Between them, Liz and Joey explained. Villarreal, as the best-known of the consortium fellows, had been approached by the local tourist office and asked to make a public presentation in Hugh Town, St. Mary’s main village. He had agreed, and on their final night on St. Mary’s, he had given a talk at Methodist Hall. Not many had come: two dozen curious locals; six or eight tourists who’d happened to be on St. Mary’s and were starved for something-anything-to do in the evening; all of the consortium attendees other than Julie; and three reporters, one from as far away as Plymouth-plus Pete Williams, who had been hanging around all week, having come all the way from London.

Williams was an English writer who was researching a book (Movers and Shakers of the Earth) on personalities in the environmental movement. He had originally applied to be a consortium fellow himself but had been turned down by Kozlov as having no original contribution to offer. He had shown up anyway, staying at a B amp;B in town, and had interviewed some of the attendees for his book. Villarreal had denied his request for an interview with rather nasty condescension.

But Williams had gotten his own back at the Methodist Hall session, pretty much commandeering the question-and-answer session. He had fired hard questions at Villarreal, at first about his sense of responsibility and regret for the deaths of the two students in the Bitterroot Wilderness Area. Villarreal had put him off with pro forma regrets-“these things happen,” “restoring the wilderness comes with a price,” “they obviously didn’t take proper precautions,” and so on. Many had been shocked at his indifference.

Then it had turned personal. There was apparently a history of enmity between the two men, and an increasingly agitated Williams had made it clear that Villarreal was going to be “exposed” in the book he was writing.

“Isn’t it true,” he’d demanded at one point, “that you never finished your Ph. D. at Cornell, even though you advertise yourself as Doctor Villarreal?”