The Scapegoat (17 page)

—That’s not a communist, Mother, Mike corrected me.

I didn’t listen. It worried me that my son was breathing their air, drinking their water, lying down to sleep on their beds.

Greece. Such a small country, and making such a big stink. Mike said that we should know more about them, they were important. But can you give me one real reason why?

Greeks: proud as punch of themselves, for no reason.

Greece: a country full of corpses and graves.

A place where the dead rule the living.

We’re not like that, darling. Our decisions are made in politician’s offices, not over open coffins.

That’s life.

They think they have a monopoly on pain. They wear their
black head scarves, show their wounds like badges of honor. It’s all theater. Pure theater.

I asked for respect. A closed coffin, a service read in our language, far from those bearded priests in their cassocks.

As for them, the clock is ticking backwards.

That country needs to pay.

NIKITAS TSOKAS, COMMUNIST, COUSIN OF ZOE (ZOUZOU) TSOKA

Enough is enough.

Those slippery bastards saddled us with too much, they crossed the line.

Crazy, cheating sons of bitches.

Our newspaper took a stance, came out against the accusation. Our press releases called it how it was.

They’d accused Gris, an opportunist who had joined our ranks for a while, though the Party spat him back out soon enough. We could tell he had no faith. He wasn’t working for the common good, he just wanted money. To buy food, that’s what he cared about. We have no use for guys like that.

Along with Gris, they accused two of our own. I know all about it, and I can tell you the charge was absurd. Neither of them was even in Greece when the murder took place, we said that right from the start, it was official. One wasn’t even alive. He’d been killed earlier, in a bombing. His name had been released along with the other names of the dead. The second guy had crossed over into Yugoslavia on orders from the boss. His job was to help out when any of our people headed that way. He spoke pretty good English, they had him up there to communicate with the foreigners.

Those fascist thugs said our guys pulled Gris into it, to work as an interpreter. No matter how you look at it, that story is full of
holes. Why would they need him to interpret when our guy knew better English than he did? They just cooked up some charge to cover their tracks. They wanted to close the case, and it suited them just fine to call it a communist plot.

Of course the Texan was no angel himself. There were plenty of his type hanging around back then, journalists on the hunt for people in the Party. He was desperate to meet our General.

He came to see me in prison. Zoe brought him. They were newlyweds, the wedding bands glinted on their fingers. He told me who he knew, wanted me to arrange a meeting. He was quick-tempered and harebrained and wouldn’t take no for an answer. I bet his mother never taught him what no meant. He wanted to get his way, that’s what he cared about most. He handed out orders and threats like they were candy.

Whatever happened to him, he brought it on himself. Think about it: he put his life in the hands of extremists. Who knows what kind of people he was dealing with. The city papers called it a murder. We believe it was an execution.

Read his articles and you’ll see. Go track down his radio broadcasts. He called things by their names, didn’t sugarcoat anything. He called the government corrupt and inept. He made no bones about declaring the country’s elite responsible for the poverty of its people, and for the political violence. He was as upper-crust as they come, but he told things like they were.

And he didn’t spare his own, either. Did you see what he wrote about Truman? That he was
uninterested in truly aiding the Greek economy and improving living conditions among the people of Greece. All President Truman cares about
, Talas wrote,
is squelching the uprising
. And supporting the corrupt administration.

The Americans called him a communist. That’s ridiculous. He was as blind as the rest, even with the truth screaming right in his face. He wrote that the communists were barbarians who swept down from the north to conquer Greece. A child of propaganda, he sang the same tune they all did.

What with one thing and another, pretty soon he made himself unwelcome. To our people but also to his. No one wants a barking dog nipping at his feet.

The Brits had him in their sights, too, for criticizing their policy in the Middle East. He spooked the British diplomats, who were in league with the Americans and the fascists in our government.

How one person can make such a fuss, I don’t know.

He also didn’t hesitate to go head to head with Rimaris, the Minister of the Interior. In a private meeting in the minister’s office, he accused him of secretly—that is, illegally—sending money to a private bank account in New York. Talas was more or less insinuating that government money, from the American aid effort, had ended up in private pockets. The minister was furious. He threw Talas out of his office, but the damage had been done, word got around. Rimaris howled that his enemies were slinging mud on his name, that
dark forces were planning his political demise
, that it was all
baseless accusations
.

What can you do, word spread.

Twenty-five thousand dollars in a secret bank account, which Rimaris’s son, who was studying at Columbia, milked for all it was worth. The dollars flowed. Everything those guys own is stolen. Those Greek fat cats, the Rimarises and all the other money junkies, built their fortunes while others among us spat blood. And those others weren’t members of the ruling class, that’s for sure.

As for what they said about Tzitzilis, what he did and didn’t do, this is a small place, there are no strangers here. His guys spread a bunch of rumors, all bullshit. That he thought about retiring so as to avoid the case. That he considered suicide—as if a pig like him could have a conscience or self-respect. That he made a pilgrimage to the island of Tinos to pray for the Virgin’s guidance. That inspiration struck and he solved the case then and there.

Not even a child would believe that.

That’s why I’m telling you, use your brain a little.

The Americans, the Brits, and our government—one big fascist roadblock. Jack Talas was a nail in their eye. If they could shut him up, they’d all be better off.

WALLACE CHILLY, FORMERLY OF THE BRITISH FOREIGN OFFICE

I design formal gardens and labyrinths. Here, take my card. I’ve worked for royalty, and for plenty among the peerage. I’m not a gardener, make no mistake, I’m not a manual laborer. I take great pride in my taste, and it’s something the better classes are willing to pay for. I turn their endless caprices into inspired designs.

I have a file with magazine clippings from all over the world. My gardens have been photographed many times, as examples of fine taste. In such a hideous age, it’s a form of consolation. Beauty, my dear, is what makes life bearable. It’s a discriminating choice, and not everyone shares my point of view.

As for the era you’re asking about, it’s now a distant, vicious past. I rarely think of it. It’s true, I worked for the Foreign Office. In those days we rushed headlong into the fire and didn’t think twice. We thought we would live forever. Youth. I have no nostalgia for it at all.

My position: I interrogated prisoners of war. I was head of the Interrogation Center attached to the British Consulate in Salonica. The Service considered me the best informed individual, among non-Greeks, concerning the Communist Party of Greece. I knew people, I knew what was happening. I handled crises. Even Americans and Europeans came to me if they wanted to track someone down, to talk to one of the rebel fighters.

Back then Salonica was a Balkan hole in the wall, filthy and disgusting. I certainly hope you don’t believe the locals’ ridiculous
claims about how cosmopolitan the city was. They’re just trying to prettify a miserable, dreadful reality. The foreigners living there suffered, that was a fact. The streets stank, the food was suitable only for locals, the only entertainment to be found was at establishments of the lowest sort. You could perhaps tolerate the place for a certain stretch of time. But there was no high emotion to be had. Anyone looking for even a drop of civilization would search in vain.

As a British citizen I have a practical, empirical mind, I like to speak with examples. This case, for instance. Let me remind you that remains of a European dish, lobster with green peas, were found in the victim’s stomach. A Scottish dish, to be precise, meant to be accompanied by aged whiskey. Talas had wine—I wouldn’t have expected more from that Texan orangutan.

The investigation concluded that he’d dined with his murderers at a seaside taverna. Forgive me, but that hypothesis doesn’t hold water. There is simply no dining establishment in Salonica that would serve lobster with green peas. They may know a thing or two about mussel pilaf and stuffed peppers, but that’s as far as it goes. There’s tangible evidence to the contrary, too: the Greek police searched the bins of every restaurant and taverna as far as Mihaniona. They turned over every leaf and found no trace of that dish.

Which means that Talas must have dined in a private home. The aspersions they cast on me later, that only at the home of a British citizen would he have been treated to a meal of that sort, that one way or another I must have been involved—these were merely attempts to blacken my name. If it ever becomes an official accusation, I’ll take the appropriate measures.

As for Talas, you know what there is to know. He was aggressive and headstrong in his reporting, and uncompromising in what he wrote. An American through and through. He advertised his integrity far and wide, to the point of making himself unpleasant. Wherever he went, he left a trail of ruins and wounds.
He pointedly ignored the press releases of the Greek administration. He did his own research, trusted in no one.

When he asked me for information about the General, I hesitated to answer him. I preferred to keep my knowledge for someone else, someone more judicious, some colleague of his who would have a better understanding of what was at stake. Talas was an excitable amateur, not an experienced correspondent.

Don’t forget, he also wrote pieces against British policy in the Middle East. People in the British foreign service took note, and rightly so. They asked their American colleagues to rein him in. But there wasn’t much the Americans could do. Their admonitions fell on deaf ears. The British weren’t pleased, but they had to keep things in balance.

Whoever told you that Talas was the first western reporter to fall victim to the Cold War apparently had no idea what was really going on.

Talas, my dear, went looking for a fight. He saw the glint of the knife and rushed straight at it.

THROUGH OTHER EYES

The Americans readily accepted the explanation that the murder had been committed by communists trying to put the administration and its allies in a difficult position, with the ultimate goal of turning Americans against Greeks. This theory was challenged by a lack of forensic evidence, or hard evidence of any kind. That was the biggest sticking point in the investigation.

In those days of mayhem and rage, one well-respected newspaper published an editorial that lay the facts on the table. If, God forbid, the perpetrators were found to be affiliated with the right, the Americans would hold the entire Greek government responsible. Consequently, there was only one solution
. And as the government is weak, powerless, and sickly, having only just
managed to get back on its feet, the administration is terrified that this situation might add other troubles to its already long list. So it crosses itself and prays that the murderers turn out to be communists
—
because if they aren’t, we’re lost
, wrote the shrewd publisher, and many of his readers bit their lips with worry.

Around that time, Rimaris’s son, the one who’d been studying in New York and had perhaps gotten mixed up with embezzled funds, went to visit Zouzou at home. He urged her to tell the newspapers that her husband had been killed by communists. Zouzou started to cry, declaring that if she’d had a gun, she would have killed herself already. Rimaris’s son laughed at the widow’s tears and overblown words. He pointed out that there was a perfectly fine window for her to jump out of—he even opened it ostentatiously and stood there, waiting.

Meanwhile at the offices of the Security Police they were tailoring Gris’s file to suit their needs. They made him an officer of the Communist Party of Greece, with the General as his mentor. They said he’d been trained in Moscow, and circulated a rumor that he killed a police officer during the Axis Occupation. The investigation wasn’t turning up any evidence, but that problem could be solved easily enough. His refusal to cooperate became unquestionable proof of his guilt. He walked toward slaughter with his head bowed.

His statement kept changing, to come increasingly in line with the events. Once the accusation against his mother for collaboration had been dropped, none of the eminent lawyers who got involved in the case seemed to notice that the only basis for a ruling against him was a confused, nearly incomprehensible confession.

Gris had given that confession on his feet, over the course of several hours. His sentences ran amok, they had no consistency; his statement was packed with borrowed language, with the vocabulary of the security police. He spoke in the name of his
country, praising its mighty past, expressing his abomination of communist ideals, taking the weight of the world on his shoulders.
I was a communist, I was a member of the Communist Party of Greece, and I declare that Greece my Fatherland is innocent of the murder of Jack Talas, which has been unjustly laid at its feet. I impeach and indict the Communist Party of Greece and Cominform and Moscow as perpetrators of this crime. When a person becomes a Greek, he speaks the truth and nothing but the truth, and I have decided to become a Greek. As I sat in my cell my eyes were opened and I became a Greek. A person becomes Greek only once in his life
.