“I would owe him a big time favor. I’d owe you both,” said Spiros.

They would be lost on your mountain of other IOUs, thought Andreas. “Perhaps if you told me what has you so wound up about this case I might be able to help you out. We both know the story is dead in the press.”

“I’m not concerned with what the press thinks.”

Andreas smiled.

“At least not the Greek press. And it’s not just me who’s worried. It’s my boss.”

“Are you trying to tell me that the Prime Minister wants the investigation closed?”

Spiros rubbed his chin. “It’s about the money.”

“Come again?”

“There are serious people in the E.U. looking for any justification for ending financial aid to Greece. So far the arguments against us are purely financial. That we don’t work hard enough, we’re corrupt, we don’t want to pay taxes. You know the routine. And although you may not think it, that’s a problem for those who are willing to let us go under, because more people in the E.U. are sympathetic to us than against us. It’s a person-to-person thing. They feel the Greek people are being made to suffer by the E.U.’s big boys in an effort to deflect attention away from their own banks’ fiscal mistakes. We don’t want to do anything that might give our enemies different ammunition.”

“What sort of ammunition?”

“The worst, the hypocritical kind. I don’t have to tell you how every country in Europe has its own sort of immigrant issues. Ethnic stereotypes are a convenient, irresistible scapegoat for political failings, especially in hard times, and no one wants to be the first to point a serious finger at another country’s shortcomings in dealing with its immigrants.

“But our adversaries would love to switch the focus of the debate from our country’s financial problems to our national character.