An Aegean April

by Jeffrey Siger

  “Maggie said you’d be up.”

  “For once in her life she’s wrong. Lila’s mother took the kids for the night so that we could sleep in.”

  “Sorry about that. I’ll call you later.”

  “Hold on. Give me a minute to get into another room so Lila can sleep.”

  “Too late for that,” filtered up from beneath a pillow. “Who is it?”

  “Tassos. I’ll take it outside.” Andreas moved quickly out of bed.

  “Tell her I’m sorry.”

  “He says he’s sorry.”

  “I don’t believe him.”

  “She said––”

  “I heard.”

  “He blames Maggie,” said Andreas.

  “I don’t believe that either,” mumbled Lila.

  Andreas closed the bedroom door behind him and stepped into the adjoining study. As much as he’d grown accustomed to their penthouse view of the Acropolis, the rose-gold glow of morning sunlight moving across the Parthenon always made him pause. He’d come to accept these moments as a welcome consequence of his marrying the heir to one of Greece’s greatest fortunes, bringing his wife, in return, such unexpected joys as this early morning telephone call to her second-generation Athens cop husband.

  He smiled, but we do make wonderful children.

  Andreas turned his back to the view, and leaned against an antique French kingwood desk. “So, what’s up?”

  “I thought you were the one who had the questions,” said Tassos.

  “I’m looking for specifics on who’s making money off the refugee crisis.”

  “I doubt I know much more than I read in the papers.”

  “I’m all ears for your ‘much more.’”

  “That will require me to take a sip of coffee.”

  Andreas heard his friend swallow.

  “Let’s start from square one,” said Tassos. “It’s a mess created by the West that the West wants to go away.”

  “Nice tag line, but do you have anything more concrete for me?”

  “Politicians all over the EU are scared shitless of even the mention of the word refugee. They’ll bite at just about anything anyone offers to lower the heat on that subject among their voters.”

  Andreas stood and turned to stare up at the Acropolis. “Meaning?”

  “The UK voted to leave the EU over free migration among EU countries, and every terrorist attack in the West gets the media looking for a refugee connection. Find a way to keep refugees away from northern European borders that doesn’t paint its politicians or countrymen as heartless bigots, and the politicians will greet you with open arms. More importantly, they’ll pay you.”

  “Sounds like you’re talking about the deal the EU reached with Turkey to take back migrants arriving on our islands by sea.”

  “Yes,” said Tassos. “That and more subtle deals. Look at the former Soviet satellite nations that closed their borders to refugees who never had any intention of staying in those countries. They just wanted to use them as passageways to northern Europe.” Tassos took another noisy swallow of coffee. “What sort of sweet deals do you think they received for closing off their borders to the south and east, and taking the worldwide media heat themselves, rather than letting migrants pass through and force their supposedly more civilized northern neighbors to say ‘no’ directly to those wanting to migrate to their countries? That would have exposed northern EU countries to a blitz of horrible publicity, at least as bad as experienced by the UK and France when refugees massed at the Calais end of the Eurotunnel trying to get through to the UK.”

  “I get the political analysis, but what I’m looking for are profiles on those who’ve figured out ways to make money-in-their-pocket profits off the refugees.”

  “If you’re talking about both bad guys and good guys, on a scale from bad to good, we’ve got refugee traffickers on one end, and NGOs on the other.”

  “Who’s in the middle?” said Andreas, suppressing a yawn.

  “It’s murky. Traffickers obviously can’t function without big-time official protection, and that costs serious money. But because of the subject’s acute international political ramifications, other considerations sometimes outweigh the profits to be made from protecting trafficking. That’s when the refugee crisis goes into hibernation.”

  “For instance?”

  “Relatively soon after making their deal, the EU cut back on its agreed-upon per diem payments to Turkey, but the Turkish government let it slide for political reasons tied to its wish to get into the EU. Some cynics saw it more as proof of just how little the Turks actually spent on feeding and caring for its refugees, but that’s a different story. Later, when the Turkish military’s coup d’état failed, and Erdogan got pissed at the West, boatloads of refugees began hitting the beaches again in Lesvos and Chios.”

  “What about the NGOs?” asked Andreas.

  “I’m sure most of them are legit, but I’m also sure some are doing far less than God’s work when it comes to how they spend the money they raise. For example, I’ve heard of some NGO workers getting kickbacks from vendors through inflated invoices to their NGOs, which brings me to the less-than-Christian behavior of some of our countrymen who contract to supply and shelter refugees. With all the money at play, there’s a lot of blame to pass around.”

  Andreas turned away from the window. “I’ve got a murdered Greek shipowner who planned on breaking the back of Turkey-to-Greece refugee trafficking, and a prosecutor on Lesvos trying to pin it on a refugee who works for the NGO that was the victim’s biggest supporter.”

  “Is that the case with the sword?”

  “You heard about it?”

  “Who hasn’t? Getting sliced in half doesn’t happen every day. Especially to rich guys.”

  “We’ve no leads, but I’m sure the guy who’s in custody didn’t do it.”

  “What do you want from me?”

  Andreas sat back against the desk. “As you said, this is the kind of murder that gets everybody’s attention. Even hard-assed bad guys.”

  “For sure.”

  “There must be chatter out there about this. Maybe you can pick something up on your old-boy network?”

  “You mean you want me to go back to hanging out in Star Wars sorts of bars, hoping to bump into intergalactic weirdos who might have something to share?”

  “You get the picture.” Andreas smiled.

  “Tomorrow’s Easter, and even bad guys take off for that holiday through Monday.”

  “Tuesday’s soon enough.”

  “How considerate of you.”

  Andreas laughed. “It’s my nature. I’ll see you Sunday.”

  “Assuming Lila doesn’t yank my invitation for waking her up.”

  “I’ll see what I can do to soften her heart.”

  “I guess that means Maggie and I should be prepared to order takeout.”

  “Not Maggie,” said Andreas.

  “Bye.”

  Morning light had broadened out across the city, but the Parthenon still glowed. As well it should, thought Andreas. Athenians had much to be proud of in their Acropolis. Some, though, took it a bit too far, claiming that unlike similar wonders of the ancient world, the Parthenon had been built by freedmen, not slaves. That sounded grand, though in truth it only demonstrated how similar were the lives lived by slaves and freedmen––once slaves themselves––working side by side, each class with origins traced to distant lands.

  Just like refugees.

  l l l l l

  The Saturday morning of Easter Week produced a strange mix of souls on Mykonos’ old town streets. During high season, locals knew better than to wander about so soon after the witching hour, but at Easter time they’d not yet ceded their town to the partiers. Old women dressed in black hurried about in determined preparation for a day of ch
urch work and services, while stragglers at all levels of intoxication struggled to find their way home from bars, clubs, and other people’s beds.

  Dana sat in a taverna on the edge of the harbor with coffee and a croissant. She’d spent much of the night in church services, the balance at home trying to sleep, and the morning, since eight, sitting in the port.

  Her Friday night had started at the island’s lone Catholic church in Little Venice. She overheard parishioners talking about joining a procession beginning at nine at the Metropolis Greek Orthodox Church next door. That seemed a fitting tribute to Mihalis’ memory, so she decided to join in.

  The procession marched as one of three departing simultaneously from Metropolis and the old town’s other two central churches. Each church’s clergy and worshipers followed their church’s uniquely decorated epitaphios, representing the bier of Christ, along a prearranged route winding past the other central churches before ending up back at their own.

  It represented the funeral of Christ, and Mykonians and visitors not marching lined the route, some standing on freshly painted balconies sprinkling the participants below with a mixture of rose water and perfumes, the rodhonoro used on Christ’s body when taken down from the cross.

  Dana walked in the middle of the Metropolis procession among young and old, locals and visitors, Orthodox and non-Orthodox, all packed together into the narrow lanes of the old-town route. She sensed that simply by participating in this single night’s event, the marchers felt they’d be elevated to a higher spiritual plane than any they could achieve on their own.

  If only that were so.

  About thirty meters before the turn onto Matogianni Street, Mykonos’ compact version of New York City’s Madison Avenue high-end shopping locale, the procession passed between a cluster of churches and opened into a much broader bit of lane. But the surge into that wider space ended abruptly as the crowd funneled into another pinch point close by the central gathering place for Mykonos’ late-night café society.

  Dana stood waiting for the crowd to move on. She looked at the buildings ahead and off to her right. It amazed her how a town as unique and beautiful as this could allow its architecture to be so compromised by transient shop-owners wishing to make it look like someplace else. Madison Avenue-style display windows imposed on classic Cycladic structures––and their rapidly spreading minimalist modern progeny––did not represent thinking outside the box. It struck her as nothing more than an unimaginative denigration of the island’s historic natural beauty.

  What a shame.

  As the crowd began moving, it carried Dana along with it to her left, and she caught a glimpse of a different sort of building. Cycladic white, like all the others, but set back beneath a balcony bearing a discreet sign advertising the island’s “accommodations center” on the second floor. A single step, and a knee-high white stucco wall enclosing a small flagstone landing, separated the first story from the road.

  Directly up and across from the step, an ornately carved white marble jamb and entablature surrounded a sturdy, six-paneled, blood-red double door, and off to its right, smooth white marble framed a matching six-paned casement window. The only apparent concession to modern times looked to be an open lattice of black iron bars over the window, but the bars matched an ancient, cast-iron cannon set into the road just outside the wall.

  This was the sort of classic, nineteenth-century Cycladic design she’d been looking for. She edged through the crowd toward the building. A sign set in marble by the door read, AEGEAN MARITIME MUSEUM.

  Dana felt a chill run up her spine.

  She stepped up onto the landing and peered through the window. She couldn’t see beyond the model sailing ship set on the sill, but that was enough to drive her thoughts to the ships and refugees that occupied her life, and to memories of Mihalis.

  “Excuse me, Miss, may I help you?”

  The unexpected voice jerked Dana out of her trance.

  “Sorry, I didn’t mean to startle you. I saw you staring in the window and just wanted to tell you that though the sign says the museum opens at ten-thirty, tomorrow morning it opens at nine, if you’re interested.” The man extended his hand. “My name is Philipos and I sort of look after the place.” Slim, with a scruffy graying beard and long hair reminding Dana of her father’s photographs of his hippie days, he looked to be in his mid-fifties.

  She shook his hand. “Thank you, I might just do that.”

  “I think you’ll find it unique. It has a garden unlike any other on Mykonos. It is serene and calming.” He nodded and left.

  How did he know to tell me that? And in English?

  Their brief encounter haunted her, and so the next morning, Dana left her table at the harborfront taverna and made her way through the old town to arrive at the museum precisely at nine.

  As if to prove he was indeed a mortal Greek, Philipos arrived a half-hour late, but with cakes and coffee for them both, “Just in case you’d be here.”

  They sat on the edge of the wall drinking their coffees as she listened to Philipos tell her the history of the museum. An individual donor founded it in 1983 for the purpose of preserving and promoting the study of Greek maritime history and tradition, particularly the merchant ship history of the Aegean Sea. Philipos spoke with great pride of the museum’s efforts to restore historical exhibits to their original state of design and build.

  His words reminded her of Mihalis’ tales of his family’s generations at sea, which led to thoughts of her murdered friend and his plans, and to tears welling up in her eyes.

  “I’m sorry.” She took a tissue from her bag and dabbed at her eyes.

  “No problem,” said Philipos. “Though I must say I’m not used to my little talk on the museum bringing tears to a visitor’s eyes.” He stood. “Come, let me show you that special place I promised you.”

  He unlocked the front door and led Dana through a room full of miniature ships arranged in separate glass cases, past walls lined in drawings of seagoing adventurers, their vessels and charts, and across a rough marble floor bordered by artifacts of the maritime life. They stepped into a smaller room of similar appointments, and stopped in front of a pair of red doors in the style of the museum’s paneled front door.

  “Here you are.” He pulled open the doors, and the glass-paneled French doors beyond them.

  Dana stood silently in the doorway, staring out at the garden. I wonder if Alice felt this way at the bottom of that rabbit hole.

  “Our garden is meant to honor those lost at sea. But it also works well for those of us lost on land. Please stay as long as you wish.” He turned and left her standing at the door.

  She’d not yet asked him why he thought she might need a place like this. Perhaps it’s all too obvious. Her mother had always said that Dana wore her heart on her sleeve, inevitably eliciting her father’s favorite pun: “That’s what makes her so disarming.”

  She should call her parents. Orthodox and Western Easter shared the same Sunday this year. It was also Passover. She’d FaceTime her parents tomorrow and cover all her bases with one call. She knew that family holidays alone were always tough on them.

  At the heart of the garden lay a four-hundred-square-meter mat of deep green, flat and smooth as a golf putting surface. A gray flagstone walkway separated the grassy center from a border of olive, orange, hibiscus, bougainvillea, oleander, and other greenery she did not recognize, all running up to a beige stone perimeter wall. The garden was no more than nine hundred square meters, but seemed much larger because, beyond the wall, only treetops and snatches of a few all-white buildings were visible in the distance.

  To her left, set off between what looked to be a small storage room and the edge of the grass, stood the top two stories of a lighthouse. A white, twelve-sided metal first story supported a second story of twelve three-paned glass windows enclosing the lamp and lens. An exterior r
ailed metal walkway encircled the base of the second story, and a verdigris dodecagon cupola and weather vane crowned it all.

  A plaque to the right of a metal hatchway in the base of the lighthouse commemorated an award at the Paris International Exhibition of 1889 for its lighting, and its subsequent service atop the lighthouse at the northwest edge of Mykonos from 1890 until replaced by a fully automated version in 1983.

  An array of relics from centuries at sea stood along the rear wall of the museum: cannon with metal and stone ammunition, a ship’s wheel, compass, engine-room telegraph to the bridge, and a collision-avoidance device relied on in a time before radar. She walked past a group of marble columns and slabs set on flagstones by the near edge of the green, and stepped onto the grass heading for three marble markers at the far end of the plot.

  She smiled. It’s artificial turf. A smart decision on an arid, drought-prone island. Three paces later she stopped. She’d realized the markers were marble cenotaphs, each honoring the memory of a sailor who’d not made it back to land. She did not want to tread any further on this spiritual gravesite.

  She turned back to sit on a stone bench abutting the rear wall of the museum, and from under the shade of a large olive tree looked out across the garden wall, hearing not a sound, except for the cries of birds.

  She shut her eyes.

  Why did they kill him?

  She already knew the answer. For the same reason they herded families into boats they knew would sink, and offered life jackets––even in children’s sizes––they knew would not float.

  It’s all about the money. Nothing else.

  And no one stood up to them. Politicians offered euphemisms and sanctimonious talk, then built concentration camps with fancy deceptive names and considered their work done.

  Mihalis had tried to do more. They’d slaughtered him.

  She bit at her lower lip, her eyes more tightly shut.

  It had to be the traffickers. But which one? Or ones? Mihalis’ plan would have affected them all. North of the city of Izmir, traffickers used sea routes from Turkey to Lesvos, west of Izmir routes to Chios, and south of Izmir to Samos.