As I settled into the Johari Rotana, I liked it. Lucky bounced around the suite happy and relaxed. I enjoyed a good view of the bay and Indian Ocean. Fresh fish came to the room whenever I looked hungry. To my surprise, when Lucky showed me the wound to her buttock the scar was small, more of a dimple really. She had a longer, thinner scar on her left forearm that she sustain in a knife fight.
About that wound she remarked, “The moron would have done himself a good deed if he had just let me kill him whilst I was in a good mood. Once he cut me, I had to teach him a lesson. So, I opened the pig up, and then strangled him with his own intestines. I gelded him and left what little he had left of a weenie as an amuse-bouche in his filthy mouth. If you’re a woman in my line of work, you can’t leave a scar unanswered.”
She was still talking when I saw the familiar face of Tucker Snarlson. He was showing up on the Tanzanian Telly on CNN. Lucky noticed my interest and turned up the volume to keep me from having to rely on the chyrons to know what Snarlson was snarling about.
Snarlson was carrying on about the “Tong” attack on the Munitions Galore HQ. He was incensed the Brits had not yet pinned a King George Cross on Constance. He also offered a hymn of praise to President Trump for his work to clear obstacles to Constance getting her heroic due. Nor did Snarlson stop there, he damned the “sinister forces that were trying to shift the blame from Tong hoodlums to Putin, “one of the world’s last remaining great men,” along with Prez Trump, of course.
Lucky was rolling her eyes. ‘You know this duffus? I’ll give the twink this. He finally got rid of his faggoty bow ties. You can tell at a glance he’s still a closet queen. Pitty his wife. You have to wonder what goes on, in my professional opinion, when he and the capitalist exploiter Trump are alone together. Yuck. Double yuck. It’s probably worse if Putin is there too.”
Lucky could be quite the provincial Confucian Chinese when alone with me. She lacked “modern” attitudes, despite her own insatiable libido. Let’s all it as it is. Her own love tunnel got more traffic than the one on Mulholland Drive to the beach. Mean girls would say Lucky accommodated more traffic than the Hollywood freeway.
We’d been there less than a week when she came home with her Spyderco Police knife blood stained. An hour passed and two of her muscular henchmen showed up carrying a large carpet. They rolled a naked man out onto the floor. His mouth was duct taped. His hands were handcuffed behind his back, and his legs were shackled. They put him on a port-o-john in a closet.
Before they shut the door, Lucky told him in both Arabic and Swahili his fate if he made irritating noises. When I asked what she told them, Lucky was matter of fact. “I told him he makes a peep I’ll slice his cajones off and feed him his own cock for his dinner. I dare say he believed me. A smart boy. I’ve a headache, darling. I’m in no mood to indulge him.”
I asked why we needed him. Instead of answering, Lucky complained about al Shabaab having sent him as an assassin. “Of you?” I asked.
It turned out he was not a threat to her. Lucky got around to explaining that al Shabaab is a cabal of Jew-hating troublemakers that were making business costs for the People of China higher. Worse, the punk had come to Dar es Salaam to kill a couple Mossad agents that the Chinese people planned to ally with.
I objected that, from what I heard, Mossad guys were handy at removing threats, knowing all about self defense and having the advantage of lean consciences. Lucky agreed with that. Still, she couldn’t risk letting this cretin assassin spoil her plans. When he came into her line of sight, she insisted she had a duty to the Chineses people to take action. So she had. So he was here.
Thank god her boys were dropping by to clean the commode, the man, and manage the guy’s feeding. They weren’t as gentle as Lucky. Maybe they were sore about my Go debts being cancelled. I made a pretense of offering to pay up, knowing it would be suicidal for them to accept. Sadly, even after my show of honour, they still refused to play Go for money with me. We stuck to playing hearts without money.
That evening, Lucky put me in a large handbag. We went to Harnu’s, a restaurant near the Ocean. I think I’d rather have gone to the Sea Cliff hotel to eat. Lucky rejected that idea. The Sea Clliff was, per Lucky, a death trap. Its being near the tip of a peninsula, with a portion of the hotel abutting the Indian Ocean. According to Lucky, Harnu’s was a safer place. More importantly, right then Harnu’s was the place she wished to be.
When she carried me into the dining room, she sat down at a table, saying, “Hello Saul, Hello Danny.”
Saul gave her a hard stare, asking, “Do we know you?”
“Don’t be coy, You know damn well who I am. You’re not amateurs.”
Danny took a drag from his English Oval, a virtually unprocurable cigarette, winked at Saul, and then said, “Hello Lucky”
“Are you Mossad boys always so shy? Pretending not to know a girl hurts her feelings. What’s for dinner?”
She dropped me on the seat next to her. A waiter scurried to her. “Yes, ma’am.”
Lucky began odering. “I’ll have the fried sardines and the vegetable tempura. Be sure to bring a plate for Crockett here. The pumpkin ravioli will do for a first course. The barracuda filet will do for dinner, and i’ll be sharing it with Crockett. Oh, and make the orders are large, these Jewish guys look a bit short on change.”
Lucky turned to me and began introductions. “Now, Crockett, pay attention. We’re eating with Danny Dayan and Saul Levi. There may be be using other names here. Danny may well killed more lowlifes than I have. Three cheers for that.”
Frankly, I doubted that.
On she went. “Whether Danny and Saul admit it, they and I have business together. Al Shabaab has been getting, literally, away with murder in Africa. And. why? Well the Chinese people and the Israelis have wasted kindness on them. The gentle approach isn’t working. We Chinese know that when guys like Danny and Saul show up, the Jews are done with leniency. Mossad doesn’t play.”
I stared at Dayan and Levi wondering why they wouldn’t kill Lucky once we left the restaurant. They were on a mission. She might be a risk to it. I stared at the two Mossad and the look on their faces told me they would not kill Lucky or me. They recognised that Lucky was bringing, as the US Feds say, KSA (knowledge, skills, and ability) to the table.
But why were we here? Tanzania is the safest country in East Africa. It’s almost 800 miles to the places I’d expect al Shabaab to be camping. Then it occurred to me. Tanzania was a safe staging ground.
By the time we left, Danny, Saul and Lucky agreed to meet at her hotel. They had a strong desire to meet the putative assassin. Lucky agreed that they could come and fetch him. I believe he’d have preferred to stay with Lucky than a couple of Mossad guys.
The next morning they came to breakfast. Lucky had pre-ordered. For herself, she got a “Chinese breakfast” that included tomato broth with handmade noodles, fried egg and scallions; for the boys she got mango juice, eggs over-easy, croissants, coconut doughnuts, rice pancakes with plenty of butter preserves on the side. There were plates of potatoes, and pots of fresh hot chocolate and coffee. Being every thoughtful, she had a puree of sea bass brought up for me, though it wasn’t on the menu. Saul and Danny ate hearty.
After Danny and Saul checked the room, they agreed it was for all practical purposes a SCIF. Danny was blunt. “We’ve had enough of pissants from al Shabaab making threats or gumming up Israeli project. We’re aware that Emperor Xi is also fed up. Israel recently expanded its capabilities with a new weapons system. We believe the Russians used one like it near Goma. We’ve a better idea.
“You should know upfront we’re going to pin the blame for the attack on the Russians. We’ve an alcoholic Russian general on our payroll. He is a revolting anti-Semite. So, we won’t miss him when he dies with the al Shabaab crowd in Somalia. We will have to get get within a couple miles of the al Shabaab base to have the impact we want. To do that well, we’ll need to come in by sea. We could go the whole way to Somalia by sea, but would prefer a sea transport and a pickup by helicopter.
“If we had access to something like a CV-22 we could stay a couple hundred miles off the coast and be well within that helicopters combat radius. You would be a superb resource if you could pre-position some fuel for the CV-22. If only team China had already got a Blue Whale built. We’d have liked its speed over what the CV-22 can do.”
Lucky then protested that Israel had no CV-22 and China was still perfecting the Blue Whale. She suggested that using 2 black hawks or that type of helicopter would do.”
Saul and Danny both objected. They wanted it all on one load. Black Hawks were too small to suit them.
Saul then looked at me. “Danny and I think Crockett has friends able to get us what we want. Or so we’ve heard. Crocky knows that whole nasty, chiseling crew at Munitions Galore, especially Wolverine.”
“Journalists know lots of people.” I was grasping for extenuations. Lucky reached over and rubbed my head. “You’re such a little devil, darling. What a hard crowd you know!. First, Constance and now these gangsters.” By her tone she insinuated I was brave rather than just crazy stupid. Alas I knew the truth: crazy stupid it was.
Still, I felt compelled to defend myself. “To earn gold, i must meet lots of people.”
Saul shook his head. “I doubt it. I read your L’Afrique Aujourd’hui stories on Putin. What a tissue of bull shit! You had sources? Hysterical. Yeah, you’re a journallist and probably believe Leon Uris was an historian or Ariel Sharon a peacemaker.”
Sometimes it’s best to say nothing. Besides, the Putin story money was already in the bank.
Danny and Saul looked at Lucky. They then said in unison, ‘Call Wolverine.”
After pointing out that Wolverine might not answer, I was shoved in front of a PC screen. Skype opened. I punched in Wolverine’s number. Voila. He came on. He was bare chested and smoking a Sherman cigarillo. To his right was a glass of Redbreast whiskey, with a bottle of Redbreast 27 a bit to the right of it.
“Why have you got those two Mossad guys with you, Crocky.”
I then made my ask.
Wolverine chucked. “Are you out of your fucking mind. An Air Force CV-22? How, Crocky, how?”
Saul and Danny shoved me aside (the pricks) to make their case. As they put it, Wolverine knew them and they knew him. They knew what he was and what Munitions Galore did. They even mentioned Binky Dalrymple’s name, referring to him as a Munitions Galore toady and WASP grifter. Danny asserted Wolverine he had the connections to get a CV-22. Saul added he also wanted current NGA intelligence on al Shabaab..
Danny’s mention of al Shabaab brightened Wolverine’s look. He stepped off to the side for a minute. He returned with his shirt, cravat, waistcoat, and jacket on. He was all smiles.
Without losing a beat, Wolverine got chatty. “So, at last Mossad plans to do something about those monsters in Somalia. Hence you all want to know exactly where the monsters are living.”
Saul and Danny nodded their heads.
“Why didn’t you say so, Crocky? I can’t abide a terrorist using Russian-made weapons. Let me see what I can do to aid your Africa delousing project. If only I could join you. I’ll be in touch.” Then Wolverine was gone.
Danny and Saul proclaimed Wolverine was reliable when it came to delivering whatever he promised Mossad. Lucky was not as confident. According to her, Wolverine was a total weasel. He did nothing without a price or unless it advanced his own angle. And it was all too easy. Even though she said nothing to me at the time, Lucky later confided she began to wonder who the fink at Mossad was. It was as if Wolverine was too ready for this big ask. She knew she had to watch her back on this one.
By the way, I did feel bad when Saul and Danny rolled the captive assassin up to take to a place unknown to “interview” him. Later they told Lucky he was a fragile boy. He didn’t survive his interview, but did offer useful information.
When I got back to Webster Groves, I clung to Roberta. If she was unavailable, I stayed close to mike. As I reckoned it, if I had a bodyguard for the first couple of weeks back in Webster, it was only a matter of time before Fielding and Bart forgot they hadn’t beat me up yet. It worked.
With Constance’s departure, Straub’s stopped bringing pounds of tenderloin to the house along with other goodies; however, Wolverine always sent his mum more than she could eat. I made out well, despite the pain of having to share with Fielding, Bart, Quine, and Chicago.
Constance and Lucky recovered about the same time. When Constance was leaving Webster, I got news from sources in London that Lucky and her party had cleared out of the Savoy. If she stayed in London, nobody I knew knew where.
I imagined I could spend time relaxing with left-over tenderloin and maybe even make a few extra Krugerrands writing about how beloved Putin was in sub-Saharan Africa. I suspect the Eumenides always plot against our good fortune. Whenever I’m hoping for easy, it gets hard.
One velvet Monday when I was up early watching Squirrel, a local celebrity, steal tomatoes from Roberta’s garden, I sensed a presence. Then I heard a voice. “Hello, fool.” I looked to my right where I saw Chaucer’s apparition sitting. His fiery eyes glared at me.
“You know, I don’t know why I bother with you.” Reasontempted to tell him not to bother with me on my account. My instinct for self-preservation overruled Reason.
Chaucer sighed. ‘If I had a lick of sense, I’d have used Behemoth to teach Wolverine a few lessons. And he’d have brought his sidekick Azazello along to make sure the killing got done right. Instead, I picked a team of assclowns for the Reading Rumble that couldn’t even finish off Constance, let alone blow a getaway car with Wolverine in it to smithereens.
“And was that failure enough? Not for you, Crocky, not for you. You disgrace all cats by losing your ass to Chinamen playing third-rate Go. Behemoth would have emptied their accounts, be it in Go or Chess. And Behemoth could have done that with a gallon or two of vodka in him. You, Crocky, are no Behemoth. You’re dumber than Sylvester, that pathetic cat that Tweety Bird confounds at every turn.
“But you can relax, sneak. Lucky got your Go debts cleared when she threatened the lawful winners of your little game with death and destruction for ‘taking advantage of a congenital idiot.’ ‘What’s a congenial idiot’ you ask? That would be you, Crocky. So, let’s see if you’re a lucky idiot. Maybe you’ll yet redeem yourself.”
Before I could say a few words on my own behalf, Chaucer vanished into thin air. What can I say? Disappearances, it’s something ghosts are masters at.
Now I had shivered at the mention of Behemoth’s name. He’s a nasty alcoholic brute that used to hang out with the disgraced Soviet writer Bulgakov. Behemoth also kept wicked company. Woland was the worst of them. If you know Behemoth, you know he was at the Grand Master level in chess. I doubt Magnus Carlsen could whip him in a match, but Behemoth has always preferred vodka, big meals, and trashy women to tournament chess. For him, chess is something to do whilst getting drunk.
As for Azazello, you couldn’t find a more vicious demon if you had searched every corner of hell. I always avoided him at all costs. The guy would rape and kill his own father, and probably had.
All that said, I don’t know what Chaucer wanted me to do. I doubt he wanted Wolverine dead. If he had, I bet he would’ve had Azazello take care of the matter. My soul tells me Chaucer wanted Wolverine humiliated. Losing to me is pretty awful for anybody with pride.
As I pondered how to proceed, one of my African sources, Sheik Snitch, contacted me from Dar es Salaam. He told me he had me booked in a room in Johari Rotana. “You’ll want to cover what’s going down. Mosaad is meeting with friends of Putin.”
According to snitch, the Israelis were fed up with terrorist groups operating out of Africa. They had an idea that a new “product” they had might eliminate a nest of terrorists with minimal risk. Mosaad, never liked anything simple, they had devised a plot.
Snitch told me one other thing that whetted my appetite. “By the way, old Chap (Snitch had been at Eton with Peregrine), I hear your friend Lucky Ming is in a suite in the Johari.”
How could I not go? Lucky would not go to Dar es Salaam unless big something was going down.
It was a long flight to Dar es Salaam, but Snitch had used his connexions to get me on a jet of a Saudi gazillionaire. I liked the guy right off. His sole questions to Snitch about me coming along aimed to seek reassurance that I was not a filthy dog. Before long, I was at the Johari Rotana.
When I hit the lobby of the hotel, the gods arranged that I bump into Lucky.
“Darling, you’re here. You always find me, don’t you sweetie? I knew you would.” I made as if to check in, but Lucky would have none of it.
“I’ve a large Ambassador Suite. You must stay with me, darling. This is Africa. You’d not believe all the predators on this continent. You’ll be safer with me. How I love my little darling. Are you hungry?” She swept me up and carried me to her suite. Fresh fish was soon on the way.
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.
I had no idea how long Constance planned to convalesce in Webster Groves. Whenever I talked to Bart, Fielding, Quine, or Chicago, they complained about her. According to them, Constance was a conceited attention hog. They also worried that Wolverine would show up in Webster with ridiculous demands for more give-hers for Constance.
Being in Potomac, i had ready access to the Washington papers. Sometimes I would get confused. Bart had to explain to me that the Onion was a satirical newsheet. I had got excited about its compelling stories. For example, I had no idea that Golda Meir and Eisenhower had an affair or that Kim Khardashian was a trans woman until I read the Onion. Without the Onion, I’d never have figured out that Obama and Trump had been schoolboy lovers in Kenya.
I did notice plenty of super stories in the Epoch Times. Why should I not have trusted it? Its byline read “Truth and Tradition.”
When I mentioned Epoch to mike, he jeered that it was a rag of Falun Gong. I was too ashamed to confess that I didn’t know who Falun Gong was. Perhaps he was an alias of Jabba the Hutt. You just never know. I sure didn’t.
Besides, in DC, the Epoch was the sole paper running lush photo spreads on Constance. If you could read, you’d swear Constance had killed more bad guys than Rooster Cogburn. The photos showed Constance holding her Python. Often you’d see stacks of bullet-riddled bodies near her. In one photo shoot, you could see her wounded in Lord Caligula’s arms. Given the pose, I knew she must have felt awful, otherwise his Lordship would have been getting a hand job. Instead of a lewd story, a headline screamed “Constance Rescued. Female Avenger Guards Brit Secrets.” If only Queen Elizabeth had been as tough of Constance, Britannia would indeed rule the waves and the world.
Op-ed columns in England supported Lord Caligula’s demand that Constance receive a King George Cross. In particular, the tabloids supported her immediate citizenship. The Mirror had pictures of alleged haters of Constance. Beholds the anti-citizenship mob. They all looked like Nosferatu.
And the Epoch was not the only newspaper covering the aftermath of the raid on Munitions Galore. The Washington Post and the Washington Examiner were lavish in their coverage. President Trump had waddled out to proclaim that Munitions Galore and Constance had been “treated very badly by some very sick puppies” for defending groundbreaking work at Munitions Galore from illegal aliens. He went on to comment on the Chinese, assuring listeners that he was “sure there were some very good ones,” but Constance had faced the “rapists and the criminals.” The President then volunteered that they seemed to him to be Asia’s Mexicans.
For several days, Mexico’s Ambassador to the US and China’s Ambassador to the US joined forces to denounce the racist comments of somebody at the White House who either knew or ought to know better. Diplomats being diplomats, no names were named. Donald being Donald, he kept talking.
Emperor Xi also addressed a Party Conference to proclaim China’s love of peace, but also to assure the world that the Chinese stood shoulder-to-shoulder with peace-loving peoples across the Universe in being ready to fight fascists and the unspeakable weapons they had been developing and maybe even using.
Oddly, the Israelis gave a prompt reply from the blue. Yahoo Netannutter assured the world that “Israel has no new weapons and no new nukes either, and would never use any of the weapons it does not have, unless they had no choice but to use them.” Imagine the relief of Arabs everywhere.
The Iranians sent communiques stating that they opposed the use of new weapons by Jews, and might even oppose their use by non Jews too. A chief Shiite mullah went on 60 Minutes and declared he opposed all barbarous weapons. Further, he promised Leslie Stahl that his sincere belief was that nobody should hate Jews more than he should.
Soon, Putin praised President Trump’s restraint, saying he believed that Trump preferred peace to war. Although neither of them had stealth bombs or Ice-10, they would not use them if they did have them, though Puti admitted failing confidence about the Germans being able to restrain themselves from war crimes. When asked to elaborate, Putin observed that Germany is so geographically close to Lithuania that only a nitwit would not suspect them of some role in that Nazi-ish attack.
As all this news swirled about me, I got to go to a meeting in Langley, VA with Lord Caligula and Binky Dalrymple. His Lordship brought Peregrine and me along to keep track of what got said. His Lordship liked Binky, but disliked having to trust anything Binky said about money.
When I walked into Binky’s office, the coolness of its parquet floors felt good on my dainty paws. I spotted fine Turkey rugs in the room, but preferred a cuddle chair in a corner with plush pillows. Binky, emulating the dress of Dick Cheney, his Lordship, and Peregrine sat at a large round table with cloisonne inlays of dragons. Peregrine expressed his admiration of the dragons. You can never go wrong with a dragon.
Binky had a projector in front of him. When he shoved a USB in it, a dizzying chart popped up on the wall. Man, I hate maths.
Immediately, his Lordship grumbled, “We’re not in for a maths seminar, are we Binky?”
“Maths is the Language of God. The whole world is but a cipher. You should take the trouble to learn a bit about it, Caligula.” Binky was the kind of guy that in days of old walked about with a slide rule in his hip pocket. He probably would have used penguards too.
Being an American, Binky tended to be lax about titles. I also think he skipped using Lord Caligula’s title to irk him. It always irked his Lordship that Binky must have more illicit loot than himself. How the American system hobbled along without a hereditary aristocracy was incomprehensible to his Lordship.
I have also wondered about aristocratic preferences. Once I asked mike about primogeniture. To my surprise, he regretted the world not having more of it. I was on the verge of asking him why when he mentioned that as the eldest son in his family, he saw nothing wrong with primogeniture. I objected that, as a known bastard, he was not entitled to inherit.
“A stupid quibble. I never said I endorsed every ancient aristocratic practice, only the good ones. Bastardry is outdated. Nobody knows what one is anymore. The average John or Sally imagines a bastard is a disagreeable person. In fact, that was always a stereotype. Most likely it was invented by conniving, pampered younger brothers to cheat their elder brothers out of a title and fortune.”
I could see our conversation was going nowhere. I did know that mike deplored the modern custom of babying younger siblings. That practice forced the elder child to handle the real discipline in the house.
At this time, I was also monitoring when I could return to Webster. Constance was growing restless to travel. She also treated everybody like a servant. Then one day I learnt Wolverine showed up in a Limo and away Constance went. I headed home to write more stories on all the lies being told about bots, stealth bombs, and Ice-10. The world needed to know just how many powerhouses had these killing devices.
I spent a few days in the Savoy, but the omnipresent guards got me to thinking this joint ain’t safe. Why not go to Potomac and hang with Melania and Barron? She’d feed me well. Also, why run the risk of staying in Webster Groves when Constance lived here? She was as much of a target as Lucky, and both Fielding and Bart would think nothing of gutting her if they concluded they could get away with it.
The challenge of living with Melania was having to deal with Chunky Donald. What a blowhard! The Sahara has less hot air in it than Donald. Worse, you ran the risk in Potomac of exposure to fast-food hamburger gases with Donald roaming the house. Then, again, it could be worse. What if Trump were Ralph Nader?
All my readers know I expect better chow than a bagful of McDonald’s burgers. The Savoy pumps out my kind of grub; however, Melania at least would have her cook whip me up something almost worthy of me.
Master Barron, being 11 or so, had no taste, but I feared his father was having undue influence. I shudder thinking about the stench of hamburger gases that often emanated from President Doughboy. It is a mighty deterrent to me visits. Further, I wearied from listening to the big one carry-on about the countless topics he knew nothing about.
On the other hand, I got a thrill out of feeling up Melania whilst Donald sat oblivious in front of his telly in revery before Hannity or the matchless windbag Lou Dobbs. I’d beg God that Don would not turn the volume up.
Lucky, bless her, never listened to the news. Instead, she read diplomatic cables and intelligence reports. The regular news sources she designated bravo sierra. She laughed and laughed when I asked her her opinion of Xinhua. “Every bit as good as Pravda ever was or,” snickering “Chomsky.”
Better still, for all her touts of the People, I never saw her eat cheap food if she could avoid it. She wasn’t much for staying where the people stayed either.
Nevertheless, my safety got the better of my inner gourmet. I could risk a few days of Trump stink if I would cut my risk of being blown or shot to bits at a Savoy feast.
I also had run up staggering debts playing Go. Those Chinese guys played too well for me. I’d leave it to Lucky to settle tabs for me. The go sharks could use what I owed them as bargaining chips when Lucky realised I had got out during their watch.
When I showed up in Potomac, I got a royal welcome. What else? If I had been the Pope visiting Manilla I’d not have got better treatment than I got in Potomac. It was the Adoration of Crockett. Had you come, gentle readers, you would have seen firsthand how I, the Love Machine, fed Melania’s love hunger She adored me. I was like heroin to her. She could not get enough of my love.
Master Barron, corrupted by his fat, vain father, didn’t appreciate me as much as a truly smart kid should if you ask me. I have to wonder what kind of education Saint Andrew’s Episcopal School was giving him. Where was the agape in my presence? Where were my hymns of praise? He was plainly a lazy, undiscerning lad. And his manners? He must have learned his manners at Chuck Schumer’s New York School of Etiquette if you ask me. Mike had warned me that our country does best when New Yorkers stay put and the rest of us live someplace else.
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.”
As I said, I’m a little bit psychic. The London trip had my power ringing 24/7. A lot was going on. Lord Caligula had started making flights on his Dassault Falcon 8X. He liked it because it could land at London City airport. He had made recent trips, or so I was told, to Tel Aviv, Moscow, Berlin, and Paris. Because of my status as a world-famous journalist, I got invited to accompany his Lordship on a trip to Moscow to discuss certain matters with Putin. Of course, the certain matters were bots, Ice-10, and steal bombs.
To keep himself from getting bored, his Lordship also had Constance aboard as a guest. I’m okay with Constance, but I dislike how she carries on like a wounded animal when Lord Caligula is having the in and out with her. They have no shame. It’s as if they think cats don’t notice or care what they’re doing.
Placating Putin required that he not think Munitions Galore had swindled him. So, Lord Caligula went to a few meetings with Putin to work out prices. Putin got a tall story about why Munitions Galore could not sell directly to him. Instead, a secret subsidiary Menacing Arms, Inc. would sell the Russians whatever in the way of Ice-10, stealth bombs, and bots Putin wanted. The price was enormous, but Putin only wished he could buy more. The ancient Greeks had a word for Putin’s vice: Pleonexia. The German translation haben und mehrhabenwollen, that is, to have and always want to have more. That about sums up Vlad’s sense of life.
Vlad also had a mean streak. When setting the meeting with Putin, his Lordship suggested a piece of country owned by Munitions Galore that had a rich supply of pigeons and squirrels. His Lordship brought along a supply of poisoned bread. As they walked about the grounds, Putin delighted in kicking pigeons as he negotiated prices. Whenever his legs tired of pigeon kicking, Putin tossed poisonous balls of bread to squirrels. He roared with laughter as he watched squirrels flip onto their backs with stiff dead limbs pointing to the blue Russian sky. “They’re so gullible they remind me of Ukrainians.”
Somehow the key element in this story did not escape Emperor Xi’s sharp sources. When I got back to Lucky in London, she was beaming. Xi had given her a mission. A rat at Munitions Galore by the name of Max Rosen was being run by Dmitri Razumikin. They often met in a small Chinese restaurant near Piccadilly Circus. Xi asked that Lucky not shoot, stab or garrote them. His desire was for an explosion that would blow them to smithereens. As Lucky’s messenger told her, he wants the restaurant to become a collage of gore. Lucky told me she also had permission to ignore innocent lives. Xi wanted splashy stories in the Tabloids.
I didn’t like the sound of any of this. How much easier it would be for me if I slipped away to Potomac to spend time with Melania’s family. And Potomac was free of the husky, blow-hard Prez. Prez Trump’s inveterate bullshit got on my nerves. But I stayed.
The day after the order, I noticed Lucky had stayed in the previous night to build a PE-4 bomb. PE-4 is easier to come by in the UK than C4. That afternoon, Lucky stuffed me in a large tote bag and headed to Piccadilly. Once there, she went to some betting cents to put bets on dog races. From there she walked to the restaurant. She went in and ordered tea and a spring roll. She excused herself, went to the lounge and WC for women, and returned in disguise. I noticed she placed her bomb under a table. She walked out. She then somehow returned from the WC dressed as when she left. She ordered some fish that she sneaked to me since I was still in the tote. We then left.
Back at the Connaught, she sat on a mobile phone. Two hours passed. I saw her hit a button on the phone. Within 5 minutes the messenger had knocked on the door, received the phone, and left with practised nonchalance. Not long after that, I saw TV rushes covering an “Explosion in Piccadilly.” The story said 4 people had died. One was a Russian national, and another was Max Rosen, who was identified as a “brilliant engineer and graduate of Imperial College.” The two other victims were an unfortunate customer and a cute waitress. Or so she was described. The decapitated, shredded version of her on the screen did not seem too cute to me. The walls of the restaurant were indeed festooned with body parts of the four. An eyeball splattered dead-centre on a wall disgusted me. I believe in clean kills.
Lucky was grinning from ear to ear. “The game’s on. Let Putin and the capitalist swine at Munitions Galore must learn the truth. We do not mess with the Chinese: On ne badine pas avec les chinois.
By the next day, the Tabloids were having a grand time with the story. The preferred line was to speculate that a lady in a Burqa was the culprit. Even though the Russian embassy expressed public dismay that Scotland Yard had declined to consider a wider range of fiends. As one Russia volunteered, “Not all monsters wear Burqas. Some even wear Chanel and Liberty scarves.” Fleet street preferred Burqas. It was easier to revv up intemperate comments if reporters asked about Mohammedan women in Burqas. Editors hated words like Islamic, “It makes it sound like our paper is in league with the terrorists.”
Putin was not fooled. Putin gathered in high dudgeon with his intelligence experts. They all agreed that Emperor Xi was sending his message on Ice-10. It was too bad that their sources also suspected that, like the Russians, the Chinese had a supply of bots, stealth bombs, and Ice-10. A new arms race had arrived. The new toys may confer no military advantages when everybody of consequence had them, but it seemed foolish not to have them.
Like Daphne on the old Frazier show, I am a little bit psychic. And if I am not psychic, I’m at least as good as Yoda at sensing a disturbance in the force. Off to London I went.
Once there, I knew that Lucky was at the Connaught. You should have seen her face when I scratched on her suite’s door, and then swaggered in when she opened it. Mind you, I think she would have looked more welcoming if she didn’t have a 1911 in her hand. But the woman went bonkers with joy when she saw me at her feet.
In no time, she swept me into her arms. We fell onto a couch together. She began inspecting me, and concluded I needed room service. She ordered a Salad Nicoise. When the order arrived, she scooped the salad’s tuna onto a separate plate that she laid at my feet. She took the rest of the salad for herself. Perhaps I should send Roberta to Lucky for lessons on how to treat a handsome Tom.
As we ate, she filled me in on what she took to be the situation on the ground. In particular, she believed the dirty Capitalists at Munitions Galore had dangerous Constance as a hired gun. Killing Constance would take some doing. Worse, Lucky still hadn’t laid hands on the rich pig Wolverine. Munitions Galore was a paradise for murderous parasites. Lord Caligula was the chief of them. He was hard to touch because he used his strumpet Constance as a devout bodyguard. Lucky was incensed.
Operating in England wasn’t easy either. The Brit twits had the habit of actually enforcing their laws on the preposterous pretense that England was a nation of law. But the law, she learnt, had not kept the atrocious Binky Dalrymple from aligning, in some yet unknown, but surely nefarious way, with Lord Caligula and that sorry crew at Munitions Galore. How the bots, stealth bombs, and Ice-10 all fit together was a dark mystery. In time, the plot will discover itself to the world.
I asked if she was just sore because China didn’t have any Ice-10 or other Munition Galore goodies.
Lucky snarled. According to her, the Chinese people had leads on how, for a price, to acquire more than enough of the kind weaponry the peace loving People needed to compete with the criminals in Washington. If I got Lucky right, an out-of-the-blue opportunity to work on the acquisition of the best that Munitions Galore had to offer had come to Emperor Xi. Better still, even if Munitions Galore had nothing to do with Ice-10, the obscure Cayman Island firm of Razzle Enterprises did appear to have the goods. Or so Lucky implied.
I perked up. How did Lucky know about Ice-10? I asked as if nobody knew the Ice-10 story. Lucky then told me that Chinese scientists had concluded that a descendant of Ice-9 had killed Uighurs in northwest China. Razzle Enterprise apparently also made sales advances on Ice-10 and other products to the Israelis, reasoning that dealing with the Americans was suicidal, and that the Russians were just as risky. Razzle thought the Germans, French, and English were too damn law abiding to suit them.
As we age, gentle readers, we learn certain advantages come to people and countries able to embrace a relaxed view of the law.
Alas, the intelligence sources in China and Israel suspected that all the major powers, even the Japanese, were arranging to obtain supplies of bots, stealth bombs, and Ice-10. A story had even leaked in the NY Times that asserted a team of American scientists in Alamogordo had made strikes in the creation of a new set of superweapons. The Times also implied that Munitions Galore, whose stock had begun to soar, had some role in aiding Americans with engineering muscle. Teams of scientists had, the story claimed, begun to shuttle to and fro from Alamogordo to Reading and back. And then there was a extended story in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung about recent purchases of ultra deadly weaponry for the German Heer.
What an opportunity for me. I made some money writing a story for Le Monde Diplomatique for a nice fee at Wolverine’s request, though he implied Binky wanted it out. In that story, I told the tale of secret processing plants in the Congo and southeast Asia that were producing secret weapons and seemed to be party to a dizzying array of shell companies. I implied the existence of a clandestine operation on behalf of Lord Caligula and Putin, and insinuated that somebody somewhere was making gobs of money, which is always true to be sure.
Binky himself, speaking on deep background, said the CIA could neither confirm nor deny my story. Munitions Galore stock soared 10% the day my story appeared. The rich see opportunity in violence. Imagine my joy about having bought a few thousands shares on margin. I took my profit the following day, and did everything I could to hide it from Roberta.
Based on all I knew, I saw I knew more than Lucky. Lucky began to show some signs of strain from staying at Connaught’s without a go ahead to kill anybody, not even Constance.
Like most Chinese, she was a gambling addict, an ancient anxiolytic. She had taken to spending too much time at joints like Les Ambassadeurs, the Ritz Club, and Crockford’s Club. If Lucky were not the best cheat I’ve ever seen, she might have lost
The had loss prevention strategies. For example, she tracked big winners at the A to steal their winnings. It seemed sleazy to me, but Lucky claimed she was punishing rich capitalists for thinking they could hang on to unearned pounds. When I asked if she planned to give what she stole to the poor, she cackled and cackled. “You’re so from the past, darling. Why should I do that? If I can steal for myself, let the poor do likewise.”
I also discovered that when Lucky went on gambling sprees, she had an insatiable appetite for rich, famous men whom she consumed as if they were bonbons. After a tryst with a former US Prez she met when both were winning big at the A, she made such hard use of him that I noticed the poor chap was checking to see if he still had a penis on the way out of her room. A man must beware of the thrice is not enough crowd. Those women are dangerous.
I knew this could not go on. There was too much bad blood between her, Wolverine, and Constance. And Wolverine was very angry about her stealing one of his bots. Also, my piece in Le Monde, along with a lying sequel in L’afrique aujourd’hui, had given Xi the idea that he should avenge himself against Putin by striking at Munitions Galore. After all, I had made up a possible joint plot. Maybe that was a bad idea.