A wind ruffled the thinning fur on the dog's back and she arched against the cold. Walking down the potholed, muddy street, she stopped for a moment to lap some water out of a puddle glistening with spent oil. She drank a little, paused as if to let the foul liquid tingle her palette like a fine wine, drank some more. At one end of the puddle, a used tire lay half-buried in the mud. The noise of the dog's drinking disturbed something that had been hiding in the tire's hollow. Though slow and dull with age and suffering, the dog knew what it must do. She watched as a small mouse peered from the shadow, nervously sniffing for danger. An instant later she sprang as best she could and snared the mouse by a leg as it tried to scurry back to safety. Though thin and sickly as the dog, the mouse would make some kind of meal.

She carried the still-kicking rodent across the street to the corner of a house, or at least what passed for a house in this neighborhood. There she leaned against a corrugated metal wall and began to chew on her dinner. She'd broken the mouse's leg in the "struggle" but still could not casually eat because she was not alone. From around a corner came another dog, bigger, perhaps, though only in frame, its bones suspending scarce flesh from simply a greater height than hers. Immediately a snarling match began with the larger male seeking to intimidate the bitch into surrendering her squalid supper. Snaps of teeth and threatening strikes, she backs up a bit and the male steals her mouse, throwing his head back to grind it with his back teeth. But as he does so, a sharp rock strikes his flank hard and he gags in surprise.

"Johnny, put that down," the man said as he walked up behind the male. He hit the dog on the head repeatedly until it dropped the now-mangled mouse. "Leave that alone."

The man picked up the mouse by the tail and tossed it toward the bitch, who stared up at him curiously, her brow furled in confusion. He grabbed the male by the ear and pulled him, squealing, through a low doorway in the wall. A moment later, he stepped out again, still holding the male, and threw the bitch a couple chicken bones that still had a little skin and cartilage on them after having been used for soup. Not waiting for instructions, she snapped up the bones and the mouse and ran off into the night.

"I don't know why you would do that, Johnny" the man said. "She's probably going to die of hunger and you want to take her food? I feed you, don't I?"

The dog looked up at him with a sarcastic expression of helplessness.

"Oh, christ, here." He threw down a few more chicken bones but as the dog bent to eat them, the man kicked it from behind, kind of a rough push. "Go on, eat that and get out of here. I don't have time for your shit tonight."

He went back through the doorway and swept away a heavy curtain made from an old rug. Behind it was a door with a heavy hinged handle that groaned as it swung two large teeth out of their holes at the top and bottom. He stepped into the abandoned rail car and pulled the door behind him, clicking a padlock from the inside. The switch hanging on the wall did not work so he lit a match and held it up to a jury-rigged breaker box. He reached up and behind the box and grabbed a large wire, the kind one sees powering heavy equipment, and pushed it down. A spark and a flash and suddenly several lights came on at once. He tried to remind himself that he should fix that but walked across the room and sat down at an old desk. He looked at his watch: 8:55, five more minutes. He lit a short, filterless cigarette.

The telephone rang. Ordinarily this would not be important, even for someone living in a railroad car as he did. Many times he had connected telephones for friends and acquaintances living in odd places, having learned about wiring and simple communications in the army. When those phones rang it was never for the people who lived there as he had always just trunked an extension off someone else's phone so his friends could make calls. This time, though, the call was for him.

"Hello," he said, though there was a new tension in his voice.

"Is this Bisser Asseinov?" the other voice said. "We're from the Bulgarian Telecommunications Company and we'd like to talk to you about an overdue bill."

Asseinov smiled and laughed softly, cigarette smoke pulsing a little from his nostrils.

"I bet you would," he said. "Can you hear me OK? Great. Yes, I hear you like you're in the room. Nice, huh? Still don't believe me?"

"Yea but Bisser, this is only us, city to city. What about everybody else, all the little villages and things? And even then, what will they do with it? Besides, I still don't see what's wrong with the cell phones."

"The cell phones are fun but there aren't enough of them, you know that," he said. "And you also know we have all the equipment for the whole network. And I don't care what they do with it, good or bad. I just want them to have a chance."

"I've heard you say that a hundred times but I still just don't get it."

"You will, some day. What time are you coming in tomorrow? We've got a lot of work to do."

"I'll take the 11 o'clock. It's supposed to get in Sofia about five but its always late 'cuz it waits for the Istanbul train so I don't know when I'll get there. I'll call you."

"Very funny. Just get here."

He hung up the phone and sat back in his chair. The first phase is finished, he thought. Well, it's not really the first phase, that was the windows, but this is the first phase of the final phase. He stubbed his cigarette out in the upturned lid of a jar and there was a sound like a small explosion.

The explosion sound came again and again before they broke down his door. Three men rushed into the rail car and stood in front of Asseinov. He looked up at them, stunned, noticing their greenish uniforms and automatic weapons. He said nothing.

"C'mon, get up and come with us," the one in the middle said.

"Why?" Asseinov asked, and his voice surprised him with its frailty.

"Don't play dumb, you know why. For that." The man in the middle turned around and pointed at a pile of coils of copper wire. Asseinov knew they thought he had stolen this and he knew he hadn't but it didn't matter at all. The wire probably had been stolen, though he hadn't done it. He knew they would never believe him and didn't want to try to explain anyway. He'd just as soon they not know why he had any wire at all. If they think this few meters is his loot, they will not even look for anything else. All the better lest they find the other few hundred kilometers, the switches, the routers, etc.

He stood up but apparently not quickly enough as one of the men backhanded him across the mouth. He fell back in the chair but made no move.

"What the hell d'ya do that for?" the man in the middle asked angrily. "He's just a petty thief, we don't need to beat a confession out of him. Idiot."

He reached down and grabbed Asseinov's elbow to help him to his feet. The four of them walked out the door and got into a dusty Lada parked outside. Asseinov said nothing at all, just sat there wondering if he could really lose the whole thing for some stolen wire.

The police took him to a dirty, overcrowded cell and it was all very routine. He sat and talked to some of the others there in jail but mostly he just waited. He wanted a cigarette or some chocolate but otherwise he was fine. He figured they'd taken the little bit of wire that was in the rail car and that they would let him loose soon, as soon as they got bored with keeping him there. There was no real purpose to this, just the appearance of law enforcement as some were arrested and others let go. Something to put in the papers and keep the people happy that police were working while the real theft was going on unabated. He thought he'd stay a few days.

Asseinov was getting bored himself one day and was just about to ask someone what would happen next when one of his cellmates had a visitor. There was nothing extraordinary about her or his cellmate except that he was sitting next to Asseinov when she arrived. He didn't want to listen but he couldn't help it. And though they spoke in odd, secretive terms, Asseinov had a pretty good idea what was going on. He didn't know what his cellmate had done or what he was covering up but he knew that, like himself, his cellmate was hiding something far more devious than that for which he had been arrested. Curious, and with nothing else to do, he sat and listened. When the visitor left, Asseinov struck up a conversation.

"She your daughter?" he asked. The cellmate, startled by the sudden interest, did not reply immediately.

"Yes, but she's married," he said finally.

"Oh, I know. I saw the ring. Just wasn't sure if she was your wife or not." Asseinov paused. "So what's the book about?"

"What book?" the cellmate answered.

"Look, I don't care about the book, if it even is a book. But maybe I can help."

"I don't know what you are talking about so I don't know how you could help." The man sounded convincing but he kept looking at Asseinov out of the corner of his eye. Asseinov said nothing for a while.

"I've got a book too."

"What are you talking about?"

"I'm telling you I can help you and you can trust me because I am like you."

"We are hardly alike," the man said, raising his bushy, professorial eyebrows and scientifically scrutinizing Asseinov's thick wavy hair and dark skin.

"I am just saying," Asseinov whispered through an ironic smile, "that I've also got a secret and my secret can help you with yours."

The conversation went no further then but the seed was planted. The visitor came a few more times. She would look at Asseinov while she talked to her father. Once she even smiled. They were careful, though, not to let Asseinov listen to them.

More than a week had passed when Asseinov's cellmate was released. Asseinov figured he would be free soon too but he didn't know when. The day after, the visitor came again. For Asseinov.

"My father says you want to help but he doesn't trust you," she said. "I probably shouldn't either but you don't look dangerous to me."

"I'm not," Asseinov said.

She looked around to see if anyone was listening. Mockingly, he did too.

"How can you help us?" she asked.

"Well, what exactly was your father arrested for?"

"He beat his boss."

"That old guy? How?"

"He didn't exactly beat him but he hit him."

"Why?"

"His boss wanted him to sign some papers and my father didn't want to. They argued and my father hit him. It's all over now because he agreed to sign them."

"Say, before I forget," Asseinov interrupted, "is there any chance you can find out how long they plan to keep me here?"

"What did they arrest you for?"

"Stealing wire."

"Oh?" she said, newly suspicious.

"I didn't steal it but they thought I did. It's a long story. But ask around, if you can. Name's Bisser Asseinov. What can I do for you?"

"I don't know, really." She thought for a moment. "My father said you had a 'secret' of some kind that could help us."

"First, you tell me what your father had to sign. You share your secret and maybe I'll share mine."

"It's nothing really, just an oath of loyalty, but my father is a very stubborn man. He works for the University and doesn't like some of the things they teach there. So he refused for a while. He finally relented because he was afraid his actions would hurt me. My husband and I are trying to find work in Cyprus and my father doesn't want anything to get in the way."

"Not exactly a moving tale of oppression. What will you do in Cyprus?"

"Anything, I don't know. We just want to get out of here."

"Do you know anybody there?"

"No. Do you?"

"No, but I know people who know people. Networks, you know?"

"No, I don't, except ..."

"I don't mean that kind. Well, I don't know what I can do for you but I know I can't do anything from here."

"I don't think there's any way for me to get you out."

"Look, they probably just forgot about me. Maybe you could remind them?"

"I don't know. I don't want to cause any trouble. Don't you have any family you could call?"

"In a way, yes, but I can't call them, especially not from here."

"Maybe I could go to your house?"

"That's nice but you don't want to do that."

"Well I have to leave. I'll see if I can find anything out."

"Thanks."

And she left. Asseinov figured that was the end of it. And it looked to be too because three more days went by without anything, no visitor, no nothing. On the fourth day, however, one of the guards came up and asked for Asseinov.

"You got a brother?"

"Sure," Asseinov said, though he didn't.

"Somebody's here says he's your brother. Says he'll watch out for you. Sure doesn't look like your brother. Anyway, we're gonna let you go."

And they did. Asseinov left the cell, went through a couple other rooms and into an outer office. There were lots of people around but no one he recognized. So he headed for the door quickly before anyone asked any questions. He went down a hall and out the front door of the station. Asseinov turned at the bottom of the stairs and started to walk down the street when someone came calling after him. He knew it was too easy.

"Asseinov?"

He stopped. He turned, and there was a young man, clean, well-kept, nice suit, light skin, no one Asseinov knew. "Big brother?" he said sarcastically.

"I'm Ivan. My wife sent me here. She said to pretend to be your brother. You know my father-in-law?"
"Oh, that explains it," Asseinov said, relaxing. "They believed you?"

"I don't think they really cared. My wife sent me because she thought they would recognize her or her father but I think Ronald Reagan could have pretended to be your brother and they would have said OK. Anyway, my wife wants me to bring you to the house for dinner. Will you come?"

After two weeks of no cigarettes and jail food, he'd have gone anywhere. Besides, there was nothing at home but a skinny dog and probably an angry cousin.

They went to a building in an older part of the city, not a big block of apartments but one of those quaint four-flats that actually look like Europe. And he met his cellmate again, a man actually named Plamen, the daughter, Irina, and a fat little dog named Zhelyu. They gave him cigarettes, they smoked. Irina brought in some salads and rakia.

"I really want to thank you all for your kindness," Asseinov said, "but I have to say, I'm more than a little surprised. I mean, none of you know anything about me."

"My daughter said she thought you were safe," Plamen said. "And you seemed OK to me too. Besides, my daughter mentioned something about networks and that intrigued me. I teach communications."

"So do I," Asseinov replied. "Here's to it," and he raised his glass in a toast.

Everyone followed but they were a little taken aback by his ease and familiarity. Still, they were more curious than offended.

"You still haven't told us your secret," Irina said.

"Yes, well I guess I owe you that," Asseinov said. "Tell me, do you have a telephone?

"Of course," Plamen said. "It's right over there next to the television."

"No, I don't want to use it. I just want to know if you do."

"Use it? Certainly," Ivan said. The rest nodded.

"Does it work OK?" Asseinov asked.

"As well as any," answered Plamen. "What are you getting at?"

"So sometimes you use the phone but it doesn't work too well, right?"

"Of course," Plamen said. "This is Bulgaria."

"Do you ever think that you might want to call somebody but it's not worth the trouble of trying to hear them, that you can't call Varna or Veliko Turnovo or Kyustendil because you won't be able to hear?"

"I guess so," Plamen said, "but what's your point?"

"My point is that that is not an accident." They all looked at Asseinov for a minute, silent. They knew what he was saying but they weren't sure they could believe it.

"You mean to tell us," Plamen asked "that the telephone doesn't work well because someone doesn't want it to work well?"
"Professor, exactly," Asseinov said. "And you can imagine what that does."

Plamen sat back in his chair and fingered his glass for a moment. Irina and Ivan were not so quick on the uptake.

"Why would someone not want the phone to work?" she asked. "Wouldn't that make work harder and less productive?"

"Who's work?" Asseinov said. "Yours, maybe. As well as your ability to talk to others. But harming that might in fact be someone else's work."

Asseinov scooped some sliced cucumbers onto his fork, ate them and followed them with a firm shot of rakia. The others sat looking at the table so he poured himself some more and sat back.

"So that's your secret?" Plamen asked.

"Hardly. I'm building a telephone network."

"What?" Plamen asked incredulously.

"I'm building a telephone system in parallel with the existing one only better."

"And that's why you stole the wire?" Irina asked.

"I didn't steal any wire," Asseinov said, "but that's what the police thought so I let them. I'd rather spend some time in jail than have them find everything else."

"Young man," Plamen began, "I don't want to spoil your fun but this fantasy of yours ..."

"I know, I know," Asseinov interrupted, "you don't know how someone like me could possibly do something like that. Sometimes I find it hard to believe too. But it's real."

"I find that hard to believe," Plamen said. "I mean, there's equipment and money and all kinds of things you could never get hold of. And expertise."

Plamen caught himself because he knew he had just insulted their guest. He looked over, his mouth still open a bit, ready to go on. Asseinov just looked back at him, not smiling but with an expression of understanding.

"Do you know anything about communications?" Plamen asked.

"Professor, I am not a professor but, yes, I know a thing or two about communications. I know these things from a different perspective, from survival."

They all sat quietly in a resigned silence. No one looked at each other for a moment. Then Asseinov spoke.
"Look, I don't want to spoil the evening," he said. "If you don't think this is possible then just think that. It doesn't mean we have to have a bad dinner."

As he said this he put another forkful of cucumbers in his mouth then raised his glass and said, "Cheers." Reflexively, they all grabbed their glasses and echoed his response, everyone touching glasses and drinking. Another silence followed, save for the noise of Asseinov chewing.

"Are you actually building this thing?" Ivan asked with a new curiosity. He was a literature student and he thought that, even if Asseinov was lying, it might at least be an interesting story. He wanted to hear more.

"Yes, I am. We are." Asseinov answered.

"Out of what, stolen wire?"

"Sometimes, though not on purpose. We have actually paid for most of the equipment."

This one really threw the party for a loop. They could accept working with stolen merchandise but they could not grasp someone of Asseinov's class having money to pay even for wire.

"And where did you get the money?" Plamen asked with a condescending lilt.
"From the mafia." Asseinov said. He took another sip of rakia. He knew they didn't believe him but because of that he knew they could do him no harm. It made him bolder. That and the rakia. Besides, he was a little anxious to lay this out for somebody so he went on.

It all started, he said, on the day he had gotten out of the army. He and the friends he had made there went on the requisite drinking binge and pledged they would never forget each other or lose touch, kind of a deluded promise, they knew, but in the revelry of drunkenness it made sense. They even joked that with their group of army friends and their extended families, they could start a revolution and take over the country. They all laughed a lot about that. Then Asseinov stumbled to his uncle's glass shop in Sliven.

His uncle was one of the more successful members of Asseinov's community. He had a small shop where he made windows for people, though usually not people from the neighborhood, who could not afford them. His uncle had an entrepreneurial spirit, though, and he managed to attract business from all over the city. He did good work and sold cheap so people from all quarters came to him. He tried to keep his income low-profile so as not to attract attention but he was clearly proud of what he did and the living he made at it. He never tired of reminding the young Asseinov that he learned his craft in the army and turned it into a business but Asseinov never really paid much attention. Still, his uncle needed some help so Asseinov went to work.

Though dealing mostly with windows for houses, Asseinov's uncle had recently begun to branch out into auto glass. He expected the market to improve when the country's economy did and he wanted to diversify to be ready for it. At 63, Asseinov's uncle was still planning far into the future. Still, because of his location and for other reasons, the auto glass business was a slow starter.

Then one day a shiny BMW pulled up to his uncle's shop. The owner, or driver at least, stepped out, closed the car up, locked it, set the alarm. A bear of a man, dressed in dark pants and a turtleneck sweater under a red woolen blazer, stopped for a moment to examine the shattered right rear window. He reached out and rubbed his fingers over it gently in a kind of final examination. Yep, it's broken all right.

The driver walked into the garage and looked around a bit before spying Asseinov in the corner eating a sandwich.
"You the owner?" he said. Asseinov just shook his head, pointed to a small door. The man walked through it. A moment later he came out again with Asseinov's uncle behind him.

The two of them walked to the car and looked at the broken window. Asseinov's uncle told the driver he could fix it but he would have to go find the glass because he didn't have any at the moment. He lied a bit because he never had glass for a BMW, usually fixing Ladas and Moskviches and the odd Shkoda. The driver asked how much and Asseinov's uncle quickly invented a price. It was low, very low and Asseinov's uncle knew he would lose on it but he thought it might get something started. The driver seemed pleased with the price and said he would come back the next day for the repair.

It was no mean feat to find the glass but Asseinov's uncle was a master at finding almost anything and he managed. The BMW came back the next day. This time the driver had a woman with him, a fake blonde in a short skirt and impossible heels. Asseinov sneaked leers between the driver's suspicious glances while the uncle replaced the window. When the job was done, the driver pulled a roll of money out of the inside pocket of his blazer, one of two bulges there on either side, and paid Asseinov's uncle. He and the woman got back in the car and, spitting gravel as their tires spun, sped off into the city.

Asseinov went into the city the next day to find some rubber pieces his uncle used to seal windows. This was one of his uncle's special ingredients, a kind of weather stripping the likes of which were not seen often in Bulgaria. It made his windows more airtight and that was one of the reasons he had repeat business. Asseinov would go to second-hand stores and buy different things to get the rubber pieces: refrigerators, old tires, used sports equipment, you name it. He wandered around the city most of the day, stopping in as many stores as he could, trying to be discreet and polite and fast before someone chased him out.

It was starting to get dark when Asseinov saw the car, the same BMW with the same driver, though a different woman, this one a redhead. They had just pulled up to a cafe and were getting out to walk inside. As soon as they had done so, and were out of sight of their vehicle, another car came by, another BMW. It slowed and stopped when the second driver saw the first car. He got out, walked over to a pile of bricks laying nearby, picked one up and lobbed it onto the back window of the first BMW. The window crunched under the weight, the brick sat there in its newly formed indentation. The second driver calmly got back in his car and drove away. Asseinov did nothing, he just walked on.

The next day, the BMW was back at the shop. Same deal, the man came back a day later and Asseinov's uncle replaced the broken glass. This time he charged a bit more, explaining to his customer that BMW glass was expensive. He still kept the price near cost, though, to keep the business.

About a week later, Asseinov was back in the city. Again it was nightfall. He saw the second BMW this time. He picked up a brick and threw it at the car's window. Two days later, the second BMW showed up at his uncle's shop.

For a long time, Asseinov's uncle thought he was just the benefactor of a mini war among the mafia thugs. He got a little suspicious one day when Asseinov asked if he was finished with a red Mercedes when he had no such customer; an hour later, a red Mercedes pulled up near the shop. Still, the uncle didn't really know anything and Asseinov was shrewd enough not to get caught or create any real suspicion. Besides, most of the business was legitimate, the car owners truly breaking each others' windows, sometimes with bullets. And in the meantime, his uncle made money. Quite a bit, in fact, which he shared generously with his nephew.

Asseinov's cousin came to visit once and Asseinov told him about the whole deal. They laughed for hours about it but after a few months, the cousin came back to ask for more details. They set up operations like this in about eight cities, working sometimes with friends or relatives, sometimes just with people they developed relationships with. It was a business transaction and Asseinov took a cut. He was amassing a serious sum of money but he was frustrated because he couldn't really enjoy it. If he did, he would arouse suspicion.

So he left Sliven. It was time to move on before somebody got wise. His uncle lost some business but he had already developed a clientele and was doing quite well. Asseinov moved to Sofia.

For a while, he lived quite well, driving a car of his own, living in a new apartment, watching cable TV. He was enjoying things. Then one day, he walked outside and found his windshield broken. It was funny, in a way, ironic, but also deeply disturbing for Asseinov. He suddenly felt like he was someone else. He didn't want to be someone else. He went to visit his cousin and get drunk.

He stayed with his cousin for eight days, getting drunk almost every one. Each afternoon, they would wake up and walk out into the backyard of the house, eat a little breakfast, watch the animals in the barnyard, tell stories. One day he told his cousin about his pledge with his army friends. They both laughed for a long time, imagining what that would be like, a gypsy revolution. Then Asseinov stopped very suddenly. He reached for the beer he was drinking, took a long pull and set it back down again. In a rush, he started to tell his cousin about a new idea.

They never started a revolution. They never took over the country. They never really wanted to. But along the way, they stumbled on something much more interesting.

At first, the idea was to expand their current business. "Economic terrorism" is what Asseinov called it. They could go in for car windows but maybe other things too. But they already had a tough enough time keeping track of what they already had going. No one they worked with had a telephone so they had to physically go to all these cities, an expensive and time-consuming process. That's when Asseinov got into connecting illegal telephones. He would shunt a line off that of some rich idiot and run it over to a nearby shack. This kind of urban dichotomy was common enough that no one ever noticed. And it was hitting the same people as before. They never paid attention to their phone bills anyway.

Then he ran into one of his army friends one day and told him what he was up to. The two had worked together in communications but his friend had been more involved in electronics. His friend took the telephone idea a step further. That's when they started with the cellular phones.

The technology was simple enough. Get a scanner, intercept the frequencies, copy the codes and there you have it: another mobile phone using the same code and so running up someone else's bill. This stuff was getting to be child's play. They were wired all over the country. For free. They just couldn't figure out what to do with it. The answer was self-contained.

Asseinov was making all the money he wanted already. He had pretty much all the possessions he wanted. He could give his friends and relatives whatever they wanted, including work. What he didn't have and couldn't give was some measure of respect. He was from an unacceptable social class and there was nothing he could do about it. Except make the best of it, for himself and for his own. The solution was not what to do with the network, it was the network.

"So we all got together again," he went on, his audience still dumb but now believing, "all the guys from the army. And we talked about how we could expand this thing yet further. The telephone network was a natural conclusion. I mean, when I told them what I had done with my own connections, they all wanted to have their own so they could do their own business."

"OK," Plamen said. "So you got the money but you can't really be building a network one house at a time."

"Of course not," Asseinov said. "One of the guys in the group had a brother who was in the army right then. He said he knew of a storehouse in Pleven where there was all kinds of old equipment, Russian surplus stuff. We went and had a look. It was all old technology but it would work. Switches, connectors, exchanges, stuff from World War II, probably, that they dumped here in exchange for a trainload of canned tomatoes. It was probably no better than the equipment they use now but no one would be able to listen in and no one would deliberately try to make it work poorly.

"We tested an inter-city line the night I got arrested. Works like magic."

"I still don't understand," Ivan said. "So you build a phone system. So what?"

"Think about what that could do," Plamen joined in, Asseinov deferring to the professor. "The biggest problem we had before was that we were isolated from one another. If I had a political idea, it would live and die with me and those close to me. I couldn't talk about it on TV, I couldn't publish a book, I couldn't even call somebody on the phone. And ideas like this cannot progress alone."

"Why do you think they built all the television antennas?" Asseinov added. "Do you think this was because they wanted us to see Dallas reruns? No, but if there was no information coming in at all, we would naturally be hungry for something. Better to be the suppliers and to transmit harmless junk that will fill up people's minds than to let someone else try to fill that vacuum."

"But we could travel through the country," Irina said.

"Sure, but look how hard that is," Asseinov said. "It wasn't expensive but it was anything but convenient. And that inconvenience was no accident either. It was all designed to make it sufficiently difficult to communicate that when we did, all we would take care of is our immediate personal and family needs. The lack of communication kept us divided."

"That's all fine," Ivan interrupted, "but that was before. It's 1995 now and we have a democratically elected government."

"Do you want to take this one?" Asseinov asked Plamen.

"I'm not sure that I can. I don't think I understand."

"OK," Asseinov began. "First, look at who's in government right now. Those people look familiar to you at all? Second, what benefit have you or I seen since the Changes? You got a new job or more money or anything like that? Your phone work any better? There have been economic changes but not for everybody, just for those in control. And one of the things they are in control of is communications, which means they're the only ones who can do any real business."

"But we've got free media now," Ivan said.

"Please," Asseinov answered, himself sounding a bit condescending."Please," Asseinov answered, himself sounding a bit condescending.

"So before it was political control and now it's economic?" Irina asked.

"No," Asseinov said. "It's always been economic. Politics was never anything more than an excuse. They kept us fat, dumb and happy with subsidized everything and called it the greater good of communism but it was really just a way for people in power to stay there because they could be rich. They may not have had huge salaries like the rich in the West but they had all the material wealth so it was the same thing. They took care of themselves and their own. And that's what we want to do."

They all sat there for a while, listening to the traffic outside, trying to piece it all together. Asseinov, too, because he had never really laid it all out like this before and it was difficult even for him to absorb undiluted. He asked for a cigarette and they all lit up, happy to have something to do other than wallow in these disturbing thoughts.

Ivan asked a few more questions. Plamen explained a bit more of the theory he had learned in the past few years. They each brought up examples from the past. And the not-so-distant past. Eventually the conversation turned a bit more blithe but there would be occasional questions and other references to the network.

They ate the rest of their dinner. They watched some television, some Bulgarian, some German or Italian or Danish on cable. Every now and then, someone would see something and would raise a hand as if to gesture the beginning of a statement. Then they would stop themselves, sit back, the others knowing without hearing. They somehow wished they had never had this conversation and at the same time were terribly glad they had.

Then the telephone rang.