H2G2 Storytime III: From Prussia with Love. Part XXXVII
Created | Updated Aug 11, 2006
Several groups, familiar and unknown, were now converging on the marketplace on this fine Cairo noon.
Sreka, hauling Anna through the dusty backalleys that led to the market, was for once delighting in telling the whole truth.
"A slave-trader?" she said, disbelieving.
Sreka sniggered maliciously. "Da, my dear. Which is why I am a-bringing you to the market. And for all Belloche's posturing, his eyes positively glowed dollar-signs when he saw you. You blondes are always popular..."
Pausing to glance up and down a convergent alley, he dragged her along into a deserted yard. The market was a dull roar up ahead. Sreka scratched his head reflectively.
"Personally, I find most women contemptible. Too soft and squeaky, too easily broken. But who am I to argue with the consumer? Now..."
He settled against the wall, and gestured with the pistol that Anna should do the same.
"Do not think of escape," he drawled. "I am Sreka, and I do not miss. We have several minutes to kill before we must move, and I am filled with the unaccountable urge to tell you how clever I am about to be."
Anna found, to her surprise, that she was actually impatient for her life of harem slavery to begin. Sreka was foul enough when grumpy, but in a good mood he was truly unbearable. He cleared his throat deliberately.
"Have you ever heard of 'Find the Lady'?"
The man who called himself Belloche was responsible for bringing the ancient slave trade of North Africa into the 21st century, using a secure website to peddle his wares to exclusive clients around the globe.
His venture, launched in the heady days of the dotcom bubble, had endured that bubble's burst and was going from strength to strength. Pictures of Steve Jobs and Bill Gates hung above his personal computer terminal in his airy, high-ceilinged apartments in an expensive suburb of Cairo.
At that moment, he was at the terminal concluding business with the Buyer. The flickering image on his screen raised a hand in salutation.
"As ever, Belloche-san, I am impressed at your professionalism and taste. The girl will be a fine addition."
"Or your money back," simpered Belloche. The Buyer controlled over half of the criminal enterprises in his native Japan and was making inroads into the Dragon Economies of the Pacific Rim, and was certainly worth a simper.
"And yet, and yet..." A ring-encrusted hand caressed a chin, grainy over the digital link-up. "These are hazardous times. Security is a grave concern. I fret, I do."
Belloche swallowed. "The package will carry the usual insurance policy. I could even stretch to...C.O.D.?"
The Buyer nodded slowly.
"It is well. However, I have also dispatched my own men to oversee the transaction. In these perilous times, it is prudent to be vigiliant."
"My men were not informed of this! They may attack your forces...the risk of a misunderstanding..."
The Buyer held up a long hand, and flicked it dismissively.
"Haah. Belloche-san, do not worry. Your men will never even know that mine were there. They practice *ninjitsu*, you see."
Belloche was aware that he had begun to sweat.
"Oh," he stammered. He forced a smile. "Oh, good."
Unaware of the lithe black-clad figures creeping along the rooftops above his head, Sreka continued to monologue.
"'Find the Lady' was a con we used to practice in the slums - a variation on the old three-cups-one-pea routine, but with playing-cards in place of cups and a Queen card in place of the pea."
For a moment, he gave himself over to nostalgia.
Life in the ghettoes of his youth had been nasty, brutish and especially short for those who crossed him, before the KGB scholarship program had recruited him on the strength of his self-taught viciousness and amorality... But he was drifting.
"Today," he said, "you are the Lady. Or perhaps the pea. There are three baskets - you will be in one. Do you follow?"
He was met with a blank stare of hostility.
"Dobro. I have already tied up two weighted baskets and dispersed them about the marketplace, in certain vital locations. First I will dupe Belloche. I am instructed to display you, within your basket, in a certain quarter of the textile market - his watching spy will confirm your presence, and I will proceed to the next quarter, that of the fishmongers, to leave your basket with his couriers and to receive payment. But you will not be in their basket."
"I'm not going to be a harem slave?" Anna said sceptically.
"No. You will stay with me, as my insurance should the Agency pursue me...what, what is that with the groaning? You would prefer a life of imprisoned degradation? My company is that bad?
She sniffed. "I suppose not. Drat."
"Damn right. After displaying you, I must pass through an arched passage to reach the adjoining fish quarter and the couriers. In this passage, out of sight, I have left the first weighted basket. I will swap baskets, leaving you beneath the arch, and give the fake to Belloche's men. I will then be made grossly wealthy. Hmmhmm."
"Very clever," Anna feted him, "is there much more?"
"Oh, yes. My comrades from the Cult await me on the opposite side of the market - await you, in fact. So I will retrace my steps, pick you up and display you for them in the main square. In the alleyway between the square and the van, I will again pull what you English call 'the old switcheroo', and deposit a false basket with them. Shortly after, I will evade my companions and return to the market to retrieve you and disappear into the continent with my new riches."
He stretched contentedly. "Africa has much to offer a man of my talents."
Anna's head was buzzing. "But what makes you think any of the people you're duping won't come after you? And why are you cheating and abandoning your friends?"
"Friends?" Sreka snorted. "They are dogs. Even Von Trapp, who used to be a proud man, bows and scrapes before that great ginger Гарпия. I am done with them. As for my dupes coming after me..."
He sniggered.
"I must have forgotten to mention. The false baskets are weighted with plastic explosives, wired with short fuses. They will none of them live long enough to be indignant. Caveat emptor..."
He checked his watch.
"Get up. It's time to shine."
The textile quarter was half-empty this evening, with only a handful of locals and tourists wandering about and stroking the carpets and weavings on display. None suspected that they were being closely observed by several independent parties - not even those who had been trained in such things.
"Definitely Cairo," said Arthur. "I recognise that spire. How about that?"
"It's that way to the food market, right?" said X. Hours of exhausting desert travel and inexplicable supernatural mucking-about had left him with an appetite, and a willingness to risk Arab food again.
"I think..." Arthur began, and then he pulled X to the ground. "Look! It's the Russian - Andrei Sreka!"
Sreka was wandering casually across the dusty courtyard, hauling a large woven-reed basket on a squeaky little trolley.
"Say no more," muttered X, pulling on a pair of black gloves. "I'll take the left, as usual?"
"Hold up, man." Arthur held X's arm. "Let's be clever, eh? Let's see what he's up to."
He whipped out a small pair of binoculars and, creeping around a crate, made to follow the Russian. Sreka stopped in the middle of the thoroughfare and seemed to be examining a Persian rug.
"He's shopping," whispered X. "I didn't have him down as a homemaker."
"No!" said Arthur. "Look..." He squinted into the eyepiece of the binoculars.
One of Sreka's hands had wandered to the lid of the basket, and now it smoothly tugged the lid to one side.
"What's he got there?" said X.
Sreka himself answered this question: glancing around the marketplace nervously, he reached into the depths and tugged out a handful of hair, followed seconds later by Anna's gagged head, writhing and twisting helplessly.
On the roof of the cotton warehouse, Belloche's man turned from his binoculars and tapped his collar.
"The cat is in the bag. Accept, and pay the man."
Thirty metres away and several feet down in the shadows beneath a mosque's dome, one of the Buyer's ninjas tucked a tiny telescope back into the folds of black silk that clung to his body, removing at the same time a tiny mirror. The medium was different, but it conveyed the same message to the other ninjas perched invisibly about the architecture - all was going according to plan.
This was about to change. Arthur had dropped the binoculars, his brows had darkened and his jaw was working silently.
"My God," breathed X. "The girl... Mary and Von Trapp must be...hey! Hey!"
Arthur had risen silently to his feet and drawn his non-issue firearm - the huge silver revolver that could blow a hole the size of a melon in hapless bad guys. Slamming a clip into it, he strode out into the market. X hopped to his feet and, hurrying after him, grabbed his sleeve.
"What happened to being clever, man?"
Arthur's expression was awful.
"I'm going to get Anna, and kill Sreka. Help me."
X hissed between his teeth, and nodded. He drew his silenced pistol.
"After you, old man."
Sreka had put the lid back on the basket and was just finishing the last knot of the binding when he heard the shout:
"Step back from the basket, Sreka, or you're a dead man!"
The Agents were advancing up the street at him, weapons drawn. This would complicate things, to be sure.
In order to buy a little time to think, he screamed:
"Never, Agency filth!" and ducked behind the basket. He tossed the pistol aside as insufficiently macho, and pulled a sawn-off shotgun from his jacket.
"Crafty bugger," commented X, scanning for a shot at any bits of Sreka visible around the basket.
The barrel of a shotgun swung into view for a second, blasted, and the stall beside him exploded in a shower of splinters and scraps of carpet.
"This is hopeless, Sreka!" roared Arthur. "Come out and take it like a man!"
"I will kill the girl!" replied Sreka, fumbling shells into the shotgun and reflecting that, if the situation worsened, he might actually do it to mix things up a bit.
"'Take it like a man'?" said X in an undertone. "Is that from Hostage Negotiation 101, Arthur?"
"Shut. Up."
"Ten o' clock!" Arthur shouted.
A figure had emerged over the parapet of the cotton warehouse, and swung a long dark shape onto the ledge. A second later, machine-gun bullets started chewing up the yard in front of the Agents. Belloche's man had intervened to grant Sreka time to escape. Shouts and alarums from behind the Agents, in the direction of the fishmongers' quarter, suggested that the other couriers were on their way to assist.
"Drop the sniper," suggested X. "I'll run out like a fool, and you take the shot, eh?"
Arthur gave a curt nod, and X staggered out into the thoroughfare towards the basket. The sniper raised his head, put it to the sights of the machine-gun and lost it to a bullet from Arthur in quick succession.
A bullet from the advancing couriers chipped the wall next to Arthur as he dashed to X.
"Sreka ran for it - down the passage - took the basket with Anna."
The Agents gave chase.
Sreka, toting a shotgun with one hand and hauling the trolley with the other, grunted his way out of the passage and into the throng of tourists and idlers in the weavers quarter of the marketplace.
Discharging the shotgun in the air several times to disperse the crowd, he made for the alley with the second fake basket in it. It was not too late to salvage something...
A besuited goon ran into in his path.
"I'm with Belloche. Where do you think...?"
Sreka was practically throbbing with adrenaline, so this was not a good time to introduce oneself. The goon flew into a wall at the first shot, and stopped moving at the second.
The lead courier listened to his last gurgles over the mike system.
"Sreka is trying to screw us," he said to the others. "Now we take him out too."
The small conclave of ninjas in the shadows above the passage came to much the same conclusion at the same moment, and loosed various Oriental death-dealing instruments about their persons.
"There he goes!" huffed X, spotting Sreka across the courtyard. A metal star whizzed past his ear and embedded itself in the ground just behind Sreka's heel - looking behind him, he saw shadows unfolding in the building above the passage. Muzzle flashes lit up the passage as Belloche's couriers fired on them, their misses sending little chips of the packed earth flying.
"Arthur..." he snapped, but Arthur was still advancing on Sreka. His turn to take point, obviously. What to do?
Another star whirled out of the evening shadows and stuck neatly in his shin. X gritted his teeth and smiled. He had seen its point of origin, and now took aim - chose his moment - and shot the ninja off the wall just as the couriers emerged from the passage guns blazing.
"What in hell...?" The lead courier pushed the twitching ninja off him and hopped to his feet.
"Sir!" A subordinate was pointing upwards, to where a black-clad figure had detached from the wall and was hailing them.
"Greetings, friend-of-Belloche. I can explain entirely our presence..."
"Kill 'em all!"
X took the moment to limp off rapidly. When he glanced back, a miniature war had emerged between the couriers in the yard and the ninjas perched on various rooftops, lead, darts and stars flying about with merry abandon. Arthur had gotten ahead of him - had ducked into the alleyway after Sreka.
The explosive-weighted basket was where Sreka had left it and, casting a hasty glance backwards he shoved the basket containing Anna from the trolley and hefted the fake into its place. She squirmed in protest, shaking the basket where it lay in the grime of the alley, and he took a moment to address her:
"It seems I won't have time to kill you just now, woman. A pity. Too many of your friends to kill first. Let this sustain you."
And he gave the basket a tremendous kick, because he was a genuinely nasty person.
"Sreka!" A bullet flew past his ears - Arthur had rounded the corner and was advancing.
"Come and get me, lawman!" howled Sreka, ducking into the carpet warehouse that adjoined the alleyway. He hauled the trolley into the ancient freight elevator that led to building's upper level, and hammered on the 'Up' button.
When Arthur appeared, he loosed a few shots at him through the grille of the elevator until he passed out of sight beneath.
This was all largely improvised on Sreka's part, and he took a quiet moment in the elevator to congratulate himself. If Mary could see him now, she would be so impressed...she wouldn't treat him like a stupid child...make him feel two foot tall...
Oh, Sakry Kolymy. All the signs were there. The revelation came to him unwillingly: he fancied Mary.
Sreka slapped his forehead. Now he was in a truly bad mood.
Moments later, Arthur rolled expertly out of the roof-window and behind a ventilation unit, dodging by inches a blast from Sreka's shotgun. The Russian was crouching behind the basket on the peak of the gentle slope of the roof. The ventilation unit that sheltered Arthur was down the gradient, almost at the edge of the roof.
"Nowhere left to run, Sreka!" roared Arthur. "Let her go, and you'll live!"
"Why, Mr Cold-Blooded Agent, do I hear a quaver in your voice? Hah?" Sreka slotted fresh shells into the shotgun, and glanced around the basket. Beyond the lip of the roof he saw the teetering pyramid of baskets in the marketplace, and some kind of battle being prosecuted on the far side of the square. Interesting, but irrelevant.
"Just...just let her go, you madman." Arthur stifled a gulp. "We can do a deal for you. We can help you..."
A harsh bray of laughter was his reply. Sreka sounded amused and angry in equal measure.
"It's true! The famous Agent Arthur Robinson is blubbering like a smitten schoolgirl!" He chuckled madly.
A distant explosion shook the marketplace, and brought Sreka up short. Billows of oily black smoke and red flame were rising from above the rooftops towards the fishmongers' quarter - his first basket had exploded, taking out a large portion of the quarter with it.
"My feelings needn't concern you," said Arthur in an utterly hate-filled voice. "You're a sane man. Consider your position. My partner will be along in a moment, and then my offer of a deal expires along with you!"
As far as Sreka could remember, he had set the fuses on his two time-bombs pretty much simultaneously. He had counted on being well-advanced in his plan by now. Clearly this limited his options - he would have to end this bluff. He licked his lips, and stepped up away from the basket, holding the shotgun to the lid.
"How romantic! how heroic!" he bellowed. "Can it be that you came from Prussia...with *love*? Hahaha!"
Arthur flicked sweat from his forehead and stepped around the ventilation unit, levelling his revolver at Sreka's head.
"Don't move a muscle," he growled. "Or..."
"What?" said Sreka, and pulled the trigger.
The top of the basket was instantly shredded, and before Arthur's brain could register what had happened Sreka had delivered a mighty kick that sent it bouncing down the gradient of the roof towards the edge.
"Anna...!!!"
It could not have been a conscious decision that made him stretch towards the basket as it thumped past - that made him take his aim off Sreka.
He felt dozens of hot pellets enter his back, propelling him over the edge of the warehouse and towards the ground, rotating lazily beneath him. With the heightened senses of one about to die he saw the basket containing Anna hit the pyramid of baskets in the market below, and saw the explosion bloom out of the wreckage - a boiling cloud of flame rising up to meet him. He passed through it - lightly toasted - collided messily with a stall's canopy - hit the ground painfully.
The last sound his senses registered before blackness took him was X, crouched beside him, saying something vaguely encouraging. Then the image of Anna's face flashed before him, bright as lightning - then only blackness.
Sreka stroked his chin thoughtfully looking at the carnage below. Chances were that the Agent was dead - all to the good. And he had half the payment that Belloche had given him, though it was probably safe to say that professional relationship was over.
All in all, not a complete disaster, he reflected while sliding down the fire escape at the other side of the warehouse. It was a pity he hadn't had time to kill Anna, but you couldn't have everything.
"Where have you *been*?" hissed Mary as he hopped into the van - and where is the girl? Vanderveer and Von Trapp looked up, astonished - Sreka was blackened with ash, splattered with blood and limping slightly.
He sniffed.
"Just trying to get along, like everybody else. The Agents are here. I killed one. Robinson."
Mary forgot her former line of questioning and her eyes, to his immense gratification, widened.
"You saw Robinson die?"
"With a belly full of lead. It was...gratifying."
Von Trapp guffawed. "We were wondering about the racket. Well done, Andrei. You shall have a bonus."
Mary clapped him on the arm.
"Yes, good boy Andrei. I may have misjudged you - you've really pulled your socks up. Now, shall we go find Daltmooreby?"
Sreka stalked off to the corner of the van, putting on a haughty air - in fact, he needed to hide the fact that he was blushing bright red. This love business was complicated. He had probably done Robinson a favour.
