Mr Hook's Big Black Box

Kris Alexandros: The Circle

Coming out of the lecture that day, I was reminded of the vast strides I'd taken forward. But at the same time, I was starting to realise that just because I liked playing around with computers, that didn't mean I would ever have the talents to make a career out of it. By my second year, third if you include the foundation year, I was confident on the core parts of my course, but I was starting to find it easier to consider the practical applications of what I had learned. I was starting to wonder if I was cut out to be a manager, rather than an engineer.

I'd lent Dwayne some of my textbooks, because when he saw my notes he'd shown as much understanding at a glance as I had through months of repetition. Sometimes while we waited for the lecturer to arrive for one of the modules we had in common, I'd try to teach him what I'd been learning during the week, and vice versa. He picked it up quickly, and maybe in trying to explain my own understanding improved. He could be the prodigious son that I would never really be.

Thinking about this as we left Grimauld's lecture, I suddenly remembered that I had promised to lend him another one of my books that day, and that I had somehow forgotten it in a previous class. I shouted after him, explaining that I would only be a minute or two, and hurried back to get it. I would expectably have caught up with him before we even got to Mendeleev Building, but I was interrupted by the chiming of my cellphone almost as soon as I was out of sight of him. I glanced at the screen and saw a Greek number, though as I had only bought this phone since arriving at Lanchester University, I didn't have the numbers of most of the branches of my family stored in it.

"Hello?" I greeted automatically.

"Kris, is that you?" The line was terrible, I couldn't have known who it was. With so much noise, anyone with the same accent would be indistinguishable. But he called me Kris, a shortened form of my middle name, and that was an immediate clue. I'd decided since I thought about studying here that I would prefer to use a name that didn't set me so far apart as a foreigner, though I hadn't even considered legally truncating my name at that point so that I could change my passport, and only one member of that extended family honoured my choice.

"Uncle Sal?" I estimated.

"Yes, it is good to hear your voice, boy. But I am afraid I cannot call purely on social grounds," he was speaking Greek, of course, but I switched back to the language I was raised on so easily that I didn't even notice until after the call. He started by telling me that he had a business proposition. A certain number of his friends had run into some difficulties, and he thought I might be able to help them out. I said that I didn't think I could split my time between studies and business just yet, but I was too hesitant to just decline his offer.

He spoke quickly and quietly, a mannerism I'm not sure he was even aware of. In the few liasons I had seen him speaking like that with other members of the extended family, or even some of the other traders in our village, that voice meant one thing. It meant he was speaking on behalf of the group of relatives and friends that he referred to as the circle. Everyone in our family knew of them, and knew to respect them, even as they paid lip-service to the idea that the circle did not exist. It had grown out of historic groups for self preservation, the antecedents of modern trade unions, but it had hoarded its power in means not entirely on the right side of the law. There was an old name for the organisation, but it is impossible to translate and keep all the nuances. So when speaking to those who did not come from our region, he would either speak in euphemisms, or coin a phrase from another Mediterranean nation.

The words he used today were "Greek Mafia". I had long suspected it, everyone in our family and our communities had, but Sal did not make the habit of describing his circle in such plain terms. The fact that he did so now meant firstly that he wanted my help with circle business, and that it was something he could not claim was related to one of his group's legitimate enterprises, and that he wanted me to know now that it was not my place to decline.