Free Jeffrey Siger_Andreas Kaldis 02 by Assassins of Athens

Athens—wooden floors, unmatched hardback chairs for twenty-four, and scraped and burned two-top wooden tables covered with coffee, cigarettes, and cell phones. After dusk, there was barely enough lighting to see.
    Kouros held the door open for Andreas. Every eye in the place fixed on them. They were about as obvious and welcome as tigers at a tea party.
    A carefully framed poster of Che hung behind the service counter alongside a six-foot-long by three-foot-tall unframed mirror. The mirror gave the place a look of greater size than it had, the poster an impression of greater meaning. What looked to be the artistic contributions of its customers occupied the other walls, with no discernable curator or standard for what could be posted. The only apparent rule was not to cover over a colleague’s contribution, no matter how artistically constructive such an act might be.
    It was exactly the sort of place you’d expect to find bordering Exarchia Square, the symbol of Greece’s student revolution and epicenter for its current revolutionaries. The media unwittingly had helped make it that way. Greek children grew up watching Greek television showing Greek students wearing Greek masks protesting against Greek authority by throwing Greek rocks (and Molotov cocktails) at Greek police. And virtually always, in one way or another, Exarchia was part of the story. The place had become a romanticized land of Oz for disillusioned and rebellious young. Not many from the old days still were around, though some remained geographically close by, just on the other side of the hill in Kolonaki, but in every other respect far removed from the revolution.
    Andreas stood in the doorway. At first, he looked to be staring at the walls, but he quickly fixed his gaze on the faces gathered around the table closest to the door. Then his eyes moved on to those at the next table. He’d didn’t say a word, just studied one face after another, lightly drumming the fingers of his right hand on a manila envelope held in his left as he did.
    “What do you want?” said the man behind the counter.
    Andreas turned to face the man and smiled. “Good morning, sir. And how are you this fine day?”
    The man did not return the smile. “Like I said, what do you want?”
    “Is this your place?”
    “Yeah. Who’s asking?”
    Andreas walked to the counter, leaned over, and motioned with his right index finger for the man to come closer. The man hesitated and Andreas wiggled his finger again. The man took a step forward and leaned in.
    Andreas whispered, “Police. I need your help with something.”
    The owner’s eyes darted to his left, then just as quickly back. Andreas didn’t turn to find where he’d looked, he could see in the mirror behind the counter that it was to a man sitting alone at a table in the rear. He wasn’t one in the photo. He looked half their size, probably five-six, 140 pounds at most. His dark hair was long in the student fashion of the day, eyes dark, skin relatively light, with a razor-thin wisp of a beard running from the middle of his lower lip to the base of his chin. He was in jeans and a plain white tee shirt, nondescript except for one thing: his eyes were studying Andreas in the mirror.
    “Yeah, what?” The owner didn’t whisper.
    Andreas kept whispering. “I need to know if you’ve ever seen these two men.” Andreas pulled a photograph out of the envelope and placed it on the counter between them.
    Andreas looked back at the owner. “So, do you recognize either of them?”
    “No, never saw them before.”
    Andreas smiled. “Yeah, sure.” He patted the bar, and turned around. “Hi folks, hate to interrupt your morning coffee, but I have a question to ask you. Have any of you ever seen either of these men?” With that he walked from table to table, pressing the photo in front of every face. Most immediately shook their heads no. A few looked more intently at the photos before saying “no.”
    Andreas spoke to