hot days, ever since the PLGF informant had contacted Rallis.
Rallis still did not know the informant’s name; it had been but a voice on a telephone two days earlier, but since Rallis
was the one who had drawn the assignment of breaking up the terrorist cells, which appeared more and more to make Athens their
home base for launching terrorist attacks in the area, he had some time ago reached the decision that he needed all the help
he could get, including terrorist informants like the one whose “information” had brought him and the three other men to Caningo
Street.
He had risen through the ranks during his fifteen years with the department—due for the most part to his tenacity and skill
as a policeman and his record for bringing to a successful conclusion nearly every assignment handed to him—but this terrorist
business was something else again. He had learned that the hard way; typical criminals were invariably apprehended because
their greed or lust got the better of them and a betrayed woman or a double-crossed accomplice would eventually come forward
or be tracked down to supply the pieces of the puzzle.
That was hardly the case with terrorists; their religious beliefs and zeal for their cause generally canceled out their taking
up with loose women who would talk. Nor did greed enter the equation, he had come to learn. These were killers who committed
their crimes for their people and their faith, not for their pocketbooks, and that kind of motivation was most difficult to
crack with standard police operating procedures. There had been some arrests, but nothing of consequence. There had been too
little to go on.
That was until the phone call; the whispering voice telling Rallis only that “something very big” was about to happen—a PLGF
initiative, is how the caller had put it—the anonymous informant claiming that even he did not know the details. The only
information he furnished was that the weapons and armaments for such an operation were to be obtained within the next day
or so from Anton Christus, and that had been enough for Rallis to set up this stakeout; for he and his men to perspire profusely
in their car across from Christus Imports, waiting, waiting, waiting.
He had begun to grow more than a bit skeptical by the middle of this second day. The police knew about Christus, certainly,
though knowing and proving were two distinctly different kettles of fish.
Christus had come to police attention several times, relating to both drug and weapons smuggling, and had been under surveillance
from time to time, though not by Rallis’s unit, but nothing had ever come from it. The importer was as careful as he was rumored
to be successful in the black-market underworld and so far he had not spent one night in jail, though Rallis knew of several
underworld murders that could be laid at his doorstep, probably carried out by his henchmen, but much as this present supposed
opportunity to close Christus’s career once and for all appealed to him, it actually paled to insignificance next to the real
reason he had put himself on the front line on this stakeout when he could have been safely riding it out behind his desk
at Headquarters.
A chance at closing in on the Palestine Liberation Guerrilla Force meant a chance to arrest Farouk Hassan and his unit, the
prime movers of the PLGF, and that, Rallis knew, would be just the ticket to make his superiors overlook his practically nonexistent
progress thus far in tracking down and rooting out the terrorist cells known to be operating in this city.
The Greek government had its antiterrorist division, of course, but they had been of little help to Rallis since they really
knew little more than he did, and in any event you could not expect a government agency to be overly cooperative with a unit
with a similar function at the local level.
He had come to the conclusion that hunting terrorists was like hunting
Rallis still did not know the informant’s name; it had been but a voice on a telephone two days earlier, but since Rallis
was the one who had drawn the assignment of breaking up the terrorist cells, which appeared more and more to make Athens their
home base for launching terrorist attacks in the area, he had some time ago reached the decision that he needed all the help
he could get, including terrorist informants like the one whose “information” had brought him and the three other men to Caningo
Street.
He had risen through the ranks during his fifteen years with the department—due for the most part to his tenacity and skill
as a policeman and his record for bringing to a successful conclusion nearly every assignment handed to him—but this terrorist
business was something else again. He had learned that the hard way; typical criminals were invariably apprehended because
their greed or lust got the better of them and a betrayed woman or a double-crossed accomplice would eventually come forward
or be tracked down to supply the pieces of the puzzle.
That was hardly the case with terrorists; their religious beliefs and zeal for their cause generally canceled out their taking
up with loose women who would talk. Nor did greed enter the equation, he had come to learn. These were killers who committed
their crimes for their people and their faith, not for their pocketbooks, and that kind of motivation was most difficult to
crack with standard police operating procedures. There had been some arrests, but nothing of consequence. There had been too
little to go on.
That was until the phone call; the whispering voice telling Rallis only that “something very big” was about to happen—a PLGF
initiative, is how the caller had put it—the anonymous informant claiming that even he did not know the details. The only
information he furnished was that the weapons and armaments for such an operation were to be obtained within the next day
or so from Anton Christus, and that had been enough for Rallis to set up this stakeout; for he and his men to perspire profusely
in their car across from Christus Imports, waiting, waiting, waiting.
He had begun to grow more than a bit skeptical by the middle of this second day. The police knew about Christus, certainly,
though knowing and proving were two distinctly different kettles of fish.
Christus had come to police attention several times, relating to both drug and weapons smuggling, and had been under surveillance
from time to time, though not by Rallis’s unit, but nothing had ever come from it. The importer was as careful as he was rumored
to be successful in the black-market underworld and so far he had not spent one night in jail, though Rallis knew of several
underworld murders that could be laid at his doorstep, probably carried out by his henchmen, but much as this present supposed
opportunity to close Christus’s career once and for all appealed to him, it actually paled to insignificance next to the real
reason he had put himself on the front line on this stakeout when he could have been safely riding it out behind his desk
at Headquarters.
A chance at closing in on the Palestine Liberation Guerrilla Force meant a chance to arrest Farouk Hassan and his unit, the
prime movers of the PLGF, and that, Rallis knew, would be just the ticket to make his superiors overlook his practically nonexistent
progress thus far in tracking down and rooting out the terrorist cells known to be operating in this city.
The Greek government had its antiterrorist division, of course, but they had been of little help to Rallis since they really
knew little more than he did, and in any event you could not expect a government agency to be overly cooperative with a unit
with a similar function at the local level.
He had come to the conclusion that hunting terrorists was like hunting
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