"Thank you," said Liddy. Colby hung up.

Next, Liddy called E. Howard Hunt and read him the sentence, Hunt grunted.

A grunt in novelist-talk means, "I just got shot in the stomach," or "I hope you got a big advance from the publisher."

"I did," said Liddy. Hunt hung up.

Finally, Liddy called Richard Nixon.

"Uh, hello," said Nixon.

Liddy read him the sentence. Nixon hung up.

It took him by surprise. It crept up behind him. It crushed him by the weight of its blow: the need for a plot. He left his typewriter and consulted the books in his den. Certainly one of them should provide a plot worth appropriating. He leafed through his books--all manuals. He had airplane manuals, car manuals, weapons manuals. And of course, a tattered sex manual. His head filled with story ideas, confidence renewed, he returned to his writing desk.

He pecked out lengthy sentences describing airplane take-offs, car transmissions and rifle barrels. And of course, he wrote about sex:

She received and expressed pleasure so well, and Rand's own pleasure was directly proportionate to what he was able to give. The two of them together, he thought, were like compound turbines increasing each other's rpm reciprocally until they went through the red line and fused from the heat of a passion that exceeds human design limits.

When he finished, he showed his manuscript to William Colby.

"Great stuff, said Colby. Liddy smiled under his mustache.

"But there are no characters besides Zlin," said Colby.

"Oops," replied Liddy.

IMAGINATION did not agree with Liddy. He grew pale, his throat throbbed, irregularity plagued him. Still, he made no progress. On April 24, at 2:37 p.m., inspiration attacked. While thumbing through a Robert Ludlum novel, it hit him--characters. He swiftly plugged them into the plot: the "very Nordic" Rick Rand, suave financial genius; the "very oriental" T'sa Li, Rick's sex-hungry girlfriend; Mikhail Sarkov, KGB agent posing as multinational chairman Greg Ballinger; T'ang Li, T'sa Li's mammoth brother and Kung Fu expert. Liddy threw in a mafia don and several Company people because, after all, they were his friends. He kept Edward Zlin, because, after all, Zlin was Liddy.