Far From Ordinary

by M James Murray

  She was pretty, usually. She knew that by how men looked at her with their hungry eyes. How they’d try and buy her drinks at the bar and hold the door open for her so they could sneak a peek at her ass as she walked by. It had helped her at times, she knew, being pretty.

  Even with her eyes puffy and her soft, brown hair disheveled, she knew that the boys would like what they saw.

  But her looks never quite allowed her to fit in, either. When she got a commendation, or when she got promoted she’d hear the whispers.

  “She must be sleeping her way to the top.” Or some variant of that. It was as though men couldn’t understand that she’d gotten to where she was today because Sarah was good at what she did. She’d graduated in the top third percentile at Chantilly, the training facility for the CIA, after all. But they all still looked at her like she was just some piece of ass.

  Sarah had gotten to where she was not because she was a woman but because she worked her ass off.

  She finished her business and went back to the bed. Everything was aching, but Sarah wasn’t thinking about that. She was thinking about Connor Browne, hoping he was alright.

  Sarah sent a quick note to the Jefferson’s.

  Hey, I’m sorry, but work has kept me late. Are you and the Mrs. okay to keep Charlie for another day? I’ll make it up to you.

  Shortly after that her phone died, severing any connection to the outside world.

  Sarah Nieminen laid down on her uncomfortable bed in that sterile hospital room and thought while she waited.

  Who was Dick Mitey, and what did he have to do with all of this?

  Chapter Twelve

  Dick Mitey woke up with a blinding headache – even worse than that one time that he drank the entire bottle of spiced rum by himself years back. He blinked a few times, trying to clear the fog from his eyes and his mind.

  The grates on the floor and the automotive lifts suggested that he was in a car garage, but there were no cars around. Just an aluminum table covered with a yellowing sheet.

  The fluorescent lights overhead were harsh and grating against his unadjusted eyes, and the room smelled faintly of turpentine or bleach or some other strong chemical agent.

  “Don’t move,” said a voice that didn’t have the musical, British tones of Adrian Vandervoort. Dick tried to sit up once again. “You move, I screw up. I don’t want screw up.”

  Dick was vaguely aware of a pulling sensation at the side of his head – the same place where he had smashed the frame of the van. He tried to remember the car chase, but he could only get fractions of memories. Squealing wheels, gunshots and a lot of close calls. There may have been a crash, but he couldn’t recall.

  “There,” said the strange voice as he clipped at something with surgical looking scissors. “Good as new.” The voice had a thick Russian accent which reminded Dick of Chekov from Star Trek. Dick touched his newly sutured head and felt skin that was angrily inflamed. It certainly didn’t feel right as new. It didn’t feel like much other than oddly fatty tissue.

  “We used last anesthesia on your head. Be grateful, yah?”

  He was looking up at an angry looking man with a shaved head and thick stubble. He peered out over his hook nose at Dick with the predatory glance of a bird of prey and his breath smelled of booze.

  “Where am I?” Dick said. The surgeon pushed a flask of water into his hand. Dick drank profoundly and greedily before he realized that the jug wasn’t water at all, it was hard alcohol. He sat up coughing.

  “Good. Is good for you. Take another sip.” Dick took another much smaller swig from the bottle. “Is life water.”

  “Tastes like Jack Daniels.”

  “Dah.”

  “Where am I?” Dick blinked, trying to get used to his new cold, metallic surroundings. There were high ceilings and a few different garage doors. The floor was concrete, stained with motor oil in various places.

  In more ways than one, the warehouse reminded him of the sewage treatment plant, except that the smell of turpentine was much more pleasant on the nostrils.

  “You’re in our safehouse, old chap.” Dick squinted to see Adrian Vandervoort leaning against the door frame, grinning wolfishly. He was shirtless, with a large bandage covering his upper left arm. Clearly defined muscles glinted from his arms and his bare chest. He didn’t have an ounce of fat on his wiry frame.

  No wonder he didn’t have any trouble carrying the body, Dick thought.

  “Oh, good,” Dick said, “though I was hoping that this was a hospital if we’re being completely honest.”

  “We survived my boy! I didn’t think you had it in you!”

  “Neither did I,” said Dick.

  “Not without casualties, of course,” Vandervoort remarked, gesturing at his arm. “That will be all, thank you, Dimitri.”

  The diminutive Russian man nodded his bald head, gathered his tools and left.

  “He’s not much of a surgeon, but he is almost certainly better than I am. How do you feel, my boy?”

  “I kind of hurt everywhere,” Dick admitted, “everywhere but here.”

  “Don’t touch it. We wouldn’t want to rupture the sutures after all.”

  Dick nodded. He’d rather not start bleeding again. He slowly checked out the rest of his body. Besides a few odd bruises and the gash on his head, Dick was completely alright.

  “Are Browne and Nieminen…” Dick could not bring himself to say the definitive adjective ‘dead.’

  “Hmm, who? Oh, your friends!” Adrian said.

  Not my friends.

  “Perhaps! That crash indeed wasn’t beneficial to their health. That doesn’t matter anyway. What is important is that we eluded them. It’s not a person or two that define an organization, after all.

  They’re just pieces of a moving machine my boy. If they are injured, they will merely send others.

  “Oh,” Dick said with a shudder. He didn’t think he was cut out for the life of international espionage. He longed for the times of a few days ago when he didn’t have to worry about large, fat, dead men, and secret organizations hunting him down.

  “It will be good for you to know that we are safe, for now. They did not trail us here. And, more importantly, we were able to recover his Lordship’s body!”

  “I’m sorry, who?” Dick was starting to feel the fog lift from his mind. Unfortunately, that was causing his brain to look for answers to the many questions which he had. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d thought this hard.

  “You must remember the body which we so precariously extracted from that vile smelling place, no? That was his Lordship Alfred Gunter Katzmann, the heir to the Prussian throne!”

  “Now, I don’t consider myself a learned scholar of history by any stretch of the imagination, but I do remember my grade 11 history class, where they taught us that Prussia had dissolved. Like 30 or so years ago.”

  “Much more than that, my boy. Prussia officially dissolved shortly following the end of the Second World War. Much more than thirty years ago,” Vandervoort said, pre-empting a question from Dick.

  “Then why does it matter?” Asked Dick.

  “It is quite complicated. You see, it all began with the abdication of Wilhelm II due to ineffectual wartime politicking…” Dick set his face in a position that he thought was attentive and thoughtful.

  “Mhmm… mhmm…”

  “Okay. Let me start again,” Adrian sighed. “Some people are trying to re-establish the Kingdom of Prussia. They can use our dead friend, Alfred Gunter Kaztmann, who is the great-nephew of the last King of Prussia, Wilhelm II, to start a war. Does that make sense?”

  “Oh yes, absolutely!” said Dick, wondering why he hadn’t just said that in the first place.

  “A war… political unrest wouldn’t necessarily be a bad thing, per se. There are many issues that we have with certain significant players in the German political scene. But, we are committed to making sure that there is no war.

  “Who sent you here
?” Dick asked, slowing sliding himself to an upright position on the uncomfortable steel table

  “I sent myself! There is no-one who I trust as surely as I trust myself. And I mean ‘we’ in the sense of you and me because, except Dimitri over there,” he pointed to the other room. “We’re it.”

  Dick understood what he was saying. He wondered how deep the conspiracy to start a war in Europe went.

  “So, you’re like a spy?” Dick asked. He felt light-headed. He wanted to lay back down, but the table was so darn uncomfortable.

  “I am an operative. I solve problems like your John Wayne or your Batman.”

  “Oh.” Dick had visions of Adrian Vandervoort running around in a latex batman costume. He wasn’t sure if Adrian knew who Batman was.

  “I loathe to involve you in our petty squabbles. However, circumstance has brought us together. I believe, Mr. Mitey, that you can assist us.”

  “How in the world can I possibly help someone like you?” Dick asked. He’d have to remember to try and keep his jaw off the floor.

  “A person’s a person, no matter how small. That was Jesus too, by the way.” Dick was impressed. His mother always said that all wisdom originates from Jesus.

  “I don’t think you’re looking for someone like me. Nobody ever needs somebody like me. Sometimes I’m just in the wrong place at the right time.”

  “How right you are my friend. But will you help us?”

  Dick’s head hurt. He laid down on the unforgiving steel of the makeshift operating table, slightly slippery from the humid Houston air, and closed his eyes, thinking about how completely strange the past three days had been.

  Prussians and world governments and spies and high-speed car crashes and beautiful women.

  It occurred to Dick that, right now, he was in way over his head.

  “Will I ever go home again?” Dick asked his voice heavy with sadness.

  “Perhaps, my boy. Perhaps one day. Once it is safe for you to do so. I want nothing else for you other than that.”

  “Oh,” Dick said, feeling very small.

  Adrian Vandervoort stood silent, towering. He pursed his lips and looked at Dick, his face betraying no emotion.

  “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

  “There’s always a choice, but,” Adrian trailed off for a moment. “Some are more hazardous to the health than others.”

  “Can’t you just bring me home?” Dick asked, then immediately wished he hadn’t. The disappointment on Adrian’s face was not something that Dick liked.

  “That isn’t a wise choice, my boy,” Adrian said.

  Dick thought about Browne and Nieminen and how hazardous it would have been to his health to meet them again, without Adrian present.

  No choice, he thought.

  “I will help you if I can,” Dick said, his voice wavering.

  “Splendid! I knew I could count on you, my boy!” Adrian’s face immediately shifted from disappointment to joy. “Once we have successfully resolved this conflict I shall reward you personally, my friend!”

  He couldn’t help but smile, which made his ears stick out even further from his head. Adrian thought of him as a friend. That felt nice, gave Dick a warm, fuzzy feeling inside which he was reasonably confident was not due to the drugs which Dimitri had given him.

  “What do we do now?” Dick asked, standing on shaky legs.

  “His Lordship will not be safe here for very long. They couldn’t have tracked us to the safe house, but that does not mean we are safe. The faster we can get Alfred on a plane the better. You’ll notice that your mobile is gone. Don’t fret! It is a mere security precaution.

  “It is just you and I. And Alfred,” Vandervoort said, pointing at the dead body propped up on the couch.

  Dick guessed that it was Dimitri who had placed sunglasses on the corpse. A half decent effort had been made to clean the sewage off his body, but Dick could still see brownish-green streaks on the exposed flesh.

  Dimitri had also dressed the corpulent dead man in a non-matching set consisting of a Hawaiian shirt and shorts which were a few sizes too small. Somehow the outfit didn’t seem out of place on the dead Prussian prince.

  “It didn’t seem right to leave him naked,” Adrian said.

  “So, what can we do?”

  “We need to find an escape vehicle before the bad guys find us. I dursn’t venture outside. I require some time to complete my report. Additionally, I am especially indisposed with my recent malaise,” he said, pointing to his arm.

  “Wait, you want me to steal a car? I haven’t stolen anything in my life, and I don’t plan on starting now!” Dick said. What would his mama say if she knew he was considering such balderdash!

  “It wouldn’t be stealing, my boy. More like commandeering. Like a pirate!” Dick did like pirate movies. He often pictured himself as a fearsome pirate captain, swashbuckling his way through the seven seas with Delilah by his side as his pirate queen.

  “I don’t know, that seems an awful lot like stealing to me.”

  “Once we have moved Alfred’s body to a safer place we will return the vehicle! And this act of commandeering will be sanctioned by the pseudo-Prussian government!”

  “Even if I did agree to this, I would be no help anyways. I don’t know how to wire a car!”

  “It is called hotwiring a car my boy. And do not fret about that. Dimitri here has a wealth of experience with that kind of thing. We simply need your support. Watch Dimitri’s back, and keep him out of trouble. That is all.”

  “I am wery experienced with this!” said Dimitri, the soles of his shoes slapping the oil-stained concrete as he walked back into the room and sat beside Alfred’s body. “I did it all zhe time as child in Russia.”

  “Oh, good,” Dick said in a small voice that sounded anything but good.

  Chapter Thirteen

  And so Dick and Dimitri set out on foot to try and find the perfect getaway vehicle. The trick, Dimitri explained, was to go at least a few blocks away from the warehouse.

  The whole logic seemed less than, well, logical. But the last few days had been far from ordinary and indeed not logical, so Dick decided not to complain.

  “What about that one?”

  “Niet”

  “Well, what about that one over there?”

  “Niet!”

  “Okay, jeez, you don’t have to get angry about it!”

  “Zhe first time, Dimitri was not angry. Zhe second time, Dimitri was not angry. Now is fifteenth time. Now, Dimitri is angry. So ve vill walk in silence, yes?” Dimitri glared at Dick over his hook nose. His accent seemed to thicken when he got angry.

  “Okay,” Dick agreed with a sigh.

  “Good.”

  They walked for another block or so, with Dick trying his hardest not to speak. Dick’s head hurt quite a bit, the throbbing intensifying with every passing step. He considered asking Dimitri about it, but when he opened his mouth to speak Dimitri had given him such a dirty look that he closed it immediately afterward.

  “Ve are here!” Dimitri announced, walking into a building.

  Dick considered telling Dimitri that there were most likely no cars inside the building, but he seemed so confident that Dick figured he must know what he was doing. Looking up at the sign, though, Dick wasn’t so sure. He remembered Josh talking about this fine establishment all the time.

  Dick sighed and walked into The Cock Block.

  He had never been there before. No, Dick preferred the isolation of his apartment to the eclectic group of people which (he imagined) frequented such an establishment. Still, it looked exactly like what he expected from a place where people (primarily female) were paid money to take off their clothes.

  Strip clubs were a dime a dozen in downtown Houston, and they all were practically identical. Loud music pulsed rhythmically in a too dark room which was dominated by a significant stage in the middle of the room shaped like a penis that an eighth grader might have drawn in homeroom.


  Women in various stages of undress were walking around with a swagger that could only be brought by being comfortable in your own skin, or by knowing that you, the patron, had to be on your best behavior if you didn’t want a date with a bouncer.

  The place smelled of stale cigarettes and alcohol. Dark music pulsed, making Dick’s headache even worse. Everywhere there were crimson pleather seats that Dick wasn’t sure he was comfortable sitting in.