That evening, forty Border Patrol agents were served a grand meal in the Magnolia Dining Room, taking over the Burns Night preparations meant for former guests. The men were loud and rough compared to the Avallon’s usual clientele, and staff guided them through formal dining. June Porter Hudson stood at the doorway, meeting the agents’ stares with poise and noticing the Bureau agents’ different reception among them.

FBI Agents Tucker Rye Minnick, Hugh Calloway, and Pony Harris entered to whistles; Minnick quickly quieted the room with a few words. Unlike Border Patrol, the FBI had rooms in the main hotel and workspaces allocated, and had already begun tasks: Calloway interviewing staff, Harris sorting mail, and Minnick collecting radios. June felt their presence as invasive and noted Minnick’s stern attention on her.

State Department lead Benjamin Pennybacker joined June, awkward but powerful in his role. June pressed him about the program’s fairness, including whether overseas diplomats truly received luxuries like caviar. Pennybacker framed it as compliance with wartime laws of civility, hinting at starving POWs, including women and children, and quoted the government’s per diem rates: ten dollars per adult, five per child. June pointed to the Avallon’s opulence to question adequacy. They briefly discussed the hotel’s “haunted” baths—June insisted there were no demons, just the water—and the trio of abandoned dachshunds the staff called the Pinta, the Niña, and the Santa María.

June’s top waiter, Sebastian Hepp, summoned her to the kitchen, where June found Chef Maurice Fortéscue sunk in gloom. She toured the Grotto, naming dishes in progress—candied yam, corn fritters, fried oysters rémoulade, stuffed peppers, braised celery, red wine and marrow sauce, baked tomatoes, duchess potatoes, and milk-fed chicken with peas—while the Border Patrol’s dining noises underscored the pressure.

Fortéscue confessed distress after a letter from his sisters describing a girl in his French village humiliated for kissing her Jewish boyfriend. His lament made clear he did not want to serve the coming detainees. June responded by acknowledging the burden through precise production targets—thousands of eggs, rolls, and pounds of provisions needed daily—signaling her understanding of the scale and her expectations.

To motivate him, June revealed that Erich von Limburg-Stirum would be among the arrivals. The name stirred Fortéscue, an aviation devotee, who immediately asked if the aviator was a Nazi; June deflected, saying it was not their role to judge, only to feed those caught in the federal net. When Fortéscue voiced worries about the hotel’s water “turning” and reports from the fourth floor, June firmly told him to leave the water to her, ending the exchange of doubts.

After a tense pause, Fortéscue tied his apron strings and committed: “Vive l’Avallon, Hoss.” June thus secured her chef’s cooperation for the massive operation to come.