Shawn was having the time of his life. Testifying and participating in discussions all day, and out partying all night. With Kia and Shai by his side they kept the taverns open and the impresarios up all night long. The CID, thanks to the beneficence of Warrant Officer Sam Houston, had provided him with a splendid expense account, and Shawn spent his country's money as though deficits didn't matter.
The three ate, drank, danced, and made the rounds of the hottest hot spots in the hottest city in the world. Shawn wolfed down rich grain fed two inch slabs of rare Angus steak accompanied by baked potatoes rich with butter or sour cream, and accompanied with bacon sloshed string beans. Kia joined him; enjoying well cooked lamb, chicken and sometimes buffalo suffused with various curry sauces all on heaps of rice cooked in fresh eggs, and an unending array of vegetables from spring peas to bamboo shoots. Shai, never outdone plied herself with kitfo; a dish of extremely rare, almost raw, beef customarily drowning in some spicy tangy and always delicious chili sauce.
Alcohol was always one of the great treats of the evening. Shawn loved his Jack Daniels over ice in coca cola followed by an equally tall iced water chaser. Kia had her home grown millet drink, a rich heavy Nepalese beer. But Shai had the best of all; hers was Tangha wine, a rich honeyed wine, more mead than wine; a centuries old drink of the people of the Amhara Plateau.
Prohibitions regarding shared utensils may have been technically upheld, and Shai may have pretended to eat in the traditional way using her right hand dipping up her scrumptious entrées with morsels of rice cake like everything was finger food, but the food, the drink, and most of all the company made all but the most rigorous cultural taboos irrelevant. They were a team, a group of companions whose experiences and love for one another superseded old folkways.
More than once Shawn awakened with a hang over; the fall out from a previous evening he knew he shared with his beloved comrades in arms. He didn't care. They didn't care. They'd come through it together, and together they were reawakening the conscience of the world. He did it for Lauren, a little girl buried in a road on some rocky stretch of a barren land. Kia did it for a mother who'd lost three babies to Souma, and Shai did it for all the babies, all the children, and the lost and hungry whether it was in Darfur, Cambodia, Rwanda, or Paraguay.
They had been on hand to see the suffering, the misery, and the tragedy, but they been there to see the perseverance, the determination, and humanity's indomitable will; a will born of mankind's faith in Divine Providence. They'd been there, seen it all and wherever they were, no matter how difficult the circumstance they'd seen the hand of God. Be it a Hindu in Nepal, a Buddhist in Thailand, a Christian or Muslim in the Sudan, or an Orthodox Christian in Ethiopia there was always man's ever present faith.
Shawn was a Catholic; a conservative Irish Catholic. How he got that way was a mystery, for he'd never had much religious schooling growing up. Yeah, he was put off by the current scandals in the Church, but all faiths were shallow and weak when one looked at the people who ran them. He'd seen Jews cry at the 'Wall' in Jerusalem even while Israeli soldiers shoved helpless Palestinian woman and children into pestilential ghettoes. He'd heard self righteous imams tout the nobility of Allah even as fanatical men cut away the faces of innocent beautiful young girls. He'd watched wealthy Hindu Brahmins ignore the starving poor, while the most upright Buddhists found ways to justify other peoples' misery.
Shawn loved God, but he'd come to love humanity more, and in his world humanity had come to increasingly mean just two people. They were somewhere in the south, in a gritty old southern city, a city that was both beautiful and ugly; a city where social injustice and the divisions between rich and poor were almost stark as in the Sudan. He despised the city, but loved its content.
She was still 'down there'. But he knew, once she was finished she'd join him in the Big Apple, and together, with all his friends, they'd have the biggest splashiest wedding this side of Charles and Diana. He even considered making Houston his best man; that was, if Kim wasn't available. Yes the world had become his oyster, he was reveling in it, but the pearls were down in the south, still in the shell.
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Kim steered clear of the nonsense he saw with Shawn, Kia, and Shai. They could play. He still had his job to do. Keeping track of Shawn was easy. In fact it was as though Shawn was supposed to be out and about; being playful, being the giddy gadfly.
What hadn't made sense were the two men following him. Kim knew right away it was Shawn and not the women who were being followed. There was an incongruity to the men tailing Shawn and it concerned him; one was clearly some kind of low class thug, but the other looked out of place. One was ready to shoot, the other ready to run.
Using his cell phone Kim got pictures of the two and had the photos forwarded to his contacts. They looked them up and came back with an interesting observation; one was indeed a hired killer, and the other was just another in a long line of corrupt businessmen. What was disturbing was both these men were connected to Camulos, and through Camulos to Shawn.
It was clear Camulos wasn't finished with Shawn, and by the look of the two men on his tail Shawn's life was still in some danger. Kim made the decision he'd knock off the killer, and collect the businessman; a little well applied pain was certain to reap all the information he wanted. Who knew, considered Kim, something big might be in the offing?
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Irene kept close watch on Susan. She didn't like was she was seeing. The demure young damsel was dressing and behaving more and more like the tramps going in and out of hotel office complex. She was afraid Susan was moving too quickly; moving too rapidly into the role Camulos expected of her; the result might not be favorable.
Meanwhile Irene kept her own mother as well informed as possible. At some time soon she, the baby, Susan, and her mother were bound to go north. When the time came Irene had to have everything in place.
The First Dinner Party:
The elevator took Susan up to the floors where she knew the all too familiar offices were, but instead of getting off at the same gloomy level she was disgorged in a brightly lit receiving area. A tarty looking hostess obtained her shawl, while a smartly dressed man directed her into the main chamber.
It was in poor taste to describe the young hostess's attire as tarty. She was terribly young and was only wearing what was expected of her, but it did still look a shade on the tacky side; with a thinly woven, tightly fitting white silk blouse, its deeply plunging frilly neckline tightly shirred in a way that emphasized her small but prominent breasts.
Susan couldn't say much for the girl's extremely short black skirt either. It was way too skimpy, and there was nothing to conceal her bright white frilly panties and thigh high stockings with their accompanying high heeled black patent leather shoes.
Her hair was tied up in two tight pig tails held in place with somewhat overlarge red ribbons tied off in small but prominent bows at just about ear level. The hostess looked much too youthful but still very pretty.
Susan wondered if someone might try to take advantage of the girl sometime during the evening. They probably would, and Susan thought that was too bad, since she was sure the girl was under age.
The man, dare she say butler, who directed her to the main chamber was certainly well dressed in a black two piece suit, but otherwise his appearance was very disquieting. He may have been someone assigned a butler's duties, but he clearly wasn't a butler; a servant certainly, but one more likely to yoke and strangle or perhaps plunge a stiletto into someone's throat. He was absolutely polite and deferential, but she got the impression he was only polite and deferential until someone ordered him to be brutal and murderous.
The proof of his actual responsibilities she thought were more in the size and shape of his hands, and in the ill concealed calculating stare that followed her around the room. No he wasn't a real butler, not by a long shot.
