Scoundrels

by Victor Cornwall

  __________

  Later that afternoon, Miss Gladkins returned. The Professor was standing in the middle of the room, staring thoughtfully at a book with a dark green spine. “Oh good, you’re back Edith,” Chadwell said without looking up, “please fetch me Stronheim’s second volume on Vietnamese hedgerows.”

  “Yes, of course, Professor,” said Miss Gladkins. She turned back to the door, and softly locked it.

  From within my terracotta carapace, I saw Miss Gladkins unbutton her shapeless brown cardigan and let it drop to the floor. Underneath she wore a black shinobi shozoku, the unmistakable garb of the ninja. Then, she lifted her walking stick, and unscrewed the curved handle, which she placed silently on a leather-topped desk. Her stick was now a short, vicious bo staff. She moved stealthily behind the Professor, and with a sharp hai and a blizzard of movement, shattered his skull with an expert strike. The Professor fell to the floor, stone dead, still holding his book.

  Miss Gladkins wheeled around to face us, battle ready. Her limp had gone. Her face was spattered with a burst of Chadwell’s blood. I noticed her eyes, malicious pin-points of black. “Blink if you want to live,” she said.

  “Cornwall!” I shouted out as loudly as I could, “She’s onto us! We need to go!” I flexed my chest and abdomen muscles to shatter the clay suit.

  Nothing.

  I flexed every muscle in my chest, shoulders, back, thighs, buttocks, arms, calves, abdomen, neck, fingers, thumbs, eyelids and tongue at once. “Attack!” I screamed, and smashed out of my clay disguise ready to throttle this deadly enemy to death.

  Well, that’s what I wanted to do. In fact, I’d lost so much weight that the clay no longer clung to me like a bespoke suit that I could shrug off in a moment. It was more like a Victorian diving bell, or the armour a young knight inherits from a bigger brother. As well as being too big for me, the clay suit had dried out in the kiln-like conditions of the air-vent, hardening to an unbelievable strength. It was no longer a disguise, but a prison.

  Cornwall had fared only slightly better. He’d punched his left hand out of the clay, and Miss Gladkins watched with amusement as he raised his index finger to point feebly at the water jug at the side of the desk.

  Miss Gladkins burst into peals of laughter that I sometimes still hear at night. She swung her bo staff at the water jug, which burst into a million shards.

  “Forgive my rudeness,” she said, bowing lightly in the Japanese style, and approaching us. “We have not yet been introduced. I am Lady Sayonara Fang of the House of Fujihokke, and the Imperial Japanese Kempeitai.”

  She was astonishingly beautiful up close, and it was difficult to understand how she had masqueraded as a frumpy librarian for all this time. Obviously it hadn’t been Chadwell passing secrets to the Japanese after all.

  “I’m longing to meet the men inside,” she called coquettishly.

  Lady Sayonara span around in a tight circle and the tip of her staff caught the side of my head. Without the protection of the clay, I’d have been a goner. My mask cracked in two, and the part covering my face sheared off, smashing onto the floor. Light flooded into my eyes for the first time in a week, and I spent a long minute clearing my throat, as Lady Sayonara waited patiently.

  “Major Arthur St. John Trevelyan, of the Scoundrels Club, Piccadilly,” I said, with as much dignity as I could muster. “And this is my good friend Major Victor Cornwall.”

  With a flick of her wrist, she shattered Cornwall’s facemask as well. I heard Cornwall taking a couple of very deep, gasping breaths. “Very pleased to meet you, Lady Fang,” said Cornwall, “forgive me if I don’t shake hands.”

  I tried it on. “I’m afraid you rather have us at a disadvantage, Lady Fang. Our practical joke to surprise our old pal Professor Chadwell seems to have gone awry. Perhaps you’ll set us free, and we’ll say no more about it.”

  Wry, and genuine, amusement spread across her high cheekbones to her almond eyes. “Please don’t insult my intelligence. I should kill you both now, but for your tenacity I am minded to spare your lives. Tell me, have you ever been to Japan?”

  “No,” I said.

  “I can think of better places for a holiday,” remarked Cornwall.

  “Perhaps you’d better have some water after all, it’s a long journey,” she said, as she dragged two packing crates, each just the right size for a terracotta warrior, from behind the bookcase.

  That fart of yours kept an enemy agent in play, costing us two years of freedom, and a very, very long walk home.

  If only you’d been able to contain yourself we could have spent the rest of the War playing hide the sausage with London’s finest fillies, instead of in Camp Wan Booli on the other side of the world.

  Yours sincerely,

  Major St. John Trevelyan.

  Hellcat Manor

  Great Trundleford

  Devon

  5th November 2016

  Dear Major,

  To suggest that the mission’s failure was my fault is laughable. It was down to your feckless butler Cacahuete who sourced the wrong type of clay for our suits. It’s common knowledge that Hyde Park clay is rich in marble. We would have been cemented in for all eternity had Fang not broken us free. My upset stomach inadvertently saved our lives.

  You’ve taken many liberties with your chapter. After reading it I was so incensed I sent Baxter down to the kitchens to rustle up the world’s hottest curry, using only Carolina Reaper Peppers which each measure 2.2 million on the Scoville scale. As he stood by with the defibrillator, I ate the lot in one sitting, losing six pints of sweat and three of blood. I then sat in the outside lavatory, and read your chapter again, wiping my arse with each page. I’m afraid that was all is was good for, and it wasn’t very good at that.

  Yours sincerely,

  Major Victor Cornwall.

  Nimbu Towers,

  Pullen-under-Lyme,

  Gloucestershire

  8th November 2016

  Dear Major,

  Oh, come now Major, don’t be such a frump. Just when I’m starting to enjoy myself with these reminiscences, you have a huge sense of humour failure, and suddenly its handbags at dawn.

  Rather than wait for your reply I took the liberty of starting the next chapter which sets out how we ended up as prisoners of war.

  Your thoughts please.

  __________

  CHAPTER 15

  The Whore of Heaven

  Japan, February, 1944

  Two hundred and eight hours. That’s how long we spent covered in terracotta.

  Our journey east was a blur. I remember long periods of silence, and then many voices at once. Abrupt commands as orders were given. Perhaps mercifully I drifted in and out of consciousness for the most of it. I had little idea of where we were.

  When the lid of my packing crate was finally removed, a squad of black-hatted, white-armbanded Kempeitai dogsbodies peered in. It took them about an hour to get us out of our shells, using the butts of their rifles to smash the clay off. I’ve had better welcomes.

  We were led to a windswept shower block and given five minutes to get as clean as possible. As the hot water cascaded down upon me, I glanced over at Cornwall’s bright red body. He’d lost weight so fast the skin of his torso hung off him like a fisherman’s jersey. The shower was a real pick-me-up though, and I came out of it feeling thoroughly refreshed, although I still could have done with a cup of tea.

  We were given some scraps of fabric to wear, and marched to a bleak little office by the side of the airfield, where Colonel Naruda, a Kempeitai officer, interviewed us. Naruda was a slight fellow with excellent English, a relaxed manner, and a fresh packet of Cherry Temple Rest, a fruity smoke of surprising tartness. “Welcome to Japan,” he said sarcastically. In another life he may have made a decent Scoundrel, but not this one. />
  Naruda motioned to a large bowl of fermented soup steaming away in an urn, and bid us help ourselves while he read a file detailing our capture. He found it very amusing. “It says here that you disguised yourselves as statues and stood motionless for a week, with no food or water. Is this true?”

  “That’s right,” I said warily, “and we’d do it again tomorrow.”

  Naruda smiled. “And which one of you was it who broke wind upon her eminence Lady Sayonara Fang?” Cornwall met Naruda’s eye.

  “You are very lucky to be alive Major, Sakura has slaughtered entire families for less,” he said. “I take it you know who Lady Sayonara is?” Cornwall and I shrugged. We didn’t care. We were too busy tucking into our bowls of rat broth, the unofficial national dish, given the war shortages.

  “But you must have heard of The Whore of Heaven…” he speculated. I tried not to react, but the way my bowl clattered onto the floor rather gave me away. Sayonara Fang was The Whore of Heaven! It was a name that struck fear into the heart of all British officers, but until now nobody knew if she was real or only a myth – a ghost story with which to frighten old Colonels. We may have been captured, but at least we’d blown her cover at the British Museum.

  Sayonara Fang, A.K.A The Cherry Blossom, A.K.A. Sakura, A.K.A. Satan’s Concubine, was an assassin. A seductress supreme, beautiful, ruthless and deadly. It was said she was born of the shadows, a direct descendant of Mochizuki Chiyome, the 16th century noblewoman who created an all-female group of ninja agents. As such she was raised as a kunoichi, a female ninja in the Iga Clan tradition. By the age of eighteen she was a formidable killer, paid to travel the world and murder for a select group of employers. Her looks gave her access to the men she’d been hired to kill.

  But Fang had another secret, a genetic abnormality that set her apart from her peers, affording her a macabre modus operandi. She was born with vagina dentata, a rare condition that causes the lady garden to grow teeth. And not just any teeth, sharp ones. She would use them to attack her lovers during the sex act. It was rumoured that she could bite off a penis and spit it out with about the same effort as a yawn. She had total downstairs muscular control, and could take her victims to unparalleled heights of sexual pleasure, right up until the moment she killed them. Even as her victims died they’d profess their eternal love to her, despite being neutered with the bite force of a saltwater crocodile.

  Fang left Japan in 1938 after killing a Yakuza boss who owed her money. She moved to Thailand to work the shows and strip clubs of Bangkok. Her act became the talk of the town. She could whittle wood and chew the handle off a tennis racket. But little did the audience members know that she was working as an assassin, until she killed a powerful oil magnate with a golf ball to the temple.

  When Japan declared war she was recruited by the military and sent to the U.K. Her mission was to stalk the bars and clubs of Mayfair at night looking for powerful men to kill, preferably officers in the British Army. She advertised in the classifieds of Tee Emm and Parade magazines as an escort. As the body count rose, so her legend grew. Witnesses would see the deceased leaving a bar with a beautiful Japanese woman, and over time she became an icon for the cunning and trickery of the enemy. In Mess Halls all over the country, she was The Whore of Heaven.

  “Come to think of it, I have never met anyone she left breathing before,” Naruda continued. “You are both lucky to be alive. Although I fear that your luck may have just run out. We require you to remain in Japan as prisoners for the rest of this War.”

  “Do we have any choice in the matter?” I asked.

  “No,” Naruda said emphatically. “You will now be transported to Camp Wan Booli.”

  I always wondered, Major, what went on between you and Lady Sayonara. I know you had some pretty frisky adventures in the 60s and 70s when I was trying to get to grips with my agonising marriage to Marjorie. I know a gentleman never tells, but perhaps you, being no gentleman, could?

  Yours sincerely,

  Major St. John Trevelyan.

  Hellcat Manor

  Great Trundleford

  Devon

  11th November 2016

  Dear Major,

  May I respectfully ask that you write no more about Lady Sayonara Fang. When the time is right, and that time is not now, I would like to be given the opportunity to remember her properly. I think you owe me that.

  Other than Fuffy, and perhaps Summerville, she was the only one who could have made an honest chap of me. Fang was the ying to my yang. I know she was a ruthless psychopathic assassin with a rare genital condition who killed over fifty men, but I found her utterly captivating. She never gave me so much as a scratch, unless I asked for one, although the permanent kink in my vas deferens serves as a daily reminder of our furious lovemaking.

  I know you are resistant to my poetry but I’d like you to consider this one for inclusion.

  __________

  Goodbye Sayonara. (1969)

  We were never meant to fall in love,

  Assassin of my heart,

  Sayonara.

  Ink black hair,

  And wicked eyes,

  A secret smile,

  Between your thighs,

  Sayonara.

  Trapped inside,

  Your jagged maw,

  Your claw,

  Your pelvic flaw,

  I wanted more,

  Sayonara.

  You gripped me,

  Nipped me,

  Almost snipped me.

  I was masticated,

  In your elasticated,

  Serrated glove,

  My love.

  Sayonara.

  You stole my breath,

  Angel of death,

  Sayonara.

  She was an incredible woman, and I shall unlock these memories from my heart in due course.

  I’ll now cover a pivotal moment in our incarceration. We’re in Japan, and as usual, I’m clearing up your mess.

  __________

  CHAPTER 16:

  The Wolf of Wan Booli

  Camp Wan Booli, Japan, June 1944

  We ran to escape the rain. It was coming down in thick sheets which saturated everything. The P.O.W. camp had no drainage and within minutes the ground was a quagmire. We bounced up the steps of the medical hut, the nearest place of refuge, and brushed ourselves down on the veranda. The rain rattled against the corrugated tin roof making it difficult to hear above the din.

  Trevelyan looked as worried as I’d ever seen him. His ridiculous hair, wild at the best of times, skittered across his head like a cavalcade of gypsy caravans.“We need to talk!” he shouted. I couldn’t hear a thing. We retreated further under the veranda roof. “We’re in trouble. We’re in big trouble!” he said. “I’m sorry!”

  Trevelyan rarely said sorry to anyone, let alone me. And when he did, he never meant it. But this time it seemed genuine.

  “Calm down St. John – what’s happened?” I shouted back, catching a glimpse of my reflection in the window. Bloody hell I looked good today. My face was covered in a fine sheen of moisture, which highlighted my handsome features.

  “It’s the General,” Trevelyan said gravely.

  I tuned in. Anything concerning the camp’s General demanded my full attention. General Miyamoto was a man to be feared. He was aggressive, uncompromising and savage, which was why his nomme de guerre was The Wolf of Wan Booli.

  “Go on,” I said calmly. “Tell me from the beginning.”

  Trevelyan composed himself. “This afternoon I was taking a hot bath and I’d settled back amongst the bubbles with Monty’s copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover, which I had promised him I wouldn’t soil.”

  I pulled a face. Monty’s copy of Lady Chatterley’s Lover had really done the rounds on camp. I’d borrowed it months ea
rlier and it had cost me three cartons of cigarettes, and even then it had been in a sorry state. It had been passed around so much that entire sections were unreadable.

  “Every man on this camp has had a go at that,” I said dismissively. “I’m surprised you can still read it.”

  Trevelyan ignored my comment. “Anyway, I was enjoying my bath, lost in the story, so to speak. You know having a bit of ‘me time’.”

  “Yes, I get the idea.”

  “When the door suddenly swung open and before I could gather myself, in walked Miyamoto.”

  “That must have been awkward.”

  Trevelyan explained that there was to be a visit of the entire Japanese High Command to Wan Booli, and Miyamoto required us to cook the most luxurious meal they had ever had, or we were dead. The meal was scheduled for three weeks’ time, during which we must devise a menu that was a fitting tribute to the glorious Japanese Empire.

  “But who is going to cook?” I asked.

  “You,” he said flatly. “I told him you’d trained at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris and would be honoured to cook for such esteemed guests.”

  “You said what?”

  “I’m sorry Cornwall, he caught me during a delicate moment. I was in the bath, having a wa-… I didn’t know what to say. You can cook a bit though old man, can’t you?”

  From the day I was born I have lived a rare, privileged existence. I have been waited on hand and foot. I’ve had servants, butlers, maids and cooks. I have never, ever had to even fry a slice of toast.