"So, Ali, what could youpossibly tell the ladies after that showing?" Mike took care of that for me. Gave them a story, thatnone of them bought, about...how we were high school chumsthat had not seen each other in a long, long time."I took Mike aside and made a date for later and he left.The ladies wanted to know what the heck was going on. Theypulled the story out of me, piece by intricate piece thatMike and I had been dating since high school. They sworethem to secrecy and to keep this to. When I asked her who she was, where she was going, and what she was doing on board, she stayed mute. From her teeth, glinting in the dark and smiling, me thought she knew what was said but made no sign. I left her and wended my doleful way to where me snoring old man lay, and crept silently into me bunk. Next morning me and the younger had it out. After cornering him in the stern, me asked him what she was doing aboard, and what did he intend for her. He told me he had picked her up at our last. “A marksman could conceal himself up there.”“True, but look how the dais is sited right in the shadow of the tower. A marksman would have to perch on the very edge of the tower to line up on his target, and thus would be spotted from the ground and dealt with.”I pointed to the row of houses and factories less than a furlong away. “However, there could be a company of sharpshooters hidden in those buildings. Cross will need a battalion of infantry to sweep and secure the area, and also have men. He produced a five-dollar bill and she took it and headed into the kitchen.She returned in a minute and half with a cup of the black elixir. She set it on the coffee table in front of him.She recrossed the floor of the room and resumed her standing position facing him. So, your excuse?” she said. The man looked worried. The meeting was not going as the man had hoped, not as the last three such meetings had gone.“I invested it and the investment failed,” he said. “It was a sure thing, but, then,.