The Malta Escape

by Chris Kuzneski

  By then, I had already finished writing Sword of God and was starting to work on The Lost Throne. Just for fun, I decided to mention Malta in the book—not only as an inside joke for me, but also as a reward for the fan. I figured, he had given me a huge thrill by writing to me, so I would do the same for him by mentioning his homeland in my book. Unwilling to mess with a good thing, I did it again in The Prophecy and have continued the tradition ever since, always finding a way to mention Malta in my novels.

  Honestly, I didn’t think that anyone else would even notice. Like most authors, I fill my books with inside jokes that are meant for a select few, and I figured that’s what this would be—merely an Easter egg for a loyal fan. But everything changed when I received an email from a Maltese journalist named Stephen Calleja.

  After spotting the reference to Malta in The Lost Throne, he reached out to me to find out if I had a personal connection to his country. Unbeknownst to me, his homeland tended to be excluded in maps of Europe that were used by authors in my genre, so he was beyond thrilled to see Malta actually mentioned in the story itself. Once I explained the reason why, he wrote an article for his newspaper that detailed my interaction with the fan from Malta and my decision to include Malta in future books.

  Obviously this was very well received in Malta, a place filled with tremendous pride for its unique history and culture. So much so, that the Malta Tourism Authority invited me to Valletta in 2015 to thank me for spreading the word about their country by showing me (and two of my author friends, Graham Brown and Boyd Morrison) the best that Malta had to offer. Not only did the MTA invite us to the Mediterranean, but we were given private access to several of Malta’s most important documents and historical sites. Needless to say, we were blown away by their hospitality and have viewed Malta as our home away from home since that once-in-a-lifetime adventure.

  Much of that trip was portrayed in the details of this story—including the author book event that was described in Chapter 8. I vaguely remember seeing Payne and Jones walk past on their way to Cinnabon, but I was so distracted by the two beautiful women (Anna Gauci and Randi Morrison), the Maltese journalist (Stephen Calleja), and the large crowd of local readers that I was unable to warn the duo about the troubles that lay ahead.

  And it’s a good thing, too, or else this book wouldn’t exist.

  GAG REEL

  I’m trying something completely new here, and I think it’s going to be awesome. But a word of warning: do not read this section before you’ve finished the book. There are major spoilers ahead—and hopefully plenty of laughs.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Payne glanced at the carnage in the library. From where he was standing, he could see multiple bodies, plenty of blood, and several bullet holes. Plus, for some strange reason, Jarkko was now sitting on the floor behind one of the dead gunmen.

  “Hello,” Jarkko said in a thick Russian accent as he worked the goon’s arms like a creepy puppeteer. “My name is Sergei, and Sergei is looking for love. Sergei likes long walks in snow, hats made of fur, and shirtless dictators who ride horses.”

  Jones tried not to laugh, but he couldn’t help himself.

  “Perfect match for Sergei is big-boned woman who can cook cabbage and get bloodstains from T-shirts. And sewing would help, since Sergei has hole in chest.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Petr Ulster took off his glasses and rubbed his tired eyes.

  He had been hard at work in the Forbidden Room of the Ulster Archives for several hours and finally needed a break. He stood from the elaborately carved desk and stretched his aching back. He was tempted to head upstairs to the kitchen for a late-night snack but realized that wasn’t what he craved at that particular moment.

  Instead, he waddled to the bulletproof security door and opened it slightly. He peeked his head into the hallway and looked around. When he was confident that he was alone, he closed the door and turned to the touchscreen that was mounted nearby. He punched in his special code and waited for the boring numerical keypad to morph into his secret menu.

  Once it did, he hit the neon button labeled HEAVY P.

  The lights instantly dimmed, and a disco ball descended from the ceiling.

  A moment later, Latin dance music filled the room.

  Ulster was quickly swept up in the erotic rhythm.

  One, two, step, thrust! One, two, step, thrust!

  Sweat glistened on his forehead as he shook and shimmied to the beat.

  Despite his size, he moved with incredible grace, as if he was put on earth to do more than study history. He was also put here to dance, dance, dance!

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  “Good morning,” Jones said as he entered the classroom. He walked directly to the whiteboard at the front of the room and picked up a black marker. Before he turned and faced the class, he wrote his name and ENGLISH 101 in giant letters on the white surface. “For those of you who don’t know me, my name is Professor Jones, and this is English One-Oh-One.”

  Jarkko sat alone in the front row of desks. He was armed with a notebook, a freshly sharpened pencil, and a bunch of magic markers. He glanced around the empty classroom on the University of Malta campus and wondered why he had been summoned there at the crack of dawn and who else Jones was talking to, so he immediately raised his hand.

  “Come on!” Jones snapped. “How can you possibly have a question already?”

  “Because you are bad teacher.”

  Jones growled and instinctively reached for his gun, but thankfully Payne had confiscated his firearm the night before. That was when he had talked Jones into this scholastic intervention. “Come on, man. It’s too early for your bullshit.”

  “No bullshit. Serious question.”

  “Fine. Go ahead.”

  “Why is Jarkko here? Jarkko speaks good English.”

  “Because of first-person pronouns.”

  “What are those?”

  Jones nodded. “My point exactly.”

  Jarkko stared at Jones, and Jones stared right back. Neither man willing to blink. This went on for nearly a minute before Jarkko finally caved. “Ugh! School sucks! Jarkko wants to go to beach and see beautiful women with almost no clothes. Doesn’t that sound good to David?”

  “That sounds great to David, but…dammit! Now you’ve got me doing it!”

  “Doing what?”

  Jones took a deep breath to regain his composure. “Seriously, dude, this is basic stuff. All you need to do is pay attention, and we can be at the beach before the clothes come off and the boobies come out. Okay?”

  “Okay!”

  “Just repeat after me: I went to the store.”

  “David went to the store.”

  “No, Jarkko. Listen carefully: I went to the store.”

  “Which store?”

  “It doesn’t matter!”

  “Of course, it matters! If Jarkko needs vodka, Jarkko doesn’t go to bakery. That would be stupid. Wait. Are you calling Jarkko stupid?”

  “No!” Jones assured him. “I’m not calling Jarkko stupid. Dammit! David did it again!”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  While working at his desk in Germany, Kaiser heard a knock on his office door.

  “Come in,” Kaiser said as he glanced up from his keyboard.

  “Sorry to disturb you,” his assistant said as she hustled into the room. “This package just arrived via courier. It’s stamped urgent.”

  Kaiser stood up, intrigued. “Who’s it from?”

  “I’m not sure, but it came from Finland.”

  “Finland?” Kaiser said as he grabbed the package. The box was small and wrapped in plain brown paper. He glanced at the label and instantly recognized the handwriting. “Thanks, Heidi. That will be all.”

  His assistant nodded and left the room, closing the door behind her.

  Kaiser felt like a child on Christmas morning as he ripped the paper off the package, revealing a white box and a simple card taped to the top that read:

  TO T
HE MAN WHO HAS ALMOST EVERYTHING,

  HERE’S A TOKEN FROM OUR RECENT ADVENTURE!

  YOUR PAL,

  JARKKO

  Kaiser put the card aside and picked up the small box. Much to his surprise, it was cold to the touch. Without delay, he lifted the lid and was shocked by the sight. Nestled in cold packs was a single object staring back at him.

  Literally staring.

  Inside the box was Volkov’s left eye.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Winston walked stiffly into the kitchen to check on his master’s dinner. As he did, he saw a bright flash of light on one of the video screens. Worried about a possible security breach, he hustled to the bank of monitors and focused on the center screen.

  And that’s when he saw it.

  Wearing suspenders over an unbuttoned shirt, Ulster was still bumping and grinding to the Latin beat, completely lost in the rhythm.

  One, two, step, thrust! One, two, step, thrust!

  Winston sighed and turned off the monitor before anyone else could see.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Jones growled in frustration as he retreated to the whiteboard in the college classroom. Since he couldn’t get through to Jarkko verbally, he opted to take a different approach. He planned to write a few sentences on the board, which Jarkko could read aloud.

  To make room for his grammar lesson, Jones first had to erase his name and the subject of the class. He grabbed the dry eraser from the metal tray and tried to erase the giant letters, but for some reason, they stayed put. He pushed harder and harder until he literally strained from the effort, but the damn letters wouldn’t come off.

  “What the fuck?” Jones mumbled under his breath.

  “What is wrong?” Jarkko asked from his seat.

  “The damn marker won’t erase.”

  “Which marker?”

  “The black marker.”

  “Oh,” Jarkko said. “That’s David’s marker.”

  Jones raised an eyebrow. “What do you mean it’s ‘David’s marker’?”

  “Jonathon tells Jarkko that David is secret racist and will only use black marker on whiteboard, so Jarkko gets here early and replaces other markers with special black marker from Jonathon.”

  “Noooo!” Jones shouted.

  “Yessss!” Jarkko replied. To prove his point, he held up a rainbow of dry-erase markers from his seat in the front row. “Jarkko did good, no?”

  Jones groaned and looked closer at his marker. As he suspected, it was a permanent marker that wouldn’t be coming off the whiteboard anytime soon.

  Suddenly, everything made sense.

  The grammar lesson. The college campus. The confiscated weapon.

  Jones was the victim of a practical joke.

  One in which he had unwittingly vandalized a classroom with his own name.

  “Shit!” Jones said as he hustled toward the door. “Class dismissed.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Josh McNutt charged into the void and was confused by his surroundings. He quickly raised his rifle, ready to open fire. “Where the hell am I? Where’d everybody go?”

  Jack Cobb rolled his eyes as he stepped across the threshold and grabbed his friend. “Josh, you’re such an idiot. You’re in the wrong series.”

  “Oh!” McNutt said as they headed back to The Hunters. “That explains it.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Winston glanced up and down the hallway to make sure he was alone before he punched in the security code to the Forbidden Room. The door popped open, and he stepped inside the chamber where Ulster was now twerking, totally oblivious to Winston’s presence.

  “Sir,” Winston called out while closing the door behind him. “Sir!”

  Ulster heard his butler’s voice and instantly froze in place. Before turning around, he asked, “How long have you been standing there?”

  “Long enough,” Winston said as he walked over to the touchscreen and turned off the music. “What have I told you about that song?”

  Ulster lowered his head in shame. “The lambada is the forbidden dance.”

  “Exactly!” Winston said as he rolled up his sleeves. “Besides, I prefer the Bee Gees.”

  With a touch of a button, disco music filled the room, and the surprisingly agile butler started to wiggle and gyrate, much to the amusement of his employer.

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Inside the war room at the Pentagon, the President of the United States tried to gain control of the meeting as admirals, generals, and administrators of varying ranks shouted at each other across the long table. Tension was at an all-time high, as the weeklong crisis in the Far East turned uglier by the minute.

  “The nuclear option has to be available!”

  “Not unless he fires first!”

  “Send in the Pacific fleet!”

  “Not without air support!”

  With the fate of the world hanging in the balance, the main door swung open, and in walked Randy Raskin. Wearing noise-cancelling headphones, his fuzzy blue bathrobe, and slippers in the shape of panther heads, he whistled a tune as he trudged across the carpeted floor toward the mini-fridge in the corner. He opened it up and was appalled by the sight.

  Suddenly angry, Raskin slammed the refrigerator door shut.

  Silence filled the room as everyone focused on the elite hacker.

  Raskin ripped off his headphones. “Who drank my Mountain Dew?”

  No one dared to move, not with the alpha male in the room.

  As his indignation grew to rage, Raskin picked up a chair and hurled it against the wall. “Come clean now, or I swear to God that your porn habits, your extra-marital emails, and every other cyber secret you’ve been keeping will be sent to every journalist in the country by midnight. You know I can do it, so I’ll ask again: who the fuck drank my Mountain Dew?”

  A two-star general timidly raised his hand. “Sorry, sir. That was me.”

  Raskin strode over to him and slapped him across the face. “That is completely unacceptable! Take off your stars, and get the fuck out!”

  The general started to argue, but before he could utter a word in his defense, he felt the cold judgment of his peers as they stared at him in disgust. He turned to the Commander in Chief, hoping for a last-second reprieve, but it would not be granted.

  The president stood and pointed at the door. “You heard the man. Get the fuck out!”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Manley Borg—Malta’s most famous porn star—took his spoon and dipped it into the steaming bowl of chowder as Jarkko watched from across the table. Gathered around them was the entire kitchen staff from the restaurant in Birgu, all of them waiting for the final verdict.

  Borg closed his eyes as he tasted the creamy substance, before he slowly and seductively licked the utensil clean. Then, with a satisfied grin on his face, he opened his eyes and focused his gaze on the anxious Finn.

  “Well?” Jarkko demanded.

  Borg nodded. “You’re right. This soup is better than a blowjob.”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Ulster sat next to Jarkko on the vinyl bench and gently patted his knee. He could tell from the look on the fisherman’s face that he was unsure about this course of action.

  “I know you’re scared,” Ulster said in a calming tone, “but I promise you’ll be fine.”

  Jarkko took a deep breath. “Jarkko is used to being on other end of equation.”

  Ulster nodded at the irony. “I realize that, but drastic times require drastic measures.”

  “Okay,” he said in acceptance. “Jarkko is ready. Now what?”

  Ulster smiled. “Just put them in and wait to be kissed by a hundred lips.”

  Jarkko squirmed as he dunked his bare feet in the lukewarm vat of water at the fish salon, a popular spa in Malta. Within seconds, dozens of red garra—a variety of toothless carp often called nibble fish—started eating the dead skin from Jarkko’s toes. After seeing his friend’s nasty feet aboard the yacht, Ulster had insisted on a pedicure of some kind, an
d this was the only joint in St. Julian’s that was willing to accommodate their special needs.

  “It tickles,” Jarkko said with delight. “It actually tickles!”

  “Glad to hear it,” Ulster said as he signaled to the spa attendant. “Unfortunately, the Garra rufa is just the warm-up. For feet that look like yours, sometimes a larger species is needed to get the job done, which is why I had these flown in from South America.”

  Without saying a word, the attendant dumped in a bucket of much larger fish before hustling away from the carnage that was about to occur.

  Ulster leaned closer to examine the impending scene. “Say hello to Serrasalmus rhombeus. Or as they’re more commonly known to anglers, the black piranha.”

  Before he could object, Jarkko felt a nibble. Then a bite. Then a wave of agony as the water turned red from the most aggressive pedicure in history.

  “Excellent!” Ulster said as Jarkko screamed in pain. “I can see bone!”

  ◊ ◊ ◊

  Jones ran back into the Maltese classroom, armed with his permanent marker. Instead of completely crossing out his own name, he made a quick alteration to PROFESSOR JONES.

  Thirty seconds later, it read:

  PROFESSOR JONES:

  BEST. TEACHER. EVER.

  SEND ME THE BILL,

  JONATHON PAYNE

  Then Jones turned out the lights and dashed out of the room.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Chris Kuzneski is the international bestselling author of twelve novels, including his latest, The Malta Escape. His books have been translated into more than twenty languages and have sold millions of copies worldwide. Chris is the first (and only) adventure writer to win an ITW Thriller Award. Although he grew up in western Pennsylvania, he currently lives on the Gulf Coast of Florida where he will probably die alone because he spends way too much time watching movies and sports.