#GenghizInLove: Episode 32

"You didn't come to my wedding," Rasputin said resentfully. He glowered across the table at me. "I thought we were friends."

"Congratulations, comrade. I didn't even know that you were married."

"I told you!" Rasputin bellowed. "When I came to Prague I told you I was getting married to Meredith."

"You didn't tell me when," I replied patiently. "Or where."

"It was your duty to find out." Rasputin took a cautious sip of his mineral water and grimaced in disgust. "This stuff is horrible."

"So why are you drinking it?" I quaffed down the amber nectar in my tall frosted glass of Hochgeboren Krystalbier (brewery founded in 1076) and smacked my lips ostentatiously.

Rasputin scowled enviously at my beer. "Meredith says that I have to stop drinking if I want to be a civilized Westerner."

"She's not here right now, is she?"

"It would be wrong..." he mumbled.

"Such devotion." I raised my eyebrows and asked the plump waitress for another beer. She beamed at me and nodded. Rasputin looked around like a hunted animal and ordered one too.

"Do you have any money?"

"You told me that you were marrying Meredith for her money."

"I've been investing it," Rasputin explained. "It will come back with fabulous returns on investment. I'm just having a little trouble with liquidity at the moment."

"What investments?"

"Oh, a bit of real estate here, a bit of arbitrage there. Russia presents such tremendous investment opportunities right now," Rasputin said in a nasal voice. I could imagine him making his pitch to hardened investment bankers in thousand dollar suits, getting his thirty seconds of attention before the burly gentlemen in leather jackets responded to an impatiently pressed beeper and grabbed him by the seat of his brown nylon pants and pitched him out the window.

"How did you come across the word `arbitrage'?" I asked, interested. "Was it on your learn-one-English-word-every-day calendar?"

"I'm advancing hard currency to entrepreneurs in Russia," Rasputin answered self-importantly. "And they will pay me back at high rates of interest."

"Sounds like usury to me," I said indifferently. "So you've become a loan shark, have you? When are you moving into numbers racketeering? And I've heard of tremendous investment opportunities in prostitution too."

"Exactly," Rasputin said excitedly. He leaned forward confidentially. The sour smell of his breath pushed me back in my chair. "See, these Russian entrepreneurs can't give me back my hard currency until they sell their goods in the West. So I had a brilliant idea. Why not eliminate the middle man? I give them the money. They give me the girls. I sell the girls into slavery and pocket the profits." He looked at me triumphantly.

I shook my head admiringly. "Does Meredith know about your schemes?"

"Oh, she approves!" Rasputin smiled ear to ear. "She had to move her money offshore anyway because she's a Ffraude's name."

"You mean the big insurance market in London?"

"Yes. The way it works is that this small group of rich people keep getting richer because they split up all the insurance premiums between themselves."

"That's the way it's supposed to work," I corrected him. "Haven't they been losing a lot of money recently?"

"It's all these natural disasters," Rasputin said moodily. "Supertankers spilling millions of barrels of oil all over Alaska. Forest fires in Kalifornia. Hurricanes devastating Florida. Why the hell can't they do something about the environment?" he demanded wildly. "It's ruining my life! I mean, my wife!"

"So Meredith actually had to pay up, huh?"

"Well, she would have had to pay if she hadn't moved her money out of England. Now she can just declare herself bankrupt. Like all the other rich people in England."

"How did she move her money out of England?"

"She made her son a Muslim."

"Excuse me?"

"Well, someone in the family had to be a Muslim. Bank Ripoff only takes money from Muslims." Rasputin shook his head at my ignorance. "The Bank Run on Islamic Principles Offshore. The biggest private bank in the world. The government of Hammurabi set it up for all those Muslims who work in the infidel world but want their money to be invested according to Islamic rules. Everyone in the City calls it Bank Ripoff," he added, proudly showing off his familiarity with the fashionable argot employed by the illiterates who work in London's financial district.

"How old is Meredith's son?"

"Twenty eight."

"How old is she?"

"Fifty one."

"How old are you?"

"Twenty seven. You knew that. You didn't give me a birthday present this year. Come on," Rasputin urged. "Age is no barrier to true love."

"The true romance of a mercenary." I sipped my beer. "You should write a book about it. Capture the menopausal market. Grab their attention by the hormones."

"Meredith does that already. She writes romantic novels. She's really good at gushing. That's how she got elected to Parliament. Lady Snatcher thinks Meredith will become a minister soon."

"Wow." I yawned. "Hey. What happened to that libel suit? You know, your article in The Voyeur..."

"The judge dismissed all charges." Rasputin grinned happily. "He said that Olivia Pebble's hair did look like overcooked pasta. And while he couldn't understand why I would want to fantasize about Lady Monica's behind, there was no accounting for people's sexual preferences. Blodgett Scrotum wasn't even there. He's still hiding in Texas." Rasputin's grin faded. "But I still have to pay for my legal defence. So I'm going to sue them now," he said vindictively. "For all my suffering and mental anguish and for the loss of my reputation as a journalist. I want to rub their noses in the mud. I want them to beg on the streets. I want to ruin their children."

"Good attitude," I said. "Do unto others as they would do unto you. An eye for an eye, a law suit for a law suit... Well, you're all set, Rasputin. I'm happy for you."

"But I want my friends to be happy as well," Rasputin said earnestly. He reached over and finished my beer. "Did I tell you how I freed Navel from the loony-bin?"

"You mean the home for the mentally challenged where Navel's father had junked him? You managed to get him out? How?" I stared at Rasputin with sincere admiration, wondering if I had misjudged him all along.

"Nobody else in the whole world could have managed it," Rasputin said modestly. "I persuaded Navel's father to release Navel into my custody."

"So you have a stepson who is twenty-eight and a foster-son who is twenty-nine. You patriarch."

"That's below the belt," Rasputin said reproachfully. "You know I can't have children because I was bitten by a lapdog." He wiped a tear from his face. Maybe it was just sweat. I remembered reading somewhere that eunuchs perspire freely.

"You shouldn't have teased the dog. Anyway, go on."

"Navel's father even agreed to pay me five thousand dollars a month if I could keep Navel off his hands. He is a very successful man and he doesn't want to think about his failure as a father. He works at one of these international financial organizations called the Zurich Club. I wonder if he would invest in my schemes..." Rasputin stared into space. "Anyway, he told me to make Navel work hard. He suggested a job building roads or picking fruit or roofing houses or working in a coal mine. Rough love, he called it. It just so happened that I had a job for Navel. Meredith's grandfather lives all alone on an island in the Outer Hebrides. He's ninety-six years old and senile and incontinent. He needed someone to spoon-feed him and to change his bedpans and to wash his sheets and so on. Isn't it the perfect solution?"

"I can't imagine Navel as a male nurse," I said, lighting a cigarette. "He can't even tie a tie let alone apron strings. How much are you paying him?"

"Well, he gets food and lodging. What more could he possibly want?" Rasputin looked shocked. He reached over, grabbed a cigarette, and absent-mindedly put the pack and my gold Charvet lighter into his pocket. "What does he need money for anyway? I lent him my old sleeping bag so that he would be comfortable in the attic. There isn't any heating and the roof leaks a bit when there's a storm. I go out there sometimes and buy him half a pint of beer and give him a few rolling papers so that he can make himself cigarettes from the old man's fag ends. He's living much better than if he were in Russia."

"Sounds like a good deal. For you," I said, getting up. I tried to retrieve my lighter from Rasputin's pocket. We had a slight scuffle. I borrowed a broom from the waitress and swept up all the broken glass from the floor. "I'll let you keep the cigarettes, Rasputin, but I want that lighter. My father gave it to me when I was fifteen and he found out that I had started smoking. He wanted me to have the right accessories."

"All right, you miser," Rasputin whined, reluctantly returning my lighter. He looked furtively at his watch and at the entrance of the Cafe Odeon. "At least buy me another beer."

I sighed and sat down again. "All right, Rasputin. So tell me why you wanted to talk to me."

Rasputin pretended to be hurt. "I need a reason to talk to my friend?"

"So it's just a coincidence that we're sitting in the same café?"

He spread out his hands. "I happened to be in Berlin, okay?"

"Did you get in by train last night by any chance?"

"As a matter of fact, yes. What is this, an interrogation?"

I looked Rasputin in the eye. "It can be if you want. Why did you plant Lucy's panties in my bed?"

Rasputin squealed in surprise. "What panties? What are you talking about?"

I sighed. "All right. Play dumb if you must. What would you like to talk about?"

"Your mother." Rasputin stared at me coldly. "You lied to me when I came to see you in Prague. She isn't bankrupt. Her fast food restaurants are booming!"

"How do you know?"

"I called her," Rasputin replied. He pulled out a whistle from his pocket and blew a shrill blast. Several masked men in beige trench coats rushed into the cafe. They whipped off the table cloth, wrapped me up in it, gagged me with smelly dishrags, carried me out, and dumped me into the back seat of a grey Mercedes which was waiting outside, its engine running. Rasputin and some of the masked men piled into the back of the car on top of me. The others jumped into another grey Mercedes. The convoy drove off at high speeds. The whole operation was carried out with frightening rapidity and brutal efficiency.

I remember the aghast look on the motherly face of the plump waitress as she watched my abduction in impotent horror. I saw nothing after that: a black hood was pulled over my head and I could sense only the jolting of my bruised body and the squeal of rubber. Eventually, I was shoved out of the car. I heard the high whine of nearby jet engines. The black hood and smelly dishrags were jerked off. I sucked the cold night air into my lungs. The darkness all around was punctuated periodically with dim lights shimmering in a heavy fog. The masked men stood around watchfully, machine pistols at the ready. Rasputin looked at me triumphantly, his hands in the pockets of his trench coat. We were standing near a private jet that gleamed white against the inky darkness, the whine of its engines rising to an unearthly crescendo, the swansong of some monstrous bird.

"Where are you taking me?" I gasped.

"To Kalifornia." Rasputin smirked. "Back to your mother."

I moaned. At that moment a volley of shots rang out. I ducked for cover. Rasputin yelled in fury. I liked it. Something was going wrong with Rasputin's plans and I wanted to watch. Blam! Blam! Two of my masked captors staggered and collapsed. The others scurried around their cars seeking cover from the fusillade of fire from another Mercedes that had pulled up nearby. Amidst the deafening din, I heard a high-pitched ping! A bullet had pierced the thin metal skin of the jet waiting to carry me off to my mother's dread embrace. I rolled away from the seeping trail of jet fuel. A masked man tripped heavily over me. Cursing horribly, the brute tried to club me with his machine pistol but the gun caught in the neck of my silk shirt and ripped it open. After chopping the lout down with a vicious karate blow, I ran towards the airplane. I had nothing to lose: my clothes were ruined anyway. I found the hole in the fuselage where the bullet had punctured the fuel tank, ripped my shirt into an impromptu fuse, lit one end with my lighter, and ran.

My head exploded and my eyeballs sizzled in a wave of unbearable heat. The screams of the damned rose all around. I had obviously died and gone to hell and now I was paying for my sins. But who was calling my name? I looked up weakly. A slim silhouette against the fireball, a near-naked witch holding an Uzi, long curly hair flowing free in the hot wind, her beautiful breasts bobbing as she ran... Anastasia hit the ground. I cushioned her fall. We lay there in a tight embrace. It was an intensely romantic moment once I recovered my breath.

Anastasia fired her gun right next to my head. I winced and looked around. Rasputin lay near us, weeping with terror. A pungent stench rose from his soiled trousers. "Ambush," Anastasia said briefly. "He was creeping up with a gun." Trench-coated bodies littered the runway. There were two charred corpses in the cockpit of the guttered shell of the airplane. Flames flickered in a burnt-out Mercedes. One of the other cars seemed unscathed but the last one had disappeared.

"Some of them got away." Anastasia seemed disappointed. She fired off a round in the air for the hell of it. "I'm cold." The night was nippy and she was, after all, wearing only sheer red lace panties. I wrenched a trench coat off the nearest corpse and wrapped it around Anastasia's slender body. She touched the blood stained lapel of the coat, licked her finger experimentally, and frowned. "They were English."

"How can you tell?"

"Tastes of fish and chips." She got up and pointed her gun at Rasputin. "You stink like a sewer," Nasty said, prodding Rasputin's fat belly with the business end of the gun. "Why did you kidnap us, Englishman?"

"He's Russian," I said. "We were at Oxford together. He's the one who killed Lucy. Did they kidnap you as well?"

Anastasia squinted at me irritably. "Obviously they tried. Why else would I be here?"

"Where are we?" I asked, looking around at the ramshackle buildings at the perimeter of the desolate runway.

"It must be an abandoned airbase. Let's go. They might return with reinforcements." She aimed at Rasputin's head. "Might as well finish the dolt off if he's not going to talk," she said, reasonably enough.

I had a sudden vision of a small dark plump woman crying inconsolably. "Don't do that," I replied. "I know his mother."

"I'll talk," Rasputin pleaded anxiously. "Ask me anything."

"Did you hear that?" Anastasia demanded. I nodded. I too had heard the distant sound of a car engine. "Let's interrogate the fatso while we get away." She shoved Rasputin towards the Mercedes. "Bring along some corpses!" I dragged the nearest three bodies to our getaway car. One of the bodies had plaster casts on its leg and elbow. I heaved the corpses onto a cowering Rasputin. Anastasia screeched off. Another grey Mercedes came up behind us in hot pursuit. Anastasia swivelled the car through a maze of small suburban roads. Our pursuers leaned out of their car windows, waving machine guns. Bullets and glass hailed through the back window. "Dump a corpse," Anastasia shouted over the noise of the car engines. I nodded. The smell was getting unbearable anyway. I twisted around, opened a door, and pulled at a body by its limp hand...

"Not me!" Rasputin screamed in terror. "I'm alive!"

"Oh. Sorry." I grabbed another hand and pushed. The body landed with a thud in the path of the Mercedes pursuing us which swerved, hit a tree and exploded in a small fireball. We giggled madly at the distant screams.

"All right, jerk. Talk," Anastasia demanded coldly, gunning the car through a series of sharp bends.

"What do you want to know?" Rasputin whined.

"Who do you work for? Why did you kidnap us?"

"His mother hired me," Rasputin pointed at me. "She wanted me to bring him back to Kalifornia. She said she would pay any amount..."

"My mother doesn't own a private jet," I said icily. "I wanted her to buy me one for my eighteenth birthday but she refused."

"I hired it. Now I'll have to pay for the damages." Tears welled up in Rasputin's swollen eyes. "Why did you blow it up? How will I ever explain this to Meredith?"

"Did you hire the thugs as well?"

"I borrowed them from the British." A shifty look came into Rasputin's eyes. "They were on to you anyway."

"So these men in beige trench coats work for Terence?"

"Have you ever seen him without one?"

"That's true," I agreed. "Why did Terence lend his people to you?"

Rasputin shrugged. "I work for him. Sometimes I need help."

"What kind of work?"

A defiant look crossed Rasputin's face. "I won't tell you." Anastasia turned and fired carelessly into the backseat. I gagged at the nauseating reek of gunfire and fresh shit. "All right, all right, I'll tell you," Rasputin screamed in panic. "I pop people for them."

"You're a hitman for the British secret service? A contract killer?"

"No contract, no job security," Rasputin whined. "They don't even pay for my medical insurance. Terence just says what a pity that Mr. So and So is obstructing British interests. So I go out and do the guy. Then some money appears in my bank account."

"Did you kill Max Bulge? What about this other dead billionaire in San Marino?"

Rasputin's jaw dropped. "How do you know about that? I thought I'd got rid of all the witnesses."

"Did Terence tell you to kill Lucy?"

Rasputin frowned. "That one went wrong," he replied sullenly. "I was just supposed to pick her up. I don't know what happened."

"Did the same thing happen at the train station here the other night?" Anastasia shouted.

Rasputin looked at her in terror and crossed himself. "You must be a witch. How did you know…"

"Dump the oaf," Anastasia ordered briefly.

"No!" Rasputin grovelled. "Princess, I'll leave my wife and be your slave. I'm much better in bed than him," he said untruthfully.

"You stink, buffoon," Anastasia replied indifferently. She made a sudden U turn in the middle of the street, ploughing through a sidewalk cafe. We crumpled to a halt against a brick wall. Rasputin hurtled through the windshield. He hadn't fastened his safety belt. Anastasia and I emerged and looked at Rasputin, lying there in a pool of blood. "Well?" Anastasia inquired. "What should we do with this clown's carcass?"

I heard the distant sound of police sirens. "He's still breathing."

"I should have trashed him back at the airfield. Taxi!" Anastasia flagged down a passing cab. We heaved Rasputin in. The taxi driver recoiled in disgust at the noisome odor. "Zoo station," Anastasia ordered imperiously, throwing money at the taxi driver. The cabbie drove as fast as he could and ejected us. Some hollow-eyed young men in tight trousers and garish makeup came up and looked at Rasputin's limp form curiously.

"Willi!" Anastasia hailed one. "Prince Wilhelm von und zu Hohenstaufen-Niebelungen," she said, introducing us.

Willi and I shook hands. "I know your father," I said stupidly. A guilty look came into the boy's eyes. I winced and pulled my foot out of my mouth.

"Willi," Anastasia said. "You told me that you know a place full of cages..."

"Ach, ja, Arsch." Willi giggled. "The patrons inspect the cages and choose their pleasure for the evening."

"Take this animal there, will you?" Anastasia casually kicked Rasputin's ribs.

"With pleasure, Nasty!" Willi bowed from the waist. "They are always looking for fresh meat. Most don't last very long. They will give me a bonus. Is he fierce? They like that sort of thing."

"Don't give him any meat for a couple of days," Anastasia advised. "Will you take care of it?"

"Of course, darling."

Anastasia kissed Willi's rouged cheek. "I wish your father were in one of those cages," I whispered into Willi's ear. He smiled and pressed my hand passionately. I looked down at Rasputin and felt a twinge of pity. But then the image of Charlotte Stant's frozen body hanging in a meat locker in Prague crossed my mind and I felt no pity at all for her gurgling killer.