Deadline in Athens (39 page)

I stared at her and my mind went to Zissis. I wondered what he'd have done if he'd heard all that. How he would have reacted. She had a triumphant smirk on her lips. She thought she'd cut the ground from under me.

I opened the door and strode out.

CHAPTER 42

Impasse = 1. a situation in which progress is blocked. 2. an insurmountable difficulty. 3. stalemate. 4. deadlock.

The meaning given by Dimitrakos suited me to a T. Liddell & Scott, however, gave further meaning: without outlet; unable to get out; the infinite (Aristotle Physics 3.5.2). So, according to Aristotle, impasse also meant "the infinite." In other words, I, who had reached an impasse, was spinning in infinity in my quest to nail Sovatzis. Put more plainly, I was looking for a needle in a haystack.

It was six in the evening, the day after Christmas, and I was lying on my bed with my dictionaries. The previous day had passed fairly painlessly. I'd been invited for Christmas lunch by Michos, Adriani's cousin who worked for the telephone company. I hadn't wanted to go, but Adriani and Katerina had telephoned to insist. It would not have been right for me to have said no, they would have been offended, and, in any case, it had at least passed the day. We had eaten our turkey, had a jolly time, and, at around seven, Rena, Michos's wife, had taken it upon herself to teach me gin rummy. What I know about cards begins and ends with snap, but out of courtesy I decided to comply. At some point, I thought I'd mastered it and they cleaned me out. I got home after midnight and went out like a light. I hadn't had so much as five minutes to think about Sovatzis.

This morning, however, he was on my mind from the first pee of the day. I racked my brain trying to find some opening, some way to trap him, but there was no ray of light anywhere. All right, we had put an end to a trade in children. I even knew who had taken Hourdakis's place at customs. Someone by the name of Anastassiou. We could send them all to the public prosecutor. The chances of the prosecutor charging Dourou as an accessory before the fact were fifty-fifty. The accessory before the fact wasn't Dourou, it was Sovatzis, and he was still at large, and so was whoever murdered the two reporters.

Adriani had been right. I should have left everything, gone to Thessaloniki, and been with my daughter. By noon, I couldn't take it anymore. I got into the Mirafiori and started driving aimlessly. Without a conscious objective, I suddenly found myself in Rafina. I got out of the car and took a stroll along the waterfront. The sea air cleared my mind and I saw the situation as blacker still. Never mind Sovatzis, we were even in danger of Dourou being released if the statement by her assistant didn't convince the court. Given the organization they had, it was nothing for them to come up with a handful of Albanians who would claim that the kids at The Foxes were theirs. They might even bring the real parents from Albania. The more I thought about it, the lower my spirits sank. I went into a cafe to unwind. The noise, the buzz of the card players, the dice rolling on the backgammon boards made me forget my cares. I got home at around four and settled down to a long browse among my dictionaries.

I was poised between sitting in front of the TV and going to see a film when the phone rang. It was Zissis.

"How's the bachelor life?" he said.

"Great. I'm having a ball."

He laughed. "That's always how it is at first. You try to convince yourself that you're better off alone. You have your peace and quiet; you don't have to answer to anyone. But before too long the loneliness gets to you and you slip into despondency. Ask me about it. I'm an expert after all these years."

I said nothing because I didn't want to admit that he was right.

"I made some roast goat in the oven yesterday, but I can't eat it all on my own. Do you feel like coming over and having a go at it with me?"

He took me unawares and I didn't know what to say. Okay, we knew each other and we helped each other out every so often, but it wasn't as if we were eating and drinking companions. I was about to say no, when suddenly I thought how difficult it must have been for him to invite me, how difficult it would be for him to have a police officer at his table, even one that he liked.

"I'11 come," I said.

"When?"

"I can be there in an hour."

"I've got a surprise for you," he told me. "A kind of gift." And then he hung up.

The roads were empty and I arrived in Ekavis Street a quarter of an hour earlier than I had anticipated. I found him waiting for me at the door. He didn't let me get out of the car, but came and sat next to me.

"Where are we going?" I said. "To the baker's to get the roast goat?"

"We're going for the surprise, but first I want you to promise me something."

"What?"

"We're going to meet someone, but I want you to promise me that once you've talked to him you'll let him go. I gave him my word that as long as he was with me, he would not come to any harm."

"Who is it? Sovatzis?"

"Sovatzis? What on earth made you think that? No, it's not Sovatzis."

"And how do you know I'll keep my word?"

"I know," he said with certainty. "Take Dekelias Street and then turn onto Attalias Street. We're going to the AEK stadium."

It wasn't far and there didn't seem to be anything to say on the way. When we got to the stadium, he told me to wait.

"I won't be long." He got out and disappeared into the trees.

I tried to guess who he might be bringing to me, but my store of ideas had dried up. Presently he came back with a man, but I couldn't make him out in the darkness. As he got closer he began to look familiar. Then I recognized him: It was Kolakoglou.

They opened the doors and got into the car. Zissis in front, Kolakoglou in the back. He wasn't wearing any overcoat and was rubbing his sides to warm himself. He was wearing the same clothes he had been wearing when he was perched on the roof of the hotel with the gun to his head. He looked at me, suspicious and frightened.

"It's okay, Petros. There is no need to be frightened," Zissis said. "Mr. Haritos gave me his word. You'll say what you have to say and then you are free to go."

"Why are you hiding?" I asked him.

"Because I'm afraid," he said. "I'm afraid that if I fall into your hands, you'll send me back to prison, and this time for murder."

"Why should you go to prison? Did you kill Karayoryi?"

He laughed despite his fear. "Do I look like a murderer to you?"

"That's beside the point. Most murderers don't look like murderers. The point is that after the trial you threatened her. You told her she'd pay for what she did to you."

"That's not what I meant."

"What did you mean?"

He fell silent. He wasn't sure he was doing the right thing by opening up to me, and he hesitated.

"Come on, say it and let's get it over with," Zissis encouraged him. "That's why you came"

"Karayoryi had a bastard child," he said.

I don't know what I'd been trying to imagine while Zissis was gone, but that was one thing I'd never have thought of. I quickly tried to work out what new paths this bit of information opened up. "Are you sure?" I asked him.

"I am."

"And how did you find out about it?"

"Before I opened my own tax consultancy firm, I worked as an accountant for the Seamen's Pension Fund. One day, it must have been April 'seventy-four, a woman came wanting to take care of some contributions. She was accompanied by Karayoryi, who had a huge belly. She must have been ready to give birth."

Without doubt, the woman must have been Antonakaki, her sister. She'd gone to take care of her contributions paid by her husband, who was a seaman, and Karayoryi had gone with her.

"Go on."

"When, years later, she approached me as a reporter, she didn't remember me of course, but I recognized her immediately. Apart from the pregnancy, she hadn't changed at all. `How's the child?' I asked her at some moment. She was shocked and looked at me in astonishment. `There's some mistake. I don't have any children,' she said. Then I told her I'd seen her at the office of the Seamen's Pension Fund and that she'd been pregnant at the time, but she insisted that she didn't have any children."

"Are you sure that it was her?"

"No doubt whatsoever."

"Maybe the child had died."

"If it had died, she would have told me so. She wouldn't have said that she didn't have any children. That's what I meant when I threatened her. That I knew her secret and I'd make it public knowledge. I got my lawyer to investigate. When I got out of prison, the first thing I did was to investigate it again myself. I wanted to expose her, to get my revenge on her, but I found no trace of the child. It was as if the earth had opened and swallowed it up. When she was murdered, I gave up on it." He remained silent for a moment and looked at me. Then he added angrily: "Do you understand how I felt? She had abandoned her child to some foster parents and she had me sent to prison because I loved children and caressed them."

Suddenly, the letters I'd found in Karayoryi's desk came to my mind. The unknown N was not Nena Delopoulou. It was the father of the child. He wanted to see his child and she was keeping it hidden from him.

"All I want is to get my life into some kind of order and to live peacefully from now on," I heard Kolakoglou telling me.

"There's no need for you not to go home, Mr. Kolakoglou. You're not wanted by the police and no one's going to bother you. If reporters start annoying you, shut the door in their faces. By now they will have found someone else to harass." He was no longer news. Robespierre had said so.

He looked at me uncertainly. He was afraid to believe it.

"I told you that if you told Mr. Haritos everything you knew, everything would work out. Go on home now," Zissis told him.

"Thanks," he said to Zissis, clutching his arm. He said nothing to me. He thought that if he said anything to me, I might change my mind and take him in. He opened the door and got out, but he didn't go back into the trees. He went in the direction of Dekelias Street, toward a bus stop.

"How did you ferret him out?" I said.

We were sitting at the table in his house, eating roast goat in a lemon sauce, and drinking retsina.

"I was surprised that you let him go, that time at the hotel."

"It was a big risk and it wasn't worth it."

"I don't imagine you did it only because of the risk involved. Deep down, you believed he was innocent."

It wasn't that I believed it. I knew it.

"Anyway, I know a lot of people in the area where you found him. They all know that for years the security police were after me too. That made it easy for me, because when I said that I wanted to help Kolakoglou, they believed me. Whoever knew anything told me. Eventually, I found out that he'd been taken in by a distant cousin of his, who lived between Petroupoli and Nea Liossia."

"I can understand those people. But how did you convince Kolakoglou?"

"I showed him these."

He put both hands inside his belt and lifted up his shirt and pullover. His back and chest were crisscrossed with scars from old wounds. I didn't need to ask him who had inflicted those wounds.

"I wanted to help him because I know what it means to be on the run," he said, tucking in his shirt. "After all, he'd paid for what he did. Why should he have to hide like a frightened hare?"

I watched him picking at the goat and eating it slowly the better to savor the taste. I remembered what he'd said to me a few days ago in the car: You're the bottom. I touched bottom and we met each other. Where? That first time in the security police headquarters on Bouboulinas Street, when we were chasing communists. Now with Kolakoglou, we were chasing pederasts. We were both sewer rats. That's why we'd met.

CHAPTER 43

It was after midnight when I reached home. Usually, I can't manage more than three glasses of wine, and Zissis had poured half a gallon down me. The moment I lay on the bed, I felt the room going around. I closed my eyes and tried to find a position in which I would feel less dizzy.

I woke up with a heavy head. I made a coffee and swallowed two aspirins. Then I phoned Thanassis. I asked him for Antonakaki's number. As I was dialing it, I prayed that she wouldn't have gone away for the holidays. Mercifully, she answered, and I told her that I needed to talk to her.

"Come around. I'll be here."

"I'd prefer that we be alone."

"We will be alone. Anna has gone away with some friends and will only be back tonight."

Athens was empty still. Those who had gone away had not yet returned. Most people went away right through to the New Year. Within ten minutes I was on Chryssippou Street in Zografou. She opened the door for me and showed me through to the living room.

"Would you like me to make you coffee?"

"No, thanks, I've already had one. Some new evidence has come up and I need some additional information concerning your sister."

"Ask me what you want." She sat down opposite me.

"In 1974 you went to the offices of the Seamen's Pension Fund to take care of some contributions for your husband. Your sister was with you. Do you remember that visit?"

"I've been there countless times. How am I supposed to remember after twenty years?"

"You might remember because your sister was pregnant at the time."

Her expression froze. She opened her mouth. To say something? To shout? I don't know, because she shut it again without a sound, without a word. And then at long last: "There's some mistake. My sister was never pregnant."

"Do you know who it was who dealt with your case at that time? Petros Kolakoglou. He was an employee at the SPF before he opened his own business. He told me that your sister looked ready to give birth in 'seventy-four" I remained silent and so did she. "What happened to the child, Mrs. Antonakaki?"

She came up with the easiest explanation. "The baby died."

"If that is so, there must be a death certificate. Do you know where it is? Is it at the Athens Registry Office?"