Part Thirty-Eight, Chapter Three - Pirates With No Ranks in the Appraise Skill

So after making a highly suspicious deal with a banker he just met a few hours ago and getting dragged into the unwanted purchase of an old junker, Gris again tries to spin himself as some sort of conquering mastermind.  "Along roads taken by the victorious Alexander, in the paths of the Romans who had conquered the East, over the broad highways established by the Crusaders in their holy cause, I sped back to Afyon."  They're doing a hundred miles per hour - not kilometers, which are the units actually used in Turkey, but miles - and as usual scattering the other motorists and donkeys and the camels that I'm dubious are widely used in Turkey but maybe Hubbard knows something I don't.

Privately vowing that "there were going to be some changes made," Gris decides to start by meeting with Musef and Torgut, who of course you remember as the pair of Turkish toughs who showed up in one chapter at the beginning of Black Genesis to get trounced by Heller before subsequently disappearing from both relevance and the story.  Since recovering from their injuries they've fallen on hard times, and the taxi driver takes Gris to their new home in a filthy slum.  Nobody answers the door when Gris knocks.

I yelled into the room, "I've come to give you a job!"

Rapid whisperings came out of the interior, for all the world like rats running around.

Hubbard, honey, I appreciate that you're characterizing these thugs as vermin and reaching for an obvious simile given their filthy surroundings, but you might want to think about whether two people whispering to each other actually sounds like the scurrying of rats.  I mean, how many rats are we talking about?  What kind of surface are they moving over?

Then somebody called, "We don't believe you but come in anyway."

"Knock-knock, I have a package for a Mr. Sporker?"
"I don't believe you, but come in anyway."

Torgut and Musef are both filthy, ragged, and about a hundred pounds lighter.  But they still hold a grudge against Heller for beating them up and ruining their reputations, so despite their physical condition Gris hires them.  And not merely as bodyguards, no, their main job will be to "make the staff jump at the villa."  Yes, Gris' second voluntary use of his new fortune is to hire thugs to whip and beat his staff into terrified, foot-kissing submission, because he's tired of being served "cold kahve and warm melons." 

That done, Gris returns home and notices that 1) the gatekeeper isn't even on duty, which is about to cost him, and 2) Utanc's BMW is parked so she's around.  Gris bangs on her door and announces that he has news for her, and much like the last people he visited, Utanc inexplicably decides to open up.

Gris informs her that after conferring with his banker, he's decided to shoot Utanc's two uncomfortably literal boy-toys with his shotgun if she so much as uses a credit card to buy cigarettes, and if she wants money she'll have to "come to me for it and you can come crawling on your knees."  And Utanc, upon seeing the "conquering resolution" in Gris' eyes, knows he means it.

Strangely enough, the little boys Gris is threatening to murder are present for all this, sitting on the floor with a coloring book within sight of the door.  They have absolutely no reaction to Gris' presence, much less his promise to kill them.

Convinced that Utanc will now surely "come around," Gris pays Ahmed the taxi driver, "the only true friend I had on this planet who had been true-blue all along," a whopping twenty thousand lira.  Then after stashing the rest of his haul in his room safe, Gris hits the Apparatus hangar and meets with the Antimancos.  The pirates have learned that the Blixo's crew built the line-jumper's platform hollow and put something in it, but Gris explains that it was filled with scotch he used for bribes.  Then Gris spins a tale of how the Swiss bank vaults are two miles underground and he just barely managed an action-packed escape from them - why, just look how dirty his shotgun is!  Both barrels of it!

But, "before you falsely accuse me of welshing on my own gang"... how the hell did Gris pick that one up?  Anyway, Gris generously shares what treasure he was able to snag on the way out, namely that bag of junk stones he bought back in Istanbul.  Because there is no possible way that paying a gang of bloodthirsty pirates a bunch of "synthetic diamonds and flawed glass rubies" could end badly.

I went back to my room and grinned and grinned.

"Gris," I said to my image in the mirror as I undressed to take a well-earned sleep, "there is nothing that can stop you now.  All problems are just buzzing flies and with cunning and money, you can swat them.  Even Heller and Krak."

I lay down for my well-earned rest and dreamed dreams that were bloody and very sweet.

Ah, so obviously next chapter Gris will begin the Machiavellian scheming that will spell his enemies' doom.  As opposed to, say, just loafing around and watching HellerVision for the next fifty pages.


Back to Chapters One and Two

Forward to Chapter Four