The fourth member of the faux family approached: twenty-nine-year-old Constance “Connie” Carson, who like Middleton and Lespasse, was former military. She’d returned the “baby,” the MP-5 machine gun, to the NATO van. Though they couldn’t legally carry weapons without permission—which the French had not given them—Connie, with her muscular cow-girl’s body and piercing blue eyes, wasn’t the sort to say no to. She’d walked up to the NATO officers, pulled the machine pistol off the gun rack, chambered a round and tossed the gun into the bassinette. Ignoring their protests, she’d said, “Just gonna take her for a little stroll,” in an accent that pinpointed her roots in West Texas.

She unplugged the walkie-talkie ear buds, disguised to look like they belonged to an iPod, and examined the roads. “Betcha he’s not alone.”

“That’s what I think,” Middleton said. “We can’t find anybody, though.”

Connie continued to scan for possible offensive threats. This was her nature, Middleton had learned.

“He’s coming to, Colonel,” the other NATO officer called, standing near Balan, sitting under the sign. It looked like a cartoon, with the words “Pommes Frites!” in a dialog balloon over his head.

“How long?” Middleton asked.

“Five minutes.”

“What do you want me to do, Colonel?” Wetherby asked.

“Hang tight. I might need you to interpret.”

“Yes sir.”

Harold Middleton stretched and gazed out to sea, reflecting that he was a long, long way from his home in Fairfax County, Virginia, outside of Washington, D.C., where he’d been only last week.

He was a bit trimmer than he had been a few years ago, when he was living comfortably—“fat and sassy,” he’d tell his daughter Charley—with two great jobs: authenticating music manuscripts and teaching music history. He’d taken them up after retiring from one that was considerably more demanding. As a military intelligence officer, Middleton had witnessed the results of war crimes, ethnic cleansing and other atrocities in many parts of the world. Determined to help bring the perpetrators of those offenses to justice, he’d left the service and started a nonprofit group called War Criminal Watch, devoted to tracking down human rights violators wanted by the International Criminal Court in The Hague and by other tribunals around the world.

Since they were not affiliated with any law enforcement agency or non-governmental organization and made virtually no money for their work, they were known as the Volunteers. They gained a reputation throughout the free world for their brilliant detective work in tracking down elusive criminals.

For various reasons, the group had disbanded some years ago, and Middleton went on to his beloved music, Leonora Tesla to do relief work in Africa and the other Volunteers to their own lives.