by Warren Esby
I decided to take the chance of contacting him that morning, as he had requested, so he would know I was still alive in case he hadn’t already surmised that when the two he sent didn’t report back. I thought that what he did next might help us determine how he fitted into the whole scheme. I knew it would be a risk for me, but I didn’t think he would actually try anything if I met him in his office or at a restaurant. Somehow I didn’t think he would meet with me at all, and if he did arrange to meet me, I didn’t really expect him to show up, although I did think that he might try to send a surrogate to take me out which is why the scheme was risky. The benefit was to see what he did next by forcing his hand.
We all went back to the motel after breakfast, checked out and went to a different motel nearby. I called Dong on the phone.
“Good morning, Dr. Dong,” I said. “This is Dr. Kellogg. Have you thought about what we discussed yesterday? Would you have time to talk to me about it some more today?”
There was silence for a while and then he replied, “Ah so.” I only thought Chinese said that in cheap novels. Then he said, “Busy all day. Maybe we meet tonight. Call me at four this afternoon. Sorry cannot be more definite until then.”
I said, “Fine. I’ll call you then. Bye.”
Now he knew I was still around. I doubted he would meet me, and I felt that if he did name a place to meet, it would be a trap. Ben and Edy decided to have a surveillance team both at his house and at the university to follow him if he left. He did leave the university just before noon and went to his house. A taxi arrived to pick him up around three. He came out with several suitcases and the surveillance team followed him to the airport. I did call his office at four that afternoon and his secretary told me that he would meet me at his favorite Chinese restaurant called A Taste of Shanghai at seven that night, and that the reservations would be under his name. Uh oh. I had a bad taste in my mouth already about that restaurant. Ben and Edy had a team there, and they picked up and questioned two men who had been hanging around outside looking at everyone who was going into the restaurant. They turned out to be two local thugs. They were armed felons, so they were arrested. We didn’t expect them to know anything about Dong that would help us and they didn’t.
After we learned that Dong had left for the airport, Edy went into the university and showed Dong’s secretary her ID and questioned her about him and asked where he had gone. As far as she could determine, the secretary thought Dong was completely legitimate, although she had only worked for him for a few months. It appears that was about as long as he kept any secretary. They never made it beyond the three month probationary period when he could terminate their employment without any consequences. She was about due for the ax and somehow knew it, so she was happy to cooperate with Edy.
She told Edy that Dong had left for the day soon after he had received a phone call from a Dr. Kellogg. He had made several other phone calls and before he left he had instructed her to tell Dr. Kellogg to meet him at a restaurant called A Taste of Shanghai that evening. She did say she heard him making reservations that morning to go to England before Dr. Kellogg called. He had not asked her to do it and was not in the habit of asking her to make any travel plans for him, so she didn’t know his itinerary, only that he told her when he left that he wouldn’t be back for two weeks. She didn’t know where he was scheduled to go in England, but she did know he had some dealings with another Professor in Oxford in England. Ben and Edy reported to their superiors about the situation. Their superiors checked with the airlines about Dong’s reservations and then contacted their counterparts in MI5 in the United Kingdom and asked them to keep an eye on Dong when he arrived.
Chapter 22
Ben and Edy needed to go back to Washington to discuss the whole matter with the powers that be and told us they would let us know what the plans were after we got back to Pittsboro. We decided to keep the SUV and drive back there with Muffy. Cleveland is only a day’s drive from Pittsboro and we introduced Muffy to her new, temporary home that evening. She had been very good on the trip and slept for most of it in the back seat. The house in Pittsboro had a big yard and Muffy seemed content when we let her out to just do her business and not wander too far away from us.
We had a pleasant few days together after we returned and before we heard from Ben and Edy. We had checked with our landlady when we got back and told her we now had a dog. She said that was okay since she liked dogs and had owned one most of her life. She had thought about getting one for company after her husband died but had not done so as yet. She and Muffy hit it off and she offered to dog sit for us whenever we went out. We took her up on her offer and let her take Muffy with her on her trip to the various yard sales and flea markets the next day, which was a Saturday, to see how that would work out. When she came back midday, she told us that she really enjoyed having a bigger dog than the other lady with the small white poodle, so we knew her competitive juices were still flowing. Ben and Edy called and told us they’d like to have us come with them to England, and we arranged to have Muffy stay with our landlady who was very happy at the prospect. We left from Raleigh-Durham airport the following day.
Ben and Edy had arranged to have a car and driver pick us up at the airport and take us to meet them in Oxford at a hotel called the Randolph which was in the middle of Oxford. Although I knew that the Brits drove on the left side of the road, it was nevertheless disconcerting to me when I got into the limousine and sat next to the driver in what would ordinarily be the driver’s seat in America. Anya sat in the back behind the driver.
So I said to the driver, “You know that you are driving on the wrong side of the road. The left side is not the right side.”
He responded, “Yes it is, Mate. Over here the left side is the right side, and the right side is the wrong side. You blokes drive on the wrong side over there.”
“Not true. We drive on the right side, which is the right side, and you drive on the left side which isn’t the right side. It’s the wrong side. Left isn’t right and we’re right. Left is only right here, and left isn’t right in the rest of the world either. And since in the rest of the world, the right side is the right side, you are driving on the wrong side.”
“Well, as far as I’m concerned, I’m driving on the right side, which is the left side, and if you don’t like it, you can find another driver.”
I knew he was getting angry, but I tried to reason with him some more. I said, “Look, someone has to be right and someone has to be wrong, and since the rest of the world drives on the right, right is right, and you have to be the ones driving on the wrong side of the road. Right?”
And he stubbornly said, “Wrong.” I guess you just can’t reason with unreasonable people. And then he said, “Besides, we aren’t the only ones driving on the left. The Japanese also drive on the left, and they make all the best cars. So you can’t say that in the rest of the world, the right side is the right side. That’s just not right. To the Japanese, the left side is the right side. And the left side is the right side in Australia and India and a lot of other countries.”
“Well, sure, but all those countries were once British, except for Japan. And Japan doesn’t make the best cars, the Germans do. And it was a German named Benz who first made cars so the Germans have a better right to decide what side of the road is the right side, and to them right is right.”
“Well to me right is wrong.”
I gave up and said, “Okay, let’s agree to disagree,” and he just grunted but didn’t say anything.
I thought about why the English and Japanese might be driving on the left side of the road and remembered what Billy had told me about mounting a horse on the left side. No, I didn’t mean that the British had to get into their cars on the left side, and therefore had to park them on the left curb and therefore drive on the left, because they still wore swords. But they probably started out driving that way because of those damned swords. Now England had a lot of knights. Yes, it is true that
they had as many days as nights, and it is also true that the knights rode around day and night but probably rode more during the day than the night. Did a different knight patrol at night, and were these called night Knights, and is this where the term nightie night comes from? I don’t know. But that’s not the point I’m trying to make. When the knights drew their sword, day or night, they held it in their right hand and they had better pass to the left of the oncoming knights to make sure the swords were in a position to protect them from the other knight. The Japanese Samurai also had long swords, and if they were on horseback they would have to pass on the left as well.
Now the United States was settled after the discovery of gunpowder and everyone carried rifles as their primary weapon and not swords to protect themselves. They would carry their rifle in their right hand and balance it over the top of the horse with the barrel facing to the left. Therefore they had to pass on the right to make sure the rifle was pointing at their potential adversary at all times. So everyone passed on the right. And everyone in Germany and the rest of Europe must have switched as well. It only makes sense that they didn’t want to have their weapons facing in the wrong direction. But no. Not the British. They had to be different. It was because they are really old fashioned and steeped in tradition as well as steeped in tea. They have even retained their monarchy instead of getting rid of that system like most of the rest of the world. Maybe they could do this because they were an island and were isolated and didn’t have any enemies on their border. But just to be on the safe side, rather than give up driving on the left, they simply outlawed guns, as if that was the solution.
Now what about the Japanese? Like the English, tradition is very important to them as well, and they even still have an emperor just like England still has a queen. The English queen is even named after the queen that was around at the time the knights were roaming around at night. Another thought crossed my mind. What about the left-handed knights? Did they have to pass on the right, and did the right-handed knights and the left-handed knights have to alternate where they passed as they rode along? Maybe the left-handed knights were called alternate knights as a result. I think that expression is still used today in reference to people who are only showing up every other night.
One thing that both England and Japan have in common is that both are island nations. Maybe all people who live on islands are a little strange in their ways. I know from when I was growing up in Boston that the people who lived on Nantucket and Martha’s Vineyard were also strange in their ways, so maybe that’s the reason. And there is also an island outside of Charleston that has a strange name and is filled with strange people. It is called Kiawah Island. People have moved there from all over the country to build luxurious multimillion-dollar houses on the beach. They have come to Kiawah to live in the South for some perverse reason since it seems to be the very part of the country they detest and don’t understand. They never leave their island except when they read in the New York Times about a restaurant in Charleston where they are told they must go, and then like a bunch of lemmings they go to the restaurant and pay for meals that are so expensive that most locals can’t afford them, and wouldn’t pay for them anyway, because they could cook better meals at home. And that is fine because the diners from Kiawah don’t want to dine with Southerners. They wouldn’t feel comfortable with people who don’t idolize the New York Times. I heard that the people on Kiawah have requested their own private road to take them from Kiawah to the downtown restaurants, a limited access road that would not be open to the locals, so they wouldn’t have to meet up with them or take the chance that some of the locals would follow that road to the restaurants that they shouldn’t be eating at because they are reserved for subscribers to the New York Times.
Since the driver was taking us to Oxford from the airport, I tried to re-open the conversation by asking him about Oxford.
I said, “Is Oxford where you ford the river Ox?” I asked that because I didn’t think, as strange as England was turning out to be, that it was because of something simple like it was named after some place that someone had forded the river with oxen. The driver replied,
“That’s where people use to ford the river with their oxen.” He said it with disdain in his voice as if to say it was so obvious that I should have known. Stupid me. I should have known.
“What river is it that those oxen forded?” I asked.
“The river Thames.”
“I thought that the Thames was in London.”
“It is. It flows there from here.”
Well he was still acting the know-it-all, so I asked him, “So why didn’t they name London, Oxford?”
“Because the water is too deep to ford the Thames in London. The oxen would have to swim across there.”
“Then why didn’t they name it, Oxswim?” I think I stumped him with that question because he didn’t answer.
The whole business about Oxford didn’t entirely make sense to me. I remembered where I grew up that there were towns around Boston with names like Medford and Chelmsford and I was sure that there weren’t any animals called a Med or a Chelms that would have forded streams in those places, so I wasn’t convinced the driver knew what he was talking about. And he was driving on the wrong side of the road, so I thought there was a good chance he was wrong about how Oxford got its name. I thought maybe the Thames might have been named the Ox once upon a time. It was either that or there were prehistoric animals called Chelms or Meds, or those were the names some Indians in Massachusetts had given to their horses. I have never heard of any one riding on an animal called a Chelms or a Med, although, come to think of it, I have heard of people being on meds, but I don’t think that is where the expression comes from.
Chapter 23
We did end up checking into the Randolph later that morning. Because of the time difference and the fact that we had flown all night, we decided to take a shower and a nap, and after an “after,” we planned to meet with up with Ben and Edy for dinner. Ben and Edy wanted to try an Indian restaurant. They were plentiful and were supposed to be much better than Indian restaurants in the United States. I thought to myself, uh oh. My previous experience with Indian food was not positive, just as it had not been positive with horseback riding. But I had no choice but to go when Anya told me to give it another try and not be pigheaded about it.
Well it turned out to be a really good thing I did, because I found out that some Indian food can be quite tasty and not hot. They had a dish called biryani that is suspiciously like fried rice. Maybe that was why the Pakistanis and Chinese got along so well working for Al Qaeda together. You know what that old expression says. Those who eat together, terrorize together or something like that. There were several other dishes everyone ordered that the waiter said were mild. I tried them all and they weren’t bad. Ben told me to order beer and that would cut some of the spiciness and it did. I noticed as I tasted the food that each dish had a distinct flavor, unlike Chinese food in which the dishes all have a tendency to taste the same, especially in restaurants that have a “Taste of” in their name.
I looked over at a party of Brits who were eating at the table next to us. Like us they ordered a large biryani and a variety of different dishes to taste. But then they did something strange with all those delicately spiced dishes. They dumped them all on top of their biryani and mixed it all together in a big mush with all of those different tastes combined into one. Everyone says that British food tends to be bland and tasteless, and I guess when Brits encounter foods with distinct tastes, they have to combine them all together to make them bland and tasteless and suitable for the British palate. That just confirmed for me that the Brits are really mixed up about everything including what they eat as well as how they drive and how they name their cities and towns. The latter point was to be emphasized even more when we decided to tour around southwest England over the next two days before getting back to the business of finding out what Rhong Dong was up to.
; We decided to retain the services of the same driver, who had a Land Rover that could fit all of us, so we wouldn’t have to try and drive on the wrong side of the road. I didn’t intend to ask him any more questions because I knew he was likely to be wrong. It turned out that Oxford was not too far from several historic sites and near to the Cotswolds which were supposed to be a very pretty part of England and a must-see if you wanted to look at the lush countryside. On the way to the Cotswolds, we stopped to tour Blenheim Palace where Sir Winston Churchill was born. Although it was the family residence of the Churchill family, Sir Winston was not in residence. He had moved a few miles away and six feet under. Since we didn’t have a shovel, there was no reason to try to go to Bladon to see if we could dig him up and pay him our respects.
Instead we continued to the Cotswolds and went through some Merrie Olde Englishe Townes with quaint names such as Chipping Norton and Chipping Campden, for which, I’m sure, Camden, South Carolina must be named, or maybe not. Now why did they name the towns in the Cotswolds, Chipping something, especially since the Cotswolds were not known as the Chipping Cotswolds, although they could have been? We found out that the name Chipping before the town’s name meant it was a market town. Well, Charleston is a market town. At least it has a market in its downtown. I think it could have easily been named Chipping Charleston which has a certain cachet to it. I think that if it had been named a quaint Olde Englishe name like Chipping Charleston, it would serve the country well by distinguishing the Charleston in South Carolina from the Charleston in West Virginia, which has caused a lot of problems and has resulted in a lot of students such as me receiving mark downs in our grades in high school when we couldn’t identify which was where.