man with a potbelly that swooped over his belt. He obviously turned the steering wheel with his stomach, and, if he didn't wear moccasins, his wife must have to tie his shoelaces. As soon as he saw me, he propped himself up with his hands on the tabletop in order to support his weight.
'Why have you brought me here? What have I done? I haven't had any trouble on the roads or been involved in any accidents, nothing! I asked your people where they were taking me and no one has told me!'
He fell silent, thinking that I would tell him, but when he saw that he wasn't going to get any answer, he began shouting: 'I've left my truck with a full load in Patras, at the mercy of all and sundry! If any thieves get wind of it and empty it, the company will be on my neck!'
He tried to pass this off as an outburst, but most probably he only wanted to quench his anxiety with his shouting.
'Sit down,' I told him quietly. He obeyed immediately.
I began just as with Milionis. I received the same answers, but in a different tone of voice. He always came back empty and he knew nothing of any illegal children, what was all this that we were trying to pin on him, thirty years behind the wheel and he'd never had a single accident. Whereas Milionis was calm and above it all, Papadopoulos shouted and yelled, and deep down was scared. Things changed when we got on to Hourdakis.
'Do you know Hourdakis?'
'I don't know any Hourdakis.'
'Hourdakis is the customs officer at the border, who stuck his head in the clouds while you crossed unchecked.'
'I don't know customs officers by their names. Do you know how many customs officers I've seen in my time as a driver?'
'This one knows you at any rate. He was in on it. He was on the take in return for letting you through. He's the one who gave us your name.
He took a handkerchief from his pocket and wiped the sweat from his forehead. He looked at me, trying to guess whether I was telling him the truth or not. There was no way he could know that Hourdakis had slipped the net and that we were still looking for him.
'Listen to me, Papadopoulos,' I said softly, in an almost friendly way. 'I know that you're the last spoke in the wheel and that it was others who got the lion's share. They're the ones I'm after, not you. If you cooperate, I give you my word that you'll get off lightly. I'll talk to the public prosecutor and most likely you'll be able to buy off your sentence. But if you play tough with me, I'll send you down for five years minimum. Think of the effect that would have on your son, on his spell in the army. And on your daughter, who might lose her family. And you'll be stuck in prison, getting slapped around from morning to night.'
I fell silent. He said nothing either. We just stared at each other. And then suddenly I saw this great lump of a man break into sobs. His stomach heaved and kept catching on the edge of the table, like a truck's tire scraping up against the curb. His tears found it difficult to roll down his fat cheeks, but then acquired momentum and ended up on the table. He let them fall unchecked. The spectacle was so sad that I wanted to turn my face away so as not to see.
'I did it all for my daughter,' he said through his sobbing. 'I'd promised her a flat for her dowry and I couldn't make ends meet with the payments. All the money I took went to my daughter's flat'
'Slow down, let's take it from the beginning. Who got you into the racket? Sovatzis?'
His sobbing was instantly arrested and he looked at me in astonishment. 'Which Sovatzis? Ours? What did Sovatzis have to do with all this?'
It was my turn to be surprised. I stared at him without speaking and bit my tongue so as not to betray myself.
'Who then? Mrs. Dourou?'
'No. A foreigner.'
'What kind of foreigner?'
'Around the middle of June in 1991, I'd gone with a cargo to Tirane. A foreigner approached me. He was with a northern Epirot Greek. The foreigner spoke Italian to the northern Epirot, and he relayed it to me in Greek. They knew that I was going home empty, and they asked me if I wanted to transport a load for them on the quiet and make half a million for myself every month. I told them I didn't get involved in things like that, but the foreigner persisted. He told me that everything had been taken care of at the border and that I wasn't running any risk.'
'And you believed him?'
'Not just like that. He offered to come with me on the first trip so that I could see for myself that everything had been arranged. And that's what happened. He came with me and we crossed the border at night without any check. From then on, on every trip, I took a cargo plus the 500,000 for myself.'
'And the cargo was Albanians and Albanian kids.'
'Only kids. Apart from an Albanian couple who took care of the kids. It was the same each time.'
I'd begun to catch on, but I didn't want to interrupt him now that he'd gathered momentum. 'And where did you deliver them to in Athens?'
'I didn't deliver them in Athens.'
'So where to?'
'Ten kilometers outside Kastoria, I left the motorway and turned onto a side road. There, a closed van was waiting for me. The kids and the couple transferred to the van and I returned empty to Athens.'
So that's why neither he nor Milionis had known Dourou. Krenek arranged everything from Albania. Sovatzis appeared nowhere. Krenek was in charge of the supply department, Sovatzis was in charge of the sales department, and Dourou of the warehouse. The only connecting link was the brother and sister: Sovatzis and Dourou. All the others vanished somewhere in between. I called Thanassis and told him to bring me the photographs of the couple murdered by Ramiz Seki and the photographs of Seki himself taken by forensics.
'Where were you on November 27?'
The date didn't appear to ring any bells for him. He answered quite spontaneously. 'Here, in Athens.'
'What were you doing on that night between eleven and one? Do you remember?'
'Till twelve I was at my daughter's house. We were celebrating my grandson's birthday. Then I went home with the missus.' Bringing his grandson to mind made him well up with tears again.
'Who else was there?'
'My daughter's in-laws and my son-in-law's sister with her husband. Why are you asking?'
'Because that was the night a journalist connected with this business was murdered.'
'I'm no murderer!' he shouted in terror. 'Okay, my daughter was going to lose her flat and I got involved, but I'm no murderer!'
'Calm down. No one's accusing you of murder.'
Thanassis brought the photographs. First, I showed him the photograph of the couple. He glanced at it and turned his head so as not to see.
'Do you know them?'
'That's them,' he mumbled. 'The ones who accompanied the kids.'
I moved the photograph away from him before he puked on the table. 'And what about this man? Do you know him?'
'Yes. He's the driver of the van that waited for me outside Kastoria.'
So that was it. The three of them had been stealing kids and selling them to feather their own nests. Seki had murdered the couple because they hadn't given him his cut. That's why we found the 500,000 hidden in the cistern in the hovel. Then others had put another Albanian to murder Seki because he was the only path that led to Dourou.
CHAPTER 40
'So, where does all this lead us?' Ghikas asked me. On his desk was the statement that Papadopoulos had just signed.
It was noon and my eyes were aching. 'There are both good and bad points.'
'Tell me the good ones.'
'We know that the operation was organized by Krenek in Albania. We've got the two drivers. We know that Seki took charge of the kids just outside Kastoria and handed them over to Dourou. So far, it all fits, but then we
