Russian Blackmail at the Ice Palace:
Edward realized in the short time it had taken to finish the ride showing off all the prisons in the Ice Palace, it took just the same amount of time to resort to deviltry. But then, what else would you expect of Helga von Wessel?
Edward turned to his wife to head back to their apartments in the Ice Palace. “Dora?” he said. He looked from side to side. She was nowhere to be found.
“It is easy to get lost in the Ice Palace,” Helga purred cynically. “All you have to do is take one wrong turn —- and you are gone, perhaps for good. We are connected to the great, vast wilderness here. Doors open to the outside at every turn. I do hope Dora has not been caught in a snowstorm.” She laughed.
Edward lunged for her. He took her slim, white, swan’s neck in his hands and backed her up against the wall. He had not touched that vile flesh in years. He made him cringe even now and brought back a flood of unwanted memories from the past and even the long past when he had been her lover. In a flash he recalled lying with her in a field near the gates of the Syrian town of Petra during the Great War. It was on the other side of the world from where he now found himself. And at this distance in time it seemed like a dark fantasy and not very real.
“Touch me,” Helga threatened with a glimmering smile on her face, “and you will risk never seeing your wife again.”
“You have kidnapped her once again, haven’t you?” Edward accused the witch who had often made off with his wife in times past in locales as different as Santa Fe, New Mexico and Southampton, England. She always wanted something, and she wanted it bad.
Helga chortled as he fingered he neck.
“What do you want this time?” he demanded.
“I was wondering when you would ever get around to asking something practical like that!” she eyed him knowingly.
“Answer me!” He shook her hard.
“Churchill and Eisenhower no doubt have certain documents that they share about Kruschev, certain spy documents. I want to see them,” she asserted.
“I don’t have access to such papers. I am no longer a spy. I am retired from the army and have taken up a position as the black rod of the House of Lords,” he confessed the truth.
She smirked. “But your friendship with Churchill goes back a long, long way. I think he will know where to find them and he might sympathize with your plight. At least I do hope so.”
“You bitch!” he exclaimed.
“Also I have heard that since your retirement you still meet with Lawrence in secret. He is still busy drawing maps to defend and attack against the Russians if they should ever decide to attack the west. I want those papers, too,” Helga insisted.
Helga was eternally dangerous and eternally the same like the far side of the moon. He could see why the Cold War with the Russians was really cold.
