id="u05d6a91b-9ee3-531c-ac74-f14f814f8173">
SIDNEY SHELDON
THE OTHER SIDE OF MIDNIGHT
To Jorja
who pleasures me in a thousand ways
Contents
Athens: 1947
Through the dusty windshield of his car Chief of Police Georgios Skouri watched the office buildings and hotels of down-town Athens collapse in a slow dance of disintegration, one after the other like rows of giant pins in some cosmic bowling alley.
‘Twenty minutes,’ the uniformed policeman at the wheel promised. ‘No traffic.’
Skouri nodded absently and stared at the buildings. It was an illusion that never ceased to fascinate him. The shimmering heat from the pitiless August sun enveloped the buildings in undulating waves that made them seem to be cascading down to the streets in a graceful waterfall of steel and glass.
It was ten minutes past noon, and the streets were almost deserted, but even the few pedestrians abroad were too lethargic to give more than a passing curious glance at the three police cars racing east towards Hellenikon, the airport that lay twenty miles from the centre of Athens. Chief Skouri was riding in the first car. Under ordinary circumstances, he would have stayed in his comfortable, cool office while his subordinates went out to work in the blazing noon heat, but these circumstances were far from ordinary and Skouri had a twofold reason for being here personally. First, in the course of this day planes would be arriving carrying VIPs from various parts of the globe, and it was necessary to see that they were welcomed properly and whisked through Customs with a minimum of bother. Second, and more important the airport would be crowded with foreign newspaper reporters and newsreel cameramen. Chief Skouri was not a fool, and it had occurred to him as he had shaved that morning that it would do no harm to his career if he were shown in newsreels as he took the eminent visitors into his charge. It was an extraordinary stroke of fate that had decreed that a worldwide event as sensational as this one had occurred in his domain, and he would be stupid not to take advantage of it. He had discussed it in great detail with the two people in the world closest to him: his wife and his mistress. Anna, a middle-aged, ugly, bitter woman of peasant stock,
