When in Greece

by Emma Lathen

  “They’re having a revolution,” said Cliff Leonard briefly.

  Startled, Ken stared at him.

  “The way I get it,” said Leonard, “the Army has taken over. They’ve sealed off Athens. I just tried to phone and that’s cut. One of my boys says they’ve thrown most of Parliament into jail.”

  He then went to a battered case and began pawing through blueprints.

  Ken was impressed by this calm and tried to emulate it. “And what do we do?” he asked.

  Leonard shrugged.

  “It’s none of our business. We finish this report. Might as well get it out of the way.”

  Privately, Ken thought this might be too tame a way to greet a revolution but, since he could think of nothing else, agreed. For several hours, he and Leonard double-checked specifications. By three o’clock that afternoon, he was coming around to Leonard’s approach. Not a soul had disturbed the two men. Instead of the endless stream of Greek clerks and officials, of lawyers and civil servants, there was only empty and echoing silence.

  “Makes it easier to get some work done,” said Leonard. “Oh, oh!”

  Ken looked up. There, in the doorway, looking curiously up and down was Stavros Backarias.

  Ken rose to greet him since Backarias was the representative of the Ministry of the Interior with whom he had had most of his dealings. To his surprise Backarias broke into fluent apologies, murmured something about an appointment, and then precipitately fled.

  Leonard grinned sardonically and suggested adjourning to his quarters down the road.

  “Maybe we’d better wait,” Ken began. “Backarias may want to talk to us.”

  “I’ve got a case of beer,” said Leonard, hoisting himself to his feet. “And today Backarias won’t want to talk.”

  The first three beers were washed down with a pungent description of the problems faced by the field engineer—from the impossibility of working with foreigners to the gross ignorance of American employers sitting back home. In fact that third beer might have been the last if Nicolls had not made a discovery. Cliff Leonard was exclusively interested in coordinates and coefficients. The domestic problem of his host country bored him.

  He was virtually illiterate in the larger issues of foreign affairs. But his previous tours of duty had included Africa, the Caribbean, and the Middle East. Willy-nilly he had become a connoisseur of political upheavals. The National Radical Union and the Center Union party were nothing to him. He was, however, very practiced on the street-corner aspects of the situation.

  “Today everybody stays home,” he said. “If this take-over runs into resistance, then there’s trouble. Maybe here, maybe some place else. No one can tell.”

  “And they think they’re safer at home?”

  “Well what do you suppose?” Leonard asked. “If there was any real showdown, the Hellenus project would be one of the first targets in the north of Greece. I’d be surprised if there isn’t a tank column up there by now.”

  “But you went to the office today,” Nicolls objected.

  Leonard grinned as he backhanded blindly behind his chair for a fresh beer. “Oh, I don’t worry about the first column. It’s when a second column rolls up with different ideas that the party gets rough.”

  Silently Ken brooded into his glass. Then he recalled their one visitor that day. “Stavros Backarias came to the office,” he pointed out. “Was he operating on the two-column principle?”

  “Oh, no. Backarias is different. The rank and file stay home. But Backarias is in the ministry. He’s a big shot. And big shots are all running around trying to find out whether they’re in or out. It makes a real difference to them who’s behind this rumble.”

  For the first time, Nicolls realized that the coup might make a real difference to him too. He had worked with Backarias for almost two weeks now and finally got on some sort of terms with him. He did not want to have to start afresh with someone else. He said as much.

  “You’ll probably know by tomorrow,” Leonard shrugged. “If there’s no shooting today, everybody will come back to work. Out of curiosity to see who’s running the show if nothing else.”

  Leonard’s prediction proved accurate. On the next morning, April 22, Ken found the compound boasting its normal complement of humanity, in fact more than its usual complement. The guards at the lodge had been reinforced by the military in the shape of three soldiers at the gate and a single tank in the road outside.

  This display of armed might in no way affected the usual entrance procedure and Ken was passed through with due geniality. Perversely now that there was no obstacle to performing the tasks scheduled for the day before, Ken no longer felt like work. What he wanted was an explanation of the political situation. But although most of the employees in the administration building spoke English, they showed no inclination to exchange views with an unknown foreigner in the shadow of the military.

  By early afternoon when rumor reported that two union men had been arrested at the project during lunch hour, there were long un-Greek silences. Ken learned only that a military junta headed by a Colonel George Papadopoulos was in charge of the country and that the junta had issued a royal decree in the name of King Constantine, but that nothing had as yet been heard from the young monarch himself.

  This information, meager as it was by Wall Street standards, represented the total harvest. Not surprisingly, Nicolls ended up accomplishing more than he expected to. Before he could become virtuous on the subject, a line to the outside world arrived with the return of Backarias. The ministry man carried himself with a muted assurance which evoked one expert glance from Cliff Leonard and then the whispered appraisal: “He’s still in, but he hasn’t gone up.”

  Leonard’s standards were too high. For most people, still being in 36 hours after a military coup is enough. Backarias at least was pleased enough to abandon the customary stiffness of a senior civil servant representing his Minister. He became positively affable. He was as unwilling as everyone else to discuss the broader implications of the situation. He was, however, willing to expand on domestic detail.

  “Yes, Athens remains sealed off,” he replied to Nicolls’ inquiry. “The telephone exchanges are still reserving trunk lines for government priority calls. But I understand that the railroads at least will be running tomorrow. No doubt you will wish to return to Athens when we have gone through these financial reports.”

  Ken agreed that he should return now that the task which had brought him to Hellenus was approaching its end. Tact made him refrain from expressing his real reason. He wanted to get some information about how the coup affected the future plans of the Sloan, preferably from the home office, at least from the foreign colony of financiers in the capital. Greece, he recalled, was an associate in the Common Market, which would bring every Western European banker into the picture.

  He need not have bothered with his explanation. Backarias, a born Athenian, assumed that anybody in his right mind would, at all times and under all conditions, wish to leave the provinces for Athens.

  “Yes, we must consider what is necessary in order to get you back,” he murmured, weighing the pros and cons to himself. “Today I think is out of the question. And if you permit, I would like to spend the evening with these projected capital requirements you have formulated. But tomorrow, if travel is permitted at all, we should be able to arrange something. If necessary, you understand, I can make a few calls.”

  Ken expressed profound gratitude; Backarias produced stately disclaimers of any service. They parted, each satisfied that he had upheld national honor. Cliff Leonard, a skeptical spectator, was critical. All this unnecessary formality was, in his opinion, a cowardly truckling to outmoded standards and alien values.

  “Still, you’ve got the magic touch, boy,” he admitted. “Catch Backarias going out of his way to do me a favor.”

  When you have made heavy inroads on a man’s liquor supply, you cannot very well tell him that his open contempt for all foreigners, all
bureaucrats, and all non-engineers is unlikely to win extraordinary courtesies from the Bachariases of this world.

  “I expect he’s just as glad to get rid of me,” Ken said mildly. “His ministry would really like to have us deal with them in Athens and let them do the field work.”

  “Well,” said Leonard disapprovingly, “if you’re so hot on being buddy-buddy with the Ministry, why not do things that way?”

  Ken stiffened slightly. “The Sloan,” he said at his evenest, “likes to see where its money is going.”

  Surprisingly this made an immediate hit with Leonard. He launched into a story about a project in Central Africa which had inspired lavish support from both the Soviet Union and the United States for over two years before the discovery that it was more than inaccessible; it was fictitious.

  On this note Ken ended the day, dimly aware that one of his future difficulties was going to be charting a middle course between Backarias and Cliff Leonard.

  By the next morning it developed that Bacharias was steering an uneasy course himself. He had spent the evening as planned and, much as he disliked raising objections, he very much feared that one of Ken’s figures was unacceptable.

  This was scarcely surprising. In the course of 18 months Backarias had not once failed to overcome his dislike of objections when presented with a report of any kind. Understandably, it was now house policy at the Sloan to provide one red herring in every report. This sleeper was carefully designed to permit a specious defense which could, in exchange for acceptance of the rest of the document, be graciously waived.

  But Backarias, to balance obstructionism in one area, was cooperating wholeheartedly in another. He hurled himself at the telephone. To Ken’s untutored ear, the ensuing conversations sounded as if they began with a threat to assassinate the telephone operator and then unwound on an increasingly menacing note. At the end of two hours, long after Ken had adjusted his red herring, Backarias cradled the phone and patted his lips delicately with his handkerchief.

  “Good!” he said briskly in tones of one who had just completed a normal business transaction. “The schedule arranges itself very well. The Athens Express will run tonight. They are holding a ticket for you. I myself am spending the evening in Salonika so I can drive you to the station. You will be in Athens tomorrow morning without any inconvenience at all.”

  He was singing a different tune at seven-thirty that evening: “I am afraid,” he said dubiously, “I am afraid you will not have a very comfortable trip.”

  And that thought Ken silently as he looked around the station, was the understatement of the year.

  Chapter 3

  Dragon’s Teeth

  At just about the same time, John Putnam Thatcher was far from comfortable himself. Trinkam and Bowman were again in conference in his office. It was still raining. But these were not the factors ruffling his equanimity. He was on the phone to Mrs. Nicolls.

  “. . . yes, of course, Jane. Ken will be in touch as soon as the lines are open,” said Thatcher. “No, no reason to worry,” said Thatcher. “We’re expecting the phones to be working again any minute. And according to the latest reports, there has been absolutely no violence. Whatever you may say about their social philosophy, these Greek colonels have been efficient. I understand, of course, that they have simply used NATO plans . . . what was that?”

  The phone spoke and Thatcher cast Charlie—who should have been doing this—a look of reproof. Charlie was smug. He claimed he lacked the proper touch with wives. Actually, they frightened him.

  “Oh, it’s quite simple, Jane,” said Thatcher at length. “The center coalition was expected to win next month’s election. So the Army has clapped everybody into jail and declared themselves the winners. What? Oh, yes, yes. Disgraceful. Of course, the Greeks have spared themselves campaign speeches, which is something. What? No, this is purely internal. All Americans are safe. No, Jane, you are thinking of several other countries. No one has stormed the U.S. Embassy.”

  He rounded off this conversation in a soothing vein but, as soon as the call was concluded, his tone hardened.

  “Jane Nicolls getting worried?” Charlie asked solicitously.

  Thatcher glared at him. “Not at all. She has simply been unfavorably impressed by these newspaper stories.”

  Their tenor was not calculated to cheer; after weighing the annoyance and uncertainty inherent in the democratic process, the Army had decided that duty demanded suspension of the Greek constitution, removal of malcontents from the public view, and purification of Greek life.

  Not even American journalists found it difficult to follow these thought processes as explained by the junta. Not, the colonels hastened to add, that purification of Greek life should be interpreted as antagonism to American tourists, American investment, and American military assistance. Good heavens, no! Greek-American friendship must continue . . . .

  All this was enough for journalists, for political analysts, and for concerned wives. The Sloan, predictably, wanted harder facts, particularly about the immediate outlook for Hellenus. Two years and several million dollars had already been committed. The Sloan wanted assurance that its $36 million was not going to be purified out from under it.

  “It’s a shame this got dumped in Nicolls’ lap,” said Thatcher mildly. Charlie, he well knew, would have been in contact with New York if he had had to swim the Hellespont to get to a phone. But, Thatcher reminded himself, it takes years of seasoning to produce a Trinkam. And it was unreasonable to feel irate because a revolution that had caught Greece, NATO, Western Europe, and the CIA off guard had not been pinpointed by the Sloan’s research staff. “But in the meantime, let’s see what we’ve got.”

  “It could be worse, John,” Trinkam reported. “The Ambassador has already made a formal representation. The new Minister of the Interior, as well as Colonel Patakos, has assured him that the new regime welcomes Hellenus ‘and will continue to cooperate in every way possible.”

  “What is that assurance worth?” asked Thatcher.

  Charlie thought for a moment. “As far as it goes, it should be O.K. These colonels don’t represent the sophisticated rightists of Greece. Oh, they’re conservatives, all right, and they want to perpetuate the past. They’re used to a few rich men running the country, and everybody else poor and respectful. They don’t like change. . . .”

  Walter Bowman leaned forward. “Look, Charlie, I don’t know anything about Greece, but I would have thought that a huge power and development project would be the last thing they’d want. After all, nothing upsets the status quo more than a big shot of industrial growth. You know, the maids would rather work in factories, the lower classes start buying cars, people put housing developments in picturesque old villages. That always burns up the old guard. Everywhere.”

  Thatcher was amused by this condensed, but accurate, view of the social consequences of economic development. “It’s called Americanization, Walter,” he pointed out. “Everybody hates it—everybody who has nothing to gain.”

  Charlie agreed. “Sure,” he said. “But you’re forgetting two things. Until it happens to them, every country thinks it’s got built-in immunization. Their people could never act like Americans. They like being maids. Remember, Greece is damned poor. They haven’t had any economic miracle yet. These military types don’t really know what’s coming. They think they can raise the standard of living without changing the social structure. They’re pretty unimaginative. In fact, you wouldn’t believe . . . .”

  “Oh, yes, I would,” Thatcher cut in. “What’s your second point?”

  “The colonels are hysterically anti-communist,” said Charlie. “They see a red menace in every suggestion of change—unionization, social security, an independent parliament. It’s like McCarthyism to the nth degree. So naturally they look on the United States as their ally. I think they’ll break their neck to keep Hellenus going. And more important, to keep American participation.”

  “Ah!” Walter Bowman pounce
d. “Because that’s the main point. It’s not going to do us much good if they decide to keep the Hellenus development, but expropriate our interest.”

  “I don’t think so, but,” Charlie shrugged, “we’ll know better in a couple of weeks.”

  “That may be too late,” Thatcher said grimly. He drummed his fingers on the table for a moment. “I wish to God they’d waited a month or two for their revolution. It couldn’t come at a worse time for us.”

  “Yes,” Charlie nodded. “A year ago would have been even better.”

  Bowman looked confused. “I don’t follow that.”

  “It’s simple, Walter. A year ago, they needed the Sloan’s assistance desperately to get the pilot project off the ground. The international agencies decided to hold back money until the Sloan and Paul Makris really got the project started. Now the pilot program has gone well, almost spectacularly well. In two weeks we’re going to negotiate our participation in the final program.”

  “If we’d already negotiated it and the consortium had agreed before this takeover, then the new Greek Government could get rid of us only by breaking faith with everybody—the World Bank, the Agency for International Development, and the others. Instead, look where we are! They could freeze us out without causing an international stink, and they could find other backers to take our place.”

  “Christ!” Walter Bowman was thinking of that 36 million dollars. “Do you think there’s any chance they’ll try it?”

  “I hope not, but I’d feel a lot happier if we got some kind of report from Ken,” Trinkam admitted. “If you don’t mind, I think I’ll get along and find out when we can expect some life from the Athens exchange.”

  Two hours later, he was back and his report was not reassuring. He had talked with several agencies in Washington and with the New York office of Paul Makris & Son.

  “They’ve all heard from their people in Greece.”