former Soviet bloc to amass vast, newly-minted Greek fortunes — and yet, Zanni was forever in the other man's shadow. Zanni's decision to attempt wresting control of the team away from his rival wasn't made for business reasons; he did it because he believed the team was the source of the other's prominence.
Two such famous boys fighting over a nationally popular toy had every headline writer and talk show host in frenzy for weeks. It was a bitter fight with a rival at least as tough as he was and resulted in an even more bitter loss. Zanni felt he'd been singled out by the media for ridicule, and looked for someone other than himself to blame for his humiliation. He settled on an easy target: old-line Athens society. Many old-liners barely hid their disdain for what they considered upstart, political opportunist, nouveaux riches. Accusing them of relishing his fall was undoubtedly accurate. What he couldn't accept, though, was the obvious fact that old-line society would prefer both men to perish in the press.
His anger simmered for months. Then he decided he'd show them all — all of Athens — his power, by making his name a feared, if not respected, household word in another way: newspaper ownership. And not just any paper, but Greece's oldest and most respected, The Athenian. As virtually everyone in Athens knew, The Athenian had been in the Linardos family for generations and, though other papers boasted larger circulations, none came close to rivaling its influence among the nation's elite.
'Fuck them,' was Zanni's reaction to a terse message declining his offer to buy the paper at a generous multiple of its economic value and pointedly suggesting that he try going after another soccer team instead; perhaps a second division one in northern Greece up by the border with 'one of those former Soviet countries.'
He did not miss the insult directed at his roots, nor the reminder implicit in the message that there were bounds not to exceed, just as there were clubs not to press for membership; at least not until subsequent generations sufficiently seasoned his family's roots with the right schools and proper marriages to make them palatable. That message had arrived barely more than a month ago. It marked day one of his siege against the Linardos family.
Zanni bought and pursued every Linardos family debt he could acquire, ones creditors dared not press against such a powerful voice; found and financed every libel claim that could be brought or manufactured; dried up much of the paper's advertising base by subsidizing those who agreed to advertise elsewhere; and paid more to those who refused to sell the paper than they could make selling it.
Despite all Zanni's maneuvering, the family didn't budge. The carrot hadn't worked and the stick wasn't hurting enough. He'd decided it was time to strike harder, beat them to death if necessary. He would not be humiliated again. Long hidden secrets of the family began circulating throughout Athens. Affairs of the fathers, addictions of the wives, and proclivities of the children kept finding their way into rival publications. And, now, a particularly indiscreet moment involving a favored granddaughter and two young men, recorded on a cell phone in the men's room of a notorious Gazi nightclub, was a major hit on the Web and the certain ruin of her name.
On each of the four consecutive Fridays following his initial proposal, Zanni sent a renewed offer to the family, each reducing the last proposed price by 25 percent. The family never responded. Two days ago he sent the fifth.
Zanni stopped pacing and stared out the window. He should have heard something by now. He'd ratcheted the pressure up about as high as you could push it. If going after the kid didn't work… what the fuck were these people made of? 'Any ideas?'
Kouros kept his eyes on the road. 'Looks like someone's sending a message.'
Andreas nodded. 'You don't go to all the trouble of hiding a body in a place where it's certain to be found, then call the police to make sure that it is, without a very clear purpose in mind.'
'What do you think it is?'
'Not sure yet, but whatever it is, they want the message delivered by us.'
Kouros turned onto Alexandras Street. They were almost back to General Police Headquarters, better known as GADA. It wasn't far from where they found the kid's body, but it sat at the heart of Athens' bustle, next door to a major hospital, down the block from Greece's Supreme Court, and across the street from the stadium of one of Greece's most popular soccer teams, Panathinaikos. GADA was a chore to get to at almost any hour.
Andreas drummed the fingers of his right hand on the top of the dashboard. 'I don't see it as a spontaneous crime of passion or tied to some drug deal gone bad. It certainly wasn't a mugging. This was planned.'
'But why kill a kid… can't imagine even our worst, hard-ass, scum-ball mafia types doing that.'
'I know. That's what has me wondering.' And worried, Andreas mumbled to himself. 'This can't be the beginning of whatever's going on.'
'Maybe it's the end?'
'Let's hope.' Andreas stopped drumming. 'But I don't think so.' Noblesse oblige was a French phrase, but for Sarantis Linardos it needed no translation. Not because he was fluent in French as well as German, English, and, of course, his native Greek, but because it described his view of the Linardos family's obligations to Greece so perfectly; most particularly his own responsibilities as family patriarch and publisher of its most sacrosanct asset. Many old-line families in Greece shared the Linardos family's social position, but none its power of the press. A loss of The Athenian meant the end to his family's influence over the thinking of its peers and its reign at the pinnacle of Athens society. He could never allow that to happen.
Then again, he wasn't feeling particularly regal at the moment and this battle with that awful Kostopoulos person was taking its toll on his family. He was not concerned with Kostopoulos' economic attacks; the fool had no idea of the reach of his family's resources. One could not have his finger on the pulse of generations of Greece's most powerful without learning their secrets. It was Sarantis' discretion in using what he learned that earned him their confidence and gave him his true influence. There was not a person of position in Greece who did not owe the Linardos family at least a bit of gratitude, measurable in euros. He knew there was far more than enough available to withstand any financial siege.
Still, many of Sarantis' long-time friends had warned him Kostopoulos was not the sort of man who could be trusted to act civilly, and he should take the threat more seriously. Some had offered to intervene to try convincing Kostopoulos to stop. Sarantis refused. He would not speak, much less negotiate, with such rabble, nor allow any of his friends to stoop to doing so on his behalf. He was convinced if he simply ignored Kostopoulos' weekly offers and the half-truths and lies he planted in the tabloids, items of little interest to the public for even their brief time on the newsstands, Kostopoulos would simply give up and go away.
He never saw it coming.
The video of his granddaughter with those two men was a brutal, merciless assassination. It left no doubt as to how far Kostopoulos was prepared to go. The humiliation would haunt her on the Web forever. Her boyfriend no longer spoke to her, no socially prominent girlfriend dared be seen with her, and the tabloid-media harpies now called a racially mixed menage a trois 'doing the Elena.' Whispers and snickers accompanied her everywhere. His favorite grandchild had no choice but to flee Greece in shame. For how long he did not know. Elena might never recover.
And Elena's mother, his daughter, moved into Sarantis' home with her other children until 'you end it with this horrible man, father;' utterly panicked over what else might happen to the children.
Sarantis had lived long enough to understand that people did what they must to survive; but never, not even in war fighting to rid his beloved Greece of Germans and later communists, had he faced an enemy so single- mindedly obsessed with destroying his family as Zanni Kostopoulos.
That's when he knew it was time to turn to his friends. Let them attempt to reason with this butcher. He wanted no further harm to befall his family; certainly no more to the children. He only hoped it wasn't too late. Andreas' office was on the fourth floor of the building and faced east, away from the heart of Athens. It had two long windows but not much of a view. That was fine with Andreas; he had more than enough to look at on his desk and on the chart of active cases fastened to the wall behind it. He was in his chair, staring at the chart, and wondering where to squeeze in the dumpster case when his secretary came through the door at the far end of his office.
'Here are the photos the lab downloaded from your camera.'
'Thanks, Maggie.' She preferred that to the Greek Margarita.
Andreas placed the half-dozen eight-by-tens on his desk. The crime scene unit had a lot more photographs to study, but he wanted to check for anything that might be helpful in the few he took. He picked up one of the boy's face. Nice-looking kid, he thought. Damn shame.
Maggie was standing on the other side of the desk, staring down at the photos. She'd worked as a police
