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By Root 616 0

years ago, in political science. I was even a member of Skull and Bones. You know, the boys' club that conspiracy theorists like to prattle about. Jesus, like people in their late teens can really accomplish anything beyond getting laid, on a good Friday night." His brown eyes and the look in them hadn't come from a college, however, even an Ivy League one. "Back in the old days, the Agency liked to recruit people from Yale and Harvard and Dartmouth. The kids there have gotten over it. They all want to be merchant bankers now and make money. I worked twenty-five years in the Clandestine Service, and then I got recruited by The Campus. Been with them ever since."

"The Campus? What's that?" the Marine asked. Alexander noticed that Dominic Caruso did not. He was listening and watching very closely. Brian would never stop being a Marine, and Dominic would never stop being FBI. They never did. It was both good and bad, in both cases.

"That is a privately funded intelligence service."

"Privately funded?" Brian asked. "How the hell-"

"You'll see how it works later, and when you do, you will be surprised how easily it's done. What concerns you right here and right now is what they do."

"They kill people," Dominic said immediately. The words came out seemingly of their own accord.

"Why do you think that?" Alexander asked innocently.

"The outfit is small. We're the only people here, judging by the parking pad outside. I'm not experienced enough to be an expert agent. All I did was whack somebody who needed it, and next day I'm up in Headquarters talking to an assistant director, and a couple of days after that I drive to D.C. and get sent down here. This place is very, very special, very, very small, and it has top-level approval for whatever it does. You're not selling U.S. Savings Bonds here, are you?"

"The book on you is that you have good analytical ability," Alexander said. "Can you learn to keep your mouth shut?"

"It's not needed in this particular place, I should think. But, yeah, I know how, when the situation calls for it," Dominic said.

"Okay, here's the first speech. You guys know what 'black' means, right? It means a program or project that is not acknowledged by the government. People pretend it doesn't exist. The Campus takes that one step further: We really do not exist. There is not a single written document in the possession of any government employee that has a single word about us. From this moment on, you two young gentlemen do not exist. Oh, sure, you, Captain-or is it Major already? Caruso, you get a paycheck that's going to be direct-deposited into whatever bank account you set up this week, but you are no longer a Marine. You are on detached duty, whose nature is unknown. And you, Special Agent Dominic Caruso-"

"I know. Gus Werner told me. They dug a hole and pulled it in after them."

Alexander nodded. "You will both leave your official identification documents, dog tags, everything, here before you leave. You can keep your names, maybe, but a name is just a couple of words, and nobody believes a name in this business anyway. That's the funny part about my time in the field with the Agency. Once on a job, I changed names without thinking about it. Damned embarrassing when I realized it. Like an actor: All of a sudden I'm Macbeth when I'm supposed to be Hamlet. No harm came of it, though, and I didn't croak at the end of the play."

"What, exactly, will we be doing?" This was Brian.

"Mostly, you'll be doing investigative work. Tracking money. The Campus is particularly good at that. You'll find out how and why later. You will probably deploy together. You, Dominic, will do most of the heavy lifting on the investigative side. You, Brian, will back him up on the muscle side, and along the way you'll learn to do what-what was it you called him a little while ago?"

"Oh, you mean Enzo? I call him that because he had a heavy foot when he got his driver's license. You know, like Enzo Ferrari."

Dominic pointed to his brother and laughed. "He's Aldo because he dresses like a dweeb. Like in that wine commercial,