The holidays, old enemies, and honky-tonk headaches return

Dearest Anastasia,

Again my correspondence will commence with deepest apologies because of yet another late response. You see finding holiday gifts for my many staff members is more difficult than most could ever imagine! I mean really! With all the undercover agents, theologians, astrophysicists, code decryption specialists, baristas, and the whole Sanskrit department (which alone is made up of 400 people), not to mention the Sultan, it really is a dreaded endeavor! What do you get a person who does have everything? I mean more than everything, everything plus everything? And then when your staff is made up of people from hundreds of different countries around the world, which celebrate nearly many specific, and not so traditional religious celebrations, one could honestly have a breakdown. Did you know that if you give a man over the age of forty from the Nubutoo tribe a package wrapped in red wrapping paper you are in a sense asking for his finger in marriage? And it is just the finger not even the whole hand!

Now I must apologize for my rant, as well as, my tardy response. Oh thank the firmament for Tahoota berries! Their properties of mood enhancement get me through these trying times, and they really give a bland smoothie some seriously needed zing!

But I digress. Our most heartfelt congratulations go to you and Lady Rosewater for expertly employing all of your wonderful resources for a successful extraction of P-H-C-M. Upon receiving this last transmission from you, we were able to pinpoint that your trouble with NASA detection was more than just a coincidence. We had received word that Mme Vicaduer and Mr. Butler have been working within an underground group headquartered in North Korea. It seems that they sent an unmanned rogue satellite with surveillance equipment to spy on you and your extraction endeavor.

It is not clear how they were able to access this highly top-secret mission information, but they did. Fortunately for us the satellite, stolen from military storage base in Dublin, had wiring issues and wasn't able to transmit any information from the site near Saturn. Navigation controls were also faulty on their device, which resulted in various collisions with various government owned weather satellites.

As result of these new developments, and with various international investigations being opened regarding the origin of Vicaduer and Butler's bumper-car satellite misadventure, we must move ahead very cautiously. This is necessary for two very important reasons. The
plexybubble trials are so classified that we don't want any traditional governmental agencies digging for information. Secondly, after obtaining the remnants of the rogue satellite, we found an audio file on the secondary navigational computer that was very interesting to me.

It was a yet unreleased country song embedded with even more top-secret information. This proves that not only is this horrid honky-tonk headache not yet eradicated, but that it may be Vicaduer and Butler, who are actually behind it all!

Anastasia, the Periwinkle camp needs to find out from you if it is safe to continue with plexybubble trials right now? Is it too unsafe?

I feel both our camps have been infiltrated in some manner. What security information have you uncovered as of late? Can you shed some much-needed light on this very very dark time?

Always,

Darwin Whitecrest

p.s. Happy Holidays