“Well, it must have been something remarkable,” he said. “We saw skeletons that have been there since Napoleon’s day. Of course, the place is full of tourists now that couldn’t pay their hotel bills, but we found everything we went to find.”
“So what did you locate?” I said, afraid that he’d start on another omelet.
“Nothing!” he said. “Absolutely nothing. We thought we had found an opening between two cells, but it was new works, being done by a couple from Des Moines who had had their passports stolen. So we have irrefutable negative evidence. There never was a Count of Monte Cristo!”
“That doesn’t sound very successful,” I said to cover up the fact I wasn’t eating.
“Oh, but it IS, it IS!” said Madison “Here is this internationally known outlaw, totally immortal, name on the tongue-tip of every school child and movie director, who never existed at all! Don’t you see? It’s the PR triumph of the ages! Total notoriety and not a single spark of fact to sully it anywhere. It means you can create even the flesh and blood of fame without the slightest vestige of reality. What a PR that Alexandre Dumas was! God, they don’t make them like that anymore.”
“Tell him about the other lead,” said Teenie.
“Oh, yes,” said Madison. “Every officer and guard we talked to about immortal Frenchmen would kiss their fingertips and say reverently, ‘Napoleon!’ They looked so ecstatic that, if you don’t mind, Smith, we’ll drop off at Corsica and visit his home. It’s right on our way.”
Anything to get away from the sight of all that food. And getting to another port and calm water was irresistible. I went quickly to the bridge.
Captain Bitts was sitting in his pilot chair looking at the sky and tumultuous sea. I said, “Could we stop off in Corsica?”
“I wondered where we were going,” he said. “It really doesn’t tell a captain much when an owner staggers aboard and says, ‘For God’s sakes, sail!’ Any particular port?”
“Napoleon’s home.”
“I think that would be Ajaccio, if memory serves me right. A bit more than halfway down the Corsican west coast. But wait a minute. That place is French. I don’t think you’d better go ashore. I don’t want to lose an owner to some (bleeped) French whore. I already lost four fire nozzles.”
I promised I would stay aboard. He went into the chartroom to plot his course and I left quickly before he noticed I was looking as bad as I felt. He might give me the Marezine injection.
It didn’t do me any good. The sports director shortly had me doing laps.
We came to anchor in the port of Ajaccio the next day. Thankfully, I stood on a steady deck and looked at the dramatic silhouettes of the mountains, jutting ruggedly to the sky. Rose, crimson and violet granites made splashes of color amongst the luxuriant vegetation.
We weren’t permitted to use our own boats because it might deprive the inhabitants of francs, and Teenie and Madison went ashore in a puffing tug.
I did my laps and exercises obediently and after lunch went down to my owner’s salon. I thought I was up to watching the viewers.
It was early in the day in New York but Heller was in his office reading texts, flipping the pages too fast for me to see what they were.
The Countess Krak came in, dressed in a severe black suit, her blond hair in a bun on the back of her head. She looked like a schoolteacher except considerably more so.
“My microwave engineers are doing fine,” she said. Then she walked around the desk, put a hand on his shoulder and looked at what he was reading. She could follow it; I couldn’t. “Why, Jettero,” she said. “What in the world are you doing with a textbook on primitive electronics?”
“They think that’s the way things are,” he said. “And if you put any truth down on an examination paper, you’d flunk.”
“Examination? You don’t have to take any college examinations. Izzy has that all fixed up. Exam papers will be handed in at Empire for you.”
“Oh, no,” said Heller. “It’s one thing to do class attendance for me or even hand in quizzes. But I couldn’t accept a diploma until I had been examined for it and passed. It’s only three days to examination week. I’ve got to bone up.”
“Oh, Jettero. You’re too honest to live! Their science reeks with incorrect premises. I battle them every day with these microwave people. The errors are so stupid even I can catch them and I know little enough.”
“You’ve got to say what the professor said,” he replied. “I’d flunk if I didn’t. And I need that diploma or nobody will believe me.”
“Hi, hi, hi,” said another voice. “Anybody home?” It was Bang-Bang. “Come on, Jet. I’ve got the M-1.”
The Countess Krak looked at him. He was standing there with a rifle. “Who you going to shoot?” she said.
“No, no,” said Bang-Bang. “Got a lot of candidates but no time. Jet here has got to graduate from the ROTC and he never once has been to a drill. He don’t even know the manual of arms.”
“Teach her,” said Jet. “And she’ll teach me. I’ve got to finish this crazy text on quadratic equations.”
Bang-Bang stared at the Countess Krak. His jaw was dropped.
“Go ahead,” said Heller. “It won’t take her long. She already knows a manual or two.”
“WHAT?” said Bang-Bang.
“I have a few minutes,” said the Countess Krak. “Show me how it goes.”
Very diffidently, Bang-Bang tightened the rifle strap and began to go through an Army manual of arms. Right shoulder arms, order arms, inspection arms, parade rest, calling the orders and counting the movements by the numbers.
“I’ve got it,” said the Countess Krak.
“You’ve got it?” said Bang-Bang, incredulous. “You haven’t touched the rifle!”
“Well, why?” said the Countess Krak. “It looks pretty primitive to me.”
“Oh, yeah,” said Bang-Bang. “That’s the Army way and it is pretty primitive. Here’s the real way to do it. Marine Corps.”
He went through a manual punctuated with very sharp slaps of strap and butt.
“I’ve got it,” said the Countess Krak.
“Oh, come off of it, Miss Joy. Don’t try to snow me. I haven’t had my first drink of Scotch today.”
The Countess Krak took the M-1 from him. She examined it. “Seems a little light,” she said. She studied its working parts. Then she checked its balance.
Suddenly, very fast, she went through the Army manual. Then, without pausing, she went through the Marine Corps manual.
Bang-Bang stood there, popeyed.
“Now, a real manual,” said the Countess Krak, “would go like this.”
And despite the restrictions of the office, she sent the rifle through a manual of arms that was so spinning and so ornate that the weapon was a blur except at those instants when it came to split-second positions, dead still. And then she went into a Fleet Marine dress parade manual. The swirling weapon made loud swooshes as it spun and the slaps were as loud as pistol shots. She finished.
“Jesus Christ!” said Bang-Bang. “I ain’t never seen nothing like that before in my life! And done by a beautiful woman, too!”
“A captain by the name of Snelz taught her,” said Heller. “So she could be smuggled in and out of a ship.”
“Snelz?” said Bang-Bang.
“Yes,” said Heller. “He was a Fleet Marine once.”
“Oh, that accounts for it,” said Bang-Bang. “Miss Joy, could you show me how that last manual you did goes?”
The whole thing made me very uneasy. I had forgotten she had been taught to handle a rifle. I wouldn’t put it beyond Snelz to have taught her how to shoot it, too. Gods, supposing she took it into her head to go gunning for me? She was deadly enough already without this.
Oh, I didn’t like the way things were going. Miss Simmons was out of the running. The spores project was completed. Heller was going to take his exams and get a diploma. The Countess Krak was training microwave engineers for so
me purpose I could not fathom.
Without me right on the ground to trip them up, they might very well succeed!
I could feel the assassin’s blade going into my back. For that was my lot if they did.
I looked at the two-way-response radio. I wished fervently I could think of something to order Raht to do. I couldn’t, but I must.
My only choice right now was to stay good and lost, keep out of Turkey and the US and hope that my training and brilliance would come up with something which would stop this juggernaut of disaster. I couldn’t dawdle forever. I would be squashed.
Little did I know that that malign Earth god, Juggernaut, already had his foot far more than halfway down on the back of my neck right that minute!
PART FIFTY-SEVEN
Chapter 5
They came back in the pink glow of evening. From their chatter at dinner, I made out that they had been at the Maison Bonaparte and the Musée Napoleonien and hadn’t learned a blessed thing about Napoleon except that the island depended on tourism and didn’t like tourists.
“What can you tell about an outlaw from his baby clothes?” Madison said. “Things have certainly become decadent. Corsica was once synonymous for bandits, but now they are running the restaurants and hotels. The criminal fraternity is always tight-lipped, though.”
“You’d have thought we were the fuzz,” said Teenie, getting around her second pheasant under glass. “Every time Maddie would get the interpreter to ask, ‘Where was the main hideout of this great outlaw, Napoleon?’ they’d just clam up and glare. As soon as I get around two or three helpings of ice cream, I’ve got to put in library time.”
I gaped. Teenie in a library? She could barely read. But sure enough, she grabbed her radio and turning it on full blast to pop from Radio Luxembourg, dived into the library and began to burrow in the books.
I looked in at this extremely novel sight of Teenie trying to read. She was tapping her foot to the pop music and moving her lips painfully as her fingers slowly traced the lines of a page. She found she was reading Hull Maintenance.
Shortly, she yelled for the chief steward and he came in and seeing what she was pointing at, he indulgently unlocked some glassed cases nobody had looked into since the yacht was built. She stared at a set of the Encyclopaedia Britannica and recoiled, dismayed, from the size of the books. But bravely, she persevered. “What letters come before and after N, Inky?”
Accommodatingly, I found the entry “Napoleon” for her. She sweated at it. It was pretty hard work. She had to take two breaks to get cream sodas and strawberry bubble gum to fortify herself. Beads of sweat bedewed her laboring brow.
Finally she looked at me. “What’s ‘exile’ mean, Inky?”
“Banishment,” I said.
“Vanishment?” she said. “Aha! I’ve found the hideout! Where’s Captain Bitts?” The chief steward picked up a phone.
The grizzled mariner appeared. “Are you lost in a fog again, Teenie?” he said, laughing.
“Bittie,” she replied, “I haven’t even got a foghorn and I’m clean off the chart.”
He sat down on the arm of a chair in front of her. “I don’t see how that could be, Miss Teenie. The way you had me mauling the chart drawers just before we left Bermuda, I should have thought you would have memorized every port in the world.”
This was news to me. I could credit her pestering him in his bedroom but not in the chartroom. Since when had Teenie become enamored with geography?
“That’s just it,” she said, “these (bleepards) don’t mention a port. They’re talking about a whole different street map. It says this outlaw Napoleon exilated to . . .” she consulted the volume, “the ‘Isola d’Elba.’”
“Isola means ‘island’ in Italian,” said Bitts.
“Oh,” said Teenie.
Bitts was pointing to a large globe of the world which hung as the centerpiece of the library. “It’s right there,” he said.
“What’s that thing?” said Teenie.
“It’s a globe of the world,” said Bitts.
“No (bleep),” said Teenie. “You wouldn’t try to con me, would you? All those charts you showed me were flat.”
“The world is round, Teenie,” said Bitts. “That’s what Columbus proved.”
“Now, let’s not change the subject,” said Teenie, waving a cautionary finger at him. “I know (bleeped) well where Columbus, Ohio is. I got arrested there when I was seven.”
Bitts gave the chief steward a signal and that portly worthy hit a switch. The big globe lighted up with internal lights. Bitts took her cautionary finger and guided it over to the colored surface. “This is the Mediterranean Sea. We’re in that. Now, this is Corsica and this is Ajaccio where we are anchored. Now,” and he made the finger trace, “if we go down through the Straits of Bonifacio, northerly up the east coast of Corsica, we come to . . .”
“The Isola d’Elba,” said Teenie in triumph. “It’s just on the other side of Corsica! Well, I’ll be popped! Hey, Bittie, why didn’t you tell me it was all on this big blob? Look here. Bermuda. Morocco. Italy. Rome. Sicily. Greece. Turkey. For Christ’s sakes, Bittie. Why’d you let me wear my eyes out on all those flat charts when here it is, plain as bubble gum!”
“I’m not at my best at four o’clock in the morning,” laughed Captain Bitts.
I was shocked. After that workout she had given me the night we sailed from Bermuda, she’d been doing things with Captain Bitts! And just before me, she’d been messing around with that black-jowled lecher! There was no end to her appetites! She was impossible!
“You leave that blob lit,” she told the chief steward. “And you leave those cases unlocked. You guys have had me in a spin with your flat charts and travel guides. Who cares if you’re liable to get ptomaine poisoning in Antone’s Restaurant. That isn’t the kind of education I’m looking for.” She peered closely again at the big globe. Then she grabbed up the encyclopedia volume and went tearing out yelling, “Hey, Maddie, Maddie! I’ve found the (bleep)’s hideout!”
“She’s a sweet child,” said Captain Bitts, fondly.
“Yes, Mr. Bey,” said the chief steward, “you are indeed fortunate to have such a charming and innocent niece. I just love her girlish enthusiasms. So refreshing.”
I thought they must be talking about a different Teenie than the one I knew. Her enthusiasms were a lot too strong for any mortal man.
But in looking back, I am amazed that, with all my training and experience, even then I did not begin to even guess what her enthusiasm was really centered upon right then. Had I done so, I might very well have escaped.
Instead, when she came back, I tamely gave my assent to sail for Elba.
“They’re not French, anyway,” said Captain Bitts. “The island’s Italian. They’re civilized and me and the crew will get a chance to go ashore. The rest of Europe used to say, ‘Death to the French.’ Now it’s the French who say, ‘Death to Everybody.’ If it’s all right with you, I’ll sail right now and get out of these froggy waters.”
PART FIFTY-SEVEN
Chapter 6
The sea was beautifully calm after we passed through the Straits of Bonifacio between Corsica and Sardinia, just south of it.
Bitts had said, “You’ll notice the difference when Corsica gets between us and the prevailing westerly winds.” And I certainly did. We were now in Italian waters and I believe that was the first time I had ever seen anything Italian calm.
The chief town, Portoferraio, was a pretty place, white buildings with red roofs standing about the blue harbor. Teenie and Madison went tearing off and I was very happy to have a walk on solid land and exercise my Italian.
The ancient Etruscans used to mine iron there and the name means “Smoky Place,” probably from the smelters. But I think some English wag must have exiled Napoleon there because it was as close as they could send him to hells. But the gag would have failed for it is now a pleasant resort: the industries are tourism and Napoleon.
&n
bsp; The “Ogre of Europe” exile residence was right in the town, on the beach: the Palazzina di Mulini. I wandered around in it: nice place, not the least bit like a jail; my idea of prisons was more like Spiteos, not this palace. No wonder he had escaped! No electric caging.
Teenie and Madison had been there already. When I asked about them, one of the guards said, “Ah, la bellina fanciulletta Americana! L’innocente.” And I thought he must be out of his mind. He had called her “the pretty little American girl” and commented on her innocence. He was holding up two joints she must have given him as a tip. It never ceased to amaze me how people failed to see through the little (bleepch).
Voyage of Vengeance Page 22
