The Red Boss's Wife

GREECE The Red Boss's Wife It was a case of free love at first sight when Comrades Niko Zachariades and Roula Koukoula looked one another over that summer day in Athens in 1945. Roula, dark-eyed and bosomy, already had a husband, having as a village schoolgirl run off with a Communist schoolteacher 14 years her senior. Niko, who had just arrived home from three years in Dachau, already had a Czech wife and a son. But such encumbrances can be voided when a girl Communist is ambitious, or when the man is Niko Zachariades, Communist boss in Greece and special protege of Stalin. Niko deserted his wife and shortly after, Roula's high-school teacher was picked up by the Greek police and sentenced to six years in jail.

Came Stalin's attempt to grab Greece, and the lovers took to the hills, where Niko raised the banner of bloody civil war. While Niko burned peasant villages and liquidated the old-line Communists who stood in his way to power, Roula, in her low-cut blouses and skin-tight riding pants, was promoted to commissar and recognized as the "Boss's Wife." Even in the hills, she was always well groomed, and in the words of one Communist deserter, "wore the only pair of nylons to be found in northern Greece."

A Boy Named Joseph. But as the Greek army, with the help of U.S. General James Van Fleet, smashed at the hard-pressed Communist guerrillas in the mountains, Niko and his Roula returned to the safety and comfort of Communist Bucharest, where they set themselves up in an apartment next to Stalin Park in the fashionable diplomatic district. From the safety of Rumania Niko kept control of the Greek Communist Party, while Roula, as head of the women's department, beamed radio appeals to the Red underground. It was a fine life. They toured satellite Europe in a limousine driven by a party chauffeur. They vacationed in the Crimea, and Roula gave birth to a boy named Joseph (after Stalin).

But even so well-placed a Communist boss as Niko sometimes had to concern himself with the disintegration of the movement back in Greece. Niko, wily as ever, got someone else to do the dirty work. First, there was Nicholas Ploumbides, a lifelong Communist. When Ploumbides was captured and shot, Niko denounced him as "a traitor" to the Communist cause. Then there was Nicholas Beloyannis, an old comrade-in-arms who was also captured and shot (some of the boys began to wonder whether Beloyannis had been honored with the mission because he had flirted too openly with Roula). In 1953, Niko sent Harilaos Florakis as his envoy. He was captured and sent to jail for life.

Six Snapshots. After such reversals, the time called for heroic measures, but not quite so heroic as Niko's returning to Greece himself. He decided to send Roula. Last February, Commissar Roula slipped across the border with her lover's instructions to reorganize the underground and bring back information on all the key figures in Greece. Niko's trusted old bodyguard was with her. Last week Athens announced that the two had been captured, and the Boss's Wife charged with espionage. In her pockets they found wads of drachmas and six well-thumbed photographs of five-year-old Joseph, sent to her by Niko since her arrival in Greece. On the back, each snapshot bore the date and the current weight of little Joseph.

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