The Outlaws (Presidential Agent 6)

Both had accepted the invitation because it had sounded interesting. And both had fled after the second hour, and met in a Harvard Square bar, by chance selecting adjacent bar stools.

Dr. Casey had begun the conversation—and their friendship—by asking two questions: “You were in there, right?” and then, after Dr. Hamilton (in mufti) nodded: “You think that moron actually believed that bullshit he was spouting?”

Dr. Hamilton had been wondering the same thing, and said so: “I have been wondering just that.”

“Aloysius Casey,” Casey had said, putting out his hand.

“My name is Hamilton,” Dr. Hamilton replied, and then, having made the split-second decision that if Casey were one of the distinguished alumni, he would have said, “I’m Dr. Casey” and not wanting to hurt the feelings of the maintenance worker/ticket taker/security officer or whatever he was by referring to himself with that honorific, finished, “Jack Hamilton.”

He hadn’t used “Jack” in many years. He still had many painful memories of his plebe year at West Point during which he had been dubbed “Jack Hammer” by upperclassmen. If he was a bona fide Jack Hammer, the upperclassmen had told him, he would do fifty push-ups in half the time this fifty had taken him. This was usually followed by, “Try it again, Jack Hammer.”

“Hey,” Casey had said, grabbing the bartender’s arm, “give my pal Jack another of what he’s having and I’ll have another boilermaker.”

When the drinks were served, Casey touched glasses and offered a toast, “May the winds of fortune sail you. May you sail a gentle sea. May it always be the other guy who says, ‘This drink’s on me.’”

“In that case, I insist,” Hamilton had said.

“You can get the next one, Jack,” Casey had replied.

Three drinks later, Jack asked Aloysius what his role in the seminar for geopolitical interdependence had been.

“Well, I went there, of course. And every once in a while, I slip them a few bucks—you know, payback for what I got—and that gets me on the invitation list, and every once in a while I’m dumb enough to accept. What about you, Jack, what do you do?”

“I’m a soldier.”

“No shit? Me, too. Or I was. I was a commo sergeant on a Special Forces A-team. What branch?”

“Originally infantry. Now medical corps.”

“No shit? I’m impressed. What do you do?”

“I’m involved in biological research. What about you?”

“I try to move data around. I make stuff that does.”

At that point, Colonel Hamilton experienced an epiphany.

“The AFC Corporation. You’re that Aloysius Francis Casey.”

“Guilty.”

“My lab is full of your equipment.”

“How’s it doing?”

“I couldn’t function without it,” Colonel Hamilton said. “I can’t tell you how pleased I am we’ve met.”

A week later, Colonel Hamilton had visited the AFC Laboratories in Las Vegas. In the course of explaining how he used AFC data equipment in his Fort Detrick laboratory, and what kind of capabilities in that area he would like to have if that was possible, he of course had to get into some of the specifics of the work of his laboratory.

Three weeks after that, while in Las Vegas to view the prototypes of the equipment Casey was developing for him, Hamilton was introduced to some of Casey’s Las Vegas friends. He quickly came to think of them as “those people in Las Vegas.” And then, gradually, he came to understand that he had become one of them.

“Aloysius, I don’t want those people to hear this conversation.”

“Ouch! You know the rules, Jack. What one knows, everybody knows. That’s the way it works.”

“Then I can’t talk to you. Goodbye, Aloysius. And tell those people goodbye, too. Hamilton out.”

Colonel Hamilton then signaled to Sergeant Dennis that they were leaving the sealed laboratory. The process took ten minutes, and included both chemical and purified water showers and then fresh clothing.