The Skeleton Coast Contract [antikvár]

Chapter One The shapely dancing teacher and I were testing an aphrodisiac and had been at it for some time. Late sunlight was arrowing through the Ozark pines around my mountain eyrie as we pursued our experiments with single-minded devotion. Norma Jean, the red-haired hoyden who was my collaborator, came fully qualified. An Honors graduate in Fine Arts, she was currently a ballet instructor and endowed with the muscular development so important in kinetic research. The aphrodisiac we had been testing was ginseng, or at least the fabled root of that plant. Often called "Sang," these forked, aromatic roots have been a major drug in the Chinese pharmacopoeia for thousands of years. The American variety of the plant is called Panax quinque-foUum (after the Greek word for panacea), and it colonizes in moist, fertile places where there is shade. Domestic cultivation is possible but arduous, and gardened ginseng brings only half the price of the wild plant. At present, the market value of the roots is around $25 a pound, and all American production is sold to Hong Kong brokers. Our experiments had been conducted on tatami mats in my open-sided teahouse set on the slope of the formal Edo garden surrounding my hilltop house. We had spent most of the day there in kimonos, sipping root infusions and preparing salads of organic-grown vegetables with the root 7