Sarris pressed a lever on his intercom, spoke rapidly in Greek, sat back, lit a fresh cigarette. The cassette will be here in a moment.'
He was wearing a pale linen suit and even at that early hour he looked alert. He watched his two visitors until a uniformed policeman brought in a cassette. Sarris picked up the cassette, inserted it inside a machine on a side table. 'Listen,' he commanded.
The cassette reeled out a string of pure gibberish for Newman. He glanced at Marler who was staring out of the window, showing no apparent interest in the proceedings. Sarris was checking his watch. After two and a half minutes he raised a warning hand.
The gibberish stopped. There was a pause. Then it came through loud and clear. In English. From now on call sign changed to Colonel Winter. Staring at Newman, Sarris switched off the machine.
'You have heard of this Colonel Winter?'
'No. Doesn't mean a thing to me.'
'Pity. I am thinking of informing the Drug Squad. The traffickers are becoming very sophisticated. Using coded radio signals to warn of a shipment on its way. The Drug Squad has radio detector vans. Maybe they'll send a couple down to Cape Sounion, try to get a fix on this Florakis.'
'And the fingerprints on that bottle?'
'We'll check them through our records. That could take time.'
'You can isolate Florakis' prints? I gave you that postcard I showed Christina while we were driving back. You've taken my prints. The card gives you Christina's. Eliminate hers and mine and you're left with Florakis.'
'I had worked that out for myself.' Sarris rose from behind his desk. 'Thank you for the information. Now I expect you'll want to get back to the Grande Bretagne, have a shave, some breakfast, then maybe some sleep. You've been up all night.'
'I had hoped for more from you,' Newman said as he stood up.
'I gave you the radio signal – which may link up with Florakis.' He paused. 'I will give you something more. I said earlier all the clues seemed to pour in at once. Yesterday we had a woman here with a weird story. A Mrs Florakis. About sixty and recently she took a bus tour to Cape Sounion. A widow, by the way. Married very young.' He smiled thinly. 'I see I have your attention?'
'Go on.'
'Her husband, Stavros Florakis, was killed in 1947 during the Civil War. In a battle with the Communist ELAS forces. It so happened a woman friend saw him die near Salonika. This woman also saw the Communists search the body, take his papers, then they incinerated the corpse. Something Mrs Florakis never understood. Still intrigued?'
'Stop tantalizing. You sound like my editor.'
'As I said, Mrs Florakis takes this bus tour. The bus stops off the road close to a new hotel building site. To let them get a good view of Poseidon. A man appears with a shotgun. He threatens the driver, tells him to get off his land. The bus driver argues. Mrs Florakis then hears the man with the shotgun shout, 'I am Stavros Florakis. I own this land and you are trespassing.' She gets a good view of this man. She gets a shock. He is not a bit like her husband. Then she remembers what happened to him. All this flashes through her mind in a few seconds. Then the bus moves off. She tells her story to me very clearly, but I am not impressed. We get so many crazies wandering in here. For good public relations I let her make a formal statement, which we filed. Now you tell me something that makes me think maybe I was wrong.'
'Florakis is an impostor.' Newman observed. 'So who is he?'
'Maybe – just maybe – the fingerprints you cleverly obtained can unlock his true identity.' He shook hands with Newman and Marler.'Let us keep in touch, gentlemen…'
'So that covers what Newman told me, Kalos.' Sarris concluded as he clasped his hands behind his neck and relaxed in his chair. 'What do you make of it all?'
Kalos, his trusted assistant, was very different physically from his chief. Small and stocky, with thick legs and arms, he had a long head and intelligent eyes. In his early forties, he had been passed over for promotion several times but bore no grudge. It was Sarris' private opinion that it was Kalos' lack of height which had held him back. Most unfair, and Sarris had done his best to help him up the ladder. But who said life was fair?
'We've had a lucky break again,' Kalos decided. 'We ignored the Florakis woman – but she may have fingered the key link in the organization the Drug Squad is trying to locate. With no success. Unless it's political,' he mused. 'Not drugs.'
Sarris sat up straight. 'What does that mean?'
'My mind roams.' Kalos smiled drily. 'As you know-there are people higher up who don't approve of a man who lets his mind roam. Never get fixated on one theory. My inflexible maxim, and stuff them upstairs.'
'You said unless it's political. Please elaborate.'
'Last year,' Kalos began, fitting his bulk inside the arms of a chrome-plated chair, 'a so-called Colonel Gerasimov visited us from Moscow. We were asked to guard him like royalty – but discreetly with plain-clothes operatives. He spent very little of his visit at the Soviet Embassy, a lot of it at the Hilton. He had three rooms booked and switched from one to another. I got curious and had him secretly photographed…'
'Without my permission,' Sarris chided him.
'You know me. When I visited Belgrade unofficially about this drugs problem I showed that picture to a Yugoslav – a Croat called Pavelic in the security services. I got him drunk and showed him the picture. He laughed when I said it was a photo of Colonel Gerasimov of the GRU. He told me it was General Lucharsky, a Deputy Chief of the Soviet GeneraI Staff.'
'I remember. Do continue,' Sarris urged him with a quizzical smile.
'Yugoslavia is sensitive to power movements inside the Kremlin. Gorbachev suits the Belgrade Government fine. Pavelic, though, is a hardliner. He told me Lucharsky was 'one of ours'.'
'You didn't tell me that bit,' Sarris snapped.
'Why raise hares? You were up to your eyes in work. While in Athens the man at the Soviet Embassy Lucharsky spent most time with was Colonel Rykovsky, the military attache. And an expert in communications.'
'How do you know that?'
The Greek cleaning woman they employ when their menial staff is on holiday happens to clean my apartment.'
'Purely by chance, of course?' Sarris was leaning forward now, taking in every word. 'You do realize you are far exceeding the scope of your duties, my friend?'
'I like to know what is really going on.' Kalos ran a stubby finger round his open-necked collar and smiled drily again. 'It is hardly likely to affect my promotion prospects. And now we hear a Colonel Volkov will soon visit us from Moscow. Odd.'
'Why?'
'Pavelic, the Croat, was very drunk when we talked alone. He said to me, 'I would not be surprised if you receive another visitor in Athens one of these days. Lucharsky's aide and confidant. A Colonel Volkov. Another sound man.' Translation – another hardliner. These are not pro-Gorbachev men. So why do they travel to Athens, I wonder?'
Sarris sat thinking, Yugoslavia was a 'federation' of six different nationalities. A racial mix, and not all of them loving each other. Croatia, the Yugoslav state in the north, was the most rebellious, the most pro-Russian, the one closest to the real hard men in the Kremlin. Gorbachev's opponents,.
This is all speculation,' he suggested, testing his assistant.
Kalos ran a hand over the thin brown stubble which covered the dome of his head. 'You are right. Up to now. There is one more thing. When off duty I often amuse myself by following the military attache, Colonel Rykovsky. He likes wandering inside the Plaka. He thinks he has lost anyone who might just be tailing him. Then he meets and spends time with Doganis.'
'Doganis?'
'A leading member of the Greek Key.'
