by Rhys Hughes
You were recognised in Mallorca, Sardinia and Rome. I was notified on these occasions by telephone and so I opened an atlas, found a decent map of Europe and worked out your likely route; then I telephoned ahead to one of my agents in Croatia and he wrote this letter for me. He was the chap who delivered it to you just now. You probably are wondering why the envelope was so bulky? I won’t keep you in suspense. It’s because I included an explosive device with the letter. It’s quite small but deadly enough.
When has it been set to go off? Good question! Approximately 20 seconds after the envelope is opened.
And that’s right about … now!
Goodbye and the very worst of luck to you!
Yours truly,
Ben Gordon
The Arrival
I shrieked but the sound was swamped by a dull roar. The letter bomb had exploded! Yet I felt nothing; there was no pain or blood and my brain was still inside my skull. What had happened?
Scipio turned to me. He was covered in water and seaweed.
I blinked like an electrocuted fish.
He explained, ‘I had a hunch something wasn’t right, so I opened the package for you; the letter was harmless enough and I passed it on, but I wasn’t impressed with the accompanying “gift”, so I dropped that into the sea, just in time as it happens!’
‘Cer I ware gyda gotsen dy fam-gu!’ I exhaled.
‘Pure Welsh poetry indeed!’
‘Well, I’m a marked man now,’ I said.
‘Come, Mr Griffiths, let us buy some fuel. I suspect we’re running out of time. We ought to obtain food too. It’s a long way over the mountains of Bosnia, Serbia and Romania.’
‘I could do with a strong coffee, my friend!’
‘Wait until Bucharest; the cafés there are scarcely inferior to those of Paris. You’ll see! Come on now!’
And so I saw very little of the sights of Split.
Back in the air, we had the benefit of thick cloud cover as we climbed above the first range of mountains. Unseen far below, the wildest regions of Bosnia thrummed with the hoofbeats of bandits and brigands in their quaintly colourful costumes; then we crossed into Serbia. I thought I now smelled the stench of war, but that was surely an olfactory illusion, blood and smoke in the mind’s nose, so to speak, rather than in my real nostrils. I covered my face with a pocket-handkerchief. Through a narrow break in the clouds I saw we were directly over the Morava River. Scipio told me that we required another fuel stop.
We landed outside a town called Zaječar and I was nervous as we got out of the plane, but there was no fighting here: we were far north of the main theatre of war, which was Macedonia. We successfully haggled for fuel and returned to the skies. Scipio flew all night. I felt guilty that he had taken this responsibility entirely upon himself, but this simply wasn’t the time or place to give me flying lessons. Shortly after midnight we passed over the border into Romania, and when the sun rose on the following day I was greeted with an astounding sight.
The clouds had dispersed and below us spread the true wonderland of Wallachia, with picturesque villages nestled in the Carpathian foothills. I enjoyed this spectacle as the sun warmed my face. There was no evidence of war or carnage down there either: the scene was tranquillity itself! But I didn’t relax too much, because the greatest ordeal still lay ahead.
The hours grew old in contemplation. Scipio began a gradual descent, and on the horizon I saw the towers and houses of a city.
Bucharest at last! The fabled Paris of the East!
Incidentally, I’ve never understood why places must be compared with other places instead of with themselves, but that’s not something I intend to discuss further here. Time is short!
Scipio narrowed his eyes. ‘Something big is happening.’
We were flying low over the city, and he pointed down into the tangle of streets. I couldn’t see anything remarkable at first, then I realised that a large crowd had gathered in one of the parks. I learned later that this park was actually named the Gradina Cişmigiu and was a delightful relic of the Turkish occupation of long ago. In the centre of the park was a large lake and in the middle of the lake was a—
‘What a bizarre aeroplane! Look at its engine!’
‘Yes,’ said Scipio, ‘and it seems to be armed with a very peculiar gun. Let’s take a closer look at it, shall we?’
As we swooped lower and nearer, I was astounded that not one head in the mob turned to regard us. Then I saw they weren’t real people but only a collection of shop mannequins, rows and rows of them, arranged like an invading army at the south side of the park. They were dressed in tattered uniforms and carried dummy weapons, but there was something not right. I confided my suspicions to Scipio.
‘You’re perfectly right,’ he said. ‘Those aren’t Romanian uniforms but Bulgarian ones. Why dress a phoney army to resemble enemy soldiers? I wonder if this is a military exercise?’
I clicked my fingers. ‘Of course! Practice for a Bulgarian invasion! It seems extreme. From what I’ve heard of the progress of the war there’s no chance Bulgaria can ever reach Bucharest, let alone overrun the city! The Bulgarian army is having great difficulties even holding on to territory in its own country! But look there—’
The remarkable plane in the lake shuddered into life. It had no visible propeller and took off almost vertically. The pilot was a bulky figure who exuded menace even at this distance.
‘Jukka Halme! I recognise him!’ cried Scipio.
‘How can we engage him? Our own aircraft is unarmed!’
‘We can’t. We must land first.’
At the north end of the park sat a group of generals on folding chairs. I hadn’t noticed them until now. They were dressed in the correct uniform and I surmised they had gathered to witness and judge the demonstration that was about to take place. I imagine they gave it full marks when it was finally over. I have never beheld anything so devastatingly awful! Jukka’s plane banked steeply and he dived at a shallow angle toward the army of mannequins. I expected him to strafe them with his nose-mounted gun but when it clattered into action, not one of the fake Bulgarians fell down. It seemed to me that Jukka had failed.
‘What an imbecile! Every bullet missed!’
But Scipio shook his head. ‘His gun doesn’t fire bullets! Take a proper look, Mr Griffiths, and remember!’
I did as I was bid. Then I saw that the odd gun had been discharging a stream of cogs, bolts, nuts, wheels, screws and other metal components and that these individual parts were all fitting neatly together in front of the mass of blind and unfeeling soldiers. It seemed the gun was somehow assembling a machine at long distance, but what kind of machine? As the last component spat out of the mouth of the barrel, I heard Jukka’s shout of exultation before he turned his plane again in a wide arc and landed it on the lake. Then he stood up in the cockpit to watch his work. I stopped watching him and observed the result.
Every cog had slotted into its rightful place; every wheel turned on its proper bearings; every rivet was tight.
The thing that stood in front of the ranks of soldiers was a cylinder of iron mounted on many legs. It had many arms and each arm terminated in a scimitar. Suddenly it pounced! The sharp blades flashed. Dummy heads sprang from dummy necks. Like a storm of steel, a vortex of vengeance, it charged through the Bulgarians, lashing out, the arms moving so fast they became a blur, the spindly legs stamping prone bodies, the mindless rage of the thing beyond all description.
Scipio Faraway rubbed his neck and winced.
‘What’s wrong?’ I cried.
‘Nothing much, Lloyd. Merely that I’ve seen that decapitation machine before! Jukka Halme never liked wasting an earlier invention, but he has excelled himself this time! He has combined the old with the new to build a weapon of truly ferocious power!’
‘I would hate to see it employed against living men.’
‘You were lucky not to.’
‘What are his next plans, Scipio?’
‘Until now, his
decapitation device has been too bulky to be of use in warfare, but it seems he has finally developed a method of transmitting it in pieces at high velocity. He also has a plane capable of flying fast, high and acrobatically enough to avoid anti-aircraft fire and deliver his weapon to the front line. He’s a genius!’
‘The generals seem pleased with the outcome!’
‘I know Jukka. He will have told them that he intends only to eradicate the Bulgarian army, but in fact he’ll do his best to remove the heads of all the civilian inhabitants too. We must stop him. Romania can win this war cleanly, without his devilish tricks …’
The Ending
Scipio searched for a suitable place to land. It was not possible to land in the park itself, for there wasn’t enough room on the lake; and the streets in the vicinity were too narrow to use as runways. We finally put down in a spacious square south of the old town. Scipio hailed a coachman, and with scarcely a pause for breath we jumped aboard and directed the old fellow to take us to the Gradina Cişmigiu.
The droshky we sat on was comfortable enough, but I was bemused by the method of letting the coachman know whether we wished to turn right or left. He wore a kaftan sprouting two cords and we pulled on one or the other as he lashed his black Orloff horses to faster speed. Scipio explained that the fellow was a member of the Skopţi sect, religious dissidents who ritually castrated themselves because they believed the generative organs were the source of all sin. Needless to say, they castrated themselves only after they had fathered successors…
Scipio appeared to know Bucharest well. He pointed out various sights as we passed them. ‘That hostelry is called Hanul lui Manuc and we can find good rooms there later. It was founded by an Armenian a century ago and is the most delightful place to stay in the city.’ And a little later: ‘See that fine tavern? That’s the Carul cu Bere, and when this dreadful mess is over we’ll go there to slake our thirst!’
We stopped at the gates of the park, paid the coachman and ran inside. I didn’t pause to worry about the consequences, I simply followed Scipio. I trusted him implicitly. A pale man waved his hands and cried, ‘Stop! The park is restricted! I saw you land. No-one else was looking but I saw you! You aren’t allowed to enter this—’
Scipio glowered at him, and the man retreated.
He was a feeble guard indeed!
We surveyed the situation. Jukka was standing on dry ground, talking to the generals. Then he turned away from them and opened the door of a refrigerator that was standing to the side, but one of the generals asked a question and distracted him. Scipio frowned, stepped forward and shook the pale man. ‘We want information!’
The pale man spluttered, ‘I don’t deserve such treatment. I’m not well, not well at all! I didn’t want to guard the park; they wouldn’t even give me a pistol for the task. I’m Professor Bogdan Velicu and I don’t belong here. He’s evil, I tell you, evil! It’s not my fault. I did everything I was told, but he still took my organs away from me!’
Scipio released him. ‘What’s Jukka doing now?’
Velicu answered, ‘That first flight was merely to demonstrate his gun and decapitation device. He used ordinary fuel in the engine of the plane because he can’t afford to waste the special fuel. There’s only a tiny piece left! He has persuaded the generals of the viability of his weapon. He will now insert the special fuel into his modified engine and use it to reach the front line at unbelievable speed, and then he will chop the Bulgarian boys into gobbets of quivering gristle.’
‘Special fuel? In that refrigerator, you mean?’
Velicu nodded, and before I rightly knew what was happening, Scipio was running toward the generals. Nobody noticed until he reached them and there was a struggle near the refrigerator. Jukka stood back with eyes that were inscrutable and then he smiled. The generals shouted orders and adjutants came and seized Scipio.
‘I must help him!’ I bellowed, but I didn’t move.
Velicu plucked my sleeve and pointed. I saw Jukka approach the open door of the refrigerator with a swagger; he reached in and picked up some object too small for me to discern.
Then he walked with it to the side of the lake.
His plane was moored there. He opened the cover of the fuel tank and dropped the contents of his hand through the hole. He replaced the cover and climbed into the cockpit. He cast off the mooring rope and started the engine. It screeched and thundered.
The generals and the adjutants turned to look.
Scipio Faraway slipped away!
He ran back and joined me. Velicu groaned.
‘You failed!’ I whimpered.
But Scipio merely smiled and said, ‘I might be able to take you for that glass of beer sooner than you think.’
Jukka’s plane rose at a steep angle. The Finn was laughing, and even at this distance we caught a few of his words. ‘I will slaughter every citizen of every city, town and village in Bulgaria … Then I will return and treat Bucharest in the same manner …’
‘He’s truly insane,’ Velicu stammered.
‘Watch,’ said Scipio.
The engine of the aircraft coughed. It sputtered. It died. The plane was now at an altitude of several thousand feet. The Finn’s expression was lost beyond the range of eyesight, but Scipio had taken a naval spyglass from an inner pocket of his black pea coat.
He studied the situation, passed the spyglass to me.
Jukka was screaming and laughing.
At the same time! Horrid!
The plane stalled. It fell like a dead vulture.
Somewhere far to the south it crashed. I prayed that nobody had been killed in the collision, apart from Jukka, of course … A thin curl of smoke spiralled into the sky.
Scipio said, ‘Probably a good idea to take our leave.’
‘I couldn’t agree more!’
We hurried out of the park back in the direction of the tavern. I think I must have been in shock. My brain was spinning and the next thing I remember is sitting at a pavement table with a glass of foaming beer in my hand. Scipio drank his own down and ordered a glass of vermouth. The waiter asked if he wanted ice with it, and I’ll never forget Scipio’s strange answer. ‘No, I have my own, thank you.’ He was a constant source of amazement to me, that mysterious sailor without a ship.
When the vermouth arrived, Scipio dropped a tiny piece of ice into it. I blinked as it melted quickly to nothing. Monsieur Faraway swirled his glass and tasted the mixture with delight.
‘I don’t understand anything,’ I confessed.
Scipio smiled. ‘It’s simple enough. When I reached the refrigerator and saw what was inside, I had a sudden inspiration. I exchanged what was in there for an object I had on me that looked identical. My substitute turned out to be very bad fuel, however.’
‘You trickster! What was it?’ I asked.
‘A diamond, ‘ said Scipio, ‘given to me by the grateful inhabitants of a village in Sierra Leone. That’s all.’
While I sat there, musing on the peculiarity of life, a drone disturbed my peace. For an instant, I thought that Jukka Halme had somehow come back to life, that my head was still destined to be removed from my poor shoulders by his infernal contraption.
But in fact it was a different plane, our plane!
Scipio stood as it approached us. ‘That Velicu fellow is piloting it! He must have taken note of where we landed. I wonder what he wants? Soon find that out!’ He used his spyglass to get a closer look. ‘There’s murder in his eyes. He’s coming for us!’
‘I wonder why?’ I blurted naively.
Scipio said, ‘He hated Jukka and was happy to see us defeat the Finn, but Velicu is no traitor; he’s a patriotic Romanian and he considers us to be saboteurs. After all, we did destroy Jukka, who had been hired by the government of King Carol. I feel sorry for him up there. He’s in a moral maze and there’s only one way out. That plane isn’t armed, so I surmise he intends to crash it into us—’
‘A suicide attack?’ I was incredul
ous.
‘Why not?’ grinned Scipio.
‘My dear friend, this is the 20th Century. Suicide attacks belong to an older, more barbaric age, surely?’
‘All the same, I think we’re in danger…’
Velicu was still climbing. It was clear he intended to put the aeroplane into a steep dive from as great an altitude as possible. He wanted as much momentum as he could get. I guessed that the entire tavern would become rubble in the aftermath of his attack.
Up and up he went, finally reaching the apex of his curve. Shaking his head, Scipio lowered his spyglass.
‘Drink up, Mr Griffiths, while you can!’
I did so. Too fast perhaps.
For now a new buzzing assailed me. I thought my ears were deceiving me, for the drone of the engine seemed to come from behind me. I shook my head, but the effect grew more pronounced. Finally I couldn’t resist a glance back over my shoulder. I reeled at the sight. An aircraft skimmed the roofs of Bucharest, a fantastical craft decorated with filigree designs, with elegant curved wings and a bearded pilot dressed in robes. Was this sight the result of too much beer?
The exotic pilot looked down and waved.
‘Salaam, Monsieur Faraway!’
‘Hello again, Rais Uli!’
‘I appear to be a few degrees off course!’
‘Yes indeed, Rais Uli.’
‘May I perform a service for you?’
‘If you would be good enough. The pilot in that other plane hopes to send us to the next world.’
‘Leave him to me. Farewell, Scipio!’
I gasped in disbelief and rubbed my eyes as the exotic pilot levelled an ornately carved musket of improbable length, aimed carefully and pulled the trigger. I saw Velicu’s plane falter. The professor was dead. His corpse pulled back on the control stick and the pride of the Bessarabian air force headed out of the city, while the Riffian equivalent continued on its long, utterly remarkable way to Tibet.
‘The Barbary Corsair,’ explained Scipio.