Operation Stingray

Short Story - Stingray

Halmetti, Midi, Illionian Dominion

World of Persephone

November 1909 Persephone World Date

Orane Delaware was a woman just trying to get home to her Inn that she largely ran to her son and her brother. A month ago, she published a book about French Mediterranean cooking, as her family was the ONLY French restaurant in Mehrain, area, and she got so many requests for her recipes, she wrote a book about her recipes, and about her beloved Marseilles France.

This led to an invitation to the Imperial court in New Belgrade, which wanted to hire her to help prepare a state dinner with Kairouan Ambassador, as the nation of Kairoua was descended from French speaking Tunisians that were trapped on Persephone nearly two centuries ago. The state dinner went over extremely well. For Orane Delaware, a newly minted Illionian citizen, she felt that she was starting to shine in her own right now as a chef.

She was feeling proud of herself until her ship, the Karadordevic, sank when an enemy corvette attacked.

After the Illionian destroyer had picked up the survivors from the liner, Orane saw nothing more of the ingratiating Mr. Calabrese, a Genoese man who had so kindly insisted on lending her his overcoat. She understood they detained him with slight injuries in Sick Bay.

While they were in the lifeboat, she didn’t know he had been hurt. She felt she would like to see him, to return his coat, and make sure he was all right. When the survivors landed at Gibraltar late the following afternoon, there was still no sign of Mr. Calabrese. Orane remembered he had mentioned being in business in Halmetti, which was across the straight from her home in Mehrain. She resolved to look up his address.

But she was so exhausted from her experiences that she slept throughout the next day. The day after, her first need was shopping. She had lost not only all the costumes she was taking to a theatrical party in Naples, but most of her belongings.

It was while returning to her hotel from a visit to the police station to certify her identity; the legend caught that caught her eye: FLAVIANO CALABRESE - GIFTS, on a plate-glass window in the steep, narrow main street. Orane crossed the pavement, expecting to find the shop shut, for it was the lunch hour. The glaze of the sun trembled between the tall, bleached buildings. There were few people about. The shop door stood half-open, inviting her. She entered.

After the glare outside, it was a moment before her eyes became accustomed enough to the gloom to see that there was nobody behind the counter. She laid her shopping parcels on the glass top and looked about her.

Mr. Calabrese crammed the shop with such curios as a camel’s neckbands, prayer rugs, yataghans, slave bracelets, censers. There was hardly room to move. Only the counter itself was clear. A little, barred cage at one end of the store was marked “Cambio.” Orane tapped on the bell on the counter for service.

Across the shop, a mirror in a lacquered frame reflected her. She was a slim, tanned young Caucasian woman, with tawny brown hair, dressed in a blue silk dress cut in a Persian or Mede style with a black leather belt. Faintly, a clock ticked somewhere. The tiny sound seemed to measure the stillness of the place. The shop was dim and hot, smelling of perfume and cigar smoke, and of burnt incense.

Orane called sharply, “Mr. Calabrese!” The ticking of the clock seemed to linger, then hasten, then linger again. There was no other sound, no movement anywhere, no opening or closing of a door, no footsteps.

A curious anxiety swept her. The odor of burning incense was unmistakable. She walked to a tall screen in the shadows at the back of the room. Glancing behind the screen, she investigated another silent room.

Through the motionless strings of a bead curtain hanging in a doorway at the rear of this second room, she glimpsed a dazzling hot courtyard.

The rear quarters of the shop were as littered as the street room. Her eyes roamed over a confusion of divans, ottomans, carpets, coffee tables, opened and unopened packing cases. A tiny column of smoke spiraled delicately upward from a litter of sacking beside one of these open packing cases. A smoldering, red ring recoiled slowly, widening over the sacking, from a half-smoked cigar that had been left there.

Beside the flame, Mr. Calabrese lay on his left side, still on the floor, his wide dead eyes on the packing-case, his right hand twisted behind him.

Before Orane could scream, a light, quick step fell in the courtyard. A shadow obscured the sunlight behind the bead curtain.

Then the curtain swept aside. The man who entered was young, muscular, and heavily built. He wore a dark suit. He didn’t see Orane. He was a Mede. He fixed his eyes on Mr. Calabrese. He didn’t check or hesitate, but went straight to the body, ground out the cigar and smoldering sacking with his foot, dropped to one knee, and pulled Mr. Calabrese over to his back.

Orane saw the hilt of a knife deeply driven into Mr. Calabrese’s chest.

Her knuckles pressed hard against her lips as she drew back until she was behind the screen. Then she crossed the front room of the shop quietly and stepped into the street. The brilliance and fervor of the sunshine enfolded and blinded her.

When Orane reached the police station, the officer who had interviewed her that morning about her documents was still there. He was a bulky man, with square jaws and a grey, close-cropped head. His name was Detective Kefash.

Before the war, his special province had been contraband and smuggling. That morning he had told Orane of the ingenious methods used by smugglers running black heroin out of Midi into Genoa Kingdom to the north and to and the French-speaking lands of Setish to the west.

Detective Kefash rose from his desk with surprise at Orane’s return. “I’ve something serious to report, Detective.” Orane said excitedly, and she told him what she had seen in Mr. Calabrese’s back room.

The detective asked only one question: “Do you know Flaviano Calabrese?” He spoke Serbian (which was the language of the Illionians who ruled Midi much the way the British ruled India in the 19th Century on Earth) with a slight Farsi accent common to Medes.

“I met him when he joined the ship at Genoa.” Orane replied detective’s question in Serbian. “His family was evacuated from Sant Cluny because of a fire. He had some trouble, but he could go out to visit them. He was hurt when we were torpedoed. When I saw the shop in the main street, I thought it might be his.”

The detective touched a bell on his desk. “I will go to Calabrese’s at once” He said.

Then, to the brown-uniformed Mede sergeant who answered the bell, “Abremis, you will drive Miss Delaware to her hotel.”

At the hotel, waiting anxiously for some word from the detective, Orane kept thinking about the Mede workman. She wondered about the impulse which had prompted her to conceal her presence from him. The more she thought about it, the more certain she was that the Mede had not come unawares upon Mr. Calabrese. The Mede workman had known very well that Mr. Calabrese was lying there.

A little after four o’clock, word was brought to her that an officer was waiting in the lounge to see her. She went down at once, expecting to find a police officer. Instead, an Illionian Army lieutenant smiled at her.

“Miss Delaware? My name’s Nemevšek, Lan Nemevšek. I haven’t bothered you before because a torpedoing entitles anybody to two day’s rest. But I’m hoping you may be fit enough to talk business now?” the young officer asked.

Orane notes that he looked at her eagerly. He was solidly built, with bright red hair and friendly eyes.

“Was it you who wanted to see me?” Orane inquired.

Lan Nemevšek nodded. “Will you have a cup of tea with me while I explain?” He offered. “There are a lot of our boys in Halmetti as it across the straight from Mehrain and the Pakdel Shipyards. I was due to put on a show the following Saturday night and was having great difficulty in scraping one together.” Lieutenant Nemevšek said explaining his situation.

“That is too bad.” Orane sympathized.

“I’ve culled a bit of talent from among our own boys and the British boys,″ he laughed. “I’ve borrowed one or two acts from the cafes. Naturally, from the moment I heard you were here, I’ve been hoping you’d help us out.”

“I’d love to but I’m not a performer. “Orane started to say. She was thinking of Detective Kefash, of the possibility of questions to be answered, perhaps an inquest to attend. And just then, as she hesitated, she saw the detective crossing the hall outside the lounge doors. She jumped up.

“Pardon me for a moment, Lieutenant.” Orane said getting up.

She went out to the hall. The Detectives had a broad smile when he saw her that resembled a predator that had its prey in his sights.

“Ah, Miss Delaware, I have good news for you!” Detective Kefash said as he greeted her. He was carrying a large satchel of packages.

Detective Kefash cupped a huge hand under her arm. Orane looked at him crossly as she didn’t take kindly to his unwanted attentions. Kefash was taken back by this, and the fact Orane Delaware was a woman of high station, he quickly backed off. He led her to a pair of steel benches sitting across the hall; he sat down across from her on one bench.

“Mr. Calabrese is alive and in good health!” Detective Kefash announced.

“In good health?” Orane looked at him blankly.

“Mr. Calabrese,” Detective Kefash said, “was not on the premises at the time you were there. Shonan Ram, the Mede assistant, yes. But not Mr. Calabrese! You were mistaken. It must have been some trick of shadows, some trick the heat play on the imagination. You have been through much, the torpedoing. And the heat-” He said politely.

“You were very right to come to me. Here are the parcels you left on the counter at the shop.” He said sliding the satchel to her feet.

It stunned Orane at this news.

“Is there anything else? Miss Delaware?” the detective asked before getting up and leaving.

“No.” she said numbly.

“Good Day then.” The detective said getting up to leave.

It wasn’t until after the detective left did Orane’s bewilderment set in. Had she dreamed what she saw in that back room? It wasn’t possible!

“Forgotten me?” a voice asked amiably.

She looked up to Lieutenant Lan Nemevšek’s amused eyes.

“You look bewitched,” Lan remarked when Orane did not speak.

She drew a deep breath, gathered her parcels, and stood up. Detective Kefash was the policeman. Why worry?

“That show of yours?” Orane said replying to the Lieutenant

“Yes?” Lan answered.

“Include me.” Orane replied. “And if the cup of tea is ready, I do need a pick-me-up.”

At the tea table, Orane made final arrangements for the show before returning to her hotel room. She discovered that she liked Lieutenant Nemevšek very much.

Upstairs, when she had left the Army man, it wasn’t easy to push what had happened from her mind. The more she thought about Mr. Calabrese, the more certain she was of his death.

If Detective Kefash believed that she had dreamed what she’d seen in the curio shop, then Detective Kefash had been deceived. She found herself haunted by the memory of the slender, quick-moving figure in white, the Hindu with the searching hands. Was he Shonan Ram? Was he dead now, and Mr. Calabrese?

She couldn’t seem to decide whether she ought to do something. But what?

The next day, she threw herself into the rehearsal of Lan Nemevšek’s show with a feeling

of relief at the chance to escape her intolerable preoccupation.

The theater was old but opulent. It had curtained boxes, a great deal of gilt, and an extravagant number of chandeliers. Lan Nemevšek’s show must have been one of the oddest mixtures ever attempted. It ranged from a red-hot orchestra of troops to a Spanish gypsy scene played by a girl called Maruja who was from the Spanish lands of Grenda.

A blind guitarist called Don Pedro accompanied the dancer. Don Pedro was a gaunt, elderly man with dark glasses. Both on and off the stage, he wore rope-soled sandals, a threadbare black cloak and a Cordoba hat. On and off the stage a brown, yellow-eyed dog guided him.

Don Pedro’s dignity was extraordinary. His guitar-playing was magnificent, perfect for Maruja’s fiery Spanish dancing. “The best thing in the show!” Orane said enthusiastically, watching them rehearse. She only wondered if they would come across the straight to Mehrain to play for her audience.

“Except the girl from home,” Lan Boyd smiled at her. “Don Pedro’s a character. He was a refugee from Grenada. No one has the heart to evacuate him. He scrapes a living somehow around the cafes, he and that mutt of his. It must be about the only dog in the city. Pedro always goes over with the troops. They think of him as a good luck charm.”

Orane smiled. Despite being on another world, some literature and music had crossed worlds.

Maruja’s castanets clattered an insolent, defiant rhythm. Her supple body writhed to the music. Her red heels struck the boards with faster and faster rhythm. She commanded the attention of every man in the room with her lithe body.

“Ole!” Don Pedro intoned. His guitar throbbed. The light flashed in his dark glasses. The dog lay with lowered head, yellow eyes watchful.

**

That night, Lan took Orane to a dance at one of the local pubs to which the ar attached him. Afterwards, they walked in the moonlight on the bastion. They could see across the water the lights of Mehrain, and if she could look carefully, she thought she could see the dome of the Mosque was down the street from the 13 Coins Pub where she called home.

There, the stone parapet dropped fifty feet into a moat of shadow. Moonlight softened the wire entanglements between a road below and the water’s edge. The wide bay itself glimmered in cool silver.

But here on the broad bastion was only moonlight and the black shadows of the date palms. A breeze stirred the fronds with a dry rustle.

“Last rehearsal tomorrow.” Lan remarked as they strolled. “Saturday morning. You’ll have only two show Orane.”

“I’ll do my best.” Orane promised.

All the afternoon, the conviction had been growing that she would have to go again to the curio shop on the main street. Until she saw Mr. Calabrese with her own eyes and talked to him, she would never believe that the scene in the room behind the shop had been an illusion.

Yet, the thought of going there again, the thought of that shop door standing half open to the shadowed interior, gave her a sultry feeling around the heart.

Now, as she moved beside Lan, it occurred to her to ask him to come to the shop with her. Her spirits lifted. She wondered why she hadn’t thought of it before.

As she turned to him, from the shadow of a date palm, there came a growl so unexpected that it checked her involuntarily.

A voice spoke sharply in Spanish. Then it said in Farsi, “Do not be alarmed.” A moment later the voice spoke again. “It’s Don Pedro.”

Lan said. “What are you doing out so late, Don Pedro?”

The guitarist rose from the stones beneath the palm. His cloaked figure merged with the shadows, but moonlight through the fronds touched his aquiline face with pallor and his dark glasses with cold gleam.

“The lieutenant, is it not?” Don Pedro remarked. “And the French senorita? I walk here every night after my performance. The coolness is good after the heat and noise of the cafe. There is a moon?” The musician asked.

“Nearly full.” Lan grinned.

“The night smells like moonlight.” Don Pedro affirmed. He flicked up a corner of his cloak over his shoulder.

“With your permission, I will walk a little way with you. I have been considering a suggestion for my performance with Maruja. If you approve, we might try it in rehearsal tomorrow.”

When they reached Orane’s hotel, Don Pedro’s suggestion was still under discussion. Orane said nothing to Lan about coming with her to the shop on the main street. The next morning was the final rehearsal.

There were hitches and difficulties with the show. It went on all day. When Orane left the theater, Lan was still busy with a thousand details. It was clear to Orane that if she wanted Lan to come to the shop with her, she would have to wait until the show was over.

She decided not to wait. Orane walked down the main street. They thronged the pavements. The cafes, the restaurants, the souvenir shops were all open and doing a roaring trade. FLAVIANO CALABRESE - GIFTS was open, too.

As Orane approached the shop, she saw three Illionian privates enter. She stood for an instant, conscious of the heavy thump of her heart. The opportunity was so obvious, so glaring. Fate had provided the three soldiers. She dashed into the shop.