The train ride back from Marrakesh had been pleasantly uneventful.  But, the same could not be said for what had transpired at Abu Kamal's residence in his absence.  His servants had been subdued by two intruders disguised as "mere"Tuaregs.  Especially his security staff!   They, like his two ever-present bodyguards, had been Bulgarian Pomaks, supplied by the 4th Department of the KSD and trained in Libya by Spetsnaz "military advisors" from the GRU.*

 Yet those two bodyguards had been rendered unconscious, by the apparently younger "Tuareg," with frightening ease. Leaving the older (or, at least, slightly taller) one as spokesman.

 "Now we may converse in private."

 "Wh-Wh-Who are you?' demanded Kamal.

 "We shall ask the questions, m'sieur.  You will answer them.  Sans hesitation and prevarication!  Otherwise, you will needlessly subject yourself to an excruciatingly slow fate."

 "Wha-wha-what do you mean?" Kamal stammered once more...before he was stabbed in the right posterial cheek by an acupuncture needle.

 "UHHHHN!"

 "As I said," repeated the senior intruder:  "...we will ask the questions.  Comprenez vous?"

 Kamal dropped to his knees in a half-drowsy daze.  A side-effect of the truth serum with which the needle's tip had been coated!

 "Oui," he haltingly replied:  "Je---comprend."

   * * * * *

  MAGIC CITY, TEXAS (MAY 2, 1979)

  Meriwether, Cecilia, and my dad had deplaned at the Wheeler County Commuter Airport without incident. There, the two normal-sized agents rented a station wagon so they could tie all their luggage on top. Then, they drove to the off-campus apartment house that would be their home till at least the end of the month.  Once they were behind closed-and-locked doors, Dad was removed from the inner right pocket of Cecilia's blazer and they got down to one final briefing.  With Meriwether pointing out the route, between the apartment house and UTMC. on a computer-printed street map.

 "Here's the TNA sorority house.  And here, at the right front corner, is the drain pipe for the rain gutter.  We'll drop you off there, first thing tomorrow morning, by establishing a pattern of pre-dawn jogging.  Cecilia will briefly stop by the bottom of the pipe to ostensibly retie one of her sneakers.  That'll be your cue to disembark and run behind it for the ride up to the attic tunnel.  When you get to the princess' bedroom..."

 "...I whip out my shrinkie-talkie and notify you," Dad replied:  "I got it the first eleven times we went over this!"

 So, at 5:30 the next morning, Cecilia and Meriwether went on their first jog toward and around the campus.  Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at Tau Nu Alpha where they paused while Cecilia performed what Maxwell Smart would probably have called "The Old Shoelace Trick."  And, as expected, Dad made it behind the opening of the drain pipe completely unobserved.  Despite the relatively cumbersome (from his point of view) jet pack and Czech-made Skorpion submachine gun he was carrying.

  You see, ten years earlier, a Czechoslovakian defector had been transferred over the Berlin Wall by jet-packing Green Berets dressed as ninjas...and armed with nine-millimeter Skorpions.    The latter being used to provide suppressing gunfire against the Volkspolizei sentries patrolling No Man's Land!

  That operation had been code-named "Scorpionfly."  And, ever since then, that had been the authorized unit designation for the airborne "microndos" (micro-reconnaissance commandos) frequently employed by Mini-Ops for preliminary surveillance.  As for Dad?  He was being overly modest when he had negatively compared himself to the patriarch of the Robinson family from LOST IN SPACE (the original series; not that needless high-tech remake).  He had actually test-flown one for himself at the New York World's Fair in 1965!   And Mom had once shown me a home movie of that flight.  

  There was no denying it.  He'd been good.

  So, Dad suited up behind the drain pipe, double-checked the ammo clip in his proportionately shrunken Skorpion, and then entered the secret tunnel through the secret panel.  Whereupon, he fired those hydrogen peroxide jets and ascended!  When he got to the landing zone, he touched down without mishap before getting out of the flight suit and making his way down the tunnel behind the walls of the sorority house's attic.  Eventually, he reached a point where there was a long piece of plexiglas tubing like one of those Depression-era pneumatic tubes you sometimes see in the old movies on TCM.  Only, this one was vertical rather than horizontal.  And inside that tube was a rope ladder...made of kite string.

 Dad slowly descended that ladder till he reached the bottom of the tube.  Exiting through the sliding panel at the bottom, he carefully tip-toed toward the wooden surface ahead of him.  There, he pressed down hard on a certain "knothole."  Whereupon, a large square section of that wooden surface swung outward!  Dad then walked through that opening and thereby got his first look at Princess Jumana of Najranistan in the flesh. 

 Figuratively speaking, of course!  Well, almost.  You see, the princess was already in the middle of sunrise prayers in the general direction of Mecca.  But, she wasn't exactly wearing a prayer robe.  Merely...a pearl-white teddy.

 tbc