After Lord Caligula’s evening with Mika and its aftermath, Wolverine told me his life settled down.  A local police detective in Pulaski County whom Wolverine called, “Uncle Cornpone” or, depending on Wolverine’s mood, “Old Gumshoe,” continued to nose around Pulaski and adjacent counties in search of the missing G-men.  The FBI would from time to time agree to offer Uncle Cornpone minor assistance.  They might run a background check, but none of it was going anywhere.

With Munitions Galore’s business growing and my stories for Africans on Putin gaining celebrity, Wolverine was in a good mood.  One evening he telephoned to me from Claridge’s London.  He had just returned to his suite after what he described as a splendid tea with a friend of Vladimir.  If I recall, Wolverine called him “Labrov,” which gave me horrifying mental images of soggy Labrador Retrievers.  When I told myself Wolverine must have meant Lavrov, I began to get mental images of filthy, shit-stained lavatories.  To help myself, I scurried off to demand Roberta change my litter.

  Wolverine also told me that Peregrine with Lavrov or Lavrov or whatever his name was.  They discussed an attempted use of one of Peregrine’s stealth bombs in Goma.  A gang of fiends had tried to blow up a bomb in the East Congo.  As nasty a place as Goma seemed to be, the gang convinced itself that it was doing the world a public service.  In fact, or so they alleged, gangsters in Rwanda had paid them well to do this.

Before the bomb went off, it occurred to Peregrine that the Russians, in return for a fee, might wish to know about the scheme in Goma. 

Putin, a great fan of peace, opposed blowing up a bomb that would create a zone of nuclear waste in the Congo’s east.  For obscure reasons, Putin felt devastation at that level in the Congo was contrary to his interests.  And so, he sent a team of Russian commandos to kill the troublemakers and seize their bomb.

Attentive readers may wonder how Putin’s commandos could know where a Munitions Galore stealth bomb was.  Let me say that the idea of invisibility is a flexible one.  Just because a Peregrine-designed Bomb is invisible to everybody else does not mean it is invisible to him.  A man should know where his own children are.

After the Russians got the bomb, Wolverine had me write stories on the dark web claiming that a stealth bomb had been seized by unknown forces after blabbermouth bombers in their gang gave away its location.  Kapow!  In no time, governments on our planet were falling over themselves, excepting the scandal-hungry regime of Great Leader Kim, to deny they had any role in the scheme.   A spokesman of Christians in Action in Langley, when queried about the story, could “neither confirm nor deny” any knowledge of what happened.  Off the record, she doubted any bomb existed in the Congo.  At the Kremlin, a spokesman denounced the west for its “profiteering” on death and hoped that this particular story was pure fiction.   The Congo’s Prime Minister Kabila’s professions of ignorance about what may or may not have happened in Goma were for once credible.  The complete lack of evidence that he had any increase in his wealth was always credible regarding his ignorance of big cases unless one could show he had had a recent influx of wealth. One of the beauties of postcolonialism is that it praised, rather than required as the colonialists did, a leader’s declining to steal.

As I got ready for bed that evening, I had another visit from Chaucer’s ghost.  Boy was he pissed.  The two dead G-men had started residing in his realm.  “How dare your pal Wolverine visit these two boors on me. All they want to talk about is “killer bots” this and “killer bots” that.  They need to get a death.”  

I asked what I could do about it.  To my surprise, Chaucey told me, “Why don’t you try throwing that new Gumshoe a bone about Wolverine’s bots?”  Even though I thought that was an insane idea for me, I kept my mouth shut.  Growing angrier and angrier, Chaucey screamed, “I’d do it myself, but why shouldn’t you have to do something.  Wolverine’s your friend now.  You have the dirt on him.  So, let you be his Brutus. And the G-men ghosts are ghastly.  The redhead may have been a looker once, but now she looks all ashen.  Worse, every hair, and I do mean every, is burnt off her body.  It’s as bad as after Daenerys had her first encounter with her dragons’ fire that left her a totally hairless nudie, not my style, thank you.  But in that case, the hair grew back.”  

When Chaucer was this way, there was no reasoning with him.  I just wanted this kitty revenant out of my room, and a lying promise was sure to work as well as a real spell.  So, I uttered, “I’m on it.”  Chaucer disappeared.  I remembered after this lie, Jack Handy’s wise observation:  Broken promises don’t upset me.  I just think, why did they believe me.”