After a few moments of opening pleasantries, Motokov's president took center stage and began speaking in heavily accented English. The company had suffered greatly due to the breakup of the Soviet Union, he explained. Antimonopoly laws had been passed, basically legislating them out of business. He seemed like an intelligent fellow—an altogether affablefellow, in fact—but pretty soon I began to notice something very odd about him. At first I couldn't place it, but then it hit me: He was a blinker. Yes-he was a world-class blinker! For every word escaping his lips, he blinked his eyes, sometimes more than once.

“So you see,” explained the Blinker, with three rapid-fire blinks, “under the new law, monopolies are no longer permitted, which puts”— blink, blink—“Motokov in a very difficult”— blink, blink, blink—“position.” Blink.“In a way, we have been legislated into near bankruptcy.” Blink, blink.

Sounds like a hell of an opportunity, I thought, especially if your goal is to flush your money down a Czech toilet bowl!

Still, I played the role of the interested guest, and I nodded in sympathy, to which the Blinker blinked on. “Yes, we are on the edge of bankruptcy,” continued the Blinker. “We have the overhead structure”— blink, blink—”ofa multibillion-dollar company, but we no longer have the sales mandate.” The Blinker let out a deep sigh. He looked about forty and had very white skin. He wore the sort of checkered short-sleeve dress shirt and blue cloth necktie that reeked of a mid-level bookkeeper at an Omaha meat-slaughtering house.

Now the Blinker reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a pack of cigarettes and lit one up. Apparently his two underlings took this as a signal to light up too, and next thing I knew, the room was enveloped in an ominous cloud of cheap Czech tobacco smoke. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of Danny, whose right elbow was on the conference table, with his chin cradled in his hand. And he was sleeping. Sleeping? Sleeping!

Through exhaled smoke, the Blinker went on: “That's why we are now focusing our attention on Kentucky Fried Chicken franchises”— What the fuck? Kentucky Fried Chicken? Why that?—”which we plan to roll out”— blink, blink-“very aggressively over the next five years.” The Blinker nodded in agreement with his own thoughts and blinks. “Yes,” continued the Blinker, with a rapid-fire double blink, “we will focus our efforts on fried chicken and mashed potatoes; the Kentucky Fried brand, of course, which is quite delicious if—”

SMASHwent Danny's head onto the conference table!

There was absolute silence now, as everyone, including the Blinker, stared at Danny, astonished. His right cheek was pressed against the conference table, and a tiny river of drool was slowly making its way down his chin. Then he started snoring one of those deep guttural drug snores from way down in the bread basket.

“Don't mind him,” I said to the Blinker. “He's just jet-lagged from the trip. Please continue. I'm intrigued at Motokov's plans to capitalize on your underserved fried-chicken market.” I shrugged. “I wasn't aware that the Czechs were such lovers of fried chicken.”

“Oh, yes,” blinked the Blinker, “it's one of our staples,” and then he started blinking again, and Danny kept snoring some more, and the Chef kept rolling his eyes, and Wigwam's toupee was slowly turning into glue, and every last one of us, including the Blinker himself, was sweating to death.

The rest of the day was no better—lots of smelly Czechs, boiling offices, smoke-filled rooms, and Danny drooling. The War Hero's son shuffled us from company to company, each one in a similar situation to Motokov. Without fail, they had bloated overhead structures, inexperienced management teams, and a limited understanding of the basic tenets of capitalism. What amazed me, though, was the tremendous hope shared by every person we met. They all kept reminding me that Prague was the “Paris of the East,” and that the Czech Republic was really part of Western Europe. Slovakia had nothing to do with them, they assured me. In fact, it was populated by a bunch of retarded monkeys.

It was now six p.m., and the four of us were sitting in the hotel lobby on the dog-shit brown couches, in desperate need of salt pills. I said to the group, “I don't know how much more I can take of this: there's no amount of money worth this abuse.”

Danny seemed to agree with me. “Please!” he begged, rubbing a golf-ball-size welt that had formed on his right temple. “Let's get the fuck out of here and go to Scotland!” He bit his lower lip, as if on the verge of a breakdown. “I'm telling you, Scotland is beautiful! It's the land of milk and honey!” He nodded his head eagerly. “It's probably in the low seventies there, without a drop of humidity. We can play golf all day… smoke cigars… drink brandy… I bet we can even find young Scottish hookers who smell like Irish Spring soap!” He threw his palms up in the air. “I'm begging you, JB—throw in the towel on this one. Just throw it in.”

“As your attorney,” added Wigwam, “I strongly advise you to follow Danny's advice. I think you should call Janet right now and get the plane fueled up. I've never been so miserable in my life.”

I looked at the Chef. Apparently he wasn't ready to throw the towel in yet; he still had questions. “Can you believe how that bastard from Motokov kept going on and on about Kentucky Fried Chicken? What's so good about Kentucky Fried Chicken?” He shook his head, as if still confused. “I thought they eat mostly pork in this part of the world.”

I shrugged. “I'm not really sure,” I said, “but did you count how many times that fucker blinked? It was incredible!” I shook my head in awe. “He was like a human adding machine. I've never seen anything like it.”

“Yeah, well, I lost count at a thousand,” said the Chef. “He must have some kind of disease, probably peculiar to the Czechs.” He shrugged too. “Anyway, as your accountant I have to agree with Wigwam: I strongly advise you to hold off making any investments in this country until they start using deodorant.” He shrugged again. “But that's only one man's opinion.”

Thirty minutes later we were on our way to the airport. The fact that twenty Czechs were waiting for us for a five-hour traditional Czech dinner was merely incidental. At six o'clock tomorrow morning we would be in the land of milk and honey, and I would never see these smelly Czechs again.

Scotland was gorgeous, but its beauty was lost on me.

I had been away from the Duchess far too long. I needed to seeher—to literally feelher in my arms, and I needed to make love to her. Chandler, of course, was also waiting for me. She was almost a year old then, and who could guess what startling intellectual feats she'd accomplished the week I was gone? Not to mention the fact that the Ludes were running out, which meant that we'd be going to work on the narcotics. Then the nausea and vomiting would set in, as well as the intense constipation. And there's nothing worse than being stuck in a foreign country with your head perched over a toilet bowl, while your descending colon is frozen like a glacier.

It was for all those reasons that I nearly collapsed in the Duchess's arms when I walked through the door of our Westhampton Beach house on that Friday morning. It was a little after ten, and all I wanted was to go upstairs, hold Chandler for a moment, and then adjourn to the bedroom and make love to the Duchess. Then I would sleep for a month.

But I never got the chance. I was home for less than thirty seconds when the phone rang. It was Gary Deluca, one of my employees, who happened to bear an odd resemblance to Grover Cleveland, the dead president with the bushy beard and perpetually grim expression. “Sorry to bother you,” Grover said grimly, “but I thought you'd want to know that Gary Kaminsky got indicted yesterday. He's sitting in jail, being held without bail.”