bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2015), pp. 44–46
It had all started a few days earlier, in a meeting at the Centre. “So,” said MacBannock, “How’s our favourite villain, Rialto Sleazewagon?” Liebnitz answered, “He’s been adopted by a German meat-packer, and they’re planning something dire.” “Sounds like a wurst-case scenario,” said Felix Africa. Liebnitz sighed, “Be that as it may….”
He flashed a picture onto their laptops. “This is Baron von Scheisswagon, a distant relative of Sleazewagon’s. He’s Bavaria’s biggest butcher, known as the King of Sausage, and he’s named Sleazewagon the Prince, or Fiirst. The Baron is also influential in a raft of German institutions like the Bavarian Schnitzel Bund, the Lederhosen League, the Original Guild for Gothic Horror and the Raving Loonie Monarchist Association. He is hosting the annual conference of the All-German Sausage Federation next week at Neuschwanstein castle. Last night, our agent in Munich informed us the Baron plans something flamboyantly evil at the conference dinner. But the agent disappeared before he could provide details. The Baron is a traditionalist, so I would avoid the company’s knockwurst for now.”
A second picture appeared. “The Baron has teamed up with this man, Dr. Wasabi Locomoto. Locomoto was disbarred last year by the Japanese Medical Association after his experiments in necromancy came to light. He disappeared from Tokyo but turned up heading the Baron’s research labs, disguised as Brad Pitt (he usually looks like Angelina Jolie). He has made some unusual purchases recently — everything from a cyclotron to 500 gallons of schnapps — but we haven’t been able to figure why.”
“Finally, there’s Sleazewagon, the twisted genius behind the plot. But to what end? Some kind of commercial advantage? We know the Baron plans to serve a ‘special giftwurst’ to the assembled dinner guests, but we don’t know what makes it special. Or is there something weirder going on?” Liebnitz paused. “The only way to find out is to get a special team into the castle.” Esmeralda spoke up. “How are we going to do that? The place will be heavily guarded, entry by invitation only.” Liebnitz replied. “Right. So we aren’t trying a frontal attack. Jones has come up with a better way.”
Manitoba Jones smiled at Esmeralda. “Locomoto has convinced the Baron to add some Japanese touches to the dinner show. One is a game show. Contestants dressed as sausages humiliating themselves for demeaning prizes.” Everyone stared. “Don’t look at me like that! I checked. It’s authentic. The Tokyo TV show I saw had people dressed as vegetables trying to tricycle across a vat of ranch dressing.”
MacBannock cut in. “The Baron went to the Guild of Unemployed Actors with No Self-Respect and hired four contestants. Through connections in Berlin, I offered them twice the Baron’s wages to disappear, and arranged a quick switch at the train station. To match the actors, we’ll be sending in Esmeralda, Liebnitz, Felix and myself.” Jones started to speak but Liebnitz interrupted, “No, Jones, you don’t fit the profiles. You’ll be our site manager in the village below the castle, Hohenschwangau.” Jones sulked.
The evening of the dinner found the team waiting in costume behind rich curtains. The Hall of the Singers was a Wagnerian fantasy on the top floor of the castle, with a high beamed ceiling, dark wooden panels and tapestries depicting medieval sagas. Tables the length of the room seated the cream (or lard) of German butcherdom. A traditional Bavarian band oompahed discretely (try that some time) in a corner of the hall, as waiters served course after course of hearty food and beer. The Baron, Sleazewagon and Dr. Locomoto were seated at the head table just in front of the curtains. The Doctor appeared to be battling a plate of raw sausage sushi, and losing.
The Baron stood to announce the evening’s entertainment, then stepped over to Locomoto. The team heard him ask whether everything was ready. The Doctor bridled and said of course; the delivery from Doorn had been delayed but was now downstairs. The Baron turned to ask Sleazewagon about the gift-wurst. Sleazewagon said “Alles in Ordnung” and laughed so hard he nearly blew his pencil-thin moustache into the pepper sauce.
Liebnitz called a huddle. “OK, people, dinner’s half over. Any ideas what’s going on?” A wooden arrow thudded into the wall behind Liebnitz’s head. While everyone else looked at the arrow, Felix spotted a figure ducking out of sight in the upper gallery across the hall.
MacBannock untied the ribbon holding a sheaf of paper to the arrow. Unrolling the paper, he frowned. “This looks like your sort of thing, Liebnitz.” Liebnitz put the paper on a table. The top page said, “This message just received from the Centre, disguised as a puzzle in case of interception. Watch your back.” Liebnitz turned to the second page, which was headed, “First-liners for the First.”
Esmeralda mused, “I saw something similar in the Coles Notes version of the cryptography manual. The left-hand column lists opening lines from novels or stories, some with a word missing. Reading across, you get blank columns for the title and author for each quote, then the year of publication. This block at the bottom gives you the missing words, titles and authors’ names, not necessarily in the order of the quotes. You have to fill in the blanks.”
“Gosh,” said Felix. “Some of them are tough.” “That’s what a smartphone and the internet are for,” replied Esmeralda. “The numbers in columns two and three tell you which word of a multi-word answer is the important one. To solve the puzzle, you just read down the first letter of each of the identified words, row by row.” “Impressive,” said Liebnitz.
Soon the team had solved the puzzle. Alarmed by what they discovered, they were even more upset to learn they were up next. The Baron’s knights-in-armour came to escort them into the Hall, no arguments, bitte.
Their appearance raised a gale of laughter from the assembled guests. They were handed super-soakers and led to a roped-off enclosure below the head table. The Baron announced that these wonderful wurst were going to do battle, with soakers full of condiments. Esmeralda rolled her eyes. The guests gathered excitedly around the ring. Bets were already being made.
The team slipped under the ropes and onto the canvas. At the drop of the referee’s oven mitt, they began circling each other, the crowd clamouring for action. Then Hamish tripped over the mitt and fell on his super-soaker, which discharged mayonnaise all over Liebnitz. Liebnitz fired back at him but missed and sprayed mustard all over Esmeralda and Felix instead. The younger agents spun to return fire. Felix bowed in deference to Esmeralda, who promptly painted him catsup-red before leaping over the Chief’s prone form to get at Liebnitz.
The temporarily-blinded Felix tried to run her down, but only managed to carom off the taut ropes and land, off-balance, directly between Liebnitz and Esmeralda as they fired at each other. MacBannock made it to his feet, looked around, and ran toward Felix’s well-coated form, already under close-range attack. But he slipped in a pool of pureed sauerkraut from Felix’s soaker and slammed into his three opponents, knocking them all down like ten-pins. The crowd roared.
Meanwhile, Dr. Locomoto pulled back the drapes over the stage at the far end of the room, revealing a mad scientist’s lair of crackling electric machinery and bubbling alembics. In its centre stood the hideous brass figure of a seated monkey with seven arms and the face of Leonardo DiCaprio, shrouded in smoke and shifting blue light. Cackling, the Doctor punched a remote control and giant speakers descended silently from the ceiling. The Baron strode over to a bare space in front of the monkey and intoned, “Tischlein, deck dich!” A large panel in the floor slid back to reveal a square opening.
The Baron turned back to his guests and said, “OK, let’s have a big round of applause for our fighters! I declare the catsup lady the winner, for beauty as well as skill.” Esmeralda struck a pose. “The clown with the sauerkraut gets the booby prize.” Felix winced. “Now everyone go back to your places while our waiters serve a final special course and the good Doctor gives us the surprise of your lives.”
Liebnitz’s head came up sharply at the Baron’s last words. He murmured to the others, “Freudian slip. l’ve got it. It’s happening right now. And it’s even worse than we feared.” He started toward the head table, struggling to pull a gun from under his bulky costume.
Before they got more than a couple of paces, the team was surrounded by knights with attitude. And machine pistols. Sleazewagon strolled up and smiled broadly. “Hamish. Ludwig. Dear adversaries. You didn’t really think you could fool me with those ridiculous disguises, did you? I would have dealt with you earlier, but I couldn’t resist watching you in that absurd battle. Esmeralda, you look particularly delectable covered in mustard.
this way, I get a true audience for the unveiling of my piece de résistance, one that knows a masterwork when they see it.”
From the head table, the Baron snapped his fingers and waiters advanced from the wings to deposit a plate before each guest, covered with arabesques of thinly sliced sausage. Dr. Locomoto gestured once more with his remote. The houselights went down, curiously oriental heavy metal music filled the air, and out of the opening in front of the monkey a massive table rose, bearing a coffin.
“Only someone as twisted as you,” said Liebnitz, “could make a piece de résistance out of resurrecting Kaiser Wilhelm, your ‘delivery from Doorn’.” Sleazewagon clapped softly. “Bravo, old man. Well deduced. But that is not my real triumph. It’s only a distraction for those useful loonies — the Baron with his monarchist fantasies and Locomoto with his Infernal Necromancy fixation — God, I hate that band. While they are focused on their dreams, I will reap the necromantic power they are generating, for my own nefarious purposes.” “What purposes?” asked Hamish, owlishly. “That’s for a later story. This one’s already complicated enough,” snapped Sleazewagon.
“But for necromancy,” said Liebnitz, “People have to die.” “Quite so,” replied Sleazewagon. “And the solid burgers around this depressingly Wagnerian hall are about to supply that requirement. They will not suddenly all die at our feet, that would be a bit obvious, but they will be walking dead within minutes, which will generate the power I need.”
Behind them, the Baron rose to his feet to propose a toast. As the guests drank, Locomoto cranked the music to ear-rupturing levels, flipped some massive switches and moved to open the coffin. But he dropped the lid on his fingers and his violent if incomprehensible curses struck through the noise.
Startled, Sleazewagon turned to look. Felix moved like lightning, scooping two of the super-soakers up from the floor and tossing one to Esmeralda with a terse “Cover me.” As he moved across the room, the guards advanced, but Esmeralda waxed the floor in front of them with mayonnaise and they went down in a heap. Felix halted before the Bavarian band and said in a stentorian Victor Laszlo voice, “Strike up the Liechtensteiner Polka!” The bandleader grimaced at the speakers, squared his shoulders, screwed his monocle tighter and cried, “Jawohl, mein Herr!”
The opening oompahs rattled the rafters as Felix shorted the speakers with a sauerkraut spray. Just as the diners were sitting down to their last course, the irresistible music lifted them back to their feet. They began to dance wildly around the room, upsetting tables, dashing food and drink to the floor and spinning the guards into the melee.
“No, no, stop dancing you fools, stop dancing!” cried Sleazewagon in frustration. But the polka swirled on, the crowd stomping out the pulsing rhythm. The speakers burst into flames, which leapt to ignite the liquors bathing the Doctor’s arcane equipment. The Tischlein began slowly to descend. A few dancers later swore they heard a muffled but heartfelt “Gott sei Dank’ as the coffin fell from sight.
The team climbed onto the raised enclosure to search for the ringleaders. ‘Don’t see Sleazewagon anywhere,” said MacBannock. “I think he ducked out when he couldn’t stop the polka. He knows when the game is lost. But the other two…” “There!” said Esmeralda. “Through the corridor where we waited. There’s a stairway back there!”
The team hurried across the hall and hustled down the stairs. Bursting through an arch at the bottom, they found themselves in an artificial grotto of carved stone, stalactites dripping from the ceiling. In a glowing pool floated an open golden boat in the shape of a fluted clamshell, with a marble swan chained to the front.
In the boat sat the Baron and the Doctor. Pointing a blunderbuss at them, the Baron said calmly, “At this range, I can take you all out in one shot. Just hold still and we’ll be gone in a flash. Er, won’t we, Doctor?” Locomoto, who was pressing buttons frantically on his remote, muttered “Yes, yes” as familiar blue flames began to rise around the trembling craft. With the Baron’s beady eye steady behind the sights of his gun, the team dared not move.
Then through the door on the other side of the stairs burst a tall, blond, bearded man dressed in full white armour and a golden helm in the form of a swan, an ivory horn at one hip and a longsword buckled on the other. Behind him came Manitoba Jones saying, “The cavalry’s here! With all the magical energy floating around the place, it was a cinch to raise some outside support. This guy was on a mural in the room next door, just raring to materialize.” The golden figure snorted, “How was I supposed asleep with all that awful music? The heavy metal was pretty bad too.”
He turned toward the pool. “And what are you villeins doing in my boat?” The Baron twitched and dropped the blunderbuss in the pool, while the Doctor kept pushing buttons frantically. The knight sighed and pulled out his sword. “You are unarmed and clearly mad, so I will not take your lives. Let this be enough.” So saying, he swung his sword over their heads and they fell instantly unconscious. As he toppled over, Locomoto’s disguise fell off. The knight pulled the boat to shore. He glanced down at the prostrate necromancer and said, “Gee, he really does look like Angelina Jolie. Who knew?”
Can you duplicate the team’s feat and decipher the six-word message on the arrow scroll (the last four rows of the chart are placed in a separate parenthesis)? bout de papier will draw the winner from a hat containing all the correct answers received by December 30, 2015. Although not necessary to win, can you fill in the chart completely? And who is the dude with magic sword?
Free-lance prestidigitator and Tuvan nationalist A Aalto was recently taking care of business on both sides of the Khyber Pass. Infernal Necromancy is a real Japanese heavy metal group; Manitoba Jones’ description of a Japanese game show is authentic; Kaiser Wilhelm is indeed buried in the garden of his home in exile at Doorn, the Netherlands; Neuschwanstein castle, built by mad King Ludwig II, is more or less as described, although the Venus Grotto and the Tischlein were borrowed from another of the king’s architectural fantasies, Linderhof. (“Tischlein deck dich” means “Little table, set yourself”; from a German fable.) Aalto notes the passing of long-time Sleazewagon lieutenant Papa Jacques Paridy; among other achievements, he was the founder of the Gothic Zydeco Band. With thanks to Mrs. Aalto for good advice and an eagle eye.
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Originally published in bout de papier, Vol. 29, No. 1 (2015), pp. 44–46. Read the rest of this issue →
