Page 87 of Shadow Ticket
“Dunno, but sure is looking like I must’ve.”
In this backcountry saturated with suspicion, where strange bikers are less than welcome, drawing an evil eye from the locals into whose midst they go speeding so carelessly, women on motorcycles are apt to be located safely beneath disbelief, composite critters like sphinxes or mermaids, sightings reported, few confirmed.
“What’s with these people, they act like they’ve never seen a motorcycle before.”
“Some have never seen anything with wheels on it.”
Ace by now is drifting into middle age. Beginning to find himself approached by practiced fingers reaching from the other world, to bring him away, one stitch at a time, into a crazy quilt he might never know more of than a few of the patches adjoining, crazy and lost as himself. The appeal of pure adventure may have begun to fade for him as early as 1919—decisions once automatic, based on maintaining a blind forward momentum, have more and more come to include how much discomfort is likely to result.
After the War he found he couldn’t return to the U.S., something therehad gone screwy, it was badlands now, to be avoided. “But…there’s no money over here, all the money’s back in the States, how can you afford to even put ‘gas’ in that rig?”
“Turns out it’s oil I’m spending more on, but there’s money here all right, if you look long and close enough.” Some old and well protected, some newly created. It was only a matter of time before Ace, inconspicuous citizen of the pavement, creeping about smelling of Motalko exhaust, found himself drifting into the motorcycle adventurer racket, taking on jobs as they came along, at first carrying confidential messages, presently small cargoes of undefined legality…trading up from an Army FUS dispatch bike to higher displacements, up to the Flathead he’s currently on. Stretches of the deep highway opening up to him, geography once only a set of names becoming real, flowing from either side into view, rushing by, next thing anybody knows he’s interurban, moving in unexpected circles, finding early celebrity, after a while international. How much of a surprise could it really have been that one day he would drift into range of Bruno Airmont, and presently find himself, hat in clenched fist, joining the long, unchronicled queue of hired stooges making their way up the back stairway to the boss’s office door?
—
Thrown together inthe Trans-Trianon 2000 ride an assortment of exiles and misfits, some disappointed in romance who hopped on their bikes and joined the tour thinking it’d be like the French Foreign Legion, a lonely pilgrimage where they could brood their way out of the blues, even manage to avoid women for a while, and bonne chance with that, fellas. They are of course mobbed out on the road by village girls, farm and city girls, female bikers, to be found these days in numbers greater than expected, even grown women, locked into the same everyday routines, when suddenly here comes trouble, fly-boy goggles, resolute jawlines, a way of bending the light. Christian and virtuous is fine as far as it goes, but narrow and sleepless are the beds of those whose lives shining apparitions like these have gone throbbing in and out of, young men too often regrettably unaware that localgirls belong to families apt to own firearms ranging from single-shot to full automatic, resulting sooner or later in one more sad tale of romantic misjudgment.
For some, magical events are reported. Creditors are outrun, bets pay off at long odds, death, injury, and wreckage from terrain or weather built into the deep structure of this route in some way nobody wants to go into detail about are narrowly avoided. For the most part, an unexceptional mud-spattered mobility, obstacles looming at every curve not always easy to read as to size or placement especially at sundown, cargo spaces stuffed with hooch, drugs, ammo, all manner of taxable goods, especially tobacco. “Not exactly a vegetable truck, but as you find out sooner or later, small loads can often fetch high prices.”
30
The Vienna branch of MI3b, daytime, a modest-size office decorated with a movie poster of Lilian Harvey waltzing with Willy Fritsch inDer Kongreß tanztand an ancient map of the Hapsburg Dual Monarchy, bentwood office furniture in the local Workshop style. From a distant open window can be heard an unremitting suite of Wagnerian works transcribed for zither. A green and magenta carpet of eye-catching design no one wants to be called up onto, which is where Alf and Pip find themselves at the moment.
Station chief Arvo Thorp sits in front of an ashtray overflowing with Woodbine butts, frowning at a document still smelling of duplicator-machine fluid. “It’s your Bolshie lot,” he growls, “this Vassily Midoff again.”
In the daylit office space, a patch of bitter weather impossible to explain away as harmless now appears, spreads, begins to thicken. The Quarrenders risk a quick moment of eye contact, but the certainty of some crisis long deferred and at last arrived at is too intense. Thorp, as usual, has just gone blithering ahead. “Since you last saw old Vassily in Budapest, we gather he’s been on the run. No concern of ours either way, but upper levels have apparently found it troublesome. Their best guess is that he might sooner or later be seeking to join a motorcycle rally in progress at the moment, Soviet elements of which have lately set up shop in Transylvania. No idea what he’s thinking, some idea of mobile asylum possibly. We’re keeping a close eye, but you appreciate that someone must be sent round, and soon.”
Alf on his feet, beginning to pace back and forth as far as dimensionshere allow. “Certainly can’t envy the poor miserable sod who’ll have to— oh here now, Thorp, what’s this look?”
“Ehrm, ‘Best of luck,’ I imagine, take note of the Fateful Initial in green ink, this is direct from F. himself, and if you and the missus wouldn’t mind both signing off…here, and here…Official Secrets releases…civil-action waivers, usual bumf, insurance, so forth…”
“But he was ours, Thorp.” Pip’s voice drained of civility. “Our bloke.”
“Someone else’s by now. Not pining away, I hope.”
“Meaning only,” Alf reasonably, “why not deploy some new faces instead, that he wouldn’t recognize as easily.”
“Housekeeping clause,” Thorp shrugs. “Your lad, your inconvenience, you go see to the tidying up.”
Pip’s eyes fidget longingly toward her purse, where the Webley lies waiting to be brought out. Alf, pretending concern, taking her gently by the elbow, both getting to their feet and off the carpet, “Thanks for locating him, Thorp old turnip, you and your lot.”
“Ever so grateful,” mutters Pip.
“We’ll see you have carte blanche down at the motor pool. Least we can do,” Thorp benevolently spreading his palms. “Off you go, children, and do try not to slam the—”
Slam.
“—door on your way out, cheers.”
—
“Well,” once they’resomeplace unlikely to be monitored, “so much for expecting this to be done with by now. Thorp brilliant as ever.”
“Makes no sense. What do you suppose it could be? One more vendetta no one bothered to tell us about? Has someone found him at last simply too inconvenient, too much effort to keep all his allegiances straight?”
“Less paperwork,” Pip making no effort to keep the contempt out of her voice, “in exchange for a human life. Cold-blooded reptiles, this lot.”
“Puts us in something of a pickle, luv. Can’t expect to be given an easy way out. At least it’ll be my turn this time,” if Alf remembers correctly.
