Game Fourteen will be Mark's third tour of duty in the ATF. He resigned - with much fanfare - in the middle of the Game Eight tournament. He returned in Game Eleven, but was cast out in the Great Verification Purge of Game Twelve, for refusing to take the quiz.

You see, Mark is a hippie. A filthy, tree-licking, pot-smoking, Haight-Ashbury hippie of the first magnitude. And it turns out, hippies and iron-fisted Czars are an explosive combination. Go figure. But an even more volatile combination are hippies and the deep south. And now that Mark has left southern Georgia for the peace and tranquility of Niagara Falls and upstate New York, maybe he'll be less angst-ridden. And maybe he'll stick around for more than one game. And maybe he'll answer his questions in less than a week. And maybe cars are made of chocolate, and my son is the tooth fairy...