Robert and Marzine

It wasn't easy finding Marzine. Robert Boyd and his crew were on a mission to flush Marzine Jacoby out of China, return her to the United States, and put her in front of a court marshal. She had taken this way too far. He'd read all about Marzine, from her dossier that documented her career as a leftist. Inside the manilla envelope were pictures of Marzine with Woody Guthrie and setlists played throughout Greenwich Village encouraging union involvement. This may have incensed J. Edgar Hoover more than the martyr campaign she was currently running throughout the streets of Shanghai.

Robert passed by another painted sign of "Red Ed" as his team had taken to call him, plastered as it was throughout the streets of Shanghai. There was the illegible Chinese writing below the picture, of Ed with his guitar pointed sharply downward, with his fist jetting forward as his wiry arm gave way to an enraged fist.

The writing, while only consisting of two characters supposedly meant "The Chords of Freedom Will Never Be Silenced". This from a conversation that was tapped by Robert's boys a few months back. In this conversation there were frequent mentions of a man named "Hershel" also called "Big Daddy". The authorities were unsure as to the significance of this person.

Robert had been in Shanghai for only a few weeks when he came across a different image with the same characteristics as "Chords of Freedom". It looked almost like a playbill for a musical event. The image featured the same layout as the other poster, only this time, Ed's face had been taken out, the guitar was still there, and in Ed's place a faint shadow of black spectacles and curly feminine hair.

At once he ripped the poster from off of the wall and immediately paid his translator a visit.

"I can't help you, not with this, you'll never be allowed in."

“Maybe as a communist I will...”

“But you don’t know anything about Chinese, let alone folk music”

“Just get me in to that gig, I’ll take care of the rest.”

The remaining five days were spent transforming Robert into an American Communist Sympathizer. The costume was complete, and Robert had picked up enough about Marzine from the Dossier. As for the political side of the mission, well.

Robert had tried hard to suppress the feelings he’d developed for Marzine, ever since he was in Quantico, VA researching her life, and what had led her to this juncture. He felt genuine pity for the way her husband had died. He admired her guts, the flat out gall it took to emigrate to China, immerse herself in the culture and become a true Communist.

He hated communism, thought it was a disease that had to be wiped out, else the domination of the west would crumble in the way the infamous domino theory was described. Each night Robert dreamed of bloody dominos falling all over the world, engulfing everything in lawlessness masked as solidarity.

He just wanted to meet her and to hear her sing.

He′d heard the tapes back at Quantico. He wasn’t to take them home, but he did. And over a tumbler full of whiskey and the clanging of ice cubes , he'd tip back his chair and fall into the spell of Marzine and the passion for her husband.

She sang in English, and could tell immediately that noone in the room understood what was said. And that, is when Robert realized the effectiveness he could have, by invading the show, seducing Marzine, and bringing her back to the light of Uncle Sam.