Jack froze. Years of cognizance awakened inside him. “Turn left at the next intersection.”
“That cursed GPS!” exclaimed His Eminence effusively.
“—or out of ennui.”
“A new exigency has arisen that vastly changes our current aims,” Jack said hastily.
“If I speed, we will not be quickly exonerated by claiming that we were trying to avoid the agents of an evil immortal Furrier,” His Eminence responded.
“Who contributed to the Holocaust,” added Jack.
Jack’s idyllic ways were gone now, replaced by an air of cold competence.
“It is ignominious to even speak of him.”
The sound was unmistakable—sharp, incisive, and very loud.
“I fear our foe to be truly ineradicable.”
“Driving faster than this would be pernicious, Jack.”
“Under the pseudonym of Samuel Jones, you led the police on a long chase at high speed,” chided Jack with surprising seriousness.
“So you purport, but I of course deny the accusation that Jones was myself.”
This new temporalization of the pursuit bought them about two minutes.
The pair of Englishmen were vouchsafed a ride in a mysteriously bulletproofed taxi whose driver seemed oddly purposeful.
“There is a quality in you, Jack, that one might rather call a quantity—your bohemian nature.”
“You’re one to talk, with your outlandish caprices.”
“We have a compatriot here in the embassy.
In the form of a doggerel, he will communicate to us the last known location of our quarry.”
“You know, France has not been at all what I expected, not a single person dancing the gavotte.”
“I’m no gourmand, but the food here is certainly excellent, as per the stereotype.”
“And I suppose many things here are indeed histrionic.”
His Eminence was indefatigable in the chase, however swift (or, in this case, slow).
Jack’s hotel room was lit primarily by mullioned windows.
The ormolu railing had fingerprints on it, which Jack with his watch cataloged in a period of three seconds.
The portico looked out on the lake, blue-green in color.
Theft was prosaic here; one had to be on one's guard constantly.
With the casual recital of a quatrain, they learned of the former furrier’s detection at a rather famous park.
“He seemed positively somnolent—very little energy.”
Their host urbanely led them to the plexiglass table, about three feet high, with several volumes laid upon it.
His Eminence, who would have fired a servant for overcooking the pickles without compunction, almost felt a bit sorry for the people guarding him and Jack—the poor souls had so little idea of the measure of what they were supposed to guard against.
This alacrity was a bit foolhardy, the agents always afterward agreed, but it had an immediate effect which was to their liking, and the door swung open.
“All of these bourgeois in my way!
“Good grief! Appertaining to that, my English is already become more Frenchized.”
The assignation was brief, and they were unable even to discern the color of their contact’s eyes, which seemed to change even as he moved.
Decisively, from the center, or near the center, of that continent-spanning web of the Furrier, emanated a message.
“I’ll put that in our itinerary—we made sure to buy extra bread. Scoundrel!”
Jack replied laconically, “It’s my area of expertise.”
“Pray cease speaking in marginal dulcets!”
His eyes were imbued with the color of the Martian sky—wait, no, that doesn’t make sense. His eyes would be, like, tan, or orange, something like that. Which would be weird. Anyway, I like Mars, and his eyes were a color.
In order to propitiate the baronet, Jack handed him a roll of bread, which, after suspicious eyeing of the French food, the former ate.
All in all, so far, this series has been a bizarre mixture of random humor, occasional poignancy, and cool one-liners, hasn’t it?
With a perfunctory movement of his left hand, he reloaded his Glock, just like this.
The Furred forces had sedulously moved up the gardens, every minute or so extinguishing at stiff price the anti-Smyth life of another guard.
In an airplane headed toward the Philippians—er, Philippines, Smyth himself viewed with a supercilious eye that very struggle.
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