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The Pythagorean Solution

Page 5

by Joseph Badal


  Letting the comment pass, John chose not to remind the inspector that the Turks held the Greeks in equal esteem. They were like the Hatfields and the McCoys—except a thousand times worse. And the feud had gone on for centuries.

  Pythagorio, on the eastern side of Samos, was just a few miles from the Turkish coast. Considering the animosity between the two countries, it was no wonder, John thought, the Greeks maintained a military base near Pythagorio.

  Then a thought intruded. What had Petros Vangelos said? One word in particular: Pythagorio. Why would Pythagorio have been one of the last words gasped by the dying man?

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  Hans instructed Josef to stay in the car parked on the street outside the Soula Hotel. He entered the small lobby and noticed a woman behind the reception desk. She was plump and dark-skinned, with black hair that fell to her shoulders. A pair of glasses tied to a chain around her neck perched on her nose. She appeared to be doing paper work. The sound of the door opening distracted her and she stared straight at Hans as he walked toward the counter.

  “Sprechen sie Deutsche?” Hans said.

  “Ja, einwenige,” the woman answered.

  “I represent a tour group,” Hans continued in German, “and we are interested in taking eight rooms this weekend.”

  She waved her hand in a circular motion, as though to say, Do I have rooms! “There are only three rooms taken now,” she said. “Two English couples and an American man. The English leave tomorrow, so I’ll have eleven open rooms.”

  “I hope the American isn’t noisy,” Hans said. “You know how some of them can be.”

  Soula nodded her head in an understanding way, but then held up her hands. “Oh, not Mister Hammond. He is quite the gentleman.”

  Hans made a sour face and said, “I heard there was some trouble here last night. Something about the police.”

  Soula made a clucking sound. “It was nothing. A policeman friend of mine told me Mister Hammond found a body near here. It has nothing to do with my hotel.”

  Hans now knew the name of the man who had found Vangelos. Perhaps Hammond now had Vangelos’s map.

  “Can you tell me which room the American is in?” he asked. “I’d like to be able to pre-assign the other rooms to my group.”

  “Of course,” she said. “He’s on the second floor. Room eight. How many nights will your people be here?”

  “Six nights. If the rate is reasonable.”

  The woman smiled. She placed her right hand over her heart. “You won’t find a better price on the island.”

  “Perhaps you could give me a tour of the premises.”

  The woman closed the ledger on the counter, removed her glasses, dropped them against her ample bosom, and quickly came around to the other side. “Please,” she said. “Follow me.”

  The tour took less than ten minutes. Once Hans had located the American’s room, he told the woman he’d seen enough. After they returned to the lobby, he handed over five hundred dollars as a deposit, gave the woman a fictitious company name, and left the hotel.

  Josef put the car in gear after Hans closed the car door. “Well?” he said.

  Hans snapped his fingers. “Nothing to it.”

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  The Banque Securite de Swisse’s boardroom spoke volumes about the financial institution and its chairman, Fritz Leidner. The Persian carpet that covered almost the entire area of the thirty by forty-foot room, the original oils—by Goya, Vermeer, and Renoir, the view of Zurich from atop the thirty-story Banque Securite Tower, and the industrial titans who occupied the seats around the enormous mahogany table were all symbols of Fritz Leidner’s wealth and power. And of the bank’s influence.

  Leidner gazed at the men seated around him and felt a surge of satisfaction. These men controlled the most successful businesses in Switzerland—but they deferred to him. After all, he’d made them even richer than they already were. And he held major ownership positions in all of their companies.

  “All right, gentlemen,” he said, bringing an immediate hush to the room. “We have an extensive agenda before us and I don’t want to be the cause of any of you missing lunch appointments.” He smiled and the others in the room reciprocated.

  Leidner guided the board through the agenda with little comment from the others and never any opposition. He’d just completed a review of the financial statements, when the door behind him opened. He looked back over his shoulder. His assistant stood just inside the door, a look of sheer panic on his face.

  His assistant stepped forward and visibly swallowed. “My apologies, Herr Leidner.” The man passed a slip of paper to his boss, which Leidner looked down at: Hans is calling from Greece. Says it is an emergency.

  After he crumpled the note in his hand, Leidner stood. “Please forgive me, gentlemen. I have an urgent matter to attend to. I should be back in just a few minutes.” He walked out of the boardroom and went to his private office. Once seated, he pulled a set of keys from his suitcoat pocket and unlocked the center desk drawer and withdrew the Vangelos letter he’d received from Butros Pengali at the Turkish Maritime Bureau. Vangelos’s questions about the Sabiya—its cargo, ownership—his claim for salvage rights. Then Leidner reached for the telephone and lifted the receiver.

  “What has happened?” he demanded.

  “We found the old man, but he got away.”

  “What about the map?”

  “He didn’t have it.”

  “So go find him. That’s what you should be doing instead of wasting my time.”

  Hans paused. “You told me to keep you informed. I am risking my life calling you behind Theo’s back.” He paused a beat and the added, “The old fisherman is dead. In an alley. We saw another man run away from where we found the body.”

  “Did you check to see if the map was on the body?” Something told Leidner that Hans’ story wasn’t the entire truth.

  “Yes, sir. It wasn’t there.”

  “Then find this other man.”

  Leidner slammed the receiver into the cradle and worked on normalizing his breathing. He swiveled in his chair and looked at the paintings of the bank’s former Chairmen—his grandfather, and, of course, his father. His gaze fixed on his father’s eyes in the painting. It was as though the old man stared back at him. He could only meet the old man’s eyes for a few seconds. Upon his father’s death fifteen years ago, Fritz, at the age of forty-six, inherited a world-class fortune, the chairmanship of the bank, and a potential problem that had ticked like a timebomb for years.

  Fritz had grown up in the bank; he was ready to take over when his father died. But what he wasn’t ready for was the sealed envelope he found in his father’s safety deposit box. The letter inside warned him about the danger aboard a boat named Sabiya. It explained how his father had laundered wealth the Nazis had stolen, how his father had hired a Turk who owned the Sabiya to transport Nazi loot, and how the boat had sunk in a storm in the Aegean in 1945. On board that boat was a fortune in gold and jewels—and a letter in a waterproof safe that could bring down the Leidner empire.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Razor wire topped the ten-foot high chain link fence that surrounded the Greek Army base on the eastern side of Samos. Built on a promontory above the sea, the base looked out across the Aegean toward Turkey. Armed sentries patrolled rocky paths cut into the side of almost sheer cliffs. The blue and white Greek flag fluttered in the light breeze from a flagpole planted outside the base’s entrance gate.

  After one of the gate guards checked their IDs and called someone to announce their arrival, Panagoulakos drove into the military complex. They passed a half-dozen Greek Army platoons marching quick-time along the side of the road.

  Panagoulakos parked in front of a small block building that sat directly behind the main hospital and led John inside. A bright-eyed Greek Army Lieutenant name
d Porras greeted them. He led them along a tiled corridor with pale-yellow walls lined with portrait photographs of anonymous men in uniform. At a set of double doors, they turned right—a sign said Nekrotomeeo/Morgue—and entered a large room equipped with six stainless steel, wheeled tables.

  Three of the tables held bodies laid out with feet protruding from under sheets. Each body had a tag attached to one of its big toes. The smells of antiseptic and other chemicals in the room were not strong enough to disguise the stench of rotting flesh.

  The odor brought back terrible memories for John. He flashed back to the time his unit in Afghanistan discovered a dozen dead Afghani villagers who had been murdered by Taliban fighters for the egregious sin of sending their daughters to the village school. Their bodies had been left to spoil—a message to other villagers not to defy the Taliban’s stone aged philosophy about women’s roles in society.

  Inspector Panagoulakos must have noticed something was wrong. He stepped over and put a hand on John’s shoulder. “Are you all right?” he asked.

  John pushed his bad thoughts to the back of his brain, where they seemed to be housed for recall at the most inopportune times. He returned to the present, rubbed his hands over his face, as though to wash away the unwanted memories. “Yeah, thanks!” But it crossed his mind that if he looked the way he felt at that moment, Panagoulakos could not be particularly well assured.

  Porras walked to the far corner of the morgue and tapped on an office door. The side walls of the office were windowed, but the Venetian blinds on the insides of the glass were closed. Porras’ light knock brought no response, so he knocked harder.

  From behind the office door came a thunderous shout of something unintelligible, followed by a string of curses.

  The young officer might have been able to face enemy fire without pause; but, whoever was behind that door had him cowed. Porras’s voice squeaked as he hesitantly said, “Doctor, there are some gentlemen here to see you.”

  More curses emanated from the office, followed by a crashing sound, as though a chair had been thrown against a wall. The young officer quickly backed away and retreated to the far side of the room, where he took up a position behind Panagoulakos.

  Based on the booming voice that came from the office, John expected at least a giant to walk through the door. Instead, a tiny, elderly man, only a couple inches taller than the diminutive Panagoulakos, flung the office door open and strode into the morgue. He had a wild shock of thick, white hair. His white lab coat sported multi-colored stains. He wore light-blue booties over his shoes and his eyeglasses hung on a chain around his neck. He bellowed in a deep, resonating basso voice, “You better have a good reason for interrupting me.”

  Panagoulakos walked toward the doctor. It appeared to John a confrontation might occur. The older man put on his glasses and then smiled and clapped his hands once. Panagoulakos stopped directly in front of the man and put his arms around him. They hugged each other for about fifteen seconds while they asked after the health of one another’s families.

  Panagoulakos released the old man and turned to John. “John Hammond, meet Doctor Socrates Theodorakis, Chief Pathologist of the Army Medical Corps . . . and my uncle.”

  John stepped forward and took the doctor’s hand. When he stepped back, he noticed that Porras seemed more at ease.

  “So, Christo,” the doctor said, “I assume you are here about the fisherman pulled from the sea. Tragic case. Would you like to inspect the body?”

  They followed the doctor over to one of the tables. John looked up at shelves built into the walls while he trailed behind Panagoulakos. Anything to avoid staring at the bodies. Dozens of bottles and jars lined the shelves. They contained what appeared to be human body parts—some recognizable, others not. John shuddered.

  The pathologist picked up a jar and removed the lid. It smelled of strongly scented salve—menthol and something else—maybe eucalyptus. After he applied a small amount to his upper lip, he passed the jar around to the others. After they all imitated the doctor and smeared some of the goop under their noses, he explained, with a smile, that the reason he did not have a mustache like so many Greeks was because of the mess the salve made. Both Porras and Panagoulakos looked sheepishly at the doctor, having coated their own mustaches with the goop.

  After he donned rubber gloves, the doctor drew the sheet off one of the cadavers with a flourish. Porras immediately changed color. First pale, then gray.

  Theodorakis jabbed a finger at the soldier and ordered him out of the room. Then he looked at John and in English said, “If you can’t handle this, leave now. I don’t want you throwing up in here.”

  John merely shook his head.

  The naked corpse was hideously bloated and a surreal milky-white/blue in color. Sea creatures had obviously chewed on it. As distorted as it was, however, there was no question in John’s mind. The high cheekbones and the large, straight nose. The mustache. “That’s the man I found on the steps,” he said.

  “You’re sure?” Panagoulakos said.

  “Absolutely!”

  Panagoulakos nodded and then turned back to study the body.

  Doctor Theodorakis began his inspection. A microphone hung from the ceiling over the middle of the lab table, near the doctor’s head. He spoke into it: “Greek male identified as Petros Vangelos. Approximately sixty-five to seventy years old. Decomposition has already begun. Adipocere evident. No lividity apparent. Past the point of rigormortis. From the condition of . . . well, well, what do we have here?” Theodorakis poked the dead man’s abdomen with a stainless steel probe. He inserted the tool into a small mark that appeared to be a hole that had been sealed by coagulated blood and the swelling of the corpse. “Looks like a wound of some sort. Maybe a bullet. Help me roll him over,” he ordered Panagoulakos. They rolled the body up on its side and inspected Vangelos’s back. There was a larger, puckered wound there. “Exit wound,” the doctor said in a matter-of-fact tone. “See the lividity on this side,” he added as he pointed at the dark color of the man’s back where his blood had settled after death.

  He rolled the body onto its back again and probed the abdominal area. The metal probe suddenly broke the seal on the wound and gas erupted from the abdomen. The salve on his upper lip did nothing to cut the odor. John turned on his heels and left the room when the smell hit him and his already roiling stomach threatened to revolt. Panagoulakos was not far behind.

  Panagoulakos lit a cigarette as soon as they stepped outside the building.

  “Hell of a way to make a living.” He inhaled deeply of the pungent Greek tobacco. “I’ve tried to quit this disgusting habit,” he said, as he waved the cigarette in the air. “But at times like this, I’m glad I smoke. There’s nothing like a Greek cigarette to kill the stench of the morgue.”

  John stared at Panagoulakos and tried to smile. “That cigarette smells like shit,” he said.

  “That’s the point,” Panagoulakos said.

  They walked down the road past the hospital until they reached the one-story, cinder block Army headquarters building. They passed through the front entrance and immediately saw Lieutenant Porras. He’d still not recovered his natural color. John tried to remember the Greek word for “nauseous” but could only come up with the word for “sick”—arrostos.

  “I’ve asked Doctor Theodorakis to deliver his autopsy report to you,” Panagoulakos said to the lieutenant. “Do you think you could arrange to have it brought over to my office in Vathi?”

  “Of course, Inspector,” Porras answered weakly.

  Panagoulakos gave the lieutenant his card.

  They walked back out the front entrance, retrieved the inspector’s car, and left the base. After a short distance, John said, “Inspector, if you’ll pick the restaurant, it would be my pleasure to buy lunch.” He wasn’t sure if he’d actually be able to eat anything after seeing Vangelos’s body and af
ter the morgue smells, but he badly needed a stiff drink.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Hans and Josef took turns napping in the back seat of their rented Toyota. They’d parked on a side street, twenty meters up from the Soula Hotel, where they had a clear view of the hotel entrance. They had no idea where Hammond had gone. But they had learned from the hotel owner that the American’s things were still in his room.

  The hours dragged by and the afternoon sun raised the temperature in the car.

  “What are we going to do, wait here all day and night?” Josef complained. “Maybe the sonofabitch isn’t coming back. I mean, after all, he’s probably scared shitless after you shot at him last night.”

  Hans slowly turned his head and glared at his partner, who shifted in the back seat of the compact car in an apparent attempt to find a comfortable position. “What do you suggest?” Hans growled. “Going down to the beach and getting a nice tan?” He poked a sausage-sized index finger against his temple. “Think for a change. We have one good chance to find this guy Hammond. If he was so frightened after last night and took off, then he’s probably not only left Samos, but also the whole damned country. If that’s the case, then we’re wasting our time. So what! We waste a day sitting on our asses. But if the sonofabitch didn’t run, he’s bound to show up sooner or later.”

  “Yeah, and what if he never returns?” Josef said in a petulant tone.

  Hans reached between the front seats and pointed his finger at Josef’s forehead. Josef knocked his hand away. Hans laughed. “Then we will find out where the Greek policeman lives and convince him he should give us the map.”

  “If there is a map,” Josef said.

  “Well, we’ll find out one way or the other, won’t we?”

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A half-mile from the Greek Army base, Panagoulakos turned right at a sign that read, CHORA/MYTILINI. This put them on a road that lead inland and within a few minutes they came to the village of Mytilini.

 

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