Kouros nodded and stood up. “So what else is new? Since when haven’t tsigani, metanastes, or for that matter, foreigners in general not been our politicians’ fall guys of choice?” He gave a casual salute and left.

Andreas turned his head and stared out the window. There had always been refugees fleeing despots and turmoil in Greece’s region of the world, but when Greece joined the E.U. in 1981 it was essentially a homogeneous land of less than ten million. With financial prosperity came Filipinos to serve in domestic jobs no longer done by Greeks and the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989 brought a wave of Eastern European immigrants seeking better lives, but it was after 2002 and the confluence of the euro currency launch, America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Greece’s all-out building boom for the 2004 Athens Olympics, that the floodgates opened.

Romanians, Bulgarians, Albanians, and Poles came to put their much needed construction skills to work for pay far greater than any they could dream of back home, and Greece’s porous island and mainland borders became an irresistible magnet for those fleeing Turkey, Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Bangladesh, and what at times seemed all of struggling Africa. They were the metanastes — the foreigners who came to work or simply escape a life in chaos elsewhere.

Greece’s population was now almost eleven and a half million of which ten percent were estimated to be immigrants. No one knew exactly how many more were living hidden lives within the country, but with the abrupt change in Greece’s financial fortunes virtually every lost job or criminal act now seemed somehow blamed on the metanastes or tsigani. No one had to tell Andreas how ugly the anger was brewing-on all sides.

Maggie’s voice came over the intercom. “Yianni’s here. He said to tell you he’s read the file.”

“Send him in.”

Kouros walked in and sat in a chair across the desk from Andreas.