Creative men, even if swindlers, have thoughts that elude ordinary beings.  As Lord Caligula savoured his post-tryst bliss with the scent of Constance’s sweat saturating him, Peregrine and Wolverine were scurrying about the salon like a couple of trapped rats.  None of the goodies at hand soothed them.  No fine champagne, no truffles, no caviar promised to relax their minds for problem solving.  

Peregrine squealed he knew not what to do to rescue them.  Lord Caligula rebuked him.

“You remind me, boy, of a prissy girl who has wet her panties.  Get a grip.”   And then his Lordship began to explain a lucrative way out.  

“We must enlist the Americans as brokers of our goods.  For obvious reasons, nobody, not even Putin or Xi, will try to strong arm them.  As it happens, one of my dear school chums is just the man to pull our balls out of the fire.  Perhaps you’ve heard of him?  Binky, Binky Dalrymple.  Binky was so sneaky a boy that his parents packed him off to Eton for his schooling. He then went to Cambridge, where he read History, specialising in scams through the ages.  He was dissipated and clever enough to be made an Apostle. Bink has gifts.

“After Binky left Cambridge, he returned to America where his waspy parents got him a job with the Christians in Action (CIA).  Despite a civil servant’s salary, I know that Binky’s accounts grew fatter and fatter.  The man is a Croesus.  He also disdains the honest acquisition of money.  Half the fun of money is stealing it.  The CIA gave Binky so many crooked contacts and means that I suspect he has more shell companies and foreign accounts than Japan has lanterns.  Our enterprise will be just the kind of knave’s project he loves.  

“Once Binky wraps his mind around this financial possibilities, he’ll be prising maximum value from our wares. And he will have it well guarded.

“I know for a fact that Binky uses the Mossad as muscle.  He also has gangs of former Legion Etrangere to apply pressure and connections in every foreign intelligence agency with killing skills.”

“But why,” asked Peregrine, “would Americans do this for us?”

“It will look like the Americans are doing this for us.  In reality, Binky is doing this for us . . . and not for free either.”  

Wolverine blurted out, “But won’t people figure out where the Arms are coming from?  Lucky seems  to know.”
“Look,” riffed his Lordship, “once Binky has all the cogs and wheels  going, a team of gods wouldn’t know who sold what to whom.  It will be the shell game to end all shell games.”  

But how could Putin get anything? If you cut him out, there’ll be trouble,” sang Peregrine and Wolverine.

“Do you believe stuff never falls off the backs of lorries. The world is rife with thieves too.  Binky will work out how to sell and distributed  to everybody, though perhaps Putin will pay a premium, but will never know it.”

Nothing surprised me as much as learning that Constance arranged to have Binky and Lord Caligula powwow at the north country mansion of her husband Irascible Lawless. The mansion’s remote location on Michigan’s upper peninsula along an ambiguous stretch of American-Canadian border assured plenty of privacy.  

Irascible began by objecting to the use of his mansion for the meeting, but relented when Constance told him the fee she had negotiated for him.  Wolverine was kind enough to send me photos of chez mes parents. The house had fireplace that would have pleased Goliath.  Flames went flying up a good twelve feet before entering the chimney.  The room had large leather sofas made from a variety of animal skins that Irascible’s servants had draped with fine Turkish rugs.  The floor had slashes in it.  

Irascible refused any form of carpeting.  From time to time, he liked to slash his claws into the floor, and then pull up sheets of oak.  Nothing that interfered with this pleasure, which grated on Constance, was permitted.  The walls had paintings and photographs of Irascible in all manner of activities, but most of the “art” showed Irascible killing other animals.  Nor was he the least backward about having the artists show gore.  

When Binky and Lord Caligula arrived, Irascible excused himself.  Constance was present.  Irascible looked at her, looked at his Lordship, then quipped, “At least when you use my house, instead of Constance, I get a fee.”  

I don’t know what happened during the negotiations between Binky and Caligula.  Wolverine told me he could often hear them laughing.  A lot of booze, fish, and fresh game got carted in and out of the room. After three days, the two of them announced an agreement.

Once again Wolverine aided my journalism.  He got me a photograph of Binky, a rotund, pink-skinned man wearing a birder’s outfit with an improbable number of calculators bulging from its pockets.  He wore thick, Martin Scorsese glasses and, perhaps in honour of the locale, sported an orange pitch helmet.  He also carried a holstered S&W Model 29.  Lord Caligula contented himself with a riding crop.

When Bart and Fielding discovered photographs of Irascible’s mansion, they got a face of disgust.

“What’s the use of having Trump as president if he is going to let your scofflaw friends fill their house with northern vermin.  We don’t mind that a lot of it is dead, but in looking through the pictures, it is clear that in the north no progress with a big wall has occurred. Instead marauding beasts still invade from the north.  Our Prez would do well to watch more episodes of Game of Thrones to educate himself on where the real threat to our country is.  Why carry on about scrawny Mexicans when there are god-damn polar bears headed our way as we speak?”  Off they went in a huff.