Where We're At: Parts 3.16-3.17: Bilocations

Reef

• Reef and Flaco are working as tunnel dynamiters in Europe. The Austrian Alps are hot; Austria wants to be able to move troops south into Italy as it sees fit. There's also a big tunnel in progress between Brigue, Switzerland, and Domodossola, Italy. They' re running into problems there because there are hot springs where the tunnels should go.
• The tunnel crews also include Nikos, Fulvio, Gerhardt, the opera singer, the Albanian (Ramiz), some of whom are "part-time Anarchists interested in furthering their chemical education."
• Ramiz is on the run from an Albanian family revenge situation. There's talk about how revenge works there versus the (American) West.
• Fulvio earlier met up with a Tatzelwurm--a snake with paws and sharp teeth; they live in the tunnels in Europe. Is the Tatzelwurm hell? Or are the dynamiters hell for the owners?
• Ruperta Chirpingdon-Groin happens to visit as part of the Euro-spa circuit. She's got Rodolfo as an (kept?) escort. Reef's sleeping with her again; she mentions that Scarsdale Vibe is buying up Renaissance art. He (Vibe) headed for Venice; Ruperta is as well.
• Philippe is involved when Reef saves Ramiz from a Tatzelwurm; Ramiz now is obligated, by Albanian tradition, to repay Reef. There's something here about reflections, maybe? Light?
• Reef leaves for Venice with Roberta. On the train going there, he has a visitation (or a vision) he still needs to avenge Webb; he needs to take out Scarsdale Vibe.

Kit and Yashmeen--and Reef

• Kit and Yashmeen take the train to Switzerland
• Yashmeen talks about the stranniki--underground men who felt a holy mission "ambassadors from some mysterious country very far away, unable to return because the way back was hidden." They're forced to wander the world seeking... something. She's one of them now--she had to leave Gottingen, didn't leave by choice. She's been expelled from the garden. She won't tell Kit why.
• Yashmeen reconnects with the TWIT at a sanatorium at Lago Maggiore; Kit tags along. And whoa, there's Reef. Reef: "[b]e content that you held out longer'n me, at least." Kit: "Just stupid. Just slow. Can't believe how long it took me to see."
• (Has Ruperta trained her spaniel, Moufette, to provide intimate services [to Ruperta]? Or did Reef just imagine it?)
• Kit introduces Reef to Yashmeen.
• Kit moves into the sanatorium where Reef and Ruperta are.
• Reef tells Kit that Scarsdale Vibe is heading for Venice. They should kill him?
• Madame Eskimoff shows up; she holds a seance and they talk to Webb, maybe. Reef calls it a con. She suggests that he try being the medium; he (with hanger-on Algie as the fourth) channels Webb: "I sold my anger too cheap." But what he doesn't say is that they should kill Scarsdale Vibe because Vibe had hired his (Webb's) killers. Reef doesn't know who he is any more; how did he sell out when in New Orleans he chose anarchism?
  
• Kit dreams of Webb. He'd turned against Webb when he accepted Vibe's money for school. Vectors never would have been Kit's salvation. He needs payback.
• Kit tells Yashmeen he wants to go to Venice; can she square it with Lionel Swome? Yashmeen says that getting her out of Gottingen was the main objective; Kit was convenient but isn't indebted. TWIT believes that Yashmeen owes her continued existence to them; they're taking her to Vienna and the Buda-Pesth, not her choice, for some sort of psychical research thing--she's to be the subject. He can write her care of her school pal Noellyn Fanshawe, who will forward letters.

(p. 677)