We stopped outside of a door in the hall. Hanson knocked sharply once and opened the door, and motioned us in. Dick went first, and I followed. Hanson brought up the rear and the Frozen Twins took up positions in the hall on either side of the door.

There was a small blond man, in a carefully tailored police uniform, sitting behind a grey metal desk in the room. He had thinning blond hair, a badly tattered mustache, a long narrow neck, a narrow face, and he had watery blue eyes, rimmed with red. He pointed us to two chairs in front of his desk. There was nothing on his desk but a calendar, a pad and a pen, and two passports. We sat. Hanson stood behind us against the door.

We sat in silence for a few minutes as he stared at us. I stared back, thinking maybe he needed a tissue for those eyes. Dirty Dick stared at his hated boots, looking like he might cry too. Eventually, he got tired of trying to scare us, and picked up a passport. Wasn't mine, as it had a dark purple cover , so I figured it was Dick's. He looked from the passport to Dick a couple of times, turned the pages and read them carefully, and looked at Dick again. "I suppose it is you," he said, in English, no accent, sporting a reedy, scratchy voice. He tossed Dick's passport onto the desk and picked up mine. He looked at it and looked at me several times.

I knew what was coming next.

"What kind of name is this?"

Ok, I hate this, and it is the story of my life summed up in a handful of words.

"What do you mean?"

"Zeno Nguyen. I am familar with American names. Most of you are named Bob or Dan or Smith or something like that, or maybe something Irish?" "What is an American doing named this?"

"We have lots of different names in America. I know a girl named June Bug Delahoussey from Grande Isle, Louisiana. You just never know in the USA."

He didn't think that was funny, or interesting, I guess, because he started the evil glare trick again. Now, I have been glared at by some professionals in my young life, including my mother, who could out-glare this  guy two straight falls after drinking a six-pack of Jax beer, so I just waited.

"I am Captain Jansen, and I am in charge here. I didn't want to be in charge of a giant frozen island full of bored, stupid drunks, but I have little personality for politics or, what do you say, biting asses, which is why I am here. Now, I want to know why you are here."

"It's kissing," I said.

"What did you say?" hissed the captain.

"Kissing asses, kissing, not biting. Biting asses would get you posted someplace worse than this, if there was a worse place. Which, I admit, there is not."

His wet eyes went to wet slits.

"You think you are funny. So. I think you are more in deep trouble than funny. You are here illegally, and I find from Hanson here that you are also involved in murder. Maybe you will find some years in a cold concrete box on a giant frozen island funny too, but I think not." He looked at Dick, and then back at me. "Why are you here? Start with that, then we will get to the woman."

We sat for a minute. Then Dick said, softly, "We missed the boat."

First, let me say this is true, but before I go to why, I have to cover who, meaning me.

Zeno Nguyen. That's me. Screwed from the get-go by a name. It is true, but at least I have an excuse. 

My grandfather was from Viet Nam. He was half French and half Vietnamese, the son of a French soldier and a the daughter of a local rice farmer in Dien Ben Phu. He moved to the U.S. in 1969, after being the personal bodyguard for the President of South Vietnam, and the premier hand-to-hand combat instructor for the elite units of the South Vietnamese elite forces.

My grandmother had been a peasant in the central part of South Vietnam, the daughter of a a moderately successful rice farmer. This doesn't mean they had a car, but everyone ate well, and my grandmother attended a French Catholic school for girls.

My grandfather was posted in Dien Ben Phu as a security expert for the French Consulate. He had a family in France, but he had never seen them for more than a month a year since he was posted halfway across the world. He saw my grandmother when  her high school class toured the Consulate one day, and was smitten.

My grandfather courted my mother enthusiastically after that, following her back to the school, and then bribing, or perhaps threatening someone at the school to find out my grandmother's personal information. Much to her embarrassment, he began calling on her, and, surprisingly, was able to meet, and gain the confidence, and even respect, of her father. Eventually she fell under his spell as well, conceding the worth of her naivite and innocence to be equal to that of his relentlessness and charm.

He had been a savate champion in France, and had gone on to study Muy Thai and Jiu Jitsu before joining the army. He was a very large man, well over six feet, and, according to old fight programs, weighed  240 pounds.

Eventually, with the blessing of the old farmer, my grandmother and grandfather moved in together, in a small apartment adjacent to the Consulate compound. Her French improved from schoolgirl basics, and he learned enough Vietnamese to talk to her father , her brothers, and the old men of her village, as long as it was simple conversation, and they spoke one at a time.

There was, apparently, never any talk of his other family and life, although I am sure that my grandmother knew about them. There was never any question of marriage between them, even though the mortal sin tainted them both, even with the French Catholic laissez-faire attitude about such things, especially in Viet Nam. However, that inconvenient side effect of arrangements like this came to put a gilding of implied commitment to their relationship, a link that formalized and forever memorialized their relationship. My father.

He was born as the French began their inevitable decline in the country, a boy with classic Vietnamese features, but with a size not seen often in Southeast Asians. He was the treasure of his parents, and his father glowed for him, and rarely left his side. Their time together was so intense, the boy never begrudged his father the four or six weeks every six months that he would disappear to his ghostly primary life.

By the time he was four, my father, who they named, without foresight, Phuc, (which in southern Vietnamese means "Luck") began learning savate from his father. By the time he was ten, he was the biggest Vietnamese kid anyone could remember seeing, and was a loving, dutiful son. He was quiet, polite, and a very good student at the French school he attended. His father was a God to him. 

He could have been teased and bullied about his parents unusual situation, but his size and his skill at fighting caused all but the fastest and oldest kids to leave him alone.

The Indochina war changed it all. In 1947, when he was twelve, Phuc's father left home during the night, and hell began. The French and the Vietnamese went to war in 1946, and in a year, the war spread to the south. My grandfather disappeared, and was never seen by his wife and son again.

My father wouldn't talk much about the years that followed, but I know they were hard. In 1950, all the French were gone from his home town, and some people came and took him away from his mother to be a soldier, at 15. He was six feet tall, the biggest male around, and the soldiers never believed his mother's screaming claim, "He is only a boy, only fifteen!", as they dragged him away and pushed her back. It wouldn't have matter anyway. Fifteen is plenty old enough to die fighting in that part of the world.

He was supposed to fight the French, but he refused. They went to beat him, and I guess it wasn't easy, because apparently he beat the crap out of half a dozen would-be persuaders before he was eventually held down. Just before someone shot him, an officer intervened and had him dragged off.

He sat on the floor of a shanty house, and the officer leaned against the wall, smoked,  and stared at him for a while. "What is your name?", he asked. 

"Nugyen".

"And your first name?"

"Zeno."

The officer frowned. "What kind of name is that?"

"The name my father gave me," said my grandfather.

"And who is your father?"

"He is the greatest soldier and greatest fighter alive."

"And he is French."

The officer stood quietly and smoked thoughtfully.

"How old are you?"

"Fifteen."

After a minute, the officer said, "You are not the biggest fifteen year old I have ever seen, but almost. You are not the fastest fifteen year old I have seen, but almost that too. You are certainly the biggest, fastest fifteen year old I have seen, though. Where did you learn to fight? You have injured five of my men, all grown, some of them, I think, badly. How did you learn to this at fifteen?"

"My father taught me. He is the greatest fighter of all the French", said my Grandfather, sullenly, but with defiance and pride. "He would kill you all easily."

"Even so," said the officer smiling through a cloud of blue-white smoke, "Even so."

"I have a friend that I think would like to meet you. He likes to meet boys who can fight like you. I think you would like to meet him, and see what he can teach you."

" I just want to go home," said my father. "I am French," he said, head raised. "I will not fight the French."

"Even so." The officer smiled, dropped his hand-rolled cigarette and ground it out, without looking, on the dirt floor.