#GenghizInLove: Episode 12

I spent much of my long weekend writing a long letter to my friend Flossie. She had sent me a postcard from Amritsar where she was interviewing fierce bearded Sikh warriors about their future plans to assassinate Indian heads of state. Floss was clearly in a didactic mood. Her message was a poem entitled `Bad Habits Which Children (Like You) Should Be Warned Against':

smoking is bad

so is fatty food

never cross the street

without looking

both up and

down

avoid a sedentary life

write back to your friends

and don't argue

with your parents

all of these things can

kill you

I thought it was a beautiful poem and I told her so. I also asked her to let me know just exactly how she had heard of the Fund for Peace and Love from whom she was getting the money for her research in India.

Memories of life with Floss reminded me of the long afternoons I had spent in our apartment, cooking elaborate gourmet meals which I had encountered in my favorite reading in those days, French cookbooks from the turn of the century, a more leisurely time in which servants thought nothing of waking up at four in the morning to stoke the kitchen fire and then begin to peel asparagus and braise rare meats. Our sleek computerized stove lessened my pleasure in cooking, but only a little: I stole my pleasure where I could find it, in wandering around vegetable markets looking for that little sprig of some out-of-season herb which might be just the perfect garnish for the cassoulet I had been engrossed in preparing all day, in earnest consultations with heavy-set stooped wine merchants about the provenance of some unusual Rhenish wine which, I thought, might suitably wash down the chicken breasts a la Reine d'Autriche with which our simple evening meal would begin; but my greatest pleasure was reserved for the moment late in the evening when Floss would emerge from her bedroom, her face flushed pink from the hot shower she had taken for over an hour after she returned home dripping from cycling back at mad speeds on her racing bike with a backpack full of heavy books from the libraries in which she spent her days, and we would sit down at the table and eat and, more importantly, drink, and talk about terrorists.

I missed cooking. One day I coaxed Lucy into going shopping for food with me. The local department stores were admittedly a disappointment, cavernous spaces lit grimly with blinding fluorescent lights, shelves lined with tins of fish preserved in vinegar and salted meats, jars of pickled fruits and cucumbers in brine, but cucumbers seemed to be the only vegetable with which Czechs seemed familiar, unless one counted as vegetables a few limp grey cauliflowers and rotten round dark brown objects which on gingerly inspection I discovered to have once been tomatoes. Sacks of potatoes lay around on the grimy tiled floors. Empty handed, Lucy and I walked past a queue of shapeless old ladies waiting patiently for their turn to count out to a surly cashier their small change, the pensions with which they eked out their meagre lives on a diet of tinned pork and potatoes.

"Try Legumes du jardin," sweet Annichka at the reception desk said helpfully. "It's where all the diplomats go." She gave us directions. As we stood waiting for a tram to take us to the center of Prague, I shivered. Autumn was already here now. The sun had long since set and a chill wind soon blew away the remaining shreds of twilight. I missed Kalifornia. I missed the sheer indulgence of fresh vegetables and warm evenings. Why was I in the desolate heart of Europe, loitering in the cold center of this alien melancholy? My question was easy enough to answer: I still hadn't called my mother. Harassed attaches in Amerikan embassies all over the world had probably been committing suicide for weeks now, cracking under the strain of fending off her insistent demands that they personally track down my exact whereabouts.

Legumes du jardin was a bright little outpost of Western prosperity in a dark alley near Wenceslas Square. A throng of people were gathered outside the shop, their noses pressed to the plate glass windows, staring at the price tags prominently attached to the tempting display of produce within, mushrooms of every descriptions, massed strings of crisp white Spanish garlic, the exuberant foliage of romaine lettuce. Lucy and I pointed dumbly at plump red tomatoes and thick green cucumbers, at the rich purple of aubergines and plums, and a cheerful shop assistant carefully wrapped each individual vegetable in tissue paper and then led us to the cash counter. Leaving Lucy to pay with a wad of bills I had thrust into her hand and which she was staring at in confusion, I broke away towards the cheese counter at the back of the shop which I had just noticed through the corner of my eye, a glistening array of cheeses, crumbly Roquefort, wheels of Stilton and, wait a moment, could that possibly be Cheddar...

"Hey, bud!" A familiar voice stopped me in my tracks. "Found your way around Prague already, huh?"

"Steele! What are you doing here?"

"It's where I do my shopping," my old school friend explained patiently. "I'm a diplomat. You never returned my call."

"Sorry, Steele. You know I never return calls."

"What are you doing right now? It's Friday night and there's a decent wine bar just around the corner."

"Let me ask Lucy." I pointed at Lucy who seemed to be having trouble paying for our groceries. Steele gaped longingly at Lucy's shapely behind. I batted my eyelashes. "She's a Mormon."

"Kinky," Steele replied approvingly. "Very kinky."

"She's weird. I think she's possessed. Oh, there you are, Lucy. This is Steele. He's an old friend of mine."

Lucy appraised Steele coolly. "You're Amerikan, aren't you? Are you a tourist here?"

"I work at the Embassy." Steele caught my warning glare too late. Lucy turned and looked at me hatefully. "Uh, did I say something…"

"Never mind," I snapped. "Let's just go get a fucking drink, all right?"

Surprisingly Lucy agreed to go drinking with us. Even more surprisingly the prim little angel was drinking with us, glass for glass. While refusing to talk to me, Lucy was getting along just a bit too well with Steele for my liking. By the time we were halfway through the second bottle, Lucy was leaning her head against Steele's shoulder and singing (a hymn?) softly to herself. By the third bottle, Lucy's face was buried in Steele's suited abdomen. Steele didn't seem to have a problem with that: he was happily stroking her hair.

"Psst… Steele," I whispered cautiously. "How do people make money on Wall Street these days?" Lucy was staring glassily at her empty glass. I reached out and carefully poured her some more just in case she was still conscious.

Steele looked up at me with mock horror. "Don't do it! Don't even think about it!"

"Why not?"

"Scary people," Steel explained. "Monsters. Evil brutes. Real crazies. Ugly demons. With a head for numbers. And political savvy. You need both in the currency markets. That's where the big money is made these days. By the serious players anyway."

"Like who?"

"Oh well, there's the pension funds. But they don't really want to make money. They just want to keep it safe for Joe Steelworker who's going to retire next week and then keel over with a heart attack. That's where they make their profits. Lots of tobacco stocks. But then there are maybe fifteen really big individual players who go for broke. They're like sharks with technology. Megalomaniacs with a killer instinct. Like this guy you work for. Mister X-O-X. He's a big boy on the currency markets. A master of the universe. And a nut. Certified."

Lucy sat up suddenly. "What do you know about him anyway?" she asked drunkenly before subsiding again with a hiccup.

"Is Xox was a front for the CIA?" I asked cautiously.

"Not that I know of. Where the hell did you hear that?"

"From a friend in British intelligence."

Steele laughed. "They should know," he replied sardonically. "They give most of their bribes to Third World governments through the guy. Not to mention their covert payments to all the dissident groups that want to overthrow those same governments. Just ask the Sikh revolutionary groups in London."

"Through the Fund for Peace and Love?"

"Is that what it's called?" Steele asked with interest.

Like a wind-up toy, Lucy sat up again. "You are both stupid," she slurred belligerently. "Mister Xox works for no man. You cannot serve both Man and Mammon!"

Steele tried to stroke Lucy's head again but she dodged his hand and fell off her chair. "Take me home," she moaned. I moved to help her up but she swatted me away viciously with her shoe. "Not you," she groaned. "Traitor. Deceiver. CIA mole. I hate you. Never want to see you again."

"Do you want me to take you home, honey? " Steele asked. He winked at me. I stared back in outrage.

"CIA man?" Lucy asked, opening one eye. "Always wondered what it would be like to fuck a spy. James Bond, baby."

"Good girl. Shaken not stirred. I'll take care of her," Steele promised. "I'll be nice. She's sweet. Does she drink much normally?"

"Never. I don't know what came over her."

"I did. Or I will," Steele said lewdly.

"Bed! Any bed!" Lucy said loudly from the floor. The waitress looked concerned. I hurriedly paid her off. Steele and I pulled Lucy to her feet. Steele had his arm around her as their taxi pulled away. I sighed and went back into the bar and ordered another bottle of wine and a plate of appetizers. The waitress made disgusted faces at me as I stuck greasy handfuls of fried cheese into my face. I didn't really care. Heart break yet again. I didn't feel like calling Lulu about it just yet. Besides she had probably gone to Berlin. Eventually I decided to walk back to the university and call home. The cool night air might clear my head and I was just sober enough to stagger back. It was late afternoon in Kalifornia and I felt just drunk enough to talk to my mother. I needed money. Man cannot live on wine and cheese alone.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 11

The next week passed by as a total blur. I had never worked so hard in my life, and at every moment that I raised my head from a desk cluttered with soiled and crumpled papers and the greasy remains of squashed pizza boxes, pausing only to rub my weary eyes with the back of a grubby hand, I devoutly hoped that I would never have to work so hard ever again for the rest of my life. At his meeting with the distinguished academics who headed the various departments and colleges of the University of Truth and Justice, Hell had airily passed on to me the responsibility of coordinating the recruitment of staff and students within one week. And while I grovelled on my knees in my tiny cubicle of an office, scrambling desperately through stacks of files in search of various relevant reports and the minutes and memoranda of many meetings, while I juggled phones with one hand between two ears while trying to send urgent faxes with the other hand to inaccessible locations like Warsaw, Vysegrad, Tirana, and Skopje, Hell sat comfortably in his sumptuous office next door, tip-tapping away at his laptop computer, writing yet another elegant and closely reasoned book destined for rapturous reviews and sales in the millions, pouring out the words straight from his prodigious brain and enormous memory. The man didn't even have to read: he knew everything. Worst of all, Hell whistled as he wrote, tunelessly, merrily.

I think I would have murdered Hell if it hadn't been for Lucy. Besides removing all knives and other sharp objects from our office kitchenette, Lucy persuaded her reluctant boss, Professor Masaryk, to give her a leave of absence for a week. Like a true angel, Lucy used her free week to help me call up the offices of all the various philanthropic foundations set up by Xox, scattered all over the jigsaw puzzle of Central and Eastern Europe. Miraculously, Xox's people were friendly, helpful, and efficient. Within days of our request for their help in recruiting students, we received large parcels sent by overnight courier, boxes which contained hundreds of applications from students. Xox's people had even interviewed the prospective students and ranked them. I suspected that Xox had ordered these lists to be prepared in advance of our request, which after all, emanated directly from his own desire that the university which he was funding should have students. Miracles are nice but, unfortunately, hard to arrange. Even if you work for a billionaire and have an angel by your side.

And after all the tedious work of arranging the transfer of stipends and travel money to the winners in Xox's lottery, after organizing such prosaic chores as buying decaying buildings in the central districts of five different capital cities and renovating them into modern dormitories, after negotiating such humdrum matters as staff salaries and curriculum conferences, after our week of toil was done, Lucy and I stood at the reception desk of the university building in Prague, anxiously awaiting the arrival of the first students.

They came in dribs and drabs, not as a flood, singly, in pairs, in small groups. Some had met at the very outset of their long journeys to Prague, others during their travels, after the usual tearful partings at decrepit train stations, leaning out of the train to accept a last minute salami or a jar of home-made preserves pressed upon them by an apprehensive mother, ostensibly for the trip, but more importantly, as something to clutch onto in the frightening future, a symbol of the certainties of home, a talisman. They came worn out from their journeys, like pilgrims, bent over heavy suitcases battered from years of family holidays, lent out to cousins and uncles, reclaimed now for this ultimate voyage. They came in their wide woollen trousers and badly cut dresses and shapeless winter coats, made at home and worn with reluctance commingled with pleasure, and in these fashions of scarcity I began to understand the reasons for their desire for escape and why they would always miss home. I also thought that I was beginning to understand Xox's philanthropic motives, if he had any. The best things in life are free, with the exception of fashion.

The splendour of the university building was too much for some. I became friends almost instantly with Paulina, a tall Romanian woman with wide grey eyes, pouting red lips, and proud breasts, dressed better than the rest in elegant white shirts, jeans, and well-cut jackets. One day, after a harassing excursion with some students to whom I had offered to show the beauties of Prague, an architectural loveliness in which they took no interest, complaining constantly that they were too cold, that they wanted coffee, that their feet hurt, and that they wanted to go home, on our return to the university building I discovered that Paulina was missing. I went in search of her and found her cowering beneath the washbasin in her bathroom. Some children had let off some fireworks outside her window while she was taking a nap, she explained, and she had instinctively ducked for cover, thinking that they were gunshots, that she was in the main square of Bucharest once again during that fierce and bloody revolution in which she had seen her friends dying. "This is not real," Paulina exclaimed, grabbing the luxuriously soft bathtowel. She got up, turned on her shower and stood fully dressed under the endless flow of hot water. "This is not real!" I could see the tips of her breasts punching out her wet shirt and the gleam of her large grey eyes staring at me. "You are not real." I shrugged in defeat and led her gently out of the shower and dried her hair with the towel. She was still staring at me and around her fine mad eyes and rosebud mouth I could see a fine network of lines, the cruel work of time and deprivation, all too real. Such a crumbling beauty. The next day she left the university and went back to Bucharest.

But most of the others soon came to cling to their new-found comforts. It was hard work to persuade them to go out of the university building even for a short walk. They preferred to stay in their well-appointed rooms and to make strong tea and to chain-smoke foul-smelling cigarettes and to talk endlessly. They sat up all night in the computer rooms and played games. They padded around the building noiselessly, in dressing gowns, pyjamas, and slippers, like inmates of a sanatorium. Lucy flitted among them, dispensing bottles of vitamins and angelic smiles. They seemed better after a while, after their travel fatigue had subsided and they had become accustomed to their new home. Perhaps Lucy's vitamins helped. They even began to complain about the room service. I was thrilled when I heard Fyodor, a balding Bulgarian, boldly declare that Prague was boring.

My work was done and I decided to tell the boss. I found Professor Hell sitting in his office, as usual, writing. With his usual Old World courtesy, he offered me a chair and listened gravely to my account of how the students had finally settled in. "Hmmph," he finally pronounced. "Anything else?"

I hadn't exactly expected Hell to jump up and hug me and declare me his anointed successor, but I was faintly annoyed by his total lack of interest in the sheer amount of work I had done. "Well," I said a little petulantly. "When do you plan to arrive at that conference in Vienna this weekend? The organizers just called. They want to know so that they can receive you properly."

"Damn," Hell growled, painfully twisting his bulky torso around in his canvas deck chair. "I'd forgotten all about that conference. Don't like trains. Oh well. Rent a car and drive me there."

"Uh, actually, I don't have a driving license," I said uncomfortably.

"An Amerikan who doesn't drive," Hell frowned to himself. "They take your license away from you? Drunk driving or what?"

"I wasn't drunk," I said quickly. A tear welled up in my eye. I really did not feel like telling Hell about my deepest trauma, about the most painful episode in my checkered past, about how they had taken my license away from me for life the day after I had finally obtained it, my sixteenth birthday. I wasn't even driving (in fact, I was comatose in the back seat): it was my little friend Barbie's unfortunate habit when she was roaring drunk of rolling her eyes around in her pretty little head while she sang pirate sea-shanties at the top of her voice that led to that ill-fated near-collision with a gigantic truck carrying nuclear wastes which they had planned to reprocess a little further along the Pacific coast. Since Barbie was fourteen years old at the time, they blamed me for irresponsible and reckless behavior, especially my mother. For six consecutive hellish summers, for a total of eighteen sweaty months, I had slaved in the infernal sculleries of my mother's Mongolian fast-food joints scouring dishes in order to pay back a fraction of the cost of her brand new silver-grey Mercedes 560SEL limousine which I had borrowed just for that evening. `It glowed in the dark, anyway,' I had protested, but my mother was, as ever, implacable.

"Doesn't matter," Hell grunted. "I'll drive myself. Chance to see the countryside. Haven't been in South Bohemia since my last escape from Czechoslovakia." A nostalgic light glowed in his eyes. "Thinking of buying a cottage around there." He smiled at me. "Take the weekend off."

"But it's only Wednesday…"

"A long weekend then. Get drunk. Chase girls. Have fun."

#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.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 9

"Hullo?" Even when she was woken up in the early hours of the morning, Lulu managed to sound simultaneously fresh as a daisy and voluptuous as a torch singer. Sleepless and entangled in a murky web of international conspiracy and espionage, I still felt better just hearing the sound of Lulu's voice, a thousand miles away in distant Oxford, and yet so close.

"Lulu?" I gasped. "Are you alone?"

"Darling! Well, practically alone. This one's not snoring at any rate."

"This one? Which one is it? Is it that muscle-bound Austrian?"

"I never understood why you didn't like Arnold. He was a sweetie. And such big muscles!" Lulu giggled.

"His biggest muscle was in his head."

"You're wrong, darling. His biggest muscle was somewhere else altogether. No, I dumped him. The jealousy became just too tedious to bear. Jealousy is like salt. Too little and you have no flavour; too much and you lose the savour."

"Whatever. Lulu, how did Rasputin get my phone number? I got a call from Moscow and it frightened me."

"How awful!" Lulu exclaimed solicitously. "Were you scared, my poor baby?"

"Did you give Rasputin my phone number?"

"Do I detect a note of paranoia, angel face? Even I don't have your phone number. Where are you calling from?"

"Prague. I emailed you all about it from Maya's place the day before I left."

"Of course. The University of Truth and Justice. Do they have any jobs in philosophy, dearest?"

"Ask Terence. He's a big shot on the University's board."

"Ah, yes. Terry Killjoy-Yuck," Lulu said meditatively. "I wonder if SLUTS has any dirt on him."

"SLUTS?"

"Sexy Ladies United Through Sisterhood. A little secret society I happen to belong to. Actually, I was President last year."

"And what does SLUTS do?"

"Use your noodle, my little poodle. Hazard a wild guess. What do you think sluts do?"

"Sleep around?"

"Exactly. And then we tell each other all about it. It's my absolutely favourite secret society."

"How secret is it if you're telling me all about it?"

"Oh, it's an open secret," Lulu declared airily. "When you join you have to promise not to tell anyone about it. For at least twenty four hours."

"Guess I'm not going to tell you any secrets."

"But I wouldn't repeat anything you told me, cuddles. I promise! And would I break a promise?"

"Yes, and then you'd boast about it," I replied evenly. "I know my Lulu."

"You just think you do, sweetie-pie," Lulu murmured throatily.

"Lulu, I certainly know you a damn sight better than the men you play with. I probably know you better than you know yourself."

"Oh, who wants to know oneself?" Lulu said indifferently. She was the best philosopher of our generation and her monograph on Identity, Episteme, and Ego: Diacritical Perspectives on Plato, Nietzsche, Lacan was already an acknowledged classic and not just among feminists. "As for men, as you know perfectly well, lover, I only go for men who don't have the brains to understand me."

"Yes, Lulu, I do seem to remember that," I said bitterly. "I spent six months bawling like a baby after you dumped me."

"Oh, cherub, did I hurt you?" Lulu sounded concerned. It was a trick of hers which I always found particularly infuriating. "Poor cry-baby. But you know, honey, you were getting too close."

"I was in love with you, Lu. Isn't one supposed to get close to the person one loves?"

"Of course not, silly," Lulu explained patiently. "Love thrives on distance. On opposites. Trust me. I know."

"Yeah, yeah. You're the expert. I'll call you next time I'm unhappily in love. Which should probably happen in about a week or so, judging by previous experience. Have you let Rasputin sleep with you yet?"

"No, of course not!" Lulu snickered. "It's such fun to play with him. Sometimes I let him think he's on the verge of actually seducing me... And then I let him fall flat on his face. Splat!"

"Tease!" I couldn't help laughing at the thought of Rasputin's discomfiture.

"It's all your fault anyway," Lulu said. "You're the one who got him lusting after me in the first place."

"It's not my fault," I protested. "He was always drooling down your cleavage. Then he got furious with me for not imitating the noises you make in bed. But that's all ancient history. You just like keeping him jealous. And he can't stand the thought that any pretty woman might ever sleep with anyone else besides him. It hurts his little ego. By now he really probably just wants to be friends with you."

"Ah, but who wants to be friends with him?"

"Ouch. Evil woman, are you sleeping with God?"

"Why do you ask?" Lulu sounded coy. So she was.

"When did that start?'

"Oh, I don't know. It's been going on for a while. He just comes over sometimes and... when he visits God just stays."

"Is he still sleeping with Flossie as well?"

"Oh, stop it, angel! They're just friends who get drunk together and then pass out in the same bed sometimes."

"That's what he tells you," I replied cattily.

"Actually, no. That's what Floss tells me. Why this sudden curiosity about God's sex life anyway, honeybunch?"

"Oh, I was just talking to him earlier this evening and he mentioned something about pillow talk."

"Did I say something?"

I laughed at her alarm. "No, he said that he talks in his sleep. He wasn't sure if he had told you that he worked for the Secret Service."

"Of course he does," Lulu said indifferently. "Practically everyone I know works for some secret service or the other. It's so boring. I've got so it's the first question I ask someone when I meet them: `Excuse me, please, do you work for a secret service?' Rasputin does. Maya does. Flossie might. You do."

"How the hell do you know that?"

"Floss told me, babycakes. Are you drunk or something? You're not usually so stupid. I'm sorry, that was mean. There's something the matter with me. It's this stupid garter belt clip that's twisted itself right into my thigh, let me just straighten it out. Oh, yes, that's much better." Lulu sighed. "That's the problem with this one. He has a fetish about old-fashioned things like garter belts and corsets. He says nostalgia is coming back into fashion." Another languorous sigh. "You know, honey, sometimes I wonder if I didn't make a mistake in dumping you. You don't have any really annoying fetishes. You take showers occasionally. You will be rich enough some day. I really think I should have married you..."

"Lulu. Stop vamping me," I warned her sternly. "I'm in deep waters here. I have to concentrate."

"Ah, but sexual tension sharpens the mind, lambkins. And your mind certainly needs all the sharpening it can get."

"Stop with the sushi-slicing for now, okay? Put that razor-sharp intellect to good use for once. I really do need some help here."

"Is something bothering little baby's sleep then?"

"Yes. Lots of things." My voice faltering, I told Lulu about God's recent revelations regarding the University of Truth and Justice. Lulu listened in sympathetic silence for the most part, punctuated by an occasional encouraging giggle. "But the thing that bothers me most of all is: Who is X-O-X?"

"A billionaire, sweetheart."

"Thanks, Lulu," I replied nastily. "Even I can comprehend that basic fact."

"Can you, really? I wish I could." Lulu sounded wistful. "Call me a poor little philosopher wench, but I really can't comprehend what it means to be a billionaire."

"What do you mean, Lu?"

"What is a billionaire? What kind of ambition does it take to become one? What do you have to do to make that much money? How does it feel to be a billionaire? Does a billionaire have time for slow sex on a summer afternoon? Does he eat foie gras off solid gold plates? How many Learjets and ocean-going yachts does it take before a billionaire gets bored? What happens when a billionaire gets bored?" Lulu laughed. "Do you see where I'm going with this?"

I hesitated. "Dimly. Do you mean that X-O-X is doing all this because he's bored?"

"Not quite, dearest. But close enough for now. I don't know what X-O-X's motivations are. I don't know the man at all, in fact. All I know is that he and Terry Killjoy-Yuck are just like that... Oh, sorry, of course you can't see me. I had two fingers spread apart. Can you guess where?"

"Lulu! What is X-O-X up to? Why does Terence want me to gather dirt on X-O-X? Why does Rasputin want to talk to me urgently? What does God have to do with it? Why aren't you near me right this moment?"

"X-O-X is a megalomaniac," Lulu said concisely. "Otherwise he wouldn't be a billionaire or a philanthropist. I can't tell you his secret goal because I don't know him. Probably something to do with taking over the world. Terence has been a spook all his life. He's crooked as a corkscrew so you can't trust him beyond opening wine bottles. He probably wants to use you and then betray you. Rasputin wants to involve you in one of his nefarious operations. Probably as a disposable courier in some sordid smuggling scheme. Godfrey is too smart for his own good and he's awfully bored and so he can't resist playing silly games. But that's normal, isn't it?" She dropped her business-like manner and put on her very best seductive tone. I could practically hear her batting her eyelashes. "And I am going to be near you very soon, my darling," she crooned. I saw her lying in bed, her long blonde hair a white shadow in the dim streetlight that filtered through her bamboo shutters. The slick sound of silken stockings as she, oh so slowly, brought her soft white thighs together and parted them again...

"Lulu, this is not kind," I said plaintively. "You know I'm all alone here. Play fair! What do you mean, you're going to be near me soon?"

"Ah, but sweetheart, you don't really want me to be kind!" Lulu whispered huskily. "You like my little games. Don't you?"

I shrugged. Erotic conversation on the phone always bores me after a while. "How's your parrot?"

"Parakeet," Lulu corrected me. "He's fine. He makes the most wonderful raucous cries. I think he's getting jealous too of all the men. Maybe I can train him to do something to them."

"An attack parakeet?"

"That's what I'll do," Lulu said decisively. "He can stay at Bird Brain. Don't laugh! It really is the name of a sort of school where they train birds to sing and stuff like that. He'll stay there and learn how to defend me while I'm in Berlin. I'm going there the day after tomorrow. I need a change. Don't you think Berlin might be my kind of city? I've never been there. Will you visit me?"

"That's funny," I said slowly. "Someone else was asking me about Berlin the other day. Lucy. She works here. Looks like an angel..."

"I don't want to hear about it," Lulu said firmly. "Yet. Only after she breaks your heart. That was our agreement, remember?"

"I'm not sure Berlin is decadent enough to handle you, Lulu, darling. Thanks for the advice. You philosophers have the right kind of devious mind."

"Thanks, precious. How adorable of you to say that!" She sounded pleased. "I'll find out more about what all these evil men are planning to do to you, my sweet. And I'll tell you when you visit me in Berlin. Okay? Thanks for reminding me about the parakeet. It's the perfect solution. Two birds with one stone! Oops, I think he heard that! 'Bye!"

I stood there holding the receiver in my hand for a minute or so after she hung up. Sweet Lulu. A flood of memories drowned out my more immediate concerns about the bizarre institution in which I now seemed committed. Old memories pervaded with the sweetness of renewed friendship and the bitter residue of lost love, a thick coating around more intimate memories of the tender brutality of physical passion. Whenever I spoke to Lulu I felt as though I were biting into dark chocolate with liqueur filling. Any woman is, by definition, far smarter than any man and very intelligent women like Lulu therefore inspire me with awe and trepidation. I didn't trust Lulu an inch but I wondered what she would be able to tell me at our rendezvous in Berlin.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 8

I staggered back to the University of Truth and Justice late that night. Lunch with the University big shots had been a largely liquid affair, prolonged well into the evening at various Art Nouveau cafes that held nostalgic appeal for Professor Masaryk and his old pal Otto Hell. Drinking one liqueur-laden coffee after another with these hardy old Central Europeans, I belatedly realized the appeal of the old Austro-Hungarian cafe-culture. Cafes are places for respectable intellectuals to get smashed. Most of the conversation between the two old professors had centered around which of their old associates were dead or dying, and while it was cute to observe the dimple of pleasure that appeared on Hell's jowled cheek at every mention of senility and disease among his still-extant contemporaries, I couldn't help feeling left out, which made me put even more Cointreau into my coffee than I would have otherwise. And then Hell insisted on going to the opera. They say it ain't over till the fat woman sings, but my eyelids droop the moment some jumbo diva appears and begins to moan. And it would have seemed rude to snore openly in front of my new boss, so I tried to swallow my yawns instead, causing Professor Masaryk some concern when I choked and my face swelled and turned purple like a bloated bullfrog. Hell watched the spectacle with malicious amusement. After the show the two professors merrily toddled on down the long garish strip of Wenceslas Square's cabarets and night clubs, two old reprobates indulging in a night on the town while I caught a taxi and came straight back to the university. I needed sleep, badly, even though I knew that I would have nightmares about opera singers with Alzheimer's disease.

Adorable Annichka at the reception desk waved a little pink slip at me. "You had a phone call!" she exclaimed gaily. `Call Rasputin immediately,' the message read, followed by a long phone number. A cold shudder ran through me. "Your friend called from Moscow!" Annichka squeaked. "He wanted to talk to you! He said it was very important!"

"Did he say what he wanted?" I asked huskily. Synchronicity always bothers me. It disturbed me profoundly that Rasputin had been calling me while I was insulting him behind his back.

"No, he didn't." Annichka made a delightful little moue. "Why don't you call him and find out?" She offered me her telephone. I recoiled involuntarily. Then, bringing my heart up from my boots with some effort, I bravely took hold of the receiver and with shaking hands punched in the number. It rang a few times and I was just about to put the phone down gratefully when a voice answered.

"Hullo..." A very languorous English drawl. I was filled with a strange foreboding.

"May I speak to Rasputin please? Who the hell is this anyway?"

"Rasputin is away at the moment. This is God speaking. May I help you?" the languid voice murmured. I felt faint.

"Godfrey. Why are you in Moscow? What is Rasputin doing there? Isn't he afraid of getting arrested?"

"Oh, hullo, old chap. Didn't recognize your voice. He may well be arrested at any moment. It might even do us some good. Free publicity for this Canadian documentary, you see."

"No, I'm afraid I don't see. What documentary?"

"I thought Rasputin might have explained to you. But he is a terrible correspondent, isn't he? It's quite simple, actually. Rasputin and I are working with this Canadian chap called Tim or Jeff or Mutt or something or the other, one of those North American names, you know. I always get mixed up." God paused. I waited breathlessly. "Tom? Jerry?" God mused. "No, I really can't remember. Anyway, this Canadian fellow makes documentaries and he wanted to make one about the Russian mafia. I met him at a party in someone's place in South Kensington and put him in touch with Rasputin who of course jumped at the chance to make some money..."

"Wait a second. Rasputin used to boast that he was on the KGB's list of most wanted dissidents. Isn't he scared that..."

"That they might get him? No, things seem to have changed quite a bit. Actually, we even went to KGB headquarters and had a guided tour. A frightful bore, really. All those dungeons. Who really cares which rooms they kept their silly files in?"

"So what is Rasputin doing to this poor Canadian?"

"Oh, he's buying nuclear submarines and aircraft carriers."

"I don't catch your drift."

"Draft is the technical term, I believe."

I had a strong divination of God at that moment, the mental image of a short slight young man reclining indolently on a couch in some apartment in Moscow, heavy-lidded eyes fixed vacantly on a half-empty vodka bottle, stroking his unshaven chin, trying to decide whether the bottle was too far away to reach without excessive movement, the phone receiver crooked between shoulder and neck, far away from his fat lower lip.

"Eighty-five thousand ton draft, the aircraft carrier. It's lying unfinished in some Ukrainian shipyard. Rasputin is trying to outbid the Chinese. Or is it the Indonesians? I can't remember. One of those states that want the Spratly Islands. I don't know why they should, really."

"What do the Spratly Islands have to do with it? Stop prattling, God. Get to the point. Why is Rasputin trying to buy an aircraft carrier?"

"It's for the documentary," God explained, unperturbed by my hysterical outburst. "This chap, Joe, or is it Ike?, has wired Rasputin up. Quite ingenious although a bit uncomfortable, I should imagine. It took ages to strap all the little gadgets onto Rasputin in invisible places. Little tape-recorders and microphones and even a tiny video-camera. Luckily, he found that he could hide all the wiring under the rolls of flab on Rasputin's belly where they wouldn't show even if he was strip-searched. The video camera was a bit more tricky but Steve?, Mike?, ended up embedding it in the sole of Rasputin's shoe. So all Rasputin has to do is to sit with his leg up on his lap and his shoe pointed at the person with whom he is negotiating, if you see what I mean."

"I think I see. So Rasputin isn't actually planning to become a shipping magnate or a pirate. He's just pretending to buy submarines."

"Exactly." God chuckled. "Can't you just see the faces of these Malay or Filipino negotiators when they see the documentary and find out that they've had to pay three times their original offer because Rasputin was upping the ante? I imagine there might be a few red faces in Bangkok over this one. Do Asians blush? I mean, do their faces change color? I ask purely out of scientific curiosity."

"Well, I can sometimes feel my face getting hotter but I don't think it shows. That's why you white people think of us as inscrutable. Actually, we're flustered and confused all the time."

"Interesting. I suppose you're right. I was forgetting about this notorious propensity for embarrassed giggling."

"With whom is Rasputin negotiating?"

"Oh, some corrupt admiral or the other," God said airily. "Probably in cahoots with the KGB. They're all trying to make money these days."

"I'm sure they'll be really amused by the documentary as well. Isn't Rasputin at all worried about this little escapade?"

"Oh, he isn't using his real name, obviously. He goes by the nom de plume of Lev Pistoff."

"And you? What are you doing there while Lev Pistoff negotiates?"

"Oh, I sit here and drink. I'm not bored in the slightest. Negotiating about nuclear powered ships is only the tiniest fraction of what we're doing," God said reassuringly. "We go to mob restaurants, drink vodka with the mob, fuck mob molls, you know, we're building up our personae as mobsters."

"So I gather. What character are you playing?"

"Corrupt British Secret Service. It goes with the accent and then, you know, Russians are so used to corrupt KGB agents that they just naturally assume that the Russian mafia in the West must have the same sort of connections."

"So Lev Pistoff is part of the Russian mafia in the West, is he?"

"Sounds so true to life, doesn't it?" God giggled happily. "We're also doing a bit of smuggling on the side."

"Drugs?"

"No, no, we don't want to get into a fight with the Italians. They're all over the place by the way."

"Drugs or Italians?"

"Both. Last night we went to this restaurant on the Arbat and the way the Italians behaved was really quite outrageous. I mean, it's one thing to politely insert a hundred dollar note into some stripper's G-string and tickle her a bit, and quite another to force the chorus girls, who one must admit were quite acquiescent, to dip themselves in bathtubs full of glue and to just lie there, shivering, poor things, you could see the goosebumps, while these mafiosi threw dollars by the bucket all over the place. Of course, they had been snorting cocaine by the handful all evening, which renders their disgraceful behavior understandable but not excusable."

"God, you seem to be developing morals."

"I know. Isn't it terrible?" God replied complacently. "Still it is a new experience. Luckily, we shall soon be returning to decadent old London, laden with all manner of good things."

"What are you smuggling?"

"Art. Ikons. Rare books. Stuff for the cognoscenti."

I yawned. "Whatever. Would you happen to know why Rasputin wanted to talk to me so urgently?"

"I'm sure I couldn't say, old chap. As you know, he doesn't tell anyone anything. It's safer that way. Is there any particular message I should pass on to him when, or, indeed, if he returns?"

A happy thought struck me. "You could tell him that I had lunch today with his friend Lady Monica Bigglesworth-Fume. She sent her love to Rasputin and asked him to get in touch with her soon. It's been so long, she said."

"I shall certainly pass on your message. Did Killjoy-Yuck have venison for lunch by any chance?" God sounded very sleepy.

Alarm bells went off in my head in a deafening clamor. I looked at my watch and sighed. I knew I had to find out what strange game Godfrey was playing, if I was to get a wink of sleep that night. I hate tossing and turning in bed. Whom the gods would destroy, they first deprive of sleep, and I was firmly determined to get my usual ten hours, even if that meant that I had to keep God talking. I made myself take a deep breath, and then another. If this momentary pause in our telephone conversation informed Godfrey that I was startled by the extent of his knowledge about who was present at my lunch with the big people who ran the University of Truth and Justice in Prague, thousands of kilometres away from Moscow where he was playing dangerous games with our thuggish friend Rasputin, well, then, so much the better. Wilful naivete has its own rewards, especially the confusion it produces among people who enjoy playing games with other people's heads. "You're very well informed, God," I said, allowing just a little shock to seep across the telephone. "Just how would you happen to know that Terence Killjoy-Yuck was also at lunch?"

"Oh, dear boy, welcome to the club."

"You mean you..."

"Didn't you know? Why did you think I got sent down from Oxford?"

"Because you drank all the time and did no work?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

"True," I admitted. "But you were so ostentatious about it..."

"Precisely," God purred.

"Godfrey, you bastard." I was genuinely outraged. "Did Killjoy-Yuck recruit you?"

"Heaven forbid." Godfrey sounded appalled. "He wasn't my tutor. It would have been poaching. Not at all the done thing, my dear fellow."

"But are you working for Killjoy-Yuck?"

"`Working for...'" Godfrey repeated mockingly. "Isn't that rather an obsolete concept, old chap? Sounds so proletarian, somehow, sort of like singing company songs before descending into the mines. Surely we're all free-lance these days. It's more efficient, isn't it?"

"So how did you know about my lunch?" I persisted.

"Oh, Terence and I chat periodically. He knows we're friends. Surely it's only natural that I ask about you?"

A bright idea struck me between the eyes. "Are you keeping tabs on Rasputin?"

God laughed. "You mean telling Terence about Lev Pistoff's activities? But that would be peaching. Another of the things one doesn't do, my dear fellow."

"So what do you do?" I asked, exasperated. "No poaching, no peaching, good grief, it sounds so rural, like you're all boy scouts or something."

"Oh, one just looks around, you know. One keeps one's eyes open. One passes on bits of information that might be interesting. It's all very casual."

"Well, will you tell me why Terence asked me to gather the dirt on X-O-X?"

"X-O-X? Ah, you mean, Socks."

"It's pronounced 'Hdzhooohdzh' in Albanian."

"How very interesting," God replied with languid condescension. "Well, everyone's keeping an eye on Socks, aren't they? I imagine Terence just wants you to find out what Socks is up to with this University. Is it a front for arms smuggling to revolutionary movements? That sort of thing."

"The university doesn't even have any students yet," I protested.

"In that case, it isn't a very good front yet," Godfrey agreed. "But Socks does rather like setting up front organizations. Take, for instance, the Fund for Peace and Love."

"So that is a Xox thing? Flossie was applying to them for money for her research in India."

"Yes, well, they do give away large gobs of money for more or less legitimate research. Covers up the rumour that the Fund for Peace and Love is used to channel money to various guerrilla groups. I know that CIA bribes to moderate Arab groups were laundered though it. And the Kurds. Probably lots else as well. Maybe that's how Socks made his money. Kept a percentage."

"Godfrey, you sound like such an expert," I said, impressed. "Does anyone else know about all this?"

"Among our mutual friends, you mean? I can't remember. I might have told Floss. By the way, they gave her the money for her research so she's off to India next week. Lulu might know too. I often talk in my sleep. Quite embarrassing."

"Isn't it a breach of security?"

"On the contrary, old chap." God sounded amused. "It's the old strategy of double-bluff. Rasputin is particularly good at it. That's how he defused all the suspicion he aroused at Oxford, you know, this excessively loud dissident Russian, everyone thought he must work for the KGB, right, otherwise how could he get away in the early days of perestroika with calling Gorbachev a KGB stooge? Why wasn't he getting the shove with the old poisoned umbrella, people muttered. Rasputin brazened it out well by simply declaring that he might be KGB but how would you ever know? You see, this way he was executing a triple-bluff, finessing the whole thing onto another, higher, dimension of uncertainty. Perhaps, one could keep going on infinitely. You know the paradox about the Cretan who declared that all Cretans are liars. Now, what does Wittgenstein say about it? Maybe I should look at Godel again..."

"Godfrey," I pleaded. I knew from bitter experience that he could spend hours rambling on and on about such things. He did after all have a first class degree in philosophy from Cambridge which, actually, now that I thought about it, made his amazing failure as a postgraduate student at Oxford quite inexplicable. Unless he was telling the truth... They want you to think like this, I said to myself sternly. Stop thinking! Be your normal superficial self. Take things at appearances. It is dangerous to get too deep into the quicksand of analytic thought. Besides, Godfrey's mention of Godel reminded me of a footnote in a book I had recently read... "God. Quick. Answer one question."

"Ask and you shall receive..."

"Who paid for Rasputin's studies at Oxford?"

"The Fund for Peace and Love. In other words, Socks. But you must have known. Wasn't Terence your tutor as well as Rasputin's?"

My head was whirling. X-O-X, Terence Killjoy-Yuck, Rasputin, Godfrey… fragmented faces and leering grins in a lurid kaleidoscope of connections. I knew I couldn't keep this up much longer. "Of course. Yes, of course, I knew that all along. I must hang up now. Good talking to you. Take lots of drugs. Say hi to the Mafia. Good luck with the art smuggling. I hear the airports are dangerous in Moscow now..." I babbled and then hung up. I rested my spinning head in my hands and took another deep breath. I didn't know what to believe from what Godfrey had been telling me. Was I really working for a fake university, for a front organization for arms smugglers and revolutionaries? I knew that I had to get in touch with my friend Lulu. She would know what was going on. In desperation, I looked up, straight into Annichka's pretty little face behind the reception desk.

"You were talking about drugs. Do you take drugs?" Annichka asked wonderingly, her big brown eyes bovine with amazement.

"Uh, sure, sometimes, I used to," I responded uncertainly, not knowing the extent to which Czech children were indoctrinated against pleasurable chemicals.

"I wasn't sure, you look so prim and proper. Such a clean little boy."

I glared at this infant. "And you're shooting up every day, I suppose, huh?"

I haven't yet but I'd love to," Annichka responded. "Everyone I know takes drugs," she confided. "My parents smoke marijuana all the time. They said I could smoke some with them when I'm eighteen. But that's so far away!"

"How old are you, Annichka?" I felt like a child molester, just looking at her. The contrast between the lithe yet lush body of this little Lolita, encased today in a skin-tight bodysuit, and her squeaky babyish voice seemed even more disconcerting now that she was talking about drugs. After my conversation with God I felt aged enough to be her father. Or her grandfather. But maybe the old gentleman took drugs too.

"Sixteen." Annichka smiled frankly.

"Sixteen." I couldn't remember back that far. "I think I was sixteen when I first took drugs. I'll give you some."

"Will you?" Annichka beamed at me. "Do you have some here?"

"Not right now. But I'll get some soon," I promised. "I'll get my friends to send some mescaline from Kalifornia. You'll like it. It makes you see pretty colors."

"Does it?" Annichka breathed. I leaned forward to hear her better. "I love pretty colors. I draw with my crayons all the time."

"Me too," I smiled, looking up from her baby cleavage. "Maybe we can play together sometime."

"I'd like that! When you get the mescaline, okay?"

"It's a date. Now can I make another phone call? It's kind of private."

"Sure! Go into the booth and call anywhere in the world! Talk as long as you want! The University pays for everything! Isn't it lovely?" Annichka clapped her hands delightedly. I blew her a kiss and walked across the wide lobby to the phone booth.

As I dialled Lulu's unlisted number, I looked at my watch and tried to calculate the time difference. It wasn't even two o'clock yet in Oxford so there was only the slimmest of chances that Lulu might actually be home and alone. But it was worth a try. Genuine naivete was positively dangerous in the perilous circumstances in which I now found myself. I needed information in order to maintain my stance of ingenuous innocence. And who better to turn to for lessons in the dainty art of candid guile than that consummate ingenue, Lulu?

#GenghizInLove: Episode 7

Hell's arrival was a momentous event. While Professor Masaryk quavered behind his cluttered desk and I pretended to be invisible, Lucy ushered in a little old man, bent double over two stout walking sticks. Bright brown eyes peered up and darted around the room sharply from beneath one massive eyebrow. The old man's cheeks were bloated red pouches that folded over under their own weight into the immense dewlaps of an aged bloodhound. A battered beige corduroy jacket was drawn tight against a powerful torso barely covered by a sporty purple and puce checked shirt, unbuttoned at the throat and well beyond, exposing a matted growth of grey chest hair that sprouted thickly up to the old man's unshaven jowls. Faded blue denim trousers, folded up at the ankles, flapped loosely against thin twisted legs as he hobbled with audible effort into the room. "Where's Masaryk?" the old man growled in a powerful bass voice. "Where's my lunch?"

Professor Masaryk advanced across his office, smiling, deferential, glad to be of use. "Otto!" he exclaimed, holding out both hands. The old man grudgingly let his hand be shaken. "Otto, my old friend! When did you arrive? Did you have a safe trip? You look well!"

"You said lunch was at twelve," Professor Hell grumbled, looking at his watch. "It's twelve. I want my lunch. They feed you badly on aeroplanes these days. Plastic! Plastic trays, plastic meat, plastic rolls. Wine in a plastic bottle and a plastic glass to pour the wine into. Disposable culture. Shoddy manufacture. Modernity!"

"But we will have glass!" Professor Masaryk exclaimed unctuously. "Genuine hand-crafted Bohemia crystal."

"When?"

"We should wait for Killjoy-Yuck and for Monica Fume."

"Fume? Bigglesworth-Fume?" Professor Hell tilted his large head far to one side. He was so top-heavy that I feared for his center of gravity. I moved discreetly to his side to support him in case he fell over. "Is that Haighte-Westerclyde's youngest daughter? Runs some women's college at Oxford these days, doesn't she?"

"I know nothing about women's education, Otto," Professor Masaryk replied. "We must ask Killjoy-Yuck."

"Killjoy-Yuck? That the chap who resembles a vulture? Must say I didn't like the way he's been staring at me in all these meetings. Most disconcerting. He at Oxford too? Regular Mafia."

"Terence Killjoy-Yuck is Senior Tutor at All Fools College. Lady Monica is the Principal of D'Urberville," I piped up. I thought of the terrifying stories I had heard about Lady Monica from my friend Flossie who was a fellow of D'Urberville College and had been coerced, at the age of thirty-two, to spoon up all her custard at a formal college dinner presided over by her austere Principal. Did I really want to have lunch with these scary old people?

Hell grunted without looking at me. I wasn't sure if he hadn't heard me or if he believed that children should speak only when spoken to. "Didn't like her husband. Told him so. But he's dead now, I suppose? Fell off a horse, I was told. Stupid thing to do."

Masaryk nodded solemnly. Professor Hell still looked dubious. "Is that official?" he asked. "Never can tell with these journalists. Play silly games with obituaries. Mark Twain. Harry Truman. Nothing makes a chap look more stupid than writing nice things about some fool who isn't even dead. Happened to me once..." The memory of this mishap made Hell glower.

"Knew her father in the war," he continued. "Worked for me. Good man. No airs. 'Course he didn't know then that he'd inherit Blastedheath and the Dukedom. His brother, Angus, hadn't gone down yet with that damn convoy to Archangelsk. Stupid mission, if you ask me." Professor Hell laughed mirthlessly. "'Course they didn't ask me. Stick to breaking German codes, Hell, and don't talk to us about strategy. Fools!" he shouted. A vein throbbed on his temple and his cheeks swelled to alarming proportions. Luckily, at that moment a gaunt middle-aged lady strode into the room. Ramrod-erect, she marched up to Hell, saluted, and curtsied stiffly. They then shook hands without exchanging a word. The rest of us watched this brief ceremony in respectful silence.

Terence Killjoy-Yuck's entrance broke the hush. A confused babel of introductions broke out. Professor Masaryk seized the moment. Grabbing me by the arm, he led me up to Professor Hell. "Otto, may I introduce this young man to you? He is... uh..." He had clearly forgotten my name but he recovered adroitly. "Your Special Assistant."

"And what the devil does that mean? What is he supposed to do? What's your job?" Hell scowled at me. I smiled meekly and looked beseechingly to Terence Killjoy-Yuck for rescue.

"Lord Hades, he will, ahem, arrange your transport," Terence said silkily. He smiled at me. I involuntarily shuddered. "He will make sure that the Rector's office, which we are so glad you have consented to occupy, functions smoothly. He will represent you at meetings which you might not wish to attend."

"Good," Hell grunted. "Hate meetings. Hate administration. Hate shuffling papers." He wheeled around towards me. "Think you can take care of these things, boy?"

"I can vouch for him," Terence interjected with unnecessary ownership. "I was his tutor at Oxford. He shuffles papers with the best of them. Literally."

"What does cheating have to do with it?" Hell glared at Terence. "Didn't ask you. Mind your own business. Boy isn't dumb, is he?"

"I'll try, sir," I whispered timidly.

"What's that? Hmmm..." Hell frowned at me. Abruptly, his expression changed into a surprisingly gentle smile which broke out like an allergic rash over his withered cheeks. He reached over and patted my arm. "You give it your best shot, eh?"

"Yes, sir!" I said, snapping to attention. That smile had given me fresh heart. I began to understand why raw recruits in the army looked up to their gruff sergeants. I had heard of Hell. His reputation preceded him wherever he went, mounting with the decades, like a snowball before an avalanche. As Professor Masaryk had mentioned, he was a living legend. Generations of terrified undergraduates had passed through his hands. Some were traumatized for life by the experience, nervous wrecks fit for nothing better than managing country branches of banks and pruning roses on weekends with nerveless shaking hands. Others, Hell's favored acolytes, trailing clouds of fame and glory, sailed on to dizzy heights in the academic world and beyond, into exalted realms of secular power and fabulous riches. I devoutly hoped that this would be my case.

These were my thoughts as our small procession walked down the hushed pile-carpeted corridors of power and took the elevator down from the twentieth floor. Pressed close to Professor Hell in the crowded lift, I inhaled that musty odor peculiar to old men, a strange dank exudation of dust and sweat and port wine and pipe tobacco, accreted together over a lifetime spent in fusty rooms. For his part, I trust, Professor Hell could only smell the sharp clear woody fragrance of my favorite cologne, Solipsiste.

"Close in here," Hell muttered. "Need some fresh air."

"Soon, Otto," Professor Masaryk promised. "The restaurant is just a short ride away. The food is very good. Even Zoosh always goes there whenever he comes to Prague."

"Does he? Well, well," Terence Killjoy-Yuck murmured. "I always thought billionaires travelled with their own personal cooks."

"Just poison-tasters," Lady Monica stated bluntly.

"What does Xox eat?" Hell demanded. I started. It was exactly what I had been wondering. I remembered our billionaire benefactor telling me that the secret of his success lay in understanding that we are what we eat. So what did he eat? And could I have some?

"I must say that I never noticed," Professor Masaryk responded shame-facedly. "I was too busy eating."

The elevator door opened noiselessly. Sheltered from the curious eyes of proletarian passers-by by the mirrored windows of our stretch limousine, the bigwigs of the University of Truth and Justice and I were whisked off to a small chateau on a hill overlooking Prague, once the favorite restaurant of high party apparatchiks, now the haunt of fat men in natty blazers, hefting bulging briefcases and cellular phones, regularly raking the room with cautiously shifty eyes between phone calls marked by excessively jocose camaraderie. Perhaps they were the same people.

"They just didn't have those little portable phones back then," Professor Otto Hell muttered. I looked at him sharply. I had said nothing. Was I working for a mind reader? "Otherwise, you're right. Power never really changes hands. Thugs."

"Line 'em up against a wall," Lady Monica Bigglesworth-Fume uttered crisply. "Shoot 'em. Shoot horses, don't we? Scum."

"You're wrong," Hell barked. "Wouldn't do any good. Look at the replacements. What's the difference?"

"Lord Hades! That's defeatist talk. Won't have it in my presence."

"Feisty woman," Hell said admiringly. "Comes from her father. Generations of aristocrats. Telling people what to do. Practice. Funny how it gets inherited. Enters the genes. Breeding will tell."

"I fought for this revolution!" Lady Monica glared. "Gave my time and money for the cause of freedom. Won't have it subverted. Otherwise what good was it to support all those tedious ungrateful dissidents?"

"But they are grateful," Professor Masaryk murmured soothingly. "I met the President just yesterday when Shoozh was up at the Castle and Good King Wenceslas asked how you were."

Lady Monica snorted. "I haven't been invited to the Castle yet. Can you imagine, that man invited these rock bands first, all these long haired musicians, instead of remembering that it was Blodgett Scrotum and I who brought him to the world's attention. Ingrate!"

"Well, Lady Monica, it was slightly tactless of Professor Scrotum to be so scathing about the new uniforms the President had ordered for the castle guards," Professor Masaryk reproved.

"And I imagine Good King Wenceslas must have winced just a little when he read Blodgett Scrotum's particularly caustic remarks on the choice of colours for the new presidential limousines," Terence Killjoy-Yuck chimed in.

"Blodgett was making a very important point which Wenceslas should have heeded," Lady Monica said, her thin colorless lips drawn together tight. She peeled the crust off a roll with acerbic severity. I winced, imagining what her students at D'Urberville College must endure on a daily basis. "Those in power must never permit themselves to play the fool. They must behave with decorum and sobriety. A certain mystique was required of Wenceslas if he was to convince the vulgar masses that he was in fact in charge after the Revolution. What did he do instead? He ordered BMW limousines. Fair enough, he needed new limousines, those tatty old Soviet tanks obviously wouldn't do. But why couldn't he order from Rolls Royce? And then I really fail to see why he should have wanted his limousines to be painted red, white, and blue."

"But they're the Czech national colors," Professor Masaryk objected. "People thought it was a nice touch."

"Limousines should be black," Lady Monica pronounced grimly. "And I think that Wenceslas demonstrated his fundamentally irresponsible character by taking offence with Blodgett."

"Is Blodgett Scrotum still teaching at Imperial College?" Professor Hell inquired.

"No," Lady Monica replied, a tragic quaver barely discernible under her stern veneer. "He was disgusted with England after all those Communist architects ganged up on the Prince of Wales. Blodgett took it as a personal attack."

"How so?" Hell seemed amused.

"Blodgett shaped the Prince's views on architecture. He took the Prince around the country, showing our future Sovereign the contrast between these disgusting modernist buildings sprouting like rank weeds all over our fair green land, and those old gracious mansions which accord so well with our sense of dignity and individualism. And Blodgett is really so sensitive beneath his crusty public persona. The venom of that attack on the Prince's views, his views, really, poisoned him against England. He felt that his Englishness was threatened. So he decided to go to Amerika. He was offered a professorship at Yale but he refused because he felt it was too permeated by this same fashionable... eclecticism." Lady Monica spat out the word with disgust and rinsed her mouth with mineral water. "Then this agricultural university in Texas wrote to him and he decided to go there since he felt that some of the original English spirit might still be felt in that pioneer frontier ethos. So he went off to Texas to commune with the crops."

"England is the poorer for it," Terence exclaimed, shaking his head sadly. "Lady Snatcher was quite apoplectic about it when we met the other day. What a great lady." A look of reverence crossed his thin ugly face and for a moment he almost looked human. "But there was also that awkward law suit. In my opinion, it's just as well that Blodgett left the country rather than see his name dragged through the mud of the Sunday papers."

"Oh, it makes me so furious to think of that viper we nourished in our bosoms," Lady Monica shrieked, clutching her scrawny chest. "That... Rasputin!"

I hid my gulp behind my napkin. But it was no use. Terence had been watching me. "You know Rasputin, don't you?" he asked maliciously. "You studied together at All Fools. And then you worked together as foreign correspondents for The Sociologist. You two are friends!"

Two bright red spots appeared on Lady Monica's pale bony cheeks. "You're friends with that vampire? That ghoul? That dastardly ingrate? How dare you?"

"I'm not friends with him anymore, Lady Monica," I said earnestly. "I broke off relations with him in disgust and anger ages ago. Even before he wrote that article about you and your friends..."

"Tell me the truth," Lady Monica said coldly. "What is your candid assessment of Rasputin's character?"

I considered for a moment. "He is a scheming, quarrelsome, sycophantic swine," I enunciated carefully.

"Oh, how right you are!" Lady Monica trilled, her thin hands clutched together in ecstacy. "What a concise and yet precise description of that evil monster." She turned to Professor Hell. "This young man strikes me as a very good judge of character, Lord Hades," she said. "I am sure he will do nicely as your assistant."

"Depends how he does his job, don't it?" Hell replied coldly. I was uneasily aware of the searching scrutiny of his bright beady brown eyes. I felt like an apparatchik. Was I really capable of deceiving the greatest living intellectual in the world, and a mind-reader to boot?

"I am sure he will do well," Lady Monica urged on my behalf. "Such judgement of character is, alas, all too rare in this degenerate age. God is dead, we proudly declared, and so now we are ruled by the devil. That's exactly what I wrote to Rasputin's mother. `I love you dearly, Katyushka,' I wrote, `but what devil raped you that you were forced to spawn such a treacherous freak?'"

"What the devil are you talking about?" Hell asked gruffly.

"It was all a Communist plot," Lady Monica declared dramatically. "During our fight against Communism, Blodgett and I became friendly with various Russians, magnanimously overlooking their racial origins and intellectual pretensions. One such family beseeched us to help their son get into Oxford. We helped in every way. I believe I persuaded Terence to give the young man a scholarship at All Fools." Terence nodded in sombre confirmation. "We did our best for him. We gave him books to review for scholarly journals. We invited him to our country cottages and gave him tea and long talks on the superiority of the English way of life. But then, after worming his way into our confidence, this Rasputin then proceeded to prostitute himself for various filthy Fleet Street rags. He wrote an article mocking the English way of life for some base magazine in which he insulted Blodgett and I and all our friends in the coarsest of terms. We had no choice but to seek recourse from the law in order to clear our names."

"Any publicity is good publicity," Hell responded without sympathy. "You should know that, Monica. Your late husband edited one of those filthy Fleet Street rags, as I recall."

Terence excused himself from the ensuing fistfight and went to the men's room. After a discreet interval, I followed. Terence had seen me watching him watching Xox and Lucy make love, and I didn't know if this was good or bad for my fledgling career as a British spy. On the one hand, it proved I was diligent. On the other hand, I didn't want Terence to think I knew too much, it would just raise expectations. I figured I'd try once again to brazen it out and demonstrate blatant ignorance, just as I had so often in my Oxford days. And so I stood at the urinal next to his and hissed. "Psst... Terence. What am I supposed to do?"

Terence frowned. "Did no one teach you as a child? You pull it out and then…"

"I'm toilet trained, thank you. What am I supposed to do at work?"

"Didn't Masaryk tell you?"

"He just said that I'm supposed to be Hell's assistant."

"Well, what else do you need to know?"

I nudged him in the ribs and winked inanely. "What am I supposed to do for you lot?"

"That is a very indiscreet thing to say," Terence replied stiffly. "And it was not discreet to follow me into the loo either. It is bad manners for one thing. You've made me piss all over my shoes. And it is bad for our reputations. Didn't they teach you even the basic skills when you were up at Oxford? You must have had a very incompetent tutor."

"You were my tutor," I reminded him.

"Oh, that's right," Terence conceded. "I must have had my mind on other things. Well, dear boy, just do whatever Lord Hades requires from you. I shall come to Prague at regular intervals. We may have lunch together on occasion. Keep your wits about you. Open your slit-eyes wide. Look around. See what is going on. Gather the dirt on Socks. Above all, just be there. Now let us get out of here before our reputations are irretrievably ruined. You go first. Being British, I shall pretend to be suffering from constipation."

The others were already on their feet when I got back to our table. After a suitable interval, Terence emerged from the toilet, making profuse apologies for his bowels. As we parted outside the restaurant, Lady Monica Bigglesworth-Fume and I shook hands warmly. The butterflies in my stomach had long since drowned in the splendid lunch. As a budding apparatchik, I had wondered if I should order exactly the same meal as Professor Otto Hell or have whatever I wanted. In the event, our choice had been the same: a delicate appetizer of home-made ravioli filled with the flesh of baby partridges followed by a robust rack of lamb with fresh mint sauce, washed down with several bottles of vintage 1952 Chateau Rochefoucauld. Exquisite. The proof of the pudding is in the eating, and I like to eat well. So, apparently, did my new boss. I had the feeling that I was going to enjoy working for Hell.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 6

Hell hath no fury like a lover horned, and I was not going to take Lucy's betrayal lightly. Pacing my room like a TV lawyer, I marshalled my arguments against Lucy and found her guilty on all counts. She had led me on and then misled me. But what most distressed me was the contrast between my ever dimmer impressions of our night together and an all too vivid memory of her romp with Xox. Yet the weakness of my case made me angrier still; confrontation makes me ill but I felt it better than meekly swallowing my bile.

And so I bravely decided to avoid dinner. I would stay in my room and starve. That would show her. I sucked in my cheeks and stared in the mirror. Tears rose in my eyes at the sight of my piteous countenance and I felt better by the minute. But then the hunger pangs started. I lurched around the room, desperately searching for the key to the minibar. But I had already gobbled up all the peanuts and pretzels while guzzling whisky earlier. There was nothing for it. The choice between starvation and humiliation was no choice at all: I pulled on my shoes and made for the door.

Just then there was a knock on the door. Hastily I kicked off my shoes and jumped into bed. "Come in!" I called out crossly, and buried my head under the covers.

"What's the matter?" Lucy inquired tenderly. "Aren't you well?"

"No."

"Aren't you taking your vitamins?"

"Yes. I mean, no."

"Why did you stop? Didn't they make you feel good?"

"Don't want to feel good."

"Why?"

"I hate you. Go away."

"Okay. I'm next door if you need me."

"I know."

The covers were raised from my cowering head. I looked up into Lucy's face. She was smiling scarily at me. "Now just how would you happen to know that I'm next door?"

"Uh… I don't know. Intuition?"

"Not good enough." She brought out a shard of glass and held it up before me. I saw my fractured face reflected in the broken mirror. "Security found these fragments all over the road this afternoon. Along with a coat hanger. Computer simulations of the distribution of broken glass show that it probably fell from this floor. Don't you have something to tell me?"

"Don't you have something to tell me?" I blustered back. "What were you doing with that hairy ape Xox this afternoon?"

"You saw what we were doing," Lucy replied coldly. "And it's Mister Xox to you."

"Whatever. So how come you were picking his fleas?"

"That's none of your business. How dare you spy on me?"

"I thought you were being attacked. I could hear you yelling down in the library. Besides, I wasn’t the only one spying."

Lucy stiffened. "What are you talking about?"

"None of your business." I folded my arms across my chest and stared at her.

"Why are you being like this?"

"I guess I'm feeling jealous," I said honestly.

"Jealous." Lucy seemed amazed. "What is that?"

"I thought you spoke six languages besides English. Isn't jealousy in your vocabulary?"

"I am familiar with the concept," Lucy said primly. "But I do not comprehend the emotion. Could you explain?"

"Haven't you ever been jealous? How can I explain what it's like?"

"Here." Lucy gave me a vitamin and a glass of water. She scrambled into bed with me. "Take this first. Good. Now tell me exactly what you felt when Mister Xox was making love to me."

"Well, I was miserable at first when I saw what you were doing…"

"What were we doing?"

"You know, making love…"

"Show me."

"You mean…"

"Exactly. Yes, there. No, further down. Oh, yes, that's it. Slower. Oh, yes… Go on…"

And later, so much later, as we cuddled in the darkness, her silky hair caressing my bare shoulder, I told Lucy about Terence Killjoy-Yuck and his fancy periscope. She said nothing and I felt uneasy, but how should I have foreseen the dark and twisted path my disclosure would entail? Consequences appear around hairpin bends and collisions are always inevitable in retrospect.

We overslept and the next morning was a mad rush, gasps of shock and hasty turns at the washbasin, much slopping and slipping in bathroom puddles, ties awry and blood on collars, and popping vitamins in each other's mouth like bon-bons. Xox was off to see the President that day, and Lucy had to arrange the logistics. As she flew out of my room, one arm groping for an elusive jacket sleeve, a ladder in her stocking begin to run, but I resolved not to notice. It was probably the only wise thing I had done since arriving in Prague.

Lucy had arranged for me to creep along in the wake of Xox's entourage, provided that I was a good little mouse. I got to ride in one of the innumerable black Jeeps escorting the great man through Prague's winding streets, blowing aside sullen bystanders with splitting siren calls. It was all great fun and at the end of it all, in the grand square in front of Prague Castle, I was treated to the spectacle of Xox's limousine sweeping up to the Castle gates. The motionless toy soldiers in their brightly colored uniforms remained still as ever in their sentry boxes on either side of the great gates while a whole detachment of olive-uniformed palace guards opened the gates ceremoniously and brought the convoy in, even until the very heart of the Castle, under the sprawling shadow of the Cathedral. A solitary grey suit in an olive sea, Xox was taken to see Good King Wenceslas in his private quarters, while the rest of us waited in monotonously gilded anterooms and tried to make polite conversation in broken German with the President's courtiers. A half hour passed and we squinted discreetly up our sleeves; at the hour we looked with open perplexity at our watches; three hours later, we were all slumped in our seats, snoring. Eventually, noisily clearing their throats, the two great men roused us. At the subsequent press conference neither Xox nor the President would reveal what had kept them closeted together so long but they had clearly had fun: Good King Wenceslas looked marginally less morose than he had ever done since his glory days as Wenceslas the Dissident, writing surrealist verse in communist dungeons and Xox had on his usual cat-slurped-cream grin. I wondered idly what the wire dangling out of his right trouser pocket led to. What was that object in Xox's pocket weighing down his trousers on the right hand side? About the size of a remote control…

I was writing a letter next morning to Flossie, proudly retailing the whole experience (and filling in some details: I hadn't really seen Good King Wenceslas show Xox the cyanide-filled tooth which had given him courage in the face of all interrogation, but I was sure he must have had one and I thought Floss should learn from his experience for when she was next held captive and tortured), when Lucy marched in. I reached around to give her a kiss and a squeeze, but she would have none of that. She was all business that day, and I sighed and prepared myself to follow orders.

"Professor Masaryk will see you. Now."

I jumped out of my chair in fright. "You said he couldn't see me for the next five days!"

"He can. I made time."

"Okay. When?"

"In five minutes."

"Five…" I looked speechlessly at myself, unshaven, sockless, in tattered jeans and sweatshirt. "Can I go like this?"

"No. Be in my office on the twentieth floor in five minutes." Lucy marched away. At the door she turned and with heartless calm told me to clip my fingernails. I stared at the door in outrage but did what she said.

"Come in, come in," a rich baritone boomed. Lucy fixed my collar and smiled at me with fond encouragement, like an experienced mother smiling at her littlest one going back to school after a holiday. I took a deep breath and walked into a large room panelled in gleaming walnut wood and lined with glass-fronted bookshelves. At the far end of the room, a tall distinguished-looking elderly gentleman rose from behind an enormous mahogany desk covered with papers and files, and advanced rapidly towards me, arm outstretched. At last he reached me, shook my hand vigorously, stared probingly into my left eye, nodded (I hoped approvingly), smiled, took my arm, and led me to a long couch flanked by two fat armchairs.

"Sit down, sit down, my dear boy! I am sorry I have not been able to see you before now, but you understand, I have been so busy..."

He took off his thick glasses and rubbed them ineffectually against the knife-edge crease of his trousers with a veined and mottled hand. After some time, he looked up with reddened eyes, their pale grey centers pathetic without the protection of the thick lenses. A sigh emanated from the depths of his soul.

"I have so many tasks to perform and so little help. It is all very difficult. Hadzhooo..." I thought he was sneezing but then I gladly realized that he too was just having difficulty pronouncing Xox's name. "Hdzoosh expects his men to do their duty. It is too much to expect! At times I feel... very alone."

"But Lucy..." I ventured timidly.

"Ah, Lucy!" Professor Masaryk beamed. "Lucy is invaluable. She remembers everything. She knows when I am supposed to meet someone. Where I should be. She brings me letters to sign." His voice took on a note of hushed awe. " She even gives me vitamins. Lucy is a treasure. But she cannot do everything. There are so many decisions which only I can take at the moment. This is why we need a Rector. Why we need you."

I stared at him blankly. "You want me to be the Rector?"

Professor Masaryk threw back his head and laughed richly for several minutes. "Ah, no, that is not what I meant, that is not what I meant at all," he said at last, spluttering a fine spray of saliva in my face, obviously still overwhelmed by the humor of the thought. I smiled uncertainly. "No, no, I merely meant that we need able-bodied young men like you to assist us. And we need a Rector."

"But aren't you the Rector, sir?"

"No," Professor Masaryk said, waving his hands in limp self-deprecation. "I am merely the Director of the Czech college of the University of Truth and Justice. But there are other colleges as well. In Hungary, for instance." His brow darkened momentarily. He was about to say something but then he restrained himself. "And the Poles. The Slovenes. Ksoosh wants a college in every country of Central Europe. And why stop there?" The Professor waved a hand through the air. "There are so many parts of the world deprived of truth and justice. Why not a College of the University of Truth and Justice in every benighted country of the world?"

"How many students does the university have, sir?"

Professor Masaryk sighed. "None. At the moment. For several years now we have been studying the possibility of having students. We have held curriculum conferences. We have authorized task forces, commissions, and research projects headed by distinguished academics to investigate the requisite pre-conditions. To establish the necessary infrastructure. It is not easy to set up a University, you know. Even if you have unlimited money."

He shook his head and finger at me. "As an old academic, I know how difficult it is to have students. Students place an intolerable strain on any institution. They have to be taught. Supervised. Examined. And then they always whine and complain about everything. Institutions have to be strong to survive students. They have to be stable. They have to put down roots first. And we are so young!" The Director smiled engagingly. "At this stage the University is like a... like a fragile plant. So easily trampled by the impatient footsteps of students. The young can be so cruel." He looked around for inspiration. It came to him. He snapped his fingers in triumph. "Or again, the University can be likened to a pure young girl. Like Lucy. Brought up by caring parents in an atmosphere of gentleness and love. Peace and love," he added, involuntarily crossing himself before resuming his analogy. "Would you like this sheltered young girl, the University, to be given to some brutal rapist, to be seduced, ravished, violated?" He looked at me accusingly. There were tears in his watery grey eyes.

"No, sir. I suppose you're right."

"Well, Hadzooosh does," the Director said, moodily. "He wants students. Now. This year. This month! He doesn't seem to care about the University. Oh, he's paying for it and I suppose he thinks that gives him the right to impose students on us. The problem with him is that he is so decisive. He is a billionaire and he may even be a genius but he is not after all an academic. He should listen to us. We have said it in the Senate and in the committees. We have said it in every meeting and in every report. It is no use. He listens, politely enough, and then he just asks `So when will the University have students?' Oh well. Maybe the Rector can make him understand."

"So is there a Rector, sir?"

Professor Masaryk looked at me suspiciously and then relaxed. "It is supposed to be a top secret. No one must know. But I suppose I can tell you. After all, you will be his Special Assistant." I gaped at him. He nodded and smiled at me. "Yes, that is what we have decided. Killjoy-Yuck recommended you in the highest possible terms. He said that you were discreet. Responsible. Level headed. Trustworthy. Intelligent. Hard working." My jaw dropped open again. I closed my mouth quickly. No doubt Terence had his reasons for this shameless lie. And I was, after all, supposed to be working for him. Wasn't I?

"So I can tell you. But you must not divulge this information to anyone until the formal announcement is made. It will be in every newspaper in the world tomorrow!" He chuckled and rubbed his hands together gleefully. "It will put this University on the map! It will shock the world! It will make History!"

"Who is it, sir?" I asked eagerly.

"Hell," Professor Masaryk breathed.

"Professor Hell?"

"Lord Hades, Brigadier-General Sir Otto Hell, K.B.C, F.A.B, F.A.E., Professor Emeritus of Harvard, Yale, and the Universities of Chicago, California, and Cambridge," Professor Masaryk intoned, rolling the syllables around as though he were savoring thick glutinous mouthfuls of Christmas cake. "The most influential intellectual in the world. A living legend. He has consented at last to be our Rector. It took months of cajolery, coaxing, wheedling. But at last we bribed, I mean, persuaded him to accept the position."

"I would be proud to work for Professor Hell, sir," I said sincerely.

"Anybody would," Masaryk snapped impatiently. "That's the point. Can you begin to imagine how difficult it was to find someone so eminent that none of the Directors of the different Colleges simply could not object? Ugh..." the Director snarled. "Ugh, for instance. Attila Ugh, the Director of the Budapest college. A megalomaniac," he explained. "Would Ugh work under some obscure non-entity? Ugh wants to run the whole University himself, you see," Masaryk sighed, "like the rest of us." He corrected himself. "Not me, of course. I am a humble man. All I want is a room somewhere, far away from the cold night air, where I can talk to some students now and again, to suggest a few books for them to read, to build them up in their careers. Perhaps, one day, when I am long since dead, they will remember me as an older colleague who helped them a little." He frowned at me impressively. "It is the only reason why I have come out of my modest retirement to help Shoosh with this University. And my task will be much lighter now. I won't have to deal with Ugh any more. Hell can handle him. Hell can handle anyone. Perhaps he can even handle Shoodzh."

"Do you know Professor Hell well, sir?"

"We were schoolboys together," Masaryk said, a faraway look in his eyes. "After that I lost touch with him for many years. There was the war and then the Communists took over and Hell escaped yet again from Czechoslovakia and I was not allowed to leave. But I have known him for almost seventy years now."

"That's a long time."

"Yes. That is why I am so happy that Hell will be here. He will be on my side. We are supposed to have lunch together today."

"Is he already here, sir?"

"Yes. He will officially start work tomorrow. And you will work for him." Professor Masaryk stared at me appraisingly. I was wearing my best black suit and flowery tie. My nails were clipped and clean. I had taken one of Lucy's vitamins. I was fresh-faced and full of vim. "Why don't you join us?" the Director invited me hesitantly. "Zoosh has left and so have Ugh and Piknik, so there will only be Killjoy-Yuck and Monica Bigglesworth-Fume and Hell and I. I suppose I might as well introduce you to Hell. No time like the present! Let me ask Lucy..." At that moment Lucy entered the room. "Speak of the devil!" Professor Masaryk ejaculated, looking at me proudly. I smiled admiringly since he seemed a tad vain about his idiomatic English and I like to please.

"Lucy, my dear, should I invite this young man to lunch?"

"Yes, sir," Lucy replied demurely, the perfect secretary. "Lord Hades is already here. He said he likes to be punctual."

"Is he waiting outside?" Professor Masaryk exclaimed. He looked flustered. He smoothed his hair and straightened his tie and retreated behind his desk. "Show him in, show him in! It won't do, it won't do at all to keep Hell waiting!"