In late October 2002, Prince Albert's spymaster Robert Eringer continued to ruse the code-named MING, who invited Eringer to his London flat. This home, in posh Kensington, was large and plush and, like MING's house in Malibu, furnished with pricey oriental antiques, including pictures "purchased last week in Napa" dating from the Ming Dynasty.

Over dinner at nearby Julie's restaurant, MING told Eringer he had served in Borfink, Germany, in the mid-to-late 1980s, supervising secret U-2 and SR-71 reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union; he told Eringer he'd traveled with the Reagan White House to Iceland and Malta for summits with the Soviet Union's Mikhail Gorbachev. His adult daughter joined the table, at one point referring to MING as "my dad, the double-agent," resulting in an awkward silence.

MING and his girlfriend had big plans in the coming month: Paris (the five-star Hotel Meurice) and Gleneagles, the ultra-luxurious resort in Scotland. When Eringer off-handedly mentioned Felix Bloch, the alleged State Department traitor, MING could not look Eringer in the eye. MING paid for dinner with a high-end black American Express card.

By the end of October, Eringer felt so good about his and Piers's progress, he composed a verse:

Halloween is near, spirits and spooks versus crooks and pukes.

We'll prevail, the bad guys will fail,

They'll end up inside the Jacques Cousteau jail.

In mid-November Eringer met with MING again in London, this time in the Library Bar of the Lanesborough Hotel, with Piers present. Over dry martinis, MING told them he had just arrived from Oslo, where he'd had a "one-on-one" dinner with President Vladimir Putin at the Russian Embassy. MING told Eringer he and Putin had drunk two bottles of vodka between them and "ate the best caviar I've ever had." Said MING, "I have known Putin for ten years-I knew him when he was a nobody."

Eringer asked MING if he had conveyed this unique relationship with the President of Russia to someone in the U.S. government, given his background. MING shook his head. "Maybe you could open a backchannel?" Eringer suggested. MING changed the subject and said he planned to spend Thanksgiving weekend in St. Petersburg and Moscow, where he would again see Putin.

And, Ming added, in early December he intended to visit Washington DC for a meeting of the U.S. President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB).