Shot on Location by Helen Nielsen

than he cared for his staff to know. An isolated incident was a small matter. There would be no great loss. American owned, the structure was well insured. But violence breeds violence, and anarchy was in the air. To such a threat the captain knew only one remedy: a strong hand. Rebellion must be put down quickly and ruthlessly. Wasn’t democracy ruthless? It had destroyed the order that preceded it by the most undemocratic means. It would survive, in whatever modified form it could survive, by equally ruthless means. One could not be effete in a world convulsed with revolution.
    In addition to the preservation of law and order, the captain had much to protect. A man of means, he owned a small estate in the suburbs, where his wife of twenty-one years (the captain had married young) maintained a home for their children: two lovely daughters and one son. The older girl was already safely engaged to the son of a prominent merchant: the younger was still in school. The boy, his youngest child, was only fifteen and entered in a military academy, which seemed insurance enough against any undue youthful rebellion. Uneducated though he was, Koumaris was observant. The military was still the best way of life for one not born to wealth, and he wanted a good life for his son. With adequate education and good contacts, young Konstantin might rise to a position of power in the new Greece. This was the private dream of Captain Koumaris, and one doesn’t coddle revolutionaries in the face of such a dream. He hated the anarchists. It was unthinkable that last night’s outrage would go unpunished.
    And so, after seeing the girl Katerina, whose brother was known to be a radical activist, at the restaurant with an American of dubious status, he had gone to her apartment and planted a seed of fear. His reputation for brutality flattered him. Let the rumour flourish. A fearful image made his work easier. And conceding brilliance to an adversary was no sacrifice of position. A wise man never belittled an antagonist except at his own peril. That was the weakness of the Americans who expected to win a war and maintain an empire, with no loss of life or revenue. They would have hard lessons to learn.
    But Katerina was loyal, and, perhaps, genuinely unaware of her brother’s activities and there was still no evidence to warrant an arrest. And the unimportant evidence was not necessary. It was almost two months since a lieutenant, in the captain’s absence from Athens, had questioned the girl, Anna, who was known to be Stephanos’ fiancée. They had gone too far with the humiliation—one never knew how a woman would react. After her release Anna had gone home and committed suicide, and word spread through the underground that Stephanos vowed revenge.
    Frustrated and troubled, the captain left Katerina’s apartment and went to the apartment of his mistress, a charming lady, five years his senior. Old men, he reasoned, needed very young women and girls to maintain the illusion of never waning virility; but the captain was only thirty-eight and found older women more attractive to the eye and more sensuously compassionate. And so, refreshed and reassured, he came to his office in the morning prepared to launch a full investigation of the senseless explosion. Now, five minutes after the retreat into solitude, Lieutenant Zervios had burst in with a report of the theft of one million Deutschmarks, taken from the office safe of a local cotton broker.
    “In any event,” he added soberly, “what has this matter to do with me? It isn’t political.”
    “Deutschmarks,” the lieutenant repeated. “Not drachmae.”
    “So? It’s a sound currency. Many businessmen prefer making deals in Deutschmarks. All right, since you have already ruined my coffee, you may as well tell me the rest. What are the details?”
    The lieutenant quickly related the story of his visit to the offices of Kolinos and Company, a merchandise brokerage firm, where he had found