, Mavros thought. Then he wondered about his captive’s background.

  ‘Where are you from?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘You heard me.’

  ‘Tavronitis.’

  Mikis looked over. ‘It’s a village near Maleme.’

  ‘Know anyone from Kornaria?’

  The man’s eyes widened. ‘You must be joking. I’ve never been near the place. Those people are fucking insane.’

  ‘Even by your standards, eh?’

  ‘Hey, they kill people.’

  Mavros leaned close. ‘While what you do is get your goons to run a knife across my throat. Miki, this piece of shit is ready to start digging again. Bring the German over here.’

  Mesner was dragged across and his gag removed, while the other sodden handkerchief was reinserted into the skinhead’s mouth.

  ‘So, Oskar,’ Mavros said to the kneeling man, in English. ‘What have you got to say for yourself?’

  ‘Please, I don’t know anything about what they did to you.’

  Mavros brought the Colt’s muzzle up to the German’s forehead. ‘Are you sure about that?’

  ‘Well. . well, I heard someone was going to teach you a lesson, but I wasn’t involved.’

  ‘Uh-huh. And who was that someone?’

  ‘The person Petros named.’

  ‘Tryfon Roufos the antiquities dealer?’

  Mesner was shaking. ‘I. . I know who he is, but I’ve never met him.’

  ‘You haven’t talked to him about your grandfather’s coin collection on the telephone, by any chance?’

  ‘I. . yes, I have.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Last week.’

  ‘You know he’s on Crete?’

  ‘Ye. . yes.’

  Mavros reckoned he was being told the truth.

  ‘So the thirty coins you stole weren’t anything to do with your grandfather’s actions, but a taster for Roufos?’

  Mesner scowled. ‘You screwed that up.’

  ‘Had a visit from Inspector Margaritis yet?’

  ‘What?’

  ‘There’s a chance your grandfather was murdered. Where were you this afternoon?’

  Oskar Mesner shook his head violently. ‘I. . I didn’t do it. I was in Rethymno.’

  ‘Hope you’ve got some witnesses.’

  ‘Yes, yes, I have. I was with some of the German boys.’

  Mavros laughed. ‘They’ll be convincing.’

  ‘But I thought my grandfather killed himself.’

  ‘I don’t think so, though having a grandson like you could have driven him to it. Three more questions. Do you know David Waggoner?’

  ‘Of course not. I read one of his books. That man hates Germans.’

  Mavros believed him. ‘How about Maria Kondos?’

  ‘From the film crew? I saw a missing person sign about her.’

  Again, Mavros didn’t catch any hint of a lie. ‘And, last but not least, have you ever been to Kornaria?’

  ‘The drug-growing village? No. I heard they’re all madmen up there.’

  Mavros nodded. ‘Miki,’ he called, ‘give this shithead his spade back.’

  ‘No, please,’ Mesner stammered. ‘There’s something else I can tell you. The film director, Luke Jannet. A friend of mine buys dope from a guy from Kornaria. He told him that Jannet’s family was originally from the village.’

  Mavros took a step back and lowered the pistol. That was a surprise. Could it be that the director’s interest in Maria Kondos was more complicated than he had assumed? After all, he had come to Athens in person to hire him.

  ‘Can we stop now?’ Lagoudhakis asked, breathing heavily. He was up to his thighs in the hole.

  ‘Tape up their hands,’ Mavros said to Mikis, then gave the skinhead a tight smile. ‘And that asshole’s mouth. I want their mobiles as well.’

  Mikis came back with the spades and phones.

  ‘How long will it take them to get back to civilization?’ Mavros asked as the Jeep was turned round.

  ‘If they follow us, an hour or so.’

  ‘Maybe we should have tied them to a tree.’

  ‘Showing mercy often has its own rewards,’ the Cretan said. ‘That’s
what my grandfather said.’

  ‘The shepherd?’

  ‘No, the one on my mother’s side, but I don’t think he followed his own advice very often — he was an andartis.’

  Mavros shrank down in his seat as the adrenaline ebbed away. He wasn’t a violent man, but Crete seemed to be turning him into one. Where would it end?

  He decided to spend the night in Nondas’s place in Chania. Although he didn’t have his laptop with him, there was a desktop computer in the flat.

  ‘You want me to stay with you?’ Mikis asked, as he pulled up at the end of the street.

  ‘Haven’t you got a woman waiting?’

  The Cretan smiled. ‘Possibly.’

  ‘All right, so go and do your thing. I’ll call you in the morning.’

  ‘Don’t open the door to any strange people. Sure you don’t want to take the Colt?’

  ‘Definitely not. There’s a decent selection of kitchen knives up there. Goodnight — and thanks for your help.’

  ‘A pleasure. Pity we didn’t bury those scumbags though.’ Mikis waited until Mavros opened the street door and then waved as he drove off.

  Logging on, Mavros reflected on how lucky he had been to find Mikis — he had local knowledge and connections, as well as the local propensity for strong arm tactics. He’d have to make sure he was suitably recompensed when it was all over. Not that he was at all clear where the latest information was going to lead.

  He found numerous sites with information about Luke Jannet — his films, his brief affairs with actresses, his ranch in northern California, but nothing about a Greek family background. He thought about the surname. There was no single letter corresponding to the ‘j’ sound in Greek — it was formed by the pairing of ‘t’ and ‘z’. He tried to think of names beginning ‘Tzannet’ and one immediately came to mind: there had been a politician who briefly served as prime minister in the late 80s called Tzanis Tzannetakis, although he hadn’t been a Cretan. The ‘-akis’ suffix was, however, a standard one on the island.

  He typed the surname into a search engine, ignoring all the references to the politician, who had been imprisoned by the Junta and was not the standard money-and-headline-grabbing piece of shit. There was nothing relevant in the first ten pages, after which more random information started to appear. He added the first name ‘Luke’ to the surname and immediately got a hit — as well as a frisson that ran all the way up his spine.

  The site was that of the Sons of Daedalus, Florida Division, a registered charity run by Americans of Cretan origin. On the page recording events in 1991, there was a photograph of major benefactors, the Tzannetakis family — father Eugene — ‘owner of a well-known automobile parts supply chain’ — mother Koula, son Luke — ‘an up-and-coming film director’ — and daughter Rosa. Luke Jannet was a younger version of his current self, his hair in a ponytail even then. It was Rosa who drew his attention most. Although her face was less hard and her body less fleshy, there was no question that she was the woman who was now known as Rosie Yellenberg. Another search revealed that she had married a Hollywood producer called Pete and that the marriage had ended in divorce four years ago; there had been no children.

  Mavros sat back in his chair. So Luke and his producer were siblings. Was that significant? It was certainly suggestive that they hadn’t made their family status clear to him, though maybe some of the film crew knew — as it was that they hadn’t declared their Cretan background, though it was quite possible they didn’t speak the language and had no particular interest in their heritage. Then again, they had chosen to make a film on the island.

  He typed in Eugene Tzannetakis and hit the motherlode on the first page. According to the Florida Sun-Times, the car parts dealer had been arrested in 1998 on suspicion of using his chain of stores to facilitate the trafficking of drugs. His family was said to be from a mountain village in Crete called Kornaria, and Michael ‘the Bat’ Kondoyannis was cited as one of his associates. The lawyers had fought hard, citing his charitable work and donations, and he was sentenced to only eight years, partly because the FBI had mishandled some of the evidence.

  So what exactly was going on here? Luke Jannet and his sister were descended from a Kornaria family and their father was a jailed drug trafficker. Maria Kondos’s father, who was also from Kornaria, had been a full-on mobster based in Florida before being convicted of involvement in the drugs trade. Why had Maria been in the village and what had happened to her? And where was she now?

  Mavros called the Fat Man.

  ‘What time do you call this, demi-Scot?’

  ‘Time for you to tell me what you found out about Kondoyannis.’

  ‘Oh, that,’ Yiorgos said, dismissively. ‘I sent you an email. Remember those?’

  Mavros kicked himself for not having checked. Now the Fat Man was one up on him. He went to his inbox.

  ‘I don’t know, I do the work but he just ignores it.’

  ‘Shut up, Yiorgo, I’m reading.’ He ran his eye down the page, which was a series of extracts from Cretan and Athenian newspapers, mostly dated from the time of the gangster’s arrest.

  ‘He’s reading, is he?’ the Fat Man continued. ‘There was me thinking he was running around the Great Island waving a huge great pistol.’

  ‘I was actually.’

  ‘Really?’ Yiorgos’s tone changed instantly. ‘Did you shoot someone? What kind is it?’

  ‘No, and a Colt Double Eagle.’

  ‘A forty-five?’ The Fat Man had always been fascinated by firearms, mainly because he’d never been allowed to use one by the Party.

  ‘Yes, a forty-five. Will you let me read this?’

  ‘I’ll save you the bother. The only thing linking “the Bat” to Crete is a trip he made there in 1995. He was given a hero’s welcome in Kornaria.’

  ‘What a surprise.’

  ‘During which he met that well-known agent of imperialism David Waggoner.’ The Fat Man mangled the Englishman’s surname with relish.

  Mavros stared at the extract, which said that Kondoyannis had visited the house of the ‘wartime British commander’, along with the Mayor, Vasilios Dhrakakis.

  ‘Are you still awake?’ Yiorgos demanded.

  ‘What? Of course I’m awake. Thanks, Fat Man, this is useful.’

  ‘No chance of you telling me in what way?’

  ‘Er, no. Talk to you tomorrow.’ He knew his reticence would drive his friend to distraction.

  Too bad. He was even more convinced that everything he was doing on Crete was linked, but he couldn’t see exactly how. The idea that the highly decorated former SOE man had got involved in the international drugs trade was surprisingly easy to swallow.

  Then his mobile rang. Niki’s number was on the screen. He answered with apprehension.

  EIGHTEEN

  As it turned out, Niki didn’t give him a hard time.

  ‘Still busy?’ she asked pleasantly.

  ‘Even more than before,’ Mavros replied, fingering the dressing on his neck. When she saw that, he’d get several earfuls. ‘But I hope to be home in a day or two.’

  ‘Don’t worry,’ Niki said. ‘I’m busy too.’

  ‘Everything all right?’ he asked, remembering how disaffected she’d been.

  ‘Oh, the usual stuff, but I can cope. See you soon, my love.’

  To his surprise, she rang off. He looked at the phone and tried to work out what lay beneath her strangely buoyant tone, then gave up. He swallowed a couple more of the painkillers, had a shower with a towel round his neck, and collapsed into a dreamless sleep. .

  . . until the early dawn, when he heard the bell of a nearby church and found himself in the limbo between wakefulness and oblivion. Faces flickered before him — David Waggoner’s with its craggy features; Rudolf Kersten’s contorted death mask; Hildegard’s soft skin; and his father, eyes flashing and lips set in an unmoving smile. Then Waggoner reappeared, leaning forward avidly as he had been when he was with Tryfon Roufos in the taverna. Wa
ggoner, that was what Spyros was telling him — concentrate on the SOE man, who spread lies about me. .

  Mavros sat up with a start. Waggoner had told him he had a place in Chania. With the filming in progress, it seemed likely he would be staying there. Early morning would be the perfect time to catch him unawares. But how to find where he was? The obvious thing would have been to call Rosie Yellenberg, aka Tzannetaki, but he couldn’t trust her. There was one person on the production crew he thought was reliable.

  ‘Alice Quincy.’ The voice was faint and full of sleep.

  ‘Alex Mavros. Sorry it’s so early, but I really need to find David Waggoner.’

  ‘What?’ the young woman mumbled. ‘I don’t understand.’

  ‘You don’t have to understand, Alice. It’s to do with Maria Kondos going missing again. He may have seen her.’ Phrasing the untruth that way reduced his guilt.

  ‘Ah, right. Hang on.’ He heard her fingers fly across a keyboard.

  ‘Sarpaki Fourteen,’ she said. ‘Do you want the phone number?’

  ‘Yes.’ He entered it into his mobile’s memory. ‘Thanks, Alice. Could you do me a favour? My talking to him is a bit sensitive. Could you keep this between us?’

  ‘Oh. OK.’

  He cut the connection before she could ask more, then dressed quickly, pulling on a classy striped shirt of his brother-in-law’s that flapped about his thin frame.

  Odhos Sarpaki was only a few minutes’ walk away. Mavros thought about calling Mikis in as back-up, but decided he could handle the old soldier on his own. He’d also borrowed one of Nondas’s kitchen knives, one with a worn handle but a very keen edge. He reconsidered ringing Waggoner first, but decided warning him wasn’t a good idea. Not for nothing did the police make house raids in the early morning — catch the bad people at their most befuddled.

  A seagull took off from the deserted street when he turned the corner, leaving behind a partially consumed chicken carcass. The scent from the flowers on the plants hanging from the wooden balconies covered the whiff of decay. Mavros found number fourteen, which had Waggoner’s name neatly printed on a card, and pressed the bell for over half a minute. Then he started pounding on the door.

  ‘Who is it?’ came a shocked voice from behind the door, in Greek.