He decided to spend the night in Nondas’s place in Chania. Although he didn’t have his laptop with him, there was a desktop computer in the flat.
‘You want me to stay with you?’ Mikis asked, as he pulled up at the end of the street.
‘Haven’t you got a woman waiting?’
The Cretan smiled. ‘Possibly.’
‘All right, so go and do your thing. I’ll call you in the morning.’
‘Don’t open the door to any strange people. Sure you don’t want to take the Colt?’
‘Definitely not. There’s a decent selection of kitchen knives up there. Goodnight — and thanks for your help.’
‘A pleasure. Pity we didn’t bury those scumbags though.’ Mikis waited until Mavros opened the street door and then waved as he drove off.
Logging on, Mavros reflected on how lucky he had been to find Mikis — he had local knowledge and connections, as well as the local propensity for strong arm tactics. He’d have to make sure he was suitably recompensed when it was all over. Not that he was at all clear where the latest information was going to lead.
He found numerous sites with information about Luke Jannet — his films, his brief affairs with actresses, his ranch in northern California, but nothing about a Greek family background. He thought about the surname. There was no single letter corresponding to the ‘j’ sound in Greek — it was formed by the pairing of ‘t’ and ‘z’. He tried to think of names beginning ‘Tzannet’ and one immediately came to mind: there had been a politician who briefly served as prime minister in the late 80s called Tzanis Tzannetakis, although he hadn’t been a Cretan. The ‘-akis’ suffix was, however, a standard one on the island.
He typed the surname into a search engine, ignoring all the references to the politician, who had been imprisoned by the Junta and was not the standard money-and-headline-grabbing piece of shit. There was nothing relevant in the first ten pages, after which more random information started to appear. He added the first name ‘Luke’ to the surname and immediately got a hit — as well as a frisson that ran all the way up his spine.
The site was that of the Sons of Daedalus, Florida Division, a registered charity run by Americans of Cretan origin. On the page recording events in 1991, there was a photograph of major benefactors, the Tzannetakis family — father Eugene — ‘owner of a well-known automobile parts supply chain’ — mother Koula, son Luke — ‘an up-and-coming film director’ — and daughter Rosa. Luke Jannet was a younger version of his current self, his hair in a ponytail even then. It was Rosa who drew his attention most. Although her face was less hard and her body less fleshy, there was no question that she was the woman who was now known as Rosie Yellenberg. Another search revealed that she had married a Hollywood producer called Pete and that the marriage had ended in divorce four years ago; there had been no children.
Mavros sat back in his chair. So Luke and his producer were siblings. Was that significant? It was certainly suggestive that they hadn’t made their family status clear to him, though maybe some of the film crew knew — as it was that they hadn’t declared their Cretan background, though it was quite possible they didn’t speak the language and had no particular interest in their heritage. Then again, they had chosen to make a film on the island.
He typed in Eugene Tzannetakis and hit the motherlode on the first page. According to the Florida Sun-Times, the car parts dealer had been arrested in 1998 on suspicion of using his chain of stores to facilitate the trafficking of drugs. His family was said to be from a mountain village in Crete called Kornaria, and Michael ‘the Bat’ Kondoyannis was cited as one of his associates. The lawyers had fought hard, citing his charitable work and donations, and he was sentenced to only eight years, partly because the FBI had mishandled some of the evidence.
So what exactly was going on here? Luke Jannet and his sister were descended from a Kornaria family and their father was a jailed drug trafficker. Maria Kondos’s father, who was also from Kornaria, had been a full-on mobster based in Florida before being convicted of involvement in the drugs trade. Why had Maria been in the village and what had happened to her? And where was she now?
Mavros called the Fat Man.
‘What time do you call this, demi-Scot?’
‘Time for you to tell me what you found out about Kondoyannis.’
‘Oh, that,’ Yiorgos said, dismissively. ‘I sent you an email. Remember those?’
Mavros kicked himself for not having checked. Now the Fat Man was one up on him. He went to his inbox.
‘I don’t know, I do the work but he just ignores it.’
‘Shut up, Yiorgo, I’m reading.’ He ran his eye down the page, which was a series of extracts from Cretan and Athenian newspapers, mostly dated from the time of the gangster’s arrest.
‘He’s reading, is he?’ the Fat Man continued. ‘There was me thinking he was running around the Great Island waving a huge great pistol.’
‘I was actually.’
‘Really?’ Yiorgos’s tone changed instantly. ‘Did you shoot someone? What kind is it?’
‘No, and a Colt Double Eagle.’
‘A forty-five?’ The Fat Man had always been fascinated by firearms, mainly because he’d never been allowed to use one by the Party.
‘Yes, a forty-five. Will you let me read this?’
‘I’ll save you the bother. The only thing linking “the Bat” to Crete is a trip he made there in 1995. He was given a hero’s welcome in Kornaria.’
‘What a surprise.’
‘During which he met that well-known agent of imperialism David Waggoner.’ The Fat Man mangled the Englishman’s surname with relish.
Mavros stared at the extract, which said that Kondoyannis had visited the house of the ‘wartime British commander’, along with the Mayor, Vasilios Dhrakakis.
‘Are you still awake?’ Yiorgos demanded.
‘What? Of course I’m awake. Thanks, Fat Man, this is useful.’
‘No chance of you telling me in what way?’
‘Er, no. Talk to you tomorrow.’ He knew his reticence would drive his friend to distraction.
Too bad. He was even more convinced that everything he was doing on Crete was linked, but he couldn’t see exactly how. The idea that the highly decorated former SOE man had got involved in the international drugs trade was surprisingly easy to swallow.
Then his mobile rang. Niki’s number was on the screen. He answered with apprehension.
EIGHTEEN
As it turned out, Niki didn’t give him a hard time.
‘Still busy?’ she asked pleasantly.
‘Even more than before,’ Mavros replied, fingering the dressing on his neck. When she saw that, he’d get several earfuls. ‘But I hope to be home in a day or two.’
‘Don’t worry,’ Niki said. ‘I’m busy too.’
‘Everything all right?’ he asked, remembering how disaffected she’d been.
‘Oh, the usual stuff, but I can cope. See you soon, my love.’
To his surprise, she rang off. He looked at the phone and tried to work out what lay beneath her strangely buoyant tone, then gave up. He swallowed a couple more of the painkillers, had a shower with a towel round his neck, and collapsed into a dreamless sleep. .
. . until the early dawn, when he heard the bell of a nearby church and found himself in the limbo between wakefulness and oblivion. Faces flickered before him — David Waggoner’s with its craggy features; Rudolf Kersten’s contorted death mask; Hildegard’s soft skin; and his father, eyes flashing and lips set in an unmoving smile. Then Waggoner reappeared, leaning forward avidly as he had been when he was with Tryfon Roufos in the taverna. Waggoner, that was what Spyros was telling him — concentrate on the SOE man, who spread lies about me. .
Mavros sat up with a start. Waggoner had told him he had a place in Chania. With the filming in progress, it seemed likely he would be staying there. Early morning would be the perfect time to catch him unawares. But how to find where he was? The obvious thing would have been to call Rosie Yellenberg, aka Tzannetaki, but he couldn’t trust her. There was one person on the production crew he thought was reliable.