political feature which had found its publication home only late and then tenuously, conditioned on "final story approval" which meant that the story had no certain home. Here in the UK, watching political sport in the US may fascinate many readers but does not always fascinate grumpy editors. ​ The original story idea was to get inside several of the personalities who made up America's rude new crop of brash young populists and "grassroots" candidates who had risen up after Mr Trump and who seemed determined to overturn "establishment" politics and the "old boys" system in America. Early for Mr Trump Declining a Ted Cruz offer, Mr Sykes opted early for Mr Trump and never wavered after that and by the tone of his writings seemed to have become more stridently "Trumpian" everyday.

Mr Sykes first joined Ted Cruz until Donald Trump announced his candidacy on June 16, 2015

This series originally envisioned beginning with Mr Sykes because he had seemed one of the more colorfully outspoken and most quoted of the several national candidates slated to be observed in the US. Never mind that much of the quoting about him came in unprintable epitaphs from an enraged international beehive of over nine million stinging feminists he had cared enough to offend. Mr Sykes had left enough information about himself online and in print to work from in any event. But then, as Mr Sykes' story parts began unfolding and colliding with the "plain old Missourian" images Mr Sykes seemed to be projecting—the story seemed unable to contain itself. ​ Mr Sykes, whose "log-cabin born" credentials seemed strained by his status as the scion and favored grandson of a

Sykes family home, the "Lonsdale House," Hot Springs, Arkansas. Built by St. Louis railroad tycoon John Lonsdale in 1906, Mr Clinton, as governor visited and stayed in Lonsdale House at least nine times in the days when Lonsdale House was owned by democrat representative, later speaker of the Arkansas house, Ray Smith. Smith became a civil rights hero when he cast the lone dissent in the 99 to 1 vote that left the Arkansas House of Representatives supporting then governor Mr Faubus and segregation, blocking blacks from the doors of Central High School in 1957 against President Eisenhower's federalized National Guard orders.

locally famous entrepreneur, Bob Sykes, who had developed a highly successful theme park called "Magic Springs" and whose corporations and partnerships owned hundreds of properties in Arkansas, Missouri, Texas, Oklahoma, and Arizona. ​ Troubled Connections ​ More interestingly, one by one, Courtland Sykes and Talosorion connections linked to current events and to troubled American political figures: Paul Manafort, Michael Flynn, Chris Christie, and Donald Trump, all characters playing parts, sometimes criminal parts, in the US Special Counsel's Russian investigation. All of this made it seem clearer why Mr Sykes had seemed so aggressively unwilling to discuss any of it with the head of the Special Counsel responsible for investigating Russian interference in the 2016 US presidential election, Robert Mueller, or with the press and why he had in several recorded speeches, angrily decried the Special Counsel as a "witch hunter" and "a liberals' stooge" who was, he raged, not out to fight crime but to "get Trump" even if he had to "squeeze witnesses" to "invent crime." Mr Sykes, no marshmallow himself, said that the FBI had become America's

"new Stasi" operating in a "police state of their own making" and that they had "burrowed deeply into American political life. FBI meddling in American elections," he said, "was far more dangerous to American democracy than Russian meddling could ever be." Surely, it seemed, Mr Sykes' outspokenness meant he was finally "coming out" and starting to unpeel a few of his own mysteries. Or so it seemed. To overcome Mr Sykes' reticence to cooperate, two sample draft pages of an early draft of this story were sent, suggesting how his quotes, if furnished, might "clarify or correct" any misperceptions given. Mr Sykes, however, finding the sample pages not at all to his liking, evoked furious legal thunder, claiming that the sample pages contained "malicious and terrible distortions and real libels," and that "we were out to destroy his campaign." He demanded to know who "had hired the story, or had gone to England for it,” suggesting, as he did, that his opponent "sneaky Claire McCaskill" had chartered it—though we assured him, she had not. ​ Finally, accepting that the story would go on despite him and his objections and without his quotes, if necessary, Mr Sykes relented in part, even finally writing a begrudging acknowledgment, that trusting "honest writers" might be best after all and that if some "fair story," were accurately written for a change, it might help his campaign and help shed the "mystery candidate" aura that had plagued him from the start. ​ Yet, when the actual agreement to be interviewed in writing came—on five and a half single-spaced typed pages—it contained restrictions that even the hungriest feature writers on desperate deadlines and facing prickly unknown subjects could never tolerate—written answers to written questions, no meetings, no follow-bys, declined questions, caveats, confidentialities, redacted names, unrevealed sources,