Exploits (21 page)

We rolled along the floor a bit, and his gun got jarred loose, and then Mr. Mako jumped up out of his wheelchair and looked up at us and shook a fist in the air and ran out of there hell for leather, and suddenly I listened to the guard cursing and hollering at me and his voice sounded awfully familiar.

“Fool!” he screamed. “Idiot! Imbecile!” He ripped his eyebrows and beard and mustache off. “
I
am Mako!
That
was Doctor Aristotle Ho!”

“Well, how the hell was I to know?” I said.

“He is getting away, and it is all your fault!” yelled Mr. Mako. “Worse still, our informants tell us that his next port of call is Hong Kong. Now Inspector Willie Wong will get all the glory again!”

“It ain't my fault,” I said. “I was just trying to protect you.”

Well, poor Mr. Mako just broke down and cried, and I did my best to comfort him and explained that even though he'd lost Aristotle Ho he had saved the country's pearls, but he wouldn't have no part of it, and finally he got control of himself and insisted that I come with him to his car, and then he drove me to his office and told his secretary to bring him any file Interpol might have on me, and wouldn't let me light up a cigar or have a beer or nothing until she returned lugging this huge folder.

“You have been a busy man since you arrived in Asia, Doctor Jones,” he said after he'd spent a few minutes reading what she'd brought him.

“Well, I try to keep active,” I said.

“'Active’ is an understatement,” he said, still thumbing through the folder. “Not only did you help Doctor Aristotle Ho escape from me today, but it seems that you are wanted for setting up an illegal gambling operation in Macau.”

“I didn't make a penny on that,” I said defensively.

“Let me continue. The Chinese government has issued a warrant for your arrest for the murder of a General Chang.”

“A simple misunderstanding,” I said.

“Tibet is after you for absconding with a national treasure,” he continued.

“He wasn't no national treasure,” I protested. “He was just a basketball player on the lam from the mob. He wasn't even a Tibetan!”

“The government of India wants you for your complicity in the destruction of a national shrine, as well as killing eight tigers without a license,” he said.

“I didn't kill ’em, I just sort of
appropriated
’em,” I said. “Well, seven of ’em, anyway.”

“And the government of Siam has charged you with smuggling armored vehicles.”

“I can explain all that,” I said.

“And worst of all,” he said, glaring at me, “when you were in Hong Kong you helped Willie Wong grab yet another headline!” He got to his feet and walked around to the front of his desk. “Speaking in my capacity as the chief representative of Interpol on the Asian continent, I must inform you that your presence here is no longer tolerable, Doctor Jones. I could, of course, turn you over to any of the governments that seek to bring you to trial, but relations between your country and my own have become strained recently, and I do not wish to exacerbate an already tense situation. Therefore, if you will sign a pledge agreeing never to return to Asia, I will put you on the Trans-Siberian Express and let you become Europe's headache.”

“And if I don't sign it?” I asked.

“Then I will have to devise a series of coin tosses to determine which government gets to incarcerate you first. The choice is yours.”

Well, it wasn't all that much of a choice that I could see, and I figured that if all my efforts to bring the word of the Lord to these brown and yellow heathen were that unappreciated, it was probably time for me to pull up stakes and take my leave of the place anyway, so I signed his paper and he flew me to Siberia, where I really could have used my pandaskin coat, and placed me on the train and pointed me to the West, and that was the end of my attempt to civilize the barbaric hordes of Asia.

Which ain't to say that my preaching days were over. During the next few years I came to grips with some mighty interesting folks and critters in the glittering capitals of Europe, and made and lost a fortune or two, and discovered a lost continent, and fell hopelessly and eternally in love fifteen or twenty times, and even was king of my own country for a spell.

But that is another story, and writing is mighty thirsty work.

THE END