Interrupted in the reassuringly familiar soap-opera plot of the love triangle, I sulkily answered the phone. "Who the hell is it and what the devil do you want?"
"Hi, dear, this is Maya." My old friend from Oxford sounded amused. "That sweet receptionist of yours put me through to this phone. Are you okay? You sound a little harried."
"Maya darling!" I exclaimed sheepishly. "I never got a chance to thank you for your help in Budapest. Did they throw you in jail?"
"No, I got away safely," Maya replied. "I had a plane to catch. My three friends are still in prison though. They don't mind. Hungarian jails are so cushy compared to the Turkish dungeons they're used to and it's all research anyway for the book we're putting together. It's called the Terrorist's Guide to European Prisons."
"Are you going to cover other continents as well? I have a Peruvian friend who might be interested."
"Oh, what a good idea. We can talk about it when we meet."
"Where are you calling from?"
"Ten kilometres above sea level," Maya replied airily. "From the first class cabin of an airplane about to land in Prague. Are you still available to help?"
I remembered the commitment I had made a lifetime earlier in Berlin to aid Maya in some mysterious terrorist project. I was torn between fatigue and the gratitude I felt for Maya's help in Budapest. "Yes, of course, Maya. I'll get to the airport right away."
Barbie touched my arm as I hung up the phone. "Do you have to go?"
"It's the first time Maya has ever asked for my help, Barb." I looked at my watch. "I'd better go."
"Be careful."
"You be careful." I glowered at the drooling students clustered around my friend, like baby wolves waiting hopefully to nibble at their prey. Sweet Annichka at the reception desk summoned a taxi for me. I told the driver to drive like blazes to the airport. Then I slumped into my seat, closed my eyes, and prayed that I wouldn't be late. The first passengers were just emerging from customs when my taxi screeched up to the arrival area. I ran in and collided into someone. I began blindly to blurt out an apology when I realized that I had bumped into God himself.
"Good God! I mean, good grief! Godfrey, what the devil are you doing here?"
"Same thing as you, old chap. Anxiously awaiting loved ones."
"Whom are you waiting for?" At that moment I glimpsed Maya's slim figure wheeling a laden luggage trolley through customs. She was accompanied by a pudgy woman with grey hair. I guessed it was Nina Hamidi. Besides designing love potions for her rich and famous Berlin clientele, who included my lost love Anastasia, Hamidi was also involved in Maya's terrorist activities. Maya waved and began to wheel her trolley towards us.
"Do I see Maya?" Godfrey murmured lazily. He shook his head in mock bemusement. "What a gathering of the clans. I wonder if she spoke to Rasputin on the flight?"
My jaw dropped open. "Rasputin?"
"Yes. Rasputin. Surely you remember our old bridge partner?" God's eyes locked onto mine with heavy lidded irony.
I gulped. "I thought he was still in Berlin."
"Didn't you hear? I forgot, you only read the comic strips. Quite right too. The story dominated the English newspapers earlier in the week before Princess Fi's miraculous ascension. Meredith, Rasputin's wife, paid a large ransom to free him from some homosexual brothel in Berlin and told all the tabloids that she had done it as a moral duty to save Rasputin from temptation." Godfrey darted me a cool amused glance. "Oddly enough, Rasputin claimed you had something to do with this." Godfrey looked over my shoulder. "Ah, there he is. My, what a limp. Stick around, old chap. I'm sure Rasputin is just dying to see you." Firmly grasping my elbow, Godfrey turned me around. Rasputin and I caught sight of one another at the same moment. Five paces away from me, Maya saw the terror on my face and turned around in puzzlement.
Rasputin let out a wild roar of rage, dropped his overnight bag, wrenched a sub-machine gun away from a policeman standing around the customs exit, and fired a loose burst in my general direction. I dived for cover behind a train of unused luggage trolleys. The bullets whined and clanged off the metal and shattered the plate glass windows behind me. The confused screams of innocent passengers rose high in pain and protest, the frenzied lowing of cows in a slaughter house, punctuated by a wild bull's bellow as Rasputin ran amuck, howling hysterically as he fired off burst after burst of machine gun fire. My heart was pounding in rhythm with the gunfire as I pushed the luggage trolleys towards Rasputin. He didn't notice until it was too late. The trolleys hit his knees with a sickening crunch and he collapsed to the ground, screaming in agony.
Unfortunately, it was also too late for Maya and Nina Hamidi. The machine gun fire had ripped Hamidi apart almost in two. Maya lay in a pool of blood amidst the wreckage of her bags. I knelt besides her and felt for her pulse in a desperate gesture stolen from a bad movie. Her eyes were still closed but she smiled weakly when I brokenly called her name. "Rasputin strikes again," she breathed. "Premature as ever. Why did he have to spoil my surprise?"
"What are you talking about?" I implored.
Maya opened her eyes wide and I gasped in horror. My friend's pretty brown eyes had turned an angelic azure, half-obscured by thick blonde eyelashes. "Recognize me?" she giggled, coughing up a thin pink bubble.
"Lucy!" Horror turned to outrage as it dawned on me that it was the enigmatic Lucy Setton who had struck once again, coolly confiscating yet another body before abandoning it to the murderous instincts of her accomplice fiend, Rasputin. "How dare you?"
I told you this afternoon that I had taken the body of a friend of yours."
"Why?"
"It's like hitch-hiking. It's cheap and you get to eat interesting people."
"But why Maya?"
"She had nothing to live for anyway," the uncanny spirit murmured, reasonably enough. "She's been dead inside ever since her husband and child choked to death on Saddam's mustard gas. You can't live for revenge forever and even terrorism gets boring after a while. Why not go out in a blaze of glory?"
"Who are you to decide?"
"We'll talk about it later." Lucy laughed and Maya died.
I knelt besides the corpse of my friend, holding her limp hand. It seemed the most forlorn gesture in the world. I wiped away angry tears from my eyes and rose heavily to my feet.
Rasputin still lay on the glass-strewn floor of the airport terminal, clutching his knees, moaning, surrounded by a bunch of airport commandos, Kalashnikovs watchfully held at the ready in case the cripple tried to make a getaway. A pudgy policeman in an atrocious suit waddled hurriedly up and began to speak in stentorian tones. Lieutenant Boruvka, the incompetent policeman who had arrested me a couple of months before on suspicion of Lucy's murder, was reading Rasputin his rights. Boruvka had finally done it. He had cracked his case without even knowing it.
I smiled to myself. It was a mistake. Smiles make Czechs suspicious, especially Czech policemen. Boruvka's jaw dropped open and I could see the wires short-circuiting behind his protuberant excitable eyes. Before he could order his bewildered cohorts to arrest me, I made a dash for freedom.
Luckily, the driver of the first taxi idling outside was a Slovak with little love for Czech policemen. Flagrantly ignoring the flashing sirens and blaring horns of their dinky little Skoda police cars, the driver gunned his powerful BMW taxi around the winding hills on the outskirts of Prague, turning abruptly in the middle of a broad street where he reversed and roared straight up the special lane reserved for trams. Stopping just short of an approaching tram, the driver wedged his taxi onto a pavement and drove at manic speeds around the blind corners and twisted lanes of Prague's picturesque city center. Finally pulling up with a flourish on Wenceslas Square, the driver smiled, contentedly twisted the ends of his thick black moustache, and declined my grateful offers of large sums of hard currency. "I used to drive stunt cars in Soviet spy movies," he explained. "Reminded me of the good old days. No sweat."
After persuading the driver to accept a few hundred dollars to buy candy for his children, I darted down a narrow alley and found myself in a smaller dimly lit square. I could hear the wailing sirens of approaching police cars growing louder, but what was this other noise which was also growing louder?
Just as the first policemen came running up, the square exploded with sound. A troupe of immensely fat men dressed in purple satin tunics and wide pink trousers came goose-stepping through the square, each puffing hard on shiny brass instruments or banging lustily on rattle-drums. Marching steadily on, the band relentlessly pushed the protesting policemen back down the dark alley. I blinked but just as the first troupe had disappeared, another brass band came stomping into the square, louder than their predecessors in both volume and costume, wearing furry outfits striped in fluorescent orange and pink with stiff curly tails. I put a hand to my feverish head and blinked again in an effort to dispel the hallucinations, but to no avail: a third band of swarthy men in Peruvian ponchos now filled the square, dancing in a circle as they strummed strange-shaped guitars and played plaintively on wooden pipes.
I took my courage in both hands and went up to one of the Peruvians. "Excuse me, sir," I stammered. "But what is going on?"
"Why, it's the annual European street music competition," the Peruvian replied in perfect English tinged with an American accent. "How convenient that you showed up. I was about to come and see you." He sounded amused. I looked with incredulity at his kindly pock-marked face and fainted.
When I came to, we were alone in the square. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. "Jesus. Am I dreaming?"
"Nope. It's me, all right," Jesus Guevara, my old friend from prep school, confirmed. "Surprised?"
"I thought you were in New York."
"I was." A shadow crossed Jesus's face. "I had to come to Europe suddenly."
"Why?"
"Can you handle a bad shock?"
I breathed deeply and nodded. "I think so. I've seen an old friend machine-gunned down before my eyes, been chased by the police all over town, been saved by a stunt taxi driver, scared silly by brass bands, and run into you. Yes, I think I can handle most shocks."
"Luke is dead. Along with the other drug designers in Murti Bing's team. They were murdered in cold blood by the men in purple jumpsuits. Are you all right?"
I nodded dumbly. More dead friends and more weird plots. It never rains but it pours.
"Hi, dear, this is Maya." My old friend from Oxford sounded amused. "That sweet receptionist of yours put me through to this phone. Are you okay? You sound a little harried."
"Maya darling!" I exclaimed sheepishly. "I never got a chance to thank you for your help in Budapest. Did they throw you in jail?"
"No, I got away safely," Maya replied. "I had a plane to catch. My three friends are still in prison though. They don't mind. Hungarian jails are so cushy compared to the Turkish dungeons they're used to and it's all research anyway for the book we're putting together. It's called the Terrorist's Guide to European Prisons."
"Are you going to cover other continents as well? I have a Peruvian friend who might be interested."
"Oh, what a good idea. We can talk about it when we meet."
"Where are you calling from?"
"Ten kilometres above sea level," Maya replied airily. "From the first class cabin of an airplane about to land in Prague. Are you still available to help?"
I remembered the commitment I had made a lifetime earlier in Berlin to aid Maya in some mysterious terrorist project. I was torn between fatigue and the gratitude I felt for Maya's help in Budapest. "Yes, of course, Maya. I'll get to the airport right away."
Barbie touched my arm as I hung up the phone. "Do you have to go?"
"It's the first time Maya has ever asked for my help, Barb." I looked at my watch. "I'd better go."
"Be careful."
"You be careful." I glowered at the drooling students clustered around my friend, like baby wolves waiting hopefully to nibble at their prey. Sweet Annichka at the reception desk summoned a taxi for me. I told the driver to drive like blazes to the airport. Then I slumped into my seat, closed my eyes, and prayed that I wouldn't be late. The first passengers were just emerging from customs when my taxi screeched up to the arrival area. I ran in and collided into someone. I began blindly to blurt out an apology when I realized that I had bumped into God himself.
"Good God! I mean, good grief! Godfrey, what the devil are you doing here?"
"Same thing as you, old chap. Anxiously awaiting loved ones."
"Whom are you waiting for?" At that moment I glimpsed Maya's slim figure wheeling a laden luggage trolley through customs. She was accompanied by a pudgy woman with grey hair. I guessed it was Nina Hamidi. Besides designing love potions for her rich and famous Berlin clientele, who included my lost love Anastasia, Hamidi was also involved in Maya's terrorist activities. Maya waved and began to wheel her trolley towards us.
"Do I see Maya?" Godfrey murmured lazily. He shook his head in mock bemusement. "What a gathering of the clans. I wonder if she spoke to Rasputin on the flight?"
My jaw dropped open. "Rasputin?"
"Yes. Rasputin. Surely you remember our old bridge partner?" God's eyes locked onto mine with heavy lidded irony.
I gulped. "I thought he was still in Berlin."
"Didn't you hear? I forgot, you only read the comic strips. Quite right too. The story dominated the English newspapers earlier in the week before Princess Fi's miraculous ascension. Meredith, Rasputin's wife, paid a large ransom to free him from some homosexual brothel in Berlin and told all the tabloids that she had done it as a moral duty to save Rasputin from temptation." Godfrey darted me a cool amused glance. "Oddly enough, Rasputin claimed you had something to do with this." Godfrey looked over my shoulder. "Ah, there he is. My, what a limp. Stick around, old chap. I'm sure Rasputin is just dying to see you." Firmly grasping my elbow, Godfrey turned me around. Rasputin and I caught sight of one another at the same moment. Five paces away from me, Maya saw the terror on my face and turned around in puzzlement.
Rasputin let out a wild roar of rage, dropped his overnight bag, wrenched a sub-machine gun away from a policeman standing around the customs exit, and fired a loose burst in my general direction. I dived for cover behind a train of unused luggage trolleys. The bullets whined and clanged off the metal and shattered the plate glass windows behind me. The confused screams of innocent passengers rose high in pain and protest, the frenzied lowing of cows in a slaughter house, punctuated by a wild bull's bellow as Rasputin ran amuck, howling hysterically as he fired off burst after burst of machine gun fire. My heart was pounding in rhythm with the gunfire as I pushed the luggage trolleys towards Rasputin. He didn't notice until it was too late. The trolleys hit his knees with a sickening crunch and he collapsed to the ground, screaming in agony.
Unfortunately, it was also too late for Maya and Nina Hamidi. The machine gun fire had ripped Hamidi apart almost in two. Maya lay in a pool of blood amidst the wreckage of her bags. I knelt besides her and felt for her pulse in a desperate gesture stolen from a bad movie. Her eyes were still closed but she smiled weakly when I brokenly called her name. "Rasputin strikes again," she breathed. "Premature as ever. Why did he have to spoil my surprise?"
"What are you talking about?" I implored.
Maya opened her eyes wide and I gasped in horror. My friend's pretty brown eyes had turned an angelic azure, half-obscured by thick blonde eyelashes. "Recognize me?" she giggled, coughing up a thin pink bubble.
"Lucy!" Horror turned to outrage as it dawned on me that it was the enigmatic Lucy Setton who had struck once again, coolly confiscating yet another body before abandoning it to the murderous instincts of her accomplice fiend, Rasputin. "How dare you?"
I told you this afternoon that I had taken the body of a friend of yours."
"Why?"
"It's like hitch-hiking. It's cheap and you get to eat interesting people."
"But why Maya?"
"She had nothing to live for anyway," the uncanny spirit murmured, reasonably enough. "She's been dead inside ever since her husband and child choked to death on Saddam's mustard gas. You can't live for revenge forever and even terrorism gets boring after a while. Why not go out in a blaze of glory?"
"Who are you to decide?"
"We'll talk about it later." Lucy laughed and Maya died.
I knelt besides the corpse of my friend, holding her limp hand. It seemed the most forlorn gesture in the world. I wiped away angry tears from my eyes and rose heavily to my feet.
Rasputin still lay on the glass-strewn floor of the airport terminal, clutching his knees, moaning, surrounded by a bunch of airport commandos, Kalashnikovs watchfully held at the ready in case the cripple tried to make a getaway. A pudgy policeman in an atrocious suit waddled hurriedly up and began to speak in stentorian tones. Lieutenant Boruvka, the incompetent policeman who had arrested me a couple of months before on suspicion of Lucy's murder, was reading Rasputin his rights. Boruvka had finally done it. He had cracked his case without even knowing it.
I smiled to myself. It was a mistake. Smiles make Czechs suspicious, especially Czech policemen. Boruvka's jaw dropped open and I could see the wires short-circuiting behind his protuberant excitable eyes. Before he could order his bewildered cohorts to arrest me, I made a dash for freedom.
Luckily, the driver of the first taxi idling outside was a Slovak with little love for Czech policemen. Flagrantly ignoring the flashing sirens and blaring horns of their dinky little Skoda police cars, the driver gunned his powerful BMW taxi around the winding hills on the outskirts of Prague, turning abruptly in the middle of a broad street where he reversed and roared straight up the special lane reserved for trams. Stopping just short of an approaching tram, the driver wedged his taxi onto a pavement and drove at manic speeds around the blind corners and twisted lanes of Prague's picturesque city center. Finally pulling up with a flourish on Wenceslas Square, the driver smiled, contentedly twisted the ends of his thick black moustache, and declined my grateful offers of large sums of hard currency. "I used to drive stunt cars in Soviet spy movies," he explained. "Reminded me of the good old days. No sweat."
After persuading the driver to accept a few hundred dollars to buy candy for his children, I darted down a narrow alley and found myself in a smaller dimly lit square. I could hear the wailing sirens of approaching police cars growing louder, but what was this other noise which was also growing louder?
Just as the first policemen came running up, the square exploded with sound. A troupe of immensely fat men dressed in purple satin tunics and wide pink trousers came goose-stepping through the square, each puffing hard on shiny brass instruments or banging lustily on rattle-drums. Marching steadily on, the band relentlessly pushed the protesting policemen back down the dark alley. I blinked but just as the first troupe had disappeared, another brass band came stomping into the square, louder than their predecessors in both volume and costume, wearing furry outfits striped in fluorescent orange and pink with stiff curly tails. I put a hand to my feverish head and blinked again in an effort to dispel the hallucinations, but to no avail: a third band of swarthy men in Peruvian ponchos now filled the square, dancing in a circle as they strummed strange-shaped guitars and played plaintively on wooden pipes.
I took my courage in both hands and went up to one of the Peruvians. "Excuse me, sir," I stammered. "But what is going on?"
"Why, it's the annual European street music competition," the Peruvian replied in perfect English tinged with an American accent. "How convenient that you showed up. I was about to come and see you." He sounded amused. I looked with incredulity at his kindly pock-marked face and fainted.
When I came to, we were alone in the square. I sat up and rubbed my eyes. "Jesus. Am I dreaming?"
"Nope. It's me, all right," Jesus Guevara, my old friend from prep school, confirmed. "Surprised?"
"I thought you were in New York."
"I was." A shadow crossed Jesus's face. "I had to come to Europe suddenly."
"Why?"
"Can you handle a bad shock?"
I breathed deeply and nodded. "I think so. I've seen an old friend machine-gunned down before my eyes, been chased by the police all over town, been saved by a stunt taxi driver, scared silly by brass bands, and run into you. Yes, I think I can handle most shocks."
"Luke is dead. Along with the other drug designers in Murti Bing's team. They were murdered in cold blood by the men in purple jumpsuits. Are you all right?"
I nodded dumbly. More dead friends and more weird plots. It never rains but it pours.
