"I would. Harry Muller would not miss a meeting with a supervisor."

Walsh didn't respond.

I wasn't too thrilled with Tom Walsh's laid-back management style, but new guys on the job needed to be careful not to call the director of the FBI to report that the sky was falling.

And, of course, there was the other dimension to this problem, which was the Custer Hill Club itself. If Harry Muller had been staking out Abdul Salami in the woods and disappeared, the response would have been very different.

Also, to be cynical, if Harry Muller was FBI and not NYPD, the response may have been a little quicker, holiday weekend notwithstanding. In fact, FBI Agent Ken Reilly may have called Tom Walsh on Sunday night. Not that the safety of a cop is less important than that of an FBI agent; it has more to do with the unfortunate and partly deserved reputation of New York's Finest being free spirits.

I asked Walsh, "Do you think Harry's disappearance is directly related to his assignment?"

Walsh had a ready answer. "I don't want to speculate on the nature of his disappearance, but if I did, I'd say that it's possible that Harry Muller met with an accident. There are millions of acres of wilderness in that area, and it's possible that he's lost or hurt. He could have broken a leg, stepped in a bear trap, or even been attacked by a bear. And from what the Albany SAC told me, people up there sometimes hunt off-season. Harry was most probably wearing camouflage and may have been accidentally shot by a hunter." He continued, "There are all sorts of dangers in the wilderness. That's why it's called the wilderness."

Kate commented, "That's why it's not a good idea to send someone there alone. He should have had a partner."

Walsh replied, "In retrospect, that may be true. But I've run dozens of rural surveillances with a lone agent. The Adirondacks are not the African jungle."

"But you just said-"

"Don't second-guess me on this. This is standard procedure, and you never raised that issue when we discussed sending John. Let's address the immediate problem."

I thought Walsh was the immediate problem, so I addressed him. "Tom, what exactly is the Custer Hill Club?"

He considered a moment, then replied, "I don't see how this relates to finding Harry, but if you want an answer ... from what I know, which is not much, it's a very private and exclusive hunting and fishing club whose members are mostly wealthy, or powerful, or both."

"You also said they had political influence."

"That's what I was told. I'd say the membership is about half Washington and half Wall Street."

"Where do you get your information?"

"I was briefed. Don't ask." He added, "I'm sure the actual and complete list of club members is not public information, which is why someone in the Justice Department wanted a surveillance of this meeting."

"Who called you?"

"That's actually none of your business."

"Good answer." Regarding Harry's phone message to his girlfriend, I asked Walsh, "What was Harry supposed to do at the airport? Which airport?"

Walsh hesitated before he responded, then said, "Adirondack Regional Airport. Some of the people who were to attend this weekend gathering probably arrived by commercial carrier-they have commuter-plane service there. Harry was to go to the airport Saturday or early Sunday morning and get printouts of the passenger manifests."

I nodded. Walsh forgot to mention that airline-passenger manifests could be accessed from anywhere the airline had a computer, or even right here from 26 Fed with the airlines' cooperation. Therefore, Harry's other assignment at the airport was to find out who arrived by private or chartered aircraft. And then there were car rentals, and a copy of those rental contracts would be very useful in trying to determine who may have attended this meeting. I was starting to think I might want to follow up on this myself.

In any case, Tom Walsh changed the subject. "The state police have search aircraft with infrared sensors to locate large living-or recently dead-organisms. They're highly trained and equipped to find persons missing in the woods."

"That's good." It was my turn to change the subject, and I pointed out to Walsh, "You seem to suggest that this was a routine assignment, and yet, you're here on a holiday to meet and debrief Harry. And apparently Tech is open to receive his digital-camera disks and videotape, which I assume will be transmitted to Washington ASAP, along with whatever he came up with at the airport."

"What's your point?"

"What is the urgency with this surveillance?"

"I have no idea. I just follow orders like you ... Actually, you don't follow orders, but I do." He advised me, "You need to only ask questions that will help you complete your assignment." He further informed me, "Our job is to gather intelligence. Sometimes we know why. Sometimes we don't. Sometimes we're told to act on intelligence-sometimes someone else acts on it."

"How long has this been going on?"

"Quite a while."

As always, there's a slight clash of cultures between the FBI and the police, which is frustrating to everyone, I'm sure.

Kate said to Walsh, "Tom, I've worked with a lot of NYPD since I've been on the Task Force, and I've learned a lot from them, and they've learned a lot from us."

Actually, I've learned next to nothing from the FBI, though the CIA is interesting.

Kate continued, "Since 9/11, we need to think differently, to ask any questions we want to ask, and to challenge our supervisors when we're not satisfied with what they're telling us."

Walsh looked at her awhile, then observed, "I think someone is setting a bad example for you."

"No. What happened a year ago is what has changed how I think."

Walsh didn't respond to that. "Let's return to the subject of the missing-"

Kate interrupted and went into her lawyer mode. "Tom, I still don't understand why this group is under surveillance. What illegal activity or Federal crime are they suspected of?"

"Whatever they are suspected of has nothing to do with Harry Muller's apparent disappearance, and therefore you have no need to know."

I butted into the argument. "This is a reactionary group. Correct? Right-wing loony lodge."

He nodded.

"So, considering that, and the high-level political and financial membership of this so-called hunting and fishing club, maybe we're talking about a conspiracy to take over the government."

He smiled and replied, "I think they already did that on Election Day."

"Good point. Meanwhile, we'd really like to know what Headquarters told you."

Walsh considered that for a moment. "Okay, for what it's worth, what I was told was that this had something to do with a conspiracy to rig oil prices. The guy who apparently runs the club is Bain Madox. You may have heard the name. He owns and operates Global Oil Corporation. GOCO." He added, "That's more than you need to know."

I processed that. The name was familiar. And oil-price rigging was not unheard-of. Still, that didn't completely explain the existence of the Custer Hill Club, or even the club members for that matter. Something was a little off here, and Tom Walsh wasn't going to put it straight, even if he could.

Nevertheless, I said to him, "I read your memo."

"That's encouraging."

I pointed out, "I thought that Iraqis were on the front burner."

"That's right."

"So? What does the Custer Hill Club have to do with Iraqis or the coming war?"