The Australian police didn't need an interpreter to know they were losing the crowd and were likely to come home with nothing more valuable than a duty-free bottle of ouzo.
In the smoke-filled briefing room of the Greek Anti-Drug Division, Victoria's Detective Sergeant Jim Coghlan and Australian Federal Police agent Jarrod Ragg were making their pitch.
Jim Coghlan's party trick helped snare Tony Mokbel.Credit: Simon Schluter
And they were sinking without trace.
They were there to find Australia's most wanted fugitive - Tony Mokbel - and, as their request to fly in Melbourne surveillance police had been rejected, they had to rely on the locals for help.
Rug lord: Tony Mokbel was arrested in Greece while wearing this absurd wig.
The trouble was they didn't know Mokbel's alias, his Athens address, his friends, his movements or even what he looked like.
In a city of 3 million it was not so much like looking for a needle in a haystack as a prick in an acupuncturist's kit bag.
The lingo may be different but coppers' body language around the world is remarkably similar. The Greeks were bored and had enough local crime to worry about without chasing a man with no name for Australians with no idea.
In desperation, Coghlan played his party trick. He turned to the policeman in the next seat and said "How is your family?" in schoolboy Greek.
Sitting at an elevated desk was the head of the Anti-Drug Division, the chain-smoking Lieutenant-Colonel George Saxionis, who snapped: "Why wasn't I told this man speaks Greek?''
There was much muttering and shrugging of shoulders so the boss addressed the apparently multilingual Coghlan directly over this previously hidden skill.
Coghlan, fearing the whole job was about to collapse, was hit with a charge of adrenaline that left him talking like a local.
Think Nana Mouskouri on steroids.
He said he had married a Greek woman, loved all things Greek, ate souvlakis daily, drank short black coffees and wanted to catch Mokbel because he was a danger to the good people of Athens.
Saxionis asked where his wife's mother came from. Coghlan answered. There was silence.
He asked where his father-in-law came from. He named a small village in central Greece. Saxionis rose slowly and walked to the Victorian, picked him up and kissed him.
''That is where I come from. That is my village!''
He turned to his troops with one order: ''We now catch this man. For Jim!''
And that is how the Greeks took up the challenge.
It was six years ago this month that Mokbel was arrested in Greece and, with his last-gasp Supreme Court appeal booted out a couple of weeks ago, the hidden story can now be told.
So how did police pinpoint the location of the man who jumped bail in March 2006 and seven months later secretly sailed to Europe?
It wasn't a fluke but it started as a 100-to-one long shot.
Then Purana chief Detective Inspector Jim O'Brien received a phone call from a policeman who had a friend, a man well known in musical circles, with a story of interest for Mokbel investigators.
And maybe he was ready to talk.
Like many in the music scene he had dabbled in drugs but had also seen the dark side - losing his own brother to an overdose.
He knew one of the key men in Mokbel's syndicate, Bart Rizzo, the man who acted as the unofficial accountant for ''The Company''.
The musician was more than annoyed with Rizzo and his syndicate. He was being used to protect someone and had a fair idea who that person was.
First the musician's name was used to make substantial international electronic money transfers and then he was instructed to provide his current and expired passports for ''our mate overseas''.
The musician was ready to blow the whistle (in tune, of course).
He was soon signed up as Registered Human Source 3030 and sent back into the field.
He took to the role as undercover spy with reckless energy, once providing police with a whispered update on his latest findings when Mokbel's right-hand man nipped off to the toilet.
Source 3030 started to take risks that made Mission Impossible look like a musical comedy. At one point while Rizzo was in another room he downloaded data from The Company's computer records, presenting it to police on a USB stick.
It was the mother lode. Rizzo kept detailed records of drug quantities, quality control systems and cash distribution.
The insider also provided police with a series of phone numbers of Team Mokbel - including the clean phone Tony used to keep in touch with his lieutenants in Victoria.
It was May 15, 2007, when Tony made a phone call back home - and, after the international pips, laconically asked his subordinate, ''Hey buddy, what's happening?''
In the Purana office the answer was: Plenty.
While Mokbel was chatting he mentioned he was at Starbucks at the Glyfada Piazza.
Coghlan, who had holidayed in Athens, knew the area well. And if there were any lingering doubt, a man in the background was heard speaking fluent Greek.
The following day Mokbel made another call saying he was working to have witnesses change their stories to derail coming court cases, was getting together a $1 million war chest for defence lawyers and that his girlfriend, Danielle McGuire, had delivered a baby daughter.
He added he expected The Company to net $500,000 a week and had ordered toupees from two exclusive Italian companies.
O'Brien had eight sergeants who had worked on the Mokbel case and in the end chose Coghlan to head to Greece, telling him on May 23 to pack his bags.
Sadly the jet-setting detective's passport had lapsed, which meant he had two days to get a new one or be replaced.
He made it - just - meeting Ragg at Melbourne Airport on May 25 in time to board the 9.30pm Emirates flight. As he settled in his seat with a briefcase full of police briefing papers and a gutful of butterflies, he remembered O'Brien's parting words. "Don't come home without him."
An additional problem was that summer crowds doubled the 100,000 local Glyfada population - largely consisting of non-Greek-speaking visitors. This would prove an ideal cover for Tony, who could pass as just another chubby tourist in a bad shirt.
After Coghlan won over the locals, the Australians were told they could use the Athens surveillance police for one week.
So police had about seven days to find the man who had been a major organised crime figure for more than 20 years.
They started where a punter like Mokbel was likely to surface, the local racetrack called Hippodrome, which operated Monday, Wednesday and Friday. No show.
Meanwhile, Coghlan started to receive live feeds from the phone taps. So when Mokbel got on the blower to Melbourne, his calls bounced back to Coghlan only kilometres away.
The surveillance unit placed an officer inside two Starbucks and another was assigned to drive constantly between the two on a motorbike. The live phone feed picked him up shopping in a supermarket with a female spruiker directing patrons to aisles for red-hot bargains.
Mokbel's luck was holding. One of the specials turned out to be nappies.
Surveillance police were dispatched to 12 local supermarkets but Mokbel had already checked out from the checkout.
Then came a breakthrough. He rang Joe Mansour in Melbourne and asked for a price list for marble tiles to be sent to a post office box in Glyfada under the name Stephen Papas.
Finally, police knew Mokbel's alias.
On Sunday, June 3, Mokbel rang McGuire's mother to say Danni might be coming home for a visit. Feeling chatty, he filled her in on life in Greece, telling her they were sitting at a pool while their six-month-old baby was undergoing her weekly drown-proofing lessons.
At the Greek surveillance headquarters, the boss said there was an Olympic-sized pool in the area that offered Sunday morning swimming lessons for under-five-year-olds and dispatched his troops while Mokbel was nattering away. He would have been snaffled if it wasn't for Greek traffic. When police arrived, Mokbel's team had cleared off.
Mokbel was becoming complacent, bragging on the phone, "Where I am at the moment, this is the last place they would look for me.''
It was 9.20 am on June 5 (Athens time) when Mokbel tried to ring Joe Mansour, and as it was ringing Mokbel answered another call. (He carried six phones. The bill didn't seem to worry him.) In the Melbourne offices of Purana and in the Australian embassy in Athens, those listening heard Mokbel confirm he would meet that caller at 11am. And then he gave the location: the Delfinia Cafe.
The restaurant was packed and the surveillance experts could see no obvious suspects. But there is more than one way to skin a fat cat and police used an undercover officer (of Greek/Pakistani descent) to slip in as a customer.
Then they launched a fake immigration raid, grabbing their own man when he failed to provide official papers.
With great theatre they dragged him into the street. A man sitting at the back, wearing longish hair and a baseball cap, looked deeply concerned and started to slip towards an exit.
But when things appeared to calm down he crept back to the small table he was sharing with another man.
The police returned and asked for identity papers. The man in the cap was pale and shaking when he handed over his Australian passport and NSW driving licence under the name Stephen Papas.
It was Mokbel's last act as a free man.
John Silvester will be on leave for two weeks.