aling with the Sovs, they came into contact almost exclusively with
Party members and policy was that West-world officials never be put in
the position to have to work with Sovs who ranked them. Only routine
office workers were drawn from Middle caste, and largely they kept to
themselves except during working hours.

Joe's immediate superior turned out to be a General George Armstrong,
with whom Joe had once served some years earlier when the general had
commanded a fracas between two labor unions fighting out a
jurisdictional squabble. Although Joe hadn't particularly
distinguished himself in that fray, the general remembered him well
enough. Joe, recognized as the old pro he was, was taken in with open
arms, somewhat to the surprise of older embassy military attaches who
ranked him in caste, or seniority.

At the first, getting organized in apartment and office, getting his
feeling of Budapest, its transportation system, its geographical
layout, its offerings in entertainment, he came little in contact with
either the Hungarians or the other officials of the Sov world, who
teemed the city. In a way it was confusion upon confusion, since
Budapest was the center of sovism and the languages of Indo-China,
Outer Mongolia, Latvia, Bulgaria, Karelia, or Albania were as apt to
be heard on street or in restaurant, as was Hungarian.

But Joe Mauser was in no hurry. His instructions were to take the long
view. To take his time. To feel his way. Somewhere along the line, a
door would open and he would find that for which he sought.

In a way, Max Mainz seemed to acclimate himself faster than either
Nadine or Joe. The little man, completely without language other than
Anglo-American, the lingua franca of the West, whilst Joe had both
French and Spanish, and Nadine French and German, was still of such
persistent social aggressiveness that in a week's time he knew every
Hungarian of proletarian rank within a wide neighborhood of where they
lived or worked. Within a month he had managed to acquire present
tense, almost verbless, jargon with which he was able to conduct all
necessary transactions pertaining to his household duties, and to get
into surprisingly complicated arguments as well. Joe had to give up
attempting to persuade him that discretion was called for in
discussing the relative merits of West-world and Sov-world.

In fact, it was through Max that Joe Mauser made his breakthrough in
his assignment to learn the inne