First we took Manhattan

by rasputin0 on October 19, 2018

I came to in utter darkness with a ringing headache. I felt my hands and feet strapped to a folding chair. When the hood was ripped off, the light should have stung my eyes, except there was hardly any light to sting with in this barebones grey dungeon. After a while I recognised the platinum visage of Sabine Sabrinolova staring at me in the dark.

‘Congratulations! You’ve reached your destination,’ Sabine smiled, ‘is it everything you hoped it would be?’

Was this Lichtenburg? Was I in Berlin? I squinted in vain at my featureless surroundings, ‘what is this place?’

Sabine’s voice echoed down the concrete halls, ‘this was an underground bunker the CIA used to spy on the Soviets. After the Wall came down we knocked through an annex to a bunker the KGB used to spy on the Americans.’

‘Really makes better use of the space,’ Valerian tightened my restraints, ‘we installed a walk-in kitchen and an en-suite. Very civilised, excellent Feng Shui.’

‘We had hoped to bring a fully-fledged member of the Ordo Nostra here, but beggars can’t be choosers,’ Sabine shrugged.

‘That’s why you needed the surveillance lifted!’ I realised, ‘you needed to cover up a kidnapping!’

‘Thank you for showing yourself at the opera, by the way,’ Valerian kneaded my shoulders, ‘we managed to plug that hole before it got embarrassing.’

‘You said “the world would be ours” in eight days,’ I couldn’t let myself be terrified into silence, I needed to know, ‘what did you mean by that?’

‘It would be churlish of me to reveal the details,’ Sabine stood up and stretched her back, ‘suffice it to say, in six days a crime will be committed, so heinous it will shock the world. The perpetrator’s social media profile will be a mess of contradictions, such that any two-bit political cause could claim responsibility. The terrorist himself, regrettably, will not be able to answer for his actions, having very inconveniently thrown himself under a train, crushed beyond recognition.’

‘Psst…that would be you,’ Valerian hissed in my ear.

‘What? No!’ I protested, ‘why would I do that? No! You can’t make me!’

‘Your protestations of free will are adorable, but I’m afraid you won’t have a choice in the matter,’ Sabine tugged an elaborate array of lights from the ceiling, ‘now this won’t hurt a bit…apart from the occasional crippling migraine.’

The lights flashed a dazzling array of colours straight into my retinas. I tried to squeeze my eyes shut, but the lights were so pretty. Sooooo veeeeryyyy preeettyyyyyyyyyyyy…

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-Wow! It sure is great to be in Berlin!