Seven Demons by Aidan Truhen (best motivational books for students TXT) 📕

is dead and Reinhard and Sharkey and Agent Hannah’s left-hand guy and her right-hand guy and some of the G-Wagen guys and a lot—really a lot—of other people are about to die because of one thing and that thing—

Tycho the saluki’s questionable libido.

Tycho does not fuck Mrs. Van der Zee’s dog and Mrs. Van der Zee takes offense and so obviously—OBVIOUSLY this is just what you do in that situation OF COURSE—she buys a shit ton of conflict emeralds and puts them in Eiger’s bank and uses them to hire Frankie Leclerc to do horrible things to Doc’s friends. She lets him see the stones and she lets him hold them but unless he wants to try and kill her right here in Bogotá against whatever precautions she has taken—I am guessing big sturdy Dutch security assholes—he cannot have them unless he does what she wants and even then she is going to keep him on retainer. A billion is a lot of money when you are trying to make your way in the world so Frankie swallows the hook and on her instruction he nudges up to Eiger to hire us and kill us off because that will solve his money problems. It’s like stupidly complex but she is Mrs. Van der Zee and no one ever tells her no.

Mrs. Van der Zee set us up—she made all this happen—because Tycho did not bone her dog.

She did all this to hurt Doc. Just to be mean.

And if this is all about Doc…

…then they will be looking for the subtle move behind the loud stupid Banjo thing…

…and Doc’s plan to rob Die Festung is probably about to get the same treatment as Mrs. Van der Zee’s Semper Augustus. Which means we need a new plan and Doc cannot be a part of it. She cannot even know until after.

I do not know what she will think about that.

—

Apart from Mr. Friday and a guy in Japan who says he will have me killed if I go there most of my friends are dead. I do not have lots of people I can ask for advice and if I did I could not tell them about this.

I go out and see the little guy in the cigar store and once again we do not talk but this time he hangs a note on the door and we go and not talk in a café and it is a really great coffee place you can tell these guys are serious but impossibly the coffee is bad.

I see in the little guy’s face that he is embarrassed but does not wish to say so to the team here. This is a legit thing they are his people but also it is a legit thing for a great coffee place to fuck up no one needs to be ashamed. I go and nudge the guy behind the laminated wood bar top and I say that the beans have gone over and he says that cannot possibly be true and I put my hand in the jar of the grinder and lift out one bean and rest it on the tip of my finger. Guy smells the bean and looks at me and just nods and a little while later we get amazing coffee and we sit. I kind of figured we would play chess or something but the little guy evidently does not like chess so we play backgammon. We play for wafers and for about twenty minutes I owe him something like 140 wafers and then the game shifts a bit and by the end we agree without speaking that we can eat the difference and we do.

TEN

RING RING “HI HELLO IS THAT THE COMMODORE HOTEL? I need to speak to the concierge please—yes hi yes—yes it is Banjo Telemark—very well I am fine I am totally alive and I have not been assassinated in your establishment at all no sir all forgotten of course—yes I need some things put on my bill—yes—no no I would be delighted for the manager to send wine but for the rest well you will see. Yes. Yes thank you yes. Yes you have a pen? Okay. I will need a chair like a throne plus a rug plus also some balik and fine white wine I will tell you where. Also ten gallons of aniseed oil and a bunch of schoolkids for a—what is it that you say a Geh-mineshaft-pro-yuckt?—for one of those—o you have children in the local—that is ideal how—a boy and a girl that is a full set I suppose—yes yes indeed I am sure they are lovely. Please yes I have a credit card here—”

RING RING—“O hello is that the Grand Kircheisen Palast? Yes this is Søren Welk yes Welk—W E L K—yes. Yes I understand you have an excellent view of the—yes of the valley and the mountain and the cable car station O it is that close? That is wonderful you could walk that how lovely—well I am organizing the—ah yes quite so you have already heard from the school very good Mr. Telemark is quite emphatic—yes of course we will keep the children away from the pool quite so but—no I cannot tell you but I assure it is just aniseed oil it will—it will—oh very well since you insist it will form an olfactory imprint of a text Banjo has written it will be almost impossible to distinguish although theoretically a person might follow all the trails and map it to read the text although as a practical matter no human really has a sufficiently astute sense of smell so it both exists and does not—yet of course you see quite so yes—no I appreciate that you run a very dignified hotel and that your present register includes a lady of some age who has taken the whole top floor yes quite so we will not trouble her—no no it is quite harmless to animals I assure you