Abaddon - Chapter 5

Penny Simpson’s notes, May 15, 2010

Luckily, I didn’t have my passport in my wallet, or any credit cards. I have been travelling in Eastern Europe for a long time, and know the value of the hotel safe. The handbag, mind you, was a valuable one, a limited edition.

I did not visit the police station to report the death. Several passing tourists took snapshots of the body. I exchanged addresses with one of them and offered him money for negatives. A journalist must do these things.

Got back to the hotel again to find more flowers in reception. Suspect Ivan has definitely been blown out by his American floozie. Cannot criticize however as am personally below even floozie status.

Birds preen after getting a shock. I read magazines. Strolled out to the foreign language bookstall and scored several out-of-date copies of Cosmo, Bella (The Magazine For Today’s Independent Woman), and Vogue. Did not escape even then; discovered seven new ways to please my man. (Also bought FHM, as it was in English - discovered seven new ways to Make My Woman Want It). Penned an extensive piece on the evils of living in a corrupt police state. Drank too much.

During the afternoon, visited the state of Na’s second most imposing tourist attraction, the Paerca Episcopa Maercus Andréëvici, a former gravel pit on the outskirts of town where trees have been planted and it is possible to hire bicycles and ride them for up to several kilometres without passing the same tree twice. The Vzeng Na Ministry of Tourism are obscenely proud of it. It is named after one of Na’s great national heroes, Bishop Maercus Andréëvici, who is historically lauded for having the common sense to retreat in good order from the Tartars at the Battle of Mohi, abandoning his feudal overlord Bela (King of Hungary, not the Magazine for Today’s Independent Woman) to his fate. This allowed him to ally himself, later, with the Ottoman armies of Beyazid I and free the lands of the Gzaere Valley for Islam. The main thing being, of course, that the land was under the Tartars no longer. As I have said, the Vaemna are nothing if not pragmatic.

Returned to the hotel having put down many, many pages of pure evil grossly misrepresenting the Vzeng Na Ministry of Tourism as Cthulhu-worshipping paedophiles in the back of my taxi. Picked up a message from the Troglodytes in reception. It appears I strategically forgot a promise to have dinner with them in the Zum Abgrund, a German-themed jolly beer-drinking thigh-slapping panzer-driving venue across the Cathedral Square. They had, if the date on the message was to be believed, already been there an hour.

Went there. What the hell. Was glad to see them. Got drunker. Sang more rude songs about limestone formations. Tights come down, apparently. They were sitting in an unobtrusive corner attracting rude stares from tourists and resigned sighs from locals, surrounded by coils of rope, nuts, karabiners, pitons and descenders. They confided to me in whispers that they were planning a caving expedition that very night.

“Really?” I said, flickering my eyelashes, wide-eyed.

They still will not divulge their secret route down into the Abyss, though, even when I accuse them point blank of planning to use the government’s deep bat guano shovel. They seem not to know of any such shovel, and its existence makes them pause for thought.

But in the end, they don’t like the idea. “We’d have seen it parked up on the pit edge”, says Pete. “It would only get parked up there when they were going to trawl for guano, yes? So while they’re still in this intermediate period where they wait for the bats to poop enough for it to be worth their scraping it off the walls, the shovel’ll be in storage in town somewhere. No way down there.”

“So which way are you going down?”

Pete taps his nose with great care, as if he might miss it if he doesn’t. “None of your beeswax.”

“It is my beeswax. Because I’m going with you.”

This startled the pair of them.

“Um. We work alone”, says Pete.

“Alone apart from each other”, clarifies Vern.

“I’ve been climbing before”, I say. “Climbing can’t be too different from caving. And I, which is to say, my employer’s expenses department, will pay you handsomely for the privilege.”

“Aha”, says Pete. “Money, huh.”

“Not sex, then”, says Vern hopefully.

“Sex is where I draw the line”, I say firmly (with you, at least, I add to myself, glancing at the muscle definition on the insides of Pete’s thighs).

“Rats”, says Vern.

“This isn’t like ordinary caving”, says Pete. “It’s a lot longer and a lot more treacherous. It’s like doing El Capitan underground.”

“I’ve been up the Old Man of Hoy”, I lie. This appears to impress them. They butt heads together and whisper at length, then break apart for further information.

“Aided or unaided?” says Pete.

“What’d’you take me for, some sort of shandy-diluting fairy?”

They huddle again.

“All right”, says Pete. “Pending successful financial negotiations, you’re in.”