LITMIR.BIZ

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over the years go stale.

      Just before Hazzard passed out he heard someone say, "Get up you useless sons of the devil. Our work here is finished."

      The sound of a noodle vendor's flute finally filtered into Hazzard's foggy brain and he slowly opened his eyes. For a moment he could not figure out where he was, or what he was doing there. Then he saw the tin cans and rubbish and it all came back like a bad dream. He was soaked with sweat and stiff as a board. He grunted and groaned himself to a sitting position. It felt like a herd of elephants had been walking on his chest and stomach, and when he finally made it to his feet, he bent over and threw up all over the alley.

      Nobody saw him as he staggered out into the street. Even if someone had seen him, it would not have bothered them very much. Japan is a weird country. Drunks were always staggering around and lying in the gutters and even the police never bother about them very much.

      Hazzard was beat, and he knew it. There was a lump behind his ear that throbbed like a jack hammer, and he found that he could not breathe if he straightened up. He knew he had to find a place to lie down, and he had to find it quick. Everything was going round and round, and he could not focus his eyes on anything for more than a few seconds.

      The nearest place was his office, and he fiddle-footed and stumbled along until he got back to the building. He thought he would never make the stairs. Every few steps he had to stop, kneel down, and grab the wall.

      Inside the office he dragged a chair up to the little washbasin, sat down and soaked his head under the running faucet. This only seemed to make the throbbing worse, and he thought he might drown in the basin if he passed out.

      Gathering up a wet towel, he flopped his six-foot-two frame down on his five-foot-two Japanese-size couch, and passed out as the room started to go around in circles.

      Hazzard was in the middle of the Arctic Ocean, strapped to a big slab of ice, with the wind howling over his naked body. A short distance away a group of beautiful nude Eskimo girls were dancing around a great big warm bonfire. They kept looking over at him, smiling and winking. One big tall lanky one was keeping time by beating two little sticks together. Hazzard had to get loose and get that tall one. He gave one big pull at the ropes, and bam!—he was lying on the floor of his office.

      He could hear the typewriter out in the small reception room; that accounted for the two little sticks. Then he looked up and saw the fan. Someone had placed it at his feet, and when it blew over his sweat-heavy clothes it was just like an arctic blast. Bright sunlight was streaming through the window, and the sight of it started his head throbbing again. He switched off the fan, rolled back on the couch with a groan, and put the towel over his face.

      The typing stopped, and then the towel popped up. Hazzard opened one eye, and gasped. Nothing could hurt bad enough to make him close that eye again, and so he opened both of them.

      Michiko was bent over him peering down. It is hot in Tokyo in August, and Hazzard had just discovered that Michiko did not wear a brassiere when it was hot in August. The low cut blouse was billowing down, the sunlight was streaming in, and there were two of the cutest little breasts that Hazzard had ever seen.

      She had been in the office working for Hazzard ever since he had started out in his unsuccessful business six months before, and he never had thought that she could be built like this. Most Japanese girls aren't. Maybe it had been the baggy skirts and blouses she had always worn before, he was thinking. Hazzard shook his head slowly and decided that it was about time he took a new look at his "Girl Friday." Michiko had been in the office for six months, and he now realized that he had never really noticed her. 'I must be slipping,' he thought.

      "Mike-san, daijobu desu ka?" she asked.

      He snapped out of his dream and looked up at her face. She had lovely dark almond-shaped eyes. The kind women are always faking with eyebrow pencils, only Michiko's were real. Hazzard found himself wondering what other hidden mysteries of the Orient she came equipped with.

      "Mike-san, you all right?" she asked again.

      "Yeah, I'm all right," he said and tried to lift himself up to a sitting position. "I've just got the world's biggest headache, that's all," and then the bells went off in his head again, and he flopped back on the couch.

      Michiko straightened up, put her hands on her hips, and with that 'mother-scolding-the-naughty-boy look' in her eyes she said, "Hangover, we? You should be more careful. Not drink so much."

      "I wish it was a hangover," said Hazzard, and reached back to caress the grapefruit-sized knot behind his ear. Then he looked up at Michiko again. "What are you doing here so early in the morning, my little flower of the Orient?" he said as he managed to sit up.

      This caused a big widening of those lovely dark eyes and a burst of Japanese girly giggles. "Early morning? It is almost time for lunch," she quipped. "Mike-san, what did you drink last night?"

      She cocked her head and looked at him sideways through half-closed lids. This made the skin on Hazzard's back start to goose-step down his spine. He had an almost uncontrollable urge to grab her and take a nip out of one of those exquisitely shaped ears. Hazzard had a passion for nibbling at female ears. He had found out that it set off a remarkable chain reaction in most women. He found himself wondering now if Michiko knew about this. He shook his head. This train of thought was not going to get him anywhere but into trouble and he forced himself to look at the floor. It needed sweeping, and so did the inside of his head.

      "Michiko, do you have any aspirin?" he asked.

      "Yes," she answered, "how many do you want?"

      "A whole bottle. The large economy size."

      Michiko sighed and went out to her desk in the small reception office. Hazzard watched her go and shook his head again. As much as he knew about the Orient, he would never be able to figure out the women. He had not paid Michiko for the last two months, and in spite of his continuous bad humor, and ordering her around like a servant, she seemed to have no complaints and kept coming to the office every morning. She treated him like a little child most of the time, making him carry an umbrella at the slightest hint of rain, forcing cold tablets on him if he so much as sneezed, lecturing him to eat more vegetables, change his shirts at the least sign of dirt, and cut down on his beer and whiskey. Just like a mother, or even a wife. This made Hazzard straighten up, all these things had been happening for the last six months, and the warning bells were just now going off—he must be slipping. The last thing he wanted right now was to be tied down by marriage. He had more things to worry about, and getting emotionally mixed up with Michiko would only complicate things.

      Ever since the Korean War, Hazzard's life had been one big jumble of mixed up events. He had been captured by the Chinese, released at the end of the war, almost given a general court-martial, spent a year in the hospital with TB, disability retired from the army, and then decided to return to Japan and study the language.

      He had run into an old friend, Lieutenant Bill Madden, at Tenth Corps Headquarters in Korea and had accepted an invitation to visit Madden at his outfit's Command Post, the 555 Artillery Battalion, commonly referred to as the Triple Nickels. A week later he had telephoned Madden and driven a jeep up to the battalion CP to drink over old times. That night the Chinese broke through the Korean division up north and before they had a chance to realize what was going on the Reds were swarming all over the area.

      The rest of the war was spent in various prison camps in North Korea. The communists never did find out that Hazzard was an intelligence officer, and had assumed that he was just another artillery captain. The war came to an end and Hazzard was sent back through Panmunjom where the prisoner-of-war exchange was taking place. From here he was sent to St. Luke's Army Hospital in Tokyo.

      Three days later he received two of the biggest shocks of his life, one after the other. The first one came when the doctor had informed him that he had tuberculosis. The second shock came in the afternoon when he had a visit from a major in the Adjutant General's office. As an intelligence officer in possession of certain knowledge vital to the security of the United States, he had placed himself in a position where he had fallen into the hands of the enemy. This was something

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