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in a marble tub. She was a staggeringly beautiful woman. Door opened and in tiptoed Boy Marvel wearing only a white towel.
     When Barnard opened an eye, smiled archly, he dropped the towel and stepped into the suds. Great tight ass, considering how
     much time he’d been sitting on it over the past few years. Barnard poured champagne, their mouths moved, they laughed. Then
     Bobby grabbed his bathing partner. The water began to churn. Barnard nearly drowned, giggling all the way. Marvel left the
     tub. After Barnard flung her champagne at him, the screen went black.
    I looked across the table. “Touching.”
    “It’s a copy. I found it here. God knows who’s got the original.”
    “Any messages with it?”
    “Barnard never liked sending interim reports.”
    “Whose bathtub?”
    “It ain’t at the White House.”
    “Is the picture real?”
    “Nothing in this town is real. But you can be sure Barnard made that tape on purpose. My guess is she was trying to flush
     someone out of the bushes.” Maxine took a long swig of soda. Quite a compliment, really, exposing her throat to me like that.
     “On July first, we picked up some e-mail from Krikor Tunalian to Louis Bailey.”
    Tuna I knew: arms merchant. Should have been dead twenty years ago. “Who’s Bailey?”
    “An ethnobotanist.” The Queen couldn’t resist translating for me. “Jungle medicine. Witch doctors. Natural hallucinogens.
     Oxford trained. Now he’s a big-shot professor at Richmond. Studies plants, sees if they might contain a cure for cancer or
     AIDS. Almost won the Nobel Prize two years ago.”
    “What would Tuna want with him?”
    “Nothing too noble. They met at Bailey’s home in Virginia. Next day Tuna wired five million dollars to a Swiss account in
     Bailey’s name. When the doc left the country, I put Barnard on the case. She took a crash refresher course in botany then
     went to Belize. That’s where Bailey goes whenever school’s out.”
    “How’d Barnard manage to blend into the woodwork down there? Wearing a monkey suit?”
    Maxine looked down at me. “She posed as a researcher collecting specimens for the International Red Cross. Put on a little
     bandanna and stumbled into Bailey two weeks after setting up camp in the jungle.”
    She must have made one hell of an impact. “Let me guess. She became his assistant.”
    “They worked together for six weeks.” Maxine looked bleakly at me. “On September first he disappeared.”
    Excuse me? No one ever got away from Barnard. “How?”
    “I got no field reports. Could have been equipment failure. Jungles have a way of eating communications gear.”
    “Whatever you say. Bailey disappears. Barnard follows his trail to D.C. but still doesn’t fill you in?”
    Obviously not. Our group didn’t work like that. We were paragons of independent study and the Queen knew better than to interfere
     with an agent teetering on the brink of extinction. “I suspect she was chagrined at losing her man. It was the first time.”
     And the last. “All I know is that she set herself up at Watergate. Soon she was screwing the president. You know the rest.”
    “Did she ever find Louis?”
    “Couldn’t tell you. No one else has seen him. If he’s here, he’s invisible.”
    “Where’s Tuna?”
    “Panama City. He hasn’t heard from Louis, either. Probably thinks the doc is still in the jungle.”
    I opened my purse and laid the tampon on the table. “Blood-work.” The Queen stared a moment before putting Barnard’s only
     remains in her pocket. “Give me a few leads,” I said.
    “Yvette Tatal is the Mother Teresa of Belize. Specialist in dengue fever. Expert in jungle medicine. Louis has known her for
     years.”
    “Anything else?”
    “Louis Bailey is the vice president’s brother.”
    Maxine had just dumped a ton of sludge on my dainty white parasol. I needed a long moment to dig out. “Is that why Louis came
     to Washington?” I asked hopefully. “To see