Albert
It was dark. The kind of darkness that someone could stab you through and you still wouldn’t be able to tell who it was that did it. All you could do in this kind of dark would be to rely on your other senses to know what was going on. That is, as long as your other senses weren’t lying to you. But as far as Albert’s case was, his senses had abandoned him a long time ago.
Albert had very keen senses. And up until now, they allowed him to make a better than honest living cleaning up bad situations. However, for the past few hours, Albert’s senses were telling him all sorts of impossible things. The lack of sensation in his hands and feet told him that he had been tied to a chair for some time, which couldn’t be so, because nobody had ever taken Albert the Fox by surprise before. The way the floorboards creaked and the wind moved through the room told him that he was on the second floor of a late Victorian, and there was little likelihood of that because
A loud sound like thunder cracked and an overwhelming pain washed across Albert’s face.
A dark, heavy shape towered over him. “He’s conscious for now.” It was a male voice, with a heavy middle-eastern accent. “It’s your call, but we cannot stay here for long. We will be found here and there will be many of them coming for this one.”
“I don’t know who you fuckers are, but you’ve made a big mistake. The people I work for don’t like it when someone messes with their business.” Albert put as much emphasis as he could into his threat without passing out. The one that struck him had a sledge-hammer for a hand.
Suddenly the sledge-hammer was wrapped about his throat like a vice. Albert and the chair he was sitting in were actually being raised from the floor for a few feet. No air was reaching his lungs, he was close to blacking-out. In a few more seconds, his head was going to pop off his neck.
“Stop that. He’s no use to us as a corpse. At least not yet, anyway.” The growing pressure about his jugular abruptly stopped and Albert gasped for air as the heavy hands let loose their hold. The other voice was female, with a French sounding accent, but not quite genuine. It was a self-possessed, mature tone, but something about it had the flirtatiousness of youth. “Perhaps you should save your ability to speak, for giving us the information we need, Mr. Fox. I wouldn’t want Silver to kill you before we get what we want from you. That would make all the trouble we went through to acquire you so … pointless. And I do so hate, wasting my time.”
“You’re not getting any information out of me you cunt!”, Albert barely rasped. A pointed heel dug into his right thigh. “Fuck!”
“Mr. Fox, make this easier on yourself. What we want from you is information … don’t make us have to carve it out of you.”
Pain was thrusting wildly up Albert’s newly bleeding leg and clouding his thoughts. “Dammit, you bitch. Get off my leg!” She smelled of jasmine this one. It was faint, and perfumed over, but definitely jasmine … and that something else that he’d never smelled before. The woman’s heel pressed in deeper as she shifted to lean into him. Albert could feel fingernails and the woman’s breath on his face. Her hands seized him steady as she licked the sweat from his forehead and cheeks.
“Eliza, do get off his leg. I know that Mr. Fox has a disrespectful tongue, but we are pressed for time. Silver and you are not hastening this up for us.” An Englishman was speaking now. More refined than the other two, but his speech was old and unhurried. The woman removed herself from Albert with a shove. “Now, Mr. Fox, my colleagues have pointed out to you, we require a bit of information ….”
A small light flashed before Albert’s eyes as a match lit a candle next to him. When his vision cleared, he saw the man with a thin face and dark brushed-back hair, wearing a smoking jacket and circularly rimmed glasses sitting before him. Behind the thin man were the woman and the other man. The woman had strong Persian features, was noticeably beautiful and slender, but had dark piercing eyes. The stocky man in the corner wore all gray and had white hair through black with a well-cropped gray moustache and beard. Another figure stayed in the shadows and out of Albert’s sight.
“Greetings Mr. Fox. Now, far be it from me to be rude, allow me to conduct the introductions. My associates – Eliza who is fond of sharp heels and Silver who has such heavy hands. Rebecca is feeling a bit too shy right now, but if you can’t learn to behave yourself Mr. Fox, I’m sure she can be coaxed into having a chat with you. And as for myself, just call me Riley.” The dark-haired man smiled and leaned towards him, a shadow revealing a scar under the man’s right eye. “You may have several notions about us now, but let me assure you, these are all less than true. The fact is, you know nothing about us or what we want. On the other hand, we know everything there is to know about you.”
“Not likely you creepy bastard.” Albert shifted in his seat, subtly checking the strength of his bonds.
“Amusing Mr. Fox. Very amusing. Let’s see here. What do we know about Mr. Albert Christopher Ferring, otherwise known as Albert the Fox, or simply, Mr. Fox? A man, who up until ten years ago, was the backend-man for IRA operations – Lockwood in ’86, Brighton in ’95, and, oh yes,
“Like I said earlier, fuck you!”
“Ah, but Mr. Fox, we shall be doing all the fucking there is to do here. You see, there’s so much more we know about you. For instance, we know that you have a secret, Mr. Fox. One that you haven’t shared with your brothers in the cause or even your new employers. Something you’ve been keeping to yourself since childhood. You see Mr. Fox, we know about your … special talents. The ones that make you different from everyone else. The ones that have allowed you to stay alive this long, despite the dangerous company you keep. How long has it been since you fed?”
Albert’s breath caught for just a second though he tried to maintain the slack of his face. Riley noticed it easily, and as the slight grin spread over the thin man’s mouth, Albert knew he was caught.
“Oh, don’t worry too much Mr. Fox. We’re not going to tell anybody. They would think you were some kind of freak and probably think up some new and interesting ways to use you … or kill you. And that wouldn’t help us in the least. You see Mr. Fox, we need you to use your extraordinary skills to find someone for us.”
“What? Why me?”
“Because you’re the only one that can find this particular … person.” Mr. Riley sat back in his seat and produced a long, dark cigarette from his jacket and smoked it. The aroma it produced smelled nothing of tobacco or any kind of smoked leaf that Albert knew.
The hairs on Albert’s entire body started to rise. Out of the shadows, there was movement. The final female, Rebecca came forward. She was very tall, ebony skinned and muscular with strange tattoos that criss-crossed her body. Her dark crimson dress shimmered slightly as she moved and Albert sat transfixed by the sight of her – she was terrible and seductive at the same time. Her eyes peered into his bare soul. “Mister Albert Christopher Ferring,” her accent was thick, almost African it seemed. The very room seemed to grow smaller as she spoke again, “We want you to find the one called the Corinthian.”
As quickly as she had spoken the words, the room went dark again. His thoughts were cloudy and his head was throbbing with pain, but Albert could still feel the others’ presence in the darkness. “You have seven days, Albert”, Ms. Rebecca said, as if in his mind.
There was a blinding flash of light and Albert was stunned. He blinked his eyes, and opened them to find that his captors had vanished. But what was more surprising was that he was back in the pub he’d been in before the incident in the dark room. And his hands were unbound!
He knew it hadn’t been a hallucination though, he could still feel the raw pain in his jaw, neck and leg. What the hell was going on?, he thought.
“Fox, tovarich, are you alright?” The question came from Greggory, sitting across from him, looking flustered and uncomfortable. He forgot that his Russian contact had been there. He was trying to absorb the happening, but Ms. Rebecca’s voice was still whispering to him.
“I have seven days,” he said and got up to leave the pub.
