Santorini Caesars

by Jeffrey Siger

  “I have no idea where that could be. Do you?” said Petro.

  “I sure don’t,” said Yianni.

  “Petro, I think it’s time you formally recruit your lady friend onto our side.”

  “You know about her?” said Petro.

  “Of course I know about her. Who connected with this case doesn’t? I just saw no reason to jump in on teasing you over someone I’m certain is a wonderful young lady.”

  Pause.

  “What should I tell her?”

  “Do you trust her?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then tell her whatever you have to tell her in order to get her focused on picking the best available spot on Santorini for blaming an assassination on the military.”

  Petro exhaled. “Okay, but it’s going to be tough.”

  “Telling her, or finding the site for the hit?”

  “Both.”

  “Good, the first will prime you for finding the second.”

  “Maybe the weather will turn bad enough to call off the ceremony?”

  “That’s called wishful thinking for the best, but we’ve got to prepare to confront the worst. I know what I’m asking you to do will be uncomfortable for you, but look at it this way: If you really like the woman, sooner or later you’re going to have to tell her the truth. Just consider me as giving you the impetus.”

  “I can think of some better words to describe what it feels like you’re giving me.”

  Andreas laughed. “I’ll let that one slide, Officer. We’re counting on you. Just let me know if you need anything from us. Yianni and I will be on Santorini with you tomorrow, come hell or high water.”

  “We’ve already had the high water.”

  “Then get ready for the other, for it’s a-comin’.”

  “Bye, Chief.”

  Petro hung up and looked up at the gray sky.

  “Is everything okay?” said Dimos.

  Petro gestured no. “Definitely not okay. You better plan on catching the ferry without me tomorrow.”

  Dimos smiled. “So that’s who you were talking to, the girlfriend, and she’s convinced you to stay.” He shook his head. “Women sure do have a way of getting men to do what they want. Too bad we haven’t quite figured out how to get them to do the same for us.”

  Petro sighed. “Yeah, too bad. Too bad for sure.”

  ***

  “Poor kid. You’re putting him through relationship hell. I sense he really likes the girl,” said Yianni.

  “If it’s meant to be, it’s meant to be. He’ll take some grief but it’s not as if he’s admitting to being a serial killer or something.”

  “To a lot of Greeks, Chief, cops rank pretty close to serial killers.”

  Andreas waved him off. “What choice did I have?”

  “I agree, but it’s going to be a hell of a tough sell, and with everything going down tomorrow….” Yianni shook his head.

  “You know it, I know it, he knows it.”

  “Maybe you should reconsider speaking to the Prime Minister?”

  Andreas gestured no. “It won’t work. We have no hard facts.”

  “We have a murdered girl.”

  “Yes, but nothing linking her murder to Mayroon, Prada, or a conspiracy to take out the Prime Minister. Even if these Mayroon folks are the same sort of blood-vengeance zealots as the Maniots who murdered Kapodistrias for offending their family’s honor, what possible reason would they have to kill the Brigadier’s daughter?”

  “Maybe she knew something?”

  “Maybe, but no one we’ve spoken to suggests that she did.”

  “I thought you saw her murder as a message?”

  Andreas nodded. “I still do, and believe if we can figure that out, everything else will fall into place. But a message to whom? It’s not the sort of message that gets a parent to cooperate. Despite what I said to the Brigadier, what worse harm could you possibly do to parents than kill their only child?”

  Andreas crossed himself three times, drew in and let out a deep breath, and slammed his fist on the dashboard. “But damnit, who has time to concentrate on any of that now? We’ve got a possible assassination plot about to go full boil, and barely a hint at the who, where, when, or how of any of it.”

  “At least we have Santorini.”

  Andreas cocked his head toward Yianni. “We’re about to find out if it lives up to its old nickname.”

  “You mean, ‘beautiful island?’”

  “No,” said Andreas looking back out the side window. “The Devil’s Island.”

  ***

  “Anything for us, Maggie?”

  “Welcome back, boys, from what I heard has been a busy day, and there’s still practically half of it left to go.”

  “I take it you spoke with Tassos,” said Andreas.

  “Right after you did. Almost made me jealous of all the excitement you two have in your lives, but I used it as inspiration for following up on Yianni’s list of possible military hit men.”

  “Any luck?” said Yianni.

  “Yep, but not sure if it’s good or bad.”

  “Meaning?” said Andreas.

  “There are a dozen possibilities, half of them still on active duty. Any one of them capable of pulling off the shooting.”

  Andreas shook his head. “I was hoping to eliminate homegrown possibilities.”

  “No such luck.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Francesco said to give him a shout when you got back.”

  “Good, maybe he found something for us on the recordings from Babis’ office. Yianni, wait with me in my office so we can hear the news together, and, Maggie, please tell Francesco to come in.”

  Yianni followed Andreas into his office and sat in a chair in front of Andreas’ desk. “What do you think it’ll be, good or bad?”

  “Greeks are natural pessimists.”

  “With good reason.”

  Francesco knocked on the open door. “Is this a good time?”

  Andreas nodded and pointed to the couch. Yianni angled his chair to see both men.

  “So, what do you have for us?”

  “You have no idea how boring a minister’s life can be,” said Francesco.

  Andreas smiled. “As a matter of fact I do.”

  Francesco nodded. “True, but this hits new lows, I assure you.”

  Andreas waved his hand. “Just tell us what you found.”

  “On the conversations our distinguished minister of public order recorded, he spent most of his time trying to get those he recorded to say how much they liked him and respected his leadership capabilities.”

  “Must have been a hard sell,” said Yianni.

  “It was, but he probably got enough to edit down into a nice promotional piece about himself.”

  “Any indication of his reason for chasing compliments?” said Andreas.

  “Not so far as I could tell. But no matter the subject, he steered the conversation around to how much better he could have handled it, and pressed whoever he was talking with to agree.”

  “Sounds like that U.S. presidential candidate, the billionaire guy,” said Yianni.

  ‘Yeah, the one with the hair.”

  “Guys, please,” said Andreas. “Was Prada involved in the conversations?”

  “Barely, and not another word mentioned about his time with the Caesars on Santorini.”

  “Damn,” said Andreas. “You’re sure absolutely nothing was said about the military or Santorini?”

  “Well, yeah, Babis had a lot of tough words to say about the minister of defense.”

  “What sort of words?”

  “As hard as he tried to get everybody to say great things about himself, he worked even harder to get them to shit all over the defense min
ister.”

  Andreas leaned back in his chair. “But no mention of Santorini?”

  “Only when Prada talked about going there for dinner with the Caesars. But we already knew that.”

  “How did the subject come up?”

  Francesco looked at his notes. “It was the day of the dinner. Prada walked in on the minister while he was recording a conversation with a member of parliament, and the minister didn’t bother to turn off the system. Prada said he was leaving for Santorini for dinner with the Caesars, and the minister asked if he still thought it was a good idea.”

  “Still? As in they’d discussed it before?”

  “Yes.”

  “What did Prada say?”

  “That because of who was coming to Santorini, it was ‘imperative.’”

  Andreas sat up. “Did he elaborate on who was coming to Santorini?”

  Francesco gestured no. “Both men dropped the subject. I assumed he was talking about the Caesars.”

  Andreas looked at Yianni. “Call Petro and tell him I don’t care what it takes, I need to know ASAP when the Prime Minister received his invitation to attend that tree-lighting—and if Prada played any part in getting it for him.”

  “I think you already told him you wanted to know that,” said Yianni.

  “Well, tell him again!”

  “Okay, no reason to yell.” Yianni pulled out his phone.

  “Uh, do you guys need me anymore?”

  Andreas gestured no. “Sorry about raising my voice to Yianni.”

  “We’re all under pressure, Chief. If you need me, just call. I’ll be in the office.” Francesco quickly left.

  “Petro’s not answering his phone. He’s probably talking with the girlfriend.”

  “Then send him a text message. This is critical.”

  “I know. And by the way, didn’t you just apologize for raising your voice at me? Not a direct apology to me, of course, but nevertheless an apology.”

  Andreas waved his hand at Yianni. “Okay, Mister Suddenly Super Sensitive. It’s not anger, it’s excitement. I couldn’t put my finger on why a business-driven group like Mayroon would have an interest in assassinating a Prime Minister they helped elect, even if he wasn’t doing all that they wanted. After all, he’s still the most powerful person in Greece—and their creation. Sensible businessmen don’t destroy their golden goose just because it isn’t at the moment laying all the eggs they want. That’s not good business.”

  “Unless there’s another goose ready to take its place?”

  Andreas nodded. “Our son of a bitch of a public order minister is auditioning for the role of Mayroon’s new golden goose, and doing all that he can to spike the chances of his strongest competition, the minister of defense.”

  Yianni nodded thoughtfully. “So what’s Prada’s role in all this?”

  “That cagey bastard? He’s acting like the perfect theatrical agent.” Andreas leaned forward in his chair. “Try Petro, again. Please.”

  Chapter Twenty-one

  The Santorini of grand, enveloping sapphire vistas and blue-domed, brilliant white churches clinging to cliff sides was what drew the tourists, but much of the island looked nothing like that, ranging more from the downright homey to honky-tonk. Patchwork fields and vineyards dotted with occasional churches and well-used outbuildings, beaches lined by commercial hodgepodges of vacationer attractions, and random eclectic architecture straining to pay varying degrees of symbolic homage to the vaulted roofs of the famed caldera properties, all seemed driven more by a shared desire to profit off the tourist boom than to honor the island’s history and traditions.

  But no matter the varied styles or tastes of summer visitors that drew them to the island’s differing locales, they came en masse from May through October. And that meant profit.

  Petro thought Sappho would be at home, perhaps at the restaurant, but when he called to say he could stay another day or two, she told him to join her at a beachfront taverna on Perissa, Santorini’s most popular beach. Perissa sat at the eastern edge of the island’s southern coastline, on the southwest side of Mesa Vouno, the limestone mountaintop site of ancient Thira, named after late-twelfth-century BCE Spartan King Thiras, whose people Santorinians credited with creating Ancient Thira’s ports, towns, and sanctuaries.

  Santorini’s second most popular beach, Kamari, once the port of ancient Thira, lay on the other side of Mesa Vouno, but the only practical way to drive between the two beaches involved a long circuitous route winding west, north, and east around Mesa Vouno and Mount Profitis Ilias, a journey that in the best of traffic took close to thirty minutes.

  Kamari and Perissa beaches shared the same black volcanic sand, Kamari’s running north to the airport, and Perissa’s heading westerly through Perivolos Beach toward the town of Exomitis. Fifty years ago sleepy Perissa had been all fields, a big white church and a few scattered buildings. Today, the Perissa-Perivolos strip offered miles of summer action as hot as its sand, with restaurants, bars, hotels, and a panoply of tourist shops working feverishly to accommodate beach worshippers from around the world searching for fun in the sun.

  It took Petro thirty relatively careful minutes on puddle-ridden two-lane roads, passing by dormant vineyards, closed hotels, shuttered summer homes, skeletons of unfinished buildings, quiet villages, and sleepy shops to reach Perissa. Gray, brown, and black—slightly tinged with green—served as the colors of the land, while shades of white, dirty beige, stone gray, and random splashes of primary colors dominated the low, local structures. Sparse trees—Petro recognized few beyond eucalyptus, tamarisk, and palm—stood randomly along the roadsides while fallow winter fields ran off toward the sea or mountain ridges.

  Petro parked next to four thick wide-plank wooden steps leading up to an all-white, two-story stucco building of unmistakable modern design but indeterminate purpose. A row of unfinished plywood sheets ran across the building’s first-floor front wall, likely protecting windows beneath from winter gales. Two white stucco pillars at the base of the steps bore the same single word mounted in black wrought iron script: MIAMI. Evidently this was someone’s idea of bringing a bit of America’s Miami to Santorini. Why anyone would want to do that was another story, though it undoubtedly tied into the entrepreneurial mania behind Santorini’s extraordinary success at giving tourists what they wanted.

  At the top of the steps a broad, white marble-tiled deck stretched across in front of the building, its stucco roadside wall just high enough to block from view—for anyone sitting on the deck—the two-lane tarmac separating the northern commercial side of the road from the expanse of ebony sand and deep blue sea to the south.

  But he saw no one on the deck today, or on the beach.

  What in the world is Sappho doing here?

  Directly up and beyond the steps stood a set of solid dark-stained wooden doors partially ajar. He headed straight for them and poked his head inside. “Hello, anyone in here?”

  “Yes, dear, I’m back in the kitchen.”

  So it’s a restaurant.

  Petro followed Sappho’s voice past tables and chairs neatly stacked and covered in clear plastic sheeting. Beyond them, a mirror-backed bar area ran the length of the east wall, but with not a single bottle visible, undoubtedly all safely locked away for the winter. For sure booze thieves stood as a bigger threat on Santorini than table- and chair-snatchers.

  Petro aimed for the left doorway on the back wall, the one not labeled WC.

  Sappho met him as he stepped into the kitchen, giving him a quick hug and a cursory kiss on both cheeks.

  “That’s it?” said Petro. “I tell you I’m staying and you kiss me like I’m your brother.”

  “I don’t have a brother, so I’ll have to take your word on that.” She grabbed his hand and pulled him deeper into the kitchen. “So, what do you think of it?”

  “I thi
nk you’re all wound up. As for ‘it,’ what’s the ‘it’ I’m supposed to be thinking of?”

  “This place, silly. What do you think of this restaurant?”

  “You’re thinking of opening here?”

  “If I can make a deal, yes. The current owners put a hell of a lot of money into it,” she waved at all the equipment, “and the portable stuff that might disappear in wintertime is locked up inside the walk-ins.” She pointed at two huge coolers against the rear wall by a door marked EXIT. “It’s a turnkey operation all set to go.”

  “Why are they selling?”

  “Because they don’t know how to run the business. They’re a couple from Athens who thought it would be chic to have a place on Perissa. They spent more time hanging out with their customers than taking care of them. That’s a big no-no in this business. You can never forget that your role is to serve your guests, not party with them.”

  “They’re losing money?”

  She gestured no. “Even in this economy it’s hard to do that on Santorini, what with the constant turnover every few days of new customers with fresh cash. They simply lost interest in their fantasy when the island’s regulars stopped coming and they found themselves having to wait on actual customers, instead of serving as kings controlling the entrance of supplicants to their castle.”

  “I get it. But why would you move your restaurant here? This is a place for a summer business.”

  “We’re not moving the restaurant. This would be all my operation. My mother and father want me to do it. They know how much I’ve dreamed of having a place on this beach. They can get all the help they need during the summer and I know I can turn this into a goldmine.”

  “Just wear a bikini and the place will be packed twenty-four/seven.”

  Sappho batted her eyes. “You silver-tongued devil, you.”

  “How far along are you in negotiations?”

  “Far enough that I’m about to make an offer. I want to do it while they’re still dejected over their summer experience. Memories tend to get rosier the longer they endure an Athens winter, and I wouldn’t want them toying with the idea of taking another run at it.”

  “You’re a hard-nosed businesswoman.”