#GenghizInLove: Episode 10

"I'm Hell. Who are you?" Lord Hades glared around the room. A frightened hush settled over the conference table. Twenty pudgy balding men in their late fifties quivered like schoolchildren. The only person who seemed unfazed by Hell's ominous presence was Lucy, sitting next to me in a corner of the room, a quiet blonde angel, the perfect secretary, shorthand pad and pencil at the ready, waiting to take notes. I still couldn't figure Lucy out, even after several days and nights of being together. She didn't mind snuggling up with me at night, but my two main concerns, romance and shopping, were clearly alien concepts for her. Take lingerie. She never wore any. And when I asked her to at least loan me her soiled undies, she looked at me like I was crazy. Secretly peeking into her closet, gaping at the tidy piles of starched white cotton panties like neat stacks of crisp currency, I had to wonder which planet she was from. Don't angels leave stains? The girl was practical to the core. She would moan throatily at the tall bunches of velvet black roses I brought her; an hour later, all that were left were the chewed up stems. "Yummy flowers," she would murmur happily, snapping up a stray petal with her pointed pink tongue. I had no time to seduce her properly since we were too busy most of the time sending out summons to all the high academics involved in setting up the University of Truth and Justice to come to Prague and to meet their new Rector. They were all here now, assembled in Hell's sumptuous office, shaking in their well-polished boots.

All but one: Professor Greedmann, the chairman of the Economics department, had flatly refused to come. `Tell Hades to go to hell,' Greedmann had faxed from New York. `I'll do whatever I want with my department.' I sneaked into Hell's office at midnight and placed the fax on his desk on top of an amazing clutter of papers and books. I spent the entire next day in my office, waiting for Hell's reaction. In the late afternoon, as I was standing on a chair, boring a small peephole in the wall separating Hell's office from mine, I heard the door slam open. Professor Hell stood in the doorway, breathing heavily.

"Call Xox. Tell him I've resigned." I stood transfixed on my chair. Hell frowned at me peevishly. "What's the matter with you? You deaf? What are you doing on that chair? Get off it. Call Wall Street. Now." He adroitly hooked one of his walking sticks onto the leg of the chair on which I was standing and pulled hard. I fell onto the parquet floor with a heavy and painful thud. A slight smirk played on Hell's broad wrinkled face. Without getting up, I pulled the phone off the desk by its cord. It fell to the floor in a crashing tinkle of protest. Hell looked slightly taken aback. I called up the New York headquarters of Xox's financial flagship, Exponential Investments.

"Hullo. This is the Special Assistant to Lord Hades, the Rector of the University of Truth and Justice. Would you please connect me to Mister Xox's secretary? Yes, it's urgent... Hullo. Lord Hades wishes to inform Mister Xox that he is resigning. Yes, you heard right. I really can't say why. Professor Greedmann might know. Have a nice day."

"That should do the trick," Hell muttered. He looked down at me with a grim smile and held out the end of his stick. I heaved myself up off the floor. "Good show, boy." He held out his hand. I shook it. "Have a nice day," he repeated. "You Amerikan?"

"I was taken there when I was fourteen."

"Fourteen, eh?" Hell mused. "That's how old I was when I left Czechoslovakia the first time. I think we'll get along, boy. Never ask questions. Do whatever I tell you or whatever you want. You'll find out that it's the same thing anyway. And always stand up for yourself."

"Aye aye, sir. I mean, yes, my lord."

"Call me Otto, damn it."

"Jawohl... I mean, yes, Otto." The phone rang. I picked it up. "University of Truth and Justice, Rector's Office," I sang out cheerfully. "How may I help you?"

A shrill worried Noo Yawk accent. "Greedmann. Gimme Hell."

"I think Lord Hades would prefer to do that, sir." I handed the phone to Otto.

"Greedmann. Listen carefully. When push comes to shove I win. I fight dirty. No holds barred. Now do as I tell you. Send an abject apology by facsimile to me. Now. Copy to all members of the University Senate. And to Xox. Got it? Don't like repeating myself." Otto slammed the phone down and scowled at me. "Think he'll do it?"

I considered. "How much does he get paid by the University of Truth and Justice?"

"Good question. A lot. Takes a lot to get anyone interested in working for a crazy Peruvian billionaire," Hell said frankly. "They're giving me ten million a year. Chairmen of departments probably get a quarter of that."

"I thought Xox was Albanian, Otto."

"Just born there, as I understand it. Went to Peru when he was young. Lots of people emigrated to Peru after the war. Good climate."

Greedmann's apology now lay before his colleagues seated at the conference table. He himself lay in a hospital bed in New York recovering from a heart attack. The Rector scowled around. "Come on. Haven't got all day. You." He turned menacingly on the unfortunate gentleman cowering next to him. "Who are you?"

"Tomas Masaryk..." The hapless Director of the Czech college whispered to his friend of seventy years standing.

"Right. Next!"

"Attila Ugh. Director, Budapest College," a small ugly man said sullenly. I suppressed a gasp. I recognized that perfectly round head with slicked-back thinning dark hair. Ugh was the mystery man with whom Terence Killjoy-Yuck had been filming Xox's romp with Lucy. And Ugh had seen me watching as well. I shuddered now as Ugh's glance swept over Lucy and I. Little black eyes glistened with malice and hatred out of a dead white rodent face. I wondered if he were really the megalomaniac that Professor Masaryk had called him.

A tall gentleman stood up. His orange tweed jacket stretched tight across broad fleshy buttocks as he bowed. "I am Professor Prince Maximilian von und zu Hohenstaufen-Niebelungen at your service," he intoned gravely in a thickly undulating South German accent, stubby fingers nervously twisting one end of a drooping grey moustache. "It is an honour to be present on this august occasion in the history of our..."

"No speeches!" Hell bellowed. "What do you do here, Niederzollern?"

"I am the Chairman of the European Studies department," the Prince droned. "We will teach these ignorant Eastern Europeans the proper etiquette with which they ought to behave towards those great and good officials in Brussels who in their magnanimity are giving..."

"Stop it!" Hell scarred the burnished surface of the conference table with a wicked whack of his walking stick. He waved the stick at the next victim in the firing line. The introductions went on and on, professors, directors, chairmen, distinguished elderly men frustrated in their self-importance, unable before Hell's fierce scrutiny to convey the grandeur of their appointments, the dignity of the pulpits from which they had bored generations of students. At last I became aware that the interminable chant of names and offices had come to an end. Everyone was staring at Hell uneasily. I leaned forward eagerly.

"Xox wants students," Hell said at last. "He's paying. We must get students." Angry jabbering broke out. "Shut up!" Hell shouted. There was instant silence. "Every department will have students next week!"

"But, Lord Hades," a voice objected meekly. "That isn't enough time to..."

"There isn't enough room..."

"We would have to hire lecturers..."

"Teaching assistants..."

"Build up a library..."

"Give them diplomas..."

"Degrees..."

"Accreditation..."

"Do it!" Hell said with quiet menace. "Now. Get to work. My special assistant here will coordinate all recruitment of staff and students. This meeting is over."

A tall handsome gentleman with an insufferably noble florid face got up dramatically. "Let the Senate decide! Or else I shall resign!"

Hell frowned. "Which one were you?"

The man tore at his mane of thick white hair. "I'm the chairman of the Social Policy department!" he shouted. I leaned over and looked at Lucy's list of names. "I'm the most eminent sociologist in the kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland!" Professor Ronald Dahl proclaimed. He shook his fist threateningly at Hell. "If you don't do what I say, I will discredit this university! I will make it the laughing stock of academic conferences all over the world!"

Hell shrugged. "I accept."

Professor Dahl's face brightened. "You accept my suggestion?"

"Your resignation," Hell said coldly. "And your department is hereby disbanded. Who needs sociologists anyway?" Professor Dahl turned pale, clutched at his throat, moaned, staggered, and finally collapsed to the floor in a crumpled heap. Hell looked around the room. "Anybody else here want to resign?"

A few heads shook. The surviving academics filed out of the room silently, heads drooping heavily on sagging shoulders. I noticed Attila Ugh turn at the door and grimace with surly malevolence at Hell's turned back. His dripping fangs glistened yellow under the bright overhead lights. The he scurried away without a word. Hell slumped back comfortably in his chair and put his arms behind his head. His massive head and jutting belly made him look like Humpty Dumpty. I felt a sudden surge of liking for this vicious old man. He opened his eyes a little and looked at Lucy and me.

"Well, children. What did you make of all that?"

"Watch Ugh!" Lucy and I said in unison.

Hell nodded and then seemed to go back to sleep again. He made me think of a very old and practiced crocodile, a survivor from some primordial past in which time oozed by as slowly as the movement of the viscous marshes which covered the earth. Was ten million dollars a year really sufficient bait to lure Hell out of a drowsy retirement replete with the fame and honor that had been heaped upon him by grateful nations? Or was it more than just greed that had brought together Lord Hades and his enigmatic employer, the billionaire master of that inexplicably successful business, Exponential Investments, Xox?

How had Xox made his money? How does an Albanian move to Peru and then on to New York, making billions of dollars in the process? Was it true, as my friend Godfrey had hinted to me on the telephone, that Xox served as a conduit for covert payments from Western governments to guerrilla groups throughout the world, skimming his commission off the top? Would such commissions add up to billions, or had Xox parlayed the money into successful investments in his own right?

Not for the first time in my life, I regretted the laziness which had prevented me from going to business school and the childish boredom that had made me long since renounce all those friends from boarding school and college who had decided to spend their lives making money. Suddenly I remembered my old school friend, Steele. He had mentioned that he had worked on Wall Street before becoming a diplomat. I wondered if a few drinks in some quiet bar would persuade Steele to tell me more about the mysterious Midas touch of Mister Xox.