Hazardous Duty

[ONE]

The eavesdropping on the communications of the world by the National Security Agency at Fort Meade, Maryland, is a rather simple procedure: They record everything said over the telephone, over the radio — and sometimes heard by cleverly placed “bugs”—by those in whom the several intelligence agencies of the United States are interested and then run it through a computer that filters out the garbage and after cracking any cryptography involved transfers the good stuff to another tape that is then distributed to the appropriate intelligence agency for analysis.

The idea is simple, the technology required is not.

Before the AFC Corporation took over the supplying of the technology — hardware and software — the NSA was relatively as deaf and useful as a stone pole. Afterward, of course, it was not.

Before the AFC Corporation took the NSA contract, Dr. Aloysius Casey— by far the majority stockholder in AFC, and both its chief engineer and chairman of its board of directors — could not be honestly said to have been putting victuals on his table with food stamps.

After the contracts went into force, though, he really prospered.

To the point where he had confided to his friend Charley Castillo — to whom he no longer referred to as “Hotshot”—that he had more money than he knew what to do with. He confided this to Castillo not only as a friend, but also because he knew that Castillo, too, had more money than he knew what to do with.

One of the things Casey had done with his wealth was of course to provide prototype equipment free of charge to the Special Forces community, but this — especially after Casey’s platoon of tax lawyers taught him how to charge this off as “research and development”—didn’t make much of a dent in the bottom line.

He had spent a hell of a lot of money building the House on the Hill for Mary-Catherine, whom he had married immediately after returning from the war in Vietnam. Their first home had been a basement room in her parents’ row house in South Boston. She had supported him emotionally — his and her parents thought he was either nuts or smoking funny cigarettes — when he went to MIT. And supported them financially by stuffing bags for long hours in a Stop & Shop Supermarket.

They had four years together in the House on the Hill, and then cancer got Mary-Catherine. Got her very quickly, which was the only good thing that could be said about that.

A year after Mary-Catherine left him alone — they’d never been able to have kids — in the House on the Hill, the demise of both the Office of Organizational Analysis and the Merry Outlaws, which was a brief reincarnation of the former, caused two of its members to be without work.

Casey had come to know both of them, and felt a kinship with both.

One of these was First Lieutenant Edmund “Peg-Leg” Lorimer, MI, USA, Retired, who had worn the Green Beret as an “A” Team commo sergeant — which logically really resonated with Casey — before getting a battlefield commission. He had been an officer just long enough to make first lieutenant when he was wounded in — and ultimately lost — his left leg just above the knee.

The other was Gunnery Sergeant Lester Bradley, USMC, Retired, who was twenty-one but looked much younger. He had been part of Castillo’s operation from the very beginning, even before they had been first formalized as the Office of Organizational Analysis.

Then a corporal in the Marine Guard detachment at the American embassy in Buenos Aires, Bradley had been sent — as the man who could best be spared — to drive an embassy truck carrying two fifty-five-gallon barrels of helicopter fuel to Uruguay. He was pressed into service in support of a hastily organized raid Castillo had undertaken to snatch Dr. John Paul Lorimer, a renegade American, for forcible repatriation to the United States.

Dr. Lorimer and Lieutenant Lorimer, it should be pointed out, were in no way related.

Castillo had handed Bradley an M-14 rifle and ordered him to do what he could to protect the fuel while he and other Special Operations operators — plus an FBI agent also pressed into service from his duties in the Uruguayan embassy looking for dirty money — conducted the raid.

The raid had promptly started to go sour, and might have failed — probably would have failed — had not Bradley taken out two of the bad guys with head shots, fired offhand from one hundred yards from his M-14 rifle and the FBI agent, taking his pistol out of its holster for the first time ever except on the FBI Academy’s pistol range at Quantico, used it to take out two more of them.

When he returned to the United States, then-Major Castillo had reported to the President — President Clendennen’s predecessor — that, since they obviously couldn’t be returned to their embassy duties, he had brought Corporal Bradley and FBI Special Agent David W. Yung home with him. He also reported that Dr. Lorimer had been killed by what they had learned were agents of the SVR as he was opening his safe. The safe had a little over sixteen million dollars’ worth of bearer bonds in it the SVR thought was theirs, Castillo told the President, and he had brought that home, too.

The President had a solution that dealt with what should be done with Castillo, others on the raid (including Bradley and Yung), and the money. He issued a Top Secret Presidential Finding establishing the Office of Organizational Analysis, named Castillo its chief, assigned Bradley, Yung, and everybody involved in the raid to it, and funded it with $500,000 from his Confidential Fund.

“In the meantime, Charley,” the President went on, “understanding I’m not telling you to do this, if you should happen to find sixteen million in bearer bonds somewhere on the sidewalk, you might consider using that for the expenses of OOA until I can come up with some more money for you.”

Special Agent Yung, who was an expert in the laundering of funds, established an account for the Lorimer Charitable & Benevolent Fund in the Riggs National Bank in Washington, and deposited sixteen million dollars in bearer bonds into it.

That was the beginning of what would become the LCBF Corporation, which was formed after, shortly before his untimely death, the President found it necessary to disband the OOA and order its members to disappear from the face of the earth.

When that happened, neither Lieutenant Lorimer nor Sergeant Bradley had anywhere to go. Neither had any family to speak of, and they had been retired from the service. Neither could Bradley continue to be Castillo’s shadow. Among other reasons for that was a redheaded Russian called Sweaty, who while she really liked Lester, did not want to have him around for breakfast, lunch, and dinner seven days a week.

Aloysius Casey offered both men a job working for the AFC Corporation laboratories in Las Vegas. He was working on a new project for the gaming industry, a computer-driven system that would, when completed, discreetly scan the faces of guests as they entered the lobby and instantly come up with their biographies, credit ratings, and the balances in their bank accounts. This would be of great interest to the gaming industry, and one of the titans of that industry, who had become a pal of Aloysius, told him that they would pay through the nose for it if he could make it work.

Aloysius, not sure if he believed it, told Peg-Leg and Lester that he thought they would be useful to him as he perfected the new system. He also said that, until they got settled, they could stay with him in the House on the Hill.

“There’s certainly plenty of room,” he said.

In addition to the twenty-three rooms in which Aloysius was — with the exception of the Mexican couple who took care of him — rattling around alone, there were four “guest cottages,” each consisting of a bedroom, a living room, a game room complete with nickel slot machines — their motherboards rigged to pay out more than they took in — and a complete kitchen.

Lester moved into one of these cottages next to the putting green, and Peg-Leg into the one nearest the pool, which he used often for therapeutic reasons connected with the damaged muscles of his leg.

From the beginning, things went well — except for the incident with the motorcycle. One day when Lester was in the lobby of Mount Vesuvius Resort & Gaming Palace watching people come in, so he could determine the best location to place the scanning cameras, he had an idle moment and dropped a quarter into a slot machine, just so he could see how it worked without anybody seeing him watching.

There then suddenly came a bleating of trumpets, the flashing of lights, the screaming of sirens, and a recorded voice repeatedly bellowing, “There is a winner!”

Lester had won the Grand Prize offered by that slot machine — an absolute top-of-the-line Harley-Davidson that was sitting on a pedestal just inside the lobby. Aloysius suspected a glitch in the slot machine’s motherboard, as that particular motorcycle had been sitting there for as long as he could remember and no one had ever won it.

The thought of Lester riding that monster up and down the Strip and then up and down the mountain every day brought forth in Aloysius what he thought of as a manifestation of the Special Operators creed that one Special Operator always covers another Special Operator’s back, but was probably more of a manifestation of previously unsuspected paternal instincts.

He conferred first with Peg-Leg, who then told Lester that while he was happy with Lester’s good fortune, his peg leg would keep him from ever getting on the motorcycle with him.

In his next tactical move, he conferred over the CaseyBerry system with David W. Yung, now the chief financial officer of the LCBF Corporation, and who was managing Lester’s investment portfolio, and got him to agree to tell Lester that the purchase of an automobile of any kind would interfere with the growth of the portfolio.

The CIA had promptly paid to the LCBF Corporation the $120 million it had been offering to anyone who could deliver a Top Secret Russian Tupolev Tu-934A aircraft to them when Colonel Jake Torine and Lieutenant Colonel Charley Castillo had brought one back with them from the Venezuelan incursion known as Operation March Hare.

The Executive Compensation Committee of the LCBF Corporation — David Yung and Edgar Delchamps — had determined that Lester was one of those entitled to one of the one-million-dollar (after taxes) bonuses to be paid to active participants in Operation March Hare.

Aloysius did not want Lester to consider that he was in a financial position to walk into the Las Vegas showroom of Bentley Motor Cars and write them a $245,000 check for their best red convertible if he wanted to.

A red convertible did figure in the final step of Aloysius’s covering of Lester’s back, however — a Ford Mustang. One was sitting, gleaming, top down, in the lobby of the Mount Vesuvius, when Lester came in to claim his prize.

So was the general manager of the Mount Vesuvius, who was beside himself with remorse for having to tell Lester that his prize had been recalled by the Harley-Davidson people for unspecified mechanical problems and that it would be a month, six weeks, perhaps even longer, before a replacement could be made available.

“Perhaps, sir,” the manager asked, “you might be interested in the Mustang as your prize in lieu of the Harley-Davidson with mechanical problems you can’t get for a month, six weeks, perhaps even longer anyway?”

Ten minutes later, Lester drove the red Mustang down the Strip and then up the mountain to the House on the Hill, where he showed it to Aloysius and Peg-Leg, who both agreed with him that the red Mustang was one hell of a set of wheels.

The general manager of the Mount Vesuvius had been so obliging because he had standing orders from the man who owned the Mount Vesuvius, three other of the more glitzy Las Vegas hotels, and three more in Atlantic City, New Jersey, and Biloxi, Mississippi, to do for Aloysius Casey whatever he wanted done.

This gentleman, whose code name was “Hotelier,” was one of five members of a group of men known to very senior officers of the intelligence community as “Those People in Las Vegas.”

The others were a well-known, perhaps even famous, investment banker, whose code name understandably was “Banker.” Another, who had made an enormous fortune in the data processing business, was a Naval Academy graduate whose code name was “Annapolis.” A fourth, who had once confessed to a reporter from Forbes magazine that he didn’t really know how many radio and television stations he owned, had the code name “Radio & TV Stations.” The fifth important member of Those People in Las Vegas was Dr. Aloysius Casey, whose code name was “Irish.”

What Those People did was secretly fund covert intelligence operations of the various “Alphabet Agencies” when the agencies could not either get the funds to do so from Congress or even dare to ask for such funds. Those People didn’t want credit for what they were doing, and for that reason — and also because what they were doing was, while inarguably patriotic, almost certainly illegal — used code names.

Dr. Casey’s role in Those People was unique. He had been asked to join, and been happy to do so, shortly after he moved about half of the AFC’s manufacturing capability and its most important research and development laboratory to Las Vegas.

Hotelier had learned that the redheaded middle-aged woman with the Boston accent who religiously — and for precisely one hour — dropped quarters into the slots in one of his places of business every morning after Mass was married to the chairman of the board of the AFC Corporation and drove a Chevrolet Suburban with Special Forces stickers on both its rear window and windshield.

He reasoned that Dr. Casey, as a Special Forces veteran, might be willing to make substantial financial contributions to the patriotic activities of Those People. And Dr. Casey, when approached, had been happy to do so.

Hotelier didn’t ask any questions about — and Dr. Casey did not volunteer any information about — Dr. Casey’s current and ongoing involvement with the intelligence or Special Operations communities.

It never entered Hotelier’s mind, either — or the minds of the other Those People — that Casey regarded them as no more than well-meaning amateurs whose money sometimes came in handy.

This came to a head when Casey learned that some of Those People had concluded that President Clendennen’s somewhat cold-blooded solution to a serious problem made sense.

The problem was that not all of an incredibly lethal biological warfare substance known as Congo-X had been destroyed when President Clendennen’s predecessor, shortly before his untimely death, had ordered the obliteration of a twenty-square-mile area in the former Belgian Congo on which was situated the laboratory that invented Congo-X and the manufactory, operated by former East Germans.

The President had ordered the use of every explosive weapon, except nuclear, in the American arsenal to be used for this purpose. It hadn’t worked. There wasn’t a tree left standing in the target area, but the Russians soon provided proof they still had some Congo-X. They proposed, in the spirit of international love and brotherhood, that they would turn over all they had and swear on all they held dear never again to make any.

In exchange, all they asked for was the return to the motherland of two SVR officers, Colonel Dmitri Berezovsky and Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva, who had defected from their posts as the SVR rezidents in Berlin and Copenhagen, respectively, and promptly told the American intelligence officer who had arranged their defection all about Congo-X. The Russians wanted him, too. His name was Lieutenant Colonel Carlos G. Castillo.

President Clendennen thought this seemed like a reasonably fair deal and ordered that the swap be made. Some of Those People thought the President had made the right decision.

Before the people sent to find Castillo and the two Russians and to load them onto an Aeroflot aircraft could do so, Castillo learned that the Congo-X that the Russians had sent to the Army’s Medical Research Laboratory at Fort Detrick, Maryland, had been flown to the Western Hemisphere aboard a Tupolev Tu-934A, which was then sitting on the tarmac of an airfield on Venezuela’s La Orchila Island with the last liter of Congo-X aboard.

About a week later, the Tupolev landed at Andrews Air Force Base flown by Jake Torine and Charley Castillo. On board, in addition to the last liter of Congo-X, were some people, including General Vladimir Sirinov of the SVR, whom President Putin had personally put in charge of the operation, and Mr. Roscoe J. Danton, of the Washington Times-Post Writers Syndicate.

While they were waiting for the CIA to write the check for the $120 million bounty they had offered for a Tupolev Tu-934A, the Merry Outlaws, as President Clendennen disparagingly had dubbed them, went to the Venetian Hotel in Las Vegas to talk to Those People about their agreeing with President Clendennen’s decision to throw Charley, Sweaty, and her brother Dmitri on an Aeroflot airplane.

With an effort, Charley rejected Edgar Delchamps’s suggestion — which had Sweaty’s enthusiastic support — on how to deal with Those People. This was to “throw them all in the great white shark aquarium at the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino and let Neptune sort them out.”

At the confrontation, Annapolis gave Charley his word of honor that he had been dead set against President Clendennen’s solution from the start and would not have permitted it to happen. As a former member of the Corps of Cadets at the U.S. Military Academy, Castillo knew that he could accept without question the word of honor of a former member of the Brigade of Midshipmen at the U.S. Naval Academy.

Radio & TV Stations surprised everyone by backing up his statement that he had told Those People that they would load Charley on a Moscow-bound Aeroflot aircraft only over his dead body by revealing not only that he had been an Army helicopter pilot during the Vietnam War — it would be a toss-up between Radio & TV Stations and Lester Bradley as to which looked less like a warrior — but that Charley’s father, shortly before he was killed, had rescued him from certain death at great risk to his own life.

But the biggest surprise of the confrontation had been that between Hotelier and Edgar Delchamps.

“Actually,” Hotelier said, “I thought Clendennen was right.”

That, Castillo and Casey decided instantly, meant Hotelier wasn’t going to live long enough to go swimming with the great white sharks in the Mandalay Bay aquarium. Delchamps was going to throw him out the window right there in the fortieth-floor Venetian penthouse.

“How’s that?” Edgar asked softly.

“Odds are my business,” Hotelier replied. “What would you say the odds were that Colonel Castillo was going to get away with his Venezuelan incursion?”

“Hundred to one against?” Delchamps asked.

“I’d have taken the bet at two hundred to one against,” Hotelier said. “And that being the case, I started wondering how — or who — could get the Congo-X and Castillo and the others away from the Russians.”

“Once they got Charley, Sweaty, and Dmitri on the nonstop to Moscow, that would be close to impossible. Even taking a shot at it would take a hell of a lot of money.”

“I have a hell of a lot of money,” Hotelier said.

Delchamps had looked at Hotelier for a long moment and then turned to Castillo.

“Ace, I trust this guy,” he said. “And since you trust these two, I guess only the others go swimming with those big fishes as we discussed.”

“If I may make a suggestion?” Hotelier had asked.

“Why not?” Delchamps had replied.

“As hard as you might find this to believe,” Hotelier said, “some of the guests in my places of business try to cheat. When we catch them doing so, we reason with them, point out they have made a bad decision, and tell them what’s going to happen if they ever again make such a bad decision or even think about doing so.

“If we — you and I, Mr. Delchamps — went to the gentlemen we’re talking about and reasoned with them, I’m sure they would recognize how gross an error they have made, and would be willing to offer their solemn assurance they would never do so again. If we did this, we would not be shutting off, so to speak, the money spigot.”

“Yeah,” Delchamps said. “Why don’t you call me Edgar?”

Despite the satisfactory resolution of the Confrontation, Aloysius still felt he had let down Castillo — had not covered his back — as he should have and resolved never to let that happen again.

To accomplish this he designed, built, tested, and then installed in the House on the Hill a miniature version of the interception system he had designed, built, tested, and installed for the NSA at Fort Meade.

The system he had installed at Fort Meade had several acres of computers to perform its tasks, but the one Casey installed at home was not designed to intercept messages of all kinds but only those going through the CaseyBerry Communications System; it fit in a small case about the size of two shoe boxes stacked one upon the other, which he kept in what had been Mary-Catherine’s wardrobe.

The best way to explain its capabilities is by example:

For example, when the system heard Mr. Lammelle ask, “Well, what thinks the Queen of Foggy Bottom?” it automatically went into Record/Alert mode as the words “Queen,” “Foggy,” and “Bottom,” in any combination, were in the filter database.

It turned on the Secondary Recording function, which went to the Primary Recording system, which operated all the time in a Run & Erase mode, and copied from it everything that had been recorded from a point in time ten seconds before the system had been triggered by hearing “Queen” and transferred it to the Secondary Recording function.

It added a date and time block, identified the parties to the call as Mr. Lammelle and Secretary Cohen, and found and stored their locations. But so far it didn’t do a thing to Mr. Casey’s CaseyBerry.

When, however, DCI Lammelle inquired of the secretary of State whether or not they should tell Truman Ellsworth that Charley was not in Budapest, “Charley,” or variations thereof, being the number one search filter, Mr. Casey’s CaseyBerry burst into life.

It vibrated, buzzed, and tinkled pleasantly to get his attention, and when he pushed ACTIVATE BUTTON #3, flashed on its screen the names of the parties to the call, their locations, and Charley’s location. When he pushed ACTIVATE BUTTON #4, it played back the entire conversation.

In a similar manner, Mr. Casey was made privy to Mr. Lammelle’s second call to Secretary Cohen; Mr. Lammelle’s call to General McNab in which he told McNab to expect General Naylor to stop by; General McNab’s call to Charley; General McNab’s second call to Charley, during which Sweaty threatened to castrate General McNab with an otxokee mecto nanara (including the translation of this phrase from the Russian language); Lammelle’s call to Colonel Torine, ordering the charter of a Panamanian Executive Aircraft Gulfstream on the CIA’s dime to be held ready to fly to Argentina; and finally Lammelle’s call to Mr. D’Alessandro telling him when the DCI’s Gulfstream was expected to arrive at Pope Air Force Base.

At that point, Mr. Casey pushed another button, which connected him with Hotelier.

“Listen to this,” he said, “and tell me what you think.”

He punched a button that transmitted all of the intercepts to Hotelier’s CaseyBerry, whereupon Hotelier listened to them.

“I would hazard the guess Clendennen has somehow gotten out of his straitjacket,” Hotelier said.

“I’m worried that Lester will hear about this and rush down there to protect Charley,” Casey said.

“Aloysius, as you have so often told me, acquiring as much intelligence as one can has to be the first step before taking any action. Now, who in Washington has the best access to what our President is up to at any given moment?”

“Roscoe Danton.”

Casey pushed a button and learned that Mr. Danton was in The Round Robin Bar of the Willard Hotel in Washington, D.C.

“And who do we have in Washington who can best extract this information from Mr. Danton?”

“Delchamps? Or maybe Yung?”

“Precisely. One or the other, preferably both.”

“Thank you. I’ll keep you in the loop.”

“Please do.”

Casey pushed the appropriate buttons and learned that Mr. Yung was in his office in the Riggs National Bank building and Mr. Delchamps was across the Potomac River at Lorimer Manor, an assisted living facility at 7200 West Boulevard Drive in Alexandria, Virginia.

He pushed the button that would connect him with the latter.

[TWO]

When David W. Yung and Edgar Delchamps walked in, Roscoe J. Danton was sitting at the bar about to sip at his third serving — at $27.50 per serving — of Macallan’s twenty-four-year-old scotch whisky. The intoxicant was being provided to him by the lobbyist for the American Association of Motorized Wheelchair Manufacturers, who was delighted to provide a journalist such as Mr. Danton with anything at all he wished to drink.

If he did so, the lobbyist reasoned, it was possible — not likely, but possible — that Mr. Danton’s columns might not echo the scurrilous stories going around that the furnishing of products of the AAMWCM, which cost an average of $4,550, absolutely free of charge to mobility-restricted Social Security recipients was near the top of the list of outrageous rapes of the Social Security system.

“Well, there he is,” Mr. Yung said.

“How are you, ol’ buddy?” Mr. Delchamps added.

Mr. Danton turned from the bar to see who was talking to him. As he did so, Mr. Delchamps offered his hand. In a reflex action, Mr. Danton took it.

“Your car is here, Roscoe,” Mr. Yung said.

“Parked illegally, so we’ll have to hurry,” Delchamps said. “Say goodbye to the nice man, Roscoe, and come along.”

Intending to say, “I’m not going anywhere with you,” he got only as far as “I’m not…” before an excruciating pain began in his hand and worked its way quickly up his arm to his neck.

Mr. Delchamps had grasped Mr. Danton’s hand with an ancient grip he had learned from an agent of the Chos-n’g-l, the North Korean Department of State Security, whom he had turned during his active career in the Clandestine Service of the CIA.

No lasting damage was done to the gripee’s body, the agent had taught him, but as long as pressure was applied, gripees tended to be very cooperative.

Waiting in the NO STANDING ZONE outside the street door of The Round Robin was a black, window-darkened Yukon Denali SUV bearing the special license plates issued by the Commonwealth of Virginia to the physically handicapped. On the door was lettered in gold LORIMER MANOR HANDICAPPED TRANSPORT # 2.

The rear door was open. Through it one could see the driver, who looked like an actress sent over from Central Casting in response to a call for “an elegant grandmother type in her seventies,” and, sitting on his haunches in the captain’s chair beside her, a dog, a 125-pound Bouvier des Flandres.

Mr. Yung quickly climbed in, and then Mr. Delchamps, still clutching Mr. Danton’s hand, assisted him in getting in, then got in himself.

“Where we going?” the driver inquired.

“We might as well go home,” Delchamps said. “This might take some time.”

Home to Mr. Delchamps was Lorimer Manor, a large house — it could be fairly called a mansion — on an acre of manicured lawn on West Boulevard Drive in Alexandria. There was a tasteful brass sign on the lawn:

Lorimer Manor was also home to eleven other people — including the elegant grandmother in her seventies driving the Yukon — who were all also retired from the Clandestine Service of the CIA.

It had been originally purchased by the Lorimer Charitable & Benevolent Fund — using the funds from Dr. Lorimer’s safe, hence the name — in the early days of the Office of Organizational Analysis as a safe house.

On the demise of that organization, the question of what to do with the property was initially solved by Mr. Delchamps, who said he needed a place to live, and would rent it from the LCBF Corporation temporarily.

Word spread quickly among the Retired Clandestine Community — known disparagingly by many newcomers to the CIA as “the Dinosaurs”—that ol’ Edgar Delchamps was holed up comfortably in a big house in Alexandria. Perhaps there would be room for one more of them?

The place was shortly full up, and there was a waiting list. It was of particular interest to females who had retired from the Clandestine Service. They were uncomfortable living, for example, in the Silver Springs Methodist Retirement Home for Christian Ladies, and places of that nature.

Mr. David W. Yung — he was good at this sort of thing — had quickly set up a nonprofit corporation to handle the administration of the facility. A housekeeper — herself a retired Special Operations cryptographer married to a retired member of Delta Force — was engaged, rates were set, a board of directors established, and so on, and soon Lorimer Manor was off and running, so to speak.

As part of the deal, two rooms in Lorimer Manor were always kept in readiness for Merry Outlaws who happened to be in our nation’s capital and needed a discreet place to rest their heads.

Mr. Delchamps led Mr. Danton into Lorimer Manor’s recreation room, which was essentially a bar offering as large a selection of intoxicants as the one in the Willard he had just left.

The centerpiece decoration of the bar was two dinosaurs, facing each other. One of them had a pink ribbon around its neck.

“Sit, Roscoe,” Edgar ordered. “And tell Two-Gun and me everything you know about how our President’s latest aberration affects our leader.”

Mr. Delchamps’s reference to Mr. Yung as “Two-Gun” unnerved him. He had no idea why the Merry Outlaws so referred to Mr. Yung, but the mental image of Mr. Yung with a pistol in each hand, blazing away at the bad guys, à la Mr. Bruce Willis in many of his motion pictures, was menacing.

The explanation was simple. In the very first days, Mr. Yung and Mr. Delchamps had gone from Montevideo, Uruguay, to Buenos Aires. Both had pistols. In the case of Mr. Yung, this was perfectly legal, as Mr. Yung was then still officially a legal attaché of the U.S. embassy in Montevideo, which position afforded him diplomatic status. Diplomatic status, in turn, permitted him to go about armed and to park wherever he wanted to.

Mr. Delchamps, who did not have diplomatic status, not only had to pay to park his car like ordinary people, but would have been arrested had he attempted to pass through Argentine customs with his preferred lethal weapon — a Colt Officer’s Model 1911A1 .45 ACP semiautomatic pistol — tucked in the back of his trousers. The solution was simple. He handed the .45 to Mr. Yung, who passed through customs carrying both. He had thereafter been known to his fellow Merry Outlaws as “Two-Gun Yung,” which had a certain onomatopoetic ring to it.

Thus Mr. Danton, reasonably, was unnerved by the moniker. As was he unnerved after having been kidnapped from The Round Robin Bar.

But what really unnerved him was being reminded that both Delchamps and Yung regarded him as one of their own — as, in other words, a fellow Merry Outlaw.

Roscoe was willing to admit they had their reasons. One was that he had permitted dreams of journalistic glory to overwhelm his common sense. Specifically, armed with a borrowed Uzi machine pistol, he had jumped aboard the Black Hawk helicopter that Castillo had bought from a corrupt Mexican police official just before it had taken off in the Venezuelan incursion known as Operation March Hare.

And, Roscoe was willing to admit, he had taken “the King’s Shilling.” Actually, it was “the Merry Outlaws’ Million Dollars After Taxes.” Mr. Delchamps and Mr. Yung had decided that since Roscoe had gone to the Venezuelan airbase on La Orchila Island carrying an Uzi, he was as much entitled to the bonus as anybody else who had gone on the operation.

When the money was offered, Roscoe had thought only a fool would refuse a million dollars after taxes. He had since often wondered if that had been the right decision.

“Edgar,” Roscoe said, with all the sincerity he could muster, “with Almighty God as my witness, I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“My sainted mother, Roscoe,” Delchamps said, “taught me that religion is the last refuge of the scoundrel.”

“Have Roscoe play the intercepts,” Two-Gun said. “If that doesn’t trigger his memory, we’ll let him play with the dogs.”

Edgar could see from the recreation room windows the dogs to which Two-Gun referred. There were eight or nine Bouviers des Flandres in the backyard of Lorimer Manor. One of them was playing tug-of-war with the garden hose. The gardener had one end still in his hands as the Bouvier dragged him around the garden on his stomach. The rest of the Bouviers, like a herd of buffalo, bounded after them, competing for the gardener’s back, onto which they leapt and rode like a sled until one of their siblings knocked them off and took their place.

“Roscoe, take out your CaseyBerry and push button number nine, which will cause some intercepts to play. When you have listened carefully, tell us what you think.”

While Roscoe was doing so, Edgar went behind the bar and prepared three drinks of twelve-year-old Macallan single malt whisky. He then signed Roscoe’s name to the honor system bar tab. He slid one glass to Two-Gun, but when Roscoe reached for what he thought was intended for him, Edgar waved his index finger at him negatively and said, “First, analysis, then booze.”

“Depending, of course,” Two-Gun amplified, “on the quality of your analysis.”

As Roscoe listened to the intercepts, the elegant grandmother type in her seventies came into the recreation room with a tray of hors d’oeuvres.

“If you give me one of those,” she said, pointing to his drink, “I will give you access to these.” She held up the tray.

“Deal,” Delchamps said, and made her a drink.

By the time he was finished, Roscoe had finished listening. He began to deliver his preliminary analysis: “I would hazard the guess that Jake Torine and Dick Miller are going to Argentina.”

“The question then becomes, ‘Why are they going to Argentina on Frank Lammelle’s dime?’” Two-Gun said.

“It… This is so wild I hate to even suggest it,” Roscoe said. “But it may have something to do with the President’s announcement at his press conference that he was convening a Cabinet meeting right after the press conference to implement his out-of-the-box thinking vis-à-vis the Somali pirates and the Mexican drug problem. Maybe he had Charley—”

“That’s the best you can do, Roscoe?” Edgar interrupted.

“I swear to G— Yes, it is.”

Two-Gun said, “It’s really too far off the wall that Clendennen would want to involve Charley—”

“You’ve got to stop thinking like an FBI agent, David,” Edgar interrupted him. “And start thinking out of your little box. This is so far off the wall that I think there’s probably something to Roscoe’s analysis.”

He slid the glass of twelve-year-old Macallan to Danton.

Danton took a sip, then said, “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“But as much as I hate to leave such pleasant company, I’m going to have to run along,” Roscoe said.

“And you’re going to have to start thinking out of your journalist’s little box, Roscoe. You’re one of us now. And when one Merry Outlaw appears to be in the really deep doo-doo, other Merry Outlaws rush to help — they do not go into hiding. Got it?”

“Got it.”

“Good. Just so we’re all on the same page.”

“What do we do now?” Roscoe asked.

There was an ordinary telephone — a base plugged into the wall with a cord and a handset — sitting below the two dinosaurs behind the bar. Delchamps went to it and dialed a number from memory.

“Good afternoon, Mr. Director, sir. This is one of your retired employees, sir, Edgar Delchamps. How are you this afternoon, sir?”

“What can I do for you, Edgar?” DCI Lammelle asked.

Twenty-plus years previously, on his first assignment as an officer of the CIA Clandestine Service, Lammelle had been sent to Athens, Greece, to work for the station chief there, Mr. Edgar Delchamps.

His orders had been to “shine shoes, make beds, and do whatever else Delchamps tells you to do. And be goddamned grateful for the chance to see him at work.”

“Well, Louise and I have been sitting around Lorimer Manor — you remember Louise, don’t you, Mr. Lammelle?”

Two assignments after Greece, Lammelle had been sent to Lima, Peru, where Louise Chambers had been the CIA station chief. His orders then had been “to wash dishes, make beds, and do whatever else Miss Chambers tells you to do. And be goddamned grateful for the chance to see her at work.”

“Yes, of course,” Lammelle said.

“Well, as I was saying, Mr. DCI, sir, Louise and I have been sitting around Lorimer Manor having a little taste, watching the grass grow, and wondering if anything interesting was happening at our former place of employment. So we thought we’d give you a call for Auld Lange Syne and ask.”

“I can’t think of a thing, Edgar, but it’s nice to hear your voice.”

“And it’s always a pleasure to hear yours, sir. I guess you don’t consider chartering a Gulfstream from Panamanian Executive Aircraft to fly to Argentina as interesting as Louise and I do.”

“How the hell did you hear about that?” Mr. Lammelle inquired, and then hung up.

Fifteen seconds later, Mr. Delchamps’s CaseyBerry buzzed.

Delchamps said, “I’ll put this on loudspeaker,” and then punched the appropriate buttons.

Mr. Lammelle’s voice on the CaseyBerry loudspeaker picked up the conversation where he had left it: “Casey told you, right?”

“A good Clandestine Service officer, even a retired one, never reveals his sources. I thought I taught you that,” Delchamps said.

When Lammelle didn’t reply, Delchamps went on. “Well, if you’re not willing to share this with us, Mr. DCI, sir — and by this I mean everything, of course — then I guess ol’ Roscoe Danton, who just happens to be sitting here with Louise and me, is going to have to ask Mr. Blue Jay Hoboken, President Clendennen’s—”

“His name is Robin, not Blue Jay,” Lammelle interrupted without thinking.

“Whatever. I’ve never been much of an ornithologist. We’ll just have Mr. Danton ask Mr. Robin Redbreast Hoboken what transpired at the President’s Cabinet meeting that might have an effect on Charley Castillo. You remember Colonel Castillo, don’t you, Mr. DCI, sir?”

“Oh, shit!” DCI Lammelle said, and then, biting the bullet of recognition that he had no other choice, reported all he knew.

When he had finished, and there was no reply from Delchamps, Lammelle said, “Okay, Edgar, now it’s your turn. What do you know that I don’t?”

“Not a thing.”

“What are you thinking?”

“I think we have to wait until we learn what happens in Argentina. I can’t believe Charley would go along with a recall to extended hazardous duty, but he’s surprised me before.”

“That’s all?”

“Why don’t you call Panamanian Executive Aircraft and have them bill the LCBF Corporation for the charter? Why did you volunteer to have the Agency pay for it, anyway?”

“Because I didn’t think Jake would fly his airplane down there pro bono. Why does LCBF want to pay for it? Isn’t that robbing Peter to pay Paul?”

“LCBF isn’t going to pay for it. Casey got Those People to advance us a million dollars for our expenses in this.”

“So Casey is where you got your information?”

“No. I just got it from the CIA. Nice to talk to you, Mr. Director, sir. Let’s take lunch sometime when your busy schedule permits.”

“Edgar, I’m asking as nice as I know how. Please don’t do anything rash.”

“Have I ever done anything rash as long as you’ve known me?”

Lammelle grunted.

“I will pass on to you anything I hear, Edgar, if you do the same. Deal?”

“Deal.”

[THREE]

The Gulfstream 550 touched smoothly down after a five-hour-and-twenty-six-minute flight — mostly at forty-five thousand feet and averaging 475 knots — from Panama City, Panama.

The co-pilot, who had made the landing, was a thirty-six-year-old, six-foot-two, 220-pound, very black native of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. When he had taxied the Gulfstream to the visiting aircraft tarmac and started to shut it down, he turned to the pilot, a forty-seven-year-old, six-foot-one, 170-pound, pale-skinned silver-haired native of Culpepper, Virginia.

“Candelaria was the first guy to fly over — I guess, really through—the Andes,” the co-pilot, Major H. Richard Miller, Junior, USA, Retired, announced. “Very large set of gonads.”

“Who was? And he did what?” Colonel Jacob D. Torine, USAF, Retired, asked.

“Lieutenant Luis Candelaria,” Miller clarified. “On April thirteenth, 1918, he took off from Zapala, Argentina, in an eighty-horse Sounier Morano Parasol, and two hours thirty later put it down the other side of the mountains in Cunco, Chile. He was Argentina’s first military aviator.”

“Thank you for sharing that with me, Dick. I always like to begin my day with little nuggets of aviation history.”

“You’re welcome.”

“And you are going to tell me, right, why you chose to enrich my life with that particular nugget at this moment in time and space?”

“Because that’s where we are,” Miller said. “Aeropuerto Internacional Teniente Luis Candelaria.” He pointed to a sign on the terminal building that said so. “The first time I came in here I saw that and figured I’d landed at the wrong airport — the Garmin screen said it was lining me up to land at Bariloche International — so I looked it up.”

“Experienced Air Force pilots such as myself never fully trust computerized navigation systems. I thought I’d taught you that.”

Miller didn’t reply, and instead pointed out the window. “There’s Pevsner’s chopper, Liam Duffy, and the local authorities, but I don’t see either a brass band or our leader.”

A glistening black Bell 429XP helicopter sat on the grass just off the tarmac. Beside it were two official trucks and eight men in an assortment of uniforms.

“I was afraid of that,” Torine said. “McNab told me that when he told Charley we were coming down here to talk about what the President wants him to do, Charley said unless Clendennen wanted to help him commit hari-kiri, he wasn’t interested in doing anything for him. When McNab said we were coming anyway, Charley said we would be wasting our time. And then he said, ‘Nice to talk to you, sir,’ and hung up.”

“So,” Miller interrupted, “when Charley got word we were an hour out, he came here in that 429, loaded Sweaty and Max into that adorable little three-million-dollar Cessna Mustang Sweaty gave him for his birthday, and the two of them took off…”

Torine took up the thought: “… and right about now he is making his approach to Santiago, Chile, or Punta del Este, Uruguay, or some other exotic South American dorf—”

“Where they will register in a nice hotel as Señor and Señora José Gonzales of Ecuador,” Miller finished the scenario.

“I see that our great minds are still marching down the same path,” Torine said. “So what do we do when we learn Charley is not available to be convinced he should trust the Commander in Chief and answer his call to extended hazardous active duty? And incidentally, what’s that ‘hazardous duty’ all about?”

“Hazardous duty pays an extra two hundred a month, and the President thinks that will entice Charley to accept the offer.”

“I forgot that. He must know how desperately Charley needs another two hundred a month. So, what do we do when we can’t find Charley?”

“We will get on our CaseyBerrys and have Junior tell his daddy and have Vic D’Alessandro tell General McNab. They are accustomed to being screamed at by them.”

“Colonel Naylor doesn’t like it when you call him ‘Junior,’” Torine said.

“I know. Payback. When we were at the Point, he encouraged my roommate to call me that. He knew I didn’t like it.”

“And what did he call you at West Point?”

“‘Sir.’ Junior was a year behind Charley and me.”

Torine pushed himself out of the pilot’s chair.

“Let’s go get the bad news,” he said.

Comandante Liam Duffy of the Argentine Gendarmería Nacional was waiting at the foot of the stair door. He warmly embraced both Torine and Miller.

“So tell me,” Miller said, “what’s my favorite Argentine-Irish cop doing out here in the boonies so far from the crime and fleshpots of Buenos Aires?”

“You mean in addition to greasing your way through Immigration and Customs?” Duffy replied in English that made him sound as if he had been born and raised in South Boston.

“Yeah.”

“I hoped you would ask,” Duffy said. “I am making sworn on the Holy Bible statements to His Eminence Archbishop Valentin and his chief of staff, Archimandrite Boris, of the ROCOR — which I’m sure you know is the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad — vis-à-vis Sweaty’s late husband—”

“What the hell is that all about?” Miller asked.

“Even a heathen like you should know that the Holy Scripture — specifically First Corinthians chapter seven, verse nine — clearly says that it’s better to marry than to burn.”

“What the hell are you talking about, Liam?”

“I’d love to clear things up, but they’re holding dinner for us.”

“‘Us’ including Charley, Liam?” Torine asked.

“Of course. He’s the one burning to get married. I wouldn’t do what I’m doing for anyone else. Get in the helicopter. We’ll take care of the luggage.”

“Who’s driving?” Miller asked.

“I am,” a pleasant-appearing man about Miller’s age said. “Colonel Castillo said that you would probably ask. Former Major Kiril Koshkov, onetime chief instructor pilot, Spetsnaz Aviation School, at your service, Colonel Junior Miller.”

Torine laughed and put out his hand.

“Jake Torine, Major. Pleased to meet you.”

“An honor, Colonel,” Koshkov said. “Would you like to ride in the left seat?”

“Thank you,” Torine said. “Junior, why don’t you get in the back with Vic and the other Junior?”

Two minutes later, they were airborne, and flying up the east shore of Lake Nahuel Huapi.

As a young officer, Torine had read a book—Grey Wolf: The Escape of Adolf Hitler, by two Englishmen, Simon Dunstan and Gerrard Williams — that posited that Adolf and Eva Braun had not committed suicide in the Führerbunker but rather had made it to Argentina, where they had lived on Estancia San Ramon, east of Bariloche, until the early 1960s.

That was right about where they were now.

He had dismissed the book as bullshit then and continued to do so until his first visit to Aleksandr Pevsner’s La Casa en Bosque — where they were headed now — several years before. The house was well named. It had been built on 1,500 hectares of heavily wooded land on the western shore of Lake Nahuel Huapi.

The moment he walked into the mansion, Torine had had the feeling he’d either been there before, or seen photographs of the foyer. This was damned unlikely, as Aleksandr Pevsner’s desire for privacy was legendary, and there was no chance he would have allowed a photographer from Better Homes and Gardens or Country Living or Architectural Digest anywhere near the place.

But the “I know this place” feeling didn’t go away, and the next day Torine mentioned it to Charley Castillo.

“Really?” Castillo had asked, smiling, and then he went into the false top of his laptop where he kept various things he didn’t want people to see and came out with a somewhat battered photograph.

It showed two men, Reichsmarschall Hermann Göring and a Wehrmacht colonel, standing with their hands folded in front of them in the foyer of La Casa en Bosque.

“The man with Göring is Oberst Hermann Wilhelm von und zu Gossinger,” Castillo said. “My grandfather.”

Confused, Torine had blurted, “But how could that have been taken here?”

“That was taken at Göring’s Karin Hall estate in Prussia,” Castillo said. “Shortly after Grandpa managed to get on the last plane out of Stalingrad.”

“What is this place, Charley? A clone of Karin Hall?”

“It certainly looks like it. All I know is that Pevsner bought this place from an American woman when he got out of Russia. After I showed him this photo, he told Howard Kennedy—”

“The ex — FBI agent who worked for Pevsner?” Torine interrupted. “The one someone slowly beat to death with an angle iron in the Conrad Hotel and gambling joint in Punta del Este? That Howard Kennedy?”

Castillo had nodded.

“Aleksandr explained to me that both Mr. Kennedy’s death and the painful manner thereof was necessary pour l’encouragement des autres not to think they could get away with setting the boss up to be whacked.

“Anyway, Kennedy couldn’t find the American woman who sold him this place and he looked very hard. As you well know, when Aleksandr tells somebody to do something and they don’t do it, or screw it up, his tantrums make the famous tantrums of General McNab in such circumstances look like a small, disappointed frown.

“But Aleksandr did manage to get the plans for Karin Hall from a dishonest German civil servant, and they looked like a Xerox copy of the plans from which this place was built. Or vice versa.”

“You think Göring was going to try to come here?” Torine asked.

“I don’t know, Jake,” Castillo had said, “and I don’t think anyone ever will.”

The Bell 429 made a sudden turn to the left, still close to the water, and both Jake Torine and Dick Miller decided it was some kind of evasive maneuver, and both wondered what they were evading.

Three minutes after that, Koshkov turned on the landing lights, and ten seconds after that floodlights came on in what a moment before had been total blackness, and a moment after that a sign illuminated, giving the wind direction and speed.

And forty-five seconds after that the 429 touched down. As soon as it had, the floodlights and the sign went off, replaced by less intense lighting illuminating the helipad.

Janos Kodály, Aleksandr Pevsner’s hulking Hungarian bodyguard, was standing at the front fender of a Land Rover. Behind the Land Rover was a Mercedes SUV, beside which stood four men with Uzi submachine guns hanging from their shoulders.

It was a five-minute ride through the hardwood forest to the mansion, where Janos led them through the huge foyer to the library. There the females of the family were waiting for them.

One was the mistress of the manor, Aleksandr Pevsner’s wife, Anna. The second was their fifteen-year-old daughter, Elena, who, like her mother, was a fair-skinned blonde. The third was Laura Berezovsky, now Laura Barlow, wife of Tom Barlow, formerly SVR Polkovnik Dmitri Berezovsky. The fourth was their fourteen-year-old daughter, Sof’ya, now Sophie Barlow. The fifth was former SVR Podpolkovnik Svetlana Alekseeva, now in possession of Argentine documents identifying her as Susanna Barlow. Susanna and Tom Barlow were brother and sister. The Barlows and the Pevsners were cousins, through Aleksandr Pevsner’s mother.

They were all wearing black dresses, buttoned to the neck and reaching nearly to their ankles. The dresses concealed the curvatures of their bodies. Each had a golden cross hanging from her neck. Simple gold wedding rings on Anna’s and Laura’s hands were the only jewelry visible on any of them.

On the flight from Panama City, Lieutenant Colonel Naylor, who had never met either, asked Vic D’Alessandro what Mesdames Pevsner and Berezovsky looked like.

“Typical Russian females. You know, a hundred and sixty pounds, shoulders like a football player, stainless steel teeth…” D’Alessandro had replied, and then when he got the shocked look he was seeking from Colonel Naylor, said, “Think Lauren Bacall in her youth, dressed by Lord and Taylor, and bejeweled by the private customer service of Cartier. Truly elegant ladies. And the girls, their daughters, Elena and Sophie, look like what their mothers must have looked like when they were fourteen. Four attractive, very nice females.”

Lieutenant Colonel Naylor knew what former Lieutenant Colonel Svetlana Alekseeva looked like. Sweaty — her Christian name had quickly morphed into this once she became associated with Lieutenant Colonel Castillo and his associates — was a striking redheaded beauty given to colorful clothing that did the opposite of concealing the lithe curvature and other attractive aspects of her body.

Today, the women’s hair, which usually hung below their shoulders, was drawn tightly against their skulls and into buns. They wore no detectable makeup, not even lipstick.

“Hey, Sweaty, where’s your otxokee mecto nanara?” Vic D’Alessandro asked, as he kissed her cheek.

She waited until he had exchanged kisses with Laura, Sophie, and Anna before saying, “You will find out soon enough, if, when you get in the dining room, you — any of you — do or say anything at all that offends His Eminence the Archbishop or His Grace the Archimandrite in any way.”

“Not a problem, Sweaty. Liam Duffy told us about the archbishop and Mandrake the Magician. So we will just stay away from them until Charley’s free.”

“Archimandrite, you idiot!” she flared. “He’s the next thing to a bishop. A holy man.”

“As I was saying, Sweaty, where can we hide until these holy men are finished with Charley, or vice versa?”

“If the archbishop did not wish to talk to you, you wouldn’t be here,” she again flared. “Or Janos and I would have greeted you with swinging otxokee mecto nanaras when you tried to get off your airplane.”

“What do these fellows want to talk to us about?” Torine asked.

“Not ‘these fellows,’ Jake,” Sweaty said. “I expected better from you. They are an archbishop and an archimandrite and deserve your respect.”

“Jake,” Anna said, “His Grace and the archimandrite are here in connection with Charley and Svetlana’s marriage problem. This is serious.”

“Okay,” Torine said.

“Now, when Janos takes you into the dining room, what you do is bow and reach down and touch the floor with your right hand…”

Sweaty demonstrated.

“… then you place your right hand over your left hand, palms upward…”

Sweaty demonstrated this.

“… then you say, ‘Bless, Your Eminence.’ In Russian.”

“I don’t speak Russian,” Naylor said.

“Repeat after me. , ,” Sweaty ordered.

“, ,” Naylor repeated.

“Again,” Sweaty ordered.

“, ,” Naylor said again.

“Now you know how to say ‘Bless, Your Eminence’ in Russian,” Sweaty said. “When you say it in the dining room, the archbishop will reply, ‘May the Lord bless you,’ and make the Sign of the Cross, and place his right hand on your hands. Then you kiss his hand. That’s it, unless His Eminence decides to introduce you to the archimandrite. If he does, then you go through the routine for him.”

“Got it,” Naylor said.

“You better have it. If you fuc— don’t get it right and His Eminence or His Grace is offended, I’ll chop you into small pieces with my otxokee mecto nanara.”

“I don’t suppose there’s any way I can opt out of this charming ritual?” Dick Miller asked.

“Not and live, there isn’t,” Sweaty said. Then she ordered, “Janos, take them to His Eminence.”

Janos opened the door to the dining room and announced, in Russian, “Your Eminence, Your Grace, the Americans are here.”

“Please ask them to come in,” a voice replied in Russian.

Janos signaled for the Americans and Liam Duffy to enter the dining room.

There were six men in the room, all dressed in black. One of them was Aleksandr Pevsner, a tall, dark-haired man who appeared to be in his late thirties; his eyes were large, and blue, and extraordinarily bright. Another was Lieutenant Colonel Carlos G. Castillo, who was a shade over six feet tall, weighed 190 pounds, and also was in his late thirties. The third was Tom Barlow, who looked so much like Castillo they could pass for brothers. The fourth was Nicolai Tarasov, a forty-odd-year-old short, stocky, and bald Russian. His mother and Aleksandr Pevsner’s mother were sisters. These four wore dark blue, nearly black, single-breasted suits, white shirts, and red-striped neckties. They were all cleanly shaven and looked (at least everyone but bald cousin Nicolai did) to be freshly barbered.

The fifth and sixth men in the room looked as if they hadn’t been close to a barber in a decade or more. Their black beards dropped down over their chests. They, too, were dressed in black, but it was not a single-breasted business suit.

The material of the archimandrite’s garment, the hem of which nearly touched the floor, was velvet, heavily embroidered with white-gold thread. Near the bottom were two representations of winged cherubs surrounded by a leafless tree, also embroidered in gold or white-gold, or maybe platinum, thread.

Draped over his shoulders was a foot-wide — for lack of a better term — black velvet shawl with a white-gold fringe at its ends. Running all the way around it was a white-gold-embroidered border an inch and a half wide into which had been sewn at six-inch intervals gemstones, most of which seemed to be emeralds. The shawl also had representations of cherubs, various versions of the Holy Cross, and some other decorative features. A large golden crucifix hung from a golden chain around his neck, and on his head was a foot-tall white-silk-covered headdress with a tail — like that of French Foreign Legionaires in the desert, D’Alessandro thought — reaching down past his shoulders.

The archbishop was similarly attired, except that he had even more white-gold embroidery and a larger golden crucifix.

Taking a chance that the latter might be His Eminence Archbishop Valentin, Vic D’Alessandro dropped to his knees, touched the floor, put his right hand over his left hand, palms upward, and said, “, .”

“May God bless you, my son,” His Grace the archbishop said, in American English.

When Archimandrite Boris saw the surprised look on Vic’s face, and as he waited for Torine, Miller, and Naylor to play their parts in the ritual as Sweaty had taught them to do, he smiled and said, “Both His Eminence and I were born and raised in Chicago.”