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Cigarette Smoke

Rodgers looked at me across the table, as I exhaled a puff of smoke. Would he believe me if I told him I didn’t know why Michael sent for me? I didn’t know what the job was. How believable was that?

And he was a cop. Well maybe not exactly, but he was working with the locals. Whatever Michael was involved in, you knew that it wasn’t exactly all on the up and up. But still, being innocent … Well, innocent of any thing in THIS jurisdiction, I had nothing to lose by telling the truth.

“I’ll tell you the truth. Michael sent me a ticket and an email asking me to come to Baghdad for a job. He never explained what it was, and I wasn’t going to ask until I got here. As you might guess he rarely put to paper anything that he thought was sensitive.”

“So you flew half way around the world, on the promise of some unknown kind of job?” Rodgers asked.

“Yeah, that about sums it up”, as I took another drag.

“Just what kind of work do you do Mr. Talman?”

“Mostly I’m a trouble shooter. I make problems go away.”

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