"Leo’s being a bit dramatic, as usual, but that’s part of his charm," said the woman, Rosina, with a fond smile at him. Rosina looked like a schoolteacher might look—a schoolteacher with a taste for platinum jewelry and expensive facial surgery. "The Great Game is less romantic than it might sound. Basically, it’s just another American secret government, and while those are common enough, they never last long. We’re very much like the southern resistance during Reconstruction. Like the Invisible Empire—the Ku Klux Klan. For a decade or so, the Ku Klux Klan was a genuine underground government! Where everybody took turns holding the rope for a minute. So nobody really lynched the darkie. You see, the darky just sort of perished."