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picked up by a white Volkswagen Santana sedan with black POLICE lettering in both Chinese characters and English script along each side, and an American-style red and blue flashing lightbar across the roof. Just like every other police car he’d ever been in, the back seat smelled vaguely of vomit.
    They let him out in the plaza in front of the Indoor Stadium. A few minutes later another squad car dropped off Commissioner Zhou.
    â€œAre you all right, Colonel?” Zhou asked him.
    â€œOh, I’m fine,” said Avakian.
    â€œI am relieved to hear this. Were you able to determine this person’s nationality?”
    Avakian knew the Chinese would love it if the guy turned out to be Japanese or Korean. He flipped open his phone and brought the picture up on the screen.
    Commissioner Zhou examined it closely. “It seems this person is Chinese.” Then he looked from the phone up at Avakian. “You were rash to approach him so closely.”
    Avakian took out the binoculars and showed him how he’d used them with the phone. And immediately regretted it once he saw the expression on Commissioner Zhou’s face. Now the spy issue was going to be on everyone’s mind.
    â€œAn interesting technique,” Commissioner Zhou said. “I must remember this.”
    The cops had obviously found the camera bag, because there was a little knot of them standing around on the grass right where Avakian had last seen it. “I think the camera bag is over there,” he said, pointing.
    As they both walked up the ring of police parted, revealing the bag. The contents had all been removed and laid neatly out on the grass.
    The cops were smiling proudly. Avakian fought to stifle his own grin. Commissioner Zhou finished acknowledging his patrolmen’s salutes, looked down at the bag, blinked in disbelief, and then exploded himself.
    So much for fingerprints or DNA, Avakian thought. No doubt everyone had pitched in to make the display looknice for the brass. And it really did. It reminded him of inspection day at Fort Benning, everything all perfectly covered and aligned.
    It took Commissioner Zhou a while to wind up his tantrum. Whether it was for mishandling evidence, or making him lose face before the foreign devil, or both, Avakian was pretty sure he’d never know.
    In the interim he bent down to take a closer look at the gear. Professional quality Nikon digital setup. Couple of extra lenses, couple of extra memory cards, lens cleaning gear. And a notebook. That he had no intention of touching. But there might just be something there.

3
    â€œN o way,” said Avakian.
    Russell Marquand seemed to take the rejection in stride. “I think you’re forgetting that I am, in fact, your employer.”
    â€œCheck the job description in my contract,” Avakian replied. “You won’t find it there. A contract that, by the way, has a week left to run. So feel free to fire me.”
    If that wasn’t the usual employer-employee banter, that was because they had known each other since 1997, when Avakian was still in the army and both of them had been trying to keep the U.S. Embassy in Freetown, Sierra Leone, from being overrun during the civil war there.
    â€œI figured that would be coming next,” said Marquand. He was a man who had crossed the Rubicon of age fifty. The comb had more hair in it every morning, and the suits didn’t fit so good anymore because he spent too much time in an office chair. “I have to deal with the Chinese every day, and now I have to take crap from you?”
    â€œOh, you’re breaking my heart,” said Avakian. “You saying this plum posting isn’t so plum? The Chinese been mean to you?”
    â€œJust once I’d like to know what it feels like to come to work in the morning and find out that they haven’t triedto pull a fast one, aren’t being obstructive for no other reason than the sheer unmitigated bitching