Frank McCord and the China Blues

Two large craters explode from the brickwork at Frank McCord's left shoulder and blast him with stiletto shards and pulverized bits of brick. The hail of fragments pepper his raincoat and impale the skin of his face as the sound of high-powered rifles reach him and bounce in all directions, ricocheting down the alley. He dives to the ground into the putrid effluent running in the alley and lays still with the water running inside his pants. He tries to place the direction of the shots but he cannot do it. The echo is still too strong in his ears. He is a target for someone and he has no idea who or why. As his main squeeze Raisa says, he has a knack for getting into trouble and staying there. A plot is afoot to assassinate the President of the United States. One person alone has knowledge of the particulars and that is Simon, the mysterious and terrifying lord of the Asian Tong. From the safety of his enclave in Macau, puppet master Simon watches the turmoil unfold under his manipulative hand. World power is swinging away from the west to the east and the premier of China and the President of the United States are mano a mano, fighting to entrench their hegemony. Each has received intelligence that an assassin has been dispatched to execute him and through a series of bizarre coincidences and mistaken identities contrived by Simon, each has concluded that assassin is Detective Frank McCord. He is the target for both sides. The scramble is on for McCord to stay alive while he finds and eliminates the true assassin. It is left to McCord to succeed and avert catastrophe between the two great powers. But what is in this for Simon and when Frank uncovers who the real players are, and that knowledge tears apart all he holds dear in the world, what is he to do?