She brought the platter heaped with feta cheese, tomatoes, and red onions and set on the table on the veranda. She sat down beside Yeo and poured herself a glass of wine.
They began to eat.
“Do you like my tomatoes?” she asked after a while.
“They are better than last summer,” he told her.
Yeo flew back to New York.He called a meeting of the board members and the full management team. Chuck Maitland had delegated authority to the people he knew he could rely on.Pulling a tight-knit organization together, sworn to silence, everyone acting like a CIA suddenly converted to gentleness and love for human kind, required a lot of discretion.And even more trust.
He had fucked up 9/11. It was right in front of his eyes and he blew it.Dink could never stop whipping himself for this oversight.In retrospect, the hints were clear, but there was nothing solid enough to go running upstairs to Shroud.In the aftermath, informational interference created so much chaos and distorted feeling that Dink’s blindness was never addressed, in spite of the fact
Sonny Boy was a twenty-six-year-old black drag queen.She was testing games for software companies when she was eight.She was a manager by the time she was ten.By the time she was twenty-two she was designing software for Fortune 500 companies.
Dink walked down the stony corridor, with rough-hewn stone walls on either side of him, the rugs as soft as down beneath his feet.Lighting emanated from the ceiling, from small lamps set back in the stone.It was assumed there were cameras behind the lights.Timers dimmed and brightened the tiny lights throughout the day so the ocular muscles would move, allowing the stiffs to blink occasiona
Sony Boy was sitting in the gold lame chair, dressed in blue sequins and six-inch heels.She wore her hair piled in twirls on top of her head like some cotton-candy courtesan in the court of Louis XIV.Dinkleberry liked to think of Sonny Boy’s style as Gaudy Chic.She always said the fuchsia streaks in her long black hair were a leftover from her days of turning tricks on the streets of
Yeo went to the intercom and discovered that Chuck Maitland was waiting downstairs to take him to dinner.They walked over Fifth Avenue.It was a balmy New York evening and everyone was out on the streets.They walked downtown to Chinatown.
Yeo was in the town car stalled in Manhattan traffic on his way to the TransGlobal building, when his cell phone rang. It was Ilna.“Do you remember Prague?” she said.That was all she said when he answered the phone.He sat there in silence.
On the plane to Prague, Yeo reflected on his own disillusionment with capitalism.His business ventures in Eastern Europe swept all the way to Russia.He had been one of the early plunderers.Yeo could spot a trend with an eagle’s eye.He bo
Yeo had been living as a homeless man for several months.He slept in shelters.He slept on sidewalks.He slept in parks.He ate at charity dining rooms.
Deep 6 was in a deep state of upheaval.The entire operation was ordered to focus on one problem that threatened international security.The problem was that no one in Deep 6 could determine what the problem was or where it originated, let alone who was responsible for it.Thirty floors of stone, somewhere in the desert, contained one hundred and eighty people who were running around like chic
At first, the global media did not identify Yeo’s good deeds as a coordinated concept.They were seen as isolated incidents.Many went unreported, for fear of public embarrassment.And then the stories began to emerge.Before long, tha
Things began to happen quickly when Yeo returned to New York.Ilna had taken an apartment off Central Park.She began painting again.It was her quiet way of coping with it all.But the Yeo she knew now was not the man she had known before.
Dink stayed clean for three days.He did his work and thought about Adriana.She was so captivating—the high cheekbones, the oriental eyes, the blood red hair, the tawny skin.He controlled himself not to rush back to her.That w
Yeo and Ilna were sitting in a café that rested on a barge that was moored to the bank along the Vltalva River in Prague.People were enjoying paddleboats in the afternoon sun in the river.Party boats passed up and down the river.To one side of the river, Yeo could see the small island that still held the youth hostel where Roland was murdered.
Yeo met up with Bill Clinton in Biskek.The president of Kyrgizstan was a half-hour late.Clinton and Yeo enjoyed coffee in the presidential suite, giving Yeo just enough time to give Clinton a picture of his plan.Launched in 2005, Clinton established the Clinton Global Initiative to bring leaders from different backgrounds together to ta
Chuck came down the stairs of the basement bar.He stopped halfway until he saw Yeo at the small bar.American expats gathered in groups, telling stories of their travels further East.Chuck joined Yeo at the bar.They kissed each other on the cheeks, as was
Yeo was sitting in the back of a basement bar, off Old Town Square, waiting for Chuck to arrive.The bar was five hundred years old.During the winter, basements were considered warm places in this part of the world, long before electrical heating.He had been married the night before.