"Within seventy-two hours one hundred and fifty special agents had been placed at carefully scouted positions in B-I Three. We were determined to make no blunders; too much was at stake. As the information flowed in from our men, all of whom, being top agents, had succeeded in establishing their cover identities without difficulty, it was immediately passed to the General Staff and to the Imperial Emergency Cabinet for study. The two bodies remained in constant session for over a week without developing any adequate scheme for handling the new factor.
"One committee of the Emergency Cabinet was assigned the important task of determining as closely as possible the precise CH relationship of B-I Three with both B-I Two and the Imperium. This is an extremely tricky chore as it is quite possible for an amazing parallelism to exist in one phase of an A-line while the most fantastic variants crop up in another.
"One week ago today the committee reported findings they considered to be ninety-eight per cent reliable. Your B-I Three line shared history of the B-I Two until the date 1911, probably early in the year. At that point, my colleague, Mr. Goering, of German Intelligence, who had been sitting in on the meeting, made a brilliant contribution. His suggestion was immediately adopted. All agents were alerted at once to drop all other lines of inquiry and concentrate on picking up a trace of—" Bale looked at me.
"Mr. Brion Bayard."
They knew I was on the verge of exploding from pure curiosity, so I just sat and looked back at Bale. He pursed his lips. He sure as hell didn't like me.
"We picked you up from records at your university—" Bale frowned at me. "Something like aluminium alloy...."
Bale must be an Oxford man, I thought.
"Illinois," I said.
"At any rate," Bale went on, "it was a relatively simple matter to follow you up then through your military service and into your Diplomatic Service. Our man just missed you at your Legation at Viat-Kai."
"Consulate General," I corrected.