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dancing-with-adventure · 3 years

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Love Letters To My Wife

JMJ

cc:2010 william c.

My Last Love Letter to My Wife

Jacqueline C.

Memoirs of True Love from a soldier

Dear Jacquie,

FOLLOWS IS A U.S. ARMY CLOAKROOM

DEBRIEFING OF THE MISSION BELOW.

*Honors due to the two French Motorcycle

Police Officers who gave their all to

Protect French President Charles De Gaulle*

Subject

Mission: To Prevent the Assassination of President Charles De Gaulle of France 1962

Case Title

ONZE RUE de la croix ROUGE

aka: Cry of the Aliases

It all started in the small, wonderful, picturesque, historic French village of Chatellerault. It was a normal very, very, early Friday morning. The year 1962.

“I warn you… I warn you,” screamed the stranger dressed in a 14th century knight’s helmet with sight shield wide open. An Albanian Skerd cigarette hanging on his lower lip and a knight’s metal chest plate partially showing under his blue French work jacket. Knight’s leggings, without codpiece, barely revealing under his modified blue workpants. Black scuffed pointy work shoes. His screams, “I warn you,” in a South Moscow accent mixed with a curious German peasant drawl seemed hysterically musical as he banged on the wooden door at Onze de la croix Rouge (Street of the Red Cross) with boiling madness early morning, Friday 10 August 1962. Jacqueline April, quickly jerked the door open almost wrenching it off its hinges as she

blocked a Roundhouse punch that the stranger was just cocking his right arm with clenched fist to blast her as he bellowed, “I warn you.”

Jacquie, Savate (the deadly art of French old shoe fighting) power kicked him in the groin.

The stranger bending over in withering agony, as Jacquie’s follow up lightening Savate heel kick strike smashed him in the open area of his 14th century helmet that exposed his eyes nose and Skerd smoking mouth. This drove him back into the very foggy, chilly, six-foot wide street, just missing the petit parked fire engine with brown fire ladders on each side, and onto the foot and a half wide sidewalk across the street, hurling the stranger into a neighbor’s house wall. The sound was like a big strong garbageman heaving a heavy metal garbage can back onto the cold sidewalk after its contents was deposited in the garbage truck.

‘Three Tons of Fun,’…Maurice, Carl and Lou. Retired, medically obese, military Psychological Operations Specialists, are now Weathermen in the London area. And Dorkus Fricate, an international outdoor Drive Inn roller skating waitress from Warningville, Upstate New York blamed this type of cold polarity weather affecting the historic Rue’s of France on the cooling fog of the climate.

Dorkus, is now under exclusive contract with Peewee’s International Drive Inn Diner of Warningville, New York, The Japanese Red Sun Angry Army Brigade, Kushi Japan, Moo’s Diner, Wet Dog Maine and ‘The Ole Communist Bar and Cafe,’ Ingrandes France. Dorkus, also follows the cooling of the planet with her assortment of brown and black caterpillars.

Dorkus, Maurice, Carl and Lou, aside from playing in a band occasionally in Paris at, ‘Alma Frump’s Dump’ are all ‘Laurates’ in accord. Carl with his

alleged Nobel Prize winning seven thousand page,‘ one word’ Doctorate thesis ‘Brevity and the Cooling of the Planet’ entitled… “Brrrrrr.”

All four pilgrimage to the Rue de la croix Rouge annually to meditate and recite ancient poetry until they are asked to leave by the Rue’s very patient inhabitants.

Onze Rue de la croix Rouge, located on one of these Rue’s on an enchanting small winding street was right out of the history books and a prime example of this type of ‘Brrrrrr’ ‘Polarity Weather.’ The well-kept house, charming but a little battered. Medieval stone two story buildings with small attic windows topping off the homes as they line the Rue seeming to be standing at Parade Rest. One might expect to meet Jeanne d’Arc on her way to battle coming down the narrow weaving Rue at any moment.

Onze de la croix Rouge. A wonderful, glowing, warm kind of magical looking Safe-House in the middle of the Rue has a long narrow back yard and an ancient Maple tree in the middle of the one quarter acre near a spring-fed small pond. The yard was surrounded by high stone walls on three sides as they seem to play some sort of bizarre tag with the back of the home. The noble walls were not that high that would prevent climbing over with some difficulty.

Besides, a loudmouth, bossy, pain in the butt, 80-year-old parrot named Sweet William alias The Black Adder, there is a small flock of angry Geese, several nasty Billy Goats and one continuously ticked off fighting bull from Spain, no matador would fight, that patrolled the yard.

Only Steve Ptah, Jacquie’s ‘Cloakroom’ (The Cloakroom is a small secret U.S. Army agency of covert specialists that fell through the cracks,) to say again, Jacquie’s partner is the only one who

could go back there without being attacked. Inhabitants of the backyard considered him one of their own. Perhaps even feeling sorry for Steve.

And, of course, Steve’s drinking buddy, Monsieur Cacahuete, alias ‘Werewolf’ a handsome peanut vendor who allegedly believes he is not a werewolf and fighting not to have a ‘Universal Werewolf Month.’ Heavily muscled and built like a top he is beautifully decorated, battle-injured, retired Legionnaire. The Peanut Vendor, who receives ‘Hazardous Duty Pay,’ and, who enjoys rough housing with his customers is the other exception the animals allow in the backyard.

The animals can’t wait for 11AM every morning to attack Monsieur Cacahuete and ravage his cart as they hear his ‘Call to Battle’ cry, “Getsha Red Hots, Getsha Red Hots Cacahuetes. He enters the house through the front door with his hot steamin’ peanut cart. Squeezing by the usual turmoil in the rooms and into the backyard.

This is always his last morning call because normally Monsieur Cacahuete and his cart had to be taken away, after each visit to Onze de le croix Rouge, by ambulance, to just past the Polish Guards barracks. Then into the charming town of Dange a few kilometers north of Chatellerault to ‘The Bitter Sweetee’ private hospital for Noggin Traumas and for those of all ages who Forgot How to Jump. Not only open to the pubic but is always filled with patients who are celebrities and politicians.

Monsieur Cacahuete brings his Red Hots to Paris one night a week when he and his band (Maurice, Carl, Lou and Dorkus play at the infamous ‘Alma Frump’s Dump’ located deep within Les Halles.

Oh yes. Then there was the beautiful, warmhearted Madame Tata, a mysterious Forever Young, lovely angel who makes sure the animals and inmates of the Safe-House are, tended too.

Dressed in French fashionable, blue and white clothes is very rarely seen or heard as she ejects herself around the house and yard. She is loved by everyone. She is always smiling.

Unexplained used egg-stained Ouija boards are occasionally fired at passing fire trucks and at Steve. A possibly demented existentialist who thinks he is a troll with serious mental health problems may be hiding somewhere nearby in a small field of daffodils. Or not?

Steve has been trying to get the fire truck halfway hanging on the narrow curb of the Rue moved from the front of the lovely antique home, so the regular morning ambulance and Banana van could get through, without much success. For some reason, the firemen seem to think there is a fire in the house.

###

10 AUGUST 1962… FRIDAY… YERY EARLY MORNING:

Back inside the historic picture book home on Onze Rue de la croix Rouge in Chatellerault, France were the sounds of many oboes. Their music drifting in from someplace far away lost in the morning fog. Also seemingly lost in the morning fog was Steve Ptah, U.S. Army Cloakroom Special Operations and Covert Pentagon Anti-Intelligent Agent. His Philosophy of Life being ‘People you go up against must always underestimate what you know and what you can do.’

Steve, standing next to a small stone fireplace with a unique onyx mantle that somehow reflected the fire burning in the hearth and added warmth on this unusually chilly morning.

The modestly furnished antique room had a plain wooden Crucifix on the main wall which drew everyone’s attention who entered.

In honor of her partner Steve, Jacquie placed a small sign under the Crucifix reading; ‘The Loving God has Mercy on those of us not playing with a full deck.’

The above words under the Crucifix are the same words ‘The Sargent at Arms’ recites at all Secret ‘Closed Door’ ‘Blue Panel’ ‘Intelligence’ meetings the U.S. Congress and Senate and are considered ‘Opening Prayers.’

A Holy Water holder was at the entryway and always filled with Holy Water from Lourdes along with an emergency set of Rosary Beads. Several framed pictures of Blessed Virgin Mary, St. Joseph, Angels and Saints were also about. Included is a large painting of Saint Jude, God’s special Saint for Impossible Missions.

A calamity of firemen with unidentified cigarettes held on their bottom lips were running to and fro trying to put out the small fire spots in the wires of

the newly installed electric doorbell that Steve and his always top notch, handyman, wingman, the honorable Monsieur ‘C’ just put in a few days ago.

A side note: (After the evening’s doorbell’s electrical work was completed Monsieur ‘C’s car, parked outside, well… his car battery caught on fire.)

This morning the usual aroma of French bread baking and French coffee brewing on the black iron oven was replaced by the smell of French cigarette smokes that were roaming the early French sculptured fawn creamy white and brown beamed ceilings due to the smoking firemen and two visitors. These two visitors, well, some may consider a wee bit strange.

Jock Unita, with recent snow on his boots, (a term used by American, French, and British agents when they work behind the Iron Curtain) has trouble

with his lineage and has a great fear of accordion players who wear lederhosen.

Jock is a Japanese cut-out (a cut-out is an agent who has no apparent connection with an intelligence agency) and one of Steve’s ace contacts.

Jock claims to be from Angola and is a member of the Japanese Red Sun Angry Army Brigade. The Japanese Red Sun Angry Army Brigade is always angry about something from cooling of the planet to all their women being men… and taller than the Japanese Red Sun Angry Army Brigade men who have been brainwashed into believing they are women by hearing the control words ‘Ah So’ with two hand claps. Then one hand clap turning them back into believing they are men. It’s complicated. Especially when they march protesting the parades they are marching in as they go into their synchronized march ‘Having a Charlie Horse Attack’ routine on stilts.

Also, Jock has been fined numerous times, by the Brigade, for unauthorized wearing of stilts. Stilts are supposed to be used only when the Angry Brigade march in ’Protest’ of parades they are marching in.

Jock always dresses in a black motorcycle jacket, red sweatshirt, and red woolen pants with matching red sneakers. Jock is a handsome hombre about five foot six, slim build, bald head, pudgy nose, cold black Jerry Colonna eyes that seem to spin continuously. Wears a physiognomy aftershave that smells like rotten fruit.

Constantly plagued by all-weather fruit flies. Some fruit flies, bursting into flames if they swarm too close to Jocks activated cigarettes. Jock, a violent chain smoker, always carries lighted cigarettes behind each ear so he doesn’t have to waste time lighting up.

Jock is wearing some type of contraption on his forehead held in place with an excruciatingly tight white with red lettering kamikaze style elastic band wrapped around his prominent bean. Speaking Japanese with a heavy Scottish accent Jock drives Jacquie’s partner Steve Ptah looney. Although it is a noticeably short drive for Steve.

Steve Ptah, a most dangerous man. His only claim to fame, aside from being an unnoticed superb ventriloquist, and a U.S. Army professional enemy terminator, assassin if one prefers, is that he has won top prize on a now defunct radio show, ‘It Pays to be Ignorant.’

With Steve Ptah is a very lissome spy and assassin, Jacqueline April, a nuclear weapon ready to explode, from French Army intelligence, Groupe D’Intervention de le Militarie Nationalerie (GIMN).

Jacquie has an IQ so high Steve must remind her to always keep Oxygen tanks with her. Or so he says.

Both Jacquie and Steve also have recent snow on their boots.

“Who was at the door?” Steve growled in a low warning tone.

“Looked like one of your idiot contacts Steve.” Jacquie replied in a sweet French nonchalant voice yet carried the threat of everyone being immediately pummeled with a baseball bat.

“He kept saying, ‘I warn you.’ As he tried to… How do you Americans say with your strange language? ‘Lay a ‘Haymaker on me?’ I had to neutralize the situation with immediate and painful counter-action.”

“Were you hurt?” Steve mumbled in a low threatening growl.

“Are you kidding?” Jacquie smiled a noncaring glint in her eyes.

“I warn you?’” Jock questioned in a high-pitched hysterical tone. “Was he partially dressed as a 14th Century Knight?”

“Oui.” Jacquie said softly, still with her voice carrying the threat of someone about to be severely beaten. “You know the lunatic?”

“Must be my publicist,” Jock squeaked in an extremely high-pitched squeak. A wine glass broke in the kitchen. “His name is Party Member 60508. He believes if he starts every sentence with ‘I warn you,’ as he throws a punch people will pay more attention to him.”

“Publicist? On a covert meeting?” Steve slow barked as if he was biting down on a stale Turkish Taffy candy bar.

“Oh, what the hell is that you’re wearing on your head Jock?” Steve, a bit over 6 feet tall, slim, lean with a body of hardened steel but is flexible like water asked. His tone was that of a long mean bullwhip being cracked. Attired in a brown suede sports jacket over a dark blue work shirt, well worn, military pressed dungarees and light brown suede cowboy boots.

Running his fingers through his wavy dark brown thick hair with silver streaks cut DA style, (Ducks Ass} Steve whipped on. “That apparatus on your noggin will draw attention to you. Not to mention a Publicist following you around. Even if he is disguised as a partially dressed 14th Century Knight.

‘Hoot mon on all of you,” Was Jock’s response as he chained smoked Gauloises French cigarettes…

two sometimes three at a time. His manner of speaking was always in a high sniffing helium tone.

When Jock became really agitated his head began to tremble and start to turn a wonderful shade of pumpkin orange-‘tealish’ making him increasingly suave and mysterious, especially to women and perhaps to Legions of ‘Woodpeckers,’ or should we say ‘Shrinks.’

“Do not get me angry Steve. You know how angry I can get---”

“Yes Steve, “Lik, Jock’s betrothed, spoke up in her usual ‘ice cracking under one’s feet while crossing a partially frozen lake tone.’ Lik, puffed hatefully on a Gitanes (Gypsy Woman) French cigy. “Remember Jock and his idiot Publicist are members of the Japanese ‘Angry Army Brigade’ of the Red Sun. And when Jock gets angry his head begins to rumble and changes color to deep pumpkin orange-painful-teal and begins to swell savagely—”

“Not swell Lik,’ Jock screeched as a glass picture frame cracked someplace.

“ ‘Expands’ as my brain becomes a Ninja brain when I get angry or become hopelessly befuddled.”

“Whatever, “Lik responded with applause as she shrugged her shoulders and did an eyeroll. “Some people crack their knuckles… Jock cracks his brain.”

“If he had one,” Jacquie inserted her venomous view into the conversation. “The guy’s a moron, a crackpot a---.”

“Jacquie,” Steve, said in a low chastising tone that sounded almost as if he were agreeing with Jacquie. “Jock has some important info for us about—"

Lik interjected with a kind of depressed glee. LIK, short for Lethal Intensity Kon-Unita. Her real

name. She too has recent snow on her boots. A pretty girl with a chin jutting out just begging to be

punched. A bit taller than Jock but dresses like him except she does not wear makeup or perfume nor rotting fruit aftershave.

“You should have worn your stilts, Jock.” Lik said coldly as Steve and Jacquie turned around to see if someone was coming from across some partially frozen pond. “Jock is always forgetting his parade stilts so he can always be a little taller than me,” Lik continued, her voice was that of shaved ice being dumped into a stainless-steel mixer “I had them made for him by Uganda jungle Pygmy’s who live in a tree and bake bananas. They can also be used as throwing weapons.”

“What? The Pygmies?” Jacquie demanded in a sharp tone.

“No, of course not,” Lik shot back as if she slammed the winning puck into the net at an ice hockey game. “The stilts. Excellent for throwing.

The stilts I had the banana baking Pygmies make for my Jock.”

“Yes, of course you did. What a thoughtful gift,” Jacquie commented in a kind sympathetic hard French tone that equaled a beautiful Siren ordering the ‘dragons released.’ Then softly whispering to Steve, “Let me put her out of her misery.”

“What about my misery?” Steve slammed back.

Lik, wears her heavily used coal bin colored hair spiked a lot off center and to her left which keeps her head in a ‘tilt mode.’ Has double-jointed lips and those freezing cold black eyes that seem always blinking ‘burst’ Morse Code. Suffers from clinically diagnosed unexpected moments of ‘Berserk Time’ which includes, but not limited to, a lot of skirmish

type running around at high gallop. Pummeling and loudly reciting the Hokey Pokey

backwards. It is believed that the medical term is ‘Tantrum Macabre’? One of her many endearing qualities.

Lik’s appearance and actions are as if she just exploded out of the Sunday morning comics.

“Lik,” Jock sang out in a high operatic voice, possibly causing eardrum damage. “You know my chums in the Red Sun Angry Army Brigade, confiscated one of my stilts last month for unauthorized stilt usage at their last meeting.

You all know, The Angry Brigade only wears stilts when they are marching in a parade they are protesting. If I wore stilt’s I could only wear one stilt until my right stilt is released from stilt lock-up. Ninety days or until I produce a troll, I found hiding

under a bridge. Otherwise, I would have to stilt-hop on one stilt throughout this mission.”

“Perhaps your Japanese Red Sun Angry Army Brigade Army of the Red Sun, or whatever the Hades it is called, would allow you to use a right foot Roller Derby skate with a thick four-inch cork insert in a pretend marching parade.” Jacquie’s venomous tone made Jock think.

“Hmmm, one stilt and one skate?” Jock screeched aloud as he challenged himself to a thought.

“No stilt hopping, limping or roller derby skating while we are on a mission,” Steve announced in a low menacing tone.

“Jock,” Jacquie demanded reason. “It’s bad enough we have to work with a guy that looks like he has some kind of plastic toilet seat on his head

being followed around by a half-dressed 14th Century knight and now hopping on one stilt.

Someone is bound to notice… like the enemy for one.”

“Does anyone else smell smoked rotten fruit?” one of the firemen, Claude Modi, careening through the downstairs rooms, yelled as he blew cigarette smoke circles nervously from his mouth. “It is hampering our ability to smell out new electrical fires in the doorbell electric wires. Who is the brainless wonder who installed—"

“Aw shut up,” a tiny voice came from outside the front window as something flew by Claude Modi, as fast as its hard-knobbed feet could pitter-patter, in the opposite direction, slinging a used, egg-stained Ouija board, from under its arm, at fireman Claude Modi.

“Hoot Mon on you Steve, Jacquie and whatever the hell that was that just flew by me,” Jock blew his words out of his mouth as if he were blowing a hot forming glass bubble on the end of a long glass tube in some freakish opera. “You all know I am a blender. Becoming a Ninja when I get angry or overwhelmed by happenings, like getting too much information overload I blend. No one will even notice me.” Jock ended his defense with a horrible bonsai suicidal attack high note scream.

“What was that scream?” Jock demanded to know.

“It was you…you mor—” Jacquie started to say holding her ears.

“Well, I think it is adorable Jacquie,” Lik drove on. “I mean Jock’s thingamajig strapped on his bulging hairless… Adds a sense of romantic mystery to his meaningless cue ball face.”

Jacquie, wearing a light white turtleneck blouse, dark blue ski vest, midnight blue slacks and fashionably eloquent black, light titanium-toe, boots with almost invisible razorblades pointing outward ever so slightly between the soles of the of the boot and the boot itself. On the feet of an expert Savate master it could cut up an opponent as one shreds coleslaw, or not.

Jacquie, slender, tall, five foot-seven, a stunning brunette with shoulder length hair framing her hauntingly beautiful face and the most remarkable blue-grayish eyes and compassionate hard nature, said softly to Steve in a mesmerizing killer French accent, “Whatever the hell Jock’s contraption is?

But Jock, “Jacquie continued in a biting tone. “Even a Renaissance man such as yourself Jock… will have to admit the contraption on your head and a Publicist using Martin Borman’s Nazi party number 60508 as a name is a little bizarre.”

“I admit nothing,” Jock screeched. A fireman, Sava Bastone, complained to other firemen that his watch crystal just shattered as Sava seemed to canter through the room.

“Only you would know Martin Borman’s Nazi party number Jacquie,” Steve smiled sarcastically. His timbre showing the signs of many brutal battles.

“Swine,” Jacquie volleyed back hard and swift.

“Well… if you must know,” Jock said in high Japanese with a heavy Scottish accent.

“Speak English,” Steve ordered harshly in a scary low tone. “No one can understand your Japanese with that heavy Scottish accent. If it is Japanese?’

“I can,” Jacquie speared defiantly.

“Of course, you can,” Steve growled under his breath. Followed by an eyeroll and rubbing his temples.

“Hoot mon on you Steve. This little gadget strapped to the top of my receding hairline (Jock, refuses to believe he is completely bald) forehead is the newest in audio/visual recording-projecting holograms devices.

“It was developed at the U.S. Army’s secret Edgewood Arsenal base in Maryland. Some guy… Alvin Gored, you know head of the ‘Flat Moon Green Cheese Society invented it…”

“You mean that nut who fools around, with Anti-Gravity experiments, in a rolling biosphere ball and believes he’s a singing Talpid?” Jacquie’s words kneed Jock in the groin.

“Right a Roo Jacquie,” Jock moaned in a splintering high note with tears of painful joy yet an angry

smile as if the harvest were finished but all the food crops were immediately lost. “The top military scientist at Edgewood Arsenal.”

“Steve,” Jacquie mused, “I heard about this rodent guy who—”

“What the hell is a talpid? Can we stay focused Jacquie?” Steve rabbit punched his question in French.

“You speak French like a Spanish cow, Steve,”

“I was speaking English for your info—”

“Then you were speaking English like a French cow,” Jacquie’s words carried the force of an uppercut to Steve’s chin as he bobbed and weaved. An occasional occupational habit in Steve’s line of work.

“You guys with your talk of cows make me think of milk-toast,” Lik dry-ice gargled. “I always have nightmares. That is my arch enemy’s Rutherford B.

Hayes favorite desert. I myself am milk-toast Intolerant.” Lik spoke, holding her cigarette tightly between her lips, in her ice cracking humble tone. Now staring at her deadly machete, she named

‘Golompi’ after her favorite Polish stew.

“Who cares if you’re ‘Milk-Toast’ intolerant?” Steve’s growl challenged. “Millions of people are milk-toast intolerant and don’t even know it. That’s because they’re not nuts like you.”

“I see you still carry ‘Golompi’ with you,” Jacquie sneered in that soft killer French tone.

“Would not venture out without my baby ‘Golompi.’ Did I tell you how we met behind the Iron Curtain many years back? Jock and I were in a Polish restaurant, Gookies I believe, when these

several very nasty Secret Police Agents came to our table. Naturally, Jock’s head exploded—”

“Naturally,” Jacquie mimicked with raised eyebrows. Did his head explode literally, or figuratively?

“I believe both,” Lik, said in a low, icy, thoughtful tone.

“Who cares?” Steve said in that menacing low tone, his teeth grinding. “We’ve all heard this story a hundred times.

“Actually 84 times,” Jacquie corrected.

Lik, sat staring at her dearly beloved and very deadly baby ‘Golompi.’ Stopped sharpening the blade against a piece of dried out steel wool. Heating the machete’s blade up by puffing on her Gitanes to sterilize the cold hard steel head lopper.

“Get to the point Jock,” Steve demanded sharply while giving Jacquie an annoyed stare. “I don’t want to hang around this place too long.”

“But you live here,” Lik pointed out very coldly. Humbly tossing her ‘Golompi’ machete up, down and all around as if she was a Majorette leading a High School parade. Then suddenly flung it deep into a far wall. “I thought I saw a caricature of Rutherford B. Hayes, my nemesis, on the wall making faces at me.”

No one seemed to notice or care at Lik’s action or words.

“Yes, I remember now,” Steve seemed confused but only for second or so. “I move around so much I forget where I am.”

“I don’t even pretend to understand what that means,” Jacquie moaned a French moan shaking her head in the negative with that ‘Another crazy American’ stare mumbling, “Too many blows to the head. Too many blows to the—. Never

mind. Steve, I can never tell if it is flummery with you or being serious.”

Jock started to speak but the doorbell made a funny dying, fizzing noise immediately starting a series of spot wire fires as the firemen yelled for back-up over their Walkies Talkies pleading to everyone not to ring the doorbell. Evidently, some enemy agent or poor soul put a sign on the door earlier to ‘Ring the bell if you love Pistachio.’ Madame Tata’s favorite flavor.

“I’ll get it this time, Steve said in a low dangerous tone as Firemen rushed around trying to find the newly activated hot spots on the doorbell wire.

“May I help you?” Steve asked in a voice so low and hard his sentence was more of a threat than a question.

The young lady was dressed in an old Mother Hubbard pink hat. A Springtime pink jacket with a lot of straps and buckles hanging from it, white pants, and white slippers. A sparkling white plastic band with some type of mysterious printing on it adorned her left wrist.

“Why were you following me just now?” She demanded to know in a soft, the mouse ran up the clock, nursey rhyme tone.

“Huh?” Steve’s cool repartee-reply dazzled her for a moment.

“I thought I heard a scream. I am Collette Perinod, a professional passer-by, and I have a blank check drawn on the Bank Nationale. Would you be kind enough to sign it? I wanted to get here before the tour buses start arriving, so I could go and cash it. Your generosity is known all over the planet,”

“Tour buses? Planet? No tour buses could fit up this Rue,” Steve said looking around. His Jungle green eyes searching up and down and all around as he handed Colette the now signed blank check with Jock Unita’s signature on it. Steve is also a master forger when necessary.

“Thank you a… a, Monsieur… Unita… Jock Unita.”

“De rien, What tour buses?” Steve asked again in a more pleasant tone still reconnoitering with his jungle greens all rooftops and up and down the chilly foggy Rue. Dorkus, Maurice, Carl and Lou were right about the weather again.

“Oh… The busses are all parked along the Blossac. The tourist then quick-step march four abreast from there to Onze de la croix Rouge,” Collette said shyly with a spooky giggle.

“You are on the Chatellerault ‘Must See’ historic tourist sights.” Collette flung up her tourist map so Steve could see through the almost lifting fog that seems to be settling back down again. “See it reads, ‘Onze de la croix Rouge is a beautiful historic home where strange things seem to happen.’ ”

Collette, continued to read. “Jeanne d’ Arc, stopped here to refresh and more recently a pair of socks someone was wearing in the house… were sucked into the past. Or maybe it was the future? Or perhaps they were sucked into the present.” But how could that be?”

Collette giggled eerily, “Sounds like this reporter has problems.”

“Wait a minute,” Steve announced angrily. “Are you spouting my theory that the Present, Past and Future existing at the same time and—”

“No,” Collette sounded confused. “I don’t know what you are babbling about. You sound like a--. I mean it sounds like the reporter and me are not the only ones that have mental health problems.”

“Then you must be yapping about the time I was taking an emergency nap.” Steve seemed to be reminiscing as if he was in another world. “And my partner was vacuuming, and she lost control of the vacuum—”

“Yes… of course,” Collette said suspiciously as she jumped-stepped back a bit from Steve and assumed the international ‘Pretzel’ self-defense stance. “That must be it. Well, I better… better move on,” Collette lamented sadly to the tune of ‘Twinkle Twinkle Little Star…’ “I think your house is on fire and I see more fire engines and a reporter from the Chatellerault Blast News…

Oh-oh. Some people with butterfly nets.” Collette yelled to Steve in a psychotic nursery rhyme of ‘Jack Fell Down and…’ tone as she waved the signed check, “Au voir Monsieur Unita. Merci beaucoup.”

“Steve,” Jacquie snapped as she yanked him inside. “Who were you talking to?”

“Jacquie, did you know our safe house is on a Chattellerault tourist map as a ‘Must See?”

“Steve, sometimes you really scare me with your leaps from reality to boundless fatuity. Now Jock what were you about to say?”

“I wear this visual recording-projection hologram device, that is powered by anti-gravity mini-micro molecule chip slowly mixing with regular gravity in miniscule portions. I am making a yearlong record of my wife’s Lik’s right ear. I am on the cusp of a New Age movement.

I am also on the cusp of passing out as this plastic- elastic kamikaze strap is cutting off the blood supply to the ole bean. I call it ‘A Year in the Life of My Wife’s Right Ear.’ Twenty-four Seven. Three hundred and sixty-four. Christmas, I always spend with my Angry Chums,” Jock said proudly, in English, knocking off the Scottish accent.

“Sacre Chat. What the blazes did I just run over?” A Frenchman passing the house in a small yellow ‘Banania’ truck could be heard yelling outside the home as the low ground fog was just starting to yield more of its hold to the wakening morning sun. “I think I broke my front axle. Hey you tin man. What in the name of Blossac Fannie you doing under my banana truck ya bonehead? You want bananas… you will have to wait like everyone else.

Hey firemen, when ya going to move that fire engine so me and my bananas can get by?” Jacard La Fourmi, banana salesman from Ingrandes, raged again. “Is that you Claude Modi in the fog?”

“No. It’s you.” The fireman yelled back then disappeared into the house.

“Me?” Jacard La Fourmi challenged himself with an unanswerable question. “But how could that be?”

From under the deflated ‘banania’ truck came a mournful cry, “I warn you.” Then a thump like flesh hitting metal… then some crying.

Back In the Home:

“It’s my left ear you are recording Jock,” Lik said in a low, ice crunching but still frightening tone as she yanked her machete out of the wall. “Do not make me correct you again.”

Lik started to stab the wall repeatedly as she cried intensely, “Death to all walls.”

“Hey Lik,” Steve said calmly. “Lay off the plaster. This is our safe house.”

“Jock is such a pathetic, happy psycho-sociopath wanting to spend Christmas with his moronic Angry nitwits.” Lik, tee-heed her words, holding her delicate fingers of her left hand over her double-jointed lips as she hurled her machete again, with deadly accuracy across the room once more stopping a small spider prancing up the far wall. Lik, later claimed the spider had the same recognizable limp that Rutherford B. Hayes, her blasted enemy, had when he scurried up walls.

“You know Lik,” Steve deeply mumbled. “You might want to seek some heavy-duty professional help. It’s not easy hurling a machete with such force and pin-point accuracy like you do Lik.”

“Oh, Steve,” Lik laughed sounding like the roar of a calving piece of ice breaking off a huge glacier, causing a tingling but also ballistic wave. “You know Steve, Jock has Post Graduate Degrees in baking cookies among many other medical accolades. As a professional hero with many

Ph.D.’s. Jock handles all my deep therapeutic needs.”

“That’s right Steve. The boys at the U.S. Army’s secret experimental base at Edgewood Arsenal in Maryland. You know… those crazy guys and gals in building 355 made and wanted me to test it after Doc Alvin Gourd developed it when he was on a singing tour with his talpids,” Jock bragged.

“The machete?” Jacquie interrogated.

“No, no,” Lik spoke up in her ice crackling underfoot tone, “The machete, I mean Golompi. Golompi was made by Polish Partisans in seclusion at Edgewood Arsenal. This video recorder and projector thing on my baby Jock’s bulging but empty forehead was a U.S. Army Edgewood Arsenal idea. They wanted him to test it out in the middle of the desert at… I think it is called ‘White Sands Nuclear Testing Sight’ because of the nano-modified Anti-Gravity chip being tested as a power source.

But my wonderful Jock chose to test it on this mission with you folks.”

“You are kidding?” Jacquie’s words were more like a plea than a question.

“Hoot Mon Jacquie. Not at all. You know I have no sense of humor. ‘A Year in the Life of my Wife’s Lik’s Left ear’ says it all.”

“Jock?’ It sounds like those halfwits at Edgewood Arsenal are at it again,” Jacquie sighed. “Steve, building 355? Were not you brainwashed in that building when those delinquents from some nut factory tested their Menticide experiments on you?” (Menticide is the rape of the mind.}

Steve thought for a moment. “Planters? By Granny, I…I, er believe you are Johnny-on-the-spot with that one. I was Menticided by them? Or was it near London at Porton Down Great Britain’s Chemical and Biological Warfare Center by a quorum of Brit Wierdos?”

“Steve, you are such an idiot,” Jacquie French whipped.

“Correction please Jacquie, I was also at Edgewood Arsenal when building 355 was a halfway house for the Criminally Insane. Graduated top of my class.

Now Jock, what does your video tapping of your wife Lik’s right ear have to do with finding out where REDCOM (REDCOM is two-part Soviet secret operation to be carried out by OAS members in Paris. OAS a Secret French Army Terrorist Organization that may use Jock’s Publicist to advertise.} is going to be activated?

We need to know and confirm when, where and how the Soviet Spetsnaz troops (Spetsnaz are Soviet Special Forces Soldiers} attack is going to happen. All we know is someplace in Paris and the Russkies are somehow planning to assassinate President De Gaulle by proxy.

“Who?” Jock asked making a one-word question sounding like fingernails across the blackboard.

“De Gaulle. De Gaulle. De Gaulle, you nitwit,” Jacquie cried out. “Why do you think we are all here?” After a moment Jacquie calmed down and continued. “It is so difficult to work with you people. Political assassinations, especially by proxy… whatever the hell that really means, are rarely successful,” Jacquie pointed out in a serious French tone. “Steve I still believe there is an assassin on President De Gaulle’s 7 person-personal security team.”

“Jacquie don’t start that again,” Steve Brooklyn snapped. “An ex-punch-drunk boxing sparring partner that passed numerous background security checks plus other rigorous investigations? Now if he were a politician instead of an ex-punch-drunk boxing sparring partner… Well, that would lend more credence to your hypothesis.”

“Steve, it is not a hypothesis. It is a fact. I believe my contact Zizib, alias Canvas Back Zizib—”

“Is CB still fighting?” Steve questioned in a low Brooklyn tone. “I thought he was locked up in an asylum someplace in Albania—”

“That is beside the point Steve… anyway he has walking privileges. And it is not an asylum it is an institution for the… Never mind. Anyway, there is something else you should know about President De Gaulle--.

“Who?” This time Steve asked, seemingly bewildered as his mind was working on an idea, he had… how to foil REDCOM.

“De Gaulle… De Gaulle… De Gaulle you idiot.”

Only Steve, and Jock and a few thousand others could make his partner Jacquie lose control to the point of madness as she Savate kicked the floor, loosening and cracking a piece of the heavy, ancient shinny hard wood plank.

“Steve, it is my left ear that is being recorded.” Lik said somewhat in that ice being cracked tone, as pieces of white plaster flew off the wall. Lik, kept banging her head against the wall where she was assuming Rutherford B. Hayes was hiding.

As the Catholic church bells of St, Jacque, just up the Rue, began to sound, Jock answered Steve’s question about ‘How was recording Lik’s right ear going to help in stopping REDCOM? —

“Nothing that I know of Steve. What do you know Steve about Holograms, or The Algerian War of Independence? Why can’t I hear Popcorn pop? Why me?” Jock pondered aloud. “But I will tell you this about REDCOM Part One, the Les Halle’s Diversion… and cardboard Spetsnaz soldiers disguised as cardboard cutouts or is it cut-outs…(Remember cut-outs=Military/Intelligence jargon for an agent who has no apparent connection with an Intelligence agency,) Wait. I feel befuddlement coming on.” Jock’s head seemed to begin the agonizing metamorphosis

into a giant teal orange colored blimpish pumpkin lifting his body a centimeter or two off the ground.

“Steve,” Jacquie whispered, “you don’t think Jock was serious about an Anti-Gravity chip… I mean one nano of Anti-Gravity touches actual gravity it could destroy—”

“Not to worry Jacquie,” Steve said in a low growly voice. “Lik said it was ‘modified.”

“Modified? What the hell does that mean? Anti-Gravity matter? How does one ‘modify’ Anti-Gravity... One would have to… Wait. Did Jock say Les Halle’s?"

“I’m coming baby,” Lik, shrieked as a baking dish shattered, for some unknown reason, someplace in a storage draw. Placing her Golompi down softly on a table Lik ripped up part of a loose heavy, wooden, historic recently cracked floor plank that must have been, well over, several hundred years old and crashed it over Jock’s head.”

DEBRIEF 2

PARIS

RESTAURANT TRUFFLES

Off Av, Jean Jaures near

28 Rue de Perigneux

MONDAY 13 AUGUST 1962

MID AFTERNOON

RESTAURANT TRUFFLES is a covert Soviet military hangout open to the elite of Paris and all Intellectuals on the Continent and Around the World. In fact, clientele must answer unanswerable questions, such as, ‘How high up?’ And ‘How long is a piece of string?’ to prove they are ‘Intellectuals’ to be granted admission.

Specialty trained Soviet ‘Spetsnaz’ (Russian Special Forces) troops and KGB agents along with

Vasaltnicki Soviet agent (Vasaltnicki people are Russian spies acting as waiters, waitresses, Doormen, cashiers, models, politicians’ businesspeople, homeless, Professionals, teachers, professors, neighbors-next-door etc…People you trust or pay no attention to until one morning you wake up in a Gulag.)

Much like the Russian Vasaltnicki agents we have today in New York City, U.S. Senate, Congress, and other places throughout the States.

TRUFFLES is a popular spot for the International ‘IN’ crowd of gourmet-diners, especially the so-called ‘intellectuals,’ who are stupid enough, to order awfully expensive ‘whites of truffle eggs’ but never eat them.

The two owners are Major Miroslav (Short Step) Elias, a short pickpocket, hit man, medically obese KGB agent who at this moment is chocking on a Borscht-soaked Truffle.

The other owner is KGB Major Frantisek (Creature) Strachovsky, a tall, very successful anorexic ‘who believes he kills by convincing intellectuals they never were born.’ Known to his men as ‘Creature,’ owing to his close resemblance and green pallor.

He has been ordered to wear a special, ‘almost’ fire resistant, slow burning paper bag, with eye holes over his head and set it ablaze just before he enters the dining area. This way he doesn’t frighten the dining guests. Both are known affectionately as the ‘Mutt and Jeff’ team of Dzerzhinsky Street. (Western agents called KGB Headquarters in Moscow, Dzerzhinsky Street.)

For an encore, when Major Creature leaves the dining area, a small group of, large-footed, high-stepping, well trained Spetsnaz soldiers stomp the moving smoldering bag, a fire safety precaution, as Major Creature stumbles away.

The elite, high society, Intelligencia dining guests believe it is part of the floor show and look forward to it with enthusiastic applause.

“ ‘Sputnik’ to ‘Short Step.’ Will you stop choking?” Major ‘Creature,’ yelled. “It is very annoying to me. If you did not stuff that gaping hole you call a mouth with all those truffles you would not—"

“You say something ‘Creature’?” Major ‘Short Step’ gargled. “By Stalin’s chicken feed sacks, he used to give himself shoulders, I do believe I am… agh… chocking.”

“Do not call me ‘Creature,’ idiot. I have enough trouble with my men gossiping behind my back.”

“Idiot? Remember your date-of-rank Major ‘Creature.’ I out rank you by 32 seconds.”

“31 seconds you—”

“Anyway, when I am eating it cuts off power to my hearing,” Major ‘Short Step’ coughed and gaged each word. “Hey! Any of you morons know the

Soviet ‘Kapooie’ method those Boyilaneyt Americans stole from us in 1923 and now called the ‘Heimlich’ maneuver.”

As the ‘Kapooie’ method was being applied by two Spetsnaz soldiers disguised as waiters and a Soviet Vasaltnicki spy named ‘Floozy’ disguised as a floozy, Major ‘Short Step’ gagged in a disturbingly chocking tone. “And that reminds… me…Stay out of…the dining…area tonight when… the Restaurant opens… We are running low on those special paper bags you… are ordered to wear over your head.”

And that also reminds me… I cannot breathe. I think you three idiots just broke two of my favorite ribs… This Soviet… ‘Kapooie’ method sucks… Run out… into the street… and grab the first… … passerby… that… can… a… perform… a… tracheotomy…”

Major ‘Short Step’ lay chocking on the floor almost passed out. His face turning a shade of ‘Tragic

Evening Blue’ Stalin’s now Khrushchev’s favorite aftershave.

Exploding on to the small, now crowded, stage area where Major ‘Short Step’ lay, one hundred and fifty-two Russian Vasaltnicki ‘Squat Dancers (Kazachok)’ soldiers started their new ‘Squat’ dance routine accompanied by blasting Russian ‘Squat’ dancing folk music, shouting, high leaping and ear-piercing yells.

Now major ‘Creature’ announced “Let us go over one more time operation REDCOM, our Paris attack plans--.”

“I tell you… you idiots I do not know how to perform a tracheotomy,” Passerby, Emile

La Traille, a tough, suave, handsome intellectual, who for some reason was chasing a large goose down the Rue as he was passing Restaurant TRUFFLES and was dragged in by Floozy and two Soviet Spetsnaz soldiers. “I am Emile La Traille,

Finder of Missing Geese. Where is my Goose you head of ham fat?”

“Perform,” ordered Soviet private Soo Poo G-Deh Seveer as he shoved a lighted blow torch in Monsieur La Traille’s hand.

###

DEBRIEF 3

LES HALLES, PARIS Les Jardin du Poubelle aka (Alma Frump’s Dump.)

WEDNESDAY 15 AUGUST 1962

LATE EVENING.

Les Halles is an immense spreading, noisy 800 plus-year-old, always mobbed with food and everything else market, almost in the center of Paris. Saturated with merchants, buyers, sellers, locals, spies, assassins and the dreaded mimes from every corner of the planet. Tourist of all sorts continuously roving throughout, barely dodging the trucks, horse pulled wagons and different sized unbalanced pushcarts. Many with square worn-down wheels.

Merchants were selling everything. Flowers, wine, fish, French bread, meat carcasses, animals, fruit, classified information. All types of food and everything in between. But the thing one will always remember most is the kaleidoscope of tantalizing yet obnoxious aromas including the drifting of burnt gunpowder of occasional pistol shots and that homey-feel that lingered about.

And the most important place was a Café called ‘Les Jardin du Poubelle’. (Known for its clarion of

Moulin Rouge and wild Apache dancehall music and familiar to all operatives worldwide as ‘Alma Frump’s Dump.’) Always packed with before-during and after-work locals and the strangest assortment of patrons, shadow-people, bewildered tourist, self-actualizing Intellectual morons, weird performers and even plain-run-of-the mill-morons, such as the writer of this debriefing, etc…

As the Pederin band blasted music like confetti throughout Café Poubelle, “Steve,” Jacquie called out. Her tone was that of a stiletto being stabbed into his ear as the Café noise ran a defense that only close piercing contact could infiltrate. “What are we doing here besides meeting with French Intelligence and doing completing a nutty plan you have been working on? A plan I do not think President De Gaulle will go along with. I have been

detecting avalanching signs of mental stress from you.”

“No time for high-praise from you Jacquie. I’ve been doing a little investigating here.”

“I know… Meeting with French Intelligence is okay. But those other Black Forest people…Those creepy shadow people you have been sequestering with

and paying off your contacts. Jock and Lik’s friends are less stable than they are.”

“You know Jock has not been right-in-the-head since he discovered it was the dish that ran away with the spoon,” Steve jackhammered his voice. I have been doing some follow up. The Ruskies have hired the OAS for De Gaulle’s assassination. And the OAS has hired that idiot ‘The Jackass’ for the assassination plan.”

“Not ‘The Lard Butt,’ alias ‘Little medically obese Eddie Illich Ramirez’ the guy that wobbles if he

could run. Alias ‘The Jackal’ alias—” Jacquie sighed.

“Right,” Steve sneered. “Previously known as ‘Fat Eddie Ramirez. Anybody blows something up the Jackal gets all the credit.”

“He must have a great publicist,” Jacquie stabbed Steve’s ear again with her words. “Wait a minute you do not think the Jackal, alias the ‘Limp’s’ Publicist could be—"

“No. Let’s not go there,” Steve growled a penetrating growl.

Let’s not go wave after wave after wave of ‘The Kackle’s’ many aliases, with that hideous laugh. He’s the only moron who runs flappin’ his arms and bunny hops and can’t sweat.” Steve moaned.

“I thought the Jackal is still living in his parent’s cellar apartment in Paris selling Hi Fi’s and dungarees from there,” Jacquie stabbed Steve’s ear again as she pushed her hair back.

Jacquie’s hair is a formal evening coiffure with a turban style bump. Steve, still coming his hair DA style in the mobbed Cafe.

Steve, answered back in a smashing sledgehammer tone, “and we’re still waiting for Jock and Lik who are supposed to meet those two KGB agents in the reserved booth behind us. You sure it was the dish that ran away with the--?”

“I don’t know, Steve. Lik, gave Jock one Hades of a clonk on that noggin of his with that broken floor plank to stop his head from swelling and turning pumpkin-teal, orange.”

“Give the guy a break Jacquie. He was becoming befuddled. Anyway, he was released from that Bittersweetie Noggin Nockers private hospital in Dange.”

“Yes, Jacquie shived her words again into Steve’s ear but this time holding a hanky over her mouth

as she thought she caught sight of a Maverick Lip Reader in the crowd. “I know, but Lik said they were treating Jock for not being able to jump. She said he has to carry a 12-volt car battery with him with wires connected to his ears.”

“Oh, big deal,” Steve roared back. “What’s a few more gadgets hooked up to Jock’s head?”

“Steve, he is carrying a 12-volt car battery around with him. What if his jump shock meter goes off every few minutes like Lik said it is supposed to? I am sure Jock knows how to jump.”

“Forget it Jacquie. We have more important things to concern ourselves. Lik assured me she disconnected the wires.”

“Like the wires she disconnected in Romania last year when we were tasked to see how many Romanian tanks they had for their surprise ‘October Military Exercise?’ I still cannot hear properly.”

“So, we found out Lik was colorblind,” Steve shouted. “All those different colored wires. Any way she insisted we all stand behind Jock… even her. Jock and his imagined nanny took the brunt of the explosion.”

“Steve,” Jacquie said in that stiletto blade tone close-up and personal. “That nanny was not imagined. If I knew then that idiot with Jock and Lik was a Romanian General in charge of the whole Romanian army’s ‘October Surprise’ was a spy disguised as a nanny, I would have… I mean I really would have Savate kicked that nitwit… Why do I put up with you?”

I can’t look for a couch now.” Steve mumbled in a low growl, “Psychoanalyze yourself later.”

Just at that moment the Pederin British band drummer, Rio went maniac. Began to make horrible faces and plunge his drumsticks into his ears while waving out his tongue Semi Flore style

sending expletives to the crowd and all the ships at sea.

Carried off the four-foot-high stage, drums and all, by the rest of the Pederin band Boris, Natasherine and Lord Bloat into an always waiting Pederin ‘Fou’ van. (Under International law a Fou Van was required to follow the Pederin’s anyplace they are allowed to perform without strait jackets.)

The chaotic Apache dancers following the Pederin band to the front door flinging their dance partners left and right in some sort of bizarre, demented Conga line.

The crowd Congaed back as soon as the great rock & roller Johnny Halliday started singing accompanied by the one and only immortal singin’ screamer ‘Screamin’ Jay Hawkin’s’ as the Mayhem grew.

Jacquie and Steve tried to fit in with the local inhabitants and the beer and wine flowed with the help of overweight, red-nosed waiters and big

boned angry waitresses always smiling… the problem was…

Even with Jacquie’s French ‘Les Halles’ type work clothes and the possibility she works in the slingin’ sides of beef on hooks sections of ‘Les Halles’ she couldn’t tone down her drop dead beautiful ‘girl-next-door’ good looks.

Steve, on the other hand looks like he caught a slingin’ side of fast-moving beef with his head… when the baby spotlights were exactly right.

“Listen Steve, there is something I have to tell you about President De Gaulle that only his closest confidants may know. Perhaps he does not know himself. He is—”

“Look Jacquie, if it’s about that idiot punch drunk boxer assassin that you think is on De Gaulle’s personal security team… don’t worry about it. You point the personal security team out to me, and I’ll unmask the miscreant in less than a minute for you. If there is one?”

“Oh, shut up flounder brain. Besides being a great President of France De Gaulle is a multifaceted genius at—”

“Excuse me, Jacquie. You’re so jealous at my winning first prize on that ‘Pays to be Ignorant’ radio program it’s fogging your focus. Plus, this case is open and shut for me. “

“Open and shut? That is because you are an idiot Steve,” Jacquie shouted with sparkling eyes and a disarming smile. “A one hundred percent blooming idiot.”

“Well, it’s about time you recognize my talent,” Steve, started to look for a mirror. But keep your Kudos for me down. We’re on a covert mission.

A big boned cigarette girl passed by asking if anyone wanted cigarettes, cigars, mirrors, or fuel for smoke signals, (Very popular as an added

entertainment booster at Alma Frump’s Dump during the gayety days of the early sixties in Paris. All Intellectuals and ‘IN’ crowed people wanted to send smoke signals from their tables to be noticed by others. Thus, so many unexplained fires were the ‘important people’ hang out.}

No one could really hear the big boned cigarette girl in the bedlam.

Jacquie sighed one of those patented sighs that people sigh when they must deal with Steve.

“There is so much freaken smoke in this ‘Dump’ I cannot see—”

“Crapola? Ah yes De Gaulle,” Steve said thoughtfully. “Jock and Lik are not only going to confirm the exact time and place—”

“We already know the place,” Jacquie hurled a word-Javelin into Steve’s ear as the now Moulin Rouge Dance Music assaulted the jam-packed fast

moving mob gyrating around the well rutted wooden/saw dusted floor.

“And the Spetznaz Russian soldiers disguised as…” Steve was interrupted.

“Disguised as what?” Jacquie asked as a fight broke out around their booth. The fight was swiftly swallowed up in a surging pandemonium of screaming French twirling Cancan dancing patrons and the combatants were kicked into Cancan unconsciousness or worse.

“Cardboard cutouts? Or cut-outs?” Jacquie laughed as she and Steve threw off, the last dancers from the fisticuffs that had landed on their table, hurling them back into the swirling mass of stampeding, dancing patrons. The last fisticuffers pleas for mercy and help were extinguished upon vanishing into the swift flowing merciless romping, vortex causing crowd.

“Was Jock speaking of actual paper and cardboard cutouts, or real intelligence people cut-outs?” Jacquie demanded to know in a tight lip, spitting fire tone.

“Does it really matter?” Steve growled that low warning growl that only beautiful woman and jungle night prowling dangerous beasts can hear. “When it comes down to it, I believe they’re both the same thing.”

Jacquie, shaking her head in the negative, while looking at her white noise watch and covering her lips with a tissue answered, “After all this time as a Cloakroom agent maybe you are right Steve? There may be no difference between ‘Cut-outs’ and regular cardboard cutouts.

I mean Jock is the only person I have ever met that is ‘perhaps’ more stupid than you. As you always say, ‘Let it play out and see.’ “

“There, see,” Steve growled what seemed as it could be an almost happy deadly growl that even

frightened ‘the Dump’s noise.’ “You feel better already.”

“I said ‘perhaps,” Jacquie, flipped her word in angry French.

“A little louder,” Steve growled, I still don’t think they can hear us at the Kremlin yet.”

“No one is going to hear us with all this noise. Besides, we have our white noise watches on. I am more concerned about Lip Readers.”

“Lid beaters,” Steve challenged. “What in the name of ‘Princes Summer Fall Winter Spring’ are you talking about? Lid beaters?”

“I said Lip Readers you… I am paying for the time in the field in Northern Finland when you were doing your morning briefing with those Finnish troops before we were to cross into the Soviet Union trying to locate that Russian defector and I

forgot to yell ‘Incoming.’ Those Ruskie artillery shells are really loud.”

“What?” Steve yelled.

“And who is this ’Princes Summer Fall Winter Spring’?” Jacquie demanded to know. “I don’t remember a Princes with that—”

“Who?” Steve asked. “And who are these Lid beaters?

Jacquie slipped a small, dainty Derringer out from under her sleeve and fired at Steve just as Jock and his little group clambered in the smokey Café door. At the same instant one of the Apache dancing patrons, who was living in the past not able to change into Moulin Rouge Cancan steps fast enough, was thrown into Steve and Jacquie’s booth with Tornado F-5 wind force.

###

DEBRIEF 4

15 August 1962

Wednesday. Almost Midnight.

Café Les Jardin de Poubelle. Alias ‘Ama Frump’s Dump.’

Les Halles, Paris.

“Hoot mon, am I still bleeding?” Jock asked as his head size stated to return to normal. “Who fired that shot and where did it come from?”

Just then there was a call to prayers wailing somewhere in the distance.

Jock and Lik were dressed normally in their black motorcycle jackets with ‘Lards of Flatbush’ written in ‘Brooklynese’ on the back in phosphorus and, of course, misspelled. Lik, wore her red shawl under her Motorcycle jacket. And their ensembles

finished off their signature red woolen sweats and sneakers.

Major’s Short Step and Major Creature who was wearing a paper bag over his head for some reason, were attired in Soviet grey military jackets and grey Soviet military pants with long red stripes on the outside of each pant leg running into their black, spit shined cowboy boots.

Both wearing high, brown Russian thick fur winter hats that someone tried to stomp down to look like French berets. Major Creature looked particularly out of place as his stomped down Beaver fur beret highlighted the paper bag, he was partially wearing over his head.

With the help of ‘The’ 7/10th of a ton Alma Frump herself and her ‘Ally-Oop’ sized club, clubbed their way to their reserved table right behind Steve and Jacquie.

It took a few moments to dislodge the Philonian patrons who were sitting at the reserved table… but after a few seconds of Lik swinging her Golumpi and Alma beating them to a pulp the intruders lay on the Café floor. All that was left on the table was a blood or red wine trail and a half-finished bottle of Beaujolais until some Big Boned waitresses dragged the limp bodies away into an open but clogged sewer almost outside the Café.

Alma Frump bellowed to no one particular. She had an explosive urge to paint a midnight seascape, but she couldn’t find the right color as she charged into the back room of her establishment following her big boned blockers who forcibly led the way.

“No, my brave hero. The bleeding has stopped. The spent shell only grazed your beautiful vacant bean and damaged the little power box on your elastic kamikaze band wrapped around your

noggin. The bullet must have ricocheted off something--”

Lik was interrupted as a patron was carried out on a stretcher nursing a Deringer belt buckle wound.

“This is one hell of a tough place,” Jock cried out in his usual high operettic voice causing ear damage within a one-meter zone of pain.

Just at that moment an alarm went off in the car battery Jock was carrying jolting him a few inches off the ground and causing, what looked like, chard hair fuzz to appear on his bald head.

###

DEBRIEF 5

16 August Thursday, 1962.

A little after midnight

PARIS, FRANCE

LES HALLES

Café Jardin de Poubelle. Alias ‘Alma Frump’s Dump.’

“Ah here we are,” Jock announced in his high-pitched squeak as he an Lik slid into their side of the booth. Major Miroslave ‘Short Step’ Elias, who needed to sit on a Paris Phone book, slipped into the booth seat right behind Major Frantisek ‘Creature’ Stanchovsky.

“Someone bring me a Citronade you bourgeois swine bar keeps, Major ‘Short Step,’ demanded in British English. “Remember, my name is Lucy Dead. I am a filthy American big-time swine gambler-tourist from the state of Oyeoh.”

“Me too,” Major Frantisek Stanchovsky echoed in a South Moscow Russian accent. My name is Lucy Dead. I am a big riverboat gambler from Oyeoh. My friends, if I had any, would call me

‘Madmick’—”

“Whaaa?” Lik challenged, “You both cannot be in disguise as the same person. And what the hell is a Madmik? For that matter where the hell is Oyeoh?” Lik, nervously started to cradle her Golompi under her red shawl.

“The idiots mean ‘Mavrick’ from an old western TV show from 1959.” A voice came from Miroslave ‘Short Step” Elias’s winter Russian fur hat, the one that was stomped down into what was supposed to look like a French beret.

“Who said that?” Major Shot Step yelled.

“You did you moron,” the voice sounded off again.

“I did?” Major Short Step interrogated himself unsuccessfully. “I did?”

“Yes, I did,” The voice came again this time from Major Short Step himself.

“Okay, If I said so I guess I did,” Major Short Step announced as he agreed with himself guzzling a sip

of his Citron-aide a Jolly, red nosed, medically obese garcon just brought him. Then yelling in Russian, ‘Russians Go Home.’ “

Lik, just sat there observing as her double-jointed lips began to toss and turn into the most tightened complicated kaleidoscopic designs.

“You said you are from Oyeoh?” Lik’s dry ice crunching words that had a strange sounding rattle to them like a sound you might hear from a frozen rattlesnake just before it delivered an almost thawed strike. “Do you mean Ohio? And Lucy is a women’s name. A name that that displeases me…

Ah So, you are not sure you are related to Misses Rutherford B. Hayes by any draw of the cards?”

Upon hearing the code words ‘Ah so’ and two threatening claps that were meant for the Russian Majors from Lik, Jock began marching in place looking around for a passing parade to protest in.

‘Who?” Both Major Short Step and Major Creature spoke at the same time. I thought Lucy is a name winning gamblers use on your American swine river boats that sail up and down Misses Sippie.

“Major Short Step and Major Creature both looking at each other and shaking their heads. Then because they said the same thing at the same time they both said an ole Russian saying. “What goes up the Chimney?” Before they could answer the question Lik not only twisted her lips but also her eyes into an almost perfect square knot. (Oh, some will argue it was more like a sheepshank knot} Twisting her lips and eyes seperately like an assassin would twist their blade between the third and fourth rib of a target.

“Do you mean ‘Lucky’ by any chance,” Steve, using his ventriloquist voice again asked.

Jock demanded to know with a follow up question also ‘if you hombres have any spare stilts on you?”

“Now how would we know that”” Major Creature asked sternly.

“Nonsense,” Lik said in that cold sound dry ice makes when one slaps a slab on one’s head for fun.

Lik, crying repeat volumes of the ‘Hokey Pokey in reverse. I suspected you were her when you ordered a Citronade. That is French for Lemonade. You are her. Rutherford B. Hayes wife that only drinks lemonade in your temperance movement. And not only that you are from ‘Oyeoh’… I mean Ohio where she is from.

As Lik attacked Major Short Step unmercifully, but with a seeming elegance, with half a bottle of Beaujolais, Jock began to rant as his head trembled and swelled with an orange bluish tint and a teal glow.

“Wait,” Jock cried out, “I am not an American. I am Japanese. No…vial Bavarian lederhosen accordion players are filling my head. Great

Angolan War Lord Agostino Neto is beating a War kettle drum all wearing empty shoe boxes sizes four and a half to 18 triple E…”

In the excitement Jock… well the circumference of his head seemed to expand exponentially as his head turned the color of teal—

‘Wait,’ came another garbled war cry from Alma Frump’s office as she looked out her upstairs office window overseeing the mayhem. Seeing Jock’s swelling head and a teal-ish orange glow. That color. That is the color I need for my seascape midnight painting. Bring that color to me.” Alma, instead of opening her office door smashed through it. Like a bull elephant in rut. Alma and her big boned waitresses followed by a number of her Jolly; medically obese, red nosed waiters charged toward the teal-ish color sending patrons flying in all directions. It was ghastly. Like a human tidal wave of flesh heading toward Jock.

“Steve,” Jacquie whispered closeup and personal. I just remembered that Major Creature carries around with him vials of acid and magnesium, jellied fire starter when they are mixed. He does a somersault in here it’s all over.”

Then it’s your job to keep him upright in here,” Steve growled back close, and I must say, under the situation, very professional.

“Idiot,” was Jacquie’s retort. “Wait,” Jacquie screamed to be heard now. Pretending to dab her lips with a hankie in case any of those roving gangs of ‘Lip Readers’ were about. “OAS men coming towards Jock’s and Lik’s table right behind us.”

“That’s Georges Walrus,” Steve said, quietly almost without moving his lips but Jacquie read his mouth.

“Alias ‘The Pygmy Hippo.’ Steve growled in a low warning.

“You mean Georges Watda… I thought Watda was another alias for the ‘The Jackal’ or ‘the Jackass or something like that?” Jacquie mouthed her question in a way any errant Lip Reader could not read her lips. “Steve, we are going to have to break this up.”

“No. Maybe Walrus and his OAS boys will—”

Before Steve could finish Alma Frump and her tsunami of big boned waitresses and medically obese, jolly, red nosed waiters smashed into Jock and Lik’s booth after Jock’s Teal colored enormous ninja head. Destroying several booths, liquor, splintering wood, sawdust flying and blasting patrons far, far away into other unexplored recesses of the Café.

As Jock’s circumference of his glowing head expanded exponentially so rapidly breaking the kamikaze type of elastic strap launching Jock’s, Deringer bullet-injured recorder/projector power box at incomparable speed causing those who

were still able to put their hands over their ears to repel the sound of buzzing jets noise turning after burners on as they roared away. Some patrons, big boned waitresses and not so jolly, medically obese red nose waiters being swept away in the vacuum the noise caused, perhaps, never to be found again. Other dazed patrons seem to speed float in half size shoe boxes and disappear in little flashes. Only to return moments later as unconscious lederhosen Bavarian accordion players. Magnesium and acid mixed as flames exploded out of some idiot’s pocket. Then partial ceiling collapse.

###

DEBRIEF 6

17 AUGUST, FRIDAY 7:00 HOURS

CAFÉ PETIT FOU, ACROSS THE STREET FROM

PETITE-SALPETRIERE HOSPITAL, NEAR THE MAZARIN ENTRANCE. THE OLD CHARENTON ASYLUM FOR THE CTIMIMALLY INSANE (LUNATIC SECTION PARKING ONLY.) RUE de la BOURRASQUES de (SQUALLS.)

“Steve,” Jacquie asked, after just getting their hearing back somewhat, nursing several bruises. “What in the name of Angles and Saints just happened last night? I could have sworn there were no accordion players in Alma Frump’s Dump last night when we entered.”

The waitress interrupted bringing two chocolate chauds and two croissants to their window table.

“Then that strange eardrum stinging noise like a squadron of jet aircraft blasting off,” Jacquie continued in that soft killer French accent.

“Bavarian accordion players. The place was filled with bizarre looking shoe boxes… half sizes shoe boxes floating around. Jock’s head turning that ghastly teal orange—”

Steve, squinting his eyes, still not sure where he was. “Huh? Jet after burners engaged full throttle, Accordion players disappearing and seconds later appearing. It was like being inside Jock’s head. All I remember is seeing Jock’s excruciatingly tight kamikaze head band snapping launching at warp speed his recorder/projector into the deep, dark recesses of Alma Frump’s Dump.”

“My head hurts and we’re all covered with soot and sawdust and whatever this sticky stuff is… Steve you sure you do not have any leaking head wounds?

That is it Steve,” Jacquie shouted, hurting their ears. “Your nose and right ear are bleeding.”

“I’m sorry,” Steve growled. “I just had a building collapse on me.”

“Steve, you are such a wimp. It was only a ceiling that fell on us… and everyone else in ‘The Dump.’ You do not hear anyone else complaining.”

“That’s because I can’t hear didley. And most of them were unconscious or taken to the hospital across the street.”

“Look, Chowder Head… what you said before, ‘It was like being in Jock’s head.’ What if that box being pressed against his head by the kamikaze elastic band was smashed into smithereens when the kamikaze elastic snapped, and the box flew off into the great unknown of Alma’s Dump—”

“And there really was some antimatter

released— No one really knows what effect a small amount of diluted antimatter would have when it is released into matter… other than destroying the universe. I think.”

“No—” Steve started to say as Jacquie felt one of Steve’s soliloquies coming beginning on a subject that he knows nothing about.

This time Jacquie cut Steve off. “Causing those bizarre happenings. No wonder the maniacs at Edgewood Arsenal wanted Jock to test the contraption wrapped around his head at White Sands Proving Grounds. They were not worried about a nuclear explosion, but they were concerned that what was in Jock’s brain might escape. The stupid things he is always thinking about would be worse to civilization as we know it than any nuclear explosion.”

“Well Jacquie, I don’t think half size shoe boxes and mad Bavarian accordion players in lederhosen could actually destroy anything… except possibly the minds off all earthlings?”

“Tell that to the people still missing at Alma Frump’s Dump and the patrons that vanished in flashes of light. Like an invasion of human

‘Lighting’ bugs. And how do people reappear before they vanish in flashes of light?”

“You mean ‘Lightening’ bugs,” Steve groaned in pain rubbing his head and dust from his eyes. “In Brooklyn we say ‘Lightening’ bugs.”

“Who cares what they say in Brooklyn,” Jacquie shrugged off Steve’s correction. “We do not have Lighting bugs in France anyway.”

“Ahh,” Steve throws his right hand up. Well, you did a great job keeping that KGB idiot Major Creature upright so he wouldn’t explode with those magnesium and acid vials he carries. I don’t think there were any major fires. No pun intended—”

“I did not do anything to keep Major Creature upright. I was under that freaking, splintered- ceiling with you and everyone else. But you know what was strange now that you remind me… I

thought I saw Alma and her crew charge toward us just before Jock’s elastic kamikaze band snapped sending it, as you said, ‘to the far reaches to previous unknown parts of the Café Poubelle, then everything… everything blew up. But why was Alma Frump and her obese waiters and big boned waitresses attacking--“

“A question hopefully never to be answered,” Steve growled taking a sip of his chocolate chaud. Jock has the ability to bring out the ‘killer’ instinct in a saint.”

“I wonder where Jock and Lik are now. I hope they made it out of the debris field,” Jacquie said almost thoughtfully as she blew whipped cream off her cinnamon stirrer stick. “Oh well, if they made it out, they are probably lurking in some shadows on Rue Morgue waiting for their next victims.”

“What I could get out of one of the ambulance drivers and a couple of the firemen—”

“Firepersons,” Jacquie interrupted.

“Huh?” Steve growled weakly rubbing his head injuries.

“Nothing,” Jacquie coughed.

“Anyway,” Steve continued, his growl coming back. “They’re taking all victims back to the mental hospital across the street for a triage or something? Then police and scientist questioning.”

“Ah, yes the lunatic asylum,” Jacquie said softly looking out across the Rue at the Mental Hospital from the table they were sitting at through a large picture window of the coffee shoppe. “How apropos.”

“Yeah, whatever?” Steve said finishing his Chocolate chaud. “I still feel a little dizzy. But I know Major ‘Short Step’ was taken here. They’re keeping him until he regains consciousness.”

“Those were some pretty heavy duty blows Lik gave him.” Jacquie mumbled with her napkin held

close to her mouth in case there were some Lip Reader survivors from Alma Frump’s Dump about.

“I’m not sure what happened to that other idiot Major Creature,” Steve growled following Jacquie’s lead as he held a napkin up to his mouth. Then realizing what he was doing roared, tossed the napkin with prejudice, “What the hell am I doing. Don’t start that Lid Beater double talk again.”

“How stupid can you be?” Jacquie slashed. “No,” her words were scorched as she raised her hands. “Do not tell me. I know you haven’t reached your full potential.”

Steve, ignoring Jacquie’s tribute to him went on. “The last time I saw a smoking Major Creature as they were trying to pull him out of the ruble next to me… the emergency Recue Doc was posturizing, ‘Whatever hit this poor soul in the head had to be traveling so fast it went through his head cauterizing skin, skull and every vital organ causing no concern-able damage… I guess he was lucky he

was wearing a stomped down Beaver on his head covered a bit with a slow burning paper bag over his head.”

“Jacquie just looked at Steve with an unbelieve stare and said, “Now I believe you reached your full potential.”

“Thanks Jacquie but this is no time for giving me kudos.”

This time it is believed it was Jacquie that growled in unbelievable frustration.

“Listen Steve, we have to get back to Chatellerault to washup and change our clothes. It only takes a couple of hours by train.”

“Regarde Jacquie,” Steve, still a bit unsteady on his feet, growled. “Over there by the hospital barb wired fence and the criminally insane warning signs, ‘LUNATICS MAY BE LURKING ABOUT.’ That very tall guy with the strange gait, bandaged head

lurking in the morning shadows. He’s sneaking off down the street. Do you think that’s the Soviet KGB Major Creature Strachovsky?”

“Of course, it is,” Jacquie’s sarcastic reply ricocheted off the windowpane they were peering through. “Who else could it be? What else walks and runs like that aside from the Jackal? Stiff legged, unable to bend his knees, or arms at the elbow. Now he is running like that. After him Steve.”

“Why?” Steve asked.

“I have to get back to Rue de la Croix Rouge to change my clothes—” Jacquie’s explanation was interrupted.

Unfortunately, a rock with paper around it thrown through the window hit Steve on the head as he tried to steady his feet, for the pursuit, rendering him unconscious.

###

DEBRIEF PART 7

18 AUGUST, SATURDAY 1962

AFTERNOON

ATLANTIC OCEANSIDE SEA RESORT

ROYAN, FRANCE.

HOTEL AU REGAL, 15 RUE PIERRE-LOTI

OFF BOULEVARD ARISTIDE BRIAND, ROYAN 17

TEL 05. 06. 07.

After a stop at Onze Rue de la Croix Rouge in Chatellerault for a change of clothes, nuclear powered showers Jacquie put together on the spot and an unexpected stop at the ‘Bittersweet Private Hospital for Dramatic and Traumatic Nuggie Injury and for Individuals Unable to Jump’ located in Dange, France; the specialists there agreed Steve would eventually remember who he was. But

there would be short lapses as Steve slips into other identities until the swelling goes down.

On the way to Royan Jacquie had to suffer Steve remembering he was La Mont Cranston alias the ‘Shadow.’ Charles De Gaulle and ‘The Norman Looboff Choir.

Jacquie and Steve finally made their way to a small, charming hotel a bit off the Atlantic Ocean coastal beach resort of Royan, France. Jacquie was about to Savate kick Steve in the head to try and get him to get his memory back with Savate encouragement.

“What is this note you keep talking about?” Steve Mumbled. “Dud I read it?

“Of course. You read it when you regained consciousness. Lucky the Lunatic hospital was across the street so they could help you tout suite.”

“Yeah, lucky me. I was seeing double. I couldn’t make out the scribbling. Wait till I get my hands on those two morons,” Steve rubbed the left side of his goose-egg head as he groaned. If they were outside the Café we were in, why didn’t they just come in and hand us the note or just tell us?”

“I do not know Steve. They are your contacts. Listen Steve while you are still yourself…”

“Huh? Wait a minute. This note is for someone named Steve. My name is… don’t tell me.”

The men in white jackets and carrying butterfly nets. chasing Major ‘Creature seem to know you Steve—”

“Chasing Major ‘Creature.’ Did they get him?”

“No, I do not think so,” Jacquie said softly. “There was so much excitement and confusion when you got knocked out. I had to focus on you. I did not know you could yodel when unconscious… or, conscious for that matter.”

“Yodel? What are you blabin’ about? Anyway, I have a lot of contacts.”

“You know, now that I think about it, I never met one of your contacts that wasn’t weird.”

“So, what,” Steve replied not realizing he was answering her in slang Swahili.” “Do you think any normal person would be in the kind of work we do?”

“No, I suppose not,” Jacquie answered Steve back in a nonchalant Swahili. “But you have so many contacts in zoos around the world. I mean not only people but all kinds of animals.”

“A contact is a contact,” Steve growled still in slang Swahili.”

“I suppose,” Jacquie said, in a far way scientific tone speaking a more formal Swahili as she inspected Steve’s head for leakage. “Hmmm, Steve have you been in a more recent contact with

‘more’ sawdust… I mean after the Frump’s Dump?”

DEBRIEF 8

18 AUGUST SATURDAY 1962

EVENING

HOTEL AU REGAL

15 RUE PIERRE – LOTI

OFF BOULEVARD ARISTIDE

BRIAND, 17

SUITE 12 TOP FLOOR

TEL. 05. 06. 07.

“It was a dark, windy almost moonless night. The Merengue dancing tree branches made spooky sounds on the deserted streets below urged on by a low-pressure grid tumbling its way off the Atlantic Ocean as electric lights flicked.

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In suite 12, Jacquie and Steve sat around a large oval table. A giant iron extremely hot pot of Bouillabaisse was simmering on the stove. There were several lighted candles from birthday size to Opera candle size that helped the large room to reek with moving shadows from the breeze entering through the open terrace.

Steve frowned at the aroma of the fish stew, or whatever type of Sea Monsters bubbling away, and the attacking scent being tossed about by the breezy jabs and uppercuts of the percolating stew. Jacquie and Steve are discussing their next move, through the fog of Bouillabaisse horror, as they waited for Jock and Lik to show up.

“I made this Bouillabaisse for its nutritional value in restoring your mind to normal stupidity from being beaned on your head with that rock they threw through the Café window.”

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“I’m going to kill those two before this mission is over.

Now that I’m all better tell me why you insisted on making that foul fish stew,” Steve sneered a growl which is difficult to do for most humans.

“I just told… Never mind,” Jacquie sneered back in that most charming and patient French accent that sounded as if she was ordering a firing squad to open fire.

“All these buildings in Royan look fairly new even in the growing darkness,” Steve said moseying over to the terrace balcony and pushing the blackout curtains all the way aside as he gasped for more air.

“That’s because Royan was bombed by the Allies during the war by mistake. Then rebuilt after the war.

Steve, did you notice the headline on the newspaper?”

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“I notice everything,” Steve said in a low menacing tone as he leaned out over the balcony railing. “What headlines? For that matter, what paper?”

“Steve do not lean out that far. “We are four floors up. ‘STILL NO EXPLANATION WHY TIME SEEMED TO STAND STILL FOR 7 SECONDS LAST NIGHT AROUND LES HALLES IN PARIS!’

And get this… The paper reports… ‘the epicenter was at Les Halles. People seemed to vanish but returned before they disappeared. Many victims report seeing the Café Poubelle, locally known as Alma Frump’s Dump was being flooded by nightmarish Bavarian accordion players in Lederhosen. Also, victims state the, what is now known locally as ‘BAP’ (Bavarian Accordion Players) disappearing before they appeared.’ Steve, how can that be?”

“Who cares. Journalistic sensationalism,” Steve growled as his voice seemed to fade away.

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Then Jacquie heard a terrible scream like a Tarzan call when he swings through the jungle in one of his movies.

‘Steve, what did you say,” Jacquie asked in deadly charming French as she looked up from the newspaper. “Steve, Steve… Where are you now?”

###

DEBRIEF 9

18 AUGUST SATURDAY 1962

21:45 HOURS

HOTEL AU REGAL

15 RUE PIERRE-LOTI

OFF BOULEVARD ARISTIDE

BRIAND 17,

SUITE 12 TOP FLOOR

TEL. 05. 06. 07.

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“I tell you Jacquie I’m not hurt,” Steve mumbled bitterly. “You forget I’m Lord Greystone or is it Lord Stovepipe? Ah, just call me Tarzan.”

“You fell off the Balcony. Four floors.”

“Nonsense. I leaped. A mere pittance for the Lord of the Jungle,” Steve roared as he sat down on a portable davenport next to the huge table. Jacquie had been reading the newspaper by candlelight. “Besides the trees broke my fall.”

“You could have been killed… leaving me to explain what happened. You know what would have happened then. Both the French and American governments would have left me out in the cold. And I would have been put in… How do you call it? A Bobbie Hatch.”

“You know Jacquie, for some uncanny reason this reminds me when I fell off the roof of Adverk Castle in Scotland.”

“Idiot.”

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“Wait a minute,” Steve ordered. “I remember. I was looking over the balcony and saw a cat burglar climb out a window across the Boulevard and shadow lurk towards the hotel carrying a mouth full of Sterling silver.”

“Sounds like those trees did not break your fall enough Lord Stovepipe,” Jacquie spoke in a tone of wisdom.”

“Lord who? Are you okay Jacquie? You sure you weren’t the one who fell off the balcony?”

“Look moron, how do you know he was a cat burglar?”

“I recall he was dressed like a cat?”

“You truly are ‘The’ professional idiot. And do not tell me to save my Kudos or ‘Who cares,’ “Jacquie went back to charting an algorithm of Jock’s thinking progress on the newspaper she had been reading.

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“Now what are you doing,” Steve growled in an exceptionally low voice.”

“More precisely that recorder projector on Jocks head those torturers at Edgewood Arsenal screwed around with. According to the newspaper ‘went through some previously unknown barrier of light or time.’

“Look Jacquie, when Jock’s head expanded exponentially… well mix that with antimatter in your algorithm you come up with… I don’t know. Stupidity, or disaster like we just experienced.

“Steve, there is something still missing.”

“Did you include Lik’s left ear in your algorithm? And what the hell is an ‘algorithm’ anyway? Where did the cat burglar go?” Steve challenged himself.”

“Still there is something missing about Jock’s thinking process. I cannot get it to fit any algorithm,” Jacquie said in a thoughtful French.

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“I’ve always theorized there are speeds faster than light in our universe… even faster than warped-mind speed. And we might even be dealing with ‘Time Inversion.’ Jock’s brain after being bombarded with antimatter may hold the key. I wonder if his head is still intact?”

“Never was,” Steve mumbled as he got up and searched the street below.

“Stop hanging over the balcony Steve and sit back down. It may account for the inmates of Café Poubelle returning before they disappeared. Quick Steve, I need more paper for the algorithm formula I am developing.”

“Yeah, right Jacquie,” Steve growled as he gave her a raised eyebrow and eyeroll.

Then there was a knock at the door. Four rapid heavy knocks that meant nothing to anyone.

Moments later Jacquie, Steve, Jock, Lik and someone none of them knew were all sitting

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around the large teak wood table discussing how sorry they were for knocking Steve unconscious with a secret message tied to a rock back at the Petit Fou in Paris.”

“Rock,” Steve roared. “It was a boulder. Morons. You wiped out the whole Petit Fou place.”

“Let us not exaggerate Steve,” Jacquie smirked in French. “Little damage was done to your head.”

“Baloney. And who is this Steve you all are yappin’ about?”

“Except for that,” Jacquie smiled as she shrugged her shoulders. “I think he is Lord Stovepipe ‘King of the Jungle.’ “

“Who?” Lik asked in a breaking icy tone.

Jacquie shook her head in the negative. “Forget it. It is of no import.”

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“Anyway,” Jock said angrily in a high pitch tone while blowing smoke from three cigarettes, we have to wait until next year when the folks at Edgewood Arsenal fit me for a new hologram projector recorder with updated antimatter and a better mini secure capture holder so I can record a year in the life of my wife’s left ear.”

“Yes,” Lik said, as if again two icebergs were rubbing against each other as they passed each other somewhere in the North Atlantic. “The boys at Edgewood Arsenal building 355, you know the criminally insane division are going to have Jock surgically self-implant it between his eyes himself so when he gets angry, or cannot understand what is going on around him and his head expands, we won’t have to concern ourselves with any kamikaze rubber-elastic bands breaking and interfering with any of those stupid space-time continuums.”

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LIk, sitting back in her chair in a relax mode, whipped her Golompi out and flung it up into the ceiling. As they were on the top floor it did penetrate the roof. There seemed to come a yelp from the roof.

Lik continued as Jock’s all-weather fruit flies finally caught up with him and could be heard swarming outside the door or perhaps it was the small neon sign advertising the hotel although I think not.

“All that would happen then would be the projector/recorder sending holograms of what is in my Jock’s head to the ionosphere as recordings of the old American 1950 Cisco Kid TV shows back to Earth did or who knows where. Did anyone see what I did with my Golompi when I came in?”

“In the ceiling Lik,” Jock said casually in a high-pitched scream that caused everyone slap their hands over their ears. “Is that boiling bouillabaisse I hear?” Jock asked as smoke engulfed his head from new cigarettes, he recently lighted.

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“For dinner,” Jacquie answered softly in French. I know you all must be hungry.”

Steve seemed to gag a bit.

“Be a big boy Steve,” Jacquie said softly in kind of Pau village French. “I could have made Andouillette.”

“That reminds me of the old Bouillabaisse song, which is the official theme song of Neptune,” Lik said in a matter-of-fact icy way as she catapulted onto the table then leaping high into the air retrieved her Golompi and some pieces of ceiling and roof tar with perhaps a schemer of Epsom Salts on the tip along with some human gluteus maximus flesh and a blood spat?”

“Please Lik, no more.” Steve’s voice sounded like one of the menacing low jungle noises one hears at night but can’t detect where it’s coming from. “Even I can’t stand it. Now please report on what you two found out about REDCOM and what the Soviets are up to… if it’s not too late already. At

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least before I seek my revenge for conking me with that stone you threw through that Café window outside the hospital in Paris.”

“Hey, I would like to have one of those things implanted between my eyes.” The masked, around his eye’s only, man, partially dressed to look like a grey cat, demanded in a kind of disturbing meowing tone. Smoking an American Raleigh cigarette stuck to his upper lip. His face carried a strange Joe E. Brown bazoo. A piece or two of miniature silverware on the side of his mouth dangled before he whipped them to the other side without disturbing his Raleigh.

“Who is this?” Jacquie demanded to know from Jock and Lik.

“Have not the foggiest,” Jock said in another high- pitch scream.

“Nor have I,” Lik’s icy tone caused everyone to chill. “We thought this thing was with you. Said he

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was the hotel’s official greeter… Or was it the official stealer?”

“By any chance are you ladies proposing to me?” the stranger purred? Then he mumbled something incoherently in a whisper as his head shifted quickly left to right his bazoo dropping a miniature sterling silver dessert spoon. He interrogated. “But why quibble about dessert?”

“Who cares who he is,” Steve growled low and menacing. “Can we get on with this.”

“I shall make arrangements for a small but elegant double wedding. I am known to the French authorities as –”

“Can you make a souffle Japanese style… you know, without cheese or eggs?” Jock screamed in a tone that was unusually high even for him.

“I am not zee cook you fools. I am Monsieur Le ‘Couchon Cnout’ alias ‘The Home Book of Verse’ also known as the ‘World’s Greatest Criminologist.’

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But I demand to know again, why quibble about this dessert. You may call me by my other alias… ‘The Home Book of Verse.’

“Now, I recommend you people stop talking about whatever you idiots are babbling about, order me one of those things you put between your eyes and allow me to recite the poet Robert Owens starting in the middle years and then spreading out in both directions at once. I will give you all comprehensive tests when we finish in two or three wee—”

That’s all he would say as Jacquie smashed his head into the table with a high Savate kick from behind knocking him out. Then shoving a lighted king-size cigarette in his bazoo to replace the Raleigh that was crushed. Pulling his chair and body to a bay window overlooking the dark rainy Blossac so he took on the position of an alert but unconscious Centennial. “

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“We are Wasting time,” Steve growled. “Throw him over.”

“Not to worry Steve,” Lik crackled. “I Know him. He is The Russian.… Known by his other aliases as the ‘Pygmy Hippo…’ and the ‘Pretend Jackal’

In the back streets of Downtown Moscow. You know by Boris’s---"

“I thought he was alias ‘The Schnauzer” Jock pussyfooted his question in a high fingernail across the blackboard society-snobby manner.

“Who cares?” Steve growled a warning growl that vibrated through everyone. “I don’t know what the hell anyone is talking about.”

“Well anyway,” Lik continued in a voice that sounded like Eliza again crossing the ice but this time with fairy wings. “Whoever the idiot is, or who he reports to… they will make their move, that is, Project REDCOM begins on the 22nd of August starting at Les Halles in mid-morning and

117

culminating, with the assassination of De Gaulle, near, Petit Clarmart--.”

“August already past,” Steve argued. “I think It’s gonna be tough to prevent that.”

“Thank you, Steve, for sharing that bit of stupidity with us.” Then Jacquie, turning to Jock and Lik said in a sweet French tone, “Obviously I Savateed the wrong persons head into the table.”

“I meant August 1961 passed last year little Miss know-it-all.” Steve growled as his eyes followed something invisible crossing the ceiling. “I just momentarily forgot what month August is in.”

“Thank you again Steve for sharing your words of wisdom this time. And one cannot end a sentence with ‘is in.’ ” Jacquie purred with a smile “You know it is ‘you guys’ fault for hitting him on the

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head with that rock-message back at the hospital in Paris.”

“Jacquie, how many times do I have to tell you to save your kudos for me until I figure out what’s going on,” Then turning to Jock and Lik whispers, trying to blow away Jock’s smoke and suicidal fruit flies that squeezed through the cracks of the door, and in a low muffled kind of growl, “She has me on this pedestal that no… no man could live up to.”

“Steve,” Lik iced her words, “You have come so close to a dangling participle—”

“And not only that added, “Jacquie added, “as soon as the Russians assassinate President De Gaulle they will make their move to take over West Berlin as the allies will be caught off guard unless we get moving.”

“The Allies are always caught off guard,” Jock said in his angry Japanese/Scottish accent. Grabbing another lit French cigarette from behind his right ear and shoved it in his mouth which made three

119

maybe four he was puffing on at the same time. He still had two more lit ones behind his left ear.

“Knock off that accent,” Jacquie demanded. Her words carried the threat of an unpleasant death.

“Which one?” Jock angrily hit a high note as glass seemed to break someplace. He immediately took up the Gobi Pretzel self-defense position (A bit more sophisticated than the regular International Pretzel Self-Defense position) Jock’s head began to tremble and turn a dark shade of tealish pumpkin orange. Lik, quickly grabbed a small burning candle and shoved it in his mouth twixt the French cigarettes. Jock seemed not to notice, or at least he calmed down.

“Do you have a confirmed day in August of this year when the assassination takes place?” Steve asked again.

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“No,” Lik stated. “That is aside from Wednesday

August 22nd and a name of Georges Watda the faux mastermind and also known as ‘The—”

“Stop,” Steve roared, sending shivers throughout all inmates of the hotel. “No more freakin’ aliases.

I have a hard enough time trying to understand what the hell is going on and I’m the mission leader. Let us just keep Georges Walrus the faux mastermind. Whatever the hell that is.”

“But Steve, “Jacquie corrected, her words smacking him across the knuckles. His last name is Watda not Walrus. Georges Watda and he to claims to be ‘The Jackal as well as a ‘Pygmy Hippo.”

“What did I just say Jacquie. No aliases. Just stick with Walrus. This is beginning to sound like a job for a zoo not a bunch of crack assassins.”

Jock began to spit hot wax and sticky pieces of tobacco out of his mouth. “I resent being called

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‘cracked,’ ” Jock’s words were almost lost in the smoke and pain coming out of his bazoo.

“I said ‘crack,’ “ Steve shot back.

“Quiet Jock. Well Steve,” Lik’s words were again like some fairy tiptoeing across an icy birdbath. “Besides what I just told you the answer to your question is no. We know nothing. We are ashamed.”

“Soooo,” Jacquie said in that soft killer French accent. “Aside from the date of Operation RedCom, the assassination of President De Gaulle which you said Wednesday August 22nd and a name Georges Watda, excuse me… Walrus for those of us not operating with a full deck. You don’t know when the assassination of President De Gaulle is going to take place and who is the faux mastermind behind the assassination?”

“We cannot know everything,” Jock sputtered in an operatic ear-piercing tone. “Who shoved a burning candle in my mouth when I was not

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looking?” Jock tried to spit out his waxy fire. His high note opera question relaxed him, a bit, from his International Gobi self-defense Pretzel stance,

“Is there anything else you do not know?” Jacquie asked in a pleasing soft French accent.

“Quiet Jock,” Lik said, this time, in a cold cold tone. “All we know Jacquie, or… do not know is our contacts Miroslav Elias and his Russian KGB buddy, the moron that looks and walks like Frankenstein’s creature and a group of about 10 OAS (Secret Army Organization} members have a Russian Look-a-Like of Premier Pompidou who we believe is President De Gaulle himself. They will install the fake in President De Gaulle’s place once he is assassinated by the OAS people. Which will be installing the real De Gaulle in his own place, even though he was assassinated.”

“You see Steve,” Jacquie said softly, “the Russians do not know that De Gaulle already is his own double, and he is also Pompidou.”

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“I don’t get it,” Steve said in a voice someone would use in reporting seeing a flying saucer in a chorus line, “If they assassinate De Gaulle, which we will prevent, why would they put Pompidou in De Gaulle’s place? I’m sure someone would notice. I mean if the fake imposter De Gaulle is, in actuality, the real De Gaulle morphing (quick-changing) into Pompidou the real assassinated De Gaulle… won’t someone the real De Gaulle is dead if Pompidou isn’t moving? Wait a mo. Which one of you doofuses hit me on my head with a rock back in Paris?”

Jock jumped up, stood at attention almost dropping the three, maybe four, lighted cigarettes he had in his mouth. Bowed politely. Excused himself and ran screaming into the WC, followed by a swarm of suicidal fruit flies, stuck his head in the toilet bowl to put out the burning candle wax fire in his mouth now beginning to rage into flames of destruction.

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“Excuse me,” Lik said, in a ho-hum manner “This has happened before… not being able to reach the flusher chain. In these hotels the flush chain is high above his head. He has congenital slow reflexes when this takes place.” As Lik sashayed toward the WC she slammed her machete into the wall where she was sure one of Rutherford B, Hayes Pinkerton men was hiding.

“Assassinated?” Steve questioned. His tone verging on ‘Covert Agent’ radicalism rage. “I mean whom is being assassinated? Pompidou or De Gaulle?”

Jock, returning to the table as Lik dries his bald head with an electric hair dryer attached to an extendable cord, High Hatted the room as he was refreshed from being flushed on.

“But there is no Georges Pompidou you fool,” Jock screamed out in words of smoke and what sounded like ‘Hysterical High Latin.’

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Lik, let the smoking hot electric hair dryer touch his head causing third degree burns.

Jock went on to painfully explain, “It is De Gaulle that plays both roles and now includes a third role of the Soviets fake De Gaulle. Have you never noticed De Gaulle and Pompidou walk alike? Talk alike, speak French, almost the same height. Look exactly alike… except for that beauty mark De Gaulle has. Take away that beauty mole and you could not tell them apart.”

“Couldn’t tell who apart? Let me get this straight Jock,” Steve growled in his low deep tone sounding as a man that intended to commit suicide but wasn’t sure how to get out of bed. “You’re saying De Gaulle is his own double? But the Soviets have a fake De Gaulle look-a-like who, thanks to French Intelligence and us, is the real De Gaulle acting as Pompidou and the Soviets fake De Gaulle? I mean… I don’t know what the hell I mean. Tell them what I mean Jacquie.”

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“Try to keep up with the conversation Steve,” Jacquie said angrily, “tell me again why you are on this mission with me.”

“What mission?” Steve looked around suspiciously rubbing the now retreating goose-egg on the side of his head where he was knocked unconscious earlier when the Unita’s threw that rock through the Petit Fou Café window front with a message tied to it, back in Paris earlier.

“That is because De Gaulle crouches down a bit when he morphs into Pompidou’s walk.” Lik’s words hung frozen in her icebergs scraping tone. “You always see them together and not necessarily at the same time.”

“Oui,” Jacquie collaborated. Her sweet French tone this time carried the pain of a tire iron across the knuckles. “I have seen them stand together, walk together, talk together. I have even seen Pompidou sitting while De Gaulle is giving a speech standing next to him.”

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“If De Gaulle and Pompidou and the Soviets fake De Gaulle are one person, how can one bestanding and the other be sitting at the same time,” Steve questioned with angst.

“Mirrors,” Jock spit out the high note scream as if he were spitting out an orange pit. The WC wall mirror cracked. Thunder began rumbling.

Lik, began applying mustard to Jock’s head burns until Jock passed out from burning head pains.”

“What the hell are you people talking about?” Steve roared as lightning flashed somewhere offshore and a chilly wind blew the balcony dark blue curtains aside.

From somewhere within the hotel came sounds of kettle drums being played as everyone who was conscious in the room looked around cautiously realizing a Mau Mau attack was very possible once the Kettle Drums stopped. (Steve, Jacquie, Lik and Jock had spent too much time in jungles alone.)

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‘Steve,” Jacquie whispered to him almost in rhythm to the hypnotic beat of the kettle drums what was happening on the mission. It was as if she was explaining the ‘Cabra First Test’ to the James gang. (This was a test concerning nuclear powered Xray lasers that scientist first theorized about at the Alamo Testing Grounds…circa 1945. The James gang refers to Jesse James and his boys.)

LATER THAT NIGHT:

“So, Jock,” Steve growled that low jungle cat warning when someone gets too close to where the big cat is crouching in their fight or flight mode.

Jock who was now conscious and smoking four French cigarettes in his mouth with two new lighted ciggies behind each ear lay sprawled out on a soft blue divan with matching pillow.

“Let me get this straight… again,” Steve continued, “You’re telling us the first part of the Soviets Project REDCOM, the assassination of Charles De

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Gaulle President of France will begin on the morning of 22 August this year by having Soviet Vasaltnicki groups, (Russian Agents disguised as next-door neighbors etc…) who will be told they are making a documentary of Les Halles and will be acting as ‘Smoke Police.’

They will put up ‘No Smoking’ signs all over Les Halles along with Smoke Police Cardboard Cutouts of Gorillas dressed as Gendarmes, so they look more threatening.

I mean the Gorilla cardboard cutouts will be ‘Smoke Police’ along with live action Vasaltnicki Soviet covert soldiers/agents and forcibly disarm Frenchmen of their cigarettes preventing them from smoking.”

“I… I do not remember saying all that, Steve.” Jock pleaded. But yes. Was I mumbling when I was unconscious?”

“How diabolical.” Jacquie said.

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“Diabolical?” Steve roared. “Try stupid.”

“You do not understand the French mind do you Steve?” Jacquie interrogated.

“Don’t pull that High School Psychology on me Jacquie. I don’t even understand my own mind.”

“Jock is a licensed Angolan Psychotherapist,” Lik advised in a burning dry ice tone. “As well as a former Mau-Mau Witch Doctor before he was discovered and chased out of Uganda if that helps Steve.

I remember that night. Idi Amin, we called him Da Da, in his underwear, swinging his ‘Poor Man’s machete, and his merry band of peculiars carrying tubs of tar and live chickens chasing and hobble dancing Jock and I through the night jungle. Just because Jock accidently hit him with a curse of ‘The Old Man’s Dance.”

Lik volunteered her story flinging her machete straight up again deep into the ceiling and piercing

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the roof where a tourist Frau Herzlich Wilikommen was taking an unauthorized Sist bath on the roof. There was a scream followed by a long deep roll of thunder. More like a painful horse Winnie of a frightened mare with a cold makes when startled.

“Look siphon apterous brain,” Jacquie snapped eyeing Steve.

“See,” Steve beamed, “that pedestal Jacquie has me on gets higher and higher. I’m gonna need a seatbelt at this height. I mean, don’t get me wrong Jacquie. All these Kudos you’re giving me are making my head swell. No offence Jock.”

“Huh?” Jock screamed with a ‘Knight of the Roundtable’ eloquence.

“And” Steve marched on, “as the commander of this mission, I would even be greater if I knew what the hell you people were talking about.”

Jacquie got up and went over to the kitchen’s Cold Storage door. Opened it, turned the light on then

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yelled, shook her head, looked around, slammed the light switch down, banged the door shut, regained her composure said to herself ‘And we called him Da Da.”

Returning, she alighted on her chair like a floating elegant leaf. Then continued: “Taking a cigarette away from a Frenchman will cause an explosion the likes not seen since Marie Antoinette allegedly said, ‘Let them eat cake.’ Jock can tell you a thing or two about the Jacobian Club.”

“You go Jacquie,” Jock screeched.

“Shut up moron,” Jacquie responded calmly but posed to attack unmercifully.

“What Jacobian Club?” Steve roared. “Where did that come from?”

“Jacquie’s is right,” Lik said in her usual ice cracking underfoot tone. “It is diabolical and right out of the old 1789 Jacobian playbook. Any French child knows that.

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The French police will be tied up for hours if not days. Riot police squads will be called to Les Halles from all over the country. I am sure the French Government will call out the Army. Even pulling the security details off De Gaulle as he travels. Leaving the pathways wide open for ‘The Jackass’ or any Alias to strike and allow the Russian propaganda machine to tell the world the French are pulling out of West Berlin weakening the Allies hold on the rest of West Germany. This confusion may even cause France to pull out of NATO.” (NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization.)

“Now wait a mo,” Steve demanded. Even his deep growl sounded bewildered. “Let me catch up. The only thing I understood is the name ‘The Jackass.’ ”

There was a deep sigh by the group. Even ‘The Home Book of Verse’ seemed to sigh although he was still unconscious.

“If all this happens,” Steve growled, “that is whatever the hell you guys are yappin’ about, how

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are these disguised Soviet Vasaltnicki undercovers… How are these Smoking Police phonies gonna escape? Think about it. Copenhagen has a population a bit over nine hundred thousand. If they’re caught it will be soon found out they are Soviet Vasaltnicki troops and that will cause an international incident and will solidify the Allies even more.”

“The sewers of Paris,” Jacquie said in her soft killer French. “The sewers of Paris crisscross under Les Halles going in hundreds of directions and miles. Not to mention they connect with the catacombs and have many escape tunnels to the Metro. Even sanitation workers have been lost never to be found.”

“That would be fine if we were in Paris,” Steve growl snapped. “But we’re in Copenhagen.”

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“We are,” Jock’s tone hit one of those torturous high notes that can cause ears to bleed. “I thought we are in Paris.”

“Oui. We are,” Jacquie whispered, her ears burning as were the others. “Steve will be back with us in a while.”

“Paris,” Steve questioned in a base voice that seemed to make the table vibrate. “Okay, that’s better. Then it seems we might have the correct logistics. One will have the detail maps to the nearest manhole covers. And theoretically so would the Soviet Vasaltnicki troops.”

“Right Steve,” Jock said in a moderate scream timbre. Now down to smoking two cigarettes at the same time. Even so his enunciation was quite eloquent. His words showing signs of advanced ‘hyperthermia.’

Thanks to Lik’s machete Golumpi we have copies of the Sewer Escape maps the Soviet Vasaltnicki troops intend to use to make them vanish like a

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herd of stampeding Yak disappearing in the Himalayas as they go over a cliff. My mouth tastes like wet candle wax.

“Let me see that map, Jacquie ordered in a voice that made everyone at the table figuratively jump to attention.

Perusing the map Jacquie started to say, “This map is—”

Suddenly the divan pillow Jock was resting his head on burst into flames.

“Quick thinking Jacquie and Lik,” Steve said as the ladies carefully lifted the brewing pot of Bouillabaisse over Jock’s head to extinguish the flames over Jock’s screams of drowning in pain. The matching blue Divan pillow is destroyed as was one side of the Divan. The aroma of the fish stew seems to fog their minds.

Jock, now sitting on the other end of the Divan was rocking back and forth mumbling old Johnny

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Holiday Rock and Roll songs to himself in Japanese. Then looking up he said in English “What is that leaking from the sealing?” It tastes like Epsom Salts.

“Thank God,” Lik said with an Icey sigh blessing herself “Jock, that must mean you still have one taste bud left.”

Jacquie, Steve and Lik sat back down at the large table once again after the smoke and the scent of burnt Divan hair cleared a bit and the spilled Bouillabaisse ate up the linoleum in the kitchen area. Jock was somewhere out in space and not ready to rejoin the group.

“Political assassinations very rarely work,” Jacquie proffered again in a soft ‘by the by’ tone.

“I still don’t understand this double stuff about De Gaulle and Pompidou,” Steve served his words as if he kicked a 3-point field goal. And don’t give me static about not understanding the French mind.

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De Gaulle being his own double and his own Soviet fake double and disguised as Pompidou?

That means if the terrorist succeeds in knocking off Pompidou, they still are knocking off Pompidou… I mean De Gaulle… I think. I mean they are still accomplishing their goal.

Wouldn’t it be better if Georges Pompidou disguised himself as De Gaulle? Then if, and don’t stop me if I’m wrong, Pompidou disguised as De Gaulle gets knocked off leaving De Gaulle is still alive.”

Jacquie, Lik and even Jock in his bizarre state of mind looked at each other as if Steve missed the whole point.

“Let me try to explain it to you again,” Jacquie said in a voice that would make one feel warm and comfy. “I have been trying to tell you something especially important about De Gaulle since we started on this mission. But I have difficulty getting through all the cement.

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There is no Pompidou. Imagine you are one of the terrorists about to assassinate De Gaulle as he goes by in his car—”

Lik interrupted: A Citron DS 19. De Gaulle calls it ‘La Deesse.”

“The Goddess,” Jacquie translated.

“I speak and understand French,” Steve’s words gave a warning growl. “At least I did until we started to work together.”

“Really Steve?” Jacquie smiled an understanding smile one uses when a patient Lion tamer tries to teach an unruly man eater to sit up.

“And yes, Lik,” Jacquie added, “the Citron Goddess has a wonderful transmission and suspension system. I rode in De Gaulle’s Goddess limo several times along with his wife and Pompidou who is of course really De Gaulle.”

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“Well… aren’t you so special,” Steve chimed. “And don’t start that De Gaulle being his own double stuff again.

“How I hate you,” Jacquie, slightly shaking her head, served her words with a touch of hemlock. “Anyway,” Jacquie went on. “Make believe you are the terrorist and just as you, the terrorist, is about to squeeze a round off with your Dragonov Soviet sniper protocol rifle you see your own terror leader who organized this assassination plot in the first place in the back seat, where De Gaulle should be sitting as the President in De Gaulle’s limo, the Goddess how would you react? Would you take the shot?

Or maybe you see yourself in the back seat where De Gaulle sits, or Georges Watda, or in your case Walrus, waving a white hankie at you in a Toddle-Doo manner.”

“Toddle-Doo manner?” Steve growled. “And?”

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“Would that not throw your aim off?” Jacquie’s comment this time was served with sweet thick peach syrup. “But now things get complicated.”

“Now?” Steve challenged.

“Yes, Jacquie snapped French style. “According to Lik and Jock the Soviets have a look-a-like of De Gaulle. So that means there are two De Gaulle’s but only one can morph into Pompidou and—”

“Wait a mo,” Steve stood up at a posture that seemed to be ‘Dress Right Dress.’ “All three including the Soviet De Gaulle are really the real De Gaulle. Jock or Lik or all of you said there’s no Pompidou. De Gaulle is not only himself… Maybe? But he is his own double, and he is Pompidou. Did I say that right?”

Jacquie and Lik looked at each other and shrugged. “We do not know,” Jacquie said cautiously. “The

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French mind is beautiful and occasionally beyond comprehension.”

“One must be married to a French woman to understand the French mind. And it makes no difference,” Lik said in a tone of someone stirring crushed ice in an empty glass.

“Makes no difference,” Steve snarled. “And wait another mo, where did this guy Georges Watda… I mean Walrus come from. How’d he get into the Goddess limo with himself… and De Gaulle? Why would he be waving a white hanky at me the assassin? And why ain’t I in the limo with everyone else?”

“You are right Jacquie,” Lik continued her tone of crushed ice being stirred in an empty glass. “Steve doesn’t understand the French mind. I wonder if there is any Bouillabaisse left.”

“You see Steve,” Jacquie tried to, in a soft French accent, and in one syllable words or less, explain. “President De Gaulle, unbeknownst to the general

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public is a master of the ‘quick-change.’ He can be in De Gaulle’s Goddess limo as Pompidou or Watda… Walrus for you Steve… or, as an assassin waiting along the side of the road to shoot himself in his Goddess limo as it passes.”

“Ya know,” Steve growled in a low tone, “this is the first time I realized my whole team is freakin’ insane. How could I have missed that when I first interviewed you… loonies. I’m swearing off French Fries.

Answer me one thing Jacquie,” an exasperated, yet bewildered Steve asked in an ‘Assassin’s Covert Rage.’ “There’s five people in De Gaulle’s limo driving down the road. De Gaulle’s wife, De Gaulle himself,’ this white hankie waving guy Georges Walrus, De Gaulle’s driver Moreau and Georges Pompidou who is in reality… Wait… don’t tell me. Ahhh,… I don’t know. And De Gaulle waiting down the road disguised as the terrorist Georges Walrus

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to shoot himself in the limo as he passes himself on the road.

Now he can’t be all these people no matter how fast of a quick-change artist.”

“Theoretically you are correct Steve,” Jacquie said as if she was putting forth some unsolvable equation. “But in practice—”

“But what about Pompidou?” Steve growled in a painful tone as if an overweight Encyclopedia salesperson holding a complete set of the World’s knowledge was standing on Steve’s bootless toes.

“There is no Pompidou,” Jacquie, Lik and a mumbling and crying Jock all yelled.

“That’s right,” Steve bellowed. I forgot about that. I think it’s all beginning to make sense to me in some delusional way?”

There was aloud banging on the door. “It is the ‘Nimrod.’ Open the door.”

###

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DEBRIEF PART 10

18 August 1962

Saturday Night

23:00 HOURS

SAME LOCATION

“Who?” Steve growled.

“The police,” Jacquie said in a harsh tone of ‘What now?’

“Open the door,” the voice on the other side of the door shouted again as if he was calling a garcon to take back his fish dinner.

“It is open,” Steve roared back as he flung open the door… “now,” he continued in a more mellow growl.

Rushing in the police officer in charge said loudly,

“ I am Sargent Brouillard, ‘IOSOPND.’ “

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“International ‘OffShore’ Ocean Police, Nimrod Division,” Jacquie said gallantly with a smile

“Is there anything you don’t know?” Steve demanded in a surly voice as he gave Jacquie the Brooklyn stare.

“We have had complaints about the strange noises and screams from this suite,” Sergeant Brouillard

Said in a deep, fries frying in a pan voice. And someone staring out your balcony not moving. And smoke coming out of the side open windows on your balcony.

This poor fellow,” pointing at Jock still mumbling and rocking back and forth still smoking his two French cigarettes, “has smoke coming from his hair and ears.”

“How quaint,” Jacquie whispered with a sigh.

‘Can you explain this?” Sergeant Brouillard shouted.

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“No,” Steve growled, “Now if you must bid us Adieu, I am sure you folks can find your own way out.”

“My men will search this place. I demand again have you any explanations? Wait I smell Bouillabaisse.”

“Ah, you changed your mind about leaving,” Steve said disappointedly.

“Hey Sarge, this nonmoving guy all dressed in grey-cat like…, smoking a Raleigh,” Officer Fan Tann said with a rusty throat sound, “but not inhaling starring over the balcony has a two-inch ash hanging on his lip… don’t we know him?”

“Hey Sarge,” IOSOPND Corporal Louiggi Laplander commented. “Let’s set up a pool to see who comes closer to guessing when this cigarette ash falls on this schnooks lap.”

Count me in,” Steve snapped in a low but twig snapping tone.

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“Why you young nitwits this is the famous Cat Burglar of Royan.”

“You mean Sarge he is the—”

“Right Fan Tann… This nitwit is the famous ‘Home Book of Verse.’ Alias ‘The Cat Burglar of Royan.’ His real name is Count Chochon Cnout… Also alias ‘Puss and Boots’ alias ‘The Umbrella of Cherbourg,’ the greatest criminologist in the world until he went off his rocker. We have been trying to catch him since… Say, are you people part of his gang?”

“That cannot be Sarge,” IOSOPND private Fan Tann interrupted. ‘The Home Book of Verse’ always works alone.”

“Right, you are Fan Tann,’ “Sergeant Brouillard said in a strangely happy tone. “Well, it looks like you people will be getting the reward. Your photos will be in all the newspapers—”

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“Look Chief,” Steve growled, “We don’t want any reward. We didn’t even know he was here. If anyone deserves a reward, it’s private Fan Tann.

Just then a strange, heavy set rotund woman wearing a bed sheet exploded through their front door with a large white laundry basket over her head screaming, “Police, my unmentionables… Look.”

###

DEBRIEF 11

ROYAN BEACH THE NEXT MORNING

19 AUGUST 1962

SUNDAY 0800 HRS

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“Watch you don’t get sun-burned,” Steve said as he read the Sunday morning funnies.

“Steve, we are under a giant beach umbrella that is big enough for a family… So, Steve, what do you think?

“About what? These Katz and Jammer Kids are just too much.”

“Forget the Sunday Funnies. Madame Trevi’s unmentionables being leaked on by the hole Lik put in that Frau, what’s her name? Frau Herzilch Willkommen’s Sis bath with Lik’s machete she blasted through our ceiling and partly the hotel’s roof.

” Relax, Jacquie. We convinced the Nimrod’s offshore police crew that all the damage was due to the idiot ‘The Home Book of Verse.’

“Oui, I suppose,” Jacquie sighed. “Not only he is going to be hit with all that second story stealing when he wakes up but a large laundry bill for all

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those unmentionables. Medical stitches for those women’s derrieres unmentionables.

And structural damage to the hotel. I do not know why Trevi’s unmentionables were spread out on the roof like that. It was dark?”

“Let alone why Frau Wellkommen was taking a Sis bath on the roof when a storm was coming in from the ocean. And what were the Nimrod offshore division IOSOPD doing on shore in the first place?”

“I admit Steve, when you are around strange thing things cozy up to you.”

“Cozy,” Steve growled the word.”

“Oui, Jacquie challenged. “Is that not an American word. It means—”

“I know what it means. What I don’t know is… why this mission is starting to get a wee bit strange? That’s another thing I don’t know… where Jock, his stilt and Lik are now? And come to think of it what the blue blazes are we doing in Royan?”

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“Boy,” Jacquie sighed again in French. “For a leader there is a hell of a lot you do not know.

“And your crack team of… I mean ‘cracked,’ team of security specialist can’t find an ex punch-drunk boxer out of seven suspects.”

“Jock is in the local hospital, Steve, recovering from his wounds as usual. Lik and her Golumpi are out looking for Rutherford Hayes. ‘The Home Book of Verse’ alias whatever is under Nimrod arrest. Whatever that is?

Listen Steve, we have the Royal Luncheon security meeting at the Chamber of Deputies this Wednesday the 22nd of August, And I mean this August not last August.

We still have not figured out who the assassin is on President De Gaulle’s security detail.

All I found out from my contact, as I tried to tell you before, was that the assassin on the security team was a contagious punch-drunk ex-boxer and

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sparring partner that has undergone extreme face-lift plastic surgery at some very deep underground Soviet futuristic hospital. The hospital is so deep below ground the rumor is this assassin still suffers aftereffects of the ‘Bends’ for a mishap in the elevator that brought him up to the surface too fast—”

“Wait a mo,” Steve said in a low warning growl. “You still harping on that? You mean your French Intelligence can’t pick out a contagious punch-drunk ex-boxer, suffering from…

‘Elevator Bends,’ ” Steve barked. “If this guy exists, I’ll pick him out at the Royal Luncheon Wednesday the 22nd of August this year not last year. Wait a mo. Contagious for what?”

###

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THE ROYAL FRENCH PRESIDENTIAL LUNCHEON

DEBRIEF 12

Wednesday, 22 August 1962

13:00 HOURS

‘

Paris France

CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES

MAIN DINING ROOM

‘THE GREAT HALL’

Formerly ‘The Robespierre Great Hall.’ Formerly

‘The Thermidorian Great Hall.’ Formerly ‘The Hebertist Great Hall.’

Over ‘The Great Entranceway’ is a quote from Robespierre, just before he tried to Guillotine

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himself without the use of gravity, inscribed into the reddish/gray ‘marbleish’ stone.

(Roughly Translated)

‘REGARDE YA MORONS

YA CANNOT HAVE PEACE AND LIBERTY WITHOUT

TERROR’

In attendance: Three hundred and fifty-two high ranking government security forces, a dozen or so politicians and their wives. Also, in attendance was a four-hundred-and-fifty-pound undercover sumo wrestler who was also a plumber and a practicing Ninja. For the record. His name was Octavus Uncontous. He sumo wrestled under the name of ‘Ah So.’ (No relation to the code Ah So.)

Jacquie April, Steve Ptah, Lik (Lethal Intensity Kon) Unita and Jock Unita were all sitting toward the end of one extremely long marble rectangular table covered with beautiful silk tablecloths. Each

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high-back royal oak chair with greenish-blue cushion and backrest.

The service was exceptional except for several hard-working bus boys seemed to be falling behind.

Jacquie, Steve, Lik and Jock, arguing about the Boxer Rebellion and its similarity to the Soviet operation REDCOM set for later this evening were all seated at the far end of the table far away from President De Gaulle and his entourage and security team.

The security team are seated all around President De Gaulle, his lovely wife Yvonne and Georges Pomoidou.

It was strange as it seemed De Gaulle and Pompidou kept changing seats at Herculean speed. Even Madame De Gaulle had to request a neck brace after a while to keep up with the conversation with her husband and Pompidou.

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For some reason, large, thin, almost invisible, possibly ‘Fun House’ distortion mirrors were set up around the President and Pompidou.

***

“How do I look Lik?” Jock, blowing smoke and all-weather fruit flies still attracted to his aftershave, demanded to know. His tone was in the extreme high ultra-sound range only migrating Blue Wales, Lik and wondering forest minstrels could hear.

Jock, dressed in formal high luncheon attire modified tuxedo over a lemon/white shirt, Black leather motorcycle pants and obsidian colored engineer boots completed his ensemble. Jock sighed in escaping helium filled-Scottish breath.

Only Lik seemed to be able to understand Jock… Sometimes when Jock spoke Japanese with a highlander accent… marbles could be heard rolling around his old bean as if they were inside a blown-up balloon.

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“Well, my sweet’s,” Lik said coldly waving her hand in front of her to make a passageway through the fruit flies, smoke and coughing a bit gasped.

Lik, dressed in a white blouse with a red rose design, red shawl, red scarf and still displaying her well off-center coiffure smiled a smile of simplicity and yet of terror that would send cart pulling oxen stampeding to their doom.

Her red scarf hiding her machete ‘Golumpi’. A wide looping black widow skirt, black running ankle boots continued in her usual ice crackling tone.

“Except for the scars caused by the brewing bouillabaisse fish stew Jacquie and I poured over your head to put out the fire on your… your swelling head. And the three temporary skin graft chewing gum tattoos on the top of your head and ears I Got from Gist and Sons Candy Store… Well, you look as handsome as ever. But to be honest I do miss your one long una-brow eyebrow.”

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“My head does not swell. It blimps into a ninja brain. But for some reason I cannot get the taste of burnt Epson Salts and melted candle wax out of my mouth.

“Sweetie Jock, not only do you not have whisper of a brain in your antique head, but you are as bald as a cracked white billiard ball.”

“Lik, who is this bald sweetie Jock that you have me mixed up with? Hoot Mon, my name is… er, Jock. Not Sweetie Jock.”

“Steve,” Jacquie whispered into Steve’s ear, “I just received the word that everything is in place to repulse the Soviets operation REDCOM early this evening at Les Halles.”

“What? How?” Steve hiss growled. “How did you ‘just receive word?’ I didn’t hear anything. I would like to know how you just got word… Did a bug fly into your ear, or… you are hearing things again?”

“Will you shut-up moron. I will tell you later.”

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“Oh, you always say that, but you never do. I want to know how you received an idiot message in the middle of the Presidential Royal Luncheon surrounded by hundreds of pompous tushes

and—”

“Never hiss-growl at me again with one of your stupid question or you will be walking backwards for a month.”

“Huh?” Steve’s jerked his eloquent reply that there is no defense against. “I can’t hear crapola what De Gaulle is saying. Let alone what you are mumbling about. We’re too far away at this end of the table. We might as well be sitting in a fast-moving taxi in the middle of Borneo,” Steve announced in a roar.”

“A fast moving taxi? Steve,” Jacquie spat back, “Just because you are wearing an ‘abnormal psychology 101’ dark-dark tuxedo with black cowboy boots—”

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Applause, from the normal guests interrupted Jacquie.

President De Gaulle just finished up his welcoming his official luncheon Guest, Count Guido Passato of Andorra. Or, perhaps it was the Honorable Sans Culotte from some unpronounceable, but important in the development of number three artist street-chalk, village in East Wales. There seemed to be some confusion whom the official guest was. It was typical Washington D. C. speak… French style.

“Steve,” Jacquie whispered ignoring Steve’s sparkling repartee about him not being able to hear ‘crapola.’ “When are you going to point out who the traitor is on the President’s security team? They are all up there with him now?”

“Patience Jacquie,” Steve answered in a murmurous growl. “If there is one. The time is not right.”

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“Oui right, like I believe you. Just as I knew. You have no idea who… Hey, is that not that Madame Telelsi and Frau Herzilich Willkommen from Royan?”

“I can’t see that far down the table in this dim chandeliers’ lighting, “Steve grunted angrily.”

“Here Steve. Take my opera glasses,” Jacquie’s words were as sweet and soft as a monarch butterfly making a crash landing on a milkweed. “I keep forgetting how ancient you are.”

“Opera glasses? Who brings opera glasses to a Royal Luncheon?” Steve volleyed back in an amazing two sentence growl. Peering through Jacquie’s opera glasses Steve confirmed the sighting. “They must be the wives of the General’s they’re sitting next to.”

“Wonderful Steve. I often wondered why you are the commander on this mission. Now I know. There were not enough imbeciles on our team,”

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Jacquie announced in another soft butterfly crash landing.

“Hold your kudos for later Jacquie,” Steve growled. “This mission is not over yet. Does this… Arch- Duke Hayes of… crapola ever gonna finish his toast?”

“Who?” Jacquie challenged.

“I hope he knows Jacquie is white-toast intolerant,” Lik whispered in an icy-rain murmur.

“His joint’s must have stiffened-up,” Jock screeched, as the giant Sumo wrestler Ah So (not the code Ah So} got up to stretch then accidentally sat back down on the speaker’s head. The speaker had bent down to deal with an errant shoelace.

“Did you see that?” Jacquie asked rubbing he eyes. “How could that happen.”

“I can’t see crapola,” Steve regurgitated again in a

menacing low grunt.

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“Aw shut up,” Jacquie whispered under her breath. “You are missing the whole mission. I wonder if that was a sign?”

“Is there a doctor here at the Royal Luncheon?” President De Gaulle called out in a loud authoritative voice?”

“I am a doctor. I have a Pygmy following of—"” Jock shouted in a voice so high only animals at the Paris zoo, a few miles away, could possibly hear him. And perhaps a few Telegraph plants at an arboretum over a hundred miles away. Or so goes the later newspaper reports by, Squint News investigative reporter her under the cover name ‘Gallapuchi Pup’ a Rootie Kazooti officiate.

“Sit down moron,” Steve interrupted Jock’s sentence using a warning tone of an annoyed tiger, “We are undercover and there are several doctors attending to Arch-Duke Hayes—”

“Who?” Jacquie asked again. “Steve, where did this Arch-Duke Hayes come from?”

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“From the last war. How do I know.”

“Did someone say they saw Rutherford B. Hayes,” Lik, grabbing her Golumpi, blurted out in a chilling, blizzard-hale tone that could only be explained as a five-hundred-pound icicle breaking off a roof, while hitting, in mid-air, an extremely large flight of high note bells hanging 30 feet below.

“No, no, no. No one said anything about Rutherford B. Hayes,” retorted Jacquie in a hard but restrained din.

It was too late, Jock and Lik had vanished from their assigned Royal Luncheon seats. The fading song of ‘Put your left hand in and shake it all about’ being sung backwards could barely be made out coming from under the table.

“Oh no,” Jacquie murmured softly but not without hopeless anger. “Lik, is going into her berserk time and with her moronic sidekick.

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“Double teaming like a tag team wrestling match of giant intellects. This is the world’s ‘intelligencia’ represented in action,” Steve’s growls had a grin to them.

“Steve, you might find this stupid but I—”

“I still can’t hear crapola Jacquie. We’re too far—”

Suddenly, giant gongs exploded all over the Great Hall creating vibrating reverberations causing everyone to cup their ears and do a seated shimmy-shimmy.

“Can you hear that moron?” Jacquie snapped with the sharpness of Lik’s machete plunged into Steve’s ear.

“French ‘Great Hall’ guards wearing thick Royal Blue ear protector muffs poured out of every conceivable ‘Great Hall’ orifice. All guards were attired in tall blue hats, blue uniforms and black spit-shined boots. Shouting, giving orders to each

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other which helped in not disarming mass confusion.

The Chef and Sous Chef, the Dessert Chef stepped out of their deeply recessed kitchen as they thought all excitement and noise was applause for their gastronomic delights. A surprise after-dinner celebration for their wonderful Royal Luncheon. Taking bows and blowing kisses to their appreciative panicked diners.

The Chef known as Monsieur Coq Du Beau-Jolais Novay. Madame Sous Chef Shanghai La La Ren-Min-Bi Ptomaine and the Dessert Chef… ‘Miss Candy Bon Bon’ known affectionately as ‘La Fille Au Cul Doux’ were all immediately arrested and blown away to the old Bastille now a museum by the running to and fro Great Hall guards. No one really understood why the Chefs-Extraordinary were arrested.

The Gongs stopped as fast as they had started. President De Gaulle, always in-command, was

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informed what had happened and called for order and quiet. Assuring the Royal Luncheon guest that all is well and to return to your seats. With the help of the ‘Great Hall’ guards clubbing into silence a few of the dining guests. Well actually many were clubbed into silence. Calm was eventually restored.

Georges Pompidou stood up and accidently knocking over one of the large, almost invisible, mirrors. Then immediately sat down in a funny blurry way.

President De Gaulle shot up at what looked like at the same time in the same blurry way and explained:

“My Dear, Dear dinning guests. Those of you who are still conscious. A terracotta priceless butt of Robespierre by Deseine, on loan to the French Government by the Musee de la Revolution Francaise has just been stolen from one of our display holders… Er… What was that Pompidou?”

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“My Dear, dear dinning friends. Dear, dear Georges Pompidou just corrected me. It will be his last correction. It was not Robespierre’s Terracotta priceless ‘Butt’ that was stolen. It was Robespierre’s Terracotta priceless ‘Bust’ that was stolen. It weighs about 30 kilos and ‘yea’ big. I am afraid this means everyone must be searched.

There was immediate rumbling and leftover fruit cup throwing from the elite dining gusts who were conscious and puffing furiously on their Gauloises and Gitanes possibly effecting their fruit cup aiming.

President De Gaulle and Georges Pompidou taking very quick turns trying to restore order to the insulted guests who were secretly returning silverware to their table. Sliding their Ill-gotten items under their large, crumpled linen napkins.

Jock and Lik who had disappeared during their ‘berserk’ attacks creeped from under the table

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back to their original seats next to Steve and Jacquie.

Jock’s presence still accompanied by dozens of suicidal fruit flies, some still exploding from Jock’s sweat laden head that had the backup lighted ciggies behind each ear igniting the fruit flies seemingly doing battle with Jock’s head. Many fruit flies plummeting in fiery death spirals. Others just suicidally racing full speed, with kind of a ‘ziz’ noise, into Jock’s head and exploding. It was horrible.

“Where were you two?” Steve demanded to know in that Royal deep growl of his. “You missed all the demented excitement.”

L[k, cold as ever, added in a voice of a last plea of a semi frozen pigeon falling out of a tree, “I heard a rumor that Rutherford B. Hayes is about. I thought I spotted the eternal rascal, but it was only a man with a limp. Now he has the limps on both legs. Right Goulumpi.”

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“You two are freaken insane,” jacquie started to say as she rubbed her face. But before anything really happened like Golumpi answering an out-a-breath Lik, Jock heaved up his words.

“Hoot Mon, Steve hold this.” Jock’s high-pitch squeal in joyous Scottish shoved a weighty, heavily wrapped in burlap object on to Steve’s lap.

“What the?”

“Oh Steve,” Jacquie snapped in a ‘Quelle Surprise’ tone. “What kind of nincompoopery is this? Again.”

“Don’t blame Steve,” Lik said in a ’cracking ice cube tray in half’ voice, “my Jock became a French Herbertist… a furnace maker came to power during the French Revolution. The French Reign of Terror about 1793. Jacques Herbert wanted the world to worship furnaces. I suppose because he was a furnace maker.

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Well anyway, there was this indoor tennis court at Versailles where all Jacobians (French Furnace Makers) took an oath to overthrow the King. Jacques Herbert ordered furnace makers and other assorted Jacobians not to disband in 1789 until a new French Constitution was accepted to make sure the French never ran out of wine. Or something like that.

Of course, this teed off the King Louis XV1 to no end. King Louis XV1 was a tea teetotaler like Rutherford B. Hayes wife. Evidently, the Jacobian crowd refused to obey the King’s order to ‘disband and to ‘Knock it off.’

Then the King’s wife added, while eating a piece of cake on the palace terrace above the milling crowd was, “Get lost you pinheads, and find some cake to munch on.” (It loses a bit in translating French into French.)

“It does not loose enough in the translation, you idiots.” Jacquie flash-danced her words across

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their faces. “French into French. Complete morons. And I do not believe Marie Antoinette said, “Go find some cake to munch on.”

“What the hell are you all talking about?” Steve’s roar was of a wounded Grizzly sitting down on a thorny bramble bush. “I didn’t ask for a history lesson. And I’m telling you morons the same thing King Louis said to his people, “Get lost you morons.” Steve opened the heavy burlap cloth a sweaty Jock had dumped on his lap.

“Steve,” Jacquie re-proclaimed. “What is wrong with you?”

“Me?” Steve questioned indignantly.

“Never mind,” Jacquie’s tone was of French sweetened sadness, “We do not have time for a complete psychoanalytical session. That would take centuries.”

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‘Will you stop talking about yourself,” Steve snapped. We have a mission. Now what the hell is this? Someone’s head in clay.”

“Did you guys steal this?” Jacquie whispered? “This is what all the ‘gong’ alarms are about and people panicking? Steve wrap it up again before someone sees it.”

“Hoot Mon, Jacquie. I took the bust of my hero Robespierre. I could not help it. I am a Jacobian at heart,” said a puzzled Jock in a soprano tone.

“I thought you are a Heberitist at heart?” Lik murmured in a slow-moving ice jam chill. Taking her Golumpi from under her cloak and with an express train thrust shoved Golumpi into the head of Robespierre’s bust. Obviously, the only place left to hide for the illusive Rutherford B. Hayes.

“A Heberitist? Moi? That was last year,” Jock cried in Angry Red Army Brigade Japanese as his head

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started to expand and turn, this time, a rather strange shade of turquoise-orange. He lit up a stale Jacobian cigarette.

Jock’s head disappeared in a veil of cigarette smoke and immolated wretched fruit flies that all seem to join in a terror-glee obscuring one’s vision.

“Actually, I am thinking of becoming a Thermidorian after reading the Thermidorian Law of 22. And how much I enjoyed my Lobster Thermador.” (Themidorian 22 July 1794 passed by French parliamentary revolt caused ‘The Reign of Terror’ and Robespierre era to eventually collapse.)

“Jock, your lobster bib is on fire,” Lik mentioned nonchalantly in a calm tone of someone stirring shaved ice in a cracked ceramic bowl.

“You know how much the ‘Great Terror’ means to me.” Jock went on as his lobster bib flamed to ashes. Lik threw a jug of water in Jock’s face and on the still smoldering bib ashes.

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Jock continued unaware he was just splashed but the fruit flies weren’t. They became even more furious as they seemed to renew their Blitzkrieg.

“Unfortunately, Jock continued, “Robespierre’s Jacobian, plan egged on by the Jacques Hebert and the Hebertist, was to have everyone in France Guillotined even the executioner. Due to a slight miscalculation Robespierre forgot to have himself guillotined before the executioner guillotined himself.

Try as he might a delusional Robespierre could not get the damn Guillotine to work to guillotine himself. Of course, his disbelief in gravity from childhood may have worked against him.

Later, Robespierre lost interest in the Revolution and furnaces and became obsessed with stilts.

But I have this Japanese Red Sun Angry Army Brigade Loyalty as all the Red Sun Angry Army Brigade have loyalty to Maximillian Francois Marie Isidor de Robespierre.

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Still, I desire to become a builder of furnaces as Jacque Hebertist. Publish my own revolting newspaper ‘Le Pere Duchesne,’ never run out of wine and be a heroic model for all fictional working-class furnace makers… well I do not have to tell you what that means.” Ending his desires, memoirs hopes and dreams with a Bonsai suicidal scream that was felt throughout the Great Hall.

Fortunately, the pain of Jock’s scream and echo in the Great Hall prevented anyone to exactly target where the great scream came from.

All the Royal Luncheon guest were seen dapping their ears with hankies and tissues to stop little drops of blood from running down the side of their faces. Even the great giant Sumo wrestler Ah So (not the code Ah So) was brought to his knees holding his ears.

“Oui, you do Jock have to tell us what all that means, but not now. I do not know what the hell you are talking about,” Jacquie snapped as she

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Steve and Lik finally stopped their ears from bleeding.

Jock Unita, still smoking a stale but damp Jacobian, three dripping wet Gauloises at one time and numerous, partially soaked lobster legs, and lit ones behind each ear for backup, spoke his above mesmerizing, ignoble and heroic words as his head expanded a bit more. He was showing head colors of blazing orange, hysterical dark blues, irrational scarlet, and other eye-burning hues perhaps never seen by humans before.

“Who were you yappin’ about? Secondhand furnaces” Steve growled a warning shot across Jock’s brow. “What the hell are you babbling about you—Look out your head is about to—”

Just then Lik grabbed a heavy silver tray from one of the ‘out-a-breath’ bus boys and creamed Jock a stunning blow, that would have put down a 1500 pound charging South African water buffalo in heat, over Jock’s expanding dome causing a

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shallow, hollow metal sound; killing dozens more swarming fruit flies and unfortunately crippling Jock’s ability to count to six.

“Lik,” Jacquie put forth her words as a Raptor might utter a warning to baby Raptors. “You know Jock’s head really does not swell that much when he gets angry or confused. You should stop hitting him on the head with heavy items like steam engine parts.

The colors of deep shaded ghastly Pumpkin orange, irrational scarlet, frigid blue and other strange colors that are not even possible…

Well, just giving the appearance his head is ballooning up.

Not forgetting though the brutal antimatter bizarre happenings at the Jardin De Poubelle Café the other evening.

Now I have definite proof my hypotheses are correct that other things in the universe are faster

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than light. Although, the alleged release of antimatter should have wiped out our existence as well.”

Steve, looking at Jock’s undercover slumped smoking body hanging partially over their part of the table said in a long deep voice, “Maybe it did Jacquie. Maybe it did.”

“Steve, how stupid can you be?” Jacquie demanded to know. “Wait. How disappointing. We still have not pushed you to your full capacity of stupidity… yet. And I thought we had.”

“Huh?” Steve countered with his famous one-word sledgehammer repartee shield.

“Hmmm,” Jacquie retorted,” I am still working on my hypothesis. But oui, there are things in this universe that are faster than light like—”

“Like stupidity,” Steve mumbled-growled. “One never wants to experiment with antimatter when there are morons about.”

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“Oh, do not be so hard on yourself Steve,” Jacquie sighed in Riviera French. “Almost not everyone thinks you are a moron. I just do not know how I put up with Steve’s martyr complex. Of course, it is Steve’s theory—”

“What? “I don’t have a martyr complex. Nor do I have any theories about anything. I don’t even know why you people are talking about that idiot’s noggin. Stunning colors. Swelling head. What about my problems? Mutinous crew on my mission. And—”

“Steve,” Jacquie, said sweetly but sternly, “I thought I made it clear about my sage.”

“Whaa?” Steve jungle roared. “Are you saying Jock is your sage?”

“Jock?” Jacquie said somewhat surprised. “Who is talking about idiot Jock? You just mentioned ‘The Noggin.’ My Pen Pal in a place called Cobleskill in the States. Remember, I told you I met ‘The Noggin’ when I became lost on tour, a few years

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back, through Pennsylvania coalmine country. He saved my life once when I was thirsty for water. Minersville, Pennsylvania I believe. I started out from Pottsville and for some reason I ended up in Minersville.

I also seem to remember a headless mule running around. He calls himself ‘The Noggin because he is so brilliant. His head stores so much knowledge there is no room to grow hair.”

“What? The Headless mule? Jacquie, headless mules don’t have noggins to grow hair,” Steve announced in a fiery blast, and shaking his head. Please don’t crackup on me. I can’t take anymore headless noggin mule Sage moments. We have a mission to complete.”

“Swine,” Jacquie said, “The Noggin is not the headless mule. You do not even understand what is going on.” Jacquie’s words carried the punch of an outta-control-wrecking ball.

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“Hoot Mon,” Jock cried out pushing himself up from the table and belching French, wet ciggy smoke, what look liked, from every opening he had in his head.

“Jock grabbed for some soggy but still lit cigarettes and lobster legs from behind his ears. Also taking with him dozens of his aftershave fruit flies with his grab.

“Be a good fellow Steve and return this bust of my former hero Robespierre back to the stand I took it from,” Jock spoke in perfect very-high pitch delirious Punjab. Fortunately, Jackie was there to translate. “Being a Jacobian is not as much fun as I thought it would be.” Then Jock passed out again on his part of the table. A big red lump appearing on the top of his ole bean.

“You idiot,” Steve growled shoving the Bust back onto a collapsed Jock’s lap. Jock stated to move and sit up again. “How am I gonna put this ton of Bust…Robespierre’s head back without being seen

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especially now that it has Lik’s Golumpi stuck in your hero’s temple. Pull it out.”

“Former hero,” Jock screeched, blowing French ciggy smoke like a steam engine trying to pull an immovable load even for a ‘Yes I Can’ small steam Choo Choo. Jock tried to re-shove the Bust back to Steve.

“Impress me my hero Jock Unita,” Lik pleaded in her thin ice cracking underfoot timbre as she dislodged Golumpi from Robespierre’s head.

Unfortunately, Lik had to use her two feet pressed against Robespierre ear and with a mighty tug retrieved Golumpi as her Royal Luncheon Chair tipped over backwards spilling Lik, the Bust and Golumpi to the stone floor causing a disturbance again to the guests near them.

“What is wrong with you people?” One of the guests, Major Duisieme Crape-Plait, demanded to know as the rest nearby back area Royal Luncheon guests schooshed them.

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“What’s wrong with us?” Steve growled in that low warning big cat threat. “There isn’t enough time to tell you—”

“I thought this was supposed to be an undercover mission,” Jacquie whispered in sweet soft French.

“Forget it,” Steve shot back.

“Get down on your hands and one good knee Jock,” Lik’s tone was that of deep ice, deep ice. The kind of ice a submarine reports while traveling under the Arctic Circle and looking for a place to surface. Lik straightened up her chair and secured Golumpi then continued,

“We will help strap it to your back and then crawl back under the table toward President De Gaulle’s chair. Then put the Bust under his seat.

Jump up and scream ‘J’accuse’ as you point to President De Gaulle. Everyone will think he stole it and tried to blame it on the Royal Luncheon crowd.”

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“That is the length of a soccer field,” Jock screamed in Angolan slang as Jacquie and Steve attempted to reassure the Royal Luncheon’s sitting near them that it is just the way they ‘burp’ in Angola.

“What happened to my lobster bib and why does my face feel wet?” Jock demanded. “Did someone throw a jug of water in my face?”

“Relax Jock, “Jacquie whispered, “It is just your imagination.

“Great plan Lik,’Steve low-balled his ballyhoo. As Steve gently, well almost gently, shoved Jock off his chair and crunched him under the table with Lik’s help.

Through an onslaught of cigarette smoke, fruit flies and ‘Angolan burping’ both Lik and Steve lifted the Jacobian Bust that was now under the table. Pretending to look under the great table for a dropped table napkin. Steve then hoisted the 30-kilo bust onto Jock’s back.

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This caused Jock to collapse immediately.

“Jacquie,” Steve coughing through the French ciggy smoke with watering eyes growled,” don’t just sit

there. Help us get him back in a crawling position.”

“Idiots,” Jacquie exhaled. “There is no drama in this stupid plan. Remind me never again to attend a Royal Luncheon with you morons.”

Jock, complaining and ‘Hoot Mon-ing’ and blowing cigarette smoke and fruit flies out of every conceivable opening in his body chugged his way under the extremely lengthy luncheon, silk linen, table-clothed, great marble Royal Luncheon table toward President De Gaulle’s chair.

“You can do it,” Lik cried out, her head under the table, voice sounding like skates in a hockey match cutting through the ice. “Just keep saying, ‘I think I can,’ ‘I think I can,’. I think… therefore I am. I think…er…What was I saying?”

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“Too bad we couldn’t find a strap for Jock to keep that heavy load balanced on his back,” Steve, growled mumbled.

“Not to worry Steve. My Jock has exceptional balance even with only one fully operational knee.”

MOMENTS LATER:

President De Gaulle, continued his idea with his guests:

Ladies, Gentlemen, Military Officials, Honored Guests, I your President Charles De Gaulle have come up with a better solution for finding the missing Robespierre Bust. I am going to order the lights turned off for 30 seconds. And all drapes closed. The person or persons who… accidently… er…stole the irreplaceable Bust of Jacobian Robespierre is to place here on my table in front of me the missing Bust. No questions asked.

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The President then turned to Pompidou who was seated next to him and whispered, “Remind me later to check for fingerprints.” (Actually, many people believe he might have been whispering to one of those almost invisible Fun House mirror’s or to himself.)

A few seconds after the lights were turned off and drapes drawn in the Great Hall there were horrific screams in high-pitched Angolan.

Simultaneously, there was a heavy crashing thud and yelling of two elderly female voices. One voice cursing in German, the other in French. One legged hopping could be heard. It was dark in the Royal Great Hall, very dark.

“Turn the lights back on,” Georges Pompidou yelled then coughed. It was a dignified cough. A cough that sounded familiar to De Gaulle’s closet friends.

“Turn on the lights,” came the words from almost, but not quite, the same sounding voice.

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As the never-ending rows of ceiling chandelier lights came back on, Frau Herzilich and Madame Teleski were hopping around on one foot cursing in German and French. A distorted Bust of Robespierre was laying out in the open. A dent in the side of his head where a machete had been.

Many of the dining guest, being politically correct joining in with hopping of their own in a show of sympathy chanting, ‘We feel your pain.’

“Arrest those two medically obese hopping miscreants,” President De Gaulle cried out. There was a struggle of epic proportions.

Back at Jock’s empty chair Jock’s hands came out from under the table grasping the Royal green blue of his cushion seat.

“Hoot Monnn…Help.”

“What happened?” Lik’s frozen tone of melting ice refreezing asked.

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“I do not know. It felt as if someone hit me over the head with one of those heavy silver bust boy trays as I was crawling,” Jock moaned a helium swallowed moan.

“But that was a while ago my frayed hero,” Lik’s words were cold and barren.

“Hoot Mon Lik,” I just felt it now when I was crawling under the table. And then… I tell you as I was limp-crawling back someone else was under that table in the dark and threw a jug of water in my face.”

***

PREIDENT De GAULLE CALLED FOR ‘LE SILENCE.’

Except for Madame Teleski and Frau Herzilich who stopped hurling expletives but were still hopping, in pain, on one foot after refusing to be arrested there was only a rumor of silence.

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Then one could only hear in the rumor of silence a single elephant trumpeting softly far, far away. Possibly from the Paris Zoo or even, Les Halles.

“And now for what I promised you Jacquie,” Steve

whispered a whisper-growl that would cause shrieking terror in any normal person where there was now complete silence. Then a pin was heard dropping.

Raising a large metal soup ladle and picking up the now deformed silver tray from the floor that Lik used earlier as a weapon to halt the expansion of Jock’s head.

Steve smashed the ladle into the silver tray in the dead silence producing the sound of a loud bell, one would hear at a boxing match.

One of President De Gaulle’s top seven security guards named Jean Cantelaube sitting at the corner of the large marble-ish table by a standing President De Gaulle and his sitting wife Yvonne

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and a sitting Georges Pompidou, Jean Cantelaube rocketed on to the top of the Royal luncheon table.

Coming out of his corner swinging wildly. Throwing hard punishing punches and yelling in Arabic Egyptian the way only the Zizib Kid could yell before the Zizib Kid hit the canvas, hard like a 75-millimeter shell hitting a cement bunker, for the count. And bubbling ‘let me at the bum. I will rip him to pieces ‘then giving the final assassin’s salute before being counted out as Jean Cantelaube bent over in pain from elevator Bends and hit the canvas (The Royal Luncheon marble tabletop) like that 75 millimeter hell hitting a cement bunker, we just mentioned above, cracking the Royal Luncheon marble tabletop.

###

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DEBRIEF 13

LES HALLES

DOWNTOWN PARIS

WEDNESDAY

22 AUGUST 1962

1657 HOURS

SOVIET ATTACK REDCOM IS ABOUT TO BE ACTIVATED:

LES HALLES was frantically busy as usual. Knockout aromas carried by French cigarettes. North African Cigars, British pipe smoke, regurgitating sewers, animal waste, minor unexplained occasion explosions. The scent of the infamous cooking of Andouillette blood sausage stampeded about. All intertwined with what sounded like poor-man’s painful ‘Tarzan Jungle

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Yells.’ (Similar to Steve’s when he fell off the balcony back in Royan.)

Sporadic small arms fire, trucks moving about and burning metal barrels with bizarre looking characters staring into the Penrod-soaked blazing hemp.

People singing the 1958 ‘Beep-Beep’ song by the Playmates. Accompanied now by the Old Timers standing a bit back from the fiery spark smokey spray coming from the red glowing metal barrel as they tried to harmonize with the old French Beep-Beep melody by humming Tchaikovsky, opus 39 Number three.

Strange sounds like loud ricocheting pinballs being battered to and fro. Voices of all timbers and directions blasting and echoing throughout the great marketplace. All participating in shouting battles to be heard.

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Cows, sheep, chickens, some documented Yetis, and other creature’s strange exotic and not so strange or exotic protesting their treatment. All joining into the sounds of metal grinding on metal, cement and wood.

Cars honking all framed by piano music coming from the now, partially being rebuilt by men who seemed to be dressed as trolls, the infamous and famous ‘Jardin de Poubelle Café,’ still known affectionally to international foreign agents as the notorious, ‘Alma Frump’s Dump.’

Three tenths of a ton, Alma Frump herself, in a modified body cast with a straitjacket thrown casually over her shoulders Hollywood director’s style. Sporting a new permanent wave dyed ‘Tint Hair Number 9’ and being lifted around giving orders from an ambulance type forklift. Signing eight by ten glossies to passing awe struck peculiars with her signature X. Yelling to impatient

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tourist that crowded around her forklift, “If you want my signature go look in a dictionary,”

Yes, the old ‘Jardin de Poubelle’ which just illegally reopened after the curious happenings concerning an alleged ‘speeds faster than light.’ Trashed by hauntings of dissatisfied Spirts and accordion players in short pants. Now the Moulin Rouge music, escaping from ‘Alma Frump’s Dump,’ was amplified.

More tourists were drawn to the rebuilding and remnants of ‘Alma Frump’s Dump’ seeming to crowd out the usual locals. The tourist came to possibly hear splotches of occasional low-grade machinegun fire. Experience outrageous time travel. In hopes to inhale gagging sulfur smells. Perhaps to experience explosions of antimatter being released, unexplained hauntings and dozens of other weird things.

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It was a wonderful time to be in Paris in the early sixties.

Two top KGB Soviet agents, Miroslav ‘Short Step’ Elias and Frantisek ‘Creature’ Strachovsky are just passing a giant metal bin of sheep heads in Les Halles.

“They all look like they are peacefully sleeping, some even smiling at me. Swine sheep,” A twisted and held together by scaffolding ‘Major Creature’ noted as he peered from a smoldering brown paper bag.

A bandaged and scorched ‘Major Short Step,’ under severe Kremlin order’s makes Major ‘Creature’ wear over his head when they are just lurking in public together.

“I would say defiant sheep heads not smiling, rather definitely laughing at you ‘Creature,’ ” said Major ‘Short Step’ in a voice that only those who are in horrible pain of abusing Haldol would use.

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“I told you not to call me ‘Creature’ Miroslav. You know my men call me that behind my back.”

“Everyone calls you ‘Creature,’ Why do you think I order you to wear a slow burning brown paper bag over your head filled with increment when we go out together or accidently tramp through our restaurant Major. Do not forget we are both Majors in the glorious Soviet Union KGB but I outrank you by thirty-two seconds.”

“Ahhh Phooey. Thirty-one seconds you… I thought I was undercover KGB. Ordering me to wear that brown burning bag over my head in public is an insult to the KGB. After all I am the best of the best.”

“Nonsense you idiot. I cannot stand the horrifying cries for mercy and all the throwing up when people see your face.”

“Surely you jest.”

“Jest? Your troops have the longest morning sick call line in the glorious Soviet Army.”

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Now look Miroslav you short piece of… Oh oh I am getting a nosebleed from my tallness again Major Frantisek ‘Creature’ Strachovsky bellowed. I feel my knee joints stiffening. I cannot bend my knees when I walk. Oh no Miroslav my hands are beginning to turn a green pallor. In the name of Stalin’s Chiken feed stuffed bags he uses to have shoulders. Look, I am having a creature attack. I need another brown burning paper bag.

“You idiot ‘Creature’ I have not received the new brown, slow burning paper bag material yet from Moscow. Our beloved Soviet Union is running out of matches and slow smoldering brown paper bags because of you.”

“Aw, it is just everyone we pass tries to put the smoldering paper bag out by stepping on my head—”

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“Wait,” Miroslav ‘Short Step’ Elias ordered. It is time.”

“Time?” Frantisek ‘Creature’ Strachovsky questioned. Surprise splattered all over pieces of his smoldering brown paper mug.” You mean it is ‘Howdy Doody’ time that Americans watch on their Soviet made televisions about this time? My watch must be fast. I do not understand Miroslav, we are wearing the latest Soviet no hour hand time pieces,” ‘Creature’ asked staring at his Soviet watch. “Oh no. Now my elbows and fingers stiffened up. And my fingers are hard as 7 penny nails.

Slow down ‘Short Step’ I am not able to walk as fast as you even though I am seven times taller than you.”

“No, you moronski,” Miroslav ‘Short Step’ Elias yelled. “It is not ‘Howdy Doody’ time. Stop watching the latest Hollywood movies on fantastic Soviet TV. It is REDCOM time. A glorious day for

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the hammer and Sickle. And stop sneaking the peaks from under your brown paper bag.

“Ah yes, Hammerski and Sickleski two of my favorite Soviet musical composers. As Major Frantisek ‘Creature’ Strachovsky started to whistle the opening tune of ‘The King and I’ one of his favorite Soviet musicals before he was high stomped kicked by one of several hundred fake antismoking police who thought he was smoking under his smoldering brown paper bag.

The fake antismoking Soviet police excreted out of their tourist busses they had hired like a bad phlegm cough.

Many Russian Spetnaz troops, that were not attired in fake antismoking police cardboard uniforms, were dressed in Arab clothing started doing Russian ‘sit-down’ squat dance (Kazachok style) shouting out in Russian accented English

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“Pardon me little lady, the sea is tossing this Missis sippi gambling Riverboat around like the glorious rush to get into Lenin’s tomb.”

The Soviets moved forward spreading out like squat dancing Lemmings about to commit suicide over high cliffs into a hungry sea. All this action to avoid suspicion of them being nuts.

From sewers and manholes in and around Les Halles they swarmed. Sticking up fake life-size cardboard cutouts of Gorillas wearing French police outfits with antismoking police sashes.

Unfortunately, the police uniforms, the mean-looking gorilla cardboard cutouts in police uniforms are uniforms that the police wore in the Napoleonic era. A minor slipup in Soviet political intelligence.

Thanks to Jock, Lik, Jacquie and Steve’s vital REDCOM dossier the real French police, French

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military, French, American and British undercover agents were ready to stop Soviet REDCOM.

Several swat teams of mental health experts from Vienna carrying Sears and Roebucks catalogs were at the ready on the roofs of neighboring buildings. As were several dozen animal shrinks and whisperers and rumor specialist and assorted peculiars parachute ready to leap off rooftops naked if called into action. Also, the Paris Bingo Club providing rooftop refreshments and parlor games.

There were melees in all directions. Running, fighting, screaming, jousting, cursing, calls for medics and Philip Morris’s cigarettes.

Animals making their last-ditch efforts to escape and succeeding. Herds of bovines and non-bovines racing in Les Halles with exotic parrots on their backs seemingly urging the animals the four-

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legged ones onward. Stampeding, snorting animals and humans, enormous tropical parrots riding anything with two or four legs that were charging, squawking, “we’re fwee, we is fwee.”

The notorious Jardin de Poubelle Café (alias ‘Alma Frump’s Dump’) no longer in freefall quickly taking advantage of the chaos putting out yellow signs with red lettering in French, English, Russian and in some type of ancient script reducing the price of their famous Jambon sandwiches and vin rouge, French cigarettes, bird seed and wooden milking stools ‘for this riot only’ were bustling with business and fights.

Many locals broke into ole French ‘Slap and Hurdle’ Apache dancing. Old French Cancan music could be heard coming in waves from the Café’s inner core.

Thousands of French smokers resisting the fake antismoking Soviet soldiers dressed in their

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Napoleonic era police uniforms. Resisting with extreme force.

The fake antismoking Soviet troops did not expect such brutal, horrible resistance when someone tries to stop a Frenchman from smoking let alone a French woman.

Many of the disguised Soviet troops, even the cardboard cutouts, so it seemed, started looking at their underground escape route maps which were, as Jacquie alluded to earlier, seriously out of date.

Manhole type coverings that had been blocked off for years, some for centuries were pried open thus allowing fumes and sounds of the past to enter the brouhaha.

Many Soviet fake antismoking agents wound up floating in the Seine River. Some locals say the Soviet agents vanished into other dimensions as they floated underground in the crisscrossing

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sewers below the Jardin de Poubelle Café which was ‘Rockin’& Rollin’ away just a few feet above the doomed miscreants.

Other miscreants, it was noted later by rescue teams became permanent guests of the French catacombs. Then things started to get strange.

Hiding in an overturned bins of hog jowls and flowers Miroslav ‘Short Step’ Elias and a nonfunctioning stiff Frantisek ‘Creature’ Strachovsky trying to raise their Soviet ‘Kremlin-at-Large contact on their Walkies Talkies.

“Calling Colonel Zaitsev. Calling Colonel Zaitsev at REDCOM command. This is Major Elias reporting on my Walkies Talkies. Project REDCOM is doing well. There is just one little Agghhhh…”

“We’re fwee. We is fweeee…” came an orchestra of squawking shriek calls from Parrots and

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screaming Macaws and pounding hoof and shoe beats.

“Fwee?” Colonel Zaitsev roared, “Are you two idiots saying, ‘you are defecting?’ “Colonel Zaitsev raged. “Allo. Allo comrades?”

It was a very good time to be in Paris in the early sixties.

###

DEBRIEF 13

THE ASSASSINATION OF CHARLES De Gaulle

PARIS

22 AUGUST

1850 HOURS

LOCATION: BARRIQUE DE GENDARMERIE GARAGE

CHAMBER OF DEPUTIES GROUNDS

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President Charles De Gaulle and entourage are going to a small airport at Villa Coublay near Petit Clamart South of Paris.

Petit Clamart is a suburb of Paris. The Presidential limousine, an unarmored stretch Citron de 19 La Deesse (The Goddess) had a super hydropneumatics system. Automatically adjusted height that keeps the limo level in almost all terrain and can adjust any sane weight load. The stretch limousine can hold up to 12 persons if necessary but not advised by the manufacturer.

Once fully loaded, The Goddess, held up momentarily after a small weight and balance delay, and the President congratulating Jacqueline April for pointing out the assassin in his security team, departed almost quickly.

The Goddess burned rubber out of the police garage at the Hall of Deputies onto route 306

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heading toward Petit Clamart and Villa Coublay Airport. President De Gaulle wanted to spend a few days at his farm after a very upsetting Royal Luncheon. It was getting dark, and the night was crying.

“Do not look so smug Steve,” Jacquie said in a low poisonous tone. I knew Jean Cantelaube on President De Gaulle’s Security team “was the punch-drunk assassin all the time.”

“Of course, you did,” Steve said in a low

whispering growl and a sly smile.

“I really do hate you,” Jacquie whispered calmly without looking at him. Okay, Honor due. Clever the way you exposed the traitorous assassin.”

“How many people, animals and junk are in this Presidential moving van?” Steve growled scaring the small flock of elite champion

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roosters and chickens President De Gaulle ordered to be taken with them to his hobby farm. Not to mention his prize-winning calf, Elsie.

Jacquie mocked Steve for complaining, “Obviously you have never traveled in a Presidential limousine before.”

Steve did have a point for piled in the Citron stretch DE 19 Goddess was the Chauffer Morrow. Next to him was a marvelous Autumn orange kitchen sink made by El Sink-Ole of Panama City, Panama to be installed in the President’s hobby farm and Dubois ‘The Midget.’

Monsieur Dubois preferred to be known as ‘The Midget’ among his Government Security team because he wanted to strike fear and discipline. The unspoken rumor was that he was just nuts but a top security agent. The

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spoken rumor… well, he is he is a giant that suffered a serious accordion accident.

The Presidential limousine had a small sunroof opening above the latest kitchen sink. Dubois ‘The Midget’ sat on the Autumn colored kitchen sink and peered out the sunroof with his oversized special operation ‘Macho Man’ night goggles.

Dubois ‘The Midget’ kept yelling at Morrow the chauffeur to turn off his headlights as they interfered with Dubois ‘The Midget’s’ night visibility goggles.

“But Monsieur Dubois ‘The Midget,’ ” protested Morrow, “if I turn my headlights off then I cannot see where I am driving.”

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“Ah,” Dubois ‘The Midget’ shouted, “Civilians. Ya got to love them. Then turn off your headlights and just use your dimmest running lights you fool. And cannot this thing go any faster?”

“But Monsieur ‘The Midget, if I am driving With just the running lights on I need to slow down to see where I am driving.”

As the front seat arguing went on, squeezing in next to the Autumn orange sink and Dubois ‘The Midget’ was Lik Intensive Kon Unita and her partner Jock Unita compressed into the passenger side front door. Sitting on Jock’s lap was a security team member Monsieur Pont Neuf. His head compressed into the windshield.

“What’s all the hysteria about up in the front?” Steve growled. “I can’t see crapola.”

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“What are you growling about Steve?” Jacquie’s stern voice drilled its way through human and animal flesh and heavy cast iron metal Autumn orange sink like a dentist tooth-drilling hitting a major nerve. “You are in the front section.”

“I am?” Steve challenged. “I seem lost in this menagerie of—”

“I need air for a moment,” a loud voice in Japanese blasted like a foghorn in an impenetrable fog as a sound of a side window exploded throughout the Presidential limo. A rush of fresh swamp aroma air fought its way in as the racing vehicle seemed to weave a bit.

“I need air,” came the tortured cry again. Octavus Uncontous, alias Ah So, (no connection with the secret Code Ah So) Sumo wrestler extraordinaire, and hobby farm guest of President De Gaulle bellowed.

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President De Gaulle’s champion calf Elsie, he was also taking to his Getaway farm, started mooing uncontrollably. This mooing caused the small flock a Blue-Ribbon chicken to start to cluck insistently and flap their wings loosing many feathers in the now careening Goddess.

In the back row sitting next to the right-side passenger window was President De Gaulle, his beautiful wife Yvonne. Squeezed in next to her sat Georges Pompidou. We think. President De Gaulle and Georges Pompidou kept changing seats with each other at unbelievable quickness.

Madame De Gaulle passed out from ultra-dizziness. Or, it might have been from the stack of thin Fun House mirrors in front of Madame De Gaulle she was forced to stare at during the trip.

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Jacquie, who wasn’t quite sure where she was sitting in the speeding Goddess, and after the limo hit an outrageous bump realized she was now sitting on Steve’s lap with two other horizontal ‘Team Security’ men.

Somewhere scattered in President De Gaulle’s limo were other ‘Team Security’ people in various positions. Soft cries of help seem to go unanswered.

Rummaging through the crowd but well-behaved mob, coming out of nowhere and unauthorized was the crawling of a lunatic. Party number 60508 Publicist partially attired in his 14th Century Knights outfit hysterically screaming ‘I warn you,’ and snapping blinding flash bulb photos.

“Someone just punched me,” roared Octavus Uncontous. His huge left arm smashing, this time, the rear most window of the limousine.

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Just then the security car door alarm blared ‘A Car Door is Ajar.’ Followed by a psychedelic blinding light show from inside roof spelling out ‘A Car Door is Ajar.’

“Someone is trying to break in,” Steve blasted out.

“Idiot,” Jacquie quipped, “There is no room for anyone to get in the limo let alone the fact we must be travelling at 120 kilometers an hour moron.

“Always with the unimportant details,” Steve growled.

The calm smooth voice of President De Gaulle came over the speaker, “Remain calm everyone.” Then in an assured tone of peace

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and tranquility addressed the chauffeur Morrow.

“Morrow, use your training of escape driving skills to dislodge anyone attempting to assault the Goddess.”

After 10 minutes of anti-assault maneuvering, driving up back alleys of small unnamed villages, unexplained blinding flash bulbs continuously exploding accompanied by excruciating painful repartee of ‘I warn you.’

Racing across partially moonlit landscapes of heavy forests, high hard bumps on non-existent roads, rickety wooden bridges, President De Gaulle gave the order, over cries of help and mercy, to return to the main road and resume to normal lunatic speed.

“The now broken light on the ceiling stating, ‘A Door is Ajar’ is off. And if you all would notice

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the annoying voice repeatedly sounding ‘A Door is Ajar’ at super-supersonic speed has ceased.

Whomever the scoundrel, or scoundrels were trying to break-in to the Goddess Limo have been eliminated by the quick driving action of my professional security chauffer who has once again saved the day. May I suggest a hefty round of applause. And if you are able give yourself a round also.

All that could be heard were muffled moans and more cries for medics and Veterinarians.

“Morrow,” Georges Pompidou demanded, “Where are we? “I have not the slightest idea Monsieur Pompidou. I do not think I have been driving for the last three minutes. I think Iam in the back seat next to you.”

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“Dubois,” President De Gaulle shouted. “Where are you?”

“We lost Dubois ‘The Midget’ guy after the first hard bump as he went through the Sunroof.” Morrow gargled.

“Okay then. Everyone is accounted for,” Georges Pompidou announced.

After a few minutes everyone started to settle back down into the chaos before someone or a group of ‘someone’s allegedly tried to break into the speeding limo.

###

AMBUSH DEBRIEF FOLLOWS

221

BELOW

AMBUSH DEBRIEF

LOCATION: ON THE ROAD (N306}

APPROACHING PETIT CLAMART

WEDNESDAY

22 AUGUST 1962

2050 hours

“It is past sunset, they should have been here by now,” Georges Watda, a member of the OAS by proxy, known as ‘The Lame Woman,’ alias ‘La Boiteuse.’ Also known as the ‘Jackass’ and ‘The Real Jackal’ and other aliases squeal.

Georges Watda an assassin who likes to dress up in women’s clothes, which for some reason makes him walk pigeon-toe and limp. Georges Watda also alias ‘The Limp,’ ‘The Lump,’ Clampit Rabinowtz, ‘The Jackass,’ and of course ‘The Real

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Jackal,’ (Not Fat Eddie Illich Ramirez as Fat Eddie’s publicist claims.) complained as they sat on the side of the road in front of the Café Trianon in a yellow Renault Este Fette van in Petit Clamart.

Aside from Bastien Thiry alias ‘The Thorn’ who was the inconsolable boss and supposed to be a shooter and George Watda, a shooter. Galan de la Tonaye, with an alias that was unpronounceable, another shooter in the yellow van and the driver alias ‘The Driver’ who also handled Walkies Talkies communications with the two other road vehicles. The Lookout car and the chase car incase Georges Watda and the other two shooters miss. In all there were 10 known assassins.

“We should call this whole thing off,” Georges Watda mumbled in non-understandable British to Bastien Thiry, leader of the assassination squad and a member of the Vieil Etat, also a retired

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Major in the French Army and of course, Clinically Depressed.

The Vieil Etat, (The Old Way/Condition) is a clandestine organization within another secret organization the OAS (Organizational Army Secret} with dubious connection to officers in the French Army. To belong to this supersecret Vieil Etat one must have traceable roots that reach back to ‘The Jacobeans’ and Robespierre. To be an officer in Vieil Etat one must be able to put a furnace or boiler together blindfolded.

“You Vieil Etat and OAS people are incompetent,” Squawked Georges Watda. After all I am the ‘Jackass’… er I mean ‘The Jackal’ the ‘Pigmy Hippo’ if you wish… the best assassin in the world. I must get out of this van so I can breathe.

“Regarde ‘Jackass’…or ‘Jackal’ or whatever the hell your name,” pleaded, Clinically Depressed, Bastian

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Thiry, “Wait… I thought I was ‘The Jackass… I mean ‘The Jackal.’ “

“How many times must I remind you?” Georges Watda yelled, “You are the Red Panda.”

“Red Panda? Where the hell did that come from? I thought I was also ‘The Thorn’?” A clinically depressed Bastien Thiry cried out.

“Bastien Thiry continued, “Listen, you…you ‘Tete de Viande’ Watda, you are being paid beaucoup money to knock off De Gaulle as he passes by. Do you want to by a pair of American Dungarees or HiFi’s? Dirt cheap. I am overstocked back in my bedroom cellar of my parents apartment in Paris.”

“I still do not understand why I am being paid in Japanese Yen,” Georges Watda alias ‘The Jackal’ or ‘Jackass etc… cried out. I will have to carry my payoff in six suitcases. U.S. dollars Or French or Swiss Francs would be much better.”

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“We went all over that, and I am not getting embroiled with you again,” a still Clinically Depressed Bastien Thiry shouted. “Are you sure I am not ‘The Jackal?’

Bastien Thiry made some bubbling noises with his mouth and insulting gestures with his arm and fingers, but not without Georges Watda returning the same arm and fingers gestures almost missing President De Gaulle’ speeding van, “Now about two hundred meters behind us is our lookout vehicle. The Hungarian, Palmpilpest alias ‘The Hungarian’—

“Stop Thiry… If you give me one more freaken alias I will assassinate you. Right here. Right now. I am beginning to feel sorry for De Gaulle.” Georges Watda wailed. In the distance a dog wailed back.

“Okay. Okay,” Bastien Thiry started to cry. “The

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Idiot Palmpilpest will signal us by Walkies Talkies when he spots De Gaulle’s limousine approaching any minute now. De Gaulle always sits in the back seat on the passenger side. All you have to do with your high-powered rifle is fire into the backseat as he passes.

The Hungarian is in the lookout vehicle, and he will give you plenty of notice. Now if you miss

De Gaulle, we have a chase vehicle.100 yards or so down the road that will chase them and machine gun everyone in the Limousine. No survivors.”

“I do not miss,” Georges Watda snorted defiantly. “You have my money ready.”

“There are six suitcases stuffed with Japanese Yen in the back of this Renault, all for you when De Gaulle is killed,” Jean Bastien Thiry started to cry again.”

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“Japanese Yen,” Georges Watda, alias the Jackass, the Jackal the Pygmy Hippo, or whatever sounded off. “I ought to shoot you morons. Give me my confirmation and reservation for my room for the Wolf Hotel in Munich. Is my grey Deushbowl Citron 2 CV AZLM escape car waiting for me?”

“Oui, as promised,” a bleary-eyed Jean Bastien Thiry alias ‘The Red Panda’ or ‘The Thorn’ sniffed. “Behind the Café. With your phony license plate FL775 and your flip switch to revolve into a different license number.”

“Now where the blazes is De Gaulle? It will be very dark in another half hour,” Georges Watda, alias the Jackass or the Jackal or the Limp, etc… sneered. “You idiots said he would be here at sunset. We should call this whole thing off.”

The assassin’s Yellow Renault Este Fette van’s Walkies Talkies started to crackle as reports came

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in from the Lookout and the Chase car wondering where the hell is President De Gaulle’s Limo?

Jean Bastien Thiry, laughing like a hysterical, tormented Jackal, thus his alias also, quieted everyone down by saying ‘We are all going to be killed.’ “I am going to wait in the café Trianon. Good Luck. The driver, alias ‘The Driver’ alias ‘The Fiasco’… will take you to your ‘Jumping Off Point’ behind the Café Trianon place transfer your Yen after you assassinate De Gaulle.

A shot rang out creasing Jean Bastien Thiry’s skull.

Watda could not believe he only creased Thity’s skull at such a close distance.

“I have to get a drink.” Jean Bastien Thiry left the van in tears due to his morbid clinical depression and morbid grotesque faces he was making holding his bleeding head.

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Georges Watda, still giving Jean Bastian Thiry arm and insulting finger gestures as Thiry stumbled away. Thiry also returning Watda’s insulting gestures.

Watda laughed, blew smoke away from his rifle barrel inside the yellow van.

Jean Bastian Thiry was refused entry to the café Trianon because of his fast deteriorating mental and physical condition. And also, because the large waiter at the café’s entrance thought Thiry was giving him the insulting gestures as Bastien Thiry tried to enter the establishment.

Bastian Thiry wondered onto the main highway toward a TV store across the wide road, stumbling and holding his head.

“Attention…Attention came the excited voice from the lookout vehicle. “Hey Watda, what are you

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doing sitting in the back seat of De Gaulle’s Limo? Looks like you guys are having one hell of a party in the passing limo. A lot of screaming and jumping around inside the passing limo.”

Grorges Watda prepared to fire again, this time at De Gaulle. He also wondered how he could have missed Thiry’s head at such a close range of six or seven inches. “What are you talking about you moron? I am here in the shooters van ready to fire.

As Watda, fired at the passing Limo, President

De Gaulle’s Limo showed some idiot smashing up and down into the ceiling of the Goddess limo a number of times as he held a 12-volt sparking battery shocking everything in the Presidential Limo.

Simultaneously, flashbulbs kept popping among the shouts of ‘I warn you,’ animal noises, Sumo

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grunts. All like a weird nightmarish celebratory horror dream.

The Presidential Limo started to pass the assassins yellow onRenault van. Georges Watda and others to open fire, blasting away, the Presidential Limo which swerved to miss some crying stumblebum, holding his head, staggering across the main highway toward a TV store on the other side of the street.

That crying stumblebum, holding his head causing the Presidential Limo to swerve probably saved everyone’s life in the Limo at that point. The was later award ‘The Unknown Pathetic Stumblebum Award’ for saving the President’s Life.

More shots rang out followed by more shooting from the yellow Renault.

“Yikes! That is me sitting in the back seat. I just shot myself,” Georges Watda ‘The ‘Jackal’ alias ‘The Real Jackal’ screamed-cackled.’

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President De Gaulle’s Limo flew by with shattered windows and many bullet holes in it. An ear-piercing suicidal Bonsai scream emanating from the Limo faded as the Presidential Limo shot by.

After the shooting stopped, there was complete silence. A dark grey ‘Deutsch bowl’ chase car, about twenty meters past the assassin’s rifle smoking yellow Renault van, was parked on the side of the road. The silence broken as the ‘Deutsch’ bowl’s engine tried to turnover and start to no avail. Cursing of several rifle-toting Hungarian men, as they tried to start their car, could be heard.

A lamppost light showed a tired breeze urging a torn piece of old, damp, dirty Paris newspaper crossing the bullet shell covered road.

The item of interest read in part… “Have You Seen This Man?’ It was an artist sketch of Jock Unita wanted for questioning in a 10 million Franc bank

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checking fraud case. ‘May be disguised as a woman dressed as ‘Mother Hubbard wearing a straitjacket.’

### END OF DEBRIEF ###

I’ll always remember the craziness. Love ya kid,

forever… bill,

ONZE de la croix ROUGE

19 APRIL 1300 hours 1963 Original cc

02 March 1500 hours 2010: Updated. cc

Classified Material Removed by U.S. Department

of Defense. Section 8 Division.

###

Love letters to follow:

Nanny Lud Has Just Been Murdered… Again. cc

Hysterical… The Precursor to ISIS. cc

Jerkwater U.S.A. cc

The Cobblers Ville Proposition. cc

Secrets of The Ancient Stone Forest. cc

Etc…

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