I hung up the phone after getting assurances from Tony that the cash would be available at the base on the following day.  The payroll office would have it, but I wondered what the effect would be of so much cash going in and out of that place, which was staffed by real humans who lived out in the community.  Real humans who talked and rumored with others in their neighborhoods and bars, and so on.

I sat behind the desk and looked at the pile of papers Pat had left for me to consider, none of the envelopes or small packages sealed.  Pat wasn’t that kind of woman, no matter what instructions I gave her.

“You’re not always here, and somebody has to set the stuff aside by level of importance.  The top of the stack has to be responded to by yesterday, in my opinion.  If you want to do it some other way, then find yourself another chief of staff.”

I waited until she was done, wanting to tell her that she did not have the title of my chief of staff. I had no chief of staff, only a clerical manager with clerks to manage and occasionally try to keep the hodgepodge of agents, insurance, and otherwise, at bay.  But, as usual, despite my expressive personality, I knew when to keep my mouth shut with women who were doing the job, which was almost always.

The top thick envelope was from the University of New Mexico, and I dreaded pulling the already opened thing open to see what was inside.

Pat stuck her head around the door as I grasped the gaping brown envelope open.

“You’re not kicked out yet, but that came with a box which I have in my office safe,” she said, not pulling back out but waiting, as if knowing I’d have something to say.

“You have a safe?” I asked, in unfeigned surprise.  “I don’t have safe,” I added, my forehead creasing into a frown all on its own.

“You don’t need a safe,” Pat said, finally smiling, “everyone knows everything about you.”  At that, she left.  “Oh, Allen Weh is waiting to talk to you in his office.  You should tell him to come to your office. You can show him that you’re not important enough to have a safe.”

I had to smile at that. I didn’t want a safe.  Pat was right. I was moving way too fast to store much of anything in a very secure, locked place that everyone knew was that. I was becoming experienced enough to know that the real players in life had plenty of access to humans who could probably not only break into any safe but do so and leave the safe without having any signs it’d been opened and reclosed.

Pat delivered the package, which amazingly gave no evidence that it’d been opened.

“You didn’t open it,” I observed, noting that the package was made of sturdy cardboard, square, and about ten inches on a side.   “Why not?” I asked.

Pat handed me a note before leaving.

“To be opened only in my presence,” the note read, the tape broken off both ends of it.  It was hand-signed with a black fountain pen.  “Professor Henry Harpending,” was written in the man’s very distinctive cursive.

“I’ll get over there just as soon as I finish here,” I said to Pat, putting the note into one of the side drawers of my desk and then gently closing it.

“Right after you see Mr. Weh, and then get the cash your men have been grousing about ever since you returned.

“He prefers to be called Colonel Weh,” I said to her departing back, but she didn’t answer.

The trio of Kingsley, Nguyen, and Quincey filed into the office, basically filling up the small space.  None of them spoke a word, but didn’t take any of the seats either. They were waiting as patiently as they could, I understood, getting up from behind my desk.

Pat’s head reappeared around the edge of the door’s jam.

“Colonel Weh is prepared to be attended before you,” she said, before disappearing again.

“Weh stepped inside the office, motioned my three friends out with a sweep of his right hand while his left grasped the door handle.  Once they were outside, he closed the door and made sure it was latched before standing in front of the desk.

“I suppose you want to sit in my chair,” I said, gently but sarcastically.

“No,” he replied, his facial expression serious and the tone of his voice clipped and flat.

I waited, staring into his eyes, determined not to blink first, even though I knew that that gesture only meant something when performed in Hollywood movies and shows.

“You managed to put sixty hours or so on a brand spanking new King Air, which is almost halfway to its next hundred thousand dollar maintenance,” he said.

“You had to be there,” I replied, my own voice quiet and relaxed.

“I knew you’d bring that up,” he replied.  “I’ve seen my own share of combat, and I don’t need any more. If you want to get yourself  killed, then that’s your business.”

“You’re not a coward, even though you’re saying all that, so you can keep telling yourself that.  It was a flight test mission to see if we could make the concept work or if it didn’t, then the planes you so love go right back to the manufacturer.”

I stared at him again and waited.

“There was a helluva lot more to that test than that.  Those two hit men, making believe they were pilot,s were a total giveaway.  And it’s come to my attention that, somehow, a real critical patient was taken aboard.  Who cared for him on the flight, and where did you take him?  How in hell do you fly around in the US of A without filing flight plans?’

I became more comfortable.  The fact that we’d flown Denis, he didn’t know, which meant I wouldn’t have to deal with a revelation that might cost me everything.  I leaned back into the executive chair and relaxed.

“You used up your whole supply of flight time for the year, since you didn’t clear it with me,” Weh said, a gleam appearing in his eyes, as the sun’s rays struck the side of his head just right.  “At least that’s a relief.”

“The plane must stay and the others with it,” I replied, softly.  “You, however, can be replaced.”

“Now who in hell do you think can do that?” he replied, laughing.

I pushed a button on my phone.  Pat’s voice filled the office, her voice sounding a lot like Mikey Mouse’s.

“How can I help you?” she purred, enjoying all the discomfort I was trying to work through after my return.

“Call the number and then put me through,” I said, looking into Weh’s eyes.

“Give them my code, zero one zero four three five eight,” and when the duty officer takes over, tell him I’m going to need a DEA intercept.”

Pat hung up.  I knew she knew it was a ruse.  She’d been around long enough to learn that a duty officer at the CIA complex only passed calls along to control agents.  There was no such thing as a DEA intercept.  I watched Weh as we waited and was very pleased that the slightest tic had appeared at the outside corner of his right eye.  I waited some more, saying nothing, occasionally glancing at the phone.

Finally, a light went on under one of the buttons, and the phone base buzzed.  I reached for the receiver, glancing at Weh.  He shook his head gently but definitively.  I let the phone buzz and blink for a while until it stopped.

“Tell me,” he said, crossing his arms over his chest, as if to protect his torso as best he could from any attack.

“I don’t need to tell you anything, Allen, except continue to march.  I’ll not draw on the usage of the aircraft unnecessarily, but I’ll decide that.  The real mission we were on, well, you don’t need to or want to know about.  Your career is not with the DEA, it’s with building Charter Air Services, and it’s the CIA that’s going to make you the millionaire you so want to be.  Let it happen.”

Weh breathed in and out for a few seconds before dropping his hands down to his sides.  “You’re a lieutenant, still, in the Corps, but you don’t call me sir or even colonel.  You don’t talk like a lieutenant either.  What’s your real rank, I wonder, but you’re right about that mission and whatever it was or is.  I don’t need or want to know, and I don’t need or want to know more about what you’re doing and what you truly are.  So, we’re done here.  He suddenly clapped his hands together and threw them wide up into the air out from his shoulders. I’d only seen that display a couple of times in television movies.  It was what dealers in Las Vegas or other casinos did when they were relieved from the table they were dealing from.

I said no more as he exited through the office door, closing it softly when he was gone.  I knew he would have to be brought up to speed about how to staff the planes and also how to allow for their usage whenever the Agency needed to get personnel in or out of countries of interest.  That meant Charter Services wouldn’t be able to depend on the planes to be around for private charters, where Allen was thinking about making his millions.  Somehow, he would have to be compensated, I knew, but that would come later.

Without warning, the door opened and my ‘three blind mice’ re-entered.

“Come on,” first and second things first and second,” I said, grabbing the Harpending box as I headed for the door.  “First, the base payroll office and then on to the university to visit the professor and his fair maiden professorial wife.   I hoped Doctor Lois Draper would be there when we arrived, as she was stunning, but like a King Cobra was stunning.  Neat to look at, but one had to be extremely wary of being struck by the poison-tipped fangs of that kind of terminally dangerous viper.

“What’s in the box?” Kingsley asked.

“I have no clue, although it is supposed to help me somehow keep my position in the Ph.D. program without me being the kind of student I ought to be to acquire the designation.  I’m not opening it because I was instructed not to.”

“Well, we can open it and tell you,” Quincey said, as I tossed the package to him.

“Nah, let the professor have his surprise, at least he’s playing ball, which I didn’t think he had it in him to do.”

The drive to the base only took about twenty minutes.  Rover, so known by the guards that they didn’t bother to check for identification.  The pay office was closed, as usual, except on pay day, which we were not close to.  I banged on the dark shuttered door and waited.  It took five minutes for it to be opened.

“You can’t come in,” a voice said through the two-inch crack. It was too dark to see inside and identify the man.

“You know why we’re here and what we’ve come for,” I said, through the crack.

“Is this a movie?” I asked, smiling to myself.  “You sound like the guy on that railroad car in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.  Are we going to have to blow the door down?”

Kingsley and Quincy both laughed, remembering the funny scene in the movie, but Nguyen remained impassive and expressionless, like it would not ruffle a feather on him if we did indeed blow the door open.

“It’s in the canvas rucksack over in the back of that Jeep over there,” the voice said.  “A hundred thousand in fifties and twenties, as there weren’t any hundreds left.”

“Thanks,” was all I said, but the man probably didn’t hear me as the heavy wooden door had closed tight as he spoke his last words.

We walked over to the Jeep and I spotted the canvas duffle bag right away, lying in the open area right over the surrounding fender that opened into a small supply or back seat area without a back seat.

“They left this out here with no guard,” Quincy asked, picking up the bag and examining it.  There was a padlock securing the top cable that ran through rings at the top.

“Where’s the key?” Kingsley asked, and I laughed.

“It’s to be cut off, security, you know,” I said, “and look over at that Quonset Hut and tell me what you see on top of it.”

“Holy cow,” Kingsley breathed out.  “A sniper team? Here. For just this?”

“It’s an air force base,” I replied, heading back to the nearby Rover. “They don’t live in the real world so overkill is foreign to their understanding.  A Marine outfit would have had an armed enlisted guy sitting in the driver’s seat and a seasoned noncom in the passenger seat.  Cheap and much more effective in sensing and then possibly reacting to a threat.”

Once back inside the Rover, I thought about the payroll clerk’s comment.  I’d asked for eighty thousand, but the amount was a hundred. I was certain there’d been no mistake in his wording.  What was the additional twenty thousand for?  I knew the CIA did not make mistakes with the money.  The Agency was expansive and very generous in the accomplishment of missions, but it was nearly infamously cheap and nasty about accounting for every dollar that was used for just about everything else.  I knew there was one man who knew, and that man would be sitting at his phone waiting for my call.  It was also Tony’s strangely arcane sense of humor on subtle display.  I had to know. He knew I had to know, and so he would wait for me to ask.  I hated the task of doing so, but loved the way the man’s mind worked, even if I was made the pawn in his game.

The drive to the university took another twenty minutes.  We stopped at the Frontier restaurant since it was so laid back and the great food so cheap that we could afford it without dipping into the money in the duffel bag, not that we had a bolt cutter to get into it anyway.  I left the guys and the money with them and headed over to the anthropology building, where Harpending’s office was located.

His door was open, so I simply walked in and set the box on the chair nearby, but I didn’t sit down.  Harpending was old school.  I would need his permission to be seated, which I wouldn’t ask for because I had no intention of staying.  He sat behind his desk reading something with his glass hung from the very end of his long equiline nose.  I waited.

“You are somehow connected,” he said, not looking up at me or recognizing me in any way other than to be the object of his verbal intention.  “You have power, I will give you that.  You undergraduated in Sociology but got your credits in theology turned into anthro credits at the University of New York. We can’t change that travesty of educational injustice.  So, you are in the compressed two-year Ph.D. program here, and I’m your advisor.  Your mentor, so to speak.

Yes, I cannot fail you nor deny you much of anything without hurting myself and that wonderful woman I’m married to, and whom I know you secretly covet.  Inside the box is an expensive but very compact video camera that takes the latest VHS video tapes.  You are traveling to exotic places, they tell me, on a regular basis.  You will take the camera and film those locations and those humans you find out there in those locations, and then bring your results back for classroom evaluation, consideration, and conclusions.  Have you taken photographs so far?”

I wasn’t ready for the question.  I thought for a few seconds.  The man was being extremely reasonable, and since there was going to be no way for me to properly attend regular classes in person, he was giving me a way through the maze, for both him and me.  I wanted to tell him that I didn’t covet his wife as I had a much better one of my own, but it might just be best if he thought I really did want her.

“Yes,” I replied, honestly.  “I’ve got a Leica R4 rig without about twenty thousand dollars worth of lenses.”

“You took photos of Mallorca and the windmills there?” he asked, still not looking up.

“Yes, probably around ten rolls of 36, just snapping here and there as I went.”

“Bring those to me, developed and printed, but not blown up,” he instructed.

It was a strange request, but fully possible, although I hadn’t had the time to get all the rolls developed.   Harpending had something on his mind, I felt deep inside me, but I couldn’t guess what it was.  Maybe it would come to me, but I could see no harm in sharing the photography since the equipment I used to make the photos was equipment I’d lied to force the Agency to buy.

“Where are you going next, and you might say ‘yes, professor’ when I ask you to do something.”

“Probably Korea,” I blurted out, wanting to laugh at his strange comment.  “And, yes, professor,” I added.

“You may leave my presence now,” he said, still never having looked at me once since entering his office.  I collected the still unopened box and went back to rejoin my friends.

Why had I not thought to fortify security around and in my home?  My wife and children could be at risk at any time.  The discussion about what happened with the first run of ISOS was encouraging, and the proof of principle about entry and exit of agents into and out of foreign countries without normal paperwork or investigation proved sound.  To remain that way, for whatever temporary time it would, required a rigid system of training, behavior, presentation, and even a fallback position wherein documents, should they be requested, would be immediately available.

If Allen Weh was going to operate ISOS, then he was going to have to come a long way from being the analytical administrator of a tiny Charter Services business plane limo service.  Could he do it?  I certainly didn’t have the time, and who else was there?  Weh was DIA, but he could not stay imprisoned in that small cell of intelligence and still do what needed to be done.

I’d created the system and then proved its worth in principle with the evacuation of Denis.  I also knew deep down, however, that the Denis transport was anything but what a normal medical evacuation would be like.   Adaptation was going to be called for, a swift and well-financed adaptation.

I headed for home, security at the forefront of my mind.  Even though becoming much more pacified, Phil Marlowe was still out there, and the mafia reactionaries on Mallorca as well.  Who would be the next person or organization to add to that list?  Or country.  I pulled into the driveway and went inside.  My plan for bringing about a more defended ‘castle’ could not be displayed before her until I was ready.

Defense had to be subtle but effective.  No overwhelming force could be expected, but it didn’t take any kind of force at all to do a simple drive-by shooting or semi-distant sniper targeting.