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Post By Despite only having four readers, the hooded Hood fearlessly presses on with his World War II adventure Wed Jun 09, 2004 at 11:21:53 am EDT |
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Sir Mumphrey Wilton and the Lost City of MysteryPart the Tenth: Herr Bookman and the Last Plane From Casablanca | |
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| Part the Tenth: Herr Bookman and the Last Plane From Casablanca “How very strange my life has become,” Miss Canterbury reflected to herself as she brushed her hair before the mirror in the white-stuccoed hotel room. It was hot in Casablanca, and the louvered shutters to her balcony were wide open to catch any breeze. The young woman looked down at the teeming street below her window. In those dying days of December 1940 the city was hot and crowded and full of danger. The African seaport was still nominally a free independent nation, but there were Nazi soldiers on every corner, ‘advising’ the local police, German administrators helping out the local port authorities. As the war in Europe went worse and worse for the Allies many refugees paid all they possessed for passage over the Mediterranean to Algerian Oran, and thence overland into French Morocco, to decadent Casablanca, hoping somehow to find a plane or steamer from there that would take them to safety. Many came but few escaped. Casablanca was a wicked, cruel place where anything could be bought, where no desperate deed was forbidden, and Sir Mumphrey Wilton somehow seemed to fit right in. Miss Canterbury had watched her travelling companion blithely bribe port officials for quiet entry as calmly as if he was tipping a waiter at the Savoy. Then he had gone to the best hotel in town and taken the best suite for himself and his ‘wife’. Miss Canterbury doubted their charade of marriage had fooled any of the knowing busboys or the cynical French concierge, but nobody seemed to care. There were many pretty young woman in Casablanca who did whatever they must to keep from starving on the streets. The vicar’s daughter was innocent but not naive, and it was she who had refused to be left behind in Hawaii, arguing that a couple travelling together was less suspicious than a lone Englishman in French Algeria. And Sir Mumphrey Wilton had been a perfect gentleman, Miss Canterbury owned, glancing over at the pile of travelling rugs bundled on the sofa. A shame. As if that guilty thought had conjured him, in bustled Sir Mumphrey now, with a little man in a French policeman’s uniform, complete with moustache and pillbox cap. “Ah, there you are m’dear,” Mumphrey called to her. “This is Monsieur Boaz, the chief of police. He’s going to help us find your uncle.” “Madame,” Captain Boaz smiled, kissing Miss Canterbury’s hand. “Your… ‘usband tells me you were parted with your dear uncle at Oran?” “That’s right,” Miss Canterbury lied adeptly. “We are very worried about him.” “He’s carryin’ a good deal of, um, family documents,” Sir Mumphrey fabricated. “Nothin’ valuable, but pictures, momentoes, that sort of thing.” “Ah,” breathed Boaz. Suddenly the desperate need of this Englishman and his mistress to find the elusive Pieter Bookman made more sense. So the old man had treasure, did he? That made the search for him much more interesting. Mumphrey closed the deal by peeling five hundred dollar bills into Boaz’ hand. Technically the currency here was the franc, but right now toilet paper had more value. “I shall make urgent enquiries, Monseur,” the Captain of Police promised him. Derek’s was the most notorious nightclub in town. Miss Canterbury clung to Sir Mumphrey’s arm and stared in fascination at the gaming tables, at the smoky bar lounge, at the tropical plants and the exotic people, all equally strange. “Why do we have to meet this Derek person here?” the young woman wondered. “Apparently he own the place,” Mumph muttered back. “And he feels safer doin’ business on his own turf.” Miss Canterbury noticed the SS uniforms amongst the white suits and cocktail dresses on the dance floor. “But there are Nazis here.” “This is Casablanca, my dear,” Captain Boaz replied, appearing from the crowd like a conjurer. “There are Nazis everywhere. We all try to get along.” Then the door of Derek’s office smashed to splinters as the burly henchman was hammered through it to sprawl over the thick Persian carpet. “Like I said,” a loud American voice came from the room beyond, “I can’t help you, buddy.” “This is not helpful, Mr Foreman. Not helpful at all,” Herr Wertham told the bar owner angrily. “Not over at all!” As the Fuhrer’s favourite torturer strode out of the office to retrieve his fallen thug, Mumphrey grabbed Miss Canterbury up in his arms and kissed her enthusiastically. He was trying to prevent the Nazi agent from recognising his adversaries. Neither Mumphrey nor Miss Canterbury was prepared for the lightning that sparked between them as their lips touched. “Rick will see you now,” Captain Boaz said dryly. “Sure, I help people outta here if the price is right,” Derek admitted, taking a long draw on his cheap cigarette. “And the good Captain here looks the other way if the price is even more right than that.” “I have plenty of people to worry about in the city as it is,” shrugged the little Frenchman. “But you two,” the bar owner accused, pointing at Mumphrey and Miss Canterbury, “you two are looking like trouble. Of all the bars in all the towns in all the world…” “But did you see him?” Miss Canterbury interrupted. “Did you help my uncle out of Casablanca?” “That’s what that Wertham creep and his goon was askin’ too,” Rick replied. “You going to tell me why I should give him to you rather than to him?” “Because we’re asking nicely?” Miss Canterbury suggested. “Because it’s the right thing to do,” Sir Mumphrey Wilton added. Rick looked at them and tried to keep his cynical mask intact. “Damn.” The pianist watched the visitors leave and glanced over at his employer. “You gonna help them then, boss?” Rick shot back a straight whiskey and glared at the black man with the bird tattoo on his forearm. “Just play it, Sam,” he growled. “Pieter Bookman?” Mumphrey checked, looking down at the old scholar who hid trembling beneath the floorboards of an Ancienne Medina brothel. “No! I swear it,” gabbled the refugee. “I am not he!” “Shame,” the eccentric Englishman said, hauling the frightened man from his place of concealment. “Because if you were we’d have a ticket out of here for you, and safe passage back to the United Kingdom.” “England?” the dissident German blinked, as if Mumphrey had mentioned the Promised Land. “You mean it?” “You’re gonna help fight the Axis,” Rick told the scholar. “Apparently you’re a big codes whiz, an’ you’re in demand.” “In fact we have an urgent job for you right now,” Mumphrey added. He produced the facsimile copies of the Bertram diaries and the translations of the text. “Apparently this was coded then changed to Vesalian. We got it back to English but now we need you to crack the code.” Bookman frowned down at the pages in front of him. “Interesting,” he admitted, fumbling for his glasses. “Yes, he’s in town. I don’t know where, but he’ll be at the airfield tomorrow night at midnight, to catch the final flight to the West before you close the port,” Capain Boaz explained, folding the thick wad of cash into his tunic. “Thank you, kapitan,” smiled Herr Wertham unpleasantly. “You have done your duty.” It was foggy on the airfield in the cold African night, and the terminal was crowded with desperate people clawing at the barriers, begging to be taken aboard the last plane out of Casablanca before the borders were finally closed. Rick passed thick envelopes to the policemen at the gate and his three guests were slipped through a side door and out onto the tarmac. “We got a problem,” the bar-owner admitted as they waited for the plane to be fuelled. “Everybody an’ his brother wants to be on that flight tonight. I could only get two seats.” “Two?” worried Bookman. “But there are three of us!” “Go with Miss Canterbury,” said Mumphrey determinedly. “She’ll see you safe back to England, and from there you’ll be taken care of.” “I can’t leave without you!” Miss Canterbury objected. “I won’t go!” “You’re getting’ on that plane,” Rick told her. “The problems of three little people don’t mount up to…” “Oh shut up!” the vicar’s daughter snapped. “We can’t leave you behind, Mumphrey. It’s… it’s not done.” “I’ll get out another way, what?” Mumph suggested. “Done this kind of thing before, y’know.” “But never again, Sir Mumphrey Vilton!” crowed Herr Wertham, emerging from the gloom with a dozen stormtroopers at his back. “Do not reach for your pocket or I vill shoot the lady!” Mumph froze. “Don’t!” he warned Rick as the bar-owner twitched his hand towards a jacket pocket. “Sorry about this,” Captain Boaz confessed appearing beside them, “but the German was offering an awful lot of money.” “And that makes it all right, does it?” demanded Miss Canterbury. The Frenchman’s face fell. “No,” he admitted. He pointed his .22 handgun at the captives. “Lie down on the ground, all of you. Now!” Mumphrey, Miss Canterbury, Herr Bookman, and Rick had hardly got to the floor when the fuel depot exploded, sweeping Wertham and his henchmen off their feet as well. “Well?” demanded Boaz with a Gallic grin as his pre-set explosive diversion lit up the airfield. “What are you waiting for, Englishman? Run for the plane!” “Y’know,” Rick declared, decking Wertham’s huge bald goon again, “this could be the start of a beautiful friendship!” Things became chaotic in the fog after that. There were cries from the port terminal, people running towards and away from the blazing fuel dump that Boaz had sabotaged, random bursts of machinegun fire, and the sound of a plane spinning up its propellers for takeoff. “This way!” insisted Sir Mumphrey, dragging Miss Canterbury to her feet and grabbing Bookman by the collar. “You have a flight to catch.” As more Nazis raced across the tarmac Rick and Boaz melted off into the fog. The Douglas DC40 was already beginning to taxi as Mumphrey bundled Pieter Bookman aboard. Then he practically hurled Miss Canterbury after the scholar before the plane was going too fast to follow through the fog any more. He heard the change of sound as the engine hauled the plane’s weight into the air and then he could see no more. He heard the sound of machine guns being slipped from safety though, and turned to see he was surrounded by Nazis with guns. “As I said, Sir Mumphrey, do not more to touch that amazing pocketwatch of yours,” snarled the livid Herr Wertham. “You may consider yourself my prisoner.” In our next exciting episode:Herr Wertham treats his prisoner to tea and crumpets and they discuss the cricket. Or maybe not. Gory electrode-play coming soon. Original concepts, characters, and situations copyright © 2004 reserved by Ian Watson. Other Parodyverse characters copyright © 2004 to their creators. The use of characters and situations reminiscent of other popular works do not constitute a challenge to the copyrights or trademarks of those works. The right of Ian Watson to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the UK Copyright, Designs & Patents Act 1988. All rights reserved. |
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