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CROCODILE GAMES

This is the strange story of four misfits and what happened to them in 1990, around the time of the breakup of the Soviet Union.

On the run from a despotic Gulf ruler, Jake Greenwood and his half-brother Edsel Okamoto flee to Tallinn in Estonia, where they meet Katriin Vesilind, who restores old buildings and does a trained bear act on weekends at the Leningrad State Circus.

They’re all living on a boat in Tallinn harbor, owned by Jake’s sometime girlfriend, Sydney Madrigal, who’s far away on Florida’s Gulf Coast, taking care of her decrepit marina. Things fall apart very quickly when, in short order, Kat discovers an ancient treasure map, Edsel incurs the wrath of two Tuvan gangsters, and Sydney shows up unexpectedly, followed in short order by the ruler’s security chief. In a panic, they flee in Sydney’s boat, making landfall weeks later on a small island in the Gambia River estuary, where the treasure is supposedly buried.

And that’s when things start to get both strange and complicated. As improbable as this story sounds, some of it is actually based on real events.