Chapter 10

There was a cup of a mud-like substance Claudia insisted was made of quality hand-picked, freshly-roasted, home-grown, pesticide-free coffee beans. I was her boss and I insisted it was mud; not that cheap-skate runny mud they have in Florida and the tropics, the stuff that looks like just dirt and water all mixed up together. This looked, felt, and tasted like one-hundred percent frozen, volcanic sludge-like mud with all the physical qualities of cement.

I buzzed her:

"Claudia, this isn't coffee ... This is -"

"- mud, I know. Why do you keep asking me to make it then?"

"It's my prerogative, I'm your boss. Now be a good girl and make me a fresh cup, yeah?"

She didn't reply to that, and I knew she was already hard at it. I had hand-picked her from among the bureau staff because she was one of the few who had finally survived the ordeal, a real good shot, and very keen on voicing her personal opinions, which could be easily discerned from the fact that I could see her through the glass pane, pouring actual dirt from a pot plant into the coffee machine.

I returned my focus to the briefing report laying on my desk, which contained little noteworthy intelligence on the Himalayan incident of a few weeks before. There were some dark points to cover, but there were capable people on it, and I was pretty adamant that they'd get to the bottom of who was behind the resurgence of ghost yetis and bone dragons near McLeod Ganj.

I had been signing paper after paper concerning logistics supplies, administrative reorganization efforts and most notably, putting into full effective force the discontinuation of the practice of using those awful papal mitres and other silly hats as warding devices. We would be replacing those with stylish, dependable - and above all perhaps - inconspicuous-looking fedoras. Jules had said that the next thing we knew, we'd be in the music business, doing concerts to save orphans.

Von Papen had visited just the other day, and was quite looking forward to going on vacation to his hunting lodge at Pomerania. Or was it Baden-Essen? He had been very elusive about the exact whereabouts of his lodge, and when I had asked him what his preferred game was, he had rather mischievously or perhaps with a look of confusion answered: 'chess'.

Even though he had been very vocative in celebrating the demons' defeat (in a rush of euphoria and wishful thinking he had exclaimed among other slightly misdirected comments, that 'ze Stalinist pigz are finally vanquiwshed!'), he remained prudently alarmed of the fact that even if the gateway had been destroyed (technically speaking, rendered inoperable rather than physically destroyed - I wouldn't want me dead), there were still demonic operatives lying around. That only enhanced the theory that they still had ways of moving back and forth, and that there was still a very real and valid reason for the Normal Bureau to exist. Until at least I managed to unlink my soul from the gateway to the underworld. Or something to that effect.