"No, I think they're still here." Pi pinned her with a determined grin,

"And you and i, lovely lady, are going to find them."

-PART II

The Serapis

October 14, 1991

Washington, D.C.

A cold, bleak drizzle shrouded the nation's capital as a taxi pulled to

a stop at Seventeenth and Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the old

Executive Office Building.  A man dressed in a deliveryman's uniform

stepped from the rear seat and told the driver to wait.  He leaned back

in the taxi and retrieved a package wrapped in red silk.  He hurried

across the sidewalk and down several steps, passing through a doorway

into the reception area of the mail room.

"for the President," he said with a Spanish accent.

A postal service employee signed in the package and the time.  He looked

up and said.  "Still raining?"

"More like a fine spray."

"Just enough to make life miserable."

"And slow traffic," the deliveryman said with a sour face.

"Have a good day anyway."

"You too."

The deliveryman left as the postal worker took the package and ran it

under the fluoroscope.  He stood back and stared at the screen as the

X-rays revealed the object under the wrapping.

He easily identified it as a briefcase, but the picture puzzled him.

There was no indication of files or papers inside, no hard object with a

distinguishing outline, nothing that looked like explosives.  He was an

old hand at X-ray identification, but the contents of the case threw

him.

He picked up the phone and made a request to the person on the other

end.  Less than two minutes later a security agent appeared with a dog.

"Got one for Sweet-pea?" asked the agent.

The postal worker nodded as he set the package on the floor.  "Can't

make an I.D. on the scope."

Sweet-pea hardly resembled her namesake.  She was a mutt, the result of

a brief affair between a beagle and a dachshund. Huge brown eyes, a fat

little body supported by short spindly legs, Sweet-pea was highly

trained to sniff out every explosive from the common to the exotic.  As

the two men watched, she waddled around the package, nose quivering like

a plump dowager sniffing at a perfume counter.

Suddenly she stiffened, the hair on her neck and back stood up, and she

began backing away.  Her face took on an odd, suspicious kind of

distasteful expression, and she began to growl.

The agent looked surprised.  "That's not her usual reaction."

"There's something weird in there," said the postal worker.

"Who is the package addressed to?"

"The President."

The agent walked over and punched a number on the phone. "We better get

Jim Gerhart down here."

Gerhart, Special Agent in Charge of Physical Security for the White

House, took the call during a brief lunch at his desk and left

immediately for the mail reception room.

He observed the dog's reaction and eyebafled the package under the

fluoroscope.  "I don't detect any wiring or detonation device," he said