By Order of the President

POSSIBLY THREE BOEING 727 AIRCRAFT. LA-9021 MAY BE FLOWN ELSEWHERE,

That should have been enough, Castillo thought when he read the satburst, of interest to anyone wondering what possibly could have happened to the missing 727.

And it certainly should have been sent to Secretary Hall.

And then he read the six pages of what Miller had written but not sent.

I don't know if this Russian arms dealer theory holds water – there's no proof – but, goddammit, this should, have been brought to the attention of everybody who could possibly check it out.

What the hell's going on here?

He read it through again and then inserted what Miller had sent to him into the middle of a lengthy article he had written-mostly paraphrased from The American Conservative -for the Tages Zeitung a week before and encrypted the whole thing. He deleted Miller's file, "shredding" it so it would not be recoverable from his laptop computer's hard drive.

Then he stood up and went to the window and looked down at the harbor and thought about what he should do next.

He went to his suitcase and took a tissue-wrapped Temple Hall cigar from a white-painted box, and by the time he had gone through the ritual of carefully unwrapping it, clipping the end, and lighting it he had made up his mind.

I told Otto Gorner that I would file a story for the Tages Zeitung about the missing 727, and I will, including in it the rumor that the Russian arms dealer variously known as Vasily Respin and Aleksandr Pevsner is somehow involved.

I'll send a copy of the story to Hall. He'll have to have it translated from the German, but he will, and discreetly, knowing that I would not have sent to him a copy of the story unless there was a reason.

And when he gets to the part about Respin/Pevsner, he'll understand what I meant about getting something I'm surprised he didn't get.

And at that point, he'll try to find out who Dick Miller is, and, when he does, everything will make sense to him.

I hope.

He went to the laptop, opened the Word program, and began to type. It took him about thirty minutes to write about seven hundred words. He read it over a final time, then went on the Internet, entered Tages Zeitung' s e-mail address, put Hall's private e-mail address in the blind copy to block, and sent the story.

Then he sent a second e-mail to Hall to make sure, first, that he was doing what he could to cover Dick Miller's tail, and also to make sure Hall understood what was going on.