CHILDREN OF TIME (2025 Edition) by Michel Poulin - HTML preview

CHAPTER 18 – V.I.P. CRUISE

 

15:51 (California Time)

Thursday, March 02, 2017 ‘A’

Private yacht M/Y ECLIPSE

South Harbor, port of Long Beach

California, U.S.A.

Roman Abramovich, standing on the stern deck of his super yacht ECLIPSE with his current wife, Dasha Zhukova, smiled on seeing two big limousines halt on the dock of the World Cruise Center, situated in the South Harbor of the port of Long Beach.

‘’Aah, here comes our first guests, Dasha.’’

His wife, a beautiful blonde in her mid-thirties, grinned and waved happily at the passengers of the limousines as they stepped out of their vehicles and started walking towards the boarding ramp, suitcases and travel bags in hand. She had been quite excited at the idea of being able to host on a short cruise some of the biggest names in Hollywood, and this just four days after the 2018 Academy Awards ceremony.

‘’Helen Mirren and her husband brought Emma Watson with them!’’ Roman nodded his head at that, noticing as well that, as expected, Steven Spielberg and his wife Kate Capshaw, coming out of the second limousine, had not brought any of their children, them being all grown adults by now. The famous Russian supermodel Natalia Vodianova, who had traveled from Europe on Roman’s yacht, then joined the Russian couple on the stern deck, her husband Antoine Arnault and her three children in

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tow. Roman took a second to discreetly admire the supermodel, who still radiated youthful beauty at 35. Her two sons and one daughter, respectively aged sixteen, nine and ten, were equally beautiful blond children whom she had with her previous husband, a rich British gentleman. Natalia still made the Forbes top-earning models list and also managed her own line of lingerie, Etam, which was all the rage in Paris and around the World. Like all the guests invited by Roman for this short sea cruise, she was easily a multi-millionaire. Roman then had to correct himself on that: he had one Hollywood celebrity on his guest list that, while presently very popular and famous, was a relative newcomer to the film industry and barely broke the million dollars a year mark in term of revenues. That actress, however, had inflamed his interest right from the start with her crazy stunts and mind blowing action scenes. It didn’t hurt either that she had the body of a goddess, and of an athletic one at that. A third limousine arrived on the dock as Helen Mirren, accompanied by her husband Taylor Hackford and by 26 year-old actress Emma Watson, got to the Russian couple and exchanged handshakes and hugs with them. Roman and Dasha were still exchanging pleasantries with the three British and Natalia Vodianova when Natalie Portman, her husband Benjamin Millepied and their six year-old son Aleph arrived on the stern deck of their huge yacht. From then on, it was a nearly non-stop procession as limousines or taxis dropped off their loads of actors, actresses and films directors and producers, most accompanied by their children. Roman had specifically offered to his guests to bring their younger children, so that they could take full advantage of the current school Spring break. There was also the fact that Roman genuinely liked children, something not surprising in view of his own seven children, of whom the two youngest were aboard. As a good Jew, Roman believed in family values and this cruise was meant as much for the children of his guests as for their parents. In total, he was expecting this afternoon 35 adult guests, plus 32 children ranging from kindergarten age to late teenagers. While his yacht M/Y ECLIPSE was a huge one, being 163 meter-long, his seventeen guest cabins would be fully booked, along with nine spare crew cabins. He was not however worried about the security aspect of this cruise, as twelve of his best bodyguards were aboard, ready to repel or keep away any paparazzi trying to spy on his guests.

Roman grinned with amusement when, half an hour later, his least rich guest arrived with two of the possibly richest actors in Hollywood and their little tribe of six children. Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt were said to be very good friends with that

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newcomer actress, Nancy Laplante, partly because the three of them were known to roam some of the poorest and most dangerous parts of the World, but for different reasons. Many forked tongues insinuated that this friendship had something to do with the fact that both women were openly bisexual, but hordes of paparazzi were still trying to produce a picture that would ‘prove’ such a romantic link. Even Dasha had speculated about that in private with Roman, to which he had only smiled, thinking with some envy about the kind of situation that would put Brad Pitt into, sandwiched between two such sexy women. He however came out of his reveries in time to greet his latest group of guests.

‘’Welcome on the ECLIPSE, Mister Pitt, Misses Jolie, along with your six lovely children. Welcome as well, Miss Laplante.’’

‘’And I must thank you for inviting us all, Mister Abramovich.’’ replied Brad Pitt, wearing like most of the previous guests a set of casual, unpretentious clothes. ‘’Our children were quite excited at the idea of being able to sail on your splendid yacht.’’

‘’And I have plenty of activities appropriate for all of them prepared aboard, Mister Pitt. In view of the large number of guests aboard and the insufficient number of luxury guests cabins available, I thought of putting my younger guests in groups of four in spare crew cabins situated in a section of the ship separated from the other crew cabins. I hope that this will be to your approval when concerning your children.’’

‘’Oh, I’m sure that they will love being out of our sight with other kids to play or interact with.’’ replied Angelina Jolie, a malicious smile on her face. ‘’As long as they don’t start playing doctor between themselves or start teenage romances.’’

‘’And what is wrong with teenage romances, Angelina?’’ said Nancy Laplante, who had stayed a bit behind the family with her two pieces of luggage. ‘’I had my first date with a boy at the age of fourteen.’’

‘’Shhh!’’ said Brad Pitt. ‘’Don’t give bad ideas to our elder kids, Nancy.’’ Roman laughed at that exchange, then made an apologetic shrug to Nancy Laplante.

‘’You will excuse me if I put you in one of those spare crew cabins, Miss Laplante. I unfortunately ran out of guest cabins for you.’’

Nancy immediately stared at him with a falsely offended expression.

‘’WHAT? I can’t even get a water-logged foxhole on this ship? I’m out of here!’’ She then changed her expression on a dime, smiling to Roman and speaking to him in perfect Russian as Angelina, Brad and Dasha laughed at her joke.

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‘’I don’t mind one bit, Mister Abramovich. By the way, is it a problem if I happen to be armed? If your head bodyguard wishes so, I can always surrender my pistols to him for the duration of the cruise.’’

Roman only hesitated for a moment before answering her, also in Russian.

‘’Keep them, Miss Laplante. I know that you made a lot of enemies in the course of your adventures, especially in Israel and in the Muslim world.’’ That made Nancy’s smile fade away, to be replace with a look of regret.

‘’And that saddens me, truly. Contrary to what some say about me, I am no anti-Semite and I love Israel. I just wish that the Israeli government could regain some common sense and stop treating me like a terrorist. I may not agree with the Israeli government policies concerning the Palestinians, but so do many Israeli Jews.’’

‘’I understand perfectly, Miss Laplante. If you will follow the steward waiting behind me, he will guide you and the Jolie-Pitt children to your cabins on the Lower Deck.’’

‘’Thank you, Mister Abramovich.’’

Her two bags in hand, Nancy followed behind the steward and the Jolie-Pitt children, who ranged in age between eight and fifteen. Going inside the yacht via a steel hatch, the group followed a long passageway and passed through two more hatches before turning left in a side corridor. The steward then briefly stopped and pointed at the hatch in the main passageway which led forward.

‘’The crew is accommodated in cabins past this hatch, but have been told not to venture in this section, which was reserved for the young guests of Mister Abramovich. Above you are the main guest lounge and disco club, with the guest cabins occupied by parents yet one more deck above the lounge. You can go up to the lounge via the ladder at the end of this side passageway, which contains your cabins. I will now lead you to your respective cabins.’’

The excited children, along with Nancy, quickly found out that other children were already in some of the cabins, unpacking their suitcases in their twin double-bunk cabins assigned to them. Consulting a list attached to a clipboard, the steward stopped in front of a cabin where a young girl was unpacking her things, then turned around to face his followers.

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‘’Misses Vivienne, Zahara and Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, you will share this cabin with Miss Harper Beckham. If you may go in and start unpacking, I will be back soon to show you were the washrooms and shower rooms are.’’

Then passing a cabin that was apparently already fully occupied, the steward stopped in front of the next cabin.

‘’Mister Knox Jolie-Pitt, you will share this cabin with Moses Paltrow, Henry Weisz-Oronofzky and Joe Alphie Winslet-Mendes. Mister Pax Jolie-Pitt, you will be in the cabin facing this one and will share it with Cruz and Romeo Beckham and with Viktor Vodianova-Portman.’’

Going to the next cabin in the passageway, the steward looked at the elder son of Angelina Jolie, an adopted Cambodian refugee boy who was by now sixteen years old.

‘’Mister Maddox Jolie-Pitt, you are to share this cabin with Cashel Day-Lewis, Oscar Jackman and Lucas Vodianova-Portman.’’

Now alone with the steward, Nancy followed him to the two last cabins in the passageway. The man pointed the two opposing doors past the cabin he stood in front of.

‘’These are respectively the combined washrooms and bathrooms, one for boys and the other for girls. This cabin is yours, Miss Laplante. The guests are invited to assemble in the main lounge once they have unpacked their things. Mister Abramovich will then speak to you all and give you the program for our cruise.’’

‘’Thank you very much, mister. I won’t be long.’’

Then entering her assigned cabin, Nancy put down her luggage and looked quickly around her. The cabin had two double-bunk beds opposite each other, with drawers under the lower beds and four large metallic lockers at one end which could be secured with padlocks. One sofa and one easy chair sat in an open space near the door, while a work desk and chair sat against the steel wall at the end of the cabin. Curtains could be drawn across the side of each bed to provide some privacy and there was a bedside lamp and small storage shelf at the head of each bed. By any standards, this was quite nice for cabins reserved for simple crewmembers. Choosing one of the bottom beds, Nancy then found out that the bed could be electrically adjusted to raise the head end of the mattress to a semi-reclined position, making reading in bed more comfortable. Favorably impressed, Nancy thought about what that said about the comfort of the guest cabins on this yacht if this was what the crew got. Unpacking quickly her two bags and putting their content in either one of the lockers or in the drawers under her bed, she

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then took out her two handguns, a compact GLOCK 26 9mm pistol and a FN FIVE-SEVEN 5.7mm pistol, and her folding combat knife, putting the three weapons and her spare ammunition on the top shelf of her locker before securing it with a key padlock. With this done, she left her cabin and climbed the ladder leading to the main guest lounge.

Despite being a very large room, the luxurious main lounge was fairly crowded when Nancy entered it, with numerous young and excited children sitting on the carpet, in front of the sofas and chairs used by their parents. One of the actresses present who saw Nancy enter then turned her head away, clearly uneasy and averting her eyes. That actually hurt Nancy. She always had tried to be friendly with Natalie Portman, but the dual nationality Israeli-American apparently believed to some extent the false accusations about her being a supporter of Palestinian terrorists still made by the Israeli government. By contrast, she got a much warmer reception from Scarlet Johansson and Chris Evans, two of her costars in the movie ‘THE AVENGERS 2’, who waved for her to come sit with them and film director Kathryn Bigelow at their table near the back of the lounge. Nancy happily went to them and sat beside Chris Evans after exchanging kisses on the cheeks with the trio.

‘’So, Mister Abramovich invited ‘The Terminatrix’ on this cruise.’’ said playfully Johansson, making Nancy grimace with false distaste.

‘’Please, Scarlet! You know that I hate that nickname.’’

‘’But it suits you so well. Like ‘The Terminator’, you can be an unstoppable killing machine, and I am not talking only in movies.’’

‘’You do have to recognize that you have quite a reputation as a real world fighter and soldier, Nancy.’’ added Kathryn Bigelow. ‘’I should make a movie with you one day.’’

‘’And what would you have in store for me, Kathryn?’’ asked Nancy, resting her chin on her crossed fingers and smiling to the famous film director.

‘’Oh, many say that you would be perfect to play a CIA agent in some Third World hellhole. Quite a few people are still insinuating that you are actually a CIA agent, especially after your little skit in Pakistan, when you found and freed Anderson Cooper.’’

‘’Why not a Russian agent instead, like Angelina Jolie in ‘SALT’? I do speak perfect Russian, after all.’’

Bigelow pointed her index at her, now serious.

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‘’You know, Nancy, that is one of the reasons why you could become one of the best actresses of all times. You can speak so many languages and are comfortable and knowledgeable about so many different cultures and historical times that you could play in about any kind of movie, anywhere in the World.’’

‘’But acting is still only a part-time occupation for me, Kathryn. I still love my job as a war correspondent and international affairs reporter. Money or fame does not really attract me, so I’m not exactly chasing after big movie contracts.’’

‘’Which is a sad waste for the moviegoers of the World, Nancy.’’ said Chris Evans, a big, strong and handsome actor. ‘’I believe actually that you would be the perfect match for certain roles which would deserve a movie.’’

‘’Like which ones?’’ asked Nancy, truly curious.

‘’Like Wonder Woman! You are truly built like an Amazon, can fight like a master with a sword and do by yourself the craziest stunts possible.’’

‘’Hum, you do have a point, Chris. It would be an interesting role to take, but not if she would be like the whimp in cheesy hot pants depicted in those sexist and childish cartoons which made her into an obedient sex object for geeky readers. Wonder Woman should be in reality a strong, intelligent Amazon demigod bent on teaching to men respect for women. And please, no star-studded blue hot pants!’’

‘’Maybe Kathryn could produce such a movie, with you in the title role.’’ suggested a smiling Scarlet Johansson, making Bigelow turn thoughtful.

‘’Well, a good movie about Wonder Woman is way overdue in my opinion, but swords and sandals movies are not exactly my forte.’’

‘’I could always write the outlines of a scenario for it.’’ proposed Nancy, malice in her eyes. ‘’After all, the true main story about Wonder Woman is about how an Amazon demigod is thrown into the modern era. However, the original premise in the cartoons, about her coming to fight the Nazis while wearing the colors of the U.S.A., should be completely dropped. Those cartoons were started during World War Two and were nothing more than crude war propaganda, feel-good materiel meant for American readers.’’

‘’True!’’ agreed Bigelow. ‘’You really would be ready to write a scenario for a Wonder Woman movie, Nancy?’’

‘’Why not? It could actually prove to be quite fun for me. As things goes, it looks like my role of the She-Hulk in AVENGERS 2 was only a passing, secondary one, with

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little future for it on the big screen. In contrast, the role of the Shadow Dancer has proved to be a lot more fulfilling.’’

‘’And your latest role as a Bond girl?’’ said Chris Evans, making Nancy think for a second before answering.

‘’Well, I have to say that playing alongside Daniel Craig was a nice experience, but I am not really fond of playing simple sex objects. I would actually have liked more to play a strong female villain instead. But don’t get me wrong: playing in ‘HIGH TIME TO KILL’ was worth it.’’

Their conversation was then cut short by the appearance of Roman Abramovich and of his wife Dasha in the lounge. While Dasha took place on a sofa, Roman walked to the middle of the lounge to speak to his guests, a wide smile on his face.

‘’Welcome aboard the ECLIPSE, ladies and gentlemen, and thank you for accepting my little invitation. I am pleased to see that you brought your children with you, as this cruise is meant as much for their enjoyment as for yours. We will soon be underway for the high seas and will sail south on a three-day cruise before returning to Long Beach. Consider the facilities on this ship as yours and do not hesitate to ask if you need anything. This said, my head steward and my head hostess will guide you on a quick tour of the ship, to show you the facilities available, then we will have a hot buffet supper on the aft pool deck. Later in the evening, we could have a few dances and drinks at the disco club, while your younger children could go play in the electronic arcade room or go watch a movie. If you don’t have any questions at this time, I will now turn you over to my head steward and hostess. If you may please split into two groups and follow them.’’

The guests eagerly got up from their seats then and mingled for a while before forming two roughly equal groups and starting the tour.

That tour left many of the guests in awe on seeing things like the disco hall, the two pools, the two helicopter pads, the many hot tubs and the mini-submarine in one of the boat bays. The hot buffet which was served following the tour proved no less impressive, with choices for every taste and diet. As per her habit, Nancy ate only moderately then and had only one cup of wine as alcoholic drink, preferring instead to concentrate on socializing with the other guests and their host. She also moderated herself at the disco hall, dancing a lot but only drinking mineral water in order to stay

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sober. In contrast, many of the other guests indulged quite a lot, with a few being rather unsteady by the time Nancy and a few others decided to go change into bathing suits in order to go take a dip in one of the hot tubs. Nancy finally excused herself with the other guests and her host at around midnight and went to her cabin, taking a quick shower before going to sleep.

03:58 (California Time)

Friday, March 03, 2017 ‘A’

Bridge of the M/Y ECLIPSE

The bodyguard who was doing the night shift on the bridge of the yacht was a relatively junior one in the pecking order of Roman Abramovich’s small army of bodyguards, thus had been given with two other junior bodyguards the shift when the threat would be the least. The fact that the three junior bodyguards had volunteered for this night shift had helped, of course. Yevgeni Vlassov, the one on bridge watch, looked again at his watch, hiding his growing nervousness. Soon afterwards, he got on his pocket radio transceiver the call he was expecting from Sergei, the bodyguard watching the open air aft decks.

‘’Yevgeni, this is Sergei. I am going to take a long number two bathroom break.’’ In response, Yevgeni spoke in the microphone hooked to his jacket lapel.

‘’Understood! You may go ahead, Sergei. Ivan, replace Sergei for a moment on the aft pool deck.’’

‘’On my way!’’ answered Yvan, the bodyguard on guard in front of the steel door of the armored suite in which Roman Abramovich and his family slept. This apparently innocuous exchange in fact hid prearranged coded phrases with much more sinister meanings. As junior bodyguards for Abramovich, Yevgeni and the two other men presently on watch would be considered very well paid by most standards. The problem for Abramovich was that someone who hated him had offered the junior bodyguards much more, with as an added incentive a threat to hurt their families if they refused the offer or double-crossed the Russian mafia oligarch doing the offering. With a promise of enough money to retire in luxury after having served Abramovich for only a few years, the three men had accepted the ‘offer’. With their families now ‘temporary guests’ of the said oligarch until the job was completed successfully, the three bodyguards started their moves with grim determination.

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While Yevgeni stayed on the bridge and watched the three crewmembers on duty there, Sergei joined up with Ivan on the V.I.P. deck, then went down to the deck and section where the nine other bodyguards of the yacht’s protection force slept. Screwing silencers to their pistols first, the two men quietly entered first the cabin occupied by Abramovich’s head bodyguard, a dangerous man indeed with Russian special forces training to his pedigree. A bullet to the head of the sleeping man was however enough to end his life abruptly. Tense as steel bars, Sergei and Ivan then moved to the next cabin, killing the two men sleeping there with single bullets to the head. They repeated the process three more times in less than six minutes, eliminating the only armed opposition they expected on the yacht. Playing it safe, they also gathered the weapons of the dead men, so that no one else could use them, putting the weapons and ammunition in a large canvas kit bag which they carried with them up to the aft pool deck. There, Sergei used his radio to call their accomplice on the bridge.

‘’Yevgeni, this is Sergei: I am back at my post and Ivan is on his way back to his post. Nothing unusual to report. Everybody is sleeping soundly.’’

‘’Understood! Yevgeni out!’’ replied the bodyguard on the bridge. His time to act had finally come. Turning around to present his back to the officer of the watch and the helmsman, Yevgeni discreetly took out his pistol and screwed a silencer to its muzzle, then silently walked to the officer, raising his pistol and shooting the man in the back of the neck. The muffled ‘PUFF’ made the helmsman turn his head towards Yevgeni, in time for the sailor to get a bullet between the eyes. As the helmsman crumpled to the deck, Yevgeni walked out of the covered, armored bridge and onto the open air bridge port wing, where the other sailor on watch stood, scanning the night with his binoculars. That sailor, concentrated on his observation task, was dead before he realized that something was wrong. Returning inside the covered bridge, Yevgeni went to the helm and made sure that the ship was still on its planned heading, then engaged the autopilot. He now had only two things left to do. First, he walked to the communications room, adjacent to the bridge, and entered it. The bored radio operator inside only had time to look up at Yevgeni before the latter shot him dead in his seat. At about the same time, the muffled noise of the big diesel engines of the yacht went down noticeably, a signal that Sergei had taken control of the engine room. Stepping forward to the banks of radio transceivers, Yevgeni changed the frequency on one of the HF radios and spoke in Russian in its microphone.

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‘’Vulture, this is Shark, come in!’’

He had to repeat his message once before getting a response, also in Russian.

‘’This is Vulture. Send, Shark!’’

‘’From Shark: the fish is hooked up. You may pull the line out now, over.’’

‘’Understood, Shark. Give us fifteen minutes, Vulture out!’’ His main job now done, Yevgeni returned to the bridge and contacted by intercom the engine room, checking with Sergei there that all was under control. Sergei answered in the affirmative, which meant that he had already killed the engineer and the mechanics on night watch. Reassured about that part of their operation, Yevgeni went to the engine controls besides the helmsman’s station and gradually reduced power, making the yacht slow down to five knots, just enough to avoid that the sea made the ship roll enough to wake up one of the guests or Roman Abramovich himself. Going to the surface navigation radar screen, Yevgeni watched it intently, until a fast moving blip appeared on it twelve minutes later. He then called with his pocket radio Ivan, who should now be standing on the open stern deck.

‘’Ivan, this is Yevgeni. Our friends are approaching from four O’clock. Be ready to greet them.’’

‘’Ivan, understood!’’

Yevgeni, feeling a bit better now, sat down in the captain’s chair and tried to ignore the bodies of the men he had killed: the only thing left for him to do was to wait for the reinforcements to arrive.

Sixteen minutes later, a large, powerful speedboat approached the ECLIPSE from its starboard stern, slowing down once near the yacht and then falling astern close enough for a waiting Ivan to throw a mooring cable to the man standing on the forward deck of the speedboat. A lightweight boarding plank was then put in place and 22 heavily armed men wearing dark commando outfits and ski masks ran aboard the ECLIPSE. The leader of the boarders immediately went to talk with Ivan in Russian.

‘’Everything went well?’’

‘’Like clockwork, sir. Abramovich’s bodyguards are dead, along with the night watch crewmembers of the bridge, engine room and radio room. Abramovich, his family, his guests and the rest of the crew are all sleeping right now.’’

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‘’Excellent! You will guide me and four men to Abramovich’s suite, while two more men will go to the bridge. The rest will eliminate quietly the remaining

crewmembers.’’

‘’Uh, is that really necessary, sir? There are numerous maids, waitresses and cooks in the lot, none of which would present any threat to us.’’ The head of the boarders gave a loathing look at Ivan: the man was proving to be a bit soft for the job to his taste.

‘’The less witnesses left, the better. They know you and the two others: they could reveal afterwards to the police your roles in this, if that is what you want.’’

‘’Er, no sir! I understand.’’ answered Ivan, understanding that he could well end up with a bullet in the brain if he insisted.

‘’Then, let’s go! We have quite a lot to do before dawn arrives.’’

04:48 (California Time)

Nancy’s cabin, M/Y ECLIPSE

Nancy woke up abruptly in her dark cabin, nearly bumping her head on the top bunk above her when she sat up: a mental jolt of sheer terror from close by had just hit her brain. That jolt had however ended as abruptly as it had come, which could signify only one thing: that person had just died. Concentrating on her telepathic powers, she soon intercepted other thoughts: some were dreams from people sleeping, but others went around with cold determination. Nancy was even able to visualize the thoughts of a Russian man as he pointed a silenced weapon at a sleeping maid and killed her with a bullet to the head as she lay in her bunk bed. The same man then killed the young woman sleeping on the upper bunk bed before leaving that cabin. Now realizing with a sinking feeling that something horrible was happening aboard the yacht, Nancy quietly but quickly got out of bed and, using only the small headlamp of her bed as illumination, started quickly dressing up, putting on a pair of jeans, a T-shirt and her running shoes. She was about to grab her pistols in her locker when a short scream of fear came from the hallway outside her cabin. The noise of running feet coming her way then followed. Going to the door of her cabin and opening it, Nancy was just in time to see young Zahara Jolie-Pitt, wearing only her panties, being hit in her back by something and crumbling to the floor right in front of her door, convulsing and shouting with pain. Nancy had seen often enough the effects of taser darts to recognize what had happened to the

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young teenager. The noise of booted feet approaching was followed by a man’s voice speaking in accented English to the twelve year-old girl still convulsing on the deck.

‘’You try to run and I will give you another jolt, young bitch! Now, shut up!’’ Rage filled Nancy instantly and she stepped quickly in the hallway to stand between Zahara and her attacker. Slapping away the electrode wires of the taser pistol held by the man in dark combat suit approaching in the hallway, Nancy then projected a mental energy bolt at the attacker. Hit in the chest by the invisible, silent bolt, the man literally flew off his feet and was projected backward, to slam violently his back and head against the steel corner of the nearby passageway junction. He then slid slowly to the floor like a broken puppet, knocked out. Leaving him be for the moment, Nancy bent down and helped up Zahara, who was crying with pain and fear.

‘’Don’t fear anymore, Zahara: I am here to protect you. What happened?’’

‘’I…I was returning to my cabin after going to the bathroom when that man in black appeared from behind that corner, pointing a gun at me. I tried to flee but something very painful hit me in the back.’’

‘’He used a taser gun on you, Zahara. Thankfully, the effects are strictly temporary. Go inside my cabin and wait for me there: I have to go check and disarm that man. I won’t be long, I promise.’’

Nancy actually gently pushed Zahara into her cabin before running silently to the unconscious man. Scanning first both ends of the passageway, she then dragged the limp man inside the girls’ bathroom, near her cabin, before starting to disarm and search him. The man, on top of having a taser pistol, was armed with a compact UZI PRO 9mm submachine gun equipped with a sound suppressor and with a GLOCK 17 9mm pistol, also equipped with a silencer. The UZI PRO, a very compact weapon measuring only about thirty centimeters with its stock folded, was also equipped with a holographic quick aiming sight, making it an ideal weapon for close quarter fighting. Nancy grabbed it, along with three spare magazines that she slipped in her belt. Seeing a pocket radio linked to a headset worn by the man, she grabbed it as well. After a quick thought, she decided then to simply take the tactical vest of the man and wear it, something that would make carrying the radio and ammunition much easier and more practical. That done, she violently twisted the man’s head, breaking his neck and killing him: she could not afford to risk him waking up and becoming again a threat to the children sleeping in this part of the ship. That thought then made her think about her next move. Obviously, her most urgent task was to protect the children from the murdering bastards who were

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still killing the whole crew in their sleep. The problem was that any noise of gunfire would certainly attract quickly more pirates, as she now considered the boarders to be, while someone was bound to eventually look for the missing man. In both eventualities bullets were bound to fly left and right, with the thin partitions of the cabins being poor obstacles to them and making accidental casualties among the children very likely. She had to find a more secure place for them to hide, and quick! Unfortunately, she could sense the thoughts of numerous pirates all around her, even on the lower decks, where she could have used some storage compartment to hide the children. Even then, any surprise encounter with one or more pirates would catch her and the children on the move and in the open, where the kids would be hideously vulnerable to lost or ricocheting bullets. Nancy concluded finally that there was only one way to truly safeguard the children while she tried to save their parents. Unfortunately, that option carried a bitter cost to her, as it meant that she would blow away her secret of being a time traveler. That dilemma was however a short one: as was customary for her, her heart won over her logic, and damn the personal consequences to her! More than thirty children were now in mortal danger and could only count on her. Her decision taken, she grabbed the pirate’s pistol in one hand and the UZI PRO in the other and returned to her cabin, where she found Zahara hiding behind one of the bunk beds.

‘’That was the right idea to hide, Zahara. Stay here: I will go get your sisters.’’

‘’What about my brothers and the other kids, Miss Laplante?’’ asked the ex-Ethiopian child refugee, fear and worry in her voice. Nancy gave her a gentle, reassuring smile.

‘’I will go get them as well, but I can’t do it in one move only. What is your cabin number?’’

‘’Cabin 233, miss.’’

‘’Good! Stay where you are and, please, don’t leave this cabin for any reason. I will be back in a couple minutes.’’

Leaving her cabin and going down three doors, she opened the door of cabin 233, which had been left half opened, and entered the dark compartment, closing the door behind her. She first woke up ten-year-old Shiloh Jolie-Pitt, putting one hand over her mouth so that she would not scream. The contact made the blonde open her eyes at once and look with fear at the dark shape hovering over her. Nancy hurried to reassure her.

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‘’Don’t be scared! I’m Nancy Laplante. You need to wake up and dress quietly and quickly: bad men are roaming the ship and I must hide you from them. Please don’t ask questions and be quick to dress. Zahara is already hiding in my cabin.’’

‘’But, my parents…’’ started to say young Shiloh. Nancy cut her at once.

‘’I will go help them once you and the other kids are all safely hidden from the bad men. Now, please dress quickly and don’t ask more questions.’’ Still fearful but obeying her, the young teenager got up and dressed while Nancy woke up in turn her eight-year-old sister Vivienne and six-year-old Harper Beckham, the daughter of the famous soccer player David Beckham. Seeing that waiting for all of them to be dressed would cost crucial minutes, she told Vivienne and Harper to forget about that and to follow her and Shiloh to her cabin. Thankfully, no pirates showed up during the short trip down the passageway and the four of them made it without incident to Nancy’s cabin, where Zahara greeted her sisters with emotional hugs. While the African girl told in a low voice to the three other girls what had happened to her, Nancy quickly took out of one of her bags a small box of what appeared at first to be simple pens. Taking eight of the ‘pens’ out of their box, she then quickly distributed them around the free space in the back of her cabin, one in each corner of an imaginary cube. The pens, in reality space-time beacon units of very advanced design, stuck to the walls thanks to integrated micro tractor beam devices. Activating the eight beacons one after the other, Nancy ended up with a large cubic volume of space which she was going to be able to use to return to her cabin with uncanny precision by jumping space-time. Fully realizing that there would be no turning back once she did her next move, Nancy took Vivienne and Harper in her arms, then told Shiloh and Zahara to glue themselves to her, each stepping on one of her feet and their arms embracing her waist tightly.

‘’Don’t be scared by what will follow, little ones: you are going to a very safe place only I know about. Hold on tight to me.’’

‘’I want my mommy!’’ said six-year-old Harper Beckham, starting to cry with fear. Nancy gently kissed her on the head and spoke to her softly.

‘’You will see her as soon as I can take care of those bad men, my little angel.’’ She then concentrated for a second, sending a mental command to the computer controlling the time distorter unit surgically implanted to the inside face of her lower spine. She and the four young girls disappeared a second later from the cabin in a brief flash of white light.

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06:58 (Jerusalem Time)

Saturday, May 8, 1948 ‘B’

Overseer’s apartments, Government Administrative Tower Jerusalem, Holy Land of Palestine

Herakles Sirtis was putting the final touch on his breakfast, a humongous sandwich made with two fried eggs, bacon, cheese slices and two sausage patties. He then decided to practice a bit his telekinesis talents and used his mind to raise in the air, then flip over the slice of bread smothered with mayonnaise, dropping it in place on top of the sandwich. Satisfied with his work, the thirteen year-old boy, huge and muscular for his age, grabbed the sandwich with both hands and took a hungry bite out of it. His appetite was as big as his testosterone drive and muscle mass, byproducts of the genetically boosted hormone production in his body. Conceived in-vitro in the 34th Century of Timeline ‘B’ in the civilization of the World Council and by scientists with deeply misguided goals concerning time travel, Herakles had been genetically engineered to go to Ancient Greece and play there the role of the legendary hero Hercules, whose proper Greek name was Herakles. Thus, apart from benefitting from the intrinsic mental powers whom all World Council citizens possessed thanks to natural evolution, Herakles was of a size and muscular power totally out of the norm. At thirteen, Herakles already stood a full 182 centimeters, with wide shoulders and thick legs, and weighed a solid 110 kilos, without a gram of extra fat. He also possessed a premature and strong sexual drive, due to the boosted levels of testosterone produced by his body, and had bedded his first girlfriend, Tera of Sparta, when he was still only eight years old. The appearance and intervention of Nancy had however put a stop to the irresponsible projects of the World Council, but not before Herakles had found himself marooned in time in 5th Century B.C.E. Rome, where Nancy had delivered him, Tera and a few other girls from a life of slavery. Since then, Herakles had been living with Nancy, who had adopted him along with Tera. Right now, he was expecting Nancy to reappear in about fifteen minutes, according to her time sharing schedule, after jumping to the 21st Century of Timeline ‘A’ fifteen minutes ago to go live for six months her life there as a war correspondent and actress.

Herakles was taking a second bite out of his sandwich when Nancy reappeared unexpectedly in the adjacent family lounge, well before her scheduled return. She also

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happened to be with four young girls who were carried by her or tightly grabbed on to her. Understanding at once that something very wrong was happening, as Nancy never brought other people from the 21st Century back with her to Timeline ‘B’ Jerusalem, Herakles put down his sandwich and wiped quickly his mouth with his napkin before running out of the kitchen and into the lounge. The four girls, one of them apparently of African origin, were being put down by Nancy as Herakles abruptly came to a halt near her.

‘’Mom? What is happening? You are returning early.’’

Nancy gave him a gentle but pained smile as she answered him.

‘’Something horrible is happening in 2017 ‘A’, something that left me no other choice but to bring these children here for their own safety. There are however still many more children in imminent danger and I must go back at once to grab them and bring them here.’’

‘’Can I go with you to help?’’ eagerly asked Herakles, making Nancy smile with pride and caress his curly black hair.

‘’You think like a true hero, my lovely Herakles. However, time is of the essence and danger is acute back in 2018. You will be much more useful to me here, to take care and reassure the children I will bring here.’’

‘’Won’t bringing those girls here blow away your secret as a time traveler?’’ asked Herakles, letting the words come out under the emotion of the moment. The two oldest girls snapped their heads at those words and looked at him with disbelief, something that did not escape Nancy’s attention. She however had started herself that train of events and could not blame Herakles for this.

‘’It may very well do that, but I will deal with that in due time. For the moment, I want you to go wake up Miriam and Tera, so that they could help you care for the children I will bring in. By the way, this is Zahara, Vivienne, Shiloh and Harper. Girls, this is my adopted son Herakles. Don’t let his size fool you: he is only thirteen years of age.’’

‘’Only thirteen?’’ replied Zahara, the oldest girl of the lot and also thirteen. She then remembered that she was only wearing panties and belatedly covered her budding breasts with her hands. Herakles, who was actually finding Zahara quite cute, smiled to her and showed her the nearby kitchen.

‘’Let’s go to the kitchen: we have to leave the space in this lounge free for Nancy’s next return. I will then go get one of Tera’s T-shirts for you.’’

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The four girls watched with disbelief Nancy disappear in a brief flash of white light before following Herakles to the kitchen, where he made them sit on high stools at the service counter.

‘’I will go wake up some others to help. I won’t be long, I promise.’’

Zahara exchanged a befuddled look with her ten year-old sister Shiloh as Herakles hurried out of the kitchen.

‘’What did this boy mean about time travel?’’ asked Shiloh, a bright and lively beautiful blond girl with a tomboy attitude. ‘’And how did she bring us here? In fact, where are we?’’

‘’Uh, I don’t know.’’ said Zahara. She then saw that there was a balcony with large patio sliding doors connected to the lounge. Some kind of city was visible through the glass panes of the patio doors. She pointed the doors to Shiloh and the two other girls, who were still distressed and unsettled.

‘’Let’s go see from that balcony.’’

Taking the hands of her sister Vivienne and of little Harper Beckham, Zahara then went with Shiloh to the lounge, opening one of the sliding doors and stepping on the balcony. The balcony, made apparently of metal, was enclosed by a transparent box shell with numerous small holes meant to let air circulate while preventing any accidental fall. The balcony gave as a result a fantastic view of the outside, being at least twenty stories above the ground. Zahara looked around with fascination at the ancient walled city close to the tower they were in.

‘’Angelina once brought us here: we are in Jerusalem.’’

‘’In Israel? But, that’s impossible!’’ objected Shiloh. ‘’How could she travel like this with us?’’

‘’I don’t know, sister. Maybe this boy Herakles will be able to tell us.’’

‘’Can he be really only thirteen, Zahara? He is so huge.’’

‘’But he really looks nice.’’ replied the African girl, who had admired Herakles’ muscles and built. ‘’He seemed kind, too.’’

Herakles showed up a few seconds later, a T-shirt in one hand and concern on his face. He first handed the T-shirt to Zahara after stepping on the balcony.

‘’Here, Zahara, this T-shirt is for you. You should have stayed in the kitchen, liked I asked you.’’

‘’We were curious about where we were, Herakles. This is Jerusalem, isn’t it?’’

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Herakles hesitated for a moment before nodding his head.

‘’Yes, it is. Let’s go back to the kitchen before Nancy returns, girls.’’ The four girls reluctantly followed Herakles back into the kitchen, where a woman in her thirties and a teenage girl soon joined them, coming from nearby bedrooms. The woman was clearly of Semitic blood, while the teenager had a Mediterranean look to her. Herakles spoke briefly to them in a language the girls didn’t understand before smiling to Zahara and the three others and speaking in English.

‘’Girls, this is Miriam of Magdala and Tera of Sparta. Miriam is a good friend of Nancy, while Tera was adopted by Nancy, like me.’’

A preteen boy with olive skin and curly hair then joined them as well, prompting another presentation by Herakles.

‘’This is David of Nazareth, the son of Miriam. Guys, this is Zahara, Shiloh, Vivienne and Harper. Nancy said that she was going to bring more children in.’’

‘’By God!’’ said softly Miriam. ‘’What is happening exactly in 2017, Herakles?’’

‘’Nancy didn’t give me much details yet. She said that many children are in imminent danger over there and that bringing them here was the only way to keep them safe.’’

‘’She told me that bad men were attacking our ship.’’ volunteered Zahara. ‘’One of those bad men shot at me but Miss Laplante then knocked him out.’’

‘’A ship? What kind of ship?’’ asked Tera.

‘’A private yacht. It is a very big one indeed and belongs to a rich man who invited our family and other families of Hollywood celebrities for a short cruise out of Los Angeles.’’

‘’Pirates!’’ hissed Tera, deducing at once why that yacht had been attacked. ‘’I hate pirates! They killed my own parents and sold me into slavery before Nancy found and saved me.’’

Zahara didn’t have time to ask questions about that, as Nancy reappeared at that moment in the lounge, four young boys holding on to her. One of the boys was sobbing, prompting Miriam of Magdala to walk quickly to Nancy to take the boy from Nancy’s arms and hug him in her own arms.

‘’My poor little angel! Don’t worry anymore: you are now safe here.’’ As Miriam returned to the kitchen while carrying the boy, Nancy pointed at Tera.

‘’Tera, I need you to call our Paris outpost and to have it alert Mike. I need him here to help manage this situation, and quick!’’

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‘’I’m on it!’’ said the Spartan teenager, starting to run towards Nancy’s work office, where there was a videophone. On her part, Nancy disappeared yet again, her submachine gun in one hand and ready to use it if need be on reemergence.

Miriam and Herakles were still doing their best to reassure and calm the eight children when Nancy reappeared again, this time with two boys and two girls, all close to the age of ten. She was tense and looked clearly worried as she put down Seraphina and Violet Affleck and let Knox Jolie-Pitt and Henry Weisz-Oronofsky unglue themselves from her.

‘’Herakles, things are getting dicey on the yacht: I had to shoot and kill one pirate who was looking for the one I killed and then hid. The remaining pirates will soon notice the absence of these two men, but there are still at least fifteen kids left for me to bring here and I may run out of time for that. I need some backup: go get one of the combat robots on duty outside my official office.’’

Herakles nodded and immediately ran out of the lounge as Nancy led the four newcomers to the increasingly crowded kitchen and dining room area. All twelve children from the ECLIPSE opened wide eyes when Herakles quickly returned with a fantastic, intimidating machine behind him. The machine, the size of a beefy man, rolled on a pair of rubberized tracks, had a number of appendages jutting out of its cylindrical body and had what looked like a weapons turret in place of a head. Nancy read quickly the number painted on the robot’s torso before speaking to it with authority.

‘’Unit 3419, you are to jump behind me to a ship off the coast of California on Friday, March 3 of the year 2017 ‘A’, at 05:04, California time. Once aboard the ship, I will position you so that you can deny access to a portion of passageway where children are hiding. You will stand guard under cloak and will use only your stun gun. The enemy is dressed in black commando suits, tactical vests and black ski masks. Shoot them on sight before they could trigger an alert or shoot their weapons. You are however to stand your ground and not chase after them. Do you have questions, Unit 3419?’’

‘’What are the precise jump coordinates, Overseer?’’ asked the machine in a normal human male voice, making the children watching this gasp.

‘’I am going now to transmit by radio the coordinates, Unit 3419. I have placed eight space-time beacons which are marking our reemergence area.’’

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Nancy then seemingly concentrated for a moment, as she mentally ordered her implanted computer to transmit the needed data via radio to the waiting combat robot. Next, she returned to the middle of the lounge and gave a final order to the robot.

‘’Jump precisely fifteen seconds after I do, Unit 3419.’’

Nancy then disappeared for the third time from the lounge. The robot rolled to the spot she had stood in and disappeared itself fifteen seconds after Nancy, making ten-year-old Henry Weisz exclaim with awe.

‘’WOW! That was cool!’’

Zahara, who was still the oldest child from the ECLIPSE present, looked with puzzlement at Miriam.

‘’That thing called Miss Laplante ‘Overseer’. What does that mean?’’ Miriam of Magdala volunteered an answer readily enough, pushed in that by her honest and straight nature.

‘’Nancy Laplante is the ruler of Palestine in this time period and has the title of ‘Overseer of the Holy Land of Palestine’. She is as well Queen of Jerusalem. Many also call her ‘The Hand of God’ because of the miracles she performed. What is your name again, girl?’’

‘’Zahara, Zahara Jolie-Pitt. Isn’t Jerusalem supposed to be in Israel, miss?’’ Miriam shook her head in response.

‘’Israel doesn’t exist in this time period, never did in fact. Palestine is a unified state comprising all of ancient Israel, with Arabs, Jews and Christians all living in peace and prosperity, thanks to Nancy. She is truly the best thing that ever happened to the Holy Land. As for your parents and those of these other children, don’t worry: Nancy can deal with about any threat, especially with a combat robot to back her up.’’ Tera came back at that moment from Nancy’s office, followed by a big, powerful man wearing a sort of dark gray uniform and by a giant, bald woman wearing a flowing dress. Zahara opened her eyes wide on detailing the giant woman, who stood well over two-meter-tall but was of slim built and was completely bald. The Ethiopian girl couldn’t help recoil in fear on seeing that the woman had six fingers per hand and instinctively hid behind Miriam.

‘’Is she an alien?’’

‘’No, she is simply a woman from the far future, Zahara. Her name is Farah Tolkonen and she is a gentle and kind woman. She also happens to be Nancy’s superior. The man is Mike Crawford, Nancy’s husband.’’

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Farah, like Mike, surveyed quickly the twelve children from the ECLIPSE, her expression softening gradually as she could see the fearful and disturbed expressions on their young faces. She then looked at Miriam and spoke to her in a subdued tone.

‘’Tell me what is happening exactly, Miriam? This is after all a major breach of protocol on the part of Nancy.’’

‘’I know and I am sure that Nancy understands that very well. She was however faced with an impossible situation and had to act quickly to protect those children. Many more children are still left to be brought here to safety, according to her. She just jumped back to the year 2018 ‘A’, with a combat robot as a backup. She ordered the robot to stay under cloak and to use only its stun gun on the pirates who attacked the private yacht she and those kids were on. She should be back here with more children in about two minutes and will then be able to give you more precisions.’’ Mike Crawford, who was detailing the children, frowned as he thought that he recognized some of them.

‘’I believe that at least a couple of those kids are the children of Hollywood celebrities, am I right?’’

Young Zahara took on herself to answer that, stepping out from behind Miriam.

‘’We all are, sir. My parents are Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt. Mister Abramovich is a very rich man and invited about twenty of the top actors and actresses in Hollywood on his yacht, along with their spouses, us and Miss Laplante. The bad men attacked at night, while we were sleeping.’’

Zahara’s answer made Farah Tolkonen tighten her jaw.

‘’Hollywood celebrities? Then, this story will be nearly impossible to contain. The medias will have a field day with this incident. Having those kids not talk about what they saw here, especially with the police investigation that will certainly follow, will take a miracle.’’

‘’Could this story hurt Miss Laplante, miss?’’ asked Zahara, suddenly worried for her savior. Farah grimly nodded her head.

‘’That and a lot more, little Zahara. In fact, history could be gravely damaged if word of Nancy being a time traveler comes out in the open in 2017 ‘A’. What she did may be admirable and chivalrous, but it was also damn foolish.’’

‘’So, she should have let those pirates hurt us?’’ shot back Zahara, disapproval clear in her tone. That made Farah pause as she understood now the full extent of the dilemma Nancy had to face. Scanning again the young faces around her only made her

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hesitate more about how to answer the young African girl. That was when Nancy reappeared in the lounge for the fourth time, carrying two boys and two girls. Mike went at once to her and took one of the girls, a beautiful blonde of about ten, in his powerful arms before kissing quickly Nancy. In turn, Nancy gave him a tired, stressed look.

‘’It’s really nice to see you here, Mike. This is shaping out to be a major event and tragedy in 2017. As far as I can make out, pirates have already massacred the whole crew of the yacht ECLIPSE, over seventy men and women, while they were asleep. They are now busy rounding up the owner and his adult guests and gathering them on one of the stern decks. I was able to read the mind of one of those pirates: they are planning to use those children as means of pressure against their parents, to convince them to give away their secret bank account numbers and access codes. They are even ready to torture these children in front of their parents to make them talk. Those bastards, who are all Russian by the way, are capable of anything and won’t hesitate to hurt or kill these children. I really had no choice but to bring them here to ensure their safety. On the yacht, they would have been exposed to crossfire and lost bullets.’’

Mike’s jaws tightened as Nancy spoke, while Farah’s mouth opened under the shock of hearing this.

‘’The bastards! Fuck the protocols then! We can’t let that happen.’’

‘’But your secret as a time traveler will be blown in the open by this, Nancy. The future could be at grave risk.’’ objected Farah. Zahara then surprised them all by stepping forward and speaking in a resolute voice.

‘’I don’t understand much of what you said but, if it is to help avoid trouble to Miss Laplante, I am ready to lie about what happened to us. We can all do that. Right, guys?’’

‘’You would be ready to lie even to your mother, Zahara?’’ asked Nancy, deeply touched by her response.

‘’To my parents, no, but I am sure that they will understand and keep your secret, miss.’’

Eleven-year-old Violet Affleck and thirteen-year-old Joe Alphie Winslet-Mendes then spoke up in turn.

‘’My parents will stay mum, Miss Laplante.’’

‘’Mine too!’’

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All the children present nodded their heads then, with six-year-old Aleph Portman being the only one to hesitate.

‘’Mom told me often that she doesn’t trust you, miss. Do you really rule on Israel here?’’

Nancy gave the little boy a sober look: one dissenting voice would be enough to blow away her secret in 2017.

‘’I rule here, yes, but it is called ‘The Holy Land of Palestine’, not Israel. I am also Queen of Jerusalem. You may tell your mother about what you saw and heard here, but tell her to come speak to me before she does anything else, once I am finished eliminating those pirates.’’

‘’I will tell her that, Miss Laplante.’’

‘’Thank you for your comprehension, Aleph. I will now have to return to the yacht to get more children. Don’t worry about your parents: I will protect them from those pirates.’’

Nancy next looked at Mike and Farah, an apologetic look on her face.

‘’I am truly sorry about causing such a breach of protocol, but I just couldn’t live with myself if I had allowed those pirates to hurt these children.’’

‘’For all that it is worth, Nancy, I understand and approve your actions.’’ replied Farah, sober. ‘’We will somehow manage the consequences of this affair. Now, go! Get those children!’’

‘’Thank you, Farah, you are a real friend.’’ said Nancy, relieved. She then stepped back to the middle of the lounge and disappeared. Farah looked with pity at the sixteen children from the ECLIPSE, silent and gloomy, and smiled to them to cheer them up.

‘’Well, since you are here, we might as well make your stay as enjoyable and comfortable as possible, children.’’

05:09 (California Time)

Friday, March 03, 2017 ‘A’

Stern pool deck of the M/Y ECLIPSE

‘’What the hell do you want? Where are our children?’’ growled Hugh Jackman, wearing only his pajamas, as a pirate pushed him and his wife Deborra-Lee towards

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other adult guests already assembled near the open air stern pool of the yacht. The pirate answered him in a heavily accented English.

‘’You will know very soon what we want. As for your children, they are still asleep in their cabins. Now, shut up and move!’’

Seeing five more pirates around the pool deck, all masked and heavily armed, Jackman did not insist and joined the more than thirty adults already crowded in one corner of the open deck. He noticed that the only children present were the two younger children of Roman Abramovich, who was also part of the crowd with his wife Dasha, and the three-year-old daughter of Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan, Everly. Another five adult guests were pushed onto the deck in the next two minutes, before one pirate went to whisper in Russian into the ear of his leader, who was waiting near the hatch giving access to the interior of the ship.

‘’All the guest cabins are now empty, sir.’’

‘’Good! Time to do the rewarding work.’’ replied the leader before approaching the crowd dressed in a mix of pajamas and underwear, stopping a good eight paces from them before speaking up in English over the noise of the waves breaking against the hull of the yacht.

‘’Listen to me carefully, all of you. If you obey us and don’t play stupid, nobody will be hurt. For those wondering where your children are, they are still sleeping in their cabins, with two of my men watching over them. Nothing will happen to them as well…if you prove to be cooperative. You all have at least one, if not more, secret bank account with electronic access codes, where you stash your extra millions out of reach of the taxman. We want those millions, thus you will provide us in turn with your bank account numbers, user names and access passwords, so that we can then access those accounts and wire their contents to other accounts of our own. You are all still making millions every year, so the loss of those accounts won’t kill you. Resisting us will, however! If you refuse to give us your financial codes, then we will be obliged to inflict pain on either your spouse or your children, or even kill them if you think that we are not serious.’’

The pirate leader was satisfied to see fear and worry then replace loathing and hostility on the faces of his prisoners. Roman Abramovich got closer to his wife, who was holding the hands of seven-year-old Aaron and three-year-old Leah Lou.

‘’Where is my crew? I don’t see any of them here.’’

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‘’They are all dead.’’ answered coldly the pirate leader, sending a wave of horror through the adult guests and visibly angering Abramovich. ‘’This should in fact convince you to take us seriously.’’

‘’Since she is not here with us, I suppose that Laplante is in league with you.’’ shouted Natalie Portman. She belatedly realized, on seeing the confused look on the pirate’s face, that her hostility towards Nancy had just made her make a huge mistake.

‘’Who? Gennady, get me the guest list! Miss Portman, step forward!’’

‘’Nice going, Natalie!’’ said in a low voice Anne Hathaway as the contrite actress made her way through the front rank of guests. Wearing only her underwear, the small Israeli-American actress stepped hesitantly in front of the group, stopping three paces in front of the pirate leader, who gave her a warning look.

‘’Tell me again the name of that guest we are missing.’’

‘’It is Nancy Laplante. She was lodged in the same section than our children, due to the insufficient number of guest cabins available.’’ The reaction of the pirate leader was one of instant anger and frustration.

‘’NANCY LAPLANTE? THE TALIBAN EXTERMINATOR?’’

‘’Her exactly.’’

Controlling his anger with difficulty, the pirate leader consulted the guest list just given to him and pointed a name and cabin number to his right hand man.

‘’Gennady, take six men and go get that Laplante in cabin 239. Don’t take any chances with her and shoot her if she resists at all. She is to be considered very dangerous.’’

As Gennady turned around and ran inside the ship, the pirate leader gave a hard look at Natalie Portman.

‘’You may get back with the others now, Miss Portman. Thank you for the information.’’

The mortified actress walked back to her previous place, avoiding the eyes of the other guests. Channing Tatum, who stood with his wife and daughter near Daniel Craig and Rachel Weisz, whispered to Craig.

‘’My bet is on the Shadow Dancer on this.’’

‘’I hope like hell that you are proven right, Chan.’’

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Taking with him two of the five men present on the pool deck with their leader, Gennady then made two quick radio calls and waited for four more pirates to join him, giving some terse instructions to them once they showed up.

‘’One guest, actress Nancy Laplante, is missing and is to be considered very dangerous. We are going to go check her cabin, number 239, in the same section where the children are. If she resists, you are to shoot her without hesitation.’’

‘’Laplante? The World karate champion? The one who went to Pakistan to deliver that CNN anchorman from the Taliban?’’ asked one of the pirates, making Gennady nod and make a sour smile.

‘’The same one. We can’t screw around with her.’’

‘’But Viktor and Dmitri were watching the children’s quarters.’’ said another pirate. ‘’Did they report anything?’’

Swearing at himself for not thinking about that first, Gennady then tried to contact by radio the two men posted around the children’s quarters, without success. He finally looked somberly at the six masked men assembled around him.

‘’Viktor and Dmitri are not answering. We must assume that they were taken out by this Laplante. Be sharp and shoot at the least sign of threat from her. Follow me.’’

With Gennady in the lead, the group of pirates first went down one deck, then followed the long central passageway of the Lower Deck, passing cautiously through a first steel hatch and then approaching a second hatch which gave access to the section housing the children. Pushing open the heavy steel hatch and seeing a few meters ahead of him the hallway junction leading to the children’s cabins, Gennady stepped through the opening and cautiously and silently advanced, his submachine gun pointed and ready to fire. His six men followed close behind him, covering the passageway and side corridors with their pointed weapons and ready for anything. What they were not ready for was Nancy having hidden on one side of the hatch, where the opening steel panel would cover her. Staying mostly behind the cover of the hatch, she pointed her silenced UZI PRO submachine gun at the seven men turning their back to her. Firing on semi-automatic mode, she used the holographic sight of her weapon to good effect, shooting bullets in quick succession. The first two men were hit in the back of their heads before the rest, totally taken by surprise, started reacting and pivoting towards her. A third man was hit in the temple as he was half turned around, while a fourth got a bullet in the throat. That man fell backward, impeding the next man from pointing his

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own submachine gun. That fifth man go a bullet between the eyes before he could fire one shot. Only the sixth man and Gennady were able to fire wild bursts, only to see Nancy vanish into thin air just before they fired. Unable to believe their eyes, the two Russians simply stood there, staring at the now empty space they had sprayed with bullets. Gennady then caught a bullet in the back of his head, spraying his shocked sixth man with blood and brain parts. The remaining pirate didn’t have the time to wipe the blood covering his face before dying from a bullet to the right temple. Nancy, who had used her implanted time distorter to jump space-time to a spot opposite her original hiding place, looked down coldly at the seven bloody corpses now lining the passageway.

‘’I hope that you have a good time in Hell, you bastards!’’ She then looked in the direction of her combat robot, still invisible and guarding the entrance to the children’s quarters section.

‘’Thanks for the advance warning, Unit 3419. Continue your watch in this position while I resume the evacuation of the children.’’

‘’Yes, Overseer!’’ answered a voice apparently coming from nowhere. Satisfied, Nancy walked past her robot, her back brushing the wall of the passageway, and entered a cabin where three teenage girls were still sleeping, oblivious of the fighting of the last few minutes, which had all been done with silenced weapons. Waking up quietly the girls and convincing them that she was not joking took more time than she cared for. Finally, after five long minutes, the three girls were ready to go and glued themselves to Nancy at her command, disappearing together in a brief flash of white light.

When she reappeared in her own cabin two minutes later, helped in this by her space-time beacons, Nancy listened carefully for a few seconds, then sent mentally a radio message to her combat robot.

‘’Unit 3419, this is the Overseer. Any movement or presence detected nearby?’’

‘’Negative, Overseer. However, there was an exchange of radio traffic on the enemy frequency in the last minute. More armed men are on their way to here.’’

‘’Thank you, Unit 3419. Stay in position while I go get the last children.’’ Checking the magazine on her UZI PRO and finding that it had only ten bullets left in it, she quickly changed it for a full magazine but pocketed back the half empty magazine instead of simply throwing it away. Nancy then left her cabin and took quick, quiet looks in the last few cabins of the hallway that she had not checked out yet. She found that

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only one cabin, with four teenage boys sleeping inside, was still occupied. A radio message from her combat robot came in as she was about to wake the boys up.

‘’Alert! Two groups are approaching from opposite directions along the main passageway. From the angle of reception of the transmissions I am intercepting, they are each less than twenty meters away.’’

‘’Damn! No time left for me to transport away all four remaining boys before the shooting will start. Hold your position and do not let any enemy pass you, Unit 3419. I am coming to the fight.’’

Now truly out of time and wanting to get the four boys in safer positions as quickly as possible, Nancy grabbed with both hands the sleeping fifteen-year-old Maddox Jolie-Pitt and pulled him out of his top bunk. The Cambodian teenager woke with a startle as Nancy was carrying him towards the back of his cabin.

‘’What? Nancy? What are you doing?’’

‘’Putting you in a safer place, Maddox. Pirates have taken over the ship and are on their way to here to grab you and the other kids.’’

As she was putting him down on the floor of the cabin, near the wall forming part of the outer hull, Maddox saw the tactical vest and submachine gun carried by Nancy and realized that she was serious.

‘’Wait! What about my sisters and brothers?’’

‘’I already hid them from the pirates, along with the other children. Bullets are about to fly and I will ask you to stay here on your belly until I come back for you.’’

‘’Miss Laplante, what’s going on?’’ asked fourteen-year-old Cashel Day-Lewis, who had awakened on hearing her and Maddox speak. ‘’Why are you armed?’’

‘’Too long to explain, boy.’’ said urgently Nancy. ‘’A gunfight is about to erupt. Jump out of bed now and come join Maddox on the floor in the back of the cabin. You too, Oscar and Lucas!’’

While still groggy and half-asleep, the three teenage boys obeyed her quickly enough, lying down besides Maddox. Nancy gave them a last warning before leaving their cabin.

‘’Stay down until I return to say it is safe to move around. Those pirates have already massacred the whole crew and will not hesitate to shoot you.’’ That last sentence was enough to finish convincing the boys to obey her. This particular worry now out of the way, Nancy slipped out of the cabin and closed its door before switching to phase shift, making her implanted time distorter create a bubble of accelerated time around her. Now moving a thousand times faster than normal and

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being virtually invisible, she walked past her robot and headed towards the bow while following the main passageway. Effecting a short space-time jump to go past the next water-tight steel hatch and reappearing while still in phase shift mode, Nancy saw the incoming enemy group as it was passing through the next hatch forward. That group counted four men who were clearly fully alert and ready to shoot. In normal

circumstances, taking them out would have proved to necessitate a risky, prolonged firefight, but those were not normal circumstances and she was no ordinary fighter. Still invisible to the four Russians, Nancy simply walked to the hallway junction midway between the two hatches and positioned herself there behind a corner, then emerged from phase shift, her submachine gun pointed and on full automatic. Sweeping the group with a long burst, she downed all four Russians before they could even react to her. Taking three steps towards them, Nancy then coldly finished each of them with single bullets to the head before bending down and grabbing fresh submachine gun magazines from the tactical vests of the dead men. Switching back into phase shift, she walked back the way she had come, passing in front of her robot and going to meet the second group of incoming pirates. That fight proved even easier than the preceding one, as the three pirates of that group were caught as they were coming down a ladder connecting the Lower and Upper Decks. Peppered with bullets while still climbing down the steep steps, the three pirates fell on top of each other, forming a bloody pile on the steel gratings of the Lower Deck. Figuring that this would buy her enough time to go transport away the four boys left on the ship, Nancy returned to their cabin and had Maddox and Cashel get up and glue themselves to her body. Maddox, who had for years dreamed about Nancy’s fabulous body, couldn’t help himself taking hold of Nancy in a strategic spot, making her look down with a smirk at the teenage boy.

‘’Getting audacious, are we?’’

She then jumped space-time with the two boys, leaving Oscar Jackman and Lucas Vodianova to look with disbelieving eyes at the spot where they had been.

05:22 (California Time)

Stern pool deck of the M/Y ECLIPSE

Seeing the leader of the pirates getting more and more agitated as he tried to contact his men by radio, but not understanding Russian, Hugh Jackman whispered to

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Liev Schreiber, to his immediate right in the crowd of scared and increasingly cold guests gathered in a corner of the open pool deck.

‘’What is he saying, Liev?’’

‘’He has been trying to contact the men he sent to find Laplante, but none of them seem to be responding anymore. I don’t think that this is just a radio

communication problem: he still can contact his men on the bridge and the engine room. It seems that the Shadow Dancer is true to form tonight.’’

‘’That Nancy is incredible. I thought that her reputation was overdone, but I’ll concede now that I was wrong about that.’’

At that moment, the pirate leader seemed to give up on his attempts at calling his men and went to an intercom telephone housed in a watertight casing bolted to a steel wall. Opening the casing and grabbing the handset, he punched a button and spoke in the microphone, with his amplified voice reverberating all around the ship.

‘’MISS LAPLANTE, LISTEN WELL TO THIS, WHEREVER YOU ARE. I GIVE YOU THREE MINUTES TO SURRENDER YOURSELF. AFTER THAT, WE WILL START EXECUTING ONE GUEST EVERY MINUTE, UNTIL YOU SHOW UP ON THE OPEN POOL DECK, UNARMED AND WITH YOUR HANDS UP. THE THREE MINUTES START NOW!’’

‘’Oh my God!’’ exclaimed Deborra-Lee Jackman, horrified, as her husband tightened his jaw in anger.

‘’The bastard! Even if Nancy surrenders now, they will certainly execute her. Then, we will be back to square one.’’

‘’But, what else can she do?’’ said Liev Schreiber. ‘’She is not the kind to let innocents die just to save her skin.’’

Hugh Jackman thought for a moment before answering that.

‘’I wish that I could take a bet with you about that, Liev. But I simply can’t say it out loud right now.’’

The big, 191 centimeter-tall actor gave Hugh a funny glance, then looked at his watch.

‘’Well, whatever she does, she better do it quickly.’’

Two minutes passed, with the hostages growing increasingly nervous and fearful as time went by. When only thirty seconds remained, the pirate leader gave a brief order to one of the three pirates standing with him on the pool deck.

‘’Sergei, pick one of the kids in the crowd and bring it to me.’’

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The few parents who had a child with them, including Channing and Jenna Tatum, stiffened at once and hugged tightly their children as the pirate started walking towards them, his submachine gun at the ready. A popping sound, like popcorn bursting, suddenly reverberated around the pool deck, coming from the Jacuzzi Deck above and forward of the pool deck. The pirate advancing on the hostages was the first to fall, his head exploding under the impact of a bullet. The pirate standing next to his leader was next, a bullet entering through his neck and going down to pierce his heart. The pirate leader, pivoting and looking up while pointing his pistol towards the Jacuzzi Deck, got hit in the right shoulder, making him drop his pistol. Another bullet then hit him in his left shoulder, with a third following quickly, hitting him in the right leg. Nearly totally disabled, the pirate leader crumbled to the deck while shouting in pain. A dark shape then jumped down from the Jacuzzi Deck, landing smoothly besides the pool while facing towards the bow. The sole pirate remaining intact on the pool deck, who was guarding the access to the inside of the ship, tried to point his submachine gun and shoot, but lost the duel, with Nancy shooting him in the face. The whole scene took only a total of six seconds, leaving the hostages stunned and disbelieving. However, instead of savoring her triumph and mingling with the other guests, Nancy started running towards the hatch giving access to the inside, while shouting an order towards the crowd.

‘’CHANNING, HUGH, LIEV, BRAD, GRAB THOSE GUNS AND SECURE THIS DECK! I NEED TO ELIMINATE THE REMAINING PIRATES ON THE SHIP.’’ The four male actors, who had done numerous action movies and had received extensive firearms training to prepare them for their roles, were too happy to obey her. As he was grabbing the pistol dropped by the pirate leader, Hugh Jackman viciously kicked him in his wounded leg, making the Russian scream with pain.

‘’You bloody bastard! I should kill you right now.’’

‘’NO!’’ shouted at once Brad Pitt, who had grabbed the submachine gun of the nearby dead pirate. ‘’We will need to hand him alive to the police, so that they could make him tell them who organized this. We should in fact bandage his wounds, so that he doesn’t bleed to death.’’

‘’Right!’’ grumbled Jackman, agreeing reluctantly. ‘’But you will have to find someone else to bandage him, or I could end up strangling him instead.’’

‘’I will do it!’’ said Angelina Jolie, coming forward at a run. ‘’I saw plenty of war wounds before in the refugee camps I visited.’’

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She quickly went to a first aid kit hooked to the forward steel partition of the pool deck and grabbed it, then returned to the wounded pirate leader, who was still conscious. She gave him an unsympathetic look as she opened the first aid kit after putting it down on the deck besides the Russian.

‘’If I would be you, I would be starting to think about what information you could give later to the police in order to escape the death penalty, you bastard.’’

‘’I would prefer to be dead anyway.’’ answered weakly the pirate leader, in great pain. ‘’The one who ordered this will have me killed in jail anyway.’’

‘’Then, give us his name, so that he can be arrested. Then, you will be safe in jail.’’

The pirate leader did not reply to that, but Angelina could see that he was thinking about what she had said to him. Forcing herself to restrain her hatred towards the man, she then did her honest best to treat him, watched over by her husband.

Even though they were no more in immediate danger, the guests and the Abramovich family were still tense and anxious during the twenty minutes which followed, being worried about their missing children. Brad Pitt in fact had to stop a number of the guests from going down to the Lower Deck to go check on their children, arguing with them to let Nancy finish her hunting first. While the others were discussing, Roman Abramovich took that time to remove the masks of the dead pirates, swearing in Russian when he recognized one of them as being part of his bodyguard force.

‘’Sergei, you bastard turncoat! How could you betray me like this?’’

‘’He must have been promised a lot of money, Mister Abramovich.’’ said Liev Schreiber, who stood guard nearby with a submachine gun. ‘’If you think about it, without Nancy’s miraculous intervention, these bastards could have cleaned hundreds of millions of dollars out of our bank accounts. As much as I hate to say this, their plan was a good one. Their bad luck was to have Nancy Laplante present on the ship.’’

‘’Damn, I sure owe her a big one for that. In truth, I could never repay her fully for this.’’

‘’The way I know her, Mister Abramovich, Nancy will probably tell you to give whatever you had in mind to some charity work. In fact, she must be the most frugal and modest top actress I know in Hollywood right now. She won’t even take contracts for publicity work because she refuses to link her name to any given brand.’’ Roman Abramovich nodded, then looked sadly towards the forward part of the ship.

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‘’Still, over eighty good people died, including my bodyguards. This ship will hang like a curse on me from now on.’’

Just as he was saying that, the noise of the ship’s engines died down and the big yacht soon came to a halt on the choppy sea, prompting a remark from Schrieber.

‘’It seems that Nancy has now regained full control of your ship, Mister Abramovich.’’

‘’She is decidedly incredible. Hopefully, all the children down below are safe and sound.’’

‘’I suspect that Nancy made that her top priority earlier on. We should know soon enough about them.’’

Six minutes later, Nancy showed up again on the pool deck and raised both hands to stop the dozens of anxious questions about to be thrown at her by the other guests.

‘’PLEASE BE QUIET AND HEAR ME! ALL THE OTHER PIRATES ON THE SHIP ARE NOW DEAD AND THE SHIP IS SECURE. SO ARE YOUR CHILDREN, WHO HAVE BEEN HIDING IN THEIR CABINS. UNFORTUNATELY, I JUST CHECKED ON THE CREW AND FOUND THEM ALL DEAD, KILLED IN THEIR SLEEP OR AT THEIR POSTS. I WAS ABLE TO CALL THE U.S. COAST GUARD AND SENT AN URGENT REQUEST FOR HELP. A COAST GUARD SHIP SHOULD GET TO US IN THE NEXT FEW HOURS.’’

‘’CAN WE GO GET OUR CHILDREN, MISS LAPLANTE?’’ shouted an anxious mother, making Nancy nod her head.

‘’YOU SHOULD IN FACT BRING THEM TO YOUR GUEST CABINS, AS THEIR QUARTERS SECTION WAS THE SCENE OF A RATHER BLOODY BATTLE. DON’T WORRY: NONE OF THE CHILDREN WERE HURT, BUT I WILL NEED A FEW PARENTS WITH GOOD NERVES TO ACCOMPANY ME UNDER. THE SCENE BELOW IS NOT FOR THE FAINT OF HEART.’’

Most of the fathers present volunteered at once, along with a couple of the mothers. The group then followed Nancy inside and down, encountering their first group of dead pirates at the foot of the ladder leading to the Lower Deck. Many uttered whispered exclamations when they saw the two large groups of dead pirates lying in pools of blood on either side of the passageway junction leading to the children’s cabins. Significantly,

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not one pirate appeared to have been able to enter that hallway before being killed. Daniel Craig gave Nancy a respectful look as they tiptoed past the bloody corpses.

‘’Hell, Nancy, compared to you, James Bond is a pussy.’’

‘’Why, thank you, Daniel!’’ replied Nancy, grinning with pride. She then whistled loudly and shouted.

‘’KIDS, YOUR PARENTS ARE HERE! YOU CAN COME OUT NOW.’’ Her words made dozens of children of all ages come out of their cabins at once, pushing screams of joys on seeing at least one of their parents. The scene of relief and happiness that followed was the best reward possible for Nancy. She however still had one big personal worry left. Hell, she thought, even if she was forced after this to cut short her life in the 21st Century, it would be worth the price for this.

After waiting a minute or so to let the pandemonium around her abate, she then shouted again over the din of dozens of excited conversations.

‘’IF I MAY HAVE YOUR ATTENTION, PLEASE. WE ARE NOW GOING TO MOVE UP TO THE LEVEL OF THE GUEST CABINS. TRY NOT TO DISTURB ANYTHING ON THE WAY, AS THIS IS A MAJOR CRIME SCENE AND AS EVIDENCE MUST BE PRESERVED.’’

The parents understood quickly enough her concerns and either picked up or held hands with their children, guiding them past the dead pirates. That was when the older children fully understood what they had escaped, something that cooled down considerably their excitement. Soon, everyone was up on the V.I.P. Deck and enjoying some family time after nearly one hour of fear and anxiety. Starting to feel the fatigue from her adrenaline-soaked adventure, Nancy gathered Roman Abramovich, Kathryn Bigelow and Emma Watson around her in the V.I.P. hallway and spoke to them in a sober tone.

‘’Mister Abramovich, I will need you to accompany us downstairs as the owner of this ship. We are going to document and photograph the various sections where killings occurred. Kathryn, you know well how to direct photographers and cameramen, so I will ask you to write down a log of the pictures we will take and of the scenes we will record. Emma, you have no children to care for and I will need you to take pictures as directed by me and Kathryn. On my part, I will use a digital video camera. I am sure that you have the latest in video and photography equipment here on this ship, Mister Abramovich.’’

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‘’I certainly do, Miss Laplante.’’ replied the Russian multi-billionaire. ‘’Just give me two minutes and I will get what you need.’’

Abramovich returned quickly as promised with a digital still camera, a digital video camera and a clipboard with paper pad and a pen in his hands. Nancy nodded on inspecting the two cameras: they were about the best models money could buy.

‘’Excellent! With luck, we will be able to document what happened on your ship before the arrival of the Coast Guard.’’

That task, a most heartbreaking one as they went through the crew quarters, took them a good two hours, by which time a Coast Guard ship had appeared on the horizon, approaching at full speed. That left Nancy only a half hour or so to speak to the adult guests and their children in private in their respective cabins, doing her best to convince them not to blow away her secrets and to agree on a common cover story. By now, every parent was looking at her as if she was something between a goddess and an alien, having heard fantastic, hard to believe tales from their children about their jump to Jerusalem and their short stay there. While things with the Jolie-Pitt family actually went quite well, Nancy couldn’t help feel anxiety as she was about to speak in private with Natalie Portman and her family. If anyone could refuse to cooperate, thus blowing her cover as a time traveler, it was the Israeli-American actress. To her surprise and relief, Natalie Portman received her with a contrite look on her face and without any visible hostility towards her. While her son was present, her husband wasn’t.

‘’Nancy, what Aleph told me was positively incredible, but other children said the same things as him, and I now believe what he told me. Is it true that you are Queen of Jerusalem and Ruler of Palestine?’’

‘’It is the truth, Natalie. I have been Overseer for six years now and Queen of Jerusalem for over four years, in a Palestine which belongs to a parallel universe.’’

‘’And your ability to travel through time, is that the reason why the Israeli government is chasing after you?’’

‘’Indeed! They learned of my abilities through a pure fluke, then decided to kidnap me in order to get my secrets through torture before quietly making me disappear. Believe me when I say that I never supported any terrorist group, nor am an enemy of Israel, Natalie. Could I count on your silence and that of your family?’’

‘’You can, Nancy. What do you want us to say to the Coast Guard and the police then?’’

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‘’Simply that Aleph, like the other children, never left his cabin and laid down on the floor during the gun battles, as I directed him to do.’’

Natalie nodded once her head, then looked down at her six-year-old son.

‘’You will say what Nancy just said to anyone who will ask you about what happened, Aleph. It may be a lie, but it will be to protect someone worthy of our trust and respect.’’

‘’I understand, Mother.’’

Natalie then looked back at Nancy, who now felt much better.

‘’Nancy, I must confess that I doubted you, gravely, during this nightmare. I believed at first that you were in league with those pirates, when I didn’t see you with the other guests, and I blew your absence to the pirates.’’

‘’I know: I heard about that from other guests. I however told those guests not to hold it against you. I forgive you for what was only a logical thought on your part at the time.’’

‘’Thank you, Nancy. You are too good.’’

That made Nancy smile ferociously.

‘’Me, good? Don’t tell that to the pirates.’’

22:08 (California Time)

World Cruise Center quay, South Harbor

Port of Long Beach, California

‘’Damn, another night shot to hell!’’ muttered FBI Special Agent Jeff Blumenthal, as he watched with other FBI agents the giant yacht approach slowly the quay, escorted by a Coast Guard cutter which was actually dwarfed by its charge. Blumenthal’s superior and leader of the FBI team which had been assembled to investigate this incident, Senior Special Agent Mack Eastwood, snorted at that.

‘’You better get used to that, kid: crimes mostly happen at night.’’

‘’I still have a problem believing the report sent by the Coast Guard, sir.’’ said Special Agent Rose Watkins, Eastwood’s deputy for this team. ‘’One woman could really take on 25 heavily armed pirates by herself?’’

‘’Actually, I am not that surprised, Rose.’’ replied Eastwood. ‘’And please call me Mack instead of sir. You did read the file we have on that Nancy Laplante, did you?’’

‘’Of course I did, si… er, Mack. I would have been derelict not to.’’

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‘’Then you should have noticed the long trail of dead bodies following that woman around, Rose. Even though her killings were either legal or justified, that Laplante has proved many times that she is a true killing machine. In this particular case, if I could believe the Coast Guard report, she had little choice but to kill all those pirates in order to protect a group of children.’’

‘’Mind you,’’ said Jeff Blumenthal, ‘’with the amount of Hollywood celebrities aboard that yacht, the medias and tabloid paparazzi are bound to go bonkers about this affair.’’

‘’You are talking about that bunch of vultures and jackals over there?’’ replied Eastwood, pointing over his shoulder at a mass of cameramen and photographers being contained behind them with difficulty by a small army of policemen. ‘’Right now, I can tell you one thing about them: any member of this team who leaks any detail of this inquiry to them will be able to kiss his or her badge goodbye. Kapiche?’’

‘’Yes sir!’’ answered at once Watkins and Blumenthal, knowing that the old-fashioned Eastwood was most capable of following through on his threat.

It took another 25 minutes before the big ship was safely docked to the quay and an access gangway was put in place. Eastwood was the first to climb the stairs, his assistants behind him, to be greeted on the ship by a blond man with a short beard and by a tall, athletic woman with long black hair. Eastwood at once showed them his FBI badge, imitated by his assistants.

‘’FBI Senior Special Agent Mack Eastwood, in charge of this investigation. My assistants are Special Agents Rose Watkins and Jeff Blumenthal.’’

‘’Roman Abramovich, owner of this yacht. With me is Miss Nancy Laplante, who killed the pirates. She is a guest, along with numerous other Hollywood personalities and their families.’’

‘’We read the initial report sent by the Coast Guards, Mister Abramovich. Has anything been disturbed, evidence-wise?’’

This time, it was Nancy who answered Eastwood.

‘’No, except for a few minor things in order to be able to operate the ship and return it back to port. However, before moving anything, we took both still and video pictures of the various crime scenes, along with a log of the pictures. The two cameras we used, which belong to Mister Abramovich, are on this table behind us, along with the log.’’

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Eastwood nodded, satisfied, then turned his head to look at Rose Watkins.

‘’Rose, tag and bag those items and send them at once to our forensic lab for detailed visual analysis.’’

‘’Yes sir!’’

As Rose went to the table to collect the cameras and the log, Mack stepped aside to let his whole team board the ship. He then went to sit at a table with Abramovich and Nancy, taking out a pocket notebook and a pen.

‘’Well, let’s start with your preliminary statements. Since you were literally in the center of the action, I will ask you to give me your impressions first, Miss Laplante.’’

‘’Fair enough!’’ replied Nancy, who took a good four minutes to tell her side of the story. The casual way she recounted how she had killed 25 pirates made Eastwood hesitate at one point as he looked at Nancy.

‘’You make it sound as if it was nearly easy, Miss Laplante.’’

‘’It wasn’t, Senior Special Agent Eastwood: I am simply accustomed to violent deaths around me. Don’t forget that I am an ex-soldier and a war correspondent.’’

‘’Er, right! I you don’t mind, I would like you and Mister Abramovich to go down with me to your cabin, where I will ask you to walk me through your actions of the night, starting when you woke up and found that pirates were aboard.’’

‘’No problem, Senior Agent Eastwood.’’ said Nancy at once, imitated by Abramovich. Before going inside the ship, however, Eastwood intercepted Rose Watkins and Jeff Blumenthal to give them instructions.

‘’I am going down with two police photographers to where Miss Laplante fought the pirates. In the meantime, Rose, I want you to start interrogating the guests about their versions of the events.’’

‘’Including the kids?’’

Eastwood thought about that for a second before answering her.

‘’Yes, but go easy on them and make it quick and in the presence of their parents. They were traumatized enough tonight: no point in upsetting them more. Jeff, you make sure that this surviving pirate is well protected in hospital: whoever ordered this job will probably do his best to eliminate him and thus prevent him from giving us any information. Assume that professional assassins will go after that wounded pirate and make sure that the policemen guarding him understand that.’’

‘’Understood, sir!’’

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Feeling a bit reassured now, Eastwood then went inside the ship with Nancy and Roman Abramovich, two FBI crime scene specialists at his back.

Despite a long and violence-filled career with the FBI, Eastwood felt nearly sick when the trio came back on the open pool deck fifty minutes later. Many of the crewmembers murdered by the pirates could not have possibly represented a threat to them, yet had been killed in cold blood like the rest, while sleeping. He could think only of Mexican and Colombian drug cartels as organizations which could show such ruthlessness. As for Roman Abramovich, he was close to tears and looked ready to crack after having to look at the cold bodies of 81 of his employees, many of whom had served him loyally for years. Even Nancy was tight-jawed. The multi-billionaire was the first to speak once on the pool deck, his voice nearly pleading.

‘’Can we finally take proper care of the bodies of my employees, Senior Agent Eastwood? They have been dead for over six hours now and the Coast Guards refused to move them from their beds.’’

Eastwood nodded his head once, slowly.

‘’I will instruct the coroner’s office to carry out their bodies at once, Mister Abramovich. Where are you planning to stay for the night?’’

‘’Not on this ship, that’s for sure! I will call the Marriot Hotel in Los Angeles and get a suite there, where a backup team of my bodyguards will be able to join up with me once they arrive from London.’’

‘’I can offer you in the meantime a protective detail of four agents until your bodyguards show up, Mister Abramovich.’’ replied Eastwood, who took a calling card out of one vest pocket and gave it to the Russian billionaire. ‘’In the meantime, if you have any questions or requests concerning this investigation, don’t hesitate to call me. Let me just call in four agents before you go.’’

That took only a minute, with Abramovich then going with his family to his suite to pack up and leave the ship with the four agents loaned by Eastwood. The latter then ended up alone to face Nancy, who looked critically into his eyes.

‘’What about me, Senior Agent Eastwood? I gave you a full deposition and showed you what I did here. Could I go back to my Santa Monica condo now?’’

‘’Yes, but I will expect you tomorrow at nine in the morning at the L.A. FBI offices, to sign your written deposition and answer some more questions. I will also ask you to stay in L.A. until further notice.’’

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‘’I can do that for the next few days, Senior Agent Eastwood, but I have to tell you that I have a speaking engagement at the Georgetown University in Washington next Thursday, where I am due to give a presentation on war journalism.’’

‘’Well, it should not be a problem, Miss Laplante, but I cannot promise right now that you will be free to go by then. It will all depend on what my investigation will find.’’

‘’What you will find is already self-evident, Senior Agent Eastwood: Russian mercenaries, possibly sent by an enemy of Roman Abramovich, hijacked the ECLIPSE and killed its crew in order to then extort hundreds of millions of dollars from the passengers.’’

‘’I was thinking more about your own actions during that hijacking, Miss Laplante.’’

That declaration apparently angered Nancy to no little degree.

‘’And what about my actions? Are some second-guessing assholes going to play the 20/20 hindsight card to pretend that I didn’t need to kill those pirates? I had 32 children to protect from bastards who had already murdered the whole crew of this ship in cold blood. I didn’t have time to read these pirates their Miranda Rights, nor could I afford to ask them first to surrender. The only thing I had for me in order to avoid a long firefight which would have endangered the children was the surprise factor. The leader of the pirates said himself to the adult guests that he was ready to torture their children in front of them in order to convince them to surrender their bank deposits codes.’’

‘’Calm down, Miss Laplante. I understand and appreciate your arguments, but others above me may question them. Be assure though that I am on your side on this. Where are you staying in Los Angeles?’’

‘’In the condo I own in Santa Monica. Here is my calling card, with my cell phone number and my address in Los Angeles.’’

‘’Thank you, Miss Laplante. You may now go pack your things and leave the ship. I will be expecting you at nine tomorrow morning.’’

‘’I will be there, Senior Agent Eastwood.’’

As Nancy was turning around to go to her cabin, Eastwood called to her, making her stop and look at him.

‘’Miss Laplante! Thanks for protecting those children.’’

‘’You’re welcomed, Senior Agent Eastwood.’’ replied Nancy, smiling to him. Eastwood then watched her walk away, admiring her long legs and feline walk.

‘’Damn! There can’t be too many women like her around.’’ thought the FBI man.

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10:42 (California Time)

Monday, March 06, 2017 ‘A’

Unit # 103, 1827 16th Street, Santa Monica California

The knocks on the front door of her condo surprised Nancy, who was working on her laptop computer on her presentation on war journalism and was not expecting any visitors. Taking out her FN FIVE-SEVEN pistol, which she wore in a belt holster, she approached the front door but stayed to one side of it, calling out when she was still two paces away from it.

‘’WHO IS IT?’’

‘’Sergeant Ronald Olson, Royal Canadian Mounted Police. We would have questions for you, Miss Laplante.’’ was the muffled answer, which intrigued Nancy. Could there be a Canadian connection to the one who had ordered the hijacking of the ECLIPSE? She doubted that. Having already little confidence in the good judgment or motives of the RCMP following the treatment she had received from it on her return from Pakistan a year ago, she went into phase shift in order to act in a snap. She then went to one of her suitcases, taking out of it a small pocket interview recorder with a sensitive omnidirectional microphone. She next inserted it between the armrest and cushion of the swiveling chair of her work desk and pushed the recording button before going back to the door. Coming out of phase shift and back to normal time, she unlocked her door, opening it and facing two big men in casual suits who brandished police badges. The one who appeared to be the senior officer in the pair quickly noticed the pistol that she had returned at her belt and tensed up.

‘’Miss Laplante, I am Sergeant Ronald Olson, of the RCMP, and this is Corporal James Pickering. You can put that pistol away.’’

‘’And why would I do that?’’ she replied coldly. ‘’I have a federal American conceal and carry permit for my pistols and I probably earned the enmity of someone very powerful last Friday when I stopped pirates from hijacking the yacht ECLIPSE. If you want to talk to me, you will have to do it with this on me.’’

‘’Very well, Miss Laplante. Do as you wish. Can we come in?’’

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Nancy stepped out of the way to let the two men enter, then closed and locked the door behind them before offering them a seat on one of the sofas of her lounge. She sat back on the swivel chair and gave a critical look at her two visitors.

‘’So, what does the RCMP want from me this time, Sergeant Olson?’’

‘’Some answers about your actions last Friday on Roman Abramovich’s yacht, Miss Laplante. As you may well know, this affair is still making big waves in the medias and has attracted the attention of Justice Minister Reyat, who asked the RCMP commissioner to investigate your role in this incident.’’

The words chosen by the RCMP man immediately stung Nancy, who stared hard into his eyes.

‘’And does your good Justice Minister Reyat realize that there is still an FBI active investigation ongoing about the ECLIPSE affair?’’

‘’He knows but, as a Canadian citizen, you are still subject to our jurisdiction, even while in the United States. You were clearly warned in February of last year, on your return from Pakistan, to keep the peace. Yet, you end up on a private cruise that is then hijacked by pirates and cause a major gun battle aboard.’’

‘’Excuse me? Are you accusing me of being the cause of that gun battle? What about the 32 children I was protecting from those pirates?’’

‘’Well, we do have only your word on that, Miss Laplante. What tells us that you were not in reality in league with those pirates, but changed your mind at the last moment after seeing them murder the whole crew of the yacht?’’ Nancy took a deep breath at that moment in order not to explode and looked at the two RCMP men with utter contempt.

‘’First, I go last year to Pakistan to deliver an American news anchorman held by Taliban terrorists, only to be treated on my return to Canada by your RCMP and your justice minister like a suspected criminal rather than as a victim of illegal torture by the Pakistani secret services. Now, you are accusing me of possibly having been in league with those pirates? Are your superiors warped by political interference or are they simply stupid? I fought terrorism in Afghanistan as a Canadian Forces officer during three tours of duty there and yet you think that I could be an accomplice to bastards who murdered dozens of innocent people in their sleep? Do you realize that I am still an active prime witness in an ongoing FBI investigation and that your visit could be construed as outside foreign interference into that investigation?’’

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‘’We don’t care about that investigation, miss: it still doesn’t change the fact that you are a Canadian citizen, with residence in Canada. I…’’

‘’FINE!’’ Finally exploded Nancy. ‘’If the Canadian government can think of me only as a potential criminal, then the hell with it and with you! Tell your commissioner that he can expect a lawsuit for judicial harassment from me if he persists in this idiotic line of thinking. Even better, tell him to stop licking the ass of Justice Minister Reyat and to drop the political correctness. Now, get out!’’

Olson gave Nancy a cold look as he got up from the sofa with his partner.

‘’You may regret this, Miss Laplante. Expect trouble when you fly back to Canada. You have too many murky connections and suspicious acts in your past for your own good. You may have denied already in the past that you were a paid CIA assassin, but many in Ottawa still don’t believe you.’’

‘’All your suppositions have absolutely zero value in terms of evidence of any criminal activity, unless you are ready to accept at face value the ridiculous Israeli accusations against me, something even INTERPOL is not ready to do. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, gentlemen.’’

The moment that the two RCMP men were out of her condo, Nancy closed back and locked her door, then went to her swivel chair to stop her voice recorder. She had to sit down and take a few minutes to calm down and chase the anger and frustration that this visit had brought to her. She however shouldn’t really be surprised by this, she thought. While the previous Canadian government had been nearly slavish in espousing and supporting American policies around the World, the present one had quickly distanced itself from the United States in many respects, intent on building back for Canada a reputation as ‘an independent World middleman and honest broker’. While Nancy didn’t have problems with that, the new Canadian official attitude had fueled insinuations and accusations against her of being a possible CIA covert agent, to be treated like a foreign spy. One overzealous Canadian Security and Intelligence Services officer had even called her a potential traitor during her brief detention last year, on her return from Pakistan. While she was still proud to be a Canadian, she was much less proud of the present government of her country and of the obtuse, biased security officers it was throwing in her path. She couldn’t go on and accept such treatment without fighting back, but she had also better things to do than waste her time and money in legal procedures against her own government. On the other hand, much of

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the logic for her to reside in the Montreal area had become mute years ago, when her old civilian employer, CONFLICTS MAGAZINE, had folded financially in 2012, and when she had left the Canadian Forces in 2013. Now, she spent over half of her time each year reporting for CNN from around the World or producing news analysis in Atlanta, while another good part of her time was spent on her career as an actress, mostly around Hollywood or on film locations around the globe. In fact, her biggest budget expenses these days were air travel from Montreal and the associated costs in hotel stays and restaurant bills.

Finally taking a bitter, irremediable decision, Nancy then consulted her electronic telephone list on her laptop and placed a telephone call to the Los Angeles offices of CNN, telling the head news manager there that she would be holding a press conference at her Santa Monica condo at three O’clock this afternoon. Next, she called in quick succession the local offices of NBC, CBS, ABC and FOX, plus the editors of the two biggest newspapers and of the three main radio stations in Los Angeles, inviting them all to send reporters to her press conference. Once she was done, she put down her telephone receiver, a grim smile on her lips: if her decision was to cost her dearly in emotional terms, then it was only just that the ones who had pushed her into taking it also paid a price for it.

15:01 (California Time)

Nancy’s Santa Monica condo

Nancy waited for the last news cameramen to be set up and ready before starting to speak while looking somberly at the lens pointed at her.

‘’Ladies and gentlemen of the medias, as you know very well by now, I was instrumental in foiling the attempted hijacking of the private yacht of multi-billionaire Roman Abramovich last Friday. In the process, I killed 25 pirates in order to protect the children sleeping on that yacht, something I openly acknowledged to the FBI and to the Coast Guards. Up to this morning, I got only praise for this and even from the FBI itself, which publicly stated that I acted rightly and legally. However, someone has found a way to criticize me for my actions, even accusing me of possibly having been in league with the pirates who killed so many poor innocent people aboard the ECLIPSE.’’

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Taking a short pause while many of the reporters frowned at her last words, Nancy took out her pocket voice recorder and presented it to the cameramen and journalists surrounding her.

‘’What you will now hear is a voice recording I took during a visit to my condo this morning by two officers of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police. You are welcomed to record the conversation for your reports.’’

She then pressed the ‘play’ button and cranked the volume to the maximum while reporters pointed their microphones at the recorder. While the reporters stayed quiet in order to listen to the recording, the conversation between Nancy and the two RCMP officers made quite a stir around the assembled cameramen and photographers, with many clearly becoming incensed on hearing the insinuations against Nancy about being a CIA agent. The latter stopped the recorder after she was heard telling the RCMP men to leave and looked grimly at the cameras.

‘’Ladies and gentlemen, this is the second time that the Canadian authorities have treated me like a potential criminal, the first one being in February of last year, on my return from Pakistan, where I had been tortured by the Pakistani intelligence services after freeing Anderson Cooper from the Taliban in Quetta. To them, my years of loyal service as a Canadian Force officer, including three operational tours in Afghanistan, seemed to count for nothing. I can now reveal to you that, in February of 2017, while I was temporarily detained by the Canadian authorities, I was accused of being a covert agent of the CIA, which I am not, as if that would have made me a dangerous threat to Canada. I will let you and the American public free to think about what such an attitude by Canadian security officers means. As a result of all this, I have thus decided to move my permanent residence from the area of Montreal to that of Los Angeles and to apply for a Green Card from the United States government. I will now take your questions, ladies and gentlemen.’’

Twelve reporters then shouted at the same time to ask the first question, while cameras clicked or rolled all around her.

19:27 (California Time)

Nancy’s condo, Santa Monica

Nancy normally drank alcohol infrequently and moderately, mostly to accompany a good meal or during social gatherings. This evening was one of the rare occasions

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when she could say that she was heavily indulging, drinking from the stocks of bottles in the bar of her lounge. She was watching the CNN news channel on her television set, listening to the latest events and checking on what reactions her news conference of this afternoon was provoking. Up to now, the joke was clearly on the RCMP, which was now passing off as a bunch of clueless, mean variant of the Keystone Cops. Even the White House press spokesman had made a caustic comment about the RCMP visit to Nancy and also had told the medias that President Rodham-Clinton had as a result called the Canadian Prime Minister and had blasted the stupid and mean way the RCMP and the Canadian Justice Minister were treating Nancy.

Nancy was about to prepare another rhum-and-coke when someone knocked on her door. She hesitated at first, putting her right hand on her holstered gun. A second series of knocks, accompanied by a female voice she knew well, then sounded off.

‘’Nancy, it’s me, Angelina. Open up!’’

Going to the front door of her condo in a less than fully steady step, Nancy unlocked it and opened it wide.

‘’Hello, Angelina! What’s up?’’ she asked in a voice which came out a bit slurred. The actress eyed her with sadness, noting the smell of alcohol in her breath.

‘’My God, Nancy! This must be the first time ever that I see you drunk.’’

‘’Me, drunk? Not yet, anyway. Come in!’’

Angelina stepped inside and saw the collection of empty cans and bottles on the bar’s counter, then turned around to face Nancy, who was closing the door.

‘’Nancy, I watched your press conference on CNN at supper time. Are you sure that you really want to move out of Montreal? You like that city so much.’’

‘’I…’’ started to say Nancy, who then couldn’t finish, a big ball blocking her throat and tears coming out of her eyes. Angelina hurried to her and hugged her as she managed to speak further.

‘’Yes, I loved Montreal, but those bastards are not leaving me any other option.’’ Nancy then started crying openly, making Angelina’s heart hurt.

‘’Things will work out eventually, Nancy, you’ll see.’’

‘’No, they won’t! Besides, how could I believe my government about anything after its latest stupidity. I am better off cutting my bridges for good right now.’’

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‘’Then, make yourself at home here in this condo in Santa Monica: it is a nice place to live and you have a lot of good friends here, including me and Brad. We are ready to help you in any way you may need.’’

‘’You’re too good, Angelina.’’

‘’Nonsense! You fully deserve every good we can bring you. Come have supper with us tonight. The kids would love to have you with us, and so would I and Brad.’’

‘’I...I accept! You are real friends indeed.’’

05:50 (California Time)

Tuesday, March 07, 2017 ‘A’

Room 11, Ramada Inn Motel

Los Angeles, California

The loud, insistent knocks on the door of their motel room got the two men sleeping in it to wake up and get up in a hurry, with one of them grumbling to himself as he walked to the door.

‘’Now, who the fuck could it be at this hour?’’

Opening the door, he came face to face with four grim-faced men in dark suits.

‘’Yes? What do you want?’’

One of the four men facing him then produced a police badge and shoved it in his face.

‘’Special Agent Blumenthal, FBI. Are you Sergeant Ronald Olson, of the Royal Canadian Mounted Police?’’

‘’Yes, I am! What is this about?’’

‘’It is about your interference in an active FBI investigation on American territory. Pack up your things: you are leaving this country this morning.’’

01:16 (Moscow Time)

Saturday, March 11, 2017 ‘A’

Private mansion, suburbs of Moscow

Russian Federation

The heavily armed team of Russian policemen approaching the walled park containing the mansion which was their target tonight were nervous, with good reasons.

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That mansion belonged to the very powerful and most ruthless head of a Russian mafia family who had a small army of bodyguards protecting him. Up to now, that mafia head had escaped justice for lack of evidence, mostly because nobody was willing to testify against him or, if they were ready to do so, ended up dead before they could go testify at a trial. This time, however, someone had talked and was, at least for the moment, safely out of reach of that mafia family. Furthermore, firm orders for action to be taken at once had come directly from the office of the President of Russia himself.

The armored personnel carrier which was leading the convoy of police vehicles and which was tasked with crashing through the steel gate at the entrance of the property turned off the main road and on the property’s snow-covered private road, only to find the main gate wide open. The Ministry of Interior Security major leading the raid then got a radio call from the armored vehicle. The voice on the radio sounded a bit shaken.

‘’Team Leader, this is Squad Alpha: we found the gate wide open. There are as well three heads planted on the spikes of the gate.’’

‘’Did you say three heads, Squad Alpha?’’ asked the major on the radio, having expected about anything except that.

‘’Affirmative, Team Leader! What do we do now?’’

‘’Continue on to the residence, Squad Alpha: we will follow you. Squad Delta, stop at the gate to secure it and investigate those heads.’’

‘’Squad Delta, acknowledged!’’

The MVD major then gave a befuddled look at his assistant, a young captain.

‘’Could a rival of Smirnov have already paid a visit to him tonight?’’

‘’But he was about the biggest fish around, sir. Who could have dared attack him like that?’’

‘’Well, I suppose that we will know soon enough. Let’s be ready for anything, though.’’

The sight of the three cut human heads as their car passed the open gate made the young captain shiver and grip even more firmly his AKSU-74 compact assault rifle. They then arrived at the main residence itself, a luxurious, three-story mansion made of stone. The lead armored carrier was already stopped in front of the main entrance, with its eight MVD militiamen dismounted and crouched on each side of the wide opened

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front door. Two more human heads were visible on the steps leading to the door, making the major wince.

‘’Somebody really paid a visit to Smirnov tonight, Gennady. I wouldn’t be surprised now to find Smirnov’s head inside as well.’’

The major then jumped out of his car as soon as it stopped in front of the entrance, followed by the captain. They entered the mansion with over twenty armed men at their back, only to find it apparently empty at first, attracting no reactions at all. Nervously searching the big residence room by room and encountering only the headless bodies of armed bodyguards on the ground floor, the Russian policemen finally found the first live occupant once they went up to the first floor. That occupant was apparently a simple live-in maid and was unconscious in her bed, her hands and feet tied and with her mouth covered with duct tape. More domestic servants were then found, all unconscious and tied up in other small bedrooms. All of them were later to say that they had seen nothing, having been knocked unconscious while sleeping.

When the MVD major kicked open the double doors of Smirnov’s bedroom, it was to find a naked young woman unconscious and tied up on the big bed, plus the head and body of a naked man. The major gave a long look at the head now lying on the bedside night table supporting a telephone.

‘’It’s Smirnov alright. I recognize the girl as well: she is one of his mistresses. Damn! Whoever did all this was ruthless as hell.’’

The young captain standing behind him also looked at the head and nodded.

‘’They sure were, or should I say ‘she’?’’

‘’What do you mean, Gennady?’’

‘’Well, sir, this is only purely speculations on my part, but we are here because Smirnov was accused of having arranged the hijacking of Abramovich’s yacht off Los Angeles.’’

‘’So?’’

‘’So, that hijacking was foiled by the actress Nancy Laplante, the same actress who went to Pakistan a year ago to deliver a CNN anchorman, slashing open the throats of over twenty Taliban extremists in the process. She killed a good two dozen pirates on Abramovich’s yacht, so doing this should be more than feasible for her.’’

‘’Hum, you may have something here, Gennady. Once we are back at our offices, I want you to check if Laplante entered Russian territory in the last few days.’’

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‘’Yes sir!’’

05:34 (Moscow Time)

MVD headquarters, Moscow

‘’So, Gennady, what’s the word about Laplante?’’

‘’It seems that I speculated wrong about her, sir: she has not entered Russian territory, at least officially, since at least six years ago. Furthermore, she has a steel-plated alibi: she was conducting a live, online interview on television in Los Angeles at about the time of the murders at Smirnov’s mansion.’’

‘’That would effectively rule her out.’’ agreed the major ruefully. ‘’Mind you, whoever did this rendered a true service to Russia. Smirnov was like a cancer to our country. With him gone, it will be much easier now to dismantle his criminal empire. We will thus concentrate next on Smirnov’s lieutenants, while they are still off balance.’’

‘’With pleasure, sir!’’ replied the young captain.