That morning, when Dietrich had gone up to the seventh floor study between the third and fourth floor of Thurm, a guest had arrived there before him. Near the window, from where moonlight seemed to eternally beam in, Wizard thumbed through the morning newspaper.
"Good morning, Isaak. Did an interesting article get printed?" asked Dietrich.
'"The winner always writes the loser's history, and the survivors always write the history of the dead'—Lessing," Isaak recited. "The Battle of Brno is over, Puppeteer." His black hair falling to his waist, Isaak glanced at his comrade's smiling face, before once again dropping his eyes to the morning paper. A needle-like cigarillo scrupulously inserted between his glove-covered fingers trailed purple smoke as he proclaimed, "It's a total victory for the Vatican. Alfonso d'Este is missing. The church army invaded the city bloodlessly."
"Bloodlessly? That isn't any fun. According to your calculations, weren't thirty thousand people supposed to die?" asked Dietrich.
Smiling wryly at Dietrich's innocent utterance, the longhaired man folded the newspaper. As he moved his eyes upward inside their flat eyelids, Isaak smiled cheerfully—a rare thing for him. "Now that the settlement of the Silent Noise operation is over, the outcome has turned out to be slightly different than planned, but it's well within the permissible scope."
"Permissible scope? Should you be saying such an optimistic thing, Isaak? There also are those among the other eight-threes who are questioning this matter," Dietrich replied. As he sipped the espresso brought in by an unidentified maid, Puppeteer frowned, but his eyes continued to smile like a cat playing with a mouse. "Ice Witch, for example. At the meeting she said, 'Isaak, wasn't it your clumsiness that destroyed Neue Vatican before our very eyes?'"
"Hmph! Her opinion is right. The fact that the Neue Vatican was destroyed certainly was my responsibility," Isaak admitted. After snuffing out his cigarillo in the ashtray, he gazed at the coffee cup still at his mouth and whispered in a tone that seemed to lecture his reflection in the brownish-black surface. "Except that it's rather unexpected for the Neue Vatican matter to be blamed on clumsiness. That was an investment—an investment intended to lead to the next success. No kind of business can attain success by neglecting investment. It seems I didn't get the Ice Witch to understand that, but—
"Say, Isaak?" Dietrich said, grinning as he peered into his companion's face. "Shall I guess what you intend to do next?"
Wizard pressed the cigarillo deeper into the ashtray, skillfully raising only one eyebrow. "Do you know what I intend to do?"
Puppeteer nodded, filled with self-confidence. "Of course I know. You’ll do something quite terrible, right?"
Wizard's thin lips stretched into a small smile in response to the extremely straightforward answer. He rested his chin on his laced fingers, and his eyes, which never shone, narrowed like those of a sated demon. "As you say, Puppeteer. I'm now going to do something quite terrible."