Chapter 17: Nobody Knows the Troubles I’ve Seen...

One moonlit night, Logan and Madison were walking from Chez Billy Sud in Georgetown to their car. It was around 11 and they were teasing each other about the merits of sea bass versus pan-roasted trout.

Three punks, two of them large, body-builder specimens, suddenly blocked the sidewalk. The leader, a pale, skinny guy who looked like he’d been grown in a closet, said, “Evening, folks. This here’s a toll road and we’re the collectors.”

Madison whispered, “Oh, God.”

Logan moved to stand directly in front of the biggest one. Who frowned over eyes that were too close together. He was a couple of inches shorter, but outweighed Logan by a good 50-60 pounds. His biceps looked like bowling balls that couldn’t be contained in the confines of his ripped-open sleeves. The blindingly white tee shirt gleamed in the streetlight.

Logan smiled, “Congratulations on your ongoing triumph over anorexia nervosa.”

“Huh?”

Logan lowered his voice, “I have an E-Z Pass, fat boy. Time for you to consider which exit strategy to employ.”

“Huh?”

“You can leave of your own volition, or go out lying on a stretcher in a long vehicle with a siren and flashing lights.”

Logan ignored the other two, including the skinny guy who snarled, “You had your chance, cocksucker. Fuck him up, Toby.”

Logan stared at Toby, “I’m going to count to three, Tubby, then the option door slams shut.”

Toby glared, balled up his fists like in a YMCA boxing ring. Logan held his right hand above his head and started finger-counting. “One ... two...”

He sprang off his back foot and whipped his head forward, smashing Toby in the nose. The head-butt caved Toby’s face in, pulping his nose, breaking both of his cheekbones, and rattling his brain around inside the cranium.

He crumbled, in slow-motion, to the sidewalk. Madison was breathing hard, both hands over her mouth.

Logan turned to Skinny, who held up both palms, backing away. The other bodybuilder was already running. Quick as lightning, Logan grabbed Skinny and slammed him back against the wall. “You hooked up with a couple of lame biceps, Casper. Not very bright, not very tactical.”

Madison’s emotions somersaulted through fear, anger, relief, anger again. She didn’t say a word, just skipped forward and kicked Casper in the balls. He screamed like a girl and collapsed into a ball, hugging his knees to his chest.

Logan told him, “Call 911.”

They continued walking toward their car when Logan heard a scraping, scuffling noise behind them. The runaway bodybuilder was charging toward them, a red aluminum baseball bat clutched in his right paw.

Logan waited patiently, balanced on the balls of his feet, as the second slugger skidded to a halt, five or six feet away. His chest was heaving as he gasped for breath, “Gonna fuck you up. Bad.”

Logan watched as he gripped the handle with both hands and started to draw it back like he was in a batter’s box. The instant the bat started its horizontal arc, Logan charged full speed. He lowered his body slightly so that his right shoulder crashed into the center of the weightlifter’s stomach.

“Oof!”

Logan kept pumping his legs, raising his torso slightly, lifting the bully up enough to slam him down into the sidewalk. The back of his head made a sickening, wet-sounding smack against the edge of the curb, and bounced once. Madison gasped again.

Casper was still curled up, moaning, terror written across his face. Logan repeated, “Call 911 — two ambulances, this time.”

Logan put his arm around Madison’s shoulders and said, “That was the weakness — having to pull the bat back before he could swing it. Left himself wide open for a couple of seconds.”

Madison shivered once.

As they drove away, Madison began composing herself. She said, “Don’t tell Popsicle what I did.”

“Okay.”

Big grin, “I want to tell him myself.”

Back home, as Madison gently applied a wet cloth to his bruised forehead, Logan remembered Senior Chief Petty Officer Horace Maytubby. He could almost hear that soft Alabama accent, “Your street enemy expects peripherals — hands, elbows, feet. A Navy SEAL uses everything he has.”

Logan smiled, recalling the lecture, “The SEAL forehead is a perfect arch — and the arch is nature’s strongest structure. Designed, no doubt, by Navy engineers. None finer.”

Nelson and Drake Xing rarely went to their father for advice even though the old man had decades of experience in the import/export business. But this — the mysterious Jia Li Ch’ing — was a different matter.

At 79, Wellington’s age didn’t really show in his mostly unlined face. As always, he was dressed in a dark suit, white shirt, muted tie. Bar-laced Oxfords polished to a high gloss.

“No one knows whether the girl is really descended from P’u Yi, the Boy Emperor.” He smiled faintly, “But that means that no one knows for sure that she isn’t.”

Drake said, “What if she is?”

“Then Xi Jinping has a decision to make. Until recently, he would have simply ignored the rumors.”

Nelson said, “And now?”

Wellington took his time; he was a thoughtful man, not inclined to idle gossip. “My sources are in Taipei, so naturally they’re a little paranoid about all things regarding the mainland.”

Drake, “So what do they tell you about Jia Li Ch’ing?”

“It’s not so much about the girl herself; Xi is seeing her as just another pawn on his three dimensional chess board.”

Nelson and Drake leaned forward; this was getting interesting. Plus, she was such a rare beauty.

Wellington, “The Forbidden City — that massive palace complex of almost one thousand buildings — is over 700,000 square meters. The most valuable real estate in the world.”

Nelson nodded impatiently, “And the girl?”

“Xi Jinping — and remember this comes from my Taiwanese contacts — is considering a public investiture for Jia Li Ch’ing. It would be mostly ceremonial; she wouldn’t have any actual power, just the trappings of imperial life.”

Drake, “Why would Xi do that?”

“A couple of reasons. To divert the world’s attention away from the detention and slaughter of the Uyghurs. Seating even a distant progeny of the Boy Emperor would be an international sensation. Wall-to-wall media coverage, nonstop.”

Nelson, “And the second reason?”

“To accelerate China’s economic growth by encouraging more Western investment — particularly from the United States now that there’s a new administration.”

Drake nodded, “Tech companies, obviously.”

Wellington, “Yes, but also automotive, heavy industry, steel, wind turbines ... really, everything under the sun could be manufactured more cheaply in China.”

Thinking of their own business, Nelson said, “And that would mean more trading between China and the West.”

“Precisely.”

Logan met Bull at the seedy parking garage diagonally across from Ethan’s apartment. Bull was suitably impressed with the Baltimore security arrangements.

As they rode up in the elevator, Logan said, “Lacy will come up here when and if.”

“When we get a whiff of Apache.”

“Right. It’s just Madison and me for now.”

“Okay to talk in front of her?”

“Yeah, we owe her that. She’s the main target now.”

Inside the apartment, Logan made the introductions.

Madison said, “Thank you for all your help. The drone and everything.”

“My pleasure. It felt like old times.”

Logan said, “Madison is going a little stir crazy, but she hasn’t gone out.”

Madison, “The building security is really tight.”

Bull nodded, “I like the secret passageway. But remember — when caution turns predictable, it becomes risk.”

Logan nodded in silent agreement; he knew that Quintin Apache would be devious, perhaps even clever. Certainly relentless.

Madison was a few inches taller than Bull, but Logan wasn’t surprised that his friend didn’t mind being the shortest one in the room. He was secure enough in knowing who he was; what was important in life. And, what wasn’t. He’d once shrugged and told Logan, “I’ve been short all my life.” And that was the last time the subject came up.

Bull waited until after a light dinner of Cunard-style chopped salad and some canned mock-turtle soup that Madison jazzed up with sherry and spices.

Bull looked at Logan, “I went to see Senior Chief Petty Officer Horace Maytubby, in Alabama. He’s retired now.”

Logan was startled, “Oh?”

Madison, “Who is he?”

Bull thought: So Logan never told her about the training incident. Typical. Logan Fucking Kelly.

Logan, “Ancient history. Back in the Paleozoic Era, Bull and I did some training out in California. And Maytubby was one of the instructors.”

Madison looked at him sharply, sensing there was more to it than that. But she waited for Bull to share his account.

Bull was still looking at Logan, “As you know, we’re guessing that Apache is in the DC area. And that he has his people here looking for Madison.”

Logan nodded.

“And, of course, we’re here looking for Apache at the same time. The Wyoming state police went over his Honda Passport. And the cops in Idaho tore his cabin apart. They found his fingerprints in both places, but nothing that indicates where he went.”

Madison frowned and crossed her arms.

Bull said, “So, as of now, we only have a bare-bones outline, a sketch of Apache’s life. I thought I might learn something from his Army records.”

Logan, “Okay.”

“Maytubby agreed and he made a call to St. Louis.”

Madison, “St. Louis?”

“The National Personnel Records Center. Huge place, massive storage rooms full of military files — millions of files — of individual servicemen and women.”

“Oh.”

Logan, “What did you find out?”

“This is second-hand, well, third-hand by now. The last Army records on Apache were two heavily redacted reports. First, by a Major Dennis Helmsley; and one from a Combat Medical Specialist, Rebecca Thomas.”

Madison frowned, “What does that tell you?”

Bull, “Maytubby’s contact in St. Louis looked them up. Helmsley is a clinical psychologist and Thomas went on to graduate from med school. Both are retired from the Army now.”

Logan looked off into space, nodded, “A psychologist. That could be the report that forced Apache out of the Army.”

“Maybe. But it looks like Apache got the boot partly because an overzealous one-star was trying to make Fort Carson squeaky-clean. Apache probably was an odd-duck soldier, but the reasons for his Administrative Discharge are murky. Maybe even wrong.”

“Well, that could turn him bitter.”

Madison said, “But into an assassin?”

Bull shrugged, “Who knows? But there’s more. Maytubby’s St. Louis contact knew somebody who knew Thomas. And that guy passed along some ancient scuttlebutt from Fort Carson. Now keep in mind that Rebecca Thomas didn’t physically examine Apache, but she did observe him pretty closely.”

Logan made a tell-me gesture with his hands.

“Thomas believes that Apache has a rare, inherited disorder called congenital analgesia. Which means that his nerve impulses don’t transmit properly. In essence, Apache can’t feel physical pain.”

People lived in the bayous south of Sausalito for one of two reasons — choice or chance. And only a very few of the residents had elected to move down there. Only the ones who liked the isolation, the slow pace, the respite from urban life. Marie and Eulalie and Rémy fell into that category, although more for privacy and nostalgia than bucolic considerations.

On the other hand, most of the bayou people were born and raised there. Generations of families who had never known anything else. It was just a familiar, comfortable way of life — and it didn’t occur to most of them, even the younger generations, to live anywhere else.

They proudly lived off of nature’s bounty — fishing was steady and plentiful because commercial fishermen ignored the bayous. Too much work for too little return. Hunting and trapping flourished year round. No Mississippi game wardens ever ventured into the remote, swampy area to enforce seasonal laws; nor to demand to see permits.

Schooling? Some mothers would send the single brightest of their children into Sausalito, at least through elementary school. But even those kids — almost all of them — returned to the bayous to live.

Marie had instituted a strict no-bullying policy. Each school usually appointed a few goodwill ambassadors to smooth the way for the bayou kids.

For the majority of the Cajun children, there was a one-room schoolhouse — rickety and raised up on shaky piers — that operated year round. But ‘year round’ meant it was open only when the students weren’t needed to hunt, fish, trap, sew, repair, do any of the hundreds of chores necessary for subsistence living.