“Indeed.” He referred to the clipboard once more. “Our list may not be complete, but you may fill in any significant omissions. You belong to the two groups I mentioned. You also belong to the Irish Republican Brotherhood and the Clann-na-Gaille. You are a member of the Flat Earth Society of England, the Macedonian Friendship League, the Industrial Workers of the World, the Libertarian League, the Society for a Free Croatia, the Confederación Nacional del Trabajadores de España, the Committee Allied Against Fluoridation, the Serbian Brotherhood, the Nazdóya Fedèróvka, and the Lithuanian Army-in-Exile.” He looked up and sighed. “This list goes on and on. Need I read more?”

“I’m impressed with your research.”

“A simple call to Washington, Mr. Tanner. They have a lengthy file on you, did you know that?”

“Yes.”

“Why on earth do you belong to all these groups? According to Washington, you don’t seem to do anything. You attend an occasional meeting, you receive an extraordinary quantity of pamphlets, you associate with subversives of every conceivable persuasion, but you don’t do much of anything. Can you explain yourself?”

“Lost causes interest me.”

“Pardon?”

It seemed pointless to explain it to him, as pointless as the many sessions I’d had with FBI agents over the years. The charm of an organization devoted to a singularly hopeless cause is evidently lost on the average person and certainly on the average bureaucrat or policeman. One either appreciates the beauty of a band of three hundred men scattered across the face of the earth with nothing more on their mind, say, than the utterly unattainable dream of separating Wales from the United Kingdom-one either finds this heartrendingly marvelous or dismisses the little band as a batch of nuts and cranks.

But, however futile my explanation, I knew that a slew of words of any sort would be better in this Turk’s eyes than my silence. I talked, and he listened and stared at me, and when I finished he sat silent for a moment and then shook his head.