by Leta Serafim
“You were so upset about that child. It was almost as if he were your son.”
Patronas closed his eyes. How could I have ever doubted her?
Seeking to change the topic, he described Antiparos and how beautiful it was. “I’ll take you there when the case over. You’ll love it. It’ll cure what ails you.”
“I’m just a little depressed tonight. I always hate the end of summer.”
Patronas pictured her sitting outside on the terrace, her hair like burnished copper in the light of the candle. Her loneliness was almost palpable.
Seeking to cheer her up, he started singing “Autumn Leaves,” an old American standard from his youth, crooning about ‘those summer kisses, those sunburned hands’ he used to hold.
Unfortunately, his serenade had the opposite effect. It made her cry. “I wish you were here,” she said.
“Ah, Lydia, what am I going to do with you?”
“Love me. That would be a good start.”
“No need to start. I already do, you know that. You’re my lady, my neraida.”
Patronas and his men were bunking in a single room in an industrial area. A dismal, claustrophobic space, it was so small the four could barely turn around, and the bathroom door would always mysteriously open whenever someone was in there, going about their business. However, it was cheap, and Stathis was in town.
Sitting on the bed in his underwear, Evangelos Demos complained bitterly about the accommodations, saying the beds were lumpy, the air-conditioning nonexistent, and toxic fumes were emanating from the bathroom. “Every time I go in there, I can’t breathe.”
“Neither can we,” Tembelos told him. “You stink up the whole place.”
Evangelos continued to list the defects of the room: the likelihood of bedbugs in the mattresses and lack of water pressure in the shower, the way the toilet leaked and spewed yellowish water into the hall.
“Re, touvlo,” you brick, “you’re not here on vacation,” Tembelos said.
“That’s right,” Patronas bellowed angrily. “In case you’ve forgotten, you’re here to get justice for Sami Alnasseri and the migrants burned in the fire, to catch the individuals who committed those crimes and put them in jail, to get justice for all those who suffered at their hand. You understand, Evangelos? You’re a policeman and that’s what you’re here to do. Not take goddamned showers.”
“Justice for Sami,” he repeated again. “Do you hear me, Evangelos? Do I make myself clear?”
“Yes,” said Evangelos. “Justice for Sami.”
The three of them chanted this over and over again the next twenty-four hours. Half mantra, half prayer, it seemed to spur them on when their energy flagged and they grew too exhausted to continue.
Stathis was coordinating the search for the killers from a desk at the police station, manning the phones and speaking to his counterparts in Athens and Europe. Interpol had stepped in, as had the American FBI. The net his boss had cast now covered two continents, but as of now, it remained empty.
Deeply discouraged, Patronas lay down and stared at the stained ceiling. Tonight justice for Sami seemed far away.
Chapter Twenty-Eight
Be benevolent to your friends.
—The Delphic Oracle
Patronas was fast asleep when his phone started to ring. Stathis, he assumed, hearing the distinctive ringtone, the one that sounded like a declaration of war.
Ignoring it, he rolled over and tried to go back to sleep. His men were equally comatose—all snoring, not quite in sync, each inhaling and whistling in a different key. They’d gotten in very late the previous night and dropped their uniforms where they fell. The stench of sweaty clothes and unwashed men lay heavy in the room.
A half hour later, Stathis turned up at the hotel and banged on the door. “Patronas, you in there? Open up!”
Patronas looked toward the window. The sun was barely up. Something major must have happened to have brought his boss out at this hour.
“What is it?” he asked sleepily.
“Three people matching the suspects’ description were seen in the parking lot of the Athens airport late last night. A security camera picked them up. I reviewed the footage and I’m sure it’s them.”
“So they’re on their way home.”
“Ticket counters aren’t open yet, but yes, sooner or later, they’re going to try to board a plane for America.”
Patronas was wide awake now. “And we’re going to stop them?”
“Of course, I’m going to stop them. What do you think? I’m not going to let them get away!”
Interesting the way his boss had switched pronouns. Now that victory was in sight, he was intent on making it his.
“I’ve ordered plainclothesmen to stand guard at all the departure gates for flights to the United States,” Stathis said. “They’ve been briefed as to what the kids look like. It’s just a matter of time.”
Patronas, self-conscious about standing in the doorway in a state of undress, tried to cover himself up with his hands. Rather like Botticelli’s Venus, the one standing on the half-shell, only she’d been young and beautiful and had a lot more hair.
By this time, the others were up, Tembelos hastily pulling on his trousers.
“How did they manage to get to Athens?” he asked.
“I’m still in the process of piecing it together, but as near as I can tell they left for the island of Serifos almost immediately after they got here, long before any of us arrived on the scene. The boat that took them was owned by a local fisherman. He said the kids approached him at the harbor, asked him to take them and he agreed, hoping to make some extra money. He didn’t think anything of it at the time, just assumed they were island hopping. After they reached Serifos, they boarded a Blue Star ferry to Piraeus and hid out there until last night when they made their way to Athens and the airport. Those Blue Star ferries make the rounds in the summer: Serifos, Sifnos, Paros, Naxos, Mykonos, and back again. They’re huge and hold over two thousand people. We weren’t expecting them to board on Serifos, so no one was checking. They just waltzed up the ramp and there they were. It was a clever move.”
Stathis said he was taking the 8:40 a.m. flight to Athens. Since he had the case well in hand, he saw no need for Patronas and the others to fly out with him. They could journey to Athens just as the suspects had. By boat.
“Third class,” he said.
After his boss left, Patronas called Papa Michalis on Sifnos and told him to get himself to Piraeus as quickly as he could. “We’re heading there now. I’ll call you when we arrive and tell you where to meet us.”
“What’s the rush, Yiannis? Why the early wake-up call?”
“The kids turned up on a security camera at the airport.”
It wasn’t necessary to bring the old man along, but Patronas wanted him there when he questioned the three students, remembering the ease with which the priest broke suspects down and got them to talk. Patronas planned to interview Nielsen at length, seeking to understand the boy’s character, the forces that had shaped him and led him to do what he did. Hopefully, Papa Michalis would aid in that understanding.
The need to confess was universal. With any luck, it would come into play with Nielsen.
Even though Patronas had been a cop his entire adult life, this being Greece, he’d never met a genuine psychopath before, a person utterly devoid of human emotion. The prospect of meeting one now scared him a little.
He tried to remember what the priest had said that first morning in Sifnos. Something about how they were about to enter the kingdom of evil. And so he was … so they all were.
As a child, he’d studied the faces of criminals in the newspapers, trying to see if there was a difference between them and the other adults in his life, if their sins had branded them. For the most part, they hadn’t, as far as he could tell. The men facing the camera looked just like everyone else. When Adolf Eichmann had gone on trial in Jerusalem, reporters wrote that the ex-Gestapo a
gent seemed more like an accountant than a murderer, ‘appearing to be normal in every respect.’ A man who had done his best to destroy of an entire race of people.
Patronas’ experience bore this out. Although he’d encountered his share of killers, they’d rarely embodied the base evil depicted in the movies. For the most part, they’d been ordinary men. Like Eichmann, maybe even a little drab.
Michael Nielsen might well fall into that category. Unlike the two killers at Columbine, Nielsen wasn’t a loner, nor had he been the victim of bullying in high school or a toxic home environment. He was obviously disciplined—Patronas recalled the boy’s runner’s physique—and the priest reported Nielsen had the best academic record of the three. So what was it that made him different from millions of other kids? What anomaly had set him apart and led him down this path?
Patronas and his men bought tickets on a Blue Star ferry, the fastest boat they could find. It departed at 10:45 a.m., arriving in Piraeus at close to five. A long trip, but Patronas welcomed it. Just to sit and watch the sea, knowing the suspects were in hand, would be heaven.
Each man had taken his turn in the shower prior to departure, one after the other, and the air in the hotel room was so hot and damp, it felt like a jungle. Wiping the mirror with his sleeve, Patronas did what he could to make himself presentable, parting his hair and carefully smoothing it down. He’d steamed his uniform along with himself in the shower and he slipped it on now. If there was a press conference, no doubt Stathis would occupy center stage, but he still wanted to look his best.
He and his men were in a state of high excitement, happy to close the case and finally return home—Nikolaidis to Sifnos, the other two to Chios.
Patronas called Lydia Pappas before he left for Piraeus and impetuously invited her to join him in Chios in a week’s time. “I’d like to introduce you to the people I know on the island and meet my relatives.”
“How long should I plan on staying?” she asked.
A little sly, the question. Patronas smiled to himself. “Let’s start with ten days and see how it goes.”
He was thinking of asking her to marry him in the same place his father had proposed to his mother, on the beach of Emborio on the west coast of the island. Surrounded by umbrella pines, it was a quiet place—the only sound, the black pebbles rolling back and forth in the surf. As there was no sand, tourists rarely ventured there. With any luck, he and Lydia would have it to themselves.
He’d do it casually. No mush, no flowers or champagne. They were both adults. He’d simply say, ‘Marry me,’ and that would be that.
Patronas and Tembelos took adjoining seats in the economy section of the ferry. The television in the salon was broadcasting the news and they watched it. Grim-faced, the commentator reported that the countries in the European Union, seeking to stop the influx of migrants, were closing their borders with Greece, stranding more than fifty thousand in the country.
Patronas turned away, not wanting to hear what the prime minister in Athens had to say about the crisis, or worse, the German politicians who’d orchestrated the tragedy—Merkel first inviting the refugees and then withdrawing the invitation. People would die as a result, most probably of starvation or disease, exactly as they had in 1941.
“Will you look at that?” Tembelos nodded to the television. Reporters were interviewing a migrant in the pouring rain. He was standing in a sea of Red Cross tents, thousands of displaced people as far as the eye could see. Each tent was filled with people hoping to cross the border and make their way on into Germany—people who were now hopelessly. stranded. Ten, twenty thousand … it was difficult to say.
Wanting a cigarette, Patronas left the salon and pushed open the door to the deck. Like the tents on television, it too was packed with migrants: Syrians in family groups and gangs of men from Afghanistan and Bangladesh, others whose origins he couldn’t identify. So many he couldn’t make his way forward and was forced to retreat. Whatever they were, they were all traveling light, most with only a backpack, and he had no idea where they were bound or what their fates would be once they got there.
Looking at them, he wouldn’t have known he was in Greece.
He ended up standing at the prow of the boat, leaning over the railing and cupping his hands to light a cigarette, match after match blowing out in the wind. A teenager—Syrian from the look of him, although Patronas couldn’t say for sure—was standing nearby, a cheap wooden cross on a cord around his neck. Patronas had been told they did that sometimes, the migrants, tried to pass themselves off as Christians, thinking they’d get better treatment, but somehow he didn’t think that was the case with the boy. Hollow-eyed, he was staring at the sea, his face filled with such abject despair, Patronas wondered if he might be contemplating suicide—as if each kilometer the boat traveled was carrying him farther away from something or someone he couldn’t bear to part with. Patronas offered him a cigarette and the boy took it, nodding his thanks and giving him a tentative smile.
Cigarette in hand, Patronas pointed out the islands in the distance and said their names, indicating the boy should repeat them after him. They continued in this vein for a couple of minutes, Patronas endeavoring to teach him a few words in Greek—man, boat, sea—the boy growing more and more animated. He embraced Patronas when he turned to go. “Efxaristo,” he said in Greek. Thank you.
Tembelos was still engrossed in the newscast when Patronas returned. “Reporters say we’re witnessing one of the greatest migrations in human history.”
“I can well believe it,” Patronas said. “There’s more than a thousand passengers on the boat today. You’ve never seen anything like it. Talk about a sea of humanity.”
The image on the television changed, this time to a scene in Macedonia along the northern border of Greece, men in police uniforms shouting and pulling migrants down from a barbed-wire fence.
“Maybe I should retire.” Tembelos said. “I don’t want to spend the rest of my days locking these people up until we can deport them to Turkey.”
“Greece will survive. All this, it’s just a momentary setback.”
“A ‘momentary setback’? Jesus, Yiannis, what’s wrong with you? Don’t you see what’s happening?”
“So far we haven’t lost anything of value, Giorgos. Unlike the rest of Europe, we’re feeding these people, feeding them when we don’t have food ourselves. The soul of Greece is intact. We are what we have always been.”
“But for how long? That’s what I want to know. How fucking long?”
Papa Michalis was waiting for them in Piraeus, standing at the bottom of the ramp when they got off the ferry. Flagging down a cab, they piled into it and headed to the airport.
Patronas hadn’t been in Piraeus in over a year and was repelled by what he saw. Most of the stores were gone and the streets were teeming with migrants, men mostly, gangs of them. Groups were sleeping out in the open on the pavement while others worked their way through the traffic, begging for handouts. A crowd of people came pouring out of the subway. He watched them for a moment, seeing not a single person, not one, who was recognizably Greek.
Far worse was the evidence of economic decline, the eroding fortunes of Greece. Buildings on either side of the road, one of the major thoroughfares in Athens, now stood empty, and there were signs everywhere advertising space for rent. Many of the abandoned stores had broken windows and nearly all were covered with graffiti, spray-painted in lurid colors. Not even the local church had been spared, its entranceway desecrated by a skull with dollar signs in the eye sockets, a phrase written in Arabic.
Tembelos nudged Patronas. “Behold, your nation’s capital.”
“A momentary setback,” Patronas repeated. “Soon we’ll be back on our feet again.”
“No, we won’t. Not in our lifetimes.”
Seeking to save money, Patronas had opted to take a single cab to the airport, a choice he had come to regret. Early evening, it was still very hot in Athens and he and three of his men
were wedged tightly in the backseat—close to a ton of perspiring, suffering human flesh. When Patronas’ cellphone rang, there wasn’t enough space to reach his hand into his pants pocket to retrieve it, not without groping one of the others. It continued to ring for the next thirty minutes.
Stathis was calling. “The Ride of the Valkyries,” over and over.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
With silver spears, you may conquer the world.
—The Delphic Oracle
As soon as Patronas arrived at the airport, he paid off the driver and hurried to the office on the second floor where his boss was waiting. Tembelos and the others were close on his heels. The airport was busy, but not unduly so, orderly lines of foreign tourists waiting to check in at the various counters with their luggage.
Stathis was standing in the midst of a group of men—policemen, judging from the uniforms—and they were all shouting, obviously upset. The room itself was large and full of television monitors, the screens displaying various areas of the terminal in rapid succession. The men and women who’d been scanning the screens had stopped what they were doing to watch the fight.
The three Americans were nowhere to be seen. Perhaps his boss had locked them up someplace else in the airport, Patronas thought, willing himself not to panic, or already transported them to the Koridallos prison complex in Piraeus.
Catching sight of Patronas, Stathis walked over. “Unfortunately, there has been an unforeseen complication.”
“What do you mean?” Patronas fought to keep his voice down. “Where are they?”