Chapter Eleven

Having checked up on Selwyn and Lonnie, Alma considered her course of action. Here she was, penniless except for an incredibly valuable artifact, Eastern European hoods chasing her, and a pyromaniac ex-lover cropping up like a bad penny. Well, at least she’d retrieved her treasure from him. She had to sort out this situation and recover some sort of life. And then perhaps she could make it up to Selwyn. Perhaps even to Lonnie, although she didn’t dare even think how that could ever be possible. Somehow the boring security of her former life now seemed so alluring. For one thing, it had contained regular meals and sleep, and fairly continuous proximity to a clean bathroom.

All her life, Alma had been certain of the value of her family treasure. George had painted in the most glowing terms the certainty of its provenance, its gilt-edged credentials, the fact that it was unmistakeably the Real Deal. But the Sun’s headlines had confirmed George was dead, by fire, and since he would have been the most likely fence for Pyre to use, she knew that something serious had happened, and she could no longer trust in what he had told her. She needed information, and she needed it fast.

Alma had ditched the Russian’s car in Lisbon, where she had hung around an internet café until someone left their computer while their time was still running, whereupon she had Googled Fabergé and learnt where she had to go next. Judicious use of her right thumb had now helped her onto the back seat of a black BMW 5-series heading into Spain. She could tell by the actinic smell of car cleaner it had been rented by the occupants, an elegant but snooty Russian woman who was apparently some sort of academic, and her sweating, drawling American passenger. Through the ferocious argument that they were having, which was mainly about why the American had insisted they pick up a hitchhiker, it transpired that they were also looking for a Fabergé egg, an egg they had briefly had their hands on but had lost in an appalling complex scrum to some underworld hood in Lisbon.

“This sounds familiar, how many of the dam’ things are there?” thought Alma, shifting to resettle the egg below her smaller left breast, the one Lonnie had always preferred and cherished as “the tit-ch”. It was now looking somewhat bigger than the other with its uncomfortable ovoid passenger slung beneath. Alma was forced to slump to hide the odd bulge, and this hurt her back. Her eyes were red with exhaustion and her head span, but clearly this was not the time to fall asleep. She pretended to leaf through some Russian fashion magazines she found on the back seat, but her full attention was focused on the edged, tensely hissed discussion taking place in the front of the speeding BMW as they headed towards the Spanish border.

The only thing her fellow travellers agreed on was that the egg they were looking for would probably turn up on the sidelines of the Fabergé exhibition taking place in Brussels as part of the Europalia Russia 2005 events. They assumed, probably rightly, that the attention of the world’s Fabergé egg specialists would be focused on that exhibition, and that sellers, buyers and evaluators would all mill around the sidelines trawling for business. Especially sellers trying to fence what was apparently an eerily vibrating egg.

Olga had suggested flying. Oppenheimer, being a Yank and therefore contemptuous of distance, had decided to drive. Olga suspected it was to stave off that fateful moment when she knew, and he knew, and she knew he knew, and he knew she knew he knew, she would undoubtedly leave his pasty boil-covered bulbous derrière, kicking it, in all its quivering unappetising horror, as far out of her life as her pointy Manolos would punt it. Olga resolved that this act would be as emasculating as possible, not, she sniggered inwardly, that there was much more emasculating to be done. Anyone who rented this sort of car had clearly long ago resorted to material augmentation anyway.

As Alma shared the American’s vast selection of high-fat, high-sugar trip snacks, the first thing she had eaten in over 24 hours, she eavesdropped upon their conversation. Fabergé’s workshop, she discovered, did not make eggs until 1884, the first one being a present from Alexander III for his wife, the Czarina Maria, in the Russian Easter tradition of gifting decorated eggs. As the academics brought each other up to date, she learned about the use of both precious and semi-precious stones from the Urals, about guilloche technique and palladium, about the exquisite variations in enamel colour shading that Fabergé himself developed, the eggs’ commemoration of Russian history such as the opening of the Trans-Siberian railway. She learned about the marks of the supervising goldsmiths, Michael Perchin until 1903 and Henrik Wigstrom therefter, and about Russian assay marks. She learned about the two Imperial eggs photographed but then lost, the twelve further Imperial eggs never even photographed, and the seven non-Imperial eggs, ostensibly commissioned by a nobleman called Kelch.

Alma felt a huge prickling heatwave of shock rise from her shoulders and cristle its way across her scalp to culminate in her forehead. Her ears buzzed. If the first egg was not made until 1884, then hers couldn’t be from Catherine the Great, could it? Hadn’t she ruled over a century before? Clearly George had been telling the most enormous porky pies. What else had he been untrustworthy about? Was her egg even genuine? Clearly Pyre and Boris had thought so. She itched to fish it out from the depths of her bosom and examine its gold marks, see which goldsmith had made it, wonder whether it was an Imperial egg after all, or a Kelch egg, and if so, what exotic minerals and metals the mining magnate may have provided for use in its making. But she knew that any eggy glimmer from the back seat would be picked up by her travelling companions, so it remained against her skin, growing warmer by the minute. With the anticipation, Alma could swear she could almost feel it vibrating.

It felt as if it was about to hatch.

For all she was dog tired, Alma could not miss a single minute of the odious sniping between Olga and Oppenheimer as they let slip vital pieces of the puzzle Alma’s life had become. As they changed drivers and filled up in a service station near Zaragoza, Alma ducked into the ladies’ loos and took out her egg. It had been the first time she had had an opportunity to examine it closely since the night she had given it to Pyre. Once safe in the locked stall, she raised the seat, stood on the toilet basin and lifted it towards the dusty flyspecked 40-watt lightbulb.




It wasn’t hers.

It was close. The enamelling was a similar colour, the goldwork very close, but it wasn’t hers. The paintings were not the familiar faces she had fondly imagined were distant imperial half-relatives, but of a completely different family she did not recognise. From the mark she was able to tell it was made by Wigstrom, so after 1903.
Whose egg was this? Where was hers?

Alma swayed on the toilet basin, nearly slipping. Tucking the egg back under her bra, she lowered herself gingerly back to terra firma. How much more was she going to be able to take? Here she was on the road to Brussels with what was most probably stolen goods concealed in her increasingly grubby underwear. The two people driving her were probably looking for the very same egg. She considered revealing it to them, but she was fairly sure that they wouldn’t be prepared to buy it from her, and she’d be left in the lurch sans money, sans transport, and most of all sans egg. There was only one thing to do, and that was to get to the exhibition and get it off her hands to some willing buyer as soon as possible. It wasn’t as if it were her treasure, her own egg, she rationalised, and she needed the money.

Back on the road, Oppenheimer now driving at a frustratingly slow pace through the darkening night, they continued up the E-15 through Barcelona and into France. Olga had occupied the back seat in order to get some sleep, and Alma found herself up front, listening to the American. His drawl was intolerable, but the information it conveyed was something else, and despite the fact that exhaustion was beginning to make her head spin, Alma could not allow herself to fall asleep.

For it transpired that Kelch, though noble, had never had any money of his own, and gained nothing by marrying the shipping, railway and mine heiress Varvara Bazanova, his elder brother’s widow. In the pre-nuptial agreement, she had kept full control of her assets, and indeed the couple lived apart for most of their marriage, finally separating in 1905, after which Varvara moved to Paris with all her belongings, probably including the seven Kelch eggs, and they were divorced in 1915. Kelch had ended up on the streets after the Revolution, and then disappeared into Siberia under Stalin. Varvara had already lost much of her business during the Russo-Japanese War and then with the Revolution, but even in Parisian exile, she remained a woman of means.

Alma was stunned by this. Varvara seemed to have been quite a businesswoman, a female magnate at a time when Russian magnates were beginning to carve up some of the most strategic mining and transport opportunities in the world, a carve-up only recently resumed after the 70-year hiatus of Communism. Alma was beginning to see Varvara as a sort of cross between Khordokovsky and Veuve Cliquot. She had almost certainly been the source of the Kelch egg orders. What if she had had other eggs made, eggs that concealed information vital to her business concerns, that she had paid the Haus Fabergé to keep off their books? Was this one of them, or was it an Imperial egg? What would Alma’s egg prove to be, if she ever saw it again? She continued to prompt Oppenheimer, trying to extract the maximum information from him without revealing more than a polite interest in a romantic story. But academics love to talk, and Oppenheimer was so deep into the pleasure of hearing his own voice that he never imagined Alma’s interest was generated by anything more than his riveting abilities as a teacher.

In Lyon, as dawn showed the last vines giving way to a starker, more northern landscape, Olga woke up and switched back into the driving seat. Alma found herself the recipient of a frosty silence as the American snored in the back seat with the annoying cyclical irregularity of an athsmatic air conditioner. The Russian pushed the Portuguese-registered rental BMW way past the speed limit through the historical heartland of French silk and industrial financing that forever ties lacy underwear to commercial power in France, and onwards north, towards the iron and coal fields that had cradled two world wars. Olga ignored her passenger, obviously unable to condescend to speak to the grubby and somewhat smelly hitchhiker that Oppenheimer had insisted they take on board. It was no skin off Alma’s nose. She wondered how a Russian academic managed to dress in such vastly expensive designer clothes. Olga had brought a jacket and coat out of her suitcase as they had motored north, and was sporting hundreds of euros’ worth of designer clothing. Alma’s guess was that Olga was probably involved in business beyond the merely academic, business similar to Boris’s, and she’d had quite enough of that. Besides, as the snooty cow wasn’t talking, Alma welcomed the opportunity to get some uncomfortable sleep and, surreptitiously checking the alien egg was safely slung, she lowered her head onto the seatbelt and slept.

She was woken up as Olga pulled up at the petrol station close to the Brussels Hilton just off Place Louise. “Get out, we are here” said Olga roughly, and reached across Alma to fling the door open. Alma tumbled out of the car, and Olga accelerated away down the road and into the hotel car park. She had clearly had enough of smelly hitchhikers. And besides, Olga reflected, when she gave that cellulitic Yankee lump the heave-ho, it would maximise the impact to leave Oppenheimer completely in the lurch, and not with some needy British waif to bolster his corpulent ego.
Alma turned, bewildered and observed her surroundings. It was about nine in the morning, on a very cold and crisp winter’s day, far too cold to be standing on a windswept boulevard in light clothes. Across from where she stood, a very posh shopping area beckoned, gilded warm galleries promising croissants, coffee, clean underwear and some warm top clothes to those who could pay.

Alma swore as she remembered her penniless state. She decided to review her current assets.

One, jewelled egg slung below bra. Check.

Two, clothes she was standing up in. Check.

Three. Rather heavy expensive black Delvaux handbag.

Handbag?

It was at this point that Alma realised she had, as a reflex, grabbed Olga’s handbag from the front passenger foot well as she hurriedly left the BMW.

Oh God.

A wave of fuschia rose from Alma’s toes, covering her entire body. She had never stolen anything before. She toyed briefly with the idea of taking the handbag into the Hilton’s reception, but knew that Olga and Oppenheimer would already be there, checking in on the American’s credit card before visiting the police to report the bag theft. But self-preservation began to assert itself over honesty, and Alma reflected that she would need some warm clothes and food soon, and besides, it wasn’t as if Olga couldn’t cancel her cards immediately.

Alma sat down on a bench and, after a moment in which moral precepts struggled with desperation, opened the handbag. And it was at this moment that Alma’s luck changed for the better. Aside from purse with credit cards, assorted feminine impedimenta, and a small gun, Olga had been carrying about an enormous amount of used non-consecutive €50 notes. And three passports, all in different names.

What kind of handbag contents were this for an academic? Alma reasoned. This sort of cash and spare ID just had to be the results of ill-gotten gains. There was no way Olga would be declaring any theft to the police. Alma’s moral dilemma dissolved. Within the space of four hours, she had purchased a small carry-on suitcase, filled it with clothes, eaten a rather good breakfast, and had found herself a modest but acceptable room at the Hotel des Congrès under an assumed name where she had had the longest bath of her life. Warm, clean and full for the first time since her house had burnt down, she had bundled herself up in her new woollen coat and walked through the fresh air to the Place Royale, where the Fabergé exhibition was being held.
It being the afternoon of a week day, the exhibition was not crowded. Aside from eggs, Fabergé jewellery and other artifacts were being shown, along with detailed explanations of the sophisticated craft techniques that Alma had heard about in the BMW. Alma tried not to hurry suspiciously past the sections that did not cover the eggs, dutifully eyeing the ornate, sumptuous items brought together from museums all over Russia and beyond. After what seemed like an eternity, she finally came to the prize exhibit, a series of nine eggs lent by their owner, the Russian businessman Vladimir Kastelberg. They included the last few Imperial eggs, commemorating events taking place during what was to become viewed as the decline of the Empire.

And there, in a case, labelled as the Fifteenth Anniversary egg, was an almost exact twin of the egg Alma had slung under her left breast. Almost exact, that is, in that it looked too stylised. Too perfect. Just too right.

Alma realised she was looking at a copy of the egg she was carrying, an egg that she now knew had been stolen from the fifth richest man in Russia, a man so close to its President that he might end up governing Kamchatka. In a series of untenable positions, this was the most untenable position yet.

She left the exhibition as quickly and surreptitiously as possible, gathered up her things in the hotel, checked out and took a taxi to Brussels’ Zaventem airport. She had barely taken the top off Olga’s €50 note stash, and now she had scraped back her hair to pass for the rather fuzzy photos, the money and passports would take her just about anywhere she needed to go. She stood in front of the Departures board, the world spread out before her, a plane to any continent within the hour, her mind buzzing. Where should she go? How was she going to unload this unbelievably famous egg, clearly stolen from someone rather wealthy and powerful who would be very interested in getting it back?

And if this was indeed Kastelberg’s egg, where the hell was hers?

By Aunty Marianne

Illustration by Vitriolica

Chapter Ten

The artifact. The message.

The egg. The code.

Boris drove closer to the building, planning the death of his guards – after they had disposed of the Brits. It made him smile. It made him nefarious.

He entered the grounds. Everything was where it belonged. Mr. Pyro couldn’t burn down a stone building.

“Welcome home, Boris.” Kevin said as Boris entered.

No guards. Boris smiled. He pulled comic big-eyed and surprised face.

“Oh?! Where are henchmen? I left them right here … Where is dog? Hey! Where is dog?! I like the dog!”

Alma mumbled, “Ask moose and squirrel.”

Kevin shrugged. “Hot guns explode. You don’t want me to talk about the dog.”

Alma looked sick. There was a lot of blood in the room, a lot of blood on her.

Kevin raised his right arm … “Shall we cook .. an egg, Boris?”

“Only I know the how to decode it.”

“I suggest you sit down and enlighten us.”

“You expect me to talk, Mister Pyro?”

“No Mr. Boris, I expect you to die!”

Alma stood and walked to the window and opened it. Boris laughed and walked to the table. “I like that one too! But you and I are too ugly to be a Mr. James Bond. Let’s see what we have and talk about setting fire to each other later.”

He put the egg on the table and was discussing terms with Kevin as Alma slipped out the door.

She was out half way down the drive before they knew she was gone and on the main road before they were out the door. In her pocket was one artifact, in good condition, with its rightful owner.

She drove on, not knowing where she was going, with no money and no plan. Escape seemed to be the best course of action.

-=-=-=-=-=-=-

Las Vegas was hell on earth.

Lonnie stood and breathed in the dry, hot air. Air that nature had ensured would not sustain life. Ground that did not sustain life. Water that had to be trucked or piped in from bloody Saskatoon.

The only conceivable thing worse than having your wife cheat on you, give away your family treasures, destroy the psyche of your over-sensitive and idealized child, and burn down your house was … Las Vegas.

“And here I fucking am.” Lonnie kicked at the ground, but it was baked harder than the 180 degree concrete on which his amazingly fuel inefficient Chrysler rental was parked.

His mother came out to the back yard, “Isn’t it wonderful? It’s like a sauna all day long. And the Americans here, aren’t they a treat?! They drive around all the time and eat hamburgers and … well, they make me feel so exotic! Imagine that, me, exotic? I never thought I’d hear anything like it, you know, people saying ‘What’s it like, living in Yurop, Millie?’ And how does one answer that? It’s like just about anything else, really, you know. I think this place is the odd place, right, but they don’t have a clue and I end up telling them the most normal things and they think it’s just such a treat, you know, such a treat, and they tell me that it’s so strange that we drink so much tea and of course the tea here is iced because, well it’s hot here innit, yeah yeah it is sort of like being in a sauna all day long except this sauna has a view of sorts … well, not much of a view I suppose, mostly just dust and garbage and of course the sun … but it sure seems bigger here doesn’t it, the sun I mean … yes … yes it does seem bigger … like it’s just going to burst and I don’t think I’ve seen a raincloud all week long … or since I arrived here for that matter … and I just love it I talk to people back home and they are just amazed at how much sun there is here but they can’t even conceive of it ….”

Lonnie walked into the house and got some water or tequila or something. His mother had always been a talker but Las Vegas made it worse. At home there was traffic noise and rain and people coming to the door. In the hot vacuum of Las Vegas – there was just Millie. Millie Millie Millie.

Selwyn has withdrawn. He mostly stayed in his room reading comic book versions of The Art of War and Caligula over and over again. Every so often he’d point to a part and say “You suppose Mummy’s here?”

Lonnie wasn’t sure what the appropriate response was to that. None of the Childhood Psychology books covered that. No blogs covered that. And Googling “Caligula and Children” would likely garner a visit from the authorities.

Lonnie was brooding. Millie was talking a mile a minute. Neither of them heard the phone. Lonnie walked into the living room as Selwyn was speaking.

“Yes, yes I understand. Remember, Sun Tsu said that all warfare was based on deception. Bye bye. No, I don’t love you too, I’m bitter. Yes, goodbye Mummy.” Selwyn hung up the phone.

“Was that your mother?”

Selwyn nodded.

“Where is she?”

Selwyn held up his Caligula. “Page 10.”



by Jim

illustration by Karen Winters

Chapter Nine

The day before in downtown Lisbon………

Oppenheimer Hugo Junior the III sat at the table outside a restaurant in a lane just off the Rua De Prata. The sun was high overhead and he was feeling slightly nauseous. He sloshed the warm olive oil in the dish before him with a spoon. He had asked for a vegetarian soup and what had been placed before him by the smirking waiter was, he was told, Sopa Alentejana, a local delicacy, hot olive oil with an egg cracked into it, a raw egg. He pushed the dish away and looked once again at the puzzle in front of him.

He had never in his whole career as professor of symbolism at the University of Los Angeles been faced by such an enigmatic conundrum. In a simple box in front of him was an egg, but it was no simple egg. It was an elegant bejewelled egg, unlike the mess floating in the rancid oil in front of him, this one was breathtaking. He held it in his hands amazed that it was in front of him; even more amazing was how he had got hold of it in the first place.

Oppenheimer had been searching for this egg since he had first heard whispers of it while doing research at the University of Kiev ten years before; he had followed its trail down ever dark alley, dirty dive and dodgy dealers empty come on since. Until yesterday that is, when he had been approached by a shaky looking Englishman who had simply taken it out of his pocket and placed it on a table in front of him. They had quickly come to terms of a 60/40 split and arranged to meet at a later date.

Oppenheimer spun the jewel in his hands letting the sun catch its faces. It was just over five-inches-tall. Exquisitely detailed paintings depicted the most notable events of the reign of Nicholas II and each of the family members but as Oppenheimer now knew it also contained a secret, a secret message from the maker himself. But Faberge, the old goat, had protected that secret with a code, it was a code unlike anything Oppenheimer had seen before, it was the fabled Faberge Code.

As Oppenheimer perused the egg in the hot sun of the Portuguese summer he was being watched. Across the lane in a small bar sat a diminutive figure sipping a cold beer. As Oppenheimer twisted the egg in his hands the albino dwarf with the rasta locks muttered quietly to himself, ‘its mine it is, the precious, mine’, he sipped his beer , ‘they took it from us they did, yes they did’. The dwarf, whose name was Manoel de Quadros d'Arzilla was for the first time in many many years within 20 meters of the thing that made life worthwhile.

Manoel de Quadros d’Arzilla was following a path that had become evident to him three days ago when he had heard the news that the precious had been found once again. Lost to his family during the Spanish Civil War the bejewelled egg held the secrets of the Romanov treasures. It was a secret that dated to the sinking in 1771 of the treasure ship Vrouw Maria - Catherine’s fabled treasure ship en-route from Amsterdam. Manoel’s family had been trusted servants and confidants to the Russian royal family for decades. His father and his fathers’ father had all been the major domo to the Russian royal family and privy to all their secrets. Manoel’s shoulders drooped with shame as he recalled how his family had failed Alexandra and her family as the Soviets had dragged that cursed family away for execution.

He remembered his fathers whispered instructions. The prized secrets passed on at the dead of night. He remembered his fathers breath tainted with tobacco and the rough local brandy that dulled the pain and the shame. He remembered as a small boy being allowed to look, but not touch, the fabulous jewel his father had hidden in the small Barcos Rabelos that they lived on. He was told; no it was impressed upon him, about the De Quadros d’Arzilla familys sacred duty to the lost Czarena and the Russian people. The secrets made him feel tall.

Manoel sat sipping his beer, staring at the precious as he remembered his father telling him the key to the message contained within each exquisitely enamelled face, the key which would unlock the trinket that the Faberge egg was, to uncover the real treasure within. The egg then tragically lost to them when the Nazi’s bombarded their Barcos Rabelos on the Douro River. The fascist looters took the precious away from them - from him. That they also took the life of his father, mother and sister was of little account now to Manoel who sat quivering in the dark bar.

Oppenheimer’s colleague, the beautiful and brilliant cryptographer from the St Petersburg State University sat opposite him reading a Chad Kroski novel, Sardines And Tuna coincidentaly paralleling the meal she was absentmindely picking at while Oppenheimer stirred the oily mess in front of him.

‘Olginka’ Oppenheimer muttered whirrling the bejewelled egg around in his thick fingers

‘Da, my pushkin’ she folded over the corner of the page she was on and closed her novel fixing her grey green eyes on the fat sweating man opposite her, he appaled her but she smiled anyway.

Oppenheimer visibly winced at the cavalier way she treated her book, folding the page over like that, ‘typical russkie’ he thought.

Olga, this is most puzzling, most puzzling, the panels on this egg seem to be vibrating at a frequency that is probably equal to the sub atomic particle ‘Esturine’ but there I’m guessing’. He raised a sceptical eyebrow at the russian beauty before him.

‘Esturine hmmm’, Olga pouted and fluffed her dark red page boy cut, she crossed her legs with a whisper of silk against silk. ‘Isn’t that vhat they used to deprogram those devoshka’s in Essex last year, my darlink?’

‘Yes, my little pioneer, you are right, now I remember’ Oppenheimer nodded, all thoughts of folded corners and paper cuts fleeing from his mind as he turned his huge intellect towards the object in his hand. ‘But how?’ he muttered. ‘And why?’ He touched very gently each of the exquisite panels, noting how the vibrations changed subtly to his touch. ‘De de dah dah dum’ he hummed along with the vibrations.

‘Olginka, pussycat, what do you think?’ Olga shuddered internally at the use of his pet name for her, they had been together far too long, but she reached across to take the jewel from his hands. She placed the egg on the table and reached down into her handbag to take out a large magnifying glass. Oppenheimer unthinkingly sipped his soup and gagged slightly.

In the bar across the road Manoel saw the opportunity he needed, leaping off his bar stool he rushed across the road as quickly as his stubby legs could carry him, as he ran he chanted his mantra, ‘my precious, my precious, my precious’.

At the table he grabbed the egg and swept the olive oil soup into Oppenheimer’s lap. Olga leapt to stop him but he darted beneath her long Slavic legs, noting en-route that she did wear stockings and was going commando, no ‘la perla’ undies for her, a fact he filed away for future use.

Manoel ran towards the docks clutching his precious to his chest. At long last he could fulfil his destiny, he could crack the code, win the treasure and pay for those leg extensions he had dreamt of for years, and after that quick excursion between Olga’s thighs perhaps a bit of extra cash could be spent on other short parts of his anatomy!

He skipped around a corner his dreads whipping across his eyes, straight into the arms of a large man who smelt faintly of onions, Borsch and Hai Karate.

‘A ah, slowly slowly my malinki pale comrade, it is I, tovarich, Boris and I see you have vhat I have been searching for’

Boris reached down and utilising a soviet version of the vulcan death grip called ‘Trotsky’s de - spatch’ learnt when he was a Spetnatz officer, rendered Manoel unconscious. As Manoel collapsed Boris deftly lifted the precious gently vibrating egg from his pale slightly clammy hands.

Laying Manoel in the gutter, Boris placed the egg in his pocket danced a few steps of a Paso Doble, clicked his heels, and leapt onto a passing tram.

He had a meeting with a fiery customer and a priatna angliski devoshka and it would be bad form to be late!

*****

A few short minutes later Manoel opened his eyes and found himself once again looking up the long wintery slopes of Olgas legs to her jutting pubis. But before his pale pink eyes had properly focused he found himself looking into the face of a highly irritated professor of symbolism who had an oily stain spread across his crotch..

‘Ahh Manoel, you are awake. Alas, I take it you no longer have the egg?’

Manoel tried to look away, he gasped ‘my precious’ and looked down at his hands as if he was still holding the Romanov jewel. ‘I had it professor, you had it, they had it’, he gabbled, ‘it was mine, my father’s sacred trust, it was mine, my precious’ He covered his eyes to block out the sun. ‘The Organizatsiya’ he moaned.

‘You followed us didn’t you, you vorm’ Olga kicked the squirming moaning dwarf with her high heeled pointy Manolo Blahniks

‘Owwww’ he squealed. ‘Stop it, you had my precious, I had to have it, it is my duty’

‘AND. NOW. WE. DON’T AND. THE. MAFIASKI. DO.’ said Oppenheimer enunciating his words properly in a way that was totally alien for an American such was the stress he was under as he bent threateningly over the small pale figure.

‘Manoel you must tell us the secret’ Olga hissed.

‘Never’ Manoel crossed his arms across his body

‘Manoel, Oppengeimer growled, ‘You know I have been searching for this for years and we don’t have the time for this’ Manoel nodded, his lips tightly closed symbolically. ‘I will never speak of it again, I swear on my father’s memory’ Manoel muttered from between the clasped lips.

‘You know that I am a professor of symbolism?’ growled the impatient sweating oil stained fat man, Manoel nodded again; they had met weeks ago when Manoel was contacted by the professor who had grilled him about the precious.

‘You lied to us didn’t you Manoel? Olga poked the dwarf with her pointy shoes once again. Manoel wriggled but remained silent. ‘You know the secret of the egg’ she poked the writhing dwarf again with her foot, ‘tell us you, you peido de cona’.

‘Manoel’ Oppenheimer whispered. Manoel stopped trying to look up Olgas skirt once again. ‘Symbolise this cuzão!’. Manoel slumped backwards blood spraying the tiled walls behind him as the 9mm bullet from the silenced Tokarev pistol crashed through his skull, his pink eyes strangely turning a piercing blue as life left his body.

‘Right Olga… the tram, lets get on it, I have a hunch that it will take us somewhere’ said the professor of symbolism as the beautiful and brilliant cryptographer retouched her lipstick, pouted, hissed ‘poshyol ty' at him and took a small pocket sudoko book out of her handbag while they waited.




By Doctor Rob
Illustration by Dr F.

Chapter Eight

“Woke up this morning
Everything I had was gone.”

The song hit her head again like a brain worm, taking her back to the day she met Pyre. She was close to breaking down. She was lost, not recognizing herself, weak to Pyre, but hating him in the same moment. In that instant, self loathing suffocated her. Through her own means, she had destroyed everything she cherished.

Am I a fool, or what?

Then she smiled the tiniest smile, silently, inwardly. Maybe not everything. Her precious was literally within her reach. And she knew something about it that perhaps Boris and Kevin did not. A very slight advantage. But the memory of smoke crept in just a strong. Where is the fire in this deal? The confidence wavered. Fear hit again, like a wave of nausea.

“I hear this pretty little box is worth half a million, or so thought your late friend, George. Pity he could not join us. I hear he likes a good vodka, just like Mr. Pyre,” teased Boris, as he tossed back a shot.

“The interest you both have in this trinket has, how should I say, triggered my curiosity.” Boris lit a cigarette and let it hang out of the corner of his mouth, bobbing up and down as he smiled at the two. They weren’t so talkative now. Fools.

The clicking release of a safety lock behind their heads caused Pyre and Alma to sit up a tad straighter. Boris’ associates were quiet. Their heavy frames did not evoke even a creak from the worn floorboards of the timber framed farmhouse as the approached the trio. Their guns were not so silent.

“Don’t worry, they are just my body guards. The Organizatsiya is a little paranoid. They didn’t like I was here by myself so they sent Pasha and Mikael. Good guys, I think you call them. Just your typical organizational bullshit. Don’t sweat it.” Boris giggled. “They are gentlemen.” The bodyguards stood like telephone poles.

Don’t sweat it? Alma had become a fountain of hot, sticky sweat. For an instant, her head pulsed with memories of an absurdly different setting. The sweat that trickled down between her shoulder blades was transformed into hot milk, poured over a sheen of olive oil that had coated her body after the most amazing body scrub at a Korean Spa for women. She had gone there with some girlfriends in London, 3 or 4 years before. They had soaked their skins to a loose, pruney pucker, then had every inch of their bodies scrubbed just to the edge of discomfort by strong Korean women. This was followed by the unusual but incredibly luxurious moisturizing treatment of massage with warm olive oil followed by hot milk that trickled into every crack and valley of her body. Afterwards, her skin had felt softer than her silk pyjamas. She could recreate the sensuality of it in her mind. It relaxed her. The sparse oxygen in the room was finally able to reach her brain. Refocusing on the pudgy Russian, she could visualize Boris liking the treatment.

But it was sweat, not milk that darkened her shirt. She could smell her own fear. She glanced at Kevin, who still looked calm. And weary. He knows something I don’t, she thought. It was time to summon her inner Judi Dench. She took a deep breath, primped her expression in her minds eye, and looked at Boris with interest and, she hoped, confidence.

“Boris, you magician! Where did you find my little trinket? Had Kevin sold it to George so quickly?” Glancing to Pyre, Alma drawled, “so much for loving it for me. I think that was my precise language, yet you somehow interpreted that to mean pawning it to that society grubbing George?” Pyre’s face sat ummoved.

Alma added her most desultory, throaty laugh, hoping to sound more confident than she felt. She concentrated on not letting her nostrils flare. Her mother used to say that gave away your emotions. Instead it felt like she was imitating a sniffing bunny, crunching her nostrils inward, rebounding back out. Too bad there wasn’t a mirror and time to practice like she had as a child, creating plays in the living room with her playmates.

“Alma, Alma, you are mistaken. This is not really your trinket. It belongs to the people of Russian. It belongs to us via our beautiful queen, Katherine the Great. You know that.” Boris clucked a few times and gave Alma the look of a fond, but disapproving parent. “You were just taking care of it up till now. All of us Russians are deeply appreciative. And to have such a beautiful caretaker – well, we are fortunate.”

Plucking the cigarette out of his mouth, Boris waved at the taller bodyguard. “Give sweet Alma and I a moment, Pasha. Take Mr. Pyre out for some sun. He is looking pale.”

Boris stood and moved to the seat next to Alma vacated by Pyre, who allowed himself to be snapped into a pair of handcuffs and led from the dark room. A shaft of light lit the room as the two left. She wondered where they were taking him. She wondered if he was in cahoots with these gangsters.

Boris turned towards Alma in a cloud of smoke and onion breath. He readjusted his unseen corset, wincing slightly as it cut into his folds.

“Alma, my beautiful stow-away, what do you know of this trinket? How did it come to you? You must have wonderful stories to tell me. I love stories, don’t I Mikael?”

Alma turned to the remaining bodyguard in time to see a mouthful of gold flash silently in response.

“Mikael is the ‘strong, silent type.’ Lost his tongue. Literally.” Boris smiled. “Makes him a good person to help in, um, delicate situations. Now beautiful lady, have a drink and tell me about your precious. Mr. Pyre mentioned it has been in your family for a long time, no?”

A glass of vodka was pressed into her hands. Why not. Vodka always gave her spine, and helped her acting skills. She downed it in a gulp that barely touched her tongue. Then she thought about her tongue… not something she cared to live without. She ran it over her teeth, then her lips.

“Of course, Boris. After your kindness, I could do nothing but to repay it with a little story. But can we open a window? It’s terribly stuffy here and this story, well, it always excites me – makes me hot.” She fluttered her lashes at both men and feigned a slight swoon. “I need a breeze, ok sweetheart?” She leaned forward towards Boris, hoping her damp shirt was not so stuck as to not fall open a bit to proffer her assets. Sweaty or not, she had great tits.

“Mikael, the window, da?” waved Boris. Grunting, the bodyguard backed towards the window and pushed it open with his left elbow, the gun never losing it’s aim on Alma’s head. A whiff of hot grass and parched earth blew heat, not relief into the room. But at least it gave some hope that if something went wrong, others might hear. “Spaciba, Mikael.”

Alma relaxed back into her seat, allowing herself to sink further and further into her fantasy of a beautiful spy, risking her life for her mission. She took a deep, luxurious breath and let it come out like an invitation to an afternoon delight. She closed her eyes and smiled just at the corners of her newly wetted lips.




Something coursed through her. It startled her. Power. She had power. She had control. This was a new game. A spark of electricity traveled the length of her body and she gave a quiver of pleasure.

“Boris, this is one of those stories that I almost never tell.”

“Why my little English dove?” Boris was perked to attention like a wind up soldier. He had stopped fiddling with his fat readjustments and attuned to something different in this woman he had thought was a simpering, spoiled English brat. His voice was soft and sweet. His attention was metallic. It was not for nothing. Boris’ lineage as the grandson of an NKVD founder was legendary with his associates in Moscow. Vain, yes. Soft? No.

Waiting a few beats, she slowly opened her eyes. “No one ever believes it.”

She let the silence fill the room after she spoke, not offering another word. She leaned across Boris to pour another vodka, putting him between her and Mikael’s gun. Her breasts were close to spilling out, like the vodka that splashed over the rim of the shot glass. The second shot went back to her throat, like her breasts back into her shirt. She glanced at the body guard. It’s working, she thought. It’s working.

With a sigh Alma barely whispered “It started well before Katherine…”


by Nancy White

Chapter Seven

Was she hallucinating?



Alma took a deep breath, raising her hand to her forehead. She felt as if her entire body was being sucked into a burning oven.

Her vision was now blurred; under the midday sun all she could see was the fuzzy contour of Kevin’s face. Was she really looking at him? Was the intense heat getting to her? For what felt like a very long time (but was certainly no more than two or three seconds), rapid images ran through her brain – Mr. pyre’s thrilling performance on stage, his chest against her breasts as they devoured each other in his dressing room , the vivid look in his eyes as her house crumbled down in flames. A violent mix of passion and hatred flowed around her body.

It was then that she felt her wrist hitting his face hard, a movement so sudden it almost seemed to take place before her brain ever got a chance to command her arm into motion. She hit him right on his sore black eye. The punch drained the very last gasp of energy from her. They both fell to the ground.

‘I’ve always liked feisty women’, said Kevin

His James Bond humour did not impress Alma. ‘How dare you? How dare you?’ She was shouting now. ‘You stole from me; you destroyed my family and my home!’ She wanted to be tough, to show him right from wrong, to rearrange all her emotions and place them in the right order. No more of that trembling leg nonsense that comes with juvenile passion.

‘Come on Alma, show some precision when using the English language. If I recall things correctly, it was you who gave me your precious thing; I never took anything away from you. It was you who decided to break your family apart; I would never EVER consider separating a mother from her young child’. A bit of maternal guilt thrown in and I should regain some leverage on this, thought Kevin to himself. I can’t go wrong here.

Alma’s face was toughening up but could feel her chin giving in to a gentle tremble of the lower lip. She thought of Selwyn’s perfectly symmetrical dimples. The way his voice sounded when he said ‘mummy’.

‘Come on babes’. Kevin was now stretching his arm, getting his body closer to hers. ‘It’s just that… you know… the fire stuff… well it’s a long story… difficult childhood, obsessive compulsive father… used to work at a firework joint’. Come on, bring on the tears, you can do it Kev, good old boy, play the fucked up childhood card big time.

Alma’s eyes changed and betrayed her. She was now looking at him with a tame glimpse of pity, but mostly her brain was now rewired into being interested in his words. She did not feel like shouting any longer. She was in listening mode.

Nice work, Kev, nice work. You’re in with this one.

‘Alma, you were right on that betrayal stuff though. I should have told you more of that. The early years. Being woken up in the middle of the night and being dragged to the back garden so that my dad could show me his latest wizardry with pyre techniques. Anyway, you probably don’t want to hear this stuff, it’s probably too late now…’

‘I’m listening. Continue’. Alma consciously straightened up her face but the forgiving eyes gave it away. Somehow she was about to make sense of this last week of her life through Mr. Pyre’s little tale of childhood traumas.

‘Me and the old man… you know, we got on well, like a house on fire…’

Alma smiled. She actually stopped herself from giggling.

Oh boy, tears and laughter. Drama and humour. You excel, Kev. You truly do.

‘But the fire trickery was the only real bond he ever developed with me and…’

‘You love birds!’ Boris roaring voice broke off the silence of the dry landscape around them. Alma jumped of shock, she hadn’t seen him approaching. She instinctively drew herself closer to Kevin and he held her. They stood there together, looking exhausted and united in their weakness, facing a v-shaped Russian who did not have the slightest sign of any hangover.

Bloody hotel minbars, thought Alma. No value for money. This guy should still be sleeping that sickening cocktail off. Despite the extraordinary situation she was now in, all Alma could think of was of sharing this silly Boris story with Kevin. Boris, the vodka-pernod-onion-martini-vodka-onion breakfast guy. She really wanted to have mundane chatty conversations, she wanted to turn to Kevin and start her sentences with the line ‘you’re never going to believe what this guy did just this morning’. Instead, she had to face the whole issue of being stuck in the middle of nowhere in Portugal with a British pyromaniac and a Russian ganster. Still, she let a smile out as she retold the Boris story in her inner dialogue.

‘You feeling happy Alma? Want to smile? Come with me, we have lots to smile about. Let’s go inside”. There was something about Boris’s body language that was not quite right. Alma sensed it straight away, but that thought disappeared instantly when Kevin held her hand. They followed him into the house.

*******

It took sometime before Alma’s vision readjusted to the darkness inside. The building was significantly cooler. The window shutters were closed; the only light in the room came from an old metallic desk lamp. At first all she could sense was the smell. A mix of cheap cigars and cigarettes. Then she saw the cloud of smoke hanging in mid air. In the corner of the living room three men of Borisian proportions played cards. They had to be Russian too, Alma thought, as she took stock of their square jaws, broad shoulders and muscular necks. Their torsos showed through tight whitish sleeveless vests; the arms were adorned with tattoos of weapons, impossible animals and Cyrillic characters. The men exchanged looks and downed one shot of vodka each. A bottle lay half empty in the table, the ashtrays piled with cigarette buts and half burnt cigars. She wondered where the round motherly Conceição was.

Boris made a gesture for them to sit down. Alma and Kevin took the double couch; Boris sat in front of them in the one man armchair. The seat gave him instant authority. He opened a brief case and proceeded to place three items on the coffee table.

Alma’s attention was now fixated on Boris movements. She stopped taking clues from bits and pieces lying around the living room. Had she looked more attentively she would have seen stacks of passports on the shelves, home-printed catalogues with dozens of photos of Slavic women, seven or eight heavy sets of keys and four guns.

On the coffee table laid Alma’s beautiful box, two British passports and a copy of THE SUN. ‘MANCHURIAN ARTS DEALER DEAD, KILLER ON THE LOOSE’, read the front page. Alma felt a shiver of fear running up her back and took her hand away from Kevin’s.

Boris reclined on the armchair and produced a roaring laugh. ‘Time to make decisions Alma. Which of these things is more precious to you?’

by Claudia, who has kindly written this while she is having FAR TOO MUCH FUN SKIING AND APRÈS SKIING WITH MR MCGREGOR IF YOU ASK ME
illustration by Natalie d'Arbeloff.