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concourse with a slowness that is infuriating to his fellow travelers. They have all spent the last half-day strapped into bad chairs, stuffed into an aluminum tube aslosh with jet fuel. Over the safety-engineered nubs molded into the jetway floor, their rolling suitcases drone like fighter planes. They graze the backs of his knees as they bank around his husky columnar body. Randy is holding his new GSM phone to the side of his head. Supposedly it works anywhere in the world, except for the United States. This is his first chance to try it out.
    “You sound clear as a bell,” Avi says. “How was the flight over?”
    “All right,” Randy says. “They had one of those animated maps up on the video screen.”
    Avi sighs. “All the airlines have those now,” he announces monotonically.
    “The only feature between San Francisco and Tokyo was Midway Island.”
    “So?”
    “It kind of hung there for hours. MIDWAY . Mute embarrassment all around.”
    Randy reaches the departure gate for Manila, and pauses to admire a five-foot-wide high-definition TV set bearing the logo of a major Nipponese consumer-electronics company. It is running a video in which a wacky cartoon professor and his adorable canine sidekick cheerfully tick off the three transmission routes of the AIDS virus.
    “I have a fingerprint for you,” Randy says.
    “Shoot.”
    Randy stares at the palm of his hand, on which he haswritten a string of numbers and letters in ballpoint pen. “AF 10 06 E9 99 BA 11 07 64 C1 89 E3 40 8C 72 55.”
    “Got it,” Avi says. “That’s from Ordo, right?”
    “Right. I e-mailed you the key from SFO.”
    “The apartment situation is still resolving,” Avi says. “So I just reserved you a suite at the Manila Hotel.”
    “What do you mean, it’s still resolving?”
    “The Philippines is one of those post-Spanish countries with no clear boundaries between business and personal relationships,” Avi says. “I don’t think you can secure lodgings there without marrying into a family with a major street named after it.”
    Randy takes a seat in the departure area. Perky gate attendants in jaunty, improbable hats zero in on Filipinos with too many carry-ons, and subject them to a public ritual of filling out little tags and surrendering their possessions. The Filipinos roll their eyes and stare longingly out the windows. But most of the waiting passengers are Nipponese—some businessmen, mostly vacationers. They are watching an educational video about how to get mugged in foreign countries.
    “Huh,” Randy says, looking out the window, “got another 747 down to Manila.”
    “In Asia, no decent airline bothers to dick around anything smaller than a 747,” Avi snaps. “If someone tries to pack you on board a 737 or god forbid an Airbus, run, don’t walk, away from the boarding lounge, and call me on my Sky Pager and I’ll send in a chopper to evacuate you.”
    Randy laughs.
    Avi continues. “Now, listen. This hotel you’re going to is very old, very grand, but it’s in the middle of nowhere.”
    “Why would they build a grand hotel in the middle of nowhere?”
    “It used to be a happening place—it’s on the waterfront, right on the edge of Intramuros.”
    Randy’s high-school Spanish is enough to translate that: Inside the Walls.
    “But Intramuros was annihilated by the Nipponese in 1945,” Avi continues. “Systematically. All of the business hotels and office buildings are in a new neighborhood called Makati, much closer to the airport.”
    “So you want to put our office in Intramuros.”
    “How’d you guess?” Avi says, sounding a little spooked. He prides himself on unpredictability.
    “I’m not an intuitive guy generally,” Randy says, “but I’ve been on a plane for thirteen hours and my brain has been turned inside out and hung up to dry.”
    Avi rattles off canned justifications: office space is much cheaper in Intramuros. Government ministries are closer. Makati, the gleaming new