by Joseph Badal
Hans and Josef stood in the shadows of the Soula Hotel, screened from the street by a row of oleander bushes. They watched the little man walk down the steps, get into the police cruiser, and drive away.
Josef patted Hans on his massive shoulder. “That was a good idea to wait in the plaza to see if a police car would go by. Someone did call the police.”
“Ja, Josef, and I’ll bet you a thousand francs it was the man we saw run away from Vangelos. We need to find out if that man has a room in this place.”
“I counted three lights,” Joseph said. “We can’t just knock on every door. Someone might remember our faces.”
Hans slapped Josef on the back. “We’ll return in the morning. Perhaps we can question one of the hotel employees then.”
“But what if he had the map and gave it to the policeman?” Josef asked.
“One way or the other we’ll find out where the map is, won’t we? Whether he has it or if he gave it to the policeman, the guy’s dead. If the cop has it, no problem. There are ways to make even the toughest cop cooperate.”
Josef chuckled. “Ja, Hans. You’re correct.”
Hans slapped his partner on the back. “Let’s go dump the body, then get some sleep. I think tomorrow will be a good day.”
APRIL 23
CHAPTER NINE
John didn’t sleep much that night. He didn’t remember until three in the morning that he’d never mentioned the map to the cop. Panagoulakos had irritated him enough that he’d forgotten the map on the closet shelf. He made a mental note to take it with him to the police station at 10:00.
John replayed Petros Vangelos’s last words: Ee eekoyenya mou. My family. And he guessed the old man had mourned his own death when he said, Ee zoë mou. My life.
He felt hungover when he staggered out of bed at a few minutes before 9:00 a.m. His tongue felt swollen and his eyes burned. After a shower, he dressed and departed for the police station.
The Soula Hotel sat on the north side of a steep, narrow street that dropped down to the left past olive groves to the sea, and rose uphill to the right to a cluster of shops and other small hotels. John lingered for a moment and stared down at the sparkling blue Aegean and then, reluctantly, climbed the hill. After two blocks, he noticed a sign in the window of a storefront: “Feela/Copies.” He patted his pocket, felt the map, and then stopped in the store. He’d make a copy for Vangelos’s family.
John then followed the meandering road downhill toward the harbor. He spotted three police cars parked outside a building sandwiched between a restaurant and a souvenir shop. The sign over the entrance read “POLICE” in Greek, German, and English. After he entered the station, he saw Inspector Panagoulakos wave at him through the open door of his office.
John stopped in the office doorway. The inspector had a telephone to his ear and apparently the party on the other end of the line was doing all the talking. When Panagoulakos finally spoke, he said soothingly in Greek, “Calm down, madam.” He repeated this twice more and then asked for her telephone number and told her he would call back. He hung up and waved John into his office.
The ten-foot by ten-foot room was furnished with a desk, three chairs, and a tall file cabinet. Papers were stacked on nearly every flat surface. The inspector removed one of the stacks from a chair, placed it on the floor, and told John to sit.
Panagoulakos slowly shook his head and ran a hand through his hair. He looked sad and tired. He wrote something on a piece of paper, then looked across his desk at John and forced a smile. “I hope you didn’t eat anything at your hotel this morning. Soula Demetridakis is famous for serving inedible food. She’s probably the only Greek in the world who can’t cook.”
John laughed and said, “No.”
“Good,” Panagoulakos said. “But we can’t have travelers to our island starve.” He got up from behind his desk and told John to follow him.
John wondered about the policeman’s sudden change in demeanor. Panagoulakos no longer treated him like a suspect.
The inspector led the way across the street to a small, outdoor kafeneio. There were half-a-dozen men in their fifties and sixties crowded around a table in a back corner. Some fingered worry beads, others sipped coffee. They all seemed to be arguing about something. John was able to pick up the Greek words for “politician” and “stupid.” John smiled. He knew from reading about Greece’s history that the Greeks had been arguing about their politicians for thousands of years.
The men all looked toward Panagoulakos and greeted him respectfully. A waiter came over, half-bowed, and showed them to a corner table. The deference all the men showed the inspector spoke volumes about his authority and reputation.
“Our American visitor is the unwitting guest of Soula Demetridakis,” Panagoulakos announced in Greek, after he sat down.
John smiled. He’d understood what the inspector had said.
The waiter and the other men laughed. Then the waiter said in a serious tone, “Inspector, the government should revoke that woman’s business permit. She’s going to kill someone one of these days.” He then disappeared into the back of the café.
“Have you come up with anything new?” John asked.
“Mister Hammond, this business has become more and more curious by the hour. I believe your story about a dead man; but, without a body, it’s difficult to know what to do first. We found blood on the stones of one of the narrow crosswalks where you said you left Mister Vangelos. That was Mrs. Vangelos on the telephone when you came into the station. She’s terribly upset. She says her husband took a small boat out yesterday morning and was due back home late last night. Apparently, her husband has never failed to come home without calling. It’s pretty clear Mister Vangelos returned to shore yesterday and got into some sort of trouble.”
“What did you tell the man’s wife?”
“Nothing,” the Inspector said. “I need to find the body, then I’ll talk to her in person.”
“Isn’t what I told you enough?” John asked. “Do you need the body to start your investigation?”
“There are a few things we can do, all of them a waste of time. If you mean that you want us to interrogate every man on Samos who speaks German, you don’t understand the importance of tourism to our little island. About seven hundred Germans are on that ship in the harbor. Three hundred of them are men. If I try to question that many German tourists, I’ll have an international incident on my hands. And, if the culprits aren’t off that ship, then they have more than likely left the island by now.”
John gritted his teeth. “You said Vangelos’s wife told you he was out in a small boat. Have you found that boat? He had to have docked somewhere in Vathi.”
“He did.” The inspector’s face flushed. “We found it tied to the seawall right across from the police station. The Coast Guard is searching along the coast on the chance his body was dumped in the sea. But, with the Aegean currents, a body could be halfway to Turkey by now. If it was weighted down before being tossed in the sea, the odds are we’ll never find any trace of it.”
“Where did Mister Vangelos live?” John asked. “Was his home close by?”
Panagoulakos rubbed his cheek. “The Vangelos family lives quite a distance from here. He would have had a very long boat trip from Vathi to his home on the other side of the island. And it wasn’t like him to have his dinner alone, away from his wife. But one of my men saw him outside the post office yesterday, just a few blocks from where we are now. The manager of the office told me that Petros Vangelos had waited all day for a letter he claimed would come from Turkey. He seemed highly anxious. Apparently, nothing ever arrived for him.” Panagoulakos’s eyes shifted away from John’s and he looked as though he was thinking about something. Finally, he met John’s gaze. “One of Vangelos’s friends here in Vathi called this morning and told us he expected Vangelos to spend the night with his family. When he d
idn’t show last night, he assumed Vangelos had gone home. But, when he called the Vangelos home this morning and learned that the old man never arrived there, he called us to report him missing. Vangelos obviously never had the chance to call his wife about his change of plans.”
The waiter brought a tray of pastries to the table, along with glasses of fresh-squeezed orange juice and two cups of coffee. Panagoulakos sipped his coffee and watched John dive into the food. He had barely finished one of the croissants when the waiter returned with a plate laden with ham, eggs, and potatoes.
“Do the police treat all visitors to breakfast?”
Panagoulakos smiled. “Why Mister Hammond, I’m sure you’re well acquainted with Greek hospitality, having lived here for a year and a half.”
John took a bite of egg and finished chewing it, all the while looking the cop in the eye. “I see you’ve checked on me, Inspector. What else have you discovered?”
“The computer is a wondrous thing, Mister Hammond. With the cooperation of our NATO ally, the United States, I learned all about your military assignment here in Greece—and about your tour in Afghanistan. I also learned you’re an only child and that your parents live in New Mexico. You built a very successful business in California, which you recently sold, and are now financially well off.”
“Very impressive,” John said. “Anything else?”
The cop’s eyes turned sad and he wagged his head. “Well, I’m sorry to say I also learned about your recent divorce.” He turned slightly in his chair and crossed his legs.
“Sounds as though you got the whole story,” John said. Then he decided to change the subject. “I’ve been trying to place your accent. You must have spent some time in the States.”
Panagoulakos gave John a wry smile. “My father emigrated from Thessaloniki to Chicago in the early fifties. Met my mother—a good Greek American girl, married, and started a printing business. I was born two years later and went through the eighth grade there. Then I came back here to Samos to live with my grandparents.”
“Must have been tough leaving your folks in Chicago?” John said.
“Yes, it was,” Panagoulakos said. “They were both killed by a drunk driver one night returning home from work.”
“Jesus!” John said. “I’m sorry.”
Panagoulakos waved a hand. “It was a long time ago.”
John looked out at the harbor for a moment, then turned back to the inspector. “So where do we go from here?”
The inspector pulled John’s passport from his jacket pocket and dropped it on the table. “I trust you won’t leave the island without checking with me first.”
“You have my word on it,” John responded. Thinking that this would be the perfect opportunity to hand over the map, John began to reach into his jacket pocket—just when an uniformed policeman rushed up to the table.
The policeman made his apologies for interrupting, then told Panagoulakos a fisherman had found a body in the sea.
The inspector must have been able to tell from John’s raised eyebrows and open mouth that John had understood the policeman. “Since you now know we have a body, perhaps you should come along with me. You can identify it if it’s the same man you saw last night. Besides,” he said with a smile, “I think it will be a good idea if I keep an eye on you.”
CHAPTER TEN
Back at the police station, John followed Panagoulakos into his office. The same police officer who had come to the café brought one sheet of paper to the inspector. Panagoulakos seemed to go over it several times before he spoke.
“We found no identification on the body,” he said, as he paced around the office, stepping over piles of paper. “A fishing net had been wrapped around it. Apparently, whoever dumped the corpse in the water didn’t weight it down properly. It takes body weight plus one hundred fifty pounds to weigh a body down under water. Instead, it washed ashore near Karlovassy, about forty kilometers from here. If someone dumped the body near here it could have floated all the way to Karlovassy between last night and this morning.”
“If it is Vangelos, why would they have taken the body? Why not just leave it on the steps?” John asked.
Panagoulakos shrugged. “Maybe they wanted time to thoroughly search it. They must have assumed you would call the police. They couldn’t wait around the crime scene. Anyway, the body’s been transported by truck to the pathologist at the Pythagorio Army base.”
Then John remembered the map. “Inspector, there was an item on Vangelos’s body that I took to my room last night. I should have turned it over to you, but forgot to do so.” He pulled the original map from his pocket and handed it over.
The inspector concentrated on the map and seemed to intentionally avoid looking at John. His mouth was closed in a grim line; eyes squinted. He appeared to be angry, but trying to control it. Finally he looked up.
“I’m going to write this off as an innocent mistake, Mister Hammond. Consider yourself lucky. But, if I discover you’ve withheld any other information, I’ll see to it you’re prosecuted for obstructing my investigation. And, I promise, you will not like the inside of a Greek prison.”
John apologized profusely and swore he had no other information.
Panagoulakos returned his attention to the map. “Without any place names,” he said, “I have no clue where this is supposed to be,” as he pointed at a spot on the map. Then he turned the paper over and scanned the words on the opposite side. “The words on the back look like some sort of nursery rhyme.”
“I had the same impression,” John said.
Panagoulakos ignored John. His lips moved while he again read the handwritten script to himself. Then, as though thinking out loud, he said, “This business about triangles getting married and rectangles being cut in two sounds like gibberish. And the only Pythagoros I’ve ever heard of died thousands of years ago.” He scratched his head and dropped the map on his desk. He looked up at John as though he’d just remembered he was there. “Does any of this make sense to you?”
“I know the words, but I don’t understand their significance.”
“They may not have any significance. Their literal meaning is ‘If I cut a rectangle in two, I will have two triangles. And when two triangles marry, I have a rectangle.’ The next sentence seems to be a separate thought. ‘Remember that Pythagoros is your friend.’ ”
He pulled a plastic evidence bag from a desk drawer and inserted the map. Then he walked over to the file cabinet and used a key to unlock the top drawer. He placed the map in the drawer and noisily slammed it shut and relocked it. The telephone on his desk rang just as the inspector returned to his chair.
Panagoulakos picked up the receiver, listened for a few seconds, then hung up. “We can be at the military base in less than thirty minutes. It won’t be pleasant to look at after being in the sea for so many hours. I would rather not put the Vangelos family through the ordeal of identification until we’re sure it’s Petros. I want you to come with me to see if it’s the man from whom you took the wallet and,” he added with extra emphasis, “the map.”
John didn’t bother to remind the inspector that identifying a bloated body that had probably been fed upon by all sorts of sea creatures would not be pleasant for him either. Perhaps it was the cop’s way of making John pay for not turning the map over to him last night. Then John thought it might not please Panagoulakos to know he’d made a copy of the map.
CHAPTER ELEVEN
Theo Burger raised her free hand to her forehead and gazed down at the polished wood floor of her Zurich apartment. She felt acid assault her stomach. Things had just gotten complicated.
“How could you have allowed this to happen?” she demanded. Then she screamed into the telephone receiver, “If you two screw this up I will cut off your balls.”
“Calm down, Theo,” Hans said in a remarkably quiet voice for a man of his size.
“We will take care of everything. You’re right, we messed up. But we think we know where the map is. We’ll call you the moment we get it.”
“What do you mean, you think you know where the map is?”
Hans expelled a loud stream of air that whistled through the receiver. Then his tone changed and he growled, “Look, if you don’t think we can do the job, then why did you send us down here? How about getting off my ass and let me go to work?”
“You sonofa—” Theo heard the connection break. She slammed the receiver down onto the cradle and leaped from her chair. She clenched her fists, then methodically cracked the knuckles of both hands, one finger at a time. She forced herself to bring her anger under control. Then, while she paced the room, she decided she would cut off Hans’ nuts, whether he succeeded in this mission or not. No one talked to Theo Burger like he had.
CHAPTER TWELVE
Inspector Panagoulakos drove John in his Fiat from Vathi over the steep spine of the island. The road serpentined away from them all the way to the coast near Pythagorio. The views were spectacular—scattered blue-roofed shrines and churches, white-walled houses in small villages, patchwork vineyards, and olive groves with rock-wall borders, all set against the distant Aegean. The water was a deep, sparkling blue; shading in the shallows along the shoreline turned the water’s color to jade.
The Turkish coast was visible just a few miles away across the sea. But there was just enough haze that John couldn’t make out anything but the outline of hills.
Panagoulakos pointed out to sea, in the direction John had looked a moment earlier. His mouth scrunched into a sour look and he grunted as though he’d tasted something foul. “You ever visit Turkey?” he asked.
“No, but I’d like to some day.”
“Don’t bother,” he said. “There’s nothing over there but barbarians.”