Special Agent John C. Leahy-RED.

He worked routine Bureau assignments. He kept up with his father’s subversive friends. He covertly redacted his comrades’ files and diverted FBI interference. Jack Leahy: Fed toady by day. Jack Leahy: RED provocateur by night.

Jack reconnected with Joan. She had gone underground and gone criminal. Her sense of vengeance had gone scattershot. She had remained fixedly RED.

She recruited on college campuses. She proudly retained her own real name, much as Jack did. The sporadic use of aliases muddied her trail. She met Karen Sifakis. Their deep friendship began. A floating dialogue defined it. Karen advocated non-violence. Joan nearly always disagreed.

A strikebreaker pulled a gun on her. She hit him with a two-by-four. She sustained a scarring knife wound.

Two Legionnaires cornered her at that Paul Robeson concert. She took a savage beating. She waited nine years. She shot and killed the two men in their sleep.

She loved the thrill of armed robbery. She planned the jobs and steered clear of the jobs as events. She was conscious of herself as a woman. She crouched in certain shadows as she raged RED.

Jack fed her inside scoop on payroll jobs and bank vaults. She always donated her heist takes to the Cause. Joan and Jack became comrade-lovers. They shared a family story and a family hatred. They moved together and in circles overlapping. Joan became Williamson, Goldenson, Broward and Faust and always returned to Klein. Jack remained a G-man under his real and entirely fictive name. Jack got Joan out of jail. Jack utilized municipal PD contacts for criminal-records deletes. Joan conceived two textile-plant jobs in L.A.-’51 and ‘53. Dragnets caught her up. Jack got her out and blitzed file reports. Joan conceived a heist in Dayton, Ohio. Jack bought off key investigators and got most of the paperwork expunged.

Joan roved and toured revolutionary hot spots. It was a breathless errand and a blood duty of great urgency. Her dialogue with Karen Sifakis curtailed her worst urges. A lust peaked and sent things bad: ‘51, ‘56, ‘61. Only Karen knew the details. Only Karen knew the price she paid to continue at her mad pace.

She moved heroin to finance left-wing coups. She fomented revolt in Algeria and Cuba. She was heedless, reckless, vindictive and in many ways ideologically unsound. The death of her great love Dwight Holly taught her things. Her arc left matched his arc right in hate and specious rigor. She should have told him that before she ran from him.

She roved. She ran from and toward J. Edgar Hoover. She thought about the emeralds near constantly. She heard out rumors and cribbed lore and supposition. She exerted common sense and followed the trail.

Jack followed it with her. They shared information and came to this:

Hoover sold the stones to a Paraguayan fascist after the war. It was greed and political payback. El jefe hid Nazi scientists the U.S. wanted. El jefe knew brilliant gemologists. They knew of the stones and had their own designs.

They studied the emeralds. Their findings comprised a thesis on exploitative mining techniques. A straight bore-through-rock technology evolved. It was successfully employed and brought an end to the quaquero raids. El jefe was afraid of overt quaquero vengeance and ordered massacres. Scores of quaqueros were slaughtered.

The bore-through-rock technology caused massive worker layoffs. Enhanced emerald profits financed right-wing coups throughout South America and the Caribbean.

Green Fire served to sustain Rafael Trujillo’s power. The Goat became obsessed. He had to own the initial Muzo-Klein stones outright. The provenance consumed him. He wanted the story to end with him.

Trujillo hoarded Dominican money and grabbed Haitian-owned land. Papa Doc Duvalier had been emerald-financed and wanted the gems for himself. Trujillo and Duvalier hated each other. Trujillo murdered Haitian refugees. Duvalier enacted reprisals. The two fьhrers discovered their mutual longing. They decided to trust each other on the acquisition of the stones and nothing else. Joan tracked the arc of the emeralds to this point and no further. She went to the D.R. in early ‘59.

She found a country ripe for revolt. She found Celia.

A leftist network supplied the introduction. Celia was a gone-bust United Fruit heiress. She was half American, half Dominican, all old money. She used her father’s surname of Farr and her mother’s maiden name of Reyes interchangeably. Gretchen and Celia came and went at whim. Joan preferred the latter name. Celia was a casualty of revolution, left- and right-wing. Castro nationalized the cane fields and bankrupted her father. The Goat robbed her mother in a recent land grab. Celia was a nationally ranked polo player and a bunco artist extraordinaire. She was omnivorously intelligent and not quite brilliant. Joan considered her ripe for conversion. One thing told her this.

The emeralds. Celia was crazed over them.

They became comrade/lovers. Celia was headstrong and tractable, independent and willfully submissive to the concept of revolt. Celia was a mystic. Joan was not. Celia dabbled in Eastern philosophy and more than dabbled in voodoo. Celia believed in the spiritual force of the emeralds. Joan did not. They reconciled their differences and traveled to Castro’s Cuba. They began plotting the 6/14 invasion.

The invasion failed. A rebel named Maria Rodriguez Fontonette betrayed the Cause. A Tonton Macoute man named Laurent-Jean Jacqueau assisted the Cause. Jacqueau secretly emigrated to America and changed his name to Leander James Jackson. Joan and Celia were captured, imprisoned and bribed free. Joan had stashed a robbery take in an L.A. bank vault. Jack Leahy tapped the cash and found the right officials.

Joan and Celia flew to America. The Goat was assassinated. Juan Bosch and Joaquin Balaguer succeeded him. They were repressive and much less garish rulers. Balaguer inherited the Goat’s emerald fixation. He was then a government lawyer eyeing the presidency. Papa Doc remained in power and remained emerald-fixed.

The men found each other. They collaborated and cut a side deal. They learned the identity of the Paraguayan el jefe. They gave him a down payment on the Muzo-Klein emerald stash. El jefe was near-broke and in poor health. He wanted to sell. It was December ‘63. Fate intervened and fucked it all up.

Balaguer had a financial setback. Papa Doc had a financial setback. They lacked the cash to outright buy the stones. They looked for a rich American to consign them to.

The right-wing grapevine supplied a name: Dr. Fred Hiltz. He was a hate pamphleteer and an emerald-myth worshiper. They contacted Dr. Fred. He paid off eljefe with a bank draft. The stones were messengered to Santo Domingo. Balaguer and Papa Doc met there just to touch them. They did not trust messengers to hand-deliver the stones. Dr. Fred insisted on an armored-car drop. A Haitian man was hired to fly the emeralds to L.A. It was now 1/16/64. He could not leave until 2/21/64. Balaguer and Papa Doc enjoyed the delay. They got to touch the stones more.

SUDDENLY:

A Tonton Macoute thug learned of the shipment. He contacted his old Tonton frиre Leander James Jackson. Leander knew his old comrades Joan and Celia. Serendipity: Celia’s brother Richard Farr worked at Wells Fargo in L.A.

Jack Leahy ran the FBI’s L.A. Office. Richard knew the armored-car route. Richard predicted the cash take along with the stones. Jack knew expendable criminal scum to leave dead at the scene. The greatest hurdle was obscuring their IDs. Joan knew a brilliant chemist named Reginald Hazzard. She had mentored him at the Freedom School. She had bailed him out of jail the month before.