by Tom Holt
He had the head of a dog, the nose of a gryphon, broad bat-like red wings, a pitchfork, four feet of tail and a stammer. He was the diabolical equivalent of sixteen and a half years old, and this was the first time he’d ever done anything like this. The reason why he’d been assigned this spot was because he was too junior to be able to refuse.
‘Excuse me.’
He looked up. Despite his poor eyesight (he was short-sighted, glasses made him feel self-conscious and, although he had contact-lenses, such was his biochemistry that they melted as soon as he put them in) he could see that the back door had opened and a female head had appeared round it. He swallowed hard, and tried to remember his lines.
‘Huhalt,’ he said, in a high, quavering voice. ‘Whogugugu-goesthere, friendorfufufufufufoe?’
‘Sorry, what was the choice again?’
‘Fufufuf . . .’
‘Friend.’
‘That’s all right then.’ He lowered the pitchfork and stepped forward, and five seconds later was lying on his beak wondering how come the house had fallen on him. Helen of Troy, for her part, was looking at a slightly bent silver candlestick and sighing.
‘Okay?’
She nodded. ‘George,’ she said, as he came out of the house and locked the door, ‘we are friends, aren’t we? I mean, you and me.’
‘I guess so,’ he replied. ‘Why?’
Helen stepped over the demon. ‘I’d hate to think I’d told a lie, that’s all. Which way now?’
George shrugged. ‘Doesn’t really matter, so long as it’s generally north-east. All I really need is a phone box. Ah, there they are. About time too,’ he said, as two seagulls flopped down on to his outstretched wrist. ‘What kept you?’
‘We came as fast as we could,’ replied Larry, wounded.
‘Like hell you did,’ George replied. ‘What were you doing, waiting for the exchange rate to swing in your favour? Follow me.’
By dint of reckless trespassing in the gardens of perfect strangers, they came out by the Westerkirk, where George flung himself into a telephone booth, grabbed the receiver and rattled his pockets for change. Helen sat on a bench and took out her powder compact. The seagulls ate a discarded ice-cream cone.
‘Right,’ said George, stepping out of the booth and not bothering to gather the cascade of change that was flooding out of the coin box, ‘that’s all settled. Lunch?’
Larry raised his head. ‘Settled, chief?’
‘Settled. What we need,’ he went on, leading the way, ‘is either somewhere with a garden or somewhere they don’t mind pets. Otherwise, you two’ll have to hover overhead with a bottle of lemonade and a packet of crisps.’
Helen of Troy gave him a look. ‘Settled exactly how, George? Not that I’m doubting you for a minute, of course, but . . .’
George grinned. ‘I phoned a couple of old friends of mine,’ he said. ‘They’re on their way.’ He glanced up at the sky, smiled and nodded. ‘My only regret is, we’ll miss all the fun.’
The ability to make friends easily is a gift you’re either born with or you aren’t. If you’ve got the knack, cultivate it. It’s worth having.
People who have the gift do tend to find life rather easier than the rest of us. If they want a new solenoid for the car, they get on to their friend who works in a garage. If they fancy a holiday in Portugal, they stay in the villa which belongs to a couple of friends who only go there for three weeks in July. The houses of the friends of builders tend to sprout porches and extensions like a flourishing tree.
Lucky George is to the likes of these as the Sargasso Sea is to nine square inches of pondweed.
‘I can see that,’ Lundqvist observed. There was a certain icy quality in his voice which would have started an Eskimo property developer rubbing his hands and applying for planning permission.
The demon who had just remarked that the fugitives would appear to have escaped shrank back and tried to look inconspicuous, something he frankly wasn’t cut out for. He was unsuccessful.
‘Okay,’ Lundqvist went on, ‘you’re such a goddamn expert, go find them.’ The bounty hunter growled irritably. He should, he knew, have been exercising his uniquely incisive mind on what the fugitives were likely to do next, but try as he might his thoughts kept straying off in the direction of seagulls, bird-snaring and new and savage advances in the ancient art of taxidermy. ‘Jump to it,’ he snapped, breaking free from his reverie. ‘The trail shouldn’t be hard to follow.’
With a soft whimper, the demon in question looked round and prepared to do his best. Fortunately for him, he was about eighty-five per cent nose, having been custom-designed for the torment throughout eternity of a cocaine dealer. He sniffed.
‘Thad way,’ he said. ‘Foddow me.’
Now then.
Given the choice, a good storyteller tries to keep the early stages of his narrative relatively plain and simple - clarity begins a tome, as the old saw has it. Sometimes, though, with the best will in the world, this option just isn’t available. If confusing things happen, with people dashing about hither and yon and tripping over each other’s feet, the narrator has to do the best he can. At least let him try and bring the participants on stage in some vestige of order.
In possession of the field, then, Lundqvist and his highly trained and motivated associates.
Somewhere off and circling, two seagulls.
In a taxi bowling down the Leidsestraat, sincerely wishing he was somewhere else but remembering to keep a careful note of time engaged so as to facilitate drawing up his bill of costs at the end of the day, Mr Van Appin.
In another taxi speeding up the Stadholderskade, completely at a loss as to what was going on but chuffed to little mint balls at being allowed on dry land three years ahead of schedule, and looking forward to seeing his old college chum Lucky George again after all this time, one Julius Vanderdecker, otherwise known as the Flying Dutchman.
Sharing the taxi with him, two other fellow students from those dear old Wittenberg days (an inventor of parachutes and a shabbily dressed Dane with a habit of muttering to himself ) and a TV reporter2, who’d asked if he could share their taxi as he had to be at an important meeting at the Anne Frank House in twenty minutes.
Down below somewhere, the management of Hell Holdings plc, roughing out the publicity campaign for Fryathon ’95 and blissfully unaware of what was just around the corner.
In the gods, God.
Two seagulls swoop Stuka-like on to a traffic jam by the Stads-schouwburg and peck frantically on the window of a taxi.
‘Hello, Mike, long time no see,’ exclaims the designer of parachutes, winding down the window. ‘What are you two doing in these . . . ?’
‘Use your brains, Lenny,’ mutters the Dane.
‘Gee, sorry. Of course, you’re from . . .’ the parachute designer lowers his voice to a conspiratorial whisper they could still probably hear in Leiden ‘. . . From you know who. Any orders from the big guy?’
‘Quark, quark,’ replies the seagull patiently. ‘Quark. You got that?’
‘You bet, Mike,’ says the parachute boffin, grinning. ‘Just leave it to us. Ciao.’
Two seagulls perch, a few seconds later, on the window-sill of a taxi a hundred yards further up the same jam.
‘Larry, Mike, good to see you,’ exclaims Mr Van Appin. ‘This is really opportune, you know, ’cos I was going through the accounts and you guys still owe me for doing the lease of the restaurant.’
‘Quark,’ interrupts a seagull quickly. ‘Quark quark quark.’
‘Quark,’ confirms the other seagull.
Mr Van Appin shrugs. On the one hand, he’s simply not the running-about type, every minute out of the office is costing him thousands of guilders in lost fees and the course of action to which his client has apparently committed himself is extremely hazardous and liable, if it goes wrong, to have disastrous consequences both for himself and his professional advisers. On the other hand, it’s a poor heart that never rejoices
.
‘Okay,’ he says. ‘Go for it.’
‘Helen.’
‘Mmmm?’
‘Pass the maple syrup, there’s a love.’
Cleaving the air like two postgraduate smart missiles, two seagulls flash down out of the sun on an increasingly ragged procession hacking its way through the back gardens of the Keisergracht.
Lundqvist sees them; and just as the penny drops and he realises that these are no ordinary herring-gulls, they bank in mid-air over the handcarts, snip lengths of wire off the suppressor machines with surgical precision in their sharp beaks, and beat it.
No point even trying a shot at this range. With a snarl, he holsters his .475 Wildey, scowls horribly at his skilled assistants, and returns to the task of cleaving a path through someone’s begonias with his machete.
Three old college chums standing rather self-consciously on the banks of the Prinsengracht, wondering what they’ve let themselves in for.
‘You ever done anything like this before, Jule?’
‘Nah. What about you, Lenny?’
The designer of parachutes stroked his beard. ‘Depends,’ he replied. ‘In 1499 I designed a contrivance for harnessing the power of the winds and the tides to operate a small, left-hand-thread ratchet screwdriver, not that there was any demand, bloody Luddites. Does that count?’
The Dane and the Dutchman looked at each other.
‘Frankly,’ said the Dane, ‘no. Oh well, I suppose we’ll all just have to learn together.’
Two seagulls flapped wearily over the rooftops and perched on the Dutchman’s head.
‘Quark,’ they said in chorus.
‘We’re on, then,’ said the designer of parachutes. ‘Over the top, and all that.’
‘You can say that again.’
‘Right,’ the parachute man continued, ‘let the dog see the rabbit. Which one of us do you think ought to say the magic words and so forth? Any volunteers?’
The Dane mole-wrenched his mind back from recollecting what a right pain in the arse Lenny had been in the old days, and locked it back on course. ‘Tell you what, Lenny,’ he said, ‘why don’t you do it?’
‘If you’re sure.’
‘I’m sure.’
‘Jule? How about you?’
‘Just get on with it, Lenny, please. And could you possibly manage to be a tiny bit less cheerful about everything, because you’re giving me a migraine.’
‘You always were a gloomy old sod, weren’t you? All right then, here we go.’
Three old college chums, plus two seagulls, vanished.
Lundqvist lowered his field glasses, licked his lips and smiled. He didn’t speak, but his lips framed the word Gotcha!
He was standing in a large, rather mangled gap in the front wall of a fine late seventeenth-century merchant’s house facing on to the Prinsengracht - when serious guys take short cuts they don’t muck about - and observing the rather awkward progress towards him of three giant, self-propelled windmills. Show-off, he said to himself.
‘You,’ he called to an assistant demon, ‘full power to the suppressors, now.’
The demon scurried away and pulled a lever. Nothing happened.
‘Excude me,’ the demon said in a small, terrified voice, ‘only I think sud of the wired are mithing frod the machide.’
Lundqvist stared at him for a moment, as if the demon had just leant forward and extracted all his teeth. Seagulls, he was thinking, oh shit.
‘Try the others,’ he yelled. ‘Move it, quickly.’
The demons, however, were backing away, muttering. As if by telepathy, they had all suddenly started thinking, Yeah, sure, we’re demons, but this is spooky. A few seconds later and they’d gone.
The windmills continued to advance. They were swinging their sails. Little puffs of superfluous flour drifted out on the wind and scattered like mist.
You can disconcert Kurt Lundqvist, but you can’t frighten him. It took him about a third of a second to get his head together, lose his temper, draw his gun and start firing. Bullets whistled through the sails of the windmills, melted and dropped into the canal.
Never mind, there was still the flame-thrower. A few deft twists on the fuel tap, and a billowing, wind-blown rose of red flame swept across the street and licked the brickwork of the windmills.
Complete waste of time. Goddamn, the Dutch pioneered fire regulations.
He could feel the backdraught from the sails now, as the three shadows fell across him. Time to withdraw and regroup. What would Napoleon have done under the circumstances?
Swish!
Okay, Napoleon would most probably have curled up in a ball and screamed, and likewise Hannibal and Irwin Rommel. Alexander the Great, however, would have jumped back into a shop doorway, grabbed the first thing that came to hand - in this case, a long wooden pole with a hook on the end, used for raising and lowering shutters - and attacked, by golly. And what was good enough for Alexander was good enough for Kurt Lundqvist.
He tucked the pole under his arm, lowered his head, and charged.
A taxi drew up at the intersection of Radhuisstraat and Prinsengracht, and a man got out. He was late for a college reunion.
‘How much?’ he demanded, shocked.
The taxi driver said it again. Muttering darkly about inflation, the passenger paid him and looked down the street.
Because, like the other Old Wittenbergers present that day, he was dead and buried, the theoretical invisibility effect cut no ice with him. He therefore saw, in the distance, a man running frantically backwards and forwards, trying to prod three windmills with what looked like a spear.
‘Damn,’ muttered Don Quixote de la Mancha. ‘Buggers have started without me.’
Okay, thought Lundqvist, as a sail whistled past his ear and cut off a button from his sleeve, that’s what Alexander would have done. Any other suggestions?
He thrust hard with the shutter pole, and had the satisfaction of connecting with a bit of winding mechanism. The pole broke.
Ulysses S. Grant. A really savvy guy. He’d have dropped the pole and run like buggery.
Also Belisarius, Cortes and the Duke of Marlborough.
The edge of a sail whirled past his head as he ran, parting his hair down the middle and making him look like a nineteenth-century curate. As he sprinted past the now useless suppressors his subconscious mind was thinking, About three feet of ordinary insulated cable and I’ll have you yet, you bastard. His conscious mind was saying, Help, help, very loudly.
Lundqvist was a good runner. Usually, of course, he ran after people, not away from them, but the principle is pretty well the same. On the corner of Prinsengracht and Berenstraat he was able to stop, lean heavily against a wall and catch up on his breathing, secure in the knowledge that the windmills were a long way behind.
He looked up.
Those windmills, sure. The three animated monsters advancing towards him, sails slicing the air like so much salami, were probably entirely different windmills, or else the same windmills, cheating. Did it really matter? He picked up his feet and ran.
Not noticing that overhead, two seagulls were floating on a thermal, in their claws two string bags. Simultaneously they let go their payloads, said ‘Quark!’ and banked off.
The bags hit the pavement and burst, scattering bulbs everywhere. Ordinary everyday tulip bulbs, only recently snatched up from a stall in the flower market.
They started to grow.
Fortunately, Lundqvist still had his machete with him, and by hacking away for all he was worth, he was able to clear a path through the thicket before the horrible snapping flowers could reach down and wrap their petals round him. Gasping for air and soaked from head to foot in sticky green sap, he staggered out, only to find himself surrounded by furiously sprouting daffodils. Meanwhile, two seagulls were hovering in the still air, string bags clutched in their talons . . .
The windmills were closing. The tulips were opening a path for them, letting them through . .
.
The key thing to do in situations like these is to keep your head, Lundqvist remembered, as a sail-edge grazed his collar-bone. He ducked down on his hands and knees, machete between his teeth, and crawled. The sails couldn’t reach him down here, neither could the carnivorous flowers. If he met an ant, at least it would be hand-to-mandible fighting, he’d have a chance.
Behind him, he heard a rumbling sound, like thunder, and the nauseating squeaking of living tissue being crushed. He cast a quick glance over his shoulder, and saw . . .
. . . A huge yellow wheel, at least twelve feet high at top dead centre, flattening a squishy path straight at him. Not a wheel. A cheese.
Lundqvist stood up. He’d had enough.
‘You bastard!’ he screamed. ‘You fucking bastard! Can’t you take anything seriously?’
Then he threw himself at the cheese, tripping over tulip-roots, dodging the murderous sails, soaked in sap and three-quarters blinded with pollen. As the leading edge of the cheese rushed towards him he hurled himself sideways, cannoning into a tulip stem, bouncing off the rubbery surface, being hurled like a baseball at the mountainous flank of the cheese. He thrust the machete out in front of him and screamed . . .
And found himself sitting in the gutter, a bent machete in one hand, a large slice of Edam in the other, surrounded by a crowd of bemused onlookers and wearing a baseball cap inscribed withI ♥ AMSTERDAM
Five minutes later, a police car came and picked him up. He was later charged with obstructing the highway, disorderly conduct and fourteen breaches of the street trading regulations.
CHAPTER SEVEN
There was, of course, only one course of action open to Lucky George after the battle of Amsterdam: retribution. Immediate, savage and on a sufficient scale to convey the magnitude of his displeasure.