The Most Beautiful Place On God's Earth

32 Blood money

Colonel Gaddafi in Tripolis 1975

Michalis had a bad feeling. At 10 a.m. Stephanos had planned to see him at the shipping office, and now it was already 11 a.m. He called Stephanos' one-man office, then Christina's flat, but nobody answered the phone.

"Lakis, I can't reach Stephanos," Michalis said to the head of his Piraeus office. "There's something fishy going on. Do you have any idea who might know something?"

"Why don't you call the hotel on Strefi Hill? The Uptones are on vacation, and I think they're staying there. Maybe Tom or Martin are there, too. They should know something."

When Michalis rang the hotel, Mr. Tsikos immediately called Christina on the phone, who briefly told Michalis what she knew. Stephanos was still asleep.

"Are Tom and the others there, too?" Michalis asked her.

When she confirmed that they were, he decided without further ado to go to the hotel and talk to them. He suspected that Christina did not know the whole truth.

The Uptones were happy to see their patron again. Killer invited him to join them on the ferry to Crete on August 8 and 9, promising a few surprises.

"I haven't had that either," smiled Michalis, "an invitation to my own ship. I hope you have reserved a double cabin - we will definitely come. Don't talk about it on board. No one on the ship, except the captain and the purser, knows me. That way I can get an idea of how everything is going."

Then he asked the boys to tell him the unvarnished and unabridged version of events, but they couldn't tell him what Stephanos had achieved at the Libyan ministry either. It didn't help: they had to wait until he was responsive again, and then the doctor would have to decide whether it made sense to talk to him or whether he needed continued rest.

Martin went with Xenia to her grandmother's house, while everyone else stayed at the hotel and waited for the Libyan shopkeeper to call.

"Apparently our prisoner was sent off by someone in intelligence without Gaddafi's knowledge," Nikos concluded from what Stephanos had told them. "I'd like to try to talk to him again. We need someone who knows Arabic. Maybe he'll say something then. I'll give the Old Man a call. He may know someone."

In fact, the Old Man knew an assistant from the Oriental Studies Institute who was part of the resistance and agreed to join them.

"We could come along," Reiner suggested. "The interpreter could ask your prisoner for an interview with us. Maybe he'll chat then. Most people are dying to be on TV, aren't they?"

"Yes, especially secret agents," Tom objected.

"True again," Reiner had to admit.

"Nikos can try to get something out of him with the help of this interpreter, and you Reiner, you can go along. You have such small devices, which you can hide beforehand in the room where they are talking, so you can secretly record what he says."

"Okay, let's try that," agreed Reiner.

They could have saved themselves the trouble. The Libyan prisoner continued to be silent. His compatriot, the shopkeeper, called late in the afternoon and announced:

"I'll get the papers on Saturday and then bring them to the hotel. You'll get the papers and give me the man, step by step. The horse will be shipped to Piraeus in mid-October."

"No, we'll do it another way," objected Nikos. "You'll give us the papers, and we'll drop the man off somewhere in Athens within six hours."

"Do I have any other choice?" the merchant sighed.