As I settled into the ​Johari Rotana, I liked it.  Lucky bounced around the suite happy and relaxed.  I enjoyed a good view of the bay and Indian Ocean.  Fresh fish came to the room whenever I looked hungry.  To my surprise, when Lucky showed me the wound to her buttock the scar was small, more of a dimple really.  She had a longer, thinner scar on her left forearm that she sustain in a knife fight. 

About that wound she remarked, “The moron would have done himself a good deed if he had just let me kill him whilst I was in a good mood.  Once he cut me, I had to teach him a lesson.  So, I opened the pig up, and then strangled him with his own intestines.  I gelded him and left what little he had left of a weenie as an amuse-bouche in his filthy mouth.  If you’re a woman in my line of work, you can’t leave a scar unanswered.”

She was still talking when I saw the familiar face of Tucker Snarlson.  He was showing up on the Tanzanian Telly on CNN.  Lucky noticed my interest and turned up the volume to keep me from having to rely on the chyrons to know what Snarlson was snarling about.

Snarlson was carrying on about the “Tong” attack on the Munitions Galore HQ.  He was incensed the Brits had not yet pinned a King George Cross on Constance. He also offered a hymn of praise to President Trump for his work to clear obstacles to Constance getting her heroic due.  Nor did Snarlson stop there, he damned the “sinister forces that were trying to shift the blame from Tong hoodlums to Putin, “one of the world’s last remaining great men,” along with Prez Trump, of course.  

Lucky was rolling her eyes.  ‘You know this duffus?  I’ll give the twink this.  He finally got rid of his faggoty bow ties. You can tell at a glance he’s still a closet queen.  Pitty his wife.  You have to wonder what goes on, in my professional opinion, when he and the capitalist exploiter Trump are alone together.  Yuck.  Double yuck. It’s probably worse if Putin is there too.” 

Lucky could be quite the provincial Confucian Chinese when alone with me.  She lacked “modern” attitudes, despite her own insatiable libido. Let’s all it as it is.  Her own love tunnel got more traffic than the one on Mulholland Drive to the beach.  ​Mean girls would say Lucky accommodated more traffic than the Hollywood freeway.​

We’d been there less than a week when she came home with her Spyderco Police knife blood stained.  An hour passed and two of her muscular henchmen showed up carrying a large carpet.  They rolled a naked man out onto the floor.  His mouth was duct taped.  His hands were handcuffed behind his back, and his legs were shackled.  They put him on a port-o-john in a closet.  

Before they shut the door, Lucky told him in both Arabic and Swahili his fate if he made irritating noises. When I asked what she told them, Lucky was matter of fact. “I told him he makes a peep I’ll slice his cajones off and feed him his own cock for his dinner.  I dare say he believed me.  A smart boy. I’ve a headache, darling. I’m in no mood to indulge him.”

I asked why we needed him.  Instead of answering, Lucky complained about al Shabaab having sent him as an assassin.  “Of you?” I asked.  

It turned out he was not a threat to her.  Lucky got around to explaining that al Shabaab is a cabal of Jew-hating troublemakers that were making business costs for the People of China higher.  Worse, the punk had come to Dar es Salaam to kill a couple Mossad agents that the Chinese people planned to ally with.

​I objected that, from what I heard, Mossad guys were handy at removing threats, knowing all about self defense and having the advantage of lean consciences.  Lucky agreed with that. Still, she couldn’t risk letting this cretin assassin spoil her plans.  When he came into her line of sight, she insisted she had a duty to the Chineses people to take action.  ​So she had.  So he was here. 

Thank god her boys were dropping by to clean the commode, the man, and manage the guy’s feeding.  They weren’t as gentle as Lucky.  Maybe they were sore about my Go debts being cancelled.  I made a pretense of offering to pay up, knowing it would be suicidal for them to accept. Sadly, even after my show of honour, they still refused to play Go for money with me.  We stuck to playing hearts without money.

That evening, Lucky put me in a large handbag.  We went to Harnu’s, a restaurant near the Ocean.  I think I’d rather have gone to the Sea Cliff hotel to eat.  Lucky rejected that idea. The Sea Clliff was, per Lucky, a death trap.  Its being near the tip of a peninsula, with a portion of the hotel abutting the Indian Ocean.  According to Lucky, Harnu’s was a safer place.  More importantly, right then Harnu’s was the place she wished to be.

When she carried me into the dining room, she sat down at a table, saying, “Hello Saul, Hello Danny.”

Saul gave her a hard stare, asking, “Do we know you?”

“Don’t be coy,  You know damn well who I am.  You’re not amateurs.”

Danny took a drag from his English Oval, a virtually unprocurable cigarette, winked at Saul, and then said, “Hello Lucky”

“Are you Mossad boys always so shy?  Pretending not to know a girl hurts her feelings.  What’s for dinner?”

She dropped me on the seat next to her.  A waiter scurried to her.  “Yes, ma’am.” 

Lucky began odering. “I’ll have the fried sardines and the vegetable tempura.  Be sure to bring a plate for Crockett here. The pumpkin ravioli will do for a first course.  The barracuda filet will do for dinner, and i’ll be sharing it with Crockett. Oh, and make the orders are large, these Jewish guys look a bit short on change.”

Lucky turned to me and began introductions. “Now, Crockett, pay attention.  We’re eating with Danny Dayan and Saul Levi. There may be be using other names here.  Danny may well killed more lowlifes than I have. Three cheers for that.”  

Frankly, I doubted that.

On she went.  “Whether Danny and Saul admit it, they and I have business together.  Al Shabaab has been getting, literally, away with murder in Africa.  And. why?  Well the Chinese people and the Israelis have wasted kindness on them.  The gentle approach isn’t working.  We Chinese know that when guys like Danny and Saul show up, the Jews are done with leniency. Mossad doesn’t play.”

I stared at Dayan and Levi wondering why they wouldn’t kill Lucky once we left the restaurant.  They were on a mission.   She might be a risk to it. I stared at the two Mossad and the look on their faces told me they would not kill Lucky or me.  They recognised that Lucky was bringing, as the US Feds say, KSA (knowledge, skills, and ability) to the table. 

But why were we here?  Tanzania is the safest country in East Africa.  It’s almost 800 miles to the places I’d expect al Shabaab to be camping.   Then it occurred to me.  Tanzania was a safe staging ground.

By the time we left, Danny, Saul and Lucky agreed to meet at her hotel.  They had a strong desire to meet the putative assassin.  Lucky agreed that they could come and fetch him.  I believe he’d have preferred to stay with Lucky than a couple of Mossad guys.

The next morning they came to breakfast.  Lucky had pre-ordered.  For herself, she got a “Chinese breakfast” that included tomato broth with handmade noodles, fried egg and scallions; for the boys she got mango juice, eggs over-easy, croissants, coconut doughnuts, rice pancakes with plenty of butter preserves on the side.  There were plates of potatoes, and pots of fresh hot chocolate and coffee.  Being every thoughtful, she had a puree of sea bass brought up for me, though it wasn’t on the menu.  Saul and Danny ate hearty.  

After Danny and Saul checked the room, they agreed it was for all practical purposes a SCIF.  Danny was blunt.  “We’ve had enough of pissants from al Shabaab making threats or gumming up Israeli project.  We’re aware that Emperor Xi is also fed up.  Israel recently expanded its capabilities with a new weapons system.  We believe the Russians used one like it near Goma.  We’ve a better idea.  

“You should know upfront we’re going to pin the blame for the attack on the Russians.  We’ve an alcoholic Russian general on our payroll. He is a revolting anti-Semite.  So, we won’t miss him when he dies with the al Shabaab crowd in Somalia.  We will have to get get within a couple miles of the al Shabaab base to have the impact we want.  To do that well, we’ll need to come in by sea.  We could go the whole way to Somalia by sea, but would prefer a sea transport and a pickup by helicopter.

“If we had access to something like a CV-22 we could stay a couple hundred miles off the coast and be well within that helicopters combat radius.  You would be a superb resource if you could pre-position some fuel for the CV-22.  If only team China had already got a Blue Whale built.  We’d have liked its speed over what the CV-22 can do.”

Lucky then protested that Israel had no CV-22 and China was still perfecting the Blue Whale.  She suggested that using 2 black hawks or that type of helicopter would do.”

Saul and Danny both objected.  They wanted it all on one load.  Black Hawks were too small to suit them.  

Saul then looked at me.  “Danny and I think Crockett has friends able to get us what we want.  Or so we’ve heard. Crocky knows that whole nasty, chiseling crew at Munitions Galore, especially Wolverine.”  

“Journalists know lots of people.” I was grasping for extenuations.  Lucky reached over and rubbed my head.  “You’re such a little devil, darling.  What a hard crowd you know!.  First, Constance and now these gangsters.” By her tone she insinuated I was brave rather than just crazy stupid. Alas I knew the truth: crazy stupid it was.

Still, I felt compelled to defend myself.  “To earn gold, i must meet lots of people.”

Saul shook his head.    “I doubt it.  I read your L’Afrique Aujourd’hui stories on Putin.  What a tissue of bull shit! You had sources? Hysterical. Yeah, you’re a journallist and probably believe Leon Uris was an historian or Ariel Sharon a peacemaker.”

Sometimes it’s best to say nothing.  Besides, the Putin story money was already in the bank.

Danny and Saul looked at Lucky.  They then said in unison, ‘Call Wolverine.”

After pointing out that Wolverine might not answer, I was shoved in front of a PC screen.  Skype opened.  I punched in Wolverine’s number.  Voila.  He came on.  He was bare chested and smoking a Sherman cigarillo.  To his right was a glass of Redbreast whiskey, with a bottle of Redbreast 27 a bit to the right of it.

“Why have you got those two Mossad guys with you, Crocky.”

I then made my ask.

Wolverine chucked.  “Are you out of your fucking mind.  An Air Force CV-22?  How, Crocky, how?”

Saul and Danny shoved me aside (the pricks) to make their case.  As they put it, Wolverine knew them and they knew him.  They knew what he was and what Munitions Galore did.  They even mentioned Binky Dalrymple’s name, referring to him as a Munitions Galore toady and WASP grifter.  Danny asserted Wolverine he had the connections to get a CV-22.  Saul added he also wanted current NGA intelligence on al Shabaab..

Danny’s mention of al Shabaab brightened Wolverine’s look.  He stepped off to the side for a minute. He returned with his shirt, cravat, waistcoat, and jacket on.  He was all smiles.  

Without losing a beat, Wolverine got chatty.  “So, at last Mossad plans to do something about those monsters in Somalia.  Hence you all want to know exactly where the monsters are living.”

Saul and Danny nodded their heads.  

“Why didn’t you say so, Crocky?  I can’t abide a terrorist using Russian-made weapons.  Let me see what I can do to aid your Africa delousing project.  If only I could join you.  I’ll be in touch.”  Then Wolverine was gone.

Danny and Saul proclaimed Wolverine was reliable when it came to delivering whatever he promised Mossad.  Lucky was not as confident.  According to her, Wolverine was a total weasel.  He did nothing without a price or unless it advanced his own angle.  And it was all too easy.  Even though she said nothing to me at the time, Lucky later confided she began to wonder who the fink at Mossad was.  It was as if Wolverine was too ready for this big ask.  She knew she had to watch her back on this one.

By the way, I did feel bad when Saul and Danny rolled the captive assassin up to take to a place unknown to “interview” him.  Later they told Lucky he was a fragile boy.  He didn’t survive his interview, but did offer useful information.