The Monk Seal Conspiracy

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17. The State Within the State

The following day I returned to Samos, the green and mountainous island where I had lived so peacefully before becoming involved in efforts to save the monk seal. I stayed there for almost a month, and as the days passed by I began to feel more at ease, believing that the problems really had been resolved once and for all. With the University of Athens and a new conservation group called Youth and Environment, I began to make preparations to re-establish the project in the eastern Aegean. After all, YPEA, and the Ministries of Public Order, Co-ordination and Environment, were all aware of my presence and address on Samos, and during the weeks I stayed there, I received no further news and encountered no problems with the police or the intelligence services. More than disturbing, however, were the bulldozers, still slashing their way towards Megalo Seitani. In January, the road had been approximately 500 metres in length, and yet when I visited the area it was nearing the 1.5 km stage, and had already been made considerably wider and flatter. I promptly reported this to the Ministry of Environment, whose explicit orders were obviously being flouted.

Franz Weber had asked me to prepare an ambitious and detailed project plan to be launched at a press conference at the Athens Hilton on 29 April. Back on Samos, in my small house in Ambelos, I took advantage of the precious peace and quiet to put the finishing touches to our proposals. For the remainder of the year, we would be focussing our attention in both the eastern Aegean and the northern Sporades islands. Youth and Environment members would be primarily responsible for public awareness programmes and education, including photographic exhibitions and locally held concerts. The university team would again focus on research, pinpointing from existing surveys the most promising areas for sanctuaries. Within five years, we hoped to have a network of fifteen or twenty reserves identified, with at least half of them protected by law.

The project plan was divided into seventeen different programmes. The first of these was the establishment of the Seitani biogenetic reserve and the rehabilitation of the area. Programmes two and three would concentrate on the creation of sanctuaries on the south coast of Samos, as well as on Patmos, Leros, Hios and Lesbos. Programme four would combine research and public awareness in the northern Sporades archipelago, reputed to harbour the largest monk seal colony in Greece. Although a marine park had been recommended for the islands way back in 1976, it had still not been awarded its Presidential Decree, and further pressure had become vital to precipitate government action.

We would also be co-ordinating our activities internationally. Weber was keen for us to expand the project into other countries, and we would attempt to encourage co-operation between our own endeavours and monk seal protection in Madeira, North Africa, Italy, Yugoslavia and Turkey. One of the most important programmes, perhaps, would be the isolation of whelping sites by temporary unilateral action, by-passing the time-consuming bureaucracy in Athens. We would provide funds for the cessation of fishing in critical areas, while government legislation, hastened we hoped by international pressure, would eventually safeguard those areas by law as biogenetic reserves.

Reports reaching us from around the Aegean made this approach even more imperative. Evidently the seal massacre that Tom Goedicke reported from Nera in 1979 was far from being merely an isolated incident. Several of the students we were now collaborating with had recently returned from Naxos, with the disturbing news that seal-hunting was still being practised on the island. In one particular fishing village on the north-east coast, lying close to a stone quarry with an ample supply of dynamite, the seal kill was ruthlessly methodical. Under cover of darkness, the fishermen would lay out their old nets in a semi-circle and draw them in towards the shore. Enticed by the trapped fish, the seals would begin feeding, at which point the fishermen would fling lighted sticks of dynamite into the net.

In another incident reported from the same village in 1981, a fisherman casting his nets near a rocky shore heard a loud barking. He then spotted a female seal swimming with a pup by her side. Approaching them, he apparently managed to capture the pup and haul it into his boat. Becoming agitated and fretful, the mother seal followed the fisherman, howling and striking the hull of the boat with her body. The fisherman began to feel pangs of sorrow for the distressed mother and was about to return the pup to her, but remembering his damaged nets, abruptly thought better of it ‘and decided to take the young animal ashore. There, with other fishermen crowding around, all sentiment was lost. They began to tease and torment the pup and even sent it racing up and down in the quarry’s cable car; finally growing tired of their games, they kicked and beat the animal to death.

On another occasion, a fisherman who had captured a seal pup carried it into the village to show it off in the platea. Again, to howls of laughter, the crowd began to torment and torture the pup, kicking it and dragging it around the square by its flippers. When the local policeman arrived on the scene, he told them they should ‘dispose of it’ since what they were doing was illegal. Knowing that the seals were protected by law, he realized that he himself could get into trouble by not intervening, and he told them so. He then turned a blind eye as the fishermen battered the pup to death and disposed of the body.

Bringing back the holistic concept of the project, we also planned to research island ecosystems, in the broadest sense of the word. We would again be portraying the monk seal as the symbol of a dying sea and would try to liase our activities with UNEP’s Mediterranean Action Plan, and with various national organizations who were combating pollution and protecting other endangered species. We would study the impact of mass tourism upon the village communities of the islands, and advocate viable alternatives. We would study agriculture and pesticide use and the possibility of introducing biodynamic farming methods in the extended buffer zones of the seal reserves. We would study the state of overfishing in the Aegean and make an evaluation of small-scale aquaculture projects, which might help coastal areas recover their lost fertility. Moreover, we would assess the possibility of creating a cooperative of various specializations vital to accomplish these diverse aims, including organic farmers, alternative technologists, teachers, writers, musicians and so forth. I still firmly believed that if such people could be encouraged to work together, the project would begin to make rapid and fundamental progress. Furthermore, in a deeper sense, the total effect of this integration and plurality could well become greater than the sum of its parts, with active co-operation stimulating ingenuity and inspiration, helping to break down the inhibiting prejudices of these caste-like professions. Unfortunately, to encourage even those involved in ecology to appreciate this broader outlook was more difficult than I could imagine, and with YPEA’s continuing vendetta, it was to prove impossible.

On 23 April I returned to Athens to make final preparations for the Athens Hilton press conference, where Franz Weber would launch the project. But at the Hotel Ermion – where I usually stayed when in Athens now that the Crystal House had been condemned – I was told that an official of the Aliens Police had been searching for me. Although he was informed of my presence on Samos, and the date of my return to Athens, no further contact ensued until 28 April when I decided to report to the Aliens Police myself, thinking that some minor formality had to be dealt with. However, when I arrived I was told that I should sign an YPEA order dated 7 April, which prohibited me from returning to the eastern Aegean islands, including Samos. Was it mere coincidence that Franz Weber was soon to announce the re-establishment of the project in the eastern Aegean? Was it because I might have interfered with the continuing and apparently illegal road construction at Seitani, a ‘strictly protected area’? Or fears by the military establishment that the project and the Seitani reserve would soon be functioning unless they intervened?

I refused to sign the document without the presence of a lawyer, and the official refused to provide me with a copy, as though even the YPEA order itself was classified as secret. To the journalists in Athens, the entire affair had become increasingly outlandish. Surely a person who is considered a risk to national security would not be permitted to roam freely about the country, stay on Samos undisturbed for a whole month, and then not even be requested to present himself to the authorities? Indeed, I was beginning to feel distinctly like Joseph K., the protagonist in Franz Kafka’s The Trial, who suddenly finds himself inhabiting a bizarre and claustrophobic world of bureaucracy and intrigue, and spends the rest of his days attempting to fight elusively secret charges until, offending the highest powers with his insistence for justice, he is quietly executed by the secret police.

On 29 April we presided over the cocktail reception and press conference in the ‘Galaxy Roof’ of the Athens Hilton. It seemed like a terrible extravagance, but the manager of the hotel was a Swiss member of the World Wildlife Fund who had offered substantial reductions on cost. Furthermore, we thought it worthwhile to fete our contacts in the media, since they would undoubtedly be instrumental in helping the project survive. The Hilton’s haute cuisine offered such delicacies as Smoked Trout with Creamed Horseradish, Medaillons of Seabass en Bellevue, Red Caviar, Creamed Roquefort with Herbs and, rather incongruously, Cold Roastbeef on a Mirror. Unfortunately, either the canapés had seen distinctly better days or the fish had come from Pireus harbour, because by the end of the conference everyone was rushing for the toilets with severe bouts of diarrhoea. Only Weber, Rita and I remained immune, since we had been too busy talking to partake in the luxurious spread.

Despite a firm promise several days earlier that he would attend the launch of the project, I was told scarcely an hour before the conference was due to begin that the Environment Minister was now ‘unavoidably detained’ by more pressing matters. It seemed certain that a copy of YPEA’s new order had reached the minister’s desk. Weber was understandably furious at being snubbed, but seemed to recover his composure when a film crew arrived from the television news.

Seated on a wooden plinth above the congregation of journalists, with Penny Marinos and representatives of Athens University and Youth and Environment, Franz Weber presented a cheque to the project for 100,000 SWISS francs and proudly announced, to the flashes of press cameras, the Foundation’s aim of launching a 1 million franc fund-raising campaign for the monk seal under the framework of the United Animal Nations. As soon as the last journalist had left the Galaxy Roof, he immediately pocketed the cheque again and declared that the project’s funds would be personally and strictly controlled by him alone.

Commenting on the spying charges, Agence France Presse quoted him as saying ‘These accusations are ridiculous and I intend to request the Ministry of Public Order to lift the restriction.’

Still seething that Tritsis had snubbed him and that the government had not thought it necessary to send anyone higher in authority than Penny Marinos, Franz suggested that he, Rita and I drive to the ministry at once and demand to see Tritsis. We were accompanied by Ylva Wigh, a Swedish journalist whose husky voice and skittish nature Weber had known since his heyday of single-handedly saving Delphi from the construction of an aluminium factory. Purring with evident delight at the rare distinction, she claimed that the Minister of Public Order, Mr Skoularikis, had recently christened her ‘Sin in Person’.

We all clambered into a taxi and sped off through the midday traffic. Arriving at the ministry, I ushered them quickly through security, a feat that can only be accomplished by brazenly pretending to be an aloof and imperious VIP. On the top floor, however, Antonis Tritsis agreed only to see Weber, perhaps suspecting that Rita and I had arrived without wearing shoes. When a troubled Franz Weber finally emerged from the meeting, he quoted the minister as saying that the YPEA report was probably not to be taken seriously and that the allegations contained in it were probably groundless.

Ylva Wigh, trying to comfort Franz and cooing in his ear on the way back to Athens, told him that she would make a personal phone call to Melina Mercouri to seek an interview and photo-session. That evening we all met in Ylva’s apartment and she announced huskily, ‘I told Melina she must simply drop everything to meet you, darling. I asked her, did she know that this selfless man had donated 100,000 Swiss francs to save the natural heritage of Greece, and promised another million? The government had entirely ignored him, and there would be the most frightful scandal in Switzerland.’ It was all arranged. Weber and I would meet Melina the following morning, and Susan Mulhauser-Tritsis, a professional photographer and the wife of the Environment Minister, would be on hand to take press photos. ‘You must wear your safari outfit, darling,’ she purred at Weber. ‘You look so sexy and Melina will simply adore it!’

And so the following morning, Franz Weber and I met with Melina Mercouri, Minister of Culture and Sciences, the former film star who had played the ageing prostitute in the celebrated film Never on Sunday. Judging by the melodrama surrounding Melina and her entourage, theatrics were still very much part of the scene at the ministry, although the leading lady, close up, looked tired and haggard. As we drank Greek coffee and ate sesame bread during the hour-long meeting and photo-session, she pledged her full support for the project, and said that YPEA’s actions were ‘probably the result of a bureaucratic mix-up’. She strode purposefully over to her battery of telephones and called a Mr Potakis at the Ministry of Co-ordination, whom she called the government’s ‘secretary of state’. She requested him to resolve the YPEA problem immediately and to provide me with an unconditional permit to stay in Greece. We then rushed to the Ministry of Co-ordination, with Weber desperately holding onto his shock of grey hair as though it were a toupee in danger of being dislodged by the high winds that came gusting through Syntagma Square. Wishing to spare him any embarrassment, I looked the other way and prayed. I knew instinctively that if the toupee were to blow away into the rush hour traffic, the project would be doomed.

Associated Press wirephoto, 30 April 1982: ‘Franz Weber asked for Melina Mercouri’s help so that British seal conservationist Bill Johnson (left) can return to the eastern Aegean island of Samos… In a bureaucratic foul-up, Johnson was accused of spying for Turkey and is in trouble from Greek police who have requested he stays out of Samos.’

After another hour-long meeting at the Ministry of Co-ordination, Mr Potakis finally communicated Mercouri’s order to the Aliens Police. And yet later on that day, despite these top-level interventions, when I arrived at the Aliens Police to collect my ‘unconditional residence permit’ I was again asked to sign the YPEA order prohibiting me from the eastern Aegean islands. Again, I refused to do so. As Weber dashed to the airport for his flight back to Switzerland, I attempted to clarify matters at the offices of Mr Skoularikis, on the top floor of the Ministry of Public Order, and met the minister’s personal secretary, Mrs Natsoulis. She led me down to the anonymous YPEA official who was dealing with the case, a refined but austere man who bluntly informed me that the intelligence service was under no legal obligation to divulge the contents of the secret report which was lying on his desk in front of him, a bulging file containing literally hundreds of papers. It was the closest I was ever to come to that legendary report, and curiosity almost overcame me as I imagined snatching it and racing out of the building. He then told me that I should make ‘an application for re-examination of my application’ for permission to travel to the border areas. It was astounding. Was this the state within the state? Even the British Embassy had intervened on my behalf, informing the Minister of Public Order that I was on a legitimate mission. But despite all of this, and even the widespread press coverage which had now reached the USA and Canada with television news reports, nothing had been resolved. It had become all too obvious that a more powerful ministry was involved in the affair, and this could only be Defence.

For the first time now, even Associated Press deigned to mention the spying saga. In the captions for their wire photos of Weber and me meeting with Mercouri, they stated: ‘Franz Weber asked for Melina Mercouri’s help so that British seal conservationist Bill Johnson can return to the eastern Aegean island of Samos. In a bureaucratic foul-up, Johnson was accused of spying for Turkey and is in trouble from the Greek police who have requested he stays out of Samos.’

During the first few days of May my lawyer informed me that the Minister of Public Order, Mr Skoularikis, was unwilling to allow me to return to the eastern Aegean unless he had the support of the Ministers of Foreign Affairs and Environment. Could such high-level political negotiations really be focussing on my ‘lifestyle’? Of course not; soon, even our lawyer was to abandon us, stating that the case, ‘involving national security, is becoming far too serious for us to handle.’

A discussion between the ministers was then tabled for the cabinet meeting that afternoon. But in the evening, questioned by Ylva Wigh at, a news conference at the Foreign Press Association, Environment Minister Tritsis declared that under no circumstances would he intervene in the case since it was entirely Mr Skoularikis’s responsibility as Minister of Police and YPEA.

On 13 May, in an ‘Urgent’ letter from the Ministry of Co-ordination, Franz Weber was informed that ‘the Ministry of Public Order has objections concerning Mr William Johnson’s presence in the eastern islands,’ and requested that I should stay out of the area. Significantly, a copy of the letter was also forwarded to the National Defence Service and, quite mysteriously, to IUCN/WWF. Were they perhaps continuing to keep abreast of matters for the sake of ‘damage control’, or did the government wish to assure the organization that whatever confidential information had been passed on to them by the Greek Mission to the United Nations in 1980 was still, and irrevocably, valid? The Franz Weber Foundation would ultimately decide to ignore the order.

In the meantime, however, I was informed that Franz Weber would be sending a ‘special envoy’ to Athens to discuss the project. Heinz Zweifel, the Foundation’s public relations manager, arrived on 27 May and we met at the Athens Hilton. Franz Weber had apparently decided that the project should now centre its attention around Piperi in the northern Sporades, which would be celled ‘Franz Weber’s Monk Seal Island’. This would not only satisfy Mr Weber’s vanity, explained Zweifel, but would also become the focal point for the 1 million franc fund-raising campaign. I should continue to monitor the eastern Aegean, especially Seitani, but for the sake of publicity we needed ‘an island’, which Weber could buy if need be. I suddenly had the sickly feeling that I had come to Greece only to feed this organization’s ravenous and conceited image. Furthermore, Franz Weber was apparently insulted because he did not appear on our project plan as ‘International President’ or some other suitable title, and suspected that we were trying to usurp credit for the Foundation’s work. It was our first encounter with Weber’s legendary persecution complex. Wasn’t the heading ‘Franz Weber Foundation’ on every paper sufficient, I asked, exasperated? Zweifel shook his head wistfully. ‘You must try to understand Weber,’ he told me, ‘and pamper his ego.’ I felt like resigning there and then, but remembered all the commitments I had made for the project, all the promises which I had passed on from the horse’s mouth. I could have kicked myself for my gullibility.

To make matters worse, Weber seemed to think that Rita was craving the limelight at his own expense, and was after the Foundation’s money. Tartly, I remarked that for several months, simply to keep the project ticking over, Rita had been working twelve hours a day as a waitress in a restaurant in Berne, and we were certainly looking forward to finally having our project expenses paid. Zweifel nodded sympathetically but insisted that Franz and Judith Weber were no longer willing to continue working with her. ‘A clash of personalities,’ he said with fatalism and shrugged, hopelessly. I reluctantly agreed to inform Rita of the decision, and also wrote a letter to Franz Weber, asking for further clarification and reasons for the decision. No answer was ever received. Zweifel further suggested that a sum of about 2,000 Swiss francs could be paid to Rita as a parting gesture. This money was never received. He also informed me that the Foundation was now unwilling to reimburse, as promised, the personal funds which we had invested in the project since February. To make matters worse, I had to formulate a new project plan and budget and no funds would be released until these had been studied in Montreux. The Webers had considered the blueprint for the holistic project too wide in its scope. They apparently wanted a media-sellable event, even if this wouldn’t save the monk seal. I knew that we were being tricked, I knew that the monk seal was being tricked, but once again, there was nothing I could do.

Following the meeting, I had the unpleasant task of informing Rita that she had been sacked, and the NCPPE, Athens University, and Youth and Environment that the planned programmes for June could no longer go ahead. Moreover, because our funds were still locked in the bank, the action could not be transferred to the Sporades. There was bitter disappointment, and understandably I bore the brunt of most of it. Much of the preparatory work had already been completed, and many of the students, having given up their holiday plans for the sake of the project, would now have to spend their vacations in grimy, smoggy Athens. Back at the hotel, I hammered out a cryptically sardonic plan on my typewriter called ‘Franz Weber’s Monk Seal Island’, almost hoping that Weber would sack me for insolence. As it happened, it was to receive praise and adoration.

Bitter and disillusioned, Rita returned to Samos with the last of her savings, and waited for Susi Newborn to visit her.

On 22 June I received an urgent message from the island, saying that the Seitani road had now reached the 2 km stage, and that the bulldozers, still at work, had already made the road wide enough for two cars to pass each other.

Rita had recently been approached by a local fisherman in Karlovassi, who told her that during the previous months he had regularly observed two seals playing outside the harbour walls.

This was heartening news, since the disturbance of the construction, particularly the dynamiting, could well have frightened the seals away from the area. But it was obvious that the seals were in great danger, and our patience had finally been exhausted by the inane bureaucracy reigning in Athens and by conflicting government statements. We decided to take matters into our own hands – there seemed to be no other option. Diplomacy had failed dismally. One day I would be informed of a government enquiry into the whole affair; the following day I would be told that no such investigation was being contemplated. Another day I would be told of YPEA’s impending decision to allow me to return to Samos. An hour, a day or a week later I would be told that YPEA was about to order my arrest and expulsion. As one Greek colleague told me confidentially, ‘YPEA is a state within the state; whatever the ministers say, you can rely on nothing and anticipate none of YPEA’s actions.’

I immediately sent a telex to Franz Weber, suggesting that I should return to Samos. All major news agencies and correspondents were alerted. On Susi’s advice, I also contacted Greenpeace Holland and Greenpeace International and was assured of their support in press and legal matters.

The following day I received a reply from Franz Weber: ‘Thank you very much for yesterday’s telex. I am in full agreement with you: the Samos projects are scandalous. I will do everything in my power to stop them. Do return to Samos. Will take care of Piperi afterwards. I do not know yet exactly when I will return to Athens but I am planning to go. Please keep me posted by telex on any news or developments.’

So on 24 June I returned to Samos accompanied by a freelance photojournalist, Pamela Browne, hoping that her presence, the backing of the Franz Weber Foundation and the moral support of Greenpeace would be some insurance against my arrest. But the following morning we were shocked to receive an angry telex from Franz Weber, demanding to know how Greenpeace were involved in the action. At this time I had no idea that the Foundation would be so susceptible to organizational jealousy. I replied by telex that Greenpeace had offered their co-operation in press and legal matters, and received a curt and churlish response saying: ‘If you think Greenpeace can give you good assistance in your personal problem, do not hesitate to turn to them.’ Thus although Franz Weber had encouraged me to make my illegal return to Samos – without sufficient funds and without any form of legal assistance – he now repeated IUCN/WWF’s expedient explanation that the YPEA harassment campaign against the project was merely a ‘personal problem’. Pamela Browne, Rita and I then met the newly appointed prefect of Samos, Mr Pandazis, who, to our utmost surprise, greeted us cordially, termed our work ‘valuable and essential’, pledged his full support for the Seitani reserve and stated that he would give its protection utmost priority. A lawyer by profession, he examined my passport meticulously and informed me that since there were no YPEA ‘red stamps’ on its pages, the restrictions which had been imposed upon me were not legally valid. I was therefore free to travel wherever I desired. Furthermore, he added with imperiousness, under new legislation the prefectures had been awarded authority over the police. As if to prove the point, he then promptly telephoned the chief of police and ordered him to furnish us with work and residence permits. As our conversation swung back to Seitani, he informed us that the prefecture had been forced to fulfil its obligations to the building contractor, but that the further construction of the road had now definitely been halted. We viewed this explanation with the greatest scepticism, since it could hardly have justified the destruction of what supposed to become a national park.

The author on Samos, June 1982.

The following day we met the chief of police, Kyrios Drumpis, whom we had encountered under such different circumstances in 1979. We were greeted with sheepish though amiable smiles, and a respectful courtesy which I had thought the police chief incapable of. Although he was in possession of an order ‘from a higher authority’ which prohibited my presence in border areas, he said that the police would be willing to allow me to remain on Samos. He would be in touch with us if the Athens authorities should have any objection. ‘We have nothing against you as long as you don’t make trouble for us,’ he blandly declared. We then asked him when he would contact Athens. One week, two weeks, maybe not at all, was his nonchalant reply. The press coverage had obviously had a profound effect – Drumpis referred to it several times, and even had press cuttings open on his desk. Was the warning against making trouble for the police also meant to include further investigation of the Seitani affair? And why was Drumpis destined to be replaced within weeks of this meeting? I had expected to be arrested and expelled; it was all very strange.

The story seemed suddenly dormant, though I did not dare believe we had arrived at a happy ending. Had YPEA itself ordered the prefecture and the chief of police to back down, fearing a scandal in the media? This game of see-saw was not only confusing; it was also eating away at the credibility of the project, making it impossible to plan ahead while doubts lingered. Was this a deliberate strategy on the part of YPEA? When would there be another move by the ‘higher authority’? More importantly, would the shadowy entrepreneurs behind the Seitani development give up so easily? We had already discovered that plans for a hotel at Seitani had been on display in Karlovassi earlier in the year, but had been hastily withdrawn as the press coverage reached its height. Also, a newly formed cultural association, ‘Gorgyra’ of Karlovassi, had been distributing hundreds of leaflets protesting about the development and the necessity of protecting the area. It seemed as though our work was, after all, having an effect upon the local population. But we still had no idea who was funding the development at Seitani, though army vehicles had again been seen in the area. Our four-year struggle had long been criticized as having little to do with ecology, and this was why we were receiving no firm backing from other international conservation organizations. It was as though we were straddling the borders between ecology and human rights, although Amnesty International and other human rights groups equally refused to help us, reasoning that it was solely a conservation problem. I found their reasoning perverse and narrow-minded to an extreme, for here, in the heart of our struggle, the survival of the monk seal was hanging in the balance. But inevitably, these are the kinds of obstacles you encounter when you fail to fit into the neat categories of Reality.

That afternoon we visited Seitani but the bulldozers were idle, parked like iron monsters at the demolished headland of Potami. Bricks and cement were piled up along the road, summer tourists were now driving along in cars and on motorbikes, and rubbish had been tipped into the forest. ‘The first biogenetic rubbish dump of Europe’, I announced with bitter sarcasm. Later, a man in Karlovassi offered us a lift in his boat to Megalo Seitani beach. He turned out to be one of the bungalow owners who had been taken to court and fined over 1 million drachmas for illegal building. Although he had no idea of our identity, he complained bitterly about the injustice they had suffered at the hands of the authorities. He declared that they had actually applied for a permit to build only one house, but had then been encouraged to accept three permits and so had built three bungalows. ‘If the area is protected,’ he argued, ‘why did we receive the building permits?’ Why indeed? Could it have been another trick to induce irreversible development of the area?

The road to Seitani, June 1982.

Once again the days passed uneventfully on Samos. Construction at Seitani remained at a standstill, although I was almost certain that the bulldozers would be back at work as soon as our backs were turned. I informed Franz Weber by telex of the apparent success of the Samos action, and requested that funds be released for the forthcoming northern Sporades programme, scheduled for 10 July.

But the Lone Ranger of Conservation was obviously still brooding over the involvement of Greenpeace, and it was not until 8 July that I received a telex summoning me to Montreux. It was to be a lightning 24-hour visit. In the balmy summer heat, the Webers and I sat in the villa’s lakeside garden and discussed, once again, the entire formulation of the project. They pored over a map of the Aegean, looking for Samos, and I was aghast that they still had no idea where the island was. I said nothing, however, realizing all too well that Judith’s doting attention to her saintly husband could rapidly become shrewish with others, her eyes betraying a distrust of everyone and a deep and repressed hysteria. Franz sat back imperiously, gazing out across the misty blue lake and envisaging with pride and enthusiasm his own monk seal island in the northern Sporades. We had still not received one cent in promised wages, and as usual, had consumed nearly all of our own savings to cover project expenses. Franz grudgingly agreed, at least, that Rita should be reinstated as a representative of the Foundation. He proposed a ‘gentleman’s agreement’ in which we would each receive a salary of 1,000 Swiss francs per month, but this money was never paid, revealing just how gentlemanly an agreement can be.

‘We have to be careful with our funds,’ Weber declared piously, as he uncorked, with a resounding pop, a bottle of vintage champagne. ‘His only weakness,’ Judith chipped in with her quavering voice, ‘is his love of fine wines.’ I could have listed a few others, but said nothing. Inside, I was seething. Franz then gave a solemn promise that, as soon as I returned to Athens, the Foundation would release 20,000 Swiss francs for the two-part July and September Sporades action. Predictably, only half of this amount was actually released, causing further exasperating complications, changes in planning, and wounding yet again our integrity and credibility.

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