Deadline in Athens (30 page)

This was all very well, but why would they murder Karayoryi and Kostarakou, supposing it was they who'd killed them? And why hadn't Dourou given out her address or number? Possibly so that she wouldn't get into any mess with the relatives if the patients died. But why had Karayoryi paid someone to supply her with the case records of the trade in children from the files of security headquarters? What connection was there between the transplants and the children? I was missing a piece of the puzzle.

Then I suddenly remembered where I'd seen Dourou's name. I again took out Karayoryi's file from the drawer and began searching through the photocopies. In one of these, Karayoryi had noted in the margin the name Eleni Dourou.

I called Mrs. Antonakaki and told her I wanted to see her.

"All right, but don't come before seven because I'll be out."

Outside, a north wind was howling. It had knocked two plant pots over on the balcony opposite. The old woman came out to pick them up. The cat was inside the house watching her through the open door. She must be mad to go out into the freezing cold for the sake of two wretched potted plants!

CHAPTER 31

She opened the door to me dressed in black.

"I'd gone to see about Yanna's headstone," she said, as if feeling the need to justify her going out while she was in mourning.

I sat on the sofa, in the same spot where I'd sat the first time. I was tired and was in no mood for chitchat.

"Mrs. Antonakaki, did you ever hear your sister mention anyone by the name of Pylarinos? Christos Pylarinos?"

"Isn't he the one who has the travel agencies? We went on a trip organized by his agency."

"When was that?"

"End of August, beginning of September, 1990."

"Was your sister with you?"

"Yes. There was Yanna, me, and Anna. Yanna had promised Anna that if she got into medical school, she'd take her on a trip as a present. We went to Vienna, Budapest, and Prague. For ten days." The memory upset her. She sniffed and her lip began to tremble. "I'll never forget that trip. It wasn't enough that we had guided tours all day long; Yanna wanted us to go out in the evenings too. I tried to restrain her, partly because I was tired and partly because I saw her spending money right and left. But my sister always did whatever she wanted"

"Apart from that trip, did you ever hear your sister mention Pylarinos?"

"No, never. Though I know she went twice more, after the trip we took together."

"When would those journeys have been?"

"The first time was in the winter. February, I think. And the sec and one was in May. But I couldn't tell you whether she went through Pylarinos's agency."

"On the trip that you went on together, did anything out of the ordinary occur? Anything that might have attracted your attention."

"Nothing. We were together all the time and had a lot of fun." She stopped, as if remembering something. "Apart from two mornings in Prague, when she went off to do her own work."

"What work was that?"

"I don't know. She didn't tell me"

"And she never said anything to you about Pylarinos?"

"No, never."

"Okay, Mrs. Antonakaki. That's all I needed to know."

As I was starting up the Mirafiori, it occurred to me that I should have another look through the folder with Karayoryi's receipts. To see if there were any clues about those trips. It wasn't unlikely that she'd discovered something on her first trip, quite by chance, and had started investigating. In 1990, she'd stumbled on the relationship between Pylarinos and the two foreigners in the photograph and then had made two other trips to get more information. Dourou was the key. If I could only find her, I might start getting somewhere with Pylarinos.

The TV was on in the living room and the picture showed the back of someone's head. The voice coming out was that of a young girl. Her words were confused, faltering, and came out sharply, as though someone was forcing them out, one by one:

"He used to buy me clothes ..:'

"What sort of clothes?"

"Blouses ... skirts ..."

"And then?"

"He'd take me to his home. . ."

"What did you do there?"

"He'd dress me in the new clothes ..."

"Did he do anything else to you?"

"He would look at me."

"Only that?"

"He told me that I was a pretty little girl ... and he touched me. . ."

"Where did he touch you?"

"On my hair ... my arms ... my legs, sometimes, not always ..."

"Just that?"

"Yes."

The back of the girl's head vanished from the screen and in its place appeared Sotiropoulos's face, grave, expressionless. His eyes, however, had a glint in them. Two fireflies, behind round glasses.

"Ladies and gentlemen, a man was sentenced to six years in prison on the basis of only a journalist's report and the allegations made by two sets of parents," he said with the look of someone unraveling a massive travesty of justice. "I'm not saying that he was convicted unjustly, but without doubt the charge of indecent assault of a juvenile is open to question. The fact that Kolakoglou's tax consultancy firm passed into the hands of the parents of the two alleged victims also leaves questions to be asked. I couldn't say whether that is of any significance in the case. Maybe yes, maybe no. At any rate, today Kolakoglou is a wanted man. If he weren't living under the burden of his conviction, it is almost certain that no one would be seeking to arrest him." He allowed a moment to pass, then added in a meaningful tone: "We reporters are sometimes prey to excessive zeal and are sometimes blind to its consequences."

Catalytic, that's what Robespierre was. Adriani could bear it no more and pressed the remote control. "What's he up to? Is he trying to pretend Kolakoglou is an innocent lamb?" She was furious.

"No. He's simply trying to discredit Petratos and the rival Hellas Channel."

"And is that the right way to do it?"

I wanted to change the subject. I was in no mood to discuss Kolakoglou, Petratos, or Sotiropoulos in my own home. "I spoke to Katerina," I told her.

"Well, you should have heard her on the phone when I told her that I was going up to Thessaloniki. Just like a baby girl." She looked at me furtively. "Couldn't you come too for Christmas? It falls on a weekend this year."

I bit my lip to stop myself from saying yes. "It's impossible. I can't leave while this case is still open. Something might come up and I'd have to run back." It wasn't only the case. It was the cost of the trip and the hotel because we couldn't all stay at Katerina's place. Then I'd have to borrow money to send her in January.

Fortunately, my tone was categorical and Adriani didn't persist. Before we sat down to eat, the phone rang. Adriani answered. "Someone called Zissis," she whispered, and handed me the receiver.

"Greetings, Lambros:"

"I have to see you. You know Hara's, the confectioner's that sells homemade ice cream at the end of Patission Street?"

"Yes."

"I'll be waiting for you there in half an hour and you can buy me an ice cream," he said and hung up.

I told Adriani I wouldn't have anything to eat as I had to go out again. In any case, my stomach still hadn't settled.

"Who is Zissis?"

"A colleague," I said, as vaguely as possible.

CHAPTER 32

We sat at a table by the window that looked onto Patission Street. Zissis was eating his parfait ice cream, while I made do with soda water. He was scraping the glass so clean with his spoon that it wouldn't need washing.

"Christos Pylarinos," he said eventually, sounding like a civil servant. "Son of political refugees. Born in Prague. Grew up there and studied economics there. Kept well away from party politics. As soon as he'd finished his studies, he entered a state-owned company. I think it was Czechoslovakian Airlines, but I was unable to verify that. He was competent and soon rose from the middle to the higher echelons of the company. He was unable to get to the top because only party members were appointed to the higher positions. At the beginning of the eighties, he suddenly appeared in Greece and opened a tourist business. The question is: Where did a company employee working in a socialist country get the money to open his own business in Greece?"

He looked at me with a crafty smile. I didn't have to rack my brain. I knew where he was leading. "The Czechs gave it to him."

"Just so. All the socialist states opened businesses of that kind in capitalist countries, because they needed the foreign currency. Some opened them through sister parties in the capitalist country, but more often than not they used individuals as fronts. Pylarinos belongs in the second category."

"And why would the Czechs trust the son of a Greek political refugee? How were they so sure that he wouldn't run off with their money?"

Zissis's smile was all condescension, as if he were talking to a mental retard. "They had a powerful control mechanism. First of all, they put one of their own people beside the individual acting as a front, to watch him on a daily basis. In addition, the sister party in the host country undertook a high level of supervision and regularly reported back to their comrades in the source country. And on top of all that, they also had a guarantee."

"What kind of guarantee?"

"Pylarinos's father died years ago, but his mother is still alive. She came back from Czechoslovakia in 1990."

"They used Pylarinos's mother as their guarantee?"

Zissis shrugged. "It wouldn't be the first time, but again I can't be sure. The party's finances were monitored by a very small circle of members. Even party leaders in high posts didn't know everything that was going on. But doesn't it seem strange to you that the son should have a huge fortune in Greece while the mother was living on her state pension in Prague?"

It wasn't only strange, it stuck out like a sore thumb. Zissis shook his head fatalistically.

"Controls, covering for each other, mechanisms-they thought of everything. There was only one thing they hadn't reckoned on. That all this would collapse like a house of cards in 'eighty-nine. And suddenly Pylarinos found himself with a vast fortune, all his own. The Communist Party of Czechoslovakia had disintegrated, its echelons had scattered, and those who came to power had no means to lay claim to all these fortunes. It's quite possible that the new people didn't even know of their existence."

"And suddenly, from being a marionette, Pylarinos became a businessman in his own right."

"I don't know about `right'!" Zissis leaned toward me and lowered his voice. "Pylarinos is like a red flag. He appropriated money belonging to others, lots of money. I'm not the only one who despises him. He is despised by all the party members. They'd be happy to see him rot behind bars, but if they expose him, they'd have to bring a lot more to light. I'm telling you all this, so you'll understand that no one likes him." He shifted his position. He sat back in his chair, looked at me, and said with absolute certainty: "But there is no way he's involved in any dirty business."

"Why is that?"

"Think about it. As long as the socialist regime existed in Czechoslovakia, he didn't dare put a foot wrong. They'd have got rid of him. Now he has a fortune. Why would he get involved with dirty money?"

"Listen, Lambros. Karayoryi may have been ambitious, but she was no fool. She had a fat file on him with information that it would have taken us a year to amass. For her to be investigating him to that extent means that she'd discovered something."

"Are you sure she was investigating Pylarinos and not someone else in his company?"

The photographs that Karayoryi had taken came into my mind. The one with the group of men in the nightclub and the other with the two men talking in the cafeteria.

"Let's go for a drive," I said to Zissis.

"Where to?"

"To my office. There's something I want to show you."

"Don't even think about it," he said, as if he'd been bitten by a snake. "I'm not setting foot in security headquarters. I almost lost my pension because for three whole months I was thinking that I had to get a certificate from your people and I kept putting it off. I said I'd help you, but let's not overdo it."

"Let's split the difference," I said, laughing. "We'll go as far as the entrance. You'll wait in the car and I'll nip in to get something that I want you to see."

"If I can stay in the car, okay," he said and immediately got up.

It was after eleven and the traffic on the roads had cleared. From Amerikis Square at the point where Patission Street widens, we weren't held up by any traffic lights, and in twenty minutes we were at the security headquarters. On the way we talked about other things. He asked me about Katerina, how she was doing with her studies. He'd never met her, but he knew she was studying in Thes saloniki. I began to tell him how upset I was that she wouldn't be home for Christmas, and, without wanting to, I came out with all my bitterness about her hunk. Zissis listened to me without interrupting. He realized that I needed to talk and he let me.

He remained in the Mirafiori, while I got the two photographs taken by Karayoryi. I showed him the one from the nightclub first.

"That's Sovatzis," he said as soon as he looked at it, and he pointed to the man with the plastered hair and the constipated smile.

"Who's Sovatzis?"

"The party member that they put in place beside Pylarinos to watch him."

"And the other two?"

"Foreigners, for sure. I don't know this one at all. The other one sitting next to Pylarinos looks kind of familiar, but I can't remember where from" His finger rested not on the pudding-faced one with the fringe, but on the one sitting next to Pylarinos. Suddenly he cried out. "Of course, it's Alois Hacek! One of the top men of the party in Czechoslovakia! You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes. He was the party official responsible for finances and he came to Greece to check up on Pylarinos." I showed him the date, to the bottom right. He seemed surprised. "November 14,1990," he muttered. "The party was already dissolved and he's taking a trip to Greece?"