I shivered as I stood outside the University of Truth and Justice building, waiting for a tram to carry me to my appointment with Steele. It was a cold grey day and the icy wind spat sleet in my face, like sporadic sniper fire announcing the approach of an advancing army, and even the vitamin I had taken could not entirely mask from me a chill premonition of the coming of winter. I felt an animal urge to find a snug shelter, to squirrel away a few nuts, to hibernate... I glanced around at the other passengers on the crowded tram as we slowly rode through the heart of Prague and I even half-envied them their shabby shoes, their drab nylon clothes, their bad haircuts, their shapeless bodies, their cramped apartments, their boring jobs, their security. Even half a loaf seemed better than no bread at all.
I got off the tram before my stop and walked over a bridge, a broad concrete span across the slow colorless wide expanse of the Vltava river. I was glad to enter the expensive warmth of the Cafe Classique, to walk across its marble floor towards the corner table where Steele sat morosely reading a newspaper, oblivious to the inviting glances and excessively short skirts of the painted women sitting all alone around him, sullenly ignoring even the intricately decorated moulding on the ceiling high above him.
"So what's with Tirana?" I asked Steele, sipping the cappuccino promptly brought to me by a portly waiter with a dignified white moustache and a manner redolent of old Vienna.
"Tirana?" Steele responded with fake cheeriness. "Why, it's the captivating capital of alluring Albania. The land of my dreams!"
"Why did they transfer you there?"
"They said I'd outlived my utility here." Steele's lower lip quivered. "Amerikan attaches should not be suspected of murdering their fellow nationals. The personnel department in Washington said that they had never heard of something like this before. They said that Congress would probably hold hearings. The Secretary of State is worried that Congress might slash the budget for the foreign service as a whole. Seriously bad publicity. I blamed it all on you but they said that I had to redeem myself somehow. So my boss, Shirley, told me to deal with shipping Lucy back home."
"Back to Utah?"
"Utah?" Steele looked puzzled. "Why Utah?"
"I've always wondered too. Lucy told me she was a Mormon. She told me that she had studied linguistics at Brigham Young University and that she was over here to convert people."
"First I've heard of it," Steele said. "Nobody seems to know anything about this girl's past. I called your university and they said that they had no records at all on Lucy. All they knew was her last name. Setton. No next of kin. No home address. Nobody even knew how she got her job at the university. Or at least that's what they said."
"Really? Whom did you speak with at the university?"
"Some old Czech guy, crotchety professor type. He was really snotty at first, wanted to know how old I was because he never again wanted to have anything to do with young Amerikans."
"It must have been Professor Masaryk," I said with glad recognition. The University of Truth and Justice already seemed very far away. Perhaps, one day it would seem so far away that I could tell funny stories about it. "She was his secretary. He really liked her."
"He sounded like he hated her. Said that she was nothing but trouble. Always on leave when he needed her."
"Huh!" I snorted. "He was always snivelling when she wasn't around to feed him vitamins."
"Vitamins?" Steele stared at me incredulously. I realized that I hadn't mentioned Lucy's propensity for dispensing her extraordinary mood-changing pills to everyone in the university. I told him all about it. "Sounds like psychotropic drugs to me," Steele responded robustly. "Vitamins, my ass!"
"You think Lucy was a drug dealer?" I asked cautiously. Steele and Luke had been good friends in boarding school but now that Steele worked for the government I wasn't sure whether to mention Luke's expertise in illegal substances. I decided not to tell Steele that I had asked Luke to analyse the vitamins.
"I don't know what to think about that chick," Steel replied dubiously. "The Records Office in Washington said that they had no records of any passport being issued to a Lucy Setton."
"But what about her personal belongings? She must have had photographs from home or something..."
"Nope." Steele shook his head decisively. "The university couldn't find a single thing that would identify her. It's like she had no past. No jewellery, no photographs, no letters. They turned her clothes over to us. They've all been bought in the last three months, all in boutiques here in Prague. Mostly stuff from Sellaton. Nothing distinctive, just whatever is cool these days."
I had a sudden inspiration. "What did she pay with?"
Steele stared at me. "Huh?"
"Cash? Credit card?" I was really excited. "She had a problem with money."
"An addiction or what?"
I shook my head impatiently. "No, she just couldn't grasp the concept. Cash to her was just dirty paper. She couldn't figure out why I wanted to be paid."
"Well, someone bought those clothes." Steel rubbed his chin with a long knobbly finger. "I think. Maybe they were shoplifted."
"Is there any way to check?"
"Not really. Who would remember? A tank top, a pair of jeans. A couple of dresses. White cotton panties. Generic stuff."
"And Masaryk couldn't tell you who hired her at the university?" The beginning of a suspicion began to coil lazily in my mind. Maybe Lucy really had no past. Or maybe someone didn't want to tell us about her past.
"I'm telling you. She came out of thin air."
"This is really strange." Why would Professor Masaryk hide information about Lucy? I had to return to the university to pack up my bags. Maybe I could ask a few questions.
"Tell me about it," Steele said bitterly. "I was the one kissing little Miss Thin Air, remember? Who knows what kind of diseases she had? I'll check out about this Mormon connection but I bet that Brigham Young and the Utah police say that they've never heard of her. We're stuck with a body and nowhere to send it. And everyone says it's my fault. So they're sending me to Tirana."
"Why?"
"Well, they want to check out Socks more carefully. Apparently they're beginning to wonder if he hasn't been double-timing the CIA all along. Not that he was ever a straight-forward agent or anything. As far as I know, the guy just passed on CIA bucks to dissidents, especially in this part of the world. Philanthropy is good cover, I guess. Nobody suspects you because they already suspect you, if you see what I mean."
"Yes," I said slowly, thinking of my friend Godfrey's remarks over the phone a few weeks earlier about the strategy of triple-bluff, of finessing one's way onto a higher level of uncertainty. "Yes, I see what you mean."
"And now, after Max Bulge fell off his yacht, all billionaires born in the Eastern Bloc are automatically suspect. So I'm supposed to find out about X-O-X's past in Albania. And because I worked on Wall Street they think I can find out whether he was a front for the Albanian communists. And since the Albanian regime was propped up by Beijing, maybe X-O-X has actually been working for the Chinese all along. In which case, maybe the revolutions of 1989 were all a Chinese plot? Shit." Steele scratched his head. "This is top-level CIA geopolitical analysis. Seriously classified stuff. Why the hell am I telling you all this?"
"It doesn't matter," I reassured him. "It's okay. I'm not working at the university anymore. I'm going to Berlin."
"Lucky bastard. They have cafes in Berlin. I bet they don't have places like this in Tirana," Steele grumbled. "I'll miss all this luxury. I've heard that they don't even have taxis in Tirana. Everyone rides around on bikes. It's exile. Deportation. A death sentence. It's the end of my career. It's like being posted in Rwanda or Burundi. I'll never make ambassador now. My father will be so disappointed. And it's all your fault."
"Oh, come on. Think positive," I urged brightly. "Maybe you'll do a great job and find out everything about X-O-X and then the Secretary of State will give you a medal."
"Fat chance. Maybe the Chinese will when they take over the world. This coffee's terrible. Let's switch to whisky."
"It isn't even noon yet."
"So what? They're all Muslims in Albania. I probably won't even be able to get a drink there. Adding injury to insult."
And so Steele and I sat all afternoon in the Cafe Classique drinking whisky after whisky, reluctantly brought to us by the portly waiter, his nostrils dilated with dignified disdain and his wizened neck shaking in palsied disapproval of the atrocious alcohol abuse he was being forced to abet. I felt adrift in a clammy fog through which I dimly saw a pretty blonde in a white dress sitting on a cloud, one little finger demurely raised to her rosebud mouth, one azure eye closed in an enigmatic wink. I had the uncanny feeling that I hadn't heard the last of Lucy Setton. Or her vitamins. Or the University of Truth and Justice. Or its mysterious founder, the cryptic Mister Xox. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. To err is human, to forget divine.
I got off the tram before my stop and walked over a bridge, a broad concrete span across the slow colorless wide expanse of the Vltava river. I was glad to enter the expensive warmth of the Cafe Classique, to walk across its marble floor towards the corner table where Steele sat morosely reading a newspaper, oblivious to the inviting glances and excessively short skirts of the painted women sitting all alone around him, sullenly ignoring even the intricately decorated moulding on the ceiling high above him.
"So what's with Tirana?" I asked Steele, sipping the cappuccino promptly brought to me by a portly waiter with a dignified white moustache and a manner redolent of old Vienna.
"Tirana?" Steele responded with fake cheeriness. "Why, it's the captivating capital of alluring Albania. The land of my dreams!"
"Why did they transfer you there?"
"They said I'd outlived my utility here." Steele's lower lip quivered. "Amerikan attaches should not be suspected of murdering their fellow nationals. The personnel department in Washington said that they had never heard of something like this before. They said that Congress would probably hold hearings. The Secretary of State is worried that Congress might slash the budget for the foreign service as a whole. Seriously bad publicity. I blamed it all on you but they said that I had to redeem myself somehow. So my boss, Shirley, told me to deal with shipping Lucy back home."
"Back to Utah?"
"Utah?" Steele looked puzzled. "Why Utah?"
"I've always wondered too. Lucy told me she was a Mormon. She told me that she had studied linguistics at Brigham Young University and that she was over here to convert people."
"First I've heard of it," Steele said. "Nobody seems to know anything about this girl's past. I called your university and they said that they had no records at all on Lucy. All they knew was her last name. Setton. No next of kin. No home address. Nobody even knew how she got her job at the university. Or at least that's what they said."
"Really? Whom did you speak with at the university?"
"Some old Czech guy, crotchety professor type. He was really snotty at first, wanted to know how old I was because he never again wanted to have anything to do with young Amerikans."
"It must have been Professor Masaryk," I said with glad recognition. The University of Truth and Justice already seemed very far away. Perhaps, one day it would seem so far away that I could tell funny stories about it. "She was his secretary. He really liked her."
"He sounded like he hated her. Said that she was nothing but trouble. Always on leave when he needed her."
"Huh!" I snorted. "He was always snivelling when she wasn't around to feed him vitamins."
"Vitamins?" Steele stared at me incredulously. I realized that I hadn't mentioned Lucy's propensity for dispensing her extraordinary mood-changing pills to everyone in the university. I told him all about it. "Sounds like psychotropic drugs to me," Steele responded robustly. "Vitamins, my ass!"
"You think Lucy was a drug dealer?" I asked cautiously. Steele and Luke had been good friends in boarding school but now that Steele worked for the government I wasn't sure whether to mention Luke's expertise in illegal substances. I decided not to tell Steele that I had asked Luke to analyse the vitamins.
"I don't know what to think about that chick," Steel replied dubiously. "The Records Office in Washington said that they had no records of any passport being issued to a Lucy Setton."
"But what about her personal belongings? She must have had photographs from home or something..."
"Nope." Steele shook his head decisively. "The university couldn't find a single thing that would identify her. It's like she had no past. No jewellery, no photographs, no letters. They turned her clothes over to us. They've all been bought in the last three months, all in boutiques here in Prague. Mostly stuff from Sellaton. Nothing distinctive, just whatever is cool these days."
I had a sudden inspiration. "What did she pay with?"
Steele stared at me. "Huh?"
"Cash? Credit card?" I was really excited. "She had a problem with money."
"An addiction or what?"
I shook my head impatiently. "No, she just couldn't grasp the concept. Cash to her was just dirty paper. She couldn't figure out why I wanted to be paid."
"Well, someone bought those clothes." Steel rubbed his chin with a long knobbly finger. "I think. Maybe they were shoplifted."
"Is there any way to check?"
"Not really. Who would remember? A tank top, a pair of jeans. A couple of dresses. White cotton panties. Generic stuff."
"And Masaryk couldn't tell you who hired her at the university?" The beginning of a suspicion began to coil lazily in my mind. Maybe Lucy really had no past. Or maybe someone didn't want to tell us about her past.
"I'm telling you. She came out of thin air."
"This is really strange." Why would Professor Masaryk hide information about Lucy? I had to return to the university to pack up my bags. Maybe I could ask a few questions.
"Tell me about it," Steele said bitterly. "I was the one kissing little Miss Thin Air, remember? Who knows what kind of diseases she had? I'll check out about this Mormon connection but I bet that Brigham Young and the Utah police say that they've never heard of her. We're stuck with a body and nowhere to send it. And everyone says it's my fault. So they're sending me to Tirana."
"Why?"
"Well, they want to check out Socks more carefully. Apparently they're beginning to wonder if he hasn't been double-timing the CIA all along. Not that he was ever a straight-forward agent or anything. As far as I know, the guy just passed on CIA bucks to dissidents, especially in this part of the world. Philanthropy is good cover, I guess. Nobody suspects you because they already suspect you, if you see what I mean."
"Yes," I said slowly, thinking of my friend Godfrey's remarks over the phone a few weeks earlier about the strategy of triple-bluff, of finessing one's way onto a higher level of uncertainty. "Yes, I see what you mean."
"And now, after Max Bulge fell off his yacht, all billionaires born in the Eastern Bloc are automatically suspect. So I'm supposed to find out about X-O-X's past in Albania. And because I worked on Wall Street they think I can find out whether he was a front for the Albanian communists. And since the Albanian regime was propped up by Beijing, maybe X-O-X has actually been working for the Chinese all along. In which case, maybe the revolutions of 1989 were all a Chinese plot? Shit." Steele scratched his head. "This is top-level CIA geopolitical analysis. Seriously classified stuff. Why the hell am I telling you all this?"
"It doesn't matter," I reassured him. "It's okay. I'm not working at the university anymore. I'm going to Berlin."
"Lucky bastard. They have cafes in Berlin. I bet they don't have places like this in Tirana," Steele grumbled. "I'll miss all this luxury. I've heard that they don't even have taxis in Tirana. Everyone rides around on bikes. It's exile. Deportation. A death sentence. It's the end of my career. It's like being posted in Rwanda or Burundi. I'll never make ambassador now. My father will be so disappointed. And it's all your fault."
"Oh, come on. Think positive," I urged brightly. "Maybe you'll do a great job and find out everything about X-O-X and then the Secretary of State will give you a medal."
"Fat chance. Maybe the Chinese will when they take over the world. This coffee's terrible. Let's switch to whisky."
"It isn't even noon yet."
"So what? They're all Muslims in Albania. I probably won't even be able to get a drink there. Adding injury to insult."
And so Steele and I sat all afternoon in the Cafe Classique drinking whisky after whisky, reluctantly brought to us by the portly waiter, his nostrils dilated with dignified disdain and his wizened neck shaking in palsied disapproval of the atrocious alcohol abuse he was being forced to abet. I felt adrift in a clammy fog through which I dimly saw a pretty blonde in a white dress sitting on a cloud, one little finger demurely raised to her rosebud mouth, one azure eye closed in an enigmatic wink. I had the uncanny feeling that I hadn't heard the last of Lucy Setton. Or her vitamins. Or the University of Truth and Justice. Or its mysterious founder, the cryptic Mister Xox. Maybe it was just wishful thinking. To err is human, to forget divine.
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