That’s pretty much what I told the Baseball player, and then asked; has our agency decided to take over a fantasy race? He, as usual, didn’t answer my question but said:
‘The German Swiss from the Zurich canton have an ancient legend about how two shepherd brothers found their way into an underground kingdom of gnomes. They saw there untold riches – even the poorest miners were wearing boots with golden buckles and ate from silver bowls. The brothers were astonished by the fact that the columns and beams of the houses were made out of gold, the signposts on the walls of the grottoes were decorated with precious stones and the handrails of bridges and balconies were made out of silver. The brothers bent double and wrapped themselves in their cloaks and pretended to be gnomes to find out where the mines that the gnomes got their precious metals and gems, were. But every time they reached an underground lake, beyond which the entrances to the mines were located, an unknown force would turn them back. So then the brothers decided to use a trick. They gave the gnomes a barrel of beer and, of course, the gnomes really liked a drink. So they began to ask for more and the brothers offered them a deal – they would fill the barrel with beer in return for the same barrel filled with gold. That’s how two poor shepherds soon became rich and left their sheep to build themselves houses on the banks of the Limmat River. And Zurich, one of the world’s largest banking centers, is now located there. But people say that gnomes, eager for beer, still live in the depths of the surrounding mountains and in the city itself – and the descendants of the legendary brothers, in accordance with the ancient agreement, still swap beer for gold.’
‘It’s a good legend,’ I said. ‘Europeans are generally quite good at making up fairy tales and myths.’
‘That’s true,’ the Baseball player laughed, but then he became serious: ‘The embassy in Zurich needs a man from our department. The work is the usual – check the technical condition of the equipment, and standard maintenance of the software according to the project. And the local boys need some help; they’ve got problems with the local network. And, Joshua, you are the best candidate…
“I’m in!’ I finished my coffee and put the cup down with a slam. ‘Switzerland – is it somewhere north?’
‘Sweden is in the north,’ the Baseball player got up. ‘You have one day to brush up on your geography and other subjects. Tickets, passport and visa you can get in the transport office, and you get your briefing from Heidi after four o’clock. Good luck!’
…In the plane I was reading all I’d downloaded the day before about Europe in general, about Switzerland and specifically Zurich, but for some reason I couldn’t find the legend about the shepherd brothers.
But among the serious files, stuffed with historic data, statistics and geographic maps, I came across a funny text about what Americans associate with various European countries:
Romania – vampires, Dracula and internet brides.
Bulgaria – isn’t it a part of Russia?
Greece – gyro (national dish), the country on the verge of bankruptcy.
Albania, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Kosovo, Macedonia, Montenegro and Croatia – a lot of organised crime, constantly at war.
Hungary – no thanks, I’ve already eaten.
Italy – mafia, pizza, spaghetti and the film Gladiator.
Vatican – the Pope, child molestation, and the book The Da Vinci Code.
Slovenia – isn’t that a manufacture of equipment?
Austria – a small Germany, with a lot of mountains and classical music.
Czech – beer! Cheap prostitutes… Beer!!!
Poland – jokes and anecdotes about poles, not very clever people.
Sweden – socialism, Pirate Bay site.
Norway – Vikings have become fishermen.
Denmark – makers of ‘Lego’, everybody wears wooden clogs.
Holland – drugs, prostitutes and prostitute-drug addicts.
Germany – beer, porno, Nazis, sauerkraut (sour cabbage), rubbish food.
Switzerland – rich and secretive people, Alps, banks.
Monaco – Grace Kelly, casinos.
France – wine snobs, bread (baguettes), could not win the war, short rulers.
Spain – bulls, hot girls.
Portugal – isn’t it Spain?
Belgium – chocolate, ‘Manneken Pis’.
England – fish and chips (national dish), bad teeth, James Bond, Harry Potter, haven’t managed to keep a single colony.
Ireland – ginger, alcoholics, potatoes, band U2.
Scotland – film Braveheart, everybody wears kilts, haggis, golf.
Iceland – volcanos, odd language, hot and sexy blonds.
Russia – communism, hackers, vodka, Anna Kournikova.
Estonia, Lithuania, Latvia, Belarus, Slovakia – are these actually countries?
Ukraine – Chernobyl, everybody is rude.
Moldova – it doesn’t exist, never heard of it.
All Europeans are crazy about soccer.
I smiled, and for my smile I got an unfriendly look from my neighbor on the seat next to me – an unshaven man with bushy eyebrows, clearly European. Then I thought, well, that’s pretty much how things are: we, Americans, indeed form some vague ideas about European nations and treat them accordingly.
The French for us are cold and calculating grumblers. The Swedish are crazy, rather infantile, sexually obsessed eternal teens. The Germans – aggressive pedantic workaholics. Spanish – lazy psychos who love dancing. Italians – sentimental artists-killers. Irish – goofy brawlers and drunks. English – arrogant snobs, convinced they know better than anyone else what to do and how to do it, but constantly missing the mark. Turks – modest traders, who count every single cent. Although stop, Turks – I think they are not a part of Europe?
I didn’t manage to put the Swiss in this scheme because I realized that French, Germans, Austrians and Italians live there and there are five official languages.
I liked Zurich. It was exactly how I imagined that good old Europe, with medieval stone houses a few storeys high under pointed tiled roofs, towers with high spires, and gothic cathedrals overlooking the light waters of the river Limmat and Lake Zürich. Yes, and above all of this urban cosiness tower, the white peaks of the Alps. Basically, it’s a country of gnomes, no less.
But I’ve also read that in the Middle Ages Swiss gnomes with long pikes defeated the armour-clad knights of almost all European countries and then became mercenaries protecting French kings and the Pope and were generally known as desperate thugs, but that was a long time ago. Having fought long enough, the Swiss decided to become pacifists, and even during the Second World War their little country managed to stay neutral, which provided an opportunity for hundreds of thousands of refugees from Germany and European countries occupied by Hitler to escape.
The technical center in the Zurich consulate turned out to be much smaller than the South African one, but the consulate itself, on the contrary, was almost vibrating from the hidden activity which always accompanies the guys from Langley.
In the past they were called ‘knights of cloak and dagger’, but today this definition has become outdated. I would’ve called the modern spies ‘adepts of the mobile phone’. Or ‘warriors of the tablet’. But to blend all these features into one, then in the Zurich consulate they are ‘paladins of the smartphone’.
With these gadgets they collected information published on open source internet. Based on this, they drew some conclusions, then called people who were in any way connected to this information to arrange a meeting.