"Nothing."

"Nothing? Not even a cot in the kitchen?"

He quoted me some rates on the available rooms, and I got scalped by the Mohawk for twelve hundred bucks, which was the cheapest room available. I asked him, "Does this place have heat and electricity?"

"Yes, sir. How many nights will you be staying with us?"

"I'm not sure, Charles. Let's start with two."

"Yes, sir." He added, "If you're with us on Wednesday evening, black tie is requested for dinner."

"Are you telling me I need a tuxedo to eat dinner in the woods?"

"Yes, sir." He explained, "William Avery Rockefeller, who owned this property, would dine with his guests each evening in black tie. We try to re-create the experience on Wednesday and Saturday evenings."

"I might need to miss that experience. Can I get room service in my underwear?"

"Yes, sir. How would you like to secure the reservation?"

I gave him my name and government credit card, we ironed out a few other details, and I asked him, "You have any bears there?"

"Yes, sir. We have a bar in the-"

"Bears, Charles, bears. You know. Ursus terribilis."

"Uh ... we ... there are bears in the area, but-"

"Feed the bears tonight, Charles. See you later." I hung up.

Kate said, "Did I hear you correctly?"

"Yeah, fucking bears."

"The room rate."

"Yeah, we're in the Mohawk Room. The Weatherwatch at two thousand dollars a night seemed a little extravagant."

"Are you crazy?"

"Why do you ask? Hey, after two nights in that B and B hovel you booked, we deserve a nice place."

"I think we get an allowance of a hundred dollars per diem in the Albany area." She reminded me, "We ... you have to make up the difference."

"We'll see."

Kate's beeper went off, and she looked at it. "Tom."

"Give it a few more minutes."

"Maybe they've found Harry."

"That would be nice." I flipped through the printouts, trying to see if anything stuck out.

Kate, too, went through the printouts and said, "Here is the eleven A.M. CommutAir from Boston on Saturday ... wow."

"Wow, what?"

"Edward Wolffer. You know who he is?"

"Yeah, he played center field for the-"

"He's the deputy secretary of defense. Very hawkish guy, pushing for the war in Iraq. Very close to the president. He's on TV a lot."

"That's probably the guy who someone here recognized."

"Yes, and here's another one on the same flight-Paul Dunn. He's a presidential adviser-"

"On matters of national security, and a member of the National Security Council."

"Right. How did you know that?"

"It's always a Jeopardy question."

"Why do you like to play stupid?"

"It's a good cover for when I really am stupid." I said, "So, Wolffer and Dunn arrived Saturday, plus two other guys, according to Betty, and they all got into the van to the Custer Hill Club."

Kate looked again at the passenger manifest for the 11:00 A.M. Saturday flight from Boston and said, "There were nine other men on that flight, but none of these other names ring a bell, so we don't know who these other two guys were who got into the van."

"Right." I continued flipping through the passenger lists. "Wolffer and Dunn left on the first Boston flight yesterday, connecting to Washington."

She nodded thoughtfully, then asked me, "Does this mean anything?"

"Well, on the surface, it doesn't mean much. A lot of rich and powerful guys got together on a three-day weekend at a mountain lodge owned by an oil billionaire. It's like one of those Renaissance weekends, or a gathering of the Carlyle Group, where some people, and the media, speculate that all kinds of devious things are going on-oil-price rigging, financial and political deals, conspiracies to take over the planet, and that kind of thing. But sometimes, it's just a bunch of rich guys getting together to relax, play cards, talk about women, and tell dirty jokes."

Kate thought about that. "Sometimes it is," she said. "But someone in the Justice Department ordered a surveillance of this gathering."

"That's the point."

She went on, "And it's not every day that the Justice Department wants to keep an eye on the deputy secretary of defense, a presidential adviser, and who knows who else in this club."

I commented, "This is getting good." I scanned the passenger manifests. "We need to do a background check of everyone who arrived here by commercial aircraft in the last few days, and see what, if any, connection they have to one another-then try to find out what Harry was supposed to find out on his surveillance: who went from here to the Custer Hill Club."

Kate replied, "I don't think that's our job. Tom didn't mention that."

"It's good to show initiative. Tom appreciates that, and by the way, fuck Tom."

The waitress came by, and one of us ordered a double bacon cheeseburger, and the other ordered a Cobb salad, whatever the hell that is.