The Greek Key (29 page)

'Not as far as I know,' Anton replied. He hurried on. That is why I returned here quickly. They were hunting for the killer.'

'And why should they think it was you?' demanded Dimitrios.

Anton hesitated again, looking at Petros. The old man frowned. It was a good question. 'Answer Dimitrios,' he ordered.

'I happened to be riding on a different part of the moor when he was killed,' Anton replied. 'Watching the homes of the three men who were the commandos.'

'I see.' Petros frowned and Anton shuffled his feet.

The old man turned on the two brothers, determined to humiliate them, to exert his authority. 'Now, tell us what a mess you made of things on Siros today. Describe in detail. Anton should know what fools his nephews can be . . .'

Petros sat staring into the distance while Dimitrios recalled the day's events. It was when he came to describe their visit to the home of Sarantis, the archaeologist, that he transferred his gaze to Dimitrios who seemed uncomfortable.

'Constantine,' he broke in suddenly, 'do you agree with all that Dimitrios has said?'

'Yes.' The more passive brother paused. 'We tried to make him talk, to tell us what he knew about where Andreas died. We broke his wrist, then his arm. The old fool slipped on the polished floor, fell over backwards and cracked his skull on the tiles.'

'Go on.'

'We decided to leave quickly aboard the chopper. We knew you would not want us to be tangled up with a police investigation . . .'

'So, you leave in the kitchen the cutlery and things you used to eat a quick meal. With your fingerprints on them, of course.'

'No, Petros! We wiped everything clean. Knives, the glasses. We would have put them away but we were afraid someone would arrive.'

'You ate when you first questioned him, then took him into the living room to apply more pressure?'

That is how it happened.'

'I wonder whether to believe you.' He was silent for a moment. 'And these two Englishmen Christina reported on - Newman and Marler. You fouled that up as well. No information from Sarantis.' He raised his voice to a shout. 'Do I have to be everywhere to make sure you do the right thing? All of you, get out of my sight. No, wait!

Christina has disappeared. Last seen with those English.' His tone was venomous. 'Tomorrow you go to Athens, find her. Do not let her see you. Follow her and tell me what she does, where she goes. Later I decide what to do about her. Now, go! Prepare the meal. If you can do that properly . . .'

Petros sat alone on the veranda, a grim smile of satisfaction on his lined face. Frequently it was necessary to crack the whip to remind his family who was the chief. He looked up as Anton appeared and spoke, his voice low.

'While I have been away. Papa, has anyone been seen near the silver mine?'

'No.' He smiled bleakly. 'You worry too much. Leave me alone. I have to think.'

Despite the mild rebuke, Petros approved: it showed Anton was using his brain. At least one of the litter had turned out well. Odd it should be his second wife's only son. The wife who had died from overwork like the first -driven on by Petros' insistence they run the farm. Early in Anton's childhood Petros had realized he was the bright one. How he had scrimped and saved to educate the boy.

While Dimitrios and Constantine had worked in the fields, Anton had been sent to a select school near Berne in Switzerland - away from the fleshpots of Athens. A school where discipline was strong, where he had learned to speak English and German.

But Petros had taken the precaution of bringing him home during the holidays for Petros' own kind of discipline. He had hammered into the boy's head that his half-brothers, Andreas and Stephen, had been murdered'- that the family must take their revenge. A cloud of poisonous hatred hung over Devil's Valley.

It had been a long struggle. First the Civil War from 1946 to 1949 between the Communists and the anti-Communists. Breaking out soon after World War Two had ended, it had gone on until the Communist guerrillas were defeated. So many wasted years,

Only recently had Petros been able to devote all his efforts to his vendetta. He had reached the stage where he was quite unable to realize it had become an obsession, filling his every waking moment, A stray thought crossed his mind. The Communists.

Why - after all these years - had the Russian, Oleg Savinkov, reappeared in Athens? He was one of the old school, a Stalinist. And the new man, Gorbachev, was a very different leader, they said. Savinkov, once called The Executioner, did not fit the new pattern Petros heard about in the cafés of the village he visited. To play checkers, to listen to the gossip. Above all to get the first hint of a farmer in trouble. Someone whose land or stock he might buy for a pittance.

Why had Savinkov changed his name to Florakis? The Russian did speak Greek fluently. And he had bought a small farm adjacent to Petros on the coast. But why had .he made a point of meeting him when Petros was sitting alone in a café? The Russian had handed him an envelope crammed with drachmae. A large sum - so large Petros, greedy for money, had not accepted at once.

'What do you expect me to do for this?' he had asked bluntly.

'Only one thing - which fits in with your own purposes. You make sure no Englishmen visit the island of Siros and poke around up near Mount Ida.'

'You expect me to kill them?' Petros had demanded.

'It is up to you.' Savinkov had shrugged. 'Maybe you rough them up a bit. You could sabotage their car - the mountain roads are dangerous.'

'And how do I get in touch with you?' Petros had asked, testing Savinkov, 'Walk across to your farm?'

'Never. And you know me only as Florakis. That is why I am paying you . . .'

Since then Petros had kept the money inside the same envelope in his Athens bank. For Petros this was an act of unprecedented willpower. But one day he might wish to sever all connection with the man who had appeared like a ghost. Then he would throw the money back at him.

But why, he asked himself for the twentieth time, should Savinkov take an interest in the murder of Andreas all those years ago?

20

Inside a first-floor room above a taverna in the Plaka, the sole occupant, Oleg Savinkov, was also reflecting on the past. A wiry thin-faced man in his sixties, with blank grey eyes, he sat at a table in his shirt-sleeves and mopped beads of perspiration from his forehead.

The evening heat confined by the rabbit warren of narrow twisting streets was ferocious. He drank more mineral water; years ago he had stopped drinking any kind of alcohol. Years ago . . . In 1946 he had been a young man of twenty, known and feared in Greece as The Russian - or The Executioner. Sent to Greece by Stalin personally because of his talent - his talent for assassination.

1946. Stalin had agreed at Yalta that Greece should come within the British sphere of influence. But when the Greek Communist ELAS movement rose up in revolt and looked like taking over the strategic country - with its potential great Russian naval base at Piraeus - Stalin quietly betrayed his promise.

Savinkov had been smuggled into Greece from Bulgaria. His mission had been brutally simple: to assassinate all the leaders of the Greek right-wing EDES movement fighting the Communists. He had succeeded - up to a point. Five top EDES leaders fell victims to his high-powered rifle. Hence his nicknames - The Russian and The Executioner.

But he had failed to take out the chief EDES leaders. Enough remained at the head of their troops to defeat the Communist uprising eventually. Savinkov had decided wisely not to return to Russia: Stalin demanded one hundred per cent success.

By this time Savinkov had learned Greek fluently and he merged with the landscape, working on a remote farm in Macedonia. The years passed and he seemed to have become the forgotten man. That was until he received discreet word from the Soviet Embassy that someone important wished to meet him.

The visit of General Lucharsky, a Deputy Chief of the Soviet General Staff, to Greece was never reported in the press. By 1986 Savinkov was settled in the Cape Sounion area, owning a small farm growing figs and olives. He had saved money, obtained from a small bank a mortgage to buy the property. He had applied for the loan in the name of Stavros Florakis. Over the years he had obtained sufficient forged papers to establish a new identity as a Greek citizen.

Here he had taken a risk. After some hesitation he had contacted one of the Communist ELAS leaders who had gone underground, the man with whose group he was working when the whole revolt fell apart. It was a greater risk than he realized since this benefactor kept a discreet and distant line of communication open with the Soviet Embassy in Athens. But this man had seen no reason to inform on Savinkov - his own relations with the Russians had been precarious. Until 1986 . . .

Florakis-Savinkov drank more mineral water. He wouldn't sleep, he knew. The oppressive heat would last all night long. Plus the babble of voices and
bouzouki
playing which drifted upwards through the dense humidity and through the open window.

1986. He had been visited at his farm late one evening by the ELAS leader who had provided him with the papers of a Greek citizen. The man's arrival had been a shock -it was Savinkov's first intimation that he had been watched, that they knew where he was.

He had been invited to meet an 'important visitor' to Athens. That was after he had been asked a number of questions about his reaction to the change of leadership in Russia. Savinkov had been frank - thinking that if he was candid the invitation which worried him might be withdrawn.

No, he did not approve of Gorbachev's glasnost. This was not the real Communism he had risked his life for during the Civil War. it was a dangerous departure from Lenin's creed, and so on. To his surprise an appointment had been made for that same evening. His visitor would drive him to Athens.

His destination turned out to be the Hilton Hotel. He was escorted to a room on the second floor where a man wearing a lightweight grey business suit had opened the door and ushered him inside. Tall and lean with the face of a fox, he wore a pair of dark glasses and offered Savinkov vodka. He refused, mentioned that he had not touched alcohol for forty years.

'I am Colonel Gerasimov of the GRU,' his host said as they sat facing each other across a small round table.

General Lucharsky was confident his deception would never be penetrated. His photograph had never appeared in a newspaper and the general public abroad didn't know of his existence. He was weighing up his guest as he poured himself a glass of the vodka, a fact Savinkov was aware of. Mention of the GRU had reassured him - as intended -since it was a GRU colonel who had accompanied him to the Bulgarian border in 1946.

'We are very worried about General Secretary Gorbachev and his crazy
glasnost
,' Lucharsky commented.

He had no doubts about coming straight to the point: Doganis, who had brought Savinkov to him, would have checked his outlook. And for a man of sixty-one Savinkov looked very fit - more like forty. Already Lucharsky was fairly sure they had selected the right man.

'He is ruining Lenin's work,' Savinkov agreed, 'but why am I here?'

He spoke slowly. It was many years since he had conversed in his native language. But he had taken the precaution of reading novels in Russian and he found the language coming back fast.

'You were once trained as a radio operator,' Lucharsky said. 'Is that not so?'

'Yes. Before I came to Greece to do a job in 1946 . . .'

'To kill reactionary Greek leaders.' Lucharsky leaned forward. 'We need a liaison man who can communicate by radio in English. I understand you are fluent in that language?'

'I learned it in the days when I served as a waiter in hotels here to make money to buy my farm. I keep it up by talking with English people during the tourist season . . .'

'Good. You are just the man we need.' Lucharsky smiled. His wide mouth made him look even foxier. A conspirator type, Savinkov was thinking. 'You will have to operate the latest type of transceiver. Doganis will train you in the use of the instrument, will give you the codes, the wavebands, the times for transmission. England, you see, is two hours behind Greece.'

England? Savinkov was startled. In the old days he used to think very fast and he found his brain moving into high gear again. The man watching him from behind the tinted glasses would be in his forties. He would show him he was not dealing with some dumb peasant.

'There could be a technical problem. Transmitting over that distance.'

'Doganis tells me you have high mountains, very lonely, near your farm. You could use one of your donkeys to take the transceiver to a peak. From there transmission will be top-class.'