While Dimitrios and Constantine had worked in the fields, Anton had been sent to a select school near Berne in Switzerland – away from the fleshpots of Athens. A school where discipline was strong, where he had learned to speak English and German.
But Petros had taken the precaution of bringing him home during the holidays for Petros' own kind of discipline. He had hammered into the boy's head that his half-brothers, Andreas and Stephen, had been murdered'- that the family must take their revenge. A cloud of poisonous hatred hung over Devil's Valley.
It had been a long struggle. First the Civil War from 1946 to 1949 between the Communists and the anti-Communists. Breaking out soon after World War Two had ended, it had gone on until the Communist guerrillas were defeated. So many wasted years,
Only recently had Petros been able to devote all his efforts to his vendetta. He had reached the stage where he was quite unable to realize it had become an obsession, filling his every waking moment, A stray thought crossed his mind. The Communists.
Why – after all these years – had the Russian, Oleg Savinkov, reappeared in Athens? He was one of the old school, a Stalinist. And the new man, Gorbachev, was a very different leader, they said. Savinkov, once called The Executioner, did not fit the new pattern Petros heard about in the cafes of the village he visited. To play checkers, to listen to the gossip. Above all to get the first hint of a farmer in trouble. Someone whose land or stock he might buy for a pittance.
Why had Savinkov changed his name to Florakis? The Russian did speak Greek fluently. And he had bought a small farm adjacent to Petros on the coast. But why had. he made a point of meeting him when Petros was sitting alone in a cafe? The Russian had handed him an envelope crammed with drachmae. A large sum – so large Petros, greedy for money, had not accepted at once.
'What do you expect me to do for this?' he had asked bluntly.
'Only one thing – which fits in with your own purposes. You make sure no Englishmen visit the island of Siros and poke around up near Mount Ida.'
'You expect me to kill them?' Petros had demanded.
'It is up to you.' Savinkov had shrugged. 'Maybe you rough them up a bit. You could sabotage their car – the mountain roads are dangerous.'
'And how do I get in touch with you?' Petros had asked, testing Savinkov, 'Walk across to your farm?'
'Never. And you know me only as Florakis. That is why I am paying you…'
Since then Petros had kept the money inside the same envelope in his Athens bank. For Petros this was an act of unprecedented willpower. But one day he might wish to sever all connection with the man who had appeared like a ghost. Then he would throw the money back at him.
But why, he asked himself for the twentieth time, should Savinkov take an interest in the murder of Andreas all those years ago?
20
Inside a first-floor room above a taverna in the Plaka, the sole occupant, Oleg Savinkov, was also reflecting on the past. A wiry thin-faced man in his sixties, with blank grey eyes, he sat at a table in his shirt-sleeves and mopped beads of perspiration from his forehead.
The evening heat confined by the rabbit warren of narrow twisting streets was ferocious. He drank more mineral water; years ago he had stopped drinking any kind of alcohol. Years ago… In 1946 he had been a young man of twenty, known and feared in Greece as The Russian – or The Executioner. Sent to Greece by Stalin personally because of his talent – his talent for assassination.
1946. Stalin had agreed at Yalta that Greece should come within the British sphere of influence. But when the Greek Communist ELAS movement rose up in revolt and looked like taking over the strategic country – with its potential great Russian naval base at Piraeus – Stalin quietly betrayed his promise.
Savinkov had been smuggled into Greece from Bulgaria. His mission had been brutally simple: to assassinate all the leaders of the Greek right-wing EDES movement fighting the Communists. He had succeeded – up to a point. Five top EDES leaders fell victims to his high-powered rifle. Hence his nicknames – The Russian and The Executioner.
But he had failed to take out the chief EDES leaders. Enough remained at the head of their troops to defeat the Communist uprising eventually. Savinkov had decided wisely not to return to Russia: Stalin demanded one hundred per cent success.
By this time Savinkov had learned Greek fluently and he merged with the landscape, working on a remote farm in Macedonia. The years passed and he seemed to have become the forgotten man. That was until he received discreet word from the Soviet Embassy that someone important wished to meet him.
The visit of General Lucharsky, a Deputy Chief of the Soviet General Staff, to Greece was never reported in the press. By 1986 Savinkov was settled in the Cape Sounion area, owning a small farm growing figs and olives. He had saved money, obtained from a small bank a mortgage to buy the property. He had applied for the loan in the name of Stavros Florakis. Over the years he had obtained sufficient forged papers to establish a new identity as a Greek citizen.
Here he had taken a risk. After some hesitation he had contacted one of the Communist ELAS leaders who had gone underground, the man with whose group he was working when the whole revolt fell apart. It was a greater risk than he realized since this benefactor kept a discreet and distant line of communication open with the Soviet Embassy in Athens. But this man had seen no reason to inform on Savinkov – his own relations with the Russians had been precarious. Until 1986…
Florakis-Savinkov drank more mineral water. He wouldn't sleep, he knew. The oppressive heat would last all night long. Plus the babble of voices and bouzouki playing which drifted upwards through the dense humidity and through the open window.
1986. He had been visited at his farm late one evening by the ELAS leader who had provided him with the papers of a Greek citizen. The man's arrival had been a shock -it was Savinkov's first intimation that he had been watched, that they knew where he was.
He had been invited to meet an 'important visitor' to Athens. That was after he had been asked a number of questions about his reaction to the change of leadership in Russia. Savinkov had been frank – thinking that if he was candid the invitation which worried him might be withdrawn.
No, he did not approve of Gorbachev's glasnost. This was not the real Communism he had risked his life for during the Civil War. it was a dangerous departure from Lenin's creed, and so on. To his surprise an appointment had been made for that same evening. His visitor would drive him to Athens.
His destination turned out to be the Hilton Hotel. He was escorted to a room on the second floor where a man wearing a lightweight grey business suit had opened the door and ushered him inside. Tall and lean with the face of a fox, he wore a pair of dark glasses and offered Savinkov vodka. He refused, mentioned that he had not touched alcohol for forty years.
'I am Colonel Gerasimov of the GRU,' his host said as they sat facing each other across a small round table.
General Lucharsky was confident his deception would never be penetrated. His photograph had never appeared in a newspaper and the general public abroad didn't know of his existence. He was weighing up his guest as he poured himself a glass of the vodka, a fact Savinkov was aware of. Mention of the GRU had reassured him – as intended -since it was a GRU colonel who had accompanied him to the Bulgarian border in 1946.
'We are very worried about General Secretary Gorbachev and his crazy glasnost,' Lucharsky commented.
He had no doubts about coming straight to the point: Doganis, who had brought Savinkov to him, would have checked his outlook. And for a man of sixty-one Savinkov looked very fit – more like forty. Already Lucharsky was fairly sure they had selected the right man.