Besides continuing most of these older vatic schools, we have added several new brands; prominent among them the “Russian experts.” Just as the Roman consuls and Senate never embarked on any public enterprise without the good word on eagle flyovers or chicken gizzards from aruspex and augur, so our magistrates, before major action, await an auspicious utterance from the experts—and do not neglect, of course, the traditional preliminary of crossing the palms with silver.
These experts are adepts at the mysteries of what the French fortnightly, Est & Quest, calls “Kremlinology.” Poring in their midnight towers over the Sybilline leaves of Lenin, Stalin and Suslov; feeding the columns of Izvestia and Pravda to their hungry computers; shuffling the Top and Bottom Secret messages from the daily Intelligence pack; intoning the statistical variations in the Soviet broadcasts; dispatching their doctoral acolytes to view the flight of opinions: the experts notify their clients of the hidden doings of the Black Queen, the Red Knave and the deuce in the Kremlin.
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