To my shame, I must admit that when I received word of the great man’s demise, my first reaction was relief. A decade of secrecy has taxed me, like a constant, unrelenting flexing of my stomach. When the manacle of my oath was removed, it had shackled me so long that I hadn’t realized the magnitude of its burden, and so surprising was my respite that all thoughts of his grieving family, all regard for his abandoned compatriots, all consideration of his influence on history, was a thin echo, drowned by unexpected succor.

Perhaps 30 years have elapsed since activities under his influence had captured public attention, but that was simply a testimony of his efficiency. Good agents are invisible, their sway unknown even to those aware of the crusades raging to stay civilization from spinning into an abyss. Yet I could see - or at least I thought I could see - his hand subtly diverting the flow of world endeavor, even as recently as this year. And at that realization, I despair for our future, for unless he was able to persuade others to accept his burden, the forces of darkness may hold sway, for they are legion and although he was gargantuan, he was only one man.

I can tell the story now, because my bond of silence was with him, not with any milquetoast organization or mealy political group with which practicality dictated he ally himself. He ignored their opinions as a workman would ignore the entreaties of his tools, and I can disregard their outrage as I would the howling of a caged dog. I can tell the story because most who read it will disbelieve it anyway, because to give it credence would obliterate their worldview. Those who know are familiar with the story already, but I hope that verification from someone who heard the tale in full directly from his own lips will give them comfort, and reward them for their own discretion and loyalty.

He was christened G Robert Deutschendorf, but the nature of his profession caused him to long abandon that appellation, and even when I met him in his twilight, he eschewed returning to his birthright and instead held to an invented surname, following his younger brother Henry's example of claiming allegiance to a cherished locale. That their chosen city was my own home town was the coincidence that caused him to seek me out, to summon me, and choose me to relate his history. He had stumbled across some of my web noodling and decided that my worldview and writing style would be appropriate for his needs, and so he contacted me and offered me audience.

I agreed to meet with him, and once he presented his fascinating history, I was eager to act as scribe for him, and perfectly willing to abide by his prerequisites. I was allowed to interview him and take notes, but none of his story could be shared, indeed the words shouldn't even be written, until the conclusion of his adventure. He didn't want to see drafts or outlines, resisting (for once) direct interference and instead trusting my meager abilities. He wanted an objective relation, and though I fear I will fail that standard, I'll try to honor his resolve with an honest account.

So, when I heard the news, I reexamined my notes and replayed my tapes, wept briefly, and girded myself for the task long assigned and now due.

It was with the Company in the South Pacific in the 1960s where G's most important work would be done, but his earlier domestic service is also notable, and serves to impart better understanding of his later heroism.

He was drawn to service at a young age, but from the start had a decidedly mature outlook as to what service could mean. Rejecting fealty to any specific person or organization, he instead allied himself with a cause, to what he felt was the unrealized greatness of his country, to the ridiculous concept that all men are created equal, and are endowed by the simple fact of their existence to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Difficult stuff, he would discover, to serve an ideal when all around would have you compromise in favor of the practical, the convenient, the expedient.

The FBI made use of him while he was in his teens, offering him education in exchange for his youth and guile. Disguised in the visage and mannerisms of the counter-culture, his stated mission was to discover subversives among his peers, to gather evidence of their traitorous activity and assist in their lawful incarceration and reform. He soon found that by that, his superiors meant for him to report the names of those who sold and imbibed marijuana and various pharmaceuticals commonly used for benign recreation. Unhappily, he complied, although he concentrated mostly on those he felt most culpable: profiteers and those who supported their vices with thievery, violence, or deception. He gained a reputation for the detail and veracity of his information, as well his persuasive courtroom demeanor. Local police learned to respect and fear him; no officer on the take or involved in a sideline of illegal trafficking was safe from his dogged scrutiny.

As expected, he was resented by those closest to him. Untarnished warriors are inevitably outcast by their fellow soldiers, who in jealousy and inadequacy conspire to destroy the perfection they themselves cannot achieve. It was probably a relief to his FBI handlers, then, when none other than J Edgar Hoover requested he be loaned to a remote field office of the CIA for a special assignment.

At first blush, it seemed to be a routine drug assignment, one arising from typical bureaucratic misconception. In a modest mid-western town, local agents were frustrated with a fruitless investigation of one Dobie Gillis, a youth they were convinced was an influential drug trafficker, possibly with connections in Mexico. Suspicion was directed toward the boy for nothing more convincing than his puzzling popularity with his peers, and that his name appeared to be a pun on a common euphemism for marijuana joints ("doobies"). This probably wouldn't have been enough to gain the attention of the national office, but for the entreaties of one Esmerelda Wentworth Menninger, an influential socialite and mother of Thalia Menninger, a 17 year-old perplexingly enamored with the low-born grocer's son. Exasperated that her daughter refused to comply with her insistence to find a more suitable beau, Esmerelda used her connections to escalate the matter. Such was her sway that the petition found its way to Hoover's desk.

It's doubtful that Hoover was initially eager to accommodate the request. International drug trafficking was a gray area of responsibility. The relatively new Central Intelligence Agency claimed jurisdiction as soon as there was any indication of foreign involvement, but the FBI insisted that a crime committed in the United States was their province, no matter the native tongue of the suspects. Since the CIA already had an investigation in progress, it would be impossible for the FBI to start their own without being accused of poaching. The Wentworth family was insistent, however, and their influence couldn't be ignored. Hoover relented when the head of a Southwest field office suggested he had a young agent, a man of peerless skill and reputation, who he was willing to loan to the investigation. Hoover realized that it would be a coup of sorts if it was an FBI loaner who broke the case, and so approved the assignment.

It was obvious almost immediately to G - now sporting the odd new name Maynard Krebs (he retained "G" as a middle initial in homage to his roots) and disguised behind a beatnik goatee - that his target was an innocent victim of rampaging paranoia by local officials and a scornful gentry. Knowing that such a revelation would only increase the resentment targeted toward him, and add another whole federal bureaucracy to his enemies' list, he again adapted to his fate. While seemingly pressing his official assignment, he began gathering evidence of suspicious activities elsewhere within the community, at the seats of power in Central City.

His first success was the exposure of abuse to draftees at an Army boot camp. After cajoling his ersatz best buddy to join him, he enlisted, and proceeded to catalogue the sadistic assaults used to prepare conscripts for their roles as fodder for the Vietnam war machine. As usual, his research was impeccable, his evidence indisputable. His aggravated handlers, unable to dispute his accusations and unwilling to prosecute those he indicted, were again forced to compromise, quietly dismissing the culpable, releasing the mistreated, and rectifying the illegal practices. The agent's reward was that to which he was accustomed: the scorn of his contemporaries and their reluctant recognition of his success.

He chose his next case with even greater ambition. Again manipulating his pal - this time into enrolling at S Peter Prior Junior College to provide cover for his own presence on campus - he began the careful accumulation of evidence of covert unconventional weapon development by the school's science department.

His ultimate target was the military contractor funding the research: Howelliburton, a wholly-owned subsidiary of the monolithic Howell Industries. The company thought it had found an institute nondescript and malleable enough that it could bypass encumbering and expensive processes required for human safety and environmental responsibility without fear of public scrutiny, and thus quickly and profitably deliver the nasty implements of conquest to their voracious employers.

It was the presence of Professor Roy Hinkley Jr to the SPPJC campus that first set his spidey senses tingling. Routine research found him listed with the faculty of the Cal Tech Physics Department, a pioneer of what would come to be known as string theory. How then, did he end up exiled to Podunk-academia, teaching high school science in the sticks and finagling a begrudged research chair at the local junior college?

The Professor's CIA file - purloined through a combination of charm and deceit - offered a genesis to the enigma. A grainy photo labeled "AZSR 52.3.14.159" showed a rag tag group in the high desert, perplexingly cringing from the sun on the horizon. One of the men in the photo - which could be Hinkley as easily as not - was encircled in blue ink. His contemporaries would be too preoccupied by Camus, cannabis, and coitus to notice, but G's sophisticated deductive capabilities - in concert with his willingness to burn the necessary shoe leather - readily lead him to a plausible answer.

He started with convincing his pal to join him on a Route 66 tour of Arizona, with side trips to small towns like Sun Ridge, Shady Rest, Sierra Rouge, San Raul, and Sand Rock. In each town, while Dobie was preoccupied charming the local sorority, Krebs would find the office of the newspaper of record and charm the clerk into loaning him copies of issues published on and around March 14, 1952.

In Sand Rock, he found what he knew he eventually would. Articles in the Sand Rock Star cited reports of unexplained explosions and strange moving lights in the night sky of the surrounding desert. One article, headlined "Star Gazer Sees Martians", dismissed the speculations of local astronomer John Putnam as to the extraterrestrial origin of the activity. Another, headlined "It Came From Outer Space?", included a photograph of a pair of county line workers, the first in the proximity of the explosion. The junior of the pair, identified as George Hindley, matched in clothing and hairstyle the encircled man in the CIA photograph, and was easily recognized to be the same Roy Hinkley, now exiled to SPPJC.

None of the principles mentioned in the newspaper articles were available for interview, a fact that Krebs found telling. The Star's editors directed him to a local folklorist, long reduced to grizzled cootdom, who recalled the winsome details, although the sepia haze of nostalgia may have influenced his recollection. In short, Sand Rock went flying saucer looney. UFO speculation dominated tavern talk for weeks, until James Dean was busted for speeding in nearby Cascade.

A trip out to the site of the CIA photograph revealed that little had changed in the intervening decade. The same broken mining equipment was scattered about a shallow cave, buttressed by charred wooden braces. The scraggly tumbleweed was scattered, but the cacti pattern remained. Krebs stood in the same spot that the CIA photographer must have stood, and pondered the man's motivation for taking the picture, and what exactly the subjects of the snapshot were reacting to. It took a moment for him to realize, and another to confirm, that he was facing north, as the photographer must have been. The overwhelming light in the photo was neither dawn nor sunset; it wasn't the sun at all.

The road trip went from Sand Rock to Pasadena, and the campus of the California Institute of Technology. A higher class of women to strike out with for the Dobie, and more file digging for his friend. The faculty archives revealed that Professor Hinkley started at Cal Tech in the fall of 1952, to occupy a new Physics chair endowed by Thurston Howell III. He taught a light load of Freshman Physics, and spent the majority of his time overseeing research, apparently gaining a Masters degree and leaving the UFO flap behind with a simple name change. For eight years, he methodically climbed the administrative ladder, publishing enough to maintain a modest academic celebrity and apparently keeping his Howelliburton handlers happy, based on his regular funding continuances.

Hinkley's Cal Tech egress remained perplexing. The faculty record and CIA file were both resolutely mute. Any reference to the Professor post-1960 in those records was expunged, if it ever existed. Clearly, the move was somehow tied to his Howelliburton research, but the nature of that research was vague, hidden in layers of CIA security that G's meager field-agent influence was unable to penetrate. The closest he could get was a project code name: Monarch, a deliciously mysterious title that could mean almost anything.

Unsuccessful but resolute, the duo returned to Central City, the fair-haired youth to continue pursuit of the SPPJC coeds, and his goateed partner to discern what picture the scattered jigsaw pieces in his possession might reveal.

Krebs decided to put Hinkley aside for a bit, hoping that a circuitous route would lead him to his destination. Scrutiny of other Howelliburton-funded research revealed legally tenuous activity. As usual, the clues were first obscure. Several students sported nasty rashes on their trunks and arms. The campus cafeteria workers took to wearing bandanas and long-sleeved shirts in the steamy dish room. Bit by bit, evidence of chemical weapons research - outlawed by state and university charter - became apparent. Methodically he gathered the facts, and arranged them so they pointed unequivocally to the culpable.

Still, he hesitated to press that inquiry to its conclusion, for fear of driving his principal prey into an inaccessible lair. It was a chance event that gave that primary inspection new momentum. He was attending an on-campus career fair as part of his "best buddy" cover, as his pal had eyes for one of the conference's organizers. A meteorologist made reference to the "butterfly effect" - which postulates that the flap of a butterfly's wings in South America can influence weather patterns sufficiently to cause a hurricane off Japan. Suddenly the Monarch project had a new possible meaning.

A revisitation of Pasadena newspaper archives - this time concentrating on the weather pages - confirmed his conjecture. In the months before Hinkley's departure from Cal Tech, several freakishly violent storms visited the area, the last causing mudslides that resulted in the destruction of a dozen homes, and the death of three people. Deeper scrutiny of the FBI and CIA files still left Monarch behind in California, but Krebs was convinced that Hinkley's weather control research continued.

Krebs returned to direct observation of his prey. He followed Hinkley during one of his customary Sunday drives to the country, as he had done before, this time with a new agenda. As usual, Hinkley drove to an isolated and apparently random spot, parked for an hour, then turned around to drive home. Instead of following as he had done before, Krebs lingered. It wasn't long before his diligence was rewarded. A tiny dust-devil swirled up from Hinkley's tires, and floated slowly across a pasture with unusual persistence. It grew, and within minutes was a small tornado, tossing flora and small fauna about before dissipating.

So Hinkley's research was still about weather control, although perhaps "weather consolidation" or "weather intensification" would be a more accurate term. Additionally, he was becoming bold again, experimenting in the open and with little regard for collateral damage. One wondered how soon it would be before some unwitting farm boy would be cutting across the wrong field at an inopportune time and become another victim to the apathy of science.

Krebs was confident he could tie the current experiments with the disaster in California. This would be an exposure too sensational for the power elite - no matter the reach of their influence - to suppress. The paper trail was too extensive, the physical evidence too dramatic. Exposed to the sunlight of public ire, the vampiric corporation Howelliburton would shrivel, and justice would pierce it like a stake, obliterating it. And with this victory, G Robert Deutschendorf himself could step out of the shadows and be acknowledged for his service.

His prey wasn’t as oblivious to his pursuit as he imagined, however. Thurston Howell III didn’t parlay a fourth-generation machine parts company into the country's third largest military industrial supplier by being unaware of his adversaries. The same instincts that allowed him to dodge six antitrust suits and enabled him to defy an annual tax evasion investigation warned him of impending capture, and with honed reflexes he contrived his escape before the noose had even identified its intended neck.

Howell realized his current pursuer was made of more substantial stuff than the IRS gumshoes or Treasury Department career cops he was used to dismissing. This investigator was used to the dangerous shadows of narcocrime; neither bribes nor threats would suffice to dissuade this menace. Diversion over confrontation was a Howell tradition, so it was a simple decision to seek respite from pursuit rather than gird for battle. A long, perhaps permanent, exile to South America seemed judicious.

Howell had others reasons for desiring a languid life in warmer climes over his familiar Wall Street battlefields. Four decades of competition - through the giddy gold rush of his indoctrination, the hardscrabble survival of the Depression, and the pillage of the post-war pastures - had left their scars. The cold stares of the betas in his pack were more daring, defying his dominance, and the intoxication he felt as he rose to the challenge was losing its titillation. To brace against an impending two-sided attack was more than he was prepared to do, especially since his union with Eunice Wentworth - he was fond of calling her "Lovey" - had yielded no progeny, diminishing his interest in the long-range destiny of Howell Industries. Then there was Ginger.

Ginger Grant was a rising off-Broadway star when Thurston and Lovey Howell first saw her in a performance of "Belly Dancers From Bali-Bali". It was a time in their long marriage when the advantages of being connected to the influential Wentworth family had become too familiar for Thurston to appreciate, and the aforementioned barrenness of womb strained their otherwise genteel relationship. Lovey was enchanted with the prospect of supporting the arts by befriending an emerging talent, and Thurston agreed that investing in the girl's career might prove rewarding. Privately, he was intrigued with the prospect of ready access to some choice Hollywood trim.

They financed a film version of "Belly Dancers", moving Ginger to California and establishing her in a medium that was more forgiving of her need for several chances at anything more than the most elementary lines. Even after Lovey's interest wandered to other diversions - a scant month after the premiere of "Belly Dancers", with the new equestrian season - Ginger enjoyed special consideration. For a decade her career was nurtured with Howell funds, funneled from obscure shelter businesses with no apparent connection to the industrialist. She undulated through a series of modestly budgeted productions, drive-in fare that actually turned a profit. Her only obligation was to discreetly entertain Howell on his infrequent forays to the west coast, and she found that his lascivious appetite was easily managed.

But a decade of B-movie stardom and sexagenarian fellatio was taxing Ginger Grant's ambition. Being a kept woman didn't deter her from honing her talent. Two recent musical productions, "Sing a Song of Sing-Sing" and "Singing in the Clouds", received the usual criticism for hackneyed plot and dialogue, but in both instances Grant's singing was commended. Thoughts of a return to Broadway began to form. When she heard that a new Harold Heckubah musical production, "Pyramid for Two", was looking for a controversial new talent to play the lead of Cleopatra, she was convinced it was the role destined to secure her star in the firmament of the Immortals.

Thurston Howell was lukewarm to the idea. It served his financial and carnal interests to keep his mistress on the west coast and out of the glare of celebrity. He thought he could sidetrack Ginger's ambition as he had to similar projects in the past: vague promises, procedural delays, and clandestine sabotage. But Ginger had found new resolve in her maturity, and resolved to get Heckubah's attention, with or without the assistance of her benefactor. Heckubah was no stranger to scandal; he considered the yellow press the best publicity money couldn't buy. Ginger determined that rumor of a long-running affair with a major, elder industrialist - with corroboration furnished in titillating morsels just before curtain - would convince the producer to choose her over more nubile or vocally accomplished starlets.

Her scheme started and ended with a clandestine communiqué to Lovey Howell. A photograph - carefully cropped to conceal the identity of the entwined female - arrived at the offices of the Wentworth Foundation. It was a miscalculation. Eunice Wentworth Howell wasn't a naïve socialite prone to irrational reaction. Similar accusations had hounded her relationship with Thurston since their flapper-era courtship, and she remained resolute in her commitment to him, regardless of their veracity. She understood the temptations that accompanied prestige, and was willing to forgive her husband any non-communicable or swaddled indiscretion, as long as his professed fealty remained with her. Instead of retaining counsel, she contacted her most discreet courier and sent the offending photograph to Thurston, suggesting he procure its negative and resolve the conflict it implied.

Grand Master Howell studied the chess board and determined his next move.

He confided enough of his plan to Miss Grant to secure her cooperation. He offered a different headline, one equally compelling, but would feature her more favorably than a sex scandal. A shipwreck, the lamented loss of a socially prominent couple, and a heroic rescue just as public interest was waning, and coincidentally just before the casting decision for "Pyramid for Two". She agreed to an August Honolulu rendezvous, and left the details to the reptilian Howell medulla.

A lesser strategist would have been overwhelmed by the plethora of assaults against him, but Thurston Howell was accustomed to the duplicitous scheming his situation required. Instead of a handful of challenges, he saw his predicament as a whole. An indiscreet mistress, a careless researcher, and a resolute federal investigator were all odd notes that he, a maestro of human foibles, could assemble into a triumphant symphony.

Project Monarch remained a sinkhole of subsidy without commercially-exploitable results. Hinkley's claim of weather control remained as elusive as the day the industrialist agreed to finance the experiments of a desert rat with a mysterious device that could turn gentle spring rains into torrential downpours. No farmer would pay to have his barren dust bowl land turned into an unworkable flooded plain, but the Pentagon was delighted to fund Project Stormbringer - research into weather intensification for military use - and insisted (encouraged by Howell's cloakroom diplomacy) that a test in a remote location was the logical next step. They offered Howell a battle cruiser from the Pacific Operating Theater for transport, but the millionaire suggested a more unassuming vessel, knowing that it would be the stoutheartedness of the pilot, not the seaworthiness of the ship, that would be essential. Howell knew who he wanted as that pilot.

Jonas Grumby Jr was an old school patriot, and loyal to a fault. He came by his personality honestly; in the 1930s daddy Jo was second-in-command to the famed gun-runner Rick Blaine, a modern Little John helping his captain defy the Fascist blockade in Ethiopia. Father and son were both burly, confident men, with friendly faces that defied the thunderous savagery of which they were capable the situation required. Grumby the senior never left the Horn of Africa, falling in battle while protecting of his compatriots and leaving a legacy his teenaged son would strive to emulate.

Knowing that American involvement in the war was inevitable, Grumby finessed a couple years to his age and enlisted in the Navy. He proved a resourceful and capable seaman, and by 1941 was promoted to ensign and assigned to the battleship Arizona. He was spared eternal rest at the bottom of Pearl Harbor with his shipmates by volunteering for a special mission, and on that fateful December morning was far north of Hawaii on the tiny schooner Minnow, en route to a clandestine negotiation. He was serving as escort Major General (Ret) William J Donovan, who was to discretely meet with Admiral Chuichi Nagumo to discuss a possible Japanese-USA alliance against the Soviet Union. Just miles from the rendezvous, the Empire's true intent was revealed and Grumby watched with horror as his ship's radar screens filled with fireflies; Japanese Zeroes swarming to destiny. Grumby's ingenuity saved Donovan and the rest of the Minnow's crew that day, as he rewired the ship's radio to scramble the transmissions of the sons of Nippon, affording a furtive retreat. "Wild Bill" would remember Grumby's resourcefulness and call him to service several times in the future.

Grumby's South Pacific service would have been remarkable, had it not been shrouded in the necessary mystery of national security. A careful comparison of ship manifests and role call logs would have found frequent discrepancies for Ensign Jonas Grumby, as he was often called upon to perform duties where a singularly quick mind, discrete manner, and ruthless comportment would win the day. It was during this time that he acquired the nickname "Skipper", earned through the admiration of his peers despite being continually passed over for promotion.

The Skipper took that slight with the same good humor that allowed him to survive in a climate of dangerous paranoia. Despite the white-knuckle peril of his daily life - solitary eruptions of terrible savagery within the relentless drone of resolute annihilation - he maintained a courageous nonchalance that sustained him. He would fulfill any inhuman task the feral imaginations of his superiors would assign him with efficiency and grace, and remained seemingly unaffected by the dark horrors that were his stock in trade. Until, that is, he was assigned to kill Jack Kennedy.

He wasn't naïve. Previous assignments had political aspects, and American officers had been targets before. He had abandoned angst over the ambiguous nature of his craft long before, but the Kennedy task was something altogether different. Never before was an assignment so blatantly rapacious; an OSS attempt to use the fog of war to eliminate a political rival. Grumby wasn't surprised that the agency would have such ruthless foresight; he knew Wild Bill Donovan's penchant for calculated precaution and brutal opportunism was a hallmark of the organization he created. He knew, too, that to refuse the job would mean the end of his career as a reliable operative, and would do nothing to secure Kennedy's safety. So, with bile rising, he accepted the assignment and in the deadly dark of August 2, 1943 found himself aboard his faithful Minnow in the opaque brine of Blackett Strait between PT-109 and the Japanese destroyer Amagiri.

His plan was adequate, if imperfectly executed, given the time allowed. Conventionally, the Amagiri would have rammed the boat head-on, demolishing it utterly and grinding what remained in its propellers, and Kennedy would have sported 60 grains of distorted lead behind his left ear for good measure. As it was, the PT boat was maneuvered to be at right angles to her intended course, and the battleship sliced the tiny craft in half, like an ax head through a crusty wedge of crumbling cheese. Two men were killed in the crash, but Kennedy and 14 of the crew survived, little Yankee wontons bobbing in a lukewarm Polynesian stew. The Skipper acted with Swiss-watch precision. As soon as the destroyer cleared the wreckage and trundled indifferently on its way, the Minnow glided into place, to the far side of the ruined craft from where the desperate crew was gathered, clinging to flotsam and each other. Relying on dark, distraction, and delirium to mask his activity, he grappled enough of the debris to drag along the men, and chugged steadily to a predetermined rendezvous. By the time the dawn arrived, rosy fingered, Jack Kennedy and his boys were drying out on the beach, pale raisins dotting Plum Pudding Island.

They got Joe a year later, when his bomber exploded over the English Channel. But after the miraculous PT-109 survival, it was determined that another attempt against the younger Kennedy would call too much attention to the shadow operation trying to sway the events of the war, and so Jonas Grumby's canny resolution to a seemingly impossible predicament gave Jack two more decades to influence history before a patsy and a magic bullet would shatter the prospect of a new Camelot.

Kennedy's salvation was the beginning of Grumby's professional and corporeal decline. Assignments became infrequent and inconsequential, as the miasma of apparent failure was inexpugnable. Immersing himself into his overt military duty proved faint compensation, he was surprised to discover. The visceral thrill of espionage was intoxicating to the point of addiction, and the longer he was without an important assignment the greater his agitation and desperation. Since he couldn't rely on dirk and garrote for endorphic gratification, he eventually reached to another equally effective conveyance: an opium pipe.

The next 16 months were a fog of alternating ethereal rapture and searing desperation. Other sailors who succumbed to the lure of the pipe would be quietly rehabilitated and transferred, but Grumby's shadowy overseers assured that he was not collected in standard protocol, preferring to retain him in familiar territory should the need arise to utilize his talents, or eradicate the evidence of their manipulation he represented. That's how Thurston Howell III found him, below decks and dreamily incoherent, when he came to the South Pacific looking for someone with Grumby's portfolio.

At the time, Howell Industries was a minor subcontractor to General Dynamos, providing precision-milled widgets for its various military projects. It paid well, once the nuances of contract gouging were discerned, and made the eager young nuevo-industrialist privy to information that could be leveraged to the advantage of one with the cunning, resources, ruthlessness, and immorality to use it. One such tidbit had come his way, and after months of calculation and clandestine negotiation, Howell was ready to execute his scheme and harvest his reward, if he could keep his opportunity secret from the other hyenas of his clan, and obtain the assistance of a capable man with knowledge of the Pacific Operating Theater.

The man Howell encountered was less than hoped for, and certainly less than his friend Wild Bill Donovan had portrayed. He found it improbable that the bloated, pasty, palsied wretch before him was once a thunderbolt-quick Spartan whose nerve and wit outmatched a flotilla of bloodthirsty Japanese prowlers. He was dismayed to consider that the fate of months of planning and manipulation might rely on the ruin lolling uncomprehending before him. But, due to the immediacy and confidentiality of the situation, his options were severely limited. Howell did what he did well; he improvised.

By necessity, Thurston Howell III was a better student of human nature than the OSS overseers who had preceded him in pondering the psyche of Jonas Grumby Jr. After only a couple days attending to Grumby's convalescence, he detected an unreported subtlety to the sailor's persona, one he determined to leverage for his purposes. Without explanation or fanfare, Ensign Jonas Grumby and a young, slender orderly, Seaman Gilligan Davis, were assigned to the USS Indianapolis, with unspecified duties.

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