H2G2 Storytime III: From Prussia with Love. Part XXXVI
Created | Updated May 7, 2007
"WOOOOO!" the home grown crowd of spectators roared happily in Cairo's market place. The tourists on the other hand looked on in, well, bemusement as another large rattan basket was placed on the others.
Slowly the giant rickety pyramid was being built in a show so ludicrous that holiday reps refused to acknowledge in their brochures.
Parked in a alleyway just away from the commotion was a van nestled with the other stalls and carts that had been moved out of the way.
Von Trapp shook his head and looked at his pocket watch hissing a sound of complaint before stepping back inside.
"Sreka is late," he told Mary. "What could be taking him so long? He has the girl."
Mary nodded silently.
Incense burned in the dark, clouded bar. This didn't seem to take away from the man's near prison white clothes noted Anna. Or that electric pink neckscarf. She also noted the pistol on the table.
The man rested his hat over the weapon then lay back and put his feet up on the table. He smiled at her and the top of his cheeks rolled up with the corners of his mouth.
Anna recoiled and Andre Sreka tried not to do the same as he took his seat next to her.
{"Who is ze girl?"} the man asked in Russian.
{"She is no-one."} Answered Sreka.
{"Ah."} He smiled again and looked to Anna. "Hello, Mz. No-one. I am Belloche, Claude Belloche: Archeologist extraordinaire." The French accent was strong.
When she didn't reply Belloche turned back to Sreka and they continued their conversation in Russian. Anna looked around. She had been doing a lot of this since the drugs wore off and wondered why her kidnappers were now less inclined to keep her unconscious. Prehaps because she was so far from home now she would have nowhere to escape to.
'Archeologist huh?' she thought to herself as she spied Belloche's bag next to the table. Broken antiquites and a crowbar. 'Feh, you're nothing but a grave robber. Judging by that outfit you must be the cleanist scum around.'
{"Why the disguise?"} inquired Sreka, nodding to the implements of archaeology at The Frenchman's feet.
{"Like you I suspect, I also occasionally find it necessary to travel in cognito."}.
{"Nah, I always were briefs."}
The other man winced slightly
{"....Regardless, the girl - where did you find her?"}{"Does it matter?"} Sreka took a slug of whisky from a shot glass and wiped away the excess on his sleeve.
{"No. She will fetch a fine price."}{"Is the market as strong for girls as it is for antiquities?"} Sreka said sarcastically.
{"Girls, believe it or not, are rarer. Particularly her sort. It's the eyes - green eyes are in high demand."}{"Payment?"} growled Sreka suddenly.
{"Half now, half on receipt."} Belloche said, pushing across the stained wood a small leather satchel that was stuffed with notes.
{"Da."}{"We will be waiting. Don't be late."}{"The nun, she trusts me. I'm in charge of the girl."}{"Are you sure about that? I'd heard she shot you."}{"I am Andre Sreka!" Sreka thumped the table, rattling the glasses. And she broke my heart before she shot me!"}
Belloche let Andrei's rage pass, then said diplomatically {"So we have a deal?"}, and extended his hand.
{"I don't usually do business with people smugglers."} Sreka said with a grimace, and shook Belloche's hand.
Belloche's ingratiating smile fell to a blank mask and he held fast onto Andre's hand, he hissed:
{"Remember, Russian, it was you who sought us out. In fact let me be franker still; Russia is a long, long way from Cairo, my friend and you come to me disgraced and embarrassed. In love - pathetic! You could not sink lower if you were on your knees begging for scraps in the street! So I'd watch that tongue of yours if I were you."}
Belloche released Andre's hand and stood up to leave.
{"Have the girl in the market place in a half an hour - I will arrange collection and transit and you can have your vengeance on this nun of yours."}
Andrei was silent and grim.
Belloche stood in the doorway silhouetted against the bright street outside. He placed a pale hat on his head and switching to perfect Parisian bid "aurevoir!" to Anna and blew her a kiss.
Anna recoiled as far as her bonds would allow, but she could only return that blank emotionless stare from the doorway with the wonder of what Andrei and he had been talking about.
"I THOUGHT SO TOO. GOODBYE, MONK."
Satan dissipated, moving into the Ether, leaving Rasputin to his own private torment in a specialy constructed bubble of unreality: The first bit of creating God had done, since he noticed one Thursday that Saturn's rings were on backwards.
The Devil was feeling quite vexxed. It was his job to oppose creation and that little upstart had come close to usurping him.
But now they were all back. He could feel the cells in Hell swelling once again with the souls of the damned.
The Devil, being utterly evil, is a natural pedant with a photographic memory. He has all the charm, wit and self-control of a obsessive-compulsive officious beaurocrat, who thinks he is funny.
Occassionally The Devil lay claim to inventing Tippexx, but even his closest imps found this to hard to believe.
However, in this great inventory of a mind, something was missing. It might, once, have been proper to call it a 'someone', but all resembelence to the divine form had been lost when he'd taken The Mark, and become a spawn of Hell.
And Leiecester hadn't returned as he was told. On one level The Devil had to admire this kind of insolence, if there was one thing he was hot on it was insubordination. But there were limits. The problem was he was having difficulty tracking Leicester, it felt like there were two of him. The Devil continued to bear down on the Earth, focussing on what was the biggest blip Leicester was leaving on his infernal radar.
He found the Demonic Form he'd had conferred on Leicester, that which he had gifted to him when sent him on his mission to re-capture Rasputin. For some reason Satan couldn't quite comprehend, it was waiting for him in the middle of the Sahara Desert.
"Go! Go! Go!" urged Arthur" as Feizel hurriedly put the Jeep into gear.
A shadow passed over them.
"Too late." lamented X. The Two Agents and Jimmy piled out of the cab. Moments later it was crushed into twisted shards as the Demon Kitty tore into it looking for another morsel of food to sate it's incredible hunger.
To the sound of shredding metal, the three men scurried and his behind a small dune.
"We're screwed!" wailed Jimmy and maniacally began biting his nails.
"No, no, no... I'll think of something." Arthur murmured and repeated this profound belief like a catechism. His eyes scanned the horizon for any conceivable assistance: one of Jimmy's guns, a sharp stick, anything; but there was nothing, just sand stretching away to infinity.
A lone scorpion returned his expectant gaze unhelpfully. Arthur dismissed it irritably.
A thunderous bellow shook him for his wandering reverie. The ground shook and several grains of sand jumped upward in excitement, as the great weight of the Hellcat advanced on their position.
The Demon raised its head and revolved several of its eyes to scan the sky. It sniffed.
Arthur felt his gaze drawn upwards too; the sky was...glowing.
"Arthur?" queried X.
"I don't know."
Jimmy, who could stand the wait no longer, made a dash like a sprinter trying in vain to get away.
The Cat saw the fleeing figure instantly and leapt over the heads of Arthur and X to give chase.
"JIMMY!" called out Arthur.
Time slowed down and dribbled like PVA glue.
The fire in the sky came down like the end of the world. The demon formed from the bones of The Red Leicester closed the gap between it and the fleeing Jimmy Feizel. Jimmy tripped; he spun slowly though the air and twisted round to see the many mouths on the creature open up, lined by fangs bigger than his arm, read to swallow him whole.
"JIM -
Time Stopped.
Arthur's trapped consciousness thought this rather odd. He could think clearly enough. And all his senses seemed to be fully functioning. But nothing was moving; except for the fire, which ranged across the horizon. And He couldn't move. Not one muscle. He was frozen in the grimace of calling out for Feizel.
Feizel hung in the air suspended, pursued forever by the bounding Hellcat.
A voice cacophonied out across the desert.
"HELL AWAITS EVEN THEE."
The Demonic form of The Hellcat began to evaporate in fits of black vapour.
As the last of the frozen form of the leaping demon dissipate before the Inferno, there was suddenly a light on the Horizon, pale and glowing like the moon.
"G!" Said the voice in The Fire.
Arthur strained to hear the other half of the conversation but he could not. It was as though it was being conducted deliberately just outside of hearing.
"THEY ARE MINE." the fire protested. THIS ONE'S A THIEF, THAT ONE'S COWARD AND OF COURSE, THE MURDERER."
Arthur felt a like someone was clutching at his heart and squeezing. The guilt was overwhelming.
The pale light glowed brighter.
"NOW YOU ARE BEING UNREASONABLE! IT WAS A DRAW!"
The Light ebbed and waned a little then flared majestically.
"WHAT PLAN?"
The light shimmered.
"FINE! TAKE THEM. I GOT WHAT I CAME FOR."
The Fire then did something impossible, it rolled up into a ball of molten magma, and plunged into The Earth, forcing open a huge hole in the ground, which then began to seal up behind it with solid rock, and was quickly covered by sand.
The Light pulsed rapidly.
Arthur felt like he was falling....
The scenery changed.
-
mmmMMEY!" Arthur lurched forward, reaching.Jimmy came to a sudden stop on the hard floor.
"ow!"
Arthur brought both hands up and looked at them. 'What just happened?', He said.
Arthur had a memory but it was...clouding over.
"X?" he turned to ask his partner "X!" X had his hands plastered over his eyes.
"Has it gone away?"
"You missed the whole thing!!?" Arthur ranted
"Quite on purpose." "Are you certain it's gone?"
"Yes, yes, it's gone." Arthur turned to look at their new surroundings. "We appear to be," he scanned about the mild dark, "in a warehouse."
His eyes were drawn to the wooded sidings; he could see daylight beyond and through the cracks, people milling.
Jimmy scurried to his feet. "You people are cursed!" and fled for the door, he wrenched it open and fled out into the street.
Arthur had to shield his eyes against the glare, but his nostrils picked up something familiar.
X stood up and brushed some sand off of his suit.
"Where did you say we are again?"
"That's impossible." Arthur muttered.
"What is."
"Smells like Cairo."
"You sure?"
"Positive."
"But we were several days out from even crossing the border into Libya!
"I know. I think we had help."
"From who?"
"I can't remember."
Arthur stood in the light of the open door looking at the normal day unwinding outside in the bustling market. X still stood in the shadow, fixing his tie
A thought occurred to Arthur. He dismissed it.
He turned to look back at X. "If were are in Egypt, that means were closer to finding Mary and Vandeveer."
"...and Anna." X nodded.
"Yes...her too," and smiled a winsome smile.
X joined Arthur in front of the open door and together they set out to look for Anna.
As luck would have it, Anna was being carried by Andrei Sreka out of bar in downtown Cairo, which was just around the corner from the street, where Arthur and X had just that moment emerged.
And they are due to see each other in exactly 1 minute and 37 seconds.
"That", St Peter said critically, "was cheating.""I don't cheat, I create."said God, with an expansive hand gesture.
"Whatever."
