1. March 24, Oakland, CA     The sun, just rising, made the hills around San Francisco look like green jewels, and the Golden Gate Bridge gleamed in the early morning light, as the Christina B out of Hong Kong made her way slowly through the bay, heading for a dock at Oakland terminal.  There were still traces of the evening fog that had blanketed the Bay, but the combination of the sun’s heat and a wind blowing in from the Pacific Ocean had scattered it.  Only small pockets of fluffy vapor hung about, mostly in the valleys and over San Francisco to the south.  The only sound that could be heard from the bridge of the ship was the humming of the engines and the slap of waves against the bow.  Overhead, a flock of sea gulls swooped and dived, following the ship in hopes of bilge being discharged upon which they would descend and feed.     Captain Chow Hung Fat, a slender Chinese with close-cropped iron gray hair, felt every one of his sixty years as he stood at the front of the wheelhouse, watching the bow of the ship gently rise and fall as it sliced through the metallic blue water.  He had been at his post since well before dawn; Chow knew his helmsman was experienced, having made this same voyage at least half a dozen times in the past couple of years, but he felt that his post was in the wheel house until the ropes were secure and the ship was resting at the dock.     It was well past mid-morning when he was finally satisfied that all was in order, but his job was not over.  While his first officer could see to the off-loading of the cargo, it was his duty as captain to be at the head of the gangway to welcome the American immigration authorities aboard.  They would want to see the crew list, and he would personally present it to them.  On most of his visits to the United States, there were no problems; the lists were given a cursory scan by the bored looking officer, stamped and returned; and the crew would get some much needed time ashore.     This voyage, however, was different.  There were no special containers, with the secret markings, that required special handling; a situation that usually presented few problems.  The ship was sailing out of Hong Kong, but had a Singapore registry, and the American authorities seemed not to suspect that ships belonging to the city state were anything but legitimate.  On occasion, money had to change hands after they docked, but unless the U.S. Coast Guard had been alerted to a potential shipment of contraband; in which case they would intercept the ship as soon as it entered American territorial waters, and not allow it to dock; this was often just a tiresome formality.  No, it was not cargo, at least not in the traditional sense of the word that worried him.  It was the crew list.     The crew, with the sole exception of one man, had been with him for more than ten voyages, and all of them were well-known to the American authorities, and as well-behaved as sailors who’d been at sea for more than twenty days could be. Never had one of his crew been involved in an altercation or committed a criminal act here.  But; that one man, whose name was buried in the middle of the list, had been added just before the ship left port in Hong Kong.  It was his second time on board.  The last time, over a year ago, had been from America to Hong Kong, and he’d made Chow nervous then.  Now, he caused the elderly captain to develop a major case of heartburn.     Li Jiu Long was no sailor.  He’d spent the entire voyage secluded in the first officer’s cabin, causing that unfortunate fellow to have to bunk with the crew.  He took his meals alone, and spoke to no one since coming aboard, except on the first day when he cavalierly informed Chow that he did not want to be disturbed during the trip, and that he expected his order to be strictly obeyed.     If anyone thought it strange that a common seaman would get away with giving orders to the captain of a ship, especially one of Chow’s age and seniority, they wisely kept it to themselves.     Every man in the crew knew, or suspected, what and who Li was, but none would dare say it aloud.  Even though Christina B was a Singapore-registered container vessel, and sailed from Hong Kong, everyone aboard knew that the real owner was a company that served as a front for the Dragon Clan, a vicious mob organization with murky ties to the Internal Security Services of Mainland China, a fact that was not apparent even if one searched the documentation of the vessel.  They also knew that Li was a senior lieutenant in the Dragons, one who was called upon when the job was dangerous, or when someone had to be ‘disappeared.’  Li’s desire to be left alone was honored to a fault.     The immigration officers, and he noticed that on this morning there were two rather than the usual one, were just coming on board when Chow reached the boarding plank.  One, a middle aged white man with large gut that hung over his belt, Chow recognized; he worked this area of the docks regularly.  His companion, a young black man with medium-length, curly hair, and gray eyes that stood out vividly against his dark brown face, Chow had never seen before.     “Morning, Captain Chow,” the white officer said.  “Welcome back to America.  Bet you got lots of stuff for Americans to buy on board this trip.”     Chow shook hands, bowing slightly as he did so.  “Yes, Mister Calhoun,” he said.  “All of the containers are consumer goods and toys from Chinese factories, so your stores will be well stocked for a few days.”  He eyed the black officer warily.     The white officer, Rory Calhoun, a 22-year veteran of the immigration service, inclined his head toward his companion.  “This is Agent Leland West,” he said.  “He’s been newly assigned.  I’m gonna be retiring in a few months, and he’ll be taking my place.”       Chow shook hands with the young man.  “It is my pleasure to meet you, Mr. West,” he said.  He never said agent when he talked to the immigration officers; always mister.       “The pleasure is mine, Captain Chow,” the black man said.  “Rory here says you’re a pretty regular visitor to our shores.”     “Yes, that is true,” Chow responded.  “I make six to eight voyages a year.”     “Well, welcome to the United States.  You have a crew list for us?”     Chow pulled the carefully folded list from inside his tunic.  He hesitated.  Calhoun was senior, but the younger agent had asked for it.     “That’s okay, captain,” Calhoun said.  “Leland might as well start getting his feet wet.”     Chow handed the younger agent the list.  West took it and scanned the names from top to bottom.  Calhoun looked over his shoulder as he read.  Chow held his breath.  He could feel his heart beating so hard, he feared that the Americans would hear it.     After a few minutes, West took out a pen and scribbled his name at the bottom of the list.  He then took a small seal from his jacket; one of the self-inking kinds, and, holding the list against his leg, stamped it.     “Again, captain,” he said.  “Welcome to America.  I hope your crew enjoys their shore leave.”     “And, tell them to spend lots of money,” Calhoun said.     Laughing, the two agents turned and left the ship.  Only when they were far down the dock did Chow let out a breath.  Yet again, he had delivered what he was supposed to deliver, and right under the noses of the Americans.  Maybe the clan was right, he thought, the Americans are stupid.  Such a thing would never happen in China.  The crew list would have been checked thoroughly, and every member required to present himself for inspection.  Chow seriously doubted that even the Americans would have taken Li for a seaman.  While the other men were brown from days of working on the deck in the sun, Li had the pale complexion of someone who had spent his days indoors.  Even Chow himself had the reddish brown skin from exposure to sun and wind at sea.     Oh well, he thought, I do not know what Li and the clan are up to, and I do not want to know.  Just unload the cargo, and head back to Hong Kong and my little flat where I can sip tea and watch the horse races on TV until the next voyage.     Li Jiu Long had been watching the exchange between the captain and the immigration officers from just inside the nearest hatchway.  As Chow turned to return to the wheelhouse, Li stepped out of the shadows.     “That was very well done, captain,” he said.  “I notice that you did not even offer them payment to expedite the paperwork.”     Chow bowed slightly.  “That is not necessary here in America,” he said. “Unlike China, where every official expects to be paid tea money to do his job, here, they have very strict rules against such actions.”     “Hah,” Li said.  “I know very well that on occasion money changes hands; even here.”     “Yes, from time to time, I have to give money to the lesser workers on the docks.  But, I have never had to pay an official. At least, not directly.”     “Just as well,” Li said, and spat on the deck.  Chow winced as the globule spattered over the polished wood that had been scrubbed only that morning.  “That might have drawn unwelcome attention to me.  Our masters would be most unhappy if anything interfered with my mission.”     “You should encounter no problems,” Chow said.  “Will you require the papers from the ship in order to go ashore?”     “No, captain, I have all that I need.”  Li patted the breast of the jacket he wore.    It was thick, much thicker than the weather required, and made him look several pounds heavier than Chow knew him to be. “You have done well.  I thank you for your hospitality.”     “Will you be returning to Hong Kong with us?  We depart in ten days.”     “No,” Li said.  “Other arrangements have been made for my departure.  I do not think I will see you again, Captain Chow.”     Li bowed slightly to the older man and walked purposively down the gang plank and onto the docks.  Chow watched him as he strode toward the canteen that was a few hundred yards from the exit.  A small eating establishment, it was there for the rare sailor who did not wish to partake of the delights of Oakland and nearby San Francisco.  Chow, who never went into either city, would probably venture there later in the day to sample the American version of Chinese food.  He particularly liked the hamburgers and fried potatoes.     When Li had vanished from his view between the canteen and an adjacent building which contained a bathhouse and a small bar that sold cheap whiskey and beer, Chow turned and went back to the wheelhouse.     Li approached the building, but instead of going into the bar, he entered the bathhouse.  Luckily, it was empty at this hour.  He walked to the back and entered an empty stall, pulling the door shut behind him.  He took off the heavy coat and ripped out the lining.  Tucked inside the lining was a neatly folded blue suit, shirt and a red tie.  He stripped off the jeans and work shirt and donned the suit.     He would have liked to have a better pair of shoes; something more befitting the rest of his attire, but patting the breast of the jacket, and feeling the leather folder inside, he knew that soon he would be able to buy a pair.     He folded the work clothes and placed them inside the jacket, and then folded it until it looked like a canvas package.       Brushing the dust off his shoes, he left the bathhouse and entered the bar.     An elderly Chinese man stood idly behind the bar.     “What you want to drink?” he asked     Li didn’t usually drink alcohol before noon, but he didn’t want to arouse the man’s suspicions.  “I will have a beer,” he said.  “And, do you have a telephone I can use.”     The bartender ducked his head toward the back, where a phone hung on the wall.     “You drink beer at bar, or you want table?” he asked.     “The bar will be fine,” Li said.  “I must make a call first.”  He took a ten dollar bill from his wallet and laid it on the bar.  “I trust this will be enough for the beer?”     “Yes, enough.  You need coin for phone?”     “That will not be necessary,” Li said.  “I will use a credit card.”     He walked over to the corner.  Taking the phone from the hook, he wiped it carefully with a handkerchief.  He then took an international calling card from his wallet.  Anyone troubling to check on it would find that it was registered to one Joseph Lee of Riverside, California.  He also had a California driver’s license in the same name, and the address on it actually existed, a small frame house in a middle class suburb which was occupied by a Chinese-American who received a nice deposit each month to his bank account.     He had in his wallet other identifying documents, all in the name Joseph Li, which was close enough to his real name that he ran no risk of not responding if someone called out to him by that name.  The documents, although paid for by the clan, were courtesy of his friends in the Chinese intelligence service for whom he did occasional errands during his frequent trips to the United States.     When he heard the dial tone, Li dialed the code for a calling card number, and then followed the recorded instructions, punching the card number and PIN.  When he got the tone that told him his call was ready, he dialed the 202 area code, Washington, DC, and then a number that he knew all too well.     It took a few minutes for the receptionist who answered to get the person he really wanted to speak with, but when he did, the conversation was brief and to the point.  He gave specific instructions and, without waiting for assent, rang off.  He had no doubt that what he wanted done would be done to the letter.  The penalty for failing to follow clan instructions was fatal, and the person he called knew that all too well.     His call finished, he returned to the bar.  He picked up the bottle of beer, Qing Dao, he noticed, and imported.  He used his handkerchief again to wipe the lip of the bottle, and drained it in a few fast gulps, something he’d learned to do after a long time visiting the states.  He often impressed his colleagues back in China, none of whom had mastered the skill of chug-a-lugging beer.     When the bartender brought his change, he told him to keep it, and spun on his heel and left.     He had no problems leaving the port; a well-dressed Chinese man with all the proper papers, he was treated as if he was a local businessman at the port to check on shipments.  Outside the port, he hailed a cab and instructed the driver to take him to an address not far from the center of Oakland, a used car dealer who, for cash, could expedite the paperwork.     He bought a blue 1984 Ford Mustang that had only 100,000 miles on the odometer. He knew that the car had been driven many more miles than that, but when he test drove it around the block, the engine purred quietly, and it didn’t make any strange noises.  It also, the dealer assured him, got good gas mileage on the highway.  To Li, that was important, because he had 3,000 miles of highway driving ahead of him, and only eight days to do it.       With the Mustang’s acceleration, and keeping to the speed limits on the Interstate highway system, he would make it with time to spare.  While Li viewed most Americans with disdain, scorning them for their materialism and ignorance, he truly loved their country.  He especially liked driving.  In America, he thought, a person could drive for thousands of miles, and if he broke no traffic laws, could do so unmolested.  Unlike China, he thought, where you were apt to be stopped a dozen times within one province by officials looking for ‘tea’ money.   In his native province of Hunan, few people besides Party officials, and of course, members of the local gang, could even afford cars.  Li and his brother, when they’d been recruited by an older cousin into the Dragon Clan, had never even ridden in a car; only once or twice had they been transported in the back of a rickety old truck to a distant village go help with the harvest.  Here in America, on the other hand, everyone had a car, even the poor.  It seemed that no one walked. If only the Americans were not too stupid to appreciate what they have, he thought derisively as he pulled out of the dealer’s lot and headed east. April 2, United States Penitentiary, Lewisburg, PA     Warden Bradley Swopes was not a happy man.     He’d only been in charge of Lewisburg Penitentiary for two years, and since it was mainly a maximum security facility, he was accustomed to having problem cases among the inmate population, except for the adjacent camp used to house minimum security male inmates, mostly white collar criminals up for securities fraud, and only wanting to do their time quietly and be released.  In the maximum security facility, though, he had the hard cases; drug traffickers, murderers, and all manner of low-life scum who had violated some federal statute or another.  He’d previously worked at a federal facility that was strictly for white collar criminals, and was having difficulty adapting to working with the more violent breed.     None of the inmates, though, bothered him as much as the Chinese.  Inmate number 251047, one Wei Li, or as he preferred to be addressed when names had to be used, Li Wei, had been sentenced to twenty years for human trafficking, and even though he never got into fights, and mostly stayed to himself rather than mixing with the other inmates, he bothered the hell out of Swopes.     The first thing that bugged the warden and many of the guards was Li’s occasional feigned inability to understand English.  Swope knew that the shithead could understand and speak English probably better than anyone in Lewisburg, but whenever he didn’t want to do something, he would suddenly go all Chinese on them.  He would have liked to be able to use a little physical coercion on the bastard, but federal prison guidelines specifically forbade such practices, and every prisoner had to have his civil rights respected.  Hell, Swopes thought, this scum never respected the rights of their victims, so why should they get such delicate treatment?     What really got his goat, though, was the fact that the US Attorney hadn’t tried to tie Li to the killing of the FBI agent by that black private investigator down in Virginia.  Even though the agent was himself a crook, they could have turned Li over to the state of Virginia and he would have wound up strapped to a gurney in the execution chamber, instead of being a pain in Swopes’ ass.     And now, he’d gotten sick, and none of the medical personnel in the prison could figure out what was wrong with him, or do to anything make him better.  They’d tried all kinds of medications and treatments, but he just seemed to get worse.  Prisoners died in stir all the time, but for some reason, the Justice Department took a special interest in Li, and had ordered that he be transported into the town of Lewisburg to be seen by a specialist, a Chinese-American doctor who, in addition to normal medicine, also practiced traditional Asian healing.     Swopes had assigned two of his best guards to escort Li into town; John Cochran and Leroy Adams; the two most senior of Lewisburg’s guards.  They would see that he got to the doctor, and once cured, got his ass back into cell block C to spend the rest of his sentence.     He gazed out of his window just as the prison van was waved through the last checkpoint, and watched as it accelerated onto the highway heading into town.     Cochran, a tall rawboned redhead from Delaware, and Adams, a slightly shorter, but muscular brown skinned man from Baltimore, had been partners for the entire nineteen years that they’d worked as federal prison guards.  They had been friends before; having bonded at Morgan State University in Baltimore, when Cochran, the only white on the college basketball team, had been befriended by Adams after the other players shunned him.     On the basketball court, they had become a two-man hit squad, demolishing Morgan’s opponents with Adams’s blocking players while Cochran sank shot after shot from just inside the half court line.  They had learned to communicate through body language, setting up plays that the opposing teams were unable to counter.  They were inseparable off court as well, and after graduation, served as best men for each other when they married their college sweethearts.  As guards, they demonstrated the same uncanny ability; able to control unruly prisoners through coordinated action without speaking.  Inside the walls, they were known as Salt and Pepper; just the spice you needed when things got rough and a situation needed a little seasoning.     They rode in silence, Cochran driving.  Li Wei, dressed in a white prison jump suit and manacled hand and foot, sat sullenly in the back, staring at the backs of their heads.     They drove south on Robert F. Miller Drive, turned left on State Route 1018 and headed east toward the river.  As they approached West Branch Highway, where they would turn right to head toward Bucknell University, south of the town of Lewisburg, and the address on a small back street where the Chinese-American doctor had his office and clinic, they could see the smoke stacks of abandoned factories along the tributary off the Susquehanna River that once served the logging and shipping industries of the area.  They could also see the skeletons of old stone buildings that had probably been way stations along the Underground Railroad used before and during the Civil War by slaves escaping to the freedom of the North and Canada.     It was early in the morning, and there were few other vehicles on the road until they neared the university, where they encountered a few cars, probably being driven by professors or students heading to early classes.     They had to drive around a few minutes to find the address on Oak Street, a small stone structure set back from the street and surrounded by a low stone wall.  The street was narrow, and they had to maneuver the van around an old blue Mustang that was parked about a hundred meters from the house.     Cochran parked the van in front of the wooden gate.  Beside the gate was a white shingle sign that read, ‘Dr. Wilson Yun, MD Modern and Traditional Healer.’  There was a drawing of some kind of plant beneath the traditional caduceus symbol just below the doctor’s name.     He switched off the engine and turned to his partner.  “You wait here with the prisoner, Leroy, and I’ll check to make sure the place is clear,” he said.     “Sure thing, partner,” Adams said.  He took his radio off his belt.  “Give me a call when you’re ready.”      Cochran patted his own radio and nodded.  He got out of the van and scanned the area.  The only other vehicle in sight was the Mustang, but he gave it little thought.  It had a temporary tag, which he couldn’t read from the distance, but in a college town, and this close to campus, this wasn’t unusual.  Probably belongs to some student who hasn’t had time to get down to DMV, he thought.     Satisfied that the outside was clear, Cochran walked up to the door of the clinic and pushed it open.     The waiting room was empty; not even a receptionist.  This had been one of the conditions that the warden had insisted upon; only Doctor Yun was to be present, and he was to clear all of his appointments for the morning.  If he couldn’t deal with Li’s ailment alone, they would have to try something else.     The door at the rear of the room, behind the receptionist’s desk, opened, and a tall Asian man that Cochran estimated to be in his late thirties or early forties entered the room.  He wore a white coat over dark slacks, and had a thermometer sticking out of the breast pocket.  He carried a stethoscope in his left hand.     “Ah, good morning,” he said.  “I am Doctor Yun.  You must be from the prison.  Where is the patient?”     “Good morning, doctor,” Cochran said.  “I’m John Cochran.  My partner and I are escorting the prisoner, er patient.  He’ll be brought in as soon as I’ve checked the place out.”     “Of course,” the Asian said. “You will find that I have followed your instructions to the letter.  There is no one here other than me, and I have no other patients scheduled until late in the afternoon, just in case I need to take extra time with, what is his name again, oh yes, Mr. Li.”     Cochran nodded and, after looking around the reception area, eased past the doctor.  He entered a small room that contained an examination table and low cabinets along two walls with glass doors. Inside the cabinets was a mixture of medicines, some of which Cochran recognized from the labels on the vials, and jars of green and brown powders, leaves and what looked like twigs.  There were two doors on the far side, one marked with the universal radiation symbol and a sign that said “X-Ray Room.  Enter only with protective clothing,” while the other was unmarked.  Cochran, who never liked going to the doctor, and who was deathly afraid of what radiation might do to his ability to become a father, merely looked through the thick glass window in the upper center of the door.  The room was unlit, but from the illumination from his side of the door, he could only see the X-Ray machine in the back of the room.  He then moved to the unmarked door and opened it.  It was an exit to the outside, opening onto a small garden that was in need of weeding.  The area to the rear of the building, with a service road used by garbage trucks and deliverymen, was clear.     “Okay, doctor,” he said.  “It looks clear.  Thank you for your understanding and cooperation.”  He took the radio from his belt and thumbed the transmit switch, causing a burst of static.  “All clear partner.  You can bring him in.”     A few minutes later, the door to the examination room opened, and Li entered, shuffling in his manacles, followed by Leroy Adams.     The doctor motioned Li toward the examination table.  “Is it possible for these things to be removed?” he asked, pointing at the manacles.  “It will be easier for me to examine him without them.”     Adams looked inquiringly at his partner.  “I suppose so,” Cochran said.  “Go ahead and take them off.”     Li turned around and sat on the table, holding his hands out.  Adams removed a ring of keys from his belt and bent to unlock the wrist manacles.     Cochran’s attention was focused on the two men, and he didn’t see the doctor dip his right hand into his pocket and pull out a switchblade knife.  His first warning was when the blade made a ‘snicking’ sound as the doctor pressed the button on the handle.  He turned toward the sound, and the doctor plunged the blade deep into his chest, sending waves of white-hot pain through his body before his brain shut down.  As he crumpled lifelessly to the floor, with gouts of blood gushing from his mouth, Adams released his hold on the wrist manacles and spun around, his eyes going wide at the sight of his partner and friend on the floor in a widening pool of blood.  He reached for his service revolver, but Li thrust his still manacled hands upward, knocking his arm aside.  This gave the doctor enough time to take the two steps toward him to plunge the bloody blade into the black guard’s chest. Adams’s eyes widened in pain and he opened his mouth to scream, but the light faded from his eyes before sound could form, and he crumpled to the floor, his outstretched hand touching his friend’s lifeless hand.     The doctor wiped the knife blade on the white frock he was wearing, retracted it and put it into his pants pocket.  He began to remove the bloody garment.     “Jiu Long da ge, wo hen gao xing kan ni,” Then, after the other man frowned, he switched to English.  “Elder brother Jiu Long, it is good to see you,” Li said.  He held up his hands.  “Now, if you will get these things off me, we can find some decent clothing and we can get out of here and go home.”     Li Jiu Long picked the keys up from the floor where Adams had dropped them, and unlocked the wrist and ankle restraints.  “Doctor Yun kept clothing here in the clinic, and I think it will fit you,” he said.  “He will not need it anymore.  And, until we get out of this country, I’d suggest you stick to English.  We want to blend in as just two ordinary Chinese-Americans.”      “Why will the doctor no longer need his clothing, elder brother?” Li Wei asked.     Li Jiu Long walked over to the door to the X-Ray room and pulled it open.  Lying there in the doorway, his throat slashed, was a middle-aged Asian.  The blood, which had pooled against the seal at the bottom of the door, had congealed into a sticky black mass.  “We do not need to leave anyone here who can possibly identify us,” he said.  “The good doctor had served his purpose.”     “Very well, then.  Let us find some clothes and get out of here.  I have missed my apartment in Hong Kong.”     “In good time, younger brother,” Jiu Long said.  “But, before we return home, we have a mission to perform.”     “I never question the orders of the clan, elder brother,” Wei said.  “But, what could be so important that we should delay my return home after being locked up here for so long?”     “We must avenge the honor of the clan and our family.  The black detective who disrupted our operations and caused you to be here must die.”   
       2. April 3, Washington, DC      When spring comes to the nation’s capital, the cherry blossoms are in full bloom, and everything is the green of new growth and rebirth, it’s easy to forget that the town produces nothing of real value to anyone; that it is little more than a smog-producing source of bureaucratic misery and pain for the average American.     When spring comes, it means the miserable, wet, mucky cold of winter has been pushed into the background for another eight months. It means that the young, and not so young, women of Washington’s government offices will put away their bulky winter clothing, and parade along the Mall in the bright, diaphanous colors of spring, showing enough of their various colors of flesh to attract the attention of male passersby to make the day interesting.     I’d done my one-hour run in the forest behind the farm house off River Road in Maryland’s Montgomery County where I live, had a huge breakfast with Sandra; that’s Sandra Winter, the love of my life, kissed her on the forehead, headed off to work.     I hadn’t done much running during the winter.  I hate the cold, and the hilly trails through the forest get slick with ice, making it treacherous.  So, since mid-December, I’d been mainly working out on the big bag in my barn.  Good for coordination; and it works up a sweat, but it really doesn’t give the cardiovascular system the workout it needs.      I drive down River Road to Clara Barton Parkway and Canal Road to enter the District; and then around the National Mall over to Fourth Street in Southwest.         There’s something about spring that makes driving in Washington pleasurable despite the mindless commuters who clog up the highways morning and afternoon.  I meditate to maintain my temper, but sometimes even meditation doesn’t work.  My blood pressure rises when I see things like some idiot with the Wall Street Journal draped over the steering wheel, trying to read the financials as he whips a BMW through morning traffic moving along at thirty to forty MPH.  In the spring, though, even dumb stunts like that don’t bother me.      I wheeled my old brown Volkswagen, affectionately dubbed the Brown Bomber, into its customary spot in front of the two story building that looks like a cheap motel, and which is the only place in the District that I can afford, despite getting ten grand a month from Holcombe, Stein and Chang, the law firm that keeps me on retainer, thanks to my old army buddy, Quincy Chang, one of the partners.     My office, actually, I should say our offices, since I share space with my assistant, Heather Bunche, a secretarial school graduate and computer genius, who came to work for me right out of school about a month after I started A.E. Pennyback, Confidential Enquiries, which is a euphemistic name for a private detective agency; euphemistic, but accurate.  We enquire into things, which means that Heather and I snoop; and we’re confidential; we never betray a client’s confidence.  Unlike the other PI firms in town, though, that sometimes have as many as a hundred people on staff, I began as a one-man operation. After I hired Heather, I became a one-man, one-woman operation.     Heather, who I sometimes call ‘honey bunch’ because I can’t resist puns, is much more than a secretary or an assistant, although that’s how she introduces herself.  She’s the inside person, doing the research and paperwork, and keeping me on schedule.  I pay her the same amount that I pay myself, because I feel her services are just as valuable as mine, which, I guess, makes us partners.     As usual, she’d beaten me to the office. Sometimes, I think she sleeps in the place just so she can be there before me.  She had her normal cup of some kind of herbal tea at her elbow as she stared at the computer screen, only, instead of the traditional smart mouth greeting she waved me over as she kept staring at the computer’s screen.     “Come here, boss,” she said.  “You need to read this.”     I walked around the desk and looked over her shoulder.  The full color newspaper page, some Pennsylvania paper, filled the screen.  The headline at the top was in large letters, “Federal prisoner escapes; two guards slain.”  The story beneath the headline told of the escape from Lewisburg Federal Penitentiary of one Wei Li, who was serving time for fraud and racketeering.  The prisoner was outside the prison for special medical treatment when the escape occurred.  In addition to the two guards, a local doctor, Wilson Yun, was found slain in his clinic in the town of Lewisburg.  While the authorities had no concrete evidence, it was believed that Li had an accomplice.     “Damn,” was all I could think to say.      “Isn’t that the guy you helped put away about a year ago?”     “Yeah,” I said.  “He was working with a dirty FBI agent and his father; smuggling contraband from Asia into the U.S.  They tried to get him on a murder rap, but, unfortunately, I had him tied up and locked in my barn at the time, and his lawyers argued that under the circumstances they couldn’t really call him an accomplice; so they put him away for the smuggling.”     “Well,” she said.  “When they catch him, he’ll go down for murder now.  Killing a cop, or a prison guard, is a sure death sentence, isn’t it?”      “Oh, it’s a death sentence all right.  The first cop that spots him is apt to empty his piece into him; and he’ll get a commendation for it.”     “From what I remember you telling me about him,” Heather said, frowning.  “He deserves to die.”     “He’s a real piece of work,” I said.  “A member of a tong in Hong Kong; no pun intended; tongs are the Chinese equivalent of the Mafia or the Japanese Yakuza.  A bloodthirsty bunch of bastards called the Dragon Clan who’d just as soon gut you as talk to you, and Li seemed to me to be one of the worst.  Not a trace of a conscience in that one.  The cop that encounters him is wise to shoot first and check his corpse for ID.”     “What do you think he’ll do?”     “Probably heading north to Canada to make his way back to Hong Kong, or even mainland China,” I said.  “There’s gonna be a countrywide dragnet out for this turkey.”     Heather shuddered and punched a key to change the screen.  I went into my office, a space not much bigger than hers, sparsely decorated with an old wooden desk, behind which sat my one luxury; a leather executive chair that I’d picked up at a warehouse sale; a wooden chair in front of the desk for the occasional visitor or client, and several bookshelves along the wall containing history books, mostly history of war.  The walls had a couple of hunting prints and an autographed photo of me with Colin Powell when he was Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and I was a young lieutenant colonel serving on the Pentagon staff just before my retirement from the army.     There was one window, right behind my desk.  Even though we were only a short distance from the Washington ship channel, the condos that surrounded us blocked all but a sliver of a view of it and the Potomac River just beyond, and then only in the winter when the trees were bare.  In the spring at least, the red, white and orange of the blossoms on the trees provided a relaxing vista whenever I decided to look.     I decided to forego my usual pointless effort to beat my computer at chess.  Quincy had asked me to do a job, and for the ten thousand dollars a month his firm paid me, his requests had priority over my quest to finally checkmate the damn computer.     The job he wanted me to do was simple; locate one Millicent Hyde-White, at an address in the District behind George Washington University, and notify her that an aunt of hers who lived in England had died and left her a rather large amount of money.  The law firm had tried contacting her by phone, but discovered that she didn’t have one.  Letters to her had gone unanswered.  This left a face-to-face visit, and that’s what they paid me to do; that and track down deadbeat clients who didn’t pay their bills.  At six hundred bucks an hour, that often amounted to a sizeable arrears, and when the amount to be collected was more than five thousand, I got to keep ten percent.  It’s a tough job, but someone has to do it.     There was no need to look up the address.  In that area, where New Hampshire runs behind the George Washington University Hospital, there are a series of cross streets lined with old brownstone buildings and one or two convenience stores.  An old neighborhood, the houses are mostly either right on the street, or tucked in behind high brick walls covered with ivy.  To find an address, you had to walk around until you spotted a faded sign embedded in the wall, and hope time hadn’t eroded the etched numbers.     Parking is always a problem in Washington, with its zone system, restricting the amount of time you can park, and the amount of traffic, you can waste half a tank of gas just finding a place to leave your car, only to have to rush back in an hour to put more money in the meter, or move it to avoid a ticket.     Fortunately, the subway system, Metro, covers most of the major areas, and the George Washington University Metro station wasn’t more than four or five blocks from any address in that area.  So, I decided to leave the Brown Bomber parked and walked from my office to the Waterfront Metro station, about a five minute trip.  I took the Green line train to L’Enfant Plaza, where I switched to a Blue line which runs to George Washington University.     The plaza outside the George Washington University station was, as usual, crowded with flower and book vendors, students hawking their latest activist campaign, and federal employees who work at one of the many agencies in the area, especially the State Department, which is about six blocks away.  Except for the vagrants hanging about trying to cadge a few bucks from naïve tourists, everyone always seems to be in a big hurry; but, I’ve never been able to determine where they’re hurrying to.     I made my way through the throng, fending off a rail thin girl with stringy blonde hair who tried to get me to sign a PETA petition, and cut through the campus to New Hampshire Avenue.   I have nothing against being kind to animals, but sometimes, some of the organizations can go too far, so I make it a point to never sign petitions of any kind, for anything.  Makes me real popular with the young activists who live for their causes and not much else.      I crossed New Hampshire and entered the rabbit warren of small cross streets, looking for Ms. Hyde-White’s address.     I found it after five minutes of searching; a two-story brownstone, hidden behind a six-foot high brick wall that was barely visible through the profuse growth of English Ivy that crawled over it and ran up the walls of the house as well.     The black wrought iron gate was closed, and there was a call box set into the recess of the wall next to it.  I pushed the button and waited.  After a minute, a creaky English accent emanated from the grille above the button, “Yes, how might I help you?”     I leaned over until my mouth was only inches away from the grille, which I assumed doubled as a microphone.  “My name is Al Pennyback,” I said.  “I work for the law firm of Holcombe, Stein and Chang, and I’m looking for Millicent Hyde-White.”     “What is the nature of your business with Millicent?” the voice asked.     “I’m afraid that I can only discuss that with her,” I said.  “Are you Mrs. Hyde-White?”     “That’s Ms. Hyde-White,” the voice said.  She pronounced it ‘mizz.’  “I am she.  What is it you wish to discuss with me?”     “Ma’am, I have to have positive identification,” I said.  “May I come in?  This will only take a few moments.”     There was a long pause, and then I heard a metallic click.  “Very well, you may come to the door.  But, I must also see some identification.”     I pushed the gate open and walked the three steps to the front door of the building.  I rang the bell.       “There is no need for that,” a muffled voice said from behind the door.  “I can see you.  Now, if you would be so kind as to show me some identification.”     I noticed the peephole in the center of the door at about the level of my nose.  Taking out my private investigator’s identification card, I held it up about ten inches from the aperture.  The picture on it is about five years old, but I haven’t changed much since it was taken, except for a smattering of gray at the temples.     The door swung inward.  Millicent Hyde-White was a gaunt, gray-haired woman, with a florid face, and bad teeth.  She stood about five-eight, and had broad hips and shoulders, and prominent, but slightly drooping breasts.  The knee-length dress she wore showed muscular calves that ended in over-large feet covered in flat leather shoes that bulged over what were obvious bunions.  Her icy blue eyes regarded me with a mixture of confusion and curiosity.     “Now,” I said.  “May I see some ID to prove that you’re Millicent Hyde-White?”     Some of the confusion left her face, but not the curiosity.  She dipped a bony right hand into the pocket at the waist of her dress and brought out a passport, which she handed to me.     I flipped the blue book open to the data page.  It was issued to one Millicent Evelyn Hyde-White, born November 15, 1949, in the United Kingdom.  It had been issued the previous year, and the color photograph was clearly of the same woman standing before me.  I closed it and handed it back to her.     She put it back into her pocket and stepped back to allow me to enter.  “Now that we are both satisfied that we are who we claim to be,” she said.  “Would you care to inform me why a legal establishment would be interested in me?  I have no need of solicitors, nor should they have cause to want to talk to me.”     “Ma’am, the lawyers have been trying to get in touch with you regarding an estate matter.”     Her aquiline nose wrinkled.  “An estate matter? What manner of estate matter?  My word, why on earth would anyone wish to do that?”     “It seems a relative of yours in England has passed away,” I said.  “You were apparently the sole heir.”     “Oh, that cannot be.  I only have one relative left in England that I am aware of,” she said.  “My aunt, Gertrude Thentwhistle, and she and I haven’t spoken since I came to this country thirty years ago.  She raised me after my parents died, you understand, and she never forgave me for running away to America with a young American GI I met at Lakenheath.  My aunt Gertrude, unlike most Brits, absolutely detested Yanks.  I think perhaps it had to do with a case of left at the altar during the war, you know, but she would never say.”     “I guess foster parents can get possessive and protective towards youngsters in their care,” I said.     “Mr. Pennyback, I was thirty-five at the time,” she said with a laugh.  “Hardly a youngster; a spinster in fact, and even though my husband was ten years younger, we loved each other.”     “Where is your husband, now?”     “He passed away ten years ago,” she said.  “I reverted back to my maiden name. We were living in North Dakota at the time.  A dreadful place; winters worse than in England, and summers filled with oppressive heat and the most horrible bugs on earth.  I moved here to Washington, and have been here since.”     “You’ve never thought of going back to England?”     “Why should I?  As I said, my aunt Gertrude was my only relative left, and we didn’t exactly part on good terms.  I have a good life here.  I became an American citizen three years after we arrived, and now consider myself American, despite my accent.”  She looked at me as if to say, ‘and make something of it.’  “In London, for what I paid for this house, I’d have a loft.  Here, I have my privacy.  There, I would have to listen to my neighbors snore and toss in their beds at night.  Have you ever been to England, young man?”  I shook my head.  “Well, believe me, a person of your height and size would find it most uncomfortable.  You would have difficulty fitting into a bath or shower.  And frankly, the tissue used in the loo there is far too rough.  I do love the soft tissues used here in America.”     This was all very interesting, but I had a job to do.  “Well, I don’t know what your aunt thought of you, but, according to my employers, she left everything to you in her will.  They need you to come to their office and sign some papers so the money can be transferred to your bank here.”     “Well, I must say I am taken completely by surprise,” she said.  “Perhaps I should have reached out to her.  Now that she’s gone, that will be impossible.”     “At least you’ll have something tangible to prove that she hadn’t completely forgotten you.”     “Yes, Aunt Gertrude was quite well off,” she said.  “She married well; two or three times in fact, and each time her husband popped off, she was left with a sizeable estate.  Good thing that she didn’t marry an American, what.”     “And, now it’s all yours.”     “What’s left after British Internal Revenue and the Internal Revenue Service here take out their share, you mean,” she said.  “Still, it was decent of her to remember me.  She was really quite put out the last time we spoke, and that was just before I boarded the ship to come to America.”     I gave her Quincy’s card after she promised that she would visit his office that very day, and left her there, shaking her head at the turn of events.     The rest of my day was much the same.  I had to track down a guy in Herndon who’d tried to avoid paying the last of his bill to Holcombe, Stein and Chang.  He was surprised that I’d been able to find him; and was even more surprised when I insisted on accompanying him to his bank to get a cashier’s check made out to the firm.  It wasn’t enough to get me a bonus, but it made the firm happy, and kept their books balanced.  Law firms are a lot like the Mafia; you don’t get away with not paying your debts to them.  Of course, you can survive not paying a law firm; you might end up in poverty, but you’d at least still be breathing.     By the time I decided to knock off and go home, the news item about the Pennsylvania prison escape had retreated to the back of my mind.
       3.      Sandra was waiting for me when I got home; sitting on the sofa with her purse on her lap.  I hesitated when I walked in, wondering if I’d forgotten something, but she had a smile on her face.     “Freshen up and let’s go eat,” she said. “I’m starved.  I was assigned to fill in for the PE teacher today, and monitoring a bunch of high school students playing dodge ball takes a lot out of a person.”     “I remember dodge ball from high school,” I said. “I hated it, and I don’t imagine anyone but the bullies like today.”     She nodded.  “Yes, it’s really a trial to keep the bigger kids from ganging up on the runts.”     I kissed her on the top of her head, nuzzling my lips in her silky blonde hair.  Sandra Winter and I have been what Heather calls an ‘item’ for over a year, and I was getting comfortable in the relationship; we were both getting comfortable.  We complement each other well.  I’m just about six-one; she’s four inches shorter.  I have a dusky complexion, brown with reddish undertones, thanks to my African and Native American ancestry; while she has the peaches and cream complexion of her northern European forebears.  She’s athletic, and had taken up martial arts after taking up with me.  She’d recently earned her first degree black belt in Taekwondo, thanks to my instruction, and was seriously thinking about going for the next level.  We sometimes run together in the woods behind the farm house, and her long, athletic legs and superb conditioning, enable her to keep pace with me.  She’s usually less winded after our one-hour run than I am.  But then, I outweigh her by at least fifty pounds and I’m ten years older.     I went to the bathroom and peeled off my clothes and then I took a quick shower.  I dressed in brown slacks, a brown shirt, and brushed the dust off my best pair of black shoes.  Sandra tells me I look good in brown, so I try to wear something in that color whenever we go out.     I keep my slightly curly hair cut short, so I only need to brush it, and I’m ready to go.  A light spray of Old Spice cologne, and in less than fifteen minutes, I was back in the living room.     “Okay, sweetheart,” I said.  “Let’s go.  I’m pretty famished myself.  Are we taking my car or yours?”     “Let’s take yours,” she said.  “I’m too tired to drive.”     We drove to Little River Turnpike just south of the Pentagon in Virginia.  The area has Washington’s best authentic Korean restaurants; all along the turnpike, mixed in among the other Korean stores and companies, it has become known as Little Seoul.  One of our favorites, and most of them were great, was Han Mi, a little hole in the wall place set back from the main street, with a postage stamp-sized parking lot, and the best Korean ribs, called kalbi, this side of the Pacific Ocean.     Sandra and I ate at Han Mi about twice a month, so we were treated as regulars.  We were usually the only non-Koreans in the place on weekdays, although local occidentals frequented it on weekends.  The owner, a stern-faced woman of indeterminate age named Lee Myung-ja, had taken to serving us; which was great for us, since I don’t speak but one or two words of Korean, and most of Han Mi’s waitresses speak less English.  Before Mrs. Lee, and I always thought of her as married for some reason even though I’d never seen or heard her mention a Mister Lee, we were forced to order from the special picture menus they had for foreigners.  It always made me feel like a kid in kindergarten, so having her explain the regular menu and help us make our selections made our outings a bit more special.     We ordered kalbi, and asked for fish soup to go with it.  There was no need to order anything else.  A Korean meal comes with rice and about fifteen little side dishes of potato salad, pickled vegetables, pickled crab legs, garlic, peppers, and other assorted dishes that I didn’t recognize and never asked about.  Hell, as long as they tasted good, and they almost always did, I just closed my eyes and ate them.  Sandra ordered a glass of white wine and I got a Heineken Beer.  Mrs. Lee had stopped serving the traditional OB Beer and switched to something called Hite, which the Korean brewing industry appeared to be promoting.  It was bitter and left an aftertaste, so whenever we ate at Han Mi, I ordered Heineken or Sapporo.     While we waited for the food to arrive, we sipped at our drinks.     “You haven’t said a word about what you did today,” Sandra said.  “I take that to mean you don’t have an interesting case like you usually do.”     “You nailed it in one,” I said.  “I’ve gotten nothing but routine work for Quince and his partners; except for this one today.”  I told her about the old English woman whose estranged aunt had left her a fortune.     “Must be boring,” she said.  “Not having killers or smugglers to track down.”     “Yeah, but boring pays the bills.  Besides, none of the people I meet doing this kind of work are trying to kill me.”     On more than one occasion, when I’d taken on a special case, it had almost gotten me killed.  In fact, I’d met Sandra on just such a case.  When one of her students was gunned down on the street, the cops treated it as just another black on black gang killing, but the kid’s grandmother hired me to find the truth.  Well, the truth turned out to be Sandra’s neighbor, a retired banker who’d gone into art theft to supplement his retirement income.  His two henchmen had killed the kid on his orders when the unfortunate lad saw them unloading the haul from one of their robberies, and had come within a heartbeat of adding Sandra and me to their list of victims.  If Buster Mayweather, a DC police detective, and one of my best friends, hadn’t seen my car parked at my house with me absent, and figured out where they’d taken us, it would have been messy.  Hell, it would have been fatal; those turkeys were planning to kill the two of us and stash our bodies in Rock Creek Park, where were unlikely to be found except by accident, not that it would have mattered, us being dead and all.