Competition: Cliffhanger

In Competition No. 2716 you were invited to supply the gripping final 150 words of the first instalment of a serial thriller.
Charles Reade, now mostly forgotten but ranked with Dickens in his day, summed up  the art of the cliffhanger thus: ‘Make ’em cry, make ’em laugh, make ’em wait — exactly in that order.’ The best of a magnificently overwrought entry that elicited the odd wry smile though no tears from this flinty-hearted judge are printed below and earn their authors £25 each. Alan Millard pockets the bonus fiver.

Assured of a handsome income despite the dubious outcome, I relished the Franco Deutsch challenge to salvage the foundering eurozone, sadly torpedoed and sinking fast.
Pietro, who claimed to know Papandreou, had planned our rendezvous, undercover, though actually under a roofless relic. Primed for action but grossly obese, I gasped for breath atop the Acropolis, rechecked the cryptic, encrypted message I should have swallowed, and  spotted our venue which turned out to be the Parthenon’s front, middle column.