NO matter how often Doc Huxley admonished him, Max Hanley refused to give up his pipe or dessert. He figured that by his age he’d earned the right to know what was best for him. The thickening around his middle added only ten or fifteen pounds, and while he couldn’t run a mile in under ten minutes, his job rarely required him to run a mile. So what was the big deal?

His cholesterol was just about normal, he wasn’t showing any signs of diabetes, and his blood pressure was actually on the low side.

He swirled his fork through the raspberry drizzle pooled on his plate and made sure he got the last few crumbs of the chocolate cake. The fork was spotless when he returned it to his plate and pushed back from the mess hall table with a satisfied groan.

“All finished?” the white-jacketed mess steward asked.

“Only because I’d need a microscope to find the few remaining cake molecules. Thanks, Maurice.”

Max had dined alone this evening but nodded to the personnel at the other tables before leaving the mahogany-paneled mess. His sturdy brogans sank into the almost inch-thick rug. A squall had kicked up from the north over the past several hours, so he decided to take his pipe in his cabin. He’d just settled into an easy chair with a week’s worth of the International Tribune that had been choppered back to the Oregon when his intercom rang. He let his cheater glasses dangle around his neck and set his pipe into an ashtray.

“Sorry to bother you on your day off.” It was Linda Ross from the operations center.

“That’s okay. What’s the trouble?”

“No trouble, but you wanted to know if we got anything from Eddie. It appears he’s left Fouzou and might be headed back to Shanghai.”

Max digested the report. “Makes sense from the snakehead’s perspective. Shanghai is one of the busiest ports in the world. Much easier to slip a bunch of illegals onto an outbound freighter amid the confusion than at a smaller harbor like Fouzou.”

“That’s what Murph and Eric Stone think, too. Do you want me to call the chairman?”

“No. Last I spoke to him he has enough to worry about. If we get any better intel, I’ll have you pass it along. What’s our position, and how’s our wallowing friend?”

“They’ve picked up a current so they’re now making six knots. That’ll put us about a hundred miles due east of Ho Chi Minh City in another five hours.”

The name always caught Max off guard. Vietnam’s largest city would always be Saigon to him. But that was from another time and another war. Every so often when a chopper approached the Oregon, a flood of memories would leave Hanley shaken for days.