Кирил Бонфильоли - The Great Mortdecai Moustache Mystery

Fortune, however, smiled in a tight-lipped kind of way so far as to afford me a row of seats unoccupied by any human bottom but mine own ill-favoured one (Alexander Pope, 1688–1744). The only harassment was that I had to sit, cigarette-less, for some eighty minutes before we were airborne, listening to egg-laying hen noises from the public-address system and the quite riveting cackle from a breeding-pair of young executives behind me.

When I finally disembarked – dishevelled, disgusted and cursing the Wright brothers – I could have kissed the tarmac, if such a custom were allowed in a Russian airport, that is.

I wasn’t expecting to see a chauffeur with a hand-stencilled sign reading “MR C. MORTDECAI – TOP SECRET US EMBASSY BUSINESS” but I did wish that Blucher had given me just a smidgen more to go on. After fully five minutes of keeping my disgruntled moustache waiting, I spied a lissom, blonde and – not to put too fine a point on it – rather delicious girl who seemed, or so I imagined, to be heading in my direction.

‘Excuse me,’ I asked innocently. ‘Would you be so kind as to tell me where I might change some American money?’

‘Of course,’ she breathed breathily. ‘Don’t worry about the money now. We get a taxi.’

Well, as I’ve often said, I am an idiot but I’m not actually stupid, am I? I mean, juicy, flavour-of-the-week, ice-blonde Finnish girls may have their little foibles (in fact, you can have my word on that), but their fancies hardly ever run to slightly overweight British chaps in early middle age who haven’t shaved for twelve hours and have just explained that they are having difficulty getting enough kopecks to buy a postcard. This is a well-known tendency. However, I succumbed to my incurable faults of curiosity and salaciousness and got into the nearest taxi with her, whereupon we bumped slowly through the streets of Moscow until we arrived at the Metropole Hotel.

The bleak-eyed hag at reception slid the key to my room across her venom-pitted desk and snarled something full of ‘ zchu ’s and ‘ zhnak ’s to my Finny denizen. I raised a worried eyebrow but she explained that the hag was only rebuking her for smoking in public. Screwing, it seemed, was OK but the decencies must be observed. Like, say, not dropping toffee-papers in the Moscow Metro.

As soon as we were in my room she divested me with great zeal and many a well-feigned squeak of admiration; then allowed me partially to do the same for her. I had at last identified the accent of her nearly-perfect English: it was East German, oh dear. However, her Finnish disguise was good: all Baltic girls wear heavily-knitted, double-gussetted knickers except in centrally-heated hotels, where they wear none; every chap who has knocked around the Baltic a bit knows that.

The Metropole’s central heating is famed.

Just as I was about to work my wicked will on her (indeed, I was already twirling my moustache in a “Sir Jasper” sort of way) she closed my eyelids with a coy fingertip and flitted towards the bathroom and turned on some taps. I opened one eyelid a coy millimetre and was disappointed to see her flitting silently back to where she had coyly piled my clothes, and commencing to rummage them. ‘Oh, really !’ I thought; ‘a chap like me surely rates a better class of spy than this …’ But I had wronged her; all she fished out of my gents’ natty suiting was a mere felt pen (I never carry proper fountain pens on Aeroflot, I don’t trust the pressurisation of their cabins). I was happy that it was a mere felt pen rather than my razor-sharp gold-nosed Parker, because she wrote upon my actual body with it.

‘HUSH,’ she wrote. ‘THIS ROOM IS BUGGED.’ Well, I could have told her that. So we sort of held hands and gazed into each other’s eyes, so to say, for ten minutes or so – well, let’s say twenty-five minutes, for I am no longer a young man, you know – without the least compunction on my part because, infra-red cameras or not, I can think of no-one who would be interested in a blackmail deal concerning me (Johanna would only get the giggles) and I could hardly be breaking any law unless the Soviet consent law starts at the age of thirty. Then she coyly – she was wonderfully good at coyness – asked me whether I had any traveller’s cheques.

All the spice of the adventure vanished: this was, after all, no glamorous spy but just another up-market tramp. Ah, but wrong again is what I was. What she suggested was that we should go to the ‘American Attached Officers Club’ (well, I guessed what she meant) where they took any currency other than roubles and kopecks. She mumbled into the room-telephone, fumbled herself into her clothes (how cold her poor bottom must have been) and told me to meet her in a large black limousine which would be outside the hotel in some nine or ten minutes.

Now, anyone who has followed my earlier craven adventures may perhaps recall that I have a rooted objection to entering large black limousines – things happen to me when I enter such vehicles. However, Russia cannot yet afford a Mafia (well, no, I’m not taking any bets on that) and the only people there who can afford cars at all have these large black limousines called Zygs or something like that. So down I tripped, after a prophylactic wash, and popped into a large black limousine whose driver was beckoning me in a comradely fashion.

The door thunked and I turned to splash a grateful kiss on my luscious little Finesse’s cheek as she snuggled in the spacious back seat beside me. Alas, she proved now to be a large, sand-papery Russian, approximately three metres long and three metres wide. (You could tell he was Russian because of his suit, you see.)

‘Whoops, sorry!’ I tittered. ‘Got into the wrong car, haven’t I?’

‘No,’ he said, in perfect English. The limousine slushed away from the kerb and whirred into the less lamp-lit bits of Moscow.

A lesser man would have said, ‘Oh shit , I’ve got into one of those large black limousines again; when, when, when will I ever learn?’ But I, being Charlie Mortdecai, said, ‘Oh shit , I’ve got into one of those large black limousines again; when, when, when will I ever learn?’ and then put on my haughtiest expression and said, haughtily, ‘You will let me out at once, please.’

My fellow traveller didn’t let me out. What he did let out, from the inside breast pocket of his greatcoat, was the most fearsome weapon I have seen since I caught our charlady with the gardener. Yes, gentle reader, it was a “29.” (For even gentler readers I should explain that this means a Smith & Wesson .44 Magnum, Model 29 revolver, the pistol with 30% more clout – muzzle-energy – than its nearest competitor. If anyone points such a thing at you, don’t waste your time hiding behind a brick wall: a “29” doesn’t even notice such flimsies.)

I pretended to be frightened. This was not difficult. Then I summoned up what English blood I could muster and arranged a tremulous sneer onto my face.

‘Do you speak English?’ said my face.

‘Yes,’ he said. I had to admit that his command of English was still perfect. If it comes to that, his command of me just then was pretty adequate.

‘Then allow me to explain that the monstrous pistol you are waving about is designed solely for shooting presidents on bullet-proof balconies. If you were so foolish as to loose it off at me here and now, you would make a sorry mess both of my brain-pan and of this valuable limousine; moreover, the noise would be such that even the less curious residents of this beautiful city might make entries in their diaries. So, I am not afraid of you in the least.’

He smacked me across the face with the barrel of his valuable, heavy, American-made pistol. At this point I became afraid of him in the least.