                         Mike Ballistas

You are the scion of an old New England union
family, and learned politics, labor and crime at
your father's knee.  Your father was a union
leader, not a mafasioso, but you remember many
evenings when you were sent away to play while
your father sat in the kitchen and drank wine
with the Greek mafia.  Because he wasn't really
a mafasioso, your father relished the stories
about this or that guy "getting it" with an
icepick that much more.  The fact is there
wasn't much violence in your waterfront town,
and most of the stories were decades old. 

Your father had always had visions of being a
local politician, and loved people to respect him. 
He never really got the support from the
democratic machine, probably because he was
all to anxious to please.  He sent you away to
the big time, and you entered George
Washington University in 1971, with the
expectation that you would be a pre-law political
science double major.  Your father had saved a
lot of money to send you to school, and he
expected great things.

The problem was that you didn't want to be a
union lackey, or even a labor leader for the rest
of your life.  You wanted a life of excitement. 
And that's exactly what you got.  

For starters, you wanted out of the
claustrophobia of New England, where the same
"tough guys" had run things for fifty years. 
Washington is a big town for politics, but its
also a big town for adventure.  You made
connections fast and found that for a young man
with absolutely no moral compunctions
whatsoever, there was plenty of future.  Look at
the arms smuggler Khoshoggi, who is a
millionaire, and has a wing of a major university
named after him.

You drifted into the grey area of arms dealing,
starting with drug contacts you made at GW,
mostly through Avery Carson.  Avery was
always a little transparent though, and you
weren't.  Once you had found some names, you
burrowed in, did your work and waited.

You learned enough about the law to abuse it,
and graduated with the poly-sci degree.  As soon
as you had your diploma you started a small,
legitimate consulting business.  Foreign Trade
Consultants Ltd.  Just a name in the Yellow
Pages at first, though now you have a nice
marble and brass office on K street with enough
secretaries and junior consultants to give the
place a legitimate feel.

Of course, you became an international arms
dealer.  Not a smuggler.  A dealer.  You seldom
see the arms that you ship.  But you arrange for
the pickup, movement and delivery.  You push
the paperwork that makes the shipments "semi-
legitimate."  Very few of the arms you ship
actually originate, or even pass through the
United States.  In your role as a trade consultant
you fly to places like the Hague, Singapore,
Nairobi and Mombassa, to make arrangements,
supervise, hire couriers, seal deals.  Forty years
ago, you would have been a good gangster. 
Never get your own hands dirty if you can help
it.

When your school "chums" began to graduate
and get real jobs, you kept an eye open for
opportunities.  You were always willing to help
find a job for a friend, or the friend of a friend.
For a long time, you had a very profitable
business in Sweden.  You had two contacts
there:  Avery Carson and Margot Matthews,
both of whom you knew from school.  You
knew that it was possible for the Trade
Representative at a U.S. embassy to stamp
import export papers from that nation to the
U.S., or from the U.S. to that nation.  Since the
U.S. routinely reroutes its own arms shipments
to South America, it was possible to use the
same machinery that the CIA uses to divert arms
shipments for your own practices.

Carson was a medium level employee, and
Matthews was the mistress of the ambassador,
Darrington Ripley.  You used Matthews to pass
orders to Carson.  Matthews knew very little
about the operation.  Carson knew considerably
more, but did not know who the orders came
from. 

Unfortunately your little playhouse collapsed. 
Ambassador Ripley found out, and you got wind
that he was going to come clean about the whole
thing, even though it would probably sink his
career, since Carson had blackmail evidence on
him.

You arranged for a car-bomb in Belgium.  You
understand that the Basque Revolutionaries took
credit.  Good for them.  

Fairly few people know about your business. 
You hired Linda Kane to deliver orders for you
in the Washington area.  You briefly went to
school with Linda in the seventies, but you
mostly knew her through Margot Matthews. 
You explained that she was delivering bribes for
your trading company.  You count on Linda to
be too dizzy to ever really roast you on the
stand, though she does worry you from time to
time.  You would like to have her killed, but
you can't do it yourself, so you are trying to
hire someone that you don't know very well, but
can trust.  Not an easy job.  It might be best if
you had something on them.

You have a new acquisition too.  Emily
Breezewood, the daughter of a Senator.  A few
years ago one of the people in your operation
decided to get weird religion and Matthew Allen
Carter happened to recognize your name, and on
the strength of having known you in school
talked them into going to Tibet, rather than to
the feds.  You have since had that person
dumped in an oil drum off the coast of Jamaica,
but if Carter hadn't helped out, it might have
gone badly for you.

He had a favor to ask in return.  That you
seduce his wife.  This would have been more
unusual if he didn't want a private detective
named Mort Nicholson to take pictures.  It was
no skin off of your nose, though, so you agreed. 
You didn't know Emily very well in school but
she was cute and deserved a wealthy rat like you
instead of a screwy rat like Carter.
Of course, she got screwed over in the divorce
settlement based on her liaison with you.  She
never knew for sure that you had set her up,
though she was suspicious.  

You actually liked Emily fairly well, and she
naturally gravitated toward you after the messy
divorce with Carter.  Maybe somewhere down
in your oily soul there is a spark of decency and
you felt responsible for her, though you doubt
it.  At any rate, she hasn't suffered financially
since she took up with you, though you got the
impression she had some hard times living with
the artsy-fartsy crowd up in New York before
she got some sense and came back to
Washington.

Now back in school, you vaguely knew Carter
and Cochran and the other weirdos.  Carter is a
scary guy, and was even when you knew him
back in school.  He was always about two bricks
shy of a full load, and success as a popular
weirdo hasn't made him any safer.  You have
sort of tried to protect Emily from everything
around her, including him, in a gangsterish sort
of way, but you aren't anxious to tangle with
Matthew Allen Carter.
 
You are a bit worried though.  You recently got
invited down to "old home week."  Apparently
Grant Cochran wanted to get all his old College
buddies together.  You probably wouldn't have
been invited, but Margot invited Emily and so
that included you.  

Considering the amount of dirt some of these
people have on you, you are a little nervous. 
You have kept your hands mostly clean, but you
might flounder in a lengthy investigation,
especially if several of your people decided to
turn state's evidence rather than tough it out. 
You were up to your ears in the Iran - Contra
affair, but that is old news now, and so far your
name has not come up in connection with it.  

For example, when you have to actually deal
with weapons inside the Continental United
States one of the people you hire is a girl named
Toni Randall-Smith, a washed up athlete who
used to run drugs for Avery Carson.  She is
efficient and discrete.  

You are particularly worried at the moment
because she is part of a complex situation that
you are afraid might be over your head.  Always
before when you were running weapons in the
U.S., you were doing it with the tacit approval
of the CIA, usually to Company funded groups
in Nicaragua.  It is your favorite kind of crime:
quasi-legal and government protected. 
Unfortunately, it now seems that the CIA is as
capable of screwing up as any third rate parcel
of gangsters, and since the hearings, your
business has fallen off sharply.

Sometimes these shipments were by Air
America, the CIA private airlines, but you also
learned about the network of drug aircraft that
are allowed to land their cargoes in the southern
U.S., so that the Company can ship weapons on
them on the return trip.  

Then you got an offer you couldn't refuse.  The
Medellin Cartel, a Columbian cocaine concern
which has nearly as much capital as IBM,
wanted to buy weapons directly from the U.S. 
Cut out the middleman.  You made a deal with
them.  The fact is that these days it is
ludicrously easy to ship weapons anywhere in
the world from the U.S.  You arranged for
thousands of semi-automatic rifles to be shipped
from Interarms in Alexandria, to a phony
sporting goods chain in Texas.

From there they are to be shipped by air through
Panama to Columbia, where they will be
modified to full automatic by the local
craftsmen, who have a particular skill with such
rustic arts.  

You have hired Tony Randall-Smith to carry out
the exceedingly simple task of driving to Texas,
and supervising the transfer of the weapons from
a Dallas warehouse to an airfield in the
countryside.  However, you will need to give
her some temporary documents that will cover
the shipment.  Tony has already made one trip
to set up the arrangements, and will be driving
back this week to actually supervise the transfer. 
You had a brief phone call from her in which
she said there might be a "difficulty" which she
would fill you in on later.  If there is a defect
with the shipment, you need to know about it
right away.  The drug cartel is picky about
quality, and they will accept delays for a good
cause.  The weapons are still legitimate, and can
still be returned to the manufacturer at this
point.  But if you ship bad merchandise, the next
car bombing you hear of could be your own.

Fortunately you have the perfect opportunity to
meet her tonight.  Margot Matthews gave you a
call to specifically invite you to tonight's party,
even though you don't know Grant Cochran
very well.  You suspect that Margot just wanted
to make sure that Emily showed up.  You
suspected that Toni might be here as well, since
she was one of Margot and Emily's old friends,
and Margot assured you she would be.  You
asked Margot to let her know that you would be
here as well.  You understand she is living in
this region now.

In your last brief conversation, Toni was full of
welcome news, and also gave you a warning that
there might be someone among your circle of
old acquaintances who was helping the Feds
with an investigation.  She hinted that it might
be Grant Cochran, or someone close to him.  It
could be Margot Matthews or Avery Carter,
though as far as you knew, Carter hadn't kept
closely in touch with Grant either.  It could also
be that Linda Kane has found out something, in
which case she has definitely outlived her
usefulness.  You need to try to pressure Carter
and Matthews about it, without giving them any
ammunition to use against you.  At any rate,
Toni has earned the $8,000 in cash you are
carrying to pay her, and you expect her to earn
the remaining $8,000 making the actual
delivery.  The deal itself is making you money
well into the triple digits.

You brought your best silenced pistol, because
if you can find out who is investigating you, this
little party might provide a good cover for an
accident.

School: You attended George Washington
University from 1971 to 1974.  You know Gary
Morant, Grant Cochran, Avery Carson,
Matthew Allen Carter, Linda Kane, Emily
Breezewood, and Margot Matthews from a circle
of acquaintances there.
THE OTHERS

What they know about you:

Mike Ballistas:  a wealthy international
consultant with impressive offices downtown. 
Ballistas has numerous prominent government
contacts, and is generally known to be an
influential businessman.  He donated heavily to
the Reagan Campaign.

People you know well:

Emily Breezewood: Your current live-in
girlfriend, Emily a college friend of Grant
Cochran, and a prep-school friend of Margot
Matthews, Emily is the daughter of Senator
Breezewood of Connecticut, a very powerful
senior U.S. Legislator.  Emily was married to
Matthew Allen Carter, and divorced him, in a
particularly messy case during which Mr. Carter
was represented by Gary Morant.  They are
reported to be on barely civil speaking terms
now.  Emily is living with Mike Ballistis.

Avery Carson: is a vital link in your
international arms smuggling network.  Carson
in the only man who could bury you really deep
without having to work at it, but you could
bury him as well.  Carson is not aware that you
arranged for the assasination of Ambassador
Ripley.  

Carson attended George Washington University
and has many acquaintances from that period,
and immediately afterward.  Avery met most of
Grant's circle of friends in the seventies while
they were working in Washington after
graduation.  Mr. Carson occupied a position in
the staff of the late Darrington Ripley, U.S.
Ambassador to Sweden.  Currently employed by
the State Department, Avery Carson is rumored
to actually work for the Company, or No-such-
agency.

Matthew Allen Carter: When you originally
seduced Emily Breezewood, she was married to
Carter, and you did it to get him out of a messy
divorce settlement.  Carter did you a favor some
years ago. 

A well known mystic, Carter is associated with
decadence, drugs, and bizarre mysticism.  It is
unclear where his money comes from, though he
is known to be at least moderately wealthy, and
eccentric.  

M.A Carter provides spiritual consultation to
some of Washington's most prominent social
figures.  He has appeared on several area talk
shows, notably Panorama in July 1979 where he
was involved in an altercation, and declined to
appear on Good Morning America in August of
1982 on the topic "Senators who follow the
Horoscopes."  He has assisted Federal
authorities as a consultant on "Cult Related
Cases", and appeared before a Senate
Subcommittee Special Hearing in 1983 to
discuss "Cult Phenomena and Crime."

Margot Matthews: Another element of your
network, Matthews was largely controlled by
Carson, though she is nosey and you cannot be
sure that she knows nothing of you.  She could
be very dangerous and must be watched, but is
fairly useful to you.

Margot was a friend of Grant Cochran, and
several other attendees in college, but went on to
become a prominent Washington socialite who
rose out of the ranks of minor political followers
due to her connections with the late U.S.
ambassador to Sweden Mr. Darrington Ripley. 
Margot is giving this party in honor of Grant
Cochran's birthday.

Margot is currently employed by the Department
of State, where she is rumored to the mistress of
a powerful political appointee.  She was
mentioned in People magazine shortly after the
inaugural ball, and her fortunes have definitely
been on the rise with the Reagan government. 

Gary Morant: is your attorney, when you need
one.  Gary may know a little more than you
would like about your businesses, and can
probably deduce that you are a smuggler, but
you have never told him anything, and he
should not have any hard evidence on you.  

Washington Attorney.  Graduated from George
Washington University in 1974, GW Law in
1978.  Formed Morant and Steele with Harlan
Steel in 1980.  Known for handling some of the
messiest and most prominent divorce and lawsuit
cases in the Washington social spectrum. 
Morant is a rising star in the social constellation
of Washington, and is Grant Cochran's attorney,
and is currently representing him in all of his
sordid legal affairs. 

Mort Nicholson: Nicholson was the
photographer that Carter and Morant used to
set up Emily Breezewood.  You only know of
him distantly, though you have kept him in
mind in case you ever need a PI. 

Nicholson is a well known private detective who
has  worked for Gary Morant, and was a
research reference for the character of Detective
George Panopalous in Grant Cochran's Trinity.

Dr. Roger Pierce: You know Dr. Pierce from
your University days, and while you cannot say
you learned much of use from him, you have
always considered him an entertaining person. 


Dr. Pierce is a Professor/practitioner of
Psychology at George Washington University. 
Young but promising, for several years his 400
level course on Personality Disorders has been
considered the "most fun" class in the entire
psych department.  Many of Dr. Pierce's
associates consider him to be "that strung out
quack", Dr. Pierce considers himself a
"perceptually enhanced alternative practitioner." 
It is obvious that Dr. Pierce either has
something on the University, or has tenure.

"Psychological disorders can be not only
instructive, but entertaining as well..."
(American Psychiatric Yearbook, 1980).  

Toni Randall-Smith:  An old friend of Margot
Matthews (and also Emily, as it turns out), you
have been using Toni as a courier for several
years.  You originally made contact with her
through Carson, for whom she was working as
a drug-runner. 

Toni is an Olympic Equestrian Medalist,
winning two Silver and one Bronze medal at Los
Angeles in 1984.  Native of McLean Virginia,
the child of a former ambassador to England. 
Personally acquainted with Princess Margaret,
has appeared in Sports Illustrated, and network
television.  Currently holds American and
European Championships in several categories of
jumps.  Professional status has been called into
question, but intends to compete in 1988.  
Other People:

Anthony Blaine:  A New York writer
considered a protege of Grant Cochran, Blaine
is handled by Jonathan Drake, the same
publisher as Cochran.  It was rumored that
Blaine and Cochran had a very serious argument
while appearing together at a promotional
convention after the publication of Sightless
King.  Blaine is best known for his Fantasy-
Horror novel Wunderking, and his most recent
work The Dinner Guest.  

Grant Cochran:  Grant Cochran is a horror
writer whose early work brought him wealth and
recognition.  His first acclaimed work was a
collection of short stories in 1977 entitled Look
Ma, No Hands!  Grant achieved a more limited
success with The Sickness in John Harrol, 1977;
The Collection, 1979; but his mainstream horror
novels  Dark Symbols,1980; and Trinity, 1982;
were extremely successful.  His Lovecraftian
fantasy-horror The Sightless King, 1984 was
universally panned.  Grant also wrote the
screenplay for the 1981 film The Blinding.
Numerous short stories including The Metallic
Taste of Blood Omni, Feb 1982.

Grant's work has tended more towards the
occult and fantasy side than Stephen King, and
his success has been less marked, but his early
novels were commercially successful.  Born
1955 to a wealthy Virginia family, Grant
graduated from George Washington University
in DC in 1975, aged twenty.  Writer and
playboy, known to have inherited some money
from parent's death in 1974. He is widely
rumored to have been hospitalized recently for
rehabilitation.

Leda Deerden: A New York author, or visual
artist, guest of Grant's Publisher.  Ms. Deerden
is known for her terra cotta figures, which are
widely sold in gift shops in the Village, and her
work at the 42nd Street Gallery, but is a
newcomer to the writing field.  Her first project
is projected to be a collaboration with Grant
Cochran.

Jonathan Drake: Publisher of Grant Cochran,
Drake is Editor of Horror at Electra publishing,
a division of Robert W. Thormond and Sons,
Inc., one of the nations largest publishing
houses.  Despite the failure of Cochran's latest
novel, Drake is reported to be successful and on
the rise.  He handles many other writers
including Anthony Blaine, and is also in charge
of titles under the smaller, but profitable Medea
imprintaur, for occult paperbacks, which
includes the works of Jeffrey Saxon.

Linda Kane:  Parapsychological researcher for
the Institute for Parapsychological Studies, 1567
23rd St. NW.  Graduate of Columbia Prep, and
Mary Washington College.  M.A. Barnard. 
Kane is a literary agent for Matthew Allen
Carter and is rumored to be his lover.  

Sarah Lamont: Sarah Lamont is an old Prep-
school and College friend of Margot Matthews,
Linda Kane, Emily Breezewood and others. 
Sarah went to work for Gary Morant as a
paralegal, and is now his chief secretary.  

Jeffrey Saxon: A noted Parapsychology/Occult
writer and Astrologer, author of Health Signs,
Astrology for You, and Psychic Defense, and
several other successful books published in
paperback.  Jeffrey is rumored to be practically
the only person in New York who does not
suffer from an incapacitating drug addiction.

Karyn Seidmann:  A New-York literary agent,
Seidmann is not well known in literary circles,
though there are some dark rumors about her
past, including a lawsuit.  Seidman handles
small time occult authors, and until recently her
biggest literary success was Jeffrey Saxon, the
popular occultist and astrologer.

Oliver Stewart:  A comic-book author and
illustrator for Universal Comics, a major
competitor of Marvel and D.C. 
Oliver responsible for the satirical Captain
Flapjack miniseries, but is best known for his
work with Blood Hound, a revitalized 1960's
Superhero, and with Revenant, a dark-horror
miniseries.  Stewart handled a graphic-novel
adaptation of Grant Cochran's Sightless King,
which was somewhat more successful than the
actual novel.  Oliver is a New Yorker, but has
maintained a friendship with horror writer Grant
Cochran, and has come down with some of his
other New York acquaintances to make his
birthday an interesting affair.

Craig Webber: An acquaintance of Margot
Matthews, Mr. Webber is a well-to-do local
business consultant, rumored to have
connections to smuggling and the underworld. 
Webber is said to be a business partner of Avery
Carson.