I went to a lot of trouble to stay connected to my London sources, including the principals during this perilous time.  So, I know that after Lord Caligula dined at Scott’s, he went to White’s to get roaring drunk.  His hours at White’s (no women allowed) aggravated Constance.  She consoled herself that London had plenty of men and that White’s by design was no whorehouse.  But it’s not being a whorehouse was no guarantee that it was not a colony of rich sodomites.  Constance feared his Lordship was headed for HIV if he didn’t change his ways.  She took PrEP when she screwed him. 

Being well past her ingenue days, she took a lot of PrEP.  The men she liked had the habits of alley cats.

Peregrine and Wolverine had scheming to do.  Their chauffeur took them from Scott’s to Munitions Galore’s property in Reading.  Peregrine kept a huge suite there that would have made Oscar Wilde proud of him.  It was a monument to Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics.  His suite’s walls swarmed with original Rosettis and Waterhouses, even though much of it was of dubious provenance. Peregrine often expressed gratitude to the Nazi looters and other crooks who helped make possible his private collection.

Wolverine admired the walls.  Peregrine’s boy servant brought Wolverine a port.  They soon sat down to a table with walnuts and cheeses, whilst the cute, shaggy boy, now in a loose loin cloth, lit their pre-Castro Davidoffs. Peregrine used the boy’s hair to wipe off the butter from his lobster feast. The boy cooed. Once again, I got a reminder of why no self-respect cat would send a son to Eton.

“You know,” opined Peregrine, “Lucky Ming is after you.  I suspect she suspects you of every sin.  I think she also thinks the bots have a role in Ice-10.”  

“Well, We did design that as guardians of Stealth bombs with or without the Ice-10 supplement.  How much have we got?”

Peregrine’s eyes shined.  “We’ve got more than I could sell at the price I want.  It will make me, you, and Lord Caligula thousands of millions. Not even Putin has looted Russia thoroughly enough to have what we’re going to have.” 

“And do the bots and stealth make us anything pitiful?”  Wolverine added, “You know I sometimes wonder if they alone would have been fungible enough for us?  Why run the risks of Ice-10?”

Peregrine rolled his eyes.  “Surely you’re joking, Woolly.  You never had a head for numbers.  Never forget that just because you have plenty doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty more.  Why should we not be the planet’s first, as the Americans would count it, trillionaires?”  

Wolverine wondered what money must mean to Peregrine when noticed the bulge in his trousers.  Talking money was foreplay for Peregrine.  You’d guess he was ready to mount his prey.

Wolverine then pleaded he was weary.  Peregrine commanded his boy servant to take Wolverine to the best guest suite.  Wolverine entered.  He liked the luxury.  There was a gorgeous Poussin and a Klimt supposedly destroyed by the Nazis in Vienna.  The Faculty Painting, alleged to have burnt during a bombing was on the wall.  Peregrine had come a long way during his seven or so years since Eton.  

By now Wolverine believed Lucky was out to get him.  As much as a son hates to admit his mum is right, his mum was right.  And he now absorbed a grim truth.  Lucky was not a trifling operative.  She was a real-deal killer.

Wolverine hunkered down with Peregrine at the Munitions Galore complex in Reading.  With the bot and human guards, Wolverine felt safe from Lucky.  They did plot a bold move.  It happened a week later, or so Wolverine told me.

I read about it in the Christian Science Monitor, my favourite Saint Louis newspaper.  A splashy headline announced a bombing at a beach in Cornwall.   Spokesmen for the government announced the loss of 500 or more lives.  Because the bombing included a chemical attack, scientists had ruled the bodies of the victims had to be isolated.  My mind reeled.  Who but his friends at Munitions Galore had the goods to pull off this attack?

I sneaked onto a plane headed for Heathrow.  After I arrived, I headed to Claridge’s.  Knowing that I was coming, Lord Caligula, Peregrine, and Wolverine briefed me on the logic of the attack. 

“Look, Crocky, the attack is a perfect exercise in misdirection.  Think about it.  Who has been attacked?  The Congo, China, Lithuania, and Great Britain.  This evening, there’ll be an attack on a girl’s football team in Montana. From what I heard, none of these girls shows promise.   The White and Congress will go bonkers.  And who has not been attacked?  Putin.  Who is the easy target of blame?  Puti.  Vlad the freezer!”  His Lordship giggled as he explained it to me.

As it happened, the trio had to arrange to send a notice to the White House of the destruction in Montana.  A team reached it.  Nobody within a 10-mile radius survived, all 70 of the perished.  To avert criticism, the White House arranged a secret clean-up.  A Pentagon spokesman said that there had been a training accident in the area, and they had deployed a CBRNE unit to investigate.  They cautioned anybody about the area to avoid coming near if he valued his life. 

Putin was now public enemy number one or the world’s most loathed great leader.