The Abandoned of God: Book 2: Niger Is the Last Place You Get to Before You Get to the End of the World!

By Monroe Silver

Book one introduced Mason Cole Stuart as an adult on a flight to an assignment in Niger, Africa. In book two youll meet the cast of unusual characters to be introduced during this adventure ride in a land directly out of the Old Testament and Hollywood. Join in this thrill ride with unusual events that occur in Niger, Africa,the last place you get to before you get to the end of the world! You will understand, as did Mason Cole Stuart, what must be done to your last breath if God puts you in my way! Spend time with those who are, at times, the abandoned of God!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Xlibris US
• Release date: Sep 20, 2017
• ISBN: 9781543452501

Monroe Silver

Monroe Silver is a former Investment Councilor and Sales Director for Pharmed Services to Nursing Home and Courier Service to Nursing Homes with Outsource Business Solutions. He had 6 years of active duty in the US Military and got his Master Degree at Northwestern University. Now retired, he is pursuing a long held and often encouraged writing passion to give to others the ideas, dreams, and visions that have swirled around in his head for a long time. He writing, yoga, resistance training and caring for his dog named “Pretty”.

Book preview

THE ABANDONED OF GOD

Book 2: Niger Is the Last Place You Get to Before You Get to the End of the World!

Monroe Silver

Copyright © 2017 by Monroe Silver.

Library of Congress Control Number:   2017914622

ISBN:   Hardcover   978-1-5434-5248-8

   Softcover   978-1-5434-5249-5

   eBook   978-1-5434-5250-1

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted

in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,

without permission in writing from the copyright owner.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents either are the

product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance

to any actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Thinkstock are models,

and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.

Certain stock imagery © Thinkstock.

Rev. date: 09/21/2017

Xlibris

1-888-795-4274

www.Xlibris.com

765040

CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PART 1

Oh No; Not Another Long Flight

Chapter 1: Introducing The International Expeditions Traveling Lonely Hearts Club

Chapter 2: We Arrive At Agadez Airport!

PART 2

The Niger Story

Chapter 3: Our Photo Safari Into The Vast Sahara Desert Of Niger Begins

Chapter 4: The Tuareg Are The People Abandoned Of God

Chapter 5: What Sights We Saw In The Tenere

Chapter 6: Mestima’s Ténéré Desert Tour Company Is Born!

Chapter 7: What Were They? Ufos, Space Aliens, Fallen Angels, Flying Serpents, Demons, Jinn, Giants, Or Just Drunken Artists?

Chapter 8: Over My Head In Some Deep Do-Do With Missionary Victoria Adair

Chapter 9: Down The Rabbit Hole With Victoria In Wonderland

Chapter 10: Bested By The Best; Ramona Lively And Giant Jack O’shea, Master Private Detectives

Chapter 11: The Old Fort Is Still There, But No French Foreign Legionaries!

PART 3

China Comes To Us

Chapter 12: Chinese Nationals Running Around The Ténéré On Monster Dune Buggies

Chapter 13: Giant Chinese Dune Buggies Are Not Meant To Fly

Chapter 14: Little China In The Big Desert!

Chapter 15: From Chinese Encampment To Ancient Tuareg Water Well And Beyond!

Chapter 16: Deeper Down The Rabbit Hole With Victoria Adair

Chapter 17: Jack O’shea The Giant And Ramona Lively The Lovely

PART 4

We Are Going To Laurence Of Arabialand!

Chapter 18: Mestima Announces A Surprise!

Chapter 19: The Mystery City: Massive Towers, Abandoned, No People, And No Answers

Chapter 20: This Is The Old Testament, Hollywood, And Lawrence Of Arabiaville All Combined

Chapter 21: Rasma The Camel

Chapter 22: Our High Holy Day Thanksgiving Feast

PART 5

God Put You In My Way

Chapter 23: Starring In A Real-Life Horror Movie

Chapter 24: Devil Dog Fight To The Death

Chapter 25: When A Man Comes To The End Of Himself

PART 6

The Other Place

Chapter 26: The Devil Dog Fight, Part 2

Chapter 27: The Fight Is Over, Rescue And Insanity

PART 7

Ishna

Chapter 28: Change Of Travel Plans

Chapter 29: Return To The Boulders

PART 8

The Gathering Of The Tuareg Clans

Chapter 30: My Special Honor

Chapter 31: My Goodbye To Rasma

Chapter 32: The Camel Piss Finally Worked

Chapter 33: Ishna’s Secret Mission

PART 9

Tuareg Magic Blood Transformation Ceremony

Chapter 34: Ishna’s Story

Chapter 35: Mason Cole Stuart, Full-Blooded Tuareg For Life

Chapter 36: Camel Piss Was The Second Worst Concoction To Swallow

Chapter 37: My New Name

CONCLUSION

INTRODUCTION

Please continue on this fictitious journey that follows the close of Book 1 of The Abandoned of God: A Life Becomes a Better Life through Living. Book 1 introduced the son, Mason Cole Stuart, as an adult on a flight to an assignment in Niger, Africa. We discovered the son and father, Matthew Lee Stuart’s similar tragic lives changing events forty years apart. This knowledge brought their lives close together throughout the son’s high school years, until joining the army.

Book 1 concentrated on the son’s memories of the unique life of his father from the life-changing event in his early years at Talking Rock, Georgia, through his twenty-two-year army career of adventures in Hawaii, the Philippines, China, Panama, Montana, World War II at Pearl Harbor, Christmas Island, Camp Livingston, Louisiana, California, and with General Patton’s Third Army in France and Germany.

With Book 2, we will jump into the later life of the son, Mason Cole Stuart, as he begins his assignment to the Sahara Desert of Niger, Africa. Meet the cast of unusual characters to be introduced during this adventure ride in a land directly out of the Old Testament and Hollywood. Join this thrill ride with unusual events that occur in Niger, Africa—The last place you get to before you get to the end of the world! You will understand, as did Mason Cole Stuart, what must be done to your last breath if God puts you in my way! Spend time with a special people who are considered the abandoned of God!

PART 1

Oh No; Not Another Long Flight

I pushed my luggage cart from the airport terminal to the hotel lobby with all the energy of an unhealthy ninety-year-old. The airport was connected to the plush Paris Airport Hotel by a long runway. The windowed runway between airport and connecting hotel showed a rainy, overcast, cold, colorless, late-October early evening in Paris. I checked in at the hotel lobby in something akin to a drunken stupor.

By the time I pushed my luggage cart into my large, luxury hotel room, it was approaching 8 pm Paris time. This did not allow a lot of time for possible sleep before meeting my International Expeditions travel group at 2 am in the hotel lobby and then head back to the airport for our long flight to Agadez, Niger. I knew as exhausted as I was, sleep would be fleeting to nonexistent. I had too much swirling around in my frazzled brain. I was operating on nerve ends and too exhausted for calm sleep.

I decided to put out the clothes for the long flight from Paris to Agadez, Niger, shower, shave, keep all luggage on the airport cart, set alarms and arrange wakeup calls for 1 am. I tried to relax on my huge bed, with no luck at all. Next I decided to sit up in a plush overstuffed chair with padded arm rests. This was how I was to spend a fitful night in review of the past twenty-four hours of air travel from Houston, Texas, to New York, and the never-to-be-forgotten fright night flight from New York to Paris.

There was so much that would flood in and out of my head this short night until 1 am concerning past memories, interspersed with brief drops into deep but fitful Dreamland. Throughout my seated attempt at some brief rest, my thoughts were a kaleidoscope of my past you’re in the army now memories and experiences on the flight to Paris. There were all the wonderful people I met on the flight. I knew without doubt that I could say to each one of them, God put you in my way!

So many segments of memories flashed into my addled mind, tired beyond sleep: My review of my early life; my father’s unbelievable past history; the near-death experiences on our flight to Paris; the wonderful group of volunteer moral boosters I met—they ministered confidence and assurance of God’s safety to terrified flight passengers; why I was on the trip to Niger; the assignment that I had accepted from my old commanding officer, Wild Willie Corcoran; thoughts of how on earth I could collect the intel needed from a secluded Chinese operation in the remote Sahara of Northern Niger; the most unusual encounter with the unexplainable, highly puzzling situation interacting with Judy Ann Graft/Judy Foster and her hauntingly exotic, beautiful, mesmerizing, mystic grandmother, Nancy Delacroix, and our Old Cherokee Thunderbolt Strike! What a mix of memories crammed into a befuddled mind in the five hours before the wakeup calls and alarms were to sound at 1 am.

CHAPTER 1

Introducing The International Expeditions Traveling Lonely Hearts Club

Holy shit! I’m jarred back to that seemingly doomed flight over the Atlantic. What was that noise? Were the wings finally becoming detached from the body of the plane after threatening to do so for hours of flapping like a goose too heavy to maintain flight?

It was most difficult to put two thoughts together. I had not actually slept. My mind was drifting into my past memories, more recent events and a current assignment for William Corcoran and the NSA. There were some moments of blackout, but no real sleep.

Why didn’t I have my seat belt around me as tight as possible? Why were the other scared shitless passengers so quiet? Had they all fainted from fright or been given some strong sedative to calm the nerves? Why was I left out of this administered drug relief before our destined plunge into the Atlantic? I had to know what was going on. I dared not say or even think the thought, What was going down? because I knew the answer to that question.

So, I bravely but hesitantly cracked a right eyelid to survey my doomed situation. This was not good. I assume this was an emergency warning being blasted, preparing every passenger to adjust as best as possible for full impact into the dark, deep, cold Atlantic. Damn it, everyone could hear the screeching oogaha horn warning buzzer. Why continue to drive us poor passengers into more traumas from that God-awful warning noise? Why don’t our pilots silence those sirens once used for warning of a WWII German air raid bombardment of London? My God, that noise is maddening. It would awaken the dead or those dead asleep! Why was I even thinking the word dead? That was definitely not where I wanted my mind to go.

Hold on, cowboy! The screeching noise is my three alarm clocks announcing a happy 1 am Paris time. Now I must answer my loud set volume phone ringing off the hook to hear a pleasant, young female voice with a delightful French accent wish me a wonderful 1 am rise and shine. I am seated in my big, soft large-armed chair at the Paris International Airport Hotel. It all is coming back to me. I have been drifting in and out of sleep, reliving past and current events in my life and worrying about my present assignment to Northern Africa. That seemingly doomed flight over the Atlantic is long over with, but still haunting to me. I could not stop consciously or unconsciously stop trying to figure out how to accomplish this volunteer assignment in Niger for my old Army Intelligence CO, Wild Willie Corcoran. Now I must get dressed, push my luggage to the hotel lobby, make the acquaintance of our IE head guide for a briefing of our itinerary for the photo safari into the Sahara Desert of Niger. I will be introduced to all my fellow paying guests for the next six week’s adventure. I must get moving. If I fell back into this comfy chair, I could sleep sound for twelve hours!

I got moving with my pushcart carrying all luggage, and arrived as usual ahead of everyone else. This meeting is for 2:00 a.m. and I’m all by my lonesome at 1:40 a.m., Paris time. It was not many minutes before my flight fright night missionary to the fearful, hopeless passengers and member of the Mason Cole Crusaders for reassurance of a safe landing in Paris in our wounded duck airplane, Victoria Adair, arrived.

Victoria took one look at me and asked, Mason Cole, do I look as bad as you look? I laughed as I honestly told her, You are beautiful in any circumstances and will look better than me on the back of a Tuareg racing camel or from the top of a 1,000-foot Sahara Desert dune in a blowing sandstorm! Victoria managed a pained attempt at a smile and chuckled.

You are a delightful charmer, Mason Cole, but I think we both look washed out, sleep deprived, still shaken from our fright night flight, and will prove brain-dead this day long. We must arrange to sit together on this long, hopefully smooth, flight to Agadez, so we can try to sleep, and not have to chitchat with other IE travel companions who all arrived in Paris a couple of days ago. They did not have our fun death defying thrill ride of yesterday as you and I. Boy, oh boy, there is your experienced caring missionary talking, isn’t it? I don’t want to be bothered by visiting with or being friendly to our travel group until I can get the cobwebs out of my exhausted brain. We need sleep and lots of it.

I totally concurred with Victoria and promised we would sit together apart from our Sahara Desert travel mates, with whom we had six weeks to get intimately acquainted! Sleep was the objective on our upcoming flight, with hopefully a very smooth ride.

At that moment at 1:50 am, our International Expedition travel leader walks up and introduces himself, along with his stunningly beautiful girlfriend. Roger Everett is a friendly, fiftyish, tall six-footer, lean, sunburned, blue-eyed, and sandy haired. I had read about Everett’s tour experiences with IE and other tour companies’ primarily in Africa, but also some European mountain tours and Himalaya high mountain adventures in Asia including Tibet, Nepal, and Northern India. Roger Everett was a most experienced and impressive tour guide.

Roger introduces his lady love, Monique LaVaro, who will accompany us on our adventure. Monique is as tall as Roger, probably midthirties to fortyish in age, perfect white teeth to accent a perfect smile. She shares Roger’s deep blue eyes, but has the complexion and smooth skin of a fashion model or an actress. Monique makes a lot of Roger’s guided tours as a writer for a large French travel magazine. What else?

Monique and Roger have shared splendid adventures together with both earning their salaries for their work on these all-expense-paid tours by their employers. It was a grand arrangement for the two traveling, adventure-seeking lovebirds. We are to learn so much of their experiences of their joint travels over the past years. They have been a serious couple for seven years, having met on one of Roger’s Himalaya Mountain treks for IE, with Monique as a photographer and writer for her travel magazine. They have been together, with some breaks, since that high mountain travel trip.

This couple asked about our flight to Paris. They knew we had a very bad experience as our flight was in a dangerous weather situation. Victoria and I simply shook our heads while very briefly stating the extremely bad deal we lived through. Everett, being very experienced with travel guests of IE, understood completely that Victoria and I were a couple of barely standing sleep-deprived zombies.

He assured us that this introductory meeting was to be brief on our travel plans, taboos to be avoided in this Muslim country, some needed details concerning documents, shot records, and baggage checks that Niger customs officials would require at the Agadez Airport. He also would outline our activities after clearing customs, meeting our Tuareg guides, currency exchange, and hotel stay in Agadez, plus dinner together later that evening at a restaurant in the city and time schedules for tomorrow’s beginning travel.

The other IE paying travel guests began to join us at 1 am. Roger Everett made all the introductions and got everyone comfortable in a circle of comfy chairs. Poor Victoria and I looked at each other, swearing to keep the other awake. Of course all the guests had heard of our ordeal and had lots of comments concerning bad flights they had endured in their flying past. It really did not help Victoria or I not one whit to hear other hair-raising tales of near-death flights from around the world, but everyone was trying to be friendly and sympathized with our ordeal on our flight from hell. Every traveling guest could see how totally wasted we were from no sleep for thirty-six hours and left us alone out of sympathy.

What a unique mix of characters. This was a simple brief introduction of our group, then the itinerary, and travel facts of our six-week adventure in the Sahara Desert of Northern Niger. We would learn much, much more about the backgrounds of each guest over our long travels, but the cart push to the airport, waiting to get checked in for our flight, and waiting to board gave all a chance to get a jump start on the background of our travel companions.

Roger did explain that this Sahara Desert photo safari was a new addition with International Expeditions. I knew exactly why this new tour had been added to IE’s long list of locations and it had to do with my collecting intelligence on Chinese explorations in the Sahara Desert of Niger, but I digress. Roger, without Monique, had accompanied our Tuareg Tour company on generally this same trip months ago with a picky, petty, unhappy group of French. Our group was the first full tour of Americans with this Tuareg guide service and on this itinerary. Great, we were an experiment. Oh well!

IE tour leader Roger Everett split his non-IE guide time between Paris, staying with Monique, and visiting his elderly mother living in Vancouver, Washington. Monique joined Roger on as many of his visits to his mom’s home as her career allowed. Monique often arranged to write articles from the scenic U.S. Northwest, British Columbia, and Alberta, Canada. Many of her company-paid travel trips were with Roger along, if his mom was doing well.

Roger’s mom loved Monique and the love was reciprocated. The mother was quite wealthy from her marriage to Roger’s deceased father, who had left her and Roger with extensive real estate holdings. Roger’s mom had been active in the husband’s real estate firm for decades until his heart conditions took him away from her. The firm was sold and many existing properties were inherited when Roger was in college. Roger’s love of travel adventure was a natural from his mom and dad, who introduced Roger to many diverse parts of the world while a child. Roger and Monique lived the life they treasured. They were as happy as a couple could be with their lives.

So, Roger began the introduction of all our traveling companions. Dale Pierce was recently retired from NASA as a high-level space engineer. Dale had been worked on many of NASA’s famous moon mission and space exploration projects doing the detail work as an aerospace engineer. We would hear fascinating stories concerning NASA’s early days and Dale’s involvement. He would entertain us with some of his gizmo gadgets he carried on our two-thousand-mile counterclockwise, irregular circle of the Northern Sahara Desert of Niger.

He would announce to us as we would be around a campfire in the middle of nowhere, on a clear night with a billion stars shining brightly, that in a few minutes a satellite of U.S. or Russian ownership would be crossing the skies in a certain direction. We would follow Dale away from the fire and watch as he correctly forecast the satellite’s movement, intended path in the sky, details of its origins, age, and functions. We never had to worry about getting lost in the vast Sahara with Dale’s gadgets to pinpoint our location. Of course, as we were to learn on this adventure, our Tuareg guides never got misdirected while in their vast trackless, roadless homeland in the Ténéré, the name for this portion of the Sahara Desert near their nomadic tribe’s unmarked and loosely defined territory.

Jeb and Jackie Lamoine were from Springfield, Missouri. They would tell everyone at first that they owned a small furniture store. This was not exactly accurate. The Lamoines owned Lamoine’s Custom Hardwood Furniture Manufacturing Company. They were grandparents who were finally able to retire, with several grown children handling every phase of the hardwood furniture manufacturing business.

They had started as a small concern, but through hard work, frugal habits, designing a quality product, and being located near the boom in home construction that took place around Branson, Missouri, their business flourished and the Lamoines became very wealthy. Branson, Missouri, grew and grew while establishing its country music entertainment theaters, vacation attractions, and entertainment parks. The country music stars and the wealthy retired with means who custom-built homes around Table Rock Lake and all over the Branson scenic Ozark Mountain area wanted fine custom furniture, bookshelves, and cabinets from Lamoine’s Custom Hardwood Furniture. Business was booming, and Jeb and Jackie were getting to see the world they had always dreamed of visiting. They were funny, down-to-earth, wonderful people to travel with in the middle of nowhere. They each possessed excellent singing voices from practice with the Springfield Orchestra Choir and church choirs over the years. Everyone would encourage these two songbirds to entertain us around our campfire on many cold nights in the desert. This singing talent was to be put into use in a most unusual way on our trip back into the Old Testament times and the magical settings of Niger’s Tenere!

Joanne Taylor and Sandy Taylor Denton were sisters. Joanne was a topnotch thoroughbred racehorse veterinarian in Florida. She was very much in demand to treat these high-spirited, hot-blooded animals worth millions of dollars to their owners. Joanne kept them healthy, nursed their ailments, helped keep them running in the racing season, making money for the owners and investors. Joanne had acquired partial ownership on several thoroughbred racehorses over the years when an owner needed her services but was short of cash. Joanne loved her work, but she had needed a break during this winter off season of racing in Florida. Joanne had never been married, was in her fifties, was most attractive, witty, and a fun addition to our group of traveling oddballs.

The sister, Sandy Taylor Denton, was a recent widow. Her husband had died in an auto accident near their home in Virginia within the past six months. This was Sandy’s second marriage that was given only two years. The first marriage had been a terrible ordeal for Sandy, with a cheating, abusive husband. This second marriage was a most happy situation for Sandy, only to end in tragedy. Sandy was at rock bottom. She looked like she was trying to starve herself to death. She appeared unhealthy, physically and mentally, for an attractive woman in her midforties. The two sisters looked very much alike, except for Sandy’s sunken cheeks and eyes.

Her sister, Joanne, practically forced Sandy to come with her on this trip to get as far away from her sad reflections as possible, hoping she could renew her life with space and time from the familiar. Niger was about as far away from anyone’s familiar world as possible. Sandy did find her soul again, her happy spirit, laughter, wonderment, and peace in the last place you get to before you get to the end of the world! It proved to be difficult to remain sad and forlorn around what would prove to be a collection of cowboys and cowgirls, full of life, high spirit and ready for a true adventure in the middle of nowhere.

Arthur Hamilton started out as a mystery man. He was extremely wealthy, single, in his fifties in age, average size, excellent shape, grayish dark hair, blue/green eyes, with extensive adventure travel under his belt. He had been on several IE tours with Roger Everett over the past decade. He was quiet, at least at first, kept to himself, and gave away no personal info, to include where he called home or what he did for a living or how he got very wealthy. He would become contaminated by the free spirits in our group and did not remain a mystery man for too long.

Rachael Sanderson was our mystery woman traveler. She seemed quite wealthy, had traveled extensively. Several adventures were also with IE and led by Roger Everett, especially the Himalaya Mountains treks. Rachael was in her late thirties, red hair, green eyes, a real stunner in beauty, quiet, single, an avid photographer with expensive equipment, and was very introverted. At least Rachael was quiet at the beginning. The group of traveling lonely hearts club band finally melted Rachael’s icy demeanor.

Stanley Jameson was from Atlanta, Georgia, married, a true adventure travel nut with many IE trips under his belt, and again, several with Roger Everett. Stan’s wife often accompanied him, if the trip was not too tough and with luxuries. Our Niger Sahara trip most definitely qualified as no luxury, plus quite ruff and tuff. Stan was also a photography nutcase with extremely expensive equipment, with multi lens of various sizes, tripods, and sandproof carrying cases; we learned these were a must in the windblown Sahara. Stanley was an architect in partnership with his father and two brothers with their own firm. Business was obviously quite good for the Jameson Architectural Firm.

We were blessed with a true odd couple that were a wonderful hoot in every way. Ramona Lively was seventy-six years young. Very young and very lively! She had to have been a knockout beauty even in her fifties and sixties, because to this day, Ramona was beautiful, spry, healthy, and in excellent shape at seventy-six years. Ramona was also extremely wealthy. She had been widowed for twenty years from her successful, famous lawyer husband. James Lively was a partner in Lively, Moss, and Tilden Partners at Law in New York City. They were the bigshot, big-city lawyers you hear about. James Lively was fifteen years senior to his wife. Hard drinking, hard living, and work pressures killed James Lively when Ramona was fifty-six years of age.

The odd couple partner to Ramona Lively was Jackson Patrick O’Shea, lovingly referred to as Giant Jack O’Shea! Jack obviously had been born with acromegaly that had accelerated growth in his bone structure and caused gigantisms. Jack’s head, hands, feet, chest, shoulder width, and overall proportions were those of a giant. He was not the exaggerated height of seven-foot-plus of some affected with acromegaly. Jackson Patrick O’Shea was an impressive six feet seven inches, but it was his dimensions that were so outsized. Jack was not fat or heavy for his proportions. He was quite athletic, weighing a muscular 255 pounds at sixty-two years of age, with a smallish waist. Needless to say, Jack the Giant could definitely handle himself in any serious situation. We would hear stories of his New York City police detective and private eye adventures more from Ramona than Jack. They were always told with humor and brought on fascinated laughter from all our tour folks. However, I never failed to detect the life-and-death danger that Big Jackson Patrick O’Shea had lived through.

Jack was not a big dumb guy. Quite the contrary, he had been a New York City police detective most of his working career. He had quite a reputation. He had been shot in the line of duty four times and killed all four assailants; two with returned pistol fire and two with his giant’s hands and strength. Jack became a private detective for better working conditions and for much better income. Jack was very successful.

The Lively, Moss, and Tilden Law firm had Giant Jack O’Shea on their payroll for special assignments not for the fainthearted or gentle in disposition. Giant Jack O’Shea well earned his money and helped Ramon’s husband’s law firm win many difficult cases with detailed, hard-to-come-by information, often from tough thugs and criminals. Information tended to be given when a rough, tough guy with needed info was seated across from and being questioned by a man with a head twice your size, a voice like rolling thunder, with the look of being capable and willing to tear your arms away from your torso if needed. Giant Jack O’Shea was a very successful private detective.

Somewhere over the course of years working for Ramona’s husband, Jack and Ramona became intimate. They were very discreet and made no mistakes. James Lively was a serial adulterer on his wife, with one sleazy affair after another. Jack O’Shea had lots of detailed proof on James Lively for adultery, but for the sake of their children and the law firm’s business, Ramona remained married to James Lively. She knew the unmarried Jack O’Shea loved her, but she was his senior by fourteen years. She always promised Giant Jack that they would have their time together when she became free.

For the past ten years, with Ramona an extremely wealthy woman, she and her giant lover traveled the world. Ramona wanted to see every place the United States said a citizen should not visit: North Korea, Cuba, Iran, Lebanon, Russia, North Vietnam, and Detroit! I only jest! Jack would make all the arrangements, often visiting the countries beforehand, making many needed arrangements. These arrangements often included securing their personal safety with appropriate bribes with the proper corrupt government officials; securing reliable bodyguards,