CHEUNG LI HAD BEen having a terrible time when she received her coded message from Mustafa the Magnificient. Pollution from China's tens of thousands of factories and hundreds of millions cars had settled across Canton province, encasing Guangzhou in an almost tactile haze. Nobody had seen the sun for eight days and cloud-seeding didn't seem to help. When Cheung Li contracted a hacking-type cough she decided to give up work for the duration of the smog. She worked as an office lady for a karaoke entertainment parlour.

So Cheung Li cocooned herself at home, pressed play on a rotation of anime classics. The windows were almost black with soot. That's when she got her second package from Mustafa the Magnificient.

Although she had decided to get back with him she had made no formal plans in that direction, and she hadn't told him of her change of heart. The main problem, of course, was that she was in China and he was in jail. The infamous Jacky Tung was another obstacle she didn't know how to surmount. But in the spaceless expanse of Mustafa's electronic thought, in the alcoves of his mindsex realms, she was beginning to feel a matrimony no authority could annul, a bond deeper than any ocean.

Then again, maybe it was just the hashish!

LONG LIVE THE ASSASSINS!