The Lost Children of Khao Ra E-Book

Eric Hoffman

• Herausgeber: BookRix
• Kategorie: Für Kinder und Jugendliche
• Sprache: Englisch

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2022

Beschreibung

Have you ever wondered if you really are who people say you are?

What if you had a past that you can't remember?  What if you were born in another land, or were secretly in line for the throne?  What if you were the missing element of a buried conspiracy, and if you were to learn the truth of your pastmillions would benefit.  You could change the world, if you only knew who you were and where you came from...

This is a story of several strangers, the children of refugees, who found one another and learned that they actually knew one another when they were children.  What's more, that they were part of a plan to create specially gifted agents, but agents for whom?

One has managed to make a living for himself as a private investigator.  Another is an accountant for a company that hasn't always lived up to its advertised goal of helping the world.  One has grown up among the government agents of South Korea, and a fourth will do anything to find her missing father, even if it means she must become a criminal.

They are all linked by technology that no one fully understands, but which someone sees as the answer to several centuries of hardship, and for a people that have migrated across the globe looking for a place to call home and to rebuild the glory of their past.

Turn to Chapter One and become engaged in a world-spanning adventure to not only uncover the past, but to discover a future that these lost children never dreamed possible.  Learn how these young adults are connected by an exotic island in the Bay of Thailand, and the by secrets under a mountain called Khao Ra... 

Leseprobe

Eric Hoffman

The Lost Children of Khao Ra

This book, and the others that follow, are lovingly dedicated to the members of Venture Crew 1761, St. Paul, Minnesota. Forever Brave and Strong.BookRix GmbH & Co. KG81371 Munich

Chapter One

Even the drunken workers sitting along the pier could tell that he was a man with secrets. He walked like someone who was trying to hide something, like someone who carried sensitive information that might be worth a lot of money to the right people, like someone who could be carrying a lot of money himself. He saw them lift themselves to their feet and check their balance. He saw them remind themselves that they were men to fear, men who ruled this part of town. He saw them walk towards him, and he braced himself for the confrontation.

“Oy! You there!” said the front man. The hand behind the thug’s back almost certainly held a pipe or a crowbar, the only weapons that most of these people in this part of Liverpool could afford. “Where might you be prancin’ on such a fine night?”

“Houligan’s Pub,” he answered. He didn’t have any reason to lie. “You know the place?”

“Aye, mate. Ye might say we do. Ye might say we came to collect the cover charge, if you have a mind to enter Houligan’s.” Four other men casually positioned themselves in a loose circle around their slim quarry. Even at ten feet away he could smell the whiskey on their collective breaths.

“Is that the place there on the corner?” he said, gesturing toward a gray, broken-down building a hundred yards behind them with dim lights in the greasy windows and static-filled music from an old jukebox inside.

The head man glanced back briefly, which threw him off balance just slightly and made him take a half step to the side to regain it. “Aye,” he said, “that’s the place. Now if you’ll be so kind to hand over the money…”

“I’d prefer to pay at the door, but thank you for the thought.” He moved purposefully toward the man, who no longer made an effort to conceal his weapon, a cricket bat with duct tape wrapped around the grip. He showed no sign of concern as he approached the man, even as the weapon was raised to strike him. When he saw the bat begin its swing, he simply jumped into the air and swan-dived gracefully over the thug’s head, clearing it by at least six feet.

“Blimey! Get ‘im, lads!” the drunk man shouted. As four barely stable Ludpulians charged, the man with all the secrets swung about, saying nothing, and only gave the barest of smiles. Four and a half minutes later, five drunken ruffians lay scattered about the pier unconscious, and one cracked cricket bat had been thrown into the bay.

Houligan’s Pub looked exactly as he expected, given its appearance from the pier. One wall was dedicated to a row of worn-out dart boards. The chairs were mismatched and looked as if each had been broken and repaired more than once. The air was heavy with cigar smoke and a complete lack of hope. There were ten people in the room, counting two barkeeps, and only two of the remaining eight looked as if they wanted company, which they were providing to each other. His attention went almost immediately to the bearded gentleman in one of the booths who sat writing on an electronic notebook with a half-filled glass of dark lager in front of him. He ordered a bottle at the bar before walking to a table close to the booth.

“It looks like the stars are in your favor,” he said to the man.

“The stars look out for men like us,” was the reply.

The bearded man continued his writing, and the man with the secrets cooperated by sitting with his own thoughts, staring into his drink. Patience not being one of his strongest virtues, however, he broke the silence with, “Interesting place. Why here?”

“It reminds me of my youth in Boston.”

“Aren’t you going to ask me if it was difficult to find?”

At last, the bearded man looked up at him. “If it was difficult to find, then you are not the man I’m looking for.”

“All right. Point taken.” He moved to the booth. “Your message said that you needed an agent to locate something valuable, and to be discreet.”

One bushy, black eyebrow raised. “Is discretion within your capability?”

“They don’t call me ‘Stealth’ for nothing. What is it, may I ask, that you need found?”

The bearded man sat back, his eyebrow still elevated. “Given your obvious disregard for remaining inconspicuous,” he said, “I wonder how much I should reveal to you.”

Stealth looked about the room. “I wouldn’t worry about them,” he said. “What we’re talking about is way out of their league. Any local bigwigs they have access to, who might be interested in the fact that two foreigners met at Houligan’s Pub and talked, would still be several levels of power below the people you and I work around. Besides, these people are too lost in their own sorrows to pay us any mind.” He paused to see if his words were having any effect on the bearded man. “So what do you need found? Stolen merchandise? Information?”

“No, I can find those things myself. I want you to find people.”

“I see,” said Stealth. “Let me guess. Your business partner absconded with the profits, and you want to know which sunny Caribbean island he escaped to. Am I right?”

The man wrote in his notebook. Stealth couldn’t see what he was writing because the screen was such that one could only read it from a certain angle. He would have thought about getting a notebook himself, except he didn’t really trust the security of devices like that, and client information needed to be protected. Anyway, he felt certain that this was another Case of the Vanishing Business Partner simply because he had taken so many of those cases, everything from ex-partners looking for revenge to ex-partners who just want the money back, and even ex-partners who had fallen in love and wanted to marry the embezzler. Cases like that usually paid pretty well, and didn’t require an amount of stored data that would make a fancy electronic notebook necessary.

“Let me assure you,” said the bearded man putting down his stylus, “that I have no relevant prior relationship with the people I want you to find. In fact, I can say with certainty that you’ve never encountered anyone like these people before. Let me warn you, however, that finding them will require more than hacking into an airline database or hotel records. This will require historical research, and I need someone who can make cognitive leaps.”

Stealth took a thoughtful sip, pretending to understand exactly what the bearded man was talking about. “I’m intrigued,” he said. “What’s my timetable, and what does it pay?”

“If I decide that you are the right person for the job, I will send you enough information by courier to get you started. You will be provided with more information if I am happy with your progress. As for how much it pays,” said the bearded man with a tinge of contempt in his voice, “I am familiar with your standard fees, but I can promise you that what you acquire in non-material benefits will far exceed any monetary remuneration.”

“It’s the money I’m looking for, friend,” said Stealth. “Why don’t you send your courier, and if I find the job interesting enough to hold my attention for the time it takes me to find these people we can discuss the particulars of the contract then. How does that sound?”

The man sighed. “Very well. We’ll proceed as you suggest. Where can I send the package?”

Stealth took another drink, surveyed the room a final time, and casually tossed a business card with the name of a hotel and room number on top of the bearded man’s notebook. He also threw a five-pound note on the bar as he left, unconcerned about receiving the grimy change.

The courier arrived later that night. “Mr. Stealth, my name is Diviner,” she said, shaking his hand. She was of Asian descent, like Stealth himself, although her accent was clearly American, born and bred. “Mr. Ptolemy thanks you for your time and hopes that you will accept this assignment.” She handed him a blue envelope and accepted the five-pound tip he offered her.

Alone and with the hotel curtains drawn, he spread the contents of the envelope over the bed. It included none of the dossiers he had expected, but explained that a list of the people he was to find would be provided by a woman named Gyeong Her, head of a multinational corporation called Pokpo. The man, who signed the brief letter with the word “Ptolemy” in a forward-slanting script with large loops in his letters, also provided airline tickets, first class, to Paris.

Stealth usually liked to know a little bit about his clients before accepting an assignment—especially clients with mysterious names like “Ptolemy”. His first impulse was to disappear and forget the whole meeting never happened, but there was something about the man that intrigued him. Something deep inside him wanted to know more. He threw the envelope on the bed-side table and reclined against his pillows. What could it hurt to check things out, he thought, closing his eyes...

Chapter Two

The reverberations shook the entire mountain. The girl had never heard anything like it. The underground base where she lived was supposed to be impregnable, but if that were truly the case, then why were all the soldiers running around? Were they at war?

“Father, what is going on?” She ran to the man in the lab coat who was studying a row of video surveillance monitors. “Are we in danger?”

“I don’t believe it,” he said. He pulled the communicator from his belt and opened it. “Sergeant,” he said, “I don’t know how he’s doing it, but the instrument he’s using is creating a cascade of sympathetic vibrations in the bedrock around the facility. He’s weakening the metal of the door on the molecular level. I estimate he’ll be through it in a matter of minutes.”

“Wait a minute, Doctor,” said the voice that was not the Sergeant’s voice. “Are you telling me that we are being attacked by one man?” It was Mr. Tam, the facility’s Chief Engineer.

“Yes, Mr. Tam. I have him in view.”

“I assume his weapon is mounted on a vehicle. We can use the electromagnetic pulse cannons.”

“He is not driving a vehicle. He is on foot. Sergeant, I recommend that you position your squad near the secondary entrance. Quickly! You do not have time!”

The doctor moved to another console, and his daughter followed him. She saw their solitary assailant on the security monitor. He was pounding at the large metal door with what looked like a glowing sledgehammer. “Father, where are the others? Why are they not here to stop him?”

“They are in Pusan. We have sent out a radio message, but they are still a half hour away.” She knew that Black Bear was strong enough to stop the stranger, and Utopian could outsmart him. Each of the members of the Iron Citadel Team would be as effective as an entire squadron of armed guards, and working together they would bring this stranger to his knees. She hoped the guards could at least slow this stranger enough to give the Team time to return and save the day. Her father seemed less hopeful. “They are busy helping with the earthquake recovery,” he said. “The people of Pusan need them more than we do.”

He turned to her and grabbed her shoulders, ensuring that she paid attention. “If this stranger makes it as far as the control room, I want you to fly to safety. Do you understand? Do not try to stop him from taking me.” His words hit her like a boulder. It had not occurred to her until then that the stranger may be after her father, the Science Research Director of the Iron Citadel.

A particularly loud noise caused both of them to look at the video console. The stranger had broken through the huge metal doors and was entering the Iron Citadel. Outside the Control Room, past the motorcade, she could hear the sound of gunfire echoing through the long tunnel that led to the front gate. Her father quickly adjusted the monitors to show what was happening there. She saw rows of guards firing their weapons at the stranger, who was walking slowly toward them holding his glowing hammer in front of him. There were bright flashes of light where the bullets met an invisible shield that protected him.

“Incredible,” said her father as he lifted the communicator to his mouth. “Sergeant, your firearms will be useless. Have your men pull back behind the secondary gate. We have to protect the Central Core.”

“Doctor Park, I have an idea,” said Mr. Tam. “There is an emergency pressure valve on the main gas line running through the tunnel. I can open it from Maintenance Control and we can flood the tunnel with gas.”

“Good idea,” said the Doctor. “Let’s see how invincible he is without oxygen.” From the safety of the elevated Control Room, she watched dozens of guards running into the Citadel’s main chamber and the secondary gate closing behind them. Warning lights for the Citadel’s environmental sensors lit up across the console, and the doctor silenced the buzzers while studying several screens at once. As the colorless gas slowly filled the tunnel, the stranger quickened his pace toward the secondary gate. Although she had not done so since she was twelve, she hugged her father’s arm.

Once again, loud noises reverberated through the walls of the Citadel as the stranger hammered the reinforced secondary gate. Even though the dials indicated that there was practically no breathable air in the lower tunnel, it hadn’t seemed to slow the stranger down. “He must have his own air supply,” said the Doctor. Putting a hand to his chin, as he always did when he was deep in thought, he stared at the stranger for a full half a minute before picking up the radio. “Mr. Tam, would the Central Core be harmed if we ignited the gas?”

“That door can withstand a nuclear attack. I have to close the valves so the blast will not follow the lines back to the boilers. Give me thirty seconds, and you can overload the tunnel junction box to create the spark.”

The doctor scrolled through the database to find the control files he needed. “I dislike violent solutions,” he said, “but I think his hostility has been proven. The blast will vent out the hole he made in the front gate, and then Mr. Tam will have a lot of repairs to make.” After a few keystrokes, they both waited until the huge, rumbling explosion brought the stranger’s hammer blows to an end.

They were silent after it came, both relieved and saddened that circumstances had forced them to incinerate the stranger. Her father had always taught her to understand a threat before she reacted, and that violence only led to more violence. Today, however, the situation seemed to force their hand. Her father looked at her, and before he could offer her any words of wisdom, the sound of a hammer at the door began again.

Three strikes, and he was through the plating. The guns rang out again, but they were no more effective than when he first entered the tunnel. She saw him holding another device above his head, then a bright light that made her dive under the console. When she raised her head again to look, she saw all of the guards lying on the floor and the stranger, his hammer held before him like a torch, was moving toward her and her father.

The doctor put a hand on her shoulder, telling her to stay hidden. He flipped the switch that allowed him to communicate with the stranger. “Who are you, and what do you want?” he said. He revealed not a bit of fear, though she could see tiny beads of perspiration on his forehead.

“I am Jhi,” said the stranger in perfect Korean. “I seek the Zhuqiijh.

“I am not familiar with a zu-keege. What is it, Jhi?”

“Perhaps you know it by another name. It is a device that alters living flesh.”

Her father thought. “There is nothing like that in this place. What makes you think that the device you are looking for is here?” He stood looking down at the stranger with his hands behind his back, and she could see that he was rhythmically pushing a red button on his radio.

“You cannot deceive me,” said Jhi. “My instruments clearly show that the Zhuqiijh was activated here. You will surrender it to me.”

“I am not a man who lies, stranger. I am the Scientific Director of this facility, and I know all of its equipment. There is no zu-keege here. Furthermore, you have broken into this facility and injured many good men, perhaps even killed them. I am ordering you to lay down your weapon and surrender yourself to be tried for your crimes.”

“You speak bravely for one with no weapons and no power,” said Jhi, “and I will not…” The hissing sound of projectiles being fired through the air interrupted his response, and three small darts bounced off the armor of his back. His eyes, and hers, located their source: Mr. Tam crouched behind a supply crate with a tranquilizer pistol. She deduced that her father had been talking to him by code over the radio while holding the stranger’s attention. He was not only brave, she thought, but clever as well.

The stranger turned back to the doctor, apparently gauging Mr. Tam not to be a threat. “We are wasting time,” he said. “Your guards are not dead. They will awaken unharmed when I am finished here. If you speak the truth and the Zhuqiijh is not here, then why do my instruments show the presence of M’qlaa energies? It is possible that what I seek is here and that you are not aware of it.” He made adjustments to his hammer while three more darts ricocheted off his armor.

“If you believe that I am not telling you the truth, then I will happily lead you on a tour of this facility so you may see for yourself.” Again, very clever, she thought. Perhaps her father could keep the stranger occupied until the paranormal protectors of the Iron Citadel arrived to defeat him.

“No, that will not be necessary,” said the stranger named Jhi. “I have no need of your service.”

He looked directly at her. “I have come for the girl.”

Chapter Three

“Hello, beautiful.”

She looked up from the computer screen to glare at the man standing in the doorway of her office. If he had been in her department, she would have fired him a long time ago. That is, if she had actually been in charge of her department. “What do you want, Jackson?”

“It’s not what I want. It’s what the boss wants. We’re being sent out.”

“When, and for how long?”

“You know the drill. When the boss says it’s time to move, we move yesterday. Your meeting with the marketing department has already been rescheduled for next week.”

She closed the report that she had been working on all morning. Being an accountant with Zahlmeister Securities was only a front for her actual work as part of their corporate-sponsored superhero team, The Gold Standard. Even so, when you put so much time and effort into a report, you want to see it delivered. She sighed. “Okay. Where do we meet the rest of the team?”

“We don’t. It’s just you and me on this one. We’re going to spend a fun-filled weekend in The Big Apple.”

Every muscle in her body tensed at the news. A weekend working alone with this particular individual was not something she would have chosen. “Dividend”, as he was known on the team, was competent, but conceited. As “Silverstar”, she had never worked alone with him. Quite frankly, she had never wanted to turn her back on him, even though he had never done anything to make her believe he would put his personal concerns over his job. He was just, well, not a person she would ever give her phone number to. “Why just the two of us?” she said.

“Not here,” he replied. They have mission dossiers for us at the helipad that will explain everything. Grab your things and meet me there in an hour.”

Once her suitcase was stowed in the cargo compartment and she was safely strapped into her seat, he gave her the brown envelope containing her instructions. They were to find a woman, a costumed agent who had been extremely curious about some of Zahlmeister’s operations in New York, and they were being sent to find out what was behind her interest. The woman had been seen wearing a blue costume with large, beautifully designed wings that gave her the power of flight. Obviously, that was why Silverstar was part of the mission. She could fly, too.

“Who is this person allied with?” Even with the headset, she had to speak over the sound of the helicopter’s rotors.

“Not a clue,” said Dividend. “We can’t place her with any government or rival company. Witnesses say she seems to be fixated on finding one guy. I doubt she’s a corporate spy. From what I understand, she barely speaks English.”

“What does she speak?”

“Thai. You speak Thai, don’t you?”

“No. My real parents are from Thailand, but I never knew them, and I never learned the language.”

“Pity,” he said. “That would have made this mission a whole lot easier.”

She spent a good part of the trip staring out the window studying the New York City skyline. She had only been there a handful of times, and had never really enjoyed it. She liked the art museum and loved it when the company had given symphony tickets as a Christmas bonus one year, but those were all of the positive feelings she could name about the place. She found it to be too noisy, too busy, and too crowded. She found it too difficult to breathe there. Even now, separated from the chaos of the streets below, she felt herself slowly withdrawing into herself, afraid that the dense, mindless jungle of skyscrapers would ride roughshod over the inner peace she clung to like a security blanket.

They landed on the roof of the hotel Zahlmeister had always patronized, the Devonshire Regal. While Dividend secured their room keys at the front desk, she sat with the luggage in the hotel’s spacious lobby, acutely aware that everything she didn’t like about the city was just on the other side of the generously proportioned but uncomfortably thin front windows. Dividend returned wearing a sly smile. “Here’s our room key, my sweet. Room twelve-fifteen.”

“What do you mean, our key?

He lowered his voice. “We—that’s you and I—are here as married business consultants. Hence, the one room. Apparently you didn’t read the entire mission briefing.”

No. She had not.

“Let’s get up to the room, dear, and discuss our itinerary, shall we?” He grabbed his suitcase and motioned for her to do the same. Suddenly, the city outside the walls of the hotel became a safer place to be by comparison.

The room was opulent, with a large balcony from which they could venture forth undetected when necessary. “We’re going to have to be especially careful,” she said. “My research shows that the city’s resident Paranormal Assistance Team has a very strong telepath named Pulse. They say she can hear the entire city at once, and can send out the entire team whenever there’s trouble.”

“No worries,” he said. “There isn’t going to be any trouble in this room. Besides, we’re here on legitimate business. If they do show up, maybe they can help us find this mysterious agent.” He pulled out his phone and speed-dialed. “Mr. Ferguson?” he said, sounding uncharacteristically professional. “This is Dividend from Zahlmeister. I was told that you had an encounter with someone we would like to locate. When can we meet?”

Mr. Ferguson had named a bar on 127th Street, and they took a cab there. They found him in a corner booth behind the pool tables, the kind of booth that people in the movies always met in to make nefarious plans. “They told me you’d foot the bill,” he said, “so I went ahead and ordered.”

“Don’t sweat it. It’s on the company,” said Dividend, sitting down. “What can you tell us?”

“Well, I was working night shift over at the Howard Street Distribution Center. This woman came flying in right through the loading dock doors and knocks one of the guys—Docker we call him because he’s been working the loading dock forever, you know—she knocks him clear across the room and pulls a couple of knives on him. Then she asks him where Duck is.”

“Duck?”

“Yeah, Duck. Anyway, he tells her he don’t know any ducks, and he asks her to describe it. Me and the other guys, we grab whatever’s laying around to take her out, since she’s focused on him and got her back on us, and he’s trying to keep her focused on him by asking her to repeat stuff. She had a really thick accent, you know, Chinese or something, so he can keep her attention on him the whole time it takes for us to get close.”

“Wait a second,” said Silverstar. “You wanted to fight her? Why didn’t you just help her find what she was looking for? She sounds desperate.”

“Yeah, well, in this town when someone pulls a knife on you, they’re usually not asking for directions to the coffee shop, know what I’m saying? She attacked Docker, and we’re his friends, not hers.” He took a drink from the bottle in front of him. “Anyways, sneaking up on her didn’t do us any good. She must have heard us or something, and she whipped around and threw one of those knives. It whizzed right by my head and gave Buster Monroe a nasty cut on his arm. You can check it out. He filled out an injury form and everything. Then she spread those wings and tore out of there.”

They heard the sound of several people leaving the bar very fast. Turning, they saw a large man in a trench coat and hat talking to the bartender, who pointed over to them. The man turned, and they saw he was wearing a mask that hid his entire face. It was decorated with an apple, making him look like the man in the Magritte painting, or at least his cranky, bitter, oversized bodyguard. She saw Ferguson out of the corner of her eye shrink back into the darkest corner of the booth.

The man stopped at the end of their table. “I’m Applejack,” he said. “Are you from Zahlmeister?”

“Who wants to know? Oh, wait,” said Dividend, “you just told us that. Isn’t that the name of a breakfast cereal?”

“Funny,” said Applejack. “Pulse told me you might be one of those comedians. I don’t get to the comedy clubs much, so you’ll understand why I’m not laughing.”

“How can we help you, Mr. Applejack?” said Silverstar.

He pointed the apple right at her. “I understand you’re looking for a winged agent from Thailand,” he said without emotion. “I’d like to find her, too.”

Chapter Four

Stealth lowered himself through the elevator shaft and counted down five floors. Being able to fly--a talent he never advertised because it gave an air of mystery to his success rate--was particularly useful because he never had to leave a conspicuous grappling hook on the roof. Never having to place a foot on the wall meant that he could enter and exit silently, sail over laser switches without setting off alarms, and reach security cameras to deactivate them before they recorded his presence. He had always credited his prodigious and proven skills when asked to explain his high fees. Figuring that as long as he got the job done, the client didn’t need to know all the details and he could keep his reputation as one of the best in the business.

The doors were tricky, but he managed to locate and disengage the circuit wires that locked them and powered the alarms. He had expected to find a hallway, but the elevator opened directly into a lushly decorated office. The floor plan he had must have been outdated. He floated through the door and landed on the thick, maroon carpet, looking for the most likely place the office’s sole occupant might hide what he was looking for. There was a large desk to his right, made of dark wood with a marble top and decorated with silver inlay. There were three doors, each of which might lead to storage areas. There were paintings on the wall, each of which might hide a safe. He chose to start with these, working his way around the room in a clockwise direction. He had made it halfway around the room when he heard the door to the right of the desk begin to open. Swiftly and silently, he ducked into the shadows behind a large curio cabinet.

Through the beveled glass of the cabinet, he watched a woman enter the room. She was stunning, with long, dark hair and dressed in a red evening gown with swirling patterns of sequins dancing from the neckline down to the hem. Her picture in the dossier that the bearded man had sent him didn’t do her justice. It was none other than the infamous Ms.Her, CEO of the globalPokpo Corporation and known in certain circles as “Poison Oak”, who had evidently taken her leave of the soiree on the second floor. She sat at her desk and pulled a small, wrapped package from the top drawer. Setting it in front of her, she simply sat back in her chair and stared at it.

For ten minutes, neither one of them moved. Was she waiting for someone?

While he was working on his fifth exigency plan, which dealt specifically with what he would do if he needed to go to the bathroom, he felt a strange vibration in the glass next to his cheek. It felt like an earthquake, except that Paris wasn’t anywhere near a fault line. As the vibrations grew stronger, he reached for a gas grenade to throw into the center of the room if he needed to reveal his position. No doubt, Ms. Her would have a gun in her desk, and a smokescreen would hide his flight to the ceiling where she would never think to shoot. At the first sign of cracks in the glass, and right before it shattered into thousands of tiny knives, he threw the grenade and leaped away.

There was considerably less chaos than he had expected. Crouching in the middle of the room, ready to leap upward, he looked straight into the eyes of Ms. Her. She sat calmly, seemingly without the panic that an exploding curio cabinet usually elicits in people. Even more shocking to Stealth, his un-exploded gas grenade was hovering two feet off the floor in front of him.

“I grew tired of waiting for you,” she said.

“Umm…all right,” said Stealth, mentally erasing all of the plans he had just created. “I guess that means I won the first game. What are the rules for the second?”

The flat, silver gas grenade floated gently into her hand. “I’ll accept this as the fee for entering my office without an appointment. Who are you and why are you here?”

Stealth smiled. He loved it when people asked him that. “They call me Stealth. I was hired to find something. I’m here because I have it on good authority that what I’m looking for is here. Perhaps you can help.” Using honesty as a tactic didn’t usually work for him, but he figured in this case it might be worth a try.

She looked at the smoke bomb in her hand. “This isn’t one of our designs,” she said. “That tells me you might be working for one of our rivals. Can you give me any reason why I shouldn’t eliminate you here and now?”

“My dear Ms. Her, since I haven’t actually taken anything from you, I think violence would be an overreaction on your part.” He stood up slowly, using his calmest voice and most engaging smile to distract her from his right hand, which moved toward the switch on his belt. “Is it possible the thing I’m looking for is in that package in front of you?”

“It’s not only possible,” she said with a disarming smile of her own, “it’s certain.”

He pressed the switch, and the smoke bomb in her hand suddenly erupted in a dense, purple cloud. He rolled to the desk and thrust his hand to where he knew the package was sitting, but it wasn’t there. Knowing he had to maintain the element of surprise, he launched himself into the air and sailed through the smoke over the desk. She would never think to look for him plastered to the wall above and behind her.

Within ten seconds, the smoke had cleared enough for him to see that she was no longer in her chair and that the package was no longer anywhere on the desk. He hadn’t heard any doors closing. If she had moved to where he had been, he would be easily seen when the smoke cleared. That meant his ability to fly would be revealed, so he descended into her chair, assumed a nonchalant pose, and waited. It was always best to give one’s opponent the impression that one was in control of the situation.

He soon saw that she had indeed moved out into the room. “Clever,” she said. “I’ll have to incorporate remote control circuitry into our own devices. You caught me off guard, which doesn’t happen often.”

“I’ll try not to make a habit of it.” Stealth could envision an entire evening of this kind of impasse between the two of them, which he really wasn’t in the mood for. This lady made him feel uneasy, and the sooner he was out of there, the better. From his position in the chair, he could see a button under the edge of the desk, no doubt for summoning security. He had no idea if she had pushed it, so it was best to assume she had. She may have been prolonging the encounter until help could arrive. He would have to move fast. “You know, I’m really on a tight schedule. Is there any way I could walk out of here with that package?”

“Of course,” she said. “You could ask nicely.”

He sighed. She was definitely stalling for time. “May I please have the package, Ms. Her?”

“Was that really so difficult?” she said, and threw it to him.

Of all the scenarios he envisioned, that was the last one he least expected. In fact, it was so unlikely that she would simply give him the package that he hadn’t even considered it. “Um…I’ll admit that now you’ve caught me off guard,” he said. “Really? Just like that?”

“Open it,” she said.

“How do I know you didn’t switch the actual package with a bomb while we were hidden from each other’s view?”

“Because I’m still in the room,” she said. “Why would I invite you to open a bomb while I’m standing right in front of you? Besides,” she added, “you were never hidden from my view.”

He opened the package. Inside was a Chinese puzzle box. “Within that box are the names and last known locations of several scientists who were involved in a project that my company helped to bankroll several years ago,” she said. “That is the information you came for.”

“Why just give it to me?”

“It’s public information. I have no reason to hide it from anyone. In fact, you could have called our customer service help line. They would have given it to you.”

“If that’s so, then why the puzzle box? I hate these things.”

“Stealth, if you can’t master a child’s puzzle box, you are not someone I would consider hiring if I ever had a need for your clandestine services.” She held up a hand to prevent his next question. “I’m going to leave now and tell my largest security guards to check this office within the next minute. I would advise that you not be here when they arrive. Aloha, Mr. Stealth.” With the sure stride of someone who led a multinational corporation, she was out the door.

He considered snooping around a little more, but decided against it when he heard the heavy footsteps approaching. He would have to remember that “Poison Oak” was someone who meant what she said. Without touching the carpet, he moved up the elevator shaft and out into the night, eager to test the usefulness of a prize he bravely never won.