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Klieg lights installed on the roof of the Foreign Ministry building—itself, a bleak ten-story monolith—beamed down on arriving guests. I fell in with a crowd of cigar-puffing apparatchiks and their brawny wives, all of us moving down a herringbone-parquet hallway into a stately ballroom. The mincing waiter led me to a table in the rear, far from the podium and head table, around which the evening’s festivities would revolve.
The Bentley was parked and idling at the curb. As always, my driver Emil Vaka stood by the open rear door, his own uniform of ancient Habsburg design garlanded with regal epaulets. I already pictured myself settling in the backseat as we sped downtown; but as I tugged my camel-hair coat against the morning chill, a woman crossed my path, walking a black-and-tan spaniel on a jewel-encrusted leash. She was tall, dark-haired, no older than forty, wearing a fur stole and the air of Old World wealth. As we exchanged a cordial smile, new purpose suddenly entered my life.