Hearts of Stone Read Free Page B

workspace, Anna set her cup down and went back to Facebook. There was another message from Dieter Muller.
> I meant no offence. Just trying to track down a lead concerning a thesis I am preparing here in Munich. I should introduce myself. I am a German research student studying the expeditions to the Ionian islands that took place before the Second World War. I am looking for descendents of a Greek family who lived on Lefkas at the time. I came across the name of Eleni Thesskoudis who came to England shortly after the war as the wife of a British officer. Is Eleni your grandmother?
     
    Anna read the message again, more slowly. She was innately suspicious of Facebook, having seen how it was routinely abused by students to play tricks on each other, and occasionally bully. Not even the staff were immune from such acts and she wondered if this was anything to do with Jamie. Better to be careful, she reflected as she composed a response.
> I don’t know you and I am not in the habit of giving away personal details to strangers on Facebook. If you are for real then send me your email and proof that you are who you say you are.
     
    She sat back and clicked her tongue. It was brusque to the point of rudeness. But despite wanting to know more about how this person, who claimed to be German, knew about her family, Anna was not going to be lured into some pathetic student prank or, worse, some kind of scam. She typed again.
> How did you find my name?
     
    She saw a prompt indicating that the stranger was typing then one word came up in the message box.
> Google.
     
    ‘Bloody Google,’ she muttered. ‘Is nothing private any more?’ More words appeared in the box.
> Google led me to genealogy records and I guessed you might be on Facebook. Tried your name and so . . . Are you the person I am looking for? If not, my apologies. If so, then you might help me with some small details about your family’s history in Lefkas. That’s all. You might find my research of interest . . .
     
    Anna raised an eyebrow thoughtfully. Her grandmother’s family owned a small supermarket in Nidhri. She had met them a handful of times when some distant cousins of her mother had visited England to see Eleni, and she had been there just the once, for a wedding, two years ago. They seemed to be a typical Greek family: loud, proud and warm-hearted. At least as far as any blood relative was concerned. Beyond the immediate family there seemed to be a number of ongoing feuds whose causes were so ancient that no one recalled what the original grievence was. Quite unremarkable, Anna decided.
    So why were they of interest to Dieter Muller? He had found her through Google, and two could play at that game. She switched to the search engine and typed in his name, together with Munich University, and the list of references appeared. There were over three hundred hits but luckily only seven that combined the name and the institution. She clicked the first likely link and the page of the Archeology Department came up, with the option to view the contents in English. Another click and a short delay and there was a page listing, alphabetically, the graduate students and their research project outlines. Anna scrolled down until she saw the name and opened the entry.
    A fresh page appeared with a small portrait image of a young man who appeared to be her own age. His hair was short and dark and he wore rimless glasses above a neatly trimmed beard. There was an attempt at a smile to save himself from looking like a passport picture and Anna noticed a small red star stud in his ear. His expression was gentle enough, she decided. Certainly not threatening or unsettling. She turned her attention to his research statement and the translation was clear enough to get a grasp of his field of study. Sure enough, Muller was examining the programme of excavations carried out by German archaeologists on Ithica and Lefkas in the years before the outbreak of the Second World