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            Under a shedding chestnut tree, Mandy raises a warm, sweaty hand and caresses my cheek. “I think you need to shave before our next meeting,” she says. She’s a starchy brunette in a suit, a string of pearls around her neck. Crimson lipstick. Rapier green fingernails. Stiletto heels. We know we are adjacent to The National Mall in Washington, D.C.— in summer— because the droning traffic never lets up, the green, plastic sign under the tree says “American Chestnut, Castanea dentata,” the sun scorches us relentlessly and the humidity has reached 98%.

Your usual tourists are a family group. Two parents, two or three kids. Dressed in shorts, they sweat in the heat. They visit the Lincoln Memorial and the Reflecting Pool. The Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum. They walk along The Mall, an enormous grassy field, devoid of shade. They buy ice cream and diversify: Those with pretensions of culture visit the National Gallery of Art. Guilty consciences drive people to the Vietnam War Memorial, the Holocaust Museum and the statue of Martin Luther King. Capitalists visit the Bureau of Engraving and Printing to watch the manufacture of dollar bills. Historians bake in the heat at the mammoth World War Two Memorial. They search out the tiny FDR Memorial. They even cross the inland sea of the Tidal Basin to visit the Jefferson Memorial. Thomas Jefferson, America’s third president, founder of the University of Virginia.

Mandy and I are not your usual tourists. A 35-year-old wheeler and dealer in New Yawk, she has brought me here as executive assistant and dog’s body. I trail her to staff conferences in Congressional offices. Interviews. Meetings. The summer of my discontent, I wait impatiently for Baz Luhrmann’s “The Great Gatsby” and Tom Cruise in “Oblivion” to come out on DVD. Ex-military, I combine brawn with… what? Stealth? Brains? Ability? Well, maybe… I give myself some credit: I am worldly. Been there, done that. To people in (alphabetical order) Afghanistan, Bosnia, Grenada, Iraq and Somalia. There’s very little I have yet to see.

Mandy made a name for herself as a koi collector, but she insists those days are in the past. Although an 18-inch koi can fetch as much as $2,000, among the titans of industry in Manhattan, koi collecting is considered strictly small beer. They have their own value system: Sotheby’s, yes. Koi collecting, not so much.

We are weighed down with negotiations. You wanna change federal government regulations, you gotta horse trade with Senate staffers. These young D.C. hotshots never know what hit ’em. They come away in shock. In The Big Apple, Mandy is known as The Kneecap Lady. Vicious, she connects the dots between the brokerage houses, the banks and several historically blue-chip corporations. Always on gargantuan projects, like the Nicaraguan bid to build a waterway rivaling the Panama Canal. Mandy is very involved in Venezuelan oil. The Russians at Gazprom hate her guts. She’s the only person I know who has access to the Vatican’s secret bank, the Institute of Religious Works. Try opening an account!

Naturally, Mandy supports Christine Quinn for the next mayor of NYC. Vote your conscience, not your pocketbook. Mandy’s ringtone is Kim Kardashian saying “Kiss me, Enriqué!”

We’re in D.C. pushing for a resumption of Mimolette cheese imports. Louis XIV declared Mimolette the National Cheese of France, but the Food and Drug Administration has suddenly decided that they don’t like the mites who live atop the rinds. Sacre bleu! They’re cheese mites. Without them, no cheese. Nights on the Rhine, mites on the rind. Who cares?! You throw away the rinds, idiots!

Mandy ain’t no lobbyist. But a bizness woman, she does her own lobbying. “Why pay some jerk and only get 15% of his attention, when I can cut to the chase and do it all myself?” she figures. Half of Congress has a BOLO warning out on her, as in “be on the lookout for…” BOLO. That’s my lady!

We’re also in the process of buying up— as scrap— war materiel in Afghanistan which the U.S. military deems surplus and unnecessary for future missions. Metric tons of war materiel.

Mandy’s cornered the frankfurter market in anticipation of July 4th and the 150 million hot dogs that Americans are expected to consume.

Her part of Wall Street is constantly afraid of getting blindsided by revolutions and other destabilizing events. I attempt to portray the Arab Spring as a business opportunity, in a new market, just waiting to be exploited. My entreaties fall on deaf ears! As Mandy’s No. 2, I’ve learned to keep my mouth shut.

So we don’t really care that the three-day Smithsonian Folklife Festival is in town. Crowds flood The Mall, children waving balloons. Day One features Copper Canyon Indian Traditions. Just like in real life, these Mexican natives weave reed baskets, steam tamales in brick ovens and panhandle. Day Two presents Memories of Vietnam. Big, black brothers grill hamburgers on outdoor ranges. Tinny 60’s rock music blares from boom boxes, a soundtrack that kicks butt.

“I don’t do oldies,” remarks Mandy. “I’m more into the L.A. experimental band Swahili Blonde.”

A Huey helicopter adorned with a Red Cross lands and takes off repeatedly, while Filipina, faux Vietnamese, “native girls” run tent brothels. Day Three is Buddhist Monk Day. Wearing saffron robes, they chant prayers, burn incense, make sacrificial offerings and immolate themselves in protest over Chinese policy in Tibet. It’s not every day you witness monks burning themselves to death on The Mall. The police cordon off the area, waiting for the smoke to clear.

“Some limo,” I comment.

“That’s the presidential limo,” a clean-shaven Secret Service agent tells me, looking askance. Like, What are you, a moron?

Aha! I wipe the crud out of my eyes and see that FLOTUS, the wife of the president, is doing one of her periodic photo ops among school children on The Mall. In addition to the Secret Service, there’s Park Police and D.C. law enforcement. Everything but rent-a-cops. Even Police Chief Cathy Lanier is on hand. Must be a big occasion.

As Mandy and I amble down Constitution Avenue, wishing there were fewer people… danger! danger! danger!

            My internal radar blows a gasket. Yes, I am looking, but I don’t understand what I see. There are soldiers in olive drab, wrinkled uniforms, looking like they slept in their clothes. They sport red stars centered on their caps. Yellow faces. Slanty eyes. Carrying Kalashnikov rifles. Wearing cheap, black leather boots. They are holding off the crowd at gunpoint. People are madly making cell phone calls. Looking upset. Where is Dzhokhar Tsarnaev now that we really need him? I cock an ear. Well, well! Shades of Pyongyang!

Three police cruisers roar up, disgorging officers. They unholster their handguns. Even the presidential limo screeches to a halt, empty except for the driver. Why in the world…?

Summing up the situation, I shout, “Those are North Koreans! They’ve occupied the abandoned gatehouse!”

I’m the one at PGA golf tournaments screaming after every putt, “Go in the hole!”

“That U.S. Capitol Gatehouse isn’t abandoned,” Chief of Police Lanier insists, climbing from the lead cruiser. “It’s an historic landmark !”

Oh, great! The whole building’s only 10 by 12. This is the National Registry version of “Little House On the Prairie,” with North Koreans standing in for the children. I state my case: “To quote Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia, that sounds like ‘legalistic argle-bargle.’ They’re in there! We have to do something about this. And I mean now!”

“Well, hold your horses,” says Lanier judiciously. “So they’ve invaded a little stone gatehouse. It’s not the Capitol building or anything. I don’t want a lot of unnecessary bloodshed and mayhem. We’ll cordon off the area and wait them out!”

I look around at the disas-tourists lining the sidewalk. “Yeah, okay,” I agree.

“But Police Chief Lanier,” the officer on my left declares excitedly. “The North Koreans are stopping traffic on Constitution Avenue and collecting tolls. A dollar a car!”

“WHAT?!” she howls. “That’s ILLEGAL! Get the SWAT teams in here!” Clutching her neck, she keels over.

Huh?

It takes me a moment to get it, but then I see the tell-tale, waxy, green bamboo poison dart that has punctured her flesh. Looking up, I spot the nefarious barrels of bamboo blowguns, each one four feet long. Aimed in our direction!  The darts travel at 150 feet a second— that’s 102 miles per hour! No way can we dodge ’em. Silently, two police officers on my right also collapse. Cripes! These North Koreans are good. Any square inch of exposed skin, and you’re a target. I crouch down lower behind the presidential limo. Discretion being the greater part of valor, I follow the example set by Napoleon at Wagram. “Mandy!” I shout. In her low-cut Navy blue suit and pearls, she won’t last another ten seconds. “Quick! Jump into the bullet-proof limo!”

Smart and fast, she scrambles inside. Whew! I’m still trying to formulate a plan when I feel the hot, rancid breath of a policeman breathing down my neck. “What’s your plan?!” he demands. Kozlovsky it says on his silver nameplate. I look at him and shrug. “Well, we got to do something until backup arrives,” he insists, donut crumbs caking his mouth, gun at the ready. “LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT! LOOK OUT!” he shrieks.

What to my wondering eyes should appear but a North Korean soldier stepping out of a black SUV behind the gatehouse, hefting a rocket launcher. He fires an anti-tank missile at the presidential limo.

“RUN! RUN! RUN!” screams Kozlovsky. He and I put as much distance between the limo and us as we possibly can. It goes up in a fireball of flying, molten metal.

Oh. Um. Yeah… Ah, fooey! Mandy was in the limo.

As the Swedes say (phonetically): Yevla wheat!

I witness a confrontation between a motorist in a white shirt and a North Korean soldier holding a rifle pointed at his head. “Listen, you chink!” swears the motorist, climbing out of his car, hot and bothered.

“No ‘chink.’ We not Chinese! Toll is one dollah!” insists the North Korean.

“Insufferable slope!”

“We not Vietnamese! We Korean!”

“Okay, dickwad. Here’s your dollar. Go take a hike!” the motorist decides, peeling a bill from his billfold. Handing it over, he jumps in his car and roars off in a cloud of oily white exhaust. See? You introduce capitalism to primitive cultures, you don’t always get what you bargained for.

An explosion draws everyone’s attention in that direction. Taking advantage of the distraction, I sprint across the sidewalk. Using MMA (mixed martial arts) moves, I knock a young soldier off his feet. “What are you doing here!?” I hiss. I press my Gerber knife against his neck. I always carry a razor-sharp Gerber knife to meetings and conferences.

Fortunately, he speaks some English. “We wanted to occupy the countryside of Greece,” he stammers, his perspiring oriental face inches from mine. “We intended to mine the gold there, but it is too thinly spread. After Kim Jong Un put the kibosh on Sino-North Korean development, invading the USA became Plan B. Our Great Leap Forward. We need to understand how best to market our brand internationally. ‘The Hermit Kingdom Brand…Produce of the Hermit Kingdom.’ This could be very effective, depending on the products. Hopefully, we can attract some big manufacturer like Nike to our Economic Development Zone sometime soon. Please consider this event as part of our outreach program. Would you like to buy a Rolex knock-off?”

I’m speaking with a business school graduate, apparently.

“You should do like Croatia and join the European Union!” I growl threateningly. “How did you get here?”

“We snuck across the border from Mexico, posing as migrant workers. Passing through Bisbee proved impossible, but once we got clear of Arizona, bus companies take you everywhere in this country.”

I slit his throat and hightail it back to the police cruiser, amidst a hailstorm of poison darts and errant rifle shots. I try to revive my police cohort. He lays in a fetal position on the ground, softly moaning. Grabbing the lapels of his uniform, I roll him onto his back. I search for puncture wounds, shrapnel, bleeding. Not finding any, I gently slap his face. His eyelids flutter. I punch him on the arm. He groans. I kick him in the ribs. He seems to be waking up. I knee him in the groin. I’m in the process of sawing through the pinkie finger of his left hand when he sits up, fully awake. “There you are!” I rejoice.

“Yeah…” he mumbles, rubbing his crotch and sucking his pinkie. “I feel like I’ve been put through a meat grinder.”

“Uh… remnants of the explosion. You must have gotten hit by the, uh, shock wave.”

“So far,” he ruminates, “those lousy North Koreans have gotten away with everything they want to do!”

“For what possible purpose do you let people carry around rocket launchers and anti-tank missiles in their SUV’s?” I grouse.

“Cool it!” counters the cop. “Congress has yet to put an effective weapons ban in place, outlawing assault rifles, 30-shot magazines and heavy armaments. Until then, it’s every man for himself. It’s a gray area.”

“Harummph!… Listen, man, why do bad things keep happening?” I ask, unable to stop myself from bellyaching in the sweltering heat and waterlogged humidity.

“What? Don’t you know?” he answers. “America’s lost its nerve. You go from John F. Kennedy to Barack Obama. From Bill Clinton to George W. Bush. Who’s the most trusted person in America? When you switch from Walter Cronkite to Oprah Winfrey, well… D’oh! According to Oprah, nobody has ever done anything wrong. We’re all victims. A nation of victims. What kind of country is that?”

Aha! Ask a cop named Kozlovsky… It’s nice of him to blame our troubles on the current generation, but the fact remains that ever since the British defeated us Americans on August 24, 1814 in Bladensburg, Maryland (which led to the torching of our nation’s capital), this country has simply never been the same!

Google “Francis Scott Key” or “Horatio Alger” for the details.

Kozlovsky  gets busy on his shoulder-mounted walkie-talkie. A cute little boy, tears smearing his face, comes running into my arms. “What’s up, son?” I ask. “Where are your folks?”

“I’m lost!” he wails.

“No reason to worry,” I soothe. Unable to stand his suffering, I pull the sweet little tyke to me, gently wrap my arms around his shoulders and snap his neck in a single mighty heave. Listen, I chalk it up to collateral damage. Laying his lifeless body on the grass, I roar in anguish, more determined than ever to make the villains pay!

“Look at this!” says Kozlovsky. We peer at the screen on his smartphone. (In this modern age, even Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas has a Twitter account!) Somewhere in Africa, the President of the United States approaches a podium. “My fellow Americans,” he says, addressing our nation. “And the 11 million illegal immigrants for whom we currently struggle with Congress to get you some form of legal status. Our country has been invaded by soldiers of North Korea. We do not yet know if this is an isolated incident or the beginning of a broader confrontation. We are monitoring the situation closely. I have instructed Secretary of State John Kerry— who is currently traveling in the Middle East— to lodge a formal protest with the government of North Korea— ”

Before I can protest, Kozlovsky has pushed the “like” button. I don’t say anything. Anyone criticizing the prez, of course, gets accused of displaying “Obama Derangement Syndrome.” Dislike him as we might, he be the president. He ain’t goin’ nowhere. There’s even a book out— entitled “Centerfold” or some such thing— which fantasizes about Obama sitting in the Oval Office and, you know, governing. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha!

Suddenly, a Hummer H3 with green camouflage finish roars up behind us. “Quick!” shouts a peremptory voice. “Get yer sorry fannies in here!”

Gratefully, we clamber inside. Electronic music— gamer stuff called “chiptune”— blares from the four-way speakers, bass booster thumping. “Who are you?” I ask the burly driver.

“Bob Johnson, Special Forces. We got a Predator drone and helos from Quantico on the way, assault vehicles from the Pentagon, you name it. Those slant-eyed nincompoops are dead meat.”

“Call them Asians,” suggests Kozlovsky.

“Whassat, pardner?” asks Johnson.

“Call them Koreans. We’re not racists, after all.”

“Get real!” says Special Forces Johnson. “They got the intelligence level of cockroaches!”

“Some of those roaches can be pretty smart,” I suggest.

“Hooey! Whose side are you on, anyway? You one of those Likiwink traitors?!”

“Don’t condemn me,” Kozlovsky whines. “I was a liberal arts major. Just tryin’ to be helpful. We members of the Metropolitan Police Force have had sensitivity training.”

“Do tell!” mutters Johnson.

Assault helicopters clatter overhead. A Hellfire missile lights up the gatehouse. Even inside the Hummer, the shock wave feels awesome, rocking the vehicle from side to side.

“Git some!” shouts Johnson.

“Death to North Korea,” I cheer. “Down with Kim Jong Un!”

“Hey! Hey! Hey!” says Kozlovsky. “Take it easy with that stuff. That’s John Kerry’s turf. State Department.”

“I’m based in New York,” I tell him. “Go tell it to the Yankees!”

“Susan Rice, then. American Ambassador to the United Nations.”

Johnson triumphantly hands me a white pastry box. “Try some Astro creme brulee squares,” he offers.

“Wow! Who doesn’t like glazed donuts? Um… why square-shaped?”

“Baker misplaced his compass.”

“What are you doing, Kozlovsky?” I ask, seeing him standing on one foot with eyes closed.

“Practicing the meditative Chinese art of tai chi.”

“Oh,” I sigh. “Whatever.”

Tired of his nagging, Bob Johnson and I climb out of the Hummer and inspect the wreckage. Charred bodies are scattered in every direction. “Crispy critters,” remarks Johnson. “It’s enough to put a man off his feed. We had to destroy the gatehouse in order to save it.”

“That’s the price of democracy,” I remind him.