Friday, when the Central Committee’s plenum would meet, was still far off. He spent the whole of Tuesday morning listening to ambassadors’ reports and to a summary of the underground news from Tirana. A seventeen-year-old girl in the adjacent quarter had taken her own life. Rumors about Hasobeu’s fall were still infrequent. Only one of the wire services mentioned it, and it got the man’s name wrong anyway, making it unrecognizable. The girl had killed herself for sentimental reasons. A young swank, who repaired bicycles on the square where she lived, had dropped her. “Haseberg …” he muttered, mulling over his minister’s mangled name. “Now you’re defying me under a Teutonic name!” While virtual silence reigned on the Hasobeu situation, all the old surmises about the death of the Successor resurfaced, presumably by reaction. Probably an attempt at destabilizing the entire Balkan Peninsula. Expansion of the Atlantic alliance to this part of Europe. Oil. Suicide or assassination?
