The pudgy businessman next to me puffed his pipe, removed it, nodded in Fortuna's direction, and went back to smoking the thing as if it were a necessary source of heat. I had a moment's mad vision of the seven of us in the bus huddled around the glowing embers in Berry's pipe.

“And you say you remember our sponsor, Mr. Trent,” finished Wexler.

“Yesss,” said Radu Fortuna. His eyes glittered as he looked at me through Berry's pipe smoke and the fog of his own breath. I could almost see my image in those glistening eyesone very old man, deepset eyes sunken even deeper from the fatigue of the trip, body shriveled and shrunken in my expensive suit and overcoat. I am sure that I looked older than Paxley, older than Methuselah . . . older than God.

“You have been in Romania before, I believe?” continued Fortuna. I could see the guide's eyes glowing brighter as we reached the lighted part of the city. I spent time in Germany shortly after the war. The scene out the window behind Fortuna was like that. There were more tanks in Palace Square, black hulks which one would have thought deserted heaps of cold metal if the turret of one had not tracked us as our van passed by. There were the sooty corpses of burnedout autos and at least one armored personnel carrier that was now only a piece of scorched steel. We turned left and went past the Central University Library; its gold dome and ornate roof had collapsed between sootstreaked, pockmarked walls.

“Yes,” I said. “I have been here before.”

Fortuna leaned toward me. “And perhaps this time one of your corporations will open a plant here, yes?”

“Perhaps. “

Fortuna's gaze did not leave me. “We work very cheap here,” he whispered so softly that I doubt if anyone else except Carl Berry could hear him. “Very cheap. Labor is very cheap here. Life is very cheap here.”