Spydog Leaves The Org

Spydog
Leaves
The
Org
Carl
Quillen
Spydog Leaves the Org
by
Carl Quillen
© 2010, Carl Quillen
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Printed in the United States of America

In this book you’ll find the dreams of a 13 year-old boy.
Now not all dreams we have are good dreams, and some we
have, we ought not let come true. And then there are those
that we should, but only when we’re older.
For a boy who I hope has not given up on his own

dreams.
To my son
Chapter 1
The musical rustling of smooth silk and fine Italian wool
plays gently in my ear as I confidently stride along that
broad avenue, tracing the side of one rectangle among
many. Gridded right-angled reality, blocky glass behemoths
glare with the glowing eyes of street-lamps reflected in their
latticed facades. Metal and glass, steel and concrete, the
smell of baked rust and sweating humanity, all of it
tempered and mellowed by a few ounces of well tailored
cloth. I delight in the way it moves with me, the light
playing on the tight weave while the fine odor of the textile
rises to my nose, which moistly twitches as I savor the night
air, sniffing precisely, delicately and rapidly.
I’ve found him. I can smell him nearby by the odor of
irritation that is clothing him. It’s my boy Linus. As I
round the corner he notices the soft scratching of my claws
as they tap the pavement and turns to face me. His large
head is awkwardly perched on a lightly framed body too
small for it. Long thin arms sprout into even longer, slightly
trembling fingers that he holds a little strangely. Mitten-like,
as if he doesn’t quite know what to do with them.
“I thought we were supposed to be inconspicuous!” he
says, “I can’t imagine what you think you are doing with
that getup, but it’s certainly not—”
“No, you are supposed to be inconspicuous. And you
are. When you are with me,” I answer back, silently. And
he understands me, because, master as he is of all languages
he can read me perfectly. Every motion that I make, every
flick of my tail, he misses nothing. He’s rather unusually
good that way.
“No I’m not! Though I admit that they’ll notice you
first. But after they get over the initial shock, they’ll have to
5
Chapter 1
wonder what kind of fool dresses up their dog in a finely

tailored Versace suit…then they’ll be staring at me.”
“This suit really isn’t,” I sniff, elevating my muzzle to
reflect the necessary disdain, “anything as mundane as that.
I assure you.” Perhaps it is the lighting. I find a spot that
looks somewhat better, a few feet closer to him, and strike a
pose. By way of explanation. He stares at me a little
stunned, silently for several seconds.
“Um…well maybe we should just get this job over with?

Then we can go home, and we won’t have to worry about it.
Inconspicuous or otherwise.”
I nod casually, with an easy loose grin that I hope
matches the fashion I’m wearing, and we continue on, me
exuding the ease and comfort that’s only possible with really
good tailoring, and Linus shuffling uneasily by my side.
6
We pass a man in a cheap dark suit. He’s standing stiffly

in a fixed position, and he eyes me suspiciously. Envying
me for my tailor no doubt. But his expression is hard to
read behind the dark glasses.
「こんばんは、」 Linus greets him with a slight bow,
but the man responds much the way a rock would, that is to
say not at all, and we continue around the corner.
“He’s security. Most of the Minister’s detail aren’t here
tonight. Wait here, I’ll go take care of him,” and I slip off
my disguise, and head back around the corner, on four feet
this time. Just like an ordinary dog.
The agent hardly notices me at all this time. Not until I
run up to him, raise my leg, and let go with a torrent of
urine. I’ve been saving it up for a while in that suit and am
glad for the excuse.
「糞犬 ! 　消火栓じゃねえぞ ! 　 ××× の駄犬 ! 」 he curses at
me, twisting as he tries to kick me, but he slips in the puddle
I made at his feet, and I hear the laughter of his colleagues
from the earphone that falls from his ear as he hits the
ground. Then I’m off at high speed, racing around back
towards Linus.
“That ought to keep them busy for a minute or two.
Did you get the memory card?” I ask him, collecting my
suit from him as he helps me dress.
“Memory card?”
“That damn crow must be having trouble getting the
camera to work. Stupid bird!” I think hard for a moment,
wondering if I could get Linus up the side of the building to
take the pictures. But he’s not really athletic enough for it,
and once he sees what he’s supposed to photograph, there
isn’t any way he’d agree to it.
Suddenly a face looms out from the darkness and a dark
hand taps Linus’s shoulder lightly. He jumps, startled and
7
Chapter 1
turns to face her, and she presses a small square of plastic

with golden connectors on it into his palm with another
hand. It’s the memory card.
「これ。」 she says, glaring at him with jet black eyes so
dark they have no pupils. They stare out at him like empty
burning holes in her face, but only for a second, and then
she passes him and fades away into the darkness, leaving
only the suggestion of a smooth face brushed by black
straight hair that’s just long enough to curl slightly following
the curves of her cheeks. It might have left a pleasant
impression but for the eyes and the menacing raven perched
on her shoulder.
“What was that?” asks Linus, visibly perturbed.
“The station chief. And his girl. She must be new.
About your age I imagine?” I speculate, as the station chief
caws faintly in the distance.
“Witchy lady,” says Linus shaking his head slightly.
“Come on, let’s go. We haven’t much time.”
* * *
When we got back to the hotel I wanted to look at the
pictures the raven and his girl agent had given us, so I got
Linus to load the memory card on the computer. He agreed
with some annoyance.
“You should really sprout some fingers. This is getting
annoying. But let’s see what broom-girl got us,” he
grumbled irritatedly, until the first picture loaded off the
card. Then his face started turning colors. First bright red,
then purple, then pale ghostly white.
“What’s this!??!” he said in a funny strangled voice.
Then he grabbed me roughly by my hand-stitched lapels.
8
“Why the Minister. In the usual blackmailable scenario

of course. Anything unusual about that?”
“Blackmail? The lady he’s with is his wife! I’ve seen her
on the news!”
“Now who would have thought, he’d rush to a late-night
tryst, in an obscure little hotel, with his wife! What a freak.”
“You’re one to talk about freaks! You and that stupid
crow!” he said, glowering at me. To which I’m sorry to say
I didn’t have a ready reply.
“You know,” Linus reflected after a long ugly pause,
“with a guy like that, you might just try to have a little bird
whistle something in his ear. Like some advice.”
“He doesn’t like birdsong. He closes the window every
time. And anyway, little hints like ‘change your policy or we
9
Chapter 1
break your legs’ somehow don’t come across that well

coming from a little sparrow.”
“Well maybe you should try changing the advice!” he
fumed, then he turned back to the computer, where he
started erasing the card. Over and over and over again.
* * *
The mice started arriving the next morning, emerging
out from an almost unnoticeable crack between the floor
and the wall. They arrived in ones and twos, each little
group carrying between them elegantly colored banknotes
of various denominations in various exotic currencies. A
large pile of bills gradually assembled itself on the floor next
to the bed while Linus looked on with a mildly amused
expression.
“Where do you think they got all that cash,” he asked,
somewhat rhetorically.
“Counterfeit. Completely bogus I would imagine. The
Org’s mice are really pretty amazing that way. They tailor
my suits too.”
Linus picked up a ¥10,000 bill eyeing it carefully. It
looked perfectly genuine.
“I suppose this means we’re going somewhere,” he said
thoughtfully.
“Just a little detour on the way home. I expect we’ll get
our orders soon,” I replied while approaching the window.
“I better not be missing much school,” he said, looking a
little annoyed. I don’t know why he was concerned. For
some people, school really is superfluous.
A bird tapped at the window. Linus padded over, placed
the bill on the window sill, and opened the window. A
sparrow hopped in, whistling cheerily, and started pecking
rapidly at the money, punching little holes in the paper with
10
its bill. After a few minutes the bird was done, and she
departed with a shrill tweet. Linus picked up the bill, held it
to the light for me to read, and I decoded our orders. Then
he burned it.
“We have to go catch a plane. It’s not a commercial
flight this time, so you should be happy,” I told him.
“Oh good.”
(Linus is a bit tired of taking me on flights. Either I go
as his seeing eye dog, and he pretends to be blind, which he
hates, or I wear shades and my best threads and wing it as a
human. It’s amazing what good clothes can do for your
appearance.)
A few minutes later we were striding out of the hotel,
making our way south, and we started spending our newly
acquired money, riding a complicated series of trains, buses
and taxis, all the while doing our best to ignore the
whispered comments along the way about the “strange-
looking big-nosed hairy foreigner” that were directed my
way. Then we began bribing our way onto a small military
base, where a complicated series of delicately negotiated
financial transactions resulted in us boarding a old, rickety
propeller-driven military transport at the end of the tarmac.
Under the menacing eyes of a truly bloodthirsty looking
crew, we took our places in the hold of the plane, balancing
ourselves on top of crates and piles of old greasy military
vehicle parts. I could only hope that this stuff wouldn’t
shift around too much in flight.
“If I’d known how many felonies this mode of transport
would require, I wouldn’t have complained so much about
doing it the usual way,” remarked Linus after a pause.
“Oh no. That’s one of the benefits of working for the
Org. Visiting beautiful foreign countries. Breaking all their
laws. It’s all very entertaining.”
11
Chapter 1
“Woof,” (which is what he calls me sometimes) “there

isn’t anything interesting about a dog taking a whizz in
public. Which is all the law-breaking that you seem to do.
The rest you leave to me, and I don’t find it that much fun.”
“Nonsense. I can tell you enjoy it. And besides, look at
the interesting people you get to meet,” I remarked,
encouraging him a little, while nodding to a member of the
crew, who was polishing a long, ugly looking bayonet while
glaring at us with eyes like blood-shot granite.
A few minutes later the plane lurched into the air on
three out of the four engines, having required the entire
runway to get airborne. And that only just barely. I
expected it to turn around for emergency repairs, but the
crew didn’t seem to think the situation was at all
remarkable, and so we continued on our way.
So we flew on for several hours, admiring the scenery,
which was up close and pretty, especially over North Korea
where we flew low, hugging the ground trying to stay under
the radar. Occasionally the crew would open the rear cargo
door and some piece of cargo would get tossed into the
maelstrom out the back, into the awaiting arms of some
interesting subversive group or corrupt official I would
imagine. Eventually Linus got a little bored, and he started
examining a little some of the crates we were sitting on.
“The Chinese characters on this say that it’s dried
persimmon…but actually, it looks more like opium to
me…” he said kind of dubiously, but then he thought the
better of it, and he sat down again, trying to pretend he
hadn’t noticed anything. But he still looked somewhat
unhappy.
A few minutes later there was a loud muffled yell from
the cockpit, “ouch!” then the door opened with a bang and
a girl was thrown bodily out the doorway.
12
“Swordplay stays OUTSIDE the cockpit!” echoed out

the door just before it slammed shut.
She was about 13 years old, but robustly built and
wearing a rather wrinkled sailor uniform with a pleated
knee-length skirt. She seemed rather incongruously out of
place until she raised herself up and we saw her face. Then
we realized—it was Broom Girl from last night.
“My name is Lucille,” she said with a heavy Japanese
accent. It seemed just a bit improbable to me, but maybe it
was the best name she could make up on the spot.
“Hey Linus, she seems kind of cute. Look she’s even got
a teddy bear with her. Why don’t you introduce yourself?” I
said to him by way of encouragement. He’s always a little
slow on the uptake when it comes to girls.
“Cute? She has ‘mother’ tattooed on her arm. Crudely,
in India ink, like the way they do it in prison!”
13
Chapter 1
As if to prove his point she sat down on a crate and

began attacking the bear. With sharp bamboo slivers that
she somehow just seemed to conjure out of the air.
Spasmodically, in bursts as we watched. She slowly filled
the teddy bear with them until it bristled with them like a
porcupine.
“Ah. Her magic. She does voodoo,” observed Linus.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” I replied. “Unusual for an agent,
to be sure, but she looks well trained.”
The intercom rang on the bulkhead, and ‘Lucille’ picked
it up.
「はい。了解。五分だ。」
She hung up, then opened a storage compartment and
pulled out two things that looked like thin backpacks with a
pair of loops hanging from the bottom corners and came
over to us.
“Those can’t be what I’m thinking…” moaned Linus.
But they were. Linus grabbed his and pulled on the
harness, clipping the loops on around his legs. Then he
spent the next four minutes figuring out how to attach my
parachute harness to me.
A red light began flashing on the wall and Broom Girl,
or I should say Lucille, pressed the button that opened the
rear hatch and gestured toward the open, howling exit.
“Oh no! I can’t do that…” mumbled Linus. She smiled,
walking towards him. Her wrist flicked, and with a
‘pshitck!’ she pointed the sharp end of a switchblade at him.
He blanched, turned around, walked a few steps and
jumped out. Then she turned to me, picked me up and
threw me out the hatch. As I looked up at her smiling face
falling away from me, the big black eyes glinting gleefully at
me from the open hatch, I could see her hand was still
holding the end of my ripcord.
14
Within ten seconds we were on the ground, and I was

glad that Broom Girl had pulled the ripcord for me. I
wouldn’t have had time if I’d had to reach for it with my
teeth, because the plane had been flying low, just high
enough for our parachutes to open safely.
When I landed Linus was within sight, gathering his
parachute together. He finished and walked the hundred or
so meters over to me, and helped me out of my harness as
the departing plane buzzed away into the distance.
“We’d better keep the parachute cloth. We might need it
for shelter,” he said as I glanced around that the barren
landscape, which looked fairly dismal in the late afternoon.
There was a muffled bang in the distance, the ugly whine
of a propeller airplane in an uncontrolled dive, and then a
disconcerting booming echo that was rather unpleasantly
suggestive of a crash. Then absolute silence. Linus and I
looked at each other with an expression tinged with
congealed horror.
“Do you think Lucille is OK?” I asked.
Linus winced. “I would guess,” he said with a pause,
“that she is fine. There—over by the greasy smoke,” he
pointed. “You can see another parachute descending. That
will be her.”
“I don’t know how you can be so sure. And isn’t it a bit
of a coincidence that the plane crashed, just after we got to
our destination…” I said, letting the sentence trail off to
silence. Then Linus completed the thought.
“I’m sure it’s no coincidence. And that Lucille knew
when to get out,” he said with exceptional grimness. I was a
bit taken aback. He seemed to have taken rather a dislike to
the girl.
“Say Linus, any idea where we are?” I asked and then
started looking around, and then I began to feel despair.
15
Chapter 1
Barren hills with coarse grass, except for places where the
ground was covered in windblown sand. Dunes in wind
sheltered hollows. Not a tree to be seen anywhere, and no
traces of human habitation. A wasteland. Totally
incompatible with fine living, and more critically, high
thread-count wool.
Linus pressed a button on his watch, and a few seconds
later, it yielded a GPS fix and flashed some coordinates on
the face. He looked at the numbers, screwed up his face in
thought for a few seconds and replied,
“Looks like the eastern corner of Outer Mongolia.”
It’s amazing the kind of things that he’s memorized and
that he can remember.
I looked down at my suit, gloom filling my soul, and
Linus took pity on me and helped me take it off.
“I’ll just fold this up for you and will put it in one of the
parachute packs. No dry-cleaning for miles around, I
imagine. We’ll have to try to preserve what we have,” he
said gently trying to console me.
16
“Well, if we must live like animals, I suppose I have a

head start on you now,” I replied a little bitterly.
“Where do you think we are supposed to go now?”
Linus asked, when he’d finished packing.
“Our orders were kind of vague. I think we were to
make contact with the local Org agent, but they didn’t say
anything about who that might be.”
“Well I hope we got dropped of in the right place,
otherwise we’ll be waiting for a long time.”
But as it turned out, we didn’t have long to wait at all. A
few minutes later we heard a soft laughing bark, and a furry
face peered out from behind a dune. Eyeing us with
apparent amusement, it emerged, loping towards us in a
relaxed oily way that fairly exuded sleaziness.
As it approached, its tongue lolled out of its mouth and a
raffish leer contorted its face. It was a dog, or at least a
dog-like creature. It had rather odd ruddy grayish fur.
Maybe it was half fox or wolf or some kind degenerate wild-
dog variety of disreputable ancestry. It began trying to
communicate with us in the usual dog way—silently by
body language.
“What’s it saying, Linus? I can’t make out the dialect at
all…” I admitted, after staring at it for some time.
“You’re having trouble too? Well, it’s a really
backwoods dialect, that’s for sure. If I had to guess,
though, he just said something to you like ‘Of course I
made it with your mom. So you must be my son. Pleased
to meet you, sonny. Oh—and by the way there’s a bunker
over there behind the next dune which has some supplies
stored in it.’ Not very polite, is he?”
“That’s what I thought he said too. I was hoping it was
my imagination,” I said, gritting my teeth for a moment,
thinking some venomous thoughts. Then I turned to the
17
Chapter 1
dog, or whatever it was, and replied, “Well thanks, ‘Dad’.

We’ll just head on over. And if you wouldn’t mind, up on
ahead towards the river there’s a girl who parachuted in.
Could you nip at her heels or something until she finds us?”
The dog pricked up his ears. “A girl? Hmm. Yummy.
I’ll go have a look,” and then he dashed off.
Linus looked at me askance. I said nothing, consoled by
the feeling that that animal was going to get what he
deserved, and we strolled over the dune to see what they
had for us there.
It wasn’t pretty. The ‘bunker’ was an open pit crudely
gouged out of the sand. There were a few decaying scraps
of old military uniforms at the bottom of it, along with
assorted scattered human bones. There were some really
old cans of something that looked like military rations,
stamped with “ 有効期限 1940”. It seemed like an un
promising date to have on a food item. There were also
some very old military blankets with chrysanthemum
emblems stamped on them, and a collection of much more
modern radio equipment, along with a solar panel or two
and a battery charging system.
We started trying to arrange a makeshift tent using one
of the parachute canopies as the fabric. We were in the
midst of a heated discussion on the particulars when Lucille
found us. She walked up to the bunker, looking rather
cheerful and with an extra spring in her step. She was
holding something that looked like a ruddy-gray fox tail,
stroking the fur and waving it around in the air playfully as
she carried it with her.
18
19
Chapter 2
Chapter 2
It was cold that night. The baked heat of the day didn’t
last long in the sandy earth, and the temperature dropped
fast as the darkness fell, hovering just about freezing until
morning. We’d done well fairly well with our makeshift
tent, and it kept the wind out. It was small, and with three
of us in it we stayed much warmer than we might have oth
erwise. But I didn’t rest well. Linus had placed me between
himself and Lucille, and with a quick gesture—“Keep an eye
on her”—he’d abandoned himself to sleep.
As for Lucille, well, she just gave me a wink and a half-

smile which expressed as clear could be that if I gave her
any trouble I’d be adding to her collection of canine tails.
Then she grabbed me and placed me at her breast and fell
asleep holding me in her arms that way while I lay awake
wondering if I’d survive till morning. It was just her way of
20
keeping warm, I suppose, but I couldn’t sleep. I just lay

motionlessly, almost too scared to breathe, warm but not
comfortable in her arms. Every time she moved some
sharp object or other would emerge out from some hidden
pocket in her clothing and stab me. And I lay wondering
how I’d ended up in this predicament.
It wasn’t a complicated story. Lucille had just skipped
up to us earlier that evening waving her trophy, looking
pleased with herself, and Linus had asked her,
「あっ、久しぶりだなあ。飛行機は、何があったの？」
And she replied, with a shrug, something like 「 The air
plane? Oh. We had an argument. 」 I couldn’t understand
her words, but the meaning was clear from the body lan
guage.
Then Linus said something like 「 You had an argument
with the gray wild dog too, I see.」
「He wasn’t very polite. Friend of yours?」
And we shook our heads.
「礼儀作法は大切ですね。」observed Linus.
Indeed. Good manners are essential I had to agree. And
so is hospitality, which we really had no choice but to
extend to her, given that she was all alone, with nothing but
the clothes on her back (and whatever weaponry she had
tucked away.) Especially as we didn’t have anything of our
own to fight her off with. So we offered to help her, quite
graciously I think, and she took us up on it.
Which is how I found myself sleepless in her arms,
wondering if I’d make it to morning. But her soft slow
breathing and her heart beat counted the minutes, and the
skies slowly turned overhead until the sun started to rise
again, dimly lighting the interior of the tent and brightening
her cheeks, which warmed, pink with sleep in the waxing
light until her eyes opened.
21
Chapter 2
She smiled softly, looking for a moment like an ordinary

girl, and very softly said in English,
“Good morning.”
“Good morning,” replied Linus, and we started to rise.
“Sleep well?” Linus gestured to me silently.
“Well she didn’t flay me,” I retorted with some annoy
ance. “I thought I might end up as a fur blanket before the
night was over.”
“Oh I wouldn’t worry about that. You’re warmer alive.
And we don’t have any way to tan your skin, so I don’t
think she’d try—”
“Thanks. That’s really reassuring.” I interrupted him.
“Next time you can be her teddy bear. See if you can avoid
thinking about the bamboo skewers she played with on the
airplane.”
Linus laughed, and Lucille rubbed her eyes sleepily and
smiling happily looked at us a little confused, wondering
what was going on. She obviously didn’t much understand
dog.
There was tweeting at the door. Linus opened it and a
sparrow hopped in the entrance. We put another bill on the
ground, and the bird pecked out orders. I read it to Linus,
and he nodded.
“I get to do radio relay. Should be interesting.” Then
aloud he said “Time to get to work,” and he headed outside
to check out the radio equipment.
After a few minutes Lucille also went outside, and I
collapsed with exhaustion.
Just before noon I awoke. It was so hot in the tent it
was hard to breathe, so I headed outside. Linus was
yammering on the radio, chattering away in Uighur, Kazhak
and Mandarin. It looked like the standard translating gig,
22
and it was keeping him busy. I decided to have a stroll

down to the river to get a drink. I walked about a hundred
yards from the bunker, along an old worn path punctuated
by old bomb craters that were spotted with ancient red
rusted flakes of shrapnel, and there I found Lucille playing.
She was on her knees, kneeling, smiling and making cooing
sounds, feeding big raw red chunks of some kind of meat to
a large vulture. I watched in amazement for a few seconds,
then quietly brushed past her on the way down to the river.
The water was shallow, little more than waist high in

many places, but a couple of hundred yards across. It was
cool and smooth-flowing and had a good taste, and there
were good-size fish lurking darkly under the surface. I had
a long drink.
When I heard a noise coming from down the path I
raised my head. It was Lucille. She walked along beside me
and sat down and started washing her hands. A red cloud
swirled out dyeing the water as it drifted downstream from
her for a few seconds until her hands were clean.
She smiled at me, 「天気はいいわ、犬ちゃん ! 」 and
started gently patting me, acting almost normally, and I
played along, trying to wag my tail. It flopped around a
little limply a couple times as I made the effort.
23
Chapter 2
「ああ! 魚だ!」she exclaimed pointing to the fish. 「お腹

が吸いか？」 and she stood up. And then—I’m not sure
what she did, but in a second she was out of her clothes,
and they fell to the ground, making little metallic clinks as
they hit the rocks. Then she jumped in the water naked and
started swimming. After a few seconds she popped up,
holding a fish in each hand, smiling and laughing. I don’t
know how she did it, actually. She threw one to me, and I
caught it in my mouth. Then she started taking bites out of
the other one, scales and all. I suppose it tastes fresher that
way. I followed her example and started eating mine.
The water may have been cold, but she didn’t mind. She
washed herself in it. I figured it would make her unhappy if
I wasn’t clean when I slept alongside of her, so after I
finished my fish I dove in as well. We splashed and played
in the water together until we were both chilled. Then she
rinsed out her underwear to clean it and put it on wet,
where it dried in a few minutes in the hot dry wind blowing
along the river bank. She finished dressing, and we returned
up the path to the camp together, me carrying two extra fish
in my jaws for Linus.
When we got back he was lying on the embankment next
to the bunker staring up at the sky and looking rather
depressed.
“Radio relay business a bust?” I asked him.
“Out of battery. It seems like it only lasts a few hours or
so, and judging from the size of the solar panels, it’s going
to take all day to charge again.”
“Oh. Have any plans for the rest of the day?” I asked
him.
“I don’t know. I suppose I should find something to
eat.” He looked over to Lucille, who had placed the fish
down on a rock beside her and was busying looking around
for something to burn so she could cook them.
24
“Looks like you went fishing…” he said drifting off.

“So what’s the news over the radio?” I asked him, failing
to suppress my curiosity for what business we were
involved in.
“The usual. Insurgents, smugglers, riffraff. It’s depress
ing really. Helping coordinate their nefarious activities…”
“Hmm.”
“Say, Woof. Do you ever wonder, you know, working
for the Org, well, if we’re working for the good guys?”
“Well you know I’m sure, once you gain the trust of
these guys, we’ll be ordered to betray them and turn them in
to the authorities,” I told him rather apologetically.
“So you mean, after I’ve spent days cozying up to and
making friends with these scum, we’ll double-cross them
and send them off to a quick execution or a long prison
sentence in a filthy Chinese jail?”
“Something like that for sure.”
“Somehow that doesn’t make me feel better,” he sighed,
glancing over at Lucille, who had assembled a collection of
sheep dung, figured out how to light a fire, and had started
to cook the fish over the manure scented flames. She
suspended them skewered with old battered and rusty
bayonet that she’d found cast alongside the path on the way
back to camp.
“Linus, think of it this way. The Org, well, either they
are the good guys, or it’s really just too horrible to think
about.”
“What do you mean?”
“If they chose they could attack us with man-eating rats,
overwhelm us by swarming giant locusts, or even have us
pecked to death by songbirds. If they wanted to.”
25
Chapter 2
Linus paused a minute, thinking, trying to understand

what I meant. “So we do it their way, or…”
“Yes.”
“Death by songbird,” he said shivering.
“Yes. Death by songbird,” I nodded.
* * *
A few minutes later Lucille brought Linus the fish,
bringing it over on the end of the bayonet that she’d cooked
them on. I was not of the opinion that the cooking process
could have done them any good; but humans are rather
insensitive to smell I suppose, because Linus thanked her
and began eating them appreciatively.
「 Hey thanks! These are really good! 」 he exclaimed
between large hungry bites while she beamed back at him.
「Say, would you happen to have anything to drink?」
Lucille smiled an even broader smile. She’d come
prepared—she’d found an old tin army canteen on the way
down to the river that amazingly still seemed able to hold
water, and she had spent some time rinsing it out and
refilling it before we returned. Now I understood why. She
handed him the canteen with a little bow. It was really
rather surprising, but in addition to her penchants for
playing with knives and killing things she also seemed to
enjoy these little domestic pursuits.
Linus smiled and took the tin canteen from her, and then
noticed a small leathery thing grasping at one spot on the
old frayed burlap strap attached to the tin. It was an old
blackened mummified human hand—still holding on, pieces
of fractured wrist bones visible at the end. Horror flashed
for a moment across Linus’s face, but then he nonchalantly
tugged the end of the strap which separated cleanly from
the metal with a slight pop and a puff of dust. Then he let
26
it drop it on the ground where it joined the other assorted

scraps of human remains at the bottom of the bunker.
“Ah. Thanks…” he said politely, and then he took a
small experimental sip of the water, showing a level of self-
control that I really had to admire.
Lucille beamed back at him. Somehow she seemed to be
really rather taken with him.
An awkward silence descended for a few seconds. Then
it was interrupted by a small bird at our feet, chirping. We
looked down at it as it hopped forward with a scrap of
paper held in its bill. The bird dropped it at Lucille’s feet
and flew away.
The paper flipped over in the breeze as Lucille bent
down to reach it revealing a large black spot imprinted in
the center, and she froze, arm outstretched towards it.
“The Black Spot!” Linus and I exclaimed together, and
Lucille began trembling. She slowly straightened up, her
face whitening, and Linus had to run to catch the paper as it
was slowly dragged away on the ground, blown by the wind.
He brought it to me to read, and I decoded the little holes
that were punched in it while Lucille softly sobbed in the
background.
“Looks like she’s fired,” I noted as I got through the first
part of the message.
「貴方はクビになってしまったそうです、」 Linus
translated for her. Lucille continued crying.
“Woof. What is the Org planning to do with her? Good
Lord, not death by…”
“…Songbird? Er…No. It says here she’ll have to make
her way home by herself, which seems to imply that she’s
going to remain alive. They aren’t providing return
transportation. Apparently the wild dog tail incident was
the last straw.”
27
Chapter 2
“Well I can’t say I blame them,” remarked Linus looking

considerably relieved. “Still, it’s a little mean stranding her
here.”
“Oh and one other thing. Because our last plane
crashed, the usual Org airline is refusing carriage. Somehow
they think we might have been responsible. We’ll have to
make our own way to Ulaanbaatar in order to get home.”
“How are we supposed to do that? On horseback?”
“It doesn’t say. Maybe the Org will send us camels,” I
said a little wistfully. I’m always game for an adventure.
“And what are we supposed to do with her? Just leave
her sobbing in the dunes here?” asked Linus, a little
flabbergasted.
“That seems to be the implication.”
I looked worriedly over at Lucille who was now
clenching her hands with tears streaming down her cheeks.
Finally I couldn’t help myself any more, and I went over to
her and started rubbing against her legs. To try and comfort
her a little. She knelt down and started petting me, but then
suddenly wrapped her arms around my neck and hugged
me, her tears dampening my silk scarf.
Linus looked at us for a few seconds with a troubled
expression on his face. Then he came to a decision.
“Well, I’m going to assume that the Org are the good
guys. And the good guys would want us to keep her with us
until we figured out a plausible way to get her home.”
And with Lucille’s arms around my neck, and her tears
dampening my fur I couldn’t disagree with him.
So Linus came over to us, patted Lucille on her back
gently (carefully, so as to avoid getting stabbed by any of the
hidden knives) and explained that she could stay with us
until we could figure out a way to get her home. And after
a while she stopped crying. Eventually she even promised
28
to behave, and to try not to lose her temper and kill anyone
while she was with us. I was beginning to believe she wasn’t
so bad after all.
Linus then proposed that we have a look at a map, in

order to see how we might make our way to Ulaanbaatar.
So we rummaged around in the bunker to see if anyone had
supplied us with one. We eventually found a very old and
crumbling Japanese campaign map, dated 1938 and started
studying it. But Linus found the old pre-war Chinese
characters on the map nearly impossible to read, and he
asked Lucille to help him with it; but much to his surprise
she was not much better at it than he was. So he quizzed
her on various subjects for a while, and eventually he turned
to me, concluding “Spying is the wrong occupation for a
young girl. She should really be in school learning
something.” He spent the rest of the afternoon trying to
29
Chapter 2
teach her silly things—arithmetic and English and so on,

while I lay with my head in Lucille’s lap, wagging my tail as
she petted me gently.
As the sun faded fast in the twilight and we prepared for
bed, I got Linus to ask her if she could remove some of the
knives from her clothing before we lay down. Much to my
delight she agreed. She eventually stacked together a ten-
centimeter tall pile of assorted razor-sharp weaponry which
she placed beside her pillow, and I was able to sleep without
worries next to her. I had a very peaceful night.
The next morning Linus awoke with the sunlight, rose
and went to work right away with the radio, and I was left
with Lucille, who seemed a lot more cheerful. She said
something that seemed to imply that she wanted to go
exploring, and so I followed her as she wandered about the
old battlefield that we were in the middle of. We hiked
among the old battered hills, jumping in the weathered
sandy trenches where troops had once hidden shattered by
thirst hunger and fear. Here they had languished within
sight of the cool fresh water of a river prohibited to them
by artillery and heavy machine-gun fire, waiting day by day
for the high-explosive shell that would eventually kill them.
Every once in a while we encountered an old rusted hulk
of an armored car or light tank, half blown apart by the
explosion that had stopped it, still blackened inside by fire.
Broken bent wheels or shattered links of tank tread littered
the ground around it, and Lucille and I would peer inside.
We’d wonder at the old animal nests that had been built
inside the shelter of the rusted steel.
About noon we returned to the campsite and found
Linus lying on the ground staring up at the sky looking
depressed.
“Trouble with your radio friends?” I asked him.
30
“No, but my radio friends are in trouble. I got new

orders from the Org along with a Chinese contact, and I’ve
been busy betraying them all,” he said sighing.
“That’s the spying life for you, eh? All in a day’s work,”
I said, encouraging him expansively. But Linus wasn’t
amused, just staring back at me morosely for a minute. But
then he started to look hungry, and that suggested to him a
change of subject.
“Any ideas what we should do for lunch?” he asked,
jumping down into the bunker and gingerly picking up one
of the ancient cans purporting to be food that were lying
there.
“Hmm. This says something like ‘pickled anemone with
seaweed and burdock root.’ Hmmm,” he said staring at a
very faded label. “This couldn’t possibly have ever been
edible! Actually, 70 years later, it’s amazing even that the
metal of the can still holds together…”
“Linus, you know I really think we’d be better off trying
to eat our shoes than experimenting with that stuff.”
“That’s for sure,” he said laughing.
“We could go fishing again—” I added, helpfully.
“I know!” he exclaimed, “Let’s go hunting! I bet Lucille
would be good at that. Um… ルシールさん、一緒で狩りに
行きましょうか？”
Lucille’s face lighted up, and she shook her head
energetically in agreement.
I was completely surprised, so I had to ask, “Hey Linus,
when did you become so comfortable asking ladies out on a
date?”
He turned to me with a funny expression on his face.
“Date? Who goes hunting on a date?”
31
Chapter 2
Lucille grabbed his hand and started heading down the

path while he stumbled at her side. She was still smiling,
her face flushed with excitement.
“Lucille. That’s who,” I replied, softly to myself.
* * *
Linus and Lucille returned towards the end of the
afternoon, Lucille holding the collected game in the lap of
her skirt, her eyes shining brightly and her cheeks pink with
delight. Linus was wet up to the waist, and the expression
on his face, well, let’s just say he seemed rather stunned.
“Good duck hunting I see,” I observed, noting the
several fine examples Lucille was cradling.
“You should have come along,” he complained. “Then I
wouldn’t have had to jump in the river to collect the bodies,
after Lucille skewered them,” he observed with some
annoyance.
“I no—I don’t think Lucille would have appreciated me
being there. Third wheel and all. Not on your first date—”
He grabbed me by the neck and started shaking me.
“Don’t you leave me alone with her again! There’s no
telling what might happen. She’s deadly accurate at up to 50
meters. Just a flick of a wrist and it’s all over. And just look
at the expression on her face and the look in her eyes—it’s
unnerving. It’s like she’s completely insane!”
“She’s just fond of you that’s all. She’s really a sweet girl,
once you get used to her,” I tried to reassure him. But this
remark just set his teeth on edge, and he grimaced. He held
me in the air by my neck for a few seconds before letting go
and dropping me on the ground. Then he turned on his
heel and walked over to Lucille, where he started helping
her pluck feathers from the birds.
32
An hour later we feasted in front of the warm crackling

embers of the cooking fire. It was a happy way to end the
day, and Linus’s gloom had considerably subsided. Lucille
bantered lightly with him as they finished the last scraps of
the duck they had shared between them.
「 This
is good isn’t it. But I suppose it would be better
with some vegetables to go with it, 」 she remarked in
between gulps.
「 Well, we should be getting more supplies soon.
Hopefully they’ll give us some better food, 」 Linus replied
while nodding in the direction of the cans we’d left
untouched in a corner of the bunker.
“Hey Linus, how are we getting more supplies? The Org
hasn’t said they could send us any, ” I asked him, surprised.
“Oh the Chinese folks I was talking to said they could
drop us some. By airplane. As a reward for helping them
capture the people I betrayed to them. I gave them our
coordinates on the radio earlier, and they said they’d send
something along to us later on today,” he quietly signaled to
me in reply.
「そうな馬鹿な ! 」 shouted Lucille as she jumped to her
feet with an angry look on her face.
“Looks like she understands dog,” I said, observing her
panicked expression. I’d been suspicious for a while that
she might be able to follow my silent conversations with
Linus, and now I found my suspicions confirmed.
“What’s going on?” asked Linus, looking back and forth
at Lucille and me with some concern as she started ripping
down the tent, packing things as fast as she could.
By now I’d figured out what had alarmed her, and now it
was my turn to bare my teeth angrily at him.
“Linus, if some thieving smuggling riffraff had just sold
out all their friends to me, presumably in order to get a
33
Chapter 2
bigger share of the smuggling business into my country,

would I (A) pop over the border in an airplane with some
kind of reward, or (B) pop over the border in an airplane to
drop a bomb on them and solve the smuggling problem
once and for all? Keep in mind we’re in the middle of an
old battlefield where no one will ever notice an extra crater
or two.”
“Oh,” he said, looking rather surprised. Then he jumped
to his feet and started to help Lucille pack. I had to shake
my head. He’s a very clever guy, but sometimes it’s hard to
tell with him.
We had finished gathering our things and were running
down the path in the direction of the river by the time we
heard the first distant rumblings from the airplane
approaching. We located a good hiding place inside an old
burnt-out tank that we’d explored before earlier that
morning, and by the time the plane arrived over our old
campsite we were safely hidden. We’d left the fire burning
and had even arranged some stones and an old blanket so
that it might vaguely look like a person sitting next to the
fire from a distance in the air, especially as the sun was
beginning to set. Apparently it was convincing, because
there was a loud explosion that shook the ground around
us, followed by the clattering of pebbles falling against the
walls of the tank as they were scattered by the force of the
explosion. When it was over Lucille and I were both glaring
at Linus while he looked sheepishly back at us. After a
moment he said 「 Uh, sorry, 」 and Lucille kicked him, but
not too hard. Then I nipped his hand.
“Ow!” he said aloud sharply.
「馬鹿 !」she yelled, kicking him again.
34
* * *
We crossed the river the next morning. Linus carried
Lucille, sparing her from the water, which while only waist
deep was cold and swift-flowing in places making it hard to
keep his footing. Lucille was still angry with him, and it
showed, because she kept a knife at his throat and told him
she’d use it on him if he dropped her. So he took his time
crossing the river, and by the time they reached the other
side his lips were pale from cold and he was shivering
violently.
The far bank of the river was rather steep, and it wasn’t
easy to find a spot where we could climb out of the water
and clamber up without sliding back down into the river.
But we finally found a good landing and we made our way
up to the top of the bank.
There we found two yaks waiting for us, their heads at
the ground, grazing on the coarse grass. But for the short
legs and long curled horns, they looked and smelled like
35
Chapter 2
indistinct lumps of matted hair. As we became apparent to

them they bellowed at us.
“They’re from the Org,” said Linus.
“You mean—” I interjected.
“Yes. Our transport. To Ulaanbaatar.”
36
Chapter 3
Yaks do not make a valiant steed. Far from being the
dignified mode of transport I had anticipated, they shuffled
along at a slow walking pace, and that only when they didn’t
find themselves distracted by the nearest passing tuft of
grass, lurch to a halt and start absentmindedly grazing. Try
as I might to imagine them as a magic carpet wafting us
along to our next exotic and enchanted destination, it was
impossible to avoid the reality of the dark fetid matted felt
of their fur, smelling as it did deeply of dirt and rancid
butter. Lying on it was like being eaten alive by a giant,
dirty, sweating and bellowing couch.
“And here I thought I would be retracing the steps of
the caravans of the ancient silk road, swaddled in
embroidered raiment perfumed with myrrh on the back of a
silk-clad Bactrian camel,” I lamented as I lay languidly in
Lucille’s lap while she gently petted my neck and scratched
my belly trying to sooth me.
“If you don’t like the yak you could always walk. You
wouldn’t have any trouble keeping up,” responded Linus a
little testily. He rubbed gingerly at his throat, which was still
a little sore in the place where Lucille’s knife had scratched
it the other day.
“I mean, you’d think the Org would at least send us
some spirited Mongolian ponies, rather than these…draft
animals. To whisk us swiftly and gracefully across the
steppe…” My voice trailed off a little wistfully. My yak
snorted at me, obviously offended, steam rising from its
nostrils.
“I’m sure you’d regret it later if you missed the full
enjoyment of any of this scenery,” he replied, waving with
his arm to the vast expanse of broken rocks and low dunes
that surrounded us.
37
Chapter 3
「綺麗だな!」interjected Lucille.
“I see you two share the same sense of aesthetics,” I
remarked a bit amused. “I wonder what else you have in
common.”
That suggested a topic of conversation to Linus, and
obviously bored and in want of a better one than me
complaining about our transportation, he turned to Lucille.
“Lucille, I wonder what your mother is like. She must be
an interesting lady.”
Lucille’s face softened in a gentle smile, and she was
silent for a moment, her thoughts thousands of miles away.
“うん。She’s the best mom in the whole world!”
“Ah. Of course—”
“—and the finest lady that ever served a drink!”
“Aaah. I didn’t know there was a connection between
alcohol and good parenting. But if you say so…”
Lucille closed her eyes in a silent smile for a few seconds,
thinking about where to begin, then she started.
“She runs a little bar in Okinawa. In Ginowan city,
Right next to the Marine air base.”
“Must be a rough area with all those jarheads around.”
“The Marines? Nah. No problem at all. Mom knows
how to bust heads. She can take care of them. Good
customers too. Nobody can knock back liquor like those
Americans can. By the way, are you American too?”
“Hell no! I’m Canadian,” said Linus, puffing his chest
out a bit. “Like American. But better, you know.”
“Better?” asked Lucille, sounding a little skeptical.
“Why sure. Up north you know, especially the Inuit.
During the winter. The alcohol—it’s antifreeze for the
blood you know.”
38
“I suppose so. Anyway the jarheads were good friends,

with Mama keeping them in line for me. They taught me
how to fight with knives too,” she said, smiling with the
fondness of a happy memory. “Look—my favorite dagger.
One of them gave it to me.”
With a flick of her wrist an evilly curved and wickedly
sharp Ghurka khukri blade appeared in her hand, as if out
of nowhere. She thrust it out straight in front of Linus’s
nose so that he could admire it up close. The engraved
rhinoceros-horn handle. The lustrous darkly glittering steel
blade.
“Yes. Beautiful,” he replied. Lucille nodded and with a

snap the blade vanished.
“Anyway, it’s just been me and my mom, ever since my
dad died,” she continued.
“Oh I’m sorry to hear that,” said Linus sympathetically.
39
Chapter 3
“It was a long time ago. When I was small. They say it
was a suicide in a way.”
“How tragic!”
“Yes. The drunken fool Dad last served alcohol to, ran
him over. With a 20 ton armored personnel carrier. Not
half an hour later. There wasn’t much left of him
afterwards. He was flat. Flat as a sheet of dried seaweed,
so they say.”
Linus was at a loss for words, just looking rather
horrified.
“Anyway ever since it’s just been me and my mom. And
of course Setsurou. He’s the boy from the tattoo parlor
next door.” She said this with a little bit of a frown.
“Did he help you with your tattoo?” asked Linus, unable
to contain his curiosity.
“Yes. Although he didn’t do a very good job. He was
only ten at the time. But I don’t regret it. It’s Mama, you
know.”
“Setsurou must be a good friend,” I interjected.
“He’s scum!” she said forcefully. “I found him, not long
ago. With a lady soldier! She was…playing with him!
They…they behave like dogs those lady marines!” she yelled
venomously, but then remembering who she was speaking
to, she turned to me and continued “…in a manner of
speaking of course.”
But being familiar with the lady dogs in question myself,
I couldn’t say I objected to the comparison.
“Anyway I’m afraid I lost my temper. I carved 「バカ」
on his forehead and skipped town. That’s when I joined the
Org.”
40
I turned to Linus and he looked at me. It wasn’t going

to be easy to return her home if she were on the run from
an incident like that.
But then Lucille continued “So where are you two from,
and how did you start working for the Org?”
“There isn’t much to say. I live with my parents on
Prince Edward Island—”
“Where Anne of Green Gables lives!” interjected Lucille.
“Um. Yeah. I suppose so. Fictionally speaking.”
“I love Anne!” she replied enthusiastically.
“I’m sure she’d like you too,” I added helpfully.
Linus glared at me, and then continued, “…so my dad
teaches at the University. Medieval Nordic languages. Or
something like that. Anyway he’s dimly cognizant of my
existence, but mostly he stumbles around muttering
something obscure in some vaguely decipherable language.
My mom isn’t much better. She flits about splashing paint
on things and calling it art. It’s some work avoiding getting
decorated by her. And the both of them together…well
let’s just say that they probably haven’t noticed yet that I’ve
been gone from home for the last week.”
“Oh that sounds lonely,” said Lucille.
“Yes. Anyway at some stage the two of them thought it
might be good to get me a dog. To keep me company I
imagine. But the ‘nice beagle’ they went to collect from the
breeder ended up being this thing by the time they got
home,” he said, pointing to me rather rudely. “They
brought him back with his tailored suits and his sunglasses,
and before I knew what had happened, I was flying first
class to Singapore, running errands for the Org.”
“I never got to fly first class,” complained Lucille,
looking rather annoyed at me.
41
Chapter 3
“I’m sorry I never got to make arrangements for you

dear,” I replied, licking her face.
She giggled and pushed me gently away, and then spent
the rest of the afternoon telling us about her Mom, amusing
bar-fights and particularly notorious regulars that she had a
special fondness for. But Setsurou she never mentioned
again. Ever.
* * *
Something had changed between Lucille and Linus, and
as our yaks carried us along across the weary miles in their
slow rolling gait they chatted easily to each other. They
spoke drifting fluidly between dozens of languages, just for
the amusement of it, exchanging jokes about improbable
grammars and unlikely syntax. When they tired of that,
Linus would tutor Lucille in some of the school subjects
where she was weakest, and Lucille, rather surprisingly
seemed to enjoy it.
Food was less of a problem than I would have imagined.
Lucille could kill more or less any animal that passed within
her field of view, and she was willing to cook and eat them
too. But much as Linus and I enjoyed the birds, snakes,
gophers, and other small game that she found for us, we
preferred visiting the Mongolian herdsmen we passed along
the way. About once a day we would see a ger (one of their
round tents) off in the distance. Heading towards it we
soon were greeting the Mongolian family it belonged to.
They would invariably invite us in and offer us food,
according to the local customs of hospitality. They never
asked for any payment, but allowed us to give them some
money for the favor. After the meal we’d have a short
conversation before heading on our way. It would go
something like this:
[ Well young man, you have a very pretty Mongolian
wife. How did you meet?]
42
Linus would be a little startled, and would answer, [Um,

well she isn’t Mongolian, she’s Japanese, and I don’t have
the good fortune to be married to her.]
[Japanese? Nonsense. Japanese girls don’t ride yaks.
They don’t speak Mongolian. And they aren’t deadly accur
ate with a knife at 50 paces. Only Mongolian girls do that,]
they would firmly assert. (This was usually after Lucille had
shown them some knife tricks for entertainment.)
[And of course we certainly aren’t old enough to be
married—]
[—You know, love blooms like fireweed on the steppe,]
they would interject, rather cryptically.
[Yes. So I’ve heard,] Linus would have to admit, after
the first one of these conversations.
[So it’s best to be married] they would conclude. And
Linus would be shaking his head, wondering what they were
talking about.
One morning we were making our usual slow progress
across the landscape when we saw a small group of
herdsmen riding Mongolian ponies off in the distance. I
admired the way their spirited mounts danced across the
steppe, and quietly lamented our own comparatively much
inferior steeds for a while until I couldn’t contain myself any
further.
“To think we could be riding magnificent animals like
that, instead of crouched atop these mounds of mouldering
fur—”
My yak began bellowing loudly.
“She says that she’s much better than any horse,” Linus
translated for me.
“I can’t for the life of me see how.” This was followed
by more bellowing.
43
Chapter 3
“For one thing she’s got much tastier, more nutritious

milk,” relayed Linus.
“Milk? The bitter yellow stuff she makes that stinks like
mink oil?”
“…and a dignity of form only matched by the perfect
beauty of a luxuriant coat of fur, without which any animal
must be considered merely naked…”
“What? What kind of delusional fantasy is that? Linus,
pass me my suit, and I’ll show this animal what dignity of
form is all about—”
But I didn’t get a chance to make my point. Which is
just as well, I suppose, because the sight of me fully dressed
might have been too much for that hick yak to handle. Too
much grace and refinement all at once you know.
Anyway, one of the herdsmen had been approaching us
swiftly as we talked, and he passed right along side of us
right then as we argued, and as he did, I became aware of
something missing from beside me. I turned to look and
noticed that Lucille was gone.
“Hey! He took Lucille!” I barked at Linus, while I beat
my yak, trying to get her to chase after. But that was
absurdly impractical, and anyway my yak was already so
annoyed with me that she just stopped and abruptly sat
down, her big glossy eyes glaring at me angrily.
“I wonder if that’s what they meant about love blooming
like fireweed,” muttered Linus, a little sadly, as he looked
after them riding away. Lucille was struggling violently in
the arms of the herdsman as they proceeded rapidly but less
elegantly out of sight.
“Well maybe it’s for the best if they take her off our
hands,” I observed, trying to cheer him up. But Linus
didn’t look any happier when I said it. It might have
remained an awkward and uncomfortable moment, but a
44
few minutes later the herdsman returned, sitting rather

stiffly on top of his trotting horse. Lucille was behind him,
one arm grasped around his chest, the other holding her
Gurkha knife at his throat. A few drops of blood scattered
from the blade as they stopped, and a bright red line marked
the place where the knife had shallowly cut him when
jounced by the galloping of the pony.
They stopped, and Lucille slid off the pony.
[Fireweed get to you?] asked Linus to the herdsman.
[My mistake,] replied the herdsman, tipping his hat to us,
and then he was off. We assumed that that was the end of
it, until later on that evening when we ran into another
group of herdsmen. They surrounded us and the leader of
them rode up to us on his horse, announcing to us that he
was the local magistrate.
Linus apologized about the incident with the knife earlier
in the day, and asked after the fellow with the nicked throat.
The Magistrate replied that the man earlier had been his
nephew. The scratch was minor, and perhaps the experi
ence might help cure him of that kind of foolishness.
[But look here,] added the Magistrate, [you can’t be
drifting about the steppe with a young unmarried
Mongolian lady. We have such difficulties with them being
abducted and smuggled into China to make brides for them
there. It’s no end of trouble.]
[She’s not Mongolian. Lucille show him your pass
port—]
He just waved his hand. [Obviously forged. She’s
deadly with a knife. Rides a yak like the wind. She’s
obviously Mongolian,] he stated, glaring back at Linus.
But what was Linus to say? Especially given that
Lucille’s Org-supplied passport was most certainly forged.
There was nothing for it but to try to bribe the Magistrate.
45
Chapter 3
So Linus descended off of his yak and the negotiations

began in earnest. Based on the premise of paying some
extra money to “obtain the necessary documents on an
emergency basis.”
The negotiations took some time. Lucille and I
dismounted from our yaks and chatted with the other
herdsman, who were very friendly and shared airag and tea
with us while we waited.
After several hours the necessary document was pre
pared, and Linus signed it without looking too carefully at it.
Lucille was asked to sign it too, and she quickly looked it
over. It was rather formal looking, Mongolian written in
Cyrillic script. “Linus d’Orpington?” she asked Linus, smil
ing.
“It’s just my name. Sound funny to you?” he replied a
little testily.
“Oh no. I like it,” she said, fishing a small stone seal out
of a pocket. Then she stamped the document, leaving a
small red mark on the paper, and wrote a name on the form
in Cyrillic cursive. Linus then paid the Magistrate in gold,
which pained him to do as our supply of it was so limited,
and with claps and applause, and handshakes and hugs all
around the deal was transacted. Smiling and in good cheer
the herdsmen then left, waving after us and yelling [Good
luck!] to us as we departed.
Later on that afternoon, after we had stopped and had
set up our tent, Linus had a close look at the curious
document that the Magistrate had given him. In the fading
light of the setting sun, he tried to make sense out of the
Cyrillic, which he wasn’t very fast at reading yet.
“Four sheep, five goats and two yaks paid in gold as a…
what is this word mean? Dowry? That doesn’t make
sense.” Then he studied the red stamp-mark that Lucille
46
had made, trying to read the seal-script, which was also

difficult for him.
“Hey Lucille, your real name can’t possibly be this—
「墓田凶子。」 Am I reading this wrong?”
“Maiden name. My name is this now,” she said, pointing
to the cursive she’d written.
“Lucille d’Orpington,” said Linus, reading the Cyrillic
slowly. Suddenly it dawned on him.
“This…is a marriage certificate,” he stated with horror.
Lucille kissed him. “I’ve always wanted a Mongolian
wedding.” Happy tears brimmed in her dark eyes.
“But, but, …” bleated Linus helplessly as Lucille put her
arms around him.
* * *
Thank heaven I was born with a thick coat of fur. The
truth is that a number of my ancestors made their living
pulling sleds across the icy north, and I’ve been thankful on
several occasions that the same hearty blood that flowed in
47
Chapter 3
their veins also runs in mine. This was definitely one of

them, as I awoke well rested from a night spent sleeping
outside the tent in the frigid open air.
So when Linus staggered out of the tent into the
morning light he found me napping happily just outside the
entrance with a thin dusting of frost in my fur. I looked up
at his red bloodshot eyes. He did not seem happy. He
grabbed me by the nape of the neck, put his eyes close to
mine, and with a slightly strangled sound in his throat,
started complaining to me:
“You left me alone with her again! How could you do
that to me?”
“You two sleep well?” I asked.
Linus started shaking me. He seemed a bit annoyed, but
really, I didn’t have any regrets. There isn’t anyway at all
that I would have wanted to interfere with Lucille’s
happiness. It wouldn’t have been right, and it might not
have been safe. Not with a girl like that.
Lucille emerged from the tent, rubbing her eyes and
smiling. She was in an advanced stage of bliss, her cheeks
glowing pinkly, eyes sparkling cheerfully, every slow, relaxed
movement of her expressing contentment. Linus dropped
me and stood, just in time to be swept up in her arms. She
kissed him again, and this stunned him just as it had before,
immobilizing him and rendering him speechless. Then she
turned to me.
“Sorry about last night, but thanks for leaving us alone.
You didn’t get cold?” she asked me. I explained about the
sled dogs in my ancestry and it put her at ease.
Then we broke camp and continued on our way. Today
Linus had more trouble riding his yak, because he kept
drifting off to sleep and nearly falling off, so after a while
Lucille rode behind him steadying him in her arms, every
48
once in a while startling him awake with a kiss. I rode alone

on the other yak feeling lonely and, well yes, a little jealous.
By about midday we came within view of a brilliantly
blue lake. Lucille squealed with delight, overjoyed at the
idea of going swimming. We’d been riding for days in the
dust, with no way at all of getting clean. We smelled bad
and looked worse, all our clothing having converged to the
same uniform dusty brown color.
When we reached the shore Lucille slid off her yak.
There was a clatter of metal against stone as her clothing hit
the ground and then a splash as she entered the water.
“I’ve never seen a woman who can undress as fast as
that,” I remarked idly to Linus.
“Just how many women have you seen undress?” asked
Linus in return. But I chivalrously declined to reply. After
a moment he continued with an idle question of his own.
“I wonder where she’s hiding the knife.”
“Knife?”
49
Chapter 3
“I’m sure she still has one. Somewhere,” he commented,

a little gloomily, while looking at her in the water. Rather an
unromantic train of thought, I felt, considering the circum
stances.
Lucille turned to us and smiled, her eyes glittering
brilliantly, and with a grin invited us to join her.
“No need to be embarrassed Linus. After all we’re
married,” she said.
I jumped right in and began swimming with her. And
after a few moments, Linus quietly joined us, and we spent
some time playing in the water, splashing each other and
generally being silly. We swam until we began to get cold,
then Lucille insisted that they wash their clothing. So they
sat naked side-by-side together on the shore scrubbing and
rinsing it out for a good 45 minutes or so until it returned to
its original color.
While they were busy with this I corralled the yaks and
got them to wade into the water. I hoped to clean them a
bit but I’m not sure it helped. I tried for a while anyway.
While we were out in the lake I looked back at Lucille and
Linus. Lucille’s skin had darkened in the sunlight during
our travels until it was a warm coppery color, and a network
of fine lines, presumably small scars from all the knives,
traced across it in interesting patterns. Linus seemed to like
the look of it too. As she moved, scrubbing the clothing
vigorously, he had a hard time keeping his eyes off of her.
He’d glance sideways at her surreptitiously every once in a
while, and she’d catch him at it with a big smile while his
face reddened.
They finished with the clothing and Lucille went to hang
up the clothes to dry, and then I came to shore. I had a
word with Linus while Lucille was briefly out of view.
50
“You’re a bit too young to be thinking of starting a

family, you know,” I told him, a little concerned about the
look on his face.
“I know! ” he snarled through gritting teeth. “Why don’t
you tell Lucille that!”
Lucille returned and stood in front of us. “Linus dear,
you really don’t look at all well. Since it will be a while
before the clothes and the yaks are dry, why don’t you take
a nap? Here, I’ll help you lie down and get to sleep.” She
grabbed his hand and led him away through the grass to
look for a good spot to rest.
I turned to the yaks and said to them “Let’s have a long
walk along the shore until your coats are dry. Those two
need their privacy,” and the yaks bellowed in agreement.
Without another word we departed.
51
Chapter 4
Chapter 4
By the time we arrived in Ulaanbataar five days later
Lucille and Linus were moving as one. Having spent every
moment for the better part of ten days together, every little
movement and facial expression that one made was
mirrored in the other. A continuous stream of thoughts
and emotions echoed between them in a polyglot of
languages, gestures, whistles, clicks and other signals
borrowed from animal speech.
Lucille had put her knives away. She only carried one
now, and it was unhidden, bound in a sheath at her waist.
She had begun repaying Linus for his tutoring by teaching
him to throw knives, and while he was still not very skillful,
he was no longer a danger to himself, and so he now carried
a knife at his waist as well.
“All you need is a school uniform now, and you’ll be
Lucille’s double,” I told him jokingly as we rode up to the
outskirts of town.
“We’ll get new clothing in town,” he replied.
“Let’s buy Mongolian clothing. Everyone keeps insisting
we’re Mongolian. Maybe we should try to look the part,”
commented Lucille with a chuckle, and Linus smiled.
We dismounted at the outskirts of town and waved
goodbye to our yaks. They bellowed appreciatively at us as
they departed, saying “Don’t forget to write,” or so Linus
claimed when he translated for us.
“Since when do yaks read?” I demanded, but then Lucille
scratched behind my ears soothing me.
“What do you think we should do know?” asked Lucille
after a few moments.
52
“We need to go find a lawyer,” stated Linus. There was

a sharp ‘pshtock!’ sound and he found himself abruptly
facing the point of Lucille’s knife.
“There will be no divorce,” she muttered in a cold
monotone.
Linus was a little startled, but he was accustomed to
Lucille now, so he recovered quickly, smiled and said “Of
course not. We just need to check that the marriage is valid.
Don’t we.”
Lucille relaxed. “And then we’ll pick out wedding rings!”
she replied excitedly.
“Well, …yes,” agreed Linus, and Lucille assumed a
blissful smile.
It turned out not to be very difficult to find a lawyer’s
office. People were remarkably helpful when we asked
them about it, and we quickly found one with some
experience in marriage law and dropped by for a visit.
Linus showed the lawyer the marriage certificate and
explained to him how we’d obtained it, along with the
problem of the age of the parties involved, and asked the
fellow if this sort of thing might carry any weight, legally
speaking.
The lawyer glanced over at Lucille, who out of boredom
had unpacked several of her knives and had started juggling
them, and then said [Well, of course Mongolian law is a
good bit more discriminating than what you may be used to.
Out on the steppes, not all births are registered in a timely
way, and not everyone is always aware of their true age.
The maturity of the parties involved must be evaluated.
Yes…] he said, drifting off and sniffing the air in an
absentminded kind of way.
[Have you been riding yaks by any chance?] he asked, a
bit nonchalantly.
53
Chapter 4
[ Why yes. Bareback. For 10 days. From the Kalkhyn

Gol.]
[ Bareback? In 10 days?] he replied, a little astonished.
[Young lady, do you see that wooden target on the far wall?]
he said, pointing it out to Lucille, who immediately let fly
with a knife. It landed so hard it sank in with a thud up to
the handle. The target rested motionlessly for a second, and
then almost magically, split in half, falling in pieces on the
ground. The knife remained with its blade embedded in the
wall.
The lawyer nodded, satisfied. [No doubt about it. Your
magistrate was an honest man. Anyone could see that your
wife is of age. And the dowry—four sheep five goats and
two yaks, paid in gold no less, yes that’s certainly fair. No
question at all.]
[ I see,] muttered Linus.
[Congratulations. You have nothing to be worried
about,] he reassured us.
Lucille had already gone to collect her knife and now
returned to thank the lawyer.
[ We’re off to get our wedding rings!] she told him
excitedly as she thanked him.
[Congratulations, it’s a joyous occasion,] he said as he
ushered us out, refusing any payment. [Please consider it
my wedding gift,] he told us while waving goodbye.
* * *
Linus and Lucille then went in search of a jeweler and
some new rings. They then spent the rest of the afternoon
buying new clothing and all the other personal items that
we’d missed during our unplanned trip across the country,
all the while periodically touching their wedding bands,
54
rolling them with their thumbs on their ring-fingers as the

new feeling of the rings irritated them.
That evening they checked into a comfortable hotel,
signing the register for the first time together, Lucille using
her new married name. I left them there with a promise to
call on them in the morning, and having changed into
civilized attire, proceeded to my club where I had arranged
chambers for myself during my stay in the city.
The Explorer’s Club chapter in Ulaanbaatar, of course,
must be considered the premier refuge for the travel-weary
beast in all of Central Asia. In my years working for the
Org, I’d had the pleasure to cross its hallowed threshold
many times, and on every occasion it had proved to be a
sanctuary from the inconveniences of the world and the
anxieties of my mission.
I rang the bell at a plain white door, unremarkable except
for a brightly polished brass handle. It lay up a flight of
stairs on the side of a stately brick building that lay to the
end of a cul-de-sac at the end of a secluded quiet street. I
was greeted after a moment by the immaculately coiffed
head of a stately mountain goat. A faint odor of lavender
diffused around the club's tweed-clad butler as he graciously
invited me in.
“Welcome back, sir,” he said, taking my coat and cane as
he ushered me inside.
“Thanks Reginald. Always a pleasure to return. I trust
the season suits you well?”
“Indeed sir. The fair weather always brings our more
seasoned travelers. The club is full, and you shall not want
for interesting conversation.”
Reginald brought me into the map room, where I
greeted some of my dear old friends. Among them were my
old stalwart, the black rhinoceros McAllister, as well as my
onetime Algerian partner in crime, the aoudad called
55
Chapter 4
Ivanov. There was also a new member, a rather

distinguished looking yak, and I was forced to admit the
foolhardiness of my former prejudice; the fellow’s glossy,
well groomed fur, well, it quite obviated the need for any
other form of clothing.
“McAllister! Ivanov! What a coincidence finding you
fellows in Ulaanbaatar,” I said as I walked over to them.
“Any news worth the retelling?”
“Archibald! Good to see you old dog! I’d have thought

by now that you’d be quietly retired. Pastured off,” replied
Ivanov with a good-natured grin.
“Well, I’m not the grazing kind of animal you know,” I
replied with a laugh.
“It’s good to see you again,” interjected McAllister. “But
speaking of news, the latest word from Chechnya is really
rather worrisome.” He pointed to the newspaper that he’d
been reading.
I glanced at the article, which seemed to describe a
calamitous atrocity involving bombs and schoolchildren. I
56
could only shake my head, wondering what the Org would

make of it. Then I pulled up a chair in my favorite spot,
under the stuffed-head trophy of the “Mad Baron” Roman
Ungern von Sternberg, and began catching up with my
good friends. 　 Under the baleful glare of the glass-eyed
Baron, we exchanged stories between sips of tea into the
evening.
I awoke the next morning to the sweet song of a
sparrow. It was a messenger from the Org with new orders.
I scanned the sheet of paper with dismay. It wasn’t going to
make Linus happy.
After a quick breakfast I went round to where Linus and
Lucille were staying. When I found them in their room, a
parade of mice were stacking money in the middle of the
floor. Mostly rubles from the look of it.
“Woof, this doesn’t look good at all,” said Linus in a
worried tone of voice.
“I got orders this morning. We are to proceed to
Chechnya immediately. And the Org strongly discourages
you from taking on new matrimonial expenses. They
particularly disliked the rumors they’ve been receiving about
dowries and wedding rings.”
“Who let them know about that? Those yaks I imagine?
I can see why you disliked them,” muttered Linus with
considerable irritation. “But look here, they dropped us in
the middle of nowhere with just the clothing on our backs.
A few unexpected expenses were inevitable in that situation.
And the steppes. Fireweed you know.”
“Yes that is rather a danger. But no more marriages.” I
said, trying to reflect the severe tone of the message. But
Lucille just laughed back at me.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” frowned Linus, looking very
concerned. “Look. I can’t go to Chechnya now. It’s a
complete disaster. I saw it on the news last night. And I
57
Chapter 4
have a wife to look after now,” he said, putting an arm

around Lucille.
“I can protect you dear,” interjected Lucille softly.
“Linus, they haven’t given you enough money to get
home on your own.”
“I don’t care. I’ll get a job if I have to.” He thought
quietly for a moment, then came to a conclusion. “I resign.
I’m leaving the Org,” he said resolutely.
Linus is quick with his decisions, and he meant what he
said. He had me draft a message right away to the Org, and
we sent it along via the next bird.
“I’m sorry if this means we have to split up, Woof,” he
said to me apologetically.
“Not at all. I was thinking of retiring. It’s about time for
me anyway,” I said, answering him truthfully.
“But what will you do about your...tailoring?” asked
Linus, suddenly a little worried.
“It’s true—life isn’t much without decent attire. That’s
why it’s part of my retirement package. Built into my
contract, you see. My little golden parachute.”
“Ah. Of course.”
* * *
We then made a trip off to the Canadian embassy to see
about a visa for Lucille. Surprisingly they seemed to know
all about the particular phenomenon involving the steppes
and fireweed, and weren’t surprised at all when Linus
produced his marriage certificate. They were able to assure
us that a visa would only take a few weeks to arrange. They
didn’t even ask Lucille to show what she could do with her
knives. Linus just shook his head with amazement.
58
Leaving the embassy, we then looked to the next order

of business, which was finding a job where we might earn
enough money to travel home.
“Maybe assassinations? Lucille would be a natural, and
the pay would be good,” I joked.
Lucille brightened up, but Linus shouted “No!” before
she could say anything, and she just lowered her head
nodding demurely.
“Maybe we could get some translating work—” began
Linus.
“We’ll go work in a bar,” stated Lucille with conviction.
“Aren’t we a bit young?”
“It’s the only thing to do. Definitely.” Then she grabbed
Linus by the arm and dragged him off to the entertainment
district in town, which she was able to locate without asking
anyone at all. Almost instinctively, it seemed, but perhaps it
was mainly by sense of smell. In any event within 15
minutes we found ourselves outside a seedy dive that
nevertheless appeared to be doing brisk business, and we
marched inside.
The owner glared at us as we entered, but Lucille just
sent her knife flying through the air. Over by the back of
the bar a few of the customers were playing darts facing a
small target hung on the wall. Lucille’s khukri landed with a
solid thud in the exact center, sinking in up to the hilt.
After a second of silence the target split in two, falling in
pieces on the floor.
The owner and the other patrons grunted and nodded.
Lucille retrieved her blade and we sat down at the bar,
where the owner without being prompted poured Lucille a
glass of high-proof Mongol arkhi. I asked Linus if he could
order me a gin and tonic, but he just ignored me. Perhaps
he didn’t know how to translate it. Lucille shook her head
59
Chapter 4
and laughed, and took a sip of her arkhi, then passed the
glass to Linus in order to share it. Linus took a small sip,
then spluttered, coughing violently with tears in his eyes
while Lucille patted his back and roared with laughter.
At that moment two rather rough looking westerners
entered the bar, wearing straw wide-brimmed hats over
darkly tanned ruddy faces, and worn denim clothing stained
by dust.
„Dieses verdamntes babarisches Land, sogar die Kinder
trinken!” observed the first on entering.
«Vous avez des belles idées monsieur, parlant de la
barbarie tout en parlant cette langue barbare, » replied the
second, a little testily.
Linus turned to them. “She’s my wife, not a kid. And
I’d watch what you say around her. She speaks both French
and German and she takes offense easily,” he told them,
quietly in English.
The men looked at Lucille, who had put her glass down
and was cleaning under her fingernails using the tip of her
knife.
“German and French? Really?” asked the German one
of the men. “And I imagine she must speak Mongolian too,
dressed like that,” he concluded, looking at Lucille’s outfit,
which was new, a jet black Mongolian deel, purchased in the
market the day before.
“Like a native. All three. That and many more.”
« Say, » said the Frenchman, « Do you think you might be
interested in doing some work as an interpreter? »
Linus grinned.
* * *
It turned out that the men were in the dinosaur hunting
trade. Paleontologists they said. It seemed unlikely,
60
because they were clearly insane. But perhaps that was just
a result of having been out searching for bones in the
baking heat of the Gobi desert for the previous two weeks.
In parched rocky land so rough that it had repeatedly
broken their truck axles when the sharp rocks hadn’t
slashed the tires. And they were at each other’s throats,
refusing to speak the other’s language and pretending they
couldn’t understand each other. Linus had to translate for
them just to have a conversation. But he made sure to leave
out the insults.
« And she can ride yaks? Really? »
« Bareback. Like the wind. Me too, actually. »
They stared back at him in disbelief. Then they hired
Lucille on the spot. For more than enough money to get us
all home afterward. Linus and me they just allowed to come
along.
«You see, she has gravitas. You need that, otherwise no-
one will pay any attention. In the chaos of an expedition
that’s essential. Don’t you agree, Professor Doktor
Friedmann? »
„But of course, mein Herr.”
« It won’t be chaotic anymore. I can promise you that,
Professor Hubert, » replied Lucille rather sweetly to the
Frenchman, spinning her knife in the air and flipping it back
into its sheath with a deft flick of her wrist.
The paleontologists smiled brightly. They shook hands
with Lucille on the deal and we agreed to meet at the
expedition gathering point the next day.
The next morning found us boarding expedition trucks
at the gathering point. We arrived to a chaotic scene, with
the good Professor Hubert’s hands grasping his colleague’s
throat yelling various obscenities at him in untranslatable
and very colloquial French. Linus busied himself with
61
Chapter 4
calming the two down, while Lucille saw to organizing the

Mongolian workmen who were loading the trucks. Within a
short period of time the loading operation transformed
from an ongoing catastrophe into a smooth operation with
almost military precision.
„…and Professor Hubert considers your analysis of the
probable Devonian tabulate coral cladistic relationships to
be absolutely the foundation of all studies in the area…”
Linus droned to the broadly smiling and rapidly nodding
Professor Doktor, rather extravagantly mistranslating a
remark from Professor Hubert. But Professor Hubert was
not objecting, having been the beneficiary of a number of
similarly mistranslated compliments.
“ あなた、 we’ve finished loading the trucks, and we’re
ready to board and leave.”
“Thank you dear. Gentlemen, perhaps we should
continue this scientifically valuable discussion en route to
our field site?”
Linus then led the Professors to the cab of the first
truck, and they followed him, walking side-by-side each with
an arm around the other and gesturing wildly with their free
hands as they talked, the best of friends.
62
We lived three days in the back of an open truck

bouncing along wretched dusty unpaved roads as we
traveled to the heart of the Gobi desert. We passed by way
of Dalanzadgad, which was dusty and spare, a village
claiming to be a provincial capital. It was a much bigger
place than seemed possible in such a remote area; but that
was all that could be said for it, consisting of as it did of
about a couple thousand gers, small houses and a few
clustered small buildings nestled on dust and broken shards
of stone.
The third day brought us to our trail head and we
alighted and stood for a moment, our bodies swaying, bones
aching with exhaustion. All except Lucille—She stood
fixedly and immovably like a rock. She’d made friends with
a hawk during the trip, and it was now perched on her
shoulder. In one hand she held a large vaguely human
looking femur which she held like a staff. Most likely it was
from one of the many desiccated remains of camels or
horses that we’d encountered by the roadside along our
way. With her black hooded figure and darkly glittering
eyes she made an imposing figure, smelling strongly of
witchcraft and shamanry. Except for her other hand, which
held Linus’s. If you looked carefully, you could see her
hand affectionately squeezing his every few seconds. And
he was squeezing her back.
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Chapter 4
The trail-head looked like an impending riot, with

dozens of pack animals assembled with their Mongolian
masters. A small group of bedraggled, very sunburned and
dirty youths stood idly by the side, glaring at us with red-
eyed bitter looks.
« Our graduate students, » said Professor Hubert,
nodding in their direction.
„They should help unload the trucks,” observed the
Professor Doktor Friedmann, and he barked an order to
them.
They responded with even uglier looks and a deep
mutinous growl.
«Perhaps we should shoot one of them. As an example.
I’m sure it would improve morale. »
„My thoughts exactly!” enthusiastically agreed Professor
Friedmann.
Linus had been mistranslating for them for three days,
and as a result the two of them were in complete agreement
on everything. In fact, they were now as completely in love
with each other as any two people can be and still call
themselves friends. This was rather surprising, especially
when you considered how truly unpleasant they both really
were.
“No need for that. Let me see to them,” said Lucille
sweetly, and she walked over to the students, the great hawk
on her shoulder shrieking occasionally. She began talking
with them, and the graduate students were obviously
impressed.
“Ah, gravitas. It certainly is a miracle isn’t it,” observed
Linus admiringly.
“Yes, she’s quite something isn’t she,” I agreed, looking
at the pack animals being made ready for us. As you might
expect, they were mostly Bactrian camels, except some of
64
them, well, they were a little different. At first I couldn’t

quite put my finger on it…
“Hey! Why that’s Ivanov. And over there—McAllister!
And that’s the our new member, the yak Sierpinski. What
the dickens are they doing here?!” I exclaimed with
astonishment.
“You’re acquainted with some of the camels?” Linus
asked, somewhat confused.
“They aren’t camels. They’re from my club. Incognito!”
I marched over to demand an explanation. First of Mc
Allister, whose ill-fitting disguise made him look especially
ridiculous. Like an enormous lumpy camel with very gouty
legs. It might have worked from a mile away, with tall
brush to hide the legs. But not up close and not here.
“McAllister! Take that fool thing off! It’s no use to you
here. You’ll be suffering with heatstroke by noon. Worse,
it’s distinctly unfashionable.”
“Archibald dear boy, I can’t possibly be seen without
attire—”
“There is no better dress for you here than your own
splendid natural hide,” I said evenly. “Please follow my
own example. It is, I’m sorry to say, the exigency of our
current location. I’ll even share with you my own special
cocoa butter. To counter the chapping in this dry wind.”
“Why thank you, dear boy,” he said while removing the
disguise. There were gasps when people realized that a
black rhinoceros had been quietly stationed among them.
“Now how and why did you all manage to infiltrate the
expedition?” asked Linus with some amusement.
“We took a quick helicopter ride down this morning,”
admitted Ivanov.
“The call to adventure is strong,” sniffed McAllister.
65
Chapter 4
“We feared you would be quite lost without us,” added

Sierpinski.
“When you put it that way, I suppose I must agree,” I
added, looking at Sierpinski. The ringlets in his delicately
combed fur gleamed like gold in the sun, and the faint odor
of his eau de toilette bathed us in exotic haze of citron,
cinnamon and myrrh. The air of refinement was so
exquisitely beyond my previous experience with yaks, it
nearly brought tears to my eyes. “I hope I might rely upon
you for my personal transport?” I entreated him.
“Of course,” he graciously permitted.
“A helicopter ride!” exploded Linus, surprising us all.
“You mean, we’ve been breaking our bones for three full
days in those trucks, when we could have ridden a chopper
and been here in style in a couple of hours?” he sputtered.
“Why naturally,” replied Ivanov. “You should have let
us know you were coming. We could have given you a lift.”
Linus was speechless. We left him nursing his bruises in
silence, while the rest of us went over to assist with the
transfer of baggage from the trucks to our animal caravan.
The professors of course were delighted with McAllister
and Ivanov. No other animal can beat a rhinoceros for
bulldozing power, and the horns of an aoudad are perfect
for excavating. My new friend Sierpinski was of course the
only animal Lucille and Linus would consider riding once
they met him, and the three of them combined were an
inexhaustible source of expedition wisdom and lore.
Under Lucille’s direction the graduate students worked
like a well oiled machine, swiftly moving supplies to the
animals in the caravan. Within a couple hours we were
ready to depart, and we headed out into the Gobi desert,
Lucille and Linus and me riding together on the broad
elegant back of Sierpinski. McAllister was at our left, his
powerful body towering high with supplies, and Ivanov
66
marched at our right, spurring us on with witty remarks and

jokes. The professors followed behind us on camels, not
daring to trust an aoudad with their carriage despite our
pleading with them. But I suppose it was better than
walking, which is what the graduate students did, trailing at
the end of the baggage train. They marched, coughing in
the dust we kicked up, stumbling in the loose sandy soil,
cursing their fate and their thesis advisors.
* * *
The journey to the excavation site took two days. Along
the way, several of the graduate students became too weak
to walk, so we rearranged the burden that McAllister was
carrying and made room for them on his broad back.
“Don’t worry about us,” one of them said to Linus,
when he asked them how they were doing. “We’re much
better than before. Before you all came with new supplies
we were drawing lots to see which one of us would get
eaten first.” Then he passed out, and Linus had to strap
him on to McAllister to make sure he didn’t fall off.
But despite this unpromising state of affairs, everyone
survived to the end of the trip, and at the end of the second
day, we straggled into the excavation site, which was on the
rugged pink rocky side of a heavily eroded hillside. We
arrived completely exhausted, and Lucille and Linus
immediately set about trying to make some soup for the
students, in hopes of being able to nurse some of them back
to health. But the professors had other ideas.
« Quick! There’s no time to lose! We need to start
unpacking the explosives to remove the overburden so that
the excavation can continue! »
“Explosives?” Asked Linus looking a little shocked. As
well he should have been. It turned out that all along our
trip, while McAllister had been walking along with us, on his
67
Chapter 4
back right next to the five or so prostrate students he’d

been carrying had been over half a ton of high explosives.
„You see, during last winter there must have been a
landslide, and the old excavation site is covered with debris.
So we need to remove it.”
«Yes, we won’t have time for the usual pick and shovel
kind of work. We need something a little faster, » explained
Hubert to McAllister, tapping his fingers together a little
nervously while the rhinoceros eyed him angrily, his great
horn only inches away from the Professor’s nose.
„We’ll make short work of the job if we use the students
right,” added Friedmann. „We’ll just need to send them
along one at a time, each carrying a few dozen sticks of
dynamite. That should take care of the problem.”
“What fun!” interjected Ivanov. “I haven’t been able to
play with explosives since the civil war back in Algeria. You
should let me help you with the charge placement. It can be
kind of tricky, and you don’t have enough students to learn
the hard way.”
“That’s very nice, dear, but why don’t we worry about
that later. Let’s set up the tents before it gets dark, and see
if we can’t revive some of these fellows enough to eat
something. We can worry about how best to blow them up
tomorrow,” proposed Lucille to us all. The professors by
now had learned to do what she said without arguing, and
so we set about making dinner and preparing the camp for
the night.
The next morning Ivanov woke Linus up by dragging
him bodily out of the tent. “I need you to translate,” was all
he said as he hooked Linus by the leg with a horn and
pulled him bouncing along the ground after him.
“Hey! Wait! At least let me get dressed—”
68
But it was no use. A few minutes later the explosions

began. The graduate students were reluctant at first, but
after it became clear that Ivanov would keep them from
blowing themselves up, their natural sense of fun was
energized and they got into the spirit of things. And after a
couple of hours, they had picked up the universal language
of demolitions from Ivanov and didn’t need Linus for
translating anymore, and Linus returned, temporarily a little
hard of hearing with his ears ringing.
“All those explosions are giving me a headache,” said
Lucille a little crossly.
“Yes, they do disturb the natural peace of this majestic
landscape,” I agreed.
“Why don’t we go for a walk?” said Linus. He went over
to the professors, and started asking questions.
“By the way, what kind of fossils were you fellows
interested in anyway?”
« The most scientifically valuable ones! »
„Well said! That is really the necessary thing.”
“And um, what makes them valuable?”
„Well, of course there is no one thing.”
« To be sure! »
„But, of course if we had some really large bones…”
« Especially of a large carnivorous dinosaur…»
„Yes exactly. Especially with the complete skull and all
the pretty teeth—”
« That would be perfect! »
“I see,” muttered Linus to himself. “If the average five
year-old dinosaur fancier would be happy—”
69
Chapter 4
„A new species of large carnosaur. With a complete

skull. That would be exquisitely interesting! Scientifically
speaking of course.”
« Indeed! The only difficulty would be in naming it.
Friedmann-o-saurus Terribilus, perhaps! »
„Ha Ha Ha. What an exquisite sense of humor you have
dear colleague. But that honor would be too much for me.
Perhaps Hubert-o-saurus Friedmannsonia? Ha Ha Ha...”
Linus left them exchanging backhanded compliments of
this sort and returned to Lucille and me.
“Why don’t we go look for some bones ourselves. Who
knows, we might find something before Ivanov blows
everyone up.”
That seemed like a good idea to us, so we departed riding
Sierpinski, who was quite concerned about the driving dust
from the explosions and what it might do to his Fur. We
rode up the steep side of the hill, and soon the sound of the
explosions was carried away from us by the bend of the
earth and it was quiet.
When we reached the top of the hill, we realized that it
was actually a small plateau, and we advanced along it until
the slope to our side steepened to make a cliff. We stopped
and Lucille spoke for a few minutes to her hawk, who she’d
taken to calling ‘Beaky.’ Then Beaky leapt into the air and
flew away into the rising sun.
“I don’t know if that bird likes me that much,” said
Linus as he departed.
“He’s a little jealous. But don’t worry about it. He’s got
a good heart. And great eyes. If there are any good bones
around he’ll find them.”
We were silent for a few minutes, enjoying the golden
light of the rising sun.
70
“Linus, how many children do you want, you know,

when we’re old enough to have them?”
“Fifteen.”
“Fifteen! 無理!”
「子供群の足音は雷なように丘陵で響きしているのは欲し
い……」
“How about eight?”
“Well OK. Maybe that would be enough,” he replied
laughing.
“Lucille, why did you…well how did know you wanted
to marry me?”
Lucille smiled and turned around to face him. “Well, we
are a little different, I know. But I’ve never met anyone else
who can speak languages like you and I can. I don’t think I
ever will again. If anyone could understand me it’s you. I
couldn’t miss that chance.”
“I’m glad I have that chance too. But you know, in
Canada you’ll have to put your knife away.”
“I know. But we all grow up, don’t we. Then we put
our toys away. And when you carry a knife, well, you have
to be very careful. Never to get angry and hurt the people
you love.”
“So we’ll put our toys away.”
“Yes.”
But this was all getting a little too smoochy and romantic
for me, and Sierpinski must have felt the same way.
Because he rose up on his back legs and charged away,
galloping into the rising sun. I didn’t know a yak could do
that, but Sierpinski evidently could. And Linus held on to
Lucille, and Lucille held on to me and we all held on to
Sierpinski, laughing at the top of our lungs as we raced
along the edge of the cliff.
71
Chapter 4
* * *
When we returned down the side of the hill a few hours
later, I felt a little like I was accompanying Moses returning
down from the mountain. The fossil exposure that Beaky
had led us to had been a revelation. Tucked into a narrow
chasm in the side of a long narrow ravine had been a true
dinosaur graveyard. Shear pink rock ledges had grinned at
us with great fossil jaws full of blackened ancient teeth, and
the enormous long bones of preserved skeletons had
paneled the rocky sides of the canyon. Just seeing it had
reduced us all to a stunned silence; we could never have
imagined that such a place existed, locked frozen in time,
the bony orbs of empty eye sockets forever staring up at the
framed rotating heavens in silence.
72
As we quietly rode down the last hill to our encampment

the smell of freshly burned cordite filled our nostrils and the
thick dust in the air made a gritty sensation in our teeth. It
was eerily quiet. A crazed graduate student ran up to us, his
red bulging eyes blinking rapidly in a face stained blue from
dust.
“We need to go get more supplies! We’re running out of
explosives!” he cried out, his arms twitching with frantic
excitement.
“You poor thing. You need to calm down and get some
rest,” said Lucille softly to him as she reached down to grab
his shoulder to shake some sense into him. But he evaded
her and danced away, laughing maniacally. Then he ran
away.
Linus shook his head. “What has Ivanov been up to?”
he wondered as Sierpinski carried us the rest of the way
towards camp.
As we arrived back we found the professors grinning
broadly, hands at their hips, chatting together with a deep
glowing self-satisfaction.
73
Chapter 4
„A few more tons of explosives ought to do it, don’t you

think my dear friends?”
« Indeed. The progress is excellent. My dear Ivanov,
you’re a true artist. It’s like watching a sculptor at work
when you set off the explosives! » chimed in Professor
Hubert, as he affectionately patted Ivanov on the head.
“Ah Linus!” Ivanov exclaimed as we passed into view of
him. “I’ve been awaiting your return. Please inform these
fellows that I must have more matériel if I am to complete
the task at hand. At least a few more tonnes of—”
“The new excavation site has been revealed to us,”
announced Lucille solemnly, trying her best to sound like
Moses.
„Revealed?”
“As if by Divine Providence,” added Linus, getting into
the spirit of things.
« And what could possibly be so divinely providential
about what you found? » asked Hubert, intrigued by our
manner and tone of voice. So we told him, and the
professors were so impressed by our description that they
immediately rode off on Sierpinski to have a look at it.
Meanwhile we made arrangements to move camp, much to
the annoyance of Ivanov and the graduate students.
A few hours later the professors returned, looking like
they’d found religion, just as we had, and Ivanov had to
admit defeat.
“Don’t be sad, Ivanov. We still have a few hundred
pounds of semtex left. That should leave ample room for
your creative endeavors,” I told him, but Ivanov just
sniffed, muttering something about ‘scale’ and ‘shock and
awe’ and other cryptic terms that we had trouble
interpreting. The graduate students cried a little too. But
they all came to their senses the next day when our party
74
arrived at the new excavation site, and they saw themselves

the sight that few if any eyes before ours had beheld—that
scene of petrified dinosaur majesty.
And so began the happy times of our expedition. Each
day was filled with wonderful new discoveries as we slowly
and painstakingly removed one nearly complete skeleton
after another from the warm fine-grained sandstone. Linus
and I spoke to the desert mice, and they were happy to help
us out. They carefully gnawed at the soft stone matrix that
surrounded the bones, loosening them so much so that they
practically leapt from the earth when we dug for them.
McAllister and the camels of course busied themselves
carrying the excavation debris away, and they also helped
transport bones to where they could be catalogued and
prepared for further shipping.
Lucille collected together a number of her bird friends
and they assumed command of the difficult work of
recording each find as it was made, pecking out records of
everything on paper as needed. Beaky was able to keep a
sharp eye on everything. He kept track of exactly what
location everything was found in, and in an unusual show of
comradery and self-restraint, refrained from eating any of
the other birds or the mice.
Ivanov at first was occupied with the difficult work of
disposing safely of the remaining high explosives. Needless
to say, we no longer had any need of it or any desire to
worry about transporting it back with us, so he had to take
care of it. He was in fact rather artistic, slowly blasting the
form of a Tyrannosaurus out of a solid chunk of rock at the
entrance to the ravine over the course of several days.
Leaving this piece of art to inspire us and commemorate
our discoveries, he returned to help us with the excavation.
The professors and most of the students were rather less
useful I’m afraid to say. Perhaps Ivanov’s explosions had
75
Chapter 4
unhinged them a little. They sat around arguing with each

other and writing ridiculous things on pieces of paper,
calling them things like “theses” and scientific papers and so
on. Some of the students were particularly excitable and
kept yammering about really implausible things like
‘graduating’. That one in particular made the professors
laugh.
After a fruitful week of excavating, we had retrieved as
much as McAllister and the camels were prepared to carry,
and so we made our way back to the trail head and they
loaded the trucks with our baggage. There we waved good
bye to the rest of the expedition, preferring to take a more
comfortable route back to Ulaanbaatar. We shared a ride
with Sierpinski, Ivanov and McAllister in their helicopter.
It was a surprise even to me when it arrived. I’d
expected a large military transport, as it was the only kind of
thing capable of carrying McAllister. But when the
helicopter arrived it really surprised me. Seated on silk
brocade upholstery elegantly and subtly emblazoned with
the Mongolian flag, we traveled in air-conditioned comfort,
served drinks by a military aide. When I asked my fellow
club members how they’d managed to arrange it, Ivanov
merely muttered “connections.”
“I have some good friends,” added Sierpinski.
Three hours later we landed in Ulaanbaatar.
76
Chapter 5
We were the toast of the Explorer’s Club. Somehow
news of the success of our expedition reached them almost
before we arrived, and within a few days, one of the spoils
of the expedition did. The club was the beneficiary of the
permanent loan of a specimen from the Museum of Natural
History. It was one of the smaller therapods that we had
collected, and it was nearly complete. When I asked
Sierpinski how the club managed to arrange it, he merely
replied,
“Connections.”
“I have some good friends,” added McAllister.
For the celebration the therapod was placed at the center

of the ballroom, and all of us were toasted with champagne
to the cheers, hoots, grunts and roars of our dearest friends.
77
Chapter 5
It was a fine moment, the culmination of my long career,

and indeed shortly after I received word that my resignation
from the Org had been accepted.
Several days later we made our way to the Museum of
Natural History and greeted the rest of the expedition. The
professors were still friends with each other and were busy
supervising the students, who were beginning the long
process of preparing the many specimens that they had
collected. It was all shockingly businesslike, and we
overheard numerous conversations that had the air of true
scientific discourse. We began to believe that the students
might actually manage to publish real scientific papers and
that a few might eventually graduate. It was quite a contrast
to how they had all behaved during the expedition itself.
Best of all, the professors thanked us for our help and
paid us.
«You must join us again next year! »
“Why thank you. Perhaps during school vacation,”
replied Linus.
„Do not worry yourself about school, mein lieber Junge,
for someone like you I’m quite sure it’s superfluous.”
“Yes. I’ve heard that before,” replied Linus, not sound
ing so very convinced.
The professors paid us what we’d been promised, but
when we settled all our bills, what with all the hotels and
costs for equipment and our personal supplies during the
expedition, we came up a little short.
“It isn’t going to be enough for the tickets,” observed
Lucille with dismay. “Woof, your personal expenses are
really a little much. Eau de Cologne, pomade, and all the
manicures…”
“We just need to be a little creative,” replied Linus,
coming to my defense. “Look, if we travel fourth class on
78
the trans-Siberian railroad, and slowly make our way hitch-

hiking across Russia to one of the Baltic seaports, I’m sure
we can find a berth on a merchant ship—”
“If we do that the school year will be over before we get
home!”
There was a knock on the door of the hotel suite, and
Linus opened it. To an apparently empty hallway, or so it
seemed until he looked down. The he saw something quite
unexpected. It was two very large rats. They were dragging
between them a large bar of gold bullion. Huffing and
puffing, they pulled it over to me, wiped their brows with
their paws, and then squeaked “here you go sir!” before
departing.
Linus raised an inquiring eyebrow in my direction.
“Ah. That must be my back pay. From the Org,” I said,
and then continuing with a softer voice, “It doesn’t look
counterfeit this time.”
“It definitely looks real to me.”
“So you’ll have to let me help with the tickets.”
“Woof, we really couldn’t—” said Lucille, a little
embarrassed.
“Nonsense Lucille. You know dogs don’t really need
money. What we need is a loving home,” I told her,
looking as sadly as I could at her. It must have worked,
because she sat down next to me, put her arms around me
and hugged me.
So I helped pay for the airplane tickets. Lucille got to
travel first class for a change, and we managed to get home
without any trouble.
A few days later we were in PEI walking up a long stone
pathway to the door of an enormous and imposing
Victorian house. Screened by ancient willow trees drooping
with lank untrimmed strands of leaves, dark empty windows
79
Chapter 5
dotted the face of the dark brick edifice, leering at us like

the empty spaces in a saurischian skull.
Lucille shivered with uncharacteristic nervousness as we
opened the door and stepped into the quiet chill of the
interior.
“Don’t worry,” Linus told her as we entered the foyer.
“My parents really aren’t that bad.”
We caught sight of a stooped gray man shuffling along
the hallway towards us, his dark blinking eyes amplified by
thick wire-framed spectacles. It was Linus’s father.
“Linus! You’ve been very quiet. I haven’t seen you
since about this morning,” he said softly to us in greeting.
“Dad! I’ve been gone for over a month!”
“Ha ha ha. Impossible. Don’t be ridiculous my boy!
But it is surprising to see you in the company of a girl. That
is rather unusual. What is your name, young lady?”
Lucille bowed down modestly.
「始めまして。ライナスの嫁おります。ルシールと申しま
す。」
And then after a pause, 「よろしくお願いします。」
“Ah. A foreign exchange student? It must be. What a
surprise! Linus you should have said something. Well, I’m
sure we can fix her up in the first spare bedroom. Could
you see to it for me?”
“Her name is Lucille. She’s my wife. We’re married.
She’ll be staying with me in my room,” replied Linus, then
he turned to Lucille to introduce his father and continued,
“and this, dear, is my father. Just call him Professor d’Orp
ington.”
Then he took Lucille’s arm, turned on his heel, and
marched away with me following. Linus’s father looked
after us with surprise, magnified eyelids blinking rapidly.
80
“Married?” he said after a long pause, his question fading

into the distance as we strode away.
“We’ll have to go register you for school this afternoon.
I wonder if they’ll let married couples be in the same class?”
Linus said to Lucille as they walked down the hallway.
終
FIN
ENDE
THE END
81
Spydog hangs up his silk scarf in his final adventure.
Intrigue! Adventure! Bribery, counterfeiting and the
usual Org skullduggery! Fast women and slow yaks!
Underage postmarital romantic activity! All my
multitudinous psychiatric issues are committed to
paper in this desperate plea for understanding on the
part of my long-suffering son.
The usual vanity press production, natch.

Spydog Leaves The Org

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For a boy who I hope has not given up on his own

wonder what kind of fool dresses up their dog in a finely

“Um…well maybe we should just get this job over with?

We pass a man in a cheap dark suit. He’s standing stiffly

turns to face her, and she presses a small square of plastic

“Why the Minister. In the usual blackmailable scenario

break your legs’ somehow don’t come across that well

“Woof,” (which is what he calls me sometimes) “there

“Swordplay stays OUTSIDE the cockpit!” echoed out

As if to prove his point she sat down on a crate and

Within ten seconds we were on the ground, and I was

“Well, if we must live like animals, I suppose I have a

dog, or whatever it was, and replied, “Well thanks, ‘Dad’.

As for Lucille, well, she just gave me a wink and a half-

keeping warm, I suppose, but I couldn’t sleep. I just lay

She smiled softly, looking for a moment like an ordinary

and it was keeping him busy. I decided to have a stroll

The water was shallow, little more than waist high in

「ああ! 魚だ!」she exclaimed pointing to the fish. 「お腹

“Looks like you went fishing…” he said drifting off.

Linus paused a minute, thinking, trying to understand

it drop it on the ground where it joined the other assorted

“Well I can’t say I blame them,” remarked Linus looking

Linus then proposed that we have a look at a map, in

teach her silly things—arithmetic and English and so on,

“No, but my radio friends are in trouble. I got new

Lucille grabbed his hand and started heading down the

An hour later we feasted in front of the warm crackling

bigger share of the smuggling business into my country,

indistinct lumps of matted hair. As we became apparent to

“I suppose so. Anyway the jarheads were good friends,

“Yes. Beautiful,” he replied. Lucille nodded and with a

I turned to Linus and he looked at me. It wasn’t going

“I’m sorry I never got to make arrangements for you

Linus would be a little startled, and would answer, [Um,

“For one thing she’s got much tastier, more nutritious

few minutes later the herdsman returned, sitting rather

So Linus descended off of his yak and the negotiations

had made, trying to read the seal-script, which was also

their veins also runs in mine. This was definitely one of

once in a while startling him awake with a kiss. I rode alone

“I’m sure she still has one. Somewhere,” he commented,

“You’re a bit too young to be thinking of starting a

“We need to go find a lawyer,” stated Linus. There was

[ Why yes. Bareback. For 10 days. From the Kalkhyn

rolling them with their thumbs on their ring-fingers as the

Ivanov. There was also a new member, a rather

“Archibald! Good to see you old dog! I’d have thought

could only shake my head, wondering what the Org would

have a wife to look after now,” he said, putting an arm

Leaving the embassy, we then looked to the next order

calming the two down, while Lucille saw to organizing the

We lived three days in the back of an open truck

The trail-head looked like an impending riot, with

them, well, they were a little different. At first I couldn’t

“We feared you would be quite lost without us,” added

marched at our right, spurring us on with witty remarks and

back right next to the five or so prostrate students he’d

But it was no use. A few minutes later the explosions

„A new species of large carnosaur. With a complete