GREECE: Front Woman

Year after year the wives of big businessmen and officials came to plump, dark-haired Stavroula Tsouchlou's elegant Athens salon to select dresses at $200 and up. Business was fine. Still, Stavroula seemed to be troubled.

Last week all Athens knew why. Some years ago middle-aged Stavroula had married her handsome young chauffeur, a staunch Communist. A divorce was soon arranged, and the affair seemed forgotten. The party, however, has a long memory—and Stavroula had been issued a party card.

About a year ago, a comrade appeared at her back door to ask a slight favor: "Nothing dangerous, nothing incriminating, you understand ..." A young girl whose family had been killed in the 1944 uprising was in trouble with the police. Of course, the affair would blow over in a couple of days—meanwhile, could Stavroula keep the girl out of sight? She agreed. The girl stayed on for weeks.

Next came an important Communist, badly wanted by the security police. The fact that she sheltered him laid Stavroula wide open to more party blackmail. Soon she was in up to her neck. Together with one of the city's big booksellers, an official in the Bank of Greece, the owner of a smart perfume shop and others, Stavroula formed a link in Athens' Communist apparatus. Each shop was used in turn as a yavka (Russian for front) for shipping recruits to guerrilla bands in the mountains.

A few weeks ago, part of the chain was seized by the police. Fifteen people in Athens were arrested, including Stavroula. She poured out the whole story to interrogators, sobbing over & over: "If you once start working with the Communists, it is impossible to escape!"

Early one morning last week, Sta-vroula's body was discovered in a courtyard three floors below a prison window. To squeeze through the tiny window on her way to death, Stavroula had had to remove her costly fur coat and Paris dress.