Spy in a Little Black Dress - By Maxine Kenneth Page 0,31
led and whether it could prove viable as an escape route.
For some reason, the room smelled like a butcher shop, although there was no raw meat to be seen anywhere around.
Moe and Larry pushed her down in a chair that, like the one in the other room, likewise had one shorter leg (Jackie wondered if they came from the same set). The two Stooges stood over her, waiting for something to happen or someone else to join them.
After another half hour, during which the two Stooges stood silent and did nothing but occasionally glower down at her, the door opened and Curly entered. At the sight of her, he rubbed his hands together vigorously, as though eagerly anticipating what was to come. He turned to face Jackie and addressed her in English that came filtered through a thick East German accent.
“Hello, Miss Bouvier,” he said. “So nice to see you again. I trust that you enjoyed your visit to New Orleans.”
Jackie tried to keep from acknowledging in any way that this was her correct name. Based on her training, she knew that everything that had happened so far had been done with one purpose in mind—to keep her off balance and lower her resistance. Just knowing this helped her resolve to stay strong and not give in to these men. But at the same time, a small voice at the back of her brain kept repeating the words that her fellow agent Jacques had spoken to her when relating the story of his friend, Henri, tortured at the hands of the Gestapo during World War II: “Henri ended up talking. Sooner or later, everybody does.”
Instantly, Jackie banished that thought from her mind. Instead, she chose to focus on her success during last year’s special assignment in Paris. If she could survive those incidents and live to tell the tale, then she could withstand whatever the Three Stooges intended for her.
Curly said, “So your name is Jacqueline Lee Bouvier, yes?”
Jackie refused to answer either yes or no, although it did bother her that he knew her name.
“And you work for the CIA, yes?”
Jackie worked hard to keep her face blank, not giving away anything that would confirm her status as a CIA undercover agent.
Curly stood in front of her, waiting patiently for her to answer. It was his patience that Jackie found so unnerving. She might have been more comfortable had he done something tangible to show his anger. She decided that playing mute was her best course of action in this situation.
Undaunted, he continued his questioning. “And what, Miss Bouvier, is your current assignment for the CIA?”
Once again, Jackie had to try her best to keep from reacting. It was getting more difficult with each passing question. Curly seemed to know so much about her. At the CIA, she was just a small cog in a very large machine. So why had they kidnapped her in particular? What information did they hope to get from her? And most important of all, what did they plan to do with her once they had this information?
Curly turned away from Jackie and addressed Moe and Larry in their native language. Moe went over to the wall, picked up a long gaff that was hanging there, and used it to reach down and pry open the hatch at the bottom of the funnel. The room was instantly assailed by a fetid and primordial smell, from which everyone recoiled. Then, upon further instructions from their boss, Larry and Moe grabbed Jackie by either arm and dragged her over to the edge of the funnel, where they forced her to look down.
The area below the base of the funnel was dark, but Jackie thought that she could detect movement down there. She heard a slithering, swishing sound multiplied many times and punctuated by some kind of ominous snapping sound. Jackie got the impression of scaly skin and prognathous jaws. And when she finally was able to pierce the darkness, she saw that the room below this one was a pit filled with crocodiles, all of them now snarling up at her with a look of hungry appraisal on their reptilian faces.
With a chill in the pit of her stomach, Jackie realized that it was feeding time at the zoo and the Three Stooges intended to serve her up as the entrée du jour unless she gave them the information they wanted.
Jackie tried to wrestle herself out of Moe and Larry’s grasp to put a little distance