by Rob Grant
I prayed I would never find out.
Not wanting to aggravate him, but not wishing to sit in silence like a good little puppy, neither, I asked him, polite enough, if he'd like to tell me what this was all about.
He shrugged. 'Someone wants to see you, pally.'
Someone wanted to see me. That was good, assuming that the someone wanted to see me alive.
We drove on a while. My stinky companion didn't go in for conversation in any big way. I closed my eyes and tried to get a little sleep, just to show old sewer breath I wasn't worried about him, or his mean little arsenal.
I pulled it off, too. This was my third night, now, without bedrest, which helped, I guess. When I opened my eyes, the car was stopped, but the engine was still running. We were up in some hills, and dawn was busting out all pretty and pink over the top of them. It was one of those picture-book dawns that make you wish you'd brought your camera, then realise you're glad you didn't, because those picturesque dawn photos really suck.
We were in a traffic queue, waiting to cross some kind of bridge over a quaint mountain stream. It was a narrow bridge: only wide enough for one car to pass over at a time. It was a surprisingly busy thoroughfare. The queues were pretty long in both directions for this time in the morning. Clearly, there was some kind of unwritten etiquette to the system: one car goes through, then the next one waits for the one in the opposite queue to pass, and like that.
Only our driver wasn't hot on etiquette. Our driver was the impatient kind. He slipped through out of turn, there was a small bump, and we were wedged in, fender to fender, with a shiny new steam-powered saloon.
The most civil of arguments ensued. The guy in the expensive steam car smiled all nice and made a polite gesture to our driver, implying our vehicle should be the one to back out. I saw the back of our driver's head shaking a negative, and a small hand movement to indicate his own, personal theory, that the steam car, in fact, should be the vehicle which did the backing out.
There were a couple more head shakes, a couple more gestures, with the smiles growing thinner and more strained, and then the steam car driver made a big mistake. A very big mistake.
He tooted his horn.
Sewage Breath next to me swore and cracked open his door. He smiled at me, to let me know he was going to enjoy this and he hoped I did too, slipped his cattle prod up his sleeve and stepped out of the car.
He put on a smile that covered up the worst of his oral problems and walked unhurriedly towards the steam car driver's window.
I looked at the door he'd left open.
Of course I thought about running. It would have been stupid not to think about running, even though I don't much like it as a pastime.
But I had the feeling the door had been left open to tempt me into trying exactly that. Could I outrun Stinko? I doubted it. He was lean and mean, and he could probably give me a ninety-metre start in a hundred-metre race.
Besides which, I had a pretty good idea who'd invited me on this little trip, and frankly I wanted to meet him.
So, no. I didn't run. I didn't even get out and stretch my legs. I just sat back and watched the unsuspecting steam car driver wind down his window, still thinking with almost beautiful innocence that the argument was going to remain civilised and verbal, only to find himself electrically immobilised with the polite smile still frozen on his face. He was still smiling, albeit involuntarily, as he was dragged out of his vehicle, thrown to the ground and subjected to a sustained, businesslike kicking administered in an almost desultory way by a true professional.
I tried to feel sorry for the guy, but he was wearing a blazer. You can never feel truly sympathetic towards any man who chooses to relax in a jacket with gold buttons, no matter what ills befall him.
When it became clear even to Darren Dentistry that the gentleman was unlikely to be capable of coherent speech for the rest of the day, much less rise up and give chase, he slipped into the steam car, and started it up. He got out again, twisted the steering wheel and pressed down on the accelerator pedal with his hand. The car shot forwards through the bridge rails and tumbled down to the stream below. Both lines of traffic remained completely static. Nobody tooted. Glockenspiel watched the steam car go, ran his fingers through his lank mop, and gently rolled the still-grinning blazered bundle over to one side with his toe so we didn't run him over, which I thought was a caring touch. Then he looked directly at the driver now at the head of the queue in front, who looked away immediately and forgot our number plate. I looked behind. Everyone in that queue suddenly found something terribly important to examine beneath their dashboards. When the local law eventually wormed its way to the scene, there would be no valuable witness evidence to be garnered here.
Stinko slid into the seat beside me and grinned. 'You didn't feel like taking a stroll, dough boy? That disappoints me.' He nodded to the driver and we moved off. I noticed some fresh stains on his trousers, and re-evaluated my earlier interpretation of the blemishes on his suit.
They weren't food stains at all.
They were blood, mucus and dried human gristle.
Nice.
FORTY
I don't know how long we'd been driving -- seven hours maybe -- when I finally worked out where we were going.
We were on a winding mountain road, a civilised four-lane blacktop, when we rounded a bend and I caught a glimpse of a fairy-tale castle. A real fairy-tale castle, mind. Sleeping Beauty's abode, as I understand it. Or Cinderella's. One of those two dames.
We were going to Disneyland, Austria.
Disneyland, Austria was a massive project that had been aborted a decade or so ago, just before it was due to open, at a cost of hundreds of millions of dollars. It was the casualty of some unpleasant trade dispute between Europe and America, something about tit-for-tat export quotas, and it caused a lot of bad feeling at the time. I think the Disney corporation tried to sue the European government for compensation. Yeah, right. Good luck, Mr Mouse. Me, I'd forgotten all about the place till I saw those magical spires.
We drove through the massive parking lot, designed to accommodate many thousands of vehicles. The tarmac was all cracked and mossed over now, though, with long grass growing through it. We parked up by the entrance gates.
Stinko stretched and cracked his knuckles, called me a few nasty names and told me I should get out of the car. The journey hadn't improved his manners any.
He prodded me through the gates and we walked through the deserted streets of old New York, past the abandoned trolley cars and the faded hot-dog stands. The driver stayed in the car.
Stinko stayed behind me, but close, with his thumb on the stun stick switch. Ever the professional.
We had the place to ourselves, all right. We had the VIP ticket. No queues for me and Stinko. All I needed was a roast turkey drumstick and a lemon-flavoured snow cone to make the day perfect. We strolled past the enchanted castle, took a right by Geppetto's workshop, and climbed a bridge over Hook's pirate ship. Finally, we came to a cable car at the base of Mystic Mountain.
I deduced, from the sharp jabs between my shoulder blades, that I was supposed to get in the car. Great, we were working on our relationship, me and Stinko. We were improving our communication skills.
Stinko followed me in, turned to shut the door, I killed him, then the cable car jerked into action and started its climb.
Whatever was waiting for me at the top of Mystic Mountain -- and I had a good idea what that might be -- I felt I'd be able to deal with it more efficiently if Captain Cattleprod weren't around to share the experience with me. I stripped away his stun stick and slipped the stiletto down my sock. I patted him down, and found a small gun in his sock. A little derringer thing. Quaint. Not much use unless you were actually pressing the barrel to somebody's eye when you pulled the trigger, which is probably how old Stinko used to use it, but I thought it might come in handy and trousered it anyway.
I turned the corpse over, just to double-check it was a cor
pse, and wasn't going to show up again in a bad movie kind of way, so I'd have to kill him twice, or even three times. His hair fell away from his face. He had no right eye. He hadn't lost it, there was just no place for a right eye to go. I rolled him back over. Even dead, he had bad-breath issues.
I looked up. The cable car was almost halfway up the face of Mystic Mountain by now. I had a decision to make: stay in the car and meet what was waiting for me, or try to leap onto the sister cable car that was making its way down the mountain towards me on a parallel set of cables.
I looked at the oncoming car. I looked up. I looked down.
No contest, really. I was pretty much done with leaping in general, and leaping onto moving things in particular. I wasn't about to start Clint Eastwooding onto a cable car three hundred metres above the magic kingdom at this stage in the game, and I really wasn't in the mood for getting my brains dashed out on the spire of Aladdin's hamburger palace below. Not my kind of death, thank you very much.
Besides, where would I go, even if I made it? I'd spent a lot of effort looking for Johnny Appleseed, and now it was time to meet him.
I let the car go by.
And I waited.
The cable car lurched into an opening at the top and came to a halt in a docking bay.
The lights were very dim. Emergency maintenance lights, probably. Though why the place had any power running to it at all was a mystery to me. I stepped out of the car and onto a wide walkway. There was only one way to go, so I went there.
There was a giant arch at the end of the walkway, fashioned as though you'd be stepping through the gaping mouth of some cartoon villain or other.
As I passed through, the cartoon villain laughed an evil laugh and welcomed me to Mystic Mountain.
Ho ho ho.
I stepped into the light.
The room was a vast cavern hewn out of the mountain's peak. It was stuffed with glittering Disneyesque treasures: hundreds of caskets overflowing with paste jewellery and gold-painted chains. Gold statues, golden vases. It was big on gold. There was a panoramic window carved out of the rock, looking out on a truly spectacular view of the Alps and the derelict Disney horror show below.
And standing against the window, looking pretty small against the breathtaking vista, was Johnny Appleseed himself.
He smiled and said hello.
I said, 'Hello, Klingferm.'
FORTY-ONE
It had been a while -- the best part of a decade, in fact -- but it was Klingferm, all right.
His face was still swollen from the bee sting crap he'd injected himself with, but the features were unmistakable.
He smiled. He had a winning smile, old Klingferm. 'Good to see you, Salty, old boy.'
He even sounded like he meant it. I wanted to puke. I really did. I would have killed him there and then, only he was holding a very powerful handgun. He wasn't brandishing it, or pointing it in my direction or anything so crass. He was just letting it dangle in his hand, his arms crossed, casually leaning against the panoramic window. Just letting me know the gun was on hand if I found myself getting a little too cheeky. He nodded his head to let me know I should start walking towards the far end of the chamber. Me? When someone is holding a good gun in their hand and they know how to use it, I always give special attention to their requests. I started walking.
Klingferm shouldered himself off the window and started to follow. 'I take it Wolfie won't be joining us?'
'Wolfie? He the guy with breath as fresh as a mountain stream?'
'That's Wolfie.'
'No, Wolfie won't be joining us, Dick. He had a dental appointment or seventy-nine.'
Klingferm fell quiet for a few steps. I didn't know whether he was lamenting Wolfie's passing or not. I'd have found that hard to believe; even Wolfie's mother would probably be doing the cancan when she got the telegram. Or maybe he'd figured out I now had some of Wolfie's dirty little arsenal. Whatever he was thinking, clearly I'd surprised him. For once, it seemed, he'd underestimated me. I'd done something unpredictable. Good. I decided to break his train of thought. 'Where are we going?'
Klingferm shrugged. 'Do you care?'
'I'm guessing you've got something extra neat lined up for me.'
'Nothing but the best.' He grinned. 'You wouldn't expect anything less, now, would you, good buddy?'
'And how many other people die this time? How many bystanders? How many innocents in my elevator car?'
He shrugged again. 'It's just a job to me, Harry. Que sera, sera and all.'
'How many people have you killed, as a matter of interest?'
'You think I count 'em, Harry? You think I carve notches on my bedpost, or something like that? You think I'm a monster? How many have you killed? I mean, not counting Wolfie back there in the cable car? You're not above playing a little God yourself, when it suits you. So why don't we let slip the whole moral indignation thing altogether, OK?'
'So, the Fabrizi dinner party thing. Mind if I ask?'
'Ask away.'
'Who was the target there?'
'The dinner party?' Another shrug. 'It didn't really matter, much. Any or all of them. A couple of the politicos, I was hoping. But there was a lot of talent at that party. A lot of shakers and movers. Quite a result, to bag them all. I wasn't particularly going for that soap opera guy, but I'm glad I nailed him. He really was an awful actor.'
'I'm still not getting it: what was the point of it all? I mean, what was the why of it?'
'Oh, come on. You must have worked it out for yourself. Smart guy like you. Must have seen I had me a theme going there.'
'I know you're American undercover. That much I know.'
'Well, bully for you, Harry. Then you should be able to guess the rest. Just being a good patriot. Running a little interference. Doing my bit.'
'Are you official CIA or deeper?'
'Deeper, Harry. This isn't official policy I'm pursuing, here. Not yet, anyway. I'm just deep enough so people in the agency who appear on the regular balance sheets and draw a salary all nice and legal can have credible deniability of me and mine. Not as deep as your organisation, Harry, but deep enough.'
'You were trying to undermine the European Union? Is that what you were doing?'
'In my small way, Harry. Every little bit helps. Every little setback. Every good politician who bites the dirt. Every piece of promising material I can do away with. It all stacks up.'
'Because a united Europe, that's a frightening thing to America.'
'A united Europe that's got its act together, sure. Scares me. Scares the hell out of me. And it scares a lot of people like me, too. Europe's huge. It's huge geographically, and it's huge economically. Suddenly the dollar's starting to look not quite so al-God-damned-mighty. Suddenly, there's another big guy on the block, and you know where that's heading.'
'Are you kidding me? You're worried Europe gets too big for its boots, and suddenly America starts looking like a juicy target? A war between Europe and America, is that where you think it's leading? That's insane. Democracies don't fight each other.'
'Think about it, Harry. Most of Europe hates America. I mean, really hates us. I don't know why, but they do. They hate our economic imperialism. They hate our McDonald's. They hate our Coca-God-damn-Cola. They drink it, but they hate us for it. Go figure. What happens if Europe really does get its show on the road? It gets the economic clout, and suddenly it has the means to express that loathing? I'm not saying they're going to come right out and start rolling the tanks down Sunset Boulevard, or firebomb New York a week on Tuesday. They'll have power, and they'll use it against us. Trade. Foreign interests. It'll be us against you, Harry. Somewhere down the line, one way or another. Us against you. So what I do, what people like me do, we do just enough to keep you off balance. Keep you from meshing. That's all.'
'Right. Well, when you put it like that, Dick, you're actually doing us all a favour. You're stopping us from going head-to-head in a terrible conflagration. I should be th
anking you.'
Klingferm smiled. Like I said, he had a fetching smile. 'I knew you'd see sense, my man. I just knew you'd see it my way. I'm the fucking caped crusader, that's all. I'm a Goddamned peacenik when it comes right down to it. I should be blessed.'
'And Plumier? The French politician? You wasted him because he was pro-Russia?'
'Don't even talk about that. I mean, you'll give me a cardiac. Can you imagine Russia joining the European Union? I get the sweats just thinking about it. Russia part of Europe? No, thank you, my fine friend. Russia on its own had us all tied up and jumpy for half a God-damned century. Russia standing side by side with Germany? And Britain? And France? And Italy? To name but five. Turkey? Greece? Jesus. It would be the biggest, nastiest alliance in the history of fucking anything. Can you see those good ol' boys climbing over each other to buy Chevrolets? I don't think so. How long are they going to sit down for American military outposts in their backyards? Long-range missile bases? Early warning stations? American nukes under their feet? If we're going to stay a world power -- the world power -- we can't give up those things. And what then? We're going to lock horns, is what then.'
'Have you taken a look around you here? Seriously? I mean, we're hopeless. I'm wearing shoes made of melon. We imprison greengrocers for selling carrots that aren't the right shade of orange. We churn out a hundred new laws and regulations every day, so fast we can't keep up, and turn the entire population into unwitting criminals. We're crap. We don't even like each other. OK, we're nominally united, but the Greeks hate the Turks, the Italians hate the French, the French hate the Germans, and the Germans hate everyone ... We're like a gigantic dysfunctional family on a self-destruct mission. We can't agree on anything important. We're wallowing in a stinking cesspool of historic national hatreds that date back centuries.'