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“That’s why you got to do it, dude. Can’t let her push you around, man. We’ll take this backstage. Me and you.” “O.K., sure,” I said. “Count me in. Why the hell not. It might help.” “Cool, Thor. All right, I’ll see you at the show. I got to go get my drums and call a taxi.” “O.K., man.” I went back in, found a quiet corner had another two beers, listening to the band, watching a few dancers. I had begun to sweat again and needed just a bit of a break. After a while I went to pee, then saw George alone in a wall booth, his table crowded with wine and champagne bottles. George, I observed, actually did look more than a little like Hemingway, in one of the later bearded phases— that is, if Hemingway had had a ponytail. I went over. “George, long time no see. How’s it hanging, man?” “Long and strong, Thor, is that what they say?” He chuckled. “Sit down and tell me something I don’t already know.” “You know that’s impossible, George. In any case, my mind is blissfully blank. At this point, I think I just want to drink. It’s my time. My wife’s out of town with the kids.” “Oh, no—you’re still married to that Czech woman?” I nodded. “Don’t worry,” he said, starting to laugh again, “it won’t last much longer. You remember what Napoleon said about Czechs—” “Sure, George, of course…” “—the men are cowards, the women whores!” He chortled, his red cheeks swelling just a bit more. “That’s right, baby,” I said, “the Napster did nail that one. So what’s new in Kosovo, man? Did they kill all the Serbs and Gypsies yet?” “Nearly—it won’t be much longer until they do. Listen, I was having my weekly lunch with my FBI contact last week, and—they still have no idea what’s going on down there. Guess how many FBI agents they have in Kosovo now?” “Uh, twenty?” George shook his head, chuckled. “One. Just one, Thor. And this guy gets all his information from the newspapers and the internet, and from talking to me. Then he writes it up and sends it to Washington. Then they go on television and claim they
are fighting terror.” George shook his head, rolled his eyes. I picked out from the table one of the cleaner looking champagne flutes, wiped the rim with my shirt and filled it from one of the champagne bottles. I grabbed a half-empty wine glass, emptied it into another glass, and wiped the rim. I set it on the table and filled it with white wine. George was saying, “I told the guy, I’ve told all of them, about this Al-Qaida chief who is living openly in Djakovice. A Somali gentleman, who lives in a villa surrounded by a spiked metal fence. One day I went up and knocked on his door. One of his wives answered, dressed in black veils. I said, ‘I would like to speak to your husband, the Al-Qaida terrorist leader.’ ‘Oh no,’ she said in perfect English. ‘Oh no, he is not speaking to anybody right now…’ I told the FBI and the U.N. and the Defense Intelligence Agency all about it. They said they had to get clearance from Washington and Geneva before they can arrest anybody, even a terrorist leader. They said it was nearly impossible to take this guy in. If this was World War II or right after, or even Vietnam, that guy would be rotting in an unmarked hole right now. They would have taken him right out, no questions asked. But we are not serious. We pay these FBI guys too much, give them long lists of rules, and they are too scared to do anything.” “Scared?” I said. “C’mon, they break the rules all the time—it’s what they get paid to do.” George laughed. “That’s right—when it comes to me and you and all the other good law-abiding citizens. But Islamic terrorists—all rules must be followed so no Arab king in Saudi Arabia or Egypt gets mad at us and accuses us of persecuting Arabs and shuts off the gas.” “So what’s the real plan then, George? What the hell is going on? You’ve got to know something. If you don’t know, nobody does.” “Well, they haven’t told me what their plan is. You’re a smart guy, you can add it up. They certainly aren’t catching terrorists in Kosovo. They’re letting them do what they want.” “Yeah?” “Oh, sure! All this Saudi money that comes in—they’re building mosques on every square inch of free land in Kosovo right now, at least in the Albanian parts, and nobody is doing a thing about it. The Saudis pay the Albanians to become devout—250 euros a month. The Albanians do it because that’s a lot of money in Kosovo.