Che Committed Suicide (42 page)

‘I need to pick your brains.’

We had dispensed with the usual ‘good mornings’ and ‘welcomes’. Sometimes months passed when we didn’t see each other, yet it was as if we were going in and out of each other’s house all day long. He got up without saying a word and went inside. I watched him going into the kitchen and I sat on one of the two old wooden chairs that, together with the café-style table, constituted his furniture. In less than five minutes, he was back with my coffee, which he put, still not saying a word, in front of me on the table.

I suddenly had a vision of how things would be if I didn’t have Adriani and Katerina. Every day, we’d sit together, two miserable old men, and make coffee for each other that we’d drink in silence. It would be the first copper-commie cooperative in the history of the world. I went along with his game and, without saying a word, I took the red Che Guevara T-shirt out of the plastic bag and handed it to him. He took it, looked at it carefully on both sides, and said slowly:

‘What is it, a gift for me for the summer?’

‘It’s a gift for me. It was sent to me by Minas Logaras, the one who wrote the biographies on Favieros and Stefanakos.’

I began telling him about all the similarities in the circumstances of the three suicides, and also in the biographies of the three men. I explained how Logaras had sent the third biography to my home, just before Vakartzis’s suicide.

‘Do you see what I’m telling you? First the biography and now this. He’s playing games with me and now he’s sending me messages. That’s why I’ve come to you. Maybe you can help me discover what it is he’s trying to tell me.’

He again examined the T-shirt, turned it inside out, but didn’t seem to come up with anything. ‘One of those T-shirts that you can find anywhere and that make a mockery of Che,’ he said, shrugging his shoulders. ‘So what’s he trying to tell you?’

‘There was another gift too.’ I took out the CD and handed it to him. ‘Perhaps together they might make more sense.’

He took hold of the CD and went over to the stereo system on the edge of his huge bookcase. Despite the stifling heat, I felt overcome with excitement. What was I expecting to hear? Perhaps a recorded message from Logaras explaining why he was doing all this or why he had obliged the three men to commit suicide, or some
challenge
, perhaps, in the form of a game, or even some ironic remarks. Instead, I heard a Latin American song with guitar accompaniment. It was pleasant enough, but it didn’t solve the mystery for me; on the contrary, it only deepened it. A Che Guevara T-shirt and a Latin American song, with the usual guitar accompaniment. What could they mean? And what connection could Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis possibly have with Latin America? So far, I hadn’t found the slightest shred of evidence that might connect them in any way. Consequently, it must have been something else that Logaras was trying to tell me, or perhaps he wanted to turn my attention
elsewhere
. But where?

I was awakened from my thoughts by the sound of Zissis’s voice. There he was, an old man, bald and stubbly, with half his teeth missing, holding a cigarette between his yellowed fingers, singing a Latin American song in a loud voice, while the tears ran down his cheeks. I got the impression that he was singing with a slight Vlach accent, but I wouldn’t swear on it because I didn’t understand a word. I couldn’t understand the song or why Zissis was crying, or anything for that matter. All I managed to catch were the words ‘Commandante Che Guevara’ every so often. It was the only phrase connecting the song with the T-shirt.

I waited for the song to end in the hope that some explanation or message would be forthcoming, but all that followed was silence. There was nothing else on the CD. Zissis had fallen silent, too. His eyes were still filled with tears. I’ve said it before, I’m not very good at expressing my feelings. That’s why I preferred to fast-forward and come straight to the point.

‘Make anything of it?’ I asked him.

He got up without saying anything and went out of the room. I suspected that something had flashed through his mind, but I knew I would have to be patient and go along at his pace. Before long he came back holding a small card covered in scribbles. Because I had seen cards like that before at his house, I knew that it was from his secret archive and I waited.

‘Favieros, Stefanakos and Vakirtzis claimed that, politically, they belonged to the left but that they were not members of any
particular
leftist party.’ He stopped and twisted the card in his fingers. ‘But they were only telling half the truth. It’s true they didn’t belong to any party, but they were members of a group.’

‘Which group?’

‘A group that called itself the Che Independent Resistance
Organisation
. When you gave me the T-shirt I didn’t think of that
straightaway
, but the song brought it back to me.’ He heaved a sigh and said, as though to himself: ‘Songs always take you back. They did then and they do now.’

I understood what he meant, but I preferred not to make any comment. I let him go at his own pace, even though I was sitting on hot coals.

‘Don’t imagine it as being any big or important group. At most it had about ten members. But they believed in armed resistance. Not that they ruled out other kinds of struggle: gatherings, occupations,
demonstrations
. But they believed that in order for all these to be more
effective
, they had to be backed by armed resistance. I don’t know whether they ever actually planted bombs or whether they remained at the planning stage, like lots of groups did then. At some stage, the Military Police announced that they had broken up the “Che” ring of terrorist bombers. Of course, that doesn’t mean that they had actually planted any bombs. In those days they arrested you on suspicion, and then they tortured you until you confessed what they wanted to hear.’ He paused and added meaningfully: ‘You of all people should know that.’

Whenever he came out with a dig about my police careeer, I
automatically
defended myself.

‘I didn’t have anything to do with the Military Police,’ I said coldly.

‘You don’t have to tell me that! Neither did I. It was your lot on the Force that I had to do with! Do you want me to show you how they left my body? It’s all your lot’s work!’

I fell silent and waited for the storm to pass. I knew that if I
aggravated
him, the conversation would take a different course and I still hadn’t got what I wanted out of him. And, true enough, after a few moments, his tone changed and calmly he said to me: ‘I’m talking about your predecessors. I don’t put you in that category.’

He said that because when he had been locked up in the cells in Bouboulinas Street, and I was just beginning my career then as a guard, I used to let him out of his cell late at night to stretch his legs or have a smoke and warm his clothes on the radiator after he’d been left fully clothed in cold water for hours.

‘Do you know who else was in the group?’ I asked to bring the conversation back to the topic that interested me.

‘I know of three, but there may have been more.’ He gazed at his card. ‘Stellios Dimou, Anestis Tellopoulos and Vassos Zikas. But I can’t tell you where they are, or whether they’re alive or dead.’

I took out my little ringed notebook and noted down the names.

‘The only one of them who’s dead for sure is the organisation’s mastermind,’ Zissis went on. ‘He must have started it on his own initiative and then recruited the others. It seems the Military Police thought the same way too, as he was tortured more than the others. The younger ones called him “uncle” because when the Junta came to power in ’67, he must have already been about forty-five. In other words, around twenty-five years older than they were. After the fall of the Junta, he disappeared and nothing was ever heard of him again. About a year ago, I learned quite by chance that he’d died.’

‘Give me his name so I can note it down with the others.’

‘Thanos Yannelis’

I clutched at my notebook to stop it falling from my hands. What connection might there have been between Thanos Yannelis and Coralia Yannelis? Was it simply a coincidence? If Yannelis had still been alive, he would have been over seventy-five. So Coralia couldn’t be his sister. Perhaps she was his daughter?

‘Do you know whether Yannelis had a daughter?’

‘You never stop, do you!’ he shouted, indignantly. ‘You’re not
satisfied
with the information I give you, now you want his family tree. No, I’ve no idea whether he had any kids, or any pets for that matter!’

I suddenly remembered all the women in their fifties who worked at Favieros’s companies and something that I’d said to Koula: that Favieros had known them all from his years in the resistance and that’s why he had hired them. If Coralia Yannelis belonged to that category, then it was certain that she was related in some way to Thanos Yannelis.

As I was getting up to leave, he threw the T-shirt to me. ‘Take it, I don’t want it,’ he said. ‘But is it all right if I keep the song?’

‘Keep it, if you want.’ Besides, it wasn’t as if it were evidence in a murder enquiry.

‘Thanks, Lambros,’ I said, while putting the T-shirt back into the plastic bag. ‘I know you can’t stomach coppers, but you’re always a big help to me and I’m grateful.’

He avoided having to answer by lighting up a cigarette. When I was out on the balcony, however, I heard him say behind me: ‘Ah, you coppers. We used to despise all your people when they had money to burn. Now our people have turned the revolution into T-shirts. And everybody’s profited.’

My first thought was to go straight to the offices of Balkan Prospect and speak with Coralia Yannelis. That thought, coupled with my impatience, filled me with momentum till I turned into Alexandras Avenue. From there, however, I began to have my doubts, which increased in direct proportion to the uphill slope. What would I gain by going to Yannelis unprepared? First of all, I wasn’t sure whether she was at all related to Thanos. It could simply be a coincidence. Secondly, even if they were related, I didn’t know how closely. They may have been cousins three times removed who hadn’t seen each other for twenty-five years.

And, apart from Thanos Yannelis, what would happen with the other three? There may even have been other members of the group that Zissis didn’t know about. The correct thing would be for me to investigate, to collect information on Thanos Yannelis and the others and then to confront Coralia. If the other three were alive and living in Greece, they might very well be in danger from Logaras’s suicide mania. And if he’d already been in contact with some of them, we might manage to avert the worst and get some new information on Logaras.

I had got as far as the High Court building when another thought suddenly came to me. Zissis had told me that Thanos Yannelis was dead, but that he didn’t know exactly when he had died. What if Logaras’s first victim wasn’t Favieros but Yannelis? If he, too, had committed suicide, for his own worse luck and ours, then we would have to start looking for a biography. Whatever the case, all this convinced me that I should leave Coralia Yannelis for the time being and collect information on Thanos Yannelis, the other three and any others in the group, if they existed.

These thoughts were still running through my head as I reached the third floor of Security Headquarters and made a beeline for the office of my assistants. I found all three of them working feverishly. I didn’t know whether they really had work to do or whether they were pretending to be occupied because of Koula, afraid that she might snitch on them because she was Ghikas’s private secretary.

‘Come into my office,’ I shouted to them.

When I walked in, I got a surprise, because waiting for me on my desk was a coffee and croissant, my breakfast every day at the office. A croissant wrapped in cellophane and a so-called Greek coffee made with an espresso machine. I usually got them myself from the
cafeteria
. I attributed their willingness to bring them for me to my recent return from sick leave and I felt moved.

‘Who brought my coffee and croissant?’ I asked when they came into my office.

‘I did,’ replied Koula, overjoyed. ‘My colleagues here told me that’s what you have for breakfast.’

I immediately understood what was going on. Vlassopoulos and Dermitzakis had decided to demote her to filing and bringing coffee in order to keep her out of their way.

‘I didn’t assign you to bring me my breakfast,’ I said to her sternly. ‘I assigned you other work and that’s what I expect you to be doing. I can get the coffee and croissant myself.’

It was the first time I had asserted my authority. She turned pale and I saw that she was ready to burst into tears. I felt sorry for her, but I didn’t want the other two having her run errands.

‘We still haven’t managed to discover any secret from their past,’ said Vlassopoulos in an attempt to change the subject.

‘Forget the past for the time being. There’s something more
pressing
.’ I tossed the red Che T-shirt to Vlassopoulos, who caught it in the air. ‘I want you to find out who manufactures those T-shirts.’

He looked at the T-shirt and shook his head. ‘It won’t be easy! It’s shoddy work and there must be at least ten different factories that could have made it.’

‘Find out which ones. It’s urgent.’ I reached into my pocket and took out my notebook with the names that Zissis had given me. I looked at Dermitzakis. ‘Stellios Dimou, Anestis Telopoulos and Vassos Zikas. I want you to find out everything you can about them. And if they’re dead, how they died and when. If they’re alive, where they live and what they do for a living. And I want the information quickly, today if possible.’

I turned to Koula. ‘Does the name Yannelis mean anything to you?’

She hadn’t recovered from the scolding and still had tears in her eyes. ‘Coralia Yannelis at Balkan Prospect,’ she mumbled with some difficulty.