Bart and Fielding had not loafed at the Tiagra cottage. By warning the locals of the plot of the Paedophile Polar Bears and Dutch, Bart and Fielding had stirred a hornet’s nest of restments. The wolves were the first to join. Wolves are militant heterosexualists. They raved at the suggestion that perverted Paedophile Bears and Dutchmen would queer little wolf cubs. They’d put a stop to that. The Tiagra bears were easy. Years ago they had sickened of Polar Bear pretensions of White Bear Supremacy. The Tiagra bears also lived in a conservative culture. They even brought in a venerable ally of theirs from the beginning of time: the Baba Yagas. The Baba Yagas promised the assistance of Baba Yagan cavalry. Baba Yagan calvary is unmistakeable for its use of pigs as mounts. The Baba Yagans managed to persuade the Tiagra raptors to give air support.
Sable volunteered to work as scouts. Lynx agreed to be scouts too, provided wolf operations were limited in areas where Lynx were to work. Wherever Bart or Fielding had needed to grease a palm or cut a deal, they had done it. They planned to win this battle.
They made no secret of their belief that without them, Lucky and I were doomed. They cited as evidence a scalp pole covered with layers of scalps on the cottage porch. Dutch scouts were no match for the Bart-Fielding teams. They had already cleaned the area of 15 or so scouts. Pre-execution-due-process leniency enhanced interrogations had revealed an outline of the Dutch plan. A major thrust into Arkhangelsk would coincide with a flanking movement to the east. If all went well, Arkhangelsk would be in the mouth of the bear-Dutch forces before the forces from the east arrived. A few of the finking, perverted prisoners also had the impertinence to ask if they were to be molested after scalping but before execution.
The query irritated Bart and Fielding. They turned these perverts over to the wolves. The wolves ate them alive. To be accurate, the perverts were alive when the wolves got the feast going. Fielding assured me you could tell weel it was going from the blood-drenched screams in Dutch. By that, Fielding knew the wolves ate very well indeed. Fielding told me she almost considered, following the example of Yabu in Shogun. What better time to contemplate the transience of happiness than when these prisoners howled their pain? Fielding smiled as she, like Yabu, meditated on the transience of life with screams as her piquant sauce. Unlike Yabu, Fielding didn’t like baths. She’d rather make do with her zazen on a zafu and zabuton.
Bart was indifferent to screams. She was pleased to hear the doomed meeting their doom. And She knew that more doom was approaching.
Bart had recruited gangs of Paedophile-Polar-Bear-hating harp seals. The seals of the White Sea have no use for Polar Bears of any kind. So, the seals finked on the Dutch location. A Dutch armada was making its way into the White Sea. I was impressed. Bart understood the need for good intelligence better than Fielding. Fielding’s attitude was to ignore intelligence and just close with the foes wherever you find them.
Bart complained Fielding’s attitude overlooked a source of advantage. As Bart put it, “When I close with a foe, I prefer that I be the surprise, not the foe.” Fielding glared at her. I also knew that for Fielding, whether she was the surprise or was surprised had never made a difference. She never bothered to surprise a rat to kill him. She took her victims as they discovered themselves to her.
Meanwhile, Lord Caligula and his entourage had established their outpost in Arkhangelsk. Lord Caligula chose a large house near the Cathedral–destroyed by Stalin and his stooges many years back, but recently rebuilt–where the Archangel Michael battled Satan. The Archangel Michael emerged victorious, a good omen.
If you ask me, his Lordship should have thought more about who the Archangel might be in the coming battle. He was an implausible archangel, a man closer to one of Satan’s lieutenants.
In the meantime, Constance had imitated Bart and Fielding by making forays into Arkhangelsk’s nature reserve. For example, she made repeated visits to national forests to recruit more brown bears, sable, badgers, and wolves. Lord Caligula did his part by giving sermons on local radio stations about the Paedophile menace. “Were the good people of Arkhangelsk going to let Paedophile-Polar-Bears and their Dutch enablers turn the boys of Arkhangelsk into a race of pale, passive catamites? Never,” screamed his Lordship, “Never! That is contrary to God’s ordinances!” For emphasis, he would step back from his pulpit, and then start bea it to splinters with his enormous silver-bound Bible.
By contrast, Lucky soothed herself with her customary means. She cleaned her weapons. She worked on her marksmanship. She would have an enemy scout set loose from time to time for her to hunt. She accumulated a large collection of scrotums that she stitched together to make chamois. Once she laundered the chamois to immaculateness, she liked to dry her hands with it, though sometimes she used this type of chamois to lube her guns.
On a clear, bright Sunday, a badger arrived from east of Arkhangelsk at his Lord Caligula’s residence to tell him of a sighting of Paedophile-PolarBears and their various accomplices. The villains had begun landing from the White Sea onto a stretch of beach. It surprised his lordship. He had figured the invaders would begin by marching on the frozen rivers inland before pivoting to attack Arkhangelsk’s eastern flank.
About 3 hours after notification of the invasion, his Lordship got unequivocal evidence that the attack on Arkhangelsk had commenced. As he stood on his porch drinking cognac, he noticed Russians dropping over stone-cold-dead as if frozen. And these poor souls were frozen. The Paedophile-Polar-Bears had released a huge dose of Ice-10. Because of the Ice-10 antidote, his Lordship never gave the matter of Ice-10 further concern. He did feel concerned when he spotted Woland and his entourage on the streets. Hella and Azazello were picking the pockets of the dead. Behemoth was drinking from a 4-litre bottle of Stoli. From time to time, he chuckled as he stepped away from drink to relieve himself on a pretty corpse. Woland asked Korovyev to perform a few magic tricks for the dead. Resurrecting them was not among them.
The antics of Woland’s crew annoyed Lord Caligula, but he got distracted when from the east an enormous boom of an explosion rolled over the city. I was at the cottage with Bart when I heard it. Bart told me to relax. She had to coax me from a cupboard. Long before the Dutch arrived, Bart arranged to have a daisy-chain of IEDs placed under an area her local experts told her was an especially good beach for invaders to land. Bart and Fielding had ordered the invaders be allowed to land unmolested. As the buildup of Dutch and allies moved into full swing, Bart got word of it. A pair of muddy, wild-eyed lynx told her. Bart then ordered the chains of IEDs to detonate simultaneously. The explosion devastated the first wave invaders and their supplies. Photos later showed mangled body parts strewn over the beach. Dutch weapons systems and broken vehicles were everywhere. Bart waited. as she ate mackerel, for secondary explosions to stop. She then communicated her advice to the front. “Lunch time.”
Swarms of Bart and Fielding’ allies occupied the beach. I’ve seen videos of bears, badgers, wolves, and the like devouring the invaders. The dead were fortunate indeed. The survivors were just so many living raw roasts and steaks in waiting.
The pleasure didn’t last long. The Dutch deployed an attack helicopter to strafe the beach. Terrified animals of the Bart-Fielding forces fled. Many died.
When the bad news reached Bart and Fielding, they headed to the beach. They reached the landing site riki tik, squads of crazed Dutchmen had organized. They shot any wounded animals–turnabout is fair play–they found and massed to start their drive to Arkhangelsk.
Fielding strapped on her spiked helmet to arm herself and made ready for a frontal assault on the Dutch. Before Field could move forward, Bart put out her claws. When they slashed across Fielding’s meaty thighs, Fielding knew to slow down.
I was peering out of Lucky bag. I worried my heart might explode. I was crying, begging to go back to the comfy cottage to no avail. To my front, I saw the Dutch hordes and their lackeys. To my rear, I saw an unexpected sight. I troop of Baba Yaga cavalry was arriving. My eyes darted to Bart. She looked murderous. The Baba Yaga had arrived with winged pigs, but the faux attached to the pig bodies with harnesses.
A sorceress in a coat of many colours trotted on her mount up to Bart. Bart was glaring at her. I head Bart raving above the battle noise, “What the fuck is this?” The sorceress told her the Baba Yaga cavalry was at her service. Bart’s patience ended.
Snarling, Bart reminded the sorceress of a promise of flying pigs, winged pigs carrying murderous, veteran witches. Instead, Bart surveyed a rag-tag crew of flabby pigs with wings on harnesses arriving. As the sorceress rolled her eyes, then clapped her rouged cheeks, she gave straight talk to Bart. “It’s the 21st century. Flying pigs? A myth, Bart, a myth. The wings are for psychological effect, not to make obese critters fly.” I’ll admit Bart did have a lot of schooling.
Undeterred, Bart screamed she paid for flying pigs and demanded flying pigs.
Waving a chubby hand, the sorceress cooed, “But, darling, adjust. You’ve been had. Flying pigs are a Baba Yaga lie. Take it as you get it, your cavalry has arrived. What do you want them to do.”
Bart spun round, pointed towards, and answered, “Send them fo’ward at a twot. When they weach a 100 yawds, chawge our foe.” When pissed beyond reason, Bart had hte endearing habit of losing her “R’s” She sounded a lot like Denisov in War and Peace.
It was a bad command. The Baba Yaga did as asked. It was sad that the Dutch helicopters spotted them, descending on the mounted porkers with the zeal of a Dutchman expecting a Ritsstafel dinner. And if you ever met a hungry Dutchman with no taste for swine? When it comes to pork, Dutch might as well be German.
The helicopters began to chop the Baba Yaga and their pigs into pieces, shredding the line of oncoming cavalry. Baba Yaga are quick studies and no fools. As the state of the battle became clear, they turned their porky mounts about or even, if young and fit, hopped off to run away fast. The helicopter crews were having the time of their lives. I could see their porcine faces licking their lips in anticipation of a roast pork feast.
Bart was running about killing any Baba Yaga she could lay hands on. Fielding took the hint. Soon she had her spiked helmet spearing anybody in her path. She and Bart seemed invincible. I was high in the air. Lucky had made use of the chaos to climb high into a stand of pines. She had slung on a Manpad. From up in the tree, she fired it. I felt the recoil. I watched. One the helicopter exploded. Moments later, I saw one of Lucky’s chums fire his very own FN-6. Voila. Another helicopter exploded. A shower of missiles devastated the Dutch air support.
Lucky had dropped down with me to earth. To my horror, she zigzagged at an angle that led to a fighting hole. She dropped in. A QJY-88 awaited her. If you’re no gun expert, It’s a bit like an American M249. In a flash, Lucky began to spray 5.8×42 heavy rounds into the beach. I had been so frightened I had not noticed the fighting hole had one of the Go sharks of London, a muscle-bound, clear fellow that tried to take advantage of my lack of skill at Go in London to get rich. He was in the hole with us. As Lucky fired the machine gun, the Go shark assisted.
If the Dutch had moved on us, I don’t see that we’d have survived, but a brutish. Polar Bear was giving hand signals to the troop in his command. The Dutch were moving quickly away from us, west towards Arkhangelsk.
In the distance, I saw Bart and Fielding killing the wounded. I recalled that Bart claimed WC Fields got right when he said, “Never give a sucker an even break.”
Neither Lucky nor I knew what was happening in Arkhangelsk. All of a sudden, a huge wolf arrived with a satchel. In it was a message from Lord Caligula. He wrote he saved ink by writing his message with the blood of the severed finger of a dead Russian. “Situation very dicey. Come fast.” Lucky wiped the froth from the wolf’s mouth. I noticed he had bleeding paws. Lucky hugged him. She was smiling. “The future is ours, Tovarisch. You’ve done your duty. Rest, sweetie.” I’ll admit it. Her making nice to a wolf revolted me. What next? A dog?
After bidding the wolf adieu, she, the Go shark managed to have a few words with Bart and Fielding. Lucky’s lackey, the Go shark, had harnassed a team of wolves to a sled. He and another of the swindling Go sharks also had got themselves wolf-led sleds As Lucky and I felt her sled lurch forward, she looked up. Above her, raptors in great numbers flew.
“Ah,” she sighed, “the sharp-eyed raptors saw that the sky is now safe. We have air cover.” You, gentle reader, may wonder why the raptors did not arrive to assist the Baba Yaga. Any cat not blind from rage could tell you Those Baba Yagas (a) had come on mounts that didn’t fly (b) had got so fat from eating kids that they had the slows, and (c) had no chance in the fight they faced. Like cats, raptors don’t join lost fights. Having them above made them birds of good omen.
We moved along and Lucky burst into the Surfin’ Bird song.
A-well-a bird, bird, b-bird’s the word
A-well-a bird, surfing bird, brr, brr, ah, ah
Ah, bap-a-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pa-pap
… Ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-paMa-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-mow, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-mow, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-ma-ma, ma-ma-mow
Ma-ma-ma-ma, ma-ma-mow
Ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow, pa-pa
Ma-ma-mow, pa-pa, ma-ma-mow
… A-well-a don’t you know about the bird?
Well, everybody knows that the bird is the word
I never really liked it. I’d have preferred “The Year of the Cat.” We were off to the Big Tohubohu. I cried and knew the worst was yet to come.–
Specialisation is for insects. Robert Heinlein, Time enough for love
The Cold Table had so much herring and other goodies on it that I had to moderate my appetite. Lithuanian main courses often include pork. As I see it, few dishes beat a pork tenderloin. Of course if they served a schnitzel, I’d just have Lucky get rid of the breading for me.
Lucky had taken slices of rye bread that she buttered and covered with salami. Behemoth had grabbed a bowl of schmaltz herring. Anybody trying to take anything from that bowl was putting his life on the line.
Cats have a simple trick to keep humans away from commandeered food. If you just shove your face in the bowl or run your tongue over its contents, few humans want anything with kitty cooties or spit on it. It’s near perfect in its efficiency, save for the occasional chap with a white cane. It’s as if they somehow manage to see nothing. You have to bite them to hammer home the message.
Time flies when you’re eating. I did spot Lucky inhaling servings of didzkukuliai. Based on smell, I’d say these were potato dumplings that had ground meat and then either cheese curd or mushrooms in them. Lucky put sour-cream sauce and sprinkled bacon bits over them or had them with pork rinds. As she ravened, she kept explaining “Darling, these are divine. Try one.” Instead, I went for a Šauktiniai, it came in both a beef in and pork version. I liked the pork, a nice, tightly wrapped stuffed and brain sheet of pork. I also found a schnitzel thing that I got Lucky to de-bread for me.
Across the table I noticed Walt sprawled on a chair. It was no surprise. I had seen him eating pounds of salami and herring. I cautioned, but he had no ears for my warnings. Now he lay glassy-eyed and inebriated on a chair.
Before long, I fell asleep too. The noise of the clearing of plates woke me. New stuff was being rolled in. Before long, Lord Caligula began a boring lecture on what he referred to as the Archangel Campaign. There were a lot of maps and aerial photographs.
His Lordship lavished thanks and praise on Wolverine for his kleptomania during recent visits to NATO HQ, the NGA offices in Saint Louis and Franconia, CBRNE offices at Fort Leonard Wood, and assorted offices at Langley, the Pentagon, NSA, and such wayward offices as those of the National Reconnaissance Office in Chantilly. On it went, Wolverine had used his clearances and connexions to amass thousands of pages of intelligence reports, maps, and photos.
Wolverine sat smoking a Sherman cigarillo and drinking milky tea. Peregrine stood behind him rubbing his shoulders as if he were a prize fighter returned to his corner. Wolverine at long last managed to raise his hand to wave off more compliments.
As his Lordship moved through his briefing, I felt my brain fogging. Nothing restored my bored senses until his Lordship told the group that Munitions Galore had made a breakthrough. Although doses were scarcer than straight guys at a Pride Parade, Munitions Galore scientists had created a vaccine against Ice-10. His Lordship’s inner circle would of course have doses. Woland laughed when offered a dose, chortling “Denn die Todten reiten schnell,” then sneered, “with or without a vaccine.”
By then Hella had returned and looked semen-bloated if anybody ever has. She screamed she knew her Freud. She wanted no part of a schmutzige Spritze. Instead, she wanted sauber Schwanz and mentioned she was quite an expert at finding it, as she gave Constance the finger. So, a vaccine was out for her.
Constance ignored her. She then whispered to Lord Caligula, “I’m so sick of killing her. Let’s get on with brief.”
His Lordship glossed the general. situation. It seemed to come to this. The Paedophile Polar Bears refused to admit that his Lordship didn’t have paedophiles anymore than he has members of the Labour Party, Communists, Mohammedans, the Poor, teetotalers, anybody on the dole, Scots, Irish, Welsh, members of the EU, fat men, and plain women in his employ. He was exacerbated that the bears singled out his hatred of one particular group. With hatreds as catholic as his own, Lord Caligula figured the bears owed his hatred tolerance. But the bears wouldn’t hear of that. The wanted confrontation.
So now the bears planned to make his life hard by using a troop of Lithuania thugs to get a good fight going in Russia’s north. The thugs blamed Russia for the Ice-10 incident in Lithuania. Still more, they had obtained a supply Ice-10 from Binky (his Lordship pointed to the chubby, naked corpse). The bears planned, according to his Lordship, to expand their territorial holdings. They would cite Russia’s role in global warming and inability to protect its citizens. A plebiscite would prove wanted local a Dutch and Paedophile Polar Bears People’s Republic. The bears would want Dutchmen in tow to have somebody to handle the administrative work and treat the inevitable outbreaks of venereal diseases.
During his brief, Lord Caligula skipped key information. For example, he didn’t mention that the Paedophile Polar Bears and Dutch didn’t realise that their bots had viruses that his Lordship could use to turn their bots against them. I think the bear aligned elements of the Dutch army were having dreams so thick about a Dutch Congo in the North that they were foregoing a lot of needed reasoning. Greed does that to people. Lust does it too.
Since I was full, I slept more than I needed to, but not as much as I like. My ears did twitch when his Lordship got to the topic of getting to where we needed to be. Apparently plenty of pre-planning had already occurred. Woland was bland about it all, saying he and his team could transport to just about anyplace they needed to be south of Heaven. He apologised for Azazello killing servant in the kitchen. The servant, according to Azazello, has the soul of contumely when Azazello asked, “Where’s the shitter?” Take my advice. If a fanged demon asks you where the shitter is, never ask if he means, “The WC.” Woland was profuse in apologising for Hella feasting on one of the servant’s 16 year-old sons. She seconded his apology, but said, “The lad was so delicious. How does a lady help herself?” She then let lose a spermy hiccough. People sitting about her reached for their handkerchiefs. Korovyev suddenly appeared next to her. Woland gave him a nod, and then Woland’s whole entourage vanished into thin air. Walt, left behind, looked groggy and annoyed.
It didn’t take long before I figured out that Lucky had summoned a van with a driver and two body guards. As we bid adieu to the folks still present, I saw the van parked in front of the main door. When you’re in Lithuania with Lucky and a van with Chinese muscle shows up, it’s a no-brainer to know it’s for Lucky.
Walt, the king of presumption, clambered in with us. Lucky issued a command in Mandarin; however, when I heard the name “Riga,” I knew we were headed there. Lucky, I learned, had a bold plan. She had booked us to fly from Riga to Saint Pete’s Pulkovo Airport. For Pulkovo we were to fly non-stop to Talagi Airport in Archangel.
I asked her about Russian customs Lucky scoffed at the idea of Russian customs being an obstacle. “Oafs. They’re good at making life miserable for everybody except people like me. I’ll be Olga Romanovna Davydova.” When I made a face, Lucky smiled. “If one of the custom’s boobs challenges me, I’ll tell him my dad Roman was a diplomat stationed in Beijing. He knocked a chink up. Hence Roman, my mum, and I landed in Moscow. I went on to have a career in international business.” As it turned out, her Russian passport sailed us through customs. The crew at Pulkovo looked unwilling to do any work unless they had order.
So there you have it. I was now in Russia with Lucky and Walt. After are night at the Dvina Hotel in Archanglesk, we headed into the Russian taiga. A louche sable guided us. Trees and snow were everywhere. The sable was chewing Red Man, a delicacy in this part of Russia.
We finally reached a swampy meadow. Somebody had erected a cabin with amenities. Lucky sprang onto the porch, but before we entered I heard a familiar voice.
“Hello, Crocky. Still running with killers?” It was Fielding’s. Her fat bod was on the porch. She was wearing her Great War hun helmet with the spike. To her side, and I couldn’t believe my eyes, Bart was sprawled under an electric blanket.
Walt tried to join her, but that earned him a stiff paw to the face. I asked,”But why are you all here?”
Bart ignored me. Fielding snarled, “Recruitment, Crocky, Recruitment.” —
Lucky’s lap for a nap, I heard Hella’s howling version of “Yummy, Yummy, Yummy I got love in my tummy” filling the bus’s interior. You, gentle reader, may have no idea how much a freshly fed succubi loves to sing. Be assured that a succubi is no honey-tone siren. She will discover herself to you as a wailer of the worst imaginable music.
“Yummy, yummy, yummy” must rank as a candidate for the worst song ever written or performed, though I admit that John Denver’s “Thank God I’m a Country Boy” can, no matter how beloved it be by drunk hicks, hold its own in any comparison of bad music. As I listened to Hella’s screeching wails, I wished I had no ears. If only the Ohio Express had never existed.
I looked into Lucky’s placid eyes. Without doubt she was imagining the peace of putting a few caps in Hella, but I despaired when she instead shoved a Flare earplug in each ear. What about me? Does she imagine that I was not yearning for earplugs?
Hella’s tone-deaf performances continued as we made haste across Poland. How I hate the Monster Mash” and “The Martian Hop”
Anyway, we were heading northeast towards Lithuania. To do what I could to blot out Hella’s songs, I watched Behemoth and Walt play cards. Walt was cheating. No honest deck has extra aces and face cards in it, but I noticed Walt’s decks did. I was puzzled that Behemoth was oblivious to Walt’s cheater’s play. Then, I heard a remark of Behemoth’s that made it easier for me to understand. Behemoth mentioned that Woland had recently gifted him a vast quantity of counterfeit rubles. Walt’s cheating was earning him a small fraction of Behemoth’s counterfeit notes. Let Walt run the inconveniences of turning phony money into real money.
After Lucky began to doze, I went to the back of the bus. It had a vacant bed. I hopped up. What a mistake. There was Chaucer’s ghost staring at me.
“How is it,” asked Mr C, “that you run with mobs of murderers and yet the vicious, lascivious grifter Wolverine lives?” I then felt Crocky’s heavy paw crash down on my head.
After Chaucer clobbered me, he relaxed. He turned prophet. What he had to say was scary.
If I believed Mr C, my destiny was in Russia’s north. I was headed for an apocalyptic battle that would make the Rumble in Reading look calmer than Vermeer’s pictures. But, according to Chaucer, in the midst of all the coming ultra violence, I would have ample opportunity to “frag” Wolverine. Chaucer told me I must not be sentimental about fighting on the same side as Wolverine. Why spare Wolverine? Why exempt Wolverine from the category of “killed by friendly fire.”
“If you value your life Crocky, you will do as I say. Also, during the battle, stay near, but not with, Lucky. They’ll be sleuths of boy-gobbling bears after her. My sources tell me the paederast Brongersma will command a Battalion of Boy-devouring Dutch Troops into battle. Word has it, the madman Brongeersma will cloak naked Dutch boys in sable coats and booties . . . with their consent, of course. These virgin boys will be forced at a jog ahead of the salivating Dutch to lure them forward. The first Dutch troops to reach the boys have their implied consent to have at them. Brongersma adores consent.
To make it easier, rumours have it that Brongersma stipulated that only boys with prelubed bottoms will be permitted to run slow enough for a Dutchman off silver skates to capture them. But once a Dutchman captures a slow boy, he will have full-access to the lad’s soon-to-be-deflowered hiney. Fair is fair.
When I frowned, Chaucer reprimanded me for committing morality. “What we’re talking about here,” Crocky, “is no different than using so-called rabbits at greyhound races. You get better performance from a lured than unlured greyhound. And so it is with the Dutch.”
Now I’m no philosopher but I doubted Chaucer’s hypothesis that using boys as lures was the same as using fur-covered mechanical bunnies to supercharge a greyhound. Mind you, I’ve not had the broad education that Chaucer had.
Shaking his head, Chaucer scolded me. “I don’t recall you complaining about Patty Smith’s account of her meeting the pouf poet Alan Ginsberg at a laundry-mat. Ginsberg, like the Chickenhawk he was, started bribing destitute Patty with change. Before long he discovered, to his everlasting horror, that Patty was a slender girl, not a pretty, moneyless boy.
Now let me confess. I have often suspected Patty’s boyfriend Robert Mapplethorpe made the same mistake. He was a genius wiht a camera but was no good at telling boys from girls. He lacked even Ginsberg’s rudimentary ability to discriminate. But be generous. Patty was not then or now bien roulee. I bet anybody could have mistook her for a boy. And can’t you imagine how Robert felt when he realised that the boy he’d been living with and sharing flats with for a few years was a woman? Talk about trauma . . . ” I’m guessing she kept her pube hair long to deceive him.
But then Chaucey left that tale of diversion to talk about the coming battle. He again stressed that I must stay near, but not too near Lucky. He forecast the zone about her would be a field of death. Despite that I must not move far from her line of sight. If I did as I was told, Lucky would kill anybody trying to harm me at immense personal peril. “She loves you, Crocky. She will die if she must to save you. She is a lot like a dog.” I then got the bad news that in a battle like the one coming in Russia, Lucky and I might both die, but not before I killed Wolverine.
Chaucer covered his ears when Hella began to sing her acapella version of “Ain’t No Mountain High Enough,” an old non-feminist hymn of Diana Ross. It was yet another crime against music. With a puff of hot air, Chaucey was gone.
Much time had passed. We were now approaching the Suwalki Gap. Hella drove through Suwalki and took a road towards Alytus across the gap. If we turned left onto the gap, we’d be headed towards Kalingrad, a Russian oblast.
Despite the bus’s sketchy looks, nothing happened at customs. Woland had a few of his friends pay the guards and the bus rolled unmolested into Lithuania with Hella sing-mangling “I will survive.”
It seemed that after an hour or so the bus pulled up to a castle. Hella brought it to a stop. Everybody debussed. Standing at the castle’s main door were none other than Lord Caligula and Constance. behind them, I saw a Peregrine and Wolverine. Wolverine looked very English. He was in a 3 piece navy suit and wearing a Coke. I could make out the gold chain of his pocket watch. On the driveway, liveried servant began getting luggage from the bus. I was amused that their livery jackets were a hot pink. They wore black breeches with lines of pink flamingoes flowing down the seams. Their shoes were black patent leather. For reasons known only to Constance of Lord Caligula, the servants wore the bearskin hats of the Queen’s Palace Guard. I couldn’t wait to sink my paws into one of those fancy hats.
We all did brisk greetings at the door, and then entered a Great Hall that had been prepared for dining and, or so it looked, briefings. For unknown reasons, a chair in the right corner of the room as I entered had a body with a familiar face in it. It was Binky. He had changed since I last saw him. For one thing, he was as naked and as dead as his twin in Africa.
Constance noticed that I had spotted Binky. Lucky had too. Constance approached, gave me a kiss on the crown of my head, then remarked to Lucky, “I see you’re looking at my statue. You, at least in Africa, were too lax about correcting Binky’s sass. It made him evermore fat and inefficient. Just look at him. What a slob.
“I even stopped trusting his tallies of my holdings. Then I knew he had to go. So I verified the accuracy of my Cold Python. I shot him with it. One shot at about 125 yards did the job. I set him out this evening so that Mr Quisling can see for himself what becomes of sassy, scheming, inaccurate servants. I don’t abide them. But doesn’t he look so relaxed? I’m having a taxidermist preserve him for me. I want to memorialise him in this relaxed state rather than as a man with a nervous stench.” Lucky looked at Constance then shrugged her shoulders. To me, I thought Constance was a total optimist if she thought naked, dead Binky on display would deter Mr Quisling from stealing.
To my left, I could hear Hella complaining to Woland. “Why did Connie kill him. She could have gifted him to me. How long should a succubi have to do without fresh sperm. Now, thanks to Connie’s selfishness, I must go hunt.” Out the door she stormed, singing a screeching version of Carol King’s “It’s too late, baby.”
Meanwhile, I got distracted. Walt and Behemoth had made their way to a bar set up not far from the Great Hall’s fireplace. Behemoth was having vodka. Walt was trying Stakliskes Mead, but complained that he had no taste for sweet. After the Mead, Walt assured to me he planned to switch to Lithuanian farmhouse ales. Mead’s a dogs drink.
Of course my eyes went to a Cold Table that had plenty of herring, sour cream, salads, cold cuts, and local bitter liquors. I began pressing to get to the herring. Lucky, glad to escape conversation with Constance, let me move her propel her to the Cold Table.
Lucky woke the next morning with a revised judgment of Berlin. The city was no longer safe. I expected to travel east, but Lucky thought that too obvious. She decided to go to Prague.
After a few telephone conversations, we left the hotel for the Bahnhof. Lucky chose to walk to the Bahnhof with me in her big bag, with a few Walthers in a secret compartment below my big-bag bed. We left the hotel without luggage. At the Bahnhof, a young woman handed Lucky a train ticket. Less than 5 hours later we were in Prague.
Somebody had booked us into the Alchymist Grand Hotel’s Luxury Suite. After Lucky entered the suite, she pulled me from her bag. She took a Walther PPQ M2 from her bag, chambered it, and then kept it in her hand as she inspected the room.
I felt alarmed when I saw the bathroom. It was immense. It had a glassed-in shower, but also had a huge gleaming, white bathtub in the center of it. Lucky had during our acquaintance already bathed me 10 life-times worth of baths. Why have a room with this temptation in it? I admit the rest of the suite met my standard.
Knowing I’d be hungry from the long journey. Lucky had the hotel’s Aquarius restaurant send up a platter of breakfast meats, and she order sea bass. She also had kulajda. She spooned the creamy soup and shared 1/2 the poach egg that was in the soup. Yum. The soup is built from a roux and heavy cream. When Lucky started cutting up my sea bass, I insisted she put it into my soup bowl. I love creamy. A creamy sauce on a dish is a foretaste of heaven.
By evening, some trunks arrived for Lucky. A shipping company had transported them. Lucky again had a full wardrobe. She also had other lethal surprises. I think it was about 19.00 when a knock on the door led to the entry of two, I mean it, two Mr Cleans. If anybody was coming for Lucky in Prague, they had better be packing heavy.
I was watching the telly when Lucky told me that her sources told her she had cleared Berlin without Lord Caligula, the Americans, the Russians or any other major players knowing where she went. We could spend a day or two enjoying Prague.
My enjoyment was marred when the news came on with a ridiculous speech by President Trump. Donald was spouting his customary crazed speculations about Mexican rapists and other evildoers from the south. He was again ignoring the real problem, namely, all the Paedophile Polar Bears with their snowback pawns invading the world from the north. Because of Don’s neglect, the bears control Holland.
Then, too, trusting Canada was insane. Canada is collection of loafing snowback dupes of the Paedophile Polar Bears. Between Holland and Canada, I bet any queer with a lust for boy will never find an unviolated boy bum. The bears had ruined the boys to girls of Canada and Holland. It’s not a grand accomplishment. They’re small countries. All the same, the the Canadians and Dutch all yearned to live in idle, sensuous bondage to the bears and their perverted doings.
Prez Don was oblivious to it all. I began to wonder if all the payoffs to allegedly molested models, actresses, waitresses, etc. etc. were Don’s beard. I wondered if he wasn’t a lackey of the bears. Sure, he makes a big show of being a Lothario but how true is that? If I recall, even Stormy Daniels claimed Don required her to dress as a boy’s sailor uniform. That’s one of the oldest Paedophile Polar Bear ruses in the book. Settle for a trim woman dressed as a sailor when no virgin boys are available.
This all pointed my mind to an explanation of the Don boy’s tolerance of nordic fascists like Putin. But had Don entered a secret alliance with the snowbacks? If so, the rants on Mexicans was smoke, pure smoke.
The next day, Lucky told me we would not be long in Prague. All I could gather wasss that Lucky planned to travel to Helsinki. From there she claimed a desire to go to Saint Petersburg. When I asked how we would get to Finland, Lucky purred, “Perhaps dear friends at Hua Wei will help. They never seem to lack for jets.” I knew Lucky had no desire to make her journeys easy to track. I would not be surprised if somewhere between Prague and Helsinki, we’d do a switcheroo to a different jet.
I had suspicions about our ultimate destination, but kept them to myself. Instead, I telephoned Fielding when I had a chance.
When I did call, I could tell she was watching “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence,” a great favourite of hers. You can blame mike for that. She asked me to hold in order to put the movie on hold. I then asked my question about my destination. She snarled my stupidity had interrupted a confrontation between Valence and John Wayne over a steak.
Being forgiving, she answered, “I always must do the heavy thinking for you, Crocky. Everybody knows Lord Caligula and that group of killers from Munitions Galore is heading to Arkhangelsk. Do you imagine Lucky will rely on Cliggy to prevent an escalation in Russia? You’re headed north to guard China’s interests. Trust me, Lucy will want some dead Lithuanians lying about for the Russians to find. And I think there is a change of a major push from the menace to the north. The successes in Canada and Holland hae emboldened the Paedophile Polar Bears. Watch out. The ruckus those Lithuanian madmen are preparing may be the cover the bears and their lackeys need for their big push.”
I looked sceptical, but Fielding kept going. “How are those Paedophile Bears going to settle from boy meat from Canada and Holland alone? They’re drunk on it. They want to extend their supply of boys. Russia is perfect. Plus, if a win in Russia does what the bigwig bears figure it will, they can seize the the all the Benelux countries whilst seizing Germany as well. All that fresh, scrumptious, white boy flesh. The bears will settle for nothing less. They’ll only stop when they start getting stocks of boys to hairy to be palatable.”
More and more I feared a coming war. But then Lucky came in. She snatched me and placed me in a bag with her weapons. We ventured into Prague where we entered the Vinohradsky Pivovar. As we entered, Lucky told me she had instructions to go there. I had already guessed that. It was not the type of joint Lucky frequents; however, it was exactly that type of dive Behemoth frequents.
To my total shock, once Lucky pulled me from her bag, I found myself sitting with Lucky, Behemoth, and, most astonishing of all, Walt.
I had last seen Walt when he took me to chez mike and Roberta after I was grievously wounded during the Battle of Martinez Creek. Walt was among the heroes. He established his credentials as a suprme killer of snowbacks that day. You may recall that Fielding and Bart had stood fast in their runs up from the creek. Body after body piled up around them as they held their ground against terrible odds.
Walt didn’t fight that way. Instead, he rallied his troops with Shakespeare’s promise that a happy few of them could forge the battle bonds that would link them forever as that happy few who could show their scars from the Battle of Martinez Creek to prove themselves as one of that Band of Brothers.
As the snowbacks hooted their battle cries, Walt had pulled his cats back to a rally point. From there he launched an onslaught against the Northern foe of unprecedented fury. Not all his band kitty brothers made it to the end. Snowball fell whilst blinding a badger. Samantha died by jumping into the creek to claw at the eyes of two bears. They raked at her with relentless claws. Sam never yielded. All three of them disappeared beneath the swirling, blood-stained waters. Roscoe and Ralph died defending their ground to the end against an attack on their flank. Theeir ferocity purchased the delay of the enemy that allowed Walt to surround murderering snowbacks, build a blaze, and then burn hoards of northern bastards alive.
At the creek’s edge, under the bridge where Woodland Avenue crosses the creek. Ralph and June died protecting their kittens, detonating a bomb that killed the unsheltered for a 30 foot radius. The kittens survived. During the battle, countless cats giving gave their last measure of devotion to send the invaders scurrying back north.
One day I expect a kitty Homer to memorialise them all.
What I can say now is that the day I saw Walt again, I showered him with grateful kisses for saving me as his steadfast valour also brought the Northern Peril to heel at the Battle of Martinez Creek. When Walt left the field of battle victorious, he was covered with gore and offal from head to toe. He above all of us knew from the battle’s start he would leave the field victorious or, like a true Spartan, on his shield. When the bears demanded surrender, Walt gave the warrior’s reply, “μολὼν λαβέ.”
Walt took my teary adulation all in stride. He was lapping at a Czech Vinhdraska 12 beer, as Behemoth consumed a steady stream of Belvedere Vodka. Lucky had the decency to order me a roasted pork tenderloin with mushroom sauce and gorgonzola. It came with potatoes that Lucky ate.
Of course she made a show when she pulled out her Spyderco Police–she kept it sharper than a razor–to slice paper thin sheets of pork for me. Her order a glass of Trebbiano surprised me. Lucky isn’t one to drink like an Irishman. She once complained to me that drink led to picking worthless men.
Behemoth didn’t waste time. He told Lucky that by now she must have heard she must cancel her travel plans.
“I heard,” volunteered Lucky.
Behemoth took another gulp of vodka, lit one of his Sherman Turkish Oval, then told her, “You’ll be going with us. I think you’re mother told you.” When Lucky said nothing Behemoth asked her, “Did you mother tell you or not? You’ll answer me or” as he handed her his phone, “you can answer to her.”
Lucky got her voice back. “She told me, Behemoth.”
“Good. It’s settled. I like the company of an obedient girl.” At that, I noticed Lucky’s right nostril show a slight flare. The inattentive would otherwise have had no clue to the intensity of her feelings.
The encounter blew my mind. When I first met Behemoth with Lucky during the troubles in Somalia, I’d have never guessed they knew each other well. Perhaps I was not paying attention. After all,, they left me for dead.
If I have learnt anything from my years as a journalist, it this: Don’t take professions of concern by the rich for the well being of others too seriously. In fact, don’t take anybody’s profession of concern for the well being of others from anybody too seriously unless you’re dealing with a dog.
Dogs are morons. Who but a a dog would drape himself over his handler to keep the him from being shot in battle? Who but a dog will run into a cave infested with terrorist find out if it is too dangerous for the handler and his cronies to enter? During the Battle of Guam, idjit German shepherds delivered messages between command posts, running through minefields and murderous enemy fire to do it. They have a monument there because so many died. There are no cats that dumb; hence no battle monuments to them.
So, when I sat near Lucky licking up one helluva meal, I knew there were no crazed altruists in that group. There wasn’t a dog in sight. Instead, Lucky, I, Lord Caligula, Constance, Peregrine, and Wolverine were all guarding our self-intested.
Alas, I fell asleep when the group started talking, often in veiled terms, about money and estimated holdings of Ice-10 and fleets of killer-bots by many competing parties. I’ve no head for numbers. What finally woke me was the foot of a chinaman, who had helped transport Mr Wiredu, nudging my back.
He was whispering in Lucky’s right ear. Lucky whispered something back. The guy pulled a booklet of Adlon Hotel matches from his pocket. Lucky opened it. From a hidden pocket, she pulled an Anita Tan pen. The gold pen was a marvel. I hopped into her lap to see what she was writing with it. What else can a journalist do? I was able to read “Wiredu, Charite, RM” but was unable to read the room number.” She returned the matchbook to her man with a word of instruction. He took it to Constance. When Constance opened the matchbook, she gave Lucky a toothy grin whilst blowing her a kiss.
I must have looked surprised. Lucky scratched the crown of my head as she said, “Professional courtesy, darling, professional courtesy.” When I muttered, “Is that wise?” Lucky squeezed my paw. “Trust me, my roast, Constance is going to tell us who pays Wiredu.” Of course, I knew that Constance would also delight in having time to torture Mr Wiredu for his having the chutzpah to kidnap her.
Indeed, Constance didn’t take long to excuse herself from the table. “Cliggy, why don’t you go keep at our business. I think I could do with some night air. Also, there is an old friend of mine that I simply must visit.”
At that point I was certain that today Wiredu had seen his last dawn and sunset. As an obligate carnivore, I couldn’t help but think of the various organs and appendages Constance would give a chewing to aid Wiredu’s memory of his paymaster. He was in for a bad, bad night.
Meanwhile, after another 30 or so minutes, everybody was getting up from the table. Lucky asked if I would mind staying in the Lobby until she gave the hotel a good study. I did.
What good fortune I had in the lobby. I strutted into the lobby to find Melania sitting in the bar alone. I made a run to her, hopped into her lap, and then commenced to knead her full, succulent breasts. Let’s face it. Female Slavs got a lot my chest weight than Chinese ones. Lucky, probably for professional reasons, had never augmented herself. Then, too, Lucky was only in her late 20s. She hadn’t had as much time to fill out as Melania.
Melania scratched me after she was done moaing with pleasure from my playing wiht her boobs. She stroked me back. As she let her wine relax her, she babbled about how much better I was than Donald. She explained she was in Berlin on business, complaining that many American failed to realise she was rich with or without Donald. Knowing her as I did, I avoided any remarks about her orange Doughboy. I shuddered when I recalled what Stormy Daniels said about his toadstool penis of ordinary dimensions.
As Melania and I chatted, I noticed hovering secret service agents. They were speculating about how much longer before “Rapunzel” passed out into the Land of Nod. It wasn’t too long. Pehaps I listened to Melania snoring for 5 minutes before I heard a familiar voice.
“There you are, Darling. How kind of you to keep Mel company. Notice how she sleeps with her mouth shut, her thighs tight together and her butt salmmed to her chair’s surface to cover her overused rear hole. Wise, very wise indeed, given what her husband is.” With that, she swept me up, leaving Melania to the Secret Service, whose agents, all in earshot, were snickering.
I had spent more time with Melania than I knew. Constance had returned from Charite looking, as Lucky put it, like a well-fed vampire. “Her mouth oozed red, red kroovy. I could imagine Wierdo’s screams as Constance broke him.”
In no time, I had the new news. Constance established that a Dutch Major working for the Polar Bear Paedophile-in-Chief had hired Wiredu.
According to the now dead man, the Polar Bear had got enraged at the murder of Binky’s twin, whom he thought was Binky himself, for preferring the silky smooth skin and non-castration-anxiety provoking baldness of a latency-age boy’s delectable member. Their is nothing like a Rush prepped boy to shield a castration-fearful-polar-bear from the terrifying prospect of a female Polar Bear in heat. Wiredu claimed male Polar Bears imagined a future where they sustained their breed with artificial insemination. Female Polar Bears were simply too dangerous to deal with.
Let docs manage their impregnation. Since the bears’ covert takeover of Holland, the bears had launched a programme to be fruitful and muliply. Dutch labs were first rate at buildng this reproductive programme into a reality. In fact, the Polar Bear Paedophile-in-Chief was even rewarding the first Dutchman to clone multiple copies of him. As that bear saw it, he was the crown of creation.
Lucky and I got back to Das Stue late. I began to piece together some of the current worries about the mad Lithuanians because of Lucky’s talks with a stream of late night visitors. What was up?
From what I heard, rightwing Lithuanias had obtained a stash of Ice-10 and perhaps a Mr Clean bot. The righties were blaming Russia for initiating a war against Lithuania when it “iced” the Lithuania hostel. These righties did not have the support of the Lithuania government, as those bureaupaths preferred to keep its eye on the ball of commerce. A war on Russia, even if the Lithuanians didn’t get blamed, threatened brisk commerce in the Baltic. Hence the Lithuania government opposed it.
The righties didn’t care or listen. Instead, as the Munitions Galore folks saw it, the crazy Lithuanias had curried the support of the Paedophile Polar Bears and their bootlicking Dutch auxiliaries. Lord Caligula, claimed Lucky, vigorously argued that the city of Arkhangelsk was probable site of a Ice-10 attack with a simultaneouss\ invasion of Dutch and bear force. “They will come from the north,” cried Caligula, “the north is the touchstone.”
Now some of his Lordship analysis seemed cracked. When Lucky and even Wolverine asked why Arkhangelsk was a better target than Murmansk, his Lordship complained that neitherof th had any poetry in them.
Lucky told me his Lordship put on the air of an Eton beak when he reminded the table that “Arkhangelsk was the very place that the archangel Michael had crushed an invasion by Satan.”
When Peregrine sneered, “You believe that drivel?,” Lucky said his Lordship suggested, “It’s rather easier to believe in the fable of a victorious archangel than that I am your sperm donor. By the way, should I request a rubber donought for you. You’re in a bad temper.” Lucky thought that was funny, but she was never a Peregrine fan.
And so he lot of us, enemies though we be, were going to form a league of necessity against the menace from the North, their Dutch lackeys, and Lithuanian dupes.
Out league got off to a bad start. It was not effective in guarding the suite of Peregrine and Wolverine, a suite east of Eton. My multiple sources told me the suite was a shamble.
Whilst we all dined in the Esszimmer, a band of banjo and flute playing bears carried boys into the suite of Peregrine and Wolverine. The bears left a layer or two of bottles of Baltika, Stoli and Rush. The suites rooms were splattered red, soaked with boy blood, as the bears had ravished each of the boys and then used their bodies as so many orders of hors d’oeuvres. Photos showed nude half devoured boys lying in all manner of positions with their white, young skins glistening in the rooms lights in stretches of boy flesh not covered in the black remnants of dried blood.
A single, very drunk beer was still in the room when Peregrine and Wolverine entered. He was a teen bear bereft of common sense, perhaps because he was drunk on Stoli, Rush, and boy flesh. His demeanor infuriated Wolverine. With a slap of his paw, a Mr Clean entered this scene of ruin. The bear, or so I am told, gave the bot a quizzical look.
The bot then gave him the Cornpone treatment. The death ray spurted from the Mr Clean’s robotic eyes. The contumely bear toppled over. Mr Clean rolled through the debris field before stopping before the unanimated teen bear. The cleaning process began. Design improvements made this edition of Mr Clean faster at dismembering and incinerating bods of most any size.
By then, Wolverine was on the telephone talking to Lord Caligula. Soon several bots arrived to make the bloody den of beer and Stoli sodomites and their victims spic’n’span. When Lord Caligula and Constance arrived for a look-see, they found Wolverine grinning as he copulated with Peregrine’s mouth. His Lordship was displeased. “Connie, would you like to peg Peregrine gurl whilst we’re here? You and Wolvy could show us what a proper spit roast looks like.”
In Lucky version of the story, Peregrine tried to get up, but Wolverine was holding his head too tight for him to get away, which Lucky described as an hilarious “embrace.”
Despite this epilogue to an orgy, the bots had the suite in fresh condition in no time at all. Lucky, cackling, told me that Constance, still reeking of Wiredu’s blood, didn’t miss the chance to fill Peregrine’s bottom. “I swear,” chuckled Lucky, “I’m surprised Peregrine isn’t preg-o or at least in need of a name change. Perhaps Peregrinette will do.”
Not all of this was good to hear. The price of most of the info was having to endlure to one of Lucky’s boring sermons on how Marx predicted western decadence. When she gets going like that, she is prone to spout nonsense. She told me, for example, that Asia has no LGBTQ+. I couldn’t resist saying, “Not even in Bangkok, eh?”
Lucky hated being contradicted. Instead of admitting to telling whoppers, she said, “Those ladyboys and such you see in Bangkok are not Asian. They are leavings of French colonists. The gays you imagine yourself seeing in Asia are all English, French, German, or American poufters, or ancestors of them, that took to dressing up as Asian women to feel tough.”
When I rolled my eyes, Lucky got pissed off, “Darling, you need larger ears. You seem unable to hear Truth!”
“Maybe so, but I recognise bravo sierra when I hear …” In a flash, Lucky grabbed me and had me under the suite’s shower. I tried peeing on her, but that just earned me a spanking and more soapy, hot water. As she washed me, she carried on about wanting to wash the bougie bravo sierra out of me.
In a way, it did. I shut up fast. Mike had warned me against trying to sober up anybody drunk on Marx or other lefty bosh. Why didn’t I listen? That said, I’m pretty sure this is the type of commie behaviour that the FBI’s first drag-queen-in-chief, Mr Herbert Hoover, had in mind when he wrote his great book, None Dare Call it Reason or was that “Treason”? In fairness, mike pointed out to me that a moron named John Stormer wrote the treason, reason fiasco. Nowadays, Ann Coulter would have bragged about writing it, if people only had shorter memories. I did once write a story explaining that John Stormer was one of Princess Hoover’s pennames.
Anyway, I played my ace. I shivered and squealed. I made a big show of it. I carried on until Lucky’s guilt slammed into her like a Tsunami. She ordered me seafood treats in melted butter, told me she had been a naughty girl, and promised to watch her temper in the future.
When we did got to bed, I felt pleased in noting my shower had cost Lucky a scratch across her thin, muscled abdomen. Despite that, she pulled me to her. I fell sleep hearing what a “darling love bug” I was.
When we got to Berlin, I understood why Lucky liked das Stue. For one thing, the room was gorgeous. Better still, from her perspective, the hotel had a fine gym with able trainers. Lucky liked being, and was used to being, pushed when exercising. She kept herself lean and mean.
Our suite’s bed was a King. Who doesn’t prefer that? You have room to move about at night. And I liked the combination of muted and bright colours in the penthouse suite, as well as the framed photographs.
My chief complaint when traveling with Lucky, if ignore the danger of it, was her terrifying her staff out of playing Go for money with me. Why wouldn’t I want to play if she refused to let my opponents collect what I owe them, but insists that they pay what they owe me. Her rules on payment create a gambler’s paradise. I admit this system is a gambler’s hell if you’re not fortunate enough to be me. The suite also had a nice terrasse for me to lounge on. I could even hear the screams of the caged animals at the zoo.
Lucky kept her word. I got a plate of eels and sturgeon sliced into kitty-sized bits for me. Once I got going on it, she left me with a bodyguard. She took herself to the Susanne Kaufman Hotel for a rubdown with other fancy services. Despite it being a breach of custom, she had one of her bodyguards keep an eye on her naked body whilst she was in the spa. Lucky did not view Berlin as a safe city, especially with Wiredu lurking.
It must have been around 21.00 when Lucky scooped me into a large purse. In minutes we were heading to the Adlon in a Genesis car that came with the room. Lucky used somebody I knew carried more weapons than a Secret Serviceman on presidential detail to drive. A couple of other guys had already installed themselves in the Lobby of the Adlon.
I like the Adlon. It’s very old school. If you’re a retired Nazi, perhaps it calls forth many happy memories of drinking to Adolf or the Reich whilst describing your collection of human skin lampshades.
Lucky walked from the lobby up to the Adlon’s second floor to the Esszimmer. Walking by the Maitre d’, she went straight to the table where Mr Wiredu was sitting.
To me it looked as if she had summoned a hat pin out of nothing. She shoved it into Mr Wiredu’s lower left thigh whilst making small talk.
“Why, Mohammed, how kind of you to get us a table in the Esszimmer. If only you were going to feel well enough to stay. I think that puncture wound on your thing will be most troubling. Some mean people put poison on their hatpins, don’t they, darling?” as she stroked the crown of my head. “Please let one of my friends, get you a ride to the hospital.” She snapped her fingers. A chap that looked like a bigger version of Goliath walked over. He was dress lie Odd Job. The giant pulled Mr Wiredu from his chair, and then, I assume, got him a cab to the hospital. Poor Wiredu did look unwell. His left thigh was leaking blood. His eyes appeared likely to drop out of their sockets.
Lucky was relaxed about the scene. When the waiter came, she told him that Mr Wiredu was holding the table for her. The next thing I knew, I had a nice chunk of lobster sitting in a dish on the floor for me. “You’ll love it, darling. The chef here is a genius. And keep your eyes open. Soon, my love, we’ll see old friends.”
I’ll confess to irritation when Lucky took the one quail egg for herself rather than giving it to me. She redeemed herself when I got some mozzarella sticks. Trust me. They’re wonderful in the Esszimmer. Lucky got a bread presentation on hot stones. Bread isn’t my thing, but then I heard Lucky coo, “Darling, you must try the butter.” I’m grateful for that guidance to this very day. This Wonder Woman of butters had chives and flowers in it. It was god worthy. I gobbled it up, lest somebody steal it from me.
By now, I should have noticed that Wolverine, Peregrine, and Lord Caligula had entered the room. Peregrine was walking a wee oddly, as if his bottom was bothering him. Wolverine was beaming. His Lordship snickered every time Peregrine took a step. I heard His Lordship sneer, leering joking. “Out of practice from Eton. boy. Should I order you a rubber doughnut?” Then I realised Constance was at the table, as I heard her giggle. When she looked at Peregrine, she assured him “how nice it is to have another lady at the table.”
When I looked up, I could see Lucky rolling her eyes. She then stopped rolling them to fix a predatory gaze on Constance and her table. You’d have thought Lucky was sitting in a hunting blind, not a 2-star Michelin restaurant.
Nothing ever seems to bother Constance. After a minute or so, she invited Lucky and me to join her table, promising “Cliggy will pay.” His Lordship did not smile when he heard that. Lucky drew a waiters attention to tell him what she wanted. In a jiffy, the waiter had joined our table to Lord Caligula’s table. Constance looked at Lucky, looked at Peregrine, and then bragged about “How marvellous to have 3 ladies at the table. Isn’t that right, Peregrine? Three happy couples: Me and Cliggy, Wolverine and his girl, and you and Crocky.”
Once Constance starts talking, it’s hard to shut her up. She thanked Lucky profusely for handling Mr Wiredu. “I thought I must kill him myself, but Ms Ming skewered his thigh for me. Such a deft touch you have, Ms Ming. His having the cheek to show his face after kidnapping me from Switzerland set my mind on murder. You were merciful. Confinement in a hospital rather than a morgue is always what rogues prefer. Did I mention he took me to a nudist colony? I must say you, Ms Ming, if I believe what I hear, you’d have liked chewing on his Peego. Wiredu sausage, it’s a handsome, meaty, ebony beauty.”
Lucky shrugged. “You musn’t confuse what you lie for what I likem Constance. I prefer pretty-faced men with thick wallets.”
I was so glad when the waiter brought another bread platter. Lucky commanded more of the butter, including a separate small bowl of it for me.
Without waiting, Lucky told His Lordship that she had heard rumours that Munitions Galore was having trouble keeping tabs on its customers. For example, lots of the Mr Cleaners were being used by small time buyers for assassinations. Then, some other rumours claimed a very small-fry buyer was planning an attack in a cold climate with Ice-10. Leaning forward, Lucky whispered to His Lordship, “I dare say you have sold not only to the rich and reasonable but to the rich and stupid.”
While stroking his chin with his long, long fingers, Lord Caligula spoke, “You’re a worrywart Ms Ming. Every businessman faces challenges from devious clients. Don’t suppose I come to Berlin for the sheer pleasure of it. I know a peace powwow is a necessity.”
My hair raised when I heard Constance mutter, “Fuck that.” Constance was no peacenik.
“Pay my lady no mind, Ms Ming. She is upset that you have prevented her from having Mr Wiredu for dessert. Did he try to talk you into killing us.”
Lucky took this to be a reference to the Mr Clean deathbot that had rolled to the door of the Esszimmer where it stood in his Lordships line of sight. “I’m not on my home turf, Your Lordship. Imprudent women have abbreviated. Hence my mechanical bodyguard. We all need one another here. And don’t look so surprised. You neither could nor did know my Mr Clean was here because I prefer a model without listening, video bugs, and spyware on it. Again, I’m a prudent woman.” As she picked me up, she stroked my chest with her now green fingernails, and added, “Aren’t I, darling.”
The fingernails looked great on my black fur. Lucky had style. I was wondering where she had stashed her weapons, as she looked well tailored.
Anyway, with the preliminaries behind them, they turned to eating well whilst scheming a better future for themselves. There was a lot to talk about.
Lucky had reserved a Grand Piano Suite at Claridge’s. Nothing pleased Lucky more than sitting down nude at that piano whilst playing Satie or, as she warmed up, Liszt. She also liked mimicking the playing of Vince Guaraldi, the jazz pianist if she felt like leaving the classical repertoire.
Athletic in her play, I’d watch from a couch as sweat began to run down her chest toward her lap. Sometimes she would sing, especially if playing Cole Porter tunes. Once soaked in sweat, she’d move to the suite’s main bathroom to wash and soak in a large tub. On those days, she blew off the gym.
During her musical moments, Lucky made sure that I ate well. I appreciated that. Music goes best, like good wine, with good food. I was eating poached eggs on sourdough bread with Wye smoked salmon and a side of bacon. I asked for a side of mornay sauce. It’s a wonderful dip for bacon.
When life is good, I tend to forget the troubles of others. In particular, I forgot how foolish Wiredu was to start the shit pot that came from kidnapping Constance. On paper, he had a good plan. Lord Caligula and fils, along with Wolverine, reasoned Holland was the place Wiredu would stash Constance. They sent their sparrows out in search of her through the Dutch countryside. Wolverine even made trips to Brussels to extract intelligence on her Wiredu or Constance’s where about in Holland.
Wiredu, though, had fooled them all. Instead of Holland, he whisked Constance to one of those nudie resorts born of the German FKK (Free Body Culture) movement. Everybody knows you don’t have to dig deep into a German heart before you discover the nudist within him. Even in the old East German days, the East Germans had vast selections of nude beaches to visit. It showed they still had a love of freedom, whatever the grim oppressive facts of East German life. So there Constance lay in a bungalow.
Most of the time Wiredu and his crew sauntered about the bungalow in slippers without anything else. They slip into thongs when walking outside.
Constance couldn’t help but notice they had younger, harder bodies than his Lordship. Outside the door, they had van loaded with weapons.
They were living in a fool’s paradise. None of them had considered how Irascible Lawless would react. They had only worried about Lord Caligula and company. They though they had him outwitted.
People must not forget that Irascible (1) fabulously wealthy, (2) a master hunter, (3) possessor of the finest hunting nose in North America. He reacted to the kidnapping of Constance as personal affront. Nobody had consult or paid him for it. Irascible is just the kind of guy who will not put up with not getting notice or a cut.
Whilst Lord Caligula and his crew loitered in Holland, Irascible was on the move. He got a corporate buddy to fly him Luxembourg. Once Irascible started spreading his money around, relying on his corporate pirates to help him, he soon had clues. He must go to Germany.
I don’t know when he picked up the scent, but he headed. He headed to the beaches of the North. He was undeterred by other scents. He knew the smell of Constance.
Lucky and I were still resting at Claridge’s, though Lucky had bought some sort of incendiary mortar, when I switched on the telly. Voila. I got news of a murderous brouhaha in Germany’s north. On a gorgeous stretch of nudist beach, there had been a blood bath.
Nobody knew all the details. It was gruesome. A number of men had been found skinned and eviscerated. They were spread upside down like butchered deer tied up for smoking. And they were being smoked. The bodies were labeled with dates and times, with the tags “Long Pig 2,” “Long Pig 3,” “Long Pig 4” etc. etc. It appeared somebody had made a meal of a missing Long Pig 1, as the authorities discovered a plate of long big with baked beans and empty bottle of Cote du Rhone. The killer had also defecated. Yuck! Their was evidence of Long Pig in the feces.
Evidence showed that a van had departed a now deserted bungalow. Witnesses described the occupants. Several of them appeared to be dead Long Pigs. At least 2 or three men had left with a barely dressed woman at speed.
Breaking news came on. A missing woman, Constance Lawless, had surfaced in Kiel after being tossed her from a van. She survived the ejection but was now in hospital. Kiel was an unsurprising destination, since rumour had it that the nudist resort was a little known one east of Falckensteiner Strand.
Within a day, the tabloids were having a go at Constance. The Sun published a story, based on a tape they somehow obtained, of Irascible visiting Constance. The story featured a photograph of Constance bandaged and obtunded in her hospital bed. The story showed Irascible Lawless had minimal sympathy for her. To quote, “Really Connie? You have a pack of Nigerians bushwack you in Luxembourg? What next? Can you still deal with rattlesnakes? Must I protect you from foxes when you go walking the fields? It’s pathetic Connie. Lord Caligula is making you soft.”
The Sun claimed German authorities wanted to have a word with Irascible, but nobody knew where he lived or how to contact him. The Americans were claiming Irascible was probably a Canadian. The Canadians said he was most likely an American. Lord Caligula was quoted as saying, “News of Irascible’s existence is too easily credited.”
But Lord Caligula and his crew had their own problem. The Polar Bear Paedophiles were wily. The Dutch police arrested, on an anonymous tip, Caligula, Peregrine, and Wolverine for possession of pornography depicting bestiality, a style of porn outlawed in Dutch law since 2008. It was refreshing to learn, even at his Lordship’s expense, that the Dutch did have a limit, although it took them to 2008 to discover it.
I was surprised that the Bears had not put that law to rest, but you never know when you need a charge on an enemy. In their lairs, the the bears had as many smooth, thin, hairless Dutch boys with pageboy cuts as any pervert could want. I did wonder what the rumours about the Paedophile bears insisting the boy where women’s jewelry and makeup were about. You would’t imagine that anybody who eats raw seal would be that particular. What a strange new world that has such people in it.
For once, his Lordship let his solicitor do all the talking for him. It didn’t take long to convince a magistrate that his Lordship was innocent. To do that, he blamed the filth pictures on Peregrine and Wolverine. He promised to arrange treatment for the two of them in England. The claim was made easier because the beast porn was found in one of Peregrine’s suitcases, albeit with commentary rating the pictures and videos in what seemed to be his Lordship’s hand.
Lucky made the best of the opportunity. The night after his Lordship’s arrest. Lucky left me alone. She went out. In about 3 hours she returned to the Piano Suite. She made a beeline for the bathroom where she showered. I switched on BBC news. Lo, a reporter stood outside Mission Galore’s reading HQ. A vast blaze was gobbling up Mission Galore real estate. The reporter said witnesses claimed somebody had mortared the HQ with 3 incendiary rounds.
When the Lucky came out of the bathroom drying her hair, I asked her about the Reading fire. She told me that people who kill friends of her often discover that they are rather unlucky.
As Lucky put it, “You would have to believe in a world without karma to believe you could kill a friend of mine like Charles de Guerre without some bad luck as a consequence.”
With that off her thin chest, she then ordered a haddock omelet with mornay sauce. She fed me bits of the haddock after I got tired of nibbling on her toes, as she drank Boerl Kroff 1996 champagne. Toe kisses always made her laugh and generous. The champagne never hurts, either. And Claridge’s does make a fine mornay sauce. The stuff is velvet smooth in the mouth. Lucky is generous after a triumph.
Once she had ate her full, Lucky lay in bed, opened herself, switched on telly coverage of the fire in Reading, and pleasured herself. She let an orgasm push her into sleep. I was how it was. Avenging de Guerre had let her get calmer, but not so calm she didn’t have a Walter under her pillow.
Once in Abuja, the Rover went straight to the aeroport. Lucky instructed the guards to find something Binky could wear. Her first thought was to bring a tailor but she thought better of it. Observing how battered he was and remembering how battered he was, Lucky told them to find a kaftan to cover him. She then verified that Binky had the brains to have a passport on him, ideally one showing German citizenship. Voila, Binky did have one. Instead of Dalrymple, his German name was Vogel.
Lucky felt somewhat better when her guys returned with a kaftan that fit Binky. They had shown initiative. The garment was cut and then hemmed to accommodate Binky’s diminutive stature.
As it happened, Lucky, Binky, and I had to take a first-class Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt. The ticket called for us to continue to Zurich, but Lucky opted to deplane at Frankfurt.
Somehow a Chinese driver arrived and he drove us straight to Stuttgart. The driver took us to the Zauberlehrling. She told her driver to take Binky to a safe house, and then return with him tomorrow morning at 10. As soon as we settled into our room, Lucky bathed. She emerged in her birthday suit, but soon put on her comfortable casual clothing. She limited her arms to a Spyderco knife and a Walther PPQ M2 that the driver gave her. She shoved another Walther into a pillowcase on the bottom side of the pillow and restored it to the well-made bed. Off we went.
A taxi took us to Hupperts restaurant. Ordering in impeccable German, I soon had a portion of fresh halibut placed in a bowl at the right of her foot. They had poured cream into a separate bowl for me to drink and the halibut had a marvellous butter sauce on it. Meanwhile, Lucky had begun to tuck into her food. A beautiful selection of bread arrived. She had a creme of celery soup, and a succulent duck with a portion of spaetzle. For dessert, she had what appeared to be a Buche de Noel, but didn’t offer me any.
Perhaps halfway through our meal, a guy approached the table. In Mandarin, which is never easy for me to follow, he told Lucky that her “friend from England” would meet us at a bank in Zurich. They planned to meet at Pictet & Cie’s Zurich office.
After dinner, we returned to our room at the Zauberlehrling. Lucy got the PPQ from under her pillow and put it on the nightstand next to her. She put the other PPQ on the nightstand on the other side of the bed. For reasons I don’t know, she left the Spyderco in a sheath attached to her right calf. Her work makes her cautious. We went to sleep.
When we woke, Lucky made a call. Within an hour, a driver arrived with Binky in tow. Binky was now wearing a blue triple-piece blue suit. It didn’t fit well, but it looked less ridiculous than the kaftan. Binky still had a bruised, swollen face. He wasn’t too agile either. Lucky had ordered us a room-service breakfast. She got a soft-boiled egg with toast. I had an order of ham that Lucky carved into bite-sized pieces with her Spyderco. When she finished her cutting, she walked over to Binky and proceeded to wipe the grease from the knife with Binky’s hair.
Binky asked, “What am I getting to eat?”
Lucky scrunched her face up. “You? You’re fat enough without breakfast.”
The driver carried Lucky’s possession to the car. Binky was in her grasp. I was allowed to walk along with them. The car was a stretched Audi. I noticed it had diplomatic plates. Before we got in, Lucky told Binky it would be a 3-hour drive from Stuttgart to Zurich. Then she asked, “Can you hold it, or must I ask the driver to diaper you? If you pee in my car, I’ll promise to cut your wee-wee off.” Binky assured her he had excellent bladder control.
The car was soon heading south towards Zurich.
Pictet and Cie is an ancient family of thieves that thrived in Zurich. My guess is that they have always had the morals of hyenas, but their offices are handsome to behold. You can feel the luxury. Everything about the Pictet’s digs screamed wealth and we weren’t even in its HQ in Geneva. The office had tasteful rooms with decent art, lots of pricey wood, and modern, but not too modern, furniture.
Lucky, Binky, and I walked into a room with a Pictet flunky. In the room sat Lord Caligula in immaculate dress. His suit was black silk with a red kerchief and a gold silk tie. He had a Roger Smith watch on his wrist. With him sat Jerome Quisling. Quisling was a legend as the greatest cryptologist and an applied mathematician. He had done his bachelor in mathematics at Cambridge. He took a Ph.D. in maths from Stanford, but also took courses in Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. Over the years of his meteoric rise, he had built an impressive portfolio of clients whose specialties were mega crimes. Mr Quisling also added rogue regimes.
During an interview with Bloomberg TV, a reporter had the cheek to ask Quisling why so many of his clients were criminals and corrupt dictators. Grinning, he volunteered, “They all pay rather better than American presidents or EU ministers. Besides, Putin has a sly sense of humour, as does Emperor Xi. But you’re old enough to be past age to prefer moralising to money. Why not ask me questions that are worthy of my intelligence, and even yours?”
Quisling’s presence meant Lord Caligula and Lucky needed somebody at ease with code and numbers to deal with Binky’s books. It also meant they had stopped trusting Binky.
Lucky sat down opposite Lord Caligula. “You’re looking fit Cliggy. Being away from Constance suits you.”
“Constance is near. I’m rather surprised you two didn’t meet in Nigeria. It was almost as if you avoided her. But I know how scary she is to some.”
“Oh, I thought we missed each other because she was getting slow as the years roll by. I even worried she might be convalescing from all her recent doings.”
“Not at all. I left her in Geneva to swim.”
During this period, Binky had provided requested information to a Pictet stooge. He returned with a folder that he handed to Binky, A young woman brought Binky a cucumber sandwich and tea. She asked if anybody else wanted anything. Lucky accepted an offer of tea. She had some smoked salmon brought to me and asked that it have a side of fondue to accompany it. When she returned, I was shocked when Binky shamelessly attempted to help himself to some of my fondue. As he reached in, he earned a sharp, loud slap from Lucky. “It’s for Crockett, pig. Leave it be.”
“Are you hungry, Mr Dalrymple?” asked Lord Caligula.
Lucky stared at Lord Caligula. “Look at Mr Vogel. He’s obviously not hungry. Perhaps you’re confusing him with Mr Dalrymple. He too has an unregulated appetite.”
“Indeed he did. Irascible Lawless complained about it to me after a mutual visit. Still, Mr Vogel looks almost as hungry as Mr D sometimes does. But one must not overeat. The cucumber sandwich is plenty.”
Meanwhile, Constance was enjoying a swim in the well-regulated waters of Lake Geneva. She had removed her skimpy garments at the water’s edge and slid into the lake’s chilly waters. She later told Lord Caligula, who later still told me, that swimming is risky for her. It excited her appetite. She considered eating one of her junior fellow bathers, but she remembered what sticklers the Swiss were for law and order. Unlike the Somalians, if you ate so much as one luscious teen girl, you’d have untold numbers of Swiss cops trying to catch you. The same if you ate a boy. The Somalians tended to be too busy killing one another to let a single devoured teen get in the way of killing one another in numbers. So, she regained the shore hungry, let the sun dry her, and then put her skimpy clothing back on her sleek bod.
None of this interfered with Mr Quisling’s work in Zurich. His fingers sailed over his laptop making calculations and notes. From time to time, he scribbled notes with his Japanese maki-e fountain pen. I liked looking at the cranes on it. Sets of equations would appear as Quisling’s maki-e flowed across sheaves of quality paper. At key moments, his brow would furrow. He would then use a pencil to create and write undiscovered math truths when he was using yellow legal pads. On and on he churned. I got to eat and sleep as he worked.
I was awakened when Wolverine and Peregrine entered the room. As soon as Peregrine sat down, he prodded me with his boot’s tip. Wolverine laughed. He said something to Quisling. Quisling handed Wolverine a number of his sheafs. Wolverine passed these to Peregrine. “I’m a classicist,” he said.
Whatever his moral failings, Peregrine was numerate. After an hour, he set down the sheaves and asked Mr Quisling a series of questions that I didn’t understand. Peregrine asked a direct question.
“So, we are able to identify the buyers of Ice-10 and Mr Cleans with certainty. Nevertheless, am I correct that the US, UK, Canada, Germany, France, Holland, Russia, Japan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Israel, India, Pakistan, China, Singapore, Taiwan, Lithuania, South Africa, Italy, Spain, Turkey, and an uncertain number of buyers that are nations or private parties have spent in excess of a trillion dollars on Ice-10 and killer bots?”
Quisling nodded. After he cleared his throat, he added, “Mr Vogel or Dalrymple or what his name is today has created a lattice of companies for collecting and laundering funds. Munitions Galore is the chief beneficiary, along with. you, Lord Caligula, and Wolverine. I won’t be able to know more about the identities until we collect more account information at Julius Baer Group where Mr Vogel has yet another safe deposit box. Also, as you all suspected, Binky has been rather generous with his cuts .” I noticed Binky squirm at this revelation. Lucky put on finger at the perpendicular on her lips. With her other hand, she drew a finger across her throat. Binky shut up.
Quisling continued, “I will meet you at BCEE bank in Luxembourg. I’ll be at Le royal.”
We were leaving when I saw Lucky place her hand on Binky’s shoulder. As we left the room, two Chinese gentlemen approached, both of them powerfully built. Lucky handed over Binky, saying “Be sure to bring him to me with a car tomorrow. We’ll be going west in the morning.”
Lucky got me up early. A breeze was streaming off the Atlantic, its vast grey waters visible from our room. As I walked on the porch to await my breakfast, the warm sun, a warm breeze, and dazzling light from white walls all hit me. I located a patch of shade to rest and await my breakfast.
Instead of breakfast, a fat Chinaman through the hotel’s entrance. Lucky had called him. He worked at China’s embassy. When he got to the room, he handed Lucky a Spyderco Police model and a compact FN 509. He also turned over a compact Walther PPQ.
Lucky decided it was time to dress, so she put on panties, skipped a bra, and put on a summer-weight suit that had enough pockets for her to arm up. She strapped the Spyderco to her right thigh. The FN went into a custom pocket on the jacket that kept it from printing. She put her Walther in a holster that she put behind her right buttock. As she did this, I got the sad, indeed alarming, idea that she had not ordered us breakfast
I was right. She stepped onto the balcony, whooshed me up, and put me in a carry bag. “We eat later, darling. I had to fight to suppress my desire to howl my pain. Lucky was impossible in mission mode.
Meanwhile, a couple of bodyguards from the embassy showed up to guard the room. She briefed them. I had already learnt that since London she had begun to tell guards they must never play go for money with me.
The driver and another guard sat up in the front seats of a Land Rover. Lucky and I sat in the back. We sped down streets of Lagos out to the bush. It wasn’t too far. I guess Binky would never have rented digs in an estate without an ample supply of boys at hand.
We got to the estate in good time, considering that Lagos has a population of close to 24 million. The place we got to had teak, banana trees, poison trees, acacias, water hyacinths, and oil palms. It was handsome. A pool in the backyard had a Gaboon adder sunning by it. None of us cared. We weren’t here to swim.
The inside of this large house with a huge veranda was of teak and tiles. I noticed plenty of venting for AC, which I yearned to have turned on. This area has a tropical climate. The Floor was littered with papers and all manner of books and curios. Near the door, the floor had a large blood stain where, I guessed, the irate mother finished Binky.
Lucky sent her boys to search through the estate’s debris. She plopped down on a zebra skin sofa in the living room. She had spotted a copy of Les Liaisons Dangereuses. She had the cheek to ignore me. Where was my food? Instead, of feeding me, she was fast into that book. I did my best to push between her and its page, but she fended me off.
In a short time, her men brought her sheaves from account books. She put down the de Laclos to look at them. Her men also gave her a flash drive and a laptop to read it. Within 30 minutes, Lucy pronounced it bull shit. “Could,” she asked, “the morons at Langley believe they had Binky’s real records? Look harder!” After a couple of hours of structural damage to the house, including searches for buried treasure, nothing turned up.
Lucky became peeved. She complained that Binky was a sneaky weasel.
We left the estate. I was still starving. Lucky got us to stop at several farmhouses. She wished to know where men that loved boys went for trysts. At first, everybody pretended the idea of it was a scandal. As soon as Lucky offered Franklins for knowledge of child prostitutes surfaced. Lucky got an address for the poshest place $500 in bribes later.
When we all got to the brothel, Lucky went directly in. There was plenty of hooting. Suddenly, we heard screams. A bloodied chap with peacock feathers sticking out of his bottom came flying out the door. Lucky walked behind him. She grabbed his tiny penga savagely, slapped him, then demanded with menace, her Spyderdo now in hand, to know where Binky was.
She didn’t use Binky’s name. She described him as a small, rolly-polly, white pervert. When the snivelling chap claimed he didn’t know, Lucky hit him so hard he lost his upper central incisors. Crying louder, he told her to check a particular room. Lucky released him but instructed her guards to cane him. “Not more than 4 whacks. I mean it!. Let him taste my mercy.” She had clearly told her men, as if it was necessary the chap that the chap was aa gladiola. They gave him 4 with gusto.
Despite the commotion, Lucky discovered Binky in the named room. He was smoking opium. A heavily painted naked boy was feeding him figs. I had raced catch up, despite my extreme hunger. When I hit the room, I saw that Binky had a sawed-off shotgun, a nice looking Beretta, to his right.
“Hello, Lucky,” he purred. “Would you care to touch some young, smooth flesh? Don’t be offended. time has not coarsened you too much yet.”
Lucky stood with a hand on the handle of the PPQ over her right buttock. She glared at Binky.
“You know,” continued Binky, while stroking his boy’s buttocks with his left hand, “my twin brother Beau was such a careless man. I never take up with a boy in a place like that estate without bribing his mother. In poor countries, a mother’s love is fungible. Beau never figured that out. Now he’s dead. Of course, I blame Putin and his ridiculous moralizing, a popular method to grandstand in Africa. The hoi polloi love the self-righteous.”
During this time, I was uneased by Binky having followed the great Randy Newman’s advice. Binky had. Aside from a pith helmet, he hadn’t a stitch on but he had left his hat on. Being a fat man, he also was sweating like a pig or horse on a hot day on the track. You could see rivulets of sweat running down his short, pudgy legs to his feet or splashing onto the floor.
Lucky later told me that if she had not wanted Binky’s records so bad, she’d have shot the motherfizzucker dead right there and then. In the background, I could hear Master Peacock screaming from his caning. Perhaps somebody was tending his wounds.
“Where are the records?” Binky’s answered by tapping his skull. “Good bookies have good memories.” Thus pretended Binky.
Lucky would have none of that. “Do you expect me to believe the likes of Lord Caligula will trust his cut to invisible books kept in your head? Where are the books?”
“Oh, you mean the accounting. Swiss banks have those books in vaults. But you can’t expect me to just write down the names of all my clients by name. Who buys what is a trade secret.”
Lucky exploded at that answer. Faster than a champagne cork, she hopped on the coffee table before Binky. Before he could touch his Beretta, she had kicked him in the forehead. The blow put an end to his buttock fondling. The naked, smooth, well-painted, big-eyed boy jumped back. His cries sent another shaved boy wearing just a codpiece scurrying in to see what was up. What he saw of Binky made him turn tail and flee.
Lucky was standing on the couch with Binky under her. Her right foot was obstructing Binky’s airway. “Will that help your memory?” she hissed. He waved a sign of submission. When she moved her foot, he began trying to kiss her feet, which earned him two resounding kicks to his gynecomastic chest.
Between gaps, Binky managed to ask, “If you’ve got that out of your system, let’s plan. I suggest we get out of here whilst the getting is good. if we make it to Ibadan, we can drive to Abuja in about 9 and a half hours. Abuja has the Nnamdi Azikwe Airport, the best in the country. Be forewarned. The road from Ibadan to Abuja is dangerous. A lot of criminal elements prowl it.”
Lucky broke out laughing. “And you imagine those criminals are more dangerous than me and my gang? ”
Binky didn’t lose a beat. “Constance. Friends told me Constance was coming. They weren’t sure why. She had a meeting in Langley is all I know. She won’t expect you to go elsewhere by way of Abuja. We’ll confound her.”
I doubted Constance was so easy to confound. However, Abuja had a Lufthansa flight to Frankfurt that connected to Zurich. Abuja also had a lot of diplomats, meaning opportunities to mooch rides.
Lucky made the command decision. After that, we headed out. I must have looked panicked. We left Binky’s room after Lucky summoned a few boys to carry him to our car. We emerged from the room into a lounge with a big bar. I understood why Binky got no help. Lucky’s guards stood in the room smiling and smacking their own palms with canes.
On the floor, I spotted a brawny Nigerian with his head cracked open. Another Nigerian lay on the floor looking rather badly beaten down. Everybody else was at the bar, drinking and trying to pretend that nothing had happened. The gods were kind because Lucky remembered me. She asked what food they had that would appeal to me. I got some local fish chopped into tiny pieces. At this point, I think I’d have eaten a rat if they had tossed it to me. Ordinarily, I don’t care for rat. The shit on them is off-putting.
All the same, I liked the fish. I ate fast. In a jiffy, we all sat in the Ranger Rover with tubby Binky tossed with a thud into the back. He groaned
Everything seemed to go well. We rolled down the highway. Once we had been several hours on the road from Ibadan to Abuja, five armed men blocked our progress. I’m unsure what they wanted, as Lucky declined to even start to negotiate, nor were her guards.
What happened next? I can only say that Lucky was the first to step out of the Range Rover. She held a FN 509 in one hand and her Walther PPQ in the other. her guards stepped out pronto. I hid in the back seat. I don’t know what happened. After about 10 shots, it was all over. We were rolling again. Lucky and her boys started telling jokes about how “wide-eyed with surprise” the wussy highwaymen looked. “Nigeria has lots of armed folks with no respect for law, eh boys?” He guards pretend pistols of their hands. They agreed with her. Several hours later we were on the outskirts of Abuja.
I’m not better with time than I am with counting. Time is a slippery notion, even Saint Augustine admitted that. As long as you don’t ask me, I know how to get on in time. Once you ask me what time is, well, I’m stumped. What I know is that I eat breakfast before lunch, lunch before dinner, and go to bed before getting up. I even know that yesterday occurred before today or tomorrow.
In the fulness of time, the big shots gave their UN speeches. Bebe Netanyahu kicked off the show.
Bebe promised that nobody loved peace more than Israel or loved it less than Palestinian terrorists and their paymasters in Tehran. Even if it would not hurt the cause of piece if, heaven forbid, a bomb obliterated Iran or this so-called Ice-10 froze all the Mullahs out of the Holy City of Qom.
In short order, leaders of the UK, France, Italy, Germany, and Japan praised pacifist policies, insisting their nations would never use nuclear weapons or Ice-10 if there is such a thing. Italy, Germany, and Japan proclaimed they had never recently initiated war on neighbours in any form.
When the time for President Putin to mount the speaker’s podium came, he pulled on a long face. He rehearsed some facts. It saddened him to have to doubt the claims that none of the prior speakers had used weapons of mass destruction. Had not the US used atomic bombs on Japanese cities? Had ot the Germans, or perhaps some other party, tested Ice-10 in Lithuania? If only, Putin lamented the Lithuanians had had the wisdom to stand fast with the Russia, rather than fall into the arms certain western powers like a temple prostitute. The result was plain to all. Lithuania was just a space, ein Raum, where Nazis and the like could test weapons. Angry shouts rose from the German and US delegations. The Brits and French were shaking their heads. The Scandinavians were rolling their eyes, though the Danes also wondered when they could go smoke.
Putin showed no signs of easing his harsh words. He reviewed suspected instances of Ice-10 use in the Congo, in Somalia, and in China. The peace-loving people of Russia took grave offense efforts to frame them for attacks in Africa. Nobody should hasten to blame anybody, though Russians knew better than anybody that only fools ignored the possibility the Jews, especially the Zionists among them, had a role. Netanyahu made a point of screaming “bul drek,” “fignya,” and “bull shit,” amid repeated calls for order. Not far from Putin, I saw Emperor Xi shaking his head. I felt a jolt when I noticed Lucky stationed like the watchdog she was behind him. She exuded a menacing alertness as her eyes scanned her surround.
When Emperor Xi took the podium, he confined his remarks to the expression of the Chinese people’s determination to contain all weapons of mass destruction. Further, the Chinese people did not anticipate ever using weapons of mass destruction except in self-defense. He knew nothing about the rumoured superweapon Ice-10.
As a watched the telly, Lord Caligula nudged me. “Old Xi knows very little about Ice-10 for a man who bought more of it from Munitions Galore and subsidiaries than the Americans. The dear man made me a rich, rich man.”
The best bit came last. When all the prattlers had had their say, President Trump stood at the podium to speak. To nobody’s surprise, he expressed his total confidence in President Putin. Rumours that the Russians had had anything to do with alleged Ice-10 attacks, which were probably all fake news, never showed the Russians did anything other than aid peace. President Trump expressed sorrow that his own intelligence agencies had released groundless analyses that concluded Russia had a role in attacks on the Congo, northwest China, and Lithuania. The President promised the American people that he trusted President Putin and believe his denials of warlike activities. It was about this time that screens at the UN flickered and then showed grainy footage of a man that looked just like President Trump, but naked, in a fancy hotel. Some pretty, naked, young women were jumping up and down on a bed with snowy white sheets.
They giggled in accented English that President Obama and his wife had slept in this very bed. Then the Trump double blurted out, in a voice just like President Trump’s, “Well, piss on it then.” At that the girls began to tinkle. At first it was two small streams, but they began to piss like horses when the spitting image of image of the President slid like a beaching walrus toward the pissers. They jumped to straddle him. To my astonishment, two immense streams of pee came splashing down on the walrus’s immense buttocks. One girl feel over backwards. She yelled, “Urine is sterile” as she sent a golden shower splashing into the President Trump’s doppelganger smiling face. If I didn’t know better, I’d say he responded with an orgasm.
By now, Lord Caligula was pounding the arms of his club chair. Constance was clapping her hands. Both of them were exhorting the wet Walrus with “Go, Donald, go!” Of course his Lordship told me that he didn’t think Donald had that in him.
Lucky i saw had a grin bigger than a Cheshire cat’s. Rumours of this tape had surfaced during the presidential campaign. To my knowledge, Trump never said it never happened. Instead, he had argued it could not have happened, since he was a Germophobe. But even the slut on the tape knew urine is sterile.
Now I will say this about Mr Trump. He is never incapable of the big lie. With the evidence getting sent across the globe, his first observation, once he had seen what was going on, was that it must have been hard to find an actor so handsome. But he said the voice was wrong, and then volunteered it was all stupid. “If I want somebody to pee on me, Melania would be happy to do it.” That was something I believed. She might even have been willing to bring in a whole line of Rockettes to pee on him.
By the next day, the White House had filled the news outlets, especially Fox and Epoch Times, with denials. Sean Hannity spent over an hour explaining why, as Commander-in-Chief, President Tru p would never let a Russian girl pee down on him. And it wasn’t our President’s fault if some women get so happy to see him that, like puppies, they pee themselves with job. So, don’t believe the lying tape at the UN. It was all fiction, and even if it wasn’t fiction, it was photoshopped to make it look as if the girls were peeing down instead of up.
But Hannity did not stop there. He showed pictures of Lucky. He described her as a wicked spy and a tsarina of video misinformation. He lies are legend among those who know her and her dark arts. Was her presence at Emperor Xi’s speech an accident? That beggars belief. She was there to fill the UN with a lying video based on lying intelligence. The great Orange Jesus, President Trump, was again a victim of a sinister hoax.
Mind you, several hateful commentators, Rachel Maddows comes to mind, on channels like MSNBC did all they could to spread lies about the President being a twisted, racist pervert. They should be ashamed of themselves. In fact, the President was so horrified when he first heard rumours of himself being golden showered that he had stopped peeing. He paid Don Jr a bonus to pee for him.
At the time, I felt I had to find Lucky. I missed her.
As all my readers know, I am, like Daphne on the old Frazier show, “a little bit psychic.” I had sensed Lucky’s presence. My Lucky antenna told me that Lucky was very near. Then I knew. Lucky was at the Sherry Netherland at 781 5th Avenue, less than 300 feet from the Pierre. Once I entered the ornate art deco lobby, I could feel Lucky’s vibe. It was less luxurious than she often took for digs, but it was near the Pierre.
Not being a shy guy, I asked for Ms Ming’s room. An impertinent clerk dared to question me. I wailed until she rang Lucky’s room. Within a minute or so elevator doors opened. Lucky strolled into the lobby, which reminded me of the bar at the Netherland Hotel in Cincinnati. Lucky walked to me and scooped me up. “Darling, where have you been? I wondered if you’d ever get here.”
Under a sable overcoat, I could feel Lucky’s familiar Walther PPQ M2 strapped below her rib cage. I would also notice the handle of her Spyderco police model just protruding from the top of a higher-than-normal Chelsea boot.
We made it to her King Suite with a city view, she shed her sable coat. She stood naked in her boots with a custom holster holding her Walther against the side of her bare tummy. She pulled the Spyderco from her left boot placing it on the fireplace mantle. I noticed her landing strip was recently shaved, neat against her mons and jet black. Her body was as muscled as Simone Biles’, but Lucky’s looked able to carry more weight. She did have an assortment of scars, but none of them were new to me. Once in the bedroom, she put her Walther on a nightstand adjacent to the right side of the bed.
Without losing a beat, she grabbed her telephone. “Yi-fei, be a dear. Go down to Harry Cipriani. I want the artichoke heart salad and avocados and a plate of the fillet of sole alla Carlina. Bring some warm cream so that I can fix it to make it very nice for Crockey.” I licked the sole of her foot and purred. I’m nothing if not appreciative.
Yi-fei returned within a half hour. He placed the food on a cart in front of Lucky’s door, and. then rang her. A second call from another guard assured her the hallway was clear. Lucky then retrieved our meal.
Lucky wax relaxing. Her detail to the UN to guard Emperor Xi had ended. She succeeded in her work. Now she had time to relax.
We listened to jazz. I sat on her lap as the music played as Lucky read Marquez’sLove in the Time of Cholera. Hours must have passed. She worked me with a stroke to the head. She asked a direct question. “Darling, did you see Charles any time in the 24 hours before somebody murdered him?”
Trapped, I admitted I had. Lucky ordered me to tell her, as exactly as I could recall, what happened when I saw him. I told her that he approached Lord Caligula, Constance, and me at the Pierre’s bar and was not polite. After Lucky obtained a blow-by-blow from me, Lucky shook her head. “Poor Charles. He had too much passion in him. If I had been there, I’d have muzzled him.
“You can’t insult a warrior as powerful and proud as Constance without wagering your life. I know Bart and Fielding would know better than that.”When I said we didn’t know if Constance murdered him, Lucky looked at me as if I was the dumbest kid in the class. “Oh, please. We’re not lawyers. We know what we know. We’re not here to prove anything. Who had the skill to murder Charles by biting his penis off, by fisting him with her cruel claws spread, and leaving his eviscerated corpse in his bed for all who know these matters to know the truth? Constance, Crockey, Constance.”
As I heard the Grosse Fuge in the background, Lucky surprised me. Words from the Old Testament undammed from her, “To me belongeth vengeance and recompence; their foot shall slide in due time: for the day of their calamity is at hand, and the things that shall come upon them make haste.”
As she turned from me to go to bed, I saw her dark watery eyes have their dam break up. Tears streamed like waterfalls over her high cheekbones. I heard her pulling a tissue from a Kleenex box. Soon, I heard a honk from her nose. When the light clicked off, she told me we would go to London tomorrow. We have much to do there.
Lord Caligula was still in a silk paisley bathrobe at 10.00. He scratched his left arm pit. When he walked to to door and opened it. As if by magic, a bellhop handed him a Bloody Mary. His Lordship surveyed him, and then told him to return at 11.00 with a Ramos Fizz.
He walked back into the suite, plopped down onto a club chair, then told me, “Women, Crockey, a man has no traction when a woman decides to do as she pleases. Constance is not going to stop killing people she can’t stand just because it costs me money. Last night I should have had one of my lads warn de Guerre, but then there still would have been war in the Pierre Piss on them both!.”
I strolled over to him, hopped up onto the coffee table before him and just sat. Nobody had clued me yet about what was going on.
Now it turned out, two or three days back President Trump had made a speech that represented President Putin as a Christian, a Man of Peace, and a champion, just like Trump himself, of oppressed people everywhere, especially in central Africa. Then the President, as if to prove his point, said that President Putin, Emperor Xi, the Jap leader, and assorted European kingpins were coming to NY to speak on Arms control. The president claimed everybody wanted to stop a new threat from a new weapon that threatened world stability. President Putin’s speech was to be this evening.
When suite’s fine old clock chimed 11, his Lordship sent a bodyguard to the door to pick up his Ramos Fizz. The bodyguard took the Fizz to his Lordship. His lordship gave me a pat on the head, then clicked on the telly. ‘Check this out, Crockey.”
The screen showed the man that mike always calls “Senator BS” bellowing, as usual, about the billionaire class and the 1 percenters. Thank god I’m a one percenter. the distribution of wealth that Senator BS saw as orchestrated by the billionaire class and illustrative of white privilege, I saw as illustrative of luck. I had had plenty of luck in my life. As mike puts it, do you see anybody in BS’s crowd rushing off to give away any money he hits a bit lotto?
BS was giving one of his typical full-throated sermons on the billionaires and their bloodthirsty habits. Within 15 or 20 minutes, BS had his gangs of college students hootin’ and howlerin’ about the billionaires the 1 percenters killing their right to free college and free public transport, and how it was these same greedy bastards whose love of money was strangling the hopes of the poor. The 1 percenters were the cause of homelessness. What’s more, the privileged were war mongers. They were coming to New York to decide how to divide up their loot with looters about world to preserve their privilege. They were in New York with their henchmen to consolidate their privilege, not to build peace.
All of the sudden, I got a nudge from his Lordship. “Check it out, Crockey.” At first I saw nothing.
Granted, Central Park had been adorned with lots of cabanas that I thought were public facilities put in for this occasion. Over the years, I’ve notice that most human beings, most especially the female ones, refuse to enjoy a piss in plein d’air. But it was not that. The structures popped open. Swarms of servants carrying stuff I was unsure about rushed into the crowd. When I looked over my shoulder, an enraptured Lord Caligula, his blue eyes blazing, screamed, “It’s martini’s and caviar. My undocumented citizens are going to stuff these scheming crybabies full of gin, olives, and caviar with, I suppose, a slather of vermouth as well.”
Senator BS looked at loss. His staff briefed him. BS resumed his rant. “This is manna from heaven, children. the food stuffs of the billionaire class are ours at last. Caviar and martinis should be free.”
But the pace of the giveaway was unsustainable. I noticed a throng of Princetonians had closed in on the cabanas to gobble up caviar and guzzle martinis as fast as their lily-white Episcopalian hands could hoover them up.
But don’t believe for a second that the men and woman of Harvard, Columbia, Penn, or Dartmouth were going to let these goodies all go to Princeton. The violence of Dartmouth students in defence of their right to huge shares was awesome, to borrow his Lordships word for their rapine. Perhaps not going to Princeton, Harvard or Yale put a chip on the shoulders of the rustics from Dartmouth.
The scene was getting ugly. I then saw what I thought was a thinly disguised Peregrine. He was in a Harrovian school boys uniform, including the stupid boater, but he has also carrying a gleaming tanto. I heard an Etonian voice from the telly scream, “The bums are stealing our caviar.” At that the tanto sliced through a homeless chap’s forearm. A girl in a Mount Holyoke hoodie with a Sanders button on its chest ran to the bum. Her mouth foamed spittle as she pulled his head back. Peregrine wasted no time. His tanto slid in just below the guy’s Adam’s apple.
The Holyoke girl and a buxom brunette in a Smith t-shirt knocked back their martinis, then rushed to Peregrine in a state of orgiastic ecstasy. The Smith girl began to lick the blood from from Peregrine’s blade like a true vampire. To think anybody wonders how to spot future hedge fund managers. Both she and Holyoke passed Peregrine matchbooks with their telephone numbers scribbled inside of them.
And the bloodlust didn’t stop. Peregrine began slashing bums, but from an opposite direction, Wolvereine, dressed like somebody fresh from Woodstock, wearing nothing more than a loin cloth and sandals, was slashing his way through clouds of pink mist into drunken tramps with a katana. Film in the evening news, showed Wolverine was chanting “Gonville and Caius, Gonville and Caius” as a war cry, as if he had bothered with with university after Eton.
Again, I looked back from the telly, Caligula was laughing so hard I noticed he had wet himself.
The crotch of his robe was soaked with his pee. I just wished with all my might that he would not try to pet me. Yuck, double yuck!
As I looked back at the telly, gangs of Ivy leaguers were beating down the homeless, and then taking away their caviar and martinis as trophies. This ultra violence crescendoed into an old-timey orgy of college lads and lassies hard at the ancient art of raping and pillaging the unprivileged. Bottomless homeless men, women, and nonbinaries were lying ravaged about the park. I turned form the telly to watch as his Lordship began to bellow. He took a napkin from the table to wipe his face. Beaming told me, ‘You know, Crockey, whatever they say, people just don’t change. Real fuckers one and all!”
But the Caviar Riot was indeed transformational. If you trust your memory, you’ll know that Senator BS went on to blame it on 1 percenters and Pentagon warmongers. Many said that some relation of that great patriot, General Flynn, was behind it, but nothing came of that. And you didn’t hear that from me.
Of course, President Trump lost no time in blaming Nancy Pelosi and Hillary Clinton. Nothing came of that either.
And Peregrine and Wolverine, after cleaning up, laughed themselves silly talking about it over a mixture of Dubonnet, Gordon’s Gin, mixed in ice with a bit of cointreau and Grand Marnier, with a squeeze of lemon.
Wolverine asked Peregrine what he proposed to do about the randy Holyoke and Smith girls. Peregrine replied he sent the girls one of his delectable stud bodyguards. “They’ll enjoy riding him. Why should I meet them. Neither of them looked ready to shave and play a boy for me.”
Wolverine shook his head. Poor Peregrine, he can’t shake his Etonian heritage. Who can fathom Peregrine’s suspect lack of sexual versatility? As Wolverine theorized Peregrine’s case, Peregrine was getting too old to be a near exclusive homosexualist, especially since he wasn’t, in Eton slang, a beak. If Peregrine didn’t shape up, he might have to spend his whole life eating at White’s and lesser clubs with his fellow sodomites
The Caviar Riots also had, as I’ve mentioned, a predictable impact on Senator BS. He fumed that caviar and martinis with olives were not free from the beginning of time.. He blamed the Ivy leaguers as well. If the crazed students had attended the University of Chicago, like Sanders, they would have behaved better. Still, one must never shirk the duty to blame all rottn behaviouron 1 percenters. The unprivileged are as immaculate as the Virgin Mary. Thus sprake Bernie.
The Caviar Riots also set off a chain reaction in the security world as protective services of attending countries beefed up their VIP protection whilst pressing for delays in scheduled activities. Emperor Xi and President Putin had their delegations tell the Americans that speeches on Arms Control at the UN would be impossible until the Americans regained control of their streets.
President Trump got. right on it. He showed up on the telly by evening to damn the New York dems for their inability to restrain the AntiFa bastards whose bad acts had made two great men, Putin and Xi, afraid to keep their public appearances. This language led to a protest, as both Putin and Xi testily informed the Americans that they were not “afraid” but doubted that the Americans knew how to deal with their criminals to keep things quiet enough to give a hearable speech.
It was sometime in the afternoon that Crockett saw Lucky on the telly. Chris Wallace was interviewing her on Fox, a great favourite with his Lordship. When he asked what the Chinese position was, Lucky wasted no time. ‘The Chinese people have asked me and my staff to assure the safety of our delegation. Let me assure you and your viewers, Mr Wallace, that nobody coming as a guest to China need fear a Caviar Riot or streets littered with the bodies of public drunkards. We Chinese still have standards, perhaps Confucian, but standards nevertheless of decency.”
Glaring into the camera, Lucky continued. “And these boozing and caviar clashes had a sad prelude. At the Pierre Hotel early this morning–a supposedly safe luxury hotel that, despite its alleged good repute, has a bandit Arms dealer and his murderous concubine occupying its finest suite–somebody murdered Charles de Guerre. I so hope this Ms Lawless, a known escort, had nothing to do with my dear, disabled friend’s Charles de Guerre’s murder.
” It is a scandal when a man who spent his life fighting for peace is murdered in the bed of 5 star hotel within a mile of where the Chinese people planned to have our beloved Emperor speak on building a durable peace. Instead, we have a murderous prelude. As usual in this lawless land, no arrests have been made. But the Chinese people do wonder why Constance Lawless has not even been brought in for questioning. Perhaps the cops here knew she needed time to clean the blood off her claws.”
Lucky said all this in an even voice. Behind Wallace, I could see Snarlson trying to make himself look smaller than a Yorkshire terrier. But Lucky wasn’t through. “Maybe your dear friend Snarlson, Mr Wallace, has something to says on behalf of law and order. I always like to hear his bons mots , especially when he isn’t distracted by his wife or boyfriends.” Wallace whitened, then chirped, “Ms Ming, in the US we don’t say such . .”
Lucky cut him short, “Maybe in the United States you refuse to mention what is plain to all, but in China, let me assure you, healthy people do mention it.”
I couldn’t believe it. Behind Wallace, Tucker was blushing. He got up and walked off the set, but the mic picked up Lucky muttering, “He runs away to let his wife change him.” At that point, Lucky was off the air.
Lord Caligula was staring at me when I turned to see his response. He was squealing laughs so hard that tears flooded his cheeks. He motioned to a bodyguard and the gent brought his Lordship a very large glass of Pappy Van Winkle.
“You know, Crockey, it wasn’t cheap to hire all those undocumented Citizens as servers or to buy that much caviar, olives, gin and vermouth, but it was worth every penny. Lucky’s funnier than Sarah Silverman.” I noticed both Wolverine and Peregrine were laughing too. Peregrine had put on a bowtie and was lisping an imitation of a Snarlson rant on crime and buggery.
At that point, Constance walked out of the suite’s bedroom naked as a jaybird. She wiped sleep from her eyes. “What so funny,” she asked the laughing trio. I stayed on the coffee table watching Constance cross her arms to ease scratching her nipples. Knowing all the parties, I doubted that this show was going to end without tears.
Soon after I went back to the suite at the Pierre, I sneaked out. I made a beeline south down 61st street. then made a a left onto 3rd Avenue going east. Once you make the left, voila, there is the monument to vulgarity. I hit the lobby and saw Kellyanne Conway stepping onto an elevator. I thought it weird that she would drop by to suck up the Orange One when Melania was at home. What’s the Oval Office for?
I kept a low profile and scampered in as the door stayed open for Kellyanne. We hit our floor. I ran as fast as I could to jump into Melania’s loving arms. You know Michelin-Boy Donny never got a welcome like I get. Of all the people I know in Donald’s entourage, I’d say Melania is the least impressed by what Don wants and Kelly-Anne among the most. Kellyanne will sing lies without end for him.
Once I was in Melania’s lucious arms, she began to koo to me as she ran to the dining room to tell the cooks to get me something to eat. I acquiesced. No wise cat turns down a free feed. You never know where you’ll be having the next one. I asked Melania what Kellyanne and Donald were chattering about. “They have to figure out what lies she is telling next week. Donald so loves being her ventriloquist. He knows I’m hopeless at trying to keep up with his bull shit, but Kellyanne gobbles it up.”
Melania went on to tell me she thought she should lie like an expert. Life as a fashion model is all about fantasies and about one’s body and one’s god-given, camera-loving looks. The modeling industry would, according to her, perish without airbrushes, makeup, breast molds, and plastic surgeons, and anorexics. Slavic models, I learnt, get by without creating the illusion of having big boobs because Slavic women all have big boobs. Maybe not as big as Donald’s, but big. The hard part for Slavic model is how to keep from running to fat as the years pass. The will to starve of an anorexic fades with time. And lots of models go to seed because they love drugs and booze every bit as much as Kate Moss used to. “Let me tell you, Crocky, Kate had a hard on for dope and booze. ”
Right about then, I heard a knock on the door. Within a minute, I felt nauseated as the stench of Prez Trump’s Big Macs and fries wafted into the dining room. Melania, ever attendant to my states, carried me into her bedroom. She stripped, climbed onto her bed, and invited me to walk on her. I had to remember that she didn’t like as much claw as Lucky. Lucky likes it rough, as one after another of her bruised, weeping lovers soon learnt.
I’m a soft touch lover. Often I fear that my skill in love stems from a history similar to Lord Varys on Game of Thrones. Recall, gentle readers, I once lived near Martinez Creek and the San Antonio Zen Center after my cruel, creepy, thieving servants cast me out of my car to die in a kitty concentration camp near the creek disguised as a flood plain. I am a master tactician. I survived.
But survival was not without suffering. By the time I arrived at Roberta and mike’s house next to the Zen Center, I had been savaged repeatedly. The Battle of Martinez Creek was the last of the catastrophes. My friend, the vagabond master of the neighbourhood, Walt, carried me away during the Battle of Martinez Creek to what he took to be an aid station. My left eye was close to gone for good. I had broken ribs. I lay on the mike and Robert’s porch expecting death’s kiss.
Instead of death, radiant Roberta became my angel, carrying me into the house to nurse. All seemed well. She spent the money necessary to save my wrecked eye. Beaucoup bucks later, I never had to fear looking like Polyphemus. Little did I know that as I lay recovering, Roberta was scheming against me. If only I had learnt the lesson of Thanksgiving. And I was humiliated when I thought I had got suckered as bad as any turkey ever had.
Roberta took me to a gelding factory. Whilst she went off to drink fine wines, a pack of butchers cathandled me. Yes, king, gentler eaders, this pack robbed me of my manhood. To make matters worse, they ignored elementary precautions. I was dumped into Roberta’s car before I had recovered my ability to pee. I began to bloat. My pitiful whimpering alarmed Roberta. Guilt forced her to take me to a real vet. I figured that even with care, I was a goner, but when the vet anesthetised me, I felt my bladder let go. So close to the doorstep of doom was I that I didn’t even bother to protest as this competent vet let me lie in a pool of my own piss.
As a Love Machine, all this abuse diminished my masculinity. And so, like a Lesbo, I’ve had to please my lovers with my dexterous paws or, if you prefer, my kitty hands and feet. Since I always tend to look at the sunny side of life, I like to imagine that my misfortune keeps me from terrifying women with a fear of satyrs. I can look safe, but, behold, I am a King of Lovers. It’s all in one’s technique.
No wonder Melania adores me.
I never recall her checking to see what Kellyanne. Just as well. She ran the risk of being blinded by the sight of them. Kellyanne, after all, had reached the of feminine rapacity. Once the risk of pregnancy passes, women are shameless libertines and worse than men.
The next morning I had a panic. Melania had switched the telly on for me, but failed to tune in the toons. Perhaps she switched on Fox news to keep Don from rushing in to change the channel. Perhaps not putting on the cartoons proves how smart Melania is. If you put a cartoon on, you run the risk of Tubby Trump wandering in to watch the toons with you.
Anyway, the telly’s screen showed the front of the Pierre Hotel. Swarms of reports slithered about it. The typical Fox reporter–a tall, thin blonde of the Megan Kelly school–wailed about crime Nancy Pelosi had caused in all parts of the city. Not even the Pierre was spared! Early in the morning, as the Kelly clone told the story, Charles de Guerre, a person whose life should be respected even though he is French, was mauled. The cause of death was unknown, but, she smirked, the Frenchy was slashed and it appeared he had been fisted by a cruel homosexualist with long, strong nails. This assault, surely sexual, had left Monsieur de Geurre eviserated. By now Kelly clone was breathing heavily and had rather heavy eyelids.
I hoped for Kelly clone’s sake that Constance did hear the assailant described as a homosexualst with sharp nails. Clearly, I had to get back to the Pierre.
And what luck I had. Kellyanne came stumbling out of Trump’s area of the Penthouse looking rumples, and not just ditzy, but dizzy. Out of I ran between her legs. I think she was so practised about what goes between ses jambons ou cuisses that she’d never notice me.
Faster than the Flash, I was back in the Pierre at my suite. Lord Caligula was lecturing Constance for her lack of self-mastery. He feared the trouble that a dead de Guerre would cause.
“You couldn’t let his insults slide off you, eh? So, you sneak out to even up with him. You had the cheek to use a glass cutter to get into his room by scaling walls. Once in, you made short, nasty work of him. You know this won’t be free. You know that French prick keeps bad company. If he is at the Pierre, do you imagine that the chink Lucky isn’t here or on her way? And he and Lucky never work on a project like this alone? More problems! Nothing but expense and blood will come of your revenge on this dangerous wanker.”
Constance looked embarrassed, “Aw, Cliggy, you know I could not just let him insult us.”
Lord Caligula began to thunder, “Indeed I do know what you cannot abide. So what? What matters is what, in the name of profit and wisdom, you should abide! Look at all the insults and bull shit I endure for the sake of money. We’re not a charity, Constance. The money matters. Bills must be paid!”
Constance then asked, “If I let you bugger me will you let this go?” This offer got her a dirty look and. a firm “No.”
At the mention Lucky’s name, I trembled. She would indeed not let de Guerre’s bad end interfere with their mission, but she would want to settle that score after she had done her paid work.
When you relax at home, you know that sooner or later, your destiny will catch up with you. All you must do is wait.
On bright Tuesday morning as I watched Saint Louie Squirrel stealing crops, I heard somebody at the front door. By the time I got to the living you, there stood Lord Caligula with Constance wrapped inside his left arm. I noticed Fielding and Bart were giving them the evil eye. Chicago and Quine had rushed off to hide in the basement. Roberta was at the uni and mike was in GLWACH, which housed his clinic at Fort Leonard Wood.
When his Lordship noticed I looked puzzled about his entrance, he reassured me. “Look, Chaucer. I carry a bump key and other tools wherever I go. People have stopped trusting their fellow man. Sad, very sad. This little key let me right in. Constance and I came to Saint Louis to fetch Wolverine. The lad has been gathering materials at NGA and the latest news from CBRNE at Fort Leonard Wood. It occurred to me that you might like to join us.”
Constance broke from Lord Caligula’s arm. Without losing a stride, she scooped me into her arms. I got a kiss on the head as she told me how much she loved “her little piglet, her little roast.” Whisked in seconds into a stretched limo in the house’s driveway, Constance and his Lordship sat down with me. Within 10-minutes, the limo pulled in front of the Southwest Diner. Wolverine sat at a table inside sipping coffee as he devoured a plate of sopapilla. When we sat down, Constance ordered country fried steak with two eggs home fries. His Lordship ordered the Grits on Fire, described as cheesys stone ground grits topped with carne adovada, red chile, corn, two eggs and queso fresco. After they ordered, Wolverine demanded the Southwest Slinger: two quarter-pound burgers, home fries, two eggs, chile, and longhorn cheese. They all asked for a big plate with sopapilla and calabacitas. Finally somebody thought of me. She ordered me a poached egg with thick sliced bacon that she sliced into bite-size pieces for me. I also got some vanilla milkshake, but felt disappointed that the place didn’t have fried-check on offer. Lucky would never have taken me here unless she planned to force them to get me whatever She decided I wanted. When it came to knowing and catering to my wants, Lucky has no equal. At least Constance was trying.
As breakfast ended, we went onto the pavement where we promised to meet up soon in Manhattan. Wolverine bragged to his Lordship about the quality of the intelligence and associated images he ha wrangled or stolen at the Fort Leonard and NGA. His Lordship, despite the good intelligence, decided he would do well to check with old associates at the UN. Besides, when in America insist on the best bagels and lox. Everybody ignored my request to go back to Webster. ‘Nonsense, lad, you’ll have a jolly time in Manhattan. You’re with me so you know fun is around the corner. And, even better, you have fans in Manhattan.”
I felt offended. I have fans everywhere. So, the limo took me, LC, and Constance to the aeroport where a private jet awaited. I felt better about it when John Travolta walked in wearing his pilot’s getup. Who doesn’t want the experience of having Travolta fly you somewhere. As you all surely know, the man has a hard-on for piloting jets. Once he took his seat, he tended to the work, and then sent us hurtling down the runway and into the Missouri sky. After he hung a uterus, we headed east across the Mississippi toward La Guardia.
I slept under the cabin’s bed for the whole of the trip. I woke when I was being placed into another limo. The driver got us to The Pierre where his Lordship had reserved the residential suite. I must say the joint was swank. As soon as Constance saw I needed a snack, she had smoked salmon with creme fraiche sent to the suite. It was tasty enough that I softened on the choice of a Mexican restaurant for breakfast. Constance also asked that Oysters on a half shell be sent up. I disliked that she gave me two and kept four for herself.
Meanwhile, Lord Caligula was chugging Pappy van Winkle bourbon whilst he spoke to Peregrine on a coded video call. Peregrine is shameless.
Behind him on the screen, i could see an Etonian uniform strewn about the room. A naked, hairless boy of about 13 or so lay strewn on the bed, but with 10 pound notes all about him. He looked hard used. Lord Caligula looked annoyed that Peregrne himself had done little to cover up. “Is this what you do with your money?”
“What of it, ” came the sassy answer.
“I’ll tell you what of it,” screamed his Lordship, “you’re a disgrace. Those young boys are for the six formers, not for the jaded likes of you.”
Peregrine stood his ground. ‘If you had learnt to read Latin and Greek when you were at Eton, you’d know that boys are for gentleman of all ages. For older boys, they’re just a pre Oxbridge convenience for the older boys.” Peregrine then carried on about how parochial his sperm donor’s attitudes were for an educated man. Besides, if you run with the likes of Constance, you’re unseemly expert on morals.”
When Caligula looked over his own shoulder, Constance was waving her pantiless, well-oiled bottom at him whilst wearing a red and black merry widow. She clenched a cat-of-nines in her teeth. Containers of superglide littered the bed. You might not imagine it possible, but his Lordship blushed. Constance began to giggle, let go of the whip for the moment, and then murmured, “Such a shy boy is Cliggy.” She then bit back down on her cat-of-nines
With that, his Lordship concluded he should get back to doing business and drinking bourbon. Peregrine had the high ground Ethics was such a struggle for his Lordship. Money was not.
About an hour later, “Cliggy” and Constance had finished their depravities. It came as no surprise that they wanted a drink, though I wondered how either of them was by then capable of anything more strenuous than sitting battered bums on thick pillows. But the Pierre’s Two E Bar is a handsome room. As I looked about, I felt my eyes pop when at a table near an exist, I saw a tall, thin man in a midnight blue Brioni suit whose left leg was amputated below the knee, though he had a prosthesis. Our eyes locked. After a moment, he put down his copy of the salmon-coloured FT he had been seeming to read, and made his way over to me. “So, good to see you, Crockett. In this dangerous world, you look spectacular. Alas, as you see, I had a mishap.” I stared at the left leg.
“Perhaps you don’t recall our meeting. Je suis enchante’ de refaire ta connaissance. Je m’appelle Charles, Charles de Guerre.”
His eyes swept around the table, turning to hard gaze as he surveyed Constance and Lord Caligula. Charles recommenced, “Est-ce qu’ils sont ces amis, mon ami? Quand tu visites monsieur et madame, tu engages une liaison dangereux. Tes amis sont sales. Ils sont aussi fous.”
His Lordship whispered a translation of Charles words into Constance’s ear. She smiled at Charles. “So nice to see you again, even if you’re now short a leg. You should learn to fight better if you make a habit of trespassing. If you keep at it, you may have no legs and all . . . perhaps no tongue at all either.”
Constance was being rude, but Charles had, after all, called them both dirty and crazy, which was not very continental of him. I also felt my anxiety alarm ringing when Constance but her hand in her handbag. If you know her as I know her, she never had a handbag without a pistol or straight razor in it. When his Lordship placed his hand over Constance’s, I heard him say, “How nice to meet you in a sedate place, Charles. May I buy you a drink?”
Charles declined. He wished to go back to his copy of the FT and he also wanted to read a column I had written for Le Monde Diplomatique. It was a think piece that Peregrine had dictated and I had signed.
Just in case you don’t know, both Presidents Putin and Trump, as well as Emperor Xi read anything with my byline. They adored my wry wit and comprehensive comprehension of world diplomacy. Nobody had a richer Weltanschauung than I. Kissinger’s day is past. I’m the future.Before Charles walked away, he turned to me and remarked, “
C’est curieux. Il y beaucoup de tes amis à New York. Pourquoi, mon ami, pourquoi?”Okay, I admit it, that comment scared me. What was Charles in Manhattan and at the Pierre. What had he said many of my friends were here. I wondered if Melania was at the Trump Plaza. It’s less than a half-mile walk from the Pierre. Could dough boy, Trump himself, be here? More generally, though, what was going down? Why were his Lordship, Constance, Wolverine, and maybe even Peregrine all in or bound for Manhattan.
Let me assure you that Carl, when not destroying companies, is a wonderful, saintly man. At Princeton, he studied philosophy. He even wrote his senior thesis on Hume, one of mike’s favourite philosophers. Carol is proof that there are oceans of money to be made in philosophy provided you have the right one.
He got me to National. He even got me to the White House where Melania was paying one of her rare visits to her putative husband. Once I got in, I can assure you she spent the night with me. Donald prefers to sit up watching Hannity and other Fox trash spouting nonsense on his presidency whilst Donald feeds on Big Macs and fries. The stench of hamburger gases is think in the air whenever Don’s about.
So, it was I who snuggled between Melania’s succulent Slovenian breasts before heading on to Saint Louis. And I did make it back the next day. As usual, I had to stay clear of Bart and Fielding to escape my mandatory beatings.
My time home allowed me to work on articles blaming the Jews, Chinese, Krauts, and Frogs for the death of terrorists in Somalia. I had strict instructions not to blame any Ivans. I was to insist the bodies of dead Russians on-site were a team of bad apples, loathsome malcontents in Puti’s loving eyes. I knowk, I know. What I won’t I do for more Krugerrand.
Wolverine and Peregrine had wasted no time writing iOperas that lambasted anybody impugning the motives of Putin and the splendid people of Russia. In one they borrowed lavishly from the Who’s ancient rock opera, Tommy. Putin was cast as that deaf, dumb, and blind guy who fought for peace for all.
I had a huge advantage when it came to writing puff pieces about Russia. During the time I’ve spent in Russia, I have stayed in luxury Hotels and eaten in Michelin Restaurants. For example, I liked sitting in the White Rabbit with Lucky. I adored the joint’s decor (loved all the bunny pictures), and Lucky ordered for me, being sure that the chef attended to my kitty tastes.
Now let me tell you the truth. If your visits to a country consist in stays at its 5-star hotels and meals at its finest restaurants, you may get a distorted view of the place. The clearly problematic, knuckle-dragging citizens are easier to spot on mean streets than are megathiefs whiling away hours in luxury hotels, posh bars, and Michelin star restaurants contemplating their next crime.
I brooded about what Lucky did to him. What if I needed a favour? To make up with him, I wrote a piece blaming Holland’s woes on its covert rule by paedophilic polar bears from the north. Lax Dutch immigration policies had left the country at the mercy of assorted northern marauders. Had the Dutch learnt nothing from their Viking problem during the Dark Ages?
Now the polar bears were flooding the country with protitution, trans, decline to state, and non-binaries, as well as drugs whilst working to close the country to tobacconists, Christians, and soldiers with short-hair. A red-blooded American man can scarcely walk into a bar without having the paedophilic polar bears unleashing a domme on him. It’s a scandal. Is it true? Like I should care.
Within a day, Tucker called me. He praised my insight, since not everybody was wise to what the depraved polar bears were doing in and to Holland. He then asked me what I knew about a story bubbling out of NATO HQ from an unknown source that the Russians were framed by the Jews and Emperor Xi for the Ice-10 devastation in Somalia. Unlike me, Tucker was too slow to detect the lying maw of Wolverine.
So, I sent him copy of my coming story on what Our Putin was doing to save the African people. Everybody knew that Russians did all they could to rescue Africans from the sneaky plots and wicked machinations of the Imperialisst in Washington, Jerusalem and Beijing.
Tucker praised me effusively, telling me, “I hadn’t known half of this shit.” I, I’d add, didn’t know any quantity of it. That evening, Tucker Snarlson’s one hour of content in just 3 hours of show bombarded his audience with my fantastic conjectures.
Of course, Tucker interlaced his own crazy speculations into the mix. He repeated my lie that the Germans had committed the atrocity in Lithuania, but he added that they were aided by a cabal of paedophilic polar bears whose MO was to operate out of Dutch Rijsttafel joints. No doubt the bears molested a fresh boy or girl after every course. And what a sinister strategy for hiding that is. How many people would link polar bears to Indonesia? It’s a deep, deep cover indeed.
In a flash, the not-quite-Nazi FvD party endorsed Snarlson’s “scoop” as authentic news, calling for investigations, since there was “something rotten in A-dam.” By the next evening, Hannity was complaining that nobody was paying enough attention to the paedophilia link and all Putin had done over the years to combat it. Fair observers, according to Hannity, knew that the size of the average Chinaman proved the Chinese lust for little people and children. China is a country of paedophiles and midget rapers.
Must Putin endure slanders on his kind, Christlike nature just because the Chinese had thrown in with the Jews to smear Russians? Again, any fair-minded person knew the Jews were working to destabilize democracy in Russia. Putin = Love.
Hannity did express sorrow for having to reveal this sad truth about the Jews, especially since they had done so much for the world running a pest control operation against the Palestinian and any Arabs unwilling to face facts about whom God had bequeathed lands in the Near East. He added it was a sign of the times that the Jews hadn’t taught the Iranians some much needed lessons. Would King David have been so gentle?
If I understood the oblique insinuations in Hannity’s and Snarlson’s show that night, it was that those paedophile polar bears that Bart and Fielding detest who had gained undue influence in Jerusalem. Israel would do nothing to stop rampant child molestation in Iran and China because the polar bears had gained an upperhand in the Knesset. They were working out plans to sell those kids into white slavery.
By the very next day, when President Trump got asked about the recent allegations, he said, “It’s hard to quarrel with facts.” He then started to rant on how the CIA, NGA, and the entire Intelligence apparatus of the US was spreading Hence it is indeed a Mad, Mad, Mad, Mad World.
Bad luck. Bad, bad luck. I had dropped down to Hotel 27’s gorgeous bar. As I entered, I heard an unwelcome voice off to my right. Lo, the fruity Tucker Snarlson was holding court. In front of him, he had the Queen’s favourite drink, a Dubonnet Cocktail, a drink made with lemon, a large ice cube, gin, and Dubonnet. If that is what they drink at the palace, no wonder it brims with inverts.
Before I could escape, Snarlson motioned me to his table. I asked for a large order of cream herring without any vodka. The barkeep obliged my unusual order. Snarlson, as if on orders from Peregrine or Wolverine, began to lecture his lackeys on the purity of Putin’s intentions. He sang a hymn of praise to me.
Anybody within earshot heard about the Pulitzer-level journalism I had done for L’Afrique Aujourd’hui on the love of Putin that was the mark of anybody living in central Africa. Like our President, whom some of you know as the Orange Jesus, the man on the street in Kinshasa, Goma, or Kigali knows Putin as a man of peace.
Hence recent insinuation of murderous Russian activity in Somalia was contrary not only to reason but to experience as well. No doubt the Russians were victims of a conspiracy. It was not Putin’s fault if some Russian malcontents, some bad apples from the army had killed al Shabaab terrorists. Just ask Crockett, a cat with first-hand knowledge of Africa and its people, a cat fresh out of Africa, who committed this recent enormity.
“It’s the kind of thing that the Germans, French and Belgian would do, isn’t it, Crocky?’ snarled Snarlson. Never one to miss an opportunity to spread a baseless rumour, Snarlson conjectured that no country had easier access to Ice-10 and Lithuania than the German, adding the Germans specialise in killing innocent people.”
Snarlson was warming up. “But you know, Crocky, we mustn’t overlook the Jews either. I heard rumours of Mossad retrieving two notorious assassins from Entebbe, a place where the Jews have a history of dirty business. Perhaps you or your China woman consort know them. Aren’t they the killer Jews Saul Cohen and Daniel Levi?”
He had crossed so many lines I didn’t know what to say. So, I said the obvious, ‘Saying it doesn’t make it so.” I mentioned too that perhaps a few too many of the Queen’s favourite cocktails might have made him careless in his use of language.
Never one to shun a fight, Snarlson stared at me and then asked, “Are your chums so ashamed of being Jews or a China woman that they want people to use euphemisms?” I was tempted to answer but instead heard Lucky’s voice from the door, “Perhaps Crockett hasn’t mastered teaching prissy closet queens about modern forms of address.” She sashayed to the table, grabbed Snarlson’s nose, and began to twist it.
Snarlson responded wiht a cascade of tears. Lucky kept her grip. “So let’s get this straight. You may call me Ms Ming and you may refer to the other two as Mr Cohen or Mr Levi like a well-manner crybaby girl,” Now Snarlson was blubbering, but Lucky didn’t let up.
Instead, she patted his head while advising, “You should drink fewer cocktails, though I’m guessing you know a lot more about cock than tail, and mind their manners better the next time you see me.” She then reached down to his crotch, grabbed it savagely, and ordered Snarlson to squeal. As he made his wee-wees, Lucky warned, “And do yourself a favour. Have better manners whenever I’m in a room unless you want an abbreviated life. Remember who I am. You know. Don’t forget it.”
Then Lucky scooped me up and walked me back to our room. The blubbering Snarlson’s friends were trying to console him. They were saying things like “As far as we’re concerned we never saw this. It never happened.” etc. A fellow in a tight leopard print shirt and leather pants whispered in his ear, then stroked him behind the ear, helped him from his chair, then led him from the bar. The fellow had the sensitivity not to use his leash.
When Lucky and I got back to our suite, she detected disapproval in me. “What is it, darling?”
I told her she was as bad about poufs as Snarlson was about Jews and the Chinese. Lucky rolled her eyes.
“You’re divinely funny, my sweet. The Chinese didn’t legalize guys doing each other until 1997. Most Chinese still disapprove. Besides, darling, look at it this way. You imagine I’m failing morally because I’m hard on faggots. Darling, don’t you remember I kill people for a living? If I get nasty with an obnoxious prissy closet femboi, that’s a misdemeanor at most.”
Perhaps she had a point. When I caught Snarlson on the telly the next day, he was shouting about lawlessness in Holland. He complained a man can’t have a cocktail in a Dutch bar without putting his life on the line. He assured his audience that Holland was worse than the Bronx or southeast DC. He didn’t say a word about gays or Israelis or the Chinese. He had returned his commentary to his beloved tropes on the criminality of blacks in Americas ghettos.
When I was in the suite, Lucky had gone out. Without warning the suite door swung open. In strolled Chaucer. I got a dirty look, then he said, “The holiday is over. I want you back in Saint Louis.” I then got scolded for having done so little to move the project of applying more pain to Wolverine and his crew. According to Chaucer, life with Lucky was making me lazy and fat. He had been talking to Behemoth about it the other day in Moscow. Once Chaucer laid eyes on me, he agreed with Behemoth’s diagnosis. Lucky was ruining my initiative. I was not keen on Chaucey’s project. His eyes glowed like molten iron when he told me so.
What’s a cat to do? With Mr C’s ghost as an escort, I headed to Schipol to mooch a ride on a corporate jet. Fortunately, my dear friend Carl Icahn was headed to National. I bounded on board. The billionaire pirate hugged me. What a guy! You got to like a Princeton man. Six hours later I was in DC.
When Lucky awoke the next morning, she was in a better mood. She ordered a bowl of fresh fish in cream, with the chef given permission to select what he thought looked best for me. For herself, she ordered a caviar omelette topped with smetana. She requested potatoes, asparagus as her sides. She got a croissant with a framboise confiture to go with it all. What I got was a foretaste of heaven. How I love fresh fish in cream in the morning. It smells like breakfast. Who needs napalm?
You’d have to have been a real chowderhead not to notice the Russians were on defence and the Chinese offence. Through backchannels I learnt that Putin had cancelled a tour of central Africa. Not even my L’Afrique Aujourd’hui features had saved him. The people are fickle.
You could now listen to hour on hour of African radio without hearing Putin compared to Jesus, Patrice Lumumba, Amin, Bokasssa, Mobutu, or any other leaders with a following, even if a very bad one. I wondered to myself if it was anything that a few Krugerrand spent on making me happy couldn’t fix. Yes, I could tell some stretchers and rehabilitate him in Francophone Africa if the price is right.
During my time without CNN, I learnt Lord Caligula had gone bold. He passed a motion in the House of Lords to present Constance with the King George Cross. The Tabloids had lots of indecent photos of her getting out of a limo at Parliament to go accept her awards.
Photographers have no shame. The post shots of Constance’s nether parts as she exited the limo. Constance had once mentioned to me that she was allergic to wearing panties, as it made her feel inhibited. Well, I now knew that, at least when in a Limo, Constance was telling lies about that.
And it didn’t stop at a beaver shot. If you nosed about or read the stories, every orgy Constance had attended–I can’t be precise as my parietal lobe damage prevents me from counting so high–had links on the web to the photos sneaked during it. If you wanted photos of her doing anything, and I do mean anything and everything, sexual, all you required to find them was a laptop and patience and search terms like “Constance” and “Orgy.”
Constance said she could and would neither confirm nor deny what the countless photos purported to show. During an interview on CNN, she gave her account, “As you know, so many of these photos are from the neck down. Many attractive women look about the same from the neck down. Also, notice how bad the lighting is in many of these shocking shots. Who know who is in these photos? Let’s just not be judgemental prudes. Observe, too, there are not a lot of duplicative shots of racy act, especially the outre ones. And you know what Voltaire said about those types doings. ‘once a philosopher, twice a pervert.’ As worse, I might be a philosopher”
Nor was Lord Caligula silent. He contended it was all much ado about nothing, a veritable tempest in a teapot. What bothered his Lordship most was, if these were indeed photos of Constance, the cheapskate press never let her monetize any of it. “Where are her modelling fees?” he thundered.
Constance wasted no time in monetizing the episode. In several smut Mags, she posed deshabille whilst using the George Cross to cover up most of her good bits. In her defence about this breach of decorum, Constance told an interviewer, “You got to show some of the juicy bits if you are going to shield them with the George. Who’s go to pay hard cash for it if you don’t?”
In the midst of all this controversy, Peregrine and Wolverine had begun a blitz reconstruction of Munitions Galore’s Reading HQ. The government had even given them a bye to hire replacements of lost guards from former colonies to prevent a rise in salaries. English guards, now that they knew the danger of the job, struck for higher pay. Peregrine got permission, in the name of national security, to hire cheaper foreign guards rather than a pack of English crybabies.
Eventually, Wolverine figured out I was at the Hotel 27, he contacted me. “Name a time when Lucky’s out. I want to talk to you.”
I checked to make sure that we were talking about a Zoom or Skype meeting. Wolverine’s temper made it stupid for me to meet him without a bodyguard present.
Lucky had told me she planned an outing to the Rembrandt museum. I refused to go with her. I’ve never care for Rembrandt’s brownish painting or his self-absorbed self-portaits. I’m more of a Poussin cat. Poussin’s “Dance to the Music of Time” or “Exhibition of Moses” are to my taste. I’m also fond of Pre-Raphaelite art. Don’t judge me. I like clarity and colour.
I also prefer Mozart to Bach or Beethoven. Bach composed music for typists. Beethoven wrote mostly sentimental works for crybabies that weep when they read Goethe’s Sorrows of Young Werther. If you ask me, the sorrow of young Werther is that he didn’t kill himself before the book got started.
Anyway, Lucky went to the museum. When Wolverine called, I got a shock. He was wearing a US Army Major’s uniform.
I guess he resurrected one of the identifies he had forged at Fort Leonard Wood. Then I learnt he was not at Fort Leonard Wood or in Saint Louis to steal documents from the NGA. Wolverine told me he was in Brussels at the NATO HQ. What a treasure trove of items to steal and Wolverine with his TS SCI, Q, and Cosmic TS clearances. And he bragged of attending meetings where he spiked intelligence that Lord Caligula had made up for him.
Soon he got down to business, telling me he wished me to write stories insinuating that the Jews had committed foul murders in Somalia. It was also the Jews who committed the outrage in Lithuania. According to Wolverine, I needed a light touch for these stories. I must not say the accusation. I must insinuate it was the Jews abetted by the Chinese.
I shuddered. I feared picking a fight with Lucky. “Can’t I a blame the Germans instead?”
Wolverine broke out laughing. “The Germans? The Jews collaborating with Germans? You’re daffier than Daffy Duck, Crocky. Besides, his Lordship wants Emperor Xi made less comfortable about his recent doings. Mind you, if you think you can tar the German and French whilst you smear the Jews and Chinese, I’m fine with that. We want a great confusion about Somalia.” After he mentioned payment in pretty Krugerrand, I couldn’t help myself. I began to purr.
As I walked in circles in the Somalian desert as murderous al Shabaabian raiders hurtled toward me, little did I know what Lucky was doing. Fielding and Bart were busy spreading dead cobras about the coming battlefield. They seemed to have a limitless supply. Lucky was nowhere in sight.
Now I know that she, Danny, and Saul had a heated argument about me. Lucky wanted an immediate rescue party formed. Danny and Saul preferred to pretend my fate was with the gods.
Once Lucky realised she was not going to be able to commandeer the CV-22, she grabbed her AK, a few additional mags, and put MREs and water into a rucksack. She donned the sack, and then headed out to where I got left, about 22 miles as the crow flies, if I lucky right. You can picture here making double time across the dessert to mind me.
As Fielding and Bart wandered about the detonation site, Bart found a welcome addition on a dead al Shabaab. In his frozen arms, he clutched a PKP Pecheneg machine gun. Bart began stroking its barrell. “Look at this commie killer. It shoots good up to just short of a mile. It shoots 600 to 800 rounds a minute.”
Bart then ordered me and Fielding to get it mounted on the tripod. “I’ll use this dead booby as cover. These Shaboobs are in for a surprise, I’ll tell you that.”
Before I could get assigned further tasks, I slipped away. Bart and Fielding were too busy loading the machine gun to notice. Bart loved machine guns.
I could hear Bart and Fielding continue to chatter about tactics. Boring! If I had the basic idea right, they planned to let the first Shabaabs come in unopposed. Bart would not aim for the foremost men. Instead, she’d pick targets at the rear. Fielding would also start making her kills from the rear. When the foremost group spotted the dead cobras, they’d get careful. Bart would then blow away a few of the forward group.
Time has taught me that Saul and Danny had no objection to going back to the detonation site. In fact, it was part of their plan. They wanted to document how many Africans the Russians had murdered with Ice-10. They planned to splatter the worlds papers with photographs of the dead, including the dead Russians. What they did object to was going back to the site before the CV-22 fueled up and had a lot of bullet holes repaired.
All this went on as Lucky, like Lola, did her Run, Lucky, Run march. Sweaty and dusty, she ran. Towards me, she ran.
Hours passed before we heard the voices of the al Shabaab raiders. I had counselled Bart and Fielding that we should hide in the ravine, rather than pick a fight. Fielding glared and me. “And let the terrorist tramp through here scot-free? Where’s the fun in that?” So, Bart stretched out behind the PKP. Fielding went out a mile to the edge of the accurate range of the PKP.
I had moved into a hollow in the ground. The journalist in me was defying danger to be an eyewitness to the pending conflict. I was peering from my hollow when the first al Shabaab began to arrive.
There was a near infinitely large group, perhaps 40, but, as I’ve told you before, a parietal lobe injury had reduced my brilliance as a mathematician. I kept expecting something to happen. Instead, I heard footsteps, chatter, buzzing flies, and birdsong on a background wash of silence. The sun had climbed past the meridian in the azure sky.
Let’s admit from the start that the al Shabaab were small-brained. As the last of them moved beyond Bart’s position, she sprang to action. The poisoned on her helmet began putting one raider after another down as she rammed their calves. The front of the troop had by then seen dead cobras. Believing it was a bad omen, they slowed down. If I had to guess, they assumed each dead snake should get a check, as a live one would be in a bad and biting mood. The forward guys were probably at least a 1/2 mile from Bart.
When Bart opened up her PKP, a clump of guys in the rear of the formation got blood-stained. Fielding ran over to do shallow dives to drive her helmet’s spike into their foramen magnum. The wounded on the ground, but not yet dead, took their big sleep. Fielding was getting a scarlet staining. At the front of the formation, a few of the baffled al Shaboobies fired without aiming. A small cluster must have located Bart. Their shots were going plink-plink about her.
Unlike them, Bart did aim. That cluster went to gore lickity-split. When I listened carefully, I could hear Bart mewing her satisfaction. I then heard her singing “Sympathy for the devil.” Again and again, over the battle noise, I heard “Please allow me to introduce myself, I’m a cat of wealth and fame” followed by a burst at 600 to 800 rpm.
Everything was going well from my perspective. Despite my pessimistic nature, Fielding and Bart had made a killing field. I relaxed.
I shouldn’t have done, as I had a maddened al Shaboobie coming at me. How terrifying he was with a massive beard and a huge bayonet he was waving at me. Somebody shouted “Tawaquf” at him. A second later a bullet hole blossomed on his forehead. I felt a lice body land next to me. “I told him to halt, darling. He had no ears . . . Of course I’d have shot him anyway. He had bad character.” Lucky then began to shoot more al Shaboobs with her AK. Even with it, she was a dead shot. Three Shaboobies trying to flank Bart fell.
Lucky then got up and ran forward firing, dropping Shaboobs on the way. Of course, I should have noticed it before, but I then heard the powerful Rolls Royce engines of a CV-22. It had two machine guns blazing. Everybody that Bart, Fielding, and Lucky had not already killed died.
Lucky pulled a gun from a dead Shabooby. One by one she began addressing each body on the battlefield. She’d put killing rounds into each body whether it was already dead. As she explained to me later, “It’s just good practice, sweetie. You make sure the scum you shoot dead are all dead. If you need a prisoner, you can spare him for the moment.”
Perhaps after 30 minutes, Lucky came back for me. She was a sweaty, blood-spattered, dusty mess of a woman. She took non-essentials from her back. She took pictures of a few frozen corpses, and she picked me up, stroked my face, and put me gently in her rucksack. ‘You stayed alive, darling, just as I told you. And I have found you.” I got a kiss on the forehead. She moved off.
I was a bit confused. It turned out Lucky knew that Saul and Danny would be documenting the Ice-10 effects at the al Shabaab encampment. When we got there, Danny and Saul were all smiles, but Lucky not so much. The Ice-10 bomb had killed everybody in the encampment. Danny said, “That bomb is a boy.” Lucky said, “Fuck you.”
Nobody wasted any time. Fielding and Bart had already hopped on the CV-22. The rest of the party loaded on. As soon as Lucky saw Fielding, she reached out to Fielding, “I’ve seen you work, ma’am. It is an honour to shake your paw.” When she looked at Bart, she also thanked her for her fine work with the PKP. “You’re small, but you are cut from the same cloth as Fielding.” She shook Bart’s paw. Bart purred.
Our aircraft was in the air. We were all headed northwest to Kampala.
When I awoke in the morning, my back ached. I heard a lot of flies buzzing to my left. One of those al Shabaab chaps was frozen dead, but his throat had somehow got cut. Now the filth flies were laying eggs to feed on him. Soon he would be a platform of maggots. My guess is they would pass on his hard-froze bits.
Above me, I heard birdsong. I was still in the ravine’s cool shadow, but I could tell the sun was heating the rim. I had taken quite a tumble after my freefall. The same was true of my companion to my left, Mr Fly.
Leaving him behind, I made my way up the wall of the ravine. As I clambered over the rim, I heard a familiar voice. “Hello, fool.”
It was Bart’s voice. Next to her, I heard Fielding laughing at me. Beyond them, I made out a horror of horrors. At a small portable table with a sun umbrella to make it comfy, I saw Woland and Behemoth. Woland was devouring a platter of fresh fruits as he chatted with Behemoth. Behemoth had a large bottle of Russian Standard vodka. When he saw me, he pulled herring a chest cooled by dry ice. He shouted “Fish, Crocky”.
Now I asked you, would any cat with a lick of sense refuse fresh herring in an African morning? You don’t get a lot of Baltic herring to eat when you’re in Africa. With caution, I made my way over to the table. Woland’s maid Hella, a real looker if not for the bulging purple scar on her neck, began cutting the herring into kitty-sized bites for me.
Bart followed behind me. She was wearing her pith helmet. Fielding was again wearing her spiked German helmet, with a chunk of frozen flesh hanging from the spike.
I couldn’t help myself. I demanded to know why Fielding and Bart were in Somalia. I knew better than to make any demands on Woland and Behemoth. Hella was always obliging. She once told me she had never refused a man an amorous service, but, unlike Lucky, she also sucked every drop of blood out of whomever she screwed.
Hella would say, “There’s always a price. TANSTAFL: there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch. You want bukkake? You owe your blood. You want anal? You owe your blood. You want the old in-out? You owe your blood. You just want kissies on your nipples or stinky feet? You still owe your blood.” I didn’t want to make demands on Bella either. She was over 200 years old, looked barely 20, and was. still making collections, a venerable Dracula, but sans penis.
Bart took no offence. In way of an explanation, I got a lecture on how I was family. She and Fielding felt a special duty to protect me since I was, to quote Roberta, “too stupid, slow, and weak” to care for myself. I was the Love Machine, not a warrior. Once Bart and Fielding had figured out that I was in Somalia during a drunken Skype call from Wolverine, they wheedled my future location from him, a task made simple by his being a braggart. It’s easiest if you get him to tell you in Attic Greek so that he can show off his Eton education.
Bart then got on Zoom to talk to Irascible. Telling him that she and Fielding decided to attack their recent bout of ennui with a cobra hunt, she got him to arrange a flight to Mogadishu. From there they found some khat merchants taking a trip to replenish supplies. One of their preferred harvest areas was within range of the al Shabaab clowns.
After ditching the Khat fiends, Bart and Fielding did start hunting cobras. One cool thing about Somalia is it has 3 species of spitting cobras and assorted other snakes that are fun to kill. Cobra hunts keep cats sharp for combat. Fielding bragged, “Bart and I also got a nice supply of venom to use on pesky terrorists. Cobras like to stare a big game, but they’re slow.
Take a careful look down at that bozo in the ravine. Bart slashed his pretty neck. I emptied an ampule of cobra venom into the wound. Behemoth, a real gent, came over to give him a hard kick in the tuchas.
There was another hoyden I took a chunk of titty meat out of when I rammed her. I think she was trying to save a wife beater.
“Everybody save the al Sha-boobs got into a shelter good ole Woland made. I think he had Hella dig it out. She digs faster than an army of gophers.”
Woland grinned at these kind words. ‘You know, Crocky, any real Russian loves what Lucky and those Jews did last night. I loved that they did it without the high casualties that the average Russian views as essential to anything we do. You can’t build so much as a copula in Russia without doing in a few Russians. In the old days, Stalin killed them in droves to maintain the motherland’s work ethic. What Russian doesn’t enjoy scenes where even pretend Russians are obliterating a foe?
Behemoth and I just had to see it done to comprehend the beautiful possibility of it. Thank the gods Putin was too busy sucking up to that fraud Caligula to commence an African operation. Those two wankers would have botched it for sure. Not our gal Lucky and her killer Jews. If only they were Russians.” Woland’s eyes began to mist. He turned his gaze from me.
He ate what looked like a varenyky. Food is the best medicine. Or is it sleep?
I noticed Behemoth celebrating with a large shot of vodka that was chasing a large piece of Schmaltz herring. I was feeling a wee bit bitter. I had already eaten all my fresh herring.
Was there more? If there was, that cheapskate drunkard Behemoth wasn’t offering it.
Behemoth looked about at the frozen bodies as the strong sun beat down. “You do realise that getting out of here may be dicey? A raiding party of these nasty Somalis are coming back. If you ask me, they’re going to blame you for this mess, especially since Woland, Hella, and I must run. There is so much bad to do in this world and so little time.”
“You all aren’t going to give us a ride out?”
“Why would we? You were told to stay alive and she would find you.”
I protested, “She didn’t say find me here.”
Behemoth had another blast of vodka, rolled his eyes, then told me, “Come, come. It was a conversational implicature. And to think I thought you a philosopher. She meant here.”
“Then she should have said so. I think she meant any here.”
“Then,” roared Behemoth, “stay here and ask her.
“We’re heading out and want to learn whether Lucky is a woman of her word.”
Bart and Fielding were unimpressed. Fielding went on a tirade. “He’ll leave when we tell him to. We don’t need a freakin’ ride. We can all walk to Kampala. Weak white guys Stanley did it. He even managed to find the kook Livingston. So, go when you want, assholes.”
I could have killed my two gals. Let them walk to Kampala. I wanted a ride. But it was too late. Woland and his entourage vanished. As did my cooler of Baltic herring. To think anybody thinks the world is just! Where do such addled souls live?
In the distance, Bart and Fielding were conferring. As Bart explained it to me, they were working out how many al Sha-bah-bahs they’d have to put down before they got spooked and ran. Bart also started working out tactics.
When I asked what I might do, Fielding insulted me. “Why don’t you find yourself an aid station and relax whilst we work out your salvation? You do recall Martinez Creek, don’t you?” What luck! I could feign outrage and hide out until the coast was clear.
In another two days, the CV-22 was ready to go, Lucky mocked me.
“Darling, do you want me to find you a parachute?”
If she wanted to please me, she could find me a ticket home to Saint Louis. I’d have been almost as happy with a trip to Potomac. She had me in her carry-on, and I surveyed the crew on the aircraft as it arrived.
Because I’m no mathematician, I’m unsure if it had more than 24 guys on it. The doomed Russians hogged a lot of space, but I doubt we amounted to more than a squad and a team. Aside from Mr Clean, nobody seemed to be carrying anything heavy than a carbine with a grenade launcher.
Luck scratched my head. Given the desire to frame the Russians, everybody carried Russian rifles. You’d think any moron could tell we were coming in on an Osprey, but nobody on board thought anybody on the ground with al Shabab would go by anything other than markings.
As the pilot powered the engines up, I felt a lurch as we lifted off the deck. Lucky clutched me tight and cooed, “It’s okay, sweetie.” When I looked out the aircraft’s door, I saw the vastness of the Indian Ocean. Even with the gain in altitude, the plan was hot and sticky. We were headed northwest.
Lucky liked facts. I had to hear them. So, I learnt the aircraft was cruising along at about 300 mph. To raise my spirits, she told me when we reached the area to deposit the stealth bomb, we only had to hop a short distance to a fuel depot a team of stealthy Chinese had set up for this purpose. We’d have plenty of fuel to head on to Kampala after checking the lethality of the coming blast.
The CV-22 would head off to Niger and probably take a refueling in flight on the way as if I cared. She told me she had us on a first-class flight from Kampala to Amsterdam. I liked the idea of Amsterdam
To entice me further, Lucky said she had booked a suite at Hotel 27. We’d be feasting at Bougainville Restaurant and having drinks at Hotel 27’s gorgeous bar. The gourmand-me thought it all lovely, provided we were not lying dead and festering in Somalia when we should have arrived in A-dam.
Now that the CV-22 was flying towards the Somalia coast at good speed. I knew the plan was to have the ship about 200 miles after the coast. On we rushed.
Danny and Saul relaxed by playing chess. Saul was the better player. Danny liked bold aggressive sacrifices. Had they been better players, I guess it would have reminded a chess aficionado of Petrosian playing the even inventive, aggressive Tal. Oddly, it was the conservative Petrosian who was a legend at 5-minute chess. Lucky forbid me to play. She knew I loved to gamble when playing Go or Chess. It’s unfortunate that I’m a lousy player at both games. I think my mathematical limits are a hindrance. For example, counting is hard. Lucky started grumbling she had no idea how many men she had to threaten to kill to get my Go and Chess debts covered.
I just thought to myself, “Could it really be that many?”
Once Lucky got over her grievances about my gambling addiction, she pulled out a pack of cards. In no time, she was running a 5-card stud poker game. She was taking all the money the commandos willing to play had. Lucky complained that it was a waste of her time to play with poor men. She had a happy memory of cleaning out Lord Caligula during a game at Monte Carlo. She had made a small fortune wiping out royals at a casino in Menton.
After 40 or so minutes in the air, I noticed we were crossing the Somalia coast. It was dusk. Within a half hour, the Osprey was doing a night flight. I, obedient to the conditions, fell asleep. Besides, what’s the use of being awake when Lucky won’t let me play Go or Chess for me?
I was seeing red lights in the cabin when I awoke. The guys were fiddling with their carbines. The General was given more booze. He was as drunk as Sam Houston on a bender.
At first, I assumed Lucky wished to help the General clear his head. She walked him to the door, suggesting he look down to get a sense of the lay of the land. Before he sensed what she had in store for him, she had unhooked him from his tether. Whilst he was giving her a puzzled look over his shoulder, she was giving him a stiff push in the back and a strong knee to the buttock.
The General headed to earth. He did scream “Почему?”
In case you know no Russian, that means: why? And it’s a rather good question if you ask me. Lucky muttered, “Because you’re worthless alive.” Until then, I hadn’t noticed how the guy resembled Willy Loman without life insurance.
Now that the general had deplaned, the CV-22 headed down. Lucky, perhaps being kind, instructed the pilot not to land on the corpse.
No sooner had the Osprey touched down then Danny hopped out cradling an AK-74M. Some commandos began dragging the 5 Russian prisoners off the Osprey. As the Russians were untied, Danny would fire rounds into them as they staggered away. The first Russian took two rounds to the face. The second took 4 rounds to the chest. Another guy got a round that hit him in the back. His lung collapsed.
In a short while, they were dead at varying distances frp, the aircraft. Danny tossed a few grenades in the vicinity to make it look more authentic, and commandos created plenty of footprints in the desert sand.
During the shooting, the bot rolled off the Osprey with the stealth bomb in tow.
Meanwhile, a commando returned to Saul. Saul then had an announcement.
“One of my guys told me he had to do a silent kill on a sentry. What a sad world it is that even in a godforsaken place like this, somebody bothers to post a sentry almost 5 miles from their camp. “
Lucky got busy with the bot. She also checked the stealth bomb, being a natural genius with munitions. When she pronounced the system good to go, I heard the CV-22 engines revving up. Everybody was getting onto the aircraft.
Then I noticed my razor-sharp danger detection alarm was sounding. I was responding to small arms fire. I stayed low, but the space about the CV-22 was hot. Everybody was onboard except for me. How could I let that happen? I should have been first!
Above I heard Lucky screaming to put the bird back down. “Crockett is still on the ground”. Imagine, gentle reader, my rage when some scoundrel safe in his seat shouted, “Fuck Crockett.”
I realised now I was in a scene straight from Last of the Mohicans. Instead of Daniel Day Lewis, I heard Lucky scream, “Stay alive, darling, and I will find you.” The CV went up and headed southwest to safety and its refueling site.
Everything considered I still had advantages. I am nearly black in the dark. Advantage one: Invisibility. I am preternaturally quiet when my life is on the line if detected. Advantage two: stealth. What’s more, the Ice-10 Bomb could kill me with a blast, but the wise scientists at Munitions Galore had created Ice-10 so that it didn’t kill cats. Cat blood, as I understood the matter, was too hot to make Ice-10 dangerous to us. Advantage 3: Biological Immunity.
I now needed a place safe from the blast. I didn’t want to wait long to find it. First, I didn’t know when the bomb would blow. Second, the al-Shabaab boogers were coming on fast and firing furiously. I saw a nice-sized ravine dead ahead. I jumped into it. Advantage 4: Kitty dexterity and Advantage 5: Fall survivability. Down I went, for a long time. “Ouch”.
Above the firing continued. Then came a loud, loud ka-boom.
And then there was silence.
I had stayed alive. She would find me.
Sometimes I wonder if all Lucky’s fights dented her brain. As I remember it, she specifically asked for a CV-22. What is a CV-22, you ask? Perhaps some of you have followed this aircraft history. It’s a tiltrotor aircraft that permits it to work as both a fixed-wing plane and a helicopter. The Marines, who are not the brain of the Armed Forces, loved this craft. They loved it no matter how many times it crashed. The Air Force decided it wanted to use it as a taxi for its special forces. It has a combat range of about 500 miles.
Lucky wanted it because you can cram a 3-man crew and 24 operators on it. If you’re willing to make people sit on the floor, you can pack in another 8 operators. The CV-22 can carry plenty of killers and their equipment.
Once we made it to the deck of the big ship, I heard the engines of the CV-22 as it approached the helipad. Once it touched down, the ship’s crew shot into action. They painted and marked the CV-22 as a Russian Federation aircraft. The Israeli commandos put on Russian combat utilities, though Lucky, Saul, Danny, and the two othe4 Mossad disdained them.
Fuelers got to work. Techs went over the CV-22 whilst a loadmaster directed people on where to put what I recognized as a Munitions Galore stealth bomb and a military version of a Mr Clean bot. Danny stood on the ship’s deck smoking an English Oval. Saul had loaded a Savinelli pipe. From the look of it, I’d say it was a Savinelli Dublin Bent. I liked it. To calm myself, I imagined smoking one myself.
I saw a group of young of five young Russians loaded on. Saul chuckled. “Look at them. A gift from Syria. When they were interviewed, these creeps carried on so freely about yids and kikes, any self-respecting Jew would rejoice in killing them. Danny won a coin toss with me. Once we reach the site, he gets to shoot them all dead.”
Right now, the Russians looked terrified. They got loaded on the CV-22 like cordwood. When I looked right, I saw a Russian general drunker than Sam Houston. If you know any Texas history, Sam drank so much that the Cherokee called him “Big Drunk.” From what I was seeing, this guy was competitive with Houston for the Big-Drunk title. Lucky told me she couldn’t wait to shove him from the CV-22 ounce we over the site. “We must kill a few Russians. Nobody would believe Russians could pull off an operation like this without casualties.”
I nodded.
Let me get this off my chest. I write two Pulitzer quality columns on Elvis and the Queen. Do I get any honour in my own family? Not a bit. That sullen bastard servant mike has ridiculed my work, telling me it had “the stamp of congenital idiocy and mental illness upon it.” He went so far as to tell me I might as well start reading and, even worse, believing the Book of Morons to learn about the adventures Jesus had in America. As so often happens with prophets, I’ve no respect in my native land. When I told mike that, he suggested I shouldn’t count on much respect elsewhere either. What can I say? The man’s a prick.
But I refuse to let the injustices I suffer keep me from continuing my story. I liked Zanzibar. I got upset when we left.
In the first place, even though Lucky was pressing hard to get started, Danny and Saul were meticulous. Mosaad insist nobody should run around killing enemies of Israel willy-nilly. Useful killers prepare. So, everybody waited on Wolverine getting the CV-22 scheduled.
One moonless evening, Lucky woke me at about 01.00. She threw me in her carryon. We headed to the beach. Imagine my total horror. She was moving into the ocean to get on some kind of Zodiac boat. You may know them as inflatable craft that are little more than floating swimming pools. She entered the faux boat.. Danny and Saul entered with two other Israeli brutes, bodyguards for them, no doubt.. Be assured, these two monsters looked nothing like the weenie Woody Allen at any age. There were two coxmen to run the craft. We headed into the dark, placid ocean.
Perhaps 3 hours passed before the boat halted. The coxmen had used some weird navigational equipment to guide us in the dark.
I aggravated Lucky when I turned her carry on into my personal urinal. What could I do.? Every relationship has its ups and down. Perhaps 3 hundred feet from us or, more likely, a 100 meters, the sea exploded as a Dolphin 2 Sub surfaced. Lucky had to drag me onto that sub. If you think about it, why would a hydrophobe want to be anywhere near a sub? Besidies, everybody knows subs are crewed by bitter insomniacs who have or will have bad marriages.
Once boarded, I didn’t get the idea that the Israelis had spent a lot of money to make the sub commodious enough to suit me. About 20 minutes after we were all boarded, I heard the commander issuing commands in Hebrew, a tongue that is gibberish to me. Then, as I trembled in Lucky’s strong arms, I felt the Dolphin diving. I squirmed, and then Lucky’s voice entered my ears, “Master yourself, darling, or I’ll burrito you. Must you behave like a pussy in a Celine novel. Be braver than Bardamu, sweetie.” She then had the cheek to smack my bottom to demonstrate the sincerity of her command to self-master..
It was an outrage, but I was too terrified to defend my honour. After a short bit, Lucky suggested (insanely) being inside a sub was no worse than being in a house during a torrential rain. A sub? No worse than a house? Didn’t she know I had seen Das Boot more than 4 times. I also had clippings of the Thresher’s implosion. And then there was the Kursk’s sad end in the Barent Sea in 2000, and I’ve just mentioned disasters we know about. In 2005 or so, an American sub managed to run into a mountain. That’s right! a freakin’ mountain. My wise fear was the expression of the purity of my scientific knowledge + judgement. Yes, sometimes knowledge + judgement = fear.
Whether I liked it or not, we were underway. I was trapped. Fear had reduced me to a puddle of fur and pee.
I gathered that a Dolphin 2 taxied at most 10 commandos. We were to rendezvous at some point off the Somali coast to join additional Israeli killing machines on a disguised vessel. The Point of rendezvous was where the CV-22 would land on the larger ship’s helipad. We then would be off to Victory or Doom.
Anyway, we reached the rendezvous point. How long it took is beyond my reckoning. To cope with the pressure of being on a sub, I found a spot in the torpedo room, perhaps the quietest place on a sub, to sleep. Of course, lot of noise started once the sub surfaced.
I went and found Lucky. Her sarcasm irked me. Did I get any lovey-dovey strokes when I hopped into her lap? Of course not. Instead, she led with “Done hiding, darling?” She should have just kept her mouth shut. Perhaps I should have opted to befriend Danny and Saul to spite her. That’s my life: Could’ve, Should’ve, Didn’t.
For the sake of my sanity, I must stop watching the news. Lucky and I went with Danny and Saul on the ferry to Zanzibar to “wait.” Lucky checked us in to the Baraza Resort and Spa.
Even though she made a fuss about the many pools, I was unmoved. All my life I’ve had a terror of bathing. How many people have drowned in recorded history? I have no exact number but assure you it is a big, big number. Lucky looked good in a bikini. She knew it. If you dropped by, she was either swimming or standing around 95% naked waiting for the next water adventure.
Lucky continued to secure me a steady supply of fresh seafood, all of it excellent. So with these amenities, why was I watching the news?
CNN came on. To my horror, a correspondent was speaking to Lord Caligula. He had returned from a recent trip to Moscow. As usual, he claimed to have no idea what Putin made of recent accusations of sales of weapons of mass destruction to sundry countries around the world. When asked if Munitions Galore had a role in these sales, as news stories in reputable papers like the London Times, the Guardian, Le Monde, and the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung were suggesting, his Lordship denied it. Without losing a beat, he replied, “Nobody loves peace more than we at Munitions Galore. We earn big money during peace. We prevent war. Alas, the world is a hard place. We at Munitions Galore know the wisdom of the Latin adage, Si vis pacem, para bellum. If you went to a Comprehensive School, I’m sorry. For these pitiful ones, let them know the Latin means, If you want peace, prepare for war.”
The interviewer. brushing aside his Lordship’s move to discuss nothing of import, pressed to know what purpose his visit to Moscow had. I knew Lord Caligula would never admit he talked to Putin. Instead, he spoke of how much he loved the Russian people. According to his Lordship, he might have more good friends in Russia, especially in Moscow, than he had in England, a country that the crybabies were taking over.
The interviewer stayed on him but got no new news, though his Lordship sniffed that Constance should already have her George Cross. He conjectured that if she had done what she did in Reading in Russia, she would already have got a Hero of the Russian Federation Medal. Every bit my mind was endangered as his Lordship walked off the stage. He was wearing a perfectly tailored, silk Brioni suit. He had a Coke hat draped over his walking stick. Then I saw her.
He was approaching Constance. She was in a mini. Scarlet fishnet stockings adorned her chubby legs. Tucked into the mini was a T-shirt that had the words “Fight for Peace” on it. Below the slogan, I made out a silkscreen image of near-naked Constance using her Colt Python to dispatch a cartoonish Chinese chap who was laden with weapons, but begging for his life. He had a bullet wound in his head that gushed blood. I think it was Constance’s erect nipples below the shirt that were de trop for me. I literally fainted.
When Lucky discovered me on the floor, I got tender caresses to revive me. I needed them, though she was naked as a newborn when she found me. Perhaps to make me feel better, she said Wolverine had talked to Dayan and Levi. He had a CV-22 lined up to get him into Somalia. Wolverine also promised a warrior version of Mr Clean would also be on the CV-22. He had a supply of petrol stashed as well in “a suitable place.” Better still, NGA had promised the requested photos of the al Shabaab encampment.
With the good news in hand, she advised me to watch less CNN. If you must watch the news, watch Xinhua. The Chinese People insist that the news be boring propaganda. You’d never see those two criminals overstimulating you until you fell out on the People’s News. Standards of decency would have kept Constance out of sight.
I asked if we would leave Zanzibar anytime soon. Lucky kissed me. “Relax. We leave soon, darling, we leave soon. Be prepared to head out under cover of darkness. And don’t worry, sweetie, I’ll put on clothes to travel. I don’t want to put ideas in the heads of those two Israeli leches. I have standards” Standards? That was new news for me.
As a journalist, sometimes events in the world overtake my ordinary projects. The recent alleged death of Queen Elizabeth is a case in point. As my readers know, I have visited the Queen countless times at Windsor Castle where I took pleasure in perusing her collection of Leonardo drawings. I was never willing to visit her in Balmoral. Balmoral is in Scotland, a dangerous bit of the north with dubious habits. What race of men wears kilts? It is a garment for exhibitionists. Thank the gods, you don’t have to travel far south to escape kilts.
In fact, if you just travel as far south as Nottingham to Sherwood Forest, you are in Men-in-Tights country. You know a man in tights is not trying to expose himself. He is a mere thief.
Hence my teeming brain tells me that the Queen fell victim to murder most foul. Do you believe she died of “old age”? Heavens, she was only 96. Even her hard-living husband Lord Mountingbadly lasted to 99. Friends in the know tell me he would have lived longer if not for the Queen’s insatiable appetites. I also have it from reliable sources that Lord Mountingbadly died prematurely from the severe beatings he received from her whenever he was mounting badly. Everybody close to the royal family knew this.
Nonetheless, the Queen was a delightful woman. Never did I ask for anything to eat without her fetching it for me. She shared her food with me that she would pull from a Tupperware in the royal fridge.
The hoax of the Queen’s death from age is plainly false. There is no precedent for it. In all my years, not a single English queen has died of old age. What kind of induction is it to conclude the Queen died of old age even though no English queen in your lifetime has?
So how did she die? Do I really need to explain it? Consider. Everybody knows that the ancient loafer Prince Charles coveted her job. He was the man who would be Queen. Camilla had to tutor him for hours to say he would be King at an ascension ceremony. And now, with the Queen’s body barely cold, he is “King.”
I believe it is easy to guess who murdered the Queen. Less than a week ago, Liz Truss went to visit the Queen under the Pretext of replacing the adorable blonde Boris Johnson as Prime Minister. No sooner than Truss left the Queen, the Queen falls sick and dies. If she did die, what better explains it than poisoning? The power-mad Truss poisoned her to advance her career as PM. You can be the idler Charles had Camilla bring Truss into the conspiracy as the Poisoner-in-Chief. The Queen didn’t have a chance against these fiends.
Now we have a diminished England with a murdering PM doing the bidding of the Man-who-would-be-Queen whilst my favourite blonde Mr Johnson sits on the sidelines reading Thucydides and Aeschylus.
There is no reasonable explanation for what we have mentioned unless you accept the hoax, the fake news that the Queen died “naturally.” And don’t think I just made this all up. I spoke to our erstwhile President about it. He assures me it is dead right. Donald has even arranged for me to talk to Sidney Powell to learn more about what Paedophile Polar Bears are doing to the world. The northern menace is not just coming to America. They are an immense power in Scotland. Beware! God save the real Queen, Queen Elizabeth.
So, as I track this story, I was distracted from telling you about times past. More on that next time. And beware of Truss! Save Boris! He has the locks of Galahad.
But do not give up hope. Consider the totality of the evidence. You are entitled to believe the Queen is not more dead than Elvis is.
The morning after the rumble, I awoke at dawn’s beginning. Lucky was still asleep in her room. Outside it, two men were playing Go. Another man sat facing the door with a pistol in easy reach. I wandered over to the window.
It was still dark. A murky slate sky drizzled into the Thames. I could see Big Ben in the distance.
I watched and thought. In another hour Lucky got up. I heard her shower. When she limped out of her room, she was wearing a thick, white terrycloth robe. She set her 1911 on a coffee table. She did the same with her PPQ. After disassembling them, she cleaned them with CLP. She had two bore snakes on the table and used these to clean the barrels since the 1911 shoots .45 and the PPQ 9MM
Another hour passed. Lucky relaxed listening to Bach Partitas. Three new guys showed up to replace the three I met first thing in the morning. One took a seat facing the door. I noticed he also used a mirror to check the window. The other two guys didn’t bother to start a new game of Go. They flipped a coin. The winner chose the side he wished to take over. When they played, I noticed the one not moving kept his eye on the window. I noticed they had two QBZ 191s, Chinese assault rifles, leaning on the wall next to them. Lucky’s SA80A2 was nowhere in sight. She had only her pistols. Once they were clean, she put in their mags, and chambered them.
“Expecting company,” I asked?
“Nah, but a wise woman always prepares for unannounced guests.
“You know, I’ve been wondering how you know Fielding.”
“Fielding and I have known each other since I was little in a San Antonio barrio.”
Lucky told me how lucky I was to know Fielding. Lucky said it took a bravo cat to take on Constance. “Whatever you think of Constance, sweetie, know this truth: she is a great Warrior. Did you watch her last night? Magnificent! She led the counterattack. She came into the open with only her Python and the thin, night air as her shields. She has style. She is a great, great warrior.”
I must have looked sceptical.
“Look, darling, we all are travelling on the great River of Life. We the living have yet to find the staircase from the life river. One day we will. You, I, everybody will travel the River of Life until we find the staircase. And when we find it, we stream up its stairs to the infinite sky. It is but a respite for the warriors. We will return in rain and dust to travel the River of Life again. Everything is stardust and water. Warriors must return to guard Life itself.”
I felt I had to ask why the warriors don’t unite.
“Because, silly goose, warriors don’t know whose right side is right. We just play our dealt hand. Neither Achilles nor Hector knew whose side was right. Aikido teaches there is always a uke and a tori, and these forever rotate. Warriors are creating right and wrong. We must believe we achieve right when time ends. Until then, true victory is self-victory.”
I was stupefied to discover Lucky the Marxist is a mystic.
Lucky stared at me. “Mark my words, darling. Constance is not the only great warrior. Fielding, Fielding Grey, is a great warrior. She came alone to the fight. That is a mark of the warrior.”
I actually doubted Fielding would agree. About a week or so later, I connected via Skype to her. She answered. I could tell she was pissed.
“Crocky, you won’t believe what brain-damaged Roberta and mike have done. They let Wolverine drop Constance off chez moi to convalesce from her stabbing. Any person with a lick of common sense would have drowned her at the first opportunity in our hot tub. Instead, we’re taking deliveries from Straub’s of tenderloin and such to keep her chubby.
“For the sake of peace, we all can be glad she didn’t see that I cut her. I’m still blaming Bart. If Bart had come to Reading with me, the two of us would have been sure to slice her into itty-bitty pieces.”
I asked if she had meant to save Lucky.
“Who’s Lucky? I wanted to put death’s grip on Constance. What a Badger Witch!”
“But why were you there?” Again, I had to ask. Curious minds want to know.
“You fancy yourself a bit psychic. Listen up, sonny. I’m not a bit psychic. I am psychic. I felt the disturbance in the force. I felt it centered in Reading. I knew you and that the China woman was headed to Reading to kill foes before you two clowns knew. If you saw Wait Until Dark, you’d know I have the insight of Mr Roat. You’re amateurs. I knew you two were off to kill before either of you did.
But let me say this. That Chinese bird can fight. It was a bad hand for her to get butt shot by Constance. It pleased me to stab Constance for her. However, now I have buyer’s remorse. Wounded Constance is now waddling about my house. If Bart and I do the right thing and kill her here, Roberta and mike will carry on as if it is some sort of grievous sin. Big deal. A dead badge. Who cares?
“What’s the use of a sacrament of penance if we can’t get a grievous sin forgiven from time to time? And that gang of hoodlums in the Rolls that rescued their tough slut, I can’t wait to put claws into them.”
Being an old hand at reading Fielding, I knew I had to get off Skype before she jacked herself up any more than she already was. I could tell Bart was in a bad mood too. As Fielding carried on, I saw Bart jump into the air just before I hung up. She snagged a finch in flight. If you ask me, you’d think evolution would have eliminated low fliers like those eons ago.
I figure everything has an upside. One bonus of the Reading Rumple was a marvellous jeremiad by Lord Caligula. Nobody gets to hear an unrestrained yellow peril speech nowadays. After starting his hate speech with assurances that nobody respected Chinese cultural achievement more than he did, his Lordship also promised that he would never believe Red China or the Chinese government in Formosa had an official role. He stressed assurances of his good will towards the Chinese people. He pointed his finger at fictitious rogue Chinese, a collection of evildoers, who had launched a thwarted attack on the headquarters of Munitions Galore.
Soon his Lordship was thundering that the criminal Tong, a gang that had too long enjoyed the forbearance of Scotland Yard and MI5. He tossed gruesome photos and videos of the Reading Rumble about the chamber. He bragged that Munitions Galore Guards had stopped the attack on their HQ, albeit with great loss of life, and prevented any defence secrets from being purloined by these monsters.
Once his Lordship’s speech turned from a spree of denunciations of Chinese felons living in some of England’s luxury hotels, he began to praise Constance Lawless. “Let us be thankful that Ms Lawless answered the call when criminal packs of Chinese rabble were on the verge of seizing state secrets entrusted to Munitions Galore. In defence of England, Ms Lawless had gathered a platoon of guards to launch a crushing counterattack. She has now, for her personal safety, obtained shelter in the United States to convalesce. If we live in a just and grateful country, I demand that Ms Lawless receive a George Cross.” He had made his ask.
The best was yet to come. Another Lord mentioned that Ms Lawless was not a British Citizen, and hence ineligible for that medal. Lord Caligula exploded inveighing against any bounder hiding his malice behind so-called legal requirements. To his Lordship, if Ms Lawless needs to be “Christened a citizen by our Queen, so be it.” He had become so angry his face had gone scarlet. He was flogging a desk in the chamber with his riding crops as he called it by the objecting Lord’s name. Needless to say, the Fleet Street crowd adored his Lordship’s flamboyance. So, I gather, did the public. I thought the act was better than any I’d seen from President Trump.
Today mike made me laugh. I asked him about Trump’s stash of classified documents at Mar-a-Lago. “Well,” opined mike, “it takes chutzpah to spend years whining about Hilary’s basement server and then sneak off with boxes of classified documents, including some you squirreled away in your desk, especially since you said you didn’t have anything. The man’s not a quick study of his own thoughts.”
Sometimes I’m not a quick study either. I asked Bart and Fielding about the stash of secrets. They told me they could care less. They were still furious that snowbacks from the Canadian wilds were still sneaking into our country because Trump broke his promise to build a big, beautiful wall. Instead, Fielding hooted, our country is to be infested by paedophile polar bears. Nobody’s child will be safe. Those polar bears will have their way with our kids and then eat them. I figured Fielding was reading Q-anon again.
None of this matters right now. I want to write about the Reading Rumble.
Recall, gentle readers, that Lucky had discussed covert ops with Charles at the Connaught. When the journalist in me pressed for more on Charles, Lucky told me he was a man of skill. He had begun his career by working as a mercenary in Francophone Africa. He was good at it. He has killed more people than a carefree teen girl has ova in her body. And throughout the years, Charles has been a friend of China. Even in Africa, he worked for us.
His father was a French diplomat married to a Chinese concert pianist. Charles’ dad came to his senses and began spying for us. He eventually got found out because of a French fink and now lives in Shanghai where he runs a brothel for foreign travellers. The cruel French impugned the man’s good name, saying he became a spy because of monstrous gamblig debts acquired in Macau. Lucky added she knew nothing about those scurrilous charges. She could only vouch for Charles’ remarkable gifts as an operative. Charles, she assured me, also loved his work.
Now keep in mind, I’m not much for directions. I’m no homing pigeon. Just like deaf, dumb, and blind kids who play a mean pinball, I can play Daniel Boone–deaf, monocular, and dimwitted though I be–just fine without any street signs. It’s maps and signs that confound me.
The night of the Reading Rumble, Lucky and I had left London in a van that had a crew of rough looking Asians in its back. I’m not a weapons expert, but I think that van alone had more weapons on it than a 3rd ID Stryker. I guessed Lucky had us headed to Reading, HQ of Munitions Galore. I wish I knew that before I got on board. Now we had gone 60 or so klicks from London. We were on Reading’s Trafford Road. What a pit!
Lucky turned off of it. Before long, she was headed toward the HQ of Munitions Galore. As she sped toward the MG gate, she fired up the van’s stereo system. At earsplitting volume, I heard David Bowie singing “Panic in Detroit”: Looks a lot like Che Guevara/ drives diesel van/ packs his gun in quiet seclusion . . . If only the guns had stayed packed in seclusion. Are you surprised that Lucky was signing along?
At the gate, Lucky shot several guards by emptying a full-auto TEC 9 on them. She stepped from the van, telling me “Stay put, darling.” I saw a MG guard leave cover to aim a rifle at Lucky. She moved her arm up. Her 1911 went off. Another guard bit the dust. She then jogged to the van’s backdoor. It opened. She accepted an SA80 with a UGL. I saw Charles step out carrying a FN Minimi Mk3. He used it to cut down 3 guards running towards the MG fence. It looked like old-hat to him.
Lucky and Charles had a Reading Rumble going. Alarms were blaring and only 30 seconds or so had passed. A bullet crashed through the front window. I decided now the time had come to hide. I went toward the gate to get behind a barricade. There was no reason to fire on the gate. Everybody there was dead, in part because Lucky shot the wounded with her SA80 as she jogged by.
She moved forward to a luxurious front office. An explosion followed her pulling the trigger on the UGL. A wave of panicked guards rolled out of the building. Charles, using the Minimi’s tripod for support, hosed them dead. How he grinned when using that Mimimi.
During this firefight, I heard other shots going off from the squad of guys Lucky had brought along. They were also shooting any MG opposition. They also were burning anything that would burn. Everything was as synchronised as the best imaginable symphony orchestra, but louder. Then something happened.
I heard a loud pop and a scream to my left. I hid but preserved a view. Woe, there was Constance commanding a platoon of MG Guards. I recognised her features as flames licked about her. She walked to a chap trying to reload his carbine, and then shoved her Colt Python to his head. When she pulled the trigger, his head went to pieces like a watermelon hit by a round round from a deer rifle.
I think Constance said, “Thank you” as she grabbed the corpse’s reloaded carbine. She then shot dead another member of Charles’s squad. Meanwhile Charles and Lucky were being pinned down by another MG platoon coming around from the right side of the MG HQ building.
Lucky and Charles were in a leapfrog retreat to safety when heard Lucky shout, “Ah, fuck.” I noticed blood spilling from her left buttock down her leg. She had a bad limp. Her left leg was dragging. Charles was in deplorable shape. Somebody had fired an RPG at him. The missile blew off his left foot. Charles was lucky that the grenade skidded away with his foot. It blew up at a safe distance from him.
Then I saw Constance was moving fast in their direction. Her celerity amazed me. There are advantages to being a badger. Pity Lucky and Charles.
I prepared myself to say adieu to Lucky. And how could I not feel sorry for Charles? What I saw next was a miracle.
A scream in the night drew my gaze. Everybody seemed to look that way. A member of team Lucky was holding his groin. Something was savaging him. I knew the style. Fielding was putting it to him. He didn’t have a chance.
When Fielding let go, he was a goner. Like a bullet, Fielding barrelled full speed across a stretch of asphalt to spear Constance’s right back thigh. Fielding wore a trophy from the Great War, a German helmet with a huge spike on its top. Unsatisfied with a mere stabbing, Fielding then bit a chunk of Achilles tendon from Constance. Down old Constance went.
The ensuing chaos was a tableau of escapes. A blue Rolls Royce sped to Constance like an Army ambulance. In she went. I could make out Lord Caligula in the backseat. I think I spotted Peregrine driving and Wolverine, a Streetsweeper shotgun in his arms, firing to clear an escape route. A squad of whooping Asians ran from around the right side of the building. Rather than invade the building, they targeted the remnants of a platoon of MG guards that were still firing away at Lucky and Charles..
All of a sudden, a van roared up, its corpsmen loaded Lucky and Charles aboard. In a war song of shots and blasts, everybody fled. Many went on foot instead of vans.. SWAT-like Reading coppers were arriving to end the fight. In the chaos, they were ineffective in catching anybody. But check out Reading’s crime rate. What else is new? Or so it all seemed to me from my vantage point in the van.
The adrenaline you get from unmitigated terror got me into that van. It wasn’t long before we loaded into a Jaguar. We got shelter in a river view suite in the Savoy. Well, not all of us made it there. I heard Charles got put into a Peugeot that transported him to the Chinese Embassy.
At the Savoy, a surgeon pulled the .357 slug from Lucky’s cute buttock. She stitched a small hole shut. The buttock was swollen. It had coloured into a gruesome heliotrope, yet the doc pronounced Lucky in good shape.
As soon as Lucky saw me, she asked, “Do you know that cat, sweetheart?”
I nodded.
“Who is she?”
I gulped and said, “She is Fielding, Fielding Gray.”
Lucky’s eyes widened. She said, “I owe her a warrior’s life debt.”
Lucky looked forward to a donnybrook in London. I didn’t look forward to a donnybrook anywhere. As you know, the informed call me The Love Machine. The Love Machine avoids conflict. Let us make love, not war.
Lucky had no use for peace. If you ask me, her lifestyle, as much as I adore her, depends on killing. She was spoiling to know what rampage she could inflict on Munitions Galore.
Despite the splashy coverage from the Tabloids, Putin did not unleash his bears. What can I say? Russians like bears. They also disliked the idea of more trouble in England.
Now that Putin had his lethal gadgets, he simmered down. Although we didn’t know it at the tme, he and his advisors decided against retaliating for the murder of their intelligence officer and asset. The bomb had put the coppers and MI-5 on high alert, an unpropitious ambience for vegeance. Also, Putin worried that Emperor Xi was yearning to fight. That could be expensive.
Russia’s quieticism did not mean that there were no juicy targets in Russia. Xi had got the bots, stealth bombs, and Ice-10 he wanted, but he was irate that even the Israelis had scored. He also sensed that despite all these oddly named shell companies that the lion’s share of the money made it back to Munitions Galore. And if there were plenty of fine targets in Russia, there was also time enough to wait.
Further, and just as important, Chinese intelligence pointed the finger at Binky Dalrymple as the probable organiser of the money grubbers’ commercial structure. Over the years, Binky’s name surfaced whenever vast fortunes were being made off chicanery. Binky, Xi was told, had a genius for mega thefts. His mysteries would have to be studied slowly.
Wolverine had the good sense to use his NGA connections and clearance, as well as DoD clearances held by a plethora of fictitious officers, to glean the state of America’s understanding. Visits to the main NGA office in Franconia, the CIA office in Langley, as well as a trip or two to Fort Meade and NSA put Wolverine in the know. He also prowled the Pentagon in various disguises and uniforms of various ranks. He obtained necessary TDY orders to explain his presence on the premises of the Pentagon. Besides, he liked shopping at the Pentagon. The bigwigs wanted the Pentagon to be nice enough that some reliable percentage of officers were willing to work endless hours to prove to their bosses that they were willing to work themselves to death. It’s one of the best strategies for promotions ever invented. Work until you drop.
After a hard day of spying at the Pentagon, Wolverine would head over to the bar at the Ritz in the Pentagon City Mall to drink cocktails. From time to time, he would make the bar at Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse his afterwork destination, as he liked to drink martinis there whilst trolling for rich divorcees or lonely, randy married women.
Wolverine didn’t need rich women, but he preferred their company. Too many poor women have squalid petty bourgeoisie tastes. Worse, many turned out to be boringly conventional in the sack. Eton had made Wolverine a connoisseur of kink. This kind of sexual hunting aggravated the perverted Lord Caligula because he found the submissions on the Munitions Galore expense account outrageous. Once I heard his Lordship complaining, “Why has Wolverine such a fetish for consensual sex. He should learn to behave as as a Lord with le droit de seigneur. My god, these women are all Americans. Wolverine had a good English education. He must learn to show this colonials who’s in charge.”
Wolverine insisted, in his own defence, that his preference for consensual perversion saved Munitions Galore incalculable legal fees and payoffs. “Unlike his Lordship, I’ve never had to bribe a copper over my doings.” Of course, his Lordship kept his costs down by running with Constance, but he did like to steal, and that included sex. The rich are like that. They don’t care because they don’t have to. There’s always a cleanup crew at hand.
Wolverine and Peregrine were both smooth operators. Together they assembled the intelligence to know who know what about Ice-10 and its delivery. Nobody, not even the Americans, had figure out how to use the blast frequency of steal bomb as a detonator. In a way it made sense to me. Don’t the big brains use an A-bomb to detonate a H-bomb?
Peregrine did have the MI-5 crowd cowed. He and Lord Caligula had assembled a killers’ row of solicitors and barristers to protect them and Munitions Galore property. Their sacred status of Munitions Galore didn’t sit well with Lucky. Her rage got excessive after an incident at the Connaught.
I suspect Constance was the instigator. Lucky and I were on the sofa watching a trashy Brit costume drama. It had to be as old as dirt because both Mirren and Jane Seymour had roles as young women. Unlike the infamous Caligula movie, Mirren somehow kept her clothes on in this feature. At least I think those were the two ancient starlets in the movie.
The noise of what smashed against our door proved why Lucky is a poor choice as a victim. Faster than the fly heads to fresh shit, Lucky was in her closet. She emerged super ricky-tick with devices. One turned out to be a concoction that blinds a bot. She tossed it around the corner of a wall forward from the front door. It made a loud thump. Voila. The bot had a face full of muck, but so did I.
Luck laughed when she saw me as she sped by me to the bot. I heard her yell, “Check it out.”
The head of the bot began to melt as the thermo device she had placed on its crown melted through to the incineration chamber where it stopped. Lucky tossed another chemical on the bot to stop the reaction. She enveloped it in an envelope that captured fumes and than a hose to the window. She cut hole in the window, placed the hose, and the fumes pumped out into London’s air.
“Cool, eh, Crockey?” In her uncontained glee, she explained Chinese scientists in Chongqing had studied how to destroy bots. “The people put their brain to the problem. Behold the result: bot blinders and a super-mini thermobaric bomb.”
By then the adrenaline wore off enough for her to notice my pathetic condition. The blinder had done almost as good a job on me it had on the bot. Blind and whimpering, I heard Lucky coo, “Darling, I’ll restore you.” Up I went, before I knew it, I had the terrifying experience of being plunged into a stream of water in a way that might have drowned a seal. I do have to admit that when she finished, she had a result worthy of Jesus. This blind guy could see again.
She dried my face and petted me. Whilst doing that, she also telephoned to a team of cleaners. She told them what had to be removed from her suite. Ever kind to me, she also told them to bring me a tartar of Chilean sea bass from Scott’s. It’s hard to stay mad at a woman like that.
She spoke to the cleaners in Mandarin. About an hour later, a tall Chinese chap who spoke English with a French accent arrived. He was wearing a Brioni suit. He was also smoking cigarettes that smelled like Sartre’s Gauloises. The guy drew them from a silver cigarette case and lit them with a Dupont lighter. When Lucky wrinkled her face at the scent of the smoke, Charles, that’s what he called himself, told her they were custom-made to replicate the original Gauloises corporals, though some were made to the Maryland specs. As he explained to Lucky, “The Nancy boys in Europe won’t let men smoke real cigarettes. Everybody is supposed to watch their health, as if men in my trade ever make it past 50.” Lucky concurred that European regulators were decadent poufs. The whole of Europe was becoming a model of the Roman Empire in decline. She was enough of a pouf herself to pass on the offer of fag, as did I.
After a few comments about the need to fix a problem, they broke into Mandarin, though I kept hearing the words “Munitions Galore,” and the names of the big bosses there.
When Charles left, I looked puzzled. “Oh, don’t worry about Charles not taking notes. He has an eidetic memory. If he sees it or hears it, he recalls it.” He’ll have all we need when we go in.
I gulped. I didn’t like what I knew was Lucky’s idea of “going in.”
Today my plan was to write more about what happened in London regarding the emerging Ice-10 tempest collapsed. Fate turned against me. On Monday, my trusty, albeit bitchy, amanuensis, mike, tested positive for COVID or what he calls Trumps Plague. Despite having the vaccination and the recommended boosters, mike got sick. His symptoms expanded even as he started taking Paxlovid. Imagine my fear. If he dies, I’ll have to endure grief. Perhaps just as bad, I’ll have to replace him during a labour shortage.
Mike, even a potential doorstep of doom, managed to see an upside. As he told me, he was living through one of the great public health catastrophes of the 21st century. Was he a man who would wish to miss a chance to complain about the fools responsible for this virus’s spread? The health gods had enabled him to speak authoritatively of the symptoms of a moderate case of Trump’s Plague: joint pain, stuffy nose, headache, sore throat, cough, discomfort breathing, and a memorable episode of diarrhea.
He felt cross with the cranks whose opposition to mandatory public health measures to save small-brained people like themselves had caused many conscientious people to contract Trump’s Plague. The unvaccinated were a primary vector of disease.
Before long, I was getting a lecture on how morons handle risk.
If you know mike, he likes examples. Imagine two privates, PVT Strack and PVT Sad Sack. Every generation has an abundance of stupid, reckless Sad Sacks who shun measures to reduce risk. Sad Sacks hate motorcycle helmet law. To Sad Sacks, seatbelts are an assault on their liberty. OSHA rules are the infallible mark of a nanny state. In the Army, divisions of Sad Sacks in Vietnam disdained flak jackets or in Iraq shells. It’s a miracle Sad Sacs don’t prefer to march into battle barefoot and as naked as the day they were born. Mike invited me to imagine Tucker Snarlson defending barefooted Sad Sacks as an elite in which the spirit of Valley Forge lived.
PVT Stracks on the other hand took sensible precautions. They believed anybody less likely to die if shot in the chest wearing a shell than if you were not wearing one. All Stracks would view barefoot soldiering as lunacy, not a restoration of the Spirit of Valley Forge
As you can guess, mike thought Sad Sacks had strong mooch tendencies. When their own addiction to folly led to disability, they wished others to compensate them. Employment at the VA made mike the VA made mooch enablement a specialty practice. Stracks often had no idea that they could obtain for service-connected injuries. Sad Sacks see all infirmities of age as service-connected, and even have networks pandering to disability applicants too dim to make a case for disability on their own.
As he spoke about Sad Sacks, I wanted to rush off to assure myself that no Sad Sacks were stealing my growing stash of Krugerrands. By today, mike began to forecast a metastasizing army of Sad Sacks, pressing for disability payments for having had COVID, because any right-thinking person should see that COVID causes PTSD or such horrendous disabilities as slow COVID, not to mention the vast range of crippling drug addictions that “self-treatment” of post-COVID symptoms causes.
Like many geezers, when mike got going on the topic of loafing bloodsuckers, it didn’t take him long to imperil his own health.
Mike went on to tell me that his experience of Trump’s Plague would make it easier for him to ignore Sad Sacks on this topic with a clean conscience. Let us never forget that a misfortune like Trump’s Plague is not an injustice.
By this mike meant that he was not owed anything if, say, the disease killed him. As my servant, I was not onboard with that bit of philosophy. I spend years bringing a servant up to stuff and then he dies because of some “misfortune” and I get nothing? What next, am I to spend my Krugerrands insuring my servants? What’s government for?
Anyway, the Plaxovid seems to have worked. Mike must have a few more decent work years in him. That’s the main thing. Let’s hope he doesn’t turn into a Sad Sack and demand more time off from taking my dictation. Using Roberta was too unfamiliar. I’ve got an artistic temperament. I thrive when assisted by no-maintenance servants.
I went to a lot of trouble to stay connected to my London sources, including the principals during this perilous time. So, I know that after Lord Caligula dined at Scott’s, he went to White’s to get roaring drunk. His hours at White’s (no women allowed) aggravated Constance. She consoled herself that London had plenty of men and that White’s by design was no whorehouse. But it’s not being a whorehouse was no guarantee that it was not a colony of rich sodomites. Constance feared his Lordship was headed for HIV if he didn’t change his ways. She took PrEP when she screwed him.
Being well past her ingenue days, she took a lot of PrEP. The men she liked had the habits of alley cats.
Peregrine and Wolverine had scheming to do. Their chauffeur took them from Scott’s to Munitions Galore’s property in Reading. Peregrine kept a huge suite there that would have made Oscar Wilde proud of him. It was a monument to Pre-Raphaelite aesthetics. His suite’s walls swarmed with original Rosettis and Waterhouses, even though much of it was of dubious provenance. Peregrine often expressed gratitude to the Nazi looters and other crooks who helped make possible his private collection.
Wolverine admired the walls. Peregrine’s boy servant brought Wolverine a port. They soon sat down to a table with walnuts and cheeses, whilst the cute, shaggy boy, now in a loose loin cloth, lit their pre-Castro Davidoffs. Peregrine used the boy’s hair to wipe off the butter from his lobster feast. The boy cooed. Once again, I got a reminder of why no self-respect cat would send a son to Eton.
“You know,” opined Peregrine, “Lucky Ming is after you. I suspect she suspects you of every sin. I think she also thinks the bots have a role in Ice-10.”
“Well, We did design that as guardians of Stealth bombs with or without the Ice-10 supplement. How much have we got?”
Peregrine’s eyes shined. “We’ve got more than I could sell at the price I want. It will make me, you, and Lord Caligula thousands of millions. Not even Putin has looted Russia thoroughly enough to have what we’re going to have.”
“And do the bots and stealth make us anything pitiful?” Wolverine added, “You know I sometimes wonder if they alone would have been fungible enough for us? Why run the risks of Ice-10?”
Peregrine rolled his eyes. “Surely you’re joking, Woolly. You never had a head for numbers. Never forget that just because you have plenty doesn’t mean there isn’t plenty more. Why should we not be the planet’s first, as the Americans would count it, trillionaires?”
Wolverine wondered what money must mean to Peregrine when noticed the bulge in his trousers. Talking money was foreplay for Peregrine. You’d guess he was ready to mount his prey.
Wolverine then pleaded he was weary. Peregrine commanded his boy servant to take Wolverine to the best guest suite. Wolverine entered. He liked the luxury. There was a gorgeous Poussin and a Klimt supposedly destroyed by the Nazis in Vienna. The Faculty Painting, alleged to have burnt during a bombing was on the wall. Peregrine had come a long way during his seven or so years since Eton.
By now Wolverine believed Lucky was out to get him. As much as a son hates to admit his mum is right, his mum was right. And he now absorbed a grim truth. Lucky was not a trifling operative. She was a real-deal killer.
Wolverine hunkered down with Peregrine at the Munitions Galore complex in Reading. With the bot and human guards, Wolverine felt safe from Lucky. They did plot a bold move. It happened a week later, or so Wolverine told me.
I read about it in the Christian Science Monitor, my favourite Saint Louis newspaper. A splashy headline announced a bombing at a beach in Cornwall. Spokesmen for the government announced the loss of 500 or more lives. Because the bombing included a chemical attack, scientists had ruled the bodies of the victims had to be isolated. My mind reeled. Who but his friends at Munitions Galore had the goods to pull off this attack?
I sneaked onto a plane headed for Heathrow. After I arrived, I headed to Claridge’s. Knowing that I was coming, Lord Caligula, Peregrine, and Wolverine briefed me on the logic of the attack.
“Look, Crocky, the attack is a perfect exercise in misdirection. Think about it. Who has been attacked? The Congo, China, Lithuania, and Great Britain. This evening, there’ll be an attack on a girl’s football team in Montana. From what I heard, none of these girls shows promise. The White and Congress will go bonkers. And who has not been attacked? Putin. Who is the easy target of blame? Puti. Vlad the freezer!” His Lordship giggled as he explained it to me.
As it happened, the trio had to arrange to send a notice to the White House of the destruction in Montana. A team reached it. Nobody within a 10-mile radius survived, all 70 of the perished. To avert criticism, the White House arranged a secret clean-up. A Pentagon spokesman said that there had been a training accident in the area, and they had deployed a CBRNE unit to investigate. They cautioned anybody about the area to avoid coming near if he valued his life.
Putin was now public enemy number one or the world’s most loathed great leader.
The Warrenton ranch had horses. An amiable Chinaman owned it, or said he did. He and Lucky spoke Mandarin, so I hadn’t a clue. After a bit, an odd-job looking guy showed Lucky and me to our room.
Lucky didn’t stay long. It was very posh, though. She went out. Soon I heard shots ringing. When I hopped onto the widow cell, I saw Lucky at distance. She had her Colt 1911 and PPQ out. As she marched through a range of moving targets, she rang up target after target. She was a dead shot. After pushing through 3 or 4 times with her pistols, she put them down. She then worked out on a larger course with a shotgun and then she started using an SA80A2; sometimes she added an AAG36 to it. Her mastery of the grenade launcher was obvious. Whatever she used, she was unerring in her marksmanship. She finished up with sniper rifles.
After she finished, Odd-Job started to clean her pistols. She shooflied him away. When I asked her why rejected Odd-Job’s cleaning, she said cleaned her own guns. “Dead people let others clean them.” I watched. Her routine was like a lot of soldiers at Fort Leonard Wood. The guns a going over with Break Free CLP, a bore snake, cotton swabs, some paper towels , and gauze squares. Once done cleaning, Lucky reloaded with special ammo from China. Not yet finished, she took a whetstone she had left to soak in our sink, and then used it to bring her Police Spyderco to a razor’s edge.
Warrenton’s a quiet place. From time to time, a husband shoots a wife and anybody she’s rutting with, or a wife gets fed up and puts a bullet in her hubby’s head. You know how it is . . . the usual rich people’s shenanigans.
Who knows what time of night or early morning Lucky awoke with a start. She gave me a shoosh.. Boom. She was in a black ninja outfit with a black kevlar vest. She had her Spyderco and her pistols arrayed on her duds. Rather than use the door, she was out into quiet, still air to get her feet onto a slab of roof outside our room’s window. I got an order to stay put. I waited, and then ignored the order. I tracked her.
Lucky must have taken a drainpipe to the ground. I had to find a tree to hop to and then shimmied down. Going full speed, I did what I would to make a large arc that would intersect my best guess of Lucky’s route. It worked. I’m good at this.
I came first across a Range Rover that was parked parallel to a fence outside the ranch’s gate. I went through the open passenger’s side window. It was still warm.
Ohh-oh. The driver was dead. Lucky (who else?”) had shoved her Spyerderco through the underside of the man’s head. The tongue was badly severed. She had then, by the looks of it, slammed his face onto the steering wheel leaving blood and teeth. With driver’s head forced forward, he then had taken an upward thrust of the knife at the base of his skull. So much for him. Oh, well . . .
I got queasy. I started back toward the house. As I did so, I heard the whop-whop of a helicopter. As it began to come down, I heard what i recognised from the morning as the report of Lucky’s SA80. I heard two short burst. I then heard something else. Woe! It was the sound of the SA8-‘s grenade launcher. I saw the helicopter turn to flames. Lucky stood back and shot the scorched survivors. I still didn’t see her. By now, Team Constance had lost six men. Two others rushed to the scene. Lucky’s fire from the SA80 cut them down. She moved laterally. When I saw her, she was putting it to an armed chap. She had her Colt 1911 in her hand, having slung the carbine. Pop. He dropped dead.
I was impressed. Lucky was stingy with ammo, a real friend of the one-shot-one-kill school.
Because I was feeling vulnerable, (I’m sane after all) I slithered back toward the house. I may have nine lives, but I’m not going to make myself a big, juicy target. I saw the Odd-Job poseur with a phone in his hand. He seemed to be screaming into it. All at once, I saw his head s burst open. Then I saw Constance about 10 feet to Odd-Job’s left. She had fired one round from her trusty Colt Python. Bad break for Odd-Job. He did seem to have got a call off. I then saw the Chinaman sprinting towards Odd-Job firing a pistol I didn’t recognise as he screamed, “Stand fast. I love you, Beetle.”
To my gobsmacked horror, his message of love enraged Constance. She drew a bead, shooting Beetle’s lover deliberately in the crotch. She walked over, kicked his body onto its stomach. He was crying. Constance had no mercy. She yanked down his pants and pink panties. She gave the exposed butt a hard slap. And then she shoved her Python’s barrel between his buttocks. “Enjoy this one, faggot.” She pulled the trigger. Blam! His whimpering stopped.
Her attitude shocked me. I knew Constance was a traditionalist, but surely the chap never did anything to or with anybody that Constance hadn’t done countless times herself. Nor, for that matter, Wolverine. At least now I had the amusement of being sure she was a RePub and not a Dem. I did see a streak of stern Catholic moralist in her.
Having slithered by now to the house’s porch, off I scampered into the house, I made it back to the room. Once in, I hid under the bed.
Lucky strolled in coated with blood. She sweet talked me out from my hiding place, then began to towel off. She stepped into a shower with her ninja kit on. She stripped, scrubbed off fast, and put he bloodied, muddied ninja duds into a canvas bag.
I mentioned my terror of Constance continuing the fight. “Not tonight, sweetie Constance knows Odd-Job’s call summoned our posse. She could leave fast or die.”
Voila, a Chinese gang arrived. They began to clean up the battleground. A clique of them spirited us from the house. Into a nice truck we went and away we went.
Meanwhile, as I learnt from future conversations, an aggravated Constance made her way back to her pickup point that night. She put three new rounds in her Python as she went. The empty casings from her work with the Chinese went into a pocket. Even when I talked to her, she was miffed at her driver. “The fool got himself killed without a fight. Screw him. I hear even Cornpone the worthless fired his freaking gun.” What did please her, she told me, is that she was not picked up by her backup car. Instead, a Caddy Escalade rolled up to her. From the back, she heard Wolverine’s voice. “Get in mum. Tomorrow’s another day.” What mother, she asked me, does not adore hearing her son’s, especially when he brimmed with optimism?
Lucky Ming was the type of woman Constance Lawless hated most: A competitor. From past encounters in Europe, the near east, Africa, Asia and sometimes South America, Constance knew Ming as a formidable, lethal woman. Her mixture of brains, creativity, bravery, flexibility, strength, agility, beauty, and ruthlessness, absence of conscience, to mention but a few strengths, made her dangerous.
Constance also pondered why the Chinese would send Ming, a high-value asset, to work in the US, as the US had superior resources for detecting and removing threats to its national security. A prise must be great to put an operative of Ming’s skill into action. And Ming hadn’t the slightest compunction about killing anything interfering with her goals. Wolverine beware!
By now, Constance had her driver hurtling the Range Rover down I-44 towards St Louis. The Rover had already passed the Rolla exit. How near or far was Ming? Did she have accomplices? Did she have covert escort cars tracking her?
As Constance saw it, Ming’s obvious goal was to reach the Chinese embassy for sanctuary and escape. Then, again, she might prefer a covert rescue at a port or via air. Constance recalled Ming escaping from the Levant after killing a disobedient Arab when a helicopter snatched her up before a posse of foes reached her. Mostly likely, she then got lowered onto a cargo ship and then vanished. If Constance had to guess, Ming went to Africa on that occasion. Ming, she guessed, adored Africa. With so much poverty and abysmal educational resources, it was a master operator’s paradise, especially if she avoided the hottest climates.
Constance liked Africa. Exciting memories encircled her. She visited it during a tour to figure out where a woman had the best chance of meeting superior lovers. Africa fared well. England and Ireland were disgraces. According to Constance, Ireland had filled itself with Catholic neurasthenics. It was a island of sexual cripples. England was a country populated by repressed homosexualists. When a woman landed there, a woman could count on wearing all her whips out. That said, Constance had an attraction to the zany Lord Caligula. He knew how to treat a woman, but could be pressed back into a submissive, English schoolboy stance with no effort at all. Thank goodness for the English public schools, even if they had pushed out generation after generation of wimpy closeted homsexualists.
On the other hand African men were a tonic, as were Australians. Japanese men were okay. Most European men were adequate. South American men were a mixed bag.
But I’m straying, as, or so I am told, was Constance. HJer unconscious churned zippy-zip as she reviewed Lucky’s escape options.
Back at Wolverine’s estate, he was busy. When he surveyed the scene, he knew somebody had seized one of his bots. He was outraged. Even with his limited forensic abilities, he got the gist of the operation. Some daring-dor or doers had dumped a horrid mix of shit, tar, and god knows what else onto his bot. Its eyes locked and blinded made it easy prey. Something had melted a portion of the bot, as was seen by pieces of resolidified metals on and about the remaining, stinky, fly-drawing half of Cornpone’s body.
Wolverine reasoned that Cornpone was bait for the bot. He felt some pleasure when he noticed the Cornpone’s S&W Model 10. When Wolverine checked the cylinder, he saw that several unfired .38 SP P+ rounds were still in it. Cornpone had fired 3 rounds. Rather stupid of Cornpone to fire. He might as well have tried to kill an anvil with his revolver.
Elation began to crawl over Wolverine, as he grew certain, after looking at a wallet (how careless of Corny) that verified his idea. Corpone it was. Of course, it would be hard not to spot a corpse so fat. Then, again, Pulaski was fat man territory. The stench of Cornpole’s last dump was powerful. As Wolverine moved away, he looked at the bright side. Cornpone will no longer show up asking silly questions about two non-existent in the present and future G-men. Good riddance to that succulent, nosey redhead and her muscle bound, dimwitted partner. Two points for the bot that day. Today the bot had met its match.
As Wolverine left, he ordered his crew to apprehend–dead or alive–the thief. He told his crew they would rue the day if they did not return the bot, no matter its current condition. It was treasured Munitions Galore property.
Once back home, Wolverine learnt from his servants of his mum’s visit. Needing somewhere to ventilate, Wolverine left an angry, angry message on my voicemail about how inopportune was the moment his mum had chosen to come. He levied a familiar complaint: What a nest of thieves the world has become. There is no respect for life either. Hear ye! Hear ye! Trump is not the only person with a gift for projection.
Wolverine’s litany of complaints expanded when he began talking about the hypersensitive Emperor Xi. Xi has set a ballbusting ancestor of Ming the Merciless on him. Now, as if he didn’t have enough to do, he had to mete out justice to Ms Ming unless his mum did the job for him.
You’d have to hear the message to grasp how much angrier he got as he ratcheded himself up over Ming’s “misbehaviour.”
There’s no doubt that he learnt further details from his servants. He must have let his crew know that Ming was headed for points unknown. He surely sent photographs of her as well.
Everybody reading the news in Pulaski County knows that somehow that day, Ming’s gorgeous Waynesville house burnt to the ground. As a saavy journalist, I know Wolverine’s guys must have turned the house inside out during a search before burning it all. The local fire department declared the fire an arson. Coppers announced their arrest of several locals, described variously as drunks, undesirables, tramps and, as if there is a difference, Democrat Activists. What else? Waynesville’s in rural Missouri.
As I was sitting and watching Lucky’s U-haul, she assured me it just looked like a real one. An associate had made a replica ofa U-haul. I wondered why.
I was pondering the problem when Cornpone arrived. He was wearing Camo and boots. Who would have thought they made camo immense enough to fit Cornpone. He was to human’s what my vodka guzzlignnchum Behemoth–a cat immortalised by Bulgakov–was to ordinary cats.
Cornpone waddled about the truck before climbing into the passenger seat. Lucky hopped into the driver’s seat, with me following. I scampered over her and plopped down between her and Cornpone.
Lucky drove out to the place where the bum died. She got out. I noticed she had her 1911 in a holster and was also wearing a Walther PPQ M2 in a shoulder holster. I recognized Walther because mike adores and buys Walthers. The PPQ is his personal favorite. Perhaps he has now added a PDP. to his holdings.
Lucky walked to the wall placed a small, discrete video camera. I worried more when I saw she had also put a thermite grenade on the ground. When I showed mike a photograph later, he told me it was a M14 TH3. If you live in a closet, this grenade will melt through an engine block. Soldiers can use it to destroy artillery and other stuff. Anyway, this M14 only looked evil to me.
Lucky effortlessly heaved a block tackle of some sort with hooks. I then saw a light weight incline planes straddle the fence. Even the enormous Cornpone could now cross the fence. To let him climb over with his muscles was a ridiculous idea. Lucky again sent me up the sycamore. One of its thick branches held her pulley system.
Cornpone carried two large pails of the mixture in the tub that the truck carried. He walked to where Lucky had told him to walk. He was a bit forward from where the bum died.
The pails pulleyed up to the branch and somehow stayed there. How did Luck do that?
Lucky had already given me my instructions.
Not more than 5 minutes passed before we heard a bot. It approached our area. As soon as it saw Cornpone, it advanced. Then Mr Clean’s eyes rolled open. To judge by Cornpone’s reaction, he was afraid. In a flash, he pulled a Smithh and Wesson Model 10 from his backside. I recognised it, as mike has one. He opened fired with fruitless accuracy, just, bing, bing.
Now if you ask me, he might as well have tried to ward off a grizzly with a safety pin. A couple of spot-on shots bounced off Mr Clean’s forehead. The death ray started. Voila. Cornpone was a slab of long pig awaiting consumption.
Without wasting a second, Mr Clean came forward. He was more or less just where the deceased bum entered the Kingdom of the Dead. I could hear Clean’s incinerator switch on. The heat of it roiled up into the tree branches. Cornpone’s hefty cadaver began to feed into the incinerator, though I could hear the squeal of the saw as it sliced Cornpone into fire digestibles faggots.
During the horror, I heard Lucky’s command. “Now!” I ran by the pails as Clean’s head swiveled toward Lucky. Before Clean drew a bead on her, the pails splatted into his metallic head. Even before that the filthy fluid had begun to pour onto him. His head was drenched with black evil slop.
Faster then Flash himself, Lucy was on the bot. She slammed her termite grenade onto him and detonated it. The thermite’s magnificent heat melted through the bots neck at a 45 degree angle. Clean’s motive force left him. The feed stopped, the incinerator stopped, the mired head dropped off and rolled between Cornpone’s buttcheeks.
I still can’t shake the image of this decapitated head appearing to be positioned to rim Cornpone food exits. Worse, death had loosened Cornpone’s bowels. Oh, well . . . realy nasty. It was most un-enticing.
Lucy noted it all. She had built a device that pulled the bot away. She jacked it on to a carrier. She secured the decapitated head in a bag and sent it over the fence. Super pronto, into the truck it all went.
Lucky also ordered (boy, I hate that word) me back. “Fast! Faster! We must get away lickety-split, rikki-tik or die.”
When in the grip of fear I am one swift cat. Mercury ain’t got nothing on me. I was in the front cab faster than Lucky. She had also pulled the rear door of the truck down. Before rolling away, She had also kicked the tub, making it flyout of the truck’s hold. The tub’s filth left its mark when it went thumpy-splatty on the ground. What remained of Cornpone’s remains were an abandonned monument. Lucky left the un-incinerated half of him for Team Wolverine.
As we rolled down the highway, she laughed. “Well, that went better than I expected,” she said. I got up the gumption to mention Cornpone’s awful death. A lover of philosophy, Lucky lectured me on the transience of life, Cornpone’s endless deficiencies, and his opportunity, for once it his pathetic life, to die fighting like a man rather than just eating like.
I kept to myself the idea that he would have been better off fighting like a woman. If he had mimicked Lucky, he might be in the truck with us. Whilst I gave all this some thought, Lucky encouraged me to look at the bright side of life.
One loss must not spoil a whole day. Besides, swiping a bot was well worth one fat man’s death.
Being more sentimental than Lucky, I had doubts. Anyway, she made a turn I didn’t expect. The truck soon rolled into a large auto body shop. A Chinese guy in greasy blue, paint-splattered overalls came out to greet her.
Lucky wasted no time. “Get this thing repainted and put its old plates back on. I want its contents unloaded by security cleared, competent people. Put it all in an unobtrusive vehicle. You and only you will take it to Saint Clair. There you will meet Mr Gan. He will take over the driving.”
The chap in overalls plainly knew better than to ask questions. Instead, he got on with the project. He gave orders to his crew. Then everything started going.
To my surprise, Lucky’s S-class Benz was parked at the shop. In we hopped. I stayed in her lap doing all I could to please her. She got plenty of biscuits on the tummy and legs. She purred. Alas, she didn’t care much for my breast work. Probably I need to work on my technique. But I learned my art working on women with brandy-snifter breasts rather than a pair that resembled a couple of martini glasses. Perhaps I had become too accustomed to Melania’s ample Slavic breasts. As anybody with eyes knows, the Germans and Slavs are races of stacked women. The Chinese? Not so much.
As Lucky rolled down the highway, there was a lot going on in and about Wolverine’s state.
For example, relying on a mother’s intuition, Constance sensed the disturbance in the force that told her her sneaky son was at risk. So, she headed to Wolverine’s lair. Instead of finding him contemplating perverted porn in his study, she learnt, as they say in Matty Groves, that he was out in his far bonnie fields bringing his bots home. Or so claimed his servants.
“What a crock,” screamed Constance, “he’s out superintending a calamity.” It’s so good to have sources that let you know this juicy stuff.
So, my sources tell me, she screeched about how she had to do every fucking thing herself. Her son was a loafing boob, conman, and pornographer, a fellow unfit for real work.” As she the house stark raving, she offered truth: “Never send a boy, a girl or a mere man on a woman’s errand.” She jumped onto one of Wolverine’s Range Rover. Her servant and chauffeur took its wheel.
My guess is that Lucky would have liked to know that Constance was out hunting. We’ll get to that soon.
I have struggled to write this past week. I did anyway. As my late friend Chuck Close used to say “Inspiration is for amateurs.” You have to trust the process. If you sit down to write, you often discover that writing occurs whether you want to or not. Creation is doing, not waiting.
Now let me be candid. I’ve had to force myself to the process. Bart, my dear friend and lover, has got cancer. Roberta and mike noticed it. Bart told me she was fine. When Roberta forced her into a kitty carrier for a trip to the vet, Bart was in shock. She had never felt better. Sure, she had a lump or two, but then some vet started examining her. Do these vets know anything other than gloomy hypotheses? Being nattering nabobs of negativism, as Bill Safire once wrote, is their speciality.
Without getting Bart’s informed consent, Roberta scheduled her with a vet surgeon.
The vet’s henchmen assaulted Bart, drugged her, and then the chief witch began carving on her. If human women mourn the loss of two nipples, imagine how a Molly with nine nipples feels. Bart awoke to discover the slicers had done a bilateral mastectomy. She lost all her nipples.
Poor Bart came home and it took her a full three weeks to be rid of an E collar and out of a onesie. She didn’t even have the strength to plot vengeance on vets and their ilk.
If it weren’t for my fear of injury, I might have done more to rescue her; however, don’t the wise say that discretion is the better part of valour? So, what good would it do Bart for me to be injured defending her? I did write a letter to KPS (kitty protective services). The loafing incompetents there have yet to get to me. And so I wrote few futile feature stories on the evils of veterinary medicine did no good either.
I did tell Bart that I would have done more if only I hadn’t been travelling. Being a natural fink, Fielding ratted and said I, whilst she was being cut, sat around stress eating. Satisfied to have ratted me out, Fielding delivered a few rabbit punches to my head. I’d have taught Fielding a good lesson after that if she weren’t meaner, tougher, and stronger than I am. If you’re a guy, what I put up with from Fielding is the price Toms pay in Kittyland for the smart choice of choosing tough, fearless wives as bodyguards. Sometimes they have mean mouths too. What Tom likes being called a worm?
The negativist vets estimates that Bart won’t last another year. I cry bull shit. If anybody thinks Steve Seagal is hard to kill, he hasn’t met Bart or Fielding. Bart will go down swinging. Don’t bet she’ll be gone in a year or less. She is 15 or so now. But I expect her to wage war on cancer. Even now, she has gained weight. She is back up to seven and a half pounds. She has no plans “to go gentle into that good night.” She is a warrior.
In the years since the Lithuania bombing, I never told her I had any role. Neither she nor Fielding recognised anybody else as having a right to put me in danger. And if Lucky had settled for hiring somebody to kill Wolverine, Bart and Fielding would have offered her a deep discount.
But I never have claimed to be a bravo chap. I adore luxury. I am, despite the people I know, a safety addict. What I have had over the years is an invincible faith in my ability to love my way out of any trouble, especially when I take the elementary precaution of doing what I can to minimise risk to me.
Hence my horror at what I began to suspect was Lucky’s plan to do something to one of Wolverine’s bots. My intuition was sound.
So, one day I arrived in Waynesville to see Lucky. She had parked a rental truck was in the driveway. In the back of the truck was a largish tub of an evil-looking concoction. It was a vile fluid if anything was. She had a jack in the truck, rope and what appeared to be some kind of pully system. Don’t hold me to that. I’m no physicist.
She didn’t take long to tell me about a plan she had to “inspect a bot.” According to Lucky, she wanted to make sure that Wolverine was not building a bot army for a heinous but unknown purpose. I doubted that. Given my journalism training, I assumed she wanted to get one to reverse engineer a specialty of the Chinese. Why make something when you can wait until somebody else does? Let the suckers pay. You spare yourself the costs of R&D.
Still, I don’t pretend to know all Lucky’s women. From what I witnessed, she enjoyed violence for its own sake. It was seasoning for her life.
If everything I described after the blast seemed chaotic that’s because it was. I still don’t know all the details. Matters go worse a week or two later.
First, several Russians in Vladivostok, including several sailors, were kidnapped. Emperor Xi went to the trouble of summoning the Russian ambassador. He told him and the press gathered for the occasion that he hoped the kidnapper was not a comrade driven insane by the recent treatment of Chinese tourists in Vladivostok. “Nobody wants these kidnapped Russians returned to their motherland more than I do,” bellowed Xi. And they were.
A box appeared when a large drone landed in Red Square. A ramp slung down from it and down that ramp, a large, red freight box slid onto the square’s pavement. On its lid was scrawled “For President Putin.” Inside this freight box were the frozen bodies of the kidnapped Russians. Attached to each frozen body was a saucy postcard of a photograph of erstwhile Chairman Mao with a mocking expression on his face. In beautiful calligraphy somebody had written, “From China with Love.”
Putin exploded once briefed. Reuters ran a story about him foaming at the mouth whilst he promised vengeance. The Kremlin denied that Reuter’s story.
Emperor Xi, smiling and waving at a crowd during a speech, promised he would be sure the kidnapper, if Chinese, got what he or they deserved. He then conjectured that perhaps the Russians pulled a phoney stunt in a lame effort to win international sympathy. “As far as I know ” exclaimed the Emperor, “Nothing is beyond the Russians.” Chinese papers ran stories on why it was so likely that Russia ran this crooked operation from start to finish. Nation of Connivers was a typical headline.
All the Chinese foreign offices noted their “sorrow” over the deaths of the kidnapped Russians. Low-level emissaries were sent to attend the mass funeral since all the higher-level statesmen and politicos were “busy.”
Munitions Galore continued to market its stealth bombs, as always with half-naked or naked (you can run racier ads in France than America) as marketing bait. When you read those adverts, you’d swear buying a bomb worked way, way better than taking 100 mg of Viagra. Spokemen at Munitions Galore denied any knowledge of Ice-10 so far as I know. I did hear that for folks in the states with TS SCI clearance and additional very, very special tickets, Ice-10 was on offer as an expensive supplement that was perhaps available for “reputable,” peace-loving clients. I think in English that means clients with more money than God.
In the midst of all this topsy-turvy, Lucky moved to a new higher gear. She persuaded Cornpone that they needed to undertake an operation at Wolverine’s estate. She promised him my assistance.
Her first step was to hire a bum to hop a fence on Wolverine’s estate and stand at a designated spot. He demanded $100, but Lucky told him $50 take it or leave it. He took it. Lucky later told me that you must never overpay a bum. “It undermines respect.”
With her new hire in hand, she took him to the area she wanted him to enter. As before, she asked me to climb the same sycamore. Once I had got up the tree, she sent the bum over and told him where to stand. She preached how essential it was that he stay silent and still unless she ordered him to move.
Everything Lucky asked for she got. She again armed herself and placed a camera that allowed her to be out of sight. We all waited, but not long.
Mr Clean arrived. The bum looked at him. All at once, Mr Clean’s robotic eyes rolled open and the death lasering began. The bum collapsed. Old Mr Clean moved to the bum. Whoosh. On came Clean’s incinerator. As the bum’s corpse began to feed into the incinerator, I could hear a saw making him into incinerator digestible bits. In a jiffy, the bum-be-gone program had done its work. Aside from a bit of scorch at the spot the bot occupied, the area from a forensic point of view was immaculate.
Lucky called me back. I went to her most rikki-tik. Perhaps I looked a wee shocked.
“What a sentimentalist, you are” scolded Lucky. “You can’t worry about a bum that got paid. Look at the bright side. This guy died doing the best-paid job he ever had. There’s a dignity in that.”
I must have looked doubtful. “Oh, don’t tell me, darling, that you wanted me to pay him $100? That’s extortionate. And it’s not as if he was a buddy of yours or mine. Don’t be so glum. Turn that frown right side up into a smile! That’s a good lover.” Most of this chattering was in Lucky’s patronising motherese. I was likely stressed as I crawled into her lap as she drove in order to make biscuits on her tummy. She chuckled and scratched my head. “So much better than Cornpone! You’re the best, darling, absolutely the best. Don’t trouble Cornpone with the bum story It puts him into his tedious cop persona. He still worries about 2 bot-devoured G-men. He’s not that quick.”
Being around somebody as ruthless as Lucky goosed my faith. Perhaps it was mike who first wondered aloud why I seemed to waste so much time praying. So far as I know, mike never hassled anybody about being a prayer addict, but he didn’t view it as praiseworthy. In all my life, I never saw him pray.
I tried to explain that I lived a risky life. “What? The Fielding and Bart are still beating you?” They did and do, but why mention it? It’s not as if bashing me is a habit either of them is willing to stop. I was their Cornpone, but they weren’t as earnest about teaching me manners as Lucky was. I too was lucky.
To be honest, mike probably moderated the Bart-Fielding beatings I got. He is Buddhist and dislikes violence, even if I cannot recall Gandhi laughing when he noticed somebody had taken a licking and, like a Timex watch, kept ticking.
Besides, mike mentioned that he drove on I-44 4 or more days per week. “I’d not bother God, if there were a god, about keeping me alive on that stretch of road. It doesn’t work that well. In California, there used to be a stretch on the Monterey Highway near San Jose called ‘Blood Alley.” I drove it many times. It was an undertaker’s paradise. California also had a stretch of highway going from LA county into Kern County in the central valley called the grapevine. They called that stretch the ‘Windowmaker.’ If God gave so much as a fart about drivers, those roads would never have been built. If God existed, I dare say we’d not have the carnage on US highways that we do. And we’re not even the best at killing other drivers. Asians don’t joke about “Driving while Asian” for nothing.”
I hated it when mike got in his logic-chopping mode. Why can’t a kitty pray in peace? I like to think of my prayer sessions as my experiments in Methodism.
To be fair, I kept mike and Roberta in the dark about my adventures with Lucky. Chaucer, on the other hand, could care less what I did to preserve myself provided I got him the results he coveted.
Still, mike liked telling me that “petitionary prayers” were beggars’ prayers. According to him, sophisticated Christians practised “contemplative prayer.” It’s a way to being with God, a way, as Jesuits say of coming to see God in all things or of learning how to make one’s life a prayer.
Let me call mike out on this rubbish. I don’t need “presence” I need safety. If God isn’t going to deliver the goods when I ask, what good is He? I want a lucrative salvation with safety guaranteed in the here and now. All this thinly veiled eroticised union with God ought to make so-called sophisticated folks like mike suspicious of their own fancy, pompous, smart-boy pretentions. And I’ve seen Roberta fiddling with her Rosary. What makes mike so sure she’s not dreaming of billions when she’s hard at doing the Rosary? Besides, “the Our Father” is petitionary prayer. Ditto, for Hail Marys. Mike should think about that. He’s had some rabid mystic bite in the past. And as Father Newman once said, “Mysticism begins with Mist and ends in schism.” So, I plan to keep asking loud and clear for God to hand over what I want.
The reason I was surviving Lucky was my prayers, so screw mike. Being wise, I rush to admit how needless it is to share my ever thought with mike. Let him feel rather than be right.
I prayed for protection. As you see, my prayers were answered. If they weren’t, you’d not be reading me now.
I went back and forth to Waynesville. Lucky had eased up on Cornpone. The fat man began to walk again. Maybe he got enough Early Times in him that he didn’t notice any pain.
He would take me to the Hub. Nothing put him in better spirits than the Hub’s Hunter Schnitzel, a breaded, fried pork tenderloin (Yum!) with portobellos and a side of Hunter Gravy (Jaeger Sosse). If we had money from Lucky, I could always him into buying me broiled salmon with drawn butter. The butter is to die for.
These feasts helped us get on better. When he wasn’t too drunk, he wasn’t a bad guy.
Lucky continued to prod him for details about all things Wolverine. One day she put of a spike of fear into me when she asked him what he knew about Ice-10. I wondered what she must know about Ice-10 to ask the question. How did she know? Obviously, she suspected Wolverine had a role.
Around that time, I heard Wolverine had met with Lord Caligula and Peregrine about another test of the stealth bomb. They needed something that would divert Emperor Xi from Munitions Galore and also confuse Putin
Peregrine said the next test should surprise the world. He suggested using it on the Lapps or if that was too small a target on the Lithuanians. Lord Caligula asked if the Lapps weren’t some tribes of primitives living somewhere in Borneo or Sumatra.
Geography was not a strongpoint in his Lordship education. If you want to learn something at Eton or Cambridge, you sometimes must stop beating up the other boys long enough to read a few pages. Admittedly, if you’re rich enough, that’s optional.
Peregrine troubled to explain the Lapps were a people living in Finland who depended on reindeer to survive. “Why freeze them?” asked his Lordship. “Aren’t’ the already frozen or damn near it?” He glared at both Peregrine and Wolverine. After a few moments, he asked, “And who are these, what did you call them, Lithzanias? Some sort of stone users, perhaps? A bunch of wogs if I recall.”
As Peregrine and Wolverine stared at each other in disbelief, Wolverine attacked his Lordship’s indomitable ignorance. “They’re a small country on the Baltic Sea. The Russians occupied it after the war. Lithuanians are very fair. Linguists like to study them because their language is in many ways the closest language now used to Indo-European.”
“Indo-European?” choked his Lordship, “They might as well chatter in Sanskrit. Why aren’t they already extinct? Why was a fair race too stupid to progress?” Staring at him, Wolverine said, “Especially since we have such an outstanding example of fair race accomplishment at the table.” Lord Caligula scrunched his face. He was puzzled.
Peregrine then pointed out that Lithuania is a convenient easy target that few, if any, outside it would care what happened in it.
When Peregrine gave me the lowdown on all this, I’ll admit I never figured out where Lithuania was until mike showed me on a globe. When I asked, he said he didn’t know if they liked cats. Perhaps like the silly Germans, they prefer dogs.
Lucky knew how to make a good first impression. She ordered off the menu, commanding the water to bring an order of grilled-shredded chicken lightly salted. Given where we were, I was not expecting her to get me a salad Niçoise. So, the chickee din-din was a kind offer.
After I finished, she grabbed me, went to her car, and told me she was in the mood for a ride. She drove me about the area. To my surprise, she took me out near Wolverine’s estate. In an isolated area, she pulled over. She strolled over to the fence, turning she issues a warning. “Be careful around here, darling. A wicked, wicked Wolverine lives here. He is a scourge and commands a squad of killer bots that are quick to kill. Never go over that fence unless I’m with you.”
I thought this was a bit thick. Uncle Wolverine would never hurt me. Well, maybe if I crossed him. He has a temper. I must say that Wolverine’s pad made me resentful of what mike and Roberta were providing me. His estate was filled with marvels and luxury.
Despite how nice Wolverine’s estate looked, Lucky started to snarl about scheming, murderous capitalists destroying a peaceful world. She also began a rave on how avaricious folks like Wolverine were. It was a typical lefty riff. Wolverine bathes in Krugerrands. He steals the bread of the poor. He eats the poor. When he vacations, he spends gobs of money cavorting with whores and his decadent billionaire chums. If Wolverine weren’t such a boy lover, he’d be indistinguishable from the odious perve Epstein and his cunning, depraved procuress Ghislaine. You know, Lucky added, when I met Gee in Paris, I should have garrotted her then and there. Instead, I let my love of kindness, beauty, and my natural leniency get the better of me. Ghislaine lived. Also, she was serving plenty of fine wines and champagne. It’s hard to savour a kill when you’re loaded. So why kill drunk? Lucky’s speech was sprinkled with “darlings” and “sweeties.” I had her smitten by me, or so I hoped.
The problem with a woman like Lucky is that, once she has had enough of you, she’ll rake you from her plate as fast as the busboy in a 3-star Michelin would rake off the leftovers of their Chef’s best dishes into the garbage. Once I was talking to mike and he warned me about this type of person. According to mike, the world has real bastards in it. Mike told me a chap named Sartre knew the mark of a bastard. According to Sartre, bastards distinguish a person like me from a table because I have a higher coefficient of difficulty. As mike put it, tables don’t resist being pushed about, human beings (mike can be so narrow) resist. You’d think he’d know from Bart and Fielding, or even Chicago or Quine, that a pissed-off cat has a very high coefficient of difficulty. We’re easy when you’re spoiling us. I suppose we’re rather like mistresses that way.
Still, I did know that I had better be careful around Lucky.
When we got to Lucky’s luxurious, dare I say estate, we sashayed in to discover Cornpone sitting on the couch in his underwear and a Polish t-shirt. To my disgust, he looked not under-groomed but never groomed. You knew his brief was a haven for brown spots. I stayed away.
He lit an Antonio Y Cleopatra cigar, poured himself more Early Times, ate a few Tums, then asked Lucky, whilst looking at me, “What is that?”
If you ask me, this slob couldn’t be dead soon enough. Lucky took it in stride.
“He’s my new friend, dearie. I think he’ll stay awhile.” Cornpone stretched out a fat, hideously hairy leg. He was barefoot and had ugly toes. I’ve always been a foot man, but this guy was beyond the pale. He lifted his T-shirt. How could it be? His belly was worse than his leg and feet. His belly was bloated, about the size of an overinflated beach ball and had an angry bullet scar.
Once I worked up the nerve, I later asked Lucky how she hopped into bed with this monster. She smiled. “I turn out the lights, darling, I turn out the lights. Everything looks the same when it’s pitch black.” I also noticed that when she got into bed with him, she wore black night blinds. Like many psychopaths, she also could put up with just about anything if the incentive structure was right.
Anyway, Cornpone in all his creepiness came to grab me. I fled! Before even Lucky catch me, I was out a window and high tailing it for safety. Glancing over my shoulder, I could see the fury in her face as she turned back toward Cornpone.
Next week I sneaked another ride from mike. Back to Lucky’s estate I went.
I hopped through the window. Lucky was in a black jumpsuit sitting on a chaise lounge. When I looked at the couch, I saw Cornpone lying obtunded. His entire body was a mass of bruises and abrasions. His right armed was in a sling and his right hand showed several broken fingers. Even the bottoms of his feet had bruises. A splintering bamboo cane lay on a coffee table in front of the divan. In front of the cane was a half-empty 1.75-litre bottle of Early Times. To the bottle’s right was a near-empty bottle of Tums. Next to the Tums, I spotted alcohol wipes, some salt vinegar, and what appeared to be tiny tub of battery acid.
Cornpone gave me a sorrowful look. Being wise, I jumped into Lucky’s lap. She cooed and cooed. I got an earful of Motherese. Then I saw her looking with utter detachment at Cornpone. She then shifted her gaze back to me. “I’m so sorry, darling. He was beastly to you. I don’t put up with that kind of naughtiness. I beat and tortured him for you, sweetie. The fucker now knows his place with you.”
Turning back to Cornpone, she fixed her cobra eyes on him whilst asking, “You will keep your fucking hands off him, won’t you, worm?” Boy, was I glad I wasn’t Cornpone.
“Yes,” he moaned. Lucky got up from the chaise still holding me. She walked to the coffee table. Grinning, she picked up the bamboo cane and then slashed Cornpone’s left foot with it. She then put the cane on the table and walked back to the chaise. Cornpone stayed on the divan blubbering out apologies. She told him to shut up or she’d dress his wound with battery acid and chlorine wipes.
She carried me to the car. I glanced back at the house. “Oh,” she said, “relax. He’ll be just fine when he rests and learns respect for my friends. You’re a wonderful friend, darling. It’s so nice to have somebody who understands me.” I resisted the desire to say that I thought Cornpone understood her just now.
Gentle reader, know that Lucky had not made me feel safer. I also had an indirect warning she was not to be trifled with. And how!
Once I ditched mike, I made my way up the road, crossed the interstate, wended left up a road past a Cracker Barrel. Then passed a Ruby Tuesday to arrive at the Walmart Parking lot. It’s easy to sneak a ride from there to Waynesville. As I sat near the exit of the parking lot, I felt a chill up my spine.
From nowhere, Chaucer’s apparition took a seat next to me. “It’s about time you got off your kitty ass to work. We’re now lucky to have Lucky on the job, rather than the slob, glutton, and dipsomaniac Cornpone.”
I’ll admit it right off. I was not so sure that the murderous Ms Ming was a welcome addition to the mix we had brewing. For one thing, I get around anybody willing to kill anybody standing in her way. No sooner did I say that, then Chaucer answered, “That’s the best thing about her. She understands that you must bulldoze obstacles, not pronounce them insurmountable.” Over the years, Chaucer said he had seen Lucky garrot loafing guards, poison inconvenient journalists, shoot and knife other operatives, and rid the world of bothersome politicians. What I wonder is, why is Wolverine still alive?”
Once I got up the nerve, I asked Chaucer what he wanted. What he wanted was for me to go talk to Lucky. I was to use my boyish charm as the Love Machine to win her over. I would then use my power to extract information from her about her plans.
Doubts assailed me. My working hypothesis about Lucky was that her heart was smaller than a microchip. Nothing about her suggested a goody–good sentimentalism. If anything, her history screamed she was a domesticated psychopath. Intelligence services across the world adore such agents. If you train a psychopath, you must monitor him closely. You must have the right incentives. You must cater to their inevitable perversions and love of risk. You must anticipate the regular stream of lies. If you can do all that and more, hire psychopaths. A collector may need a Jack Bauer, but he needs a strong-willed, ruthless Chloe directing him. Your psychopathic agents need tight collars.
If Lucky is indeed a psychopath, I saw one Love Machine manoeuvre I could deploy. Feed her vanity. Every cat knows the technique. When you enter the target’s zone, you make your disdain for everybody else present plain. In an audience of any size, you know somebody will want to pet you. Treat him as he would treat a rat’s body in his bed. Once you have your contempt for all noticed, simply hop into your target’s lap. Win!
I confess that many cats like to do this to cat phobics and haters just to screw with them. I’m not one of them. Besides, most psychopaths fancy cats. A cat’s self-interested mentality is something every psychopath understands.
Psychopaths even understand cat aggression, especially kitty predatory aggression. Any cat will show reactive violence if you mess with him. If you want to understand predatory violence, watch a cat stalking prey. He is patient and quiet before he pounces and kills. Psychopaths appreciate that we cats also like to toy with our crippled victims. After our first strike, we like to play before making the kill.
With so much to ponder, I startled when I heard Chaucey hiss, “I want results! No excuses; results!” Then he vanished.
It didn’t take long to hop into a sucker’s F-150 for a quick ride to Waynesville. I got out near City Hall, then scooted across the street to Hoppers. Lucky sat at a table drinking a club soda with a lime twist.
You already know my love method. A worthless pub manager tried to evict me. I eluded him. Other customers cried out for my company. I ignored them. Then, in a flash, I was in her lap. I rubbed on her, and then, guessing what she’d like, I began making biscuits on her chest as I pushed my face towards hers. She adored it.
The pissy manager rushed over to evict me. She told him to leave her and her friend (me) alone. She smiled as she asked him if he felt it would be safe to take me from her. He walked away muttering “Fine, fine.”
Lucky drifted into Motherese to speak to me, annoying habit of women. Please stop. It drives healthy cat so yearn to commit mass murder.
Anyway, she told me I had a rugged, handsome look. She conjectured I was a Snake in the Chinese zodiac and mentioned that she was a Tiger. Motherese or no, we were bonding.
For at least a week journalists wrote stories about the escalating bad relations between China and Russia. I stilled my pen. When I gave the matter any thought, I imagined Emperor Xi watching Mike Meyer play Doctor Evil. If you think about it, Doctor Evil is a good tonic for dictators. Few of them have a sense of humour.
Consider Putin. I have it from reliable sources that Putin doesn’t know how to laugh. Just as some people or tone-deaf, Putin is joke deaf. His foreign policy expert Laughoff told him the Chinese ambassador was witty. Putin couldn’t see it. Laughoff had the wisdom to know better than to try to explain it. Instead, Laughoff pointed out that the ambassador always got the press laughing during his interviews. “The press? An Army of Morons,” muttered Putin.
The Chinese soon announced a series of expulsions of Russian from China. The Russians opted to make a minimalist expulsion in reply. Laughoff drew up a list of the 10 homeliest men and women at the Russian embassy to send back to China. As he told Putin, “it’s a smart move. These people could procreate in Russia. i assure you it would not be with our country’s best and brightest.”
Wolverine had managed to reinstate his access at Fort Leonard Wood with the creation of new identities. All were on TDY to the Fort. Among the fictive soldiers were SFC Verity, Colonel Doom, and Commander Slackard. Wolverine was unable to resist a pretext for wearing naval dress blues; hence CDR Slackard. For a similar reason, he had papers for a USMC LTC that he named Offal. He said the idea for the name came to him when reading Homer.
The engineers at Fort Leonard Wood had, per Wolverine, realised a dangerous, perhaps undetectable bomb was on the loose. Nobody was willing to admit or deny that they knew what the bomb did or how it was hid. Wolverine did attend a series of briefs by senior engineering intelligence people on possible ways to defeat a wave pattern that might have a role in the bomb’s lethality. Unlike everybody else, Wolverine knew what that lethality was. It was reassuring that the briefers had no idea how to defeat it, though they had lots of unworkable ideas.
M5 I heard was working hard to place spies on the Munitions Galore payroll. Peregrine spotted them with ease. They never had the know-how to tempt him into hiring them.
Peregrine feared the chief risk to his projects was M5 buying somebody. So far, he had no evidence of that.
In hindsight, Wolverine should have kept Uncle Cornpone in his line of sight. Out of the blue, a trim woman had arrived in Waynesville. She bought a comfortable house. She also began to frequent restaurants favoured by Cornpone. Despite her being a beauty, she flirted with the fat, sloppy Cornpone. It worked too. It always does with straight good ole boys.
When she did talk, she had a gift for getting him to open up about his cop work and his current cases. Once she got Cornpone on the subject of Wolverine, I gather she picked and picked.
Cornpone and Lucky Ming were a coincidence of opposites. Unlike some people, I believe opposites never coincide by accent. Only art brings them together. I suggested to Wolverine, who had mentioned Ming’s arrival in Waynesville to me that he use his intel community sources to learn more about Ms Ming.
Even Wolverine was surprised. According to his sources, Ms Ming was an alias for an accomplished field operative. Over her career as an op in Europe and Asia, she had run honeytraps, recruited dupes, obtained what was alleged to be impossible to obtain, and assassinated an indefinite number of people that Emperor Xi had decided the world could do without.
Wolverine treated her presence with nonchalance. When I mentioned her to Lord Caligula, he viewed her presence in Missouri as anything but benign. He sketched his view for me.
Why would the Chinese waste an operative of “Ming’s” stature in Waynesville? For anybody well informed and willing to think, Ming’s becoming Cornpone’s boyfriend signaled the Chinese were guessing Wolverine was not a well-connected executive living big but cheap in Missouri. Rather, Ming’s bosses suspected Wolverine had a role in their NW explosion. Their suspicions mightily enhanced, on his Lordship’s account, by Wolverine’s position as a Munitions Galore executive well connected to Peregrine and Lord Caligula. The Chinese planned, his Lordship reasoned, Wolverine’s doings as Ariadne’s Thread to the Ice-10 crowd. Cornpone was a useful idiot in her hunt.
Summing up, his Lordship remarked, “Now the time has come for Wolverine to be on his toes.”
Bobbie Nosick had had her trip from the nursery to the crematorium. Nobody would have guessed that the trip would end when a prototype of Mr Clear incinerated her. If you knew Bobbie, she would have demanded a fee from Peregrine and his engineers to use their proto-bot to incinerate her. The idea of “free” anything always brought Nosick’s blood to a boil.
Peregrine understood. So, being a gentleman, he paid a fee for services to her estate without specifying the nature of the services. Bobbie had accumulated a lot of money over the years. Aside from the cost of her Lucky Strikes, smoking paraphernalia, and gin, she seldom spent money. Even for her smokes and gin, she was more than willing to swap a hand job for a pack of Luckys.
If you visited Bobbie, she would charge you for using her toilet. If you refused, she’d direct you to the garden. People she adored got their drink and food at cost. Peregrine told me that his visits to Bobbie amused him as her house looked like a shrine to Ayn Rand. Photographs and nude portraits of her were everywhere. You’d also see photos of Bobbie embracing Murray Rothbard or visiting Milton Friedman’s grave. Her house of course had a library crammed with the collected works of Hayek and von Mises. She sometimes played what she viewed as greatest hits. For example, she listened over and over to Goldwater’s speech proposing to get rid of social security.
If Peregrine had too much to drink, he would describe his fear that somebody might have murdered Bobbie without paying her for the pleasure. It hurt Peregrine deeply to imagine that. Bobbie would not more be killed without pay than consent to sex without a fee. When she was with Alan Greenspan she always insisted on payment in gold. What a woman. A real looked to after you got past the cigarette smoke.
Nobody will ever understand Bobbie’s seminal role in the perfection of Death-bots. One could say her bot cremation, albeit of a very dilapidated cadaver, was a proof of concept. Without her stinking corpse, the engineers might have used sick dogs or other mammals. Bobbie showed the project worked on a human scale, though engineers being engineers would have preferred the bot confronted a battling, scream, wily subject. As Wolverine’s Mr Cleans showed, they work fine on humans, even when the victim’s being difficult. The proof in Bobbie’s case study failed to sow the laser would kill anybody in the right way or that the machine could cope with the flow of blood when a body was being right-sized for cremation.
Bobbie’s inspiring writing was among the forces that encourage the sales divisions of Munitions Galore to a complete commodification of killing and death. Further, one got just what one paid for. Putin, for example, had no right to insist on special treatment just because he had supported Munitions Galore project in the past. If he wants a stealth bomb, let him pay the market rate. He should also pay for silence regarding his role in the Ice-10s development and testing. Peregrine and Wolverine liked the reference to testing. It gave no specifics, but they were sure Team Putin’s key members would know the full meaning of “testing.”
Emperor Xi knew nothing of Bobbie, of Peregrine’s schemes, or of Wolverine’s role. His ignorance made them all laugh. Instead, the Emperor knew the Russians had some role in the death of Chinese citizens I the country’s northwest. The Russian he believed had had a hand in the bomber’s work was nowhere to be found. Hence he assembled a team of experts in Suifenhe in the northeast of China. The city is less than 4 hour of drive time from Vladivostok, a juicy target. There is both a major highway and a rail line connecting Suifenhe and Vladivostok. Harbin and Vladivostok are also connected by rail.
From his intelligence services, Emperor Xi learnt of Russian efforts to build more Borei-A submarines to replace ageing Typhoon submarines. At Xi’s direction, the team in Suifenhe with support from Harbin planned to a Borei-A nearing completion. The team had the job of figuring out how to do the job without implicating China. Accordingly, a team, calling themselves the Kasparovs worked to make it look that renegade Russians had sabotaged a Borei. Despite this promising plan, Emperor Xi was sad that he had nothing as devastating as Ice-10 to try on the Russians. He also wanted to put Putin in the same epistemic position as himself regarding the role of the Chinese in the debacle that was going to occur to a hush-hush project in Vladivostok. Putin must in a sense know it without being able to show it.
To honour the 4th, I’m interrupting my story to reflect on my native land. The cat does not always have an easy go of it in America. In general, most Americans accept us. I’m lucky about that.
We cats have relied on our charm, good looks, and agility to win countless Americans over. These good Americans show their love us by various signs. It is America that you will encounter Maine Coon Cats or American Short Hairs. The names bespeak our membership in the American community.
Often I am grateful that America is a creedal nation. Americans are not a Blut und Boden nation, even though in the white heat of our day’s politics, too many Americans forget that. I don’t even know if I was born in the states. I think so, but don’t know it. My best guess is that I was born in Texas. Of course, most of the folks in my Childhood neighbourhood near Martinez Creek in San Antonio chattered away in Spanish with ease. The priests spoke it too.
Much of the politics in this country confuses me. Take the crowds of people pressing to cross the Rio Grande or come into California from Baja or Arizona or New Mexico. They are not, as my lefty chums imply, undocumented citizens. They are people wishing to become residents and sometimes American citizens. If they get into the US, their children become creedal Americans. As often as not, the parents of these Americans do too.
If they all have desires, it is to build a life in America rather than in Meso-America, Mexico, or someplace else. If blood matters, many come to American by losing blood to arrive.
Should people who sneak into America be allowed to stay? Let’s face it, we’re past the days when Texas Rangers could throw their butts across the US-Mexico border into cacti. I don’t know if they “should” be here. What I do know is that, like me, they are here. And they’re not lining up to leave either. They’re also transforming into Americans by being in El Norte.
Right now, a lot of Americans are waging war on one another over the recent SCOTUS decision on abortions. I’ve not read Dobbs. Like most people, I’ve better stuff to do than read Alito. If I’m going to read something, I’d rather read from Elliott’s Book of Practical Cats.
But consider the facts. You can’t make Americans to do what they don’t want to do, no matter how mean get in trying to make them.
I used to live in Tennessee. Only the gods know how much Hill Billy Heroin folks in Hamblen, Cocke, Sevier, Knox, Hawkins, or other counties are east Tennessee are using. It’s a lot.
Take my word for it. It’s less legal than abortion and has been for a long time. From what mike tells me, its being unlawful doesn’t count much with that crowd. And there is precedent. They didn’t give a damn that making moonshine was unlawful either. Where there’s a way. Will having abortions be more of a nuisance? For the next few years, sure.
Anyway, what a person thinks about abortion isn’t what makes an American. Whatever the core creedal beliefs of Americans are, getting “right-think,” whatever that might be, on abortion isn’t in the core.
A lot of the probable core is silly. If you’re an American you know the words of the “American Anthem” as surely as a Frenchy knows the words of “The Marseillaise.” You may know that Nathan Hale regretted having only one life to give for his country, that Washington was the first President, or that American flags have one star for each state in the Union. You’ll know that baseball games have a 7th inning stretch, that in the south people think NASCAR is a sport and that nowadays not many blacks vote for Republicans and that not many guys fond of camo vote for Democrats. You’ll know too that the right-wing loons vote Republican and that lefty crazies vote Democrat.
The odds are you have little idea of the steps it takes to pass a federal law. If you call the war Americans waged on one another from 1861 to 1865 “The War between the States,” you’re a Republican and if you call it “The War to free the Slaves” you’re definitely a Democrat. If you can name all the cabinet members of the current administration, you’re either young and do your homework, overeducated, or Joe Biden.
I could go on about being an American, but I am pretty sure that the beliefs that make us Americans are more like those above than what people get asked on a citizenship test. Most Americans also hate adultery, but not so much that they plan to change their ways. In that way, they’re just like Toms, except we Toms don’t pretend to hate adultery. And even though I’m a good American, I don’t get my fur in a knot at the idea of teens rutting with one another. Teens do that. And it’s very wrong of them to mention it to their parents it’s a matter of respect.
And on the 4th, all we Americans make a show of our passion for fireworks, sunburn, BBQ, and beer. There’s other stuff we Americans like too, especially on the boozy holidays, which is why the population is just short of 330 million.
And there is so much American stuff. But I’m an American kitty. I love it all. And I don’t care how stupid I may think your politics or practices are, please know I love you. After all, I’m not known as “The Love Machine” for nothing. I love you. Now have some BBQ and beer, give you main squeeze a squeeze, eat BBQ, guzzle beer, and get sozzled enough to go do something extravagant for an American cat. As the great Dionne Warwick once sang, “What the world needs now/ is cats sweet cats/ it’s the only thing/ that there’s just too little of. “Believe it. Believe it!” Please forget my namesake never won a fight in San Antonio! Happy 4th! Love, Crockett (aka The Love Machine or Crocky)
When I surveyed the room, I saw Fielding and Bart had put their hard eyes on. A slaughterman would give a steer entering the slaughterhouse the same look. It was unwise of Constance to have made any threats, however veiled, in Bart’s house. Fielding would have killed Constance for the sake of general principles. She detests rich bitches. Bart and Fielding were two tough Mollys annealed in a San Antonio barrio.
Constance pretended oblivion to the whole scene. Fearing the direction of the impending action, I waved Bart and Fielding down. “Just look at how serious these two get when they think anybody would hurt me. Of course, Constance and I are dear friends.” Bart and Fielding rolled their eyes. The two of them dropped their lethal stares but stayed vigilant.
“How rude of me. I may have looked too mean. Fielding and I mistook her for one of her bastards.” Constance glared at her and I noticed her left nostril flared, so I got her to toss back another vodka.
Once she and I got talking, she knew about bits of the doings in Goma that I had not. Living in Saint Louis, I did have NGA contacts from whom I got good intelligence. Peregrine, Wolverine, and even Caligula had also provided telling details.
For example, from Wolverine, I learnt an avaricious Munitions Galore scientist in Reading had provided a shifty, money-toting Nigerian with a small stealth bomb. The scientist had worked on the bomb’s stealth jacket without knowing of its full capabilities. After Lord Caligula rewarded him for his good work with a trip to Portugal, the scientist disappeared in a diving accident off the Portuguese coast. No body was recovered.
The Nigerian, bomb in tow, had no difficulty getting a stealth bomb onto his flight. That’s the beauty of this bomb. The crafty Nigerian went from Gatwick to Lagos’s Murtala Muhammed International Airport. Instead of meeting a representative of a Russian oligarch in Lago, love of money got ahold of him. So, he met with a gang of big-thinking terrorist thieves with abundant cash and connections in Goma.
Word is that the Nigerian conniver disappeared in Lagos without a trace, as did the money. The oligarch was furious but denied he had anything to do with the Nigerian’s disappearance. The terrorists took a flight from Murtala to Accra in Ghana. The gang then had to fly to Addis Ababa to catch a flight from there to Goma. It was a nightmare of a trip. It takes 22 hours to get from Accra to Goma provided all goes well.
A snitch in the gang tipped the Russian oligarch’s contacts. A Russian operative put a tracer on the “bomb” as the clueless terrorists waited in the Addis Ababa airport. As soon as the Russians knew the bomb was going to Goma, Putin got the facts from his oligarch friend. Now in the know, Putin mobilsed CCO assets and they were in Goma by the time the terrorist thieves arrived.
Putin was enraged that somebody had swiped one of his Munitions Galore bombs. Peregrine got an earful from Putin about that. The CCO had no trouble dealing with this gang of amateurs. The thieves had death & blackmail in mind, believing the stealth bomb had a small, tactical nuclear device under its jacket. They should have been as stealthy as the swiped bomb. Instead, the CCO left them dead to feed local animals, including two happy crocs, in a shack outside Goma.
With the bomb back and in Moscow, Putin was unsatisfied. Who financed this plot? CCO experts came up with a list of plausible rich culprits in Uganda and Rwanda. It was convenient list. The likely Ugandan masterminds were in Kampala and the Rwandans in Kigali. Not hard places to find whomever you’re looking for.
Less than ten murders later, Putin was satisfied.
Shortly thereafter, Wolverine had made his way to Moscow. He had a better understanding of the bomb’s powers than Putin. After he gave Vlad an inkling, it was child’s play to convince him that only the Chinese were ruthless, devious, secretive, and powerful enough to cover up what the bomb did after the bomb’s first test.
But both Wolverine and Putin needed a real-world test of the bomb’s effectiveness. Neither of them puts a lot of stock in what lab results showed. Those two wanted a body of evidence. In fact, they wanted lots of bodies of evidence.
I now knew more facts than anybody had previously shared with me. As Constance had more to drink, it became clear that (a) she did worry about Wolverine getting himself into a game where he was outclassed and outresourced and (b) she worried that she might have no way of her cut of probable big bucks out of it. Being a little drunk, she began to sniffle, “It would break Irascible’s heart to discover his own son was scheming to cheat his parents out of a cut of this big score. What kind of boy had they reared? Loving families shared what they stole.”
I offended her when I asked if she and Irascible shared. “How dare you. Irascible and I are Wolverine’s mother and father. He’ll get his when he inherits it, provided he doesn’t proe to be an ungrateful, chiselling son.”
Fielding had had enough.
She switched the telly on. Lou Dobbs was touting candidate Trump’s wall. Constance smiled.
“I just adore that man. We do need a wall. We need more guns too.” Bart broke in, “And the wall shouldn’t be just down south. We need one to keep the snowbacks out. Canadians have been mooching off us since the Revolutionary War. When our ancestors were fighting, theirs were kissing King George’s crazy ass.” For once, Constance, Fielding, and Bart agreed about something. Bart and Fielding recalled the Battle of Martinez Creek. Whenever they did that, you could count the seconds before they’d begin raving about the menace the Northern Hordes posed to our country. There were risks to an open northern border. Fielding worried lots of “sissy draft dodgers and their fairy, French friends.” would sneak back to our country. Bart snarled out that she feared a resurgence of Leonard Cohen’s music or, worse still, Gordon Lightfoot’s. And then who knows how many moose, wolves, polar bears, racoons, and other undesirables would come south?
The three ladies–Constance Fielding, and Bart–began to scream, “Our trump is Trump! Our trump is Trump!” Chicago, Quine, and I for various reasons didn’t believe them. If Trump’s the trump let’s play some other game. We did and do have the common sense to keep that opinion to ourselves.
All this excitement left Constance feeling amorous. “Find out what delicious entertainers are in town. I’d so like a taste of Clooney this evening, but I’m so hot to trot, I’d settle for Pavarotti. What libido those Italians have! If you know him, Pavarotti’s lucky he’s not in jail.” But if there was one thing Constance could not abide, it was poor nobodies. Her appetite was for men worthy of “The Lives of the Rich and Famous, ” unless they were Russian ballet dancer. She had no patience with homosexualists like Nureyev.
“Call my limo back, Crockett. And don’t expect me back this evening. You’re a nice guy, but this neighbourhood is declassee. For god’s sake, Roberta and mike have you living next to an interstate. Were houses adjacent to massage parlours, strip bars, and tire stores all unavailable?”
Bart and Fielding hissed. “Oh, I’m so sorry,” she told them, “I forgot that you two were doing the best you could when you picked your overeducated servants.” Her chauffeur opened the front door and out she waltzed to her limo.
Bart and Fielding stared at me, smacked my nose, and said in unison, “When are you going to embrace us killing her?”
Once I grasped that the Russians had swiped a stealth bomb from terrorists in Goma, and killed them to boot, I wondered how that bomb would discover itself to the world. With Putin, you always had to doubt any benign goals. At the same time, I knew from Melania that Putin loved and was loved by Donald. Melania once exclaimed while scratching my tummy “If only I was loved so much!”
As soon as I heard that and noticed the Medea look in her eyes, I did what I could to soothe her. She adored it when I made biscuits on her torso. After ten or so exhausting minutes of massaging her, she regained her sanity. When you see a woman with a Medea gaze, you should wet yourself before leaving her to her own devices.
I never thought she would kill Barron, but Ivanka and Don junior killings seemed fair game. For a few minutes, I thought of touting a Mr Clean bot. Let Mr Clean make clean kills. Instead, I kept my mouth shut. Telling her about what a Mr Clean could do would, as the Great Nixon once said, “be wrong.”
Perhaps I was too cautious. Melania has never to date killed any of Donald’s dubious children. Of course, with Trumps, you never know how many bastards they have sired. Who knows if Melania has rid us of any of them?
If I had to guess, Uncle Cornpone would have had better luck tracing Melania’s possible murders than trying to pin anything on Mr Wolverine Lawless. Cornpone was spending far too much time at the Huddle House for his health. He’d go early for orders of chicken-fried steak with eggs sunny-side up and hash browns. As often as not, he’d order fried pickles to go. Unlike svelte, aristocratic Wolverine, Cornpone started putting pounds on pounds. A spare tire blew up around his middle that spilled over his ever-tighter waistband. His face got redder too. You couldn’t, to be fair, blame the red, bloated, mottled face on the Huddle House. Cornpone liked sitting in his Lazy Boy recliner with a jug of Early Times. To put all his physical deterioration on the Huddle House ignores other causes.
Cornpone would sit in his recliner, simmering in Early Times, and ponder how to link guilty Wolverine to the death of the two G-men. Sometimes, when very drunk, Cornpone would practice conjuring a tale that put Wolverine in the Huddle House when the skeezer OD’d on the toilet. When sobriety arrived with the dawn, that idea died with the dawn.
Cornpone did begin to think that the drop in Pulaski County’s population of bums and tramps had something to do with Wolverine. Where were these malodorous losers disappearing to? It was as if, like the G-men, like mike’s published papers, the G-men vanished into the universe without a trace. So, the Lost Hobo, reasons Cornpone, must be my beacon.
While Cornpone had such thoughts, he had no idea Wolverine Lawless was not even in Pulaski County. Laden with intelligence for Fort Leonard Wood and NGA, Wolverine lounged in a suite at Claridge’s, chatted with various CEOs, diplomats, intelligence operatives, munitions engineers, cyberneticists, and Oxonian classicists at Claridge’s teas.
I would never have learned about Cornpone’s thoughts if he was not a compulsive diarist and a compulsive bullshitter. All you had to do as a journalist if you wished to know Cornpone’s thinking, all I had to do, was to get to know the waitresses at the Hub Lounge or Bulgogi House in Saint Robert. Beware, though. You can get fatter than an Army wife if you take to eating Hunter Schnitzel at the Hub or Beef Bulgogi with Yaki Mandu as an opener. You could learn even more about Cornpone if you headed into downtown Waynesville to Hoppers Pub. You again risk your boyish figure if you order the Rings and Things or, for humans with a sweet tooth, fried cheesecake.
None of this resembles what Wolverine was eating. He might sit in the Fumoir at Claridge’s having a Grosvenor (Christian Douan, Macino Rosso, Raspberry eau de vie, with an absinthe finish). He liked to have Dorset crab and radish to open. He enjoyed a beef tartar with red chicory, sunflower seeds, and shallot crumble. For his main course, he liked the roasted Cauliflower with parsley tahini and pistachio. The peas with mint worked well as a side and the dark chocolate fondant with coffee ice cream was irresistible as a pudding.
Wolverine and Cornpone, you see, lived in different culinary worlds. In truth, Wolverine pitied the lower classes and blamed their parents for begetting children that grow up to be Cornpones. Wolverine did understand, being smart, the necessity of having poor people about to serve him. It was the contumely of a middling man like Cornpone that offended Wolverine.
Whenever Wolverine called, he bragged about how our work for Putin in African had exceeded even great expectations. He did say he had to hit some European cities before he headed back to “grunt” work in Missouri. He told me he had already made a reservation at the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski. He had meetings with the mighty to make big decisions. One thing I was sure of, at the Hotel Baltschug Kempinski, “there ain’t no angels livin’ there.”
Despite my forever-fear of Chaucey’s retribution, as I write today, other news has overwhelmed me. This past Friday, I watched the erstwhile cheerleader Liz Cheney making a case against Trump and his only-see-him-wearing-kneepads coterie. And do, if you can, picture Liz with her delectable teen legs. Yum!
You know the kneepad boys. Tubby Bannon and Fibber Meadows are charter members, though Kenny ‘the bottom” McCarthy deserves an honorable mention. Liz could outride, outwrestle, outshoot any of them. As a tough guy, unlike DT’s gang, Liz is the real deal.
Still, I wondered about Liz lecturing on the 1/6 Insurrection. Does she believe that anybody in his secret heart doubts that DT and his boy-I’d-look-great-in-an-SS uniform did everything Liz the Fierce says they did? There are a lot of people willing to say they don’t believe it, but how many are so dumb that they believe it? I say, “Few, pitifully few.”
When I arrived for one of pet sessions with Melania, I once asked her about 1/6. Did she believe Don was guilty? She chuckled, “If you can count on anything with Donld, it’s that he’s always guilty, though you may have to indict a few bagmen before you reach him. Donald loves, as any woman knows, rubber gloves.” Also, on her view, Don is a bit like a 4-year-old. He has no real grasp of what is true and what is false. Donald’s mouth expresses his wishes rather than facts.
Still, I felt bad about Liz spending so much of her life making a case against a known rascal and his rascally pals. For one thing, her dad’s heart is so small, you must wonder how much time he has left. Liz even made me repent for having taken one of the few bribes I accepted as a journalist.
Perhaps, gentle reader, you remember the time. During Liz’s gay-bashing days, she was very hard on her Lesbo sister. Even then, that kind of out loud thinking could pull forth retaliation as a harvest. A Sapphic crusader, I can’t remember if it was Camille Paglia or one of her twins, promised me $100 to plant a story insinuating Liz was a faux heterosexual. For the $100, I agreed to do the story. I also included a link to a probably photoshopped episode of Liz lesbianing it up with a rather loud naked, hairy woman.
Believe it or not, this scoundrel never paid me the $100. She swindled me. It taught me an indispensable lesson as a journalist. When you agree to a bribe, get your money upfront. I did use a pen name for the story so Liz the Fierce never found me out. Be careful, though. A lot of politicos have mean teams of vicious, expert hunters.
Now listening to Liz recount the plots of Insurrectionists—Proud Boys, the Oath Keepers, Trump, congressional loons, crazy lawyers, a mad General, and assorted members of the Clueless—whilst watching footage of these clowns lacked the impact of the massacres in Buffalo and Uvalde. When I see children or innocent shoppers being cut down with an AR, I start to think maybe I should stop sneaking out of the house.
Perhaps I should even try to talk mike into moving to Inverness in Scotland or Kyoto where nobody seems interested in hunting children or people they don’t know. I even start to feel I’m going to weep if I head earnest pols talking up solutions like outlawing ARs or Kalashnikovs. It’s all insane. The same types howl the gun-control “solution” every time somebody slaughters a fresh herd of innocents. Mike always taught me that if you keep doing the same thing over and over without result, your insane. You need to try something else. Even Roberta thinks you shouldn’t keep doing what doesn’t work.
When I a tête-à-tête with Peregrine, he vowed that staffing the schools with Munitions Galore killer bots, which looked indistinguishable to my eye from the Mr Clean model, would guarantee security. Peregrine also estimated he and his Munitions Galore could do it even cheaper if school authorities let him place bombs with his invisibility sheath on bombs in school hallways. Munitions Galore computers had already predicted with absolute accuracy where mass shooters would go in any modeled school before they reached the kids. All that then needed doing was for the bomb to detonate. “Turn the killer,” as Peregrine put it, “into body parts. Don’t waste scarce resources on apprehending and trying evil ghouls bent on evil. Be done with them.”
Bart had her own view. “Train feral cats to patrol the schools. Arm them well. I’d also recommend walkways hanging from hallway ceilings. Teams of well-trained, well-armed cats could either drop from the walkway and eat the murderous Bozo’s carotid and vertebral arteries. Alternatively, they could just shoot him down where he stood. Human coppers are too lenient. They’re always refusing the kill suspects. It’s why we have so much crime. You don’t see this in Saudi Arabia, where His Royal Highness even know how to handle sassy journalists.”
I’ll admit it. I don’t know that any of these well-intended measures will work any better than the endless string of defunct and resurrected re-resurrected gun-control measures. I suspect it’s easier to just move, but mike says he’s too old to traipse around the world in search of a safer country. The man’s lazy.
I feared the consequences of lying to Chaucer’s ghost, but I am a congenital optimist. What if the world unfolds in a way that conceals my lies? Undiscovered lies are close enough cousins to the truth to pass muster with me.
Uncle Cornpone’s industry might do the job for me. If he lacked a first-rate mind, he still had first-rate industry. This Gumshoe, if I judge Wolverine’s complaints about Cornpone, that Gumshoe was getting to Wolverine. If Wolverine’s bots had not killed the 2 G-men, no moral scruple would have interfered with Wolverine having him canceled. And Wolverine is not a fan of what we now called canceling. For Wolverine, “cancelled” meant dead.
The problem with another Wolverinean cancellation is that he had two recent cancels on his books. Yet another dead copper dead less than 1/2 year after the 2 coppers had disappeared started to look like an organized effort. Neither Lord Caligula nor Peregrine would approve of that. They rejoiced in subtle solutions. So did Einstein. As he put it, “Subtle is the Lord, but malicious he is not.”
Wolverine had to use all his self-mastery when Uncle Cornpone had the chutzpah to show up at his estate and, in the presence of several bot servants, accuse Wolverine of having his bots murder the 2 G-man. Imagine the sheer will that Wolverine used to not do what he wanted to do.
Uncle Cornpone had no proof, but Wolverine still yearned to kill him for his idiotic impertinence. Cornpone may have had the right answer about what happened to the G-men. So what? Cornpone no more deserved credit for his right answer than a 5th grader deserves for saying 16/64 = 1/4 because the 6s cancel. The gods have arranged heaven and earth so that fools are not always wrong. Sometimes they get something right through dumb luck.
One thing Chaucer told me scared me more than anything. What if heaven brims with boors? What would it be like to spend an eternity surrounded by ghosts whose sole hobby is talking about themselves? Could you imagine having to listen to Donald Trump talk forever? What might happen if your patch of heaven was shared with Amber Heard or, even worse, the wife basher, dope fiend Johnny Depp. And would god have the wisdom to keep Depp sober or to keep histrionic Heard’s fingers away from keyboards? I have doubts, horrible, horrible doubts.
Meanwhile, I’m hoping that the cat-god makes the world unfold in ways that hide my lies. Chaucer holds a grudge if you cross him.
After Lord Caligula’s evening with Mika and its aftermath, Wolverine told me his life settled down. A local police detective in Pulaski County whom Wolverine called, “Uncle Cornpone” or, depending on Wolverine’s mood, “Old Gumshoe,” continued to nose around Pulaski and adjacent counties in search of the missing G-men. The FBI would from time to time agree to offer Uncle Cornpone minor assistance. They might run a background check, but none of it was going anywhere.
With Munitions Galore’s business growing and my stories for Africans on Putin gaining celebrity, Wolverine was in a good mood. One evening he telephoned to me from Claridge’s London. He had just returned to his suite after what he described as a splendid tea with a friend of Vladimir. If I recall, Wolverine called him “Labrov,” which gave me horrifying mental images of soggy Labrador Retrievers. When I told myself Wolverine must have meant Lavrov, I began to get mental images of filthy, shit-stained lavatories. To help myself, I scurried off to demand Roberta change my litter.
Wolverine also told me that Peregrine with Lavrov or Lavrov or whatever his name was. They discussed an attempted use of one of Peregrine’s stealth bombs in Goma. A gang of fiends had tried to blow up a bomb in the East Congo. As nasty a place as Goma seemed to be, the gang convinced itself that it was doing the world a public service. In fact, or so they alleged, gangsters in Rwanda had paid them well to do this.
Before the bomb went off, it occurred to Peregrine that the Russians, in return for a fee, might wish to know about the scheme in Goma.
Putin, a great fan of peace, opposed blowing up a bomb that would create a zone of nuclear waste in the Congo’s east. For obscure reasons, Putin felt devastation at that level in the Congo was contrary to his interests. And so, he sent a team of Russian commandos to kill the troublemakers and seize their bomb.
Attentive readers may wonder how Putin’s commandos could know where a Munitions Galore stealth bomb was. Let me say that the idea of invisibility is a flexible one. Just because a Peregrine-designed Bomb is invisible to everybody else does not mean it is invisible to him. A man should know where his own children are.
After the Russians got the bomb, Wolverine had me write stories on the dark web claiming that a stealth bomb had been seized by unknown forces after blabbermouth bombers in their gang gave away its location. Kapow! In no time, governments on our planet were falling over themselves, excepting the scandal-hungry regime of Great Leader Kim, to deny they had any role in the scheme. A spokesman of Christians in Action in Langley, when queried about the story, could “neither confirm nor deny” any knowledge of what happened. Off the record, she doubted any bomb existed in the Congo. At the Kremlin, a spokesman denounced the west for its “profiteering” on death and hoped that this particular story was pure fiction. The Congo’s Prime Minister Kabila’s professions of ignorance about what may or may not have happened in Goma were for once credible. The complete lack of evidence that he had any increase in his wealth was always credible regarding his ignorance of big cases unless one could show he had had a recent influx of wealth. One of the beauties of postcolonialism is that it praised, rather than required as the colonialists did, a leader’s declining to steal.
As I got ready for bed that evening, I had another visit from Chaucer’s ghost. Boy was he pissed. The two dead G-men had started residing in his realm. “How dare your pal Wolverine visit these two boors on me. All they want to talk about is “killer bots” this and “killer bots” that. They need to get a death.”
I asked what I could do about it. To my surprise, Chaucey told me, “Why don’t you try throwing that new Gumshoe a bone about Wolverine’s bots?” Even though I thought that was an insane idea for me, I kept my mouth shut. Growing angrier and angrier, Chaucey screamed, “I’d do it myself, but why shouldn’t you have to do something. Wolverine’s your friend now. You have the dirt on him. So, let you be his Brutus. And the G-men ghosts are ghastly. The redhead may have been a looker once, but now she looks all ashen. Worse, every hair, and I do mean every, is burnt off her body. It’s as bad as after Daenerys had her first encounter with her dragons’ fire that left her a totally hairless nudie, not my style, thank you. But in that case, the hair grew back.”
When Chaucer was this way, there was no reasoning with him. I just wanted this kitty revenant out of my room, and a lying promise was sure to work as well as a real spell. So, I uttered, “I’m on it.” Chaucer disappeared. I remembered after this lie, Jack Handy’s wise observation: Broken promises don’t upset me. I just think, why did they believe me.”
During Mika’s first appearance on Morning Joe after her evening with Lord Caligula, she pounced onto the set with a lioness’s confidence. She announced she had “cornered” his Lordship in a restaurant. Her relentless queries battered away the man’s defences until he confessed to earning his money from fear and vengeance.
Joe joined her assault. You’d have thought Joe was shocked to discover anybody would try to monetize fear and vengeance as Joe was now doing. He raved about the world’s war pigs like Munitions Galore that got fat lapping up the blood of innocent children and others blown to smithereens by his Lordship and his bastard son and henchman Peregrine Blond-Bomb.
None of these objections struck me as good candidates for changing Lord Caligula’s mind.
I couldn’t help wondering if his Lordship might think the adulterous Joe and Mika had a right to lecture his Lordship about good morals. After all, the rumour mills had it that they had been having goes at one another since 2010 or so. Attentive readers may recall that Mika didn’t get rid of her husband, albeit by lawful means, until 2016. The twice-divorced Joe didn’t give wife number 2 the heave-ho until 2013. About 3 years after he started sampling Mika’s wares. Like here, he knew her value.
Like Voltaire, they had a relaxed view of the demands of sexual morality as applied to themselves. They were strict on matters that didn’t tempt them like selling Arms for huge profits. I had heard Lord Caligula mention to her over their dinner that if not for men like himself, her dad would have had very little to do. She should show more gratitude. To judge by the sounds I heard emanating that night from the back seat of the limousine, Mika is no ingrate.
From what Wolverine told me, criticism of Munitions Galore never hurt its bottom line. If anything, the snivelling critics made more buyers aware of Munitions Galore’s numerous product lines, all of them profitable without even more business.
During the talk with Wolverine, he sang my praises as he described how delighted “our friends in Moscow” were to read my stories in L’Afrique Aujourd’hui. Bart and Fielding may accuse me of being an imbecile, but unmet friends in Moscow had a different opinion. Despite Fielding and Bart’s bad rating of my intellect, they both granted I had become a much better provider. I pleased them mightily by hiding my new wealth from Roberta and mike. Wolverine had proved useful as he had become of master of Swiss bank accounts, shell companies, and cleaning money in all forms.
Quine and Chicago liked the idea of inheritable fortunes. Quine liked to squeal, “You mean I’m an heir? What am I worth.” If Roberta was in the room, Bart would smack him senseless, telling Roberta, “The boy was having a bad dream.” Chicago liked to carry on about how once he was rich, he would have regular pedicures. Bart’s fear was that if Roberta ever leant about my growing holdings, she’d squander it on donations to Catholic Charities or, just as creepy, social justice programmes whether catholic or something else. It made Bart and Fielding sick at heart to think Roberta might give their money away to feed the hungry or some such nonsense.
Wolverine had no doubt that charity was a waste of money. “What happens when you give to the poor? Let me tell you. You destroy the identity of the poor. It’s identity murder, a subspecies of soul murder. The poor don’t mind their lives if you keep them away from malcontents and liberal goody-goods. The poor man has a special perspective. He has unattainable, but delicious, fantasies about the rich. Why spoil them? Do you tell a teen boy dreaming of in-out with Penelope Cruz that it’s an impossible love? Cruel mothers may do that, but any decent mother ought to find something else to do with her time than steal her son’s dreams. As I see it, a mother, no matter the photographic or pornographic evidence must never tamper with her young wanker’s dreams. Impossible dreams carry a boy through his grim lot in school.”
The range of Wolverine’s philosophical and psychological thinking always amazed me. Given his theories, no wonder members of White’s in London talked to him whenever they could. Wolverine wrote several opinion pieces explaining why White’s must never allow women members or remove British wild game from its menu. He worried that having women members would cause the nauseating spectacle of members leaving the club sober or feeling that laws against sodomy were going to be enforced in the club. These opinion pieces received the acclaim of members but did less well with jealous women scheming to attain membership. One constant fear at White’s was cross-dressing women sneaking into the club. More than one member wept at the thought of that.
I did take Wolverine’s renewed interest in philosophical thinking as a sign. He wasn’t spending so much time, I reckoned, having to ward off pest from the FBI worrying about a couple of missing G-men.
The traceless vanishing of two G-men in rural Missouri did what anybody smart would expect. A plague of G-men arrived in Pulaski, Crawford, Texas Counties to investigate.
Investigators piled threats on threats on the 16-year-old squeezer that swiped the missing G-men’s car from the Walmart in St Robert. If you thought about this girl, you may have suspected she was, a flaming borderline. She was a girl never more than a half-jump from a looney bin. But she bypassed the looney bin. She dropped into her grave early.
An attendant at the Huddle House catty-corner from the Phillip 66 Truck Stop off I-44 in Cuba found her. She sat in the Huddle’s Lady Room. She had died of an overdose taking her last dump. Hers was no dapper cadaver. There she was enthroned in all her deceased magnificence. Behold: her cyanotic body propped up against the toilet stall’s left wall. Her last offering to our world rested half-submerged in the toilet water beneath her dead end. Imagine how her open, pale, snake eyes stared back at the attendant who found her. The attendant choked out an “Oh shit.” Then she screamed.
Lickety-split coppers from all about made it to the Huddle House. Some were happy to have orders of Fried Pickles, others ordered waffles. Sergeants and above ordered eggs and chicken-fried steak. They all waited, bored but eating, for permission to leave.
After a long wait, the FBI arrived. Angry G-men began to lay blame for the girl’s death on the dead girl. If only she had not fallen into the only life she had ever known, this would never have happened. That was the gist of their postmortem. A few G-men blamed co-workers for failing to offer the girl a better deal. The smart ones connected to the truth: She didn’t know squat.
Throughout the hunt for the gone G-men, Wolverine held a stream of parties attended by the rich and powerful. It was as if Wolverine made it a point to never let an investigator find him at home without a General, a gazillionaire, or a famed politician in his company.
Wolverine de-emphasised the presence of his numerous Bot security details. Instead, he decorated his property with Xe security for high-net-worth individuals.”
After investigators had made numerous visits, Wolverine’s suave presentation won them over. He always described the “bots” as experimental toys. He insisted he relied on his Xe team for protection, not novelties like a Bot. From what I gather, the G-men gobbled up this bullshit whole.
During this time of investigation, I wrote the Putin-loving stories for L’Afrique Aujourdh’hui. Subsequently, Wolverine and I turned the miscellaneous articles into a best-selling book in Francophone Africa. Wolverine also arranged for English and Portuguese translations. If any readers have seen the French and English translations, they’ll recall a placid Putin standing with an enormous wood cross behind him. All about him stand moonshine-swilling Americans in camo and their simian Ukrainian henchmen with hammer and nails. They’re ready to crucify loving Putin. The book’s title stretched above the cover picture. The title was magnificent in its ridiculousness: Will They Nail Our Saviour to the Cross?
By relying on materials Wolverine had sent me, I built a narrative aiming to prove that not only was Putin the reincarnation of Jesus but the reincarnation of Patrice Lumumba and Malcolm X as well. My job required some fancy metaphysics. Both Lumumba and Malcolm X died at the hands of assassins after the birth of Putin. I worked out a multiple soul hypothesis. Exquisitely large, immaculate “soul receptacles,” that is, a body can hold several souls that can arrive at any time.
And so, Putin’s virtue allowed him to take in the souls not only of Jesus but of Lumumba and Malcolm X. It was as if Putin was not just a Trinitarian being, but a quadripartite being.
The writing was easy enough. As for having enough virulent passages about Americans and Ukrainians, I grabbed any extant antisemitic passages about Jews and Jesus I could find. The Protocols of the Elders of Zion was a treasure house for me. Mein Kampf and the writings of Goebbels were also superb. Once I substituted Americans or Ukrainians for Jews and Putin for Jesus, I had an embarrassment of riches when it came to hateful tropes to write into passages when I needed them.
Sometimes Wolverine worried that in some countries Lumumba was either not popular or was disliked. We found an easy solution. For the book’s editions in those countries, we just substituted the name of a beloved local martyr for Lumumba or, if need be, Malcolm, or even substituted Mohammed or Castro for Jesus.
At first, Bart disapproved of these articles and books. She claimed I was a horrible example to Chicago and Quine. She complained it was dishonest. Then she learnt the size of my advance and royalties. So she reversed herself. She also took back mean comments about me being a lying imbecile. Instead, she put it to me like this. “You’re not really lying. You’re being paid.” I resisted asking her whether she extended this defence to shyster personal injury lawyers that had accused her over the years of torts. I was being paid and she was not going to analyse away a benefit.
Before Wolverine left my house the day of drop by, he showed another side of himself. In the future, shaking his hatted head, he advised me to stay in my own lane. “A smart Tom,” he sighed, “keeps his nose out of other people’s business.” Besides, the two G-men were no friends of mine and Wolverine didn’t number them among his friends either. If they had disappeared, maybe they needed a lesson in minding their own damn business. Perhaps, too, they chose to disappear. More greedy FBI guys defect to Putin’s Russia than you might think.
When I told Wolverine, that any defections above zero would be more than I’d think, he grinned. He also began to pound the thick end of his walking stick into his left paw. “Nothing good comes to a Mr Nosey,” he muttered.
All at once, Bart was in the room between us. She was hissing spit on Wolverine’s bespoke suit as she made to him what she called “promises, not threats.” The gist of her promise was that if Wolverine didn’t learn to keep his club’s tip on the floor, any Molly might feel justified in abbreviating his lying life.
At first, Wolverine looked relaxed as he sized Bart up. Then I heard his suit jacket tearing. Right behind him, Tank had slashed his back. You could hear Fielding’s growling battle voice. “Mr Lawless, have we had a proper introduction? As a rule, critters like you slither or scurry into my house pay a death tax for their visit. Critters your size are short enough to wind up with their throats cut. Can you imagine that? Bart and I have a rule. Listen up. You must learn it. We handle Crockey’s discipline. He is ours to beat and abuse, nobody else’s. Anybody who forgets that may learn a hard, final lesson about life.” Bart listened. Her glinting eyes smiled at Wolverine.
After estimating the odds, Wolverine knew his answer. “Quite so.” Replied a grinning Wolverine. He left humming, an old, old Turtle’s tune, “So Happy Together.” He then added, “My Day Will Come” once he was on the pavement.
A week later I got a pushy message from Wolverine encouraging me to stick to writing light features or stories from materials he sent me. For example, he sent me a handsome advance for a story that would appear in L’Afrique Aujourd’hui on what Putin had been doing to “de-nazify” the Crimea for Africans. I was to explain that the Ukraine was a nest of antisemites, racists, Nazis, and Russian loathing thugs. If my French was not up to the task, Wolverine told me to write it in English or in High Cat. He promised to see to a translation. I’d have refused if that handsome advance hadn’t been a stack of Krugerrands wrapped in Franklins. Wolverine and Peregrine understand my weakness for 24-carat gold. He said it was a 10% advance for what he envisioned as a 5-piece story that would convert to a book on the heroic work Putin was doing to gift a restored Russia to the world.
Oh, my friends, how I want to say more about Wolverine’s gifts as a spy. Few have monetized the trade with the ruthless efficiency of Wolverine. Instead, I am writing about the murderous assclown, the chubby dung heap, that walked into a Tops to shoot dead anybody he took for black with a Bushmaster rifle. The assclown decorated his rile by scribbling racist slogans so beloved by righty loons.
As a black cat, Bart felt the deepest imaginable offense at chubby, pasty, young Gendron. She burst into a rage when she heard mistrained policeman had convinced this wannabe Einsatz Kommando not to kill himself. Her reaction called to mind a scene from “Babe.” Instead of Babe, it was Bart who wailed an endless “Why?!” So, Bart dashed off an irate letter to the editor demanding an inquiry into what has led authorities to send cops to mass murders rather than infantry. “One must never forget,” wrote Bart, “The rationale for infantry is simple. You’re not there to arrest anybody. You want to cut the killer down where he stands. If he has put his gun to his own head, don’t discourage him. Fill him with holes before he commits another homicide.”
Bart has always taken a hard line on crime. Gendron’s murdering blacks was a grave offence enhancement in her eyes. If a vicious fool likes shooting blacks of his own kind, what might he do to black cats like Bart or me? Her view didn’t surprise me. Her theory of justice and jurisprudence got absorbed from watching Clinton Eastwood and Steven Seagal movies. She loved old western too. “Notice, too,” Bart reminded me,” that when the drumhead court sentenced handsome Bill Budd to hang, they did it fast.
From the time the handsome Budd killed the demonic Claggart to the time he hanged was less than 24 hours. “Let that be a model for us all,” cried Bart. If a drumhead court could hang a sailor that fast, a hanging that required a trial, you can have on-the-spot justice from our infantry when they respond to a mass shooting nowadays. So reasoned Bart.
I mentioned to Bart that the authorities didn’t want to make mistakes. A shooter could be crazy. An innocent man could be hanged by mistake. Bart delivered two blows to my head as her answer.
Fielding then chimed in. “Who cares? If a madman is shooting people, he’s a malignant crazy. Screw him. Put him down. And why are you always worrying about so-called innocents? None of us is innocent. If somebody didn’t do the crime that we’re hanging him for, he must have done something else. Innocence is a ruse.
“Besides, don’t we say, ‘Better ten or even one hundred innocent men hang than let one guilty man go free.’ And there is precedent. If crucifying our savior, an actual innocent man, remitted our bloodguilt, what’s the big deal about killing one innocent guy we mistake for a guilty one? You should worry about finding the bad guy, not keep living in the past.” When I started to challenge Fielding’s logic, she had had enough. She beat me up. Bart joined in.
I sometimes forget I don’t live in a house of lenient, prissy Democats. Bart and Tank see themselves as survivors of Martinez Creek because they never feared having bloody paws. Fielding had made her living killing rats, a job that she claimed made her the feline moral equivalent of Eastwood’s Man-with-No-Name.
As I tended to my battered face and body, Bart and Fielding told me, “To do true justice, a cat must learn to live with her mistakes.” Their cold stares told me I had best shut up about Gendron. Feigned agreement with their opinions was a wise path. In the past, when I tried to defend myself in these kinds of cases by pointing out I was taking mike’s position on a controversy, they’d just sigh.
“Mike,” I was told, “didn’t know any better.” “You know,” Bart added, “that his mum’s maiden name was Shea. That’s an Irish name. The Irish are a race of rogues. Being from a clannish race of professional connivers, mike has a congenital predisposition to leniency towards criminals. Have you noticed that mike even believes in letting somebody appeal a conviction? Appeals??? Did Billy Budd get an appeal? Was a “Wanted Dead or Alive” notice dead letter until the rascal named on it had a chance to appeal? Did Fielding accept surrenders or appeals from rats? Please! What a pile of Bravo Sierra! You must talk to your chums Wolverine and Peregrine about punishment. They’re sound thinkers on legal theory. Stop listening to mike the excuse monger.” Okay, I get it, I’d been warned.
Operation Gobble stayed a mystery to me back then. I had a few putative pieces of what I suspected was a vast jigsaw puzzle. That’s it. During this time, Wolverine wrote stories for the Moscow Times. In stories that should have insulted even a moron’s intelligence, Wolverine told stretchers about life as a louche Army Sapper’s wife, life as a keen CBRNE trainee, or life as a driver of military vehicles of all kinds. As often as not, Wolverine titillated his Russian readers with tales of Army wives that would have shamed Madame du Barry. If that trollop du Barry’s name rings no bells, then picture Tallulah Bankhead, Lindsay Lohan, Courtney Love, or, indeed, Wolverine’s mum, Constance Lawless. You’ll then know what what Wolverine conveyed about Army wives. Wolverine depicted soldiers as industrious Sad Sacks.
Wolverine wrote a few substantive pieces about a possible move of NGA from Saint Louis; however, he opined NGA would stay in Saint Louis. Beneath the avalanche of mindless fluff that occurred beneath Wolverine’s byline, substantive work did appear. For example, Wolverine seemed to have plenty of good information about Putin’s doing. From Putin’s adventures, he distilled a hagiography of Putin.
From talks with Snarlson, who was still wearing bowties that stop circulation to a man’s brain, I can testify that Snarlson and Donald Trump, two ready friends of Truth, insisted that Wolverine was writing the true news about what a swell guy Putin was and is. They even welcomed a a salacious story about Donald’s alleged evening with urinating hookers. Snarlson argued this alleged Trumpian pee-pee party was a grotesque exaggeration of the liberal press. Besides, a man as rich as Donald Trump would, if the fake news about this evening were true, have been pissing on the whores, not vice versa, as odious purveyors of fake news pretended.
In Wolverine’s Moscow Times columns, he went so far as to quote nameless Russian security experts. According to them, “They had no records of the alleged events at a Moscow Hotel room located at . . .. Further, if the events occurred, perhaps they happened between 22.00 and . . . hours, etc., etc., etc.” Wolverine touted his sources’ reports as an exoneration of Donald. With Wolverine’s columns in hand, Snarlson hit the air snarling. He screamed sundry evildoers were conspiring to humiliate Trump. And why? “Because they hate America.” Thus spake Snarlson!
When had the chance, I asked Melania if she believed these Moscow stories. She began laughing with so much fury I feared she was going to have a cardiac arrest. And I never did get an answer from her. Whenever I asked, she would laugh and laugh and laugh. She seemed to have, at best, guarded confidence in Donald’s fidelity.
One evening when I asked, after a fit of laughter, she pointed at a photograph of Donald (the Penthouse brimmed with them). Then she blurted out, “Does that look like the face of a pervert?” Then she began to cackle hysterically. Earlier that evening, she had told me she had no idea Donald had a pee phobia. She snicked as she told me she learned of it from Snarlson reassuring the public on Fox.
It did begin to dawn on me that Operation Gobble had more to it than the gaining control of national secrets held by the Army or the NGA, just as the one Holy Apostolic Church is about more than its material holdings.
Operation Gobble extended far beyond the accumulation of software materiel and software to win battles, or intelligence necessary to make better weapons and software. Like the Church, Operation Gobble aimed to obtain loving allegiance and control over minds. And unlike the Church, Operation Gobble had no intention of making the grave error of ceasing to burn witches. Neither Lord Cali nor Peregrine Blonde-Body planned to coddle apostates.
As a journalist, I often must rely on intuition. I sensed a connexion between the unknown scheme of Wolverine and Peregrine and what I had I learnt about the Russians chez Melania. Then there was a novel taste of Peregrine powering my intuitions. He had evolved an intense curiosity about the armed forces of all countries that he nourished by reading Janes Journals. Peregrine devoured new issues of “Janes Defence Weekly” and “Janes Intelligence Report.”
Once he revved up my curiosity when he chuckled that you can’t make a decent bomb unless you know what you want to blow up with it. He added that you also need to know, as NGA does, where the stuff you plan to blow up is. By Contrast, Wolverine had a keen curiosity about anything that promised a fat profit, not just arms. When Skyping with Wolverine, I also noticed that more than once I had caught him reading Army Field Manuals on CBRNE, Intelligence, Combat Engineering, and driving military vehicles, a far cry from his Etonian taste for Catullus, Suetonius, or Petronius. Wolverine never tired of reading about the scandals of the classical world, but there are pitifully few scandals in an Army Field Manual. Peregrine, I heard, littered his office with military manuals and doctrine.
I suppose the world should be glad Peregrine had military interests; otherwise, he would have spent a career filling his office with naked secretaries and boys. If not for a career at Munitions Galore, I’m certain he would have devoted his life to making and marketing porn. Perhaps bombs and missiles were his sublimation. Evidence? Peregrine never missed a chance to sell his bombs and missiles by having leering half-naked women straddling them. Given the sales, the adverts worked.
Anyway, my reporter’s intuition told me something was up. And how did I get the idea of a visit to Melania? Had Wolverine hypnotized me? I could think of no other plausible explanation. With his smooth, bedroom voice and piercing eyes, Wolverine was a mesmerist supreme.
Also, could it be a mere coincidence that was after the first visit to Melania, I heard mention of Operation Gobble. I then had no idea of how Operation Gobble pulled seemingly unconnected threads together.
I was glad when mike returned to St Robert with Fielding and the boys. Later I felt mad when I discovered via Roberta that mike, even before interrogating me, had dialed iSALUTE to report his sighting of Wolverine in uniform. A counterintelligence agent investigated and determined that a soldier named Constantine Law was TDY from Fort Bragg. His documents were immaculate, though the agent agreed that, based on a photo mike showed him, he could have passed for an identical twin of Wolverine. There was no surprise about the quality of the paperwork, as Wolverine insisted on meticulous work from his blackmailed victims. He got it too.
But that’s a different story. The day after he left, I sneaked out of the flat to catch a flight to NYC. Any cat with his salt knows how to play the stowaway game. In a few hours in NYC. I got to Trump Towers dressed to the nines. I wore in my midnight-blue silk suit and was wearing a midnight blue Borsalino homburg. After wending my way to the Trump’s penthouse, I gave the door a kick. As a butler opened the door, in I went.
Butlers and other riffraff are among the obstacles faced by an industrious cat seeking entry into a richlings home. This butler tried to throw me out. Faced with this emergency, I began to squall with all my might. Soon a faint patter of feet came my way. Voila. To check the butler’s assault I slashed him and presented myself to Melania’s gaze. She smiled and dismissed the brutal butler. Good riddance to the brute!
Now you must keep in mind that a cat’s seduction of a human woman is a study in indirection. Most of the so-called great seducers—Casanova, Don Juan, Cyrano, Wilt Chamberlain, Warren Beatty—would have done well to have made themselves understudies to a cat like me, the Love Machine. You must learn how to work a woman. Never make your move too early. You must wait. Good women will start to make a fuss over you. Move away from your target. You must move away. A woman disrespects and easy conquest. She’ll tend to follow you about the room or hold her hand out for you to sniff as if you’re a dog, an infuriating gesture. Don’t fall for it. Preserve your dignity. Keep a distance. Finding a chair or davenport to hide under is perfect.
The odds are your women will start talking in motherese. Let her. Time is now your friend. Make her wait. In fact, the more smashing her looks, the longer you should make her wait. Beautiful women like Melania expect men to come at them faster than a hungry cowboy to the chuckwagon. Confound their expectation. You must feed your woman’s insecurities.
Once you have the woman approaching complete exasperation, make your move. I recommend you start by rubbing your head on her outstretched hand. Pretend to be wary but allow her to pick you up after a decent interval of pets to your head. You own her now. You can now also learn something that always astonishes amateurs. No matter a woman’s politics, women are suckers for kitty faces. You have a purr. Use it! Your woman may be a radical feminist with Gloria Steinem posters marring her walls. She may have a history of filing sexual harassment complaints against incompetent men. If you know your game, it never matters. If Donald, to take a pathetic example, had been home, Melania would have banished him if he began to paw her chest or sniff her lap. I, though, simply began to make biscuits on her chest. She was oozing her delight in seconds, as she had fantasies of having won me over. I sniffed about her lap. She murmured what a sweet boy I was and asked if I would like something to eat. And why not? I was soon munching on tartar of tuna whipped up for me by her cook at Melania’s command.
After my lunch, I let her enjoy more lap time, then we retired to her comfy bed for a nap. She stripped without shame to sleep with me. Once again, match point for the Love Machine.
Once she fell asleep, I hopped down, read any correspondence lying about, and checked her computer. Oh, the things I was learning. Some of it was tricky as it was in Slovenian, a language I barely knew.
What I most wanted to learn about was Trump’s Russian connection. To me, I viewed her as an unlikely chum of Putin. It’s not as if the Yugoslavia she was born in had an affection for Russia. Besides, I couldn’t believe she’d think a womanizer like her hubby DT could resist honeypot traps the Russian CBP (SVR) would set for him. Throughout his life, DT has let his little head do the thinking for the big head. Anyway, getting to know lonely Melania was going to be worth my time. How I loved her cook.
It’s too bad that my visits put my remaining good eye at risk. Somebody once described the Trump penthouse as what you’d get if you gave Louis XIV’s architects too much crack before setting them to work. I concur.
To spare my eyes, I wore sunglasses there as often as possible. Journalists must steel themselves to the necessities of their work.
A few days after talking to Wolverine, mike, Fielding, and the boys came to visit. Quine, acting like total peckerwood, ran about the houses like a lunatic. He has a gift for getting on my last nerve. Even worse, mike started to interrogate me. He had seen Wolverine on base in a LTC uniform with an 82nd Airborne patch, a CIB, paratrooper badge, and a few other medals and badges. As mike saw it, he should have had Wolverine picked up by the MPs. Wolverine’s fraudulent presentation offended mike.
He asked me what I knew about Wolverine’s “scam.” I feigned a headache, but mike still didn’t shut up. I tried walking away. Alas, mike pursued me. For a while, I stayed as silent as Mr Ed when in the presence of Wilbur’s wife. That got me nowhere. With no good lies at hand, I simply professed my ignorance. Why can’t mike get it into his skull that my brain is not a holding tank for Wolverine’s secrets? Once he wearied of interrogating me, he went off to bother Roberta and the other cats. He and Bart got along famously. Fielding adored him too, believing that in the role of a conductor, he had got her a ride to Missouri.
Bart ratted on me immediately. She ratted to mike that I had Skyped with Wolverine and she could tell from his sinister cackles that he was up to no good. If I weren’t so afraid of her, I might have killed her that day. Sooner or later, mike would turn that fink info against me.
So, I decided to keep a low profile with mike, doing my best to suck up to him at every opportunity. Sometimes, you must pump up a servant’s ego.
I then recognized an opportunity. If you may recall, Don Trump had started an onanistic campaign to be the Big Cheese of the USA. Chaucer, of course, knew Trump. Chaucer shared DT’s love of others. Oh, how they loved swapping revenge stories. Mind you, Trump has never been my kind of guy.
First off, he doesn’t eat enough tuna. If you have money, you should eat tuna, lox, and pork tenderloin. Second, he was giving loud talks on illegal aliens in the south. I cry, “Bravo Sierra!” I knew from my experience at the Battle of Martinez Creek that the menace to our country is coming from the north. We need to do something to keep the furry, snow-back killers from the north out. Who cares about a bunch of people coming from the south whose idea of a good job is a Hormel Plant?
Let’s admit, if only in hindsight, that DT had the wrong illegals in his sights. I grant that it is easier, given US History, to get Americans terrified of short meso-Americans than cute, sharped-toothed, furry killers. And don’t even get me started on our country’s coyote infestation. Who’s doing anything about that?
Nevertheless, DT’s fantasies of life in the White House put me at an advantage. I decided I had to get to know Melania better. She looked lonely and bored. “Perfect,” I thought. I look great in a tux. I need more rich female friends. Trump Towers here I come.
I want to mention that one of the glories of the US is the kindness of almost all Americans to a well-dressed cat. As always, there are wicked exceptions. Who can watch a Tweety Bird cartoon without noticing that the premiss of this sad effort at humour could only have come from a diseased mind? Do you not feel for Sylvester as he struggles to put that sassy, scheming bird in its place? Of course, we all knew the cat-hater that controlled the cartoon would never let that happen. Almost all Americans are better than that. Hence I knew that once I got to Trump Towers, Melania would be mere putty in my paws.
One cool, clear morning, I sat in my flat gazing through a panel of glass tracking cars and light trucks coming and going in the parking lot below my balcony. I like car watching but wondered why I saw so few expensive rides. Where were the Escalades, the S-class Mercedes Benzes, the Land Rovers, the Jaguars? It was something to think about. Had Roberta moved us into a tenement?
Feeling tense, I retreated to my kitchen. When I want to relax, I go to my water bowl to drink clean, cold water, especially if no catnip’s at hand. I always encourage Roberta to drop ice cubes in my water before she goes out to earn money for me. It’s among my lifelong habits.
As I peered into my bowl as a prelude to my drinking, I shuddered as a saw an image of Chaucer’s sneering face on the surface of the water. The bowl spoke. “Fear not, vassal. Before I died, I promised you a haunting. You will never escape my voice in your grubby world. I have news for you. Beware of Mr Wolverine Lawless!”
The image disappeared at those words. What might the ghost of Chaucer mean? Chaucer had encounters with Wolverine when they both had coinciding visits to Windsor Castle or Balmoral. I knew the Queen Mother thought Chaucer was a real dear and even felt love for him (so he told me), perhaps in the grip of the false belief that Chaucer was gay. Chaucer wasn’t gay, but would, I grant, do just about anything for a large enough stack of money. Being gay was also an irresistible quality to the Queen Mother. It was almost as good as being a fat aesthete. Chaucer liked pleasing royalty. If you aim for a baronetcy, you got to be pleasing to top-tier royalty.
What, though, would lead Chaucer to warn me about Wolverine? In fact, I doubted Chaucer meant it as a warning. He preferred to put fresh fears in my head. And what was Wolverine capable of? Well, let’s be honest, just about anything and everything. He loves money more than Chaucer did if that’s possible.
Not long after Chaucer’s revenant’s visitation, Wolverine Skyped me. Well-tailored as always when not frolicking in the woods or rutting with somebody, Wolverine told me he had sensed a crack in the world’s moral space and an urge to telephone to me. He took off his cocke hat, lit a Sherman, and continued. “Don’t imagine all I do is throw parties for perverts. Parties and videos are the fertilizers of my trade. They are paying dividends. Did you know that I have obtained a Top Secret SCI clearance from the Army?” Of course, I didn’t know that until he told me. I learnt he had even finagled himself into having HRP (Human Reliability Program) status. Even I shuddered at the idea of Wolverine with access to nukes.
Wolverine bragged these clearances and tickets were fruits of his soirees. “No matter what it is or where it is, somebody somewhere had the god keys to the objects of my desire. It’s just a matter of getting the keyholder to use the keys,” remarked Wolverine. I gathered as he elaborated that he had clearances both as a contractor and as an Army intelligence officer. “I only put myself up as a lieutenant colonel (LTC) intelligence officer working with the 82nd Airborne as a G-2 for my CAC.* Fort Leonard Wood is a training site, so it’s unremarkable for me to be there. LTCs stationed at Leonard Wood might get noticed, but I trusted my status as a visitor would keep me invisible when I went in for my CAC and various badges. I repeated the process when a different soldier was doing the work of creating the cards to obtain my civilian card. It’s child’s play once you have cowed marks with the god keys who are too scared to decline to do your bidding.” Wolverine had an immense toothy smile as he conveyed gloating descriptions of his just-picked fruits. As I already knew, nobody, not even I, should trifle with Wolverine. More were learning that lesson.
He surprised me by making no demands of me that day. I did wonder about his larger goals whilst also considering how it was possible, given the soirees he liked, that Wolverine had escaped the clutches of HIV. I keep Chaucer’s “Beware” alert in my head. Still, I wished Chaucer’s ghost had stayed put in San Antonio.
- editor’s note: CAC = Common Access Card
Webster Groves, as an inner and prosperous, suburb of Saint Louis, had plenty to recommend it. For example, the coppers could stop you without you having to fear for your life even if you were a criminal. In Ferguson, where Roberta worked, cops refused to make a habit of coddling criminals. I admit I had to adjust my brain to the Webster Groves methods of law enforcement. Chaucer had taught me his view of law and order: Better that a thousand innocent people get the lash than 1 guilty man go free. In his glosses on punishment, Chaucer hastened to add that these severe strictures had no application to cats. By nature, cats are law abiders. Chaucer also had no patience with imaginary offenses like a cat attacking a human being. If a cat attacked a human being, he no doubt had had his good reasons.
Hence, gentle reader, you can imagine how gobsmacked I was about the rioting malcontents in Ferguson. A copper by the name of Wilson shot dead a sassy, swaggering thief on a Ferguson street. According to a store owner, Brown, a self-described “gentle giant,” had taken five-finger discounts on items in the shop owner’s store. Being a giant, Brown displayed enough menace to terrify the shop owner. Now, following Chaucer, I do put a lot of the blame on that shop owner. Chaucer always insisted that everybody has a duty to arm himself to protect his holdings. Chaucer lauded the idea of self-help justice. “Don’t waste time calling for lazy coppers,” he’d cry. “Do it yourself justice is best.” Of course, nowadays goody-goods try to pretend that defending your holdings is a crime. Chaucer’s ghost howls with indignation whenever even a whisper of that lefty claptrap reaches his mind. I can hear him shaking his ghost chains.
If I learnt anything from the meltdown in Ferguson, I learnt that when somebody robs you, do yourself a favour. Shoot the motherfizzucker before he gets off your property. If you don’t, you’ll be sorry. Bart and Fielding were for once in total agreement with my Chaucerian doctrine. In fact, Bart and I began to hold weekly claw-sharpening circles when Roberta was a work. “If somebody robs our house,” Bart chuckles, “he’ll wish he had sneaked into the home of Hannibal Lecter instead.”
Despite our family’s adherence to Chaucer’s views on law and order, when we, at last, moved into a house on Chestnut Street, we adored the local star entertainer, “Mr Squirrel,” (aka St Louie Squirrel and Louie). Louie’s flagrant raids on Roberta’s tomato plants and lettuce patch delighted us. When Fielding and the boys came for a visit, they couldn’t watch enough of Louie either. As time passed, we observed St Louie Squirrel grow fatter and fatter. We marveled that his chubby legs still carried him away too fast for Roberta to catch him. Bart took his escapes as more evidence that Chaucer’s calls for owners of anything to arm themselves got matters right. A Ruger 10-22 would even the game between Roberta and Mr Squirrel. Still, we kitties liked to watch Louie steal tomatoes and then relax on the backyard deck to eat his loot. It was as if Jesse James lived! He was though an inordinately fat Jesse.
During my first year in Webster, I began to work on getting myself connected to the city’s rich and famous. The Saint Louis Opera Theatre was perfect for that. Opera as you know attracts masses of rich snobs with a taste for stories emphasizing love, adultery, and murder. If you know the costs of season tickets to an opera house, you know it also is high enough to keep the number of poor people present to a minimum. You get your share of wannabe rich college students and art history graduates working as ushers, but praise the gods, most of the people in an opera house have enough money to make them worth a cat’s attention. And what cat can resist women in evening gowns or men in tuxes?
Wolverine and Peregrine approved of my opera attendance, as did Lord Caligula. Only his mistresses know how many hours his Lordship spent in Covent Gardens at the Royal Opera House. His Lordship touted good opera as better than rhino horn as an aphrodisiac. Also, Wolverine’s appearance at several of the Operas came as no surprise to me. I’d see him in the company of executives from Boeing Defense, Space, and Security or World Wide Technology in tow, as well as his usual diet of NGA officers, politicos, and General officers. Occasionally I’d get invited to parties that made what I saw in Waynesville look like dinner at a Trappist monastery. Wolverine held these soirees of unrestrained depravity at the Jesuit-owned Hotel Ignacio. “Always go with the Jesuits if you can. These smart boys are the playboys of the Church. The order has had centuries to learn how to hold secrets tight.” If you saw what went on in those rooms when Wolverine arranged the parties, the SJs better hold secrets tight. The Ignacio also had a level of luxury that Wolverine and Peregrine’s clientele expected. Rank, as they say, has its privileges.
I am distracted by the stories flooding the news on the leak of Justice Alito’s decision that, if the unlovable Alito keeps his support, will overturn Roe. With my abortion rights at risk, I spoke to Bart about obtaining an abortion. She called me an idiot, as did Fielding. “You’re not preggo, Crocky. And, being a Tom, you’re not ever going to get knocked up.” I protested that she was making a prediction. She is no seer. Who knows what the future holds? And why couldn’t I take that pill to get a sense of what an abortion, if I ever become pregnant, would be like? Bart and Fielding rolled their eyes. “Our education system has failed him,” they chimed. But I had read radical feminist papers on the future happy day when men could carry to term. Anything and everything are possible. If not in the past, then now. If not now, then in the future. If not in the future, then in the timelessness of kitty heaven.”
Still, Tony Alito’s draft bothered me. I diskliked it, even though Tony is a dear friend. I couldn’t help wondering how many guys would wind up involuntary fathers if he had his way. Maybe “involuntary” is the wrong word since most guys plunge with alacrity into coitus without women forcing them, but “nonvoluntary” must count as the truth about unaborted kids. It wouldn’t be so bad if a child’s paternity was beyond proof. Alas, Watson and Crick’s discovery of the double helix ruined that. Man-haters got together in no time to develop reliable paternity tests based on the DNA of putative fathers. Denials of fatherhood have become impossible to pull off. And the result? Cis-women shaking down guys to pay for the rearing of their bastard sons and daughters. My friend Tony had concocted a recipe for conscripting men into public fatherhood. I weep to consider what Tony’s mad ideas would do to a struggling guy’s pocketbook. Tony had created the premise for the best argument ever developed for boys running with Trans-, rather than Cis, girls. Of course, in the heat of the moment, guys are wont to forget the risks of dating fecund Cis-women. Tony ignored all of that in his opinion. Instead, he would allow the dragooning of women into motherhood and in the future would do the same to pregnant men. He may not think about these deep topics, but I do.
As I explained my deep thinking to Bart, her fury mounted. She got so incensed she again beat me up. “Where do you get these insane ideas? What have they to do with cats? Have you ever met a trans- Tom or Molly? Cats are all Cis-gender and will always be Cis. You’re thinking about this like a human, you imbecile? When I invited her to entertain the idea that trans- Mollies and Toms are so convincing in their look that they are indistinguishable from Cis-gendered kitties, Fielding beat me up.” Neither she nor Bart ever had patience with philosophers.
I did think there was an irony in Tony’s thinking. Tony told me he never thought a mother or father had a duty to donate so much as a pint of blood to save their own flesh and blood. He had never argued for forcing a parent to donate a kidney to save a dying child. It was only if the child was literally a parasite in the womb that Tony wanted to keep the mother and child union intact. Anyway, I began to think this opinion could only have been written under the direction of Tony’s latest crush, her Majesty Amy. Trust me. He will deny it. Tony always preferred a woman that could carry no cargo or was setting sail with full ballast. He had made occasional exceptions for his wife. Nobody knows if Tony will succeed in imposing his view of abortion on Americans. Can he keep a 5-4 majority? He does not have such a gift for friendship that I would bet my life on it. At least I’ve now unburdened myself to you, gentle reader, and am ready to talk about living in Webster Groves.
As I made my way back home and thought about Wolverine’s wants, none of what he wanted was surprising. He had passed me a folder with photographs of attendees at his soiree. The photographs included names, brief bios, and pertinent career information. The photos included high-ranking military officers, senior defense contractors, intelligence officers, especially from the NGA, and politicians. He asked me to guard the folders like a precious secret. He added he might have ideas in the future for stories on these folks. The public might, he conjectured, one day like to know the kind of parties its bigwigs attended. Wolverine could barely conceal his delight at having so many people enrolled in his book of eligibles to blackmail.
Despite the bar soiree having so much business-chat built into it, Wolverine, Tucker, and I had a good visit. Tucker still had occasional moments where he was not in the grip of right-think dogmatisms. I still preferred his company to a feminist coven. Tucker had yet to conclude that the Clintons and their minions were pedophiles running a kiddy prostitution operation out of a pizza parlour in downtown DC. His refreshing skepticism about some looney hypotheses back then made him easier to talk to and snarled less. He was still wearing, as I’ve mentioned, bow ties. I liked it. He sometimes reminded me of George Will.
If you spent half hours with Tucker, you did have to endure his boring sermons on how other people should live, but he was sometimes hilarious, often without knowing it. Wolverine, Tucker, and I all got to know each other better that evening. After all, there are limits to how well you get to know somebody from online chess or chatting on Skype. For example, I had no idea that Wolverine had known Chaucer. They had first met as guests at Windsor Castle. Some of the royals, perhaps the Queen Mother, could not get enough of them. Wolverine also loosened up after a few Campari. At his inebriated best, Wolverine was a delightful raconteur.
When I, at last, got back home, I made a surreptitious entry. Once in, I rounded a corner to head into the kitchen. Rather than the scent of tuna, I felt a bolt of pain shooting into my head. Bart sucker-punched me as I rounded the corner. I took a right paw and then left to the nose. She carried on about her eunuch (that would be me) daring to come home stinking of amaretto and cream. She calmed herself by beating me up, then evicted me from the kitchen without tuna. I imagined I had escaped to a happier place. I was wrong. Fielding beat me up as soon as I entered the living room. She resented me going for a ramble without her. If she enjoyed anything in the world, it was a good walkabout. I escaped her clutches, but I didn’t get to a happier place until I crawled into the bottom of my bed. In the bed, I set myself up at Roberta’s feet. Her body’s heat warmed me. She muttered I was a good kitty and fell back to sleep. Tell me you’re not jealous of my having a servant like that. If anything is admirable in a servant, it is gullibility. She never figured out I had been out. Perhaps mike didn’t notice either, but I suspect he didn’t care one way or the other.
When I woke up in the morning, I discovered irritating news. Roberta had no prospects of a job at Fort Leonard Wood that paid the vast sum she viewed herself as worth. As I think I’ve mentioned, she had set herself up with an associate dean’s gig in Saint Louis. She had decided to let a flat in Webster Groves until she knew Saint Louis and its environs well enough to buy a house. Then I heard more news worth knowing. She was going to take Bart and me with her. Fielding and my boys would stay in Saint Robert with mike. They would travel with mike on weekends to visit us. I was unsure whether I liked this arrangement. I hated the impertinence of my servants making these decisions with my input. And why wouldn’t be mad. First off, Fielding and the kids would be living in a much larger place than I would be. That seemed clearly wrong. Second, neither Roberta nor mike knew how long the arrangement would last. Time would tell. I was sure, too, that neither Chicago nor Quine would approve of weekly travel. Quine in particular detested car trips. Look at the picture above. You an see what a nervous Nelly he is.
You now have the gist of what I know of Wolverine’s background. I have omitted an unsavory story or two. For example, Peregrine once told me that when Wolverine was short on cash, he would bash persons making a withdrawal at a cashpoint. Peregrine challenged this habit to no avail. Wolverine made it a question of safety. “Don’t worry. I won’t get caught. A whack from my walking stick knocks my mark cold. Concussions cause a minute or two of amnesia of the events before the blow. Marks never remember my looks. Also, I only rob from the working class. If you start robbing women or the rich, bobbies will actually try to catch you. This is safe.” Peregrine had to admit Wolverine never got caught. Besides, if you knew the markups Peregrine attached to his bombs and missiles, you’d also know he is the last person on earth to lecture anybody on robbery. Mind you, all sales by Munitions Galore had a fat profit, not just Peregrine’s ordnance.
Early on in Wolverine’s journalism career, he also learnt that a journalist had easy roads to additional revenue. He started using some of his juicier stories as opportunities for blackmail. Blackmail was lucrative enough to turn escalating habit. His blackmailing supplemented his income. The extra cash was also easy to hide from Constance. Further, working for a tabloid guaranteed a stream of stories that no target would want to read about in the paper. Wolverine was gleeful whenever he talked, by way of illustration, about Prince Charles efforts to suppress stories about his desire to be one of Camilla’s tampons.
To get even more money, Wolverine reviewed wines. He would only publish favourable reviews if he got an untraceable complimentary case of any well-reviewed wine. Since Wolverine did not drink bad wine, his reviews were factually honest. He just never published a favourable review without a bribe. His negative reviews, which became legendary, seemed to establish his honesty and taste. After a few years of reviewing, Wolverine had an enviable cellar for so young a gentleman.
Be all that as it may, Wolverine was now in Missouri. He had invited me to join him and Snarlson for drinks. Because Wolverine seemed an unlikely gentleman to have a holiday in Missouri, I wondered out loud why he was where mike had come to work. According to Wolverine, he too was working. He had come to Missouri to write a series of reports on the US Army and its training for the Moscow Times. He also mentioned, in a feat of free association, that National Geo-Spatial Intelligence Agency (NGA) had a large presence 2 hours away in Saint Louis.
My bravo-sierra detector went into overdrive at that news. The badly dressed owners of the Moscow Times might pay for travel and offer modest fees for articles on the Army and NGA, perhaps with help from Putin, but Wolverine was not somebody to leave London to hang out in Missouri for a small fee. Wolverine adored large fees. I detected the secret hand of Peregrine Blonde-Bomb at work. He could make the Moscow commission a small tip to his larger finder’s fees.
From mike, I knew that Fort Leonard Wood offered fresh Army recruits Basic Combat Training. The Fort also had units that trained all branches of the armed forces in driving military vehicles and trained Combat Engineers and Sappers. The Army also trained all military specialists in CBRNE (chemical, biological, radiation, nuclear, and explosives) at Fort Leonard Wood. My budding skills as a journalist told me that it was inconceivable Wolverine was just in Missouri’s Ozarks to write for the Moscow Times and to get sozzled with Snarlson. Peregrine would have a keen desire to know about the doings of NGA and the training of the soldiers that, for example, responded to CBRNE attacks. Peregrine also had the money to make a stay away from London worth a stint in Missouri’s Ozarks. The Moscow gig was a perfect cover for Wolverine’s unmentioned role as an intelligence operative. Then, too, Wolverine liked the Ozarks. He felt at home as he stripped to run in his bare fur through the Ozarks, swim in its abundant waters, and climb trees in its vast, tall forests. He would return to his city clothes and habits refreshed after romps in the Ozark’s lush woods. It reminded him of a warmer version of Michigan’s northern forests that had made his father rich.
As already mentioned, Constance Lawless pressed Wolverine to do more than study at Eton. Contacts matter. A young wolverine must prove himself to be more than grind. Wolverine fell into the spirit of the place, but, to his mother’s consternation, never made any headway seducing beaks or clergy. Not even the desperate measure of joining the choir, a renowned nest of paederasts and budding homosexualists did him any good. He did meet one boy with excellent credentials: Peregrine Blonde-Bomb. Peregrine got his name after his dad Lord Caligula got a hatcheck girl at a London gambling den pregnant. His lordship tried to excuse himself, claiming he thought the girl was a boy. By the time he realized his error, he was too far along to care. Caligula’s solicitor tidied up the sequelae of the evening after a palimony suit. Part of the suit was that the boy’s last named be “Blonde-Bomb.” Blondes and bombs, according to Caligula, as two of the world’s treasures. When it came to money, bombs and newspapers had done well by Lord Caligula, but blondes, alas, had been a steady, albeit tolerable drain, on his income.
When the time came for Wolverine to leave Eton, like his friend Peregrine, he scoffed at the idea of heading to Oxford to suffer for four years reading “Greats.” Cambridge was most unappetizing. So, Wolverine talked his special friend, Peregrine, into getting him an interview with his father for a job at a London tabloid. At the interview, Lord Caligula liked what he saw. There sat Wolverine in a bespoke suit, coke hat, and a walking stick. The stick was of polished ebony, tipped with silver, and had a large wolverine’s head as its handle. Lord Caligula asked about it. Wolverine volunteered that as a gentleman he must never succumb to the temptation to bite or claw a foe. Like a true gentleman, Wolverine fought his enemies by beating them insensate with his walking stick.
Lord Caligula marveled at Wolverine’s breeding, but could also he write. After Wolverine responded to prompts with shameless, ribald stories about beaks, bishops, various ministers, and other public figures without any discernible concern for their truth, Lord Caligula knew he had the makings of a top-drawer Fleet Street journalist before him. The only question was how little he could be paid. Instead, Caligula said, “You’ll do. We’ll talk money later.”
Wolverine felt a surge of pleasure. He pictured sharing a flat with Peregrine. Surely, Peregrine would also earn money as a journalist. When he mentioned sharing digs with Peregrine explained it was a no-go. He would not work as a journalist. Papa was installing him as a manager at Munitions Galore, one of Lord Caligula’s most profitable businesses. “I’m going to put you in the Bomb R&D department. Think your name: Mr Blonde-Bomb. You’ll have instant credibility in the trade. Besides, you’re too honest for journalism or overseeing one of my Blond Bomb Gentlemen’s Clubs. You lack the criminal training to do a proper job.”
Now, gentle reader, let me say that Lord Caligula, in my view, got Wolverine about right, but he underestimated Peregrine. No level of sneaky criminality was beyond him. Still, his Lordship had a point. Why risk detection from a mistake by an amateur criminal? Lord Caligula had so many shell companies that nobody had any idea he owned the Blond Bomb Clubs. And why would they? In his role as a Lord, he offered the public incessant speeches on the sanctity of life, the indispensability of capital punishment, God’s Love, the dignity of work, and the need for parents to remember Salomon when chastising a child. His Lordship was also a staunch critic of all perversions, and often railed against the “infestation of London by homosexuals.” It was becoming impossible for decent men to walk down a London street without being lured from decency. Perhaps his House of Lords’ speeches are best understood in relation to two questions he put to Wolverine during the interview. “Do you attend church?” Wolverine replied, “Surely you know that at Eton chapel is mandatory.” “Good news,” cried his Lordship. He then asked, “Do you believe in the almighty?” Wolverine didn’t lose a beat. “Don’t be ridiculous. Of course not. But . . . it is appearances that matter.” At this point, Lord Caligula’s heart melted. He stroked Wolverine’s snout while murmuring, “What a smart, lovely boy you are.” Wolverine, if he knew anything, it was what humbug was and so did his Lordship.
Once Wolverine had his job, he telephoned his mummy. It had been a couple of years since her last personal visit to him. She had stopped by Eton during one of her routine trips to London to shop. She’d have stopped more often, but her trips took her to places several miles from Eton. Her time was valuable. On this trip, he come to see if I had followed her instructions on shoes. When she saw the pair Wolverine was wearing, a frown flitted across her face. She observed that Wolverine had had Szabo, her Hungarian cobbler, made his shoes, but she disapproved of the style. Wolverine would never go anywhere sporting Baby Janes. When Wolverine began to talk about their comfort, she cut him short, telling him that she was not asking him to dress like an Italian in pointy shoes. He could wear the male equivalent of Betty Janes, the Chelsea boot. She added that it would be unseemly for him to go to dinner parties in any stiletto heels that Szabo might have made him. And he was ordered not to wear mules when shopping either. “I am not,” hissed Constance, “a shoe model for you. It goes without saying that your bare pawed father is no model either.”
Anyway, when Constance picked up to phone and Wolverine told him of Lord Caligula’s offer to hire him, his mother surrendered to orgasmic happiness. ‘Oh, thank the gods. Your father and I did not squander are money in sending you to Eton.” She agreed that Lord Caligula would be mean with his salary. She promised Wolverine a modest allowance from his father. When Wolverine wondered if his father would go along, being so cheap and all, Constance turned fierce. “He’ll do what I tell him to do, or I’ll flog him dead. Disobey me? Whom do you imagine he is?” Now I do have to admit I have pieced all this material together from a liar’s testimony. Nevertheless, I know it to be true that Wolverine began to write. He also began his “Lawless Roaming” column. It was very popular, perhaps because it ran next to pictures of naked women in his tabloid. Peregrine also started at Munitions Galore and showed an aptitude for weapons research. He enjoyed watching bombs destroy things at the range but was never happier than when watching footage from war zones of burning, screaming men emerging from a just exploded tank. Sailors jumping into the water from an exploding ship were also a good look. “Oh, how I love my work,” he’d cluck, ”my bombs and missiles work.”
So, how did I meet Wolverine? Chess. Wolverine and I liked online chess. I had a quality that endeared me to him. I always lost. Snarlson played too. I also always lost to him, but Snarlson won as many games as he lost against Wolverine. Wolverine complained that Snarlson practiced too much. “Tucker has no spirit of the true amateur in him. I know he practices. He refuses to let raw talent speak for itself.” “Snarlson,” Wolverine conjected, “would think better about politics if he thought more about it rather than practice chess.”
Wolverine and I began having conversations via Skype. Even without meeting him cat-to-badger, during Skype chats he gave me his bio. The rest I got by hunting copies of his thrice-weekly column, “Lawless Roaming.” The column was a bit like reading a crueler, less truthful version of Auberon “Bron” Waugh’s writing. Wolverine’s enemies spread a rumor that Evelyn Waugh was his biological father. If you have heard anything about the morals of Constance Lawless, Wolverine’s mummy, the rumor about EW’s paternity verges on incontestable if she ever did meet Waugh.
Wolverine grew up in Michigan peninsula near the US/Canada line. Wolverine’s putative father, Rapacious Lawless, had vast holdings that he had attained from logging, drug-running and cruelty to beavers. Rapacious hired beavers rather than ordinary loggers. He worked them like galley slaves. Beware to any grumblers, unionists, crybeavers, eggheads, pensioners, or unproductive or loafing beavers. Any troublesome beaver was headed to a milliner in preparation for years on a hat rack. Rapacious believed with all his heart that it was a crime against wealth to coddle beavers or any other employee. It was a belief that made him rich.
Wolverine’s rich parents bought his way into Eton. They noticed the boy had a gift for languages. From an early age, he learnt fluent wolverine, beaver, badger, cat, English, and other language. The polyglot Wolverine arrived at Eton. His mother Constance hoped his time at Eton would make him more presentable. For example, Rapacious, educated in the woods, moved about naked on all fours. That was fine on the Michigan panhandle, but Constance Lawless wanted a gentleman son. Eton made Wolverine bipedal, taught him how to dress in a myriad of correct styles, imposed Latin and Greek on him, made his manners elegant, his accent posh, and familiarized him with le vice anglais and the Sodomite predilections of English richlings and their teachers. He made the mistake of speaking out against sodomy to his mum. It earned him a dirty look. “Tsk, tsk,” she said, “I dare say Octavius Caesar would have ended a nobody had he been a prissy prude like you. If I’ve flourished doing it—just look at my bright eyes and bushy tail–there’s not a reason on earth that you can’t too.” Wolverine knew better than to defy Constance. He promised to do better in the future. It never hurt his career on the English side of the Great Pond. It got his column “Lawless Roaming” jump-started when he left Eton. It also got him introduced to all the rich buggers that run the world of journalism. (to be continued)*
*I’m pleased to announce that my blog has undoubtedly been the proximate cause of MP Parish’s decision to give up his seat as a backbencher.
Before I turn to my first meeting with Snarlson and Wolverine in Waynesville, let’s let a current event distract me. Only last night, I was talking to mike about MP Neil Parish. Despite his reputable, confidence-inspiring last name, Parish has made a scandal. Several female backbenchers observed him—nobody has yet said for how long the women observed—as he sat enrapture by porn on his sneeze-stained laptop in chambers. Immediately, I knew Parish had not attended Eton or Harrow. Any Etonian, for example, would have the brains to minimize the chance of prying, unpaid, female eyes seeing porn with him. An Etonian would retire to a toilet stall, a time-honored destination for the sexually desperate when away from home. Parish, a dropout from an agriculture high school, lacked the brains and breed to seek a stall. To his credit, Parish at 65 and still keen. His wife, in the best British tradition, pretended to be nonplused by it all. She quipped that if women started holding la porn habit against a husband, the English institution of marriage would lose all viability.
Anyway, mike asked me to find out more. I knew this type of story is Wolverine meat as a journalist. I rang him. When he picked up, I asked, “Parish. What do you know?” You could hear Wolverine’s grin even across a transatlantic telephone line or whatever carried the signal. “Ah, yes, the MP porn-gazer.” I demanded details. “What kind of porn?” After many years on Fleet Street, Wolverine knew how to answer. He harrumphed, “I cannot confirm that it was tranny porn nor can I deny it.” I pressed him for what he was implying Wolverine’s education at Eton and Balliol had immunized him against the perverted behavior of perverts. Instead answering me, Wolverine began to talk about the decline of Parliament. “What a gang of weak-wristed wankers are running this country. A mere 60 or so years ago, you had Profumo chasing a nineteen-year-old model whose paramours included a soviet intelligence officer. Back then, no self-respecting MP settled for photographs of naked anything. They went out and got themselves the real deal. Like Roman politicos, they adored a good rut at an orgy. Now we have become a nation of wankers. Parish is a mere symptom.” He then mentioned that in the 60s there weren’t any women finks scurrying about the chamber playing gotcha with the likes of Parish. Wolverine then did a brief riff from the blue on our friend Snarlson. Our masculinity-obsessed boy, Snarlson took a lot of vacations to Nana Plaza in Bangkok*, but that was before he discovered the new Red Light Therapy. When I asked what he meant, Wolverine sighed. “ It’s all a sign of the times.” He added, “Don’t you recall the first time you met him in Waynesville.”
So, we are back to where I had planned to start. How it came to pass that Wolverine Lawless, Tucker Snarlson, and I met for the first time in a Waynesville bar.
*Nobody knows if Snarlson ever vacationed in Thailand, let alone frequented, the ladyboy-dominated Nana Plaza. Wolverine was not a journalist to let Truth interfere with a yummy story. Besides, he told me this. He was careful about what lies he put into print.
How was the trip from San Antonio to Fort Leonard Wood? Let me be honest. I don’t know. I slept for most of it. I’d wake up from time to time to note our progress. The cars, Millie & Juan, moved north until we reached Oklahoma City. After a night in a motel east of Oklahoma City, we got up early and then had a day of more driving and long naps. Once out of Oklahoma, we entered southwest Missouri. It wasn’t much. I could see why Mother Earth hates it and Oklahoma so much that she made a habit of dropping tornadoes on the land.
When we got to Saint Robert, mike got us to the house he had rented from the Swindling Housewives of Saint Roberts, a group of women with a guy boss whose business was feeding on soldiers coming to Fort Leonard Wood. The house wasn’t as bad as I expected. It was large with a huge partially finished basement that had a view of the garden, a large patch of grass with a fire pit that sloped away from the house until it dropped into woods. The top floor had lots of room. Bart, Fielding, Quine, Chicago, and I made ourselves at home. After a couple of days, Yellow Knight’s truck arrived. A new ensemble of squires commanded it.
They carried the furniture into our new place. It was a challenge for them. They had managed to mangle a lot of it but reassembling put them to a test of devilish complexity. They failed. Roberta had to show them how to put the bed back together. As the squire charged with reassembly looked on, stupefied by the bed’s unfathomable geometry, without comprehension.
Roberta called Yellow Knight to complain about the quality of the move and the addition of various never mentioned charges. Yellow Knight, with his uncanny ability to detect an incoming complaint, dodged Roberta’s calls for almost a week. When she reached him at least, he took full advantage of the fact that he was in Texas and she was in Missouri. Once again I saw that the best way to avoid losing a fight is to stay as far (literally) as you can from it. Yellow Knight understood this. Don’t cheat people staying in town. Cheat people who are at a safe distance from you.
Roberta thought she had a job lined up at a Fort Leonard Wood Clinic. They offered her a pay packet that would have embarrassed Ebenezer Scrooge to put on the table. Voila. Roberta lined up an associate nursing dean’s gig in Saint Louis, a couple of hundred miles down the road that paid well. She took a flat in Webster Groves, whilst mike took on the habit of weekly visits to Saint Louis form Saint Robert, a grubby town beyond the gates of Fort Leonard Wood, but adjacent to Waynesville, yet another grubby town, but one that had a perfect bar in its favor. The Lost Cat Tavern was a secret watering hole of my friend Wolverine Lawless and his buddy Tucker Snarlson. Tucker liked to sneak away for long binges. He’d get drunk drinking Campari, sometimes Dubonnet. Keep in mind that Snarlson was still wearing bow ties back then. Wolverine stuck to whisky or triple gin martinis with a side of pickled herring. I drink in moderation and tend to stick to Amaretto and cream cocktails, though Wolverine would sometimes treat me to a White Russian. But why would a guy like Wolverine be drinking in Waynesville? And why did he have a passion for Michigan athletics?
Why Missouri? You may recall a bit of advice from Vonnegut in Cat’s Cradle. Commit this to memory: “Peculiar travel suggestions are dancing lessons from god.” God put this suggestion in mike’s head by getting him hired to work as a boss-man psychologist at Fort Leonard Wood (aka Fort Lost in the Woods). My beloved servant mike would no longer be at the bottom of the psychologist heap. Instead, he would have risen to the lofty equivalent of Staff Sergeant for psychologists. He was so proud.
When anybody starts a climb to the top, moves happen. So, mike hired a pack of thieving movers, The Yellow Knight Moving Company. In time, mike learnt the Yellow Knight feared complaints more than a deer fears headlights, but with one difference. If the Yellow Knight suspected complaints, he did not freeze. He ran.
Yellow Knight’s squires arrived to load the trailer 4 days after Chaucey got folded into his grave. Roberta didn’t trust them. She jailed me, Bart, Fielding, Quine, and Chicago in an empty restroom. She shut the door and put a sign on it that read “CATS. DO NOT OPEN. USE HALL BATHROOM” in English and Spanish. Anybody wanting to have a pee or what-have-you had to use the other toilet. Perhaps with a team of over-educated squires, the sign would have worked. These squires looked to have spent more time in tattoo parlors than schools.
It was just a matter of time. One of the squires opened the door, freeing us. We all skedaddled. Everybody but Bart headed to my old bedroom that Roberta had, without my permission, made into a nursery. Bart took a different route. Out of the house like bat out of hell she went. Roberta, almost as fast, locked us into the now unfurnished nursery. By the time she rushed out the front door, Bart had vanished. When mike told me about it, he said anybody, including the squires, could see the steam coming out of her ears. I should have told her that with illiterates it is better to rely on pictures rather than words. I could also hear from the nursery her saying some not very kind stuff to the squires. The prescient Yellow Knight could not be reached.
The longer Bart was invisible, the more murderously angry Roberta got. The squires stayed clear of her too. When they finally had packed out the house, they got their truck started and rolling to Missouri. These squirers may have had profound dyslexia in Spanish and English, but they were smarter than to dare mention a tip to Roberta. That’s why they are all still alive.
Now picture it. There we were. The house was empty. The next thing was drive to Fort Leonard Wood. Fielding’s fate was in the balance. In theory, she was still the responsibility of her across the street neighbor. That neighbor kept assuring that cats should decide for themselves where to live. When asked if Fielding was going to Missouri, he said, “Yes.” Fielding was grateful ever after. On Fielding’s tale about it, mike was the conduct of the bus. He, not Roberta, had given her a ticket to ride.
Roberta felt good for Fielding, but she was obsessing about Bart. Roberta announced she would stay in San Antonio until she found Bart. Bart heard that. She felt so guilty she came out. She may have preferred to stay in the Barrio, but if Roberta loved her that much, as Bart told me, “You must reward that kind of love in a servant.” We were all tucked into the two cars: Millie and Juan. Millie was Roberta’s white Chrysler 300 and Juan was mike’s burgundy Mercury Marquis. Juan insisted that mike put on a cabbie’s hat whenever he drove him. The cars fired up. The Northeast journey had begun.
I must mention the sadness that gnawed my heart as I felt as I prepared to leave. Walt, my rescuer at Martinez Creek, refused an offer from mike to come to Missouri with us. Walt had befriended mike and they respected each other. When asked why he was staying in Texas rather then come to Missouri, Walt explained his rolling-stone lifestyle wasn’t suited for living with servants. Walt asked for one last favor. “Feed me a last bowl of my favorite vittles on the porch. It will be my last supper with you., a sign of our everlasting friendship.” And so it happened. And so it was. We love you, Walt.
My letting Fielding and Bart bar me from seeing my own sons, from having access to my own beloved room did not sit well with old-school Toms in the ‘hood when the word got out. I suspected Bart was the fink. Even though many of these same Toms shrank in the presence of Bart or Fielding, they sneered at me for my strategy of Metta. Everybody knew I was a Love Machine, not a fighter. Why the blame? Instead of tolerance, the local Toms told jokes comparing me to Varys that sneaky eunuch in Game of Thrones. On the upside, I was an indoor cat with bodyguards. Let these cruel Toms tell their jokes. I was untouchable, save by Bart or Fielding.
And you must also remember the time. Science had not discovered the secret of jump-starting a chap’s masculinity. Fresh discoveries are a hope to many guys. Within the last month, I was watching Tucker Snarlson. (aka Carlson). He noticed all the trouble in the world because of low-T men. If only guys would start tanning their scrotums with Red Light, they could become manly men with irresistible (to het women & gay men) bronzed scrota with puffy, baked. juicy rejuvenated testicles within them. It was a red-light miracle that, unlike traditional red-light treatments, carried no risk of VD. The treatment obviously worked. Just look at Snarlson. Back when Bart and Fielding bullied me, Snarlson would up on TV shows wearing fruity bow ties. Red light cured him. He had moved to masculine ties and ceased to have any embarrassment about being racist, misogynist, homophobic, transphobic, or demophobic. You can almost picture him in his bedroom, his bronzed scrota dazzling after a red-light session, as he prepared to have at it with his wife or a smaller catamite if his wife was unavailable. What an inspiring picture in my mind’s eye!
Then it occurred to me. Guys like Varys and me, or Jake in Hemmingway’s The Sun Also Rises, had no hope of benefiting from any form of Red Light Therapy. Fate had left us with empty sacks for scrota. Without bakeable testicles, the treatment would fail. We would stay as wimpy as ever, no matter how much red light we got. We’d keep wanting a collection of bow ties. We would have to develop our inner woman. We would need to rely not on testosterone but on an adaptation to our fate. Castrati must evolve crafty, female-like brains to make it in. the world. If you can’t (literally) beat them. Join them. Snarlson’s advice was a dead end.
And so, by dumb luck, and without the aid of science, I turned out to have hit upon the right method to advance myself: Acceptance. Let malicious maligner joke and sneer, I was marching forward. I had also learnt the whole family was moving to Missouri.
Fielding had landed. As you see and as so often happens, calling “Police” proves a bad idea. The evildoers escape and the victims become your wards. Roberta turned my beloved room into a nursery where Fielding, Quine, and Chicago lounged. Worse was yet to come. When I tried to visit my sons, Bart and Fielding blocked me. They told me as a matter of policy, Toms were persona non grata until further notice. I reminded them I was the father and the Love Machine. Bart swatted my nose in way of reply. It hurt. Keep in mind I had no idea how long the bully hoydens planned to block me. I complained to ailing Chaucey. He yawned, then observed that he (a) was too tired to deal with the problem and (b) I had cried “Police,” and that choice created the problem. If I had shown restraint, perhaps Roberta would never have got it in her mind to invite anybody in. She’d have been digging holes in the backyard. I authored my own misery.
As pater-familias-in-waiting I despaired. Fielding and Bart had begun to create a matriarchy in my future realm. My complaints crashed as fast as they left my mouth. Roberta did nothing. When I went to mike, he started a sermon on the Myth of Patriarchy. Women have always called the shot, he said. Part of their art is a genius for rhetoric that made it look as if guys run the show. But who decides when to wean us, when to toilet train us, when to spank us, what we wear, what we eat, what our chores and honey-does are, where the kids get schooled, how to decorate the house, what we do on weekends, and whether to take birth control (as many a conscripted father discovers)? And all of them have an appealing out. They can go the way of Sappho, which mike viewed as the thinking woman’s choice. Sapphists don’t hate men. They have fathers and brothers and men friends. They know we have a role as congenial friends and, in a pinch, sperm donors, but they’re not much as husbands. They’ve down their homework. They know what pigs men are. And if a woman tries to clean up all of a pig’s dirt, she’ll have endless work. She’ll have an early trip to a graveyard. Many women have this life. Their hormones doomed them. In fact, if you study who the men haters are, talk to a het, divorced woman in her 40s. But that’s all theoretical, he told me. I had to figure out how to proceed in the now. What a boon to me living next to a Zen Center was. I’d listened to their services (lots of loud chants to a beat) through a bedroom window. How to live with my now crisis, the Buddhists had the answer: Acceptance. So, I accepted it. Time works as a friend if you’re patient. Sooner or later, Bart and Fielding would get bored with protecting the kitties. I could then become a daddy. Acceptance works better than resistance. Resistance to Bart and Field would have amounted to suicide. Violence was their lives’ seasoning. Anyway, I heard mike’s subtext. To win, I had to become crafty, had to become, like Odysseus, a master tactician.
Fielding Grey (aka Fielding & Tank) once lived in a home across the street from the Zen Center. She had planned an indoor life of modest luxury. Her servant betrayed her. After a year of nothing but kindness to her servant, this servant one day locked Fielding out of the house. Fielding wailed to assert her right of entry, but her anguished pleas fell on deaf ears. When the servant came out to explain her treachery, she claimed her son’s asthma had gotten worse and worse from Fielding living in the house. A doctor told her the boy should not live in a house full of cat hair and dander. Fielding felt rage at this doctor. What kind of medicine man was he? Had he never heard of Advair, of Flonase, of Zyrtec? Why criminalize something as natural as cat hair when medical science has answers on the book to the sequelae of exposure in wimps? After Fielding later heard that mike was allergic to cat hair and took Advair, Flonase, and Zyrtec to live in peaceful co-existence with Chaucer, Bart, and me, her resentment grew. By then, though, she had moved in with us all.
Survival for a dispossessed cat is never easy. Fielding’s traitor servant, probably out of Catholic guilt, continued to put food out to feed her. The traitor encouraged Fielding to go on rat patrol to supplement her diet. You already know from the story of the Battle of Martinez Creek that Fielding liked killing. Martinez Creek was already habitat for a full range of murderous undesirables; for example, raccoons, rattlers, and hawks degraded the neighborhood. Fielding saw no reason to put up with sneaky rats as well. Besides, rat kills kept her razor sharp.
But Fielding also knew she was too pretty–a sleek, grey, emerald-eyed beauty–to have to live outdoors. She launched her campaign to return to indoor life. The first step was easy. She began to come over to my house’s porch. She’d wait till Roberta had set herself down on a bench on the porch, then would start a charm offensive. Fielding figured out fast that Roberta liked it when Fielding would charge her fist if she held it out. Roberta demonstrated the technique to mike. He’d make a fist, then stretch out his arm, and then fielding would charge the fist. She’d purr as she rubbed against it. The other method for home entry was unsubtle. Fielding would charge into the house whenever mike opened the door. He would grab her and return her to the great outdoors that she detested, but he was proving a hard sell. She wasn’t gaining entry. Even worse, Chaucer was all against her. He had enough subjects to bully already. He also slandered her whenever he could
What Chaucer had never counted on was Fielding’s sex appeal. Living outdoors is not a friend of abstinence. It soon became obvious that Fielding was knocked up. She told Roberta that I was the father. Bart called that story a slut’s lie. I admit it. I didn’t remember good times with pretty Fielding, but I figured my wounds at Martinez Creek had caused a touch of amnesia. I was so focused on the bad times; I forgot the good times. What’s more, I liked the idea of being a father. I would be in line, once Chaucey croaked, of being a pater familias. Kids would prove I wasn’t always like that chap Varys in The Game of Thrones. I was no Varys. I had used my manhood before Roberta turned me over to the castratrix.
Pregnant cats have kittens. So it was with Fielding. Roberta set up a birthing center on my house’s front porch. It was a wood box with a single entry and a New-Mexico-style flat roof that was covered in fleece. Fielding delivered four kittens. Two soon found homes. The treacherous servant claimed the right to the pick of the litter. Her daughter came and collected one as did another. Fielding believed it a scandal. Why had the daughter not offered to take her in? The other two Toms got named. The runt of the litter mike named Quine, an homage, I suppose, to the Harvard logician and philosopher. Quine looked like you probably imagined Fielding did as a baby. The other was a chap with white rear paws and a large, ascot-shaped white patch on his upper chest. The rear white paws got mike thinking about the Chicago White Sox. Bam! The kitty had a name: Chicago.
Despite the kitties, Fielding and her Toms stayed out living in the birthing center. Then it happened. One afternoon, Bart and I were talking to Fielding through the screen door to the porch, emphasizing how good we had it. Suddenly, we heard a sound. Before my horrified eyes, two huge killer K-9s rushed onto the porch. Fielding retreated into the birthing center. Its door was a defensible position, provided the killers didn’t knock the roof off its foundation. A battle started. The filthy dogs shoved their hideous maws into the door, Fielding, ever a warrior, stood fast, slashing without remorse at these devouring K-9 snouts. Fielding was showing her mettle. She neither asked for no quarter nor was giving any. She was braver and tougher than a Spartan. Bart and I began to scream, “Police! Police!” Roberta heard us. She shot through the door faster than the Flash. When the door opened, Bart and I did the right thing. We fled deeper into the house, though I could still see Roberta. It was beautiful. She showed her rural Tennessee roots, as she began to kick the crap out of the demonic, murderous dogs. They scurried away howling “foul” louder than Trump after he blew the 2020 election. Roberta then verified the health of Fielding, Quine, and Chicago. She also noted with pleasure Fielding’s blood-stained claws. Fielding’s valor equaled her and her brood’s admission ticket into the house. Bart frowned. Roberta gave them my entry room, which I viewed as sacred, the sanctum of sanctums. Of course Fielding and sons liked their new digs.
Behemoth had already arranged a Mercedes-Benz bus. A pretty girl with a nasty purple scar about her neck sat in the driver’s seat. As Lucky clambered into the bus, a fellow named Korovyev was doing card tricks for the pretty girl. He called her Hella. I heard him telling Hella that, for a taste of her left nipple, he was willing to do 5 card tricks. Hella told to go fuck himself.
What a mistake Hella’s command was. In an augenblick, the inventive Korovyev created the illusion of him fucking himself. His illusion sang Russian folk tunes as it gave itself a fucking. From the top of my bag, I noticed Hella was grinning and leering at the sight of Korovyev’s conjured member. That faux penis was longer and thicker than a baby’s arm. Hella’s mouth was watering.
Lucky had the good sense to get me back to a staider, comfy portion of the bus. Behemoth and Walt were sitting at a card table where they were encouraging us to join them for a game of Hearts.
Walt assured me it was an honest game. Korovyev was excluded. When he played, he shot the moon every hand. Neither Walt nor Behemoth was willing to grant that Krovyev was lucky at Hearts. They suspected him of cheating. Don’t play cards with a conjureman.
Before I could agree on stakes, Lucky intervened. “Crocky isn’t allowed to gamble. He can’t control himself. So, I forbid it.” Behemoth listened to her as he poured himself a yard of Belvedere vodka. Behemoth sneered that it was “unseemly” for a cat to take orders.
Lucky chimed in that Behemoth should think of me as a Love Machine, not a cat. I wished she hadn’t said that.
“Well, he looks like a neutered cat to me,” replied Behemoth. Everybody at the table got a good laugh out of that. I could feel a sulk coming over me, along with a vague idea that life would be easier in diapers. Before I could retreat with my wounded ego, Walt got me to sit next to him.
Since he was still lapping up beer, Walt’s tongue had loosened. He was drinking Paulaner Salvator Doppelbock. According to Walt, life in San Antonio got boring after his victory at Martinez Creek. To many of the Toms got soft from bedding down with Molls. Family life was not for Walt.
Anyway, not long after my work in Somalia, Behemoth and Woland showed in San Antonio. Azazello was with them. They described their rage at punk Somali pirates seizing ships owned by Woland that carried more drugs than a Spanish galleon of yore. Behemoth gave Walt a tirade on how worthless the American and the Brits had become on pirates. “Nobody wants to hang pirates anymore. The Brits used to string scores of them up on the yardarms of British Man-of-Wars. Now they negotiate. Gag me” As he said that, Behemoth slammed his bottle of vodka down so hard that he broke it. Walt confessed he was amused when Behemoth mopped up the vodka with his own tale and proceeded to suck the vodka out of it.
Woland and Azazello then had made a simple pitch to Walt. “We know you, Walt. Our sources tell us that you’re a natural killer. We’re recruiting soldiers- or, if you prefer, sailors-of-fortune willing to treat pirates like pirates. We can’t have Somali amateurs stealing drugs from us and then having the chutzpah to try to extort ransom for the drugs from us. Tell us you will join our campaign of deterrence to start hanging these mother-fizzuckers.”
Walt lapped up more beer. According to Walt, at first he didn’t feel a strong pull to hang Somalis, but then Woland got down to talking about Walts fees and incentives. He promised Walt that he was free to torture the Somalis any way he chose during interrogations. Further, he would receive 20% of any drug inventory on any reclaimed ship. Even better, he would receive a $10,000 bonus, payable to Swiss accounts in gold bouillon, for every hanged pirate. Once Walt stopped the piracy, he would receive a subsidy for life, also payable in bouillon, to run a People’s Republic on the Coast of Somalia, provided all Somali boys were gelded at birth as a measure to prevent the development of criminal friendly traits like muscles.
After agreeing on terms, Walt told me he made himself a rich man. Alas, he found that living in Somalia didn’t agree with him. bHe fixed tat by promoting his ablest Lieutenant, Kitty Niger Bravo, to terrorise the Somalis out of returning to piracy. It turned out it was easier to suppress piracy than Woland or Azazello imagined. The key, said Walt, was refusing to be squeamish about hanging or enslaving the wives, children, and extended families of pirates. Then, too, the longstanding kitty judicial principle that it is better that 1,000 innocents hang than one criminal escape his just desserts made suppression easier to achieve and maintain. Of course Niger Bravo’s habit of shooting troublemakers from the UN, Oxfam, Amnesty International, and other foreign snivellers was creating tensions, but, as Walt put it, “True leaders must be firm with crybabies.”
“But why,” I asked, “are we headed to Lithuania?”
Walt stared into my green eyes. “There is a fight coming, Crocky, a fight that will have more excitement in it than sex with a thousand and one Molls. I want to be there. Life’s not all about money.”
As I listened, I didn’t have the heart to tell Walt I’d been earning extra Krugerrand writing more stories for L’Afrique Aujourd’hui and other African mags touting Putin as the saviour of Africa. I had just written a story on the latest scourge in Somalia, Great Leader Niger Bravo. I didn’t have to make up many lies about P’s rottenness. The Puti is a mega-monster. If you want him to look bad, just tell the truth. I did have to tell one whopper after another to continue the pretence that Putin is a friend of Africans rising up from their precolonial, colonial, and postcolonial history. Like most of the world, African countries didn’t need to have colonialists to be run by crews of stinkers. Letting the locals run anything can always equal or better the catastrophic works of colonialists.
I did decided against telling Walt thatPutin was still paying me for the hagiographical stories I was writing on him. What embarrassed me is that Puti is so vain he believes the bullshit I write about him. And it’s a miracle that I can write this nonsense without getting drunk to do it.
I was processing Walt’s Out of Africa story when I heard a scream and a ruckus at the front of the bus. Caution is the best policy when in doubt! Discretion is the better part of valour! I hopped back into Lucky’s bag. I survive because I am never afraid to flee.
Lucky, though, was headed in the wrong direction, she was headed to the front fo the bus with a Walther in hand. Peering over the top of Lucky’s bag, I could see Korovyev bleeding from his chest Hella soon spit a wad of titty-flesh onto the bus’s floor.
Hella wailed that Korovyev tasted disgusting. “I bit off a piece of his hairy titty. It’s as nasty as almost anything I’ve ever put in my mouth. Blame him. A man should know better than to conjure himself fucking himself in front of a succubi. For god’s sake, succubi live on a diet is sperm. I’m starving. Based on the taste of his titty, I bet his cock’s a poisonous hose.”
Lucky was sympathetic. “Do you want me to shoot him dead for you?”
Hella didn’t hesitate, telling Lucky, “Don’t be ridiculous. If I wanted him dead, I’d kill him myself. I’ll just want the other succubi about how bad he tastes. He is one evil tasting seducer.” In the meantime, Korovyev did the smart thing. He had made himself invisible. He was plainly a man with plenty of experience when it came to knowing what to do after wearing his welcomes thin.
Once Luck got back to me, she scratched my head. I learnt from her that Hella would never kill Korovyev or ask to have him killed. Behemoth and Woland make to much money off Korovyev’s magic to make killing him okay.
“Then why did you offer to kill him?” My curious mind wanted to know.
With total disbelief, Lucky stared at me. She then said, “Haven’t you noticed I’m Chinese? It’s a Confucian etiquette thing. I had a duty to offer and she had a duty to refuse.”
When I shook my head, she got mad. She hissed, “A cat dares to lecture anybody on killing anything over nothing. At least when I kill somebody, I don’t play with his remains or leave a headless body for my boss to find.”
She then turned to disassembling and cleaning her PPQ. When I started to crawl out of her bag, she suggested I make myself useful and figure out how to escape from this gang.
Before I’d solved that puzzle, we stopped at a rest area. A running lorry was parked there. Hella strolled from our bus. She walked straight into a men’s room. In 10 minutes, she returned. After apologizing for the delay, she mentioned she no longer felt hungry. The facilities, she said, had a men’s room with a unneeded glory hole and two obliging gents.
Looking a wee tousled, she brushed her hair. I noticed her ears looked the worse for wear. Lucky shushed me before I could share my thoughts. Hella must have guessed what I was thinking, blowing me a kiss and then saying, “Sweetie, I’m not the kind of girl to let boys, even the biggest boys, to use my head and tell on me.” She pulled the bus away from the rest area. Then I faced a new puzzle. Nobody other than Hella had ever left the men’s room. The lorry was running but unoccupied.
My face scrunched. Lucky was smiling, “And now, darling, you begin to perceive what a dangerous mob we’re travelling with. You can stop looking at the lorry. The cops will eventually tow it. Its drivers are a permanently indisposed.”
Once solicitors got charges against Peregrine dropped, he left Holland. Peregrine zoomed me, how he got my number at Claridge’s is anybody’s guess. He complained that Lord Caligula was sending him to Kiel to the Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein, the top hospital in Kiel. Constance’s bill had already been settled by his Lordship. Not wanting a lot of questions, his Lordship also made the hospital a large donation in Constance’s name. Peregrine’s fear was the mood Constance would be in.
To confuse prying eyes, Peregrine told me he had to fly into Copenhagen. A driver would fetch him from the aeroport and take him to Kiel. A second driver would fetch them from the hospital in Kiel to drive him and Constance to Berlin. He was to take them to the Hotel Adlon. Lord Caligula would meet them there.
His Lordship had reserved the Berlin Suite for Constance. Peregrine also learnt, he told me, that the Adlon’s Linden Suite was reserved for him and Wolverine. When Peregrine mentioned the Linden Suite had only 1 King bed, Peregrine told me that his Lordship exploded, screaming, “You two fairies spent what 5 years buggering each other at Eton, and now you pretend to have wholesome preferences. Pretend for the week you’re Etonians again. I’ll have lube placed in the suite for you.” When Peregrine explained that he and Wolverine were bisexual, his Lordship got further incensed. “Bisexual? What rubbish. I know you boys for what you are. A pair of Trisexuals is more like it. You’ll try anything sexual, eh? You two are as deviantly indiscriminate as anybody ever graduated from an English public school. Do you want me to hire an Etonian beak for the week to flog your naked bottoms? Will that warm you up? Stop complaining. You and Wolverine will share that suite.”
By now, Peregrine was in tears. I suggested he just let another room in addition to the suite. He went sour. “Would you deprive me of my friend Wolverine’s companionship? He is so fun and cuddly.” I knew it was time to give up. The Zoom call ended.
I wondered whether to tell Lucky. She had gone to Reading to take photos of the Munitions Galore’s charred buildings. Lucky adored this genre of photograph. The woman took pride in her work.
During a break from watching cartoons, I switched the telly to BBC news.
Eureka! There was Lord Caligula being asked about the fire at Munitions Galore. Without losing a beat, his Lordship said, “In the last days, God foretells that bad things happen. This, though, isn’t much of a bad thing. I am no fool. I carry insurance for calamities like this. Talk to my insurance brokers and Lloyds. They’re crying in their goblets of gold. I’m at last getting money from my policies.”
It’s hard to fault his logic. Let fools like mike say that the best liability policies are the ones you never need to use. If I spend my money on insurance, I want something more than a promise to pay if this or that happens. I want a cash return, a lovely Krugerrand or two.
About the time, the clocks started chiming 6, Lucky swept back into our suite. She was wearing, black capris with her feet stuffed into a pair of red hightop converse sneakers. she had on a pale green silk shirt, over it was was wearing a black jacket with a dragon in red, green and gold on each sleeve. The jacket had a beautiful full-colour tiger on the back.
I noticed on closer inspection that the jacket had an interior pocket with one of her Walters in it. The jacket’s exterior pockets had her police Spyderco and a mace dispenser in them. She had dropped a bag with an old, treasured Pentax camera and almost certainly another Walter in it. Then she pulled me over to the couch. She opened her laptop and before I knew it she had transferred photos of the the ruins in Redding to the laptop from her iPhone. “Look, darling, isn’t it all glorious?” She was so happy in vengeance that I didn’t have the heart to tell her Lord Caligula was well insured. Instead, I mentioned I most enjoyed looking at photographs with good food.
In a jiffy, she had me one of those scrumptious haddock omelets with mornay sauce sent up. When I ripped the omelet open, the haddock was delightfully flaky. I heard her murmur “Darling, you look so content when you eat well. I could just eat you up.”
Frankly, I’d rather she not go that far. I already had to be careful that I didn’t get myself too sauced with mornay. If I did, I was risked a bath.
It must have been close to 9 PM when the phone rang. Lucky seemed weary. She flipped the speakerphone on. Bam. I recognised the voice of Wiredu.
I heard this words, “Miss Ming, I thought yo might like to know that Constance Lawless, Lord Caligula, one of his bastards, a chap called Peregrine, and Constance’s boy Wolverine Lawless have checked into the Hotel Adlon in Berlin. Don’t worry. They no longer have pictures of Hitler in the lobby. It’s safe for an asian girl to visit. I thought you’d like to know.” I heard the click.
Lucky looked at me. “That was the creep Wiredu’s voice, wasn’t it, darling?” I nodded. She continued, “The chickenshit wants me to do his work for him.”
Now of course I wondered how much Lucky knew about Wiredu. Lucky was even better connected than Fielding. But the real question was why his Lordship’s gang was in Berlin. Linden avenue where the Aldon is was an area not took far from Friedrichstrasse, where Berlin’s Puppenjunge once loitered. If you walk out of the Aldon to go east on Unter den Linden, you’ll run into Friedrichstrasse. If you head north on Friedrichstrasse, you’d reach the Bahnhof. Train stations are always havens for punk trade.
Ad you ou can bet your life that there is not a Paedophile Polar Bear alive that hasn’t read Puppenjunge, a book translated by the paederast John Henry Mackay as The Hustler.
Of course, the hustling boys in Puppenjunge are too old for polar bear tastes, but they still can’t get enough of the book. I’ve never met a Paedophile Polar Bear who had not worn out several copies of The Hustler.
Paedophile Polar Bears are also mad for the work of Christopher Isherwood, and I’ve yet to meet one who hasn’t see Cabaret a few hundred time, or extolled the genius of J M Barrie, the eccentric, asexual bore who wrote Peter Pan and, even worse, The Boy Castaways of Black Lake Island. But the bears are so keen Barry, but not as keen as they are Mackay or Isherwood.
So, I began to suspect the bears had something to do with Lord Caligula’s visit to Berlin. Perhaps Lucky did too. She wasted no time booking us the Penthouse Suite at Das Stue. Once she had the suite booked, she smiled, telling me, “You’ll love it, darling. I’ll order their fresh eels for you. Don’t worry, I’ll slice them up small for you. If you want, I’ll get you some sturgeon too. This chic hotel will put us near the Zoo and away from the spies near the Brandenburg Gate.”
There was no escaping. I was on my way to Berlin, a city with a history of setting the standard not for low morals but for no morals. It is a new Babylon. And it was going Babylon even before Weimar decadence and all queer Nazis that smoothed Adolf’s climb to power. I think the Brown Shirts were cut from the same cloth as the hairy Proud Boys. These are all the type of guys at home in leather bars.
On the evening of the morning I met Wiredu, Lord Caligula appeared on the TV of the suite Lucky was renting at Le place d’armes. The suite was a study in beigey colours. I was on the corner of the bed when I saw the news coverage of Lord Caligula’s speechk. Lucky was on the bed, naked, but busy running a bore snake though her Walter PPQ-M2. She had the other parts on a copy of Le Monde and was using CLP to put the pistol in order. She had already cleaned the slide and mechanism.
I could hear her racking the gun once she reassembled it, which made it harder for me to hear what Lord Caligula was saying. Nevertheless, I got his message. It was the typical Munitions Galore rubbish. Nobody wanted peace more than the employees and owners of Munitions Galore. But there was something new. He was “devastated” by this afternoon’s kidnapping of Constance Lawless in Luxembourg City.
Now that got Lucky’s attention. According to his Lordship, “Ms Lawless, true to her American spirit, did not go without a fight.” More details emerged. For instance, could her abductors have anticipated her using a steak knife that she had inadvertently taken from the restaurant where she had just eaten to disarm and disembowel one of the kidnappers? She then used that man’s gun, if one is willing to believe witnesses who are not English seriously, to put a bullet into the brain of another kidnapper. At that point, a tall black man is said to have put her into tranquility with a drugged dart. He was very dark, wore a blue suit, yellow shirt, and a well-polished pair of Chelsea boots. So far, the Luxembourg coppers had made no progress with case.
Lord Caligula added that the sneaky dart man had left a card saying “In the name of the people of Africa, I arrest Constance Lawless for crimes against humanitiy committed during her recent visit to Africa.”
Puffing himself up, his Lordship, with tears pour down his ruddy cheeks, blubbered, “Ms Lawless, the soul of kindness and mercy, had gone to Lagos to investigate the apparent murder of our dear friend and business associate Mr Binky Dalrymple. She hoped to investigate and rescue him if he still lived and help find his killers if not. She had discovered that it was Mr Dalrymple’s beloved identical twin, not Binky, who was murdered. There are gangs on gangs of rascals in Nigeria. From what Ms Lawless told me, a number of people who ought to know better had arrived to tamper with evidence or perhaps loot the Dalrymple plantation.”
Behind me, I saw Lucky, still naked, pointing her Walther at the TV whilst sighting the gun on the image of Lord Caligula.” She was muttering, “Oh, if only. . .”
His Lordship continued with a plea and a promise of a reward for the safe return of Ms Lawless. He lamented that, as the world turned from observing God’s commandments, the circumstances in England and abroad had continued to deteriorate, but who would have imagined that Luxembourg would be sink of evil. When somebody as sweet as Constance Lawless is unsafe in Luxembourg, you know we’re in the last days.
Lucky pulled me onto her bare tummy. My head rested between her unample breasts. As she scratched my head, she told me, “We have plenty to do. Let’s go to England and pay Reading another visit.” After that, she made few phone calls. We had a flight to Heathrow, a reservation of a suite at Claridge’s, and some of Lucky’s helpers coming to pack us out. I was miffed by all this activity. So, I gave her right taunt, smooth, hairless buttock a strong wack of the paw. She smacked me lightly back, saying “You’re being a little devil, darling. You drew a little blood at my crack.” It made her grin. She then cleaned her wound and shoved a Kleenex on it until she had stanched the bleeding. The snapping of the left buttock to the right buttock held the Kleenex in place; ah, the advantages of being young and fit. I was proud of myself. I had revealed my claws.