The INVISIBLE GUY a real soundtrack for an imaginary spy film Episode Eight - CAFÉ ZAGREB   Copyright © 2002 - 2005 Arthur Jarvinen

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Scene:

The Invisible Guy has come to Café Zagreb (which is actually nowhere near Zagreb, being in point of fact located just on the edge of one of the seedier quarters of Sofia, Bulgaria, but is named for the proprietor's birthplace and specializes in the exquisite homemade alcoholic beverages of that general region's populace, i.e. various slivos, grappa,  travaritsa, and the like, which he has made and/or acquired for him by his mother's brother, who sends them over periodically along with back issues of the local paper) in search of Yoakim Vazov (that being his legal name, although he is more usually referred to by his friends and associates simply as Jokko), easily the best-informed and most reliable source in the eastern European freelance intelligence community - at least as far as The Invisible Guy is concerned - and who, incidentally, though being well into the second half of his eighth decade would appear to be, to the average observer, no more than two-thirds that age, is still sexually active (enjoying quite a reputation among the local women in general as well as a particular clique of nymphets young enough to be his great grand daughters) and can still drink even the most robust, cocky, and reckless of soccer captains or pirates under the table without so much as having to take a whiz until late the next day - and then could do so from across the room and fill a longneck bottle with nary a drop wasted, such are his strength, aim, and control in the masculine art of competitive pissing - this particular establishment being the most likely place to find him on any given occasion, as he is rarely to be seen anywhere else.
 

The Invisible Guy has come to Café Zagreb (which is actually nowhere near Zagreb, being in point of fact located just on the edge of one of the seedier quarters of Sofia, Bulgaria, but is named for the proprietor's birthplace and specializes in the exquisite homemade alcoholic beverages of that general region's populace, i.e. various slivos, grappa,  travaritsa, and the like, which he has made and/or acquired for him by his mother's brother, who sends them over periodically along with back issues of the local paper) in search of Yoakim Vazov (that being his legal name, although he is more usually referred to by his friends and associates simply as Jokko), easily the best-informed and most reliable source in the eastern European freelance intelligence community - at least as far as the Invisible Guy is concerned - and who, incidentally, though being well into the second half of his eighth decade would appear to be, to the average observer, no more than two-thirds that age, is still sexually active (enjoying quite a reputation among the local women in general as well as a particular clique of nymphets young enough to be his great grand daughters) and can still drink even the most robust, cocky, and reckless of soccer captains or pirates under the table without so much as having to take a whiz until late the next day - and then could do so from across the room and fill a longneck bottle with nary a drop wasted, such are his strength, aim, and control in the masculine art of competitive pissing - this particular establishment being the most likely place to find him on any given occasion, as he is rarely to be seen anywhere else.

Claude is alone at a small table with a labelless recycled clear plastic one-liter bottle of luta rakia* ruminating on a line from a poem by Zoran Tadic in an elegant sewn-in-signature volume privately printed and intended primarily for casual distribution amongst the friends and family of its author.
 

* Forget about trying to buy it, even over there. It's a homemade schnapps sort of thing, and even the name doesn't translate into anything more precise than "old brandy".