Genghiz In Love

#GenghizInLove: Episode 66

2011-09-04T10:07:00.000-07:00

And then there was light.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 65

2011-09-03T10:06:00.000-07:00

At first I thought it was the fireworks I had arranged, but then the blasts boomed louder, the walls began to shake, and the chandelier started showering sharp shards of glass all over the delirious assembly. Panic replaced ecstasy and the happy crowd became a frenzied mob desperately seeking escape. The exits were clogged by screaming swarms, pushing and shoving, trampling one another. And when the machine guns began their heavy clatter, the shrieks of terror and the wails of lament rose high with the sharp stink of cordite.

I saw Annichka cowering safely in a corner. The breath returned painfully to my lungs and I realized how much I had dreaded losing her again. I ran towards my darling and rocked her in my arms and wiped the tears away from her reddened eyes.

I felt a slap on my shoulder and I turned around. Xox loomed above me. He waved an arm at the maddened multitude and smiled widely. "Humans." He shook his head. "They need more vitamins."

"Humans?" I asked wonderingly. "Aren't you human?"

"Sometimes." Xox surveyed the scene of hysteria and chaos and smiled again. The grin seemed plastered to his face, the mocking amusement of an antique mask, the cruel serenity of a Buddha. "Did you put vitamins in the drinking water?"

"In the food for the reception as well," I confessed.

"Well done. In that case, we can leave soon, don't you think?"

I looked around. The untidy mounds of dead and wounded at the exits were slowly being pushed aside by the ugly snouts of field artillery pieces. And at the head of an army of purple jumpsuits were our old friends, the Cardinal now resplendent in white and gold Papal robes, Attila Ugh, his fangs flashing with malice and jubilation, Nero Insanetti gamboling along behind like an obsequious monkey, and a husky man with a hefty paunch and a drooping lower lip: the abominable Axel von Schadenfreude. And from another entrance, in the vanguard of another army, in raced a miniature tank, a motorized wheelchair carrying a roaring Rasputin resting a wicked-looking submachine gun on his plastered knees, his baleful eyes darting around, hunting without doubt for me. Just as Godfrey turned to point me out to Rasputin, I discreetly edged behind Lady Snatcher. "Yes. We should leave," I simpered. "How?"

"No problem." Xox pulled out a little device that resembled a remote control from the pocket of his trousers. "How does it work?" he mused. "Is it this button?" The chandelier came down with a colossal crash, along with a huge chunk of ceiling. The pillars supporting the rest of the ceiling began to wobble ominously. "Sorry. It's this button. There we go." A hole opened up in the parquet floor before us and a flight of stairs dropped into place. Xox politely offered his arm to Lady Snatcher. "Sorry about all the noise, dear lady. Let's continue somewhere quieter."

Xox and Lady Snatcher led the way. Lucy shepherded the other Big People along. I clasped Annichka and a trembling Barbie to my side and motioned frantically to Immanuel, Divka and Benito. The last thing I saw amidst the mayhem was Jesus in single combat with the Holy Roman Emperor. Numchuks whirling viciously like twin propellers, Jesus's face was a mask of intent and pleasurable concentration as he wreaked vengeance on Axel, who staggered about like a sleazy drunk, trying unsuccessfully to evade the brutal whipping. Axel looked like he was getting the short-end of the stick and I sighed with regret as Barbie and Annichka dragged me away from this satisfying spectacle. We followed the others through a damp catacomb. The murky maze meandered on through endless dank caverns, the eerie silence broken only by our heavy footfalls and the sound of distant water. Then the sodden track rose steeply and we were clambering along slippery ledges of hard rock. At last we emerged, breathing hard, into the light.

We were standing in the nave of the Cathedral, deep within the medieval fastness of the Castle. The flickering candlelight imbued the faces around me with a mysterious glow.

"Won't they follow us?" Benito asked.

"Probably." Xox didn't seem very worried.

"I ordered some nuclear weapons," I offered tentatively. "Should I call..."

"There's no need," Xox replied with a dismissive wave of his hand. "Our opponents must be celebrating their victory. Fighting is hungry work. They are feasting on the hors d'oeuvres that were arranged for our reception."

"You mean..."

Xox smiled. "They are almost certainly basking in peace and love even as we speak."

"So what do we do now?"

"Continue our little discussion, of course." Xox waved his arm around the cathedral. "Nice and quiet here besides a few inveterate worshippers who are used to noisy tourists."

"We could have lunch in the Castle with Wenceslas," Divka offered.

"What a very good idea," Xox beamed. "I haven't seen the President since I introduced him to vitamins. He should be most amused by all this."

"What about the university?" Immanuel asked.

"Experiment's over anyway," Otto growled. "Time to get down to the serious work."

I blinked. "You mean spreading the Nice pill all over the world?"

"You would like to put it into the drinking water, wouldn't you?" Xox winked at me. "Plop. Just like that." I blushed and hung my head. "Do you have any plans for your future?"

I shook my head. "Not really. Do you want me to go around poisoning the wells?"

"Oh no, my dear fellow." Xox seemed amused. "I have bought several mineral water companies for that purpose."

"You're going to sell the Nice water?"

"Of course." Xox spread his hands. "People are so suspicious of free things. They prefer to pay. This funny illusion of choice. So we will launch a world-wide marketing campaign with all the top models and we will charge outrageous prices. While the concept of money lasts."

"And then?"

"When money dies, so will notions of ownership. Do you have feel particularly possessive about your body, for instance? Do you need it for any special purpose?"

I looked over at Annichka. We grimaced apologetically. "Well, actually..."

"Don't worry. You can have your body most of the time," Xox said reassuringly. "I just want the use of it every once in a while." He patted his considerable belly. "Middle-aged spread, you know. No matter how much tennis you play..."

"Can I have the use of your body?" I asked cautiously, remembering the vigor and enthusiasm of his prolonged coupling with Lucy.

"Why, of course!" Xox cried. "And you are welcome to use the Learjet and the penthouse in New York and the mansion in Tuscany and the private beach in the Caribbean. Just as I can stuff myself with pizza and whisky when I am in your youthful body. It's like time-sharing. So convenient to exchange bodies periodically."

"What about Annichka?"

"Anastasia shares that body, doesn't she?" Lucy smiled at Annichka. "I've always wanted to be a redhead. Would you two mind if I joined you as well, darling?"

"Come to think of it, I'm getting tired of hobbling around with walking sticks," Hell growled unexpectedly. "Think I'll join you also. And I'm sure Rudolphine could use a vacation from Pipi periodically. Hard work, being an airhead."

Annichka burst into a radiant smile. "It sounds like fun!" my darling squealed. "Like playing with lots of crayons!"

Of course I couldn't refuse after that. I knew that no confusion of bodies could really affect us. Anastasia and I would be together, always. Xox pulled out a small box encrusted with precious stones, opened it, and handed glittering golden pills all around. "Nirvana," Xox murmured. "This is what Murti Bing and his team were working on."

"Utterly marvelous," Lady Snatcher pronounced abruptly. "May I have one too?"

"Why not?" Xox grinned. "The more, the merrier."

We raised the golden pills to our lips and smiled at one another. As I swallowed, I saw myself as through a glass, darkly, in a Tibetan monastery, meditating. But then the vision changed. The world was stifled by mushroom clouds and engulfed in flames and the screams of the damned rose high, a dim echo reaching even the arid desert plateau where I was wandering in a blind daze. And then I am among a band of fierce bearded warriors standing around a tank, scratching their heads. "Can you drive?" they demand. "Of course," I reply, a single tear of redemption coursing down my dusty cheek. And I turn the key in the ignition and the engine splutters to a start and we rumble off. "Callooh, callay!" the warriors chortle in their joy, whipping up their horses and riding along. "We have a khan!" And the cry resounds in the frozen air, as we ride off towards the rich cities of the setting sun, and more horsemen will join their number, the warriors of the indomitable sacker of cities, the father of dynasties, the immortal Genghiz...

My vision swirled away in a flash of color and I returned. The world was illuminated from within. I saw the reality of forms and shapes, the incessant movement and interaction of minute particles, the evanescence of monads. And I knew that there were other channels for anger and war, for peace and love, and that I could surf effortlessly between these myriad levels.

But then Xox pulled out the remote control from his pocket and pointed it at me and pressed a button.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 64

2011-09-02T10:05:00.000-07:00

"Peace and love!" Xox proclaimed. The words reverberated through the auditorium. Xox beamed at the excited faces before him. "Are you well fed? Are your heads clear? Do you help one another? Are you happy?"

"Yes!" the students responded in enthusiastic unison. There were some scattered shouts of "Give us a million dollars and we'll be even happier!" Xox peered benevolently down.

"A million dollars?" Xox grinned. "What do you say to a hundred billion?" An awed gasp ran through the audience. "I hereby offer the University of Truth and Justice a permanent endowment of a hundred billion dollars." Xox turned to Otto Hell who was comfortably slumped in his chair, arms folded behind his head, snoring. "Lord Hades, as the rector of the university, do you accept?"

Hell noisily blew his nose into a disgusting snot-rag and heaved himself up with his walking sticks. "I do," he announced gruffly. The two men shook hands. "should also make another announcement. The University of Truth and Justice has been given a Presidential charter by Good King Wenceslas as a personal expression of his support. Gives us city-state status like the Vatikan. Means we can do whatever we want. 'Course we do already." The auditorium shook with thunderous applause. A couple of enthusiastic students began an impromptu Cossack dance. Hell thumped the podium with his stick. "Xox. Get on with it."

Xox nodded. "I will tell you a little story. Once upon a time a group of men sat by a lake, smoking cigars and drinking whisky while pretending to fish. They started talking, about their mutual business interests, about their families, about the meaning of life. They agreed that the state of the world was bad and that the future would be even worse. Was it possible to prevent humans from wiping themselves off the earth? Was it even desirable? Some held the view that we were a race of greedy irritable stupid apes who deserved to die out. Good riddance to bad rubbish, and why not exploit other monkeys meanwhile. Others were more charitable. Perhaps it was the mellowing effect of the fine single malt whisky they were drinking. They felt that humanity deserved another chance. They resolved to provide it." Xox smiled at the hushed audience. "I should mention that these men were all billionaires. We form a little group called MIDAS."

Xox took a long drink of water. I glanced over at Benito. He nodded back. "Perhaps it was already too late. Perhaps the balance had tilted and the apocalypse had already occurred. We agreed that we still had to try. Perhaps technology could still help. We decided to fund experiments in cutting edge science and technology. Some of these experiments have not succeeded quite as well as we had hoped. Space travel, for instance…" Xox flipped his fingers. A miniature rocket came whizzing noisily around the corner and crashed into the podium with a deafening explosion. Xox shrugged and spread his hands. "Other projects have been rather more successful." He flipped his fingers again. Gold coins cascaded down from the ceiling. I covered my head and ducked for shelter while everyone scrambled about desperately. Lady Snatcher was on her hands and knees, grasping and shoving with the rest of them, protectively grasping her pile of bullion to her bosom. Xox waited until the tumult had died down and everyone was back in their seats again, fingering their booty. "As you see, I have been investing in gold recently. Of course this worried a few people…" Xox smiled benevolently at Terence. "The secret services of the West were rather concerned, especially after MIDAS cornered most of the world's gold supplies. The decision by the European central bank to dispose of its gold holdings was most helpful. The secret services have been wondering just exactly why these crazy billionaires have been buying gold. The Sultan of Arabia has been most nervous. And with good reason. This is why."

Xox flipped his fingers again. A large white screen fell into view, covered with neatly scribbled equations and complicated calculations. The more diligent students began frantically copying. "A new formula for solar energy. While inexpensive to produce and completely environmentally friendly, these new solar cells do require a certain amount of gold. Unfortunately, human beings place a quite inexplicable premium on the value of this metal. So we bought it all. In this alchemical process the earth's gold will now help us to benefit fully from the sun's gold. And the energy we generate will go to water pumps and desalination plants in the third world. Nobody will ever die of thirst or tainted water again. Or of over-work. One of MIDAS's most active members is a great engineer in Japan. For thirty years now, Tamato-san has been developing industrial robots in his factory near Mount Fuji. He has finally made the ultimate breakthrough. Artificial intelligence of such a level that the robots can design other robots of ever increasing intelligence. Assembling each other in the darkness with complete efficiency. Factories throughout the world will be revolutionised by this combination of inexhaustible energy and intelligent labour. The age of the machine is over and the age of the robot has begun."

"Other experiments in biotechnology and genetics continue. Soon we will have cures for all the major diseases. We will be able to turn back the biological clock. Humans will be able to live forever in perfect health. But will we be happy?" Xox paused and gazed at his silent audience. "Technology can help to some extent. It can eliminate work, hunger and disease. But are human beings ready for eternal life and freedom? No compulsion to go to the office or factory, no desperate desire to buy all the satisfaction one can cram into a short ninety-year life-span, no greed or need that cannot be indulged in an eternity of leisure. Will we use our new freedom to develop all our skills and talents and to build bridges amongst ourselves? Or will we continue to struggle in a mindset forged in the age of scarcity, fighting and struggling like monkeys in a cage, unable to comprehend the new reality of endless possibility, the simple mind-blowing fact that the door to our cage has finally been opened? Will we struggle even harder and longer for primacy amongst ourselves, now that we can fight for all eternity? The members of MIDAS agreed that no technological advance would ever help if humans were not altered in some profound essential way. But how do you tame an angry monkey?"

"Cut off his balls!" a girlish voice pleaded.

"Starve him into submission!" someone boomed.

"Give him drugs!" Immanuel shouted happily.

Xox grinned at Immanuel. "That is exactly what we did. To all of you. We experimented with a new generation of drugs that make people gentler, kinder, and smarter. With irreversible effect. The ultimate alchemy, the transformation of the human soul. And you are the result!"

The spectators looked at one another in a dumbfounded daze. Immanuel broke the nervous hush. "Hooray!" he cheered loudly and began to clap. Others joined in. The tentative applause grew louder.

"And so I give you a toast!" Xox said loudly, raising his glass of vitamin-rich water. "Let us all drink to Peace and Love! For now and forever!"

A deafening chant resounded through the hall. "Peace and love! Truth and Justice! Peace and love!" Even Lady Snatcher and Monsieur Jacques were affected by the hypnotic atmosphere and the drinking water: the scowling old witch lost her ferocious squint and kissed her arch-adversary on his bureaucratic cheek. Jean Rameau reached over and shook the hand of his nemesis, Gunther Otto Troll. The huge hall was saturated with vibrations of goodwill and bliss.

Until the explosions started.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 63

2011-09-01T10:03:00.000-07:00

And after Terence had taken his vitamin like a good boy and calmed down, we all trooped out of Xox's suite down to the elegant auditorium of the University of Truth and Justice. The mahogany walls and parquet floors glittered with fresh polish, the baize on the conference table shone under the bright lights like a meadow in spring, the microphones amplified without dissonance, and the eager young faces in the audience looked scrubbed and spruce. The string quartet fell silent as Xox and Hell walked onto the stage.

A hand grabbed my jacket. I turned sharply around. God smiled lazily at me, amidst a bristling forest of microphones and video-cameras. "What are you doing here?" I hissed.

Godfrey smirked at the notebook ostentatiously perched on his lap. "Covering this event for The Sociologist, my dear fellow," he purred. "Jenkins was most insistent. Wouldn't miss it for all the world."

"Godfrey, are you up to mischief again?"

"As always, old chap. How else to overcome boredom?"

I spotted Jesus and Barbie in the third row of the auditorium. Barbie was dressed in black and her eyelids were swollen and puffy. "We'll have to have a long chat about boredom sometime, God. I've got to run."

"Of course. Enjoy yourself… for now. This bash promises to be most interesting."

I went up to Barbie and hugged her. "Jesus just told me Luke was dead," she said in a barely audible voice. "I can't believe it…"

"I know, honey," I said sadly. Barbie's tears coursed down my neck. At length she let go and reached into my pocket for a handkerchief. "Keep it," I said, after she had blown her nose noisily. Barbie smiled at me through her tears: it was an old joke between us ever since my twelfth birthday when she had given me a dozen beautifully embroidered handkerchiefs laced with sneezing powder. I delved into my other pocket and found a tube of vitamins. "Take one now, sweetie. You'll feel better..."

Doors slammed and necks craned as the other Big People were ceremoniously announced. First came a dumpy lady with golden bouffant hair fluffed out over a bloated purple face stuck in a severe scowl. Her protuberant blue eyes and protruding front teeth made her resemble a pugnacious old rabbit. "Her Grace, Lady Snatcher!" And immediately after: "His Excellency, Monsieur Jacques!" The President of Europe, a nondescript politician with silvery hair and stern spectacles strutted down to the stage and waved his arms in the air, clumsily, like an ageing rock star. An excited murmur ran through the audience as the two principal antagonists took their seats on stage.

"Herr Gunther Otto Troll!" I liked the icy attack glare in Troll's frosty blue eyes when he saw the last guest arrive, the disgraced chairman of Banque Eurolux, Jean Rameau, a pudgy person of indeterminate age and gender, sweating profusely as he wiped his pasty jowls. In the row in front, Marya Madlenova spit disdainfully in Rameau's direction. Madlenova was holding hands with Professor Flysenko, our sociologist-in-residence and world-famous expert on prostitution. Madlenova and Flysenko glowered at me: I smiled back and mentally wished them luck. I felt exhilarated. The speakers were clearing their throats and a few were already drinking their doctored water. An expectant hush descended over the audience. The Big Bash was about to begin.

Rameau's keynote address began with platitudes and degenerated into clichés: a jumble of banker-talk and Eurocratese. "Convergence of economic cycles… Synchronisation of fiscal laws and tax regimes… Public policy capacity building… Deeper versus wider… The best is yet to come…." After ten minutes of pompous pronouncements on the challenges facing Central Europe, my eyes glazed over. I was impatiently waiting for Fyodor and his friends to take up the rather over-ripe tomatoes I had thoughtfully arranged in hampers by their seats, when Rameau's drone came to a startled halt.

"Excuse my ignorance, Rameau," Troll interrupted curtly. "How long has Banque Eurolux been around?"

"Almost two years."

"Your institution was supposed to provide capital to small businesses in the post-communist countries. How many loans have you made in these two years?"

Rameau flushed. "None. But…"

"What was your bank's budget last year?"

"Four billion euros."

"And how much of it was spent in Central Europe?"

"None. I must protest…"

"How much money did you spend on decorating your offices last year?"

"I cannot recall…"

"Answer the bloody question!" Hell growled.

"About two and a half billion," Rameau conceded sulkily.

"And how much was spent on staff salaries and bonuses?"

"Just under two billion."

"How much did you make?"

"This is unbearable," Rameau protested. "I did not come here to be insulted in this fashion…"

"That's true," Hell replied. "You came here because it was a chance to rehabilitate your sleazy reputation. Here's your chance. Answer the question!"

"My remuneration last year was approximately half a billion," Rameau replied, glaring at Troll. "And it was approved by the Banque's board of directors. Including His Excellency, Monsieur Jacques…"

"So your budget was four billion and your costs were four and a half billion. Leaving a deficit of half a billion," Troll said silkily. "The same amount as your personal take. Quite a banker, Monsieur Rameau. Or should I say bank-robber?"

"Just as we have said all these years," Lady Snatcher snarled stridently. "Pigs wallowing in the trough. Salami and all that European nastiness! Waste of good tax-payer money! This would never have happened while we were around…"

"Actually, Madame, the Banque Eurolux was established at the last European meeting you attended as Prime Minister," Monsieur Jacques interpolated. "I remember it well. You assaulted me violently with your handbag."

"We don't remember you." Lady Snatcher glared at Monsieur Jacques. "You a Frog or a Kraut?"

"Neither, Madame," Monsieur Jacques replied with dignity. "I am Belgian."

"In that case you don't count. Another European nobody. At all those meetings we were forced to attend there was never anyone who could stand up to us. European men have no balls."

"It is true that rates of testicular cancer have risen sharply in Europe while sperm counts keep falling," Monsieur Jacques conceded. "However…"

"All this garbage you Euro-fags eat," Lady Snatcher continued, unmoved. "Garlic and salami. What's wrong with good old sausage? Solid British fare is what you need. Bangers and mash. Steak and kidney pie. Bubble and squeak. Toad in the hole. Pre-packaged microwave dinners. Doesn't appeal to all you snail-eaters though. Always nibbling on brie and sucking up to your farmers."

"The rural lifestyle is an integral part of the European dream!" Monsieur Jacques protested. "Our farmers need all the subsidies they can get. The European landscape would not be the same without them!"

"Who needs landscape?" Lady Snatcher replied robustly. "Come to think of it, who needs farmers? Put the lazy layabouts to work. Let them build roads. Sixteen lane concrete highways stretching over hill and dale, packed from bumper to bumper with motorists safely sheltered in the privacy and security of their automobiles."

"But public transport is vital for our society. Standing shoulder to shoulder in a crowded metro builds strong feelings of community!"

"This illusion of community is all a gigantic left-wing conspiracy," Lady Snatcher declared darkly. "We defeated communism single-handed. President Reagan helped a bit. Now you Europeans are trying to revive this monstrous notion that we have something in common with one another. But we will never give in!!"

"Social harmonisation is key to solving the problems of unrestricted capitalism. The crisis of homelessness…"

"The homeless are a good measure of a vibrant economy. Look at New York City!"

But what about single mothers? Starving children…"

"Women should know how to keep hold of their husbands. By the balls, if necessary. And children should work. Builds discipline. Look at the Third World! In Victorian times, Britain was like that." Lady Snatcher sighed with regret. "Ordinary people knew where they belonged. In the factory and in the slum. And if they didn't work they went to the poor house or to jail. Debtors were hanged and we sent thieves to Australia. It worked so well! But then we grew soft and brought in all these communist laws abolishing child labour and capital punishment. Look at the result! Whiny little namby-pambies bleating for more art lessons!"

"Artists are an indispensable element of the social fabric." Monsieur Jacques was scrabbling about for words. " The glory of European culture… Leonardo da Vinci!"

"Leonardo was a military technician. Proves our point exactly. Get rid of cultural subsidies and put more money in the military! All these artists hanging around like pests ever since we stopped killing off one another. Bring back the age of patronage. Instead of messing about with all this abstract nonsense, let them paint us!"

"Have you no feeling for social justice?" Monsieur Jacques, asked, appalled.

"That's what those weak little men said when they deposed us." Lady Snatcher laughed harshly. "But they did not succeed. We will never surrender! We have been re-grouping, gathering about us the best and brightest, the most ruthless entrepreneurial spirits of our time. Now we are informed that there is a new Holy Roman Emperor in Vienna, and a new Pope. At last Europe emerges again in its true colours. A Katholic conspiracy to suppress individualism and substitute dogma and corruption instead of the joys of consumerism and the free market. We welcome this development. Your hornet's nest of namby-pamby social democrats will be squeezed from either side by the true believers. And when the bureaucratic nobodies fall away, there will be at last the final battle, the ultimate showdown between gallant Britain and the Evil Empire. Like a second Churchill, we will be acclaimed again as England's ruler; like another great Queen, we will send forth our brave pirates to demolish the Katholic Armada. In that last Crusade, the free market shall prevail once and for all, and the Margarine Age shall begin!"

"You are deranged, Madame." Monsieur Jacques was shaking like a leaf. "This is my worst nightmare. Please, Monsieur Xox, put an end to this mad cow's ravings!"

"Roast beef builds character, little man!" Lady Snatcher bellowed back. "You're probably a vegetarian. Snivelling like a Hindu!"

"Fight! Fight! Fight!" the students chanted, inciting the two opponents. Tomatoes and rotten eggs whizzed through the air, smearing the glittering stage. Lady Snatcher rolled up the sleeves of her blood-red jacket, revealing powerful blacksmith arms. Monsieur Jacques loosened his tie with shaking hands and gulped down a glass of water. Lady Snatcher sneered and threw down a beer. The atmosphere in the room was electric.

Just then Xox stood up and held up his hand. "What a thoroughly enjoyable debate." He smiled at the audience. "I have always held that we are what we eat. Lady Snatcher is living proof. Put down those tomatoes for a moment. Shall I tell you a story?"

"Story! Story!" the audience chanted. The lights in the auditorium dimmed, and a single spotlight shone on Xox's gleaming head. He stood there in the silence, an enigmatic portly figure, one hand playing in the pocket of his grey suit, and began.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 62

2011-08-31T10:02:00.000-07:00

"Almost time for the Big Bash!" Lucy exclaimed gaily as the elevator surged up. "Is everything ready?"

"Not quite." I punched a button. The elevator ground to a halt. "I have to arrange something with Benito. I'll be up in a minute."

"Be careful!" Lucy smirked. "Benito is not a happy puppy right now."

I walked down the corridor towards Benito's room. I hesitated outside the door when I heard his anguished wails, but then shrugged and walked right in. A friend who needs is a friend indeed. Benito lay slumped on the floor in a puddle of beer and tears. I thumped him on the shoulder several times before he raised bleary red eyes towards me. "Leave me alone!" he groaned listlessly.

"What's with you?" I demanded ruthlessly.

"Delilah... left me." Fat tears rolled down Benito's tanned cheeks. "She went off with that bastard, Hachek."

"What are you talking about?"

"When Hachek and I were wrestling on the terrace..." Benito muttered between sobs. It was hard to make sense of what he was saying so I hit him hard on the head. He tried to fight back but I overpowered him easily even though he was much bigger than me. I love fighting with drunks.

"All right," I commanded after I had pinned Benito down and forced him to drink some whisky. "So Hachek knocked you down. Did he beat you up badly?"

"I beat him up," Benito sputtered indignantly. "Delilah jumped on my back and stopped me from killing him. Then she asked him if he was all right and started kissing him all over." Benito shuddered and morosely threw a beer bottle against the wall where it shattered spectacularly. "And then she stuck her tongue out at me and they left..." he concluded brokenly.

"It's okay, Benito. They're both gone now."

Benito convulsed in agony. "He took her back to Poland? Oh, my God! She'll live in some horrible prefabricated socialist apartment building and live on rotten potatoes for the rest of her life!" He buried his head in his hands.

I patted his curly head. "You don't understand. After they left, Hachek tried to kill Delilah but then I persuaded him to commit suicide instead. But Delilah is gone too. Her body has been taken over by this wandering spirit called Lucy." I coughed. "The problem is that Lucy is a little... homicidal. Her bodies tend to have short lives that come to a violent end." I smiled at Benito. "But don't worry. Lots more fish in the sea," I added comfortingly. "Go back home to Surf City. There must be millions of busty blonde babes hanging out on the beach."

Benito let out a tormented bellow. "I don't want any other busty blonde babe. I want Delilah!"

I sighed. "So take a vitamin." Benito sulkily popped a pill. "Now blow your nose and wash your face and come up to Xox's suite with me. Lucy is there right now. See if you can seduce her."

Benito lifted large olive eyes in naive appeal. "What do I have to do?"

I shrugged. "You could try overwhelming her with red roses. Fill her bathtub with vintage champagne and her mouth with liqueur chocolates. It's not original but all's fair in love and decor."

"I'll go shopping right away." Benito jumped up from the floor and wrung my hand enthusiastically. "I owe you one, man."

"Well, actually, I'll take you up on that right away. On your way down, could you just check on the arrangements for the Big Bash?"

"Sure thing. Anything else?"

"You're in charge of vitamins, aren't you? Would you just put some vitamins into the drinking water at the head table? You know, the water that the Big People will be drinking?"

Benito's eyes went wide with wonder. "You want to drug Xox and Lord Hades and Lady Snatcher and Monsieur Jacques and Herr Troll and Monsieur Rameau?"

I nodded. "Into the water jugs. Plop. Just like that."

Benito hesitated. "Should we?"

"Of course we should. You give the students vitamins all the time. They're harmless." I poked Benito in the ribs. "Come on. It'll be fun."

Benito giggled. "Maybe we could mix the vitamins into everything. The fruit punch, the salad bar, the steak tartare..."

I slapped him on the back. "There you go!"

Benito chuckled madly. "I'll do it right away."

"Good man. Make sure to put lots in. I have to make a phone call. I'll see you at the lecture."

Benito skipped off happily. I went to my office and called up Darko Darkovich, my favorite explosives expert. Darkovich had tactical battlefield nuclear weapons, and while I hoped that designer drugs would do the trick, I wanted to make absolutely sure that the Big Bash would pass off without giving me an allergy rash from all the stress. I was worried about my complexion: I hadn't been eating enough fresh fruit and vegetables in the last few days. If you can't be good, be careful.

My heart was in my throat when I finally made my way to the rarified heights of Xox's penthouse apartment. I gulped with trepidation when the door opened. A bald man in a badly cut grey suit stood at the threshold, grinning. Xox himself.

"Welcome." Xox stared intently into my left eye. "I did not get the chance to thank you properly in Budapest. I have been hearing a lot about you since."

"Nothing terrible, I hope," I murmured feebly.

"On the contrary, my dear fellow," Xox replied ambiguously. "I have just had the pleasure of meeting your exquisite friend, Anastasia." Xox winked approvingly. "Charming creature. I am so glad that she is one of us. You know our other friends of course." Putting his arm on my shoulder, Xox wheeled me around.

Lady Rudolphine and Anastasia were sitting together cozily on a couch, absorbed in an animated tete-a-tete. Lucy was curled up at their feet. They looked up and smiled at me. Otto Hell sat comfortably slumped on another long overstuffed sofa, belly placidly protruding, eyes closed as if in sleep. Besides him, long stick limbs contorted like an ungainly insect, waving his wine glass in the air as he vainly tried to engage Hell in conversation, sat Terence Killjoy-Yuck. He looked up at my entrance and went pale. I went over to him and thumped his thin shoulder in hearty greeting.

"Terence! How the hell are you, old chap?"

"You!" Terence's eyebrows were rocketing all over the place. "I thought you were..."

"Dead? Under arrest?" I guffawed.

Terence smiled weakly. "I had indeed heard, ahem..."

"Where's Rasputin, Terry? In hospital or in jail? Did Godfrey get away?"

"I really couldn't say."

"What about your other minions in beige trench coats? Where are they when you really need them, huh?"

"My dear chap." Terence smiled winsomely, exposing rotting front teeth. "Are you still upset about that little scene in Berlin?"

"Not at all." I grinned back. "I don't mind being followed and bugged and kidnapped and chased and shot at. What I do mind, however, is being used as a scapegoat."

"What on earth..."

"Why did you send me to Prague in the first place, Terence?"

Terence wriggled uncomfortably. "Do we really have to discuss this now, dear boy? Perhaps some other time would be more appropriate..."

"I don't think so." I looked up. Otto was still pretending to sleep. Xox was pouring himself a Scotch. He glanced over and smiled benignly. "I was a decoy, wasn't I?"

"Decoy?" Terence had clearly never heard the word before. He rolled it around wonderingly between pursed lips. "Decoy?"

"You wanted to spy on Xox. You knew that his security apparatus was vigilant." Lucy nodded. "You wanted me to be caught because that would draw attention away from the real spy, didn't you?"

"Real spy?" Terence shook his head in bewilderment. "My dear chap, whom are you talking about?"

"Me, obviously." Otto opened one beady eye and frowned at Terence. "Game's over, Killjoy-Yuck. Xox knows everything. I've been working for him all along."

We gaped at Hell in amazement. His move had boldly torn open a veil of secrecy, exposing the shadowy spaces in which spies revel, a murky maze of ambiguous meanings and nebulous identities, a dusky world with its own hazy allure, and those drawn into its obscure orbit soon find their eyes growing accustomed to a deceptive dimness in which values and people lose all distinctness and are soon reduced to mist and shadows... Now we sat blinking suspiciously at each other in the novel clarity produced by Hell's disclosure, like tourists newly arrived from a foggy English winter for a vacation in the tropics, and if even I, the rawest recruit among our ranks, found myself at a loss for words, how should one depict the indescribable distress Terence must have felt, stoop-shouldered spook, born to genteel bitchiness and bred to snobbish contriving, as he sat there stiffly, wincing?

But even the stiffest of upper lips soften under pressure and as he sat there under our concerted stare, Terence was soon blubbering brokenly. "Don't hold it against me," he sniffled. "I was just serving Queen and Country..."

"No, you weren't," Otto replied calmly. "You were doing your very best to sabotage the Queen all along."

Terence sat up straight. "How dare you…"

"You're not trying to deny your involvement in Princess Fi's assassination, are you?" Hell said reprovingly. "That clumsy attempt to implicate the poor Princes in the plot. Tut tut. And who set up the poor trusting young Duke with that gorgeous gold-digger transvestite? The turncoat who sucked the Princess's toes on that Caribbean beach and then sold the pictures to the tabloids wasn't one of your trench-coated flunkies? And who burned down the poor woman's castle?"

"There, there." Xox patted Terence's shoulder comfortingly. "Don't cry. We know all about your plot to discredit the royal family and eliminate the Queen."

"You do?" Terence's eyes went wide with alarm.

"Of course. And to put Lady Snatcher in her place." Terence gulped. Xox nodded reassuringly. "The Snatcher Foundation's finances are hardly a secret to me. Your money is safe in my hands."

Terence groaned. "The Royal Bank of England merger…"

"Yes, I bought the bank. But surely you knew that?"

"You own everything now, don't you?" Terence asked suspiciously. "But whose side are you on anyway?"

"I am on everyone's side." Xox beamed. "Surely you should know that by now?"

"Even the Pope and the Holy Roman Emperor?" Terence made a brave attempt at resistance.

Xox chuckled. "But of course. They don't know it yet but they will."

"Your conspiracy of billionaires hasn't won yet," Terence said pugnaciously. "We will fight on the beaches and in the streets…"

"And yet the MIDAS membership keeps growing," Hell said unexpectedly. "Despite all your efforts to assassinate them."

"Funerals are good opportunities for meetings," Xox added graciously. "Were you trying to murder us in order to eliminate MIDAS or because you had lost too much money to us?" Terence let out a low moan and buried his head in his hands. "Oh, yes, we always knew that you were after us. Why else would we play bridge with you? I'm sorry, my dear fellow, but you really must improve your game a little. Here. Take a vitamin. Lemon flavor or cherry?"

"It's time to get down to the Big Bash," Lucy chirped up. "Lady Snatcher and Monsieur Jacques should be arriving any minute."

"Thank you, my dear. We must not keep our guests waiting." Xox offered his arm to Lady Rudolphine. "Shall we go? This event promises to be most entertaining."

#GenghizInLove: Episode 61

2011-08-30T10:00:00.000-07:00

Pandemonium reigned on the terrace. We were all under the indiscriminate influence of Basic Instinct, and the mysterious drug's effects were all too visible. Benito and Hachek lay locked together on the floor, their magnificent muscles writhing as they fought. Delilah lay asprawl between them, her clothes incitingly torn, her splendid breasts heaving with the shrieks she repeatedly uttered, mechanically, like a dysfunctional doll. Immanuel's tattered purple robes fluttered like the flag of some derelict nation as he stood precariously balanced on the balustrade, earnestly exhorting the unheeding combatants to cease their strife. Jesus sat motionless like a predator owl, watching through unblinking eyes, arms crossed across barrel chest, trained assassin's body relaxed and ready. And, crawling on all fours, my heart pounding, I negotiated the perilous hazards of the glass-strewn floor, seeking escape from the mayhem.

As I entered the safety of the elevator, I was filled with an instinctive need for chocolate milk. I craved its insipid reassurance, its cloying satiation. Riding down in my closed cocoon, I coveted childishness. The elevator door opened and I went over to the reception desk. Cute little Annichka was sitting behind the counter, playing with her dolls. She looked up at me and frowned.

"Oh, it's you." Annichka looked down again into the vacuous eyes of her plaything.

"What's the matter?" I asked, hurt. "Aren't you glad to see me?"

Annichka stuck a needle into her doll's eye. I blinked. "You never play with me," she squeaked sulkily. Her lower lip was stuck out in a mutinous pout. "You always promise to bring me drugs and to play with crayons but you never do."

I winced. She was right. Months had passed since that promise and, trapped against my will in earth-shaking conspiracies, I had been faithless to this pretty chiclet. "What about right now?" I asked hopefully. "Do you have your crayons here?"

"I don't want to play with you anymore." Annichka's lower lip quivered. She viciously ripped a sleeve off her doll's dress. "You like Barbie better than me. I hate you."

"Come on, sweetie," I pleaded but to no avail. "All right. Don't talk to me. But do you have some bandages here? I'm bleeding all over the carpet."

Annichka put her little hand to her mouth and squealed in horror. She was rummaging frantically through her first aid kit, tossing gauze and iodine everywhere, when I had my brilliant idea.

"Annichka, don't you want to try a new drug?"

"Yes, but shouldn't we first bandage..."

"No. Listen. Suck some blood out of this cut on my wrist." Annichka's eyes opened wide in amazement. "My bloodstream contains a drug called Basic Instinct," I insisted urgently. Annichka looked at me trustingly. I had a moment of misgiving, seeing those big brown eyes, but I suppressed this misplaced compassion ruthlessly. I fluttered my eyelashes at her and smiled toothily. "Trust me."

"Okay." Annichka smiled sweetly. I held out my bleeding wrist to her. She put her soft lips to the cut and sucked, at first with tentative little nips, but surprisingly soon, with greater zest, tweaking and licking with quick feline flicks of her hot tongue. I shivered and closed my eyes. Snippets of memory zipped through my head, odd fragments from my brief sojourn with my lost love, Anastasia. Anastasia's green eyes flashing as she advanced towards me brandishing a butcher knife; Anastasia flashing a perfect thigh as she casually inserted a needle; Anastasia holding me to her, clawing my back, huskily howling guttural endearments; Anastasia calmly kissing her father's severed head before turning to me in that inexplicable transfer of her spirit's green flame... An eerie calm enveloped me. I was a solitary spectator in an empty theater. Then I was dangling in the void, suspended without support in an endless chasm, alone. A hot sweet presence was gone: I was bereft.

Until Annichka looked up at me and smiled. I gasped. The brown centers of her bovine eyes were flickering, transmutating: the milk chocolate brown yielding at the edges, whipped into a hazel froth, slowly succumbing to the inexorable progress of a glittering viridian wave. Annichka's adorable face underwent a parallel transformation: the cute curves melted away, accentuating the arrogant angles of the cheekbones and the long loveliness of the haughty throat. Annichka's thick dark curls tightened and shimmered with a coppery sheen, accentuating the small pink freckles gathering on her very pale heart-shaped face. "I love the taste of blood," the girl whispered huskily. "You remembered."

"Anastasia."

"My stupid love. So slow to release me."

"You didn't explain."

"You didn't think."

"I can't help it."

"Did you miss me?"

"Until I realized that you were with me all along."

Without warning Anastasia slapped me hard. "You bastard," she snarled. "How dare you sleep with that trollop Madlenova?"

I bit my lip and smiled sheepishly. "I'm sorry."

Anastasia glared at me through slitted eyes. "I had to fight her with all my power. Otherwise she would have stolen both our souls and then we would be languishing for all eternity in the belly of the beast."

"Oh, come on," I remonstrated. "She's not that bad."

"She's an old cow. I cannot believe that you wanted to release me into her body."

"Do you like this one?"

Anastasia appraised her new body dispassionately. "Not too bad. At least it's young." She wiggled her hips and stared down her front critically. "The bottom is all right and the legs are quite good but the breasts are a bit small."

"They are not," I protested hotly. "They are firm and round and high. And big enough for a hot little adolescent. What do you want, melons?"

"And why pick a receptionist?" Anastasia's upper lip curled in aristocratic dismay.

"Edit the snobbery," I replied firmly. "Annichka was easily the cutest girl around. And talented. The things she did with crayons..."

"Stop speaking in the past tense," Anastasia interrupted. "I am Annichka. I am sixteen years old and very vapid." She rolled her eyes around in her head. The copper curls turned chestnut and the clear green eyes became murky momentarily before settling into placid brown. "I like this drug!" Annichka squealed happily. "Now can we play some other game?"

"Yes, sweetie. I know a very special game I want to play with you." I firmly led her behind the reception desk into the small room where the receptionists catnapped at night. I covered her face with hot kisses as we subsided noisily onto the flimsy camp bed.

With the passion reserved for lovers reunited after a long separation, Anastasia and I ran through the stages of love, the urgencies of clumsy preliminaries and premature culmination, the relief of laughter and affection, cuddle and fondle, then the careful impassioned agonizing bliss of coming together again, the lazy languorous tendresses that follow, leading only to more urbane embraces, the sophisticated wickedness available to those with time on their side. Naughty Anastasia amused herself by corrupting innocent Annichka, suddenly switching selves during our most dissolute caresses, snickering sardonically at her simple substitute's startled squeals.

"What will happen to Anastasia now?" I asked, idly stroking my beloved's sweet long flanks.

"How the devil should I know? I don't keep in touch with my previous bodies. She will probably go to mass regularly, have four corgis which she takes for long walks by the sea, dutifully accompany her husband to decorous church gatherings, and stare blankly when acquaintances ask why she stopped making movies."

"Poor thing." I wistfully remembered lying in bed with that smaller more fragile body.

She glowered at me. "Stop that. She's just a body."

"How can you be jealous of your own previous self?"

"You're with me now."

"But what should I call you?"

"Annichka, obviously. I may need a new name when I start my acting career."

"Annichka is going to become a movie star?"

"Of course. You don't think I'm going to be a receptionist forever, do you?"

"La di da." I stiffened and turned. "Isn't that someone ringing the bell at the reception desk?" Annichka and I threw on some clothes and left our little cave.

Delilah stood at the reception desk, sobbing hysterically. Her clothes were ripped to shreds and her hair was a serious mess. "Help me!" Delilah screamed wildly. "He wants to kill me!"

"Come here." Annichka and I escorted Delilah to the back room. I pulled out my flask from my pocket and cajoled the sobbing girl into gulping down a shot. She grimaced through her tears. I sighed. It was a sad sacrifice of good single malt but chivalry required it. After a few wasted shots, Delilah was calm enough to answer questions. "Who's trying to kill you?"

"Hachek." Delilah's face contorted again. "He knocked Benito down like a doormat and then started chasing me all over the building with a knife."

"Why?"

"I don't know." Delilah began to sniffle. "He... he called me the perfect Amerikan cow. He wanted to milk me. Boo hoo hooo!" She began to wail loudly again.

The reception bell rang insistently. We looked at each other. I squared my shoulders and nodded reassuringly at the girls. "It's probably Hachek. I'll handle him." Annichka looked at me adoringly. I marched out. Hachek was was bleeding profusely and his craggy hook nose seemed even more menacing than usual against the backdrop of his bloodless face. His tiny eyes held a cunning squint and his thin lips were twisted in an evil leer. He was holding a large hunting knife.

"All right," Hachek snarled nasally. "Where is she?"

"Who?"

"My side of beef. I want a steak. Rare." Hachek jumped over the counter and rushed past me, felling me with one passing shoulder.

I eased myself up and followed him. Hachek stood against the far wall, holding Delilah in front of him. The knife was poised at Delilah's exposed throat. Annichka sat on the bed, calmly putting on her stockings. She looked at me ironically. "My man."

I stuck out my tongue at her and turned to Hachek. "Why do you want to kill her?"

"All my life I have longed to die. I just want to take her with me." Hachek giggled insanely. "Like a Pharaoh, secure in the knowledge that I will have company in the afterlife."

"Why don't you kill yourself first?" I suggested. "Then we'll slaughter her. Like a ritual heifer. Much more impressive that way."

Hachek frowned for a moment and then nodded. "Why not?" he said easily. "Do you promise to sacrifice her?" I nodded, ignoring Delilah's indignant gurgles. "Okay. Here goes." Hachek pulled the knife away from Delilah's throat and slashed it across his own. He toppled to the floor like a butchered bull. The sweet scent of blood rose sickeningly in the air.

"A ritual heifer, huh?" Delilah glowered at me. Her thick blonde eyelashes fluttered accusingly, half-obscuring her large azure eyes. "Recognize me now? Still want to sacrifice me, mister?"

"Lucy," I gasped. "Back from the dead. Again."

"Hi." Delilah/Lucy turned to Annichka/Anastasia. "We've met."

"Of course." Anastasia smiled. They shook hands. "I dreamed of you once. And then I saw you murdered in Berlin."

I rolled my eyes in my head. "Small world. What the devil are you doing here, Lucy? Why did you take over Delilah's body now?"

"I can't just wander around without a body," Lucy replied reasonably. "I smelled the blood. Why not Delilah? She's cute. And in case you've forgotten, the big bash begins in less than three hours. Xox is already here. Don't you want to meet him?"

Anastasia nodded. Her phosphorescent green eyes glittered in the darkness. "Why not?" I muttered feebly. Lucy laughed and led the way. We took the elevator up, up to the private suite of Xox, the lair of the lord of chaos himself.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 60

2011-08-29T09:59:00.000-07:00

Jesus and I walked to the University of Truth and Justice. It was a pleasant half-hour stroll, meandering through deserted streets lined with the elaborate facades of a more prosperous age, periodically punctuated by the slender spires of forsaken churches. The cool night air held a promise of spring. We sauntered along in silence, sunk in our separate thoughts. Although my stunned eyes had seen Maya gunned down by Rasputin, I still could not comprehend that she was dead, and I found it even harder to believe that Luke had perished. Plots were colliding head-on like vast tectonic plates, crushing my best friends in their mangles.

"Someone will have to break it to Barbie," I said reluctantly.

"Is she here?" I nodded. Jesus took a deep breath. "I will do it," he said at length. "She is my responsibility now."

"I've known her since she was six." I felt oddly jealous but also relieved.

"Sleaze and I were closer than brothers. I take care of what he left behind." Jesus looked at me with heavy hooded eyes.

I shrugged, overcome by his unabashed machismo. "Whatever." I felt numb. I needed a jolt to shake me up, I needed drink and drugs and nostalgic conversation, I needed a wake. And so Jesus and I went to Marek's bar. Barbie and her entourage had disappeared and Marek was closing up. We picked up an assortment of strong spirits, found a convenient terrace with comfortable chairs, and settled in for a long night of serious drinking.

"Nice place Xox has here." Jesus downed his fourth tumbler of tequila, glancing around at the terra cotta and plate glass and track lighting all around us. He idly pinched a buttery fold of leather upholstery between his fingers. "Almost as luxurious as his New York office."

"Were you trying to raise money from Xox?" I asked curiously. "Luke told me that you had gone to New York to meet some old pal of yours who had defected from the Enlightenment and set up his own splinter group."

"I wouldn't describe Xox as an old pal exactly," Jesus replied calmly. "But I did go to New York to meet him, yes."

"Are we talking about the same guy?" I asked in bewilderment. "Grinning bald billionaire..." Jesus nodded. "Why would the richest man in the world be involved with a Marxist revolutionary movement?"

Immanuel peeked his head around the corner at that moment, still in muddy purple robes, followed by Benito, Hachek Katastrofski (as ever, nose first) and Delilah. "So that's where you are," Immanuel said happily. "Barbie and the boys have gone to bed."

"Separately, I hope."

"I can't swear to that. What a girl. Marek told us you were drinking heavily. We've been looking everywhere for you. May we join you?"

Jesus rose and bowed politely. "Jesus Guevara at your service. What's your poison?"

Immanuel beamed. "Whisky, please. Thank you." He sat down between us, knocking over a couple of empty bottles. Delilah's two suitors perched themselves on either edge of the armchair into which she had gracefully subsided. Hachek and Benito glared at each other each time they found their rival staring down into her spectacular cleavage. "This looks like a heavy discussion."

"Jesus here claims that Xox is a closet Marxist."

"Really?" Immanuel exclaimed. "Which closet? Leninist or Maoist?"

"I don't want to get into Marxist theory," Jesus began. I heaved a sigh of relief. "What do you know about the Enlightenment?"

"It's a shadowy movement in Peru trying to bring about a peasant revolution," Delilah responded, clearly a girl used to getting good grades.

"Basically, that's correct. The Enlightenment was started by a university professor who read too much Mao."

"That is how it all starts," hook-nosed Hachek interjected gloomily. "Silly ideas about the dignity of labor."

"Dangerous things, vegetable gardens," Immanuel added.

"There are more peasants than factory workers," Jesus continued. "So the revolution must come from the peasants. The poorest countries in the world are agrarian economies. So the capitalist world-economy can only be overthrown by an alliance of societies ruled by peasant communism."

"Do you actually believe all this, Jesus?" I asked. "You were the chief spokesman for the Enlightenment."

"Well, it is hard to imagine that North Korea and Albania and Cuba are going to rule the world," Jesus agreed. "But the peasants need something to believe in. It's better than believing in a virgin who wants you to have fifteen starving babies."

"What does Xox have to do with all this?"

"He's Enfer Hohdzha's cousin."

"Who?"

"Hohdzha was the chief ideologist of the Albanian communists for forty years. A ruthless megalomaniac who wanted to make Tirana the capital of the world. So he sent his acolytes out to the poorest countries in the world. Their mission was to infiltrate local communist parties and to spread the word. Proletariat bad, peasants good."

"And Xox was sent to Peru?" Immanuel asked incredulously.

"Right. He gave the university professor lots of books by Hohdzha. The cool college kids loved it. More Maoist than Mao. Wow. What a great reason to grow a beard." Jesus gulped down the rest of the tequila, coolly inhaling the worm straight from the bottle. Benito whistled in admiration.

"Did Xox grow a beard?" I asked curiously. "It's hard to imagine him with facial hair."

"He's been bald ever since I've known him," Jesus answered. "Which is almost twenty years."

"You've known him since you were a small child?"

"My parents died for the revolution." Jesus smiled remotely. "How do you think I managed to go to an expensive prep school like Bendover?"

"My mother sent me there to make rich friends," I replied, shame-faced. Yet again I realized how thoroughly I had failed my poor mother.

"Well, I had a full scholarship from the Fund for Peace and Love. Except it wasn't called that back then."

"So how did Xox make his billions?" Immanuel asked.

"And why?" I added.

"He defected."

"What?"

"He changed sides at some stage. He does not talk about it much but I suspect it was when he went to Chicago to study with Otto Hell. That was when he decided that Mao was wrong and that Hohdzha was naive. You see, Xox had to find money for the Enlightenment. Revolutions need guns, bullets, uniforms, boots. And the peasants would rather betray you to the army and collect a reward. They don't want to feed you while you fight for their freedom. Xox saw the obvious answer. Cash crops. He built symbiotic relationships with local peasants, regional cartels, compliant policemen all over Latin America, and flexible politicians everywhere. But this was hot money and these were simple people. After buying their limousines and private jets and penthouses and everything in the fashion magazines and lingerie catalogs, when the money still kept rolling in, they got frightened. Like Midas in the myth, everything they touched was turning to gold and they didn't like it. It was too conspicuous. Xox was glad to help. He was everyone's front man. He invested their money, and, lo and behold, it multiplied even beyond their dreams, safely, far away, in computer printouts and stacks of gold ingots in underground vaults. When the Enlightenment had less than a thousand guerrillas and a bank account bigger than ten billion dollars, Xox saw the irrelevance of the peasant revolution."

"So he moved to Wall Street and became a capitalist?"

"He moved to Wall Street because he was still a communist. But now he knew where Marx and Lenin and Mao and Hohdzha had all gone wrong. They tinkered with movements among the poor, the proletariat, the peasants, the peripheral. But it was the center that was crucial, Xox decided. If he was going to give capitalism a heart attack he had to become a great big lump of fat to choke the system at its core."

"A Master of the Universe," I said dreamily. Finally the connections were all coming together. I still wasn't sure I liked it.

"How do you know all this?" Benito asked.

"He told me."

"Why?"

Jesus chuckled. "I've been working for him for years. We get together once a year usually when he brings together the leaders of all the revolutionary movements he funds. The Sikhs, the Acehnese, the Tamils, the Mindanao people, the Xighurs, the Kashmiris…"

"What does he want?"

Jesus shrugged. "Truth and justice? A better world?"

"Why doesn't he buy himself some better clothes first?" I snapped peevishly. "I hate those baggy grey suits he wears. Why doesn't someone stop him?"

"How do you stop the richest man in the world from giving away all his money?"

"It's not just his money, is it?" Immanuel shrewdly pointed out. "If I understand you correctly, Xox wants to do away with money altogether."

Jesus grinned. "You're right. And lots of people are actually trying to stop him."

"Isn't Xox worried?"

"Hard to tell. He smiles constantly and gives lots of television interviews."

"He's up to something, isn't he?" I asked suspiciously. "An ultimate project. Like all the megalomaniac trillionaires in the James Bond movies."

"I don't know." Jesus smiled serenely, a pock-marked Buddha. "We'll just have to see."

Immanuel let out a resonant belch. "Xox has a dream," he declared drunkenly.

Benito nudged me. "Uh, oh. Time for another sermon."

Immanuel continued, unfazed. "Xox wants a refrigerator for every Chinese peasant and Amerikan hausfrau. He wants each species of animal and plant, fish and fowl to lie together in peace in the New Ark, in their allotted place in the Big Refrigerator filled with frozen genes, awaiting rebirth on a better planet. He wants solar energy and perpetual motion and desalination plants. He wants psychotropic drugs and endless joy." Immanuel reached for his bottle of whisky, missed by a mile, and toppled over with a deafening crash. "Long live Xox! Xox is in us all. I am Xox!"

"No, you're not," Benito replied primly. "You're just drunk."

"Better drunk than stupid," Immanuel replied sharply, resisting our attempts to help him up from the floor. "Get in touch with your instincts, damn you, and stop fussing over me."

A membrane ruptured in my memory. "Instincts!" I exclaimed, draining down my vodka and throwing the empty bottle off the balcony. "Now I remember!. Lady Rudolphine gave me a drug called Basic Instinct and said I would remember when the time was right. Jesus, does Lady Rudolphine know that her son is dead?"

Jesus nodded. "I met her in England yesterday. Xox sent me to Murti Bing's country house. I had to identify the bodies." He smiled coldly and flexed his powerful fingers. "You say these men in purple jumpsuits work for Axel von Schadenfreude? I hope to meet him one of these days. In fact, I'm going on a little manhunt."

"What a good idea." I smiled back. "Let's go scalp the Holy Roman Emperor."

"Is that who he is?" Jesus didn't seem terribly concerned about the potential impact of his regicidal plans on world history. "I'm sorry, amigo, but you can't come. I assassinate better alone. Besides, this is a private vendetta."

"Luke was my friend too," I protested. "And I have my own vendetta with Axel."

Jesus shook his head implacably. "You don't have the training."

I pouted. "Oh, all right, you old feudster. Will you at least bag a couple of purple jumpsuits for me?"

"Did I hear someone mention drugs?" Immanuel spoke up from the floor. "I feel the strong need for a pick-me-up of some sort."

"Of course," I said, reaching into my pocket for the shiny phial of Basic Instinct. "Lady Rudolphine said that it just had to be dropped into any open wound."

"That's good." Immanuel pulled out a shard of glass from his thin ankle. "I'm bleeding like a pig already."

I took the sharp sliver and scratched my wrist. "In memory of Luke Leazy," I whispered huskily, carefully dripping a drop of the silvery fluid into the bright red blood welling up in the wound. "Drug designer extraordinaire and the best of friends."

"Rest in peace." Jesus injected his dose.

"I miss him already and I didn't even know the guy," Immanuel piped up. "Can I have some too?"

"Yes, but wait till you get in touch with your instincts before you try to kill yourself again."

"Ow!" Delilah suddenly screamed. "I cut my foot!"

"Permit me to assist." "Goddamnit, just get out of the way." In their haste to assist Delilah, Hachek and Benito toppled together to the floor. The vial of Basic Instinct flew out of Immanuel's hands and broke with an ominous tinkle. I closed my eyes and covered my ears in an ineffectual attempt to block out the animal grunts of the two powerful young males angrily wrestling on the glass-strewn floor. I could feel my basic instinct coming to the fore: I looked around for escape.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 59

2011-08-28T09:57:00.000-07:00

Interrupted in the reassuringly familiar soap-opera plot of the love triangle, I sulkily answered the phone. "Who the hell is it and what the devil do you want?"

"Hi, dear, this is Maya." My old friend from Oxford sounded amused. "That sweet receptionist of yours put me through to this phone. Are you okay? You sound a little harried."

"Maya darling!" I exclaimed sheepishly. "I never got a chance to thank you for your help in Budapest. Did they throw you in jail?"

"No, I got away safely," Maya replied. "I had a plane to catch. My three friends are still in prison though. They don't mind. Hungarian jails are so cushy compared to the Turkish dungeons they're used to and it's all research anyway for the book we're putting together. It's called the Terrorist's Guide to European Prisons."

"Are you going to cover other continents as well? I have a Peruvian friend who might be interested."

"Oh, what a good idea. We can talk about it when we meet."

"Where are you calling from?"

"Ten kilometres above sea level," Maya replied airily. "From the first class cabin of an airplane about to land in Prague. Are you still available to help?"

I remembered the commitment I had made a lifetime earlier in Berlin to aid Maya in some mysterious terrorist project. I was torn between fatigue and the gratitude I felt for Maya's help in Budapest. "Yes, of course, Maya. I'll get to the airport right away."

Barbie touched my arm as I hung up the phone. "Do you have to go?"

"It's the first time Maya has ever asked for my help, Barb." I looked at my watch. "I'd better go."

"Be careful."

"You be careful." I glowered at the drooling students clustered around my friend, like baby wolves waiting hopefully to nibble at their prey. Sweet Annichka at the reception desk summoned a taxi for me. I told the driver to drive like blazes to the airport. Then I slumped into my seat, closed my eyes, and prayed that I wouldn't be late. The first passengers were just emerging from customs when my taxi screeched up to the arrival area. I ran in and collided into someone. I began blindly to blurt out an apology when I realized that I had bumped into God himself.

"Good God! I mean, good grief! Godfrey, what the devil are you doing here?"

"Same thing as you, old chap. Anxiously awaiting loved ones."

"Whom are you waiting for?" At that moment I glimpsed Maya's slim figure wheeling a laden luggage trolley through customs. She was accompanied by a pudgy woman with grey hair. I guessed it was Nina Hamidi. Besides designing love potions for her rich and famous Berlin clientele, who included my lost love Anastasia, Hamidi was also involved in Maya's terrorist activities. Maya waved and began to wheel her trolley towards us.

"Do I see Maya?" Godfrey murmured lazily. He shook his head in mock bemusement. "What a gathering of the clans. I wonder if she spoke to Rasputin on the flight?"

My jaw dropped open. "Rasputin?"

"Yes. Rasputin. Surely you remember our old bridge partner?" God's eyes locked onto mine with heavy lidded irony.

I gulped. "I thought he was still in Berlin."

"Didn't you hear? I forgot, you only read the comic strips. Quite right too. The story dominated the English newspapers earlier in the week before Princess Fi's miraculous ascension. Meredith, Rasputin's wife, paid a large ransom to free him from some homosexual brothel in Berlin and told all the tabloids that she had done it as a moral duty to save Rasputin from temptation." Godfrey darted me a cool amused glance. "Oddly enough, Rasputin claimed you had something to do with this." Godfrey looked over my shoulder. "Ah, there he is. My, what a limp. Stick around, old chap. I'm sure Rasputin is just dying to see you." Firmly grasping my elbow, Godfrey turned me around. Rasputin and I caught sight of one another at the same moment. Five paces away from me, Maya saw the terror on my face and turned around in puzzlement.

Rasputin let out a wild roar of rage, dropped his overnight bag, wrenched a sub-machine gun away from a policeman standing around the customs exit, and fired a loose burst in my general direction. I dived for cover behind a train of unused luggage trolleys. The bullets whined and clanged off the metal and shattered the plate glass windows behind me. The confused screams of innocent passengers rose high in pain and protest, the frenzied lowing of cows in a slaughter house, punctuated by a wild bull's bellow as Rasputin ran amuck, howling hysterically as he fired off burst after burst of machine gun fire. My heart was pounding in rhythm with the gunfire as I pushed the luggage trolleys towards Rasputin. He didn't notice until it was too late. The trolleys hit his knees with a sickening crunch and he collapsed to the ground, screaming in agony.

Unfortunately, it was also too late for Maya and Nina Hamidi. The machine gun fire had ripped Hamidi apart almost in two. Maya lay in a pool of blood amidst the wreckage of her bags. I knelt besides her and felt for her pulse in a desperate gesture stolen from a bad movie. Her eyes were still closed but she smiled weakly when I brokenly called her name. "Rasputin strikes again," she breathed. "Premature as ever. Why did he have to spoil my surprise?"

"What are you talking about?" I implored.

Maya opened her eyes wide and I gasped in horror. My friend's pretty brown eyes had turned an angelic azure, half-obscured by thick blonde eyelashes. "Recognize me?" she giggled, coughing up a thin pink bubble.

"Lucy!" Horror turned to outrage as it dawned on me that it was the enigmatic Lucy Setton who had struck once again, coolly confiscating yet another body before abandoning it to the murderous instincts of her accomplice fiend, Rasputin. "How dare you?"

I told you this afternoon that I had taken the body of a friend of yours."

"Why?"

"It's like hitch-hiking. It's cheap and you get to eat interesting people."

"But why Maya?"

"She had nothing to live for anyway," the uncanny spirit murmured, reasonably enough. "She's been dead inside ever since her husband and child choked to death on Saddam's mustard gas. You can't live for revenge forever and even terrorism gets boring after a while. Why not go out in a blaze of glory?"

"Who are you to decide?"

"We'll talk about it later." Lucy laughed and Maya died.

I knelt besides the corpse of my friend, holding her limp hand. It seemed the most forlorn gesture in the world. I wiped away angry tears from my eyes and rose heavily to my feet.

Rasputin still lay on the glass-strewn floor of the airport terminal, clutching his knees, moaning, surrounded by a bunch of airport commandos, Kalashnikovs watchfully held at the ready in case the cripple tried to make a getaway. A pudgy policeman in an atrocious suit waddled hurriedly up and began to speak in stentorian tones. Lieutenant Boruvka, the incompetent policeman who had arrested me a couple of months before on suspicion of Lucy's murder, was reading Rasputin his rights. Boruvka had finally done it. He had cracked his case without even knowing it.

I smiled to myself. It was a mistake. Smiles make Czechs suspicious, especially Czech policemen. Boruvka's jaw dropped open and I could see the wires short-circuiting behind his protuberant excitable eyes. Before he could order his bewildered cohorts to arrest me, I made a dash for freedom.

Luckily, the driver of the first taxi idling outside was a Slovak with little love for Czech policemen. Flagrantly ignoring the flashing sirens and blaring horns of their dinky little Skoda police cars, the driver gunned his powerful BMW taxi around the winding hills on the outskirts of Prague, turning abruptly in the middle of a broad street where he reversed and roared straight up the special lane reserved for trams. Stopping just short of an approaching tram, the driver wedged his taxi onto a pavement and drove at manic speeds around the blind corners and twisted lanes of Prague's picturesque city center. Finally pulling up with a flourish on Wenceslas Square, the driver smiled, contentedly twisted the ends of his thick black moustache, and declined my grateful offers of large sums of hard currency. "I used to drive stunt cars in Soviet spy movies," he explained. "Reminded me of the good old days. No sweat."

After persuading the driver to accept a few hundred dollars to buy candy for his children, I darted down a narrow alley and found myself in a smaller dimly lit square. I could hear the wailing sirens of approaching police cars growing louder, but what was this other noise which was also growing louder?

Just as the first policemen came running up, the square exploded with sound. A troupe of immensely fat men dressed in purple satin tunics and wide pink trousers came goose-stepping through the square, each puffing hard on shiny brass instruments or banging lustily on rattle-drums. Marching steadily on, the band relentlessly pushed the protesting policemen back down the dark alley. I blinked but just as the first troupe had disappeared, another brass band came stomping into the square, louder than their predecessors in both volume and costume, wearing furry outfits striped in fluorescent orange and pink with stiff curly tails. I put a hand to my feverish head and blinked again in an effort to dispel the hallucinations, but to no avail: a third band of swarthy men in Peruvian ponchos now filled the square, dancing in a circle as they strummed strange-shaped guitars and played plaintively on wooden pipes.

I took my courage in both hands and went up to one of the Peruvians. "Excuse me, sir," I stammered. "But what is going on?"

"Why, it's the annual European street music competition," the Peruvian replied in perfect English tinged with an American accent. "How convenient that you showed up. I was about to come and see you." He sounded amused. I looked with incredulity at his kindly pock-marked face and fainted.

When I came to, we were alone in the square. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. "Jesus. Am I dreaming?"

"Nope. It's me, all right," Jesus Guevara, my old friend from prep school, confirmed. "Surprised?"

"I thought you were in New York."

"I was." A shadow crossed Jesus's face. "I had to come to Europe suddenly."

"Why?"

"Can you handle a bad shock?"

I breathed deeply and nodded. "I think so. I've seen an old friend machine-gunned down before my eyes, been chased by the police all over town, been saved by a stunt taxi driver, scared silly by brass bands, and run into you. Yes, I think I can handle most shocks."

"Luke is dead. Along with the other drug designers in Murti Bing's team. They were murdered in cold blood by the men in purple jumpsuits. Are you all right?"

I nodded dumbly. More dead friends and more weird plots. It never rains but it pours.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 58

2011-08-27T09:55:00.000-07:00

I am almost always late, not because I don't value other people's time but because I invariably get caught by some old bore who wants to jabber into my ear. After fifteen minutes of insincerely reassuring Professor Masaryk that everything would be all right, really, if he just took a vitamin, I finally managed to escape, just half an hour late for my date with Barbie. Luckily, she knew my habits: I found her in Marek's bar, surrounded by a gaggle of male students. Technology really has changed the world: every red-blooded Central European male under the age of thirty has seen my starlet friend's recent work in such frat classics as The Booze Brothers and Secret Sorority Showers.

"I think my all-time favorite scene was when you crawled out of the beer keg," Fyodor was telling Barbie as I walked into the room. Alexei and Andrei, the art historian twins from Moldova, nodded in intelligent agreement, drooling down Barbie's cleavage.

"I'm so glad you liked it!" Barbie grinned luminously. "I caught an awful cold shooting that scene. That was in Firemen's Party VI. I didn't know anyone had watched that far…"

"Actually, it was in Firemen's Party VII," Fyodor corrected her. "I have seen all twelve movies in that series. At least five times each."

"You were the highlight of my teenage years," Grigori told Barbie, a far away look in his dark eyes. I snickered to myself, trying to imitate that romantic look. Grigori was the University Don Juan. He had seduced every single girl in his department, and a few married ones as well.

"Oh, that's so sweet." Barbie was close to melting. I coughed ostentatiously and joined the group. Barbie turned to me, her eyes shining. "These guys are just adorable. They've seen all my movies."

"And I've seen all their moves." I looked at Grigori severely. "Isn't Svetlana waiting up for you?"

Shame-faced, Grigori mumbled an excuse and drifted off. Barbie frowned at me. "Why are you coming over all big brother?" she said mutinously. "So what if he's married?"

"It's a Russian marriage."

"What's that?"

"You've heard of Russian roulette?"

"All the Russian students have spouses and children at home," Fyodor explained. "None of them knew each other before they came to Prague. But within two weeks of arriving here, they were neatly organised into couples. Naturally, they are all insanely jealous since they have so little time together. Grigori's wife for the year is Svetlana. He has already cheated on her with every girl he can find. If he didn't cheat, he wouldn't feel married."

Barbie was taken aback. "How peculiar."

"Yes, well, Russians are like that." Fyodor leered.at Barbie "Now Ukrainians, on the other hand…"

"Fyodor, what's the matter with you?" I asked, astonished. "Are you drunk?"

"With love!" Fyodor declaimed theatrically. "You bring us a star from Heaven and expect us not to fall in love? We have blood in our veins, not ice!"

"You've got alcohol in your veins, and Barbie is actually a starlet from Kalifornia," I replied tartly. "I've never seen you so drunk before."

"Just a few bottles of pepper vodka, my friend." Fyodor belched drunkenly. "Strictly medicine. To get over the shock…"

"What shock?"

"The shock of seeing our esteemed Professor Novak dragged away by the Czech police. Oh, the screaming and shouting, the wailing and weeping…"

"Marek, call a hospital. Poor Fyodor is having some sort of fit."

"No, he is telling the truth," Alexei said tremulously. Andrei nodded vehemently. "We were sitting in the lecture today and Professor Novak was talking about Deride's theory of meaninglessness. It was after lunch and so we were taking a nice little nap. Just then the door burst open and this fat policeman came storming in with a whole detachment…"

"At least fifty of them," Andrei confirmed.

"And they dragged poor Professor Novak away."

"On what charge?"

"The fat policeman called Professor Novak a pervert."

"Which is true enough."

"But not enough reason to arrest him."

"They called him the Park Killer," Fyodor said sententiously from the floor where he had gradually slumped. "He killed poor Lucy."

"No, he didn't…" I said, aghast at the thought of that mild-mannered aesthetic philosopher in the clutches of Lieutenant Boruvka.

"Yes, he did," Fyodor insisted. "By process of elimination they had figured out that Professor Novak was the only person who knew Lucy and who had been in Prague during the right time period. So they got a search warrant to raid Novak's apartment. And they found all these trophies from all his previous victims, skin, nipples, toenails, nose-rings. He was assembling a big mannequin."

"Oh my god." Barbie shuddered. She looked worriedly at the group of students pressing around her. "This maniac was your professor?"

"He was the head of the department of Culture," Fyodor said with slow relish. "Totally crazy. He confessed to everything. Except Lucy. He said he had nothing to do with her murder. Apparently he went crazy after Divka divorced him. That's when he started picking up prostitutes. He was desperate for human contact…"

"Philosophers get that way," I agreed. "Does Divka know?"

"Novak told them he would only confess if Divka was there. So he calmly told them about all his murders. And then at the end he turned to her and told her he still loved her."

"How romantic."

"She seems to think so. She has been there all day. Immanuel is going crazy with jealousy. I think he has gone to do something really bad. I was trying to stop him but he wouldn't listen." Fyodor tilted his head and sucked back the last of his vodka. "He will get killed and I will feel guilty. That is why I am drinking. It numbs the pain in advance."

"Oh hell." I was worried. "I just hope he won't jump from this building."

Benito came running into the bar. "I can't find her," he announced breathlessly. "Have you seen her anywhere?"

"Who?"

"Lila. If Manny has touched a hair on her head, I swear I'll scalp him," Benito said fiercely. His broad chest quivered. Barbie shivered.

"Why do you think Immanuel would do something to Delilah?" I asked.

"He's missing. She's missing. What do you think?" Benito asked jealously.

"Maybe she's with someone else."

"Oh fuck. Hachek." Benito tottered to the bar. Marek poured him a whisky. Benito tried to slug it back but it went the wrong way when Immanuel made his dramatic entrance.

Enter (stage right) IMMANUEL, his hair standing straight up in a frizzy brown halo, contentedly wiping off the mud and blood from his hands onto his purple robes.

BENITO: cough, cough

IMMANUEL (dramatically): Arise, my children, for the kingdom of heaven is at hand. Lucifer cavorts with the angels, the morning star is brightest at high noon. And behold, the son of man shall learn from the trees, for they neither toil nor spin, but perpetually move in the wind. The sun pours down its gold and the leaves stay forever green. The mysteries shall now unravel, and the stranger in your midst shall save ye. Arise, my children, for the day of revelations is close at hand.

BENITO: cough, cough

FYODOR (sotto voce): That's the kind of lecture Immanuel has been giving us recently in his Philosophy of Revelation class.

ME (cautiously): Immanuel, where did you get those robes?

IMMANUEL (contentedly): From a bishop.

ME: Did the bishop just give you his robes?

IMMANUEL: Yes. At gunpoint. I was wandering about in the park by the train station when I saw the bishop and knew I had to have his robes. I asked him nicely but he wouldn't obey so I pulled out my gun. (Immanuel holds out his gun. It is a water pistol.) I took him to a nice quiet phone booth and told him to strip. Then I put on the robes and squirted him with the gun and skipped away.

ME: You left the poor bishop in a phone booth?

IMMANUEL: It seemed like the safest place to leave a naked bishop.

BENITO: cough, cough.

Enter (stage left) DELILAH, followed by HACHEK KATASTROFSKI. BENITO springs to his feet in an agony of jealousy.

BENITO: Lila! Where have you been?

DELILAH (surprised): Hachek took me to a movie.

BENITO: You went with him?

DELILAH: What's your problem?

BENITO: I love you.

DELILAH (scornfully): You don't even know me.

BENITO: But I love you.

DELILAH: I heard you the first time round. I love you too but I'm not in love with you.

BENITO (screaming): Aaaaaghhh!!!

DELILAH: Benito, you're like the boy next door. Hachek is different. (HACHEK smirks.) He has this aura of evil. The way he looks at me makes me shudder. He's every mother's worst fear… (BENITO gags. He waves his fist at HACHEK who cocks a snoot back. DELILAH catches her two suitors making horrible faces at each other.) Oh, take a vitamin, you two!

BARBIE (puzzled): Is it always like this around here?

ME: Often.

Just then the phone rings. MAREK picks it up and hands it to me. "It's for you."

#GenghizInLove: Episode 57

2011-08-26T09:53:00.000-07:00

I followed Hell to the boardroom. Hell threw himself into his usual canvas camp chair, which he perversely insisted was infinitely more comfortable than the butter-soft leather armchairs that lined the gleaming conference table. I timidly moved towards a corner of the room, but Hell waved me over to his side. I was nervously aware of Professor Masaryk's disapproving glower, but then cheered up when I saw Lady Monica Bigglesworth-Fume scrunch up her eyes and lips in what looked like a smile. Lady Monica was sitting next to Terence Killjoy-Yuck. I shuddered, appalled at the sight of my old Oxford tutor. Instrumental in sending me to Prague in the first place as the fall guy in his covert plots against Xox, what brought this suave vulture to Prague again, lazily flapping in to gorge on fresh bleeding kill? Next to him was a stocky red-haired man with a perpetually pugnacious expression on his bulldog face. I instantly recognized Blodgett Scrotum, England's most notorious conservative philosopher. Scrotum was engaged in conversation with a short balding man with a thick neck and barrel chest, famous Polish dissident turned pornographic journalist, Cain Piknik. The only person at the table I didn't know by sight was a trim man with a shock of white hair and a black suit whose perfect cut made my mouth water. I regretfully recalled that I still hadn't called my mother to beg for money. I needed new clothes badly.

"Right. Let's get started." Hell silenced the quiet chatter as usual with a noisy thump of his walking stick on the conference table. "Got lots to discuss."

"Are we not missing some people, Otto?" Professor Masaryk quavered. "Also I do not recognise the gentleman in black…"

"Gunter Otto Troll," Hell replied. Gott uncrossed his folded arms and waved a hand. I nodded approvingly at his daring pink tie. "He has taken over the European Studies department."

"But where is our colleague Attila Ugh? I do not like him but surely he should be here for a meeting of the University's trustees."

"Ugh has resigned." A quiet wave of shock rocked the room. "As some of you may know, Xox was held captive in the Budapest College last week until my special assistant here freed him, using some rather unorthodox means."

"Always this boy causes trouble!" Professor Masaryk shook his fist at me.

"This intervention has somewhat precipitated matters," Hell continued. "Ugh and his cronies have come out in their true colours. The Budapest College has seceded from the University of Truth and Justice." Hell raised an embossed parchment. "They have formed their own University of Ruthless Justice and declared war on us."

"The Warsaw College has received an invitation to join this new university," Piknik confirmed. "Budapest has offered us West Slovakia and Northern Bohemia if we join them. I am here to hear your counter-offer."

"Two billion dollars for the Warsaw College and the majority share in Playtoy magazine for you," Hell replied briefly. "Take it or leave it."

"Done," Piknik replied, settling back comfortably in his chair. His small eyes glinted with satisfaction. "Real estate is the most over-rated investment."

"I always said Ugh was a megalomaniac," Masaryk declared with satisfaction. "He was never content with being merely the Director of the Budapest College. He always wanted to be university rector…"

"Actually, they have appointed a new rector. Albert Lumpkin."

"Bert Lumpkin?" Troll asked incredulously. "I thought he was in Paraguay with all the other Nazis."

"Apparently not." Hell sighed and rubbed his eyes. In that moment, he looked old and vulnerable. "I take this personally," he explained. "Lumpkin was a student of mine at Chicago. Took my game theory course along with Troll here and Xox. But Lumpkin always played dirty. Failed him for cheating. He became a strategist for the U.S. Defense Department during the Vietnam war. Worked for Kissinger for a while, then headed down to South America and became cozy with all the dictators. Military advisor to the most repressive military regimes on the continent. Excellent strategist. Eminence grise behind Somoza, Stroessner, Tourniquet…

"Tourniquet!" Blodgett Scrotum said indignantly. "Lord Hades, I must protest your description of that noble man. The Generalissimo is a hero in the cause of freedom."

"Lady Snatcher has just awarded Generalissimo Tourniquet the very first Gold Medal of the Snatcher Foundation," Terence confirmed.

"If Ugh is allied to Lumpkin who used to work for Tourniquet, then my allegiances are clear," Scrotum declared confusingly. "I have no choice but to secede as well. Monica, come!"

"Sorry, Blodgett," Lady Monica replied regretfully. "Free enterprise is all very well but I draw the line at torture."

"But Monica, my dear, ordinary people do not always know what is in their own best interest," Scrotum spluttered. "The masses must be taught to be free. Torture is just another form of education. Think of it as corporal punishment. Firmness is necessary. I was most impressed with the effectiveness of capital punishment during my recent exile in Texas."

"Oh, do stop being so tiresome, Blodgett!" Lady Monica said with asperity. "Texas has changed you. You sound positively Stalinist!"

Scrotum drew himself up to his full height, preparing to respond, but was obviously unable to come up with a sufficiently crushing retort. He turned on his heel and stomped out of the room, ostentatiously ignoring Lady Rudolphine who entered as he left.

"What's he upset about now?" Lady Rudolphine asked lightly.

"Oh, Aunt!" Lady Monica burst into tears. "I've lost the man of my dreams…" she sobbed.

"Nightmare, really," Lady Rudolphine responded unsympathetically. "Pull yourself together, Monica. I've had quite enough weepiness to deal with this week."

"Were you with her Majesty?" Terence asked curiously. "How is she taking Princess Fi's unexpected demise?"

"Badly." Lady Rudolphine sighed. "The poor thing was never taught how to drink. So she glugs champagne straight from the bottle and the bubbles go to her head causing wild exhilaration for fifteen minutes before she's down in the dumps again, whining about how her subjects don't love her anymore. And the Princes are of no use at all since it is shooting season in Scotland and they are all out with the guns. She was nearly apoplectic this morning when she heard the Pope's announcement."

"I thought the Pope was in a coma," Piknik said.

"On life support, I believe. The one in Vienna made the announcement."

"The Pope in Vienna?" Even Hell looked mystified.

"You haven't heard?" Lady Rudolphine chuckled. "Our old friend the Cardinal declared himself Pope this morning after the Vatikan doctors refused to turn off the old Pope's life support machine. His first act as Pope was to sanctify Princess Fi."

"Clever move." Hell sounded impressed. "Wins popular support"

"Right. Now they just have to get rid of everyone who knew Saint Fi personally."

"Is that what upset Her Majesty this morning?" I wondered why Terence looked quite so happy.

"She's always been terrified of assassination." Lady Rudolphine nodded. "I barely managed to keep her from abdicating this morning."

"What a blow that would be to our royal family." Terence surreptitiously rubbed his hands together.

"Be a dear and check the latest news," Lady Rudolphine urged me.

I was back two minutes later. "No news about the Queen. But the new Pope, His Holiness Maximilian the First has crowned His Excellency Axel von Schadenfreude as the new Holy Roman Emperor," I announced gravely, reading out the news release I had picked up on the internet. "The coronation took place in Bratislava about an hour ago."

"Why Bratislava?" Masaryk asked, Czech chauvinist to the core. "It is just a small provincial Slovak city."

"Bratislava was chosen because of its historic past as the coronation city of the Holy Roman Emperors," I continued reading. "The historic name of Pressburg has once again been restored to the city."

"Bratislava is an hour's drive from Vienna," Hell said soberly. "And halfway between Budapest and Prague."

"You mean…" Masaryk looked terrified.

Hell nodded and raised the parchment he had received from Budapest. "We need to take this declaration of war very seriously."

#GenghizInLove: Episode 56

2011-08-25T10:00:00.000-07:00

"Get to work!" Otto Hell ordered the next afternoon when I finally showed up after many aspirins and pots of strong espresso. "Set up the big bash for this weekend. I've called a meeting of the board of trustees this evening. Confirm Xox's attendance. And what about that historical research on the Schadenfreude family? We need some hard evidence."

My hangover grew worse instantly. I pouted. "What are you going to do?"

My boss put his hairy arm around Pipi's slender waist and smirked. "It's a nice afternoon. We're going fishing." Hell looked at my bleary face for a moment. "You been taking street drugs again? Take a vitamin, damn it. You look dreadful."

I popped a pill and then another. The dark clouds lifted almost instantly. I felt speedy, even belligerent. After some hard bargaining with various caterers and fireworks experts, I walked into my temporary office, placed my feet, cigarettes, and hip flask on the desk, and pulled the ashtray and telephone toward me. I was ready for combat. It was time to call New York. I punched in one of the numbers listed under Exponential Investments in the slim university phone book. "X-O-X Foundation," a cracked voice whined. "Koroviev speaking."

Koroviev. With incredible speed and precision, my memory recalled that Koroviev had cleaned up after Lucy's death. He had also contacted Luke on behalf of the X-O-X Foundation. How did I remember this? Normally I couldn't even remember the names of people I had met an hour before. Clearly the vitamins were affecting my memory. I frowned. A bad memory was so convenient. My closest relatives and best friends had long since reconciled themselves to never receiving birthday cards. Strangers came up and threw their arms around me and I bore their effusions with equanimity, knowing that I would forget their faces again within the minute. A good memory imposes responsibility and the quality I like most about myself is my utter incapacity to be responsible about anything. If I was going to remember things I would have to act like an altogether different person. I shrugged. I had an interesting lead on the line and there was no time for existential questions.

"Monsieur Koroviev," I said warmly. "How are you?"

"Fine, thank you," the whiny voice replied hesitantly. "Who is this?"

"Come on, big guy. I work for Lord Hades. I'm his special assistant."

"Nero Insanetti?"

"Of course not," I said cheerily. "Nero is gone. Didn't you know?"

"Of course..." Koroviev whined. "What can I do for you?"

"Would you happen to know how I can reach my friend Luke Leazy?" I asked easily. "We just don't seem to have Murti Bing's place listed in our confidential phone directory. I thought you might know..."

There was a sharp intake of breath. "You don't know?"

"What don't I know?"

"Please speak to Mister Xox himself about this," Koroviev replied formally and then he hung up.

I shrugged, mystified. I had to invite Xox to the Europe conference anyway. After the usual hassles with various clerical intermediaries, an obstacle course which I hurdled with ease, dropping Otto Hell's name whenever I felt like it, I was put through to a mobile phone number in London, a special line to the great man's special assistant herself.

"This is Lord Hades' special assistant at the University of Truth and Justice in Prague," I recited for the hundredth time. "May I speak to Mister Xox please?"

" So you finally learned how to say his name." The voice sounded pleased.. "Thanks for saving his butt in Budapest the other day. I couldn't get there in time. Couldn't find a spare body. In New York City, can you imagine?"

"Excuse me?"

"You used to call him Mister X. You even called him Socks once. I bet you learned it from your friend at the Amerikan Embassy. What was his name, Steele?" The voice giggled. "He was cute."

"Steele was transferred to Tirana. He's still there as far as I know," I replied faintly.

"Tirana, huh? Think Steele managed to find out anything in Albania about Our Master? Or was my mysterious death just a red herring to distract attention?"

"Who is this?"

"It's Lucy, silly." I could almost hear her skip for joy.

"That was you in Berlin, wasn't it? The torch singer with Old Nick and the Fallen Angels? In that dreadful nightclub, Holle?"

"Lucie Settonova," the voice confirmed. "That was fun. I've never been a torch singer before and it was such a relief after being a boring Mormon."

"Did you kill her?"

"Who, me? I was the victim. Ask the Berlin police. About the brutal murder of a young Czech au pair with a husky voice and a fondness for nose rings. Actually, I wouldn't advise asking the police. They would probably arrest you again. And that's no fun, is it?" The voice giggled again. "You might ask Rasputin. When you see him again."

"Who the hell are you?"

"Lucy. Mister Xox's valued special assistant."

"Whose body do you inhabit right now?"

"You know her. In fact, she's a good friend of yours."

"Oh shit. Who is it?"

"I'm not telling..." Lucy teased.

I took a deep breath. "Do you snatch bodies often?"

"Whenever I get bored. Which happens quite frequently."

"So I see. Will you tell Xox that Hell is arranging a conference this weekend?"

"He knows. He'll be there. I'll show up too. When you least expect it."

"Don't change bodies before then. I mean, please don't murder any more of my friends, okay?"

"I can't promise that, silly. You're in for a shock, though..."

"I can't wait." I hung up the phone and grabbed my head. It was still there. My increasingly frequent encounters with the supernatural were imbuing me with a profound appreciation of the simple pleasures of life. Like the fact that I had a head. Safely attached to my body, albeit with a scrawny neck. One couldn't have everything. Or could one? With a little help from one's special friends? Whom did Lucy call when she wanted to dispose of her current body and Rasputin wasn't around? Was Rasputin back in action after all? I was suddenly very afraid. How would Rasputin have felt about me when he woke up from his coma and found himself sold to a Berlin brothel for hardened homosexuals by his erstwhile best friend? Would he still like me? More to the point, would he want to kill me?

I pulled myself together. My personal feelings had nothing to do with it. I had a job to do and I was, after all, a special assistant. Like Lucy. I remembered Nero Insanetti, who too had been fond of boasting about his special status. And look what had happened to him. I didn't want to start frothing at the mouth and sobbing at meetings and threatening to kill inoffensive strangers just because they resembled the Antichrist. I resolved to take better care of myself. I would take more drugs and indulge my personal feelings shamelessly.

I stared out of the large plate glass window. The view was spectacular, a panoramic picture of Prague, faded red rooftops and a thousand spires stretched out beneath me, a broken medieval mosaic, or a complex jigsaw puzzle, or an intricate web. The maze stretched out beyond my sight but I knew that the horizon was no limit, that beyond its horizontal, billions of people were eating, sleeping, working, plotting, rushing to and fro, teeming, struggling to escape the long confines of their particular place in the puzzle, hoping to reach some still center. It seemed to me that all the lines of the labyrinth were leading now to this building where I sat, small, motionless. In that silent instant, I became suddenly aware of the movement of the earth, the unending rotation of the planet, the wild whirl of the world, a greater game than all the plots of power in which I was now embroiled, and I rejoiced.

But then I sighed and stared morosely at the fat studbook in front of me. The music of the spheres was fun enough to listen to but I would face an altogether different music if I didn't do my long overdue historical research. I had no intention of getting a tongue-lashing from Hell: I began dutifully to pore over the tiny print, tracing the intricate pattern of marriages which wove the Schadenfreude family inextricably together with the more obscure offshoots of the Gapsburg dynasty, a narrowing trail of drooping lower lips and hooded eyes and an appetite for mad violence which finally led to the abominable Axel von Schadenfreude, and I was so engrossed in this maze of intrigue and intermarriage that I did not notice Hell standing behind me until he tapped me on the shoulder.

"Enough work for now," Hell said almost kindly. "Come along and have some wine. Most of the trustees are here for the meeting."

"Who's here?"

"Some old friends." Hell grinned. "And one or two you haven't yet met."

"You're not planning to kill anyone tonight, are you?" I asked in alarm.

"Asking questions again," Hell reproved. "Just sit in a corner and take notes. The big stuff will take care of itself. Just sweat the small stuff."

#GenghizInLove: Episode 55

2011-08-24T10:00:00.000-07:00

Ce..le…brate

All night long!

Come on!!

It's a ce… le… bra…shun!!!

Dance music blared triumphantly through giant loudspeakers on all four sides of the enormous room. Strobe lights pulsed in hypnotic rhythm, bouncing spangled reflections off the kaleidoscopic mirror-ball hanging from the ceiling. We shoved our way towards the bar. The Moxie was Prague's hottest nightclub, a converted movie palace in the heart of Prague's art deco Old Town district. The seats had all been ripped out and the big screen resembled an abstract expressionist work-in-progress on which the kids practised their graffiti skills. The place was packed with Prague's hippest: little teeny-boppers in tied-dye rags and piercings on every conceivable body part, cool party-girls with spiked white hair and black band-aid skirts barely covering their shapely hips, battered old hippies with long ponytails and vacant looks in their rheumy bloodshot eyes. The air was thick with tobacco smoke and incense and the pungent odor of home-grown pot. The drug-dealers and prostitutes plied their wares surreptitiously in corners under the benevolent eye of the blatantly plain-clothed and easily bribed policemen, and yet an odd innocence prevailed: this was, after all, the capital of Bohemia.

Lulu, Stash, Barbie and I lolled against the bar and let the world flow by. "Psst, want some X?" The bartender whispered, taking us in with a practised eye.

"Not for me, thanks." Having inadvertently eaten a Truth sandwich on the way back from Budapest, I felt all drugged out. "Just another beer…"

"Ecstasy? I'd like a hit," Barbie said brightly. I tut-tutted at my little friend. She stuck her pointy tongue at me and grimaced horribly. "Want some, Lulu?"

"Of course, darling," Lulu replied. "Stash will have some too."

"Will it wake me up?" Stash asked dubiously. "I'm not sure I want that."

"Oh, don't be so grumpy. You two grouches can just hang out here and get smashed. Barbie and I are going to have some fun." The two girls popped their pills and pranced off to cavort on the dance floor, instantly drawing a circle of drooling men around them, like iron filings to a pair of magnets. Stash and I took our beers to a table and slumped into companionable silence, grunting occasionally, asking for a match, the occasional appreciative head jerk indicating an exceptionally cute chick, a casual sexist slur here, a bigoted remark there… Male bonding is so undemanding.

"Pretty girl, Barbie," Stash said. "She good in bed?"

"We've never slept together." Stash raised an interrogative eyebrow. I shrugged. "I've known her since she was six."

"Never stopped me. I had slept with every girl in my neighbourhood by the time I was fourteen."

"Yeah but that was in Katholic Poland. You had repressions to overcome."

"And you didn't in laid-back Kalifornia?"

I shuddered. The Truth drug was wearing off but I still felt an insane compulsion to confess everything. Just then a deafening drum roll induced a momentary hush. All the lights went out and we were enshrouded in inky darkness. "Ladies and gentlemen!" an excited voice boomed. "We have the pleasure to present this evening an extraordinary entertainment… A surprise performance by the one and only… Artist Who Dares Not Speak His Name!" After an instant of stunned silence, loud cheers and shrill whistles resounded through the night club. I stuck my fingers in my ears and watched the graffiti-laden big screen lift up, revealing a makeshift stage. Dry ice billowed everywhere and amp;$%*=$ leaped onto the stage and struck up a fast and furious rendition of his notorious classic "Black Wedding":

Baby I don't care what you feel

As long as you do what I tell you

You can dress up in rags

Or just crawl in a sack

Nobody will come to save you

Don't ask for a bedtime story

'Cause it’s a

Black wedding

Always wanting to be bad

Go straight down to hell

You can rip off your shirt

And wax the hair on your breasts

And play rebel-rebel

Don't ask for a fairy tale ending

'Cause it's a

Black wedding

amp;$%*=s managers were quick to deny reports of the reclusive artist's surprise performance in Prague when reports spread like wildfire on the internet the next day. "It must have been an imposter," one spokeswoman insisted. "amp;$%*=$ would never travel without his pet chimpanzee!" However, I remain convinced that the Artist I saw that night at Moxie was the real thing: the patented MarswalkTM had the authentic dragging lethargy and the slow wiggle of the hips at each refrain bore undeniable testimony to the Artist's distinguished history as a topless go-go dancer. I sat in my chair, goggle-eyed, and when the whole thing was over and amp;$%*=$ had vanished as unexpectedly as he had appeared, I was barely able to walk weakly to the bar and beg the bartender for a bit of X.

"Did you see that?" Barbie demanded, wide-eyed. "That was…"

"amp;$%*=$. Yes, I know, Barb. I took you to see him in concert on your thirteenth birthday, remember?"

"I saw him just last week at your mom's place. He was serenading her."

"Oh fuck." I winced. "Did I miss her birthday again?"

"You're in big-time trouble, boy. She'll leave me all her money if you don't watch out."

"Were you sucking up to her again?"

"I just happened to be visiting my parents in Caramel-by-the-Sea," Barbie replied innocently. "And my mom was having her nails done…"

"At Nails-by-the-Sea…"

"Which happens to be next to Salon-by-the-Sea where your mom was having her hair done before her birthday party."

I shuddered. "Was it big?"

"Not really. Just a couple of thousand people."

"And the Artist sang Happy Birthday. What devotion."

"It was all over the newspapers that week."

"The tabloids, you mean."

"Yeah, whatever." Barbie only read the National Busybody and Tittle Tattle. "Anyway, your mom misses you. She told me so. And I saw the tears in her eyes."

"She can turn them on and off like a tap," I replied indifferently. "They taught her how to do that in the days of the silent movies."

"You're so mean."

"I'm her son. You want to dance?"

Barbie and I went out under the lights and swayed our limbs in wild abandon, letting the staccato rhythm of the rave sweep through our bones. Time ceased in that ecstatic moment and I was free, anonymous, without attachment or history or famous mother as the sweat dripped down my nameless face and my heart pounded to the beat of the music. Lulu had persuaded Stash to join in, and the four of us danced through the night, an orgy of movement punctuated only by frequent visits to the bar and toilet. I guzzled bottle after bottle of mineral water, savouring its bitter saltiness. My thirst was as endless as the night.

But all good things come to an end, just as they should, and my friends and I walked out of the night club into a cold blue dawn. We walked down a long deserted boulevard, past a solitary tram making its stately progress, its lights pale gold against the lightening sky. The pale blue was taking on a rosy flush by the time we crossed the Vltava at Charles Bridge, taking deep breaths of the frosty smoke-scented morning air, expelling the night's detritus from our lungs.

"So you guys won't stay here for a few days?"

Lulu shook her head. "It's been lovely to spend time with you, sweetheart, but we must get back to Berlin today. I've got to finish my manuscript. The publishers are waiting with bated breath and they've been so patient, poor darlings. And Stash has to work on his movie…"

"Will he find someone to replace Anastasia?"

"It shouldn't be too hard. Lots of ambitious actresses out there. Will you be able to replace her as easily, my poor baby?"

I sighed. "I don't know, Lu. I have to find the right girl."

"Lots of pretty airheads out there," Lulu said reassuringly. "Just keep hanging out at night clubs and taking drugs. Things will work out." She cast a sidelong glance at Barbie, striding along beside Stash, chattering away happily. "I like Barbie. What about her?"

"I can't do that," I said, shocked. I looked back surreptitiously at Barbie's bright face and opulent curves. "She's my friend."

"You are allowed to fall in love with your friends, you know," Lulu chided.

"Yeah, but Barbie is going out with my friend Luke," I replied weakly.

"What's that got to do with it? You've known her longer than he has."

I played my trump card. "My mother likes her."

"That does make it difficult. Are you sure you can't overcome this obsession you have with annoying your mother, angel?"

"No," I said rebelliously. "It's my one principle."

"Ah well," Lulu observed philosophically. "I prefer not to have any principles at all. But then I am a married woman so I can afford it."

"But I am running short of money so I will call my mother and wish her happy birthday."

"Darling, how reasonable of you. Let's go find a pub somewhere and have sausages and beer. This calls for a celebration!"

#GenghizInLove: Episode 54

2011-08-23T10:00:00.000-07:00

The scene has become a visual cliché now, after Stash's notorious depiction in Escape from the Temple, the blockbuster mega-hit which finally earned him Hollywood dollars in addition to the usual critical acclaim; even beer ads on television now parody that famous moment when a troop of nuns scrambled six flights of stairs down a fire escape, hitched up their skirts and ran through the traffic snarled up as usual on Budapest's busiest boulevard, chased by a horde of husky men in tight purple jumpsuits. One devout old lady suffered a minor stroke when the wimple flew off Xox's beaming bald head as he ran past her car, causing irate motorists for several blocks behind to impatiently honk their horns, in turn causing the Prime Minister, engaged in a fiery parliamentary debate, to briefly consider resigning. A survey commissioned by the Archdiocese some weeks later confirmed the Archbishop's worst fears: nuns had plummeted in public opinion to a status barely higher than policemen although still substantially above lawyers and journalists.

"Phew!" Lulu said breathlessly, as we found shelter in a dark alcove behind a fast food stand on the Danube embankment. "Are we safe yet?"

Stash stuck his head out for a peek. "For now," he replied cautiously.

"Oh good." Lulu pulled off her habit and straightened her hair.

"Good idea." Barbie followed Lulu's example. "I'm hungry."

"I could use a coffee." The two girls ordered refreshments from the fast food vendor, a dissatisfied middle-aged man who couldn't take his eyes off his gorgeous customers. Stash, Xox and I also disrobed but we didn't get nearly the same level of service. We sat calmly around a table, sipping cappuccinos and soaking up the pale winter sunlight, transformed in that moment into lazy tourists enjoying a well-deserved vacation from mayhem and chaos.

"So what did you find out?" I asked Lulu.

"So much resistance to telling the truth. Got some juicy stuff though." Lulu peeked sideways at Xox. The great man's head was thrown back and his mouth was slightly open. An incipient snore gurgled forth. Lulu and Barbie giggled.

"With whom did you get into a fight?" I asked Stash, who was applying a cube of ice to his black eye.

"Nectarini."

"My hero," Lulu trilled, solicitously taking the ice cube from her husband and deftly dropping it down his neck. "My big strong man got into a fight to defend my honour, didn't he?"

"Nobody is going to call you names in my presence," Stash said firmly. "Except me."

"I must say I would never have got engaged to Nectarino if I had known his true opinion of women," Lulu said. "Italian men... I didn't know Nectarino could even speak but there he was, yelling away, calling me a two-timing unfaithful bitch. And Luciano was nodding away too, even though I only slept with him once when we were at Oxford."

"What did Godfrey have to say about it?"

"Ah God. He just sat there watching calmly. We went around the table, you know, confession time, and when it was God's turn he just admitted that he totally bored with everything."

"Which makes him a very dangerous person," Stash commented soberly.

"Was he representing Terence at this meeting?"

Lulu nodded. "Terence couldn't make it because he was at some ceremony in London deifying Lady Snatcher. So he sent Godfrey."

"Did Godfrey explain the connection between the British secret service and these crazy Euro-plotters?"

"No, but he did confess that he had told Axel that Anastasia and you were at her father's castle."

I nodded. "That's what I thought. Any revelations out of the rest of them?"

Lulu shrugged. "Just your usual tangled mess of conspiracies. This pompous little man Pickie was from the Zurich Club..."

"He's Navel's father," I explained.

"The one who institutionalised Navel?" Lulu asked, interested.

"Navel's only got one father as far as I know. Why was Pickie at this meeting?"

"He was representing the Sultan of Arabia. Apparently the Sultan owns this bank…"

"Bank Ripoff."

"Yes." Lulu seemed affronted. "Do you know everything or do you want to shut up and listen?"

"Oh, okay," I said meekly. "So Pickie was here to put through this merger of Bank Ripoff and Hotbank?"

"Exactly. He had to negotiate with Nectarino, since the Nectarini family basically runs the Vatikan's finances. But Pickie was also buying something from Nero Insanetti…"

"Secret documents," Xox said unexpectedly. We turned to look at him. He seemed wide awake and completely lucid. "Nero took them from me this morning when they put me into captivity."

"What happened, exactly?"

Xox shrugged. "Nothing special. I was on my way back from a MIDAS meeting…"

"MIDAS?"

"Have you heard of it?" Xox beamed. "It is a billionaire's club. Fine fellows. We play bridge together sometimes. Yesterday we met at the funeral of Christian Covett."

"Covett's dead? What happened to him?"

"His private jet lost cabin pressure and he suffocated to death along with all the crew. The plane flew half-way across the Pacific Ocean before landing on auto pilot in Hawaii where he was due to play in a bridge tournament. A sad loss. He was a good player. Anyway I was on the way back from his funeral so I thought I would drop in and see how things were going here in the Budapest college."

"And they just locked you up?"

"There was some talk of ransom," Xox said mildly. "Our European friends have not been particularly happy with me since I picked their pockets. Also the Sultan of Arabia was particularly anxious to get these documents. My colleagues and I have been funding some research which might affect the Sultan's interests."

"What kind of research?"

"Solar energy. A new artificial photosynthesis process…"

"Oh my god," Lulu said, appalled. "Why didn't we take those papers away from that pudgy little man…"

"Oh, it really doesn't matter," Xox replied calmly. "The documents were just camouflage. I always have my documents stamped "Top Secret". It diverts people. Everything in those papers is readily available on the internet."

"So where are the real secrets?" Stash asked slowly.

Xox smiled and tapped his forehead.

Just then a shot rang out. A hunk of plaster crashed down from the wall behind Xox, narrowly missing his skull. I turned and groaned. I had barely drunk half of my cappuccino and there they were again, the men in purple jumpsuits running towards us, tireless, indefatigable, always on our trail.

"Quick. Let's go." We jumped into a small motor boat moored to the embankment. The boat's owner, a hefty middle-aged woman with bright yellow hair, drinking coffee with her friends at a nearby table, screeched angrily at first, but then waved permission after we threw her a fistful of dollars. Stash revved the engine and let her go. Rifle shots rang out as we careened wildly into the middle of the Danube, bouncing through a freighter's wake, nearly colliding into a tour boat laden with middle-aged tourists. Jaws dropped and cameras snapped as Stash expertly whipped our vessel around the big boat, eluding our pursuers' sniper fire. We made as if to follow the tour boat to the other side of the Danube before turning back in our tracks and docking at the embankment right below the Grand Hotel.

"What fun." Xox beamed as we pulled him out. "Thank you for the rescue. Excellent timing. I have a meeting in New York in ten hours. My Learjet is parked at the airport. Taxi!"

We waved goodbye and then went up to the hotel. Stash and Lulu packed and paid up, after which we caught a taxi to the university building where Stash's Mercedes was parked. Stash sneered at the parking tickets on the windshield and threw them away like so much confetti.

"You know what I still don't get?" I asked as we left Budapest behind us, driving into the sunset. Stash had his hands on the wheel and his eyes on the road. Barbie was curled up comfortably against me, her head in my lap. I stroked her hair idly as I spoke. "Why did Axel bring Anastasia with him to Budapest?"

"Oh, we asked about that, angel," Lulu replied, looking over her shoulder. "I didn't finish telling you about the interrogation. Apparently, Anastasia's father left her the bulk of his fortune and so Axel can do what he wants with it now since Anastasia just signs everything. He wants her to make over the shares she owns in this Tamato robot company to Nectarino. In return, the Nectarini family will help Axel buy up lots of seats in the European assembly."

"What for?"

"The Cardinal wants Anastasia's son, Ulrich, to eventually become the Holy Roman Emperor. They want to make the European bureaucracy really powerful and to have young Ulrich rise through the ranks till he becomes President. The idea is that once he's President he would declare himself Emperor and nobody could do anything about it."

"Like Napoleon."

"Exactly, sugar. But Axel doesn't want to wait till Ulrich grows up. Axel wants to become Holy Roman Emperor himself. So he wants to pack the European assembly and then stage a coup. It was all working out fine until Xox threw a spanner into the works."

"What did Xox do?"

"He took billions off the European bank, didn't he? So now they've lost all this credibility. Nobody trusts Eurocrats any longer."

"That's why Hohenstaufen wanted to kill himself." A thought struck me. "Why do the Nectarini want to buy Tamato robots?"

"Luciano said something about perpetual motion. I didn't get it," Lulu confessed. "I was always terrible at science in school."

"So Luciano has been working for the Nectarini all along?"

"Tamato hired him on his own merits but he sold out to the Nectarini." Lulu shuddered. "I always knew he was twisted."

"He's Sicilian," I said, defending our old Oxford acquaintance. "What do you expect?"

"Whatever. Did Xox tell us something we didn't already know about MIDAS?"

"He made it sound so simple," I replied. "A billionaire's club. They play bridge together and go to each other's funerals. Lots of those lately. And they also fund research on solar energy that makes the Sultan of Arabia nervous. Nervous enough to kill? I have no idea if Xox was telling the truth or not."

"Why not? Didn't he eat the Truth sandwich?"

"You saw him gobble it up. It didn't seem to affect him though."

"You're right. It was a wrenching experience for all the others. Maybe Xox tells the truth all the time."

"Maybe. But he can also keep a secret. I just wonder what's behind the smile on that big bald head."

#GenghizInLove: Episode 53

2011-08-22T10:00:00.000-07:00

From my vantage point at the edge of the boardroom, I surveyed the faces at the table and conducted a mental roll call. Attila Ugh, the rodent-faced director of the Budapest College with slick black hair plastered to his pointy scalp and a perpetual expression of sly malice on his sallow face. Crazy Nero Insanetti whom Hell had chased out of Prague and who had destroyed my office with his incontinence and hatred. The Cardinal, a dignified mummy in his stiff purple robes. Axel von Schadenfreude, baring a yellow fang above that querulously drooping lower lip. And then a few surprises. My old pal Godfrey, languidly leaning on an arm, idly stroking his chin as he looked on with heavy lidded amusement. A small officious gentleman in a pin-striped three piece suit, fussing with papers in his handsome leather briefcase: I had met Navel's father just once before, at a lunch before Navel's commitment into a mental institution, but I recognized Mr. Pickie of the Zurich Club all the same. A short young man with gold-rimmed glasses on his handsome face: could that possibly be Luciano Shinola, my Sicilian friend who now worked for Tamato robots? Luciano was gesturing with boyish enthusiasm as he talked with a big blond man whom I didn't know but whom Lulu seemed to recognize, judging by her stifled gasp.

"Nectarino Nectarini," she whispered when I nudged her and raised my eyebrows. "My former fiance."

"What the hell is Godfrey doing here?"

"Standing in for Terence?"

"Makes sense. And Luciano?"

"Too weird. This is like an Oxford reunion."

"You there!" Axel shouted harshly. "Stop whispering while I am talking." Was he speaking to us? Axel's arrogant face was flushed brick-red. "What impudence!"

"You have done your job," Ugh said harshly. "Now leave!"

"I don't think so," I replied calmly, pulling out the gun I had confiscated from Nero in Prague. My friends pulled out their plastic toy guns and fanned out towards the exits. "We just got here and we need to ask you a few questions. Besides, it's so good to see all these familiar faces."

The familiar faces didn't seem to reciprocate the sentiment. Axel's face became a magenta mask of violence and hatred. The Cardinal sucked his yellow teeth in a rictus of fury. "Oh my God!" Nero groaned, raising his hands to heaven. "It's the Antichrist himself!"

"Nice to see you too, Nero," I said amiably. "Get away from that security alarm, Axel, or else…" The gun exploded in my hand with a deafening report. Axel screamed in pain and clutched his shattered shoulder. I smirked modestly: I had only missed his hand by three feet. Not bad for a first try.

"Okay. Now tell me where Anastasia is."

"In the chapel," Axel moaned. "Mein Gott, this really hurts!"

"Professor Ugh, would you please take me to the chapel?" I asked pleasantly. Ugh looked into the maw of my gun and nodded reluctantly. "Lulu darling, would you mind asking our friends here a few questions while I find Anastasia?"

"Not at all, angel." Lulu blew me a kiss. "Say hi to her for me."

I followed Ugh down the corridor, walking close enough behind him to smell the coconut-scented brilliantine on his hair and to prod him in the ribs with the pistol I was holding in my jacket pocket.

"You will never get away with this," Ugh snarled as we rounded a corner.

"Why is that?"

"Because I am about to pull that cord on the windowsill which raises an alarm… Oh damn!" Ugh said furiously as I moved the cord out of his reach. "Why did I tell you that?"

"Because you value truth deeply?"

"I do not!" Ugh wiped away the slaver from his mouth. "All I want is power!"

"Power to do what?"

"To rule the world!" Ugh shouted. "Everyone in the world must learn Hungarian!"

"Even if they don't want to?"

"Do people learn English today because they want to or because Amerika rules the world?" Ugh asked. I shrugged. Fair question. "Now it is my turn. I want to rule the world. It is what I have struggled for all these years, what I have lied and cheated and plotted for all my life." We stopped in front of a heavy wooden door. The chapel was guarded by five hefty nuns in black habits and white hoods, toting shiny machine-pistols. They nodded respectfully at Ugh and opened the door. The chapel was a small jewel box, all red velvet and intricate gilded woodwork. "Oh my God!" Ugh fell to his knees before the altar and broke down sobbing. "I have wasted my life! I cannot face the truth!"

"Don't worry," I said reassuringly. "The truth will wear off in a while. Now just tell the nuns to bring out Anastasia. Tell them Axel and the Cardinal asked you to deliver her to me."

"I can't do that!" Ugh looked around, panic-stricken. "That would be a lie!"

"The truth shall set you free," I quoted lightly, nudging Ugh's neck with the gun. "Or it might kill you. It's entirely up to you, my dear fellow."

Ugh scrambled up and gabbled something in Hungarian to the nuns. They nodded and disappeared behind the velvet drapes. "I told them you wanted to see Princess Anastasia," he mumbled.

"See, that wasn't so hard, was it?" The nuns emerged from behind the drapery, respectfully pushing forward a pale slim woman with curly red hair. "Anastasia, my darling," I cried in anguish, my eyes filling with tears. "What have they done to you?"

Anastasia looked at me blankly. The fire in her eyes was gone. I stared sadly into pale green disks with pin-prick pupils. Her breath rose and fell, but her skin had an ashen tint.

I turned away and waved my gun at the startled nuns. "Drop those pistols!" I demanded coldly. "Ugh, gag those nuns and then tie them up. No, actually, make them take off their clothes first. Yes, goddamnit. It's your life, buddy. Tie them tighter. That's better. Now you stand with them. No, you don't have to take your clothes off. You want to? Oh, okay. Right." I glanced at Ugh intertwined lasciviously among the horrified nuns and smiled.

I led Anastasia to the altar and held her close to me. I kissed her gently, running the tip of my tongue over her still lips, the pure curve of her slim throat, the sensitive edge of her inner ear. I breathed softly on the short hairs on her long neck and ran my fingers like living feathers down the curves of her breasts and thighs. She stood there, motionless in my arms, oblivious to my caresses. I raked my nails down her lower back: still no response. I closed my eyes, and sighed. Anastasia's inertness was a heaviness in the gut and my own lack of response to that beloved body was a dull affliction in my heart.

The chapel door burst open and my friends came running in. "We've got to get out of here!" Lulu said breathlessly. She caught sight of Anastasia and gritted her teeth in pity. "Poor baby," she said briefly, touching Anastasia' face. "Let's take her out of here with us."

"No," I said sadly. "She wouldn't want that. She told me before that Axel will never let go of this body. That's why she left it. And that's why she won't go back in."

"You can explain later," Stash said quickly. He had a black eye and his knuckles were raw and bleeding. "We must find Xox and get out of here. The men in purple jumpsuits will be here any minute."

"Xox?"

"The Cardinal told us Xox was imprisoned in the chapel."

I ripped Ugh's gag off. "Unnggh!" he moaned. "Just a second. Unnngghhh! Oh, yes, that's it!" His ugly face creased in orgasmic ecstasy while the nun in front of him cringed in mute shame at her defilement.

"Ugh. Where is Xox?"

"What? Oh, Xox? Behind the altar," Ugh said obligingly. "The key to his cell is in the back pocket of my trousers. Be careful. There are nuns on guard."

"Right." My eye fell on the nuns' habits lying on the floor. Minutes later, five nuns shuffled cautiously behind the altar. Xox was sitting cross-legged on the bare concrete floor of a cramped cage in the centre of a cavernous space concealed by velvet drapery. The nuns on guard greeted us happily but their enthusiasm diminished rapidly once we had taken their guns and clothes away from them. Hell hath no fury like a defrocked nun.

"Ah, thank you," Xox said placidly, when we unlocked the shackles on his ankles. "I was beginning to get rather hungry." I dug out a sandwich from my jacket pocket and offered it to him. "Salami? My favorite kind." Lulu looked at me askance. I shrugged as Xox took a big bite of the sandwich. It would be interesting to hear Mr. Xox tell the truth. We used his chains to tie up the nuns.

"There is a fire escape here!" Stash called out.

"Get moving." I dashed back to the chapel. Anastasia was still standing there silently. I pulled off my white wimple and touched her still face. I could hear the heavy footsteps pounding down the corridor. I kissed my darling's body goodbye forever, once, lingeringly, and then ran for dear life.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 52

2011-08-21T10:00:00.000-07:00

We had time to kill since Barbie's flight would only get in at eight the following evening. Stash plugged his video camera into the television and played tapes from their honeymoon in Venice, that spectacular city made for sin. I listened with amused delight to their stories: Lulu's giggly enthusiasm bubbled merrily through Stash's ironic descriptions like froth on dry champagne. It was a lovely night that ended with breakfast in bed together at three in the afternoon, feasting on eggs Benedict and garlicky salami and Bellini cocktails, brought to us on silver platters by a charming dark-eyed maid in a black and white uniform that nicely fitted her slender frame. The maid glanced wide-eyed at Lulu reclining luxuriously in bed between two men. Lulu smiled at the girl and thanked her nicely but the maid just put her hand to her mouth, crossed herself, and scampered away.

"I'm even wearing pyjamas," Lulu exclaimed indignantly. "Honestly. People just assume the worst."

"I can't even get it up," I said mournfully. "Did I tell you about Lady Rudolphine and this lotion called Lethe?" I told my friends the sad story of my drug-induced impotence. "I'll remain a eunuch until I can find a good home for Anastasia's soul."

"There, there, sweetheart," Lulu said tenderly. "Don't cry. We'll find her for you."

"Evil Axel has probably got her pregnant already."

"That can be fixed," Stash said reassuringly. "In Poland we have many cures for that ill. Repression is the mother of invention."

We finished our cocktails and dressed lazily. Just as we were leaving Lulu's sumptuous suite, the phone rang.

"Maya?" Lulu exclaimed. "Where are you, angel? How fabulous. Yes, we just finished breakfast. Wait for us… we'll be right there." She hung up, her eyes shining. "Maya is here, darlings. We're to meet her at this café down the street right away."

We hurried out of the hotel into the dark evening. Cold raindrops spattered heavily down from an oddly yellow-grey sky obscured by massive black clouds. A bare-headed man in a black raincoat ran past us. The yellow lights and smoky warmth of the Café Arpad were welcome shelter from the storm.

After a short struggle with the officious maitre d' and his flunkeys, all dressed in regulation black and white, we made our way into the café. Maya was sitting at a corner table in front of plate glass windows overlooking a broad boulevard, talking intently to three swarthy men I did not recognise. She caught sight of us and her thin face lit up. We hugged for a long moment and I felt her heart beat like the pulsing of a bird.

"These are some friends who will be helping us," Maya said, tactfully not introducing her companions. "I won't bother with their names as you wouldn't be able to pronounce them anyway." We all laughed. The swarthy men had nice smiles under their grey-flecked dark moustaches. I felt grateful to them for the risk they were taking for someone they didn't even know and I tried haltingly to thank them, but was told by Maya to shut up and sit down and drink my coffee like a good child.

"So when we do this?" asked the youngest of the swarthy men.

"How we do it?" asked the middle one.

"What we do?" asked the oldest and gruffest of Maya's men.

Lulu, Stash and Maya turned in unison to look at me. So did the scowling waitress, coming up at that moment with a plate of assorted pastries.

I took a deep breath and an apple tart and extracted a crumpled piece of paper from my pocket. I smoothed it out on the table. "I was involved in renting the facility for the Budapest college so I happened to have the building floor plan," I explained. "This is the main entrance. If security here is like in Prague, then there might be steel doors and guards with sub-machine guns. We would need university identification to get in. Here are the conference rooms and the guest suites. My guess is that Axel and his men have Anastasia holed up in one of those suites while they hold their conference in the main board room. Axel has a small army of men who wear purple jump suits. I believe they are armed and dangerous."

"What is our objective?" Stash asked.

"I need ten minutes alone with Anastasia."

"Is she that hard to get?" Maya grinned. She lightly jabbed a finger at the building plan. "This is actually not so difficult. We just need to arrange a diversion so that the guards go away from the guest area."

"A demonstration at the main entrance?" Stash suggested.

Maya nodded. "That might work. Gives us enough time to sneak into the guest suites… if this plan is accurate."

"Must watch building," the oldest swarthy man said emphatically. "I no trust paper."

"You're right. Will you three mount a stake-out of the building tonight?"

"In this weather?" I protested. "I feel guilty enough as it is, getting you folks involved. I'll watch the building by myself tonight."

"Don't be silly," Maya replied acerbically. "In the first place, they know you. Secondly, you're not a trained watcher. You'll fall asleep. Third, my friends are used to jail."

"Oh, okay," I said, shame-faced. "But I don't know how to thank them for this."

"This isn't just about you," Maya replied mysteriously. "We have our own reasons." She got up. "We shouldn't spend too much time together in one place. Let's disperse for now. Think up a plan and let's meet for breakfast here tomorrow. Before four in the afternoon, okay?"

"I've got to go pick up Barbie," I told Lulu and Stash as we walked back to the hotel. "I don't know what time we'll be back."

"The room's all yours, angel," Lulu sang out, holding on to Stash's strong arm. "We'll do the night clubs and mount a little stake-out of our own."

"Have fun." I grabbed a taxi outside the hotel and asked the driver to take me to the airport. The street lights glowed vivid white against the glistening black of the night. Black and white, black and white… the flickering tapestry of light burned an obscure pattern into my mind and inchoate plans floated like paper airplanes through my brain, as I sat brooding through the long taxi ride. The flight from LA had already arrived. As I stood waiting for Barbie to clear customs, my ideas slowly gathered shape and flowered into dazzling blossom at the sight of my childhood friend striding through the arrivals area, oblivious as ever of the dropping jaws and envious gazes, lissom and svelte, long blonde hair blowing behind her and big blue eyes glistening with joy at the sight of me, the archetypal Amerikan beauty, my lovely Barbie doll.

"I missed you!" Barbie exclaimed in her inimitable child-like fashion, once I had dragged her through the drooling crowds and we were safely in a taxi headed back to the city. "I've been so lonely since Sleaze went away. I have a really bad feeling about this trip to England and my astrologer agrees…"

"Have you heard from him?"

"He called after he arrived in England, but I haven't heard from him since." Barbie pouted. "I don't think he loves me anymore."

"Of course he does, you little idiot." It didn't matter that Barbie had metamorphosed into the hottest starlet in Southern Kalifornia: I looked at the shining butterfly and saw a familiar caterpillar. For me, Barbie would always be the scrawny little girl next door with the big trusting eyes who adopted me as her big brother and whom I had tirelessly abused ever since. "But a man's got to do…"

"What does a man have to do?" Barbie prodded me in the ribs. "What is Luke up to in England? And what are you planning to do with this…" She thrust a hand into her opulent cleavage and pulled at her bra. In the mirror I saw the elderly taxi driver's eyes nearly pop out of his head as the taxi swerved alarmingly off the road.

"Barbie, wait till we get to the hotel, all right?" I scolded in alarm.

"Okay, okay. It's sort of uncomfortable, that's all."

We made it to the hotel without further mishap, and the taxi driver's eyes were so glued to Barbie's chest that he didn't even bother to bargain with me. I took my friend up to Lulu's room and opened the door for her. Barbie tip-toed in and turned to me, holding a finger to her lips.

"What's the matter?" I asked.

"Sshh…" Barbie looked at me reprovingly, went into the bathroom, and turned the shower on full-blast.

"What are you doing?"

"Taking off my clothes, silly."

"I can see that," I replied acidly. "And you look very nice. But what's with the silence routine?"

"Security," Barbie said, unhooking her bra and letting her splendid breasts fall free, a vision for sore eyes in the billowing steam. "Luke taught me. They can't listen to our conversation while the shower is on."

"Guess we'll have to leave the shower on for a while then. Where's the Truth drug?"

"My bra has a secret compartment."

"Tut tut. Don't tell me you need to stuff your bra these days." As a teenager, I had caught Barbie stuffing her training bra with my athletic socks, and blackmailed her into buying us milkshakes for a whole year with her pocket money.

"It's very convenient. I've smuggled all sorts of things in it. Here." Barbie handed me a small glass vial filled with glowing amber liquid.

I looked at the vial curiously. "Truth, huh? How long does it take to work?"

"Ten minutes, maybe fifteen. Works best with food."

"Maybe I should test it on you and find out if you've been naughty or nice lately."

"Very naughty." Barbie got into the marble bath and moaned throatily as the hot water cascaded down her beautiful body. "Oooh, yeah. That's what I needed. You could soap my back, you know, like you used to when we were kids. And isn't there any champagne in this joint?"

"All right, I'll soap your back and bring you some fizz. Luke's been spoiling you. You were never this demanding as a kid." I retreated out of the bathroom, clutching onto the precious fluid. "Let me just get this to safety before you throw the soap at me."

Lulu and Stash didn't get back from the night clubs until six the next morning. After ordering a little something from room service, the four of us walked sedately by the Danube embankment like good little tourists, all the while plotting mayhem and murder, until it was time to meet Maya and her companions. On the way there, we found a toy store and made a few small purchases. Over breakfast at the Café Arpad, brought grudgingly by a puffy-eyed waiter, I told my friends of my plan. Maya whistled approvingly.

"Could work," the oldest swarthy man agreed, grudgingly. "But have to get past the nuns."

"Nuns?"

"Many nuns around the building," the middle man explained. "With sub-machine guns."

"Nuns with guns," Barbie said dreamily. "Sounds like a rock band."

"They must be guarding the Cardinal," Stash said. He looked at his watch. "Well, we should get going."

I nodded in agreement. We got up, pulled out the toy pistols we had bought at the toy store, and finally got the attention of our waiter. We picked out waiters of approximately the right shape and size, forced them to take off their white and black uniforms, tied them together in a circle amidst the café's confused clientele, and gave the long-suffering pianist a handful of money to play Hungarian dances all morning. Lulu, Barbie and I piled into Stash's Mercedes and we followed the nondescript Lada Maya and her friends had rented almost to the entrance of the university building. While Maya and her companions began yelling Kurdish independence slogans through megaphones, attracting a large crowd of curious bystanders, many of whom shouted along in sympathy, Lulu, Stash, Barbie and I dressed quickly in the stolen waiters' uniforms, took up the platters of sandwiches we had ordered from room service at the Grand Hotel, and marched resolutely into the service entrance of the university building. Lulu and Barbie smiled and batted their long eyelashes at the stout nun guarding the gate and offered her a salami sandwich. The nun grunted and let us in. Once we were inside the building, Lulu and Barbie adjusted their clothes, pulling up a skirt, undoing some buttons. The irresistible waitress wenches then led the way past guards and men in purple jumpsuits, flashing smiles and cleavage in every direction, while I consulted the floor plan at each turn. We could hear the Kurdish demonstration growing in volume outside on the street, and hurried before the police arrived and dragged away our friends.

"We've got two minutes max before the guards return," Lulu said urgently, knocking down the first guest suite door. We fanned out down the corridor, searching for Anastasia. Besides a couple of cleaning ladies in mid-fuck, we saw no one. Anastasia was nowhere to be found.

"This is hopeless," I said breathlessly. "She could be anywhere. We have to interrogate Axel and his friends."

"Break into their meeting and feed them sandwiches?

"I know it's rude, Lulu, but I'm desperate."

"All right, let's do it. Sandwiches to the ready… aim, fire."

We marched down the corridor in perfect formation, past some returning jumpsuits. I opened the boardroom door noiselessly and we distributed the sandwich platters evenly along a long glittering mahogany table. The assembled dignitaries ignored us completely, their attention focused on a balding thick-set man with a drooping lower lip who was standing at the head of the room lecturing them in heavy hectoring tones. Listening is hungry work: the Truth-laden sandwiches disappeared within minutes in an orgy of chewing and gobbling. I complacently watched them take their medicine, having stashed away a couple of spare sandwiches in my pocket. Sitting inconspicuously in a corner of the boardroom, I checked my watch. Ten minutes, then fifteen. Time to tell the truth.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 51

2011-08-20T10:00:00.000-07:00

Just then the phone rang, as if in answer to my wish. "Floss?" I asked happily. Then cautiously: "God isn't there, is he? Good. You have no idea how much trouble it caused last time he listened in on our conversation."

"Well, he is a spy, you know," Floss pointed out. "It's his job. Have you been getting into trouble again?"

"Story of my life. How about you?"

"Well, actually I just got someone out of trouble."

"You sound awfully pleased with yourself about it. What did you do?"

"My first good deed since I was expelled from the Girl Scouts," Floss replied smugly. "There's someone where who would like to speak with you. Here."

"Hi…" The familiar voice was as thickly happy as chocolate syrup.

"Navel!" I exclaimed, jumping for joy. "You escaped!"

"Floss rescued me. Our hero." I heard the sound of lips smacking and then Flossie howling in outrage and smacking him.

"Tell me all."

"Well, there I was on this wretched island in the Outer Hebrides, cold, unshaven, malnourished, an indentured servant to this gruff old man."

"Meredith's grandfather, right?"

"Right. Rasputin had sold me into slavery after my father had delivered me into his evil clutches. Anyway, so there I was on Rottenegg island, slaving away, trying to get all the old man's diapers washed before the storm, when I suddenly saw…"

"Flossie walking on the water?"

"She might as well have been considering the boat was knee deep in water. Anyway there she was with her firm-breasted Sikh amazons, intrepidly sailing in to the rescue…"

"He's telling it all wrong," Floss interjected impatiently, her voice booming over the speaker phone. "It wasn't nearly as romantic as young Mister Pickie makes it sound."

"Oh, so Sikh amazons aren't romantic?" Navel responded hotly.

"Stop bickering, guys," I groaned. "Floss, is Navel just making all this up again?"

"Not quite. I did bring along a few friends to help… God damn it, Navel, get away from that teddy bear. It's mine!"

"Where did you find these friends?" I asked.

"In the Punjab obviously. By the way, you bastard, why did you have to get me freed?"

"I can't believe this." I was stung. "Weren't the Sikhs going to pull all your teeth out?"

"We were just pretending. It was part of my research program to see if the West really cares. Then Xox comes along and intervenes and the Sikh warriors didn't want to play anymore. Don't know why they are so scared of Xox."

"Well, he funds them, doesn't he?"

"Yeah, but it goes deeper than that. They worship him like a god. Anyway, that's where I met Trixie Kaur and the other girls. They're a special guerrilla unit trained in Ninja techniques. Suicide bombers. So when you told me Navel was in captivity, I had the girls fly over…"

"These are real warrior women!" Navel interrupted enthusiastically. "Serious muscles. But they're so bashful too. All veils and dark eyes. Too cool. I'm going to ask Trixie to marry me. Anyway, so Captain Floss and her Sikh amazons come sailing up in their leaky little boat and just take over the island, tie the old man onto a stretcher, sail to the mainland and deliver him to an old folks home. He was still cursing a blue streak when we dropped him off. In Scottish too. Wonder how those prim little old ladies are going to take it…"

"When did you mount the rescue, Floss?" I asked enviously.

"A couple of days ago. I couldn't find you anywhere…"

"And we've been celebrating ever since," Navel hiccuped. "It's been the wildest party. Even Lulu called to congratulate me…"

"She actually called to find you," Floss explained. "But Navel is now totally convinced that he is the centre of the universe."

"A few hours in bed with the Sikh amazon should clarify things for him. Where was Lulu calling from?"

"Budapest." Floss sounded serious. "She had some news for you."

"What is it?"

"Lulu and her husband…

"Stash."

"Yeah. They were in Budapest on her way back to Berlin." Floss hesitated. "Lulu saw Anastasia there."

"Oh my god."

"Apparently Axel is in Budapest for some meeting at the University of Truth and Justice."

"Guess who else is in Budapest? " Navel chimed in. "My father. He found out I had escaped and called right away to threaten me with the mental institution again. Isn't it odd?"

"No, Navel, I don't think it's odd at all," I sighed, remembering the Cardinal mention Mr. Pickie of the Zurich Club at Prince Ludwig's suicide party. "I have to get to Budapest right away."

"Lulu thought you might," Floss replied. "So she and Stash are going to wait in Budapest for you. They're staying at the Grand Hotel."

"They would," I replied, remembering that great domed edifice with the elaborate façade and the courteous doormen in purple livery. I had spent an unforgettable night there once with a cute little Hungarian chanteuse named Annike, back in the carefree days of my early youth, before I became entangled with wild witches and Katholic conspiracies.

"Go to it!" Navel piped up. "Go rescue the girl!"

"I'll do my best," I replied. "You couldn't possibly send those Sikh amazons over here, could you?"

"Can't do that," Floss replied regretfully. "It would take weeks to get them visas. But you know what… I'll call Maya and see if she knows any Kurdish guerrillas lying low in Budapest who might be able to help."

"That would be lovely," I said gratefully. "I'll take all the help I can get."

I stuck a note on Hell's door telling him I was off to Budapest for the weekend. Sweet Annichka at the reception desk called a taxi for me. Ten frantic minutes later, I was sprinting down a railway platform at Prague train station, trying to overtake the accelerating midnight express to Budapest. By some miracle, I made it with a last mad leap, although I twisted my ankle horribly and then had to pay a hefty fine for not having bought my ticket in the train station like everyone else. Central European train conductors have no sense of adventure.

Limping through the crowded train, I eventually found a vacant seat next to a smelly old man with thin unshaven cheeks and mad red-rimmed eyes. Every so often he would smash his fist into the overhead compartment and shout wildly in Romanian. Everyone else scowled at the old man but I found his hoarse war cry oddly exhilarating: I too was on the warpath after all. I bummed a cigarette from the old guy and gratefully sucked in the harsh smoke. Coughing my lungs out, tears obscuring my sight, massaging my bruised ankle, huddled next to my rank neighbour, I had a sudden moment of happiness. All my fears evaporated in that instant of epiphany: I was on my way to rescue my darling, and what could be more romantic than that?

My happiness lasted all the way to Budapest. Standing on the crowded platform, shaking hands cordially with my elderly neighbour (who spoke English, French, and German equally fluently and was a respectable Bucharest book seller and avid chess enthusiast on his way back from a disastrous tournament in Prague), I experienced the first return of apprehension. What if Lulu and Stash had grown impatient and left Budapest? And what if Floss had failed to find Maya for extra help? How was I to storm the Budapest College of the University of Truth and Justice alone?

My fears were groundless: Lulu and Stash greeted me at the Grand Hotel with warm hugs and cold champagne. "Take a hot bath this instant, angel!" Lulu exclaimed, wrinkling her adorable nose in distaste. "How you stink!"

"It's just Romanian cigarettes, Lu." I offered her the battered pack my neighbour had generously given me. "Want one?"

"Don't be silly, sweetie." Lulu ripped open an embossed box of gold-tipped Balkan Sobranies and lit up luxuriously. "We could use those as tear gas though."

"Do you know where they're holding Anastasia captive?"

"Darling," Lulu said nicely. "I hate to break it to you but nobody is holding Anastasia captive. I saw her twice, once with this hefty character with the drooping lower lip…"

"Axel."

"Right. They were having dinner in this very chic restaurant. And the second time was by herself downtown. She was wearing a fur coat and her chauffeur was trotting behind her with lots of bags. She looked like she had been shopping"

"Did you talk to her?"

"I tried, angel." Lulu bit her lip. "I was right in front of her and I waved and called out her name but she just looked blankly at me. Through me, really. Then she just got into her limo and drove away."

"They've got her on drugs," I wailed. "Or hypnotised her. Some kind of mind control."

"Don't be so excitable, sugar," Lulu chided. "She's just blank because you've got her soul stuck away somewhere."

"We have to get her alone so that I can put her soul back into her."

"How do you do that?" Lulu asked with interest. "Do you stick your… soul into her and kind of wiggle it about?"

"That's one way. I bet they've got her in the university building somewhere. We have to get the truth out of her captors somehow."

"Do you have a plan for getting into the university building?" Stash asked, sucking back some chloroform. His calm presence was heartening.

"Do you have your video camera handy?"

"I never travel without it."

"We could pretend to be a film crew."

"Won't work." Lulu shook her head. "Axel and his people hate all forms of popular entertainment."

"Well, we've got to get in there somehow. We can figure out the details later."

"And just how are you going to get the truth out of Axel and his cohorts?"

"I don't know," I replied, perplexed. But then memory hit me like lightning. "The Truth drug. Would you hand me the phone, please? I've got to call Kalifornia right away."

And I did, and Barbie was home and yes, she knew exactly what I was asking about. Luke had told her all about the Truth drug which he was working on and had even left a sample for her use. Barbie agreed without hesitation to catch the next flight out from LA and to secrete the drug on her lovely person. I smiled beatifically at my astounded friends. Those who ask shall receive.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 50

2011-08-19T10:00:00.000-07:00

50

"What the devil do you want now?" Hell growled, taking off his reading glasses and looking up from the enormous pile of papers and books which, as usual, had slipped over from his table onto every other horizontal surface in his office. I gnashed my teeth. The old devil knew perfectly well what I wanted. I wanted to ask him lots of questions and to get some real answers. But I didn't have the nerve, so I temporized.

"Two things, Otto. What happens to the European Studies department now that Hohenstaufen has… retired?"

"Hire a replacement, obviously."

"Why do we need a European Studies department anyway?"

Hell frowned. "Asking questions again," he reproved.

"It was a rhetorical question," I protested.

Hell sniffed, implicitly conceding the point. "Xox wants to defuse the anger against him by giving away some money. I told him that you can't buy love. He replied that it's not about love. Eurocrats are all whores anyway. Man's got a point."

"Whom do we want to bribe?" I asked bluntly.

"The Germans lost the most money."

"But Xox didn't even speculate against the deutschmark!"

"The Germans had to lend the European central banks the most money. They lost more than four hundred billion dollars."

I whistled. "Xox made that much?"

"Not just him. Lots of other speculators as well. But he made the most. At least two hundred billion." Hell shrugged. "Call Troll."

"Who?"

"Gunther Otto Troll. Former head of the German central bank. Ask him to take over the European Studies department."

I stared at Hell through narrowed eyes. "And he will? Just like that? You set this up, didn't you?"

"None of your business." Hell flashed me his old alligator grin. "What was the second thing you wanted to ask me?"

"Nero Insanetti managed to seriously offend a journalist from The Sociologist. They're influential. It might damage our reputation if they published something negative."

Hell shrugged. "Used to work for them, didn't you? Who's the editor? Dogsbody, isn't it?"

"He retired twenty years ago," I said kindly. "The new man is Jenkins."

"Call him up. What do you need to bother me for?"

As I sat down in Delilah's office, poised to call Jenkins, I suddenly wondered how Hell knew that I had once worked for The Sociologist. I had never told him and he had never evinced any interest at all in my past. Had he been doing some background checks on me? I had a horrifying vision of Hell cackling as he looked through a dossier on my chequered career. I shuddered and tried vainly to dismiss both the disturbing image and, more generally, my past.

Jenkins clearly felt the same way. When I called him, there was nothing but the sound of deep breathing. "My God!" he finally croaked. "It is you. Thought I'd got rid of you forever." His tone changed from fear to suspicion. "Hell you want? Can't have job back and that's final," he snapped. "Got somebody else. Good guy for a change."

"That's actually all I wanted to find out," I said soothingly. Jenkins' mangled diction aroused a twinge of nostalgia. "Who do you have on the Central Europe beat these days?"

"Correspondents anonymous," Jenkins replied stiffly, but after some coaxing he relented. "Had to hire someone after Rasputin disappeared. New man with no experience. Smart young fellow with lots of initiative. Highly recommended."

"Who is he?"

"Name of Godfrey Blythe. About your age. Went to Oxford too. Know him?"

I suppressed a snigger. The image of God bustling around the chancelleries of Central Europe, hustling confidential interviews with highly placed sources, was too incongruous for words. I wondered how long it would take before Jenkins would have to brace himself for yet another painful dismissal. "Yes, I know Godfrey," I replied. "All too well. Who recommended him?"

"Terence Killjoy-Yuck," Jenkins replied. "Oh shit. Recommended you too, didn't he? Oh, no, what have I done..."

"Don't worry," I said maliciously. "I'm sure you'll just love Godfrey's reports."

"Haven't seen any so far," Jenkins confessed. "Only been on job a week."

"Who was the correspondent before that?"

"No one full-time. Had to look for someone we could trust after debacle with you. Tried out freelancer based in Prague. Didn't work out. Writing style was too sincere. Too Amerikan."

"Bob something?" I asked casually.

"That's right," Jenkins confirmed. "Worked for English language newspaper there."

"Prahahaha!"

"What's so funny about Prague? Never had time to go there myself but everyone says it is a bleak and dismal place."

"Prahaha! is the name of Bob's newspaper."

"How did you hear of it?" Jenkins asked in surprise. "Where are you anyway? Not back in Mongolia yet?"

"I'm in Prague too. I'm the special assistant to Lord Hades at the University of Truth and Justice."

"The Lord Hades?"

"The one and only. He's the rector of this university."

"Xox's university?" Jenkins asked, interested. "Bob sent peculiar report about the place. Claimed university staff all violent psychotics on drugs. Too silly to print until all this currency market turmoil today. Xox is big news now. Might just use story as exclusive scoop for tomorrow's issue. Don't have much else on the man."

"Don't do that," I replied calmly. "Bob showed up at the university completely drunk and proceeded to insult everyone he encountered. Why, he even tried to rape one of the receptionists and when they tried to stop him he swore he would get revenge. I know all about it."

"Really?" Jenkins said dubiously. "Sounded so sober."

"He was clearly on drugs."

"If you say," Jenkins sighed. "Wish we knew more about Xox."

"Doesn't everyone?" I responded sympathetically. "Who else made a killing on this currency speculation?"

"Besides Xox, looks as though Sir Johnny Silver did very well. Quite surprising since he's been going downhill for some time. Perverse investments!" Jenkins chuckled. "Who on earth buys gold in this day and age? Rumoured he was acting clandestinely for Christian Covett but impossible to confirm. Covett is always so circumspect."

"Who's Covett?"

"As you Amerikans like to say," and here Jenkins assumed a truly grotesque exaggerated nasal drawl, "Which planet are you from, anyway?" Much to my relief, Jenkins dropped back into his usual British whine. "Most successful investor of his generation. Whatever he touches turns to gold. Everyone in the business world reveres Covett. Your ignorance extraordinary."

"I'm not in the business world," I replied tartly. "Nor am I Amerikan. Have you ever heard of something called Midas?"

"Can't be happening," Jenkins moaned. "Must be nightmare. Calls out of blue to test my knowledge of mythology. Must be those new sleeping pills."

"Okay, you don't know about the Midas conspiracy," I said, unfazed. "What do you know about Banque Eurolux? Or about the Holier Than Thou Bank? Or about the Bank Run on Islamic Principles Offshore?"

"All have peculiar names."

"Are they involved in any scandals?"

"All embroiled in major scandals." Jenkins' tone sharpened. "How do you know that? I've only just heard in past hour about impending arrests at Bank Ripoff. At dawn tomorrow. Rumour that Sultan of Arabia himself is named in arrest warrants. Biggest shareholder in Bank Ripoff, you know. Personally guaranteed every Muslim deposit. Not Muslim, are you?" he asked suspiciously.

"I'll tip all my friends off," I promised. "Come on, Jenkins. You haven't even told me what the scandals are. What's the Hotbank scandal?"

"Going on for donkey's years. No solid proof but rumour is Hotbank, Vatikan's bank, you know, is involved up to ears in seriously troubled Italian bank called Banco Nectarini. If Banco Nectarini collapses, Pope out on street. Begging for alms just like Jesus," Jenkins commented irreverently.

"Have you heard anything about a merger of Hotbank and Bank Ripoff?"

"Heard rumour. Amazing if true. Sultan of Arabia hooking up with Pope? Would salvage Nectarini fortune and probably tide Hotbank over cash flow crisis. What is all this, anyway, twenty questions? Can't you read The Sociologist like everyone else?"

"Thanks for answering my questions. I'll give you an inside tip about Xox, if you want."

"What?" Jenkins asked breathlessly.

"He prefers the Financial Times to the Wall Street Journal," I lied.

"Really?" Jenkins breathed. "Could run an opinion piece on that. Should appeal to British readers. Buck 'em up. Master of the Universe reads British paper. Jolly good fillip to national pride. Although did take fifty billion pounds off our Treasury. Makes it sound too much like own goal, doesn't it? Still, thanks ever so much, old chap. Call again sometime."

"I will," I promised. "By the way, how can I get in touch with Godfrey? Where is he based?"

"Funny should ask. Wanted him to start in Vienna, get taste for Central Europe, whipped cream and all that, but fellow insisted wanted to be in Budapest this week. Had hunch something big going to happen."

"I wonder what," I said slowly. "Do you have a number where I can reach him?"

"Not yet," Jenkins replied regretfully. "Wish I did. I'd like to fax him." I smiled, remembering Jenkins' faxes. They were a standing joke among all of the overseas correspondents for The Sociologist, communications which came through on our fax machines at all hours of the day and night, querulous, meticulous, officious, and scrupulous, just like the man himself. I felt a wave of liking for that balding worried middle-aged man sitting so far away at his untidy editing table late at night, hunting for yet another missing dispatch, trying to make yet another deadline, never able to catch enough sleep. I hoped his new sleeping pills would work.

Was it too late to call Hell's nominee to take over the European Studies department? I made a few phone calls and found out that Gunther Otto Troll was ensconced in Berlin as the vice-chairman of Exponential Investments. The former head of the German central bank already worked for Xox. No wonder Hell had been so complacent about persuading Troll to replace Professor Hohenstaufen. What else was up Hell's sleeve and who else was in Xox's pocket? I sighed and picked up the phone again.

"May I speak to Herr Troll, please? I'm the special assistant to the rector of the University of Truth and Justice... Herr Troll, Lord Hades would like you to take over the European Studies department here."

"Hmmm." Troll didn't sound surprised. "Ja, he mentioned this a few weeks ago. When does Otto expect me?"

"As soon as possible. It's a mess right now, frankly."

Troll laughed shortly. "Hohenstaufen's department, nicht wahr? No wonder. I will come to Prague tomorrow. We will have to summon Lady Snatcher and Monsieur Jacques for a debate on the future of Europe." Troll chuckled. "That should be fun."

"Jacques who?"

"I forget this new man's last name. Doesn't matter. It is one of the great unspoken rules that the European president should be named Jacques. Makes it easier for everyone."

"When do you want to hold this debate, sir?"

"Xox should be there."

"He will be here next week to announce the university's permanent endowment. There is also the annual university keynote lecture."

"Who is speaking?"

"Professor Hohenstaufen invited Jean Rameau. The head of Banque Eurolux."

"I know who Rameau is, thank you very much. We are mortal enemies. So Hohenstaufen invited Rameau, did he? How naughty of him. And then he died. Tut, tut. What very bad manners."

"Perhaps we could combine the lecture and the debate?"

"Ach, ja. A small conference in fact. Rameau will lecture. I will destroy him in front of all the assembled dignitaries. Then Lady Snatcher and Monsieur Jacques will claw each other's eyes out. Good. Anything else?"

"No, sir." I was impressed by Troll's brisk efficiency.

"Don't call me `sir', okay? My people call me Gott. My initials, you understand. G-O-T. Gott."

"Jawohl, Gott."

"Give my regards to Otto. Congratulate him on grabbing little Pipi so quickly." Troll chuckled again. "The old crocodile still snaps up his prey faster than anyone else."

"Have you known Otto long?"

"I was his student at Chicago thirty years ago. I still remember his Game Theory course. He gave me a C. I wanted to kill him. It would have been so easy to rig up a little car bomb..." Gott sounded wistful. "Xox also wanted to kill Otto. Even though he got a B+. He was a megalomaniac even in those days. As if he didn't know that Otto never gave anyone an A. Anyway, mustn't open old wounds. See you soon, young man."

"Yes, Gott." Xox had been Hell's student. The two men had known each other for thirty years. Why did Hell pretend to know nothing about his former student and present employer? I put the phone down, stretched my weary body, cracking every joint in my back, and yawned. It had been a long day and I had done a lot of work and I deserved some rest. I had weathered a barrage of insults, regained my old job, seen a man die, arranged for his physical and legal disposal, ordered a tank to blow a hole into the building in which I was now sitting, and found out more tantalizing titbits about billionaires and banking scandals. And yet each moment's revelation only led to more secrets, as though questions were rabbits multiplying in some dark warren. In that moment I longed for the simplicity of an answer.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 49

2011-08-18T10:00:00.000-07:00

I rolled up my sleeves and got back to work but not immediately: after taking one look at what Nero Insanetti had done to my office, I had to go to the bar first. I ordered a double scotch on the rocks: normally I drink my whisky neat but they had just run out of single malt and I drink blended whiskies only for medicinal purposes. Marek, my big blond friend behind the bar, eyed me curiously as I gulped the whisky down and asked for another. "Are you all right?" he asked. "You look green."

"I'm fine now," I replied after downing my second whisky. "Had a small shock. Did you know Nero Insanetti?"

Marek made a sour face. "He came in here once with a journalist. They ordered some tea, but before the water had even boiled, Nero was screaming like a maniac and they were rolling around on the floor and Nero was trying to strangle the other guy." Marek brought out a huge cosh from beneath the counter and brandished it at me. "I had to knock Nero out with this before he let go of the journalist's throat."

"What was his problem?"

Marek shrugged. "Well, the journalist was trying to interview Nero about the university but Nero started screaming that he wasn't a reporter at all but a spy and that it was Nero's job to execute spies. That's all I heard because the guy wanted to leave the building before Nero regained consciousness. I wonder what kind of story he wrote about the university."

"What magazine was he from?" I had an uneasy foreboding that I already knew.

"Let me think... The Sociologist? Is that really the name of a magazine? Doesn’t sound as sexy as Playtoy or Renthouse."

"They like to think they're different."

"So anyway, be careful around Nero."

It's all right. We just got rid of him."

"About time," Marek replied, shaking his head. "He was getting on everyone's nerves. He would just sit for hours in that corner holding his head in his hands, moaning loudly. Then all of a sudden he would sit up and scream loudly, `Why me, O Lord?' I was going to speak to that nice old Lord Hades about it."

"I don't think Nero was talking to that nice old Lord Hades, Marek. I think he was talking to God. He was a good Katholic."

"Oh, yeah?" Marek sniggered. "Does a good Katholic pretend to faint in the elevator so that he can look up a girl's skirt? Ask Annichka about it. He even sent her a memo threatening to complain to the management if she didn't wear wider skirts so that he could get a better view."

"Nero did that?" I gasped angrily. "To cute innocent little Annichka?"

"She's not that little anymore. Or that innocent," Marek said, winking. "But she sure is cute."

"Oh, come on, Marek. Annichka's not even sixteen yet. She likes to play with crayons."

"She's just getting ready for bigger things. Besides, she turned sixteen while you were away. Her cheekbones are beginning to show through the babyfat. She's past her prime. I wouldn't touch her with a pitchfork. Who's going to the Superbowl this year?"

"You'd love to touch Annichka with your pitchfork. You're just being perverse. It must be Nero's influence." I groaned and got up reluctantly. "I'd love to stay and talk about chicks and football, Marek, but I have to clean up the mess Nero made."

"Here." Marek offered me a pair of bright yellow heavy duty rubber gloves. "Who knows what diseases he had?"

"Thanks. I'll bring these back tonight."

"Anytime, pal. Glad you're back." Marek smirked. "You know who else will be glad? Annichka."

"Oh, stop it."

"No, really. She's been dying to play with your... crayon."

Smiling, I escaped before Marek could wing any more lewd insinuations my way but the smile died on my lips as I stood in the doorway of my office, contemplating the revolting task before me. It was worse than mucking out a pigsty because pigs are at least careful to keep their feed apart from their muck. Nero, on the other hand, had eaten, drunk, slept, defecated, and, possibly, worked in the same squalid space: crumpled papers, potato chips, rosaries, files, half-eaten sandwiches, computer diskettes, used teabags, academic journals, beer bottles, crucifixes, pillows, turds, a sleeping bag, pools of urine, prayer books, tweed jackets, clumps of dried vomit, old school ties... all lay strewn on the floor before me, impartially intermingled, like some primeval scene of inhuman devastation. I felt sick to my stomach and I leaned against the doorway and held my hand over my mouth and swallowed hard to stop myself from retching.

I dimly heard a door open. I looked up. Otto Hell was standing next to me, leaning on his stick, impassively contemplating the disaster zone. At length he sighed. "I blame myself," he said heavily. "Should have kept an eye on him. Fellow just cracked up. He wasn't always like this."

"What happened to him, Otto?"

Hell cocked a beady brown eye at the stains on the ceiling. "Must have started after he went to Albania. Sent me a wild memo from Tirana saying that Albania was like a combination of North Korea and Bangladesh and that he finally understood Xox. Acted strange ever since."

"Why did Nero go to Albania?"

"The X-O-X Foundation is about to open an office there. The Amerikan attache in Tirana asked for some information."

"Was the attache's name Steele Remington?"

"Sounds right." Hell glanced at me. "Know him?"

"We went to school together."

Hell surveyed the wreckage again and shook his head. "Can't clean this up with just a pair of rubber gloves. Blow out that wall and flush the muck out. Share Delilah's office in the meantime. Notice the inscriptions on the ceiling?"

I looked up. "I thought it was just damp coming through. But that shade of brown... Gosh, you're right, Otto! Those are words. And they look like they were written in blood."

Hell nodded. "Can you decipher the words?"

"No," I confessed. "Can you?"

"'Course I can," Hell said gruffly. "Cracked German codes during the war, didn't I? Just as well that you can't read them," he said grimly. "They're curses. In Latin. Aimed at you."

My mouth dropped open. "Why me?"

"He told you," Hell replied drily. "You're the Antichrist, ain't you?"

"I don't understand why Nero took such an immediate dislike to me." I pouted. "It's not like I look weird or anything." I rubbed the pointy little horns on my head as a thought struck me. "He must have written these curses before he even met me! And look, there's a little voodoo doll with all these pins stuck in it. It doesn't look in the least bit like me?"

"Got any enemies?"

"Me?" I stared at Hell. "I spread sweetness and light wherever I go. Why would I have any enemies?"

"Stole Anastasia away from Axel, didn't you?"

"It wasn't my fault," I whimpered. "She seduced me. Besides, he's got her back now."

"What about Killjoy-Yuck? Think he might be upset at you for killing his men in Berlin?"

"Godfrey said Terence didn't mind," I protested. "They were working for Rasputin on the side. The British have privatised everything… But what does Terence have to do with Nero's curses? You said Nero was working for Ugh and Hohenstaufen. Are they in cahoots with the British secret service as well?"

"Ask Killjoy-Yuck. Invite him to Prague for Xox's formal announcement about the University's endowment."

"You think he'll talk?"

"After I've interrogated him, he damn well better."

"Otto, why did Terence send me here? He knew I was incompetent."

"Maybe because he knew you were incompetent."

I grimaced. "This is too complicated for me."

"An incompetent spy is easily found out," Hell explained patiently. "If you were blown then Xox's security apparatus would relax their guard. They wouldn't dig deeper."

"Who's the real spy, then?"

"Told you not to ask questions," Hell growled, shuffling away on his stick. "Do I have to train you all over again? You were being set up. Why do you think I let Masaryk fire you over that absurd murder charge?"

"You said that I was bad for the university's reputation!" I cried in outrage. "You mean you knew I was being set up for something even worse so you wanted to get me out of the way?" I realized too late that I had just asked another question so I coughed and nodded and smiled. "Of course you know exactly what's going on. But you aren't going to tell me!"

"You'll find out soon enough," Hell replied equably. "Now close that door and get to work. There's a lot to do."

"Right away, Otto." I saluted and set off in search of a demolition crew.

An hour later, as dusk fell, I watched happily from a safe distance as an enormous tank rolled up the street. The gun turret turned slowly around and up. The 120mm howitzer stood fixed for a moment and then fired, an unearthly sound, as if God were ripping his robes to shreds in a rage. A soft white cloud rose from the side of the university building and a large mound of debris crashed onto the sidewalk. The smoke cleared, showing a gaping black hole where Nero's office had once been. I cheered loudly. I felt like Yeltsin.

A grinning blond giant leaped from the tank and strode up towards me. "Is all?" he asked, gesturing at the polished facade of the university building. "Just one?"

I looked longingly at the brightly-lit windows of Professor Masaryk's office. Professor Flysenko's office was immediately below. They were both working late. The neat rectangle of light was such a tempting target. I sighed. "No, that's all... for the moment," I said regretfully, handing the demolition man a fat wad of cash. "Can I reach you in an emergency?"

The giant gave me his business card. "Satisfaction guaranteed!"

"What kind of guarantee?"

"Tactical battlefield nuclear weapons," the blond man beamed. "Just got shipment from Uzbekistan. Can launch from shoulder." He kissed his hand theatrically. "Beautiful!"

"Where are you from, Mister..." I glanced at his card. "Darko Darkovich?"

"Ex-Yugoslavia, of course," Darkovich replied, a trifle impatiently. "Everyone in arms trade is from ex-Yugoslavia these days."

"I'll be in touch," I promised and went back to the building to make some phone calls. I was full of righteous indignation. My personal inadequacies had been abused by clever vicious men weaving intricate plots. I felt like taking revenge. Should I ask Hell some more questions first? I shrugged. Why not? Fools ask questions that wise men won't answer.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 48

2011-08-17T10:00:00.000-07:00

All eyes were on Nero Insanetti. Otto Hell had just accused his special assistant of conspiring with evil Professor Ugh and smarmy Professor Hohenstaufen. The atmosphere in the conference room was electric.

"What conspiracy, Lord Hades?" Nero squealed. "I don't know anything. I have met Professor Ugh just once. And I didn't even know that Professor Hohenstaufen had invited the head of Banque Eurolux to give a lecture here."

"That's not true, Nero," Benito said gravely, pulling a crumpled sheaf of papers out of a handsome burgundy calfskin portfolio. "I have a whole bunch of confidential memos from you about this lecture."

"Me too," Immanuel confirmed.

"Which memo was that?" Professor Masaryk asked in amazement. "He sends me a dozen memos every day. And my office is just next door."

"Memos work better than face to face communication," Nero shouted furiously. "My efficiency requires a speed of decision faster than sight!" Professor Masaryk stared at Nero blankly. "This is an objective fact," Nero screamed, froth dripping from his mouth, "Not a personal preference!"

"Shouldn't we call a doctor?" Marya Madlenova inquired calmly. "The man is clearly mad."

"I am not mad!" Nero shrieked, swallowing his slaver. "I am merely enthusiastic! You pretend to be a philologist, you bitch! I am filled with God!"

"Does God speak to you through Attila Ugh?" Hell asked drily. "What did Ugh offer you for passing on copies of all my private communication with Xox?"

"Insanetti is secretly working for Ugh?" Professor Masaryk's face darkened with fury at such perfidy. He walked across the room and wagged his finger in Nero's face. "How could you do this to us? We took you in, we fed you well, we treated you properly, and you betrayed us to the Hungarians?"

"Ugh has grand plans," Hell said calmly. "Wants to use this university as a front for secretly training his own private army. Ugh has struck a deal with Zimmerfreien to get financial backing from the Vatikan for his clever little schemes."

"But what was Insanetti's role in all this?"

"To keep Ugh informed and to keep me in ignorance."

"I see it all now." Professor Masaryk nodded slowly. "Amazingly, even I remember. Insanetti came here from Budapest. I thought nothing of it when I hired him in your absence, Otto. He had good recommendations from distinguished academics in Italy and Poland and England and France and even the best of us have to go to Budapest occasionally. Why, I myself have been to Budapest three times in my life!" Professor Masaryk smiled proudly and flexed his biceps but then the smile faded from his lips and he shuddered. "Although nothing could persuade me to spend the night there. But this Insanetti spent six whole months there." Professor Masaryk glared accusingly at Nero. "Why, he even speaks that disgusting gibberish which bears no resemblance to any civilized language, Hungarian!" As professional linguists, Marya Madlenova and Divka nodded in sad agreement.

"I will give you three minutes to explain yourself, Nero," Hell said icily.

Nero took off his watch (a large digital object on a plastic strap, I observed in disgust) and put it carefully on the table. "In the first place, I wish to record my grave dissent with the general intolerance in this room against non-Indo-European languages. If necessary, I will summon you all as witnesses in a court of law. Estonians don't like such prejudice!" He angrily thumped the table. "But I must collect myself. I have two minutes and thirty-five seconds remaining. As for my connection with Professor Ugh, I can only say that he is a gentleman of great character. He is almost English in his hostility to all outsiders. I am deeply awed by this quality since my mother is from Ireland. My father traces his ancestry to the early martyrs. I am, therefore, doubly Katholic. Professor Hohenstaufen goes to confession only on Sundays; I go every day. The Cardinal has absolved me in advance for all crimes I commit on behalf of his ambition to restore our Mother Church to her rightful position as World Nanny. My conscience is clear. I have a minute and forty-two seconds remaining, I notice, and I hope you are all observing the remarkable clarity of my defence. As I have frequently observed in my memos, I play chess not poker and this training serves me well since I can make good moves even under time pressure. As a good Katholic, as a historian, and as a Roman, I felt it my duty to assist the Cardinal and Professor Hohenstaufen in their commendable efforts to restore the Holy Roman Empire. By force of arms if necessary!" Nero shouted, clambering onto the table. He pulled a large revolver out of his tweed jacket and waved it around wildly before cocking the safety catch and aiming the gun at my forehead. "I will become a martyr if need be but I will rid the world of this Antichrist!"

Hell neatly hooked the crook of his walking stick around Nero's ankle and pulled him off the table with a resounding crash and bang: the gun went off as Nero fell. "I still have three seconds left!" Nero moaned from the floor. "Two seconds!"

"You just used them," Hell observed coldly. "Your time is up. Benito, confiscate that gun, give Nero his severance pay, and then throw him out of the building." Benito kicked the gun towards me, and dragged Nero, still whimpering, out of the room. I picked up the gun and put it in my pocket. I have always had a weakness for shiny toys.

Professor Masaryk suddenly smote his forehead. "Was this not foolish, Otto?" he exclaimed. "Now he can go and tell all our secrets to Ugh! Should we not bring him back and..." Professor Masaryk hesitated.

Otto smiled grimly. "And what? Shoot him? No, Tomas. Let Nero run off to Budapest and tell Ugh that we know all about his little plot. They have secrets, we don't. Remember that." Professor Masaryk nodded earnestly and moved his lips, obviously repeating the words like some magic mantra. I looked at Hell curiously. He had more secrets than anyone else I knew. And while I was beginning dimly to perceive who `they' might be, I still had no clue who `we' were. Hell had told me to do some historical research for him on the intermarriages between the G and T, Gapsburg, and Schadenfreude families but did that mean that I was once again working for Hell? And what did the plot to breed the next Holy Roman Emperor have to do with that enigmatic bald billionaire, Mister Xox?

Lost in this maze of questions I barely noticed Benito come back and hand Hell a piece of paper. "Fax for you, Lord Hades," Benito said. "Just came in from New York while I was throwing Nero out of a window. I thought you might want to see it."

"Thank you, Benito," Hell said kindly. He looked at the fax message and a thin smile crossed his lips. "Well, we may not have any secrets but Xox certainly does," he announced in a jocular tone I had never heard before. "Guess it's not a secret anymore. Or not for much longer anyway. Might be of particular interest to you, Schweinbraten," Hell added, glancing at Professor Hohenstaufen who was sitting slumped in his chair, a dull glaze of shock clouding his porcine little eyes. "This is a fax from the Fund for Peace and Love in which Xox offers this University a permanent endowment of a hundred billion dollars. What do you think? Should we accept?" Hell's eyes crinkled faintly as he looked around at the jaws hanging slack all around him.

"A hundred billion dollars," Professor Masaryk said faintly. "Is that a lot of money?"

"I begin to like this university," Marya Madlenova murmured mercenarily. "I might just stay here. Permanently. Is Xox married?"

"What did he do, rob a bank?" Immanuel wise-cracked.

"Actually, several," Hell replied blandly. "Apparently he has just concluded a successful speculation successfully against the British, European and Swiss central banks. He bet that they couldn't support their currencies above a certain level. They bet that they could. They lost. They are a lot poorer. He is a lot richer."

"Why does he want to give all this money to the university?" Divka asked sensibly.

"Man doesn't approve of how little Western Europe is doing to help Eastern Europe. Thinks he can do it better. So he's playing Robin Hood. It's probably a good tax deduction." My eyes narrowed. What billionaire ever pays taxes? Why was Hell making up plausible excuses for Xox's bizarre philanthropy?

"This is the end of Europe," Professor Hohenstaufen groaned in sepulchral tones. "The end of the single currency project. It is all over. The project of building a united Europe is over. The work to which I and millions of other Eurocrats dedicated our lives is ruined. It is the end." Hohenstaufen tottered to his feet and gazed at Hell emptily. "Please accept my apologies, Lord Hades," he quavered, trying vainly to speak in his former pompous intonations. "I must go and shoot myself." He shuffled slowly towards the door.

"Just one question before you go," Marya Madlenova said in her usual murmur but it sounded loud as a shot in that stunned silence. "Isn't suicide a mortal sin?"

Professor Hohenstaufen fell to the floor like a pole-axed bull.

Immanuel dropped Hohenstaufen's wrist. "No pulse," he said. "He's dead this time. Must have been a massive heart attack."

"He was under a lot of stress lately," I said gravely.

"Better this way, really," Hell pronounced. "No need to call the police. Easier on the family. Call a doctor. Issue the usual condolences."

"Yes, Lord Hades," Benito answered obediently, but Hell shook his head.

"Not you. You've got your own department to handle, Benito. I think we can leave this to my special assistant." Hell scowled at me. "Xox is coming here next week to announce his gift to the University. Wants a big bash. Lots of things to arrange. Get to work." I looked up in gratified surprise. All eyes were on me. I smirked modestly. It felt good to have my job again.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 47

2011-08-16T10:00:00.000-07:00

Nero Insanetti, the madman who had taken my place as Otto Hell's special assistant, immediately confirmed my feeling of being unwelcome. As soon as the meeting commenced, Nero flailed his short arms in the air. "Point of order, Lord Hades!" He glared venomously at me. "What is a stranger doing in our midst?"

"Whom are you talking about?" Otto growled.

Nero pointed at me. "This devil," he yelped. "What does he do in our beautiful building? Why is he at our important meetings? Why does he eat our fine free food?"

"Nero," Otto replied with quiet menace. "He is here at my invitation. Now stop playing the fool."

"Excuse me, Otto," Professor Masaryk said, obsequiously enough, but a mutinous gleam shone in his eye. "But I believe that Insanetti has a point. This fellow has a police record. Why, he was even implicated in a murder." Professor Masaryk suppressed a sob. "The murder of a pure young girl who worked at this university. A sweet young thing who worked for me. Oh, Lucy!"

Benito coughed deferentially. "Actually, sir, her real name was Charlotte Stant. And we don't know how she came to work here. Or anything about her character."

Professor Masaryk took off his glasses and waved them about vaguely. "Her name is irrelevant. So are her origins. And her morals. Ever since she died I have been unable to do my work properly. Nobody does it for me." Delilah indignantly opened her mouth in protest. Professor Masaryk shook his head obstinately. "No, my dear Lila, you do your best, but it will take a long time to train you properly. You only bring me papers to sign. More and more papers but never any vitamins." Anger suffused his distinguished old face. "I refuse to sit at the same table with this man. He callously deprived me of my vitamins. And he did it together with a well-known CIA agent! The man is a rapist, a murderer, and a spy!"

Professor Flysenko whistled in amazement. "A murderer!" he rumbled. "Now I understand. He challenged me to a duel only fifteen minutes ago. He wanted to kill me!"

"And he is insufferably insolent." Professor Prince Maximilian von und zu Hohenstaufen-Niebelungen joyfully joined this concerted assault. "He refused to go to dinner with me. The young fool has no conception of court etiquette! Is that the sort of example we should encourage for our students? He is a bad influence and his continued presence in this room, building, university, and city will poison the atmosphere permanently!"

"As it is we suffer enough from the air pollution in Prague," Professor Masaryk agreed.

Nero crossed his arms across his chest victoriously. "Leave the room immediately!" he exultantly hissed at me.

"He is obstinate," Professor Masaryk said sorrowfully. "He feels no shame. I told him to confess. And do you know what he said in reply to me? To a man old enough to be his grandfather?" Professor Masaryk looked around at his fellow mutineers. "He had the colossal nerve to say that he hadn't killed the girl. That he was innocent! Even though the newspapers had already convicted him."

"An obvious degenerate," Flysenko said, shaking his head. "In my monumental study of prostitution I make the most interesting point that you can tell a whore by the shape of her skull. Just look at this fellow. He barely has a nose. Look how pointed his ears are. As for the shape of his eyes, why, he even has an epicanthian fold!"

Professor Hohenstaufen leaned forward and stared. "Gott im Himmel!" he exclaimed in shock. "You are right! His eyes are like almonds!"

"He's from Mongolia," Immanuel protested. "He was born that way. He can't help it!"

"Exactly," Flysenko answered triumphantly. "But we can. We Europeans must resist the evil from the East. For centuries now we Poles have been the bulwark of the West. Leave him to me. I know how to deal with Orientals." He crossed himself superstitiously, muttered a short sibilant prayer, and leaned across the table towards me, his little brown eyes glittering with malice. "O evil emissary of the yellow peril!" he hissed. "Depart immediately. Or else the sword of Jan Sobieski will fall upon you!"

"Lord Hades, would you please put an end to this nonsense?" Divka said loudly. "If we are not going to get down to business, I must run away and pack. Poor Wenceslas is going to Tripoli this evening and I promised to go with him. Otherwise he will never be able to understand what Gaddafi is talking about. They will get Wenceslas horribly drunk and he will just nod his head and agree to everything and it really would be very bad for our little country's international reputation if we send any more Semtex to the IRA."

"Travelling a lot with Good King Wenceslas, aren't you?" Professor Novak asked jealously. "Do you have any time left for your students?"

"I make time for my students," Divka replied, her eyes flashing. "Unlike you. You just make them. And then double-time them."

"Stop this squabbling!" Professor Hell expostulated. "Really, Divka, I'm surprised at you."

"He started it," Divka muttered defensively.

"Did not," Novak spluttered under his breath.

"Did too."

"Told you to stop it!" Hell said in exasperation. "Sound like an old married couple!"

"Well, actually, we were married," Divka and Novak said in unison but then their momentary harmony fell apart into an acrimonious counterpoint as they pointed fingers at each other and simultaneously yelled: "It was his fault!" "It was her fault!"

"This is not a divorce court!" Hell bellowed. A sullen silence settled over the room. "Maybe we can get on with the meeting now," Hell grumbled. "Where were we?"

"We still have not resolved the question of this murderer's presence," Professor Masaryk noted.

"Do we really want the CIA to know all our secrets?" Professor Hohenstaufen added.

Otto glared at Hohenstaufen. "What secrets?" he demanded. "Got anything to hide, Untermenschen?"

Professor Hohenstaufen tried to meet Hell's glare, failed, blushed, and bit the ends of his drooping grey moustache. "I go to confession every Sunday," he mumbled weakly.

"You see?" Professor Masaryk said to me earnestly. "This is how to set an example. Do not be so proud, young man. Listen to your elders. Emulate their conduct. Professor Hohenstaufen never raped anyone."

The image of a gaunt young man in tight trousers with garish makeup around his hollow haunted eyes hanging around the Zoo station in Berlin flashed before me. "Except his son." The words slipped rebelliously out of my mouth despite my firm resolve to keep my mouth shut. The effect, however, was astounding: Hohenstaufen gasped, turned purple, clutched his flabby chest, and collapsed onto the floor.

"Now see what you have done!" Professor Masaryk howled. "Another murder!"

"He's not dead yet," Immanuel said, kneeling over Professor Hohenstaufen's prostrate form. "He just fainted."

"Heart attack?" Hell inquired.

"I don't think so," Immanuel replied. "His heartbeat sounds pretty regular."

"Well, if he's not dying, throw some cold water in his face," Hell ordered. "Haven't got all day." Benito picked up a bottle of mineral water from the table and poured it over Professor Hohenstaufen's head. Hohenstaufen spluttered and sat up. He looked like a fat bedraggled water rat. "Now, if you're feeling better, Schutzstaffen, why don't you tell us your little secrets?" Hell invited. "You might, for instance, tell us why you have secretly invited the president of Banque Eurolux to give a lecture to our students."

Hohenstaufen gagged and looked imploringly at Hell. "May I please be excused from this meeting, your lordship? I do not feel well..."

"Not just yet," Hell replied inexorably. "As Masaryk says, you'll feel better once you've confessed."

"Really, Otto!" Professor Masaryk gulped. "I didn't mean it like that. Must we torture a senior colleague in this fashion? Prince Maximilian has already told us that he confesses every Sunday!"

"Ah, but to whom?" Hell murmured. "Who is your confessor, Sauerkraut? Is it by any chance His Eminence the Cardinal, cousin to the late Prince Ludwig von G and T?"

"His Eminence is also my cousin," Professor Hohenstaufen replied with some dignity. "Why should I not keep my sins in the family?"

"Like with your son, eh?" Hohenstaufen's face turned purple again and he swayed in his chair. "Never mind that for the moment," Hell said magnanimously. "Just answer the question. Why did you invite the president of the Banque Europeenne pour la luxe, calme, et volupte to give this year's keynote lecture?"

"Banque Eurolux is a prominent European institution," Professor Hohenstaufen responded. "I am the director of the European Studies department. I assumed that we would all agree that this invitation would be good for our little institution."

"Isn't Jean Rameau the president of Banque Eurolux?" Marya Madlenova asked, interested. "Pompous little pseudo-intellectual fake. So is his twin brother Jacques, the chairman of Pan-European Airlines. They take after their uncle. My dear friend Jean-Saul Fartre once introduced me to Albert Rameau. Such an annoying person. Always babbling about killing Arabs on the beach. It was a great relief when he died in that absurd motorcycle accident. His ridiculous disciples speak darkly of murder but it was obviously his own fault since he never could hold his drink. Nor can his nephews. I cannot imagine what Jean Rameau could have to say that would be of any interest to our students."

"That could be said for most of the people we invite to give lectures," Novak pointed out. "What makes Rameau particularly objectionable?"

"Well, besides the fact that he has stolen several hundred million dollars from the bank he manages, money which was supposed to go to starving babies suffering from AIDS in the worst orphanages in Romania, nothing," Hell replied. "Man is a vicious criminal, but, then, most bankers are. Point is, Rameau needs lots of support and legitimacy right now in order to keep his job. What did Rameau offer Donnerblitzen here in return for this flattering invitation?"

"Would Professor Hohenstaufen do such a thing for money?" Divka's eyes were wide with horror at the thought of such corruption.

"It is done all the time." Marya Madlenova shrugged. "How do you think Nixon got rehabilitated? The going rate is ten thousand dollars per lecture for the person who arranges the event."

"That's peanuts, I suppose," Immanuel sniggered, fingering the tattered fabric of his threadbare jacket.

"This is all part of a bigger game," Hell said grimly. "Isn't it, Sachertorte?" Professor Hohenstaufen looked about him like a hunted animal. "How long have you been a whore and a spy? Selling your favours to everyone: kickbacks from Rameau, graft from the Cardinal, hush money from Attila Ugh, and, of course, palm grease from Nero..."

Nero let out an agonized wail and began to hop up and down in his chair. Hell looked at his special assistant coldly. "How long have you been involved in Hohenstaufen and Ugh's little conspiracy, Nero?"

The atmosphere in the room was suddenly palpably tense. Everyone leaned forward in their chairs and held their breath, waiting for the next unpredictable disclosure. The peaceful facade of the University of Truth and Justice was cracking open: what dreadful skeletons would now stagger forth from hidden closets?

#GenghizInLove: Episode 46

2011-08-15T10:00:00.000-07:00

Lunch was as usual delicious but I couldn't help feeling unwelcome. Marya Madlenova was sitting right opposite and kept staring coldly at me with rapier thrusts of her hazel eyes. I couldn't remember just why she was so furious and it distracted me from my search for a fresh victim. I knew all the pretty students too well to steal their souls, I had listened to their poignant stories and admired photographs of their children. Delilah was the only attractive woman in the room whom I didn't know at all but she already seemed caught between two importunate suitors, Benito and Hachek Katastrofski. It was a relief when Benito hastily gathered us around after we had lingered sufficiently over café au lait and white chocolate mousse.

"I don't know why Lord Hades summoned this emergency meeting," Benito said. "It's all very hush-hush. I think it's about the future of the University of Truth and Justice."

"There is no future," Immanuel pointed out comfortingly as we trooped towards the elevator. "The very notion is misleading."

"Yeah, well, nobody told Lord Hades," Benito answered. "But if we're late for this meeting, I certainly won't have a future."

Immanuel shrugged amiably. "In the future we'll all just be dirt in the ground."

"Are you speaking from experience?"

A crazy grin spread over Immanuel's face. "Well, you know, Benito, in my last incarnation..."

The elevator doors opened noiselessly. There was a moment of silence as we began our descent to Hell.

"All right," Benito groaned. "The suspense is killing me. What were you in your last incarnation?"

"Nothing," Immanuel crowed, triumphantly thumping Benito on his sleekly groomed head. "That's the point. We only live once. Then we're dead. Dead, dead, dead. Get it?"

"That's so hopeless," Benito moaned. "What about our immortal souls?"

"We don't have souls," Immanuel replied smugly. "We're just meat. Dead meat."

"But you're a philosopher," Benito howled. "You're supposed to figure out what makes human beings special."

"Ah, Benito," Marya Madlenova murmured disdainfully. "Do not be so stupid in public. Only fools get so excited about being human beings. Personally, I would rather be a peach."

"We are special because we can kill," Hachek Katastrofski asserted in a high-pitched hesitating nasal whine. "The only moral law is the law of the jungle."

"Eat meat or be meat?" I asked.

Katastrofski nodded. "Humans are superior because they can kill other animals. And those humans are superior who can kill other humans."

"Why can't we just be nice to each other?" Benito pleaded. "Each of us is unique and irreplaceable. We all contribute to Earth's diversity in our own special way. Love thy neighbor..."

"The only way to love your neighbor is to fuck her," Katastrofski replied harshly, staring down meaningfully into the deep cleavage between Delilah's large breasts. Delilah looked up at him, blushed, and turned away. Her breasts bobbed all the more invitingly as she stepped out of the elevator and walked down the long carpeted corridor towards the conference room.

Benito glared angrily at Katastrofski. "I was talking about animals," he hissed. "Would you fuck a dolphin? Or a baby seal?"

"Would a dolphin or a baby seal prefer to be fucked or to be slaughtered and eaten?" Marya Madlenova asked meditatively. "It is hard to know what animals really want."

"I'm told that great advances have been made recently in understanding the language of dolphins," Divka chimed in helpfully.

"Well, my dear, speaking purely as a professional philologist I think it may take some time before dolphins and human beings are on good enough terms for us to ask them such questions politely. As for baby seals..." Madlenova threw up her hands elegantly, raking my cheek with a sharp impeccably lacquered fingernail. "Ah, pardon," she said winsomely. "I hope I didn't hurt you. Too much."

"Nobody ever bothered to ask baby seals if it hurts too much to have their skulls clubbed open," Benito said bitterly.

"There is no need to ask. They cringe and moan and make all those pitiful little sounds," Marya Madlenova replied as we walked into the conference room. "You remind me of a baby seal, Benito," she added sweetly. "You show your feelings so openly. I can so vividly imagine you gambolling in the snow. Of course you would like to have a playmate with whom to gambol. But perhaps she has already been clubbed by the big bad hunter?" Madlenova patted Benito's cheek, walked across the room, and sat down, smiling to herself.

Benito stared at her, his mouth hanging wide open. "What a bitch," he whispered hoarsely.

"I think she likes you.".

"What the hell are you talking about? That bitch just called me a baby seal!"

"Well, you do look pretty sleek. Your hair, I mean," I added hastily, seeing the indignation rise in his hot brown eyes. "I think she meant it as a compliment. Or as a warning."

"I just don't get what Lila sees in that fucking hook-nosed slick Polish son of a bitch..."

"You talking about me?" A deep voice rumbled behind us. A tall middle-aged man with a pot belly stood in the doorway glowering at Benito. His black hair was plastered to a curiously pointy skull and his fleshy nose did have a hook to it. A greying Hitler moustache rose and fell rhythmically with the irritable twitching of the man's thick pale pink lips.

Benito blushed scarlet. "Oh, I'm sorry, Professor Flysenko. I wasn't talking about you at all."

"You were not?" Flysenko frowned. "But I am Polish and a son of a bitch and I think I'm pretty slick. I was glad to hear that Delilah likes me. It is fun to rub up against her in queues, elevators, and other public places. But whom were you talking about if not me? What other slick Polish son of a bitch is here?" Flysenko scanned the room quickly with his restless little brown eyes. "Ah. You must have been talking about young Hachek Katastrofski then. This makes things complicated. My compatriot, my competitor. Blood solidarity or sperm rivalry? In my books I have always said that sex is our primary instinct. I must uphold my writings. I shall challenge him to a duel. Will you be my second?"

Benito nodded eagerly but I regretfully cut him off. "Benito cannot possibly be your second, sir, since he is an interested party to this conflict. The laws of duelling will not permit it."

Flysenko sneered at me. "What could you, obviously an Asian, possibly know about duelling?"

I pulled out my well worn black duelling glove from the special pocket in my trousers where I have kept it ever since that unfortunate incident at a ball in Heidelberg when some oaf in a loud check jacket asked my partner to dance with him five times in succession and I realized, much to my dismay, that I had no glove with which to challenge him and the ballroom was filled with his friends who laughed at me and refused to lend me their gloves, and as a result I resignedly watched the dunce carouse the night away with the girl while I stood leaning against a wall, my eyes full of misery and hatred. I have known better ever since: I never leave home without it. "Pistols at dawn?" I asked casually, twirling my glove with one hand while I watched Flysenko's little eyes widen with fear and loathing.

"Oh, I don't know," Flysenko replied, in as nonchalant a tone as he could manage, but we could all hear the tremor beneath the rumble. "It seems so unnecessary. We are all reasonable men. I'm sure we can work something out."

"An apology perhaps?" I said tauntingly.

Flysenko stiffened but subsided after another warning twirl of my glove. "Well," he conceded. "Perhaps Asians do know something about duelling."

"Thank you, Professor Flysenko," I said warmly and shook his clammy hand. After having saved the honor of a whole continent I felt that I could afford to be gracious. Besides, if Hell wanted me to come back to the University of Truth and Justice, I would probably have to work with this repulsive coward. "If you would like, I would be glad to be your second in your duel with Katastrofski. May the best man win."

But Flysenko shuddered at the word `duel', mumbled something noncommittal, shuffled across the room like a man broken before his time, and struck up a conversation with his young Polish colleague. They glanced covertly at me as they spoke, which is always disturbing, but I was more disturbed by Marya Madlenova's steely smile. She beckoned me over towards her and I had no choice but to obey.

"So, my young Mongolian," she murmured. "You know how to stand up for yourself. I like that in a man. Men should be... erect." I collapsed into a chair. Madlenova's knee brushed mine under the table. Long cool fingers stroked my thigh. The fingers slid deftly into my lap. But then Madlenova frowned and took her hand away. "Perhaps I was wrong?" I said nothing. A pale freckled face surrounded by a halo of curly red hair flickered dimly before my eyes, the candle-lit ikon of an archaic deity. A great melancholy welled hotly up into my eyes. To sleep with Madlenova would be to admit that the goal of recovering Anastasia was a lost cause: was I then to abjure my lost goddess and convert to this disturbing new divinity? Was I even physically capable of infidelity? Yet even this unwonted passivity of my body seemed like some sort of betrayal. "Here comes Professor Hell," Marya Madlenova said distantly. "Come to my room after this meeting. I may give you another chance to prove yourself."

We all stood up as Otto shuffled into the room, followed by Professors Masaryk and Novak arguing heatedly together as ever, with pudgy Nero Insanetti and Professor Hohenstaufen tagging along in their wake. Hell glared at us and waved his stick irritably around. "Stop this nonsense," Hell commanded. "Sit."

We sat. I tried to pay attention as the meeting began with all the usual preliminaries but my mind was somewhere else. I felt the same freezing sensation on my forehead and scrotum and I wondered miserably what Lady Rudolphine's mysterious ointment Lethe was doing to my bodily functions. Would I ever have an erection again or was I doomed to a lifetime of mockery and derision at my impotence? I looked around at the powerful and beautiful men and women sitting proudly at this burnished mahogany conference table, their hair or balding pates glittering in the strong overhead electric lights, and once more I felt myself the shy stranger at a foreign feast, thirteenth at the table, anonymous, unwanted.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 45

2011-08-14T10:00:00.000-07:00

I returned to life with a grimace. I had a sour taste in my mouth, the acrid tang of rusted iron. I frowned and rubbed my gums gingerly. My finger returned, dripping with blood. I groaned. I had been feeling guilty for months now about missing my last check-up with my regular dentist, Barbie's dad, Dr. Boopstein. But what would that mild-mannered balding Rotarian say when he saw my newly acquired fangs?

"Lots of vampires in Kalifornia," a voice said gruffly. I opened my eyes. Sure enough, sitting at my sickbed was my mind-reading boss, Otto Hell. He fixed me with his beady brown eyes. "Rudi tells me you're a little shaken up."

I laughed wildly, spitting out a fine red spray of blood. "How would you feel after discovering that you've been carrying around a spirit within you without even knowing it?"

"Depends whose spirit," Hell answered evenly. "Aren't you glad that Anastasia is with you?"

"Within me," I corrected him. "Not with me. Within. There's a difference."

Hell shrugged. "So spit her out. You need to find a suitable body for Anastasia's spirit. Lots of fish in the sea."

"What about the other girl's spirit?"

"Big fish eat little fish."

"You want me to commit murder!"

"More like theft, really. Besides, you're just an accomplice."

Pipi emerged from her bathroom in a slinky pink bikini. "Like it?" she asked, pirouetting before us. "I'm going to lunch."

"Dressed like that?" Hell scowled. "This is, after all, a university. Might consider my reputation."

Pipi's little face contorted. She burst into tears. "I'm good for your reputation!" she sniffled. "You're old and I'm sexy. I'm a fine trophy!"

"Good point," Hell agreed.

Pipi sobbed a little longer, dried her eyes, put on a dressing gown, snapped her fingers, and disappeared. Lady Rudolphine sat before us, white haired, dignified, sedately smiling. "As you see, my dear, it really is quite easy to change bodies," she remarked calmly. "And most enjoyable."

"For you maybe, Lady Rudolphine," I replied acerbically. "But how does Pipi feel about it?"

Lady Rudolphine shrugged. "Does it matter? To be honest, I doubt if the silly little thing has even noticed." She rolled her eyes in her head and vanished. Pipi wriggled in her chair. "Are you coming to lunch?" she pouted. "I'm hungry. You talk too much."

"I can't handle this," I groaned. "Are you really suggesting that I should seduce some brainless little chiclet and pour Anastasia into her? It seems so immoral..."

"What's morality got to do with it?" Hell growled. "Just pouring old wine into new bottles."

"But I don't even know how to do it..."

"Didn't have any trouble decanting Anastasia into Madlenova," Hell pointed out. "Follow your instincts."

"I must have been following my instincts when I went with Madlenova. And it didn't work."

"Too ambitious. You're just a novice vampire. Madlenova is a tough cookie. Need to practise your bite on softer prey."

Lady Rudolphine reappeared, nodding. "Otto is right. In any case, don't worry about getting it wrong. We can replace your missing instincts."

"Oh no," I wailed in horror. "More drugs?"

Lady Rudolphine grinned wickedly. She dug out a small glass bottle from her handbag and held it up. The little phial glittered in the light. "Basic Instinct."

"Is that another of your pet drug designer's special creations?"

"Dear Hans van der Annersvoort." Lady Rudolphine smiled fondly. "He really is very inventive."

I hazarded a guess. "Is he also in England now? Along with Sleaze and Nina Hamidi?"

Lady Rudolphine gazed at me coolly. Generations of aristocrats frowned haughtily at me through her deep blue eyes. "I don't keep track of Hans' precise movements. I'm not that fond of him." She handed me the little glass phial. "This is the small emergency supply of Basic Instinct I keep with me when I travel. It's very easy to use. Just dab a drop into any open wound. A scratch will do. I usually use a sharpened hairpin. I shall leave it with you when I go."

"You're leaving?" I asked in distress. "When? Where are you going?"

"My dear little man, I do have other responsibilities besides dealing with your absurdly trivial emotional storms in a teacup," Lady Rudolphine replied evenly. "I have to go to various gallery openings, opera premieres, charity balls, and visit the Queen, whom I have been neglecting shamelessly in the last few weeks and the poor dear does take on so if I don't pop in every once in a while even though it is such a bore for she has absolutely no conversation and she has taken to pouting (and given her lower lip, can you imagine the sight? It really is quite frightening) and stamping her feet and throwing infantile tantrums, quite absurd behavior, really, even if these are trying times for her, what with the most peculiar way in which her children are behaving, positively encouraging the press to photograph them posing naked on Swiss ski slopes and having their toes sucked on Caribbean beaches, and people burning down her castles, and those silly Australians wanting to get rid of her and set up on their own, and even the most die-hard Tories are demanding that she pay taxes and she can't very well move her assets offshore, now, can she, it would be setting a bad example, besides which, Britain already is an island, and, you know, I really do have to take care of my paralysed son."

"I'm sorry, Lady Rudolphine," I said remorsefully. "I had totally forgotten..."

"Oh, Murti Bing is probably fine," the old lady replied. "He keeps himself busy. He has rather a lot of colleagues working with him at the moment."

"Colleagues? What does he do?"

"Oh, this and that. You might say that he is a sort of... chemist." Lady Rudolphine chuckled. "Alchemist is more like it, actually."

"Alchemist." I stared at Lady Rudolphine. My brain felt oddly clear and it wasn't just that I hadn't had a drink in a long time. Little snippets of various casual conversations flashed before me, gleaming bits of information like random pieces of cardboard thrown up into the air, mere confetti until one saw how they fell, settling themselves into place, integral parts of a complex jigsaw puzzle. Some unidentified expert had altered the chemical structure of the pill which Luke Leazy had designed for the X-O-X Foundation. Luke had been invited by the X-O-X Foundation to work in England with a genius who had designed drugs in the sixties in San Francisco. Saure had told Anastasia that the woman who designed her love potions, Nina Hamidi, had gone to England on urgent business, an opportunity she couldn't pass up. Lady Rudolphine had revealed to me that she obtained Lethe from the underground drug designer in Amsterdam, Hans van der Annersvoort, and that she had heard of my friend Luke. And on our first meeting at Prince Ludwig's suicide party she had told me that her son Murti Bing had spent a lot of time in San Francisco in the sixties. Murti Bing, the alchemist. What the hell was he stirring up in his little cauldron together with the best underground drug designers of the world? And to what terrifying end?

"I'm sure you can guess," Lady Rudolphine smiled.

"Xox wants to take over the world."

"He's already done that," Hell replied casually. "By far the richest man in the world now. Probably the most feared as well."

"What about the Sultan of Arabia?"

"Cutting off arms and legs is small stuff," Hell said dismissively. "Feudal foolishness. Flogging frightens nobody anymore. Whole crowds of Western degenerates flocking to Arabia these days. Punish us, the masochists bleat, and the mullahs don't know how to respond. In any case, the Sultan is terrified of Xox."

"Why?"

"Asking questions again," Hell said reprovingly. "Use your head instead."

"I'm on sick leave. What does Xox want?"

"To win friends and influence people."

"By giving them drugs?"

Hell shrugged. "Why not? As good a way as any other."

A sudden flash of insight blazed through my head. My eyeballs nearly popped. "Did Xox set up the University of Truth and Justice as an experiment? To test all these new attitude-changing drugs on a bunch of depressed intellectuals?"

"Did you just figure that out?" Hell looked at me in surprise. "Thought you knew it all along."

I giggled hysterically. "How silly of me. Of course I should have known. Why else would anyone set up a university in Central Europe?"

"The alchemists began by experimenting with prisoners on death row," Lady Rudolphine recalled. "But then we realized that we needed to test the Nice pill's effects simultaneously on three dimensions: intelligence, morality, and pleasure. And it's hard to check pleasure levels on death row..."

"So you decided to experiment on students instead. Giving them `vitamins'."

"Exactly. It was the perfect pretext."

I looked at Hell severely. "Aren't you ashamed of yourself?"

Hell scowled back at me. "What for?"

"You're the greatest living intellectual in the world," I protested. "You've been teaching in institutions of higher learning all your life. Aren't you shocked and dismayed at this sort of subversion of academic standards?"

"How did you spend your time when you were in university?" Hell demanded.

I looked down, shame-faced. "Taking drugs and hanging out with other delinquents."

Hell shrugged. "Our students do that too. Just in laboratory conditions. What's the problem?"

"Oh, nothing really, I guess." I sat up in alarm as Lady Rudolphine approached. "What are you doing?"

"Another dose of Lethe." Lady Rudolphine deftly dabbed the lotion onto my forehead and balls.

I squirmed at her touch and giggled. "It tickles. Am I going to forget everything again?"

"Just inconvenient memories. This should keep you from feeling heartbreak," Lady Rudolphine explained. "And you will only remember Basic Instinct when the time is right. The repeated dose will keep you out of mischief for a while."

"Whatever." I spat out another mouthful of steaming-hot blood into my handkerchief. "Why is there all this blood in my mouth?"

"Just means you're hungry. You're a vampire, aren't you?" Hell reminded me. He rose to his feet and put his arm around Pipi's waist. "Coming down to lunch? There's a meeting afterwards which I particularly want you to attend."

I sighed and got out of bed. I knew that I was going to spend the next few days looking around furtively for fresh meat. I wondered if I would spot a potential target at lunch. I wanted Anastasia back, even at the cost of my better feelings. I felt sorry for my prey but I really had no choice. There's no such thing as a free lunch, especially for the victim.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 44

2011-08-13T10:00:00.000-07:00

I paused outside Lady Rudolphine's door and knocked hesitantly. After a moment the door opened. Wrapped in a frilly pink negligee, her short blonde hair tousled, Pipi von G and T smiled sleepily at me.

"Pipi!" I exclaimed, startled. "What are you doing here?"

"Sleeping, obviously. What happened to you last night?"

I blinked. Pipi's voice had changed. It was much deeper. And I had never noticed her very English accent before. "Where's Lady Rudolphine?"

Pipi stared at me coolly. I had never noticed her cornflower blue eyes. "I'm right here."

"Where?" I tried to peep around Pipi.

She sighed. "In front of you, stupid." And, as my jaw dropped open and the world went around my dazzled eyes, before I slumped to the floor in a dead faint, I heard her sigh again. "Honestly. Men. They just can't handle change. A little makeover and the boy faints…"

Eventually, I came back to life. I shakily sipped strong black coffee and looked questioningly at her. Lady Rudolphine or Pipi: what was I supposed to call her?

"Either," she answered. "Call me Pipi when I'm pretty and silly. Lady Rudolphine when I'm old and witty."

"You can flip back and forth?" I asked, stunned.

"Of course." She smiled, spread her hands, and rolled her eyes. The little blonde cutie transmuted into a dignified tanned old lady with a dangerous flicker in her dark blue eyes.

I gasped. "How did you do that?"

"I took over Pipi," Lady Rudolphine replied calmly. "Like a merger. Or an acquisition. Good deal for her too. Axel's lawyers would have cheated her out of her inheritance. And she really wouldn't have been able to handle Schloss Himmelsberg by herself."

"And you get a new body to play with?" I stared at Lady Rudolphine open-mouthed.

She nodded cheerfully, rolled her eyes again, and, there she was, cute little Pipi, throwing her blonde hair out of her face. "Isn't it fun?" Her voice was higher now and more accented and the eyes were a paler blue. "It's like playing with dolls."

"Is Otto ready for this?" I asked dubiously. "Does he know that you've acquired his fiancee, body and soul?"

"What's a body or two between friends? We've been together for so many years anyway. Variety adds spice to relationships." Pipi snapped her fingers. Lady Rudolphine reappeared. She frowned at me. "But where were you last night? You need another dose of Lethe."

"No, Lady Rudolphine, I'm not up for it right now," I moaned, dreading the thought of being boiled again in the hot shower. "I've just had the strangest experience. It's a long story." I told Lady Rudolphine about Madlenova's late-night seduction. "Then there's nothing much to tell," I said, shrugging. "We fell asleep. Madlenova had obviously put something in the tea. Another of these love potions you all seem to use." I glowered irritably at Lady Rudolphine. "Why can't you witches just content yourselves with Chanel Number Five?"

"Love potions are more efficient," Lady Rudolphine replied reasonably. "Go on."

"In my dream we were walking hand in hand in the moonlight. But the moon came closer. She was actually leading me towards the light. But the heart of the light was an impenetrable darkness. It came from... the dark woman. She stroked my face with her hairy paw. The fur was soft as velvet."

"What happened then?" Lady Rudolphine breathed.

"I clambered up in her lap and looked into her eyes. I knew that she would not hurt me." I shivered. "I entered the darkness. Madlenova was there. In that darkness we fought for a long time. She wanted to take me into her. I was afraid. Some part of me wanted to be taken, to lose myself utterly. She knew it and she fought harder. That was her mistake. I stopped struggling and let her swallow me. But she couldn't. She choked. Then I took her. But I couldn't keep her." I stared wide-eyed at Lady Rudolphine. "Then the dream ended. When I woke up Madlenova was furious with me. I still don't understand what happened."

Lady Rudolphine looked at me peculiarly and began to laugh. Clutching her sides, howling hysterically, she collapsed into a chair and waved her long legs about in the air. I averted my eyes and scowled at the wall. I didn't see what was so very funny about my sex life.

"How utterly hilarious..."

"The humor escapes me," I said stiffly and stared in outrage as Lady Rudolphine began to laugh again.

"That's what makes it so funny," she replied, struggling to control a fresh spasm of giggles. "You don't even know what you did."

"What did I do?" I cried in exasperation. My lower lip quivered mutinously. I wanted a warm bed and a pretty maid to bring me breakfast. I wanted a hot bath and a thick soft towel. I wanted silk pyjamas and a dressing gown and padded slippers and a big armchair in which to lounge all day sipping tall cool drinks and flipping through glossy art magazines. I wanted comfort and luxury and a life free of complications. Instead I had a bad taste in my mouth and the dismal prospect of a day filled with meetings. The image of Otto Hell cackling as he went ice-fishing fused with the sight of Lady Rudolphine chortling away. Why couldn't these grown-ups at least stop laughing at me if they weren't going to explain anything?

"You raped Madlenova."

"No, I didn't," I protested. "There was no violence involved. Besides, she seduced me. I didn't even want to go to bed with her."

"Didn't you?" Lady Rudolphine grinned. "Most men would gladly lose their souls to go to bed with her. Those whom she takes usually do lose their souls. To her. They become her creatures. She plays with them until she gets bored."

I shuddered. "What happens to them then?"

Lady Rudolphine smiled again. "What happens to people who lose their souls?"

"They go to hell," I replied devoutly. "And burn forever."

Lady Rudolphine shrugged. "Ah, hell," she said lightly. "Hell, is a metaphor. No devils with pitchforks, no eternal fires."

"How do you know?"

"Because I have been there." Lady Rudolphine's eyes bored into me. "And so have you." A sharp steel spike slammed, sizzling, into my heart, shattering it again into a million small pieces. I groaned and clutched my chest. The pain was so intense that I could barely breathe. It was all I could do to stop myself from screaming aloud at the agony. My head was spinning and I saw little stars before my eyes, cold stars, distant and cruel, mocking my anguish with their indifference. As through a fog I dimly saw fiery curls on a bowed head, a pure profile with full sensitive lips speaking words I could not hear, would never hear... Lady Rudolphine released me from her gaze. The spike slid from my heart. I gasped and blinked the tears out of my eyes. "That is hell," Lady Rudolphine said slowly. "Hell is being deprived of what one loves."

"I want Anastasia back," I mumbled sadly. "I miss her so much..."

"I know." Lady Rudolphine nodded sympathetically. But then her lips curled and she burst out laughing joyously. "And Madlenova knows too. Do you understand now why she is so insulted?"

I shook my head. "No. What did I do?"

"You dear silly man," Lady Rudolphine replied fondly. "You tried to turn her into Anastasia."

"How did I do that?"

"You overpowered her spirit and poured Anastasia into her. Of course, it didn't last for very long, Madlenova is far too strong to take over just like that." Lady Rudolphine cracked up again. She wiped her streaming eyes. "Oh, I should have loved to have seen Madlenova's face," Lady Rudolphine gasped between chuckles. "The vampire out-vamped, the biter bit, overpowered by a mere boy... Oh, dear, how very humiliating."

"What do you mean, I `poured Anastasia into her'?" I asked slowly.

Lady Rudolphine stopped laughing. She looked at me with enormous affection. "Where do you think Anastasia is right now?"

"I don't know," I replied, bewildered. "In Berlin with Axel?"

Lady Rudolphine shook her head. "No," she said sweetly. "She's right here. In you. She kissed you. Remember?"

And in that moment, I was deluged once again in an ecstasy I had felt only once before but which I instantly recognized. I felt myself drowning in honey, immersed in its slow lethargic weight, overwhelmed by the buzzing of bees on a drowsy summer day, imbued with the tangy sweetness of Anastasia. I can't remember fainting but I must have keeled over again. Going catatonic twice in one morning was a new record even for me, but then it was that kind of morning.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 43

2011-08-12T10:00:00.000-07:00

Following Hell's example, I spent the day fishing. Like all good Czechs, Divka had a weekend cottage in the countryside. I sat in the backseat of her cramped Skoda, tenderly cradling our precious picnic basket in my arms, as she maneuvered the little wreck down potholed country roads. Immanuel sat beside her, occasionally bouncing through the sunroof. It was a very enjoyable ride, and Divka's driving was positively sedate compared to my other recent chauffeurs.

Divka's weekend retreat was a small shack by a little lake whose viridian surface waveringly mirrored a low range of tree-covered hills. We found some ancient fishing tackle that had belonged to her father and headed for the water. For me, that lazy afternoon in the sun was a blessed respite from the violence and anguish of the previous week. Sitting companionably on rocks at the edge of the lake, we whiled the time away. I munched ham sandwiches washed down with lots of Becherovka and incited the plump and placid ducks with my crumbs.

Warmed by the winter sun and the glow of Dr. Becher's fabulous herb liqueur, I eventually told Immanuel and Divka about Anastasia's abduction. They sat side by side, hand in hand, and listened to my tale of woe, nodding in unison like sympathetic birds. Couples are fortresses, and I felt both excluded and protected in the shadow of their commingled strength.

"Did I tell you, Wenceslas knows your Anastasia? She acted in a production of his play Salome. He thought she was great."

"I don't know how much acting Anastasia will be doing from now on," I replied heavily. "Axel believes in keeping them barefoot and pregnant apparently."

"He should be deported to Afghanistan!" Divka's eyes flashed with indignation. "It is disgusting that the British should help him kidnap her. Wenceslas is the chairman of the European Human Rights Commission. Do you want him to make a big stink?"

"Maybe not just yet, Divka," I replied cautiously, remembering my encounters with the Czech police. "Let me ask Otto first."

"So Otto thinks that your friend Godfrey told Killjoy-Yuck where you were, and Killjoy-Yuck told Axel?" Immanuel asked doubtfully. "It seems too complicated."

"There are so many others who could have also called Axel," Divka added. "What about Gauss's bodyguards? One of them could have been an informer. Or maybe even Prince Ludwig. Didn't he force Anastasia to marry Axel in the first place?"

I shook my head. "You're right, Divka. We can't rule anyone out. But this isn't just your average messy divorce. There's the whole Katholic connection as well with the Cardinal in cahoots with Axel to bring back the Holy Roman Emperor bloodline. And Axel knew who I was. He knew I was going back to Prague. Nobody could have told him that except Godfrey."

"I still don't understand what Terence Killjoy-Yuck gets out of this," Immanuel objected. "You said he was your tutor at Oxford… I don't mean to pry, but what exactly did you have to do for him?"

"I wasn't his bum-boy, if that's what you mean."

"So why did he send you to Prague in the first place?"

"Takes a philosopher to ask the obvious question," I replied irascibly. "I've been chewing over that one since the day I arrived. My friend Lulu thought I was being sent here as a scapegoat."

"For Lucy's murder?"

"This was before Lucy's murder." I hesitated. "I think Terence planted me here for some other reason. I don't think he wanted Lucy murdered. Rasputin confessed that he was just supposed to kidnap her."

"Why would Terence want Lucy kidnapped?"

"He knew Xox and Lucy were lovers. Maybe he wanted to hold her for ransom. Or just get the dirt on Xox."

"What I still don't understand is this connection between Lucy and Rasputin," Divka interrupted. "He didn't have to find her, she took a taxi to go to the train station where she so conveniently runs into her murderer. And then again in Berlin."

"You buy this body-stealing shit?" Immanuel sniffed.

"It takes a philosopher to ignore the facts," Divka retorted. "Can you come up with a better explanation?"

Immanuel and Divka bickered all the way on the long ride back to Prague. By the time they dropped me at the university building, they were no longer on talking terms. It was past midnight, time to go to bed. I let myself into the building with my spare entry card, which I had thoughtfully preserved. I longed for a night of rest, of darkness and quiet, of deep sleep unmarred by unnerving conspiracies or dreams. I wondered idly if Lady Rudolphine was already asleep or if she would insist on administering another dose of her mysterious ointment, Lethe. What was it all about?

Just then a dark form glided over. "I was waiting for you to come to my room all day," a husky voice murmured. "You did not obey my orders. Come with me now and I will punish you." Sharp fingernails lightly grazed my neck and slid down inside the back of my shirt onto my shoulders. I shivered. Marya Madlenova took my hand and led me down the darkened corridor towards the elevator. I sighed deeply. No rest for the wicked.

Expecting some dank dungeon where I would be tormented with molten wax by noseless executioners, I blinked in surprise as Marya Madlenova led me into her lush boudoir, silken cushions and buttery soft spreads scattered everywhere, all silvery pink and lime green, a faint perfume in the air like distant atonal music. Madlenova released my hand and smiled. "Would you like some tea?" she murmured.

"Yes, please," I said, looking around me in wonder. "Are we still in the university building?"

Madlenova laughed, a low voluptuous laugh as she busied herself with the tea. Watching her graceful movements, again I was disconcerted by a sense of something strange, as though she were lacking a limb. She handed me a porcelain cup so sheer that the steaming liquid within glowed through, golden, translucent. "Money makes life very simple," she observed. "Do you like the tea?"

I held the cup to my face and took a sip. "It's exquisite. The incomparable bouquet of first-picked small-leaf Darjeeling but there is something else in here too..."

"Well, well," Madlenova interrupted quickly. "I see you know something about tea."

"A little." I didn't tell her that I had spent my last two winter vacations playing hooky: instead of going skiing in the French Alps with rich friends, as I had promised my mother, who is constantly concerned that I don't make enough useful contacts, I had worked on tea plantations in the foothills of the Himalayas, back-breaking work for laughable wages, but also the priceless pleasure of holding a freshly plucked and gently bruised tea leaf, its perfume wafting into my quivering nostrils like the morning mist on a sunny hillside. This tea had all that but there was another aroma as well, the smell of algae rotting in the sea, the fragrance of over-ripe femininity...

Madlenova curled up against me. We drank our tea in silence. Warm waves of well-being rippled softly through me, but also an odd foreboding. She looked up and smiled again, not the predatory sneer I had seen earlier in the afternoon but a gentle smile, the grave smile of a sensitive and trusting child grown old before its time. Knowing that I would regret it, I stroked her silky hair and flinched at the static charge that jolted my hand. A short eternity later, we were lying together in her bed.

Expecting pain, I received only pleasure, the simple pleasure of holding a soft slim warm body, the pleasure of affectionate murmurs and liquid kisses and gentle caresses which led to a love-making which felt like walking together, hand in hand, in the moonlight. We fell asleep curled up together like two little kittens.

But when I woke up next morning, Marya Madlenova was staring at me sullenly, her eyes like brooding yellow slits in the face of a jungle cat. "Get out of here," she snarled. "I never want to see you again."

"What did I do?" I asked, bewildered.

"I've never been so humiliated in my life. Get out."

I scrambled into my wrinkled clothes. "Won't you tell me what I did..." I began again weakly.

"Out!" she screamed wildly. "Out!"

"Okay, okay," I mumbled and went in search of fresh clothes and an explanation.

#GenghizInLove: Episode 42

2011-08-11T10:00:00.000-07:00

An unusual diffidence pervaded me as I got out of the elevator during my first afternoon back at the University of Truth and Justice. Through the glass doors of the large dining room I saw again a crowd of bright young faces, but, in the polished glass, darkly, I also saw the blurred reflection of my own drawn and melancholy face, and I faltered at the contrast. I was the shy stranger at a foreign feast, anonymous.

But then a hand waved at me and a friendly face smiled in in welcome. "Hi! Lord Hades told me you were here," a handsome young man boomed jovially. Perfect white teeth glittered through carefully groomed designer stubble. "How was Berlin? Glad to be back in Prague?"

I blinked. This person seemed to know me. How much did he know? "Oh, Berlin is Berlin as usual," I replied evasively, trying to remember his name. The olive eyes gleaming through incredibly long eyelashes seemed familiar. Had Anastasia and I blindfolded him with a silk scarf before whipping him silly? Had he pressed charges? "And Prague is Prague," I added, with a noncommittal nod. "Where is Otto?"

"Oh, he's taken up ice-fishing," the young fellow replied. "He's gone for the day."

"Would you do me a favor? Could you let Pipi von G and T know that Lady Rudolphine Bing needs her for a moment?"

"Sure thing!" the young man replied happily. "Pipi is that little blonde cutie, right? Did Lord Hades really murder her husband?"

A pudgy man at the end of the table looked up at me, gasped, buried his sallow face in his hands, and began to sob loudly, but I paid no attention because I was too pleased to see a face to which I thought I could attach a name: that bony leprechaun face and wild crop of thinning hair belonged to my friend, the philosopher with whom I had spoken so often about ethics at the end of the world... damn, what was his name? And that pretty woman with high color in her cheeks and short silky black hair, surely I had seen her before as well? I passed a hand over my icy forehead and sat down heavily: what had Lady Rudolphine's ointment, Lethe, done to my memory? I resolved to face the crisis with cunning. "Won't you introduce me to everyone?"

"Sorry," the young man said apologetically. "I thought you knew everyone here, but, that's right, you left before the University really began functioning. Well, you know Immanuel, of course, and Divka..." I grinned with relief at my old friends. "This is Hachek Katastrofski..." A gaunt young man with long greasy blond hair, a high forehead, and an immensely hooked thin nose smirked insincerely at me and immersed himself again in his plate. He was playing with his food with great absorption but not a single bite or sip passed his lips. I resolved to ask about it later. Hadn't someone (wasn't it that famous Polish ex-dissident journalist, what was his name?) mentioned that Katastrofski had Fascist leanings? I recalled that Hitler was vegetarian and a teetotaller, which might explain Katastrofski's odd behavior, but why should this bizarre repugnance for the best things in life extend to rice pudding?

I wasn't the only one watching Katastrofski play with his food. A very pretty girl with short blonde curls sat next to the young Fascist, biting her rosy lower lip as she stared at his ostentatious profile. "That's Delilah." My young host exhaled the name reverently. "She's Professor Masaryk's assistant. We work together," he added proudly. Then, noticing her obvious fascination with Katastrofski, he frowned. "Lila, wake up," he snapped rather tetchily. "I'm trying to introduce you." The girl started, blushed, shook my hand, and sank back again into worried contemplation of her neighbor's nose. I too felt that it was a disturbing object, so much so that, in the days to come, I was never able to look at Katastrofski for longer than five seconds at a time. His nose reminded me too strongly of a craggy peak I was once forced to climb in the desolate wastes of the Altai mountain range in Central Asia and I suffer acutely from vertigo.

"What work do you do with Delilah?" I asked ingenously.

"I told you when we met in Berlin. I'm the coordinator of the Department of Culture. It's a great responsibility but I feel ready for it. I am, after all, Benito! And I like my job!" he added, laughing uproariously. His sheer animal vitality was infectious and I found myself laughing along. The pudgy man at the end of the table raised his head from his hands and gave us a look laden with misery and hatred.

"Who's he?" I whispered.

"That's Nero Insanetti," Benito whispered back. "He's Lord Hades's assistant. He's been acting very strange lately..."

"I know you're talking about me," the pudgy man screamed hoarsely. "All of you. I see your smiles." Nero drew a hand across his eyes rapidly, leaving sweaty smudge-marks on his forehead. "I know your wicked plots. You are cold and heartless. It is the Anglo-Saxon mentality." His voice broke as he stared sadly at Benito. Tears brimmed in his puffy eyes. "But you, my young Italian comrade? Et tu, Benito?" He slumped off his chair and crashed onto the floor. The babble of happy young voices ceased for a moment as people turned to stare.

"There, there, Nero," Benito said soothingly. He crossed over to the huddled form lying shapeless on the floor, pulled out a little plastic tube from his handsome tweed jacket, forced open Nero's mouth, and dropped the pill in. "Take a vitamin. It'll make you feel better. You really ought to take them more often."

Nero shook his head feebly and spat the pill out. He sat up, drool running down his chin, and glowered at Benito. "Ah, you young fool," he cried weakly. "Do you even know what is in these vitamins?" I listened intently, wondering if this obvious psychotic was onto something. What did he know? In the event I was disappointed. Nero launched into a long, unoriginal, and rather repetitive diatribe against modern faith in science. "It all started with fluoride in the water," he screamed as the big men in white uniforms came to drag him away. "Contaminating our precious bodily fluids. It is a plot to destroy our European culture... I will never take vitamins! I will suffer instead... And you!" he screamed at me. "You are the Antichrist! Don't smile at me! We know who you are..."

"What a kook," Benito said, shaking his head as we watched Nero shake his fist at me from a distance. "What's there to suffer about?"

An image suddenly pierced my heart: the memory of Anastasia stabbing her portrait in the living room of her apartment in Berlin, her subsequent faint and my attempts to revive her, the mistrustful look on her waif-face as she came back to life in my arms... I staggered and clawed at my chest. Lady Rudolphine's lotion, Lethe, had brought me relief for some time, but the throbbing anguish told me that my wounded memory had been torn open afresh and my broken heart was bleeding, again.

"Are you all right?" Benito looked concerned. I nodded faintly. "It must have been a shock," he added sympathetically. "Nero screaming at you like that. Not very nice, really," he said primly. "Even if you were the Antichrist."

"Is he Katholic?"

"I don't know Nero that well," Benito replied prissily. "I never inquire into people's personal beliefs. Personally, I'm into Limboism."

"What's that?"

"Oh, we're the new world religion," Benito answered breezily. "We're a synthesis of all the others. We're very tolerant."

"Do you believe in hell?"

"Gosh, no." Benito looked shocked. "Our religious leaders talk about an after-life in which those who don't share our beliefs linger on. Without any pain, of course. They just don't make it to paradise."

"A kind of cocktail lounge?"

"Yeah, maybe," Benito replied, his eyes twinkling brightly. "Perpetual Happy Hour."

"So what makes heaven special?"

"Your drinks are on the house." Benito laughed heartily.

"In that case, this must be heaven," a husky voice drawled. I spun around, my heart drumming against my ribs in a staccato beat, its thunder reverberating in my ears... The voice sounded so familiar. I breathed deeply. A slim woman stood leaning languidly against a pillar. She smiled slowly at me. A fine flow of mahogany hair flooded past a pair of hazel eyes, two circlets of olive green flecked with streaks of burnt siena around two wells of impenetrable black. She was wearing a beautifully cut black suit. I noticed irrelevantly the adroitly applied makeup on her pale olive face. She was beautiful and yet there was something very wrong, as though she were missing some vital body part… "You're sweating," she said in an amused murmur. "Are you afraid already?" She leaned forward, sniffed my neck, and swiftly grazed my unshaven cheek with her lips. I caught a whiff of expensive perfume and something else besides, something green and over-ripe, rotting… "I'm Marya Madlenova. Forget everything you have heard about me. I'm much more dangerous."

"In what way?" I asked unsteadily.

"You'll just have to find out, won't you?"

"How will I find out?"

She looked at me for a moment, coolly, and then shrugged. "Not by asking." She turned to Benito. "When is this meeting?"

Benito looked at his watch. "Lord Hades has postponed it until tomorrow. You're supposed to be at this meeting too."

"Why me?" I asked in chagrined surprise. "Anyway, I can't discuss it now. Not on an empty stomach." Not having eaten in over thirty hours, I was famished, and, as I remembered it, the food at the University of Truth and Justice was very good. Saliva dripped down my bristly jowls as I thought wistfully of a platter of Prague ham with horseradish. Rumor had it that Hitler broke free of his vegetarian vice only once in his life, when he rolled into Prague at the head of his conquering armies, and strolling around a pub, slapping his men on their backs as they drank their beer (no doubt causing many a stolid drinker to choke, splutter, and turn purple), caught sight of a plateful of Prague ham which he grabbed from a waiter who ran after him demanding indignantly that he pay, but Adolf was too quick for him and he got away and wolfed down the ham in the privacy of the nearest toilet. I have always considered it incontrovertible proof of Hitler's fundamental degeneracy that he returned to being a vegetarian, although it is pleasant to think that the ham probably made him violently sick since he wasn't used to the luscious juiciness of meat. We will never know. There were no witnesses and Hitler looked green most of the time anyway. "I didn't come back to Prague just to go to meetings."

"Oh, come on," Benito coaxed. "Poor Professor Hohenstaufen had to interrupt his holiday in Rome at short notice just for this meeting."

"In that case," I said sincerely. "I will be glad to come to the meeting. After I've eaten several meals first." Having already witnessed Otto Hell decapitate one German prince, I was curious about Hohenstaufen's fate. Appetite grows with eating, and revenge is the best dessert.