Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,18

must be worth today? Hell, do you know how many Civil War soldiers I could have bought with that money? Enough to reproduce the entire Union and Confederate armies, I reckon.”

“Do you think anyone has found it by now?” Jackie wondered.

“I doubt it,” the professor said. He shook his head and smiled. “If they had, the whole world would have heard about a find like that.”

They were waiting for her in her room.

A disappointed Jackie had returned to the B and B. To come all this way and have nothing to show for it rankled her like a toothache. As she walked into the room and turned on the ceiling fan to cool the stifling air, she was shocked to see that she was not alone. There were three men grouped around her bed. They all wore baggy suits that looked like they had been manufactured in the 1940s for the cast of Guys and Dolls. One of them was as bald as a roc’s egg; another had wiry, receding hair; and the third looked like his mother had cut his hair using a bowl as a guide. They reminded her of the Three Stooges, the low-rent comedy team from the movie shorts.

But what they did next was far from funny. As a single unit, they rushed Jackie, grabbed hold of her, and forced her out of the room, down the stairs, and out the side door of the B and B, where they wouldn’t be spotted by any of the other guests. Curly had his hand over Jackie’s mouth so she couldn’t scream and gave orders to the other two, Moe and Larry, in a language that Jackie identified as German. She assumed that they were not European visitors in search of a young American wife to bring back home. No, these must be Stasi agents, spies for the East German intelligence network. But what they were doing here in New Orleans or wanted with her, she had no clue.

On the side street between the B and B and the western edge of Audubon Park, there was a tan sedan parked at the curb. Jackie knew that the men were planning to hustle her into the car and spirit her off. But to where and to what purpose? She knew if this happened, she would never been seen or heard from again. She had to prevent the men from getting her into the vehicle. But how?

Then two things happened almost simultaneously. The first was that the man Jackie chose to think of as Larry, being more intent on holding on to her than on watching where he was going, tripped over a section of pavement that had been buckled by an oversized, gnarled tree root growing out of the ground. Jackie had previously noted that this phenomenon was common in New Orleans, where rain and flooding encouraged trees planted along the city’s various thoroughfares to shoot right up out of the sidewalk.

As soon as she felt Larry let go of her arm, Jackie immediately went into action and bit down on the hand that was covering her mouth. She was gratified when Curly let out a yelp of surprise and released her. That only left Moe on her other side to deal with. She handled him with one of the deadliest weapons ever designed—a woman’s stiletto-heeled shoe. A quick and expertly placed kick to the shin was enough to neutralize Moe momentarily and force him to let go of her.

Jackie made a run for St. Charles Avenue. Unfortunately, these same heels were not made for running, making it difficult for her to race to safety. She noticed a streetcar stopped up in the middle of the street to pick up passengers and decided that this would be the best way to put distance between herself and the three East German spies. Not daring to look behind her to see if they had recovered enough to give chase, she put on a burst of speed, dodging in and out of passing cars, and made it to the streetcar a second before it closed its doors.

Rooting around in her handbag, Jackie handed the driver a dollar bill, waited while he gave her change from his coin belt, then walked swiftly down the center aisle of the streetcar and took a seat in the back so she could look out the rear window to see where the Three Stooges were. Despite the fact that all of its windows were lowered, it felt