Larcenists and Lambs

Ing. Markéta Šichtařová

Ing. Vladimír Pikora, Ph.D.

Attention, readers and users of this book:

All rights reserved. No part of this printed or electronic book can be reproduced or disseminated in paper, electronic or other form without the prior written permission of the publisher.

The unauthorized use of this book will be prosecuted as a crime.

Published by NF Distribuce s.r.o.

Noted in the commercial register of the Prague Municipal Court,

Section C, file No. 112680,

Zlešická 1848, 184 00 Praha 4, Czech Republic

First edition, Prague 2017

© Ing. Markéta Šichtařová

© Ing. Vladimír Pikora, Ph.D.

© Mgr. Tomáš Zahradníček - TZ-one

Cover Photo © Tomáš Nosil

Cover Design © Jan Kurel

Graphic Design © Iveta Hostašová

Translation © Eva Munk

Editing © Mary Matz

ISBN: 978-80-7539-072-1 (ePub)

ISBN: 978-80-7539-073-8 (mobi)

To our angels:

Barbara, Martin, Bertie, Danny, baby and all those who come after them.

The authors wish to thank Eva Munk, Mary Matz and Erik Best for their invaluable help, as well as all the others who voluntarily (or involuntarily) appear under different names in this book.

If any of the characters in this book seem familiar, please note that the similarity is not purely incidental. Each of the characters have a real-world, real-life counterpart whom the authors borrowed and modified in literary terms to some degree – or didn’t.

If any of the events strike you as insane, please note that all are to some degree inspired by real occurrences. Some have already happened and some happened more or less in the same manner. And the reality is often even more bizarre than fiction.

And if the warnings and messages in this book seem highly unlikely, please note, that from the broader aspect of history, they are actually quite tame.…

EPILOGUE

Khnrr-khrr-mmm-mmmm-khnrr-mmmm…

Martin opened his eyes wide with a jerk. Dark. Is this what death looked like? His gut wrenched in panic. Then he heard his own rattling, fear-choked breath and he realized he was alive, though just barely clinging to consciousness. Something not unlike a piglet was snorting somewhere near him and a piglet somewhere near you in the dark generally does not portend anything good.

Khnrr-khrr-mmm-mmmm-khnrr-mmmm…

Martin’s eyes couldn’t penetrate the thick darkness. What the hell was it? He stretched out his hand. A few inches from his head, he prodded something that he identified to a high degree of probability as a pillow, and something, that, to a high degree of probability, he decided to identify as long hair. No, he wasn’t in a sty. He was lying in bed next to somebody.

Mmmm-khnr-prsk!…

Damn it! So they’d got him already? Martin’s sleepy brain refused to give out any further information.

Suddenly, he realized that the unidentifiable sounds coming from the other side of the bed weren’t the only ones he was hearing. The sounds from the outside couldn’t be mistaken for anything but shrieking gusts of wind and raindrops drumming on the window.

“This is completely psycho. Sounds like someone here went overboard with the booze,” he grumbled under his breath, half-hoping the sound of his own voice would wake him up from this ongoing nightmare. To his surprise, it worked: the fog in his mind lifted.

“Oh my God,” he whispered, opening his eyes wide. “Shit.”

Frankfurt am Main, Germany

February 14

As he perused each of the eight faces in the stark room, Otto Kruspe felt like one of the knights of King Arthur’s round table. Nine men in perfectly tailored suits, nine warriors fighting for a cause.

Presumably, Otto had no idea that, at that very moment, the man on his right was thinking that if these nine men had some mechanism that could separate the sheep from the goats (or rather, the bulls from the oxen), they could have packed it in long ago and wouldn’t be stuck here now.

Presumably, the man on Otto’s left wouldn’t have agreed either with Otto or with his neighbor. At the moment, he was fighting the desperate urge to take a piss and he had the feeling he wouldn’t be able to hold it much longer. As a result, he tended to regard the entire object of the meeting as hopeless and inconsequential.

The man on his left wasn’t quite sure why he was there. But that was entirely normal and correct, as he had been chosen for the position precisely for his cluelessness. He did, however, understand that this meeting was very, very important. It could, in fact, have a direct effect on the continued existence of his job.

Otto cleared his throat, paused, and resumed his speech: “Gentlemen, as of now we have all been alerted to the threat. Our company is in a long-term decline and, what’s more, the government has launched a vicious campaign against us. And it could get substantially worse. We all know that if we back down once, we’re going to have to back down again and again. That can permanently affect our enterprise, causing irreversible damage. We must, without delay, agree on how to move forward. Any suggestions, gentlemen?”

No, to Otto’s exasperation the gentlemen had no suggestions. Otto took a deep breath. This is what he had to work with.

“Gentlemen, let’s give ourselves some homework. A month from today we will meet again. Same time, same place. In the course of the next month, we will not make any public statements and we will maintain a completely neutral stance on the matter. A month from now, we will present our proposals on how to proceed jointly in the face of this unprecedented threat.”

The gentlemen agreed. The man on Otto’s right agreed most emphatically.

Prague, Czech Republic

February 28

Helena Stone had always felt that weekdays were for the birds, but today was in the running for the most idiotic, at least in the past month, at least judging by the way this morning was going. You’d think that if you were 33, had a husband who was crazy about you, but you could still turn (some) guys’ heads the way you did at 20, and you were a wildly successful banker – the head of a whole division, in fact – and making a fair-sized lump of money to boot, there wouldn’t be much more you could ask for. It was just that Helena felt that getting up before nine a.m. was a crime against humanity. And if you had to get up at seven and on top of that you knew you had a meeting with the most prized idiots you ever had the misfortune to encounter to look forward to, you could just tell today was going to be a pain in the neck.

After fourteen years of living together, Martin Stone knew his idiosyncratic wife pretty well. And he knew darned well that the best thing he could do at that very moment was to put a double espresso in her hand and get out of the way. In a flash, her first, morning half-hour-long stupor could change into anger, and this anger would manifest itself in a shower of vitriolic comments directed at whoever happened to cross Helena’s path. The last hapless victim had been the unfortunate postman who rang at too early an hour and subsequently got blindsided by a pair of her very-well-aimed slippers. Yet, after a half hour and a sufficient dose of caffeine, the beast turned into a lamb. That’s how it always went.

Martin thought his wife was hot and never missed a chance to tell her so. What he loved most was her big butt, which, in his opinion, formed a delightful contrast to her tiny waist. He had no clearly defined opinion about her Halle Berry-style crew-cut; nonetheless, he found the decidedly un-bankerly, deep red color of her hair quite entertaining. All in all, it was grand that after 14 years you were still turned on by the same woman, especially if that woman happened to be your wife, mornings notwithstanding, he mused, while deftly dodging out of the way behind the kitchen table, as Helena blew by muttering something about some unspecified “wretched riff-raff.”

When she finally slammed the door behind her, he breathed a sigh of relief, made himself a cup of real coffee and sat down at his computer. He had roughly ten hours of work ahead of him, until the little lady, in lamb’s clothing, came home from the bank and he could occupy himself with something more pleasant. Like making out with his wife.

For a second, Helena toyed with the idea of turning this all-out rotten day into a barely tolerable one by borrowing Martin’s old, banged up, red, now contending for antique-status Mini Cooper for the drive from their Prague apartment to the bank. But her rational self prevailed and she got into her silver company-issued Skoda Superb.

She never could figure out why her colleagues at the bank were insanely jealous of her company car, because she considered her Superb the ugliest and most asexual thing she had ever driven. (That tallied perfectly with the opinion her colleagues’ liked to whisper behind her back that Helena was “pretty weird” in some ways.) Still, when her employer had given her the keys to the Superb some time back, she’d deemed it wiser to keep her preferences concerning company cars to herself.

Actually, she found it useful to keep more than that to herself; for example her views on the bank’s investment policies, which diametrically opposed those of the board. Or her view that the board directors, all foreigners, hadn’t been sent to Prague from the Austrian mother branch due to their outstanding abilities, but as punishment for their inabilities. Or her view that the general director’s new assistant had more in her bra than in her head. Her position as the head of the trading department of their small bank was, she felt, entirely too-well remunerated for her to feel compelled to share her not entirely relevant views with every Tom, Dick and Harry.

It’s just that she didn’t always manage to adhere to this credo. Helena had always been one to act first and think later. Maybe that’s why she and Martin got along so well. He had a tendency to make slower (or better yet no) decisions, preferring thorough analysis. (Or rather, brilliant analysis, as he liked to think.)

The result was that, the few candid remarks that did slip out sufficed to make Helena’s directly superior board member fall secretly and madly in love with her, and to make the bank’s general director fall secretly and madly in hate with her. She didn’t feel the need to concern herself with either one or the other.

This morning was the same as all the others: from the instant she slammed the door behind her in a white-hot fury over the ungodly hour she’d had to get out of bed, until the instant that she unlocked the door of the company car parked in their outdoor parking space, she managed to cuss out their neighbor, the Left, the other neighbor, the Right, the first neighbor’s wife, the entire government coalition, the opposition and her boss. And then her hands touched the steering wheel. She stopped cussing. For her, the steering wheel was like a cigarette to a smoker, a glass of wine to an alcoholic: a cue to relax.

She had to slow down due to the usual traffic-jam on the Prague ring-road, so she started fiddling with the radio. After flipping through a few stations, she decided that AC/DC’s lively tune, Highway to Hell most accurately corresponded to her mood and destination.

Mere minutes later, she hung a sharp right into an underground parking lot in the Karlín quarter and drove by the attendant, scowling. She knew very well that his waving hand had turned into an upturned finger the minute she was out of sight; she’d noticed that he amused himself this way each time any woman drove past him. Helena decided that, at the earliest opportunity, she’d find out whether he directed any, and if so what, type of gesture at passing men. Not that it was any of her business. But Helena was curious by nature.

She reached her glassed-in office next to the trading room, a big room full of computers, at a brisk trot. She had a lot on her plate today. Prior to the board meeting, she had to look over her subordinate’s presentation. The young trader, Karel Václav, was diligent – too diligent for Helena’s taste. Truth be told, Helena suspected his diligence was actually brownnosing. What’s more, she could never remember if his name was Karel Václav or Václav Karel and that irritated her. At any rate, it pleased her to think that, by giving him a name like that, his parents had taken a thorough revenge-ahead-of-the-fact on their son.

____________

After reading the first three pages of the presentation, which implied that the brilliant successes of the trading department over the past month were due to the brilliant motivational program of Ms. Stone, Helena concluded with disgust that it was definitely not a case of diligence, but of brownnosing, and had to be punished accordingly. Humming Highway to Hell, she scrolled through the rest of the presentation, found a sentence that mentioned the “crown rate correction” and changed it to “crown rate erection.” Briefly, she weighed the likelihood that her subterfuge would be discovered against the likelihood that it would be attributed to the carelessness of Václav or Karel, and then decided it was worth the risk. She hit “send.”

Five minutes later she was sitting in the oval conference room and staring at ten men in badly fitting, nondescript, gray-black suits, and at one almost-woman. Helena had always suspected that the head of Controlling was only a half-woman. Not only did she wear a baggy, gray pant suit as a matter of principle, but the whiskers above her upper lip also attested to her femininity, or lack thereof.

Helena wriggled nervously in her chair. Compared to the attire of the others, her black suit was form-fitting, to say the least. Her skirt, which barely skimmed her knees, was too short. Her hair was too fiery-red. And when she wasn’t busy keeping her mouth shut – and, in the past few years, outside the walls of her own home, she had been doing her best to keep it shut and limit her comments only to the subject of strategic trading with financial derivatives – her words were rather blunt. She always felt that way with this bunch: she’d never been quite sure she belonged here.

On the other hand, no one could say she didn’t belong here. From the moment she’d taken over as head of the trading room, the bank’s results in financial markets trading had improved rapidly despite the economic crisis. (Unfortunately, one couldn’t say the same of the bank’s other results, specifically loans.) And her economic education put her head and shoulders above the other occupants in the room.

After getting her doctorate at the Prague Economic University, she rapidly went through several different jobs in several different banks, all of which involved financial markets trading. With every job change, she moved up in terms of job position and wages until she became the only female head of trading in Prague.

She wasn’t especially proud of her success, maybe because it had been all too easy. She simply found the thoroughly masculine environment of stocks, bonds and forex amusing and she’d never suffered from an extreme case of feminism. What’s more, she could easily envision her career taking a completely different turn.

Actually, Helena had a surprising amount of talent in a surprising number of areas. For example, she could sketch quite well. During boring meetings, in the margins of her paper, she was especially good at creating outstanding portraits of her handful of superiors as caricatures of a certain part of the male anatomy. Also, as had been demonstrated on a few occasions, she was a literal marketing and overall sales guru. For example, she had not found it at all difficult to sell a ton of compost to an office rat in their apartment building. Still, neither of these activities brought her any especial pleasure.

In rare moments of contemplation, she imagined herself as a professional NASCAR driver. Of course, with the exception of enthusiasm, she had no qualifications whatsoever for such a career, because she had never driven anything more interesting than her company Superb. Neither would she mind being an astronaut, in spite of knowing virtually nothing more about space than what one could read in a run-of-the-mill, pop-science-fiction novel. (Actually, she only wouldn’t mind, provided that she could take her husband up into the stratosphere with her.) And she totally wouldn’t mind being a rock star. Granted, the lack of any musical talent whatsoever, of which she was well aware, wasn’t entirely compatible with this career path. But she refused to fret about that. She was convinced one should do what one enjoyed and not what one had, by some freak accident, earned a diploma in. Moreover, she was deeply convinced that if one sincerely enjoyed something and devoted enough effort to it, one would ultimately master it.

As a result, she had never clung to her job at the bank tooth and nail, which was precisely why she’d managed to climb higher and higher on the bank’s career ladder with unforced lightness and charm. This tended to generate envy and spiteful gossip among her male colleagues.

As for her, she harbored a deep disdain for a substantial number of her colleagues. In their small bank, friendship didn’t exist. There was only inclusion in a clan. And the number of board members vying for the job of general director corresponded to the number of clans. Helena had observed with disgust that the higher on the ladder of real or faked loyalty said person in said clan rose, the more he or she copied the head of the clan. This extended right up to such things as the same brand of shirt. The most frequent and most copied brand was Armani. As soon as Helena had realized this, she’d stopped wearing any type of obvious brand-name items, especially those by Armani, against which, for reasons not entirely clear to herself, she’d developed a special aversion.

The buzzing in the oval conference room jerked her out of her reverie. Helena realized that for a few moments she’d managed to block out the completely irrelevant presentation of the, momentarily magenta and somewhat agitated, Karel or Václav. Shortly thereafter, they adjourned for a coffee break and Karel or Václav rapidly departed the oval conference room. Helena’s mood took another plunge: after the break, it was her turn.

Not that she was afraid. She’d only been afraid once in her life, two years ago on vacation, when her husband couldn’t pry his eyes off of that blond bimbo by the pool. She was aware that being married to a sex fiend was a relatively risky undertaking. But, at least until then, she’d considered Martin Stone to be a cross between two genetic abnormalities: a faithful sex fiend. Nonetheless, that time at the pool she’d gotten that ugly, grinding feeling in her stomach, but just until Martin had assured her that her butt was much better than that bleached blond bimbo’s.

Now she was irked because she was going to have to start thinking strategically about what she was going to say at the meeting. Not that she didn’t know how to do that. It just wasn’t exactly Helena’s style. She made a point of thinking about what she was going to say only under duress and only at work. In private, she refused to say anything other than what was on the tip of her tongue. True, over the last ten years she’d polished the professional self-control act to a high luster. Still, to be honest, she knew she had a long way to go to perfection.

When Manfred Hermann, the Austrian board member and Helena’s direct superior, who she knew had a mad and secret crush on her, took the floor, she reminded herself once again to only speak about the subject at hand and only when asked.

Manfred coughed, then coughed again. Even though the bank was owned by Austrian capital, the business language of banking had always been English, even in an Austrian bank operating in the Czech Republic. The problem was that the ordinary employees, as well as their Austrian bosses, were, without exception, somewhat screwed in terms of English. In practice, that was apparent both in the lack of communication between both groups (or was it that bosses and subordinates just wouldn’t communicate much even without the language barrier? Helena wondered sometimes), and in the way everyone in the bank spoke very fast. It was easier to hide a thick German accent and to mask a hodge-podge of Czech-German-English words in phrases delivered at staccato speed.

“Frau Stone, our bank doesn’t have a pension fund in the second pillar of pension reform. Therefore, as an institution, we will not take part in the pension reform.” Manfred, taking great care with his enunciation, ventured a dramatic pause. Meanwhile, Helena was trying very hard not to move a muscle, even though she couldn’t figure out why, for heaven’s sake, Manfred was explaining this as if everyone in the room didn’t know it already. He might as well start explaining that they were, surprisingly, in the Czech Republic, which, surprisingly, was in Central Europe and was, surprisingly, a member of the European Union. She concluded that Manfred Hermann evidently liked to hear himself talk even more than she had heretofore suspected.

“However, because we wish to take an active part in actual social trends,” he continued, “we are offering a competitive product, which will enable our clients to save money for their senior years and, as a result, to enjoy a dignified old age.”

“For God’s sake, cut it short,” she moaned under her breath, or I will break out in hives. Even the love of one’s own voice had its limits.

“What was that, please, Frau Stone?”

Helena froze. Had she been thinking out loud? But that would mean that Manfred understood Czech much better than he had been pretending till now. Finally, she reassured herself that only a groan had escaped her.

“I … have an allergy … and sometimes I make noises … through my nose.”

“Aha. So, Frau Stone will now tell us how many client contracts for our product, Gold Horizons, have been signed in the first two months.”

“Two hundred and forty nine.”

“In what time frame? In the past week?”

“In the first two and a half months that the product has been in existence.”

“I beg your pardon?”

Helena took a deep breath so she would be able to articulate very clearly. “Two-hun-dred-and-for-ty-nine. In-two-and-a-half-months.” Even though she was looking Manfred straight in the eye, out of the corner of her eye she caught the half-woman from Controlling and the graying man from the back office cringing slightly, as if preparing for an explosion.

The explosion came: “In two and a half months…?”

“Yes. Two hundred forty nine.”

“Are you making fun of me?” Manfred turned beet-red. “Two hundred and forty nine contracts for a bank of our format? And where’s the mistake? Why aren’t we selling more? Bad Vermarktung? Oder schlechte Verkaufer?” Manfred always skipped from English to German when he was excited. Or tapdancing. Or alone with his assistant.

“Good marketing, good salesmen, miserable product.”

“A miserable WHAT?!”

“Product.”

Long pause. Manfred Hermann was letting it sink in. He had been wrong. This woman wasn’t worthy of his secret admiration. This bitch wasn’t right in the head. “Stocks are at a historical high. They’ve been rising since 2009. Gold Horizons enables our Czech clients to invest in euros in the soundest European stocks over ten years! It’s a magnificent product! Magnificent!”

“Mister Hermann, our cleverly though ironically named product invests in stocks, in euros, for ten years. All of the above stinks like a three-day-old fish. If stocks are higher than they were in, let’s say 2010, but the world, economically speaking, is worse off than in 2010, then, Mister Hermann, then that means something. It means that something’s wrong. It means stocks have got to fall. It means that smart people are selling stocks and stupid ones are buying them. If the Czech economy is in the dumps and the Eurozone is in the double dumps, what do you think is going to happen? Something very unpleasant is going to happen: the Czech crown is going to rise against the euro. Maybe not immediately, but within the ten years that our clients have their money in that brilliant Gold Horizons of ours, it will most surely rise. And that means what? That means loss. For our clients. So our dear clients will suffer a loss on their stocks and a loss on the crown-euro rate. And one big loss plus another big loss equals one mega loss, or, better yet, a problem for my conscience. And therefore, all of our salesmen have absolutely clear instructions to explain that project of ours to every potential client very clearly. And, in the event that some moron still doesn’t get it, it serves him right and he deserves that Gold Horizons due to his stupidity. Hergot, I am such an idiot.”

The last sentence wasn’t spoken in English, but in Czech, and it wasn’t addressed to Manfred, but to herself. And then there was silence. Only two people were breathing a bit heavily. Helena. And Manfred. Manfred Hermann was scowling and trying to remember what the words “moron”, “hergot” and “conscience” meant. Then it occurred to him that the crabby face he was making could betray that he didn’t know what she’d been talking about and he made a face which he considered to be patronizing.

“So, Frau Stone, it will be necessary to change the sales plan. Our shareholders demand results. Our agents will continue to explain all of the advantages of our product clearly enough to increase results at least to a thousand contracts by year’s end. For starters. We have devoted large investments into this project.”

“Mister Hermann, we will not find that many morons among our clients. And even if we did find them, accidentally, I personally will make sure that they receive as basic an explanation as they need to comprehend what this lousy project is all about.”

“Are you saying…?”

“I am saying that, in addition to our profits, there is another thing at play: the human element. Our interests evidently are … ehm, or they should be, in contradiction to the interests of our shareholders. This product brings a loss to our clients. I can’t sign on to that.”

This time Manfred Hermann caught all the words, and he didn’t like them. Nobody in the oval conference room said a word. Ten pairs of eyes stared fixedly at the tabletop. One pair glared at Helena. And Helena stared out the window, off into the distance. Then, across the street, three floors down, her eyes caught a glimpse of some woman with a dog and a baby carriage. She watched them for a while. And then – for the first time since she’d put on her banker’s outfit ten years ago – her eyes got red and grew oddly moist.

The drawn-out silence in the room started to get somewhat oppressive.

____________

With a last triumphant click, Martin Stone finished the story and snapped his laptop shut. As a freelance investigative journalist specializing in economics, he could set his own schedule but he continued to keep the same office hours as he had back when he was still employed. His working hours began with his wife’s departure for work and ended with her return. To be sure, the mornings were a bit touch-and-go – sometimes it was like taming an angry beast – but the evenings and the weekends made up for it, even after fourteen years.

The decision to go freelance hadn’t been easy. He’d made extended graphs, listing all the pros and cons of being an employee versus being a freelancer, with points assigned to each. According to his analysis, freelance journalism could be a bit better than working as a journalist at a national daily, but the results weren’t unequivocal enough to enable him to make a decision. At least that was what he thought until Helena, in passing, happened to glance at his graph. Emitting a derisive little snort, she’d asked him what he would enjoy more. When he truthfully answered “freedom” she asked him what he was still doing at the newspaper, suggested that he bring her some champagne in the bathtub, and strolled toward the bathroom. He fetched the champagne and quit the next day.

That was probably the second most crucial decision of his life. The most crucial had occurred roughly fourteen years ago when, as a young man of nineteen, in the hallway of the Language Academy, he’d met a skinny, equally young girl with chestnut curls down to her waist, freckles on her nose and mesmerizing eyes. She wasn’t exactly beautiful, but she undeniably had something he lacked: a kind of animal energy and drive. First, she engaged him in a conversation about the English Conditional; then, she dragged him off to a nearby beer pub and finally, God knows how, they ended up at her place, a tiny apartment furnished with one mattress, one blanket, one pot, a pile of CDs and a laptop. After the first passionate night, which seemed more like mutual derangement of the senses than mere sex, he made a fundamental life decision: to do everything in his power to ensure there would be another such night.

That had been relatively easy, thanks to the fact that the girl lived alone. During the day she toiled away at a part-time job to make money for rent, and at night she toiled away over English phrasal verbs. School she didn’t have to toil at, that came easy. The very same day he first stepped into her apartment, he moved in.

However, Helena’s past remained a mystery to him for a long time. Because he himself had been raised in a traditional family, or at least one he considered traditional, it took him a long time to come to terms with the fact that Helena didn’t talk about her family or her past in general. It took a lot of prying and convincing to find out that she’d basically run away from home on her 18th birthday. Life with a hysterical, spoiled sister and a bossy, aggressive and vulgar alcoholic mother was unbearable. From the day she’d left home with a single backpack and money saved up for the first month’s rent, nobody had come looking for her.

Martin was the only child of older parents who both died within a short time of each other a few months after he’d moved in with Helena. Both of their bonds with the past were thus definitely broken. Still, it took another twelve years for Martin and Helena to get married, even though they’d lived together from day one, albeit in a different apartment – not the original tiny hole-in-the-wall. Martin had analyzed his and Helena’s incomes, taxes, factored in the future development of the GNP, likely changes in tax rates, national birth rates, and a few other indicators, and the resulting graph had indicated that there wasn’t the slightest reason to throw away money on something as silly as a wedding. Helena, too, couldn’t care less about marriage.

Or so he’d thought. Until that fateful morning, when she’d awoken unusually grumpy (Martin had had a vague suspicion that it might have been due to his amorous advances at 5:45 a.m., while she was still asleep). Shortly thereafter, she informed him that he had two options: either to finally marry her or to finally get out. He’d tried to convince her, graph in hand, that such a step was entirely unnecessary, but she assured him that she was serious and he married her the very next weekend.

Martin was a good investigative journalist. He was so good that people were constantly telling him so, in order to get him to write more stories. And because Martin liked having his ego stroked, he had a strong tendency toward workaholism. This was why he had to stick to a firm work schedule: not to make himself work enough, but to keep himself from working too much. But today was an exception. He’d finished his story and just didn’t feel like starting a new one. His thoughts kept coming back to that ill-fated weekend three weeks ago.

Something was wrong.

I have to think of a way to cheer Helena up, he thought for the twentieth time that day. Got it! I’ll make a fantastic dinner. Something she really loves. Along with some of those little extra things chicks like – or are supposed to like. Martin wasn’t sure what they were exactly; he vaguely remembered seeing a candlelit dinner for two with flowers and a piano on TV, but he had a feeling Helena would prefer a really loud Clash CD. And she’d send him and the flowers packing, asking if he thought she was a goat, since he was bringing her weeds. Oh well, lots of time left till evening. He’d think of something.

____________

Helena stared out the window. From three floors up she watched the other side of the street. She had a vague feeling that someone was talking to her, but she really, really didn’t want to come back to Earth.

“Frau Stone! Ich spreche with you!”

Slowly Helena turned her head. Manfred Hermann’s face was horribly contorted and he was shaking with rage. His tiny eyes and wrinkled pink nose reminded Helena of a pig’s snout. The other ten people were very busy. The guy on the left, who was sweating so much his bald head glistened like a mirror, was very diligently digging through the papers in front of him. The guy on the right felt a sudden need to write a very important text message. The half-woman from Controlling looked like she was going to slip right out of her chair and under the table. It reminded Helena of grade school, of the moment when the teacher, at the start of an oral exam, was deciding whom to call up to the blackboard and none of the students dared make eye contact with her.

Helena took a deep breath and opened her mouth. And then she stopped again. Maybe it was those rapidly blinking pig’s eyes. Suddenly she didn’t want to explain anything.

“Na?” Manfred was shaking, sweating and positively reeked of perspiration. The bald guy was frenetically leafing through his papers.

And then it all became very clear. And because Helena generally didn’t think through what came into her head, but was all the more swift to act upon it – after all, she had a husband to do the thinking, but as luck would have it, he wasn’t there at the moment – she started talking almost as fast as the thoughts came into her head.

“You know what? I just at this very moment got tired of playing the idiot here. I quit. What I’m trying to say, Manfred, is that you’re a fat pig and a moron. And that you don’t know what deodorant is and that you understand your job about as well as a goat understands parsley. It is Czechism for you don’t know what you’re talking about. A goat is one of those animals that has horns and goes ‘maaaa.’ And you’re an idiot. You do understand the word idiot, don’t you?” she added hopefully.

Yes, Manfred Hermann knew the word idiot, as well as a few of the other words that had been mentioned. And he was convinced that, in order to maintain control, he had only one option: “You’re fired as of right now!”

Helena glowed: “That’s great. I knew we’d agree on something. I always end up seeing eye to eye with everyone.” Then she slowly got up and headed for the door. The oval conference room suddenly rustled with the sound of papers that had to be read at that very moment, clicked with urgent text messages, and clacked with the nervous taps of shoe heels that were supposed to relieve the owner’s unbearable tension.

“See ya!”

Oddly, no one answered.

As Helena passed the kitchen off of the hallway, she heard the wheezing voice of Karel Václav or Václav Karel, who stood turned with his back to the hallway, phone in hand. “I’m gonna kill that fucking slut. She did that to me. I’m gonna kill her.” She paused long enough to assure Karel, or Václav, that it would surely not be as bad as all that because from now on they wouldn’t be seeing each other so often. And you know what they say: out of sight, out of mind.

Karel or Václav swung around with sincere terror in his eyes, gave his boss who he wasn’t aware wasn’t his boss anymore a glowing smile, and said something about “people these days.” He said he’d just had a very unpleasant telephone call with his ex-girlfriend, although of course he’d told her not to call during work hours.

Helena asked the young man whether he’d ever wondered if honesty wouldn’t simplify his life, and without waiting for an answer, headed for the reception, where she deposited the keys from the company Superb on the desk. She had no one to say goodbye to, no friends at the bank. And she never kept any personal items at the office.

Out of habit, she didn’t head out of the building through the main door, but, completely illogically, through the underground garage. Too late she realized that this time she’d have to walk through the entire garage on foot, which was rather a pain. What music would she choose for this moment if she was sitting behind the wheel? Chris Rea’s The Road to Hell popped into her mind.

Helena’s last gesture on bank property as she walked past the doorman was an upturned finger.

____________

Martin wasn’t expecting the key in the lock at 2:15. His startled left hand dropped the pot it was holding onto his left toe. “Goddamn it!” he yelped and his right hand released the knife which landed softly in the toe of his right flip-flop, thus pinning it to the wooden floor roughly two millimetres from his pinkie. “Bloody hell!” he said, trying to take a step. However, the flip-flop pinned to the floor betrayed him, and, while the top half of Martin’s body started to move forward, the leg didn’t. When Martin’s forehead met the kitchen counter, he gently moaned, “Oh shit,” freed his right foot from the offending flip-flop and rushed to the door to find out what could be bringing his wife (no one other than his wife had a key to the flat) home shortly after two o’clock. And because he’d never seen his wife at home at this time of day, on a workday, it must be a very serious reason indeed.

“What the devil are you doing here?” he met her at the door where, in Martin’s opinion very sexily, she was in the process of peeling her high heels off of her feet.

“I quit.”

“Oh shit,” Martin said. “Are you fu-- flipping kidding me?” Helena couldn’t stand when he used vulgar words. And he didn’t, unless he was very upset. And for the last three weeks he’d been constantly upset.

“I’m not. I quit.”

Martin analyzed the news for an instant.

“OK. But when people quit, they don’t just show up at home at 2:16. Actually, they generally continue to go to work for the entire severance period. If not, it’s a violation of work discipline and they don’t get severance pay, which they are entitled to according to the Labor Code. For example, when I left the newspaper, I …”

“I don’t give a hoot about severance pay,” Helena interrupted him. “But, to be honest, it really never entered my mind. Is there anything to eat? I haven’t had lunch.”

“Well, I was just making dinner. I thought something romantic and such… but I don’t think it’s quite done yet.”

Helena stopped in mid-step and gave her husband a probing look. “You’re making dinner in the middle of the afternoon? You’re cooking? A romantic dinner? Is everything OK? Have you taken your temperature? And why do you only have one shoe on?”

“Well I thought… if… well that after that happened… when you came home… we could find something more pleasant to think about…”

She looked away quickly and headed for the bathroom. Martin followed her and leaned against the doorjamb. She was jerking her clothes off and carelessly tossing them on the floor, while filling the tub. Neither said a word. Then Martin broke the silence: “What happened?”

It took Helena a while to answer. When she spoke, her voice was very quiet and held an uncharacteristic tremor.

“I am sick to death of all the disgusting hypocrisy. I don’t want to waste my life on useless, superficial things anymore – it’s trickling through my fingers. I don’t want to just exist anymore, I want to live! I am so sad, I…” her voice broke, “I feel so bad.”

He was by her side in an instant. Suddenly, Helena was like a rag doll, in his arms. “Kitten, it was just the ninth week, the very beginning. And you even said that this was a bad time, that you didn’t know how we’d manage. So it just solved itself. It just happens. And to women over thirty it happens roughly a third of the time. We’ll have another baby.”

The force of her reaction shocked him: “I don’t want another one! Or, yes I do. But I wanted this one! I liked this one! I talked to him! I felt him! Nobody can understand what we shared! And he’s gone!” Then she broke down in his arms.

As he rubbed her back, Martin realized that this time he really, really had no idea how to assess the situation or what to say.

Prague, Czech Republic

March 1

Ever since he was little, Andreas Volk had had a flair for business.

He was born in 1972 in Hollabrunn in Austria, which, according to his own estimation was a hole. (Of course the proud inhabitants of Hollabrunn would categorically disagree with him.) Even though it was only some 55 kilometres from Vienna, Hollabrunn, in the pure sense of the word, was a small town, and Andreas hated it to the bottom of his soul. As early as grade school, he’d decided that he certainly wouldn’t be a small-town, provincial hick, like his parents, and from that moment on, he’d subordinated everything to that goal. His biggest asset he received from the parents he scorned, though unbeknownst to them: bilingualism. He spoke German thanks to his Austrian father. From his Czech mother, who had married into Austria from communist Czechoslovakia for money and who had never learned German properly, he spoke fluent Czech.

He went to high school in Vienna and it was there that his talent for business first became apparent. When, for three months running, students regularly lost small items, it became clear that they had a kleptomaniac in their ranks. Andreas (who, incidentally, was among those hardest hit by this kleptomaniac) announced that he was establishing a one-man student detective agency and that, for a few shillings, he would find the lost items and return them to their owners. Because the number of items recovered by his agency reached 100 percent from day one, tales of his successes quickly spread throughout the school and Andreas’s income rolled in for almost the entire four years.

Or just until the day shortly before the end of school, when a group of fellow students caught him robbing their lockers in order to generate demand for his services. But because there was no hard evidence that Andreas had been involved in the previous (rediscovered) robberies, and because he was still a minor, the only result was a broken nose, expulsion of both Andreas and the student who broke it, and Andreas’s realization that next time he a) had to be more careful and not steal so openly and b) should only steal when the rewards outweighed the risk. Oddly, after Andreas was expelled, the number of robberies in the school dropped to zero.

Andreas’s parents decided the boy was going from bad to worse, and packed him off to his grandparents’ in South Bohemia a few weeks before his 18th birthday. The Communist regime in Czechoslovakia had recently fallen, and people, punch-drunk from their newly gained freedom, didn’t know what to do with it. As luck would have it, while picking the pockets of drunken guests at a village dance, Andreas lifted the wallet and documents of a local politician, a lazy but greedy chap, not much older than Andreas. At first Andreas wanted to keep the money and toss the documents, but then he realized that he’d seen the face on the I.D. before. After straining his brain cells a bit more, he realized it had been in the previous day’s local paper. Andreas Volk, then barely 18, immediately saw his chance.

He returned to the scene of the crime and once again put his tried-and-tested business model of a manufactured loss and ostentatious return of goods to use. The grateful politician offered Andreas a spot on his party’s ticket in the next elections. After all, such self-sacrificing and honest people were exactly what this country needed. Andreas squeezed out a fake tear, expressed his regrets that he wasn’t a Czech citizen and therefore couldn’t run for office, and came up with a counter-suggestion, i.e., that he would become the politician’s advisor and right-hand man. After all, he had experiences from The West (at that point neither of them realized that the Austrian Hollabrunn lies roughly to the east of the South Bohemian town of Prachatice).

And so the career of the political Cardinal Richelieu, the crooked-nosed lobbyist Andreas Volk, was born. It didn’t take long and the cooperation proved to be mutually advantageous. The 18-year-old Andreas, whose only qualifications were an Austrian heritage, advised his bread-giver on political matters, the bread-giver reciprocated by advising Andreas on bedroom matters, because said politician had taken a shine to his young advisor – and to hell with his broken nose. Andreas apparently gave good advice because as early as 1992, his young friend won a seat in the erstwhile Federal Assembly and Andreas, now an assistant to a federal deputy, saw his dream to escape the clutches of the bourgeoisie come true.

Since then, Andreas had been drifting from one politician to another. Officially, he was an advisor or assistant. Unofficially, he was the guy who did the behind-the-scenes dirty work that had to be done, but couldn’t be seen. He’d managed to hang on to his spot in politics throughout the division of Czechoslovakia and through all the subsequent elections. Faithful to his motto to only undertake lucrative risks, he never suffered from financial need. Nonetheless, he felt that the most important role in his life still lay ahead of him. Until recently.

It happened when HE, his current best friend, a man who always liked to stay a bit in the shadows, gave him the idea. Instantly, Andreas knew this was what he’d been waiting for all of his life.

Andreas Volk was savoring this moment: forever after, he would divide his life into “before” and “after.” Just one more, tiny step. Andreas took a deep, thoughtful breath and, with extreme concentration, he swept a speck of dust off of his laptop keyboard. Then he took another thoughtful breath and drank in the text on the screen. Yes, everything was going absolutely marvelously. Exactly as he’d expected.

If Andreas and HE were a little lucky – and Andreas tended to be lucky – before long it would be even better. For the first time in a long time, Andreas was feeling almost great.

Prague, Czech Republic

March 7

Helena told her husband to save a little fun for the afternoon and crawled out of bed. Martin noted that his wife didn’t appear especially irritated, even though it was only a few minutes before 9 a.m. This was potentially a high-risk factor, as it indicated that things were not as they usually were.

Strange sounds coming from the kitchen confirmed his suspicions. It seemed prudent to check them out. Reluctantly, he too crawled out of bed and went to see what his wife was up to. He found her rattling the empty alcohol bottles in the pantry, evidently looking for a full one, and very edgy. Briefly, he considered whether it wouldn’t be wiser to keep his mouth shut, but then he took the risk.

“What the he—ck are you doing?” Martin said, feeling uneasy again.

His wife had always been blunt, and her bluntness reached formidable proportions when she was being questioned by her husband.

“I’m looking for booze. And there’s Jack here.”

“What for?” He realized it was a lame question, but he couldn’t think of a better one.

“I feel like getting drunk.”

“And are you aware that it’s only nine in the morning? And that, thanks to your mother, you might have a hereditary tendency toward alcoholism?”

“No, I am not aware of anything but my simple and quite basic desire to get drunk as a Dane,” Helena admitted, and added that she was not of the opinion that the time of day was a relevant factor in relation to this desire. And, after a moment of thought, she further added that, in any case, she was out of luck because she had not found any means of bringing her plan to fruition. And then, to Martin’s surprise, she sat down, right on the floor of the pantry and closed her eyes, tired.

Martin realized that this was something of a problem because his wife’s body language indicated that she had no idea whatsoever what she should be doing at 9 a.m. on a Thursday morning in spring. And that she evidently didn’t even intend to think about it. And that, all in all, she was looking like a person who doesn’t know what to do with herself and, what’s more, doesn’t care.

“Kitty, we’ll find you some other work. Everybody’s going to want a fox like you,” he tried.

Helena opened her eyes and looked at him as if he’d just fallen off of Mars.

“I’m not going to look for other work,” she declared without much enthusiasm. “Maybe I’ll … Maybe I’ll … start a business. No, wait, I’m going to invest, or rather, play the market. I think the NWR stock is going to keep falling. I think it’ll fall to sixteen crowns. We could be able to get something out of that.” She closed her eyes again.

Martin reflected. Prior experience told him that if, just five minutes ago, his wife had decided to play the markets, then she was going to play the markets and, what’s more, she’d be just as good at it as at any other vaguely financial thing she’d ever encountered. Moreover, the family income, despite a hefty mortgage, could be put on the back burner for the moment. No, that wasn’t what was bothering him right then.

“You’re more upset about that other thing, aren’t you?”

Helena didn’t answer. She didn’t even bother to open her eyes. Or even to get up off of the floor.

But he’d bet his bottom dollar that she’d started trembling a little more.

“Look, you know what I think? I think you should do something. Anything. Anything’s better than sitting here and staring at the wall. For example, we could go back to bed. Or you could go buy us some goodies,” he added hastily, seeing the face Helena’d made after his first suggestion.

Helena liked this new proposal. Going shopping meant driving their old, red Mini Cooper with the white racing stripes on the hood and roof and the prospect of that appealed to her.

“We’re going to have to buy a new set of wheels. This bucket of bolts is on its last legs,” she grumbled to Martin over her shoulder on her way out of the door.

Hooray, he thought. It’s not quite 10 a.m. and she’s grumpy, so we’re almost back to normal and hopefully on our way out of this crisis too.

____________

“I’m a loser baby, so why don’t you kill me?” Beck Hansen blared out of the speakers as Helena hung a fast right into the shopping mall parking lot just as the light turned red. Disgusted, she mused that the whiny music was hardly worth listening to, but the text was pretty apt.

Still, in the few minutes it took to drive to the shopping center, her mood had improved a bit. It was mainly because on the empty roundabout, she’d managed to do a handbrake turn, which elicited, one, a huge wailing of tires and, two, adrenalin in her blood, and that was never a bad thing. She was determined to demonstrate her mastery of this maneuver to Martin at the earliest opportunity.

She drove slowly through the parking lot, looking for a free space. Maybe, if she hadn’t been so absorbed by the handbrake turn, she’d have looked left at the crossroads and seen the oncoming Audi Q7. And maybe, warned by its dangerous speed, she’d have stopped and let the Q7 pass, even though she had the right of way. But she didn’t. The impact turned the left rear end of the elderly Mini Cooper into a pile of scrap iron.

Helena took an instant dislike to the 40-something guy who stormed out of the Audi Q7. Not because he hadn’t given her the right of way and plowed into her, but because he was a trifle too loud, a trifle too stylish, and his Armani belt buckle was a trifle too big. She’d learned from experience to watch out for those types.

She didn’t even have time to turn off the engine before the guy flung open her door, stuck his hooked nose into her car and started bellowing things that Helena liked even less. Helena didn’t condone vulgarity.

“You stupid cow, what were you gaping at? You’re gonna pay for this, just wait! What were you fucking trying to push your way in there for? Don’t you know how to park, you cow?”

“Hello, pleased to meet you too. As for your question, I was planning –”

“Shut your trap you stupid bimbo! You fucked this up! I’m gonna kill you!” The flashy type was looking a mite put off. And Helena disliked being interrupted even more than she disliked vulgarity. The guy, who wouldn’t let her finish a single sentence, was starting to make her angry. She decided that rather than wasting time chatting with such a specimen, she would undertake something more productive. However, hard as she thought, right then she couldn’t recall the proper procedure to follow after a car accident. She had a vague suspicion that she should call the police. But she wasn’t entirely sure. After all, it was her first accident. Unless you counted the wrecked motorcycle, one knocked-off rear-view mirror and a fairly high number of completely destroyed tires. She thought of calling her assistant and asking her to send a taxi so she wouldn’t have to waste her valuable time here. But then she realized that she’d quit a few days ago, that she didn’t have an assistant anymore, that she wasn’t sitting in her company car and that probably her only option was to call her husband.

“Gdd---mtt,” Martin mouthed into the phone, and, out loud, asked Helena the extent of the damage. She told him she had no idea, and that the old heap was a piece of junk already (even though it ran great and had been a lot of fun to drive), so the damages were probably going to be zero point zero. Martin analyzed this and wondered if there was any point in telling Helena that he wasn’t asking about the damage to their car but the damages to the car of the idiot he heard yelling in the background. But then he decided to let it go. He told Helena to get the guy’s contact information and to document everything so they’d have some evidence for the insurance company: she could record it on her cell phone.

Helena thanked him, punched out the cell phone and turned back to the hot-shot who was in the process of kicking the front grille of their Mini. But before she could initiate a conversation, his cell phone rang.

The guy repeated roughly the same vocabulary he had used with Helena into the cell phone. I guess he isn’t just rude to me, she thought, neither angry nor sympathetic. And she started recording the wreck with her cell phone. In the background, the hot-shot continued to yell something about stupid half-wits and suddenly looked very happy. So happy, in fact, that when Helena stuck a pen and a dry cleaning bill under his nose, he quite readily wrote his name and phone number on the back.

Now that’s what I call a balanced personality, she snorted in disgust. That bundle of nerves would lose his shirt on the stock exchange.

____________

“Does it run?” Martin asked when Helena walked in.

“It runs,” she assured him. “It’s just a bit more banged up than before.”

“OK. Good that it runs.” Martin was just on his way out the door and needed to take the heap – unless of course she needed something or didn’t want to be alone…?

Helena assured him that she could handle it – but why the sudden rush?

“I just got an interesting phone call. You know Sykora, the lobbyist? No? No surprise. He’s a kind of gray eminence. Loaded. And he wants something from me – it could mean work. Might be a story in it. He said he’d like to meet with me asap. So I said I’d come right away. Are you sure you can handle it alone?”

Instead of answering, his wife gave him the car keys. Twenty minutes later, Martin was sitting in the lobbyist’s office on Národní Třída.

Martin Stone was used to forming a rapid, but more-or-less kind opinion of the people around him. On the whole, he liked people, and so, provided someone didn’t let him down repeatedly, he had a tendency to see everyone’s good side. But this time, this time he just couldn’t get himself to see the good in Michal Sýkora. Somehow, the guy simply didn’t sit right with him, he just couldn’t put his finger on why.

Maybe it was that double chin that shook every time he moved, Martin mused. “Interesting phenomenon, that chin. Yet the belly-bulge isn’t all that big. Not that the man was skinny, God forbid. I’m a world-class decathlon champion, if he’s skinny. But I’ve seen bigger. This guy is more, well … jelly-like. Especially under the chin. Like pig’s-foot-jelly. Hm, on the other hand, why should that specifically bother me?” he rebuked himself. So maybe it was the excessive propriety, he mused. People who were extremely polite and spoke too correctly were just weird. They were too careful.

He asked for mineral water and espresso, and when the conversation kept going around in circles and it looked like the preliminaries about the weather would never end, he took the initiative and asked what precisely Mr. Sýkora wanted from him.

“Michal to you, Martin, to you always just Michal!” the lobbyist glowed. “You see, we have this client, a very reputable client, who would be very interested in your services. Actually, I think you are the most highly qualified person in the entire country. You are a triumph!” Michal Sýkora paused and waited to see the dramatic effect of his words.

Martin, for his part, was waiting for Sýkora to stop showing off and say something to the point.

“My client would be interested in a little analysis, written by you, presumably, because you really know your way around these things. You’ve got several stories about European Structural Funds and European politics under your belt and you know how to write!” he added with the broadest smile he could squeeze out of his lips.

Martin kept waiting. When the waiting got somewhat tedious, he said, “There are bigger experts on European subjects around than me. What am I not getting here?”

“OK, you know the deal, so I’m not going to tap dance around it: you have contacts in the right places, right? So it will be child’s play for you to get it into the big dailies. In cooperation with us, of course. We will give you full support.”

“You still haven’t said what it’s supposed to be about.”

“Yes, well, ehm. Ehm, our client is interested in an analysis of the European Banking Union and consumer protection inside the Banking Union. Presumably, we are looking for a positive assessment of the Banking Union. And, as follow-on, a series of articles stressing that today, in every European country, bank clients have substantial rights. That many people don’t even realize the extent to which the current European legislation protects clients from the often willful conduct of the banks.”

“I guess you don’t have many banks as clients, since you’re so hard on them,” Martin, who still couldn’t understand what this was all about, made a feeble attempt at a joke. In fact, he was only half-listening to Sýkora: he couldn’t tear his eyes away from that jiggling double chin.

“By no means,” Michal Sýkora, who obviously didn’t get the attempt at humor, assured him. But, presumably, he could not tell him the client’s name. After all, Martin knows how it goes in this business. Doesn’t he?

But of course, Martin assured him. He just didn’t understand why he (assuming the client is a man and not a woman, obviously) thinks that he, Martin, would be willing to write such drivel. After all, it isn’t exactly a riveting subject. So it would come at a cost. How much is the counterparty offering?

A figure was stated and Martin carried out a rapid analysis. Then he announced he would have to give it some thought and that he would let him know in a week. However, if he did agree to take it on, he would like to make clear that he would write the analysis with complete objectivity, in other words, according to his own best knowledge and conscience because he is a journalist and not some pencil-pushing flunky. At this point, he thought that for a fleeting moment he saw a sort of shadow pass over Michal Sýkora’s face, but he might have imagined it.

____________

The world outside the window was so cold. Led Zeppelin was playing Kashmir. Absently, she breathed a circle on the glass and drew a nine in it. Then she rubbed it out again. She felt like her brain was exploding. She swayed to the beat and stared out of the window in a trance. And then, thank God, Helena got that life-saving idea: call William. William almost always cheered her up. He’d cheer her up now too, she had no doubt about that. Quickly, she pulled out her cell phone.

William Stannard was the oddest guy Helena knew. In terms of looks, he was on the borderline between David Beckham (thanks to his manly 184 centimetre high frame) and Omar Sharif (the piercing eyes, constantly overgrown hair and striking elegance). (So instead of him, she picked a four-eyed kid with a constantly befuddled look on his mug.) Helena had always been attracted to slightly older men, and because Willian was six years older than she, he was a perfect match. (Which is why, shortly after she’d met him, she’d taken up with a guy the same age as she.) Aside from that, William, in spite of his somewhat non-British, black-haired exterior, was three-quarters English and, thanks to his maternal grandmother, one-quarter Scottish – and Helena had a definite weakness for Brits. (Which is why she’d found herself an unadulterated Czech.) William could have been an international poster boy for dry British humor. (Which is why she’d married an intellectual who was fit to be tied when one of his theories about who was in cahoots with whom came true.) And William was rich. Disgustingly rich. William was a very clever real estate speculator, who’d very cleverly managed to turn over the not inconsiderable sum of money he’d inherited from his parents. (Which is why she got hitched to a guy who was as poor as she was.) In any case, Helena had always had a thing for real estate speculators. (Which was why she’d found a guy who made a living as an investigative reporter.) And William had been in love with Helena for fourteen years. (Incidentally, to Helena’s Czech ear, the somewhat posh name “William” sounded incredibly sexy. Which is why she never degraded it to some diminutive form like Billy or Will.)

In spite of all that, William was everything but a smooth, aristocratic gentleman. Maybe it was due to his own private rebellion against his strict parents who, although they’d left him a sizeable inheritance, never smiled or cried when he was a child and scolded him for any similarly unacceptable expression of emotion. And the more they stifled him, the more the hidden rebel inside him grew.

Once, shortly after they’d met, Helena was witness to a relatively bloody fight. It had happened in Prague, in one of those establishments he used to take her to, the kind she’d never have been able to afford on her own. Some guy started making rude remarks at her expense and she made the mistake of translating them into English for William’s benefit. And then he started turning the joint upside-down. She’d emerged from the incident with a slightly bolstered self-image, William with a sprained wrist. Still, judging from what was left of the faces of the three thugs that stood up to him, he’d come out the winner, hands-down.

Surprisingly, this street-fighter overflowing with testosterone could – provided that he considered it to be to his advantage – behave like a polished English lord, the way he’d been taught.

Taken all around, it was a completely unlikely and highly suspicious combination of two perfect beings, like in a romance novel. It was so perfect that it was beyond her ability to fall in love with William the way he had with her. Moreover, he was the only person in the whole world who made her feel too ugly, too ordinary, and too stupid compared to himself. She liked being with him, but she couldn’t love him. Instead, a few weeks after she’d met that perfect British tourist in the streets below Prague castle, she fell totally in love with a guy who was as Czech as they got, and just as imperfect as she was.

Nevertheless, since then, she and William had been joined by a deep bond of friendship and trust. And mutual physical attraction. It was all the odder because there had never been anything physical between them. Not that he hadn’t wanted it but, for some reason, she didn’t. She had an old-fashioned, romantic notion that the strange attraction would disappear with the first intimacy. (Which was the only, though fundamental, point of contention between them, and had William permanently convinced that Helena was slightly wacky.) And what’s more, she was impossibly, old-fashionedly faithful to Martin.

At first Martin was none too thrilled to find out that somewhere on the British Isles lives an individual who caused women to swoon on a daily basis and who has long-term nefarious intentions upon his wife, but, out of spite he refused to go into it any further. Nonetheless, after convincing himself over and over that his wife was completely immune to the wiles of this individual, he came to accept William as a necessary evil.

All things considered, this dubious character did have his uses, because he was willing to pay for both of their regular vacations to Scotland. Granted, Martin would have preferred a vacation by the sea, meaning a warm sea, but you don’t look a gift-horse in the mouth, right? And because time is kind, after a few years, both men, with minor exceptions, managed to become friends of sorts. Especially since Helena was still steadfastly immune to William’s charms.

Nonetheless, nothing is perfect. Perfection is a myth. Of this, Helena was deeply convinced and it continually nagged at her brain. And she was determined to figure it out even though she’d been trying for fourteen years, and still hadn’t uncovered anything. But had not abandoned her investigative efforts.

And now she had an intense need to hear his soothing voice.

“Hello, Lassie.”

She retorted that she was the wrong age for him to be calling her “lassie,” but she secretly hoped William would not take her at her word. And then, strictly for the sake of conversation, she asked how things were going in the world of real estate. Then, not even waiting for an answer, she steered the conversation to herself. She told him the past week had been lousy and that she was very sad and that she was going to have to start looking for a new car and all that. And that at the moment she saw only one positive thing about her life: not having to get up for work in the morning. Other than that, everywhere she looked, she only saw grayness and falsehood and media lies. As if the whole world were made up of those repulsive and stupid reality shows and talent contests on TV, ads for an elusive better life, and homogeneity in all things. And that everything made her sick. Her orgy of self-pity lasted for roughly twenty minutes. William listened very patiently.

Then he went into deep contemplation. During the pause in conversation, Helena realized how much she almost loved William for being willing to listen to her whenever about whatever, no matter how inane it was. Then Mr. Perfect asked Helena what one thing she wanted most in the world. Whereupon Helena, after thinking for a second, said she wished that what had happened three weeks ago hadn’t happened.

“Wrong answer. I didn’t ask you why you were feeling sorry for yourself, or what you don’t like about your past. I asked you what you wanted to happen now.”

Helena thought for two seconds. “I would want to get drunk as a swine. Not know where I am, or who I am.”

“Wrong again,” he assured her. “That’s really not what you want. Stop feeling sorry for yourself and acting like the victim of an unjust fate. Just say what you really want right now.”

This time Helena didn’t think about it. Honestly, she blurted out, what she wanted most was a baby. Which actually surprised her very much because it was the first time she’d actually said it out loud to anybody, including herself.

So William posed a follow-up question: how were she and Martin doing, and was told excellently, thanks for asking. So he told her that, sorry, he didn’t see things quite as pessimistically as she did. Because, first, Helena had her priorities completely straight, and second, she had the ideal conditions to work on her priorities. And, if one knows what one’s priority is and one has the means to work on it, the battle’s half won.

For the first time in several days, Helena had a good laugh, told William that she knew he’d once again give her excellent advice. Then she quickly hung up because she heard Martin’s keys rattling in the door.

Before he’d even had a chance to take off his coat, she explained how things would be and added that she’d changed her mind about playing the stock market and that she now had somewhat different priorities than making money. And she asked him if he would like to immediately take a break from work and work on her priorities for a while.

But Martin, contrary to all of his former tendencies, hesitated: “I just… the doctors say you’re supposed to wait at least three months… I wouldn’t want to hurt something.”

Helena shot him the kind of glance parents give their naughty offspring when they catch them slamming other kids over the head with a bucket in the sandbox.

“Doctors can take their theories and stuff them. Good thing they’ve got it figured out theoretically. Once they get it figured out psychologically, and when their hormones are as out of control as those of the people they’re trying to advise, I might give their theories some thought. Although that doesn’t mean I’m actually going to listen to them,” she stomped her foot angrily. “So, do you want to take a break?”

Martin did. And the thought crossed his mind that that crazy Englishman was full of surprises. Against all odds, he could even prove to be useful.

____________

An hour later, as they lay lazily stretched out on the bed, listening to Light my Fire by The Doors and munching apples – because Helena always claimed certain activities gave her a bad case of the munchies – Martin told her about his meeting with the lobbyist. Now that he’d had time to think, he knew even less what to make of it.

On the one hand, it was a chance to make 200 000 crowns relatively quickly. That sum wasn’t especially high for such expert analyses, provided they were only a few pages long, like this one was supposed to be. When he factored in the time and effort it would take him to do the work and, on top of that, the fact that he’d have to turn away other work because the analysis would occupy him 150 percent, the reward was adequate. Nevertheless, something about it didn’t sit right, but what? Was it Michal Sýkora himself? But even in his case Martin couldn’t put his finger on what was off about him.

This time Helena didn’t know what to tell him. Truth told, now that they didn’t have her income anymore, it went somewhat against her grain to turn down assignments due to some weird distaste or a jiggling double chin, as Martin called it. After all, if Martin wrote it independently, if he just assembled all the facts about the European Union and put all the pros and cons down on paper, it might even turn out to be a good deed, right? And if a good deed is paid for, all the better, right?

Martin didn’t answer – he was busy thinking. When he finally spoke, what he didn’t like about this assignment suddenly became very clear.

“You know, I’m not so sure they want me to write all the pros and cons. I can’t get rid of the feeling that they only want the pros. They’re just pussyfooting around it. And for the life of me I can’t figure out why someone would be willing to have someone else, meaning me, write some paean to the European Banking Union. It’d be just as easy for them to take some texts produced by the clerks in Brussels and translate them. They’ll get exactly what they need at a much lower cost. There are oceans of texts like that. Nothing easier than a net search. That’s what strikes me as odd. Why should I write something that exists already? And not knowing what it’s going to be used for gives me a weird feeling.”

“In other words, you think it stinks,” Helena explained. “Of course you still have the option of doing two things at once. First, you can up the price from two to let’s say, three hundred thousand. That’ll offset the smell. And second you can explain very clearly that you’re only willing to write it independently and objectively and they can take it or leave it.”

That sounded like a pretty good idea to Martin. He asked his wife if she would like to continue working on her priorities.

Prague, Czech Republic

March 12

The business-like representative of the Association of Minor Clients of Banks was very particular about his shoes. And he always looked down on people who weren’t particular about their shoes.

He had in his possession many pairs of shoes. To tell the truth, he didn’t even know how many because many of them were still in unopened boxes, and the man wasn’t quite sure whether he would ever open them, because several months had passed since he’d bought them so they were probably out of fashion. Some would refer to him using the derogative term metrosexual. He, of course, didn’t consider this term derogatory. He was proud that he had a pair of perfectly matching shoes to go with every outfit. People who always wore the same shoes, were, in his eyes, undistinguished buffoons with whom he communicated only if it was absolutely necessary, and only with maximal distaste.

So the fact that the sweaty old fart sitting across from him in the Café Louvre, who’d just ordered his second beer in the middle of the business day and was gulping down potato soup with such gusto that he’d managed to spray his tie with it whilst puffing like a boar coming out of an oak grove, was wearing the same pair of shoes two days in a row, and boring black ones at that, was in itself enough to make the man despise him from the bottom of his soul. If it were up to him, he wouldn’t be losing time here with this boor. But maybe this fat pig could be useful after all…?

But as the representative of The Association sat there with the fat guy, he started to get the sinking feeling that he really was wasting his time. That press spokesman was just a pawn. The representative could tell. Oh yeah, a “right-hand man” or an “advisor,” that was a whole different ballgame. A “right-hand man” whispers in ears, a politician or a manager acts, a press spokesman just reports. And Marcel Bureš, the press spokesman of one of the largest banks in the Czech Republic, was still just a press spokesman. And on top of that, this press spokesman was a moron who probably didn’t even understand what he had just been told. But the fact of the matter was that he had to talk to this idiot because his boss didn’t give a damn about the Association of Minor Clients of Bank and he’d refused to meet with him personally, but still.

“Look, Marcel, let me rephrase that. If you don’t talk to me now, in a friendly manner, it will hurt you. You will bleed. You will lose. Do you understand me so far?” the man queried.

Either Marcel Bureš swallowed a potato that was too big for his throat and started coughing, or he confirmed.

The man decided it was the second. “And if you lose, it will cost you dear, very dear. Capisto?”

Marcel took a swig from his mug of beer and blew some bubbles.

The representative of the Association chose to interpret that as confirmation that his statement had been understood. “And if it costs you dear, so dear that you shit yourself, then there won’t be any bonuses.” He let his words fade into silence for effect. The dramatic pause was somewhat diminished by the mighty plop coming from Marcel’s mug.

“So I will make you an offer,” the man continued. “A very decent offer. We will come to a friendly agreement and, in exchange, we will not drag you through the gutter in the media. Your media image will not be damaged. Capisto?”

Marcel guzzled the rest of the beer. This pretentious metrosexual cretin really thinks we’re going to let them blackmail us. Well, you’ve got another think coming, you stiff-necked snob.

“Look, I obviously can’t give you an answer. I don’t make these decisions. I’ll present your case to the boss and we’ll see.” Marcel got up. “Like I said. Let’s see what the boss has to say.” Right, asshole. Like I’m gonna waste the boss’s time with this crap.

Prague, Czech Republic

March 13

Martin warily observed his wife. At first glance, she appeared more or less normal. As always, she was perfectly made up. Maybe it was the t-shirt – he hadn’t seen it on her in a while; outside of the house he was used to seeing her in a business suit. Apparently, now that she was home, she’d grown too lazy to change. Now she was wriggling uncomfortably, trying to hide the unaccustomed t-shirt under the blazer.

He’d taken her to the Volcano Complex primarily because Helena had burned the slab of filet mignon to a crisp, allegedly due to some clown on TV who claimed the government was taking all possible measures to generate economic growth. That had generated so large an explosion in his wife that she’d completely ignored Martin, even after he’d pointed out for the third time that smoke was pouring out of the kitchen. By the time she sniffed the air and asked what that awful smell was, it was too late. Ergo, there was nothing left to eat at home.

The other reason he’d brought her here was because he had a feeling that his wife still wasn’t feeling up to par and needed to get her mind off of things.

True, from the instant she’d, as she called it, gotten her priorities straight, she didn’t seem so passive and broken anymore. And she was more than ever eager to lend herself to all of Martin’s favorite activities, and not just at night. She’d even started dragging him away from the computer, even five times during working hours.

Nonetheless, Martin had noticed with some trepidation that when Helena thought he wasn’t watching her, she would engage in odd practices: kicking the kitchen cabinets, punching the doorjambs, or hissing curses about her birth and her ancestors down to the eighth generation. And then she would grab her chest as if she couldn’t catch her breath. He just didn’t like it.

But what scared him the most was when, that very morning, he’d caught her cancelling her hair appointment. All those years that she’d worked in the bank, Helena had had a carefully styled, fiery-red crew cut. He’d noted her visits to the hair salon very carefully, because they meant that once every four weeks he’d had to spend the evening alone. That is, without sex. That is, miserable. In order to get through it, he’d always arranged an evening in the wine cellar with friends. And now, for the first time, due to Helena’s laziness, he’d cancelled. Yes, laziness. Because when he’d asked her what it was supposed to mean, she’d just shrugged her shoulders and told him she had no idea why she should be going to some stupid hairdresser. And he did not like that one, single bit.

And so now he was desperately trying to think of a way to get his wife to devote some attention to something other than making babies and the replacement-steak on her plate. Not that both weren’t great. It was just that man cannot live by sex and steaks alone.

“Good?”

“I can’t get no … satisfaction …” Helena hummed and set down her utensils with a clang.

“Meaning what?” His wife really was a nut.

“Meaning the Rolling Stones.”

“They like steak too?” he asked sarcastically in order to convey to her that she was acting like a Tartar.

“Have you fallen out of a tree? Like there wasn’t enough.”

“Well maybe from now on they’ll start serving bigger steaks for the same money, since they managed to kick-start economic growth… Hm. I know. Stupid attempt at a joke,” he added when his wife’s eyes narrowed dangerously.

“This blather about growth always makes me so mad I could spit. Especially when it’s that clown, proclaiming it to collect pre-election points. Show me the growth! I just see an oncoming depression all around me.”

“I think you’re looking at everything too darkly. You’re depressed and you’re judging everything by the same measure.”

Helena leaned over the table.

“I don’t mean depression like a bad mood. The kind William’s got because he can’t get me into the sack.”

Martin wriggled lightly in his chair.

“I’m talking about what’s known as economic depression. Do you want to know what the signs of

an economic depression are?”

Martin was starting to find this discussion a bit whacky. He assured his wife that at the moment he was much more interested in the signs that when they got home, he and Helena would have some fun because that t-shirt she was wearing was fantastically tight, even though she was trying to hide it under that blazer.

“God,” Helena wailed, “what did I do to You that you gave me a sex fiend for a husband?” And then she explained to Martin that, although she was very happy that he liked her exterior, she would also be quite grateful if he could pay attention when she was revealing her interior.

Martin agreed that this was an entirely justifiable request. It just wasn’t clear to him how some economic depression could be affecting her interior, when his interior was being affected by something else entirely. And he gave her a significant wink. But he would try to listen for a while. Helena rolled her eyes and asked if her husband knew what the signs of a so-called economic depression, or drawn-out economic crisis, were.

He said he knew, but he couldn’t remember them all right now. But if Helena wanted, he would name all the “Misses” since 1995 and the size of their…

The sizes of their “what’s” Helena never found out because she interrupted him in mid-sentence: “Sure, you’re laughing because you have a pretty decent job. But I don’t. And we have a mortgage the size of a barn. And playing the stock market right now … isn’t my priority.”

Martin conceded that he was also aware of the mortgage. Just that at that very moment he certainly wasn’t going to let it ruin his evening.

Helena rejoiced that her husband was aware of something other than her red t-shirt with “MINI” written on the front.

“So, logically, in view of the circumstances, our economic situation is looking pretty risky.”

Martin agreed that her t-shirt was somewhat risky and that she should have a weapons license to wear it. But that it has one flaw, the MINI doesn’t really correspond with reality; that he would prefer the slogan MAXI.

“Could you please focus? Because I’m actually pretty worried about our future,” Helena said and added a look that finally made Martin get serious. So what was on his economically-aware kitty’s mind?

His economically-aware kitty couldn’t define it precisely.

“I don’t even know exactly. I just have this weird feeling. It’s like this: everyone at the bank kept acting like this was one big party. The bank’s policies were – actually still are – lend, lend, lend, no matter to whom. And to invest, invest, invest all free capital in no matter what. Whenever possible, in debt securities. With no regard to the risk. Because there is no risk; risk in Europe basically doesn’t exist. At least that’s what the board believed. And when I indicated that I didn’t consider this to be prudent banking investment activity, and that I considered some of those investments to be risky, I was told indirectly that I was wrong in the head and that I was being a pain. Because ‘of course,’ in Europe, the crisis has been resolved, no state went into bankruptcy, the Eurozone did not fall apart, the bank was owned by safe Austrian capital, blah, blah, blah… .”

Martin nodded, to show he understood.

“Except that I just can’t shake the feeling that the world’s a ticking time bomb and Europe is going to be the first to go off. Look, unemployment in the entire Eurozone is about 12 percent. In Portugal it’s about 17 percent. In France, nearly 11 percent. In Spain, 27 percent. In Greece, it’s over 27 percent. Among young people under 25 in Greece the unemployment rate is nearly 60 percent. Even during the Great Depression in the 1930s, which everybody’s heard of and which is constantly being pointed out as the worst-case scenario, from which the Second World War was born, unemployment in most countries wasn’t this high.”

Martin nodded his agreement again, but to tell the truth, he was far more interested in the bottle of red the waiter had just brought to their table.

“And it’s not true that no member-state has gone bankrupt,” his wife went on. “Greece went bankrupt. And the fact that the bankruptcy isn’t being called a bankruptcy in public has nothing to do with it. When a kid goes to get a tetanus shot, they don’t call it a shot the size of a cow, they call it ‘a bee sting.’ But it still hurts like hell. And I’ve got a nasty feeling, when I listen to the news, that Cyprus could go bankrupt any day now too.”

Martin nodded in affirmation again and did his best to pay attention.

“Never, in the entire existence of the human race, has the world been as deep in rotten debt as it is now. I mean both individuals and states. Can you believe that in Holland, for example, individual indebtedness has reached 250 percent of the entire national GDP? Never yet has so much unbacked currency been printed all over the world as today. This is not what a solution to a crisis looks like. Instead, I have a feeling that this is an ongoing, but well-hidden, crisis. I have this growing … distrust. I just don’t believe the future is all that rose-colored, the way the politicians or bank board members are trying to convince us it is.”

Martin had reached the conclusion that there’d been enough intellectual contemplation. It was time to sum it up and bring his wife’s monologue to a close: “So what’s actually troubling you is the feeling that the world – and Europe in particular – is like a bus heading into a dangerous curve and rather than hitting the brakes, some driver is stepping on the gas. And rather than honestly admitting that he’d lost control a long time ago, the driver is telling the passengers that he’s got the wheel firmly in hand. After all, being lied to has always irritated you.”

“Yeah, I think you put your finger on it. I just don’t know why that driver’s lying. To keep the public from rising up?”

“Hm. What do I know? Maybe he thinks he’s in control? Like the directors at your bank?”

“Now that I think of it, looking back, I’m actually pretty glad I ditched that job. I have no interest in being a part of this,” she frowned.

“And would you be interested in being a part of the trip home? And then taking that t-shirt off?”

“Yeah, I guess….”

As they drove through night-time Prague, Helena dug vigorously around in the CD carrier with a frown on her face. When she finally found what she was looking for, the inside of the car filled with the Australian band Midnight Oil wailing How do we sleep while our beds are burning…?

Frankfurt am Main, Germany

March 14

Otto Kruspe hadn’t had a good day. Bitterly, he thought for the umpteenth time in his life that the crushing majority of Germans would consider his position to be an unattainable career peak and a ticket into the club of the rich, the powerful, the admired and thus also the happy few. Was Otto Kruspe happy? Of course he was. He had everything. He had three very well developed blonde assistants – true Germanic Brunhildas. He had the mellow monogram O.K. embroidered on his shirts. He had an AMG class Mercedes with two drivers in black suits and dark glasses. He had a direct phone line to Chancellor Angela Merkel. He had his personal psychotherapist at his disposal 24/7. He always had a Viagra pill in his breast pocket for potency, a Fluctin pill for depression and another pill to calm him down, the name of which he couldn’t remember, possibly because whenever he needed it he wasn’t able to remember anything at all. In other words, he had everything that was needed to make a man a man. And sometimes he would remind himself that, in addition to all that, he also had quite a presentable wife and a son at a prestigious university.

Nonetheless, it occasionally came to pass that Otto Kruspe had a weak moment. How he hated it! Both of his palms would start shaking uncontrollably, his lips would get tingly and he’d have difficulty breathing. He felt like a prisoner in his own body, one who wanted to issue inarticulate screams. And he was extremely anxious. He knew, however, that he couldn’t let it affect him. He had to work even harder. He had to go play golf. He had to chase that hated feeling of anxiety out of his head with a bigger volume of work.

Except today he wouldn’t. Today was a bad day.

Otto Kruspe hadn’t been expecting much from the morning board meeting, but the reality exceeded his worst nightmares. After it ended, it was obvious that even in this quarter it would be impossible to stop the growth of his bank’s losses.

The European economy, he was told, was still too weak. It would be necessary to continue writing off loans, particularly to commercial real estate, but not only to that. Everyone had some explanation. Everyone had a mouth full of bullshit. Just that no one was standing out there with his bare ass in the wind like he, Otto Kruspe, was! He was the chairman of the board. It’s his name that was going to be in all the headlines next to the news that, whereas last year the bank had achieved profits of 355 million euro in the first quarter, now it is deep in the red… how much, exactly? 90 million euro? 100 million? Otto didn’t know yet.

But he did know that even massive layoffs wouldn’t change it. Times were tough. The extremely low interest rates prescribed by the European Central Bank in the Eurozone were having a detrimental effect on the bank’s economic results. Added to that were the constantly growing share of loss loans, which would never be paid off. At any rate, Otto knew already – and he was one of the few to know – that this quarter’s results would be much worse than the stock market analysts were expecting. And worse results meant that the share price would plunge. Even the price of shares owned by himself, Otto Kruspe, as part of his board member’s package. Otto delved into his chest pocket for the pill whose name he wasn’t able to remember.

And to top it all off, he now had to focus his attention on another hot potato. He glanced around at the faces of his eight colleagues, and grasped the edge of the table firmly with both hands to stop their uncontrollable shaking. The last time he’d sat here, he’d felt like an uncrowned King Arthur with his faithful knights. I must have been delirious, he thought. This group is more like a crew of aliens straight out of Star Wars. Thank God that I still have my head on straight and everything firmly under control, he thought, relieved, as he watched the tic in the eye of the man sitting across the table from him. He gripped the edge of the table with vibrating hands.

“Gentlemen, as I say again, this, in my opinion, is completely unacceptable behavior. Unfortunately, since our last meeting, there has not been any positive development. On the contrary, a new video, made in several different languages for several European countries, has materialized on YouTube. And in most of those countries, including Germany, it has gone viral.” Otto paused. With the exception of one man, all nodded their heads in agreement. Of course, the one exception was always a bit out of it, so that was entirely in order. “I assume you have all seen the video?” Otto demanded.

The member, who was always a bit out of it, along with two others, produced nervous coughs. Kruspe was tempted to ask them why they were nodding so avidly if they didn’t know what they were nodding about. “So then, it calls banks unscrupulous hyenas – yes this is the term they use – who rob their poor clients from the position of power. We know how it is, those pathetic arguments about our fees for just saying hello…”

A few faces emitted knowing chuckles.

“The viral video claims that, as soon as they manage to obtain sufficient funds from sufficient people for court and lawyer costs, they will submit a class-action suit against all German banks. They claim it’s more or less a done thing, despite all valid legislation. And they say that, after they win the first case in Germany, the Association of Minor Clients of Banks will file suits against banks in other EU states. They are demanding the return of banking fees for past years. To be more exact, for the last four years, fees prior to that, thank God, are protected under the statute of limitations.”

To his great dismay, Otto Kruspe suddenly realized he’d let the words “thank God” slip out accidentally. Now it’s going to look like he, Otto, was afraid those jerks could win.

“Ehm, what does viral mean?” the man who was known to have gotten a seat on the board because he never had an opinion about anything interrupted him. Which didn’t matter much because, as a representative of a rather peripheral credit union, of the nine men present he was sitting on the smallest balance so the others considered him a makeweight.

“Marcus, that’s a video that spreads like an avalanche through the internet. That everybody forwards to everybody. And this video explains to our clients, in words of one syllable, how to download a form asking the Association to represent them in their conflict with the banks. Moreover, it claims that, in Germany alone, they have 80,000 clients who oppose the alleged unethical conduct of banks and who have already paid them a court fee. And the numbers keep growing. At least that’s what they claim.”

At that moment, Otto Kruspe became aware of an exceptionally strong pressure in his chest. Did he take that pill? He couldn’t remember.

“Gentlemen, this pressure is completely unacceptable.”

“It looks like they hired some good advertising agency to make this video. It’s pretty good,” a gray, desiccated-looking man on Otto’s left spoke up. It was the first time he’d said anything all evening. Eight pairs of eyes with eyebrows raised in surprise turned his way. You could have cut the silence with a knife.

“Well, I’ll just step outside,” the ancient banker finished his brief contribution to the discussion, pushed his chair back with a loud screech, and hobbled out.

As soon as the door closed behind him, Otto broke the silence.

“Gentlemen, this is an absolutely fundamental attack on the principles of our enterprise. We have to stand up to this pressure. We can’t allow this endless diminishment of our territory.”

A man with salt-and-pepper beard reminiscent of a walrus spoke up: “What about settling out of court?”

“That is unacceptable!” for the first time, Otto lost his temper. “That would be like admitting we’re willing to deal with that riff-raff on an equal level! That what they’re saying is true! That we really are behaving unethically!”

Still the walrus didn’t give in. “It could be cheaper for us. We’ll voluntarily return all the fees we collected over the past four years but we will save face. Yes, we’ll pay, but those blackmailing punks won’t get a single euro out of it because they won’t win a single court case. We simply can’t let ourselves be blackmailed.”

“Hans, that kind of thinking is unacceptable,” Otto was now beating the table with his fist. “We can’t admit we’re even thinking about something like that. It would cast all of the agreements voluntarily signed by our clients into doubt. Any contract could be cast into doubt retroactively and we might as well just wrap up our whole business and go home! I am certainly against.”

“And what’s your solution?” the walrus stuck his chin out defiantly.

This is a virtual mutiny, Otto Kruspe thought. He’s sitting on a balance one third the size of mine and he dares to have an opinion.

“I propose that we do not make any statements whatsoever and wait for the next court verdict. The last lawsuit over banking fees took place in June of 2011. We – ehh – all know how that ended. Nonetheless, it’s been almost two years. It wasn’t precedent-setting. We know that every case must be judged on an individual basis, so a class-action suit is nonsense. Let’s wait for the next verdict. That will show that the law is on our side. And in the event it doesn’t, we will deal with it then. Just don’t panic. We will reevaluate after the court case ends.”

“If it isn’t too late.”

Otto’s face started to swell and grow red, and the fingers gripping the edge of the table were completely white. However, the explosion was forestalled as the door flew open again.

“So did I miss anything?” the desiccated old man asked.

“No, just a decision,” Otto growled, broke up the meeting and started digging around in his breast pocket. He was sure he hadn’t taken that pill.

Prague, Czech Republic

March 13

“So, why me, Mr. Sýkora?” Martin Stone stretched out comfortably in the armchair in the office of the Prague lobbying and public relations agency firm and decided that he had to get a coffee machine just like the one that had produced the miracle he was holding in his hand.

“Michal to you, Martin … Would you excuse me for one second? I have this urgent matter, I’ll be right back. Would you be so kind and wait a short while in the reception …”

Now that’s what I call an elegant way to push someone out the door, Martin thought, peeved. He was so angry at himself for letting this guy push him around that he couldn’t produce a response, and merely obediently retreated back to the reception area. He’d come five minutes early, granted, but Jelly-Head (as he’d privately nicknamed Sýkora of the jiggling double chin) most probably didn’t have anything better to do, so he was just hassling him.

He looked around. Money certainly wasn’t a problem around here. From the fresh orchid on the reception desk, to the bubinga wood panels on the walls, the office breathed opulence. He felt a little ill-at-ease. It occurred to him that his wife, with her years in the bank, would feel more at home here. The bank certainly tried to create a better impression on its visitors than the newsroom where he’d spent his past years did.

But no matter how much he looked around, there was no sign of a coffee machine. I’ll ask the receptionist what brand it is, he thought, but immediately discarded the idea. Right, that would make me look like a welfare case that’d never had coffee before. I’ll look around myself.

Martin got up, smiled and nodded at the receptionist, as if thanking her for pointing the way to the toilets, and the instant he was out of her field of vision, he turned and headed in the opposite direction. He didn’t have to look long for the exclusive Bugatti coffee machine. He gave it a disgusted snort – he’d rather drink instant slops for the rest of his life than invest two month’s pay into such an expensive piece of junk. Just then, he recognized the jovial voice of Michal Sýkora coming down the hall toward him.

Martin, mortified at the thought that he was supposed to be sitting in the reception area like a good little boy and not sniffing around in other people’s kitchens, quickly wedged himself into the far corner, painfully impaling his hip on the corner of the kitchen counter. He produced a low moan and moved to cover his mouth with his hand. This resulted in a sharp encounter between his funny bone and the edge of the china cupboard. Everything went black. Nonetheless he heroically choked back his whimpers.

“… He agreed to do it?” an unknown voice asked.

“It’s cool. We’ll run it through PSV like always,” Michal Sýkora’s voice responded.

“Like I said, no records. Everything cash in hand. We can go up to double the amount.”

“Oh come on, this isn’t the first time I’m doing this,” Sýkora chuckled.

“But if it all goes tits-up, we’ll buy that other bird, that dickhead’s always for sale.”

“Look – ” Martin peeked out of his hiding place just in time to see Jelly-Head slapping some casually dressed hot-shot on the shoulders. “Friday, OK? See you.”

The moment the pair disappeared from his line of vision, Martin knew three things for sure. First, Jelly-Head was a vulgar pig who was friends with other vulgar pigs for the sole purpose of buying certain persons who were so bad off they could always be bought. Second, these types weren’t used to paying. Third, he, Martin, had known this from the start, but he was just too lazy to be honest with himself because believing in Jelly-Head’s honesty was somehow easier. And fourth, he’d lost any inclination whatsoever to do business with Jelly-Head. Holding his elbow, he sprinted back to the reception area like a deer, arriving at the self-same moment when a smiling Michal Sýkora emerged from his office.

“Come in, Martin, come on in. So how’s it going?”

“Why me?” Martin repeated his heretofore unanswered question.

“Because you’re the best, Martin. You have the correct insight into the problem and you know how to present it optimally. And you have the right media connections. But anyway, how are you? Something wrong with your arm?”

“Look, I don’t want to do it. To tell the truth, I’m not used to doing work when I don’t know what it’s going to be used for.”

Sýkora stretched his shit-eating grin a bit more.

“Oh let’s talk about that later. Plenty of time! Tell me, how are things? What about your wife? You haven’t been married long, have you? Tell you what, I almost envy you the romance – in a good way, of course.”

“Yeah, thanks for asking,” Martin relaxed a bit. “The wife’s doing OK.” Well, actually, it was all for the birds, so to speak. The wife had quit her high-level job at the bank, miscarried, and to top it off, some moron with an Audi Q7 had destroyed their old Mini in a shopping center parking lot, so they were going to have to buy a new car. When it rains it pours… But other than that, great, they’re doing great. And why precisely was Michal so keen on Martin himself doing the analysis when he really wasn’t all that qualified to write about the European Banking Union? When his job as a relatively well-known freelance investigative journalist revolved mostly around the nefarious practices of various larcenists, like those suspicious solar power plant licenses a while back? Whereas he’d never written anything about banking regulations… .

Michal Sýkora looked momentarily taken aback, at least so it seemed to Martin. He completely ignored Martin’s questions and changed the subject to their Mini. How old did he say it was? And did it still run? Aren’t people awful these days? Michal loved those funny old cars, presumably the older models – entirely different story. The modern Mini Coopers had lost that old charm, but back then it was a grand little car, wasn’t it? And was that Mini of Martin’s special in any way? Any distinguishing marks? Racing stripes on the roof? Checkerboard side windows or anything like that? Martin relaxed completely. He had to admit that he was starting to enjoy this conversation. Gesturing wildly, he described the white racing stripes their Mini has – or rather had before it got totaled – on the roof. And that it still ran, although after getting hit by that moron it was more by force of will. (Meanwhile, he was thinking that maybe he would take the gig after all.)

He finished his suggestive description by asking Michal if he would mind terribly rounding the fee for the analysis up by a hundred thousand to three hundred thousand. Sure, it was just a few pages, but in view of the high quality, you might say…

Michal Sýkora smiled, shook a scolding finger at Martin, to show he was a sly fox that very well knew his price, and asked him if a month was enough to write the piece. Martin took it as a sign that the price was settled, agreed that a month should be enough time to write the thing and asked Sýkora to send him an email with exact specifications, or better yet, an outline of the requested analysis. Sýkora’s answer was an unintelligible bellow and a few moments later he was shaking his hand in the doorway and slapping him heartily on the back.

“Oh, before I forget, I’ll email you a contract this afternoon,” Martin had almost forgotten.

“Nooo… that won’t be necessary,” Sýkora slammed the door he’d just been pushing him out of shut again. “Why don’t we just do it under the table, in cash? We can do that, can’t we?

But Martin was of a different opinion. There would be a contract, as always. The same one he signed with every client.

Sýkora looked very surprised and Martin asked him if he wouldn’t like to think it over. The response was that a person who makes his living writing about nefarious practices certainly doesn’t want to get mixed up in one of them. What good would it do him to work without a contract? Martin asked.

Michal Sýkora responded to this infantile question with a look of even greater surprise, as if he couldn’t understand how, for heaven’s sake, a person as educated as Martin Stone could be posing such an idiotic question. And then he asked what Martin would say if, instead of cash, he got the money in bitcoins?

That threw Martin for a bit of a loop. Of course he’d heard of bitcoins. But, truth to tell, he’d never cared enough about them to form an opinion. Actually, he didn’t even rightly know what they were good for. But he’d think about it. And by Monday, March 25, he would give Michal his definite answer.

Back outside on the street, Martin wasn’t quite sure he wasn’t getting taken for a royal ride. Then he shrugged it off.

____________

“What? You don’t know what bitcoins are?” Helena, a bit out of breath from the unusually hearty welcome she’d given her returning husband, stretched out, luxuriously naked on the bed next to him.

“Of course I know. I just don’t know if I don’t smell a rat. Some tax evasion. I never really gave it much thought. Is it clean?”

Helena thought a while. “Yes and no. See, bitcoins are a relatively new electronic currency that hasn’t been quite fully grasped by the legal system yet. In any case, it’s an unusually interesting little toy. The thing is it’s not exactly clear if they are a currency at all. I mean, like money. I mean, it isn’t clear so far. And so nobody today knows exactly how to look at bitcoins in terms of legality. In the future… bitcoins will probably become money legally from a legal standpoint as well.”

“And you know all this how?”Martin asked, somewhat taken aback.

Helena rolled over on her stomach and propped herself up on her elbows directly above Martin: “Ohhh, I couldn’t sleep the other night, so I started interneting, looking for a way to improve our family budget. It seemed like a good idea to buy a few bitcoins, speculatively. So I started looking for some information about them…”

“What? You were depressed, couldn’t sleep, so you started digging around the internet? You couldn’t wake me up?!” Martin gave her a peeved look.

“No, I couldn’t. That would end the way it always does,” his wife snapped and rolled away.

“I thought you had some ‘priorities’? Like making babies? Or has that changed?”

“Yes,” Helena conceded, “but everything has its limits.” Six times a day was way more than enough. Her husband might come to expect it. And anyway, this was before she’d gotten her priorities straight.

“So what happened with the bitcoins?” Martin asked. “Are we betting on them then?”

“No, we aren’t betting on them,” his wife admitted ruefully. “It would have been a good thing in view of how fast their value’s been rising lately. But then I kind of got lazy. See, the first thing you have to do is install some software which lets you into the bitcoin network. But I started getting sleepy.”

“Aha. And how much money didn’t we make?”

“Well, at the start of March, when I was thinking about it, the rate was at around 30 dollars. Last time I looked, it was around 80 dollars.”

“Oh sh--, oh dear.”

“Hm…” Helena added.

“So why’s the rate rising so fast?”

“Because there’s a lot of incredible gossip going round about them. So it’s getting written up a lot. And lots of people have taken the bait. As a reporter, you should understand that. And the more they get written up, the more interesting they become to speculators. And, as it happens, once speculators take an unhealthy interest in something, they speculate and speculate until they speculate their way to a giant bubble.”

“So you think bitcoins are just a speculative bubble?”

“Yup.”

“So why did you want to speculate with them?”

Helena rolled her eyes and clasped her hands in mock despair: “Are you making fun of me? You just stick to your tax evasion, solar power plants and the broken glass you generate whenever you touch anything in the house. That’s got to be clear as day, doesn’t it? Price bubbles, just before they pop are the best, ie. the fastest way to make money.”

“In the first place, don’t get fresh with me or I’ll teach you to stay in the kitchen until you learn not to burn dinner, and, second, this might work until price bubbles burst because once they burst, you lose everything.”

“Do you take me for a complete pencil sharpener? You think I’d wait till the rate drops back down again?”

“You wouldn’t be the first to vainly think they could pull out, and then didn’t… You’re a bit too cocky for my taste… .” Martin grumbled under his breath.

“Nothing wrong with my ears, you wet old blanket.”

It was quiet for a while. Then Martin spoke up again: “So if you’re so sure of yourself, why aren’t we playing the market?”

Helena rolled over on her side, her back to her husband: “Don’t feel like it. Tired.”

Right. That was precisely what he didn’t like about his wife lately. For as long as he’d known her, she’d always been full of energy, always sticking her freckled nose into every little thing, even if it was none of her business. Whether she was good at it or not. Especially when it was about things like motorcycles, hard rock, English life and customs, or finance. This was sinister. This wasn’t her. He felt a desperate urge to provoke her into some signs of life: “So in your opinion, bitcoin players have fallen for some old wives tales? So, bitcoins are like a big scam?”

Apparently he’d chosen the right subject. Helena rolled back over on her back and frowned the way she always did when she was thinking hard.

“No, I didn’t say that. I’m just saying that the bitcoin has a more brilliant marketing strategy than it could ever have dreamed of. I mean the economic crisis. People are afraid to keep their money in the banks or under their mattresses. You want to know what it is that people like about bitcoins?” Helena started counting off on her fingers.

“Bitcoins know no borders. Whereas ordinary currencies are issued by the state, the bitcoin isn’t issued by any authority. You can easily move it all over the planet without any barriers. All you need to do is be online. In today’s world, that gives you unimaginable freedom.

“Second, the bitcoin isn’t regulated. And, what’s more, it’s very hard to regulate. Germany and the USA have already tried – their courts ruled it was a currency – but wanting to regulate isn’t the same as regulating it. Can you imagine? Nowadays, any state can look at your bank account. You’re constantly being monitored by cameras, even when you buy a stupid hamburger you have to pay taxes on it, but nobody’s yet been able to regulate the bitcoin. That’s a mighty sexy notion.

“And it gets better. Normal money’s based on trust. By trust I mean that when you entrust your money to a bank, you trust it not to fritter it away on some of its own speculative transactions. But the bitcoin, in addition to trust, is also based on an encrypted algorithm. And a lot of people find codes fascinating.

“But what people find even more fascinating is the notion that the bitcoin is completely anonymous. And what’s more, there’s this other fascination with the fact that, because of the bitcoin’s algorithm, the volume of money released into circulation is known in advance, so it’s actually a non-inflationary currency. Which, according to those who speculate with the bitcoin, is no bad thing in today’s world.”

Helena fell silent.

“So what’s the problem? That all sounds amazing, almost as amazing,” Martin leaned over her, “as your ass to waist circumference ratio.”

“You are such a stud,” she fell to thinking again. “The problem is, none of what I said is true. The bitcoin isn’t anonymous, and it isn’t even non-inflationary.”

“And you’re a genius, I guess, because you’ve come up with something nobody’s thought of before. So everyone else is stupid. Is that what you’re saying?”

She ignored him. “So, first, it was proved long ago that the bitcoin isn’t anonymous, it just isn’t said in public. The truth is that every set of bitcoins includes information about who it came from and where it went. It’s kind of like if you happened to get the idea of bringing me breakfast in bed. Even if you didn’t bring it all the way, I’d be able to figure out that you’d tried to from the spilled mess on the floor. Nonetheless, one way or another, bitcoins are still more anonymous than other currencies, and that makes them ideal for money laundering.”

Martin decided this homily was a positive sign: his wife had shown an interest in breakfast in bed. “So what about the non-inflationary part?” he asked.

“That’s a bit more complicated. For now, the bitcoin isn’t inflationary. But technically, under certain conditions it could become so. The fact that individual sources keep copying that rubbish about the bitcoin not being inflationary from each other doesn’t mean anything. At work, people used to say I was sleeping with the boss, and then, based on the gossip principle, the rumor continued to grow and if anyone happened to doubt it and asked for confirmation from an independent source, he always got it because ultimately everybody’d heard about it from someone. Even I heard it. Just that morox of a boss hadn’t.

“So, basically, what it means is that money doesn’t have to come in the form of coins, bills or computer files. Money can come in the form of legal obligations. All you need is for one bank to start lending bitcoins and, technically, inflation can take place. Sure, you could say that the existence of bitcoin banks isn’t possible because the fundamental principle of the bitcoin algorithm is that you can’t reuse a bitcoin belonging to someone else, which means you can’t lend it. But think again. You can. You can trade with the legal obligations replacing bitcoins. And at that moment, algorithm or not, a thing called endogenous money comes into being. In other words, bitcoin inflation comes into being.”

Martin absorbed that surprising information and found it more-or-less logical. But why was his wife so reticent about her creative nightly bouts of depression?

However, Helena wasn’t finished yet: “Simply put, the bitcoin thing is the same as every other evolutionary experiment. Some work out and others are just another dead end. I don’t know if bitcoins are going to catch on with the masses. But technically it’s possible. And, what’s more, for now it’s an awfully unstable currency whose exchange rate tends to rise and fall a lot.”

“But what does that mean for us? Why was Jelly-Head offering to pay me in bitcoins? You think it was money laundering?” The thought scared Martin to death. As a reporter, he didn’t want to get involved with something like that; he might have to write about it.

His wife shrugged her shoulders.

“What do I know? But it doesn’t exactly sparkle with good intentions. If the job smelled a bit before, now it stinks like a skunk crossed with a badger. The last thing that sly old Sýkora of yours wants is for anyone to know that he gave you this job. It’s a double-cross.”

Martin sighed: “So what am I supposed to do?” I need to think this through some more, he thought in despair.

“Just tell him to go to hell,” his wife advised.

Martin thought about that for a while and concluded that he couldn’t come up with a better idea, even if he’d plotted it all out on a graph.

“OK, I’m gonna go email him right now that there’s no need for him to wait till Monday for my decision. I’m not taking the job.” Peeved, he got up out of bed and went over to his notebook. He was happy to note that the whole time he was up, Helena hadn’t taken her eyes off of his naked backside and wondered how long she could go without working on her priorities. After listening to the clack of his keyboard for a while, she asked if he wouldn’t like to come back to bed; he felt like a positive playboy.

Prague, Czech Republic

March 17

“Would you mind turning that noise off for a minute?!” Martin, looking extremely stressed out, gestured wildly at his wife.

Helena emerged from the kitchen.

“Did you say something?” There was a wild look in her eyes. In one hand, she brandished a meat cleaver and in the other a bottle of red wine.

Martin yelped, backed up, tripped over his slippers and sat down in the ficus tree pot. “Shit, what’s wrong?”

“I’m tenderizing pork chops, why?” His wife sounded surprised.

“With an axe and a bottle?” Martin responded, recalling his previous request. “Turn off that bloody noise, drat it.”

“Kindly stop speaking like a longshoreman. And it’s not bloodynoisedratit, it’s Metallica One, just in case you were wondering. Super rhythm for tenderizing meat. It’s just what…”

“It’s like a goddamn jackhammer. I’m not asking what the bloody noise is called – I’m going deaf from it! I want to hear the bloody news!” Martin yelled, struggling to get out of the plant and waving wildly in the general direction of the TV set.

With an affronted shrug of her shoulder, Helena switched off the music and turned back to the kitchen. She realized that her better half wasn’t complaining about the genre of music, but the loudness which, admittedly, was a mite over the limit; nonetheless, she couldn’t dredge up the slightest bit of sympathy for him.

Martin turned up the news. The good-looking blonde in a low-cut dress was reporting that the crisis-plagued and indebted Cyprus was battling its first economic recession in almost forty years.

Helena stopped halfway to the kitchen. The subject caught her attention. She did an about-face, the meat-cleaver uplifted, wine-bottle at the ready.

When she appeared at his side, Martin yelped and dodged.

Helena couldn’t see why her husband was so frightened by the blonde’s report that on Friday the EU summit had approved a 10 billion euro loan for Cyprus’s indebted banking system. She turned the volume up a bit. The young lady was now hollering so loudly that the next-door neighbor’s nervous terrier started barking.

“… Of course one of the conditions of the loan is an increase in taxes and the implementation of a one-time tax on bank deposits. In order to prevent their citizens from taking the banks by storm, in other words starting a run, the government decided to temporarily freeze bank deposits. In Nicosia, several thousand people have taken to the streets…”

“Holy shit,” Martin said.

“You’re talking like my mother again,” Helena informed him.

He ignored her. “Do you know what this means?”

“That people aren’t going to be able to take out money from the bank,” she judged.

“Would you mind putting down that axe? It’s making me nervous.” Martin was running around the room like a ferret, the way he always did when he was thinking hard about something. “This is no one-time tax on deposits! Do you know what a tax is?”

“The money they take off my payroll in accounting.” The cleaver swished through the air menacingly. “Or took off my payroll, back when I had a job. Why?”

Martin wasn’t sure if his wife was speaking to him as if he had the IQ of a rocking horse in order to deliberately provoke him or because, due to her miserable mood, she’d speak that way to anybody. “Taxes, as you know, are payments remitted to the state without prior specification as to the purpose for which said state will utilize them,” he recited. “And they are paid either regularly, for example annually, or upon the occurrence of certain events, for example upon inheritance. And you always know ahead of time that, if you carry out such and such activity, you will pay such and such tax. For example, if you earn your pay, you will pay.”

She rolled her eyes, “I passed my finance course. You want salad with those pork chops?”

Martin wasn’t listening. “So, obviously, this is no tax. It is to be used for a concrete purpose, so Cyprus can get foreign aid. It’s not paid either annually or upon the occurrence of some event, but simply because the European Union decided it would be. And you can’t evade it, even if you give up your Cypriot citizenship…”

“Hm…”

“… And that’s because this clever once-off tax is going to be implemented retroactively! All you need is to own a Cyprus bank account today …”

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