Free Mykonos After Midnight by Jeffrey Siger Page A

will be fine.”
    Wacki looked surprised, but quickly walked to the taxi, opened the rear door and motioned to Sergey. “If you please, Boss.”
    As Sergey got into the taxi he said, “I assume you prefer I call you Wacki.”
    As opposed to bitch, boy.
    ***
    A big attraction of Mykonos for the monied crowd was that with the right connections you could achieve virtually anything. But money alone wouldn’t get you what you wanted. You needed juice. The island’s powers-that-be could shut down anything and anyone if they weren’t pleased. Courts offered little help if you hoped for relief within a decade, and even a judicial victory was likely only the first of many battles. The island powers had voting constituencies to satisfy, many of whom were members of large families whose support they needed to stay in power. If you didn’t know whose toes you were stepping on––or how to dance around them––you were in for a nightmare of promises, compromising payments, and disappointments.
    Those looking for a welcoming, good time experience in paradise should stay tourists. For those hoping to make money, the gloves came off the locals.
    To most, Wacki would be an unlikely choice for doing knightly battle of the Camelot sort, but he was perfect for the rough and tumble world of Mykonos club-scene politics. He knew its dark side well, having spent half his life catering to the illegal and illicit wants and desires of visitors and islanders alike.
    Wacki also knew the times were changing. Mykonos had been through more than a decade of extraordinary good fortune, with everyone profiting off high spending Athenian, American, and European tourists willing to pay whatever it took for a fun time. Those days were over, at least for this generation. But unlike virtually anywhere else in Greece, Mykonos’ international reputation meant that some could still make a lot of money on the island. And Wacki had a pretty good idea where the new cash was coming from.
    Russians were buying up the best seafront properties on the mainland. Prime homes near Athens in elegant areas on the way to ancient Sounion, some of the most desirable places along the Peloponnese coastline, and parts of the Halkidiki Aegean shore in northeastern Greece, close by the holy peninsula of Mount Athos sacred to Russian and Greek Orthodox alike, had experienced a land rush of Russian investors.
    Unlike British and Germans waiting for a “better price,” Russians didn’t care to wait. And Greeks welcomed them with open arms. Many Greeks had soured on the euro zone, and saw financial salvation in the arms of economic alliances with Russia. History had often shown the error of such thinking, but memories were short, especially for those in financial crisis.
    With the introduction of direct flights between Moscow and Athens, it was only a matter of time until Russians fixed their eyes on Mykonos. Arabs were coming too, but Wacki’s money was on Russians for the long term play, if only for their common Eastern Orthodox roots. Two hundred fifty thousand of the wealthiest Russians had already discovered and made Cyprus home.
    Wacki didn’t give a damn about the implications for Mykonos, his only interest was in getting a shot at Russians flush with cash. For that he needed a backer. Someone with money to lure more money. But bad times had eliminated the usual Mykonian suspects for such a venture. Wacki had even turned to lighting candles in church, hoping that would change his luck.
    The answer to Wacki’s prayers came in the form of a phone call on the day of Christos’ funeral.
    He’d heard rumors from Eastern European sex traffickers supplying girls to a dance club he once managed of a woman called “Teacher.” As tough as those motherfuckers were, they spoke in reverential tones of a mysterious bankroller of some of the biggest criminal enterprises in Eastern Europe; ones that didn’t have the good fortune of ex-KGB connections. Some said Teacher was ex-KGB,