The days passed quickly at the end of the year. There was great activity in DALTO at that time. The deadline for submission of the DALTO annual report was drawing near, and Swoboda with his charts was deeply involved. As this vast report required some months in the preparation, it was always begun in the middle of the year it purported to cover. Necessarily incorporating an element of conjecture, it was an earnest effort for all that. It was Swoboda’s first experience of the reporting strategy and he was quick to grasp its tactics of defense: a program, for example, was “particularly” efficient; a situation had been “carefully” examined; a success was “outstandingly” successful—these adverbial badges of insecurity being designed to take the opponent by surprise.

Swoboda’s normal work was disrupted by the report, but he was assured that this was a temporary inconvenience and he did not mind. Cheerfully he pieced together the scissored paragraphs (“Two experts in metallurgy served in Tanzania during the year under review.…” “Four awards were made for the study of sanitary engineering abroad.…” “A fruit factory was erected in Kashmir.…”). Swoboda was surprised to see how the very items that had been the subject of so much anxiety and dispute throughout the year appeared, when reported, to be part of some grand and faultless design to which no disharmony could ever conceivably have attached. He tried to reflect that this was perhaps, in some final and overwhelming sense, no more than the truth.

In the days before Christmas, the long corridors of the Organization were gay with plastic wreaths, and in the main lobby the Organization Singers chanted carols interspersed with the Founding Constitution set to music. It was on the afternoon of the DALTO Christmas party that Mr. Rodriguez-O’Hearn asked Swoboda to come into his office. Swoboda was, of course, in and out of Rodriguez’s office all through the working day; but there is an atmosphere, a closing of doors, a lowering of voices, a pushing away of papers, that unmistakably announces an interview of more personal character. (I am sorry to say that, although such interviews do occasionally bring good tidings, their general climate is one of foreboding.) Swoboda assumed of course, and rightly, that the discussion would have to do with the matter of his promotion, which he had been expecting Rodriguez to mention. It was known that the Board would soon meet—perhaps it had even met already, and Rodriguez was now authorized to give Swoboda the good news.

“Swoboda, sit down,” said Mr. Rodriguez-O’Hearn. He performed a scale or two with the fingers of his right hand and said nothing more for some moments. Swoboda was oddly reminded of Mr. Bekkus. But he put this out of his mind with a dismissing mental smile.