Part 2
I had access to Mazli's notes and research material, including a map of the harbor and a schedule of the comings and goings of the Princess Flyer, an Abeking & Rasmussen motor yacht, 156 ft length, 22 ft beam, 7 ft draft, with twin engines (2X 830 hp), and holding 10 berths.
Which told me squat about how to pull a heist on this damned boat. And furthermore, Thor and company were being tight-lipped about what I was supposed to steal once I got on board!
'Sorry, old man,' explained Thor, 'but we don't entirely trust you. Once you have the item in hand, you might simply forget about your wife's plight, and take advantage of a lucrative opportunity.'
'That's BULLSHIT!' I shot back.
'Ah, but we've already been burned by our experiences with Mr. Mazli, and so we are taking every precaution. Hence, we are holding back a little bit of information; and you will plan on Mr. Grisaille accompanying you on the operation, as an additional safeguard.'
I groaned. 'If Gristle tags along, he's got to pull his weight-- I don't need some goon standing next to me with a gun in my gut while I'm trying to crack a safe!'
'The item is not located in a safe,' said Thor. 'It is in the open, in plain sight, on board the ship. But the ship is tightly guarded-- that is where the difficulty lies.'
'How do you expect me to plan a heist when all you give me is RIDDLES?'
'Just consider the alternative,' advised Thor, 'and you will find a way.'
...
What I came up with wasn't a planned heist-- it was a suicide mission, a blind date with disaster! But 'considering the alternatives,' I had no choice. I gave them a list of materials I'd need, and Gristle went shopping, while I spent a few tense hours locked in the basement.
I'd tried to figure out where we were. It had to be near the resort, and I was pretty sure I heard shoreline sounds when they were dragging me inside. I'd seen three rooms, including this basement cell; and I knew Pam had been taken elsewhere in the house.
I was racked by worry about Pam. I was worried about what Monique would do to her-- and I was worried that Pam would end up spilling her guts. If these baracudas found out that we weren't really married, then Pam would lose all value as a hostage, and they'd have no confidence in their ability to control me. That would be very deadly for the both of us!
I hoped she was smart enough to realize that too, and that she was tough enough to take whatever Monique dished out. And my imagination went crazy conjecturing what that redheaded viper was capable of!
I must've slept a few hours in spite of everything, because I was in the rapture of some wonderful dream when Gristle shook me awake and yanked me to my feet. The dream-bliss vanished as I remembered where I was and what I faced.
As we climbed the basement stairs I could hear crickets outside. It was evening again. I also realized that I was starving, since I'd eaten nothing in all that time.
Gristle led me down a hall into another room I was seeing for the first time; it was a dining room, and seemed a pretty fancy affair. But given the company, I'd rather be eating in a sewer.
'Considering that this may be your last meal, Mr. Samuel,' said Thor, 'I tried to cook up something special. Nothing too heavy, of course-- we need you wide awake and alert tonight. But I think you'll agree that I missed my calling-- at least that's what I'm often told...'
'I want to see my wife. If I can't see her, everything's off.'
Thor frowned. 'We'll take care of that in due time. But we don't want our dinner to get cold!'
'Let me see her NOW-- or Gristle's gonna have to use that gun of his!' I knew I had leverage-- their plans wouldn't brook any delay.
Thor frowned, looking at the plates of neglected food. 'Alright!' he said. 'But one look and that's it. We don't have time for sentiment.'
He led me over to an adjoining room with a control panel and a TV screen. 'This is the best I can do-- Monique said in no uncertain terms that she didn't want to be disturbed. It's often like that when she has a new pet...' he glanced at me, and added politely, '...if you would excuse the expression.'
He flicked on the screen, and I watched carefully as he jumped from one camera to another until he got to a kitchen view. At least at first glance it looked like a real kitchen, but one from the late 1950's.
Sitting in an oversized baby's high chair was Pam. She was dressed in a frilly, brightly-colored toddler's outfit, complete with a baby bonnet. She appeared to be tied down in the chair, her wrists restrained somehow behind her back, her long, beautiful legs folded up, her ankles tied together and pulled back.
Monique had a bowl of pudding, and was patiently feeding it to her captive with a spoon. The redheaded hellion took obvious pleasure in Pam's humiliating predicament. She cooed over her, and stroked the young woman's leg affectionately. Pam turned her head away from the offered pudding, and Monique grasped her captive's hair firmly and turned her back. She force-fed Pam, not angered by her resistence but amused.
I could only imagine what Pam was going through psychologically. Monique had taken the spirited, beautiful young woman and regressed her to babyhood. There was absolutely nothing Pam could do to stop her.
As long as Monique was content to play absurd games of dress-up, Pam wasn't in danger. But the psychotic redhead no doubt had other plans for the young woman that were starkly more fiendish if I should fail at my mission. The flicker of fear in Pam's expression as she met Monique's gaze showed that she was realizing the fact herself...
Thor flicked the screen off. 'There, you see? She's unharmed! Now go eat your meal-- it will be time to leave soon!' He glanced towards the dining room, inpatiently. Then he took me by the arm-- 'Come on, damned you, it will all be fine if you just keep your head!'
We'd only been gone a few moments, but the culinary showpieces that Thor served me were as cold as ice. Or at least that's how they seemed to my palette.
...
The Princess Flyer gleamed in the night waters. Gristle and I paddled silently towards it in a rowboat. He'd taken up the back position in the boat, which didn't surprise me, but worried me.
I was tipped by the fact that when we left the house, they didn't do anything to prevent me from seeing where I was and what the house looked like. They were dropping the precautions they'd taken earlier, because they knew I was never coming back, voluntarily or not. After I'd planned the operation, they'd made their own plans, which didn't include my continued survival
'Hey, Gristle,' I said. 'Don't you think it's about time you told me exactly what the prize is here? I'm gonna find out anyway!'
Gristle chuckled. 'I guess it won't do any harm. We're goin' after the Pearl of the East!'
'Never heard of it.'
'Sounds like you don't travel in the right circles. Trust me, we're all gonna be millionaires!'
'You don't say. I'd of thought a bauble that valuable would be locked up tight in a safe. Just suppose it is-- then what'll we do?'
'It ain't no bauble... hey, you just keep rowing!'
'We gotta hang back still,' I said. 'I hope Evans didn't screw up.' Evans was Thor's other hired hand, a muscle-bound creep like Gristle, only he knew how to keep his mouth shut. When I'd explained to him what he needed to do, he'd just nodded.
I could see the figure of an armed guard walking the deck of the Princess Flyer, because of the lights that shone on the ship. There were no lights on our boat, and I was counting on the fact that our black outfits and greased faces would blend in with the dark shoreline behind us. Mazli had written nothing about infrared goggles-- if the guards were using them, then we were sitting ducks out here.
Suddenly, a hundred yards in front of the Princess Flyer, there was an enormous flare of light. A 'FFWWOOOMM!!' resounded in the air as a small watercraft exploded, shooting embers into the air. Some landed on the deck of the Princess Flyer, and a few hot splinters came down around myself and Gristle.
The guards ran towards the front, and others on the ship came out to find out what had happened. There was nobody left watching our starboard approach.
'I'll take it from here,' said Gristle, and I felt the butt of a pistol in my back.
Using every ounce of my strength and every fear-instinctive reflex I had, I twisted around and brought my oar swinging back at Gristle. The gun exploded, and I felt a burning flare up above my right hip. The oar connected with Gristle, though, and he lost the gun in the water.
I lunged back at him, bearing down on him with the oar. I got the handle under his chin, and was pushing him back against the edge of the boat.
Gristle got a hold of his own oar, and began wacking me with it. He brought it down on my head and the thing snapped in two. I was seeing double as Gristle pushed up against the oar I was holding.
He was trying to turn the tables on me. I let him.
But as he leaned forward to bear down on me, I pulled him down on top of me and tipped backwards. Our stores in the bottom of the boat gouged into my back as I rolled backwards, but I managed to get my legs under Gristle for just an instant, just long enough to kick upwards...
There was a splash as Gristle hit the water. I twisted around to see his boots kicking in the air. I grabbed them and hugged them to me. His top half was under water, and with me holding his legs, he couldn't come up for air.
I flattened out on the boat as much as I could, to keep it from capsizing as I held onto Gristle. I felt his fists pounding on the bottom of the boat. His legs flexed desperately trying to thrash out of my grip. But I had the leverage, and he didn't have any air.
Presently, his legs relaxed in my grip. I held on, just in case he was playing possum. But by the time the rowboat had drifted over next to the Princess Flyer, I knew there was no life left in him. I released his legs and watched them sink into the bay, instantly swallowed up by the black water.
I quietly paddled the boat up to the hull of the larger ship, and tossed a grapnel up to the railing. I slung my pack over my shoulder and climbed up. I had no idea how severely my back was injured, but it didn't interfere with my movements, other than to distract me with with a searing agony.
I had to steal the Pearl of the East in order to rescue Pam-- but I had no idea where the Pearl was on board, or even what it was, assuming it wasn't a precious stone. There was nothing for it but to use my stealthing skills to capture one of the crew and interrogate them, all the while avoiding capture myself. This was surely an instance of grievously poor planning on my part.
My only piece of luck, I thought, was that nobody on board had heard Gristle's gun go off in the commotion of the other exploding ship.
But in that, I was wrong. I suddenly heard the rush of feet behind me. And, disasterously, I began spinning around to face it, spinning the wrong way...
It was a bare-footed kick that connect with me. But the foot made contact right where the gun had injured my back. The pain was like an exploding inferno, and I blacked out.
...
There is nothing more terrifying than a pair of shapely, tanned, feminine legs. That is, when those legs are athletically muscled, and those muscles are bent upon the crushing of your windpipe, and the owner of those lovely legs has seemingly no concern about what shape you're gonna be in later to sing an aria at the Met.
I would have gladly taken measures to discourage this attention, but my wrists were tied behind my back, and the owner of those lovely legs was busily engaged in a vigorous attempt to dislocate my right ankle.
Thusly engaged, I was busy working out an ingenious plan to turn the tables on my antagonist, vanquish her, interrogate her, forcing her to give up the location of the Pear of the East, and exchanging witty repartee the entire time. But just then, someone else entered the room.
'I need you back on patrol, Kolika,' the feminine voice said. 'I can handle this one.'
Kolika stood, and I looked up at her. She was a beautiful Hawaiian girl, dark, long-haired and bikini-clad. She had a knife in a sheath banded to her right thigh, and I'm sure she could use it to carve out the heart of any bothersome admirer. She looked down at me with fierce animal hostility and contempt. It inspired an intense lustful response in me, as I'm sure it would have in any red-blooded American boy. After all, if she was this intense when she was on duty, imagine what she'd be like on a date!
Kolika turned and marched barefooted out of the room.
I heard a pair of high heels pacing forward across the wooden floor of the brightly-lit cabin. They were worn by a pair of shapely legs that came into view, beautiful dancers legs in black net stockings that stretched all the way up to the wearer's hips, where they were seamed to the glossy black fabric of a leotard. The leotard, in turn, clung enticingly to the hour-glass figure of a tall, curvaceous blonde, whose silky hair dropped in front of her face as she leaned down over me.
She turned me over onto my back and straddled me. I stared in awe at the swelling breasts gathered at her V neckline as she bent down over me and pulled her hair back. Then I gazed upon her flawless, classic features, and saw the trembling of her ruby red lips.
Then she slapped me!
'You brute!' she said 'How dare you leave me in Stockholm-- without so much as a goodbye!'
I gasped, trying to articulate a defense. 'Heidi... I had urgent business... I didn't have time to...'
'I know all about it!' she hissed. 'A mission-- another mission! Can you imagine what it does to my self-esteem when somebody leaves me alone in bed so they can go off and save the world?'
'Heidi, sweetheart,' I pleaded with her, 'you know if I'd had any choice in the matter...'
'I can't tell you how much that hurt me! After that, I began to do silly things. I spent the next ten years doing silly things! I thought I had forgotten you, and now suddenly you turn up here, on the deck of my own ship! What are you doing here, Max?' It wasn't my real name, but the one she knew me by.
'I didn't know you were here, Heidi. I was trying to rob this ship. I have to rob it, I absolutely have to!' And then, briefly, I told her about Thor and Monique, and about Pam.
Heidi had untied my wrists and was helping me to a chair. 'This Pam-- are you close to her?'
'I should say not! But I have to protect her-- she's an innocent in all this.'
'Just as I once was,' she said.
'Can you tell me about the Pearl of the East?' I asked. 'Do you have it?'
'Yes...'
'I have to have it, Heidi.'
'I can't give it to you,' she said, almost tearfully, but with finality.
'Can you at least tell me what it is?' I pleaded. 'I have no idea!'
'We don't have time for that,' she said. 'We have a rescue mission to carry out. This ship carries a very fast motorboat. We also have some armaments, and other equipment that you might find useful.'
I looked at her, open-mouthed. She leaned forward and took me in her arms, and gave me a fiery, passionate kiss, like the kisses she used to give me ten years before, but with more hunger, more urgency, and more despair...
Then she broke it off. 'Hurry,' she said. 'They must be expecting you back soon!'