Code Name Apple
By
UCSBdad
Disclaimer: My code name is I Don't Own Castle. Rating: K Time: The year 1919, mostly.
Emil unlocked the door and led them to a well-furnished room in back. There was a glass topped display case with a number of pieces of jewelry in it. None of them had price tags which Castle was sure made them very, very expensive.
"I'm sure you'll want my very best, Countess Ilsa?"
Kate nodded and Emil opened the back of the display case with a key. Then he removed a tray of jewelry and inserted another key in the back of the display case. Another tray slid out and Emil put it on top of the display case. The tray was full of pistols. Some were tiny little derringers, and some were large revolvers, most were in between.
Kate picked up and automatic pistol, disassembled it, reassembled it and shook her head. She picked up another automatic and did the same.
"This will do. I'll need two spare magazines and a box of fifty cartridges. What will that come to?"
Emil quoted a price in Finnish markkas. Castle had no idea how much that was.
Kate handed Emil the money and he handed her the pistol, two spare magazines and a box of cartridges. She began loading one magazine. Castle grabbed a second magazine and began loading it.
"This is a Belgian FN Browning Model 1910. It fires a 7.65mm bullet. That's .32 caliber to you Yanks. The magazine holds seven cartridges. There are three safeties." She demonstrated each safety to Rick. "Do you have any questions?"
"No." Actually, he had lots of questions, but he kept those to himself.
They left the back room with Emil acting very sad that he had not been able to find something exquisite for dear Contessa Ilsa. Kate acted equally sad.
Once outside, she quickly looked around.
"I imagine we're about to be followed."
"Why?"
"Emil's other business isn't entirely unknown. People keep an eye on his place. Some of them might be interested in us. Come on."
Kate led them through the city from a tram to a bus, then a taxi and then back to a bus. By the time they left the last taxi, Castle had no idea where they were.
"There's a nice alley up ahead that'll lead us to where we want to go and if anyone's following us after all of that, we'll see him coming."
They didn't see him coming.
The man jumped out of the shadows and grabbed Kate around the neck and waved a gun at Rick, all the while shouting in a language he didn't understand. Then Kate jabbed the man in the eye with something and he screamed and put his hand to his eye. Kate moved away and went for her gun in her purse. Rick was faster. He drew and fired. He no longer had to worry about whether he had ever killed a man or not. He had. The man slid to the ground, bleeding from the throat. When his heart stopped pumping, the blood stopped flowing.
Kate quickly searched the man, grabbing his wallet.
"You're robbing him?" Rick asked.
"I want his identity papers. He may have been just some robber, but if he was out to kill us or capture us, I want to know."
"What did you stab him with? A knife?"
"No, silly. A hatpin. Do you think these large hats stay on by themselves?" She held out a pin about six inches long to show him.
Then she grabbed his arm and led him down the alley.
"Why are we leaving?"
"The police might come if anyone heard the shot."
"So? He assaulted you and threatened me."
"If the police find us, we'll have to give our right names. Neither of us has any alternate identity papers. The police might let the wrong people know about us."
They exited the alley onto a brightly lit street and casually walked down the street. They hadn't gone far when they saw two police officers running to cross the street ahead of them. Kate quickly pushed Rick into a small storefront and began kissing him. The two cops stopped and asked a question in Finnish. Kate broke the kiss and answered in what Rick thought was German. She also seemed to be slurring her words.
The second cop said something and the two went off. Kate resumed the kiss until the two cops were gone down the alley.
"That was nice." She said and kissed him again. When she broke the kiss this time, Rick spoke.
"It was very nice." And he kissed her.
They kissed for a minute, and then she broke the kiss.
"We have work to do."
"What kind of work?" He asked.
"We're meeting with Reginald Parker of the National Post. He's a reporter."
"What's he like?"
She smiled.
"You cannot hope to bribe or twist,
Thank God the British journalist.
But seeing what the man will do,
Unbribed, there's no occasion to."
"Do we need him that badly then?"
Kate nodded.
"He knows all the dirt on everyone."
They met at a very expensive restaurant. The floors were covered in deep carpets, the walls were dark mahogany and there was highly polished brass everywhere. The chairs were comfortable, the tables spacious. The waiters, there were no waitresses, were quiet, knowledgeable and discrete. One hardly noticed they were around. The customers were expensively dressed, knew which wines went best with which foods and in general showed that they fit in with the world of the wealthy and powerful.
Reginald Parker didn't look like he fit in. His suit was cheap and ill fitting. His teeth poor and his hair scanty. He appeared to be drunk. Castle noticed that people at nearby tables avoided looking at him.
Parker staggered to his feet.
"Ah. The lovely and Honorable Miss Katherine Houghton Beckett." He looked over Castle. "And her latest conquest. I will save you some trouble, dear boy, the Honorable Miss Beckett is chased but she is chaste." He laughed at his own joke.
A waiter approached.
"Would madam and the gentleman wish to start with something to drink?" Castle caught the fact that the waiter had ever so slightly accented the word gentleman. Apparently, Parker didn't notice or didn't care.
"White wine, please." Kate said. "Do you have Crimean?"
"Of course. Inkerman, '97?"
Kate thought for a moment.
"Yes."
"And you, sir?" The waiter faced Castle with his back to Parker.
"Do you have Scotch whiskey?"
"Yes, sir. Might I suggest the Aberfeldy, eight-year-old, sir?"
"That will be fine."
"More gin for you, sir?" he said to Parker.
"Bloody right."
Once the drinks were served, the waiter took their dinner orders and soon dinner was served. Castle found the meal delicious. There was no conversation while eating. Once the meal was over, Kate and Parker began to talk. Castle soon became bored. The talk was about people, places and political parties he'd never heard of. Instead, he recalled kissing Kate.
"Castle. Are you ready to go?"
He looked up. Parker was gone and Kate was standing there.
"Yes. Of course."
"We'll go back to the ship. If no one managed to follow us here, we'll be okay."
Once in a cab heading for the ship, Castle asked a question that had been bothering him.
"How does someone like Mr. Parker get a table at that place? He really doesn't fit in there at all."
"Like I said, "Nosey" Parker knows all the dirt on everyone."
"What do we do now?"
"We go see the Regent of Finland."
"Finland has a regent? Do they have a king?"
"No. The Russian Czar was also the Grand Duke of Finland and during the war, some Finns, thinking Germany would win the war wanted a German prince to become their new king. That died when the Allies won the war. But Finland still has a Regent even if it will probably become a republic fairly soon."
"Who is the Regent?" Castle asked, a bit confused.
"General Carl Gustaf Emil Mannerheim."
"How'd he get the job?"
"He led Finland's troops during their civil war with the Reds. He was an officer in the Russian Imperial army and rose to be a lieutenant general. He fought in both the Russo-Japanese War and the Great War. In between he was sent to China by the Czar to see how the Qing dynasty was reforming China. He spent two years in mostly western China, traveling to Sinkiang, Shansi and Tibet. He supposedly met the Dalai Lama and taught him how to shoot. Eventually he reached Peking and returned to Russia."
"Very impressive." Rick said.
"That's not why he's the Regent of Finland. When Finland declared independence, it began a civil war with the Reds. The Reds held southern Finland where most of the population lived and had a lot of men, but few officers. The Whites, as Mannerheim's side was called, were in the same position until he came along. He managed to put together a staff to run the army and he out-planned, out-organized and out-fought the Reds. He's quite a hero."
"Oh, one other thing. Oddly his native language is Swedish, but he speaks fluent German, French and Russian. He speaks a bit of other languages, including English, so don't say anything in English that you don't want him to know."
"So, we just walk in and ask him if he'd mind letting the Royal Navy anchor a few ships in Finnish territorial waters to fight his Russian neighbors?"
"No, silly. We're here unofficially. We're merely having afternoon tea with the Regent."
When they got there, Castle decided that being the Regent of Finland was a good job. He had a nice palace, left over from when the Russians ran the place, lots of servants and a host of heel clicking, uniformed military staff officers.
Aside from that, he was bored silly. Kate and Mannerheim chatted in French aside from a gruff, "Hello, glad to meet you." in English from the Regent. When they were done, and were leaving, he asked Kate how it had gone.
"Very well. He really loathes the Reds for executing the Russian Imperial family and he'll do anything he can to hurt them. We can tell Admiral Cowan to have Britain send a formal delegation to Helsinki."
Once more, Castle was happy to be back at sea in the Thomas Ford. They sailed a bit with Admiral Cowan's force and once helped a US merchant ship taking food to the Baltic nations after it had hit a mine.
Arriving onboard the merchant ship, Castle and his repair party found that the ship was old, badly maintained and crewed by the sweepings of the gutters of many ports. Many were not seamen by trade and those that were, were not at all capable. Castle went to the bridge to look at the ship's charts. The navigator, as far as Rick could tell, was about seventeen and spoke no English.
"How did you end up here?" Rick asked. "You have accurate charts of the area and charts of where the minefields are. It looks like you just ran straight into the minefield."
The boy smiled and nodded.
"Does anyone onboard speak English?" He asked slowly.
The boy smiled and nodded.
"I do, Captain." Said a familiar feminine voice.
Rick was very happy to see Kate.
"Can you find out how they managed to run right into a minefield when they had excellent charts and a perfectly fine day?"
Kate and the lad spoke, the young boy repeatedly pointing to the compass.
"He says the captain told him to follow the compass slightly northwest, about seventy-five degrees. Eventually they'd reach land somewhere and ask where Riga was."
"They're headed for Riga?" He asked.
"Yes."
"We're not that far from Riga. We can get the pumps running and escort the ship there with some of my crew running this ship. Do we know where the captain is?"
"He says that's his cabin over there."
The captain was found. He was drunk. When Rick and Kate tried to question him, he replied in a language that Kate didn't know, but waved a US passport at Rick.
After a great deal of effort, both ships made Riga, Latvia.
TBC