Chapter 77
The Athens intelligence network, like its continental counterparts had links with Malory’s London friends and the Americans. The networks in these countries handled threats to national security : they had the resources to get information on anyone. Economic threats had the lowest priority but were nevertheless within their province.
Sometimes intelligence gathering intersected with commercial threats to companies whose business was of national importance. Often, these companies operated in other countries.
Commercial espionage was usually downgraded by the intelligence service. When it had to be investigated, there were the usual ways of getting illicit information via corrupt police and bureaucrats, ex-servicemen, petty criminals, prostitutes, informants, political agitators and agents provocateurs. Many of these had their own special talents – bribery, burglary, intimidation and chicanery which were available or hired out for a fee, depending on the job. If any of them were caught, they were on their own and the networks would deny any knowledge of them.
The Athens intelligence community kept any pseudo-legal operations at arm’s length. Stefanides worked within the outer circle of the network. In the early 1970s when he was a student, he’d played a small part in the overthrow of the ‘Colonels’, the Greek military junta supported by the Americans to oppose socialism and the influence of the Soviets. Since then, he’d been in a few scrapes with politicians, police and the military but had always emerged unscathed.
On this occasion, the brief to find Christoforou was a commercial job (which was a rarity in itself) and was unrelated to State Security. As he was handling the work for a large fee, direct involvement was unavoidable : his paymaster, Ashby was in situ with him, overseeing everything he did.
With that in mind, Stefanides had been busy on the phone in his room until two in the morning which was the usual time he went to sleep (after the floorshow at the Perikles Hotel had ended.)
The first call he made was to a contact in the Athens police to try and get a photograph of Christoforou or his fingerprints or anything else to identify him positively. The contact was a reliable detective inspector who was used to dealing with the Security Service even though he distrusted them and was irritated whenever they poked around in his criminal cases.
As the files were in the Criminal Records Office, the inspector said it would have to wait until nine o’clock when he could slip in unnoticed and copy the file, if there was one.
Next, Stefanides rang a low-level clerk who worked in the Passport Office to get a copy of Christoforou’s most recent travel documents. They might have a recent photograph if the police hadn’t taken one.
Even after any of these were available and he could physically identify the target, it could still be difficult to track him down.
Christoforou was using a false name and passport and whatever alias he was using, wasn’t known. It might have been ‘Kyriacou’, the name given by the visitor to Ashby’s hotel. Or it might have been something different altogether. At that stage, they didn’t know what it was.
Ital-Grec had eight ferries plying the Adriatic ports, each with more than twenty crew members. Identifying Christoforou as one of a hundred and sixty seamen could take weeks. The job would require someone who could search Ital-Grec’s staff records, either with their co-operation (by bribing them or talking them round) or doing a break and enter job.
For a delicate operation such as this, Stefanides recruited a con man called Demos (short for Demosthenes). He was a bear of a man with a passing resemblance to a male Greek singer who, at the time, had a female following around the world. Demos liked to trick women by pretending to be his namesake and was forever running after and discarding lady admirers.
He was to go to the head office of the Ital-Grec Ferry Line in Athens, the Maritime Authority and Athens General Hospital. If there were girls in each of these offices who looked after the personal records of staff, seamen or patients, he would charm them or spin a story of trying to find his long-lost brother. If worst came to worst, Stefanides said he could pay them something moderate for the information he wanted.
Stefanides stressed that they needed to find out which ferry Christoforou was working on and when it was due back in Patra. The important thing now was the time factor. But for a very quick job, Demos said he’d want a lot more money than usual. Stefanides merely said, “We’ll talk about it,” which meant they would haggle about it later.
After an interlude of several hours, at around half past seven after the sun had risen, Demos rang back. He’d already had some success but couldn’t guarantee that what he’d found out was correct – that was for Stefanides to judge.
One of the secretaries at Ital-Grec Ferries had gone into the office early to catch up on some paperwork. Demos had spun a story that he was a private detective in a divorce case. He was trying to find a sailor who had run out on his family – the wife wanted to end the marriage so she could re-marry but she couldn’t find her husband. To get the divorce, the sailor needed to be handed the court papers in person and sign for them. He was described as very tall, middle aged, bald, heavily built with a black beard and glasses.
The secretary had said that a man answering that description came to their office a few weeks earlier, trying to get an advance on his salary. He frightened the girls in the office and in the end, the boss kicked him out. She remembered his name – Kyriacou.
“If it’s him, he’ll be on the Patra to Bari run. His ship, Poseidon IV will dock tomorrow morning at six o’clock.”
“That matches what we already know about him,” said Stefanides. “See if you can get anything on him this morning. Ring me again at noon.”
Demos was then on his way to the hospital, the Maritime Authority, the Passport Office and a park where Christoforou’s criminal records would be handed over in exchange for an ‘administration charge’.
When everyone met at breakfast, Stefanides reported the progress he’d made overnight.
“At this stage, we don’t know for sure if the Captain will be on the Bari ferry returning tomorrow morning but the information I’m expecting at mid-day will give us a better idea.”
In the hotel’s travel brochures, a train timetable showed the trains linking up with the Patra ferries to Italy. There were two ferries servicing Bari but eight traversing the Adriatic.
“Do you know for certain that he’s on the Bari ferry ?” asked Ashby.
“Not yet. We’ll just have to be patient,” replied Stefanides. “At one o’clock, you and I will go to Patra. Nikos, you should stay here with your wife on Poros. We will be back in two days.”
To this, Nikos protested. “We must go with you too. They will know we’ve left Athens. Soon, they will come after us. We want to leave the country – so you must find Christoforou quickly.”
At noon, Demos rang again and said that he had Christoforou’s police file with photograph and fingerprints but no medical records and a passport application from twelve years earlier. The maritime certificates weren’t of any use.
“All we have to go on is what the secretary in the ferries office told you,” said Stefanides. “Take a copy of the police photograph and go back to the ferry office. Ask them whether that is definitely Kyriacou. If it isn’t, tell them anything you like, as long as you find out which ship he’s on. And courier everything to me at Patra – Sporades’ place.”
By one o’clock, they had left Poros and taken the highway traversing the Peloponnesus, past Argos then up through Achaea to Patra.
Stefanides’ friend, Sporades ran a small hotel not far from the ferry terminal. This was to be their base for the next few days. It was in an out of the way place but overlooked the harbour and the ships entering and leaving the port.
That night, they had everything they needed to make a positive identification of Christoforou. Now, all they had to do was to find him.
Plantation A Legal Thriller Page 77