Our group spent the next day meeting with “officials” in the interim government, mostly members of the recently cobbledtogether National Salvation Front. The day was so dark that the automatic streetlights came on along the broad Bulevardul N. Balcescu and Bulevardul Republicii. The buildings were not heated . . . or at least not perceptibly . . . and the men and women we spoke with looked all but identical in their oversized, drab wool coats. By the end of the day we had spoken to a Giurescu, two Tismaneanus, one Borosoiu, who turned out not to be a spokesman for the new government after all . . . he was arrested moments after we left him . . . several generals including Popascu, Lupoi, and Diurgiu, and finally the real leaders, which included Petre Roman, prime minister in the transitional government, and Ion Iliescu and Dumitru Mazilu, who had been President and Vice President in the Ceausescu regime.

Their message was the same: we had the run of the nation and any recommendations we could make to our various constituencies for help would be eternally appreciated. The officials treated me with the most deference because they knew my name and because of how much money I represented, but even that polite attention was tinged with a distracted air. They were like men sleepwalking amidst chaos.

Returning to the Intercontinental that evening, we watched as a crowd of peoplemost, it looked, office workers leaving the stone hives of the downtown for the daybeat and pummeled three men and a woman. Radu Fortuna smiled and pointed to the broad plaza in front of the hotel where the crowd was growing larger. “There . . . in University Square last week . . . when peoples come to demonstrate with singing, you know? Army tanks roll over persons, shoot more. Those probably be Securitate informers.”