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  In that respect, she and I are alike. She says she loves me because I am just as crazy as she is, and I probably am, and that is another way she and I are alike. She also tells me she thinks I’m smart and funny and sexy, but I’m not as smart as she thinks I am, and I don’t consider myself sexy at all, but if she wants to think I’m sexy too, I’m not going to argue. But I don’t know why she thinks I’m funny. I consider myself to be a serious individual. I think about things and ask questions, and I think the answers I give to many of those questions are as good as anyone’s.

  But as I said, Anya is one of those people who other people want to talk to and enjoy being with up until the day they die, and as a result she always seems to pick up a lot of useful information. She found out for example, that if you want to hear all the dirt about the Pakistanis in the department, ask the Indians. And if you want to hear about how evil the Indians are in the department, ask a Pakistani. It’s the same with the Chinese and Japanese. She learned who hated whom and who was related to whom.

  It appears that once an Indian or Pakistani got a position in a department that allowed them to hire or influence the hiring of others, one or more of their relatives or friends would often end up working in the department. There was a nepotism rule, but that didn’t apply to them because, as far as they were concerned, they weren’t nepots. But they didn’t let anyone know who belonged to them, that is, who was a relative or friend from their community back in India or Pakistan, or who owed their allegiance to them, because then they could be accused of being nepots. You had to find that out on your own, and Anya was good at that. Within two months, she had everyone in the department sorted out as far as who belonged to which influential Pakistani.

  There turned out to be two influential Pakistanis, both from the Punjab region. One was a Sikh named Dr. Singh who was very good at taking care of sick people and was beloved, as were all the people working for him, whether they were relatives or not. The other was also a Sikh named Dr. Singh, and he had a very different personality. He hardly ever came into work. He always called in sick, but everyone knew that he just wanted to stay home, because he had a hobby and an outside interest that kept him busy. He raised and trained German Shepherds as attack dogs, and he had a very well-known kennel known as Sic’em Shepherds. Everyone called him the sick Sikh, to distinguish him from the other Dr. Singh and because he always called in sick. And people would sing the praises of the Dr. Singh who was the Sikh whose research helped the sick, but they didn’t have much use for the sick Sikh who didn’t shepherd the sick and instead shepherded the Sic’em Shepherds.

  But there was another Pakistani who was working as an animal caretaker in the institute, and no one could figure out how he got the position except that, when he applied, the department manager just assumed he wouldn’t have applied if he didn’t belong to one of the two Pakistanis and didn’t ask which he belonged to. Instead she just hired him because she knew she didn’t want to ask and then be accused of being an anti-nepot, which might not have been politically correct.

  Anya managed to get the records of the unaffiliated Pakistani named Ghazan Gopang who was a Pashtun. It turned out he was recommended by a firm with a Federal Government contract located in the Research Triangle Park area near Raleigh in North Carolina, but they couldn’t find out too much about him except for the fact that he was given rave reviews for his work. And he was very good at his job so there were really no complaints. Information about him was scarce and no one in the department knew too much. Anya befriended him and he seemed taken aback by it, but who wouldn’t welcome the attention of a pretty girl. Ben and Edy had his house checked out while he was at work but didn’t find anything. It was an old house that had been put into apartments, and there was a College of Charleston student living down stairs who agreed to record any package deliveries to Gopang and get the return addresses. Ben told him he was from ICE. Sure enough, a package arrived the following week from the North Carolina firm Gopang had worked for, and a week later there was another rat balloon found in the Cancer Institute’s animal facility. Ben and Edy did the necessary background check that no one else had bothered to do and found out who he really was. It was time to move in. Anya asked Gopang if he would like to come over Saturday at lunch time and teach her how to cook Indian food. He jumped at the chance. She told him she would have another couple there as well for whom she would be cooking. When he arrived as scheduled, he was introduced to Ben and Edy. After he shook hands with them, Anya called his name. As he turned around, Anya with a smile on her face shot him with a taser.

  Chapter 7

  By the time Gopang recovered, he had been tied up, gagged, rolled in a rug, and placed in the back of our black Ford Expedition, and we were on our way to Francis Marion National Forest which is located a short distance outside of Charleston. From what I was able to determine from my neighbors, Francis Marion National Forest was named after two revolutionary war women who used the forest as a center of their efforts to help the Colonists battle the British. Their names were Miss Francis and Miss Marion and they set up a camp in the middle of the forest where the Colonists, who were fighting the British in Charleston, could hide and rest and get a good meal. They made biscuits and had plenty of grits and added shrimp to the grits when they could get it.

  And Miss Francis and Miss Marion had a little pet. It was a swamp fox that they had captured in the swampy forest and tamed themselves. They apparently got into a dispute over naming it because each wanted to name the swamp fox for the other since they were such dear friends. Miss Francis wanted to name it Marion and Miss Marion wanted to name it Francis. They finally compromised and named the swamp fox, Francis Marion. But no one had bothered to check whether the swamp fox was a girl fox or a boy fox. It turned out it was a boy fox and it was so embarrassed by having the name Francis Marion that it ran off and hid in the swampy forest and wouldn’t even come out to eat its shrimp and grits, and neither the Colonists nor the British were ever able to find the famous, elusive Swamp Fox.

  The four of us, with our Pashtun package in the back, drove out of Charleston through Mt. Pleasant to Wando (real name of a real town) and then Huger (pronounced “you-gee”) and into the forest. It was not very difficult, even fully loaded, to get over the mountain of Mt. Pleasant. Now, the area around Charleston is called the Low Country, and rightly so. It is essentially a delta area and some of it is little more than a series of sand bars and salt marshes. Anything more than a few feet above sea level is unusual. I surmised that Mt. Pleasant must have had somewhere within its boundaries land more than a few feet above sea level, but no one had ever found it. Perhaps it was all a hoax. And it wasn’t that pleasant either. It was rather an ordinary suburb indistinguishable from any other congested suburb near any other typical American city anywhere in the country, although this suburb was probably at a lower elevation than most and certainly the lowest elevation ever to be designated as Mt. someplace. It was also very hot and humid most of the year and had more than its share of mosquitos and gnats, and of course, Northerners.

  The location that we were headed for was a government restricted area in the middle of the National Forest. It had a gate with a lock, and Ben had the key. Inside was an old abandoned pig farm with a small cabin and a big pigsty. As you know, pigs are unclean as far as Muslims are concerned, and that entered our minds as we drove in and got Gopang out of the SUV. I let him get a good look at his surroundings and a good whiff as well and told him,

  “Welcome to Wantmo.”

  That’s what I decided to name the pig farm for our new Pashtun friend on the spur of the moment as we passed through Wando. It was a play on Gitmo, because from a sample of Gopang’s fingerprints, Ben and Edy had found out that Gopang had been imprisoned at Gitmo for a year where he had air conditioning, a television, a foot tub and bathtub and could play soccer. He was on the all-star prisoner list at Gitmo for scoring more goals in one season than any other prisoner without a full beard.

  After
a year and a promise to be a good boy in the future, he was released to the Pakistan government who promised that he would remain in prison for life. A life term in Pakistan is apparently one week. He had been involved in several other terrorist attacks since he was released and was undoubtedly responsible for more allied deaths in Afghanistan after his release than before. You may not know how Guantanamo Bay got its nickname Gitmo. My understanding is that they gave it that name because there is a little saying in the government that you gitmo at Gitmo. And how well Gopang had lived while he was there is an indication why that name is so appropriate. That’s why I wanted to let old Gopang know that Wantmo was different. Our motto is that we wantmo at Wantmo, and he wasn’t going to gitmo at Wantmo. In fact, he wasn’t going to get anything unless we were finished with what we wanted to know and didn’t wantmo.

  We took Gopang out of his rug, still tied up, and took him over to a tree by the large pond behind the pigsty. We tied him to the tree in a sitting position, took off his shoes and let his feet dangle in the pond. We told him we were on a wildlife adventure that he was part of, and that accidents could happen on such adventures. We were there to observe the habits of the alligators that live in that pond behind the pigsty to see if they behaved any differently than alligators that lived in ponds that were not near pigsties. In South Carolina alligators of eight to eleven feet are not uncommon and that pond had several alligators including one well over ten feet long. They looked like floating logs and we pointed out the biggest log to Gopang just as it began to move. We told him we had named the big alligator Mo and it was appropriate to name alligators in camp Wantmo, Mo, because they always wantmo.

  We had learned while living in Charleston, that crabbing was one of the favorite activities of the locals. They would take a big pail down to a dock and a string with a turkey neck attached. They would lower the turkey neck to the bottom of the creek and wait a few minutes. Then they would pull up the turkey neck which by this time had one and sometimes several crabs attached to it. The crabbers would deposit those crabs in the pail and do it again until they had enough crabs for a meal. We wanted to see if we could catch an alligator using the same method. Did we want to eat the alligator, you may ask and I may answer, not that day, but they do serve alligator in some restaurants around the Low Country. They cut pieces from the tail and deep-fry them. It tastes like a cross between fried chicken and frogs’ legs with a hint of turkey neck flavoring thrown in.

  Anya and I had a cooler of turkey necks on ice, and Ben and Edy had a cooler of frozen Dove Bars on dry ice in the back of the Expedition. They told us that on occasions like these, when we were interrogating a prisoner, they liked to eat a Dove Bar to let the prisoner know that they had come in peace since the dove is a symbol of peace. Both coolers were brand new and looked identical so I brought the coolers over to where Gopang was sitting and opened one. It was a really disgusting sight, those Dove Bars I mean. The exterior of the Dove Bar is coated with a very sweet chocolate. As I mentioned before, Anya and I don’t like sweets, and if I eat more than I should, I get a reaction and often have to go and throw up. This would all make sense to you if you read my previous narrative of how I got involved with the CIA in the first place, and which explains a lot about why I am like I am. But that can’t be helped now, so I’ll continue with the present memoir.

  I opened the other cooler and took out a turkey neck. I threw it at big Mo and made a direct hit on that log. The turkey neck bounced off and a smaller log grabbed it and swam away, but it had served its purpose, we had big Mo’s attention. I took a second turkey neck and rubbed it over Gopang’s bare feet and then tied the turkey neck to a string. I threw the turkey neck out in the pond and it landed between big Mo and the shore. I started to pull the turkey neck back in and told Gopang we were trolling for alligators in the southern tradition, and right on cue, big Mo started moving towards us trolling for Gopangs in a new southern tradition that started that day. I told Gopang we needed names of people he knew in North Carolina or there wouldn’t be enough of his necessary parts to enjoy the virgins in the afterlife. Ben and Edy just nodded in agreement because their mouths, by this time, were filled with Dove Bar. Well I must admit that Gopang was tough. He didn’t say anything. When the alligator got about ten feet from him, I lifted the line out of the water with a pole and dangled the turkey neck in front of big Mo’s mouth, and that gator opened his mouth and snatched that turkey neck right up cutting through the line with his powerful jaws. Gopang looked at me and finally started talking.

  He said, “I’ve been at Gitmo. I’ve been interrogated by all your professionals, and I know you won’t let that alligator hurt me because I know it’s your country’s policy not to torture anyone. It’s against your laws. One of your lawyers down there assigned to me told me all about it. The best you could do was waterboarding, which you can’t even do anymore. So you might as well just cut me loose. I know my rights, and you’ll be in trouble if you don’t let me go. ”

  What could I do? He knew his rights. So I took out my knife, showed it to him, smiled, shrugged my shoulders, and stabbed him in his foot slicing it open so that the blood just started dripping into the water. As I said, he was tough. He only screamed once before he started talking and he really talked fast as he noticed big Mo beginning to move towards the source of the blood. Anya started writing the names down. He said that there were only three that he knew. He swore there were only three, and I believed him. As Mo got closer, he started to scream some more. To give Edy credit, she was a tough babe. She didn’t miss a bite of her Dove Bar during this discussion. Ben, with his Dove Bar half eaten and still in his mouth, with the stick showing between his lips, racked the AK-47 we had brought in case big Mo decided one of us looked more tasty than Gopang.

  When we were sure that Gopang had nothing left to say, and being tired of his screams, I nodded to Anya and she took out her Glock and shot old Gopang through his right ear. She was right. The smell of gunpowder helps make the smell of a pigsty less objectionable. I untied Gopang and threw him into the pond for big Mo who had done what he does best in an admirable fashion. I hated to see those turkey necks go to waste, so I threw them in as appetizers for the rest of the alligators who were very polite and would wait until big Mo had dined.

  Now don’t get all teary eyed over the death of old Gopang. He had been implicated in the death of at least twenty Americans, more than half after his release from Gitmo. Had we turned him over to the Justice Department, he would have had a lengthy incarceration, followed by a lengthy trial and another lengthy incarceration followed by a lengthy release, a lengthy chase with perhaps a capture that would start the whole process over again. All of these lengthy processes cost a lot of tax payer money, so we were just saving the United States Government from having to borrow more money from the Chinese, which has become a lengthy process in itself.

  Ben and Edy finished their Dove Bars, Ben threw the AK-47 in the back of the Expedition along with the coolers and we headed out of the forest. You may ask whether we were worried about someone finding the remains of Gopang out there. Well after living in Charleston for a while, we found that Francis Marion National Forest is one of the favorite dumping grounds used by the locals for dead bodies of all sorts. Whenever someone is missing and presumed to have met with foul play, they always look for their bodies in Francis Marion National Forest. Sometimes they find them, and sometimes they don’t, and sometimes they find other bodies that had been missing and they had stopped looking for months or years before. No one knows how many undiscovered dead bodies are out there. Well, duh. If they’re undiscovered, how would anybody know? There are a lot of dead bodies thought to be out there, and one more or less is no biggie.

  As we left the forest Ben turned to me and said, “You know, today is an example why we like to use contract workers who are not regular employees. You guys can take short cuts and use innovative methods that we can’t. We have to do it by the book, and I would hate to have used a drone s
trike to eliminate the body of Gopang, which is one of the current methods we use to get rid of evidence, because it would have messed up a whole area of the National Forest.”

  I knew this method to be one of the preferred procedures for disposing of all sorts of things by the Federal Government and had been a personal witness to its effectiveness in my previous experience with the CIA.

  I then said to Ben, “Well, Ben. Anya and I are good citizens in that regard. We like to use eco-friendly approaches and recycle whenever possible just as we did today.”

  Then turning to Anya, I said,“You know, I do have a big regret about today.”

  “What’s that Alexei?” She likes to call me Alexei when she’s in a tender mood even though my name is Alex.

  “We were so busy, we didn’t have a chance to look for any of those little swamp foxes.”

  Chapter 8

  On the way back to town, we stopped at the Baskin Robbins in Mt. Pleasant. Downtown Charleston didn’t have one, and Ben and Edy really liked their ice cream. They had a double scoop of the flavor of the month and Anya and I had a diet Coke and shared a kiddy portion of half a kiddy scoop of pistachio and half a kiddy scoop of dark chocolate. Anya had most of it, but I did get a couple of bites of each, which is about my limit. Over our respective ice creams, Anya and I discussed with Ben and Edy the fact that we would now have to leave Charleston, at least for a while, and go up to North Carolina to check out the three names Gopang had given us. Ben and Edy said they would find out as much as they could about them and give us that information when we got up there.