Lovelace and Button (International Investigators) Inc.

by James Hawkins

  “Well, I wish I’d hit the other one a damn sight harder,” confesses Daphne.

  It may be nearing midnight Friday across the Atlantic in London, but Montague is high enough up the ladder to have yanked a U.S. Embassy cultural attaché out of a West End strip club. The man, a CIA plant with more connections than the Internet, had only taken minutes to report back.

  “What do they know about her?” asks Dawson, once Montague has put down the phone.

  “You’re not going to like this,” says Montague, and Dawson’s headache worsens when he discovers that, thanks to Bliss’s outburst at the morning press conference, Daphne has taken on celebrity status. “Apparently, she’s some kind of hero.”

  “What?”

  “Yeah, you idiot. That woman you and your clowns locked up has the Order of the British Empire for intelligence work.”

  “Christ! She must be at least eighty.”

  “Maybe nearer ninety, from what I hear. But don’t knock it. She’s the one who infiltrated your supposedly impenetrable establishment.”

  “Yeah, but —”

  “And disabled a sophisticated security system.”

  “Okay. But who the hell is she?”

  “She was some kind of special agent during the Cold War.”

  Dawson exhales a breath of deep understanding. “So that’s how she got Allan eating out of her hand.”

  “Allan?” questions Montague, still ignorant of another agent’s involvement.

  “One of the guards,” says Dawson, sloughing off his injured junior without explanation.

  “Let’s face it, John, the fact you were taken by a geriatric foreign agent is not gonna look good in your annual report.”

  However, his annual report is the least of Dawson’s concerns. “Look, sir. Can’t we keep this quiet?”

  Montague gives Dawson a cagey look, and leads him sideways. “And how would you propose to do that, John?”

  “There are drugs…” he starts, and Montague plays along.

  “Really?”

  “Yeah. Just enough to screw their memories up. Then we could ditch them in the forest somewhere. What d’ye think?”

  “I think you need some psychological adjustment, mister. Now, do they know what you’re doing here?”

  “They guessed —”

  “No. You’re not listening to me,” warns Montague. “Do they know?”

  “No… not as far as I know. Not specifically.”

  “Good,” says Montague, starting to rise. “In that case, have my man get my car. We’ll take the ladies home.”

  “You can’t —”

  “Mr. Dawson, I don’t have the authority to relieve you of duty…” starts Montague, eyeing the junior man fiercely. “But I’m certainly authorized to shoot you as a dangerous lunatic. So I suggest you get my car.”

  “But they’ll talk.”

  “Well, I’m gonna ask them real nice on behalf of the president not to. But then I’m coming back for a discussion with you. By which time, I’m sure you’ll have some answers — capisce?”

  “Got it,” says Phillips, having rewired half of the van’s ignition system, and the engine bursts into life as Bliss turns the key.

  “Thank God for that,” mutters Bliss, then he checks his watch. “We’ve still got nearly an hour before Daisy starts phoning.”

  “We’d better get moving, then,” says Phillips as he slams the hood and leaps into the passenger seat. “Although I still think we must be crazy.”

  Bliss drops the van into gear but he doesn’t pull away. “Mike,” he says seriously, “this isn’t really your problem. You can bail if you want to. I’d understand.”

  “No…”

  “Look. You’ve got a pregnant wife waiting for you —”

  “Yeah. And you’ve got Daisy waiting for you,” Phillips reminds him as he takes out his pistol and checks it over. “So put your damn foot on the gas and let’s make some waves.”

  “I hope you won’t need that,” says Bliss, as the heavy van lumbers onto the road, and Phillips agrees.

  “It won’t do much good if they open up with machine guns again.”

  “Why would they?” asks Bliss. “It’s their van. We’ll be okay as long as we just drive in as though we own the place.”

  Less than a mile ahead of the two detectives, the gates are swinging open and a black Mercedes silently glides out onto the road.

  “Steve!” yells a panicky Dawson into his cell phone as the gates close behind Montague’s car. “They’ve gone. But they took the women.”

  “What? Okay, I’ll get some wheels,” says Bumface without a moment’s hesitation. “Grab some artillery. We’ve gotta stop ‘em.”

  “Steve… I don’t know —”

  “Shit! Are you crazy? It’s perfect. We’ll hit ‘em on the freeway. With any luck they’ll smack into a big rig. We can take ‘em all out in one go.”

  “Are you comfortable, ladies?” asks Montague as he turns from the front passenger seat and smiles at the two women in the rear.

  “Yes, thank you,” says Daphne warily. “But who are you and where are we going?”

  “We are taking you back to Canada —” he says, but Trina cuts him off.

  “How do we know that? They’ve been promising to let us go since Wednesday.”

  “Please, Mrs. Button,” continues Montague softly, “it was all a big mistake. Now just sit back and enjoy the ride. We’ll soon have you home.”

  “Get ready,” says Bliss as he prepares to round the final few bends before the entrance to the bogus monastery. “It’ll be coming up on our — what the hell?” he exclaims as the Mercedes skims past in the other direction.

  “What is it?” asks Phillips.

  “That was Daphne,” breathes Bliss, almost in disbelief, having caught a glimpse of the woman with her face earnestly glued to the side window as she tries to record landmarks.

  “What?” demands Phillips in amazement.

  “It was Daphne — in that car,” Bliss shouts excitedly as he slams on the brakes.

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes… no — I don’t know,” wavers Bliss as the van slews to a halt. “It was so fast and she was in the back.”

  “Quick, turn around. Let’s check it out.”

  “Oh, shit. We’ve got trouble,” mutters Montague a few minutes later as he spots the white van closing in from behind.

  “What’s up, boss?”

  “I thought he’d pull a stunt like this,” spits Montague. “Research, my ass. Put your foot down, Nick. There’s a couple of heavies on your tail.” Then he spins to the two women in the back seat. “You’d better get down, ladies. Get down as low as you can.”

  “They’ve spotted us,” mutters Bliss as the Mercedes suddenly speeds away from them, then he sees the gun as Montague leans out of the window. “Oh, Christ! He’s shooting!” he exclaims as the pistol recoils. Then he starts weaving erratically, hoping to dodge a bullet. Phillips drops the passenger window and has his gun at the ready, but Bliss reaches over to pull him back.

  “No, Mike,” he yells. “They might crash.”

  The heavy van is no match for the Mercedes on the straight, but Bliss knows the twists and turns of the forest road better than Montague’s driver and manages to keep the car within sight for a few miles. However, half a ton of wet salmon slopping from side to side has him constantly fighting the wheel as he broadsides around bend after bend. “We’ll never keep up in this,” he shouts, as he cuts a blind corner with a silent prayer, but Mike Phillips is on his cell phone checking out the registration of the fleeing car.

  “You’re right, Dave,” he says after a few minutes. “It’s registered to an import company that’s a known cover for the CIA.”

  “They’re moving them to a safer spot, Mike.”

  “Yeah. Your warning on TV worked,” admits Phillips. “But it won’t do us any good if they get away.”

  “I know that!” shouts Bliss as they near the bar where Dais
y is waiting. “I’m gonna leap out and get the car,” he adds. “Get ready to take over.”

  Daisy is staring anxiously out of the bar’s window with one eye on her watch, though she’s not expecting the reappearance of the van, and she’s on her feet and at the door in a second as it slides to a halt in a hail of gravel.

  “Hey. You haven’t paid —” yells the barman as she heads for her car. “Jesus, what is it with these foreigners?” he mutters in disgust. “Don’t they ever pay?”

  “Keys!” yells Bliss to Daisy as Phillips scorches away in the van, and in seconds he is back on the trail of the Mercedes with the Frenchwoman beside him.

  “What’s happening?” she asks, but Bliss is focusing on the road.

  “We’ve got to catch them,” he says as he lunges the car through bend after bend until the van is in sight.

  The large vehicle is swaying dangerously from side to side with the weight of wet fish as Phillips desperately tries to catch up to the fleeing Mercedes, but he’s blocking Bliss’s path.

  “This is worse than England,” moans Bliss as he jinks from side to side, seeking an opening. “Get out of the bloody way, Mike,” he screams as he leans on the horn, and Phillips finally pulls over. Now, with a clear road, Bliss throws the car furiously at the bends, and he feels the tires sliding on the damp pavement as he slams his foot from throttle to brake and back again, but there is no sign of the Mercedes.

  “We’ve got to catch them soon,” he tells himself, knowing that he’ll have only a fifty-fifty chance of choosing the right direction once they hit the freeway.

  Buzzer’s van quickly recedes in Bliss’s mirror. It has taken a couple of hits from Montague’s pistol and is beginning to falter, while behind it, Dawson and his henchman hustle to join the race.

  “It’s Buzzer,” says Bumface in surprise as the two men find themselves balked by the meandering vehicle. “What the hell is he doing?”

  “Get out of the way!” screeches Bumface, leaning out of the window.

  “You can wait,” mutters Phillips, and he ignores the flashing headlights and blaring horn of the trailing vehicle as he sticks to the crown of the road.

  “I’ll call him,” suggests Bumface, but Buzzer isn’t answering his cell phone this afternoon.

  In the Mercedes, Station Chief Montague is also on the phone — he’s spotted his persuers and is calling the police in Bellingham, giving a description of Bliss’s car and asking for backup.

  By the time they hit the main highway, Mike Phillips in the van is all but out of the race. Alarming noises from the engine compartment suggest that Montague’s shells may have penetrated some vital organ, and the temperature gauge hit the top several miles ago. However, Bliss is still in the hunt. Daisy had spotted the Mercedes taking the ramp onto the freeway and they are hastening northwards with the fleeing car in sight.

  “This thing won’t go any faster,” moans Bliss with his foot on the floor as he weaves through streams of traffic, and he is beginning to wonder if he’ll ever catch up when the surrounding traffic begins to slow.

  “It is zhe police,” says Daisy, turning at the sound of sirens.

  “Mike must have called them,” says Bliss thankfully when he checks his mirrors and finds the flashing lights of three police cars fanned out across the highway behind him. Other cruisers are racing to catch up, and a loud throbbing in the air alerts him to the presence of a helicopter hovering overhead.

  “Thank God for that!” whoops Bliss. “Good old Mike.”

  But after a moment’s elation there is the dawning of unease in his mind as he looks ahead and sees that the car containing the captive women appears to be headed straight for the Canadian border.

  “What is zhe matter, Daavid?” asks Daisy, sensing a problem as the line of cruisers catch up to them.

  “This is the police. Pull over or we’ll shoot,” commands a voice through the loudhailer of the lead vehicle.

  “What?” utters Bliss disbelievingly.

  “Pull over or we’ll shoot,” repeats the officer as if hearing him.

  Daisy’s presence in the car dissuades Bliss from trying to outrun the officers, and with the border in sight, he’s confident that the Mercedes will be stopped, so he brakes to a halt.

  “Get out of the car with your hands in the air,” commands the voice as officers leap from their vehicles and take up firing positions.

  “This is bloody ridiculous,” says Bliss, getting out but not complying.

  “Put your hands on your head. Put your hands on your head!” screams the voice maniacally.

  “Will you stop messing around?” shouts Bliss, unfazed by the fact that ten officers have their weapons trained on him. “I’m a police officer.”

  “Stop where you are. Get down on the ground,” the orders continue with increasing insistence.

  “Oh, give it a rest,” says Bliss, strolling towards them with his empty hands spread wide.

  “Hit the ground. Hit the ground,” continues the stentorian voice, but then one of the officers slowly stands up and lowers his weapon.

  “Oh, no. Not you again,” sighs Captain Prudenski, and he waves for his officers to lower their weapons.

  “Thank God,” says Bliss, then he frantically points at the fleeing Mercedes. “But you’re letting them get away with the women.”

  John Dawson and his henchman keep their heads down behind the cordon of police cruisers and the backed-up traffic, while Mike Phillips, with smoke belching from under the hood of Buzzer’s van, drives along the hard shoulder, screeches to halt and races towards the officers with his RCMP badge in hand.

  “Stop that Mercedes! Stop that Mercedes!” he is yelling, but the vehicle is already slowing for the border control.

  “Take it easy, Mister,” says Prudenski. “They’re CIA officers.”

  “I know that,” says Bliss. “Why the hell doesn’t anyone listen to me? That place you call a monastery is an undercover CIA operation.”

  “Really?” says Prudenski, as if surprised.

  “Don’t tell me you didn’t know.”

  “Not until fifteen minutes ago.”

  “The women were there, like I told you. Now you’ve let them get away. They’re in that car.”

  “Yeah, I know that,” admits Prudenski, making no attempt to chase after the vehicle.

  “Well, why won’t you stop them?”

  “Because,” he says with a smirk, “they’re taking the women back to Canada.”

  “What?”

  “And they thought that you were trying to stop them.”

  “We were…” Bliss is admitting when a muffled explosion spins them around, and several officers hit the ground simultaneously.

  “Oh, shit,” mutters Phillips at the sight of Buzzer’s white van engulfed in an inferno. “There goes Roger Cranley’s evidence.”

  chapter sixteen

  Daphne Lovelace looks more like an elderly aunt returning from an afternoon’s mystery bus tour than someone who has just eluded the Grim Reaper as she and Trina step out of the Mercedes at the U.S. customs post.

  “Hello, David,” she calls with a smile and a wave, and the sun finally shines after three rainy days.

  “Are you all right?” Bliss asks, leaping from Daisy’s rented Toyota and dashing towards the woman.

  “I lost my bloomin’ hat,” she moans, as if that is the most important issue. “But otherwise, yes, we’re fine — aren’t we, Trina?”

  “Are you sure?”

  “Yes, we’re all right, David. They were just a bunch of amateurs.”

  “They didn’t touch you, did they?” asks Phillips, running up to peer into Trina’s eyes.

  “Oh! No,” shrieks Trina. “And Wilting Willy was quite nice really.”

  “Wilting Willy?” queries Mike Phillips.

  “Of course, his real name was Spotty Dick,” admits Trina conspiratorially, “but I thought he looked more like a Wilting Willy.”

  “Oh. I see…”

&nbs
p; A large Buick with deeply tinted windows drives slowly up to the border. Bumface, in the passenger seat, has a sub-machine gun across his lap and he would happily wipe out the entire assembly, but the area is swarming with police and customs officers.

  “I think it’s time we got out of here,” says Dawson as he sees the women relating their story, and he slowly turns the car and doubles back.

  “I’d better phone my office and let them know that the women are safe,” says Phillips, but Trina whips the cell phone out of his hand as he begins to call.

  “Hey!” he protests, but he’s wasting his time.

  “I gotta call Rick,” she says, as if she is entitled.

  “Hey, Rob. It’s me — your mom,” she yells excitedly into the phone when her teenage son answers. “I’m back.”

  “Oh. Hi, Mom,” Rob says cheerily, adding. “Hey — is Daisy with you?”

  “Yeah…”

  “Oh, great. She makes awesome sandwiches.”

  “It’s definitely a hospital,” Daphne is explaining to Bliss and Phillips. “I smelt it as soon as we arrived. And most of the people I saw were in wheelchairs or walking with sticks. But they were all Chinese.”

  “Or Korean?” questions Phillips.

  “Perhaps. Although they might even have been Vietnamese or Cambodian.”

  “What were zhey in for?” asks Daisy as she hangs on to Bliss’s arm.

  Daphne shrugs. “I was more interested in getting us out of there, to be honest.”

  “Daphne was terrific,” gushes Trina while she waits for someone on the other end of the phone to wake her husband. “I thought my guinea pig was good at escaping, but Daphne could winkle an elephant out of a mouse hole.” She goes on to recount details of Daphne’s various breakout bids as Montague hovers sheepishly in the shadows.

  “Daphne Lovelace, you are absolutely amazing,” says Bliss, gathering his elderly friend in his arms once Trina has finished.

  “Oh, it was nothing, David,” she says, brushing it off. “I once saved my life with a packet of chocolate digestive biscuits.”