Chapter 1

"Rory Seamus Jones, Sir," He answered aware, as always, how strange the name sounded, though perhaps here with the melange of cultures and peoples that was America, the raw joining of his Irish and English halves was less brutally obvious. His mind was racing and his thoughts wandering in a haphazard sequence of vignettes covering the bizarre almost impossible events that he had just witnessed — no, not quite witnessed, been a part of. His eyes focused; he saw again the large slightly overweight policeman, his greying hair, his harassed face, his over-the-top mannerisms and, perhaps, best his deep abiding spirit: the policeman's eyes spoke volumes; here was a man who could be trusted to sort things out. He looked around: yes, they were hustling away the elderly Chinese-looking gentleman and his large minder, that, for all the world, seemed more than a little like Oddjob, from the James Bond movie, though of course he didn't have the bowler hat. The large men in the suits, with the bulges under their arms were still looking worried and talking constantly into their cheek-mikes. The really cute nurse was still there and, yes, she was coming towards him.

The policeman looked up, "Sir?" he said.

"Sorry Constable, my mind was wondering I think it's kind of catching up with me, what was that again?"

"That's Officer, Sir, and I was asking where you were staying and if I could check your passport."

Rory saw the nurse had stopped and was hanging back now, waiting for the policeman to finish.

"I beg your pardon, Officer," he replied as he handed his passport to the policeman along with a card he had taken from his wallet that had the name and address of his hotel along with his room number.

The policeman checked the documents and handed them back to Rory, after noting down the address and other details. "Thank you Mr. Jones, that's all I need, but the suits are going to need to talk to you, so please stay here for a while longer."

"No problem Officer," Rory responded already loosing interest, his eyes again finding the Nurse. She was stunning, definitely Asian by her looks; small, she was certainly shy of five feet, though by no more than an inch, her tight uniform with its short skirt showed that she had an adult figure, though, completely in proportion to her diminutive size, well perhaps not all of it, she had a very tiny waist, if he had to guess he would have said she was wearing a corset. Her long, blue-black hair was plaited and even coming up and over her nurse's cap, before it started down, it was bumping against her beautifully alluring posterior. Her eyes were very large, despite the lovely slight epicanthic folds and now that she was closer, he could see that they were not dark brown to black as he had assumed from a distance, but a deep midnight-blue and even more unusual, the pupils were very slightly oval, hardly noticeable, until you saw it and then incredibly sexy, as it made them look slightly cat-like, he thought. There was something strange and special about the way she looked, and then he realised that she had the look of an anime heroine or as near the look as is possible for someone who was definitely, unquestionably, a flesh and blood real-girl.

She stopped in front of him, her stance, the look, the way she held herself as she half-smiled with those cupid-lips and that tiny anime-style mouth, they all said one thing: 'you were checking me out — I saw you.' Rory felt himself reddening, as she started to speak. "His Majesty wishes to thank you in person. Come at two-thirty if you can, otherwise call the number on this card and we will make other arrangements." She handed him the gold-embossed card, turned and walked back towards the elderly gentleman, who was now sitting in a black limousine; she never looked back once as he watched her walk with her plait bouncing enticingly against her nicely swaying bottom. Even her voice was beautiful, he thought, with its soft mellifluous tones and the slight Chinese or Japanese sounding accent, over-topped with a touch of American burr that was just right.

He looked down at the card. 'His Majesty King Moytokk III' was written in an artfully cursive script and under this an address in the city and a telephone number. Well as long as he wasn't kept here too long, '14:30' as his European conditioned time sense thought of it should present no problems. And then he caught himself thinking about the old joke associated with two-thirty, what was it? Chinese dentist time; well maybe not politically correct, but it sort of appealed to his sense of comedic balance.

Now if Rory could have heard the agents talking he would have been even more intrigued with the Nurse, but he couldn't. Well if these guys in the suits were going to talk to him he thought he better get his head in gear and get it all straight while it was still fresh in his mind. He noticed a bench a little to the left and perhaps a metre back and went to it and sat down.

Over where the limousine was just drawing away, the junior suit was talking, "I don't get it Sir; their first volley took out both our guys with a single hit to each, so whatever was in those crystal slivers was very potent. So why did they aim three at the nurse, and none at the King or that big bozo and then when that frisbee stopped the three for the nurse, why did they just stop, break cover and run like the blazes, okay they got away, but still, it makes no sense: after our guys the big bozo should have been the biggest threat, but from the way this went down you would think it was the nurse."

"You don't have the clearance for this, so just take it from me that they had to take the Nurse out unaware or give up, there was no middle course available. Anyway, thanks to that frisbee this didn't go down as planned and no one's dead or badly hurt. So if not exactly a win, we at least get away with it."

Over on the bench Rory was going over events in his mind. Now how had all this started?

Some weeks earlier, Rory Jones had just finished his second year at university in England. He was studying for a bachelor's degree in Artificial Intelligence and he had made arrangements to spend part of his summer working at a campus based research facility in the states. It was a sort of work experience/learning exercise, which paid just about enough to cover his costs and allow him a couple of weeks at the end to sightsee and have a bit of a holiday. It was mid august now, and he'd finished his summer work, yesterday, which was the Friday.

This morning he had met Annalys in the park. He and Annalys had hit it off on day one. When he had walked through the door he had found himself something of a centre of attraction. At six-one, fairly well muscled and with a tight 'ass' as the American woman had no problem saying even within his hearing, he was sufficiently interesting to cause a stir. Add to this his not quite handsome good looks, for and Englishman easy going manner and nature, together with his cultured English accent and he was an instant hit. Annalys was probably the only moth not called to his flame that morning and though he was introduced, it seemed that he had no real interest in her: a striking five foot eleven tall leggy Texan blond, who looked like she had just stepped out of the pages of playboy.