The truck had a nice ride.  I even found a comfy seat to take over.  Lucky didn’t mind.  She spent her time chatting in Mandarin to one of the rescuers.  

An hour or so later, the truck stopped.  A door opened.  Lucky hopped out and so did I.  What luck I have.  I recognised the street.  We were in Vienna.  Roberta and mike still owned a townhouse there.  By an act of divine jujitsu, I had landed in that neighbourhood.  The Chinese safe house, or so I construed it, was near Curzon CT.  If you know Vienna, the the neighbourhood is an easy walk to or from the Vienna stop on the Orange line.  It is also near 66 going into town.  But from the Chinese perspective it had an indispensable feature: A superb high school within walking distance.

On the way into the safe house, a pair of clods dropped a trunk of guns.  It was my signal to skedaddle.  Up a short hill, I hit a biking trail just off Earls Court.  Into it I went.  Efforts to lure me back to the dangers of Lucky’s company failed.  I had had enough for the moment.  Fine vittles ain’t everything.

I took a long counterintuitive trot on the trail.  My vigilance was at its peak.  When I got to Vienna station, I caught a train.  When it reached Rosslyn, I sneaked off and caught the Blue Line to National.  From National, I stowed away on a flight to Saint Louis.  Easy-peasy.  I then went to my Webster Groves holding.

Before going home, I watched Polgar’s boys play some chess.  

Why would I do that?  I suspected I had a beating in my future from Fielding and Bart.  Would you rush to that fate?

I know my wifeys.  When I got in, Fielding was the first to notice.  “Lookee, Bart.  Behold, the wayfaring stranger has returned to mooch.”  Bart rounded a corner.  When she saw me standing by Roberta’s Noguchi table,  she picked up speed.  She had a gleam in her eyes when she clobbered me.  I fell to the floor.  Fielding had at me too.  Since I long ago learnt the futility of resistance, I waited until they had punched themselves out.  When no further blows rained down on me, I went upstairs to my queen-sized bed.  

As you might have expected, lots was happening that I only got the lowdown on later.  For example,  Lucy got to the Chinese embassy in disguise by driving a delivery truck into it.  She must have learnt the bot she swiped was fit for reverse engineering.  In the role of a diplomatic courier, I heard she went to Shanghai.  Once in Shanghai, she booked a flight to Vilnius.  

Wolverine range me a few days after I got back to Saint Louis to tell me he and his mum were at Claridge’s in London.  Since it was a Zoom call, I noticed that Peregrine was sitting in the suite drinking tea whilst Wolverine and I caught up.  I also saw Constance, either nude or half-naked, wander in and out.  

If I understood Wolverine, secret buyers were miffed about rumours that somebody had stolen one of his Mr Clean bots.  Further, and worse, many intelligence analysts believed Munitions Galore ha something to do with the bombing and Ice-10 frozen corpses in Lithuania.  

Meanwhile, Lord Caligula gave speeches in the House of Lords decrying the murders in Lithuania and the loss of a moral compass that kept people from buying or selling weapons of mass destruction.  When a fellow Lord referred to Munitions Galore as a Merchant of Death that trafficked in loathsome, antihuman weapon, Lord Caligula jeered at him, and then promised the House that  God punished men guilty of such calumnies.  

Perhaps God does.  When the sharp tongued Lord got to his country home that evening, an unknown assailant beat him near lifeless, and left a rolled  transcript of the battered moralist’s speech before the Lords stuffed like an old stogy in his bleeding mouth.  

The next day, tears in his eyes, Lord Caligula spoke a jeremiad against the plague of violence swamping England.  “Why only last night, a fellow Lord was beat insensate in his own house.  We must stop these attacks.”  Then his Lordship began a tirade against the immigration.  What a sad day it is when a lax government permits aliens to ravage defenseless Englishmen in their homes.  Not satisfied, his Lordship blamed her Majesty’s government for preventing real Christian Englishmen from arm themselves.  Concealed carry for the rich is a national necessity!

I had to listen to this Caligulan rubbish because mike read it to me from a e-subscription to the Telegraph he had.  Given mike’s tone, I felt mocked for my friendship with his Lordship.  To mike’s annoyance, Fielding, Bart, and Quine meowed their approval of Lord Caligula.  It was about time, they chimed, that a politician had the sense to recognise the alien menace.  Chicago, being a jock, pleaded he was above politics.  

Back in London, Wolverine, Peregrine, and Lord Caligula all met at Scott’s in Mayfair.  They order the shellfish for two, paying a hefty supplement for lobster and caviar.  Wolverine said he was very hungry.  So, he ordered the seafood catch of the day for two. The three of them added and shared potatoes, spinach, and tarragon buttered vegetables as sides.  Lord Caligula ordered 2 servings of smoked eels and a twice baked cheddar souffle as starters.  He ordered a bottle for 10,000 pounds  of Colin-Morey Montrachet and left it to the sommelier to make additional selections as needed.  

Over dinner, the threesome rejoiced at the consequences of the attacks in Congo and Lithuania.  Demand for Ice-10 had intensified.  Everybody promised to never identify the seller, even if it was Munitions Galore.  Peregrine played dumb about having access to Ice-10.  “Let them bid up the price,” recommended a smiling Lord Caligula whilst Wolverine shovelled eels into his ravening mouth.

As the threesome feasted, Lucky sat in her suite at the Hotel PACAI fuming.  When she had her henchmen dig up a few graves of Ice-10 victims, she found them empty.  Damn Americans, Israelis, Russians, Germans, Brits, and French had beat her to the graveyards.  As she sat watching Lithuania TV, she felt sure scientists in other countries were doing what they could to reverse engineer the secrets of Ice-10.  Wisely, she let her unconscious tackle the problem.  Clicking off the telly, she started a session of Tai Chi.

An hour later, an unshakeable conviction settled over her.  She smiled to herself. She called the concierge and asked that he book a 1st Class flight to London.  How could Munitions Galore not have the secret of Ice-10?  She then dialed the Connaught to reserve a suite.  

Some gentle readers may wonder how I come by all my details.  My sources, my gifts as a journalist, and my lovability make me one well-informed guy.  Lucky, fo example, flooded me with info when I telephoned her after she got to London.   I wept that I missed her.  Only my natural delicacy had pushed me away.   She also bought my story that a friend in London told me she was at the Connaught.  Lord Caligula liked everybody to know about Lucky’s whereabouts.  Thank you Lord C.