Codename Xenophon

by Leo Kanaris

  ‘I did.’

  ‘Is it registered with the police?’

  Kotsis gave him a stern look. ‘It certainly is.’

  ‘Can I have the telephone number of your cousin?’

  ‘Of course. Have you got pen and paper?’

  George took down the number.

  ‘Call him in the evening. He’s out on the land during the day.’

  George shut his notebook. He felt the man was solid. No reluctance there. Little point going any further, but he would try one last question.

  ‘Since the murder was committed, someone has been at the firearms register and cut out a page. Do you know anyone in this neighbourhood who is capable of getting into the local station and tampering with the evidence in that way? Maybe a relative of one of the officers? Or a friend?’

  Kotsis looked blank.

  ‘Because whoever cut that page out is almost certainly the killer.’

  Kotsis nodded thoughtfully, but said no more.

  ‘Thank you,’ said George. ‘I won’t take up any more of your time.’

  Their last stop was the internet shop, CosmoWire, where they found the proprietor behind a glass partition separating him from a darkened room packed with computer terminals. At each of these sat two or three boys, their faces lit by the changing images on the screens. A strange, jumbled soundtrack of car engines, explosions, gunshots, groans and frenzied music strung an invisible mesh through the air, which was hot and rancid with adolescent sweat. The boys’ eyes were intently focussed on the games. Some were excited, others playing with a cold expertise that George found unsettling. The man in charge asked them what they wanted.

  ‘I’m looking for Manos Tasakos.’

  ‘What for?’

  ‘I need to ask him a few questions.’

  ‘About what?’

  ‘I’ll explain when I see him.’

  ‘Are you an inspector of some kind?’

  George gave him his card.

  ‘I see,’ said the man, handing back the card. ‘What do you want to know?’

  ‘Are you Mr Tasakos?’

  ‘I am.’

  ‘I understand you possess a rifle.’

  ‘No longer.’

  ‘What happened to it?’

  ‘I gave it away.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Four or five years ago.’

  ‘Do you remember the manufacturer’s name?’

  ‘Mauser. ‘

  ‘Old? New?’

  ‘At least fifty years old. Maybe older.’

  ‘What did you use it for?’

  ‘Shooting birds, targets… Normal things.’

  ‘Where were you on the night of March 25th this year?’

  The man reached for his mobile phone and started pressing buttons.

  ‘March 25th? In Athens all day.’

  ‘Did you stay the night?’

  ‘No. I came back on the last boat.’

  ‘What time was that?’

  ‘Seven? Something like that.’

  ‘What were you doing in Athens?’

  ‘Business.’

  ‘Did you meet people?’

  ‘Of course.’

  ‘People who could vouch for your presence there?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘What sort of business were you doing?’

  ‘Buying computers.’

  ‘For this place?’

  ‘No. Another one.’

  ‘Same kind of thing?’

  The man nodded. ‘An internet facility.’

  George gave him a sceptical look. ‘Is that what you call it?’

  ‘You have a problem with it?’

  ‘I don’t like to see kids stuck in front of computers.’

  ‘It’s the work-station of the future.’

  ‘I know. But children should be doing more wholesome things.’

  ‘They’re safe in here. With two parents at work all day, someone has to look after them.’

  ‘No doubt. But that’s not what I’m here to talk about.’

  ‘What are you here to talk about?’

  ‘Professor John Petrakis.’

  ‘Oh.’ The man’s expression changed. ‘That was a sad business.’

  ‘Sad indeed.’

  ‘Of course everyone knows who did it.’

  ‘Do they?’

  Tasakos glanced at Abbas. ‘You’ve heard of Colonel Varzalis?’ he said.

  ‘I have. I can’t see why he would do it.’

  ‘He’s lost his mind. No reason at all. Just ping! Dead man.’

  ‘I understand he’s a friend of yours.’

  ‘That’s true.’

  ‘Don’t you feel bad accusing him?’

  ‘I’m not accusing him. I’m just telling you what a lot of people are saying. If you didn’t hear it from me you’d hear it from someone else. And of course I feel bad. Only he’ll never be charged.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘He has connections. Right to the top. Even if they try him, and find him guilty, he’ll never serve a prison sentence because he’s old and ill.’

  Tasakos took a cigarette from a packet on his desk and lit it.

  ‘Can I get you a coffee?’

  George thanked him but said he must get back to Athens. They walked out through the thudding twilight of the shop into the street’s bright glare.

  ‘What do you think?’ asked Abbas as they took the harbour road.

  ‘How well do you know Tasakos?’

  ‘So-so.’

  ‘Weren’t you volunteers together?’

  ‘Yes. He’s a good man. Has a lot of worries, though. A difficult life.’

  ‘In what way?’

  ‘His wife’s a recluse, and very obese. The son’s not much better.’

  ‘Just one child?’

  ‘There’s another son in Germany. But he keeps his distance.’

  ‘He’s prickly about his business.’

  ‘You weren’t exactly diplomatic. And he gets a lot of criticism. No one likes to see kids under the spell of those violent games. Fantasy it may be, but it has an effect. It has to.’

  ‘Anyway,’ said George, ‘it’s irrelevant. He doesn’t own a gun, and he was in Athens all day. If all three men are telling the truth I’m no further forward.’

  ‘If!’

  ‘I now have just one day left.’

  ‘You need to see that forensic report.’

  ‘Damn right I do! And suppose it says the gun was a Mauser? We have two! How many of those are there on the island?’

  ‘Quite a few. The Germans had millions of them.’

  George thought about this. It didn’t help.

  ‘I’d better catch my boat,’ he said.

  18

  George reached home in the early evening. He was expecting his son Nick from London at ten, and wanted to tidy up before he arrived. The place was a mess. He gathered the old newspapers and magazines from the sitting room, stuffed the dirty clothes from the bedroom floor into a laundry basket, washed up the dirty plates in the kitchen, and went quickly round with a hoover and duster. His head was bursting. Abbas was right. He needed to slow down.

  Just after eight he received a message to say the flight was delayed by two hours. A bomb alert at Heathrow. ‘Don’t wait up, Dad. See you in the morning.’

  There was still work to be done. He took a can of beer from the fridge and opened up his laptop.

  The first thing he saw was an email from Pezas with the results of his research on Yerakas. He read it slowly, twice. Yerakas had built hotels, apartment complexes and marinas all over Greece, choosing his locations skilfully. The Aegina Palace seemed to be a rare error. He also had interests in shopping malls, golf courses, water supply and sewage treatment. There were ambitious plans for an ‘eco-apart-hotel’ to be built on a nature reserve, currently on hold because of the country’s debt crisis.

  ‘GOOD!’ Pezas had written alongside this last part.

  Yerakas was married, with two daughters and a
son. He also had a brother and a sister. The brother worked in Zurich in investment banking. The sister was married to a businessman in Athens. She had one son.

  George called Pezas. ‘Thanks for the report,’ he said. ‘Thorough as usual. But there’s a name missing.’

  ‘Which one?’

  ‘You say Yerakas has a sister married to a businessman in Athens. What’s his name?

  ‘Hell, I knew you’d ask. I didn’t get that.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I was interrupted, and couldn’t get back to my informant.’

  ‘Can you find out for me?’

  ‘Not right away.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I’m having drinks with a friend.’

  ‘After drinks?’

  ‘It’s a lady friend.’

  ‘You should have said! Call me in the morning.’

  He put down the phone, thinking with amusement of Pezas, one of the horniest men on the planet, having drinks with a ‘lady friend’. Still playing the field at forty-five. Still thinking of sex every three minutes. Tomorrow he would either be grinning with a conqueror’s pride or crippled with existential doubt. Did I move too fast? Am I losing my touch? Maybe she’s the other way? George had talked him down after a few such encounters. It was like being twenty again, with that feeling of half the human race enveloped in the deepest, most impenetrable, most beautiful mystery…

  He was hungry, and ordered kebabs from a takeaway. He tidied his desk while waiting. When the doorbell rang he opened up, gave the man his six euros, went back into the sitting room with a second can of beer from the fridge, and settled down to eat.

  He needed to think a little about the next few days. Nick was scheduled to go to Andros in the morning, and he wanted to go with him, but he also had to make his report to Petrakis. There would be no time to write it tomorrow. He would have to do it tonight, even if it was inconclusive, with crucial information missing. But that was the price Petrakis paid for being a shit and in a hurry.

  He was tired. In former days he would have lined up the beers, the cigarettes, the songs; lamp on, music on, typewriter loaded with paper and carbon. Then go at it like hell. Till any hour of the night. Till dawn if necessary. Now he just felt like going to bed.

  He crumpled the kebab box and dropped it in the bin. Then he pulled the ring on the can of beer, thought nostalgically of the Papastratos cigarettes he used to smoke, and opened the laptop.

  Two hours later, it was done. He printed the report, signed it, scanned it. He emailed the scan to Petrakis, and tucked the original into a folder on his desk. He stood up, arched his back, and checked his watch. Half past ten. Nick would be here at midnight. He wanted to be up to see him, not asleep on the sofa like an old man in front of the TV. He decided to go out for a stroll.

  19

  As soon as he got in he knew something was wrong. A smell of tobacco in the hallway, lights on all the way up the stairs. He ran up and found his door open. Dimitri stood on the landing looking appalled. Thieves had got in and pulled everything from his study shelves, emptied cupboards and drawers, flung books and papers across the floor.

  ‘Did you see anything?’ asked George.

  ‘I heard a few noises,’ said Dimitri. ‘I wanted to come and check, but Tasia wouldn’t let me.’

  ‘She was right.’

  ‘How did they get in?’

  George checked the door.

  ‘Probably a credit card. I didn’t double-lock.’

  Dimitri offered to help clear up. George said no, he could handle it. ‘Go to Tasia. You need to be with her.’

  He checked the other rooms. They were untouched. But the study was thoroughly ransacked. The laptop had gone from the desk. The old French wooden wine cases where he kept his cameras and audio equipment had been cleared. He checked the desk drawers. These had been searched, and a few items were missing: memory sticks, a portable hard drive, his Beretta. The files on the desk had been taken too.

  The doorbell rang.

  Nick was standing on the threshold next to a big suitcase. They embraced.

  Nick said, ‘You look shattered.’

  ‘I’m fine,’ said George. ‘How was the bomb scare in London?’

  ‘Very calm and British. It was nothing as it turned out.’

  Over his father’s shoulder Nick saw the study. ‘Hell, dad, what’s happened here?’

  ‘I’ve just had a break-in.’ George felt suddenly weak. ‘I need to call the police, make a list of stolen things…’

  ‘Do the list in the morning. You should rest now.’

  ‘You’re right,’ said George. ‘But let’s have a whisky first.’

  Over a glass of Talisker they talked. Nick spoke about his course, his friends, his girl, the rivers of beer that irrigate student life. He found it miraculous that people could study and pass exams with so much booze in their blood. ‘What’s the secret? They get drunk at night, then up the next morning, breakfast at eight, lectures at nine. Hung over, feeling like hell, but in there, like clockwork. It’s a system. And it runs very smoothly.’

  ‘While the Greek drinks only coffee and fights his way through chaos every day.’

  ‘And what a surprise, we’re in crisis.’

  ‘Maybe it’s the breakfast that does it,’ said George.

  ‘Breakfast, a cold climate, and thinking as a community.’

  ‘We invented that, for God’s sake, and we’ve forgotten it!’

  ‘Did we really?’ said Nick. ‘Isn’t it found in all human societies?’

  ‘Found and sometimes lost,’ said George pensively. He stared into his glass.

  ‘Let’s hope we can find it again,’ said Nick, raising his. ‘Cheers!’

  They drank to their hopes. ‘A lot will depend on your generation,’ said George. ‘You can see how it works in England. Bring it back here. Don’t compromise.’

  ‘I could say the same to you,’ said Nick. ‘You studied abroad, you saw it. What happened?’

  ‘That’s a damn good question,’ said George. ‘The answer is just one word: PASOK.’

  ‘Really? How about two words: New Democracy?’

  ‘OK, both parties are to blame. One sat complacently on the old order, the other broke it up and made things worse. But for me, PASOK was the killer. Andreas Papandreou was a clever man. Taught economics at Harvard, as you know. He wanted Greece to be a more equal society. He began well, helped the poor, built hospitals, said all the right things. Then the power went to his head. He bought votes with money from Europe, created the most bloated, obstructive bureaucracy on the planet, and nationalised the best of Greek industry, transforming it from a source of income and jobs to a drain on national resources. He poisoned this country! Wrecked the economy and destroyed all hope for the future in the space of ten years!’

  ‘And you expect us to fix it?’

  ‘No. Of course not. You can’t. Just don’t make it worse.’

  ‘That’s a hell of a legacy,’ said Nick. ‘I’m not sure I want it.’

  ‘It’s yours anyway,’ said George. ‘Make the best of it.’

  He poured another drink, adding a little water to the whisky.

  George asked what they were saying in London about the Greek crisis.

  ‘Oh, the usual stuff,’ said Nick. ‘The Greeks are lazy and corrupt. They spend all day in cafés and on the beach, and never pay their taxes. You hear it all the time. It’s pretty offensive.’

  ‘What about the economy?’

  ‘They say we’ll have to leave the euro. Devalue, make exports cheaper, fix the deficit.’

  ‘No one says that here,’ said George. ‘Even if it’s the obvious answer.’

  Next morning, sipping strong coffee after a late night, George tried to marshal his thoughts. All his working material was missing. Some archives too: three boxes of press cuttings, one of photos. All electronic storage devices, including the back-up copies he had made of essential files. His phone and diary, his weapons. He was g
oing to have to spend the next few days repairing the losses.

  Where should he begin?

  He remembered the colonel’s list of volunteers. He made a note to call Abbas, hoping he had made a copy.

  The telephone rang.

  ‘Mr Zafiris?’

  A voice he did not recognise.

  ‘Who’s speaking?’

  ‘How are you feeling?’

  ‘Who’s speaking?’

  ‘Stay out of other people’s business.’

  ‘Tell me who you are, so that…’

  The voice interrupted him. ‘There won’t be a second warning.’

  The line went dead.

  George swore. Threatening calls were standard. But these stupid shits could never see beyond their own noses. Whose business was he supposed to stay out of?

  He reached for the telephone directory, looked up Kakridis, Petrakis and Pezas, and jotted their numbers down. He rang Kakridis first, got an answering machine and left a message. Next he tried Petrakis.

  ‘Yes?’ The unmistakable, suspicion-filled voice.

  ‘Zafiris here. I have a question and I want a straight answer.’

  ‘Go ahead.’

  ‘Did you send someone to raid my flat last night?’

  ‘Why would I do that?’

  ‘Perhaps you might tell me.’

  ‘I did not.’

  ‘I’ve also had a threatening phone call.’

  ‘What do you want me to do about it?’

  ‘If it was you that instigated it…’

  ‘I don’t do that kind of thing.’

  ‘Or some agent of yours?’

  ‘Absolutely not!’

  George wondered what else he might ask. His head was hurting, his mind working slowly.

  ‘Is that all?’ asked Petrakis.

  ‘Well, since we’re talking, did you receive my email?’

  ‘I did, and I replied.’

  ‘My computer’s gone, so I haven’t read your reply.’

  The voice hesitated. ‘Wait one second. I’ll read it to you… Thank you for your report. I need to consider the matter carefully before committing any further expenditure. Please regard this investigation as closed and forward to my office all relevant paperwork.’

  ‘Closed?’ George could not hide his disappointment. ‘You really want me to stop?’

  ‘That is the usual meaning of the word.’