The Long Kiss Goodbye

EP 1: Preface / Prologue

Against a backdrop of celebrities, diplomats, supermodels, gangsters, and attempts at romantic closure, nuclear geopolitics unfold on a personal level in China around the time of the Six Party Talks. A Chicago Tribune article from April 24, 2003 identified "an American citizen of Asian origin" as having aided the defection of the father of North Korea's nuclear program. Over a year earlier, I had befriended a fellow New Yorker in Shenyang, and when I eventually reported him missing, his role in the defection was confirmed to me by a source at the U.S. Embassy.

This became a basis for the story, which emerged as a kind of reimagining of Antonioni's 1966 "Blow-Up" set in 2004 Beijing.

Some names have been changed, and some situations have been modified for dramatic effect.