G
	It was Wednesday, August 10.  It was cool and windy in
Worcester that evening, as Zoner and I drove down the hill from the
airport, heading home.  We were back in Wormtown after our
unauthorized journey to Area 51; we'd invaded one of the most secure
places in the United States, stolen things, and had a wild time, and
now I had nothing to show for it other than a busted nose and a
general sense that I was in a slump.  A friend with some training in
field medicine had sorted the nose for me, and it was already starting
to heal; after a good night's sleep at the Luxor Hotel in Las Vegas
and a nap on the flight back I felt as close to human as I could,
under the circumstances.
	Zoner glanced over at me as I gazed gloomily out the passenger
window and said, "'Smatter, anyway?  You don't usually take losing so
hard.  It's not like it was a real fight anyway."
	"We did agree to make it official," I reminded him.
	"Yeah, but even so," he replied, making a dismissive gesture.
"It's not going to kill your record, and everybody'll know it was a
cheap win.  -Both- of your losses this week have been cheap.  Eddie
Honda ripped Ken a new one on the board last night."
	That brought a smile to my slightly bruised face despite my
perverse determination to hang onto my bad mood for as long as
possible.  The World Circuit Martial Arts Tournament, the semi-formal
fight-sanctioning body which keeps the stats for my career and those
of a lot of my fellow street fighters, has an electronic bulletin-board
system most of us tournament regulars hang around on, discussing our
various interests inside and outside the martial arts, our recent
fights, who's up to what, and the general sort of bumph you'd expect
from a bunch of people who are mostly friends, or at least
acquaintances.
	"You stopped by home before flying out?" I asked.
	"No," Zoner replied.  "I checked in from Quest's place.
They've got the -coolest- gear up there.  I want one of those monitor
rooms."
	"Ah," I said.  "So you haven't been to the house yet?"
	"Nope," Zoner replied.  "Why?"
	"Just wondering."  

                     Eyrie Productions, Unlimited
                               presents

              A Third Universe from the Right Production
                                 of a
                    Straight On Till Morning Film

                   STREET FIGHTER: WARRIOR'S LEGACY

	      BATTLE 05: JUST ANOTHER WEEKEND ON THE JOB
        
                         Benjamin D. Hutchins
                               MegaZone

          with the gracious assistance of The Usual Suspects
	      a bit of cadging from Sega's "Crazy Taxi"
	 and some unlikely inspiration from "Changing Rooms"

               (c) 2002 Eyrie Productions, Unlimited


	We didn't say much more until we got back to the house.  The
lights were on; Rose, my former teacher, had kept an eye on the place
during our little jaunt, as she sometimes did.  We travel a lot, and
usually we just rely on the house's security systems, but this time
there was somebody else involved, and we didn't really want to leave
her alone while we wandered the country breaking national security
regs.
	They both met us at the door as we entered, bags in hand.
Rose took a look at the damage to my face, tsk'd thoughtfully, but
said nothing.  Our houseguest, a teenage Japanese girl named Sakura
Kasugano, was a little more vocal about it:
	"What happened to -you-?"
	"I had an argument with the United States Air Force."
	"Oh.  Who won?"
	"Her Majesty's Special Air Service," I replied dryly.
	Sakura gave me a skeptical look, as though she were weighing
several different responses.  Finally, she settled on, "... You're
weird."
	"Yeah, so I've been told," I replied, heading for my room to
put away my bag.  "How was -your- weekend?  How's your head?"
	"Fine.  Dr. Mueller came by a couple of times to check up on
me.  He thinks I'll be OK.  I feel fine, anyway."
	I nodded.  "Good, good.  I see Rose took you shopping."
	"Well, yeah," she said, glancing down at the jeans and Clark
University sweatshirt she was wearing.  "All I had with me was my
uniform and some underwear.  I wasn't expecting to be gone for more
than a couple of days."
	Sakura was staying with us because her father had (in my
opinion) wildly overreacted to what he saw as her unseemly interest in
martial arts and martial artists, and disowned her.  Now, I could
grant him that faking a "school trip" and flying halfway around the
world to show up on a total stranger's doorstep (mine) in search of
her favorite karateka (not me) was a bit impulsive and, well, -weird-
on her part.  But when I'd called him up to let him know that she was
safe and ask where I should send her, he'd said a lot of nasty things,
finishing up with, "You street fighters have made her what she is -
now she is YOUR problem.  Not mine!"  Then he hung up in my ear.
	So, what was I to do?  Throw her out into the street?  Call
the Worcester PD and have them take her off to Child Welfare or INS or
wherever Japanese schoolgirls who've turned world traveler and been
disowned by their fathers go?  No; that was what the book said to do,
but the book didn't cover the sort of potential, the raw talent,
Sakura embodied.  She'd taught herself a reasonable facsimile of
Shotokan karate by watching Ryu Hoshi fight a dozen times in and
around Tokyo.  She'd learned the Shotokan ki fireball, the Hadoken,
just by watching Ryu do it and listening to him mumble something about
centering.
	What ordinary foster parent could comprehend that kind of
thing?  Her -real- parents couldn't.  Her father had said a lot of
things about her disgracing the family with her antics, but I'd heard
something else, something truer, buried in his voice: Fear.  He was
afraid of her, of her talent, of her strength and skill and the speed
with which she'd achieved them.  She had the calling - it was too late
to turn her back now, and that's what anyone but her own kind would
try to do to her.
	So, not seeing any other volunteers for taking charge of such
an interesting case, I took her in.  We'd spent the last couple of
weeks pretending that it was a temporary arrangement, and she'd be
moving on to look up Ryu, her real hero, any day now... but she hadn't
mentioned that plan for several days.  I wondered if I was winning her
over.  I wondered -why- I was winning her over.
	After dinner, I decided I'd call my sort-of-girlfriend Cammy
in San Francisco and see how her working vacation was getting on.
She'd invited me along, but what with the Sakura situation I didn't
want to stay away that long, so I begged off.
	Oddly, she wasn't there.  Not just not in the hotel, but not
registered.  I wondered if she'd hit a change of plan.  Well, there
was one easy way to find out... but I'd have to wait until morning to
do that, since it involved calling her operational base in Scotland.
She was, after all, an agent of Her Majesty's Government.

	Morning was disquieting.  On the one hand, waking up in my own
bed for the first time in a few days is always a pleasant experience,
and my face felt almost human again.  On the other, I got a major
runaround from the phone staff at Castle MacLir, and that was -after-
passing the complex codephrase screening process that ensured I wasn't
a crank or crackpot.  I was pretty well known to the staff at the
castle by then, having been dating Cammy primarily by phone since late
spring - but suddenly the whole system was an impenetrable wall.
	It took me half an hour of alternate threatening, throwing
around my SPECTRUM reserve clearance, and cajoling to get as far as
Brigadier Lethbridge-Stewart, and all he could tell me - and he
stressed that it was more than he should have told me - was that Cammy
had been reassigned.  She didn't work out of MacLir any more; she was
based out of MI6 headquarters in London.  Her San Francisco assignment
had been cut short because of the reassignment, he imagined, but it
was all out of his hands.
	The Brigadier rather liked me, I thought, so I took his
slightly embarrassed stiff-upper-lip sorry-I-can't-tell-you-more-
old-boy routine at face value.  I thanked him for his help, rang off,
and called London.
	That didn't get me anywhere at all.  The people in Scotland
had nothing on Headquarters when it came to putting up a granite wall
of resistance on the phone.  I chased that one for almost an hour
before I finally gave up.  I wouldn't have wasted that long on it,
except that I was pretty sure I -did- have clearance to get in and
talk to a field agent, but they were blocking me out of sheer
cussedness.
	I can do cussedness, but only for so long.  I had things to
do.  I'd just have to pick the thread up and chase it from another
angle.  Maybe through another of my contacts in the intelligence
community... ah, well, there had to be a way.  Anyway, she'd probably
call me sometime by the end of the week; -my- home base and number
hadn't changed.
	I put the morning's annoyance out of my mind and headed off to
take care of my day's task.

	Thursday afternoon found me out at Worcester County Airport,
where Zoner and I rent a pair of big Butler hangars a short distance
from the terminal building.  One of the hangars is occupied by Zoner's
C-130 cargo plane, the Prince of Thebes, with which we ply our chosen
trade of carrying cargo and passengers around the world for rates
ranging from reasonable to extortionate.  The other contains the
original plane we used when we started Trailing Edge Air Lines three
years before (a Douglas Super DC-3 named "Eddie"), and one of my
indulgences in this world: my modest collection of old automobiles.
	I have related the story of my usual daily driver, a 1957
Chevrolet 210 sedan, before; and from that story depends the story of
the rest of my collection, which I've mostly amassed since leaving
college for the more lucrative business of freelance air transport.
Between that and the supplementary income that my fight career has
provided, I've been able to build up a respectable group of cars and
trucks without spending a fortune at it.  I don't tend to go for the
most popular collector's makes and models, so my cars tend to cost
less than the really famous cars of their age.  Even my '57 isn't one
of the particularly sought-after models, though at least it's not a
four-door.
	Of the vehicles in the hangar collection, only one, a
mostly-stock 1966 Chevy 1/2-ton pickup, dates back in my ownership to
before the founding of Trailing Edge.  Angus the Wonder Truck, as it
is known, was acquired and pressed into service to haul parts (or,
occasionally, whole cars on trailers) for my father's and my other
projects back in the day.  I keep Angus out of sentimentality and have
never been very tempted to trick it out with lots of gizmos and
performance doohickeys.  On the rare occasion when I have to trailer
something back to the hangar, Angus usually draws the job despite the
greater suitability of Zoner's Suburban, just for tradition's sake.
	The other half-dozen range from a perpetually-incomplete '49
Cadillac chop-top hot-rod project I've been working on for years (I
bought it out of my share of the first-ever payment made to Trailing
Edge for a job) to a clean, straight and not-much-tweaked '68 Charger
R/T like the one Steve McQueen chased into a gas station in "Bullitt".
When I need to think, or convince myself that I'm not a total failure,
I often go to the hangar and either work on the Caddy, polish the
Charger, or do some other maintenance or modification work on one of
the others.
	Today I was working off my discomfiture at my recent losing
streak by overhauling a Muncie M-22 transmission.  At the moment I had
its innards scattered all over my workbench and was eyeing the
slightly rounded corners of the rear reverse idler gear's teeth
dubiously.
	I heard footsteps on the concrete behind me and turned to see
Sakura Kasugano standing near the door in jeans and a sweatshirt that
was too large for her.  She had probably come into the hangar
intending to talk to me, but right now she wasn't acknowledging my
presence at all: she was looking at the Lincoln.
	Honest Abe wasn't my favorite car in the hangar, mainly
because I'm not much of a Ford man.  I like their trucks up until
about 1955, and a few specific examples of their cars (like the 1932
Model A and the 1949 Tudor); and anyway most of my real passions
car-wise date to sometime before 1960.  Still, the Lincoln had a
special place in my heart - after all, it hadn't cost me anything
except some sweat and bruised knuckles, and its presence in my
collection was a symbol of the friendship of a man who was very
influential in some circles.
	I stood at my bench with the reverse gear of the Muncie in my
hand, puzzled at Sakura's transfixed reaction to the car, until I
remembered that she was from Japan, where cars are tiny plastic boxes.
She confirmed my suspicion a moment later by murmuring,
	"That's the biggest car I've ever seen."
	The Cadillac was actually bigger, but as it was essentially a
pile of dusty, primer-spotted parts in the corner of the hangar, I
could see where it had't grabbed her attention; and Honest Abe is
pretty imposing, long, low, and black, with black leather interior.
	"It's pretty big," I agreed.  She turned her head to see me
for the first time, blinked for a moment as she lost her train of
thought, and then apologized.
	"I'm sorry," she said.  "I don't want to bother - "
	I waved a hand dismissively.  "I'm just messing around
anyway.  What's on your mind?  How'd you get up here?"
	"I took the bus," she said, walking halfway around the
Lincoln.  "What is this?"
	"It's a '64 Lincoln Continental," I said.  "My Uncle Enzo gave
it to me for taking care of a little problem for him.  What's on your
mind?" I repeated.
	She looked momentarily at a loss, then said, "Well... I'm not
sure.  You looked pretty depressed when you got back from your
trip... MegaZone said you'd be up here... I don't know, I guess I
thought I might see if I could help you with anything."
	I looked her over.  "Not dressed like that," I said,
indicating my own grease-smeared work clothes.  "This is messy work."
	She gave me that fierce, challenging look I'd come to enjoy.
"I'm not afraid to get my hands dirty," she said.
	I grinned.  "I believe it.  I don't think you're afraid of
much of anything."  I put the gear down on the bench and went to the
parts sink, squirting some gritty orange goo into my hands from the
big bottle standing on its edge as I elbowed the hot water on.  "OK,
jump in the Chevy and we'll go get you some work clothes."

	She was as good as her word; with her street clothes covered
by a mechanic's coverall (I didn't know they made them that small) and
her bangs tied out of her eyes with her usual hachimaki, she jumped
right into the messy, smelly job of cleaning and reassembling that
transmission without a complaint.  As we worked, she asked me what it
was for.  I explained that I intended to put it into the '34 Ford
five-window coupe I was building for my father's 43rd birthday.  He
always wanted a '34 Ford, and I thought the reversed digits were a
clever touch, or something.
	She asked a lot of questions, which usually irritates me,
except I got the impression she was really listening to the answers.
She learned fast, too, and had a better eye for guessing what size
wrench was needed on various bolts than I did.  We got the whole thing
back together by lunchtime, innumerable needle bearings and all.
	Zoner dropped by as we were jacking the four-speed into its
place under the Ford.  He stood by the bench with his arms folded,
watching quietly, as we sweated and grunted and occasionally cursed
the thing into position, lined up the clutch, then bolted up the whole
mess.  Fury, who had accompanied him, sniffed around for a while, then
went to his dog bed in the corner by the wall telephone, curled up,
and observed us all with an air of supreme boredom.
	When Sakura and I emerged from under the Ford, Zoner observed
dryly, "Not very ladylike language."
	Sakura wiped some sweat from her forehead with the back of one
arm, replacing it with a smear of grease, and scowled at him mildly
before turning to me and saying, "Now what?"
	"Now nothing," Zoner said.  "We've got a job."
	I cocked an eyebrow at him.  "Oh?"
	Zoner nodded.  "Transbelvia.  Taking in a load of tractor
parts for Universal Export, picking up one of their salesman while
we're there and running him to London."
	"Oh," I said, in a different tone.  One of -those- jobs.  I
pointed a socket drive at the camp trailer parked in the corner of the
hangar that served as our operations base when we were up at the
airport.  "Sakura, why don't you go get cleaned up - we'll get some
food before we head out, if we have time."  I looked Zoner a question,
and he nodded in response.
	She trotted off without demur, and I climbed out of my
coverall, hung it up on a nail, then went to get some more of that
orange goo to scrub my hands with.  Zoner slouched after me and leaned
on the bench while I washed.
	"I talked to Jim Greer this morning," Zoner told me.  "He said
he'd square everything with INS as soon as we give him the word."
	"He's not sore about the Area 51 thing?  I mean, we did botch
the exit a little."
	"Nah, he's pretty pleased with it, actually.  We kept the
Brits from swiping it, after all - kept it in the family, so to speak.
And Bill Guile getting his face redecorated doesn't hurt Jim's
feelings any."
	I scowled.  "I'm trying to erase the whole incident from my
memory," I said before starting to scrub my face.
	Zoner laughed.  "So is Guile," he told me.  "He didn't even
report you or Cammy.  You show up on his after-action report just the
way Cammy played it - as Captain D.H. Hudson, injured defending the
base from the same unknown intruder who beat up Guile, and Major
Camilla White, both visiting from NORAD and presumably back there now,
having left Area 51 in some haste to change the launch codes for Sky
Dancer's nonexistent nuclear armament."
	I elbowed off the water and dried my face and hands on a clean
shop rag, giving Zoner an incredulous look.  "You're kidding.  Bucky
Guile -helped us- clean up the loose ends on the op?  Why would he do
that?"
	"Greer thinks he's embarrassed about the beating he took -
literally - from MI6.  I think our friend in the Corps leaned on him
to cut us some slack."
	I grinned.  "Either way, works for me."  The screen door on
the trailer banged and Sakura came out in her street clothes, hands
and face washed.  Fury finally showed an interest in something,
hauling himself out of the dog bed to mooch a head-scratching.  Dogs
like women better than men, I'm telling you.
	"Can one of you give me a ride back to the house before you
leave?" she asked.  "I can catch the bus if you have to go right away,
but if we're going to get some lunch - "
	Zoner grinned at her.  "Who said you were staying behind?"
	She blinked at him.  "You mean - go with you?"
	"Sure.  You've got a passport, right?"
        
	It was dark, and rain beat at the cockpit windows as we droned
on through the darkness above the North Atlantic.  Strange thing about
air travel - we were traveling at nearly 300 knots, fast enough to get
from Worcester to New York City in half an hour, but in the
featureless black over the Atlantic, it felt as though we weren't
moving at all.  There was a curiously hypnotic quality to the hiss of
the rain and the thrum of the engines.  I was in my usual spot, the
right-hand seat, though it would be a stretch to call me "copilot".
For the record, I -can- fly an airplane, but I'm only comfortable with
the sort that have one engine, and I'm nowhere near as good as Zoner.
I know enough about the Herc to keep an eye on the gauges, though.
The automatic pilot takes care of the heavy lifting on the long trips
anyway.
	I took a look over my shoulder at the two bunks mounted on the
aft bulkhead of the cockpit.  In the dim light, with my eyes adjusted,
I could make out the dark blur of Sakura's hair jutting out from the
bundled covers on the top bunk.
	I grinned and turned to Zoner, saying softly, "Well, this
should ease your worries about whether she travels well."
	He looked back, smiled, and replied, "Yeah, I'm impressed.
She doesn't wake up for North Atlantic turbulence.  Of course, the
real test there will be the first winter crossing, but still."
	As if to underscore his remark, the plane buffeted a bit,
drawing no response from the bunk.  Well, from either bunk; Fury
doesn't give a damn about turbulence.  He's the laziest dog I've ever
seen in my life.  I think he'd sleep twenty-four seven if I let him.
	When we'd boarded the Prince and set off from Worcester in the
middle of the afternoon, Sakura had been full of questions, just as
she had that morning when we were working on the transmission.  Zoner
had answered them just as happily as I'd answered the car-related
ones; he loves talking about his airplane, and she was giving him an
excuse.  When we crossed Newfoundland, roughly following the old North
Atlantic shipping route, she settled in, sat at the seldom-used flight
engineer's station, and enjoyed the aerial experience, her first time
aboard an aircraft other than a commercial jetliner.
	Darkness comes fast when you're heading east into a gathering
evening at 300 miles an hour, and at only 9 o'clock Worcester time,
Sakura announced that she was sleepy and would like to lie down.
Zoner directed her to our built-in living quarters aft of the forward
bulkhead, essentially a tiny apartment wedged into the extra fuselage
length afforded by the Prince's being the -30 model Herc.  She'd
passed on that, saying she preferred to stick close to the flight deck
for now, so I'd broken out a set of sheets and a blanket for the top
cockpit bunk, and that was that.  She'd sacked out at 9:30 and been up
there ever since.
	I knew the feeling she was having, and I liked it.  Despite
the narrowness of the bunk, the flight deck of the Prince of Thebes
was a nice place to sleep; it's warm, cozily lighted with the warm
reddish glow of the instrument lights, and full of the pleasant throb
of the props, which sound nicer from in front of them than behind.  Of
course, I'd spent so many hours in it by then that it felt like home
as much as our den back in Worcester, but even for someone unfamiliar
with it, it's a pleasant, nonthreatening little room, as long as you
aren't afraid of airplanes.  Sleeping there is rather like sleeping in
the back seat of the car on a long nighttime drive, listening with
half an ear to your parents talking in hushed tones up front.
	I yawned and checked my watch; it was 11:40 Worcester time,
4:40 AM in London and 7:40 in our ultimate destination, Zbgnvzsk
(don't ask how it's pronounced; you'd hurt yourself), the capital city
of Transbelvia.  It was funny how our destinies seemed to intersect
with that tiny country's; in three years of operations we'd been there
six times, more than any other non-US destination except London.  I
wondered what MI6's man was there for, and which of MI6's men it was,
and if we'd met before.  At one time or another we'd flown most all of
MI6's high-level operatives into or out of somewhere.
	It would be about five hours before we got to our scheduled
refueling stop, Gatwick International outside London.  When they send
us on a potentially dangerous job, Her Majesty's Government is always
kind enough to buy us some gas along with the generous pay they
provide for such missions.  It's little things like that which make
the British so much nicer to work for than, say, the CIA.  The
Washington types are always trying to stiff independent operators for
things like fuel, customs fees, equipment repairs and medical
expenses, but Whitehall always pays promptly.  That sort of attitude
on the part of the customer makes it so much easier to be a truly
customer-focused vendor.
	I yawned again, took it as a sign, and told Zoner I was
heading back to my bunk if he was doing all right.  He sipped at his
coffee, nodded, and told me he was good for another ten hours easy.
I got up and went to bed.

				  MZ
	I watched Gryph head back to bed, sipped my coffee, and turned
to stare back into the blackness in front of the Herc's nose.  With
the overcast, there were no stars visible, and the black of the sky
blended into the black of the sea seemlessly.  I checked the
instruments by instinct, making sure I, and our course, didn't drift
off.  I didn't feel tired, but it was all routine and not very
exciting.  Everything was familiar - the glow of the instruments, the
thrum of the engines, the lashing of the rain...
	...the occasional sleepy, soft feminine murmur.
	OK, that was new.
	It was new, and I wasn't sure how I felt about it.  Gryph and
I had been living our own little buddy movie for years.  The two of us
flying around the globe, having our adventures.  Him with his fighting, 
and me with my little jobs.  A couple of perpetual bachelors playing
dangerous games with expensive toys and loving it.
	Sure, there were women (well, at least for me - I was starting
to think Gryph was a monk there for a little while), but nothing
really serious.  Well, not until recently, what with Gryph and Cammy.
OK, OK, and maybe Meg and me.  I was starting to think that maybe I
was more than just a bit sweet on that girl, but I didn't want to
examine that too closely at the moment.
	Right now I was listening to the sounds of a teenage girl
sleeping just a few feet away, and wondering just what we were getting
her, and ourselves, into.
	Gryph and I knew the risks, and we were responsible for
ourselves.  But Sakura, for all of her attitude, and maturity, was
still a kid in many ways.  A bit too eager to rush in, a bit too
unfocused.  She had a lot of potential, but she needed to work on her
control.  In the meantime, she was our responsibility - and I wasn't
sure we were ready, or able, to handle it.
	What right did we have to bring her along on a mission like
this?  What would happen if things got hot?  How was her presence
going to change things for Gryph and me?  For that matter, just what
was happening with our lives in general lately?  Was our buddy movie
turning into an ensemble piece?
	I chased these thoughts around my brain as we droned on
through the night, but did little more than spin my wheels.

	Sakura woke up while we were on the ground at Gatwick, gassing
up.  She was sitting in the flight engineer's seat when I got back to
the flight deck from a quick briefing with a duty officer from SIS,
looking out the windows at the bustle of the airport.
	"Hey," I said, taking my seat.
	"Hi," she replied.  "Are we there?"
	"No, this is Gatwick - England," I told her, strapping in.
"Just a fuel stop.  It'll be another three hours before we reach
Zbgnvzsk."
	She let me alone while I went through the preflight and
chatted with Gatwick Control about our departure clearance and what
runway to use.
	"I never heard of Transbelvia," Sakura confessed after we were
back in the air and I'd finished talking to the ground.
	"Not many people have," I told her, "but it's really quite a
place.  It was first organized as a separate principality in 1845, and
its borders, incredibly enough, have been more or less stable ever
since.  It was taken over by the Nazis, like everything else in this
part of the world, in 1942, and then by the Russians in 1954.  They
stayed just long enough to teach the Transbelvs how to build cars in
the grand Soviet style and then got out."
	"Why?"
	"Nobody's sure.  Something about the local climate they just
didn't like.  The royal family fled to Britain in '42, when the Nazis
took over, and the Soviets didn't manage to capture or kill any of
them when they rolled in in '54.  The Transbelvs still think that it
was their fighting spirit that drove the Russians out."
	"Wow.  One family against the Soviet Union?"
	"Yeah, it seems incredible, doesn't it?  But old Crown Prince
Warvel was supposed to be quite a guy."
	"Was?  He died?"
	"Yeah, he was assassinated in 1971.  The whole family was
wiped out in a series of bombings and sniper shootings."
	"Jeez, that's horrible.  Who did it?"
	"Nobody knows.  A lot of people think it was the KGB, or the
Bulgarian Secret Police, trying to soften the place up for another
Communist takeover, but nothing ever came of it - the Communists
-didn't- take the place over, so if it was their plan, they either
dropped it or somebody screwed it up for them.  Ever since then
there's been a regency.  A lot of the Transbelvs are still hoping that
some surviving relative to the royal family will turn up."
	"How do you know so much about this place?" Sakura asked.
	"Gryph and I have been there a few times on jobs.  It's a
semi-constitutional monarchy with a free market right smack in the
middle of what was the Communist Bloc not too long ago - almost as hot
a spot for international intrigue as Istanbul.  Lots of opportunities
for an enterprising shipping company."
	I left it at that, wondering if Jim Greer or one of Gryph's
contacts in SIS could dream up a security clearance for a girl this
young.  I didn't like lying by omission about our business in
Transbelvia this time around, but just bringing her along was probably
a violation of the Official Secrets Act.
	"Hm," she said, and mercifully left whatever questions she
might've had about those 'opportunities' unasked.

				  G
	I woke up from a strange dream about food because somebody was
shaking my shoulder.  I yawned, sat up, and focused my eyes as best I
could on someone who was much too small to be Zoner and must,
therefore, have been Sakura.  I blinked blearily at her - I am not a
fast waker - and asked her, "London?"
	She shook her head.  "Za-big-something-or-other."
	"Zoner let me sleep all the way through to Zbgnvzsk?"  I sat
up, careful not to rap my head on the ceiling, and climbed down,
feeling my joints crack with some satisfaction.  "Where is he?"
	"Talking to the customs people," she said.  "I came back to
get my passport and he told me to wake you up."
	"Thanks," I said.  "I'll be with you shortly."  As she left, I
went into the small but shower-equipped head, brushed my teeth, washed
my face and got some water into my hair so I could comb it down with
some chance of success.  Sleeping always mashes it into a fright wig.
I put my shoes on and went to the weapons locker.
	When Zoner and I are traveling on business that's exclusively
mine - my perpetual tour on the semi-formal World Championship Martial
Arts Tournament tour - I don't usually carry a gun.  I don't challenge,
or accept challenges from, people I wouldn't trust not to shoot me.
When our business is more official, though, I usually go armed.  My
grandfather, a former Army weapons instructor, made sure I know what
to do with a firearm years ago.  In a way, it's every bit as much a
martial art as Ler Drit.
	I took off my jacket and pulled on a shoulder-holster rig that
had been hanging in the locker, then adjusted it.  Shoulder rigs
aren't the easiest things in the world to deal with, but I'm too much
of a traditionalist, and too thick around the middle anyway, to bother
with inside-the-belt holsters, and Transbelvia wasn't the kind of
place where a person could carry openly.
	Originally, I carried a Colt .32 Pocket Hammerless on jobs
like this - times when I needed something easily concealed and didn't
anticipate all-out combat - but, tragically, the Hammerless bought the
farm on an unauthorized expedition into a Saudi oil refinery about a
year into my freelance espionage career.  I was pretty upset about the
loss - the Hammerless was an old and trusted friend - and word got
back to the gunsmith in Chicago who Zoner and I use for all of our big
orders.  She knew of my fondness for odd and unusual guns and worked
me up a replacement.
	She scrounged me up a Makarov, worked on it for a month, on
and off, in her free time, and presented it to me at our Christmas
gathering that year.  I've carried it on these jobs ever since, and
it's never let me down.  Our gunsmith doesn't fool around.  If she's
given a gun her seal of approval it means she'd be willing to carry
the thing into a tight spot herself, and given that she spends her
free time bounty hunting for fun and profit...
	... Well, that's good enough for me.
	I tucked the Makarov and a couple of spare magazines away,
made sure my green Army jacket would keep anybody from panicking, and
went on my way.
	The customs room at Zbgnvzsk International Airport was just as
I remembered it: institutional green, stuffy, and smelling faintly of
floor polish.  The customs agents looked bored and hot in their green
woolen uniforms.  They examined my passport without demur, stamped it,
and bade me have a good stay in passable English, certainly a lot
better than my half-assed Transbelvische.  They'd already cleared
Zoner and Sakura, and one of them was at the other end of the table
engaged in an earnest telephone conversation, probably regarding the
provenance of our cargo.
	"I'll stick here and take care of the cargo offloading," said
Zoner to me.  "You want to go into town and see if you can make
contact with Universal Export's man?  From what their managing
director told me yesterday, he'll be eager to get back to London."
	"Sure," I told him.  He took me aside and gave me a brief
rundown on the contact procedure, then turned me loose.  I gestured to
Sakura and we headed out.

	Transbelvia is a nice enough place, and the airport has rental
counters enough, that we could have gotten a car with all mod cons, an
Opel or maybe a British Ford.  I insist, though, that when in
Transbelvia, the truly discriminating tourist is obligated to drive
the national automobile, the one and only Belv.  The Belv is the
quintessential East European car, a tiny tin box with a two-stroke
motor that sounds like a mimeograph machine on Self-Destruct and
smells like a burning blackwall tire.  This particular one had a
four-speed manual gearbox that liked to crunch and jitter on shifts,
brakes operated by cables, and no gauges that worked.  It was
impossible to tell how old it was, since Belvs have been manufactured
in precisely the same way since 1954.
	We shuddered and rattled down the airport access road and into
the city of Zbgnvzsk proper in grand style, with the windows rolled
down as far as they could be forced and the canvas sardine-tin cover
over the car's gaping roof rolled back.  The radio blared out the
afternoon news in Transbelvische and I couldn't figure out how to turn
it down, let alone off.  
	  In desperation, I punched the radio.  It didn't turn down or
off, but switched from the news to a station that was playing what
sounded like Bulgarian country-western music.  We were better off with
the news.  I felt a sudden desire to drive this car up into the back
of the Herc and take it home with me.  What was more, I knew if I
slipped the rental agent a pair of blue jeans on my way out, I could.
	"This car is great," Sakura shouted over the chatter of the
radio and the clatter of the motor as we crested the ridge separating
the airport plateau from the city basin.  "It's like driving a
carnival bumper car on the street."
	I grinned.  "I like them too," I said.  "You get a real
feeling of partnership with your transportation heaving one of these
things around the road."
	A horn blared behind us, and a sleek silver Mercedes swooped
indignantly past, its white-haired banker-type driver giving us a rude
gesture for not pulling out of his path immediately he made his
appearance behind us.  I stuck my tongue out at him and Sakura made
that checking-a-contact-lens gesture that Japanese people do when
they're expressing the same basic sentiment.
	The city of Zbgnvzsk spread out below us in all its glory, a
hodgepodge of narrow streets, vaguely modern motorways, rambling stone
buildings, and glittering glass towers, all set against the backdrop
of the Transbelvian Alps to the north and the River Vzsk descending
from them and passing through the city on its way southwest to join
the Danube.  Population 750,000, most of them bankers, commodities
traders, importers-exporters and international espionage agents.  A
strong artistic community with a tendency toward ridiculously
self-important industrial-rock bands, utterly incomprehensible
"experimental cinema", and nice geometric abstract paintings.  The
marketplace of the Carpathians.  Prostitution: legal and tightly
controlled by the state.  Drugs: many legal, all easy to come by.
Crime: Not as much as you'd think.  It was like a little bit of every
other European city - a little bit Amsterdam, but a little bit Moscow
too.
	I was supposed to meet our man at the Casino Transbelvia, the
city's giant state-run gambling emporium.  The Transbelv opened in
1988, when the Prince Regent, Marko Vlaszkiv, decided to see if he
could boost the country's tourism by making a name for the place as
another Las Vegas, or Monte Carlo, or Royale.  It worked, after a
fashion.  The house odds are slightly better for the serious gambler
than in any of the other high-roller hotspots, and the atmosphere is
more like Royale than Vegas, which is good for the non-gambling
tourist.  The food isn't quite as good as in Monaco, but you can't
have everything.
	Following the brief I'd been given by Zoner, I turned the Belv
over to the astonished parking attendant, and the two of us went into
the casino.  We were underdressed for a serious day of high-stakes
gambling, me in my jeans, work shirt and M-65 jacket and Sakura in
skirt and blouse, but the doorman recognized me and let us in without
demur.  Zoner and I once saved the management of the Casino
Transbelvia 420 million dollars and a major embarrassment, so they
treat us pretty well there no matter how we show up dressed.
	"Ah, Mr. Gryphon!" said the manager, Mr. Djarko Krovnz, as he
saw me enter the grand red-carpeted lobby.  He bustled over from his
kiosk by the entranceway and kissed me on both cheeks, then pumped my
hand effusively.  "So good to see you again!  It has been, what,
nearly six months since you came to see us.  You have been keeping
busy?"
	"Oh, off and on, you know how it goes, Djarko," I said.  I
liked Krovnz - his manner might seem spuriously cheerful to the casual
observer, but I had observed him long enough and under stressful
enough conditions to know that that was what he was really like -
effusive, warm and generous - with people he liked and trusted.  He
was a short little round man with a neatly trimmed beard and mustache
(all pointy) and a great deal of thick graying black hair which he
kept slicked back.  It didn't take direction well, and so several
times a day he had to pull a comb out of one of his inside pockets and
fight it back into place again.
	"So it does, so it does," he said, taking my elbow and
ushering me into the casino.  "I read in the Fighters' Times that you
have become a World Warrior!  Congratulations!"  His twinkling black
eyes lit on Sakura, and he smiled even a little bit wider.  "And who
is this charming young lady?"  He bowed deeply to her, took her hand
and kissed it.  "I am Djarko Krovnz, at your service.  You are
Mr. Gryphon's protege?"
	I didn't jump in with introductions because I was curious how
Sakura would react to that.  I was a bit surprised when she smiled at
him and said simply, "Something like that.  I'm Sakura Kasugano."  She
gave him a return bow, Japanese style, and said, "It's a pleasure to
meet you."
	"But I am keeping you from your entertainment," said Djarko,
rubbing his hands together, barely able to restrain his delight that
his favorite street fighter apparently had a student.  He produced a
brass key from a side pocket and handed it to me, saying, "Your
regular room is ready for you if you wish to change your clothes.  I
think we can find something suitable for the young lady as well."  He
gave me a reproachful look.  "You should have let me know ahead of
time that you were bringing a guest," he said, wiggling a stubby
finger at me with mock irritation.  "We could have had everything in
readiness.  Ah, well, we will have to improvise."
	He clapped his hands once, and a beautiful, dusky girl
appeared from somewhere.  She was dressed in the uniform of the house,
a red vest over a frilled white tuxedo shirt, tuxedo pants with red
outseam stripes, and a little red box cap.  I recognized her from one
of my previous stays - she was sometimes a bartender, sometimes a
croupier, and occasionally a dancer - but, irritatingly, I couldn't
remember her name.  Zoner would be sorry he wasn't able to see her
again.  They'd made something of a game of her brushing off his
passes.
	"Samira," said Djarko, saving me from a full day's annoyance,
"please see what you can find for this young lady."
	"Of course," she said, then turned to Sakura with a smile.
"This way, please."
	She looked at me, and I nodded; shrugging, she followed Samira
around a bend and out of sight.
	I suffered my arm to be yanked up and down by Krovnz once
more, then went to room 201.  Djarko keeps 201 free at all times,
which admittedly isn't too tough - because of some odd physical plant
constraints on the second floor, it's the smallest room in the hotel
by far, no bigger than your average room at a Marriott (which is
infinitesimal by the standards of the Casino Transbelvia).  The
bathroom is stocked with the brands of toiletries Zoner and I like,
and the closet contains two tuxedos and accompanying pairs of shoes,
one set in Zoner's sizes, one in mine.  I took a quick shower, combed
my hair into some semblance of civility again, and put on the tux.
The jacket was even cut so as to accommodate the Makarov.
	I grinned at myself in the mirror - I like the way I look all
dressed up, though I don't do it often - and then went back down to
the lobby.
	Sakura was there, and Djarko, who was beaming with pride at
Samira's handiwork.  And with good reason - the girl had done a
marvelous job.  She'd found a simple but elegant black evening dress
in an appropriate size, and shoes to go with it.  Most impressively,
she'd done something to Sakura's hair that, though it didn't reduce
its usual disarray much, made it seem as though the disorder was a
stylist's artifice rather than just the natural tendencies of thick,
untidily trimmed hair.  Even Sakura herself looked faintly pleased
with the result.
	"Are those real pearls?" I asked.
	"Unfortunately, no; none could be found on such short notice.
They are just from the dancers' costume shop," said Djarko sadly.  I
looked to see if he was joking, but he looked perfectly serious.  It
was as if he felt he'd committed a disservice by not coming up with a
string of genuine pearls to go along with the dress.  He shook off his
discomfiture enough to bustle over to me, straighten my bow tie a
little, brush some imaginary lint off one lapel, and then give me a
satisfied smile.
	"There," he said.  "Now you are ready to visit the gaming
floor."  He took a black-and-white-striped plastic plaque from his
pocket and pressed it into my hand.  "An opening stake," he said,
"with the compliments of the house."
	This was a standard thing, too - every time Zoner or I step
foot in that casino after the job we did for them, Djarko insists on
giving us a thousand-pound plaque (the Casino Transbelvia does its
business in the British pound) to stake us at the gambling tables.  We
in turn make it a point to lose the money as soon as possible, so that
the balance would be preserved.  This requires no particular effort or
sacrifice on our part, since neither of us has any skill or instinct
for casino gambling whatsoever.
	I thanked Djarko, offered Sakura my arm, and off we went.
	"This feels weird," Sakura murmured to me as we crossed
through the lobby.  "Everybody's so -nice-.  Do you own this place or
something?"
	I laughed.  "No, but Djarko acts like it sometimes.  Zoner and
I did the management a big favor a couple of years back, and... well,
let's say we're friends of the house now."
	"I think that manager guy was really upset that Samira
couldn't find me any real jewelry.  I don't know where they came up
with this dress.  I've never worn anything this formal in my life.  I
couldn't even walk in the first shoes she found me, she had to borrow
some flats from one of the dancers.  I probably look like a little kid
playing dress-up."
	"You look great," I told her.  "Relax.  No, scratch that, keep
your guard up.  You look ten years older.  You'll have every guy in
the place offering to buy you a drink."
	"Really?"  She reddened a little.  "Why?"
	"We'll, uh, have to discuss that sometime."
	We went into the casino itself, onto the floor.  There wasn't
much action at this time of the day - the serious players would be
sleeping off the previous night, and the tourists were for the most
part out looking at landmarks and seeing the sights.  Only a few
die-hards sat at the few open tables - here a game of baccarat that
looked like it had started the previous evening and was still raging,
there a couple of worn-looking aficionados at the roulette wheel,
shouting and cursing in French.  A bored-looking blonde girl sat at
the only illuminated blackjack table, alone.
	I slid into a chair across from her, tossed my tiger-striped
plaque on the green baize and said, "Good morning."
	She glanced at her wristwatch and replied in a light
Scandinavian accent, "It's just past one in the afternoon."
	I shrugged.  "It's always morning somewhere in the world," I
said, repeating a dearly-held maxim of a college friend of mine.
	She glanced at Sakura, who had taken the chair next to me.
"Miss?"
	Sakura gave her a blank look, then understood and shook her
head.  "I'm just watching him," she said.
	The dealer nodded and dealt.  I was so startled to actually
win the first hand, nineteen to a twenty-four bust, that I decided to
keep playing until this unaccustomed luck ran out.
	Later I was to decide that Sakura was my good luck charm,
because that day, my luck didn't run out, at least not with the
cards.  I sat there, becoming more and more engrossed in the game, for
almost two hours, slowly attracting a crowd of onlookers as the heap
of plaques at my end of the table got higher and higher.  The casino
started to fill up as people finished lunch or dragged themselves out
of bed, and most of them piled up behind me, watching me play and
commenting among themselves in a babel of languages that bounced off
my ears.  I wasn't paying any attention to them; I was too wrapped up
in the game.  I had a few narrow escapes, was saved several times by
the 'House draws on 16' rule, and at one point stayed in the game only
thanks to a well-timed surrender, but the cards favored me by far.
	Finally, the dealer smiled at me and said, "You are very lucky
today, Mr. Gryphon.  Mr. Krovnz will be thrilled."
	I blinked at her, jolted out of my card-playing trance by her
voice saying something besides the usual, subdued, automatic language
of the game; then I grinned.  "I don't think he'll be as happy as all
that," I said, indicating my heap of plaques.  I had lost track of how
much money they represented, and now I didn't dare to try to count
them.
	"No, you're mistaken," the dealer said.  "Whenever you or
Mr. MegaZone come in, he's always disappointed that you never win
anything.  'Those poor men,' he says," she said, in a remarkably good
impression of Krovnz's accent, "'they save my place here and then they
never win anything.'"
	"Well, I've won something today," I said.  "And I think I'd
better quit while I'm ahead."  I looked at my watch, then stared at it
in shock.  Good Lord!  Why hadn't the man we were supposed to be
meeting contacted me yet?  He knew I'd be at the blackjack table.
	Sakura nudged my elbow.  "One more," she said.
	I considered.  I didn't know exactly how much money I had
there, but given the height of the disorderly pile, it had to be a
lot.  On the other hand, what did I really have to lose?  If I blew it
all I'd leave with exactly what I came in with.  It wasn't as though I
were betting a child's college fund.
	I grinned at the dealer.  "OK, one more."
	She looked over my shoulder, a question in her eyes.  I knew
she was looking at Djarko.  I could imagine the beaming look on his
mustachioed face as he nodded to her.  If she'd had to check with him
for permission to proceed, there must be quite a lot of money embodied
in that pile.  I felt excitement yank at my heart.  I'm not much of a
gambler, really - I never bother with lottery tickets and outside of
this casino I don't play cards for money - but the prospect of this
one last hand was engaging me right where I'd left off when the dealer
had broken my reverie.
	The dealer nodded to me, probably echoing the nod she'd gotten
from Krovnz, and I shoved the whole mess of chips into the betting
circle.
	She dealt, turned one card up, and waited.  I picked my cards
up and looked at them.  6 of clubs, 5 of diamonds.  Hmm.  I looked at
her shown card.  Ace of hearts.  Hmm again.  The obvious thing was to
hit once.
	I put my cards down on the table and heard my voice say,
"Double down."
	The gabble of voices behind me stopped as though I'd fired a
pistol shot.  The dealer's professional composure fractured the
slightest bit for the first time since I'd shown up.  She looked a
little troubled, her eyes flicking up over my shoulder again.
Apparently she got a nod, because the worry lines around her clear
blue eyes immediately smoothed out again.  "Gentleman takes one," she
said, then drew a card and put it with my others: 9 of spades.
	"Stand," I said.
	She turned over her hole card: 8 of clubs, which forced the
ace to be 1 rather than 11.  "Nine," she said calmly.  "House takes
one."  She drew.  3 of spades.  "Twelve," she said.  "House takes
one."  Again.  I tried to keep my hands from trembling.  Her new card
was the 4 of hearts.
	"Ohhhhh," said the group behind me.
	"Sixteen," she said.  "House takes one."
	She drew, put the card down, and almost stopped my heart.
	It was the jack of clubs.
	"Twenty-six," she said calmly.  "The gentleman wins."
	The crowd behind me burst into cheering.
	The dealer smiled at me.  I forced myself to remain calm,
returning her smile, and said, "That's all for me, thanks."
	As she went through the laborious business of coloring up my
plaques (reducing them to the smallest amount of the highest
denominations), I turned to see Sakura beaming at me.
	"I knew your luck would hold for one more hand," she said.
	"Congratulations, Mr. Gryphon," said the dealer, pushing a
neat pile of six flat black plaques, topped with a colorful layer cake
of a green and gray marbled one, two yellow ones and a single white
one, at me.  "Your total winnings come to six hundred seventy-five
thousand pounds."
	I stared at her in utter astonishment.
	"You can't be serious," I said.
	"But I am," she said, her cheeks dimpling with another grin.
"As I told you before, you're very lucky today."
	I stood up, took the white five-thousand-pounder off the
stack, scooped the rest into one of the flap pockets on my jacket,
then tucked the white plaque into the top pocket of her red vest,
behind the bright green silk handkerchief.
	"Pour le personnel," I said in my usual execrable French.
	"Oh!" she said.  "That's hardly necessary - "
	"I insist," I said.  "Thank you for a lovely afternoon."
	"You're welcome, Mr. Gryphon," she said, blushing.  "Come
again soon."
	I smiled at her and headed for the cash window.  Djarko
bustled over, beaming from ear to ear.  He grabbed my hand and
wrenched it up and down some more, trying to congratulate me, but he
was so happy he just kept making a kind of burbling noise until
finally he had to stop, clear his throat, take out his comb, wrestle
his hair into submission, and mop his face with his handkerchief, all
of which collectively bought him enough time to find his voice.
	"Ah, Mr. Gryphon, finally you have some luck in my place,
hah?" was what he finally said.
	"I should say so," I said.  "Listen, Djarko, that girl's not
going to get into any trouble over this, is she?"
	Djarko waved a hand, his suavity back in place.  "These
things, they happen.  The cards favored you today.  It is expected,
once or twice in a season."
	"And the tip I gave her?"
	"That is between you and Clara, my friend."
	I nodded.  "Good.  I'd hate to think my run of luck was
costing her.  She's a lovely girl."
	"No.  No.  You are so charmingly naive about the ways of the
world!" Djarko declared.  He gave me his mischievous grin and said
with mock solemnity, "I promise I will not break her legs or fire her.
I will not even speak to her sternly.  Don't think of it again, I beg
you."
	So I didn't.
	We made chitchat for a bit while the cashier packed a small
canvas bag with English banknotes, and then Djarko bustled off again -
Djarko Krovnz bustles everywhere he goes - to oversee some other
aspect of the casino as the place started to fill up with the
afternoon crowd.
	As Sakura and I watched the cashier count notes, I realized
that there was a man in a tuxedo leaning against the counter some
distance from me, at one of the closed cashier windows, watching me.
I looked up at him; he nodded in greeting.  Something about the man
was tickling an alarm at the back of my head.  He looked familiar, but
yet I couldn't say I'd seen him before: a lean six-footer, curly black
hair, narrow face - kind of a postmodern Lord Byron look.  The sort of
man who looked like he was born to wear velvet smoking jackets and
shirts with ruffly fronts and cuffs.  He wasn't, at the moment - he
had on a tux like every other man in the place - but there was
something Byronic about the way he carried himself, if you follow me.
	He took a gray metal cigarette case out of his pocket,
extracted a cigarette from it, put the case away, then walked casually
over.
	"You're a conservative player," he said in a calm, faintly
bored-sounding British voice, "and not very strategic."  His criticism
wasn't stated harshly; it was the sort of tone I might use to point
out a shortcoming in a fellow martial artist's stance.  "I would
hardly have expected you to double on that last hand.  Congratulations
- you've had some excellent luck."
	"Thanks," I said, "Mister... ?"
	"My name is Bowen," said the man.  He paused to light the
cigarette with a battered black Ronson lighter, then added, "Laurence
Bowen."
	I nodded and offered a hand.  "Ben Hutchins."
	He raised his eyebrows slightly at me as he shook my hand.
"The staff here seem to know you by another name," he observed.
	"Nickname of mine," I said.  "It's their way of compromising
between formality and familiarity."  I stepped aside so that I could
introduce Sakura, which I proceeded to do.  I wasn't sure exactly what
to call her, since we hadn't had that conversation about her response
to Djarko's question yet, so I settled for "companion" and hoped Bowen
didn't get the wrong idea.  He was polite and pleasant in greeting
her, but no more.
	"Might I buy you a drink," Bowen asked, "to celebrate your
good fortune?"
	I said I didn't see why not, and the three of us went into the
bar.  Transbelvia has no drinking age - in fact they don't pay much
attention to age under any context - but Sakura had a Coke anyway,
which seemed to amuse Bowen.  We took a corner booth, and Bowen made
sure to take the side from which he could see the entrance.
	"You're Gryphon of Trailing Edge Air Lines?" Bowen asked after
the waitress brought our drinks and left.  All the pleasant British
bantering was gone from his tone, and his face had cooled into a
deadly seriousness.
	"That's me.  My partner's at the airport keeping the Herc warm
for us.  We're expected at 1330 Zulu."
	"We may have to move that up a bit," Bowen said.  "Don't be too
obvious about it, but do you see the man with the green cummerbund at
the end of the bar?
	I took a sip of my Newcastle Brown Ale and looked.  "Uh-huh."
	"I have something," Bowen said with a trace of cool amusement
in his voice, "that he wants very badly.  What's more, he knows I have
it, and he has several friends stationed throughout the casino.  They
don't want to make a fuss inside, but the moment I try to leave,
they'll be all over me, and anyone I'm with."
	"That won't be a problem," I told him.
	"No?"
	"No," I said, and gave him my best enigmatic smile.  When the
waitress came by to see if he wanted another martini, I told her,
"Would you ask Mr. Krovnz to stop by this table, please?  Tell him
Mr. Gryphon would like to talk to him." 
	"Certainly, sir," she said, and went.  A few moments later,
Djarko bustled over.
	"Djarko," I said softly, "this is my friend Mr. Bowen.  You
need to discuss something with him, and me, and Sakura, in your office
right away.  We don't want to be pulled away from our drinks for
business, but it can't be helped.  I'm afraid you'll have to insist."
	Djarko blinked at me for a moment; then a slow smile spread
across under his mustache; then he scowled fretfully and said in a
louder tone, "I'm afraid I must insist.  It will only take a moment.
It is very important."
	I sighed and replied, "Oh, very well.  Come on, you two, we'd
best see what he wants."
	We all got up and followed Djarko into his office.  As soon as
the door was closed, Bowen turned a scowl on me.
	"Why," he wanted to know, "did you think it necessary to call
attention to us that way?"
	"Djarko," I said, ignoring him, "do you remember the gentleman
at the end of the bar?  Bald guy with a green cummerbund, jacket too
small for him?"
	Krovnz nodded.  Twenty years in the Transbelvian Secret
Service had made him a keen and habitual observer.  "Something not
quite right about that one.  And he has friends, too.  Five of them,
scattered throughout the gaming floor."
	"I count four," said Bowen, perplexed.
	"Perhaps you do, but there are five," Djarko replied with
perfect confidence.  "You probably missed the one at the baccarat
table; he at least know how to hold cards.  The others are amateurs."
	"The bald gentleman is of the opinion that my friend Mr. Bowen
owes him a substantial amount of money, money Mr. Bowen has no
intention of paying."  I grinned at Djarko.  "We'd like to leave
without him and his friends... encumbering us."
	Djarko grinned back.  "But certainly, Mr. Gryphon, that can be
arranged."  He pressed a button on his desk; a moment later a tall
blond man in the livery of the house entered through the side door.
"Klaus, please bring the things of Mr. Gryphon and his companion from
201 and Samira's workroom, and Mr. Gryphon's money from the cashier's
counter."  Klaus nodded and went.  A few moments later he returned
with two bags, one containing my clothes and Sakura's, the other
stuffed with money.  Sakura went off to an adjoining room to change
back into her street clothes; I got started right there in the
office.
	"Good, excellent," said Djarko.  "Now.  You know the six
gentlemen you and I thought might make trouble?  They are after
Mr. Gryphon's friend here.  Mr. Gryphon and his friends are leaving.
You will have your men... "  Djarko shrugged wryly.  "... Eh, -hinder-
the six gentlemen."
	Klaus grinned.  "With pleasure, sir.  Give me two minutes to
set it up."  He turned and left again.
	Bowen gave me the eyebrow treatment again; I shrugged and
grinned as I buttoned my jeans.  Djarko actually giggled and winked at
him.  He probably knew instinctively, as an old spy himself, that
there was more to the bald man's beef with Bowen than money, but he
didn't much care.  He was having too much fun.
	Two minutes later, as Sakura was emerging from the other room,
the intercom box on Djarko's desk beeped and Klaus's voice said, "All
set.  Boris is bringing Mr. Gryphon's car around."
	"These men may be quite dangerous," Bowen said to Djarko.  "Are
you sure your men are up to it?"
	Krovnz was gathering up my tuxedo - even in a crisis he could
be counted on to look to the needs of his guests and their things.  He
looked offended.  "We are not shopping mall security guards here,
Mr. Bowen," he said, a bit huffily.  "We can handle six thugs from the
Sindikat Karpathika... "  He smiled slyly, his eyes twinkling.
"... Or wherever."
	Bowen gave Krovnz a slight nod, acknowledging that he'd
underestimated the casino manager, and smiled.
	"So now it is time for you to leave us again, Mr. Gryphon,"
said Krovnz, his mustache drooping with sadness.  "Ah, well!  You have
had a good time, I think, though your stay was short.  Come and see us
another time when you can stay longer."
	He gave me another effusive handshake, then bustled away to
see to the arrangements.  Bowen sidled over to me and murmured out of
the corner of his mouth, "What kind of car?"
	"Belv," I replied.  "God knows what year."
	He frowned.  "Good work," he said sardonically.  "We'd as well
to -walk- away."
	"Hey, lay off," I told him.  "Nobody said anything about you
being hot, just that you wanted a pickup."
	He sighed.  "Well, we'll just have to wing it and hope for the
best.  I hope your friend's men are good."
	Indeed they -were- good.  As we emerged from Djarko's office
and made for the main exit, the six men from the Sindikat dropped what
they were doing and beelined for us, not running, but only barely.
The more ambitious ones were starting to reach into their jackets when
Djarko's men suddenly appeared, as if out of nowhere.  They came,
waiters, croupiers and one janitor, and suddenly there were six
separate "regrettable accidents" scattered about the foyer of the
casino, and six angry men in green cummerbunds entangled with trays of
drinks, a cake, some kind of pasta dish, ten stacked trays of poker
chips, two dozen packs of baccarat cards, and a mop.
	The three of us hustled outside to discover that the situation
was a bit worse than we had initially thought.  Outside on the
casino's front steps, blocking us from the street and the idling Belv,
were a number of men in black jumpsuits and three people, two men and
a woman, dressed as...
	... bullfighters.
	I let out the kind of curse I should really be more careful
about using in front of somebody Sakura's age.
	"Who're -they- supposed to be?" Sakura muttered to me.
	"Spanish ninjas," I replied.  I know the plural of "ninja" is
"ninja", but these feebs, by God, are ninjas.  "I -hate- Spanish
ninjas."
	The female Spanish ninja was a dark-haired, dark-eyed, quite
beautiful creature, really, but when she spoke her voice was flinty
and cold.
	"End of the line, Mr. Bowen," she said.  "A pity you had to
involve others in - "  Her dark eyes went wide as she recognized me.
"You!  Well, well!  This is a fascinating coincidence.  Don Antonio
will be most pleased when I deliver to him your head."
	"He won't be too pleased if you got it by having your heavies
shoot me, will he?" I asked.
	"At this point," she replied with a sweet smile, "it hardly
matters."
	Sakura, bless her, didn't have the patience for proper
repartee-with-villains.  As I watched the muzzles of the guns in the
hands of the men in black jumpsuits, trying to predict which one of
them would fire first, she suddenly exploded into motion on my left,
plowing into the Spanish ninja on the woman's right with a terrific
dashing shoulder block.  He let out a heavy "WHOOMPH!" and went over
backward.  I charged too, Ler-sliding into engagement radius of the
one on her left and letting him have a straight-armed hand-heel strike
to the point of his chin.  The woman hissed in annoyance and started
to draw the rapier at her side.
	There were two sharp cracks, and she was tumbling over
backward down the stairs, the half-drawn rapier clattering out of its
scabbard and away toward the street, as Laurence Bowen shot her twice
in the chest with the little black Walther PPK he'd produced from
somewhere inside his tuxedo jacket.  Then he grabbed the barrel of one
of the black jumpsuiter's guns, wrenched it out of his hands while
elbowing him in the throat, turned, and covered the others.
	I only noticed this out of the corner of my eye, as I was a
bit busy dealing with the rather thin, sallow-complected Spanish ninja
I'd charged.  My heel strike had stunned him, but he was a quick
recoverer, and apparently a fairly advanced student.  Strapped to his
arm was a three-clawed weapon such as was favored by his order's
master, Antonio de la Vega.  He was keeping me busy enough that I
didn't have time to check much of anything.
	When I stole a glance to see how Sakura was doing, he clipped
me with a backfist, fortunately not with the hand that had the claw on
it.  I stumbled back, caught my heel on a step, and made a mental note
as I sprawled not to get into any more fights on staircases.  The
Spanish ninja grinned and reared his claw arm back, and I readied
myself to roll away from the blow - 
	- when with a sudden loud THUD he was flung away to my right,
tumbling in a heap across the stairs and then rolling down to the
street.  Standing where he had been a moment ago was the nose of an
automobile, angled crosswise on the casino stairs, its suspension
rocking and tires smoking from the sudden stop.
	I got to my feet and took a better look.  The car was so
battered and dented it was hard to tell for a moment that it was, or
had once been, an early-sixties Ford Falcon convertible, painted a
familiar shade of yellow, with the scuffed remains of a
black-and-white checkered stripe running around it like a plimsoll
line.  At the wheel was a gorgeous girl with long, straight scarlet
hair, an orange tank top, and jeans, her face slightly flushed and
grinning.  Behind the car, scattered black-suited men pulled
themselves up from various positions into which they looked as though
they'd leaped or been flung rather violently.  Bowen covered them
warily with the submachinegun he'd taken from one of them and
sidestepped toward me.  Sakura, standing over the prostrate form of
the third Spanish ninja with his nunchaku in her hand, was staring at
the car with unconcealed shock.
	As the car bounced on its overworked shocks, a bearded,
elderly man in the black garb and purple stole of a Transbelvische
Orthodox priest jumped spryly out of the back without bothering to
open the door, leaned back into the car and handed over a fistful of
bills to the driver.
	>Wow!< he crowed in the local language.  >You're one hell of a
driver!<
	>Just doin' my job,< replied the driver with a wink.  Then she
looked at me, sized me up for a second, and yelled in English, "C'mon,
or I'll leave ya!"

     /*  Bad Religion  "Inner Logic"  _Stranger than Fiction_  */

	She didn't have to tell me twice.  I piled into the front seat
as Sakura hopped over the side into the back; Bowen sidestepped twice
more, keeping the muzzle of his MP5 on the jumpsuit squad for as long
as possible; then, as the Falcon's driver clutched out and stomped her
throttle, he broke into a run and dove, letting fly with a long,
ripping burst to keep the bad guys' heads down until just before he
crashed into the back and rolled onto the floor.
	"Name's Gena," said the cabdriver - for I had just noticed
that the Falcon had a "TAXI" sign affixed to the top of the windshield
frame - as she slammed a racing shift into second and clipped the guy
I'd been fighting, who was just starting to get up, with the Falcon's
left wing, sending him spinning back into the street.  "Where to?"
	"The airport," I told her.  I glanced back to see a mob of
Djarko's men swarming the stairs and the aged priest laying a wicked
spinning front kick on one of the black-jumpsuiters - looked like Wing
Chun kung fu, but I didn't get to see much more of his action before
he was out of sight.
	"I didn't break up a party back there, did I?" she asked with
a mischievous grin as she handbrake slid the Falcon around a corner,
then piled back on the gas.
	"Hardly," replied Bowen dryly as he climbed off the floor and
got himself situated so he could cover out the back of the Falcon with
his subgun.
	"Think we lost 'em?" Sakura wondered, peering behind us as the
narrow street whipped past.
	As she spoke, two black Mercedes sedans came screaming out of
side streets to either side behind us, knocking a fruit market to hell
and gone before they got onto their racing lines and came after us.
	"Nope," I told her, pulling my Makarov out of my jacket.
	Fire spurted from the side of the right-hand Mercedes; bullets
stitched a path up the decklid of the Falcon before Gena could swerve
out of the line of fire.  Teeth gritted, she swore like a sailor and
rammed a downshift, powersliding the Falcon around another corner, the
left rear corner whanging lightly off the base of a statue of a
general on a horse.
	One of the enemy cars made the turn.  The other slammed
full-tilt into the statue, causing the old general to topple forward,
his saber neatly slicing the roof of the car in two as the four men
inside scrambled hastily out of the way of his tarnished copper
wrath.  Sakura cheered, then ducked as the guy hanging out the front
passenger window of the car that was still chasing us let off another
burst from his subgun.
	Bowen leaned out over the decklid and returned fire, starring
the Mercedes's windshield but not breaking through the armored glass.
The gun ran dry and he threw it away, drawing his Walther again.
	Gena was an inspired driver, as good as me, maybe a bit
better.  As I watched her flog that beat-up old Falcon through the
narrow, twisting streets of downtown Zbgnvszk, I wondered where she'd
learned to drive that way.  
	I learned the art of combat driving from our Chicago gunsmith,
the part-time bounty hunter, who has a '67 Shelby GT500 that she
treats absolutely shamefully.  I mean, the Simon brothers treated
their old Dodge pickup better than this woman treats that magnificent
automobile.  But I digress; she can certainly drive, no doubts about
that, and a couple of years ago, on the first trip Zoner and I took to
the Windy City, she taught me everything she knows about the gentle
art of the car chase.  I may not be a natural flier like Zoner, but
with two, three or four wheels to put on the ground, I can more than
hold my own.
	The Falcon responded to its driver like a live thing, leaping
over curbs, chattering around corners, and wailing down the
straights.  Its body panels were dented, scraped, discolored and now
bullet-holed, and the upholstery could definitely have used some work,
but the car clearly had everything it really needed, under that
battered skin.  Occasionally, as the wind caught us in a corner and
blew our slipstream back over us, I caught the unmistakable whiff of
the kind of exhaust you get from racing gasoline, as if the engine's
window-rattling roar wasn't indication enough that the Falcon wasn't
quite factory stock.
	Bowen had stopped shooting at the other black car dogging our
trail; his PPK wouldn't do a thing against armor an MP5 hadn't managed
to breach.  Whoever the bad guys had driving was no slouch either, and
the black car was obviously no more original-condition than the
Falcon.  We skidded around the next corner, banged off a parked BMW
and set off its alarm, then roared up a ramp and onto the airport
access highway.
	As the Mercedes rounded the end of the ramp behind us, the guy
with the submachinegun emptied it in our general direction, sending
slugs whining off the concrete highway boundaries and putting one
rather alarmingly through the Falcon's rearview mirror.  I hitched
around in the seat to see that Bowen had the same idea: maybe we could
clip the gunner next time he leaned out the window to shoot at us.
	Suddenly, though, Sakura jumped up in her seat, putting one
foot up on the Falcon's decklid, completely indifferent to the car's
slipstream whipping around her, leaning most of her weight on her bent
leg and using her other foot, planted in the uncertain footing of the
car's back seat, mainly for balance.  Her eyes were narrowed in anger,
and her hands were clenched at her right side in a posture I
recognized immediately.  Bowen stared at her as if she'd lost her mind
and reached to grab her and haul her back down to cover, but before he
could do so, lightning crackled over her arms and he drew back, eyes
wide.
	The gunner popped out of his window and leveled his MP5, and I
swear, Sakura smiled at him for half a second.
	Then she shouted over the roar of the wind and the Falcon's
engine:
	"Shinkuu - HADOKEN!"
	The fireball, forged from the energies of Sakura's own soul,
burst free from her hands as she swept them forward, leaving a
dazzling afterimage in their wake.  It streaked back, almost too fast
to see, and smacked the Mercedes square in its bullet-pocked
windshield.
	The armored glass exploded as if it had been struck by a
giant's fist, glittering shards and pebbles of it bursting in all
directions, and the car swerved violently to the left as the driver
was slammed back against his seat by the fireball's residual energy.
The gunner yelled in consternation, his burst of fire ripping wildly
into the sky, and then the Mercedes slammed the center divider with a
heavy CRUNCH and immediately began shrinking as we sped away from it.
	Sakura raised her fists in the air and gave a triumphant
shout; then she wobbled, suddenly dizzy, and fell back into the back
seat.  Bowen had recovered quite well from his shock and reached to
break her fall, turning her around and easing her into a sitting
position.  She seemed to have fainted entirely, but a moment later her
eyes opened again and she grinned at me.
	"What do you think?" she asked, barely audible over the
slipstream.  "Not too shabby, ne?"
	"It was great," I told her.  "You need to work on your
control, though."
	"Damn!" Bowen snapped.  I turned a little more in my seat,
intending to give him a "what's your problem?" look, until I realized
he hadn't been talking to us - he was looking out the back again.
	Three more black Mercedes sedans were rushing up the highway
on our tail.
	I turned to Gena.  "I can't believe I'm asking this question,
but d'you think you can make this thing go faster?"
	She grinned, not taking her eyes off the road, and the Falcon
surged, its engine snarling, by way of her answer.
	"Good enough," I said appreciatively, and turned to Bowen.
"Your watch is Q Branch, I suppose?" I asked him.
	"Of course," he replied.
	"Please tell me it's Type C," said I as bullets whined around
us.
	"As a matter of fact," he said.  "But Station Z won't be able
to help us out here," he added.
	"Never mind that, just give it here!" I said, holding out my
hand.  He gave me a curious glance, but unstrapped the Rolex and
handed it over anyway.  I swapped him my Makarov for it, cupped my
hand around it to shield it from the wind, twirled the date-setting
stud to set the date to the second, pressed the stud back into place,
pressed it a notch further than that, and spoke into the watch face.
Well, all right, I wasn't in the speaking mood - I yelled at it.
	"Gryphon calling Prince of Thebes on MI6 Emergency Two!" was
what I yelled.  "Come in, Zoner!"  Then I held it to my ear.
	"Zoner here," the watch replied scratchily.  "What's up,
Gryph?"
	"I have Universal's man with me," I replied.  "It's a hot
extract.  Crank up the bird and drop the ramp, we're coming in!"
	I knew Zoner had questions he wanted - was dying - to ask, but
he didn't ask them.  The phrase "hot extract" had switched him
instantly to his most professional mode, because he knew it meant I
was being shot at, an activity which makes me ill-tempered.
	"Roger," he replied.  "ETA?"
	"Five minutes, maybe less," I told him.
	"S.I.G.," said Zoner.
	"Gryphon out!" I replied, and turned back to see how Bowen was
making out.  He'd emptied his PPK at the bad guys while I was talking,
and had switched to my Makarov; as I watched, he clipped the gunner in
the middle car with a round, making him drop his MP5.  Sloppy fellow;
if he'd been using the sling like he was supposed to, he'd have kept
it.
	Bowen looked at the Mak with something like satisfaction, the
kind of look I would give a particularly good wrench, and resumed
firing.
	"Coming up on decision time, fella!" Gena shouted, wrenching
my attention forward again.  "Where in the terminal do you wanna go?"
	"To hell with the terminal!" I yelled.  "Take us right out on
the flightline, then I'll tell you where to go from there!"
	She gave me a millisecond glance, her blue eyes twinkling;
then the close-mouthed little smile she'd been wearing throughout the
drive widened just a little bit and she took a firmer grip on the
wheel.
	We skidded sideways across the terminal approach, bounced over
the median dividing the vehicle access lane from the bus through lane,
and roared down the front of the terminal building, the bellow of the
Falcon's engine reverberating interestingly from the concrete rain
canopy over the sidewalk in front of the terminal.  Bowen emptied the
Makarov into the front of the lead Mercedes, making steam billow from
its holed radiator.  Then he passed the empty gun back to me and
reloaded his own.  I changed out the Mak's magazine too, then went
eyes-front just in time to see that we'd reached the end of the
terminal frontage lane and were still accelerating.
	We missed the turn at the end of the frontage lane entirely,
jounced over the curb with a violent crash from the car's underbody
and a spray of sparks from all four corners, then smashed through the
cyclone fence barring our way onto the tarmac.  Ahead lay a narrow
alley perhaps a hundred yards long, between two hangars, littered with
stacks of barrels, pallets of empty (at least I hoped they were empty)
crates, and all the random refuse of an aircraft garage.
	Gena threaded the Falcon between two piles of packing trash,
her hands steady on the wheel.  Then I saw her smile tighten a little
as she nudged the nose of the Falcon a little to the left, just as we
reached a pyramidal heap of barrels.  We had been going to clear it,
until she did that, and for a second I wondered what the hell she
could be playing at.
	Then we clipped it with a great booming WHANG, and in the next
instant we were past it.  I turned to look, to see it collapsing in
our wake, the metal drums falling, bouncing and rolling all over the
alley.  The driver of the lead Mercedes, almost blinded by the steam
from the radiator, stood on the brakes an instant before his car
plowed into the mess; the car slewed drunkenly to the right, then the
left, then back to the right, and slammed into the sheet-metal wall of
the hangar, crumpling it up like the side of a torn tin can.  It
stopped the Mercedes, though, and the second didn't quite clear its
tail end, wrenching it round with a splintering impact and plowing
through a stack of crates before recovering and continuing its
pursuit.
	Gena didn't see the results of her handiwork, since her
rearview mirror was gone, but she certainly heard it; her smile became
an open, fierce grin as she whipped the Falcon around a pile of oily
aircraft engine parts, then brushed a heap of crates in hopes of
causing a similar obstructing mess behind us.  That worked too, but
not as well - both of our surviving pursuers made it through, although
not without a scratch.
	Then we burst clear of the alley and out onto the tarmac of
the airport's staging area.  I scanned the flightline and spotted the
Prince of Thebes standing off to our right near where we'd parked it,
props whirling, cargo ramp down, ready to go.
	"There!" I yelled, pointing.  "The gray C-130 with the red,
white and blue triangle on the tail!"
	"I see it," Gena replied, and laid in the handbrake, drawing a
lovely complex curve in black across the gray concrete of the
hardstand as she re-aimed the Falcon in the Prince's direction.  The
two black sedans swept out of the alley and turned to follow us,
gunfire singing all around us.  Another round popped into the Falcon's
bodywork someplace; Gena gritted her teeth, downshifted for better
acceleration and floored it for the Prince.
	"What am I supposed to do once I get you there?" she
demanded.  "Drop you off and try to lose these jerks?"
	"Just drive right up that ramp," I replied, "but you'll have
to stop pretty quick once you get there!"
	She grinned, all trace of annoyance gone, as though I had just
proposed a truly grand adventure.  "You got it!" she said, and eased
the Falcon into a long, gentle curve.  Ahead of us, Zoner throttled up
and the Prince started to roll.  I could imagine what Zoner was
hearing from the control tower by this time, and the thought made me
smile.
	"Here we go!" Gena yelled.  "Better hang on!"
	The Falcon hit the bottom of the Prince's ramp, its bumper
clipping the steel decking of the ramp before the wheels caught and
the car jumped.  Gena kept it under control, ramming the gearshift
down a gear for engine braking, steering opposite the inevitable skid
and using a deft hand on the handbrake while she heel-and-toed the
brake and throttle.  The car leaped into the Prince's hold, slammed
down on the deck, skidded for perhaps ten feet, went far enough
off-line that the front right and left rear corners tapped the
walls... 
	... and stopped.
	I jumped out, dove for the intercom and bellowed into it,
"We're in!  Go!  GO!"  Bowen was on the hop to the other side of the
car, ramming in the ramp retractor.  As the ramp started whining up,
both he and I took a couple of shots through the narrowing gap, just
to keep the bad guys' heads down and discourage them from doing
anything stupid, like trying to ram the back of the Herc.  The deck
shivered under our feet as Zoner poured on the power, and we were
off.  Gena and Sakura scrambled out of the Falcon - Sakura had
recovered her strength rapidly, faster than I expected, and I was
pleased to see it - and the four of us ran up to the flight deck.
	"I have to hand it to you," said Zoner distractedly as he
conned the Prince of Thebes across a taxiway, "you really know how to
make an entrance."
	I jumped into the copilot's seat; Sakura strapped herself into
the flight engineer's station while Bowen and Gena scrambled into the
lower bunk, Bowen in the corner, Gena near the end, both holding onto
the struts that held up the top bunk.
	"Careful with the takeoff angle," I told Zoner as he ignored
the concrete taxiways and ran the Prince straight across the grass -
the C-130's landing gear laughs at undeveloped terrain.  "We've got
about a ton and a half of unsecured automobile back there."
	"Yeah, I, uh, sorta noticed," said Zoner, nodding.  He opened
the throttles with a practiced, steady hand, eased the yoke back, and
lo, we were off.  Within minutes we were out of Zbgnvszk International's 
control area and climbing west toward England.
	"Gonna be a while before we hear the words 'welcome to
Transbelvia' again," Zoner observed wryly.
	"Yup," I agreed.
	Zoner thumbed in the autopilot, took off his headset and
carefully hung it next to his head, and let out a long sigh.  "You
want to go strap that car down now?" he asked me blandly.
	"Yeah, all right," I replied nonchalantly, as though we did
this kind of stuff every day.

				  MZ
	Now that I wasn't quite so busy ignoring the Transbelvian air
traffic controllers' quite justified screams of indignation at my
mistreatment of their airport control zone, I could take a moment to
relax, unpucker my sphincter, and take a look at the MI6 agent who had
been so important to the Other Side, whoever they might have been,
that they'd chase him out onto the flightline of an international
airport.
	Hmm, a dilemma.  Would it be the somewhat pointy-faced fellow
in the tuxedo, or the gorgeous redhead in the tank top?
	Somehow I was thinking "tuxedo".  That left the question of
where the redhead had come from.  I phrased that question in the form
of a look at Gryph.
	He grinned.  "MegaZone," he said, indicating the redhead,
"this is Gena; and this," he went on, indicating the man in the tux,
"is Mr. Laurence Bowen, with Universal Export."
	The redhead snorted derisively.  "'Universal Export' my ass,"
she said.  "He's a British secret agent."  Bowen was giving her a
look, to which she responded by tossing her scarlet hair and saying,
"Do I look like an idiot to you, Mr. Laurence Bowen of Universal
Export?" she asked him.  "Sure, you're just an import/export man from
England, out for a morning's fun at the Casino - with a watch that
transmits on MI6 emergency frequencies, a handgun and enemies in the
Sindikat Karpathika."  She nodded.  "Right, uh-huh.  Mrs. d'Amato
raised one fool, but he wasn't her daughter Angelina."
	Bowen looked like he wanted to glare, but only for a moment;
then he seemed to admit to himself how obvious our circumstances had
made it, and smiled.  He had a disarming smile - it went well with his
odd ambience of Byronic flair.
	He nodded - it was actually more like a bow, given the
circumstances - and surrendered.  "Quite.  That was an excellent
piece of driving, by the way, thank you.  And quite a piece of flying
too," he added with a nod to me.
	"No problem," I replied.  The rest of them followed me aft,
where I stopped for a moment to admire the cargo.
	"Well," I said.  It was really all there was to say; I have
enough tact not to come right out and say, "That's the shittiest-
looking Ford Falcon I've ever seen."  Besides, the judgment would have
been unfair - the car was obviously not having one of its best days.
The rearview mirror was missing, and the bullet hole in the windshield
told the story of where it had gone.  Who knew how many of the dents
and scrapes had been there before today's excitement had started?
	Gryph and I got the straps and blocks out of the locker and,
with a little shoving and swearing, got the Falcon secured.  I
immediately felt better; unsecured heavy cargo always makes me
nervous.  All we need is one good pocket of turbulence and we've got
major airframe integrity issues, to say nothing of the laugh riot that
is a rapidly shifting CG.
	With that taken care of, we retired to the "flight lounge",
the little living room of our small living-quarters module.  We'd been
carrying real cargo on the way to Transbelvia, which had kept me from
installing the larger living unit; now, looking at what Gryph had
brought back with him from the casino, I figured it was just as well.
	Gryph was sitting in one side of the little booth built into
the side of the microgalley; Sakura was in the other side, pouring a
Pepsi over ice and grinning about something.  Probably the most
exciting morning she'd ever had.  She was taking to the lifestyle like
a frog to a pond.  I didn't know whether to like that or be worried by
it, but it made me feel better, overall, about having her along than
I'd felt in the morning.
	Bowen was sitting at one end of the little couch built into the
bulkhead opposite the microgalley, and Gena at the other; I contented
myself with the little collapsible stool in front of the weapons
locker.  Fury poked his nose out of Ben's bunk to have a sniff at the
new arrivals, but apparently they bored him, because he went back to
sleep almost immediately.
	"So Gryph," I said, pointing to the Casino Transbelvia gym bag
he still had over his shoulder.  "What's in the bag?"
	He blinked, as if realizing he had it, then pulled it off his
shoulder and tossed it to me with a smile.  It was solid and fairly
heavy, like it was full of paper.  "Books?" I wondered, then unzipped
it and peered in.
	"Jesus H. Christ!" I burst out.  I couldn't help it.  The bag
was full, absolutely -stuffed-, with British money, mostly twenty- and
fifty-pound notes, wrapped up in neat little bricks with bands around
them showing how much money was in each brick.  "Where'd you get
this?" I asked, tossing the bag back.
	"Won it," said Gryphon, "at blackjack, believe it or not.  I
thought Djarko was going to cry."
	"Upset, was he?" I wondered.
	"Upset!" Sakura burst out, then laughed.  "He was so happy he
could barely talk.  I was afraid he was going to pass out."
	"Well, keep an eye on that bag," I said with a grin.  Nodding
to Sakura, I went on, "It's her college fund."
	Sakura blinked, looked from me to Gryph, then down at the
booth counter, going red over the bridge of her nose.  I guess she
hadn't thought that far ahead yet.  Gryph was giving me a funny look
too, come to that.  I guess he hadn't thought that far ahead either.
	"Somebody want to tell me where we're going?" Gena wondered.
	"London," I said.  "After that... "  I shrugged.  "We can't go
back to Transbelvia until we've had a chance to smooth things out,
which might take quite a while by phone.  I guess we could drop you in
Germany... "
	"I don't need to go back to Transbelvia," Gena said,
grinning.  "In fact, if you guys are Americans, that might work out
pretty well for me.  Where's your home base?"
	"Worcester, Mass," I replied, at which Gena brightened.
	"No kidding?  Hell, that's perfect.  I might make it back to
school in time for the start of term after all."
	"Where do you go?" Gryph wondered.
	"Northeastern," Gena told him.
	"How'd you end up driving a cab in Transbelvia?" asked
Sakura.
	Gena shrugged.  "Figured I'd do Europe for the summer.  Dad
didn't like it - he thought I should've signed up for summer term - so
I had to pay for it myself.  I, uh... had a little problem in the
Czech Republic and ended up kind of... well, broke.  I figured I'd cab
around Zbgnvszk and save up enough money to fly home by the start of
the school year, but I wasn't quite going to make it."  She grinned at
the expression on Bowen's face.  "I know what you're thinking, Secret
Agent Man - 'If you were so broke, where'd you get the car then?'"
	"The question had crossed my mind," Bowen allowed.
	"Fixed it up out of a junkyard," she replied.  "I'm pretty
handy with a wrench.  Maybe," she said as if the thought had just
occurred to her, "I could have made money faster if I'd been a
mechanic... but driving the cab was too much fun to give up."
	"Oh, that reminds me," said Ben, and he rummaged around in the
gym bag, pulled out one of the wads of banknotes, and tossed it to
her.  "That cover your fare?"
	She looked at the number printed on the band, then back at
him, and said, "It's too much.  I don't need -anything- if you guys
are gonna fly me home."
	"Keep it anyway," he said.  "You're gonna need to get that
Falcon patched up after what we made you put it through."

	We got into London as evening was falling, and since we had
little else to do, we all piled into Gena's Falcon to drive Bowen over
to MI6 headquarters, draw our pay, and so on.  Fortunately, the days
of that headquarters being itself a secret were over - they'd just put
up a gleaming pyramid of an HQ near the Thames, in fact, with a lobby
and a tour and everything, just like the J. Edgar Hoover building,
only in a better part of a better town.
	Gena stayed outside in the car while the rest of us went
inside.  Bowen shook hands with Gryph and me, thanked us for our help,
and went off into the bowels of the building someplace.  I went over
to the special services window and chatted up the Wren - I suppose
they don't really call them that anymore, but a girl in a Royal Navy
uniform, anyway - while we waited for my pay voucher to clear.  Gryph
went to the main counter, Sakura trotting behind him, and started
talking to the burly sergeant type about something.  I could guess
what, but it would only be a guess, since I couldn't hear them from
across the lobby.
	I was just taking the envelope full of money from the Wren
when I -did- hear part of Gryph's conversation with the sergeant at
the main desk.  That part would have been him leaning over the counter
and saying, in as loud a voice as a person can use and not technically
be shouting, "WHAT?!"
	The sergeant kept his voice down, so I didn't get to hear
WHAT?!, but from the look on Gryph's face, he didn't find it any more
credible the second time.  I thanked the Wren hastily and started
heading over there.	
	Sakura was pulling at Gryphon's right arm and saying, "C'mon,
maybe we should just go, huh?" but I could have told her that was
useless.  Ben can be damn near immovable when he doesn't want to be
moved, and right then he wasn't interested in anything but jawing with
that sergeant.  The sergeant, for his part, didn't look impressed, and
as I drew nearer, I could finally hear what he was saying in a quiet,
rather bored tone.
	" - ector of Secret Intelligence's personal order, sir.
Nothing I can do about it."
	"That's completely ridiculous," Gryphon said, in that tone
that meant he was struggling to contain his temper.  "I want to talk
to Admiral Messervy at once."
	"Admiral Messervy is no longer DSI, sir," said the sergeant
patiently.  "He retired last month."
	That was news to Ben, and to me too, for that matter.  He
blinked in surprise at the sergeant, then recovered himself and plowed
ahead, "Well, then I'll see his replacement, if he's the one that gave
the order."
	"-She- is," the sergeant replied, his tone finally becoming a
bit pointed, "and she's not interested in speaking with you either,
sir.  Her instructions in the matter are quite clear.  You are to have
no further contact with Leftenant White."
	"C'mon," Sakura repeated, tugging harder at his arm.  "Let's
just go, OK?  It must be some kind of mistake, you can call later and
straighten it all - "
	"Not good enough," Ben growled at the sergeant, "not -near-
good enough, my friend.  My partner and I have undertaken dangerous
missions for this agency - not six hours ago I was being -shot at- in
the course of rescuing one of your agents - and because of that I
-demand- the courtesy of an -explanation-!"
	That got the sergeant's wind up; he drew himself up a bit and
replied icily, "M is not in the habit of explaining her decisions to
-contractors-.  Now I really must ask you to leave, -at once-.  I
shouldn't like to have a security team show you out."  He sounded as
if he should like that quite a bit, actually.
	Gryphon tensed, his eyes flashing, and his left fist was
clenched so tight the knuckles were white.  Little crackles of
lightning flickered all up and down his arm.  For a second I thought 
he was actually going to go over the counter and punch that sergeant's
lights out, or throw a Psycho Lightning at him from where he stood.  I
turned my brisk walk into a trot, on my way to a full-out run, when
the tension suddenly drained out of him again and a look of intense
relief covered his face.
	Cammy had just come through a door at the back of the lobby,
dressed in the day uniform of a Royal Marines lieutenant, and it was
the sight of her that had caused such a change in Ben.
	"Cammy!" he said, and then his face darkened again, with
concern and confusion this time rather than anger.  "What the hell's
going on?" he asked her.  "This guy told me that - "
	"I'm afraid what he told you was true," she interrupted him,
her tone of voice cool, and an alarm bell jangled in the back of my
head.  I stopped just behind Gryph and stared hard at her over his
left shoulder as she continued, "You'd better go."
	"True?  Go?  What the hell's going -on-?!" he repeated, a bit
plaintive this time.  He spread his hands in a gesture of entreaty.
"Tell me what's happening here, -please-!"
	"You should leave," said Cammy coldly.  "Now.  And don't come
back; I don't want to see you again."  Her face was perfectly
composed, without a trace of sympathy or compassion.  I kept staring.
Something was nagging at me, something not quite right.  She didn't
seem to notice; all her attention was focused on the coolly
contemptuous glare she was giving Ben.
	"You don't mean that... " he murmured, but it was a question,
not a statement.
	"I do," she replied without hesitation.
	That took the wind out of Ben's sails like a two-by-four in
the gut.  (Actually, a lot worse, since if he's ready for it he can
shrug off a two-by-four to the gut without blinking, but you get the
idea.)  He stared at her, his face washed absolutely blank by
astonishment and the beginnings of the pain.
	"I don't understand," he said softly.  "I thought... "
	"You thought wrong," she said, her voice devoid of emotion.
"Perhaps you should be more careful with your presumptions in future.
Goodbye, Gryphon."
	She turned her back and stalked back through the door she'd
entered by, and just before her back was fully to me, my suspicions
were confirmed.
	"Wait!" Gryph shouted, and made as if to follow her; the
sergeant interposed himself smoothly, his eyes like flint, his right
hand on his sidearm.
	"Sir, I must -insist- that you leave at -once-!" he barked.
	Gryph blinked, as if noticing him for the first time; then his
teeth gritted as all the anger that Cammy's sudden appearance had
jolted out of him came back with interest.  I grabbed one of his arms,
Sakura the other, and we both started shouting in his ears, pleading
with him to calm down.  It was like trying to manhandle a granite
statue; he was so mad all his muscles were at fighting tension, hard
and ridged, erasing the deceptively soft outline of his resting body
and revealing the powerhouse under the rather tubby silhouette.
	I was actually starting to get a little scared.  I didn't see
Ben this angry very often, and it was never a good thing when I did.
He didn't -get- angry during organized fights - they were business,
not personal - and he tried to take things easy in his private life,
handling most adversity by trying to make it into a joke, if necessary
a black one, but any kind of joke so he could laugh it off.  This was
the reason why: if something happened that -did- push him past the
limit of his patience, he was so strong he could destroy things, kill
people, before he got hold of himself again.
	If he blew right now, Sakura and I didn't have a chance of
stopping him by main force; if we couldn't get through to him, yelling
in his ears, and make him calm down, he was going to mess this guy
up.  It would take somebody shooting him, repeatedly, to stop him, and
in this particular place there would be no shortage of people willing
and able to do just that.  I set my heels in the floor and yanked as
hard as I could, trying to at least make him notice I was there.
	The sergeant seemed to realize he might have bitten off more
than he could chew.  He didn't look scared, but he backed up a couple
of steps, drew his sidearm, and shouted, "Security to the front desk!"
	"Gryph, come on, it's not worth it!" I yelled.
	"Listen to him!" Sakura shouted in his other ear.  "Get ahold
of yourself!  What kind of example is this to set for your student?"
	That drove a wedge into his shields; he stopped pushing
against us, though not much of the tension came out of him, and he
gave her a sharp look.
	"Student?!" he demanded.
	She let go of his arm, bowed hastily and said, "Hai,
Gryphon-sensei!" with desperate earnestness.
	He gave her a long, hard look, then turned back to the
sergeant, who stood calmly covering Ben as several more uniformed
soldiers jogged up behind to back him up.
	Ignoring the pistol, he yanked his left arm free from my
grasp, jabbed his index finger at the sergeant, and said in a low,
furious voice, "You tell your new M this isn't over."
	Then he turned on his heel, brushed past me, and stormed
out.
	Sakura looked at me, then at the heavily armed soldiers; then,
bowing, she said, "'Scuse us, fellas," and trotted after her newly-
acquired sensei.
	I sighed, waved tiredly to the soldiers, and followed.

	We stayed in London that night, sleeping aboard the Prince of
Thebes.  Gena sensed something was wrong the second she saw Gryph come
stomping out of the MI6 building, and kept quiet the whole way back to
the airport.  As soon as the Falcon was back aboard, Gryph got out
without a word, retired to his bunk in the living module, and closed
the curtain, sealing himself off as best he could from the rest of the
world.  Given what had just happened, I couldn't blame him.  Fury
bayed at him until he opened the curtain and let the dog climb in and
curl up on his feet, but other than that he was having no part of any
social contact tonight.  Sakura and Gena helped me strap the car into
place in his absence.
	I offered to fix up the other bunk on the flight deck for
Gena, but she said she'd rather sleep in her car, so I got her a
pillow and blanket and she nested down in the back seat.  Strange
girl.  Hot, too, but I was too preoccupied to give that as much
thought as it deserved.  (Besides, I was otherwise involved.)  I could
have gone to bed too - I was tired enough - but I still had some
things to think over before I'd be able to go to sleep, so I went up
on to the cockpit, sat in my seat, and watched the ground traffic of
the airport through the windshield.
	"Zoner?" Sakura said softly from her bunk after a while.
	"Yeah?" I replied.
	"You saw it too, didn't you?  When Cammy turned around and
went back through that door?"
	Under better circumstances I'd have smiled a little; I was
liking Sakura more all the time.  When we started out on this trip,
even though her coming along was my idea, I wasn't sure how I liked
the idea of Trailing Edge Air Lines having a third crewmember.  Now I
was sold on it.
	"Yeah," I said quietly.  "She was crying."

	Next morning we left for home, next evening we parked the
Prince in the hangar in Worcester.  Ben stayed in his bunk for the
whole flight back, but emerged and was tolerably civil in saying "so
long" to Gena.  He even mustered enough bonhomie to offer her the use
of the garage when the time came to fix up the Falcon, an offer she
gladly accepted, since she lived in a walk-up apartment on Huntington
Ave. and was lucky just to have a parking space available.
	"Well, you guys," she said as we finished unstrapping the
Falcon from the Prince's cargo deck, "you've saved my school career,
and I had a hell of a time to boot.  You ever need a ride in Boston,
you know where to find me."  She climbed aboard, fired up the car, and
with a jaunty "Seeya soon!" she was gone.
	It was pleasantly cool and a bit breezy, with a beautiful
starry sky for the last few hours of August.  I stood in the open
doorway of the hangar, took a deep breath, and said,
	"Hey, Gryph - we ought to take the convertible home tonight.
Might be the last nice night we get for a while."
	"Hm?" he said, then, "Oh... yeah, I guess."  I figured that
was about the best I was going to get out of him.  I shut the hangar
door and we went through the connecting door into number two, where he
kept his car collection.  He unlocked the key cabinet, took out the
keys to his white 1965 Buick Wildcat convertible (the LOOOOVE Booooat,
soon we'll be making another run!), and started putting the top down.
	I got in the back with Fury.  A '65 Wildcat is big enough for
even a six-and-a-half-footer like me to get in back, and Sakura looked
so worried about Ben I figured I'd let her stay as close as she
wanted.  He was on automatic pilot, working the car's controls
competently but listlessly.  He didn't even take the long way around
to get home, which he certainly would have done if he'd been paying
attention, because he loved to bomb around in that convertible on a
nice summer night like this one.
	Instead, he drove us straight home to the corner of Cedar and
Russell Streets, pulled up into the driveway, and plopped the Buick
into Park, then sat there, hands on the wheel, looking through the
windshield at nothing.  Only with some prodding did he climb out and
walk robotically to the front room, where he sat down on the couch and
resumed his consideration of the infinite.

				  G
	I stayed that way for almost an hour, and probably would have
been like that all night, possibly all week, if it hadn't been for
Sakura.  What she'd said to me in the lobby at MI6 had stuck in my
mind.  It ricocheted around in my head all the rest of that night, all
through the long, droning flight home, all the way from the airport to
Cedar Street.  "What kind of example is this to set for your student?"
	I had a student?
	Did I -want- a student?
	I looked up from where I sat on the sofa in the front room,
glancing across at Fury, who was sprawled in the armchair.  He gave me
a sardonic look.  
	"Well, what do you think?" I asked him.
	He made a grumbly noise, shifted in the chair, and went to
sleep.
	Off in the kitchen, I could hear the clink of dishes and the
hum of conversation as Sakura and Zoner got dinner ready.  It sounded
like they were having a pretty convivial time out there; I wondered
what I was serving by staying in this funk.  I certainly wasn't
getting any closer to finding out what the hell -happened- to change
the situation.
	A week ago, Cammy had invited me to spend the weekend with her
in San Francisco, and I'd had to decline because of the odd situation
at home.  A day ago she'd given me the coldest look I'd ever received
and told me she didn't want to see me ever again.  At the time, I'd
been so upset - it had been a long day and I was still keyed up, and
the guy on the desk had wound me up further into the bargain - that
I'd just flipped.
	But now, thinking about it, the whole incident didn't make any
sense.  It was too peculiarly timed, and the look on her face had been
too odd.  Cold, mechanical... that wasn't the Cammy I knew.  If she'd
decided to give me the heave for some reason, she wouldn't have done
it that way - she'd have yelled at me, told me to bugger off and stop
bothering her.
	So if I wasn't dealing with a girl who'd suddenly decided I
wasn't what she was looking for in a relationship, then what -was- I
looking at?  Something a lot more sinister.  As I sat and contemplated
it, I stopped feeling hurt and angry and started feeling -uneasy- and
angry - not at Cammy, but at whoever was responsible for this strange
state of affairs.
	So.  I could either mope around about it like a lump - or I
could get up, reconnect with my life, gather my allies around me and
do something about it.
	I got up, scruffled Fury's ears, and went into the kitchen.
	"By the way," I told Sakura offhandedly as I entered, "the
word is 'Eldritkar'."
	"Huh?" she asked, turning and blinking at me in surprise -
rather pleased surprise, if I was any judge.
	"Eldritkar," I repeated.  "If I'm your Valdritkar, you're my
Eldritkar.  You might as well start learning the terminology."
	She went a little pink, smiled and said, "Yeah... I guess I
should.  Eldritkar, huh?"
	"Yeah - longer 'a', though.  Like there's two of them there."
	"Picky, picky," she replied.  "If I hadn't been such a geek
about my English lessons the best I'd be able to do would be
'Erudorittokaa'."
	"I was wondering how your English got so good," Zoner remarked
as he started pummeling ground beef into burger patties.
	"It's the way I do things," Sakura replied, hopping up into
one of the tall stools next to the kitchen counter and rocking idly
back and forth on the swivel.  "If I'm really interested in something,
I totally weird out on it.  I did it with Transformers when I was
little, then English, and now martial arts."
	"You were into Transformers?" I blurted.  "Cool!  I was a
-huge- Transformers fanboy.  I've still got most of mine.  We've been
meaning to put shelves up in the den to put them on."
	Sakura looked glum.  "My parents gave all of mine to my little
brother," she said.  "I had Super God Ginrai and -everything-.  They
kept pretending they were buying them for Tsukushi anyway - after all,
they weren't suitable toys for a -girl-... "
	She clenched her fists and trailed off, looking half sad and
half angry.  I couldn't blame her.  Thinking about her father would
probably make her half sad and half angry for the rest of her life.
	I patted one of her hands and went back to chopping.  "You can
play with -my- Transformers once we get the shelves built," I told
her, to get her mind off her parents.  "Just be careful with my old
Megatron, he's getting awful creaky in his old age."
	She glanced up at me, realized what I was trying to do, and
gave me a fleeting smile.
	"Thanks," she said.  Then she hopped down from the stool and
went into the den to pet Fury and wait for dinner.
	"Good save," Zoner muttered as he edged past me to the drawer
where the skillets were.
	"Thanks," I replied.  "This parent stuff is hard."
	"Wait 'til you have to explain sex," he said.  I made sure to
drop the knife I was chopping potatoes with on the counter before I
slapped my forehead in dismay.
	Maybe I can get Rose to handle that bit.

			    END BATTLE 05