by M T McGuire
“Yeh.”
“Arnold! I’m going to end up killing him before we get anywhere near Denarghi,” she sighed petulantly. “Well if you’re the leader, you can make him shut up, can’t you? If he annoys me any more I kill you instead, understand?”
Big Merv glared at The Pan.
“You may as well top me now then, Mrs Deirdre. I can’t stop him wittering on any more than you can.”
“It’s pronounced MIZZ, as in Ms Deirdre.”
Big Merv folded his arms and gave her the kind of measured look The Pan had seen him giving some of the Big M dance troupe when they were having a strop on what the male staff of the cartel euphemistically referred to as ‘a red letter day’.
“MIZZ Deirdre,” Big Merv corrected himself.
With another sigh of annoyance she turned her attentions to a small pack attached to her cartridge belt and after a brief moment of rummaging about, took out a torch.
“Here,” she told The Pan, “since you’re that much of a drip you’ll have to have this flashlight. You can thank Mister Merv for that,” she shoved it into his hand. “Now get in before I push you. There are a lot of stairs and you don’t want to fall down them, do you?”
“No I don’t, do I? which might be why I didn’t want to lead off without a torch.”
The Pan got the impression she would like nothing more than to see him fall down the stairs. Then again, that was probably why he’d had to go to such lengths to get a torch out of her. Stupid woman, he couldn’t see in the dark, even if she could. This minor piece of insubordination was not what The Pan would call a victory but it was definitely a result.
“Do you know, Deirdre, if you weren’t a psychopath, you’d be very attractive,” he said as he stepped into the darkness. It wasn’t his best, but it was the most annoying thing he could think of to say on the spur of the moment and it made him feel better.
“If she really was a psychopath, she’d chuck you down those blinking stairs. And the way you’re going on I’d be happy to give ’er a hand,” growled Big Merv from somewhere behind him. The passage was dark, full of cobwebs, and The Pan was unimpressed. Perhaps Big Merv was right; this was not the time for a hissy fit, but the Resistance had finally got to him, and behaving like a spoiled child took his mind off the fear.
Chapter 49
At the bottom of the stairs they came to a small room with a door at one end.
“Out of my way,” said Deirdre as she barged past them all and unlocked it. Once on the other side, things were entirely different: the passage beyond was spotless. Lamp brackets hung on the walls, but as it was getting light outside, the lamps were extinguished and the lighting was provided by daylight, reflected via a series of mirrors, hidden in tubes drilled in the trunks of the trees in the forest above. They were taken down what looked like an underground main street to a large room where, assisted by her troops, Deirdre locked a ball and chain round one of each of their ankles. Once finished, she left them there with four armed guards. They listened in silence to the sound of low voices outside the door, before it opened again and Denarghi walked in with his usual burly gun-toting escorts, except this time there were four of them.
“Finally, the Mervinettes,” he said smugly, “I believe you have robbed the Bank of Grongolia.”
“Believe what yer like,” said Big Merv. Denarghi nodded and one of the heavies flanking him pulled out a sawn-off shotgun.
The Pan wondered if they ever put the weapons down and had a normal conversation. Judging by how strung-out Deirdre was he guessed not. They probably ate with one hand only so they could still keep a loaded gun in the other. He could imagine Deirdre at suppertime hefting a rifle at the guy opposite and shouting, “You! Pass me the ketchup NOW if you want to live to have grandchildren.” Either that or she would taste her food, decide it wasn’t properly seasoned, run hotfoot to the kitchen and blow the brains out of the cook.
“Are you paying attention to me?” asked Denarghi.
“Yes!” said The Pan smartly. Arnold! Had the rest of him missed anything important while his mind had been wandering? He hoped not.
“Good. Because you have a simple choice. Give us the loot or we’ll hand you over to the Grongles.”
“You’ll do that anyway,” said Big Merv, “I know you people.”
The heavy levelled his sawn-off shotgun at The Pan.
“Insults will do nothing for your cause,” said Denarghi.
“But we can’t help you,” said Frank sullenly.
“Yeh, Big Merv chucked the loot out of the window about a mile out to sea,” said Harry.
“You WHAT?” shouted Denarghi. The Pan shut his eyes and waited for the impact as one of them was shot. Nothing happened, so he opened them again. He watched as Denarghi took a deep breath and pulled himself together with a visible effort, before starting again, calmly. “Let’s start with you!” He walked over to The Pan, jumped up and ripped off his false moustache. Arnold’s Y-fronts! That smarted.
“As I thought. Nice disguise from a distance but close up, my friend, it doesn’t cut the mustard.” He took a standard Grongolian issue, static-powered, personal organiser from his belt. Unlike the Grongles, Denarghi had plenty of fur to charge it up with. He looked The Pan up and down. “I will start with the obvious facts; five nine, blue eyes, shifty,” he tapped at the keyboard and everyone waited in silence. Denarghi didn’t share the results of his search, instead he laughed and said, “This simplifies things a great deal.”
“Yeh. I know about the triple star,” said The Pan.
“Obstructing the course of justice?” asked Denarghi.
“A long story.”
“One you do not wish to share?”
“Not with you.” Not with anyone. It was too stupid.
“Five years is a long time,” said Denarghi. Was that admiration or jealousy in his tone? Hard to tell.
“You’re not wrong there, Your Majesty,” said The Pan, with more feeling than intended.
A pause. There must be a reward for a blacklisted person with stars, a big one if Denarghi’s expression was anything to go by. He gave The Pan a measuring look. The wrong kind of measuring look. The type of evaluating look a butcher might give livestock.
“Let us revert to the robbery,” said the blurpon, changing the subject abruptly, “do you expect me to believe you were involved in a robbery at the Bank of Grongolia—the world’s most impregnable bank—and then threw away the things you stole? Explain.”
“Why are you asking me? I’m the getaway man, I don’t think. I drive,” The Pan began. There was the click of a safety catch being removed.
“I don’t usually waste resources,” said Denarghi, “but for you I am prepared to make an exception. Oh I know you’re the driver, and I know you’re good. No.” He laughed mirthlessly. “You’re more than good, you’re untouchable —none of my people come close —but you are worth a lot of reward money for who you really are, before I even factor in that you are one of the most wanted gangsters in the world.”
“I’m not a gangster.”
“You are one of the Mervinettes. What else are you if you are not a gangster? And you are also a risk. My Lieutenant, Deirdre, tells me you are high maintenance and untrustworthy. What is more, she says you’re incapable of doing what you’re told. I don’t need freethinkers here, I need people who are prepared to follow the orders they have been given, even if it means laying down their lives for the cause. Are you prepared to follow orders?”
The Pan glanced at Big Merv. Big Merv’s orders could be tall but they were usually very general, things like ‘Drive!’ or ‘Let’s get out of here!’ Even The Pan could obey common sense commands like those, and when he couldn’t, he argued. But Big Merv had never given orders in the manner Denarghi was referring to, or the way Deirdre did.
The Mervinettes followed a plan. The Resistance did what they were told. The Mervinettes did whatever it was they needed to do to make the plan work even if, sometimes, that meant binnin
g the plan altogether and doing something else.
Each gang member had a clearly delineated area of responsibility and for that, he was the acknowledged ‘expert’. That meant their heists could be more flexible and their group dynamic was more informal. The Pan might have been scared of Big Merv, but broadly speaking, he trusted his judgement and his abilities as a leader. Sure, Big Merv made all the decisions, but he listened to the others and took what they said into account first.
“I asked you a question,” said Denarghi, “are you prepared to follow orders?”
“Not if they’re downright stupid, no.”
“Ha! I thought as much. I don’t need people who think they know better than their superiors. I am looking for obedience.”
“If you’re looking for people like Deirdre then we’re clearly too clever for you,” said The Pan sullenly, “that woman is an idiot! She was shouting her head off in forest full of Grongles so I suggested, very politely, that she keep her voice down and she had a complete meltdown. She can die for your cause if she wants, but going out of her way to get martyred is just stupid—especially when it means we have to die with her.”
“That is exactly the kind of behaviour I am talking about,” growled Denarghi, “you are walking very close to the edge my friend.”
The Pan rolled his eyes.
“By contradicting a moron? Deirdre may be a magnificent soldier for all I know but laying down her life is one thing, wasting it—and the lives of the others around her—that’s a different matter entirely.” No! What was he doing? Not again! He’d already got himself thumped once today. Why didn’t his big mouth have an off switch? Why did he always have to argue with everyone about everything? What was it about people like Deirdre and Denarghi, people who always had to win, that so badly wound him up? There was no debate with people like this, they were always right! Even if they contradicted themselves in back-to-back sentences, they were still always right because they believed they were and they had big men with guns to deal with anyone who disagreed.
“Deirdre is a brave and honourable freedom fighter,” said Denarghi.
In The Pan’s view she was only brave because she was too stupid and unimaginative to be frightened. Never mind, now was not the time to point it out; now was the time to make amends, before Denarghi had him shot.
“Look, I’m sorry, I didn’t put that very well. What I am trying to say is that I’ve been on the blacklist for five whole years and in that time I have learned a few things about not getting caught and one of those things is not to go yelling my head off when there are Grongles around. I guess Deirdre’s braver than me. I was scared we’d be caught, that’s all.” Even to The Pan’s own ears his words sounded hollow and insincere. Maybe the aggressive line was best after all. No, the best thing would have been to shut up completely or ideally, to not have shot his mouth off in the first place. But it was too late for that now.
“Did you not think that Deirdre might be a highly trained and disciplined soldier with more battle experience than you?”
“Nope,” said The Pan, “I’m sure she is, but my frame of reference wasn’t soldiering, it was running away. I’m an escape man, that’s what I do.”
“You admit you let your fear sway you?”
“Of course I did! I have a strong survival instinct. It comes with the territory.”
“And you are proud of this? You are proud to be a coward?” asked Denarghi incredulously.
A tricky one.
“I’m not exactly proud to be a coward, no,” said The Pan, “but I am proud that I can do something well. If being yellow gives me a useful skill then I can live with it.” He wondered if he should point out that being a coward made him good enough at what he did for Denarghi to call him ‘untouchable’. No, probably not. He would only take it the wrong way. He wasn’t making any headway, but the idiot in him still made the mistake of a further attempt at explanation.
“Running away is what cowards do best, right?” he said, “so if I wasn’t a coward I wouldn’t be any good at making an escape, would I?”
“If you are so afraid, how can I rely on you not to turn tail and run at the slightest sign of danger. How can I be assured you will wait until the right time before you run?” said Denarghi.
“I’ve no idea,” said The Pan, flatly, “I’ve never thought about it. I’d guess there’s a clue in the fact I haven’t up until now. Perhaps I have some principles, after all.” If Denarghi noticed his sarcasm he made no sign.
“There is no room for fear in this organisation,” he said, “cowardice makes people selfish.”
The Pan was exasperated. It was like talking to a robot.
“But I’m not ‘people’ I’m me and it makes ME good. You’re not listening are you? What am I supposed to do? What do you want me to say? Everything I’ve said has gone straight over your head hasn’t it?”
There was a sudden silence. The Pan had mentioned size to a blurpon. It was oblique and he hadn’t meant to, but it was done. It was the worst thing he could have said. Great. Who was the moron now, he thought dourly?
Chapter 50
Denarghi’s scarlet fur bristled with anger.
“Are you making reference to my size?” he asked.
“Not on purpose!” The Pan looked helplessly at Big Merv.
“Your Majesty. I understand that my stupid, mincing puff of a driver is rambling on like a great girl in a way that might make you kill us all,” growled The Big Thing, his voice rising to a bellow by the end of the sentence and glaring at The Pan all the while. “Arnold knows, I wouldn’t blame you if you topped the little Herbert! But for all his pink, girly wussiness he knows a thing or two about escaping and he can handle a snurd better than anyone alive. That’s how come he has been blacklisted for five years and survived, see? Because he doesn’t wanna die. He doesn’t wanna die so bad he’s good. That’s why, even though he talks cobblers and behaves like some high maintenance bird with PMT,” The Pan winced, “I listen to what he tells me.”
A backhanded compliment. Pity about the PMT bit though. Never mind, Big Merv seemed to have got Denarghi’s attention, and at last he appeared to be listening.
“Go on,” said the blurpon, coolly.
“So he weren’t too smart with Deirdre—” began Big Merv.
“Not you!” said Denarghi. “You,” he pointed to The Pan. “Before you speak, bear in mind I don’t have to keep you here. The reward on your head is worth far more than I’d get out of using you. So you can carry on being a wise guy if you like, changing the subject, insulting my organisation and me. If you do, I can hand you over to the Grongles with a clear conscience. Or, you can tell me the truth, and I might change my mind and let you stay here and work for us. I have a simple question for you, my friend, and I would like you to answer it. Where’s the loot?”
Bugger! Bugger, bugger, bugger! Now what? The Pan glanced over at Big Merv with a questioning look. Almost imperceptibly, he nodded.
“I’m afraid Harry was telling the truth, Your Majesty,” said The Pan, deciding full adherence to royal protocol might increase his chances of survival, or at least sugar the bitter pill of truth. “We lobbed—” no, that wasn’t the right word. This called for tact and diplomacy. He started again, “We’d run out of anti-missile chaff, so we needed something metal to act as a decoy.”
“You threw the priceless items you were contracted to steal out of the snurd window while you were over the ocean, to save your pathetic skins?” Denarghi asked. His attention still focussed on The Pan, clearly he’d decided he was spokesman. Arnold! Why did they always do that? Whatever he said he was bound to get thumped by one of the henchmen, but if he got the story wrong he’d probably get punched by Big Merv, too. He really, really must learn to be less conspicuous.
“Er, that’s about the size of it, yes,” he said. Denarghi signalled to the heavy with the shotgun and he pulled the trigger. There was a massive explosion as the shot hit the ground in front of The Pan’s feet and b
lew a hole in the floor. He leapt backwards straight into the waiting clutches of the guards behind him who held him still, despite his efforts to scrabble as far away as his chained ankle would allow. He noticed the others had grabbed Big Merv, Frank and Harry to stop them trying to come to his aid.
“Where is your dedication to the cause?” hissed Denarghi.
What cause? There was no cause, not Denarghi’s at any rate. The Mervinettes were bank robbers. For all of them, including The Pan, this was about self-preservation – and money of course. The Pan didn’t think it was wise to be truthful about the gang’s motives. A direct answer was definitely best avoided.
“Er, Your Majesty, Mr Denarghi, sir, we had no choice,” he said. “It was a case of keep the loot and die or bin the loot and live. Anyway, it’s no big deal, I know roughly where it is. We can go back and get it for you, but only on condition you let the four of us go alone.” Oops, stupid to add that last bit. Good to ingratiate his fellow Mervinettes but bad to do so with such a glaring lack of subtlety.
“Let the four of you retrieve my loot and do a runner? Don’t insult my intelligence!”
“It ain’t your loot,” said Big Merv, “we didn’t steal it for you. Even if we still had it, it’s not yours to take.”
Thank you Big Merv, thought The Pan as Denarghi hit him. He was expecting it after the scare tactics with the shotgun, but the shock to his system was still substantial. Denarghi might have been just over three feet tall but he could still jump high enough to deliver a hefty punch in the jaw, just at the point when The Pan had been bracing himself for being headbutted in the stomach.
He bent double for a few moments, his hands to his face, while he waited for the smarting to go away. Oh well. At least he wasn’t bleeding mutant blue blood all over the place. There was usually an upside to everything.
“That’s right, punch me,” he said as soon as he’d straightened up. “What did I do? He’s the one who rattled your cage,” he flung one arm outwards, gesturing in Big Merv’s direction, “why don’t you go and punch him?” And on Denarghi’s signal one of the guards replied with a second punch to The Pan, in his ribs this time.