Something fishy
It was a dark and stormy night...
There I was, sitting in my favorite little bar in a small town in Loas - OK, so it is the only bar in that little town - enjoying my five days of R&R from the 'contract consultant' operation that some guys were running in SEA (no, I can't tell you anything except that it involved flying) when in walked a guy that looked vaguely familiar. Maybe it was the Loatian beer that made him look familiar but there was something else...
I'd been looking at the menu (bilingual) that seemed to make no sense in any language. I was about to make a WAG -wildazzed guess- when the stranger suggested I avoid the fish. Now even his voice seemed familiar, but I couldn't place it in the haze.
"what's wrong with the fish?", I asked.
"Well, from what I know, the owner buys from a bunch of guys who have an export business selling exotic reef fish to aquarium suppliers. However their fishing practices are a bit shoddy so they catch a lot of protected species. Rather than get caught sorting the poached piscines they just sell some species like loach and parrot fish to the locals. I'm not sure how edible they are but they certainly are illegally obtained."
"So why should I be worried if they are poachers? I'm just buying dinner."
"Oh, probably nothing can go wrong, but then the authorities, such as they are, might also infer that you knew and thus were party to the illegal operation."
He smiled, grabbed a couple of beers and sat down at my table. Bingo! Now I knew! the stranger was the Athletic Director from my old college! Name of Roche, but behind his back we called him "Roach". What a coincidence that he'd drop in here.
We swapped tales, and beers, for a bit and I inferred that he was also a 'consultant'.
Then he asked: "Can you fly a helicopter?" (To be continued...)
