The Corrections

    * ­ “no-questions-asked” access to wiretaps and other state-security apparatus!

    * ­ the legally enforceable right, whilst on Lithuanian soil, to such titles and honorifics as “Your Lordship” and “Your Ladyship” and “Your Grace,” with non-use by service personnel punishable by public flogging and up to sixty days in jail!

    * ­ last-minute “bumping” privileges for train and plane seats, reserved-seating cultural events, and table reservations at participating five-star restaurants and nightclubs!

    * ­ “top-of-the-list” priority for liver, heart, and cornea transplants at Vilnius’s famed Antakalnis Hospital!

    * ­ no-limit hunting and fishing licenses, plus off-season privileges in national game reserves!

    * ­ your name in block letters on the side of large boats!

    * ­ etc., etc.!

The lesson that Gitanas had learned and that Chip was now learning was that the more patently satirical the promises, the lustier the influx of American capital. Day after day Chip churned out press releases, make-believe financial statements, earnest tracts arguing the Hegelian inevitability of a nakedly commercial politics, gushing eyewitness accounts of Lithuania’s boom-economy-in-the-making, slow-pitch questions in online investment chat rooms, and line-drive-home-run answers. If he got flamed for his lies or his ignorance, he simply moved to another chat room. He wrote text for the stock certificates and for the accompanying brochure (“Congratulations—You Are Now a Free-Market Patriot of Lithuania”) and had them sumptuously printed on cotton-rich stock. He felt as if, finally, here in the realm of pure fabrication, he’d found his métier. Exactly as Melissa Paquette had promised him long ago, it was a gas to start a company, a gas to see the money flowing in.

A reporter for USA Today e-mailed to ask: “Is this for real?”

Chip e-mailed back: “It’s for real. The for-profit nation-state, with a globally dispersed citizenry of shareholders, is the next stage in the evolution of political economy. ‘Enlightened neotechnofeudalism’ is blossoming in Lithuania. Come see for yourself. I can guarantee you a minimum ninety minutes’ face time with G. Misevičius.”

There was no reply from USA Today. Chip worried that he’d overplayed his hand; but weekly gross receipts were topping forty thousand dollars. The money came in the form of bank drafts, credit-card numbers, e-cash encryption keys, wire transfers to Crédit Suisse, and hundred-dollar bills in airmail envelopes. Gitanas plowed much of the money into his ancillary enterprises, but, per agreement, he did double Chip’s salary as profits rose.

Chip was living rent-free in the stucco villa where the commander of the Soviet garrison had once eaten pheasants and drunk Gewürztraminers and chatted with Moscow on secure phone links. The villa had been stoned and looted and tagged with triumphant graffiti in the fall of 1990, and had then stood derelict until the VIPPPAKJRIINPB17 was voted out of power and Gitanas was recalled from the UN. Gitanas had been attracted to the shattered villa by its unbeatable price (it was free), by its outstanding security arrangements (including an armored tower and a U.S.-embassy-quality fence), and by the opportunity to sleep in the bedroom of the very commander who’d had him tortured for six months in the old Soviet barracks next door. Gitanas and other Party members had worked weekends with trowels and scrapers to restore the villa, but the Party had disbanded altogether before the job was finished. Now half the rooms stood vacant, the floors splashed with broken glass. As throughout the Old City, heat and hot water originated at a mammoth Central Boiler Facility and dissipated much vigor in the long trip, via buried pipes and leaky risers, to the showers and radiators of the villa. Gitanas had set up offices for the Free Market Party Company in the former grand ballroom, claimed the master bedroom for himself, installed Chip in the former aide-de-camp’s suite on the third floor, and let the young Webheads crash where they pleased.

Although Chip was still paying the rent on his New York apartment and the monthly minimum on his Visa bills, he felt agreeably affluent in Vilnius. He ordered from the top of menus, shared his booze and cigarettes with those less fortunate, and never looked at the prices in the natural food store near the university where he bought his groceries.