An Aegean Prophecy - Jeffrey Siger [23]
No sooner did Andreas sit behind his desk than Maggie came bouncing through his office door. She dropped an envelope on the desk. ‘So, what did he have to say?’
‘What did who have to say?’
‘Tassos.’
‘Of course, how could I have thought this was about police business?’
‘It is about police business, I don’t need to ask you what he has to say about other things.’ Maggie smiled. ‘I want to know if he can help you find the guy you’re looking for.’
Andreas stared at her. ‘Is there anything you don’t know?’
‘When he called to find out where you were, I knew it had to be serious if he wouldn’t talk to you over the phone, and since we both know what he’s good at,’ she seemed to swoon at a different thought, ‘I figured you were looking for someone.’
Andreas shook his head. ‘You’d have made a terrific cop.’
‘Too limiting.’ She turned and left.
He watched her bounce out the door; five-feet, three-inches of red-topped, endless energy.
Andreas opened the envelope. It contained the photographs he’d given Kouros of the crime scene. He took them out and spread them on his desk. There were dozens. What a tragedy. Time to focus: on each photograph, on each section of each photograph, on everything in context with all else. Looking, studying, hoping to find a clue, anything that might help. But all he kept seeing was the same thing: a sad-looking, silver-haired monk, lying dead on a street, clutching a cross. What a terrible end for such a wonderful life, for any life.
He stood up and walked over to the window. What was going through that monk’s mind when faced with the end of his life? To accept his death … to fight … to pass along a message? There were no signs of a fight or a message, and he was clutching his cross. His choice seemed clear. Acceptance.
Andreas had reached a dead end. Now it was up to Tassos.
6
Andreas was in the middle of a dozen things on a half dozen different cases when Maggie buzzed him. ‘It’s him.’
He didn’t have to ask whom she meant; he just picked up the phone. ‘Are you about to make me as happy as you’re making my secretary?’
‘I hope so - but differently.’
‘Where are you?’ Andreas looked at his watch. It wasn’t even two. ‘You can’t be back on Syros.’
‘No, we stopped for lunch on Ikaria.’
‘Ikaria?’ It was a northern Aegean island, a little less than halfway between Patmos and Syros. ‘Why Ikaria?’
‘I have a lot of friends here from the old days.’
Andreas knew that for Tassos the ‘old days’ meant Greece’s military dictatorship years, between 1967 and 1974, and his time spent as a rookie cop in an island prison guarding the junta’s political enemies. He’d taken great pains to befriend all the politicians under his care as a hedge against Greece’s return to democracy. That made him great friends among both outright fascists and hardcore communists. No doubt the ones on Ikaria fell into the latter category. It was a bastion for communists long ago forced to relocate there from other parts of Greece.
‘I have what you want. I’m on a landline, do you want to chance it?’
‘What the hell, if every phone line in this country’s tapped, we’re wasting our time trying to save it anyway. Shoot.’
‘It was a lot easier than I thought. The person who called the minister of public order to get you assigned to the case didn’t try to hide who he was. Everyone in the office knew.’
‘Why don’t I think I’m going to like what’s coming.’
‘Oh, it’s not as bad as you think.’ Then Tassos told him the name.
‘Great, a former prime minister. How’s that not bad news? Who’s possibly going to make him talk? He’s untouchable, another dead end.’
‘Are you finished?’
Andreas slammed his hand on the desk.
‘As I was saying, it was easier than I thought. You see, the person who got him to make the call also must have figured that a former prime minister was untouchable, that no one possibly could force him into revealing a confidence, and so he didn’t bother to use an intermediary when asking for the favor. What he didn’t know was that the prime minister owed a few favors of