Prologue: "An Offer You Cannot Refuse"

Deaths of heroes; uprisings; suppressions; the end of dreams; blood in the streets of Chicago, Paris, Saigon.  Mankind for the first time orbited the moon, but back on earth, the fundamental rules still applied.  Greed.  Desire.  Power.  Overreaching death.  That year was more than just a densely packaged parade of events, more than an accidental alignment of the stars. It was a catalyst for change, a class and sexual struggle between generations, between the haves and have-nots—the 99 percent—rich and poor, a war between past and future for entire countries and the world, a violent struggle seeking an outcome.

The author of the Gorila series, Savkovic, was sent to Paris on a journalistic assignment to write a report about the suicides and attempted suicides of numerous young women from Eastern Europe.

One of these women was the beautiful sister of the famous Parisian bodyguard, Stephan, who had been featured on the front page of Paris Match as “the sexiest man alive.” After throwing herself in front of a metro train, she miraculously survived, though remained handicapped for life, and was recovering at a convent outside Paris.  Savkovic wanted to write a story about her, but would only be able to see her with permission from the brother, the bodyguard.  The permission was never granted. The encounter between Savkovic and the bodyguard became the foundation of the author’s accidental and indirect involvement with the Affair Delon. Twenty days after Savkovic returned home from Paris, the bodyguard was murdered.  News spread like the plague across Europe, and the French press covered the event more closely than the Vietnam War.

This book is a true odyssey about all people from around the world who have left their homes, wives, and children, their neighborhoods, and the magic of the small pleasures their hometown offers, to hunt for a better life. Usually these young men did not return home in glory, but their personal charms—a lighter, a key chain, or a tobacco case—were sent back to their hometowns with the formal words regarding their death. These people died like true heroes, and their personal stories remain unwritten. They were starved, worked under difficult conditions, and hoped for the day when they would be discovered. The difference between what our fate writes for us and the fairy tales our mothers’ soft voices read to us before bedtime, is that the third son and the poorest young man do not get the hand of the beautiful princess; they remain pitiable and unfortunate, or if they are lucky, they are blessed to experience the dream, but just for a little while. Some were fugitives from the law, with their puzzled hearts longing for free love, the air of freedom, aromatic wines, beautiful women, and foreign money . . .