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For a smile as wide as a country sunrise
While we were in the city looking for Papa Levi, who was not hard to find, Jennifer had come home briefly to pick up some things. Unfortunately, while home, the police arrived again. But not our local police, these came from Paris with arrest warrants for Jennifer and myself. There were more than 30 police officers who once again searched our chateau and clinic, looking for Nadia and Ilyana, whom they naturally didn’t find.
Jennifer reminded them that Nadia and Ilyana had left us on the bus yesterday, but for some reason the police did not believe her. The arrest warrant claimed we had been harboring a dangerous international criminal, a murderer, thief, extortioner and a few other things. She had supposedly escaped from a maximum security prison in Belarus, killed her husband and took her daughter here, with our help. We had taken some extra precautions already, so that Kat’s Wildcats and Sky’s Bad Girls were gone to a different location, just in case there was trouble at home.
They are not officially listed with our Investigators at any time now, so that helps. The Black Wolves are also not listed as working with us and they hid everything pertaining to the Black Wolves before the police arrived at their door. The police that were out yesterday to do the search had also been arrested for cooperating with us. I quickly came home, handy being able to travel this way, so that I could be there with Jennifer as we were arrested. Sienna told us not to worry, she would have her lawyers get us out of jail right away.
However, her lawyers had already been warned to stay away from us, or they would risk being arrested as accomplices, as well as being disbarred. I would say that someone in our government is working with these people, and that person has great influence, and that means we are in trouble. We could easily have fought our way out of being arrested, but these police officers, at least most of them, were innocent men and women. We didn’t want to harm them in any way.
Besides, it wouldn’t really help our case, it would just make us look guilty. For now, we go along with this foolishness. Sky took Kitty to help Kat protect Nadia and Ana, plus she brought Rusty, Sir Night and Jewel to help. Richard got in touch with Mandar right away since the police had come looking for him as well, but just for questioning, they said. Mandar did not like what was happening, he realized the seriousness of the situation, so he went into hiding briefly to think about what needs to be done.
Then he got in touch with Aari and asked if he still had some good contacts with larger “organizations”. Aari said he did. So Mandar suggested getting in touch with a couple of them and try to frame this as a definite threat to them. “If this Papa Levi gets hold of all this money,” said Mandar, “then he could move his operations right across the continent and easily push these other organizations out of business.” “Hmm, that is a thought,” said Aari, “and one that some people I know would not like very much. I will see what I can do.”
Unfortunately, this would mean revealing that Major is still alive and that could be a problem. Right now we have a bit of a stalemate, since we still have the emerald, but Jennifer and I are in jail and have been refused bail since we are considered a high risk to flee. This is especially due to having helicopters and jets at our disposal, and I will admit, that thought did occur to me. And it still might happen, though if we did try to run and hide somewhere, police departments around the world would likely be looking for us.
A couple of new charges have been laid against us now, kidnapping the ambassador (because we detained him for a few extra minutes at our chateau) which he claimed was a traumatizing experience. Plus we had apparently beaten him, even with our police present. He was seen by a doctor in Paris who confirmed the ambassador had indeed been beaten (probably by one of his own men). When our team tried to interview this doctor, they discovered he had died of a heart attack the previous day. That was certainly convenient.
But it made things much more difficult for us. Kat kept all of this information away from Nadia and Ana, so they would not be worried. But how long can we keep this information from them? Our computer girls are working overtime trying to find the link between someone in our government and this ambassador. There must be a link, or this could never happen the way it did. I communicated with Carine to tell Aari not to reveal himself to his old friends just yet, that could just bring more troubles which we don’t need right now.
Aari agreed with that, so he will try to find a different way to get word out. Well, here we sit, in jail, trying to figure out how to get out of jail, legally. We could easily escape, but that wouldn’t really help, it would just make things worse. Okay, maybe I said that before, but sitting in this jail cell is a new experience for me. Well, somewhat anyway. It has been a week now and that is the longest I have spent in jail, except for one being kidnapped by one of our enemies, along with Dawn. That was when we first met.
Seems like such a long time ago now. The guard left my cell door unlocked today, but I didn’t try to escape. It was obviously a trap and I wasn’t going to fall for it. Meanwhile. “This is not working,” said Levi, “that man is in jail, Nadia is gone somewhere and those Investigators still have our emerald.” “Yes, this is taking much longer than I expected,” said the ambassador, “perhaps we could arrange a deal, they would be set free if they give us the emerald.”
“He would never go along with it,” said Levi, “unless he and his wife were set free at the same time we received the emerald.” “Then let us do that,” said the ambassador, “after all, this is getting us nowhere, and people back home are getting a bit anxious.” The next morning, after breakfast, Papa Levi and four men headed out to their car. Just as they arrived, there were two shots, and two of Levi’s bodyguards fell dead instantly…
To Be Continued. ©2025 Steve McLeod.
Today is not going quite the way I had thought it would. This Papa Levi is somewhat more intelligent than we figured him to be. I certainly never expected he would get his embassy working on his side, but that is what he did. And it does pose a greater problem than we usually face. Now, yesterday this ambassador had admitted to kidnapping four of our girls at the market in town. Then he proposed exchanging them for Nadia and Ilyana. He said our 4 women are likely more important to me than Nadia and Ilyana.
“Yes, those 4 women are very important to me,” I said, “but you had something wrong, Nadia and her daughter mean nothing to you. For you they are just slaves, to be tossed around, to do your bidding, to satisfy your desires, to be beaten at your pleasure. They mean nothing to you. But to me, they are as important as all the other women here. And I will make sure you never get your hands on them or take them back to Belarus. Now, you return those 4 women to me, or you will not leave here.”
He laughed. “I have diplomatic immunity,” he said, “you cannot arrest me or do anything else to me. You cannot even prove that I kidnapped your women.” He laughed again. “That is where you are wrong!” exclaimed Mandar, “We have laws here and you just admitted to kidnapping those women. We will have you arrested for kidnapping and blackmail.” “I will just deny everything,” he said, “and my government protects me. How will you arrest me? I have diplomatic immunity.”
The police arrived at that point and said they had searched every inch of the premises and Nadia Kovalyuk and her daughter Ilyana were nowhere to be found. “That is totally impossible!” exclaimed the ambassador, “they must be here and you will be severely reprimanded by your superiors for not doing a complete and comprehensive search of this building!” “I told you before,” I said, “they left on the bus this morning. Now, return the 4 women you have kidnapped, then you may leave.”
“They kidnapped 4 of your women?” asked the senior officer. “Yes, he admitted to doing that,” I told him. Then we lowered our monitor and played back the recording of that part of our conversation where he had admitted to kidnapping the girls. “You can do nothing to me,” he said again, “I have diplomatic immunity. But I will have you arrested for detaining me unlawfully.” Carine had already informed me that the Black Wolves have the girls safely back.
“Okay, you may go,” I said, “but don’t come back, you are not welcome here.” He smiled and the three of them left, followed by the police who apologized for putting us through this terrible ordeal. I assured him it was not his fault, he was only obeying orders, which I did not mind. After they had all gone, then one of the Black Wolves vans showed up, with our girls and also with Alfred. He had come to take a look at the emerald found in Ana’s teddy bear.
“Well Alfred,” I said, “what can you tell me about this little green stone?” “Well, it is not so little,” he said chuckling, “and it once belonged to the Queen of Denmark, though not the present Queen. It was stolen some 17 years ago along with other jewels and a good size shipment of gold, though the jewels and gold were stolen at different times, but within two weeks of each other. It was amazingly executed too and the trail of the thieves disappeared from sight rather quickly. Nothing was ever recovered, until now.”
“So, it is possible that this Papa Levi was part of the group responsible for this theft,” I said, “and Nadia’s husband found one of the jewels and stole it from him.” “Well, this isn’t just one of the jewels Steve,” he said, “it is the ‘key’ jewel for finding the remaining jewels and gold which I think were well hidden, but not everyone in the gang knew where. Then perhaps something happened to the ones who hid the loot, so it was lost. Until now. See this engraving on the back of the emerald?”
“That actually says something?” I asked. “It is rather tiny,” he said, chuckling again. We had to put it under his microscope to read it, and even then I couldn’t read it because it was in Belarusian. I asked Aurora and Sapphire, our two Russian girls to come to my office. They wrote out the message on the back of the emerald and interpreted it for us. I decided that now would not be a good time to return the emerald to it’s owner. Mandar agreed with that. We then had a lengthy discussion about the present case and then he had to leave and continue with his business trip.
But he would return immediately if we needed him for anything. Then he called for Richard to come and pick him up by helicopter, instead of driving back. This also provided us with another opportunity to make a switch, so we did. Nadia and Ana went back with Mandar and will stay in his private residence for a while. I also sent Jennifer, Kat, Celestine, plus Muffin, Storm and Snow along too. I told Nadia and Ana it would only be until we could persuade Papa Levi to go back home.
It shouldn’t really take long to convince him now. Without Nadia and Ana here, we can begin to apply some greater pressure on this Levi “creep”, as the girls keep calling him. There was this little matter of the two embassy vehicles that were completely destroyed and the staff in them that had been killed. Apparently they had decided to fight the Black Wolves, instead of surrendering, as they were ordered to do. However, no one in town saw anything that could help the police.
I assured the police that no criminal gang works for us, but there is a criminal gang in Canada by the name of Black Wolves. The police didn’t like the thought of another criminal gang coming to France. Anyway, it satisfied them for now and got them away from us. Now, time to go after Papa Levi, and we know where to find him in the city. First, we get rid of the ones who are watching our chateau day and night.
That turned out to be quite easy, they were not too far away across the road and part way up the hill on the other side. We had some of the guys bring them to us and then we went to the city with our “catch”. Finding Papa Levi wasn’t so hard, we just waited for him to show up at the hotel restaurant for dinner, then we joined him…
To Be Continued. ©2025 Steve McLeod.
Steve`s Country 