My door finally moved and in stepped the afroed Gloria from the submarine, dressed in white like me. “How are you today, Professor Kitu?”

“Wala.”

“Wala. I’m Gloria.”

“I know,” I said. “I’m fine. You got here fast.”

“I got here as fast as you. I’m Mr. Sill’s pilot.”

“I see. And you’re also a sonar operator on the submarine. What else do you do?” I asked.

She laughed. “Many things. I do many things. I see you’ve changed your clothes. Shall we go?”

“Where?”

“Lunch. As you know, Mr. Sill loves lunch. And this is an important one.”

“How so?”

“John’s associates, he calls them associates, from the different territories are here to make their quarterly reports. It’s very serious business. I am told the stakes are extremely high.”

“Gloria, are you a villain?” The words felt strange in my mouth.

“I suppose I am. I’m trying, at any rate. Villain is such an elastic, shall we say limber, term. One person’s villain is another person’s freedom fighter. I’m sure you’ve heard that cliché. Or something like it. Ready? Let’s go.” At the door, she turned to me. “We’re having tater tots. I love tater tots.”

Lunch was served at a long rectangular table with John Sill seated at the head. There was no one seated at the other end. I was placed next to Gloria as far from Sill as possible. To his immediate right was Eigen. Six men faced eight others on down the table. We were all dressed in the same white linen outfits.

“I love lunch,” Sill said. “As always we’re having the lobster frittata from Norma’s in New York. Flown in this morning. And tater tots, the frozen kind, the cheap kind. They’re the best. Don’t you agree, Gloria?”

“Yes, Mr. Sill.”

“Gentlemen, thanks to you as always for making the long journeys here to make your reports. I’d like to introduce our guests. This White girl beside me is Eigen Vector. I’m having sex with her. And at the end of the table, next to Gloria, is Professor Wala Kitu. He’ll be helping us with nothing. All aspects.”

The men applauded. I looked at Eigen’s face but nothing registered on it. In fact she wore a dim, mechanical, unchanging smile, unlike her own.

“Perhaps, Professor Kitu will speak to us a bit later about nothing.” John then turned his attention to a doughy man seated across from me and three chairs closer to the head of the table.

“Agostinho Aguedo, our representative from western South America, would you care to share your report?”

Aguedo was visibly nervous, his white shirt showing sheer with perspiration, but then so were all the men. He closed his eyes briefly, fumbled with the stack of pages on the table in front of him, and stood. “Fellow villains, guests, Mr. Sill,” he said. “The quarter ended positively, with prostitution taking an upswing. Our drugs sales held strong and steady. Graft and protection money saw a seven percent improvement and piracy, though newly controlled, yielded significant yield.”