Wordzzle 37?

Sure you say, 37 is a nice round number or is it a prime number? Anywho......

Stop by the Raven's Nest to check out the other stories. If you feel like it, you can catch up on the continuing story written here.

This Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: squeaky toy, perpendicular, olives, shanty, howling at the moon, soul, bow and arrow, uniform, statistics, praying mantis

Mini Challenge: glamour, rocking chair, cormorant, objective, symbolism

This week's episode: A stitch in Time

At 8:45 AM in Hong Kong, Ki Wan Li stepped away from his desk and went into a small storage room at the end of the hall. This room contained an old rocking chair, a plaque depicting a cormorant catching a fish, and other unused decorations from the company's glory days. The firm of Biddle, Banks and Bailey was an old established British trading house that had converted to banking and off short account parking in the 80s. The once proud sign emblazoned with the Chinese bow and arrow motif looked more like it should be in one of the myriad shanty towns surrounding Hong Kong than in the downtown business district.

Whatever the symbolism had been, it now went unnoticed in the hustle of the city. Ki placed the small EMP device in a niche next to the wall to the server room. The only requirement of the device was that it be placed perpendicular to the server for best performance. It had been designed to be directional and not as a 360 degree unit. It would do its work and then self destruct, causing a small fire that would be assumed to be the cause of the server outage.

When the system came back up there would be some new accounts with well known names.
Li went back to his desk and dialed the number he'd been given. Only one sentence was spoken. He acknowledged his receipt of a baseball uniform he ordered and thanked them for the quick service.

The call had been answered by a machine and then forwarded to an import company in New Jersey that carried everything from squeaky toys manufactured in Rumania to olives from Greece and Italy. The extension that answered the call was Dianne Henderson's. She handled sales statistics and various other duties for the outfit. Though she felt at times she'd sold her soul to the devil in going back to work for a large corporation, she kept her hand in the revolution by helping out with certain anti-corporate actions.

Dianne looked at the small bamboo cage with the praying mantis that the company had received from a Chinese firm as a sample. Somehow she didn't think it would go over that well in the US. She placed the mantis on the window sill and made her call.

The invitation to the white house had surprised and excited Jean and McCool as well. In spite of his dislike for the current administration, McCool knew that Jean would love the glamour of an event at the White House. Though the total story of the investigation had not been told to the administration, enough of it had gotten through to give the Homeland Security boys an idea. It seemed like the obvious objective was to gain some good PR for their department in a time when Homeland Security was increasingly unpopular. The vast budget overruns and sorry service at the airports had begun to weigh heavily on the public's patience.

McCool asked Johnson what he should do and the Sgt advised him to go along with it for now. The administration would be out of office before the truth came out about their involvement. To attempt to do much with the investigation while they were still in power would be no better than howling at the moon.

Instead they would focus on the perpetrators and forgo the background info incriminating the administration and the RNC till after the election. No matter who won, the next administration would be more than happy to crap on the Bushies.

Back in Silver Springs Justine was wondering why Claude had been so warm and tender tonight in their lovemaking. She had not experienced this side of him before. He rose from their bed and explained he would be going out for a while. She knew not to ask, but also knew he wouldn’t, couldn’t be going to another woman. She’d made sure of that. The fact that either of them could walk after this marathon of pleasure and aerobic exercise amazed her. And then he’d been so gentle and caring. Amazing. She was happy and scared at once. What was going to happen next?

For Claude's part, he would be glad to get the operation underway and leave this land of fast food, foolish presidents and hustling, crowded freeways. Where he and Justine were headed would be an extremely different and better destination.

RT