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are.”
    We entered a room at the end of the corridor. Burgundy - red curtains covered the walls and ceiling. Four sets of electric bulbs hung loosely in clusters. There was only one rectangular pine table in the room, dead centre with a bench on either side. Tranh sat down, invited me to join him, clapped his hands. A gruff looking man appeared with a straggly beard, trailing the remains of food and mustard, wearing an open - necked Greek blouse.
    â€œRaki, Dmitri. Rib-eye steaks. Os à moelle. A la Bordelaise. Some cool Touraine wine.”
    Tranh turned towards me.
    â€œYou recall our conversation the night we met. About this Sheba, this boa, this killer woman who is looking for you. Or, is it you looking for her?”
    â€œVaguely.”
    â€œYou asked me for some assistance. Something about ridding yourself of her presence.”
    â€œJust talk.”
    â€œYou told me you loved this woman too much to let her live. I can help you, but you must tell me the rest of your tale. There are certain things which escape me. Any woman deserves a man’s attention for an evening or two.
    But, why for so long? I want to hear more about this obsession. I have an idea about this woman. I presume you don’t have any scheduled appointments, Robinson.
    Bear with me, Robinson, I have my own reasons for listening to stories such as these.”

III
    A few stints doing factory work and waiting tables as a young man taught me quickly enough that you had to find an angle if you wanted to escape a life of drudgery. This meant learning to stand on your own t wo feet, and selling yourself to the world. My ticket to a palatable life was a law degree, once I realized the lucrative possibilities of being vested with a public trust. After a few years representing the scum and dregs of the city of Montreal, I tilled more fertile soil.
    At one time or another, I have sold junk bonds, raised funds for First Nations tribes, run immigration scams out of Wanchai during the post-Tiananmen fiasco, acted as front man for venture capital schemes and served as an intermediary between the First World and the Third for rebuilding projects in Beirut and Algiers until the Hezbollah and the Armed Islamic Group brought beheading back into fashion. At one point, I hung out my shingle as a facilitator , and spent my time organizing golf dates and bordello visits in the Wanchai for Taiwanese defence ministry types and French arms salesmen with a taste for retro-commissions. With a law degree, you could pretty well do whatever you wanted during the eighties and early nineties. People were selling everything from plutonium to countries. The whole planet was open for business.
    I never did business to make a fortune. Getting by was plenty for me, and I was happy enough on the margins. You didn’t have to be a genius to figure out that everything would collapse sooner or later. The markets were like a global casino. The conditions were created by a war, and a war or some act of terrorism would bring it to a halt.
    Oddly enough, it was during a brief return stint to the practice of law that I hit the jackpot. A colleague, or rather crony, Hervé Bourque, had asked me to take on some of his case load during one of his own sordid sex tours of Bangkok before the politically correct cut out that as a viable option. One of his cases involved a girl named Kimberley Sutherland. She had been honeymooning in the South-West with a man named Spike. Spike suggested they rent an ATV. What’s an ATV? asked Kimberley. They’re made by Honda, Spike responded, omitting to mention that ATVs run on three wheels, which makes them notoriously easy to f lip. When Spike hit the first dune in the Mojave Desert, Kimberley screamed. As he hit the second, Kimberley’s butt bounced off the seat. On the third, the ATV flipped, bringing the honeymoon and life, as she had previously known it, to a full stop.
    Spike couldn’t have known it at the time, but his