Evil Deeds (Bob Danforth 1) (6 page)

Few people would be able to tell from looking at Franklin Meers that he was the U.S. Embassy’s Chief of Intelligence in Greece. He had wire-rimmed glasses, pale skin, and an Ichabod Crane-like Adam’s apple. Tall and gawky, in a preppie way, he looked more like a thirty-five-year-old professor than a spook. His physical appearance lent credence to most people’s opinion of him: Someone devoid of feeling, just another low-level bureaucrat doing grunt work for Uncle Sam. They didn’t know the real Franklin Meers. Just because he had learned to hide his emotions well didn’t mean he wasn’t passionate or capable of acting out his passion. Now seated across a table from Bob and Liz Danforth, Meers was damned upset and having a tough time not showing it.

They sat at a corner table shielded from the hot afternoon sun by a blue canvas umbrella with
Campari
printed on it in big white letters. The tables near them were unoccupied. Thank God for the Greek siesta, Meers thought. Most of Athens is probably asleep.

“Captain Danforth, Mrs. Danforth, what I’m about to tell you is classified,” he said, keeping his voice down. “Even with the kidnapping of your child, technically you don’t have a need to know. Providing you with this information could get me in trouble.”

The tortured look on Liz Danforth’s face when she stared at him tugged at Meers’ heart. She nodded.

“I want you to bear with me while I provide some history,” Meers said, “then I’ll explain what may have happened to Michael.” At his mention of the boy’s name, a grim look came over both of the young parents’ faces.

“When the Germans invaded Greece during World War II, Greek partisans took to the mountains and forged a resistance movement. Allied governments – principally England and the United States – supported many of the resistance units. The U.S., for example, infiltrated OSS agents into Greece to facilitate the provision of supplies and equipment to the partisans and to gather intelligence on Nazi activities.”

“What’s the OSS?” Liz asked.

“The Office of Strategic Services,” Meers said. “Effectively, the forerunner to the CIA. Its information gathering focused not only on Nazis, but also on Communist resistance groups. The U.S. and Greek governments were concerned about Stalin’s plans for Greece once the war ended.”

“But what has this to do with getting Michael back?” Bob interjected.

“Maybe a lot!” Meers said. “You need to let me finish. Then you’ll understand.” He removed his glasses and wiped them with his handkerchief. “The Soviets also supported resistance groups, whose members often murdered members of non-Communist guerrilla units who threatened their influence over an area. You can’t imagine the atrocities the Greek Communists visited on their own countrymen.”

Meers sketched a rough map of Greece and the Balkans on a paper napkin. “The Communists concentrated their activities in these areas,” he said, jabbing at the map with his pen, “along Greece’s border with Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, and Albania. The West suspected Stalin of planning to extend his control to the Balkan countries and beyond after the war ended. Once Soviet troops occupied all the Balkans, the only obstacle to their influence over the Aegean and the Ionian Seas would have been Greece.

“Anyway, after the war, a revolution began in Greece. The Soviets backed the Greek Communists. It was touch and go for awhile, but the Communists were finally run out of the country. Many escaped across the border and settled in Yugoslav and Bulgarian villages.

“This is where the story gets sinister . . . and where it might have touched you. Stalin ordered the fleeing Communists to take every child they could get their hands on to villages across the border. Most of the villagers who lived on the Greek side of the border were simple, uneducated farmers and craftsmen. The Communists told them, because they lived in what had been Communist-controlled territory that the Nationalists would sweep through their area and exact reprisals against them and their children. Even many who were anti-Communist believed the story. Hundreds of parents entrusted their children to the Communists. They assumed they’d eventually get their kids back when things cooled off. Instead, most never saw their sons and daughters again. Many of those who resisted were killed, their children kidnapped.”

“What did Stalin want with those children?” Bob asked. “And what does this have to do with our son?”

“I’m getting there,” Meers responded sympathetically. “The Communists have always impressed me in one aspect. Where we worry about the short-term – the next election or the next quarterly report – those Russian bastards think generations, even centuries ahead. Stalin wanted to indoctrinate thousands of Greek kids, to turn those kids into rabid Communists who could be integrated back into Greece years later as spies and, ultimately, as leaders of a Communist Greece.” Meers shook his head as though to clear it of the distasteful information he had just conveyed and shrugged, spreading his hands in a palms-up gesture, adding, “Of course, taking the children also had a very effective psychological component.”

Bob opened his mouth to ask a question, but Meers cut him off with another hand gesture.

“They took those kids to villages in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, raised them as Greeks, and trained them as Communists. This program must have pleased Stalin. He ordered the Communist leadership in Yugoslavia and Bulgaria to continue kidnapping Greek children – infants and kids up to age two or three. Each year since the Greek Revolution, the Greek government has investigated reports from police departments across the country about mysterious child abductions. But no one could discover who took the children or why. Until five years ago.

“Greek Intelligence arrested a twenty-six-year-old man who offered to pay a Greek Air Force officer for information about U.S. nuclear missile sites in Greece. Under interrogation, he told of his training as an intelligence agent for Bulgaria and gave up an incredible amount of information about ties between the Soviet and Bulgarian Intelligence agencies. But he really shocked the interrogators when he said he’d been born in Greece and, at six years of age, after the revolution that followed World War II, had been kidnapped and taken to Bulgaria. He said babies were still being kidnapped at the time he was interrogated – often by Gypsies who delivered them to Bulgaria for cash payments.”

“Why would they take an American child?” Liz asked.

Meers shrugged. “Think about it. You live in a Greek neighborhood. Your son is dark-haired and could pass for Greek.”

Bob leaned back in his chair and ran his hands through his hair. He exhaled loudly. “I want to see all the files you’ve got at the Embassy on these kidnappings. And I want to read the file on this Greek who spied for the Bulgarians.”

“I understand what you’re going through. Change that. I can only imagine what you’re going through,” Meers said. “But there’s no way I can give you the files. If anyone discovered I helped you, I’d be up the creek. Besides, what would you do with the information, even if I let you see it?”

“If we can figure out where these kids have been taken, I can go there and find Michael.”

“Do you have any clue how dangerous that would be?” Meers said. “You don’t speak Serbo-Croatian, Bulgarian, or Albanian, do you?”

Bob shook his head.

“Your position in the U.S. military means you’d be shot as a spy if you’re captured in Bulgaria . . . after they interrogated you. The Bulgarians would love to get their hands on you. It’s not like U.S. Army officers with Top Secret-Crypto security clearances show up in Bulgaria every day.”

“You need to understand something, Mr. Meers,” Liz said. “With or without your help, we’re going to do whatever it takes to find our son.”

“Including,” Bob added, “talking to the press about these kidnappings that have been going on for years. The press will love the story.”

Meers looked from Liz to Bob, deciding. The last thing the U.S. State Department would want was an international incident over these child abductions. Embarrassing the Soviets and their Eastern European vassal states would disrupt strategic arms talks then going on between Washington and Moscow. He stood and stared down at them. “Okay,” he finally said. “Be at your home tomorrow morning at 9:00.”