The fumes from Jed's cigarette joined the cloud above the poker table. Behind Nigel, Agent Matcham coughed into a frilly hanky. Jed kept gulping down the carcinogens.
Nigel threw three cards onto the table.
“Hit me,” he instructed the dealer.
How Jed would love to do just that! Not only were his glasses broken and his limbs still aching from the little creep, his $50 chips had dwindled to a mere three, while the horrible woman opposite him rasped her laughter every time she scooped Jed's chips into her ever-growing mound. She didn't even have the decency to pile them on top of one another! They were spilled across the table under her breasts. The men were eying them eagerly.
As Jed tossed down a two of hearts and received a queen of clubs in return, he considered whether these two men could also be part of the cell. It didn't seem likely. It seemed they had just happened upon the table and, seeing the piles of chips and the state of the woman, had swooped down on her like vultures.
Jed checked out his hand. He now held three queens and two jacks. Another full house. He stared over at Nigel, which was difficult at this angle, but if he leaned back in his chair he could just about manage it. He was trying to tell him with his eyes he wanted to win this time. He had already handed over $1050 to the woman. Wasn't that enough to make her feel confident, or whatever this strange poker part of the mission was supposed to accomplish? Surely MI-6 wouldn't begrudge Jed a little $150 for his loyalty and silence?
Nigel nodded once, twice, three times. Jed felt the anger building under his cowboy hat. He shifted his chair forward, the rage churning through him. A gambling man like him didn't appreciate being forced to lose time and again.
“I bet $1000!” the woman squealed.
Nigel and Agent Matcham above him looked alarmed.
“I fold,” Nigel said.
“I'll meet you and raise $500,” said the man to Jed's right.
“I'm out,” Jed said, tossing his cards in disgust on the table.
Nigel straightened his tie. Jed was grateful. He waited until Nigel had gathered the remains of his rum and coke and what few chips he also had left, stood up, and guided Agent Matcham out of the private poker room, his hand on her elbow. Jed threw back the remnants of his Bailey's, scraped his chair across the carpet and stood up. He glanced at his watch. Shocked gripped him. It was seven o'clock! He had to get to the cabin and change for the captain's dinner at eight!
He didn't care, particularly, but Ursula had been counting down the minutes, squealing with delight every afternoon when she found a new piece of jewelry on her pillow, and she had even given him an impromptu fashion show with some of the items. Ten courses of food didn't thrill him, but he didn't want to let her down.
He met Agent Matcham and Nigel where they had arranged, between the roulette and the restrooms.
“How did I do?” Jed asked, flush with the excitement of it all.
Agent Matcham gave him little claps. Nigel just looked at him.
“Brilliantly!” she cooed, pecking him on the cheek. Jed blushed. “We were certainly spot on when we chose you. Nigel and I were just discussing...we think we have that horrid woman almost in our reach now. All thanks to you.”
“That's great,” Jed said. “When are we gonna meet next? I didn't realize how late it is. I gotta get to my cabin. My wife's got a seat at the—”
Nigel snorted.
“You'll be doing no such thing. We are at a crossroads in the mission. We can't just leave her there at that table. We've to continue! You've to continue!”
“But—”
Nigel sped towards him like a ferret. Jed, hands shooting up to protect his face, backed into the water fountain. Nigel sneered into his drooping collar: “You want another round with me, old man?”
“Enough!” Agent Matcham snapped. She pulled Nigel away. He shrugged his shoulders, adjusting the cuffs of his shirt, all the while the look on his face baiting Jed.
“Anyway,” Jed said, “I've only got $150 left. I don't know how much more I can do.”
“Ohhh!”
It was one of the few times during the storm the ship didn't toss to one side, but it looked like Agent Matcham pretended it had, thrusting her body across the carpet and hurtling toward him, earrings flying. Jed's arms shot up—to catch her or protect himself, he didn't know—and she landed in his arms. She peered up at him, bosoms pressing against the polyester of his shirt, gratitude sparkling in her eyes, running a hand through her flips of hair and doing something subtle with them that suddenly made her even more alluring. She ran a finger up the length of his arm. Torn between an uncharacteristic desire and characteristic discomfort, Jed sought to remove her from his personal space.
“That's something we must discuss with you, dear,” she said.
Jed had the sensation what would come from those strangely- and suddenly-puckered lips wasn't going to be good news.
“You see...there's been a mishap with our funds. We're on the verge of having that woman in there just where we want her, and ready to move on to the next step of the mission. Soon the red mercury will be in our possession, and the fate of the world will be secure. But a money transfer from the UK hasn't been able to get to the ship due to the inclement weather. And we need it now.”
“And how am I supposed to help with that?” Jed asked, in his mind each minute ticking by ratcheting up the rage/disappointment Ursula would unleash upon him.
“We need a sub of $25,000,” Nigel said. “And we know you have it, mate.”
Jed saw a flash of annoyance glint in Agent Matcham's eyes for a second, then she turned to him and smiled her best come-hither smile.
“How...?” Jed wondered.
“MI-6 knows everything,” Agent Matcham told him softly. She placed a hand on his and squeezed it gently. “It will only be a short-term loan. For the next and final game. Don't forget, MI-6 has unlimited funds, and you will be paid handsomely for your services.”
“And we gave you that $1200,” Nigel said.
This was true. Jed massaged his goatee as he thought. It seemed incredible that they needed exactly the amount he had in his special account.
“But...how would I get that much out of the ATM?” he asked. “Aren't there limits?”
“The ATMs are Russian,” Nigel said. “They have no daily limit. We checked.”
“And,” Agent Matcham wittered on, “depending on the circumstances of the next game, it might not even be necessary to part with the money. Nigel might decide you must win it all, don't forget.”
The thought of a terrorist making off with his and Ursula's nest egg and doing God only knew what with it, the time spent building up the interest to get it to $25,000, rankled Jed. But he had won the principal in the lottery. If that hadn't happened, he and Ursula wouldn't even have it to rely on. So it was like free money. And the British government would be paying him back, and he would be making the world a safer place...
Agent Matcham placed her briefcase on the water fountain and snapped it open. It was angled so that Jed couldn't see inside. He wondered, wondered what was in its leather-bound depths. She tugged out a sheet of embossed paper. It had the Queen's logo on top. It looked very official.
“We have here a promissory note,” she said, “which, of course, I will be happy to sign, if that makes you feel more secure. I can assure you, however, the British government pays its debts in a very timely manner.”
“Come on, come on!” Nigel snapped, stamping his foot. “She might be leaving the table soon. She might already have left, and then our chance will be gone. We may as well have just blown up the world ourselves! You want another round with me? Another round of training, innit?”
He glared menacingly through the cracked lens of Jed's glasses. His fists were ready for action.
Jed looked at his watch.
“Can we complete the mission, the next few hands, in a few minutes?” he asked. “I really have to go.”
“A poker game doesn't take long,” A
gent Matcham said. Jed wondered about this. After a youth of military training, he had gotten used to split second decisions of life and death, of instant action. He hadn't actually put this skill to use on the battlefield, and the older and older he got, the more time it took to let the mission sink in before he prepared himself to the actuality of doing it. But now, with no time left for thinking, he nodded his head. He grabbed the pen she proffered and signed the paper.
Agent Matcham clapped her little claps again, the gratitude this time beaming across her entire face. Nigel deflated with relief.
“Let's go,” he said, grabbing Jed's elbow and guiding him to the ATM which was, remarkably, Jed thought, right beside their meeting place.
Flanked by Nigel's menace and Agent Matcham's menopause, Jed was ushered towards the machine. Shielding the keypad with his hand, he tapped in his code. It was the year he and Ursula got married. The many dollar bills shot through the slot. And with each bill that emerged from the slot, he could see Ursula’s disappointed and raging face in the place where the faces of dead presidents should be. He got a sudden cramp in his finger – his ring finger on which his band of gold was a constant reminder of the vows he’d committed to his Ursula and the undying trust she placed in their marriage.
CHAPTER 36
SERVE ON THE RIGHT, clear on the left, serve on the right...
With her horsey teeth arranged in a smile, bottle of posh-git wine brandished in her stubby fingers, Fionnuala felt she was on display as she crossed the dining room towards the captain's table with its special table cloth. Perhaps it was the champagne on her basically-empty stomach, but she felt like Nicole Kidman on the red carpet at the Oscars in Hollywood. Aquanetta and the trolley trundled at her side, like her PA or a minion from her entourage.
Fionnuala counted the bodies around the table. Her shoulders slumped with disappointment. Six invited guests, one, two, three four, five, six, the captain and...she couldn't miss Ursula's eggplant blimp, but she couldn't see the distinctive tiki-bamboo fright of a hairdo that was Yootha's poking above the back of one of the chairs. Where was she? If she had decided to cancel, Ursula's humiliation would have to be postponed. Though, Fionnuala thought, she could always alert security herself, let them know she recognized the jewelry, and they'd haul Ursula off. Hopefully kicking and screaming, with all the ship looking on as they ate. The smile that already strained her chapped lips widened. She couldn't wait to see the look in Ursula's eyes when she slopped the wine into her glass. She hoped she choked on it.
Serve the captain first, serve the captain first, serve the overprivileged git! first...
As they got closer, Aquanetta's steps grew more wobbly, the roll of her hips more suggestive. It was more the drink, Fionnuala thought, than the passage of the ship, and the distance between them seemed to be growing. It seemed to Fionnuala as if the booze was making the woman more black.
One hand rolled the trolley, the other snapped the tongs at the backs of diners' heads as she passed, and Aquanetta was now singing a low, mournful “One Nation Under A Groove,” ...getting down just for the funk of it!
Fionnuala nudged her. “I don't think themmuns wants us singing at the table.”
The glare Aquanetta bored into her with made even the unflappable Fionnuala shrink. The woman's nails flickered with menace around the tongs.
“You got something against Funkadelic?”
Fionnuala didn't know what this meant, nor did she want to. They reached the table. Nobody paid them a blind bit of notice. The captain was deep in conversation with the woman beside him. Ursula was pointing to her nameplate and wittering on to the manatee-type thing sat next to her. Fionnuala smiled at the backs of their heads as she raised the wine bottle and approached the starched back of the captain's collar under his jacket. She figured out which his right shoulder blade was, found the wine glass among all the many on the table, and began to pour. He looked up at her, alarmed.
“Aren't you going to let me taste it?”
Fionnuala did something with her knee that was meant to be a curtsey.
“Och, catch yerself on! Ye'll taste it when it's in yer mouth, sure!”
She moved on. Aquanetta followed her, grappling a shrimp thing and dumping it on the captain's plate, then an oyster.
Around the table they moved, wine sloshing into crystal, shellfish plopping onto china, and not a word of thanks nor a smile of gratitude from any of the self-obsessed toerags around the table did they receive. Fionnuala shuddered with rage. The servants were invisible. She and Aquanetta were sub-humans only there to satisfy their desires of hunger and thirst. While the hunger rumbled in Fionnuala's stomach! And, from the look of slowly-bubbling fury on Aquanetta's drunk face, she was feeling just the same.
After this poncey-looking git, Ursula was next. As Fionnuala poured—she realized she had given the first few too much wine; those at this end of the table were only getting dribbles as the bottle was emptying quickly—her eyes shot wildly through the chattering, dining masses from the buffet for any sign of Yootha. There were nine more courses to serve, so there was plenty of time for her to arrive, but—
There! There, across the expanse of the dining room, was Yootha, racing out of the elevator towards the table, huffing and puffing and waving a hand in greeting, though why she bothered, Fionnuala didn't know, as nobody was paying her any mind. Fionnuala stifled a giggle. And moved behind Ursula's back to the wine glass at her right, Aquanetta and her trolley serving the git to Ursula's left. As Fionnuala poured droplets of wine into Ursula's glass, the silly bitch unaware, Aquanetta approached Ursula's neck, tongs-a-clacking.
Ursula turned her head at the noise, looked up, saw the curling, sparkly fingernails, the Gothic lettering, the little ring dangling from the pinkie, pried open her horrified lips—
—and shrieked like a sow at the slaughter. The plates, her wine glass, Slim, all receded from her vision. She saw only the nails. Casino Woman! Coming at her with a strange weapon! Here on the ship! As shock and confusion flooded her brain, she was vaguely aware of heads shooting around, eyes inspecting her the length of the table. She grabbed Slim's hand, twice as big as Jed's but half as comforting.
Ursula focused on the pattern of her empty plate and managed to pry from her tight throat: “I-don't-want-the-likes-of-her-serving-me. I-don't-want-her-serving-me!”
She couldn't see the alarm flickering on the faces around her, the black woman over her staring down, confused. As if from miles away, she heard Captain Hoe gasp his disbelief.
“My dear lady! It's not 1960! You can't object to an African-American servin—”
“I don't want her here!” Ursula screamed into the napkin strangled in her fist. “Get her away from me! I'm telling youse, get her outta me sight!”
Somewhere above her right shoulder, she heard gleeful cackling, but couldn't force her head around on her neck to inspect the culprit. She had a vague awareness of Captain Hoe thrusting back his chair and rising. But clear as day was Casino Woman staring down at her, hand on hip, glaring her hatred into her face.
“You don't want me serving you?” shot out of her mouth, and then she seemed to grow more enraged, more a woman of conviction, as she continued,“You racist bitch! You ain't nothing but a...honkey!” The woman now took in all the white people sat before the finery, tongs snapping. “Treating me and her,” she nodded somewhere above Ursula's right shoulder, “like dog shit from your shoes! Can't even look at us! Can't waste your eyesight looking at us. You all motherfucking honkeys! Yeah, I know folks don't say it much no more, not since the Jeffersons been canceled, but they outta! Crazy-assed white honkeys! Who to blame for all the banks going under and the economy collapsing and people losing their homes? Honkeys! Who gun down all their classmates in schools across the nation, and movie theaters too? Ain't no blacks, no latins, no Chinese do that. I'll tell you who! Outta their mind honkeys! Who run the crack labs that churn out the shit that got my little baby D'Kwon killed? Who fill up all the therapists offic
e? Ain't no blacks in the waiting rooms. All honkeys, I tell you! Yeah, you too! Fireplace my ass! Crazy motherfuckering honkeys!”
As Yootha scurried over to the table, she clucked her annoyance. Severe staffing issues were billowing. That woman with the nails, she searched her brain for a name, but no, was having a meltdown at the table, and, she glanced at her watch, it was only the first course! She must be restrained and another take her place. Yootha thought wildly for a suitable replacement. She was pleased to see, at least, two security guards racing towards the table. There were two members of staff who wouldn't be getting the sack.
Just as she joined Captain Hoe at the silly fool's side, the woman roared like an unhinged beast, grabbed the edge of the trolley and toppled it over. Shrimp and oysters flew through the air. Splattered on the guests.
“Cease—”
The entire dining room screamed as a unit as the metal hull of the ship shuddered and crackled. They were thrust to the side like midnight on the Poseidon Adventure. Bolts up and down the length of the walls fizzled, bodies flew across tables, plates spun like Frisbees, food sailed from them and spattered faces and walls. Fionnuala was tossed into the table, the wine bottle shattering in her hand. The ship moaned, then roared. A metallic ripping pierced the air, and fingers pointed in terror at a crack that gnawed through the metal above the Titanic Centennial banner. Black ooze seeped from it and trickled down the wall. The lights went out. The A/C died. A stench of scorched metal filled the air.
The emergency lights were but yellow flickers from overuse. The ship seemed to settle upright.
“Calm down!” Captain Hoe yelled through the shrieking and moaning. “You've nothing to fear except yourselves! Calm down now! I'll take care of this!” Nobody heard him, except maybe Yootha, right beside him as she was. He raced through the staggering masses out of the dining room.
The Irish Lottery Series Box Set (1-3) Page 90