The eighth book in the Evan Tanner series

I flew from New York to Los Angeles, then nonstop to Seoul. I had a few hours before my flight to Bangkok, and I rode a shuttle bus into downtown Seoul, walked around, snacked on fried shrimp, drank a beer, and caught a bus back to the airport. Nothing looked remotely familiar, but then it had been quite a while since I’d been in Korea. I hadn’t spent much time in Seoul, but this time around it was noisy and bustling and furiously modern, a far cry from the Korean cities and villages I remembered.

This time around, too, nobody was shooting at me. There were no Chinese soldiers blowing bugles, no artillery rounds whistling overhead.

I have to say it makes a change.

I’d reset my watch in L.A. and in Seoul, and I reset it again a few hours later in Bangkok. By then I’d lost track of what time it was in New York, and, since there was nobody I wanted to phone, I didn’t much care. It was three in the afternoon in Bangkok, and that was all I had to know. It was a half hour earlier in Rangoon, if I remembered correctly, but I would cross that time zone when I came to it.

My only luggage was the day pack I’d carried aboard the plane with me, and all it held was a clean shirt and a change of socks and underwear. My toothbrush and razor and such rode in the Kangaroo pouch clasped around my waist, along with my Swiss Army knife. I had some cash in a money belt under my Gap khakis, and once I’d cleared Customs and Immigration I ducked into a men’s room and slipped my passport in there as well. Then I ran a gauntlet of overeager cab drivers, took a train to a spot where I could catch a water taxi, and floated on into Bangkok.