"My name is Anthoney. I was posing as an investigator for the FAA, but I guess that cover is blown now," Jed started out his improvisation. "Let me see if I can condense the scenario. First you must promise that all of this is just between us, for now. Just tell Kearns that you lost the suspect."

"Yes."

"Are you familiar with the disposal of outdated aerial roll film supplies?"

"Class 2G, 10 x l0" by 400 feet?"

"Very good. What happens to the outdated, unusable rolls?"

"Burned as trash, I suppose."

"Used to be. Photographic film utilizes silver. Silver has in recent years become very expensive. Silver can be recovered from both undeveloped, and developed film.

Now let's talk about dirty underwear. Your General Hendrickson was approached by Kearns with an under-the-counter deal of letting a dummy firm handle waste film disposal. The outdated film was burned anyhow, so an offer of payola didn't hurt anyone other than an uninformed taxpayer. Collected from bases all over the world, the General's commission on the recovered silver, after all, only amounted to $60,000 a year, which was, as he felt, untraceable.

If his involvement had stopped there, nobody would have found out. However —are you familiar with air reconnaissance operations? The reason I asked whether you were Intelligence or CIA, was to see what agency is involved."

"No. We were told it was supply's problem and not to embarrass anyone by talking about the black market."

"Well, there, you see. Outdated film libraries are also destroyed by burning. Kearns wanted this film, too. Hendrickson must have told him that the negatives were classified information. Kearns must have threatened the General with exposure because Hendrickson formed a special supply group with a single mission —disposing of top secret photographic negatives. You following this?"

"I believe it. I know what those bastards are capable of."

"Right. What has us worried —not the money— is that some of those negatives are showing up as prints used by Russian cartographers. We don't seem to consider aerial photographs taken by our own planes, for example those sent out on a training mission over test sites in Nevada, important enough to keep. The Kremlin does. Do you see why I had to threaten you with a bottle of shampoo?"