Sons of Sparta: A Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis Mystery by Jeffrey Siger Page A

gas and started a fire that still burns today. The locals call it their ‘gate to hell.’ Then there’s Chernobyl. No one likes to talk about it anymore, but it still haunts and poisons us every day. If that’s the kind of foreign expertise the world has to offer us, I say no thank you.”
    Andreas knew he was getting Orestes’ “Greece is for Greeks” bullshit sales pitch, not a search for truth. It was a lobbyist pitching to get his client what it wanted and damn everything else. But as insincere as Orestes undoubtedly was, the environmental issue was a real one, and it wouldn’t be prudent politics to give him an angle on claiming Andreas, and by extension Spiros’ ministry. He wasn’t concerned with environmental threats.
    “I’m not sure environmental issues fall within the domain of my ministry, but I’m willing to look into what you’ve raised to see if any illegal activity might be compromising environmental safeguards.”
    Orestes’ face lit up like a kid’s on Christmas morning. “That’s terrific. Come, let’s rejoin my party. Tomorrow I will give you the names and details of those you should be investigating.”
    Before Andreas could respond, Orestes stood up and headed back toward his friends’ table. He waved for Andreas to follow. “No need for you to carry my glass and the bottle. The waiter will do that for me.”
    Asshole .
    ***
    Andreas stood outside El Malaga, trying to remember where he’d left his car. He’d been inside with Orestes and his crowd until four. Now he had a whole new batch of connected “friends” trying to draw him into their networks. It was age-old, lure-the-fly-to-the-spider style politics. Spiros said Andreas wouldn’t like the political game. Guess he was right about one thing .
    Orestes had announced with a flourish to his table of friends that Special Crimes Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis has agreed to conduct an investigation into the efforts of certain foreign elements to exploit our nation’s resources for their own national interests. That brought on a round of toasts to Greece and to Andreas. It was pure theater, with Orestes cast in the role of noble savior of the nation, having found the “perfect” champion for their cause. Andreas had decided simply to smile. That was all Orestes really wanted anyway—the opportunity to play hero to his guests. Where it all would lead was something for Andreas to sort out with Spiros in the morning.
    He remembered he’d parked his car on a sidewalk somewhere around a corner. He waved good night to Petro at the door and headed toward the corner in front of him.
    Andreas knew to stay alert to his surroundings. On a scale running from white to red—white being asleep in your mother’s arms, red being balls-out raging with an AK-47—on the street he kept perpetually in orange. But with all he’d been drinking, at the moment it felt more like peach, as in Bellini. At the corner he turned left and saw his unmarked police car about a block away. He smiled. Right where I knew I left it .
    Halfway to the car, two young men came running around the corner in front of him heading straight at him, with a third coming up fast behind them. Andreas backed into a doorway to let them pass. He heard the crack of a gunshot and saw one of the two men in front grab the back of his thigh and fall to the pavement five feet before the doorway. The other kept running. The third man stopped at the man on the ground and shot him three more times. He looked up, saw Andreas in the doorway, aimed his gun at him, and pulled the trigger.
    Nothing happened.
    Andreas was on him like a wounded grizzly. He’d already snapped the man’s trigger finger yanking the gun out of his hand, broken his jaw with a palm thrust under the chin, cracked two ribs with an elbow to the chest, and was kneeling on the man’s chest pounding away at his face when someone pulled him away yelling, “ Chief, stop . That’s enough.”
    Andreas didn’t struggle.