Jose Garcia loved American idiom. Unfortunately, Quint thought, he was always about twenty years behind on the latest slang terms.

Garcia was going on. “And that weepy looking type talking to Dave Shepherd? That’s Albrecht Stroehlein. Albrecht used to pick up the tab at the beerhalls in Munich, back when Hitler didn’t have a pot to…”

“Plant a flower in,” Quint finished for him. He looked over at the German his companion was talking about. A man of about sixty. From what Garcia said, probably one of the former Nazis who had fled to Spain to avoid Nuremberg.

Garcia said, as though with satisfaction, “You can imagine how our guest of honor is going to react to those two.”

Garcia was the town crier. The gossip who knew all, and if there wasn’t anything to know, invented something. Quint wasn’t usually interested in the ins and outs of his fellow expatriates in Madrid. He said, “Why shouldn’t Professor Ferencsik get along with them? What connection have they got with his field?”

The Spaniard grunted amusement, sipped his bubbly wine again, stroked his fingernail over his mustache again. “Pal, you just aren’t up on the news. Our Hungarian scientist’s second biggest interest in life is medicine.”

Quint was becoming irritated with the conversation, actually, but he said, “All right, all right, drop the other shoe.”

Garcia laughed, as though he had accomplished some minor triumph. “His first interest is the achieving of the One World. Of World Government. He’s a fruitcake on the subject. That’s why he left Hungary. Couldn’t stand the fact that they wouldn’t allow him to sound off about it.”