Ruthie managed to have a very nice sleep that night, and the fact Lisa was also sound asleep in the next bed and not snoring helped. So did the fact that Lisa kept her word not to make a move on her while they were in Budapest.

The women got their wakeup call at 5:30 am. After a full breakfast carefully prepared and served by the Hungarian police to make sure no possibility of poisoning, Lisa and Ruthie packed their bags. Escorted to the service elevator by the cops, they wished each other good luck. During the trip down, the women hugged one last time and Lisa carefully slipped to Ruthie the special instructions that she needed to follow if any message, official or personal, had to be relayed to Lisa.

Ruthie took a flight under an assumed name to De Gaulle Airport. She took the express subway to downtown Paris, and after a brief stop at the Eiffel Tower, took a high-speed train to London. All that time she kept her eyes on her handbag which contained the previous intelligence information, and perhaps the fate of the free world's economy.

A little over two hours later she arrived at St Pancras Station and pulled in just as the British networks were doing their lunchtime news broadcasts which by tradition were at one in the afternoon. Following the station master's instructions, she entered the Underground, took the Victoria Line to Oxford Circus, then the Central Line to Bond Street. While the transfer between the lines was very quick - less than a minute - she did not like having to go up a very long escalator then walking down a long staircase when entering the system; nor going up a staircase, escalator and yet another staircase when leaving – then walking outdoors another ten minutes.

At last Ruthie found herself in front of the Embassy of the United States of America to the Court of St. James's – not, contrary to popular belief, the Embassy to the United Kingdom. She reminded herself that the American Ambassador was accredited to the Sovereign, not the Prime Minister. She also remembered that the occupant of 10 Downing Street usually referred to himself or herself in official documents, not in the first or even third person, but as HMG, "Her Majesty's Government."

"Good afternoon, Major," Ruthie addressed the Marine at the front gate, a woman in her 30s. She gave the officer a military salute and handed her her passport. "You may not know this but my grandfather used to represent our country in the same place where you stand now."

"Yes, Reverend Camden, he also was my veteran pen pal during Enduring Freedom while I served in Afghanistan," acknowledged the woman, after scanning the passport and discovering this was the high priority guest she had waited for. Another Marine assumed her regular post, as she escorted Ruthie into the chancellery and right into the office of the Ambassador.

"Reverend Camden," said the Ambassador as the Marine exited the office and shaking Ruthie's hand, "thank you for coming here on such short notice, and on such an urgent matter."

"Thank you for inviting me, Your Excellency," replied Ruthie, attempting to stick to protocol. She took her seat and was awed by how ornate the chamber was, and even the chair she was seated in. She could only imagine if the private offices of the Prime Minister were even more so. She did not want to imagine what the royal palaces were like.

"I know you don't have much time, but can you summarize what Mr and Ms Lumby have to offer?"

"Yes sir," said Ruthie, handing over the diplomatic pouch. She gave a précis of the dossier, including a list of the prime suspects, although she also underscored the Lumby siblings had no idea of exactly who it might be. However, Ruthie wanted to add that she was only the messenger, and she had a major critique of the working theory.

"What is that, ma'am?" enquired the Ambassador.

"Well sir," replied Ruthie, "my sister and father and me, all of us, have been against the Kahanists and the – um, I won't refer to the other group by name again – as long as we can remember. And this is before Reverends Connor and Parker had this file fall into their laps. But this is an unholy alliance, and that is being bland. I just can't believe true believers in a discredited ideology would be behind this – unless they were running low on funds and needed a massive treasury to keep things going for an indefinite period. And seriously...why would one be in league with a pack of terrorists? And the saying may be old, but I think it applies here – 'the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but with friends like these, who needs enemies?'"

"This is a multi-pronged attack on the free world's financial system. I can assure you, they're not the only ones. Another well-organized group, also Arab hating, is doing a run on the derivatives market."

"Excuse me, Your Excellency, I'm not sure I heard you right," said Ruthie.

"Oh you heard right, Reverend," replied the Ambassador. "What they've done has happened independently of the target within the sights of the Lumbys and their friends in the bond business. But they have the same end goal. Forcing Armageddon. You were asked to get involved because we've learned that two traders, one from each of the camps had a chance encounter, not far from here in The City. They had a few drinks, one thing led to another and during pillow talk they discovered their common criminal interest. They started spreading the word up their chains of command. Next weekend, when you have returned to the States, the heads of the two are having a summit in Cyprus to finish their plans to capitulate the Middle East into an unprecedented crisis."

"Any idea when they'll launch?"

"We're presuming two weeks later, exactly. They will make coördinated transactions at precisely noon Greenwich on Friday the 19th. Everything – bonds, currency, blue chips, penny stocks, precious metals, crude... and it goes on."

"Sir, aren't there supposed to be 'circuit breakers' to stop that kind of thing?" asked Ruthie. "I thought markets suspend trades if the overall index goes down ten percent during a trading day, longer at twenty. They close all together for the day if it gets to thirty percent."

"If there are flips at exactly the same moment, it won't matter. They'll cash in while everyone else is left broke."

"But it's not all going to the terrorists, is it? Where is it going to?"

"Two words, Reverend. 'The Work'. When you meet your next contact in about an hour, she'll explain."

The Ambassador handed another CD-ROM to Ruthie, which she presumed from what Lisa told her would hold the next set of data.

Ruthie thanked the diplomat, and found in the envelope directions to the British Museum. After finding her way to the Museum, she found the library section. Walking up to the front desk of the library, and glancing around, Ruthie addressed the clerk:

"Good afternoon. You must have every book ever published in Britain."

"That might be a stretch," the clerk said, "but most of them to be certain."

"Do you know the way to Albuquerque?"

"Quite ma'am," said the man, recognizing the code phrase. "Third floor, study room R."

Ruthie went up the staircase, and was stunned to find she had to make a left turn to get to the room. Take a left turn at Albuquerque? That's also not a good sign, she told herself.

The minister walked towards the assigned room. The officer from Scotland Yard on point duty there opened the door and let Ruthie in without any identification asked for. Clearly, she had been expected. But Ruthie wasn't expecting who was behind the door.

"ASHLEY?!" she shrieked.

Lucy's long time rival and later friend was working in London as a commodities trader. She had stumbled onto something big, and wanted to talk to Ruthie too. But not in quite the manner Ruthie expected.

"Do you know how to sign, Ruthie?" asked Ashley in sign language, giving a sideways glance at the cop to shut the door right away. The officer complied.

"You damn well know I do – my whole family does!" communicated Ruthie, after hugging her friend. "We're still friends with Heather, and while she has Cochlear implants and can read lips, we still sign with her out of respect. But is this really necessary?"

"It is. We're both under guard here but if there's any chance of a bug being slipped through, this is the only way they can't snoop on us. Besides which, Jeremy's and my daughter is deaf."

"Oh, Ashe, I'm sorry!"

"It's not your fault – but thank you."

"Okay," said Ruthie, "Lisa said this wouldn't take as long as my meeting with her yesterday. I'm not even sure I have time for another eleven hours, let alone three."

"I have my summary, already encrypted with the same Enigma randomization as Lisa's and Tom's brief, right here," said Ashley, presenting her with yet another disk. "But I can give you a summary in just fifteen minutes, because while the scam is essentially the same – this time with bets on what may happen on the markets – it is with other people's money. And even more unwitting ones."

"Who are the players?" signed Ruthie.

"Televangelists and other right-wing extremists in the States and pretty much the rest of the free world – even ones based here in the EU."

"Why am I not surprised?"

"Well no one should be, Ruthie," replied Ashley. She then spent about ten minutes explaining how it was happening.

When Ashley finished her signed dissertation, Ruthie asked her the obvious question: "Ashe, these phonies have more money than they can dream of. They play off people's emotions to get their money. They use form letters to generate replies to prayer requests. They fly to ski resorts on their own church's corporate jets and call it official business. Why do they want more? The IRS now is watching all of them like hawks, auditing them annually! People like that give most evangelicals, myself included, a bad name. We don't need any more guilt by association."

"My dear friend," signed Ashley, "they keep referring to their need to do The Work. For most Christians of all stripes, you and me included, that means spreading the Gospel. These groups however believe The Work means enriching themselves. And as more and more of their followers have finally wizened up and stopping making donations, they've had to become more creative. Some insiders who have had the courage of feeding snippets of information to the press have suffered terrible reprisals. One insider who just happened to be the sister of a famous gospel singer, died on the morning she was supposed to give a deposition to the IRS, and the cause of death was 'accidental poisoning'. Coincidence?"

Ruthie replied by giving the international one finger salute. "I know who you mean, and who her boss was. She was murdered. Everyone knows that!"

"Precisely. Seems like the BI crowd is having the same problem. Their free publications are only free because they force their members to double or even triple tithe. Which is extreme to begin with. But their idea of The Work isn't spreading the word, it's building diploma mills and white elephant concert halls behind iron wrought fences, not to mention million dollar mansions on their compounds. And the rest of the time they use their publications not just to expound their already heretical beliefs, but to bash other breakaway churches within the movement. A growing number are calling it out, they're getting disfellowed.

"Two days ago, while you were in flight to Frankfurt, the two people the Ambassador alluded to dropped into the police station where Jeremy, who's now a cop, is posted, and had quite the story to tell. Seems after they made love for the first time, they were so delirious with ecstasy they told each other's secret. They spent the next week exchanging notes which went up the other's chains of command, between periods of hot sex - a lot of it. Knowing they had the same enemy they decided they wanted to fight together to slay the enemy, so they went to Scotland and pulled a 'Gretna Green.'"

"They eloped?" Ruthie asked. "For what purpose ... oh man! When Christ would be forced to return, they would be among those who managed the world on God's behalf because they helped fell the proverbial Babylon."

"Yeah. And this is no marriage of convenience, I assure you. Six months later, they are as genuinely in love as when Matt and Sarah got hitched. And they are now pregnant. But a weird thing happened. Just before leaving Scotland, they got WWJD and SBTC tattoos on their thighs as an everlasting reminder it's God who created sex and who brought them together. They consummated their marriage when they got back to London but just before they climaxed they both realized what they were doing at their offices was wrong. And they had set the fuse for something potentially horrifying by having talked to their minders beforehand about the other side's fraud.

"They said they couldn't abide this going on any more in either camp. And they quietly renounced their respective denominations and returned to their shared birth church - Methodism. They also decided to sing a tune. Big time. They spent the next six months drawing up an even more massive file than Lisa and Tom did - about 300,000 pages. And that's what I have here on this disk. The Crown Prosecutor for Greater London called Jeremy and me this morning and said she can't tolerate this criminality even if the disclosure was voluntary and apparently complete. So there is no immunity. They're going to have to do some jail time - about six months, less with good behavior, in exchange for forfeiting about half of their ill-gotten gains. Then the Home Office - this country's department of immigration, justice and national security - will put them into a witness protection program. And the child they're expecting, they won't lose him or her - in fact when they're due for parole, they'll actually get it on humanitarian grounds and after labour is induced they'll all be rushed into the underground until a trial happens about two years from now."

"The Ambassador didn't tell me any of that," said Ruthie.

"That's because they're setting a trap for their leaderships; the majordomos still don't know their minions converted back. And we need you to make the drop on the whistleblowers' behalf, a bogus one actually, to a park a few blocks from the Royal Palace in Brussels. You will then backtrack and make another one in the main park in Charleroi. The exact point is in the envelope there. The Brussels drop is the fake one, the disks in the envelope the Ambassador gave you are nothing but hard-core pornography – hopefully the one making the pickup will show up. When he or she is arrested, we think the authorities there can wrest something out of him or her too."

"Well, Ashe, I'm glad you're helping out. Jeremy too. I can't believe just how up to the ears all of us are in."

"It may be worse before it gets better, and I know you've heard this already; but Ruthie, from Jeremy and me, please watch yourself! Thank you. And give our regards to Luce and Kevin."

"I will." The women hugged again.

After leaving the British Museum, and going to a steakhouse, Ruthie checked into her hotel room and turned on the "telly". She was impressed by the quality of the newscasts and the insight of the reality shows in Britain which had far better production values and more coherent "confessions" from their participants than the copycats Stateside. Before going to bed, she pulled out a locally procured phone card. She called up Peter at home. No answer. She tried his cell phone. Voice mail full. She then tried sending a text message. A reply was almost usually instant, but this time none was forthcoming. She then tried Shelby.

"Peter left just about the time you arrived in Frankfurt," said Shelby, as she was finishing supper for her family as well as Ruthie's children. "He dropped off your children for the weekend then just took off. No explanation, just he had some business to take care of. And he made clear he didn't want to be reached except for when an extreme emergency came up."

"Did he say where he was going, Shel?"

"Um ... Enid, Oklahoma. A male friend of his from high school is meeting with him after several years of back and forth instant messages. They're going hunting in the back country. Not surprising, though - we all have licenses and usually win in the tag lotteries, no matter which state."

"When will he be back?" asked Ruthie.

"Thursday...same day you're due back, for all our kids' birthdays, on Friday," Shelby replied.

"Okay...fine. If he calls, tell him I said I love him."

"Will do, Ruthie. Come home safe."

"Knock on wood."

When Ruthie hung up, she thought it was a bit weird he would leave town just when she was on the most dangerous trip she might ever have to make. She furrowed her eyebrow, then opened up her laptop and logged onto the hotel's wi-fi. Going on one of the social media sites she and Peter frequented, she looked up any recent friends he may have made in the last three months (the friend Shelby alluded to had moved there years ago). No new contacts of Peter's were in Enid, but a friend of the friend of Peter's, a couple of years older than Lucy, indeed did live there also and had been added to the intermediary's list just four weeks earlier.

The woman had ruby-red hair, a dozen or more shades darker than Lisa's auburn, which flowed down to the top of her thighs. She had emerald-green eyes. Her face had freckles that would have matched Lisa's. And she was naturally endowed and she dressed so she showed it but not flaunted it. Her overall appearance was not an A-list bombshell, nor a female porn star (with or without implants), but she was not in the ugly duckling club either. She certainly was attractive - at least as much as the lead and secondary alto and soprano soloists at the mega church Ruthie co-managed.

The minister recognized the face as well as the name. Felicity Foster Hunter. She was a well-known former Catholic turned mostly left-wing evangelical lay preacher (although she still angrily opposed abortion and 'right to die' initiatives) and contemporary gospel singer who railed against televangelists as well as her former Church almost weekly on YouTube, interspersed with at least two or three new and original Contemporary Christian or Southern Gospel songs written and performed by her; and got views into the hundreds of thousands within hours of a new video post which would grow into the millions by the end of the week and the next week's broadcast, and thousands of comments from other evangelicals on both political sides fed up of the usual spokesgroups who claimed to represent them. Even Catholics, also in the thousands, expressed their support for her ministry feeling their home church had long abandoned them and that she was their moral voice as well. Needless to say, she had several albums having gone platinum in short order, almost exclusively from iTunes sales, and e-book sales with her views on the state of the Church and what she believed were also brisk.

Just three weeks before this night, one of the most notorious Christian television network owners in America delivered a blistering on-screen one hour long editorial against Felicity, not only calling her a heretic but every other demeaning word against a woman the FCC would allow. While he did not mention Felicity by name one single time, when he concluded by saying, "I hope God kills you before someone else does," she knew he meant her and had gone incommunicado. No new broadcasts. No new songs for sale on iTunes. No new daily reflections on her blog. Speculation was running rampant on the Web. What happened?

Ruthie put two and two together. Peter, a fan of Felicity's music, had noticed the bad man was literally smirking during his daily appearances after several days of silence from the woman. Peter was frightened, as were Ruthie, Rod and Shelby, that the broadcaster had made the good woman "disappear" Pinochet style. But without the other three knowing, Peter used the back channel to privately contact Felicity to say he wanted to make sure she was okay and that he wanted to help her fight back, even if from a distance. The offer was accepted within an hour.

After a series of positive chat sessions during the next ten days and after his having cheered her up, Felicity finally said she was in a safe room at her backsplit in Enid and she wanted to let the world know from that room that she was perfectly fine and she was immediately declaring war against the executive who threatened her, as well as every other Christian broadcaster who spread unorthodox principles on air; but she needed an alternate media channel to get that message out just in case her YouTube channel had been hacked. Peter immediately offered his services there too. With nearly twenty thousand dollars worth of top end equipment loaded up in his van - the one without a call sign - he drove westward to Enid to help her prepare her rebuttal broadcast on Ruthie and Peter's new radio station (he had gotten his license a couple of days after Ruthie earned hers).

Ruthie knew what probably happened next although not the specifics. She would find those details later, but Felicity was so relieved someone had the courage to reach out to her that, after a dress rehearsal, she left the safe room with Peter and they took a stroll through the adjacent woods. They soon leaned on each other after talking about their respective ministries, and not long after that they made love in the depths of the forest. They were actually shocked afterwards at what they had done, especially since Felicity was nine years older than Peter and they had used no protection whatsoever. But after Peter confided in her what Ruthie was up to, Felicity promised she'd do everything she could to help get Ruthie to the finish line - since Felicity had been tracking her rivals for years and had even more dirt on them, of the personal kind, ready to spring.

Ruthie wasn't going to cry when she realized that Peter and Felicity had been having an online affair of sorts, probably for months, which was finally consummated for real just that day. True, it hurt Ruthie that Peter betrayed her and her trust. Sure, it was bound to have happened with any woman sooner than later. In fact, Ruthie had actually contemplated having an affair with one of the male deacons. But for Peter to do it with a fellow and highly regarded evangelist not just hurt Ruthie, it shook her beliefs to the core. Worse, the coupling set all three up for even more blackmail than what they were already anticipating. She respected Felicity Hunter's doctrinal soundness as well as her courage, too; but all Ruthie would have done if it had been her was to write a check, a large one, as a retainer to fund the woman's libel suit against the "Christian" network's owner and his wife - a showpiece for plastic surgery gone insane - who had ghostwritten the editorial.

Well, Peter, we'll talk about this when we both get home, thought Ruthie. I may give you a pass, given Felicity's dire straits, but that doesn't mean you're the only one who can have fun.

Ruthie pulled out the disk copy that was meant for Lisa. Loading it in, and following the instructions provided, Ruthie inserted her own message.

The next day, Ruthie took the train from London to Brussels. She made her fake drop, and a couple of hours later, drove a rental car to Charleroi to make the real drop with her personal screed. As she left the park, she looked at the sign at the front entrance. Following instructions, she pointed the upright arrow held by a thumb tack to the left.

An hour and a half later, Lisa went to the park, discovered Ruthie had successfully made her drop, and grabbed the envelope from under a footbridge.

There were several copies of disks intended for different agencies. There were two more. One was for Thomas and the family vault. The other, labelled green, was for Lisa.

Lisa sat on a park bench, opened her laptop, and inserted Ashley's disk. Per Lisa's instructions Ruthie had encrypted three messages in different parts of the official dossier and set on a read and destroy mode.

The first message: You were right, Lisa. Peter and I haven't made passionate love in nearly a year. We haven't had straight up, tab a into slot b sex in four months. He hasn't licked my inline skates in three months. The last time he let me give him a blow job was two months ago. I don't know what's happening now, but I do know this – during the thing with Henderson, I actually did imagine having sex with Lucy. Not that I ever would have done that or have even tried. During my senior year in high school, I semi-cheated on Peter and Frenched a girl to see if I liked it. I didn't do it then, but looking back at it I know now that I would have. It doesn't mean I'm a lesbian, or bisexual, or even bi-curious. I just want to try it. So, you're about to find out where I'll be next so I can do just that.

"Read you like a book, sister," smirked Lisa.

The second message said, We need to give everyone the slip. That includes all of our guards. I realize this is a massive risk. But the two of us need to be alone, and in a place where both of us can reawaken our souls. So I've booked a hotel room in Stockholm. When we get there, we can stroll around the city for a few hours so we can get our bearings, especially since the sun's out much longer up there this time of year - I think two hours longer each side than it would be in Saint Louis; but when we check in we'll be each other's, without reservation, for that night and the next three days. I'll let you know which hotel, and how we get to Stockholm, when I meet you tomorrow at noon at the rendezvous point in the last message.

"Peter's cheating on you, isn't he?" said Lisa. "That's as good a reason as any. Although I believe you would want to do the 69 with me even if he wasn't. Brigitte is doing a female co-worker of Tom's this week. If they hadn't gone to Miami and instead stayed in this part of the world, it would have been a real girl's night out - all four of us making love, in the same room, to all of each other!" Lisa also realized that, based on another code, "noon" actually meant six AM.

It took nearly five minutes for the encrypter to find Ruthie's third message. Which had the meeting place.

Prinsengracht 263, Amsterdam.

"The Anne Frank House?!" gasped Lisa. "Ruthie, are you crazy?"

Then she immediately understood her friend's logic.