“Ugly brute!”
“Sorry? What did you say, darling?” Nika asked.
“I was saying your driver looks like a brute,” Ferenc Sanko muttered as he shifted uncomfortably in the backseat of the car. “Where did you find him? At the zoo in the Parc de la Cintadella?”
“Oh, Ferenc, that is so clever!” Nika said laughing. “Actually, I didn’t. Some Russian officers are staying at my hotel and loaned me their driver.” She leaned forward.
“Isn’t that right, Sergei?” Nika asked, and when he failed to answer fell back in her seat. “Not much of a conversationalist, I guess.”
“I am sure he is not fit to hear anything you have to say, my princess!”
Nika laughed again. “Ferenc, you are so romantic!” She snuggled up close to him. “I am so happy to be with you tonight… you will never know how much!”
“I am the happy one,” he replied. “Happy and lucky! What a pleasure to speak Hungarian again with someone as beautiful as you!” He kissed her hand.
The driver saw the gesture and scowled.
Ferenc laughed. “Seems that peasant doesn’t appreciate refined Central European manners.”
“Then don’t tip him!” Nika said.
“Ugly brute!” Ferenc muttered again and Nika rubbed the side of her face on her companion’s coat then reached inside and caressed his chest.
He was not carrying a weapon.
Ferenc was pleasantly surprised. “You are a passionate woman, Nika.”
“That is very true,” she purred.
The car pulled up to the Gran Teatre del Liceu which was celebrating the blossoming relationship between the Spanish Republic and Soviet Russia by hosting the Odessa Opera Company in a performance of Rimsky-Korsakov’s opera Mlada.
Ferenc waited for the driver to open the car door and when he didn’t, opened it himself just as the driver got out and went to the other side.
“Thank you, driver,” Nika responded. “What is your name again, please?”
The driver grinned idiotically. “Sergei, lady.”
“Well Sergei, you are an excellent driver,” Nika continued, “though lacking somewhat as a conversationalist.” She turned to her companion. “You will give him something after all, won’t you, Ferenc? Thank you.”
Ferenc started to argue but thought better of it. He reached furiously into his coat and put some bills into Sergei’s outstretched hand. The driver looked wide eyed at the money.
“Spa-SI-ba!” he said loudly, then addressing Nika in Russian asked, “Does the lady wish me to wait?”
“No,” she replied and linked arms with Ferenc. “We’ll find our own way back!”
The couple entered the opera house and Nika put her head on Ferenc’s shoulder as they waited in the cloakroom. “You handled that buffoon brilliantly, Ferenc. I told him not to wait because…” and Nika pressed her left breast against his arm. “I am sure you know the way back to your hotel, no?”
“I… I do… indeed!” Ferenc replied dry-mouthed as Nika handed her coat across the low partition to the coat-check lady who gave her a withering look when she saw Nika’s elegant black evening dress.
“I guess they won’t be any dressing up for the opera in the future Socialist Paradise,” Nika said and hold of her companion’s arm.
“She is jealous of your beauty,” Ferenc assured her. “You are the most beautiful woman here.”
Nika glanced around her. “That is entirely possible. Shall we go to our box?” “Let us!” Ferenc said and escorted her up the red-carpeted stairs.
“I have two surprises for you tonight, Fenko,” Nika said and again pressed her breast again against his arm. “The second is when you take me back… to your hotel.” She felt his body tense.
“Wonderful,” Ferenc replied. “Yet can the first be somehow better than the second?”
Nika tightened then loosened her grip on his arm. “Ah… that will be for you to say. It is with us, in my purse.”
“So small?” he asked.
Nika looked seductively into his eyes. “Yes, very small, yet very potent… uniquely suited for our evening together.”
Ferenc led Nika to their box. “I must tell you again how lucky I feel to have met you in the hotel café last week. To know someone from home, to be able to speak Hungarian at ease with a woman as lovely and alluring as yourself after so many years in exile, to be able to forget about the ‘revolution’ and be just a man again is more than I can even express… by words alone, I mean!”
Nika hoped she would not need to reply, and her wish was granted.
“And yet, my dear, I have no regrets!” he continued. “The work I do in Spain is also for the good of our people back home, to bring the kind of freedom only the Communist system can provide. If the Fascist swine do stage an uprising, there will be a full battalion of Hungarian volunteers eagerly waiting to destroy them!”
Carried away by his fervor, Ferenc took Nika in his arms. “And what is more, comrade, I want you to stay here and help me! We will live together and, if need be, die together fighting for the future!”
She let Ferenc kiss her. “Ah, what a thought. I promise to make this an evening you will never live to regret,” Nika breathlessly murmured as he ushered her into their second-row box.
The lighting was poor throughout and Nika realized their box would be in near pitch-black darkness throughout the performance. She closed her eyes. Lucky again, she thought and as if on cue Ferenc confirmed it. “When the house lights dim, no one will be able to see us,” and pointed to the heavy curtains gathered at either side of the box.
“And there are those, should wish to become… more discreet?”
“Yes, but not quite yet, Ferenc. Not until the end of the ‘Indian Dance’.”
“Why this curious taste for Russian music?” Ferenc asked peevishly. “Had you wanted to go to a performance of Brahms, that I would understand.”
“Is Brahms being performed anywhere in Spain tonight, Ferenc?” Nika inquired teasingly. “I adore Rimsky-Korsakov and this is my favorite of all his operas. Besides, he was a good revolutionary.”
She leaned forward in her seat, giving Ferenc a tantalizing view of her cleavage. “Perhaps if I familiarized you with the libretto? That might make it easier for you.”
Ferenc pulled at his shirt collar. “That’s really not necessary…”
“So then,” Nika began, “In the ancient pagan city of Rethra, the wicked Voyslava murders Mlada, the bride of Yaromir, Prince of Arkona, so she can marry him. But the spirit of Mlada returns and eventually reveals the truth to Yaromir in at the Temple of Radegast and when Voyslava at last confesses her crime, he kills her! Then Voyslava’s friend Morena, Queen of the Underworld, destroys Rethra and Yaromir dies but is reunited with Mlada in Heaven!”
Nika crossed her legs, clasped her hands over her knee and sighed.
“The end.”
“Well, frankly, I don’t care much for opera… Russian opera least of all,” Ferenc replied sulkily.
“That is why I am so grateful to you for indulging me tonight.”
Nika sat back in her seat, elegant in her black evening gown that complimented her black hair and radiant complexion.
“The shade of Queen Cleopatra also appears in the story,” she added, then sighed again and smiled. “I admit the plot line is a trifle complex. I don’t think it would interest you very much.”
As Nika expected, when the performance began and the house lights dimmed, it was nearly impossible to see what was going on in any of the opera boxes even without the curtains. As she enjoyed the opening of the opera, Nika again calculated her times. The Indian Dance should begin in about forty-five minutes, at which point she had twenty-five minutes to bid farewell to Ferenc and out the building before Intermission. By the time the opera finished—and thankfully, it was a long one—she should be across the border into France.
Meanwhile Ferenc talked incessantly… about himself, the coming world revolution, then more about himself, until a blare of trumpets interrupted him. “What is that?” he asked but his sneering tone could not shake Nika out of her reverie. The orchestra played the piece just as she thought it should be… strong, passionate, decisive. As the female voices of the chorus rose and fell in perfect unison, Nika imagined a world of nobility, honor and beauty far beyond anything she had actually experienced. As each piece reached its climax, she found herself beating the time with clenched fist on the arm of her chair, and each time the chorus reached crescendo would gladly have pleasured herself had she been alone or in more congenial company.
“Ahhh! That is splendid,” she sighed.
“I see you are still enthralled—yes, I will say it again, enthralled, because I always choose my words carefully—to this ridiculous fairy tale of brave nobles and just kings. I tell you…”
Nika let him drone on for a while. Was there any humanity left in the man, or in any of his kind? The imminent revolution. The promised worker’s paradise. The X-number of people needed to die to bring it about. Is that what believing in the righteousness of your opinions did to you, she wondered. As for her own politics, she wasn’t quite sure about what she liked but very certain about what she didn’t.
“Yes, I know Ferenc,” Nika replied in a meek, consoling voice. “I know I am silly and childish! That’s why I need a strong man like you to educate and lead me to something better.”
She gave his arm an affectionate squeeze. “That’s why I am with you tonight. Then, later… oh, just one moment! My favorite dance sequence has started!” “Really, Nika, my sweet dove, I find all this Slavic idiocy incredibly boring. Could we not…?” He leaned over to kiss her, but she put her hand against his chest.
“You’re right, Ferenc, it’s a poor performance—you’re an excellent judge of music, by the way—only please let’s wait until this, the Indian Dance, concludes?” She put her hand inside his suit coat and rubbed his chest.
“I so want to share it with you. And I haven’t given you your first surprise! We’ll wait for the Indian Dance to finish, then leave… ahhh, listen!”
The piece began, the music wafting into the air of the opera house like heavy incense and having a nearly a narcotic effect on Nika’s senses.
“Umm… so stately, so exotic. And erotic.” Nika took a small box of Belgian chocolates from her handbag. “Do you like chocolate, Ferenc?”
“Yes, but you just said…” then watched as Nika took an exquisitely wrapped piece from the box, slowly unwrapped it, then place it delicately between her perfect, white teeth. She brought her mouth close to his and as their lips were about to touch, deftly pushed the chocolate with her tongue into his mouth.
“Savor it, Ferenc. They are very expensive.”
Ferenc swallowed, closed his eyes, leaned his head back and smiled. “That was sublime,” he said.
Nika smiled. For the first time during their brief acquaintance, she truly agreed with something he said.
“It was very sweet. Just as you surely are…” He paused, swallowed hard, and began to pant. “Forgive me… I mean, must be… your…” but Ferenc stopped again. Nika noticed beads of perspiration appear on his forehead.
Two, two and a half minutes maximum, she recalled, and started counting.
Ferenc pulled at his collar, his vision swimming. “Could you help me… loosen… my collar?” he gasped.
Nika carefully wiped any trace of chocolate from her lips “I am afraid, no. This is the first surprise I promised you tonight, comrade Sanko. Consider it a gift from twenty of your friends in Debrecen.”
“Debrecen?” Ferenc whispered hoarsely. “I… never had any friends from… in Debrecen.”
“Quite true,” Nika said and placed the chocolate box in her handbag. “I spoke ironically.”
“Nika… please help me. I feel… feel…”
“Bad?” Nika asked. She leaned over and retightened his tie. “Yes, I think you must, but not for long enough. Still, we must be grateful for even small favors, don’t you agree?”
Ferenc fell back into his seat, staring at her.
“Ahh! You find it impossible to speak now, but I can tell from your beady little eyes you can still hear and understand me.”
She nestled close to him and whispered in his ear. “Remember the Debrecen Twenty, the murder of my father Benedek Molnar, and enjoy your descent into hell!”
Ferenc’s eyes lit up in a flicker of recognition, then terror, then went still.
Nika closed his eyes and sat back in her chair, giving the appearance to anyone watching of nothing untoward. She turned her head as if they were speaking, nodded and patted Ferenc’s dead arm tenderly, then in one uninterrupted motion rose and was out the door the second the Indian Dance concluded.
Nika returned to the foyer, five minutes ahead of the schedule she had laid out. The cloakroom attendant was no more congenial than before and seemed to question Nika with her eyes when she handed her the numbered disk. “My husband is ill. I am going to a chemist.”
The woman looked Nika up and down, lifted her chin and jabbed her finger at a poster on the wall. A woman dressed in a plain blue cotton dress stood with crossed arms and a fierce scowl on her face in front of a group of fashionably dressed ladies in hats and gloves. It was an old poster from the Soviet Union, a bad translation into Spanish replacing the original Russian:
The hearty women of Spain shout a resounding NEVER MORE to the fatuous women of the bourgeoise… AND their corrupt mode of dressing!
Or words to that effect.
“That’s how a woman of today’s Spain should dress!” she said.
Nika could not resist. She pretended to study the poster for a few seconds, nodded as if in agreement and turned to the woman. “Thank you for your advice. You have reminded me of something my father often said… all the wrong people are having children.”
As she walked quickly down the steps of the opera house the man who had driven Nika and Ferenc from her hotel was waiting. She slid into the back of the car and slammed the door behind her.
“He’s dead?” Sergei asked.
“I certainly hope so,” Nika answered. “Else it will be a very short trip for both of us.”
“May he burn in Bolshevik Hell,” Sergei replied. “He wasn’t even going to tip me!”
“Well, it was my suggestion, after all,” she reminded him, “but I managed to turn that nicely around for you, I thought.”
Sergei grinned sardonically and pulled the car onto the street. “I’ll be glad to get the Hell out of here. How was the opera?”
Nika opened her handbag and took out the box of chocolates. “Absorbing.” Nika replied and produced a handkerchief and a bottle of perfume from her purse. “Do you like opera, Sergei?”
“All Russians like opera. But this place? Bah! I’ve seen a real opera house before. It was on a postcard my captain gave me so I could send something home to my mother and sister for Christmas. He even wrote a little poem the card, even though they couldn’t read.”
Nika did not reply. She knew better than to say anything when Sergei mentioned his mother and sister.
“I got out of the car and walked around this one. It’s not as nice looking as the one in the postcard I sent my family. That one was in St. Petersburg.”
“St. Petersburg is not what it used to be… literally.” Nika replied.
“Russia isn’t what it used to be, literally,” he scoffed. “I like music. During the war my captain—crazy brave himself yet never exposed his men to useless dangers—he played piano and always had one whenever we were any place longer than a day. It was a mystery to me how he managed that and in my simpler time I thought maybe he had some mysterious power. I always tried to get duty near his quarters so that when he played, I could listen. He used to play one piece again and again… I never knew the name, but seemed to me very sad yet not pandering, if that’s the right way to describe it. It entranced me and eventually I could hum it quite well. After the war found out what it was…”
The scent of Nika’s favorite perfume stole from the back seat of the car to the front and Nika saw him looking at her in the rear-view mirror as she poured more perfume over her handkerchief and again patted her lips.
“Just a precaution, Sergei.”
*“Tchyort!* I asked you not to do that again and you promised. You promised, Nikolka!”
Nika raised and lowered her eyebrows in a display of frustration. “I know I promised, but what was I to do? Shoot him in the head with a revolver or slit his throat with a dagger but make sure it was during the chorus so no one could hear? I consider myself good with a knife but not that good.”
Nika repaired her lipstick, sighed and closed her compact. “Besides, I was very careful.”
Silence. Then more silence.
“Alright, Seryozha, I’m sorry. I promise… no, swear, I’ll never use that method again.”
“Puh! I’m supposed to believe a promise from a Hungarian? Know what we say in Russia about Hungarians? ‘A Romanian and a Hungarian will both sell you their grandmothers but at least the Romanian will deliver the old bitch!’”
Nika laughed. “I’ll spare you what we say in Hungary about Russians. Care for a chocolate?”
Sergei reached his right hand behind him. “Only if you have the anecdote if I pick the wrong one.”
Nika laughed again and handed him a chocolate. “Never worry, there’s only ever one.” He unwrapped the chocolate and tossed it into his mouth.
“At least… I think there was only one,” Nika said. “There might be a spare. Are you going to finish your story? About the piano-playing officer?”
There was a short pause before Sergei spoke again.
“Brahms. Hungarian Dance 17. He played that. I suppose you know it?”
Nika smiled. He wasn’t angry anymore. “Yes of course… and it is my favorite.”
“One day while he was playing, I was caught loitering nearby so I could listen. The provost was going to punish me with extra duty until the captain heard the commotion and shouted from the window that he’d given me permission to be there. He came outside and gave me one of his cigarettes.”
“You like fine music, I see.”
“Yes, your honor,” I answered.
“It’s a rare enlisted man who does,” he answered. “I need a batman… my last one was killed at Bolinov. You want the job?”
“Naturally, I said ‘yes’; my mother didn’t raise stupid children. He told me as batman my most important duty was to see he always had a piano to play whenever the regiment was stationed any place more than three days. He didn’t care how I got one just that I did and if it had an owner and he wanted money bring him back to his quarters and he’d pay him only that we must bring the piano with us as well.”
He lit another cigarette. “And you know the rest.”
Nika indeed knew the rest but felt no urge to hear it all again. She was tired. Her task for Viktor accomplished and her father avenged, she wanted to sleep.
“When is the rising to take place?” Sergei asked. “I want to know how fast to drive.”
“Tomorrow. First, Morocco, then Spain.”
Nika decided she had just been cruel to Sergei and wanted to make amends.
“That was a very nice story. About the piano. You never told me it before. How did you finally figure out it was Brahms Hungarian Dance Number 17?”
“When I arrived in Budapest, I went to music shops and hummed the tune to the salesgirls and managers until someone finally recognized it.”
Nika smiled, laughed, then laughed louder. “Mary and Joseph! I would have paid to see that! A walking mountain like you, humming Brahms and asking some poor salesgirl what it was?”
Sergei smiled. “I don’t know. Some of them told me it was charming. Maybe they thought I was just… eccentric.”
Sergei drove the Czech-made 1935 Škoda Favorit 170 miles from Barcelona to the half Spanish, half French border town of Le Perthus in slightly less than four hours, then it about one hour more to the fine Béarnaise city of Pau in France. Once Nika and Sergei crossed the frontier, they were under the protection of the Comité Secret d’Action Révolutionnaire, though Nika preferred to call them by their nickname La Cagoule—“The Hooded Ones”. Through his contacts in the Italian embassy, Viktor had pieced together why several secret arms purchases by the Cagoule in Italy had been pinched by the police once they crossed the French border and offered to share this information in return for helping Nika get in and out of Barcelona.
Thus did Hungarian and Italian intelligence officers plus a secret society of well-placed French terrorists cooperate to assassinate a Hungarian Communist agent in Catalonia to render a small assist towards the success of a military coup planned by Spaniards.
Sergei turned on the car radio, to be shortly rewarded with an agonizing grown from Nika.
“I swear to God, if I hear that song one more time, I shall lose my mind!” “What song?” Sergei asked.
“The Music Goes Round And Round,” Nika replied, imitating the vocalist. Serge leaned forward and turned off the radio.
“No music then.”
“At least not that. Thank you, Seryozha.” Nika said.
“Not at all,” he replied. “My mother always told me never to be at odds with a woman who has a box of poisoned chocolates nearby.”
“Nika? Nika… we are here.”
Nika was curled up half asleep on the backseat as Sergei drove over the Gave du Pau. She stirred herself and saw on her right the city’s magnificent Renaissance château where Napoleon spent his holidays as Emperor of France. Asking a gendarme for directions, Sergei found the Hotel de Gramont shortly before midnight.
They were expected and no sooner had she closed the door and telephoned the front desk for a wake-up call at 8 am than Nika stripped off her clothes and climbed into bed. As her head touched the pillow, Nika thought again of the exotic looking woman she had seen at that café in Prague the week before coming to Barcelona. She wondered… then fell into dreamless sleep.
Breakfast in the hotel restaurant was the venue where Nika to inform the Cagoule about the informer in their midst. Sergei would also be there, two tables away.
Viktor had instructed his pupil to always conduct “business” in places with few conventional entrances but multiple unconventional exits. “Agreeing to meet in a hotel room or worse a private house is tantamount to a vampire requesting a communion wafer. The only agent’s stupid enough to do so were never very good in the first place or lost the will to live,” and Nika took his admonition to heart.
Due to the importance of the information Nika had she would be giving it directly to the Cagoule leader, Eugène Deloncle. As they had never met, Deloncle would be wearing a badge showing a fleur-de-lis surmounting two victory garlands on his suit lapel while Nika would appear to be reading a book and chose the second volume of her father’s three-volume history of the Punic Wars.
A quarter of an hour later a pale man wearing a black suit and homburg entered the restaurant flanked by two men she took to be his bodyguards. The maître d’hôtel paid the man considerable deference, though his stature and general appearance made Nika think of a morose Benito Mussolini or a cheap version of the American gangster boss Al Capone.
The man saw Nika, feigned a smile of familiarity and made his way to her table while his two companions took one nearby.
“Nika, my dearest! Such a long time!” Deloncle took her hand, kissed it and remained standing beside the table. “What are you reading now? Certainly not more poetry?”
Nika returned his smile and languidly replied “Not today, Eugène. A book on the Second Punic War. You know… Rome, Carthage, Alps… Elephants.” She sighed slightly and went back to reading.
“The usual thing.”
Deloncle’s smile turned Cheshire. “It wouldn’t be the one written by your late papa, by any chance?”
Nika suppressed the urge to look surprised, inserted a place marker between the pages, closed the book and laid it on the table. “Won’t you join me, dear Eugène?”
Deloncle ordered and Nika lightly tapped the book cover. “How did you know the author was my father?”
“Abductive reasoning. Professor Molnar’s seminal work was on the Punic Wars. He was executed with 19 others in the Hungarian town of Debrecen by order of one Ferenc Sanko. Monsieur Sanko was sent to his just reward last night in Barcelona, the city from where you just arrived. The person I would be meeting from Hungarian intelligence was a woman. Professor Molnar had a daughter. We French understand the concept of revenge.”
Somehow, Nika was not amused. “It is a pity you seemed unable to apply your skill to the matter we are here to discuss, no?”
Deloncle smiled. “Indeed. But then I have never made a claim of omniscience.” He leaned forward. “What have you for us, please?”
“There is an informer within your organization.” Nika opened her book, extracted a card, and handed it across the table to Deloncle. The name ‘Gabriel Jeantet’ was written on the back.
“This man, I understand, is in charge of your arms purchases abroad and their concealment in France, correct?”
Deloncle nodded slowly. “He is the informer?”
“No.” Nika took a second card from the book and handed it to Deloncle.
“She is.”
“Who is this?” he asked.
“Who is this?” Nika asked in surprise.”This is Mademoiselle Laetitia Toureaux, girlfriend of Monsieur Jeantet. When she is not frequenting la bal musette or screwing your chief arms buyer she works for the security division of the Paris police, a position she secured through her work for a private detective agency specializing in the surveillance of foreign nationals throughout Metropolitan France. She also pays the occasional visit to the Italian embassy in Paris. Your last arms shipment was seized after it crossed the border from Italy, correct?”
Deloncle nodded. “Yes. Can you provide us with any proof?”
“I should imagine it would be an easy thing to find out if it is true or not.” Nika responded.
“Can you suggest how?” Deloncle asked.
Nika mastered her temper. “Simple. See that Toureaux alone is given information about a car bringing a shipment of arms hidden in the boot, this time across the Swiss border. If the car is stopped and searched when it enters France, then you will know.”
“Yes,” Deloncle conceded. “Quite simple.” He made to leave, then paused. “I must tell you, your work in Barcelona was flawless. You are safe here in France, while the Spanish police appear to have no idea how Monsieur Sanko departed this veil of tears. I must say you have panache. We may someday wish to employ your talents on our behalf.”
“Any news?” Nika asked.
“None yet. There seems to be a delay. One cannot rely on the Spanish to do anything with punctuality.”
Deloncle rose and took Nika’s hand. “Once more, my thanks. I am sure our two organizations will have much to cooperate on in the future. Vous revoir bien tôt, j’espère!“
Sergei came to the table. “That looked like fun.”
“Fúj!” Nika said wiping the palms of her hands on the linen napkin. “I feel like I need another bath! Take over France? Tchyort! They couldn’t rob a blind beggar of his pencils without getting caught!”
“You’re speaking Russian,” Sergei observed. “You really must be disgusted.”
“You’re a bad influence on me,” Nika said. “I’ve always thought so. I was joking about the bath. Let’s just go.”
Sergei looked around him. “Fine. Let’s get the Hell out of here.”
“You said that about Spain last night,” Nika observed.
“And I am saying it about France this morning,” he said sweeping his arm as if to encompass the entire country and everyone in it. “It’s a long drive to Budapest. Care to stop anywhere along the way?”
“How about Prague? We dropped in on the way to Barcelona when you wanted to have the car checked.”
“The Favorit is a Czech car. It made sense. Prague was nice. Many White Russians there.”
“Then good. I can do some shopping. Also… no, no nothing.”
“You should not keep secrets from me, Nika. It’s my job to protect you.”
“I’m not keeping secrets from you, Seryozha. It’s just… personal, and hard to explain.”
There was a long silence. “Just swear to me you’ll be careful, Nikola.”
An hour later they were driving through the city when Sergei asked if Nika thought there was a Russian Orthodox Church they could visit before leaving. “It would just be for a few minutes.”
“The amount of time doesn’t matter,” Nika answered. “I just don’t think there is a large enough White Russian community in Pau to make up a congregation.”
“I see,” Sergei replied and said no more about it.
Deep in the Aquitaine countryside an hour later, Nika’s curiosity got the better of her.
“Why did you want to find an Orthodox Church, Sergei? I didn’t know you were religious.”
“All true Russians are believers, even if we don’t appear to be. Today I feel the need to light a candle for my mother and sister.”
“There is probably an Orthodox Church in Prague. Another reason to go there,” she said and yawned. Being in a car always made Nika drowsy.
“Even if I wasn’t religious, or even a Believer, I still would light a candle for them,” Sergei continued. He lit a cigarette and offered the pack to Nika who yawned again and held up her hand.
“I like things to be in their proper place. There is a proper place for God and His servants in this world. That reminds me of a joke my captain once told me. The survivors of a shipwreck land on a tropical island. They are captured by a tribe of cannibals and lined up before the chief. ‘Cook everyone but him!’ the chief said pointing to the last man in line, a priest. As the others are led away, one of them asks the chief, ‘Why are you eating us but sparing him?’ The chief said ‘Just in case’.”
Nika laughed. “That’s very good. Now I have something funny for you— Monsieur Terroriste left me with the bill for breakfast!” she said and a few minutes later was fast asleep.