As it turned out the stairs led to the middle of a corridor and so there were four doors at the top. I chose a door, stood outside, and held the knob. I listened, trying to hear any movement at all. I took a deep breath, turned the knob, and entered. It was not a bedroom at all. It was a conference room, a war room like ones I had seen in movies, admirals pushing tiny ship models around on a vast blue nautical chart. But this table was not a chart of the ocean or a mere map of the land but a model of Fort Knox and the US Bullion Depository. The detail was amazing, buildings, trees, bushes, soldiers, and even potholes in roads. There were lavender-colored letters on top of the depository that read Operation Lilac. There was so much detail that I found myself looking for myself, for Sill, for Eigen. I remembered that I was in fact only looking for Eigen and decided to move on to the next room.

In the next room I found Eigen, but sitting with her, waiting for me, was John Sill. “Well, it took you long enough. How can this operation go like clockwork if one of my principals is running on BPT?”

“Sorry.” I looked at Eigen. I could see that she was still in a trance or drugged, I didn’t know which, but I could also see fear in her eyes.

“What held you up?”

“Do you know that your general friend is dead?”

“I didn’t know that,” he said. “That’s an alarming bit of news.”

“And yet you don’t appear alarmed.”

“It serves no one to get excited about anything. Don’t you think it’s better to remain calm?”

“Like Eigen here?” I asked.

“There’s calm and then there’s—” He stopped.

“Drugged?” I said.

Sill shrugged.

“Are you telling me you’re not responsible for the general’s death?”

“Yep.”

“Then who did it?”

He shrugged again. “Villainy is messy, unpredictable, erratic, fickle, one might even say inconstant. How would a mathematician put it?”

“Unpredictable is good.”

“I was thinking you might suggest variable. At any rate, no one lives forever. There once was a general from Trent, whose dick was crooked and bent, it caused him much trouble so he put it in double and instead of coming he went.”

“Takitall was from Trent?” I asked.

“No, I just like limericks. I mean, who doesn’t?”

“I don’t,” Eigen said.

Sill and I looked at her.

“I like sonnets. And villanelles.”

“Eigen and I will be leaving now,” I said. Nothing sounds like a lack of confidence like one’s trying to sound confident.

“You can’t go now. Your departure is not a scripted part of Operation Lilac.” A couple of Sill’s large, formerly Sikh, men stepped into the room from the hallway. “You see, you really must come with us. It will be like nothing you’ve seen before.” Then to his henchmen, “Bring them. And be careful with the male.” He laughed. “We want to be certain that nothing happens to him.” He leaned close to me. “Literally.”