Like Daphne on the old Frazier show, I am a little bit psychic.  And if I am not psychic, I’m at least as good as Yoda at sensing a disturbance in the force.  Off to London I went.

Once there, I knew that Lucky was at the Connaught.  You should have seen her face when I scratched on her suite’s door, and then swaggered in when she opened it.  Mind you, I think she would have looked more welcoming if she didn’t have a 1911 in her hand.  But the woman went bonkers with joy when she saw me at her feet.  

In no time, she swept me into her arms. We fell onto a couch together.  She began inspecting me, and concluded I needed room service.  She ordered a Salad Nicoise.  When the order arrived, she scooped the salad’s tuna onto a separate plate that she laid at my feet.  She took the rest of the salad for herself.  Perhaps I should send Roberta to Lucky for lessons on how to treat a handsome Tom.

As we ate, she filled me in on what she took to be the situation on the ground.  In particular, she believed the dirty Capitalists at Munitions Galore had dangerous Constance as a hired gun.  Killing Constance would take some doing.  Worse, Lucky still hadn’t laid hands on the rich pig Wolverine.  Munitions Galore was a paradise for murderous parasites.  Lord Caligula was the chief of them.  He was hard to touch because he used his strumpet Constance as a devout bodyguard.  Lucky was incensed.

Operating in England wasn’t easy either.  The Brit twits had the habit of actually enforcing their laws on the preposterous pretense that England was a nation of law.  But the law, she learnt, had not kept the atrocious Binky Dalrymple from aligning, in some yet unknown, but surely nefarious way, with Lord Caligula and that sorry crew at Munitions Galore.  How the bots, stealth bombs, and Ice-10 all fit together was a dark mystery.  In time, the plot will discover itself to the world.  

I asked if she was just sore because China didn’t have any Ice-10 or other Munition Galore goodies.  

Lucky snarled.  According to her, the Chinese people had leads on how, for a price, to acquire more than enough of the kind weaponry the peace loving People needed to compete with the criminals in Washington.  If I got Lucky right, an out-of-the-blue opportunity to work on the acquisition of the best that  Munitions Galore had to offer had come to Emperor Xi.  Better still, even if Munitions Galore had nothing to do with Ice-10, the obscure Cayman Island firm of Razzle Enterprises did appear to have the goods.  Or so Lucky implied.

I perked up.  How did Lucky know about Ice-10?  I asked as if nobody knew the Ice-10 story.  Lucky then told me that Chinese scientists had concluded that a descendant of Ice-9 had killed Uighurs in northwest China.  Razzle Enterprise apparently also made sales advances on Ice-10 and other products to the Israelis, reasoning that dealing with the Americans was suicidal, and that the Russians were just as risky.  Razzle thought the Germans, French, and English were too damn law abiding to suit them.  

As we age, gentle readers, we learn certain advantages come to people and countries able to embrace a relaxed view of the law.

Alas, the intelligence sources in China and Israel suspected that all the major powers, even the Japanese, were arranging to obtain supplies of bots, stealth bombs, and Ice-10.  A story had even leaked in the NY Times that asserted a team of American scientists in Alamogordo had made strikes in the creation of a new set of superweapons.  The Times also implied that Munitions Galore, whose stock had begun to soar, had some role in aiding Americans with engineering muscle.  Teams of scientists had, the story claimed, begun to shuttle to and fro from Alamogordo to Reading and back.  And then there was a extended story in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about recent purchases of ultra deadly weaponry for the German Heer.  

What an opportunity for me.  I made some money writing a story for Le Monde Diplomatique for a nice fee at Wolverine’s request, though he implied Binky wanted it out.  In that story, I told the tale of secret processing plants in the Congo and southeast Asia that were producing secret weapons and seemed to be party to a dizzying array of shell companies.  I implied the existence of a clandestine operation on behalf of Lord Caligula and Putin, and insinuated that somebody somewhere was making gobs of money, which is always true to be sure.

Binky himself, speaking on deep background, said the CIA could neither confirm nor deny my story.  Munitions Galore stock soared 10% the day my story appeared.  The rich see opportunity in violence.  Imagine my joy about having bought a few thousands shares on margin.  I took my profit the following day, and did everything I could to hide it from Roberta.  

Based on all I knew, I saw I knew more than Lucky.  Lucky began to show some signs of strain from staying at Connaught’s without a go ahead to kill anybody, not even Constance.

Like most Chinese, she was a gambling addict, an ancient anxiolytic.  She had taken to spending too much time at joints like Les Ambassadeurs, the Ritz Club, and Crockford’s Club.  If Lucky were not the best cheat I’ve ever seen, she might have lost

The had loss prevention strategies.  For example,  she tracked big winners at the A to steal their winnings.  It seemed sleazy to me, but Lucky claimed she was punishing rich capitalists for thinking they could hang on to unearned pounds.  When I asked if she planned to give what she stole to the poor, she cackled and cackled.  “You’re so from the past, darling.  Why should I do that?  If I can steal for myself, let the poor do likewise.”

I also discovered that when Lucky went on gambling sprees, she had an insatiable appetite for rich, famous men whom she consumed as if they were bonbons.  After a tryst with a former US Prez she met when both were winning big at the A, she made such hard use of him that I noticed the poor chap was checking to see if he still had a penis on the way out of her room.  A man must beware of the thrice is not enough crowd.  Those women are dangerous.

I knew this could not go on.  There was too much bad blood between her, Wolverine, and Constance.  And Wolverine was very angry about her stealing one of his bots.  Also, my piece in Le Monde, along with a lying sequel in L’afrique aujourd’hui, had given Xi the idea that he should avenge himself against Putin by striking at Munitions Galore.  After all, I had made up a possible joint plot.  Maybe that was a bad idea.