Chapter 3
Steed and Emma were shopping in a small boutique called Outre Façon that catered to women with exhibitionist tendencies. Specifically, it offered clothing for those whose business it was to wear as little as possible. A young salesgirl hovered around them as they browsed. She was covered only with a translucent poncho that barely reached the top of her thigh. Underneath she wore lacy undergarments—an indulgence to the commercial code, no doubt; one got the impression she would have liked to wear nothing at all beneath the filmy fabric. She occasionally approached to speak a few words in French to Steed, rubbing her body against him as she did so. He merely smiled in return, politely reeling off the French equivalent of "just looking."
Steed ambled along the opposite side of a clothes rack from Mrs. Peel. He could smell her scent on his undershirt. She seemed to be having trouble making up her mind about the diminutive undergarments in front of her.
"These look nice," Steed offered. He used the tip of his umbrella to indicate some pink satin panties. "You can wear garters with them."
"I'm not sure I'm comfortable shopping for lingerie with you, Steed," Emma said candidly. "And what do you find so thrilling about garters?"
He leaned in to her ear, so close he could have nibbled at her lobes.
"They're perfect for hiding weapons," he whispered.
"Ah, now I know where your mind's at," she teased. Emma held up an item for his perusal. It was a black leather miniskirt. She pressed it to her waist and checked where it fell on her thigh.
"That's no way to hide your weapons," Steed said.
"If you want me to be a woman of convenience, I have to look the part."
"There's no need to be that convenient." He held up a short, burgundy velvet skirt with a side slit that extended to the waist. It would allow her quick access to the Beretta on her thigh.
"This should meet all your needs. Would you care to try it on?"
Emma looked around, and the salesgirl suddenly materialized to wave her towards a nearby curtained booth. Unfortunately, the curtain was virtually transparent; Steed politely turned away as Emma stepped behind it to remove her wool skirt and slip.
She strolled out and did a pirouette in front of Steed, inviting his critique. He smiled at the brief flash of the form-fitting white panties that she had been wearing that morning when she subdued his attacker. Steed stepped in close and knelt down by her leg. Emma froze and became quite still as his warm hand slipped up her thigh.
Steed reached into his jacket pocket with his other hand and produced a small piece of black leather: her garter holster. It took great self-control for Emma to suppress a quiver of delight as his warm hands passed between her legs, just inches below the heart of her womanhood, as he fastened the leather in place.
Steed folded the hem of the velvet skirt over to display the holster on her thigh. "Ah, just like a friend of mine used to wear," he commented, admiring his handiwork.
"Rita, or the blonde?" Emma asked cattily.
"One of the blondes," Steed answered wryly. He pulled his hands away, and Emma had to resist the urge to grab his wrists and force them back down below.
She felt a sense of wantonness following the intimate contact, and it showed as she started to look for something to cover her upper body. She was avoiding all of the conservative choices and seeking out the sexiest thing she could find. Emma lifted a flimsy garment on a hanger in front of her face and peered at Steed through the fabric. His eyes widened in astonishment at the sheer pink camisole.
"Don't you find that a bit lacking in the opacity department?" he asked. "You'll have every man in a two-mile radius stopping to talk to you."
A grin tugged at the corner of her mouth as she suggestively raised an eyebrow.
"Isn't that the point?"
-oOo-
It was early afternoon back at the hotel, and Emma was carefully setting out her new clothes on the back of a chair in preparation for her adventure later that evening. Steed was at the writing desk, examining something from his pocket. Emma walked over and rested her chin on his shoulder.
"What do you have there?"
"I removed these from our impetuous assassin this morning, after you disabled him."
Emma picked up one of the items from the desk and examined it.
"Vin De Fin. 'The wine to end all wines'," she read from the business card.
Steed jingled a key on a tag in front of her. "And this, a key designating the Jardin d'Acclimation—the zoo located on the north end of the Bois," he explained.
"Two clues? Luring us to different places?" Emma smirked. "Haven't you ever heard of 'divide and conquer'? This is obviously a trap."
"Of course it's a trap," Steed grinned. "That's what makes it so irresistible."
"So you're proposing we just walk right in to danger?"
"There's no danger, as long as we keep our wits about us."
"'Keep our wits about us'? That's your grand advice?"
"I'll take the Vin De Fin. You take the Jardin d'Acclimation. Since it's in the Bois, it'll help you get the lay of the land for tonight. We wouldn't want you to get lost in the woods."
"How come you get the winery?"
"Everyone knows of my reputation as a world-class oenologist," Steed answered matter-of-factly. "The winery trap is obviously meant for me. Ergo, the zoo trap is meant for you."
Emma's eyes softened as she lightly touched a hand to his chest. "Be careful, Steed." She delicately took the keys from his hand. "I mean, 'keep your wits about you'."
-oOo-
Forty-five minutes later, Steed pulled the runabout into the gravel lot of an abandoned winery on the outskirts of Paris. A dilapidated sign hanging on the fence broke loose when he parked nearby, finally succumbing to the rust of ages.
"It looks as if the vin is completely fin," Steed chuckled to himself. He quietly closed the car door and strolled toward a side entrance of the main building. There were no other cars in the lot. He tried the knob on the side door and found it unlocked.
His footsteps echoed on concrete as he stepped inside. The four-story high room was dominated by three large wooden vats, each some fifteen feet in height. A rather unsturdy-looking catwalk gave access to the top of the vats. Steed listened carefully, and heard some miscellaneous popping and scratching noises. Probably just a gang of wayward rats, he thought.
The afternoon sunlight slanted in through some broken windows set in the ceiling. A flashing glimmer caught Steed's eye near the center vat. Something was dangling near the edge.
He mounted the rickety catwalk and crept toward the center of the room. As he inched closer, he immediately recognized the object. It was Peter Peel's gold pocket watch, the one that Mrs. Peel had picked up in the Amazon. From only a few feet away he could read the inscription: From Emma, with love. They must have captured Mrs. Peel at the zoo. But how could they have gotten the watch out here so quickly? Had they brought her with them? Was she in some sort of danger? Could she be in the vat?
Steed couldn't resist stepping closer to peer over into the container. His concentration was so focused that he didn't notice the shadowy figure moving across the floor beneath him.
As Steed reached the edge, the mystery man threw a lever and the catwalk tilted to hurtle Steed feet first down into the dim interior of the teakwood cylinder. He landed on the damp floor of the vat; Mrs. Peel was nowhere in sight. The walls seemed to be slippery with the ancient residue of grapes; but in case he had any ideas about scaling them, a man shortly appeared on the catwalk above him holding a gun.
He wore a mask covered with black and white checks; not diagonal, like a harlequin; but side-to-side, like a racing flag—or a chessboard.
"Welcome, droog Steed," Pyotr Pehlovich called down into the makeshift prison. "I have followed your exploits with great interest these past few months."
"You have me at a disadvantage," Steed said, a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth.
"That, tovarisch, is an understatement. I have you at my mercy."
"I like the mask," Steed said wryly. "Very fetching. And your name is...?"
"My name, or what I look like, will not matter to you a few minutes from now." The Ladja threw a lever next to the vat and there was a thundering boom that echoed through the large room. Steed looked immediately overhead to see a massive steel platen start to lower towards him.
"Your guess is correct, Mr. Steed," The Ladja announced smugly. "You are in a hydraulic wine press."
In a fit of gallows humor, Steed popped open his umbrella and looked nervously at the descending press.
Pehlovich laughed. "Your umbrella looks quite formidable, Mr. Steed. But the press is capable of hundreds of kilos per square centimetre."
"You must be the man they call The Ladja," Steed said evenly.
Pehlovich disregarded Steed's assertion. "The Ministry seems to have spent a lot of time trying to look into the activities here in Paris," he said. "Eventually, they will run out of agents. You were number five."
Only a few more inches and seconds remained until the heavy steel ram would reach the top of the vat.
"You expect me to talk?" Steed called out into the shrinking gap.
"No, Mr. Steed," The Ladja laughed easily. "I expect you to become wine! A rich red merlot, I think."
The incoming light was blocked off as the top of the press passed the lip of the vat and started lowering into the rapidly diminishing space.
Steed looked at the sturdy teak walls around him. He was trapped.
-oOo-
Emma was strolling down the street in the Bois de Boulogne. Her leathers were the perfect outfit for the cool day; they fit her like a second skin. She sometimes liked to imagine herself as a deadly, pouncing panther when wearing them, much like the one that almost caught her in the Amazon, before Steed intervened. Even though the material wasn't impervious to bullets or blades, she felt invincible when she had it on. Perhaps that explained her leaving the Beretta back in the hotel room, when she could have easily tucked it into her boot.
Tourists with cameras were clustered around every cage of the small menagerie in the Jardin d'Acclimation. Emma moved freely among them, pausing to read a plaque near a decorative fountain. In her mind, she could hear Rita's matter-of-fact voice paraphrasing the words to her, saying, "You know, at the end of the nineteenth century, the Jardin Zoologique was actually renamed to l'Acclimation Anthropologique, and living primitive peoples were exhibited here—Nubians, Bushmen, Zulus—in an horrific human zoo."
Emma looked around her. Now, only a handful of friendly, well-fed animals prowled the cages. She reached into one of the zippered pockets in her outfit and pulled out the key, checking its number against the surrounding addresses.
She followed a directional sign towards a small brick outbuilding containing steel bars along its sides. A roll of canvas had been unfurled down across the front of the bars on one side, announcing it was FERMÉ POUR RÉPARATIONS. She checked the number on the building. This was the place.
The key admitted her through the outer door into a central corridor, where bars marked off the inside walls of the cages. This appeared to be a service area for feeding and transferring animals in and out. While the bars facing the outside world were solid and set in cement, the bars in the corridor were punctuated by cage doors. All of them were swung open.
She inched forward carefully, watching for a stalking tiger or deadly python to emerge through one of the doorways. But all of the cages appeared empty, save the last one on the end.
In the center of a cage was a bowler, just like the type that Peter—and Steed—wore. Next to it was a body covered by a sheet. It couldn't be Steed, she thought. He left less than an hour ago. But they could have ambushed him just minutes after he left. He could be injured, or drugged.
The other wall of the cage was missing entirely, covered only by the canvas tarp that flapped in the breeze. One could see why it had been closed for repairs.
Emboldened by the obvious escape route, Emma stepped cautiously into the cage and approached the bowler next to the motionless figure. Her heart beat rapidly at the thought that Steed could be dead. What would she do without him? She didn't think she could bear to lose him, not so closely on the heels of having lost Peter.
She knelt down and whipped the sheet off the figure. It was a dummy.
The cage door slammed behind her. Emma barely caught a glimpse of the dark-haired man with the moustache who had closed it before she ran for the other wall of the cage. As she swept aside the canvas tarp, she was surprised to see a small electric fan—and a brick wall only two feet beyond. The open wall had been an illusion.
She was trapped.
-oOo-
