As if he hadn’t spoken, the guy with the pompadour said, “I’m gonna need to see some ID, Stieglitz.”

He had a good command voice. That was what Jerry’s friends back from Vietnam called it. Jerry’s hand started for his wallet before he even thought about it. He made the hand stop.

“Hold on, dammit,” he said. “Who the hell are you? You want something from me, show me a warrant.”

The stocky man snorted in annoyance. “You can call me John P. I’m with the CIA.” He bobbed his head toward each of his pals in turn. “This is Fred, and that’s Steve.” Fred was the one with the briefcase. Steve had shut the door.

Things were happening much too fast for Jerry. He stared at John P., and at his friends. “You guys are from the CIA, too?” he blurted.

Fred nodded. Steve said, “Actually, I work for the RAND Corporation.” He was about the same age as John, and looked like a professor. Jerry had no trouble believing he drew a paycheck from the big, fancy think tank in Santa Monica.

“Your ID,” John P. said again. He was not only built like a boulder, he was as implacable as one rolling downhill.

This time, Jerry did pull out his wallet. He displayed his driver’s license. John carefully checked the photo against his face, then gave a grudging nod. As Jerry stuck the wallet back into his left front pocket, he said, “Now let me see something that proves you are what you say you are.”

John shook his head. “Sorry. Not gonna happen. People who work for a secret outfit don’t carry cards that say, ‘Hi, I work for a secret outfit.’ You wanna call the cops, go ahead. We’ll be gone before they get here, and you’ll never find out what this was all about.”

Jerry didn’t call the cops. He’d had his car broken into a couple of years before. The Hawthorne police were no faster than they had to be, and no smarter. Later, he wondered if he should have. But that was later. At the moment, he just asked, “Okay, what is this all about?”

“You are Jerry Stieglitz,” John said. “You are a grad student in marine biology at UCLA. You passed your doctoral exams a few months ago, and you’re working on your dissertation.”

“That’s me,” Jerry agreed. Then a light went on in his head. “Professor Krikorian said somebody was asking questions about me a couple of weeks ago. That was you people, wasn’t it?”

“Could have been,” John answered, deadpan. Then he unbent enough to grin. He looked years younger when he did. He went on, “You speak Russian, too.”

“Not real well. I read it better,” Jerry said.

“Okay. And you know a little Swahili. How did that happen?” John asked.