Triple Crown

1

‘Where are those goddamn cops?’ Tony Andretti said it under his breath, quiet as a whisper, but it was full of frustration nonetheless.

‘Calm down,’ I murmured back. ‘They’ll be here soon enough.’

Tony and I were lying side by side, out of sight in the bushes, next to a lay-by off the A34 trunk road north of Oxford. We’d been in position for several hours, getting ever wetter thanks to the persistent rain.

‘Call them in now, Jeff,’ Tony hissed at me angrily. ‘Or we’ll lose them.’

I ignored him and went on watching through my binoculars.

Two men were standing in the lay-by, between the cars in which they had recently arrived, their heads bent close together as if they didn’t want to be over-heard. Not that there was much chance of that, I thought, not with a line of heavy lorries thundering past noisily on the dual carriageway only a dozen or so yards away.

One of the men, the shorter of the two, removed a white envelope from his trouser pocket and handed it to the other, who then turned away from the road, conveniently facing directly towards me, as he counted the banknotes it contained.

I used the camera built into my binoculars to take a couple of still shots as the man thumbed through the wad, then I switched to video mode and zoomed in, first on the money in the man’s hands and then up to his face. The light wasn’t perfect but my top-of-the-range digital system would be well able to cope.

Obviously satisfied with its contents, the taller man stuffed the white envelope into his anorak and then handed over a small flat package. I filmed it all.

‘Now, Nigel,’ I said quietly but distinctly into the microphone taped to my left wrist.

I went on filming as the two men briefly shook hands and then started to return to their respective cars.

‘We’re losing them,’ Tony said to me in an irritated tone.

I was beginning to think that he might be right, that I’d left it too late, when a couple of police squad cars arrived at speed, screeching to a halt and blocking in the vehicles in the lay-by. Even before they had come to a complete stop, the doors were flung open and four uniformed officers spilled out.

The shorter of the two men stood stock still, openmouthed in disbelief, but the taller one turned and ran — away from the police, and straight at me, at the same time removing a long-bladed knife from his coat pocket.

‘Knife!’ Tony shouted loudly from beside me, as he struggled to stand up.

The man changed from looking back at the police to looking forward to where Tony and I had been hiding. He saw Tony, who was now on his feet, and turned slightly to go directly for him, the blade facing upwards in his left hand in a manner that suggested to me that he knew exactly how to use it.

I rolled over, grabbed Tony by the ankles and pulled hard.

He came down on top of me, his considerable bulk sprawling over my legs.

‘Let go of me,’ Tony shouted angrily, trying to kick out towards my face.

I hung on tight.

The man with the knife hurdled the two of us and ran off into the trees behind, pursued by a pair of the policemen.

They’re welcome to him, I thought, even with their anti-stab vests. I’d been on the wrong end of a carving knife once before and had no wish to repeat the experience.

I released Tony’s legs and we clambered to our feet.

‘What the hell were you doing?’ Tony shouted at me, his face puce with rage. ‘I could have had him.’

‘He’d have had you, more like,’ I said. ‘Better to live to fight another day.’

Tony stood staring at me, his hands bunched into fists, adrenalin still coursing through his veins. I stared back at him.

Slowly he relaxed and his fingers uncurled.

‘I suppose you’re right,’ he said. ‘Thanks. But I’d have taken him down if I’d had a piece.’

‘Tony, you’re no longer with the NYPD.’

As a younger man, Tony had been a cop, one of ‘New York’s Finest’.

‘I can’t get my head round you Brits and guns. Not even your cops carry them. You’re just asking to get yourselves killed.’

I resisted pointing out to him that, in the previous ten years, only a handful of British police officers had been killed on duty, whereas hundreds of American cops had died in the same period.

The remaining two police officers had arrested the shorter of the men and were applying handcuffs to his wrists while relieving him of the package, which was then carefully enclosed in a plastic evidence bag.

Nigel had followed the police in his own car and was now standing to one side watching. Tony and I went over to join him.

‘Well done,’ I said, slapping Nigel gently on the back.

‘You’re certainly a cool one, and no mistake,’ Nigel said, smiling at me. ‘It was as much as I could do to stop the boys in blue turning up as soon as they knew the men had arrived.’

I smiled back at him. Nigel Green was a colleague of mine in the integrity service of the BHA, the British Horseracing Authority, and we had together spent several weeks setting up this operation after a tip-off. We had been surprised that the police had been so cooperative, agreeing to wait in a farm lane with Nigel until I called them in. Word of our past successes, when they alone had previously failed, had clearly filtered up to the powers that be.

‘Damn right he’s cool,’ Tony said. ‘Nerves of steel. I’d have called the cops in far sooner.’

‘I’m not cool,’ I said jokily. ‘At least, not in that sense.’ In temperature terms, I was extremely cool, and very wet. I shivered. ‘If the posse had turned up before the package was handed over we wouldn’t have been able to implicate both men. That’s all.’

‘Do you think those guys will get their man?’ Tony asked in his rich New York accent, looking over his shoulder towards the woods.

‘Eventually,’ I said. ‘If not today then sometime soon. I have all the evidence we need on disc.’ I tapped the binocular-camera round my neck.

The arrested man was frogmarched past us towards the police cars by two tall officers who made him look even smaller than he actually was.

He stared at me with hatred in his eyes.

‘Hinkley, you’re a bastard.’ He said it with feeling.

‘You shouldn’t get mixed up with drugs, Jimmy,’ I said.

The man was placed in the back of the police car.

‘He knows you, then?’ Tony said to me.

‘Indeed he does,’ I said. ‘Jimmy and I have crossed swords before.’

Jimmy Robinson was a jockey, quite a good jockey, who had previously tested positive for cocaine and been banned from riding for six months as a result. That had been two years ago but he had clearly not learned his lesson.

‘I thought you always worked undercover.’

‘I used to, but things change.’

It was a consequence of being a long time in the job. When I’d first started as an investigator at the BHA, fresh out of the army, I worked my entire time incognito, often using false beards and glasses to ensure that, even if I were seen, no one would recognise me again. But gradually, over time, my name and face were slowly put together by the racing fraternity and my covert work was now limited, although I could still occasionally get away with it provided I employed some of my more elaborate disguises.

It was a situation I was not happy with. I had enjoyed living in the shadows, rather than in the spotlight.

For some time I had even considered leaving the BHA altogether, packing up and moving abroad, possibly to Australia, to start again where my face was unknown.

The two policemen returned from the woods empty-handed, which didn’t please Tony.

‘They should have caught him,’ he said to me. ‘Your cops need to be fitter.’

I thought that was rather rich coming from him. Tony could hardly run fast enough to catch a cold. He had clearly put on far more than the odd pound since his days on the force.

‘We’ll have to call the dogs out,’ one of the policemen said. ‘They’ll soon find him.’

‘Get a helicopter up,’ Tony said, almost as an order. The policeman shook his head. ‘No point. Even their heat-seeking cameras can’t see through that lot.’

I looked past him into the trees. It was, in fact, more of a plantation than a natural wood, with evergreen firs standing cheek by jowl for as far as I could see, which wasn’t very far at all due to a lack of illumination beneath the trees. If visible light couldn’t penetrate the cover, it was no surprise that infrared would be unable to do so either.

‘Do you need us any more?’ I asked.

‘Not here,’ said the senior officer. ‘But you will each need to give a statement concerning this operation. Can you do that on a Section 9 Form?’

‘No problem,’ I said. ‘I have one on my laptop.’

Section 9 of the UK Criminal Justice Act 1967 allowed written statements to be accepted by a court as evidence, provided they obeyed certain conditions. The Section 9 Form wasn’t absolutely essential but it contained the necessary declarations of truthfulness and I was happy to oblige. The police had been uncharacteristically helpful so far and I had no wish to upset them.

‘Come on, Tony,’ I said. ‘Let’s go home.’

Tony was my shadow, as he had been for the past two and a half weeks. His official title was Deputy Director at the Federal Anti-Corruption in Sports Agency (FACSA) based in Washington, DC, and he was on a fact-finding mission to the UK to learn how the integrity service operated at the BHA.

He and I had instantly liked each other and I had enjoyed having him around, while he, in turn, had developed a love for British steeplechasing, and especially for the Grand National.

Ten days previously, Tony and I had travelled north by train from London to Liverpool for the big race.

He couldn’t get over the excitement that a single jumping race could generate in the population as a whole, with everyone discussing the relative merits of the forty runners, and every workplace running its own sweepstake.

‘At home in the States, steeplechase racing is mostly a small-town affair, run by farmers out in the boondocks. You’d be lucky to have more than a couple of tents in a field somewhere with some temporary bleachers. Nothing like this.’ He had waved his hand expansively at Aintree’s towering grandstands and the impressive media centre.

‘Over seventy thousand will be here today,’ I’d said, as Tony had shaken his head in disbelief, ‘with tens of millions more watching live on television.’

And the Grand National itself had certainly lived up to all the hype with the eight-to-one favourite catching the long-time leader on the line to win by a nose in a photo finish.

‘Amazing,’ Tony had said repeatedly, as the victor was loudly cheered all the way to the winner’s circle, flanked by two police horses. ‘Is all your jump racing like this?’

‘No,’ I’d said, laughing. ‘You should try a wet winter Wednesday at Hexham. Two men and a dog if you’re lucky.’

I had gone to the National not for any specific reason but simply to watch and listen, to gather intelligence and, maybe, to defuse any trouble before it started. At least that’s what I’d told myself, although I had mostly wanted to show off one of the great showpieces of British racing to my American guest.

He had not been disappointed.

Back in the lay-by, a police van arrived with a pair of vicious-looking German shepherds barking loudly through the rear windows.

Nigel, Tony and I stood watching as the excited, snarling dogs were removed from the vehicle by their handler, a mountain of a man with hands as large as any I had ever seen. He crouched down to cuddle each dog in turn, allowing them to nuzzle their snouts into his neck, sharp teeth and all.

Rather him than me, I thought.

After this moment of tenderness, it was time for work.

The dogs were first taken over to the car that belonged to the fugitive and given a few moments to register his scent. Then they were off into the woods, the strain on their leads almost pulling over the handler. A smaller man would have had no chance.

‘I’m glad I’m not the one they’re chasing,’ Nigel said. ‘Did you see those bloody fangs?’

We all laughed but with a slight nervousness — it was really not a joking matter.

‘I’ll miss all this excitement,’ Tony said to us with a smile as we climbed into Nigel’s car. ‘I’m back to being stuck at my boring desk from next Monday.’

‘Don’t you get out into the field at all?’ I asked.

‘Not much any more. I’m getting too old. And too fat.’ He guffawed loudly and clasped his hands round his substantial midriff. ‘Nowadays I have a team of young pups like you to do all my legwork.’

He remained unusually quiet and pensive all the way back to London, a smile never leaving his face. He didn’t elaborate on what was occupying his mind and I didn’t press him. He would tell me if he wanted to.

He didn’t. Not then, anyhow.

2

‘Diuretics!’

‘Yup. Mostly diuretics together with a few laxatives.’

‘No cocaine?’

‘Not even a dusting.’

‘Amphetamines? Or ecstasy?’

‘Nope. Nothing.’

‘Bugger!’

It was the following morning in my office at BHA headquarters in Central London. Nigel was giving Tony and me the bad news about the contents of the handed-over package.

‘The cops aren’t very happy about it either, I can tell you,’ Nigel said. ‘My contact says they’ve dropped the investigation and released Jimmy Robinson with no charges and an abject apology. The chief superintendent is really angry and intends to call Paul Maldini to give him what for.’ Paul Maldini was Head of Operations at the BHA — our boss. ‘He claims we’ve made them look like foolish amateurs.’

To be fair, I suppose we had. But we had also made fools out of ourselves.

Nigel had received a tip-off from one of his regular cluster of covert informants that Jimmy Robinson was again dealing in drugs. Perhaps I had been naïve or careless in assuming that the drugs in question were unlawful, but Jimmy had previous form in that respect. I had called in the police and, with much pushing on my part, the matter had eventually gone right to the top with the Director General of the National Crime Agency applying to the Home Secretary for a communication intercept warrant on Robinson’s mobile telephone. That’s how we knew where and when to wait for the hand-over.

‘Couldn’t they indict Robinson for anything?’ Tony asked.

‘Purchasing medicines without a prescription?’ Nigel raised his eyebrows. ‘It’s hardly grand theft auto. You or I could do the same on the Internet.’

‘Then why all the cloak-and-dagger stuff in some deserted lay-by?’ I asked. But I already knew the answer. Whereas the drugs purchased may have not been illegal according to the Misuse of Drugs Act, both diuretics and laxatives were banned substances for jockeys under the Rules of Racing.

‘Does Jimmy Robinson have trouble with his weight?’ I asked.

‘Doesn’t every jockey?’ Nigel replied.

It was true.

Rises in racing weights had never kept up with the increasing height and bulk of the population as a whole. Before diuretics were added to the list of banned substances in 1999, their use had been widespread by jockeys of all abilities to control their weight.

One former champion jockey once joked to me about taking a handful of pee-pills every day as his only breakfast. ‘The trouble was,’ he said, ‘they made me so dehydrated I got dreadful cramps. On one occasion I remember being given a leg-up in the paddock and being unable to get my left foot into the iron because of it. Had to bump-trot the horse all the way to the start before it eased.’

Another told me he regularly used laxatives, taking them by the packet-full. ‘Explosive decompression,’ he’d said with a laugh. ‘I’d pebbledash the ceiling if I wasn’t careful.’

I’d asked him what the jockeys did now that those drugs had all been banned. ‘Fingers down the throat, mate,’ he’d said. ‘Eat to ease the hunger pain then throw it all back up again so as not to put on any weight. Not clever really.’

‘Can’t do much for their teeth.’

‘Teeth?’ He’d laughed again. ‘Bugger the teeth. Most of those get knocked out in falls anyway.’

I dragged my mind back to the matter in hand.

‘Surely Jimmy would know we would test him for diuretics,’ I said.

‘The police lab says this is something new. Still a thiazide, whatever that means, but a synthetic version. Perhaps Jimmy thought it wouldn’t show up in a test. And maybe he’s right.’

‘Why do these bloody drug firms keep muddying the water with new compounds?’ I sighed. ‘Don’t they realise we’re trying to stop the cheats?’

‘Apparently millions of people take diuretics every day for heart problems and high blood pressure.’

‘I’m one of those,’ Tony said meekly, tapping his jacket pocket.

I suppose I couldn’t realistically blame the drug companies for making our life difficult, not if they were doing good for millions.

I sighed again. ‘So why did the supplier run? And why pull a knife?’

‘He claims he didn’t know what was in the packet,’ Nigel said.

‘So they caught him then?’

‘My police contact said the man walked out of the woods with his arms in the air when he heard the dogs coming. He’d got rid of the knife by then, of course, and the cops weren’t about to launch a massive search for a weapon that hadn’t been used. The man claimed he was only an intermediary, delivering a sealed package for a friend.’

‘So why did he run?’

‘He says that he was told the package contained drugs and he’d assumed they were illegal.’

He hadn’t been the only one.

I was now even more relieved that Tony hadn’t had a ‘piece’ in the lay-by. I could imagine the furore that would have followed the shooting of a man who was supplying perfectly legal medication.

‘It seems odd to me that he just happened to have a knife in his pocket. Surely that’s not normal.’

Tony waved a dismissive hand as if to say that it was quite normal where he came from.

The man’s car had been removed to a forensic laboratory to be searched and, according to Nigel’s police chum, no illegal substances had been found. The man was free to pick it up whenever he wanted to.

The phone on my desk rang. I answered it.

‘Jeff, it’s Paul Maldini,’ said a voice down the line. ‘I need you in my office, right away.’

Oh God, I thought. The chief superintendent must have called.

‘On my way,’ I said.

‘And Jeff, bring Tony with you.’

‘And Nigel?’ I asked.

‘No. Only you and Tony.’

How odd, I thought. It had been Nigel and me who had been responsible for setting up this sorry affair, not Tony. He had simply been an innocent observer to the disaster. It didn’t seem fair that he should be facing the firing squad alongside me.

Tony and I made our way along the corridor to Paul’s office. It felt to me like we were two miscreant schoolboys who had been summoned to the headmaster’s study after having been caught smoking behind the bike sheds — hugely apprehensive and not a little frightened.

‘Ah, come in, come in, both of you,’ Paul said as I knocked and opened his door. ‘Sit down.’ He waved at the two chairs in front of his desk.

I thought the condemned always had to stand to receive their punishment.

Tony and I sat down.

‘Now, Jeff,’ Paul said, smiling and nodding at Tony, ‘Tony here has something to ask you.’

‘Eh?’ I was unsure what was going on.

‘I’d like you to come to the States,’ Tony said, half turning towards me.

‘Eh?’ I said again. ‘Isn’t this about the Jimmy Robinson affair?’

‘No,’ Paul said. ‘It is not.’

‘Didn’t the police chief superintendent call you?’ I asked.

‘As a matter of fact, he did,’ Paul replied. ‘And quite cross he was too. So I reminded him of all the things we had done right in the past and that we had acted in good faith in asking for their help in this case. I told him we had nothing to apologise for.’

‘What did he say to that?’ I asked.

‘Not much.’ Paul laughed as if amused by the memory. ‘I suspect they might not be so helpful in future, but we can live with that. Now, let’s move on. Tony spoke to me last evening and I’ve just had a meeting with the chief executive and the chairman and they have given their approval for his proposal.’

‘What proposal?’ I asked, confused.

I felt like I was living in a parallel universe. I had been expecting to get a severe telling-off and yet here was Paul Maldini, a man with an infamous temper, smiling and joking as if I was flavour of the month.

‘I would like you to come and work for me,’ Tony said.

I turned in my chair and stared at him.

‘Permanently?’

‘For as long as it takes,’ he replied.

‘For as long as what takes?’

‘Let me start from the beginning,’ Tony said. ‘But what I’m about to tell you is highly confidential and cannot be discussed outside the three of us. Not even the BHA chairman and chief executive have the full picture. Do I make myself clear?’

‘Absolutely,’ I said, even though I thought he was being rather melodramatic. As an ex-army intelligence officer, one thing I did know was how to keep a secret.

‘You are aware that I am Deputy Director at FACSA, an agency dedicated to preventing corruption in sport.’ He pronounced it ‘Facsa’, as a word rather than speaking out each of the letters in turn.

I nodded.

‘We have the particular task of keeping US horseracing free of organised crime. As you may know, unlike here in the UK with the BHA, there is no national racing authority in the US. Each of our states has its own rules and is responsible for enforcing them. My federal agency was set up to provide a nationwide focus on anti-corruption, and the Thoroughbred horse industry, both racing and breeding, represents a significant part of our efforts. We even have a special section dedicated to it.’

‘Yes,’ I said. I knew most of this from discussions Tony and I had had during the last fourteen days. ‘But where do I fit in?’

Tony looked around him as if making sure no one was lurking and listening. He also lowered his voice.

‘For some time I have had my suspicions that we have an informant in our ranks.’

‘Mmm,’ I mused. ‘Corruption within the anti-corruption agency. Not good.’

‘Indeed not,’ Tony said.

‘How do you know?’ I asked.

‘I don’t know,’ Tony said. ‘I only have suspicions. My racing team have initiated several operations only to discover that the target has got rid of the evidence just before we turn up. At first I thought it was bad luck, but it has happened too often.’

‘What sort of operations?’ I asked.

‘We recently raided the barns of a trainer who we believed was employing illegal immigrants as grooms, mostly Mexicans, paying them well under the minimum wage and in cash to avoid federal payroll taxes and Social Security dues. We had done our homework and were pretty sure we had the trainer dead to rights. All we needed was to catch the illegals in the act.’

‘But you found none?’ I said.

‘Not one. Vanished like mist in the morning sunshine.’ Tony held his hands out, palms uppermost. ‘On another occasion we received a tip from a disgruntled ex-employee that a Maryland horse farm was using an unlicensed antibiotic together with equine growth hormone on a newly born foal in order to determine if they made the foal grow faster and larger. This practice would be unlawful under the US Animal Welfare Act, but we were involved because it would also constitute a fraud on the future buyer of the foal. So the team arrived one day at dawn to search the premises and take blood samples for analysis.’

‘What did they find?’ I asked.

‘That the foal had been euthanised and the carcass cremated.’

‘Did the farm give a reason?’

‘They tried. Some hooey about the animal kicking out and breaking its leg. But the pit was still red-hot from the fire. They must have incinerated the poor thing through the night.’

‘It could have been a coincidence,’ I said. ‘They do sometimes happen.’

‘If it were only those two I might agree but there have been more, like a fire that conveniently destroyed all the computers in the office of an illegal bookmaker hours before they were to be seized.’

‘Arson?’

Tony rolled his eyes. ‘Not that anyone could prove.’ ‘Have you had a leak inquiry?’ I asked.

‘Not officially. But the Director and I initiated a review of our internal and external communications. In the process, we covertly examined the email and phone records of all of our staff who knew about the operations ahead of time, but it turned up nothing of any use.’

‘How many people knew about these operations beforehand?’

‘About twenty.’

‘Why so many?’

‘There are eight field agents in the horseracing team with a half a dozen backup support staff. Then there are three or four senior personnel, myself included, who would be fully briefed. Plus the Director. All would know about an operation ahead of time. Most would be involved either in the planning or in the decision to give it the green light.’

‘That’s far too many,’ I said. ‘A true secret stops being secret when two people know it, let alone twenty. Planning should be done by only two or three key decision makers, with those taking part in the raid briefed about the operation and told the target only immediately before the off, when it’s too late for the information to be leaked.’

Tony looked down at his hands as if somewhat embarrassed.

‘We are a relatively new agency,’ he said. ‘We clearly still have much to learn.’

‘So you want me to come and teach your people how to do it,’ I said rather flippantly.

‘I suppose that would be nice eventually,’ Tony said seriously, ‘but what I really want you to do now is to come and find our mole.’

‘Why me?’ I asked.

Tony and I were safely back in my office with the door firmly shut. Even so we kept our voices to a murmur.

‘A number of reasons,’ Tony said. ‘Mostly because you know what you’re doing and, because you are an outsider, you are above suspicion. I came to London specifically to recruit you but I needed to be sure. Hence I’ve watched you closely over the past two weeks and I am sure you are the right man. You are determined and single-minded and, most important, you are unflappable. Yesterday you demonstrated admirably that you can keep your head when all around are losing theirs, and that includes me.’

‘I try,’ I said.

As an army intelligence officer in Afghanistan, it had been my task to acquire information from local tribal leaders, most of whom hated the Taliban only fractionally more than they hated the British. Meetings were always fraught with danger, and a wrong word or action could result in an all-out shooting response. Keeping one’s head at all times was essential, metaphorically and literally.

‘But surely there is someone else in another part of your organisation who is better placed to investigate the leak?’

‘I need someone who understands the racing industry.’

‘I know British racing,’ I said. ‘not American.’

‘No matter,’ Tony said. ‘I’ve realised during my stay that horseracing here is much the same as in the US and the potential for trying to beat the system is identical.’

‘I’m not so sure,’ I said. I’d been to the United States before, on holiday, and everything had seemed very different — bigger, brasher and more ballsy.

But Tony wasn’t giving up that easily.

‘Jeff, I need your help. Having a corrupt component in an anti-corruption organisation is like having a cancer. It has to be excised and destroyed, otherwise it will grow and spread, killing the whole body.’

I knew what he meant more than most — my sister had cancer.

‘But I know nothing about how your organisation operates.’

‘I consider that a plus. You won’t be blinded by procedure and protocol. You will be able to look at things afresh while being someone who knows what to look for. I can hardly ask one of my own racing team — I might be approaching the very person we’re looking for.’

‘Don’t you trust any of them?’

‘I thought I did. I picked them all myself. Nearly half are ex-military and the rest are ex-cops. I’d have trusted each of them with my life six months ago. Now I wouldn’t walk down a dark alley with any of them.’

It never ceased to amaze me how wafer-thin and fragile trust can be. All relationships, both work and play, rely on trust as their foundation, yet that trust can be dispelled so quickly by a single word or a casual action, anything that plants a seed of doubt in the mind. And once trust has gone, it is difficult, if not impossible, to re-establish. Ask any divorce lawyer. It’s not a lack of love that drives most marriages apart, but a lack of trust.

‘But there must be other people you could ask, someone from another agency like the FBI or CIA?’

‘Maybe,’ he said. ‘But would they know what to look for? Also, we at FACSA value our independence. It took much persuasion in Congress for our agency to be set up outside of the FBI rather than as a subsection of it, against the wishes of their then Director. Neither my Director nor I have any wish to go to the FBI now and admit we were wrong.’

‘And were you wrong?’ I asked.

‘Not at all. FACSA reports directly to the Attorney General and the Department of Justice, the same as the DEA and ATF do, and I want to keep it that way.’

‘DEA and ATF?’

‘Drug Enforcement Administration and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.’

‘You Yanks do love your acronyms,’ I said with a laugh.

‘Be grateful you don’t work for the Navy’s Bureau of Medicine. Its official acronym is BUMED.’

‘You’re kidding me.’

‘I’m not. Its headquarters building is on Arlington Boulevard. I pass it every day on my way into work.’

‘In Washington?’ I asked.

‘Across the Potomac in Virginia. We’re in Arlington, near National Airport. Real estate in DC has now gotten too expensive for the government. Even the FBI is currently looking to move out.’

Did I fancy some time in Virginia during the spring? I’d heard of the Washington Cherry Blossom Festival. I wondered if it would still be out.

‘OK,’ I said. ‘Tell me what you want me to do.’