Behersket spændende forbryderhistorie. Det interessante er, at den afslører, at de indbringende forbrydelser - i hvert fald set med forfatterøjne - allerede den gang var handel med kvinder, stoffer, våben, informationer, lejemord. I den nævnte rækkefølge !
Valutaspekulation havde man også for de forbrydere, der ville beholde rene hænder. Futures er åbenbart ikke en ny opfindelse !
Handlingen udspiller sig på Balkan i perioden mellem Verdenskrigene. Men desværre er miljøbeskrivelsen nødtørftig.
Der falder dog et par sandheder undervejs. Og nogle gode udtryk/observationer.
Jeg er stadig ikke sikker på om der er tale om angelsaksiske eller imperieherre unoder.
[1923 Offiziersputsch bringt die Auflösung der Bauernpartei (MP. Stambulijski wird erschossen. >dtv-Atlas zurWeltgeschichte<, 1968, p.163]
In nineteen twenty-three Stambulisky had, he knew,. been head of a government of liberal tendencies; but of just how liberal those tendencies had been he had no idea. There had been an attempted assassination and later a military coup d'etat carried out at the instigation, if not under the leadership of the I.M.R.O., the International Macedonian Revolutionary Organisation. Stambulisky had fled from Sofia, tried to organise a counter-revolution and been killed. That was the gist of the affair, he thought. 51
Anyone who ad been selling the Lev for delivery in three months or more, counting on a fall, would face huge losses. 62
The method is simple. 'How nice,' some-one will say, ' if that man so-and-so, that scoundrel, that disruptive influence, that menace to peace and prosperity. were to go.' That is all. A wish expressed. But, my friend. to hear such things and to take note of them, to issue instructions and to take the responsibility for them, to procure he ends yet never to speak of the means. 70
"But he also knows men like Dimitrios, the dangerous class. the political hangers-on, the grafters and the under-cover men, the social scum. that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of an old society. He himself has no political convictions. For him there is no other nexus between man and man than naked self-interest. He believes in the survival of the fittest and the gospel of tooth and claw because he makes money by seeing that the weak die before they can become strong and that the law of the jungle remains the governing force in the affairs of the world. And he is all about us. Every city in the world knows him. He exists because big business, his rnaster, needs him. International big business may conduct its operations with scraps of paper, but the ink it uses is human blood !" 70
Marukakis interrupted him by calling for the bill. Then he glanced at Latimer slyly. "You know," he said, "you English are sublime, You are the only nation in the world that believes that it has a monopoly of ordinary common sense." 71
One deceives oneself, you know. One thinks that one wants to be understood when one wants only to be half-understood. 79
He went on to develop his theme. It was obvious, he contended, that from the facts quoted above the theoretical minimum number of spies that any single European government could afford to have working in Europe was in the neighbourhood of seventy: that is, three for each other country or two in those countries without navies. that gave Europe a total spy population of nearly two thousand. 114
[T]here are no competent spies unemployed today. There will always, of course, be a small number ot unemployable incompetents; but espionage has not slumped since the early nineteen twenties. The League of Nations in its early days proved bad for business. However, things soon began to get back to normal, and they are to-day, he says, better than ever before. 115
Both Lenotre and Galindo had for several years been peddling drugs which they bought from a man in the employ of a big French wholesale drug manufacturer. That sort of thing used to be quite easy before the nineteen thirty-one regulations. 158
Half a gramme, perhaps, is taken through the nostrils. It may make you feel sick the first time; but you will try again and the next time it will be as it should be. A delicious sensation, warm, brilliant. Time stands still; but the mind moves at a tremendous pace and, it seems to you, with incredible efficiency. You were stupid; you become highly intelligent. You were unhappy; you. become carefree. What you do not like you forget; and what you do like you. experience vith an intensity of pleasure undreamed of. Three hours of Paradise. And afterwards it is not too bad; not nearly as bad as it was when you had too much Champagne. You want to be quiet; you feel a little ill at ease; that is all. Soon you are yourself again. 161
" I was thinking," said Dimitrios, " that in the end one is always defeated
by stupidity. If it is not one's own it is the stupidity of others." 216
Orla Jordal, 2007
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