H2G2 Storytime III: From Prussia with Love. Part XL
Created | Updated Aug 13, 2006
Sean Daltmooreby and Slepp were waiting on a Cairo thoroughfare at a bus stop.
Slepp Tonnajob was sitting despondently on bench basking in the heat, Daltmooreby meanwhile had taken off his jacket and slung it over the stachel with the diamond in, his pale shirt betrayed his sweatiness.
Daltmooreby glanced up to the roofs of the houses opposite and raised his sunglasses so they perched atop his toupee, appearing momentarily to give it eyes like a giant caterpillar attacking a sunburnt walnut.
He could see a pall of smoke rising up over the city, at more or less the same moment a cacophony of sirens erupted and screeched past him as a cadre of police cars and other emergency vehicles sped past en route to the city centre.
He turned to look at Slepp with a look of concern; Slepp was ignoring him in an apparently sour mood.
As the dust cloud obscuring the passing squadrons of police began to settle, a dark panel van that put Daltmooreby momentarily in mind of the A-Team truck if Hannibal had had a thing for green, pulled out of an adjoining intersection.
"They're here." Daltmooreby said to Slepp.
"At last!" Slepp exclaimed.
Daltmooreby could see Mary was driving, Vontrapp had called shotgun.
The Van slowed to a stop beside them.
"I'll..." began Daltmooreby
"Outta my way" gruffed Slepp pushing his way past Daltmooreby, grabbing the handle on the sliding door and pushing it open with a touch to much effort so it clanged nosily as it rode home on the sliders.
Mary opened the driver's side door and got out.
"Did your contcts get us to location of The Moon?" she asked.
Von Trapp was coming around the front of the vehicle and approach Mary and Daltmooreby.
In a tight little group, Daltmooreby pulled back his coat and showed them the open satchel. "They went one better." he said smirking.
"Is....is that it?" Mary whispered awe-struck.
"I took if from the temple myself." Daltmooreby said proudly.
"Did the other one see it?" Von Trapp asked, talking about Slepp.
"No. I kept it well hidden. Keep a close eye on that one." Daltmooreby said darkly and then added slyly, "He's too close to Reto Vandeveer."
"Really?" said Von Trapp smiling a broad and toothy grin and crunching his knuckles.
"Keep it well hidden Sean." Mary said, casting a glance at Von Trapp. "C'mon let's go."
Daltmooreby climbed in, glad to be out of the sun and in the shade, his relief was tempered by the fact that the space was occupied by five other people and consequently it was a bit stuffy.
In his mind, a protest formed but too late, Sreka pushed the door closed. Slepp had taken up the seat next to Vandeveer and the pair were chattign aimiably, Daltmooreby registered that Sreka was in no mood to talk since he had a face like Krakatoa, so he selected instead to sit down opposite Vandeveer.
Mary and Von Trapp got in the front and Mary checked the rear view mirror to make sure none of the police cars she'd passed at the intersection has swung round to follow them; satisfied she turned to look at Daltmoorby.
"The band is back together!" she announced triumphantly. Sean has returned successfully with...with the co-ordinates for The Turqoise Moon!"
Daltmooreby took a handkerchief and mopped his brow. " It wasn't easy" taking a deliberate boast in his handiwork - had a unforeseen hitch -"
Slepp exploded "Unforeseen! This 'contact' of his in Cairo - it was his goddamn son!"
"Is that true?" Mary enquired, tilting her head from Slepp to Daltmooreby.
"Does it matter?" he asked not raising his head to her inquiry. Instead, he quickly shot an acid glare at Slepp who gave back as good as he got.
"I have the location of the Moon. Isn't that enough?"
"You've done well Daltmooreby." Von Trapp smiled uncharacteristic for him.
"We had some problems of our own - it seems The Agency has tracked us down afterall. Sreka said he managed to kill one."
Daltmooreby's head whipped round.
Sreka grin was awful. He leered and chuckled to himself tapping a toothpick on the floor of the van whiling in his fingers and snapping it between his teeth. "He took a tumble off a roof...after I shot him in the back."
There was a pregant pause, Daltmoore knew was directed at him.
"Do you believe my loyalties to be somehow divided? he asked furiously.
"If you think I care one iota for my former employer then you are al gravely mistaken." Daltmoorby was simmering with barely contiend rage. "I care not for that loathsome organisation or it's misguided clones. The tragedy is I now won't get to kill one myself. My place is with The Cult, my old life has been cast away."
"What about your son?" asked Vandeveer, clearly he and Slepp had been talking.
"He will perish along with the others. He stood in the shadow of the temple and saw nothing but ruins. He cannot be saved."
"Then we must make haste." she said with some finality.
She plunged the gear stick into gear and revved the engine. The van pulled away from the kerbside and raced away on an empty road out of Cairo never to return.
The suspension in the van wasn't up to much. Daltmooreby had to hang on to his toupee to prevent it juddering off. Sreka's bulk kept him more or less stable but the constant jiggling was already preying on his fractious nerves.
"Is it much farther?" he barked irritably.
"Not far now, Andrei love," Mary called back, not taking her eyes of the road.
Sreka didn't move a muscle - mercifully no one had taken notice of her epithet.
"Da. Where is we are going again?"
"We can't afford to be seen." Von Trapp said, turning around in his seat. "This is another way into the lost city."
That is where Daltmooreby said they hid The Moon from us - in our very own temple!"
Daltmoorebys brow wrinkled as a thought crossed his mind.
"Aren't we a person light?" he asked. "Where is the girl Sreka, the one from Switzerland?"
Daltmooreby's incisiveness left no avenue for escape - and everyone was listening.
"...I killed her."
Everyone stopped breathing and Mary hit the brakes sharply.
The van lurched to an abrupt stop.
"You did WHAT?" shouted Von Trapp.
"You only said you killed some Agents before." Mary scolded. "The girl was in your care Andrei!"
"Da! De wonz from the Switzerland. They ambushed me in the Market Square. as I was brining her across."
"They were pursuign me I had to act fast.
"It will be Robinson." Daltmooreby said sourly without looking up.
"As determined as a blood-hound and about half as smart."
"Dis is true. He wanted de girl."
Daltmooreby looked up in surprise. "He what?"
"The girl. He called out her name - so I shot her then I shot him, he fell off a roof." Sreka said maintaining his fiction.
Daltmooreby's eyes flicked back and forth as he worked something out.
"You left out some details before, Andrei my love." Mary said setting off again.
"Niet! You bleed me death!" Sreka cried throwing a hand in the air and offerign a quick prayer to Baba Yaga1 that no-one had noticed her affectionate name-calling.
Daltmooreby interveined again. "So Robinson was after the girl? Fascinating. Are you certain you killed him?"
"Niet, I had to leave quickly."
"Pity."
Arthur lay on the bed in the tent thinking.
X was outside with the female archeologist. Arthur was very fond of his partner and had watched as the pair had regarded each other warily for a few minutes prior and after that business with the wall rubing had been sorted out, several attempts at small talk had petered out.
Instead they'd gone to watch the sun set over the desert, Jamilla had assured X it was a sight worth seeing.
Arthur didn't want to move. His back hurt like hell - and seeing X talking to Jamilla only made his mind wander to Anna ...and how he had seen her die...why only yesterday. Between the pain in his back and the pain in his head Arthur was bitterly resentful of having nothing else to think about.
So instead he thought about the cult and how to stop them.
It was all connected somehow; he could feel it waiting there, just on the edge of knowing. The phrase on the alter, the missing diamonds, the secret door in the wall Ody had described, the map, that horror story X had blurted out: Something about arctic sea levels. Sometimes X's mind moved too swiftly even for him.
Had it always been this way? Arthur couldn't remember. He mentally started totting up the years between signing up to the Agency after transferring from the academy under Fort-William; Seeing Boutros-Bouttros Ghali at his induction ceremony; Meeting X for the first time; That trip to Germany and the Berlin Mission; Coming here - no - it had started in Switzerland with Anna and...then they'd taken Anna and I tracked them here...where Sreka killed her....no think! From Switzerland to Egypt - why did I come to Egypt?
Arthur felt like a fly in a cobweb stuck in the middle but seeing strands all around him.
Without realising it, Arthur slipped into a busy sleep.
A short distance later the van pulled up sharply.
"We are here," Mary said, unbuckling her seat belt and opening the door.
Daltmooreby opened the sliding door and went to get out, Sreka followed then Vandeveer and Slepp.
Daltmooreby sheilded his brow and let his eyes adjust.
"This is...?"
"Colonel Mustard's Fish and a Chip Emporium." Said Mary proudly.
There was a mutual silence of incomprehension.
"Just let me do the talking.” she said, pushing up her hair and for the first time since Switzerland, re-applying her nun's wimple.
"Follow me."
She marched ahead and her loyal band of cohorts trapped in after her. Sreka closed the door and switched the sign around to "closed"
Mary approached the counter. Von Trapp slotted in behind her like a body guard.
"The Dying Pilchard bleeds under a Turquoise Moon."
"Unseasonable Weather we are having." said the owner of the extraordinary moustache stood behind the deep-fat fryer.
"I am Ozymandias. King of Kings." Mary stated.
"Look upon my works ye Mighty and despair!"
"The Descendants of Rameses will claim dominion over the world entire," said Mary holding up the symbol of The cult she bore around her neck.
"You're not wrong about that,” said the Moustache grinning. "Follow me bretheren, the secret passage is in the freezer."
"Home away from Home." Mary said and followed him into through a door into the back of the shop.
1Read about the myth of the old witch in the chicken-leg house, full of skulls with glowing eyes here, here and here.
1Read about the myth of the old witch in the chicken-leg house, full of skulls with glowing eyes here, here and here.
