"I'm sure you would. That's why you're in it. I probably wouldn't even get a chance to finish my story. And I'm sure you'll want to hear how it's going to end. So I'm taking the wee liberty of the lifejacket to make sure you hear me out."

"My life, Mr. Magrudder, is not a wee liberty. Please let me out of this. I've always been afraid of drowning."

The man who called himself Magrudder giggled slightly. "Good. You just stay afraid of me and well be fine."

"Now, follow me, if you will," he continued. "I and two other people I trust began keeping little notes. Nothing big at first, just notes of these strange occurrences and certain small events that seemed to go extremely well for the nation with no apparent reason. Luck, it was attributed to, I believe. And then, one day, my stroke of genius. I put myself in the place of a young president who was to be assassinated in Dallas.

"I said to myself, you're the President and you've got a problem."

Magrudder finished the bottle by draining it into his mouth and tossed it overboard with a splash. He took out another one from the case and this time did not bother pouring into the champagne glass. He drank directly from the bottle.

"Excuse the indulgence," he said, "but a year-and-a-half of sobriety must end with a certain joy. In any event, I said, I'm the President and I've got a problem. Crime is increasing. If I tell my police no holds are barred, we get a police state. If I don't, we get chaos, and then, if Machieveli's right, we get a police state anyway. I want to save the country. So what do I do?

"I figured what the President did. He decided to create an organization that didn't exist. It could break the law to enforce the law, but since it didn't exist, it would not endanger the Constitution.

"So I, the President, create this organization, and only I and maybe my vice president and two other men know about it. The man who runs it and the man who heads the killer-arm. The man who heads the killer-arm has to know, because he must violate the law and if he were captured and believed he worked for the FBI or the CIA or what-have-you, then it would be just as bad for the country if he confessed to that. You see, so he knows.