Chapter Five
It was a good five more minutes trekking -- descending slightly, or so she thought – until they reached a narrow, paved road. It could even be someone’s driveway, as it clearly was not designed for two cars to pass each other. Still, it was infinitely more comfortable than the wilderness and King Frederick led her to the left. He kept a grip on her arm, because he felt she did not keep to the side of the road well enough and he did not want her to be run over before she had shown him where to buy bus tickets.
After three sharp bends going down, they saw a junction ahead. Suddenly a pavement appeared too, as well as garden walls. They were slowly entering the civilised world.
“Look at me,” said Anna Margaret, gesturing at the smudges on her trousers.
He missed the gestures. “Why?”
“I’m dirty. My blouse is all wrinkled, too.” She pulled the blouse from her trousers, undid the lower buttons and made a knot. “But now no one will notice.” She looked awful, like a sexy tourist showing off her belly button. But at least she no longer looked like she had rolled over a dirty floor in an office.
“Do they have shops in this place?” he wondered when he had gone left onto the wider road.
“I hope so.” After another five minutes following the wider road, they hit the main street. In the meantime, they had not seen anybody pass them. The only people Anna Margaret had seen were two middle-aged women doing household chores. It was Saturday, she reminded herself, but she had completely lost track of what time it could be. “Are we actually too early for the shops? It feels like I’ve been up for an entire day by now!”
“No, they’re already open. Look, I see people.”
She pointed at an ATM. “First, get some cash. It’s always useful to have some cash. Then we find a supermarket.”
“I don’t see any bus stops.” He sounded disappointed.
She wondered if he even knew what bus stops looked like. But at least there was a place name. Just when she switched on her phone again to see if there were bus stops at all in this village, Louis rang again. “Yes?” she asked with some irritation, stepping away from the ATM. It was annoying that he was interrupting both her google search and her supervision of how much cash His Majesty was taking out. She did not know if he had any idea of what was necessary. She could stand next to him, but then he would overhear her conversation and she did not want that.
“
He turned off his phone, and
you turned off your phone. What the hell is this about?”
“
He thought this a good occasion to go rogue. He accepts some interference from me, but I strongly advise you to leave him alone, like I said. Leave. Him. Alone.” She would undoubtedly have to say it a few more times before the message got through.
“I don’t know what you mean. Go rogue?”
“I suggest you look it up in the dictionary,” she said sharply.
“Is he about to do something stupid? Does he have any protection with him?”
“I’ll tell him to buy some, okay?”
There was a pause on the other side of the line. “I understood the bodyguards are all still at the villa and he’s not. Where is he?”
“As if you don’t know.” She did not know if they could be traced. In reality, that was. In films they certainly could be.
“We lost track. There are concerns that he was taken by the three attackers when they got away, because his responses have been quite peculiar. And he has not phoned his mother.”
“His
mother?” Anna Margaret cried. What on earth did his mother have to do with it all?
“One would expect him to call his mother to say he’s all right.”
She would not expect that at all, as he had theoretically grown up years ago. “Well, he’s all right. He was not taken by attackers and he is under my control.” She stared at the king’s back. She hoped he had not heard.
Louis continued to be concerned. “I could have a team of psychologists fly over immediately.”
“Louis, I’ve said before that I want you to leave him alone. You will be contacted if your help is needed. The same applies to everyone else who’s listening in.” She did not doubt he had put her on speakerphone in some crisis meeting that she would have been attending had she not been abroad.
“Where are you?”
“Safe.” She hung up. “How much did you get?” she asked her companion.
“A few hundred.”
“That’s fine. Let’s find the shops.” She washed her hands in a fountain they passed. They had got very dirty from climbing and crawling.
Across the street was a supermarket and on this side a shop with household items. “What do we need?” Anna Margaret said in a low voice, although there was no one there to overhear her. “Water would be nice if you’re serious about the bus. Why don’t you go in while I google where we are and how far my hotel is from here.”
King Frederick looked as if he was six and being allowed to shop for the first time on his own. “Do you plan to go to your hotel? What for?”
“If it’s near, I might as well pick up my own toothbrush and clothes.”
“What should I get?”
“Just use that superior intelligence of yours and figure it out.”
She checked her phone, hoping no one would call during the search. The town her hotel was located in was not far. She pondered if it was wise to make a detour to go there, but having her own things would be nice. And she could give George some orders. She could not find any information about buses online. Usually bus stops showed up on a map, but they were conspicuously absent here.
His Majesty appeared again with a large plastic bag. He gave it to her – for inspection, she presumed, because she was not going to carry something as heavy as this. Two large bottles of water, some apples, bananas and grapes, tasty rolls, a notebook, pens, toothpaste, toothbrushes, shampoo and a package with two razors. It all looked surprisingly useful and she was amazed.
She took a sip of the water and handed the bag back to him. “Let’s find a place where we could buy underwear.”
“Please buy your own underwear.” Evidently he did not want to be sent in again on his own.
They walked down the main street and passed a dusty square with a shop, a restaurant and a church. Finally they came across a shop that might sell what they were looking for. It looked to be cheap and limited in its range, but it would have to do.
He followed her inside like an obedient dog. “If you see something you need, put it in the basket,” she whispered at him, although it was doubtful whether anyone else would have cared. “I have no idea of your taste and size.”
He seemed to find that funny.
In an old taxi that had been parked in the dusty square, they had been conveyed to the hotel. It was a lot quicker than walking, which she estimated would have taken them over an hour. She was glad she had spotted the taxi just when she had decided to walk. “All right, come on up.”
The hotel was large enough for no one to pay much attention to yet another guest coming in and she was not even sure they had been noticed at all. Her room was on the first floor. Her companion was evidently used to larger rooms, because he expressed his amazement at the size of the bathroom.
“It serves its purpose,” she said briskly. “Now get out, I’ve been dying to use it for an hour.” When she came out, he was looking out of the window, but he soon disappeared into the bathroom himself for a closer inspection. She did not pay attention. First she had to get out of these clothes. Unfortunately her only other set of clothes was more or less the same as this one and the small shop had only carried things that were not to her liking. She had bought the least ugly top and chose that over a formal-looking blouse. Then she packed everything into her suitcase, except for the food and his clothes.
Only then did she check what he was doing, which was still being in the bathroom. She knocked. “I’m going to see if George is in. Are you going to change when I’m gone?”
“No, I’d do it in front of you, but I don’t have to change. I’ll have a banana.”
“Er… right.” She went out and knocked on George’s door. He answered after a few seconds and looked very relieved to see her. Before he could say much, however, she beckoned him to her own room.
The king was eating a banana, as he had said. He observed George’s instant reverence with a peculiar look.
“Now, I’m going to leave this hotel and travel home,” Anna Margaret began. “I won’t tell you how, so you won’t be able to tell anyone. I don’t think I’ll manage to be at the office on Monday. Maybe Tuesday. I will occasionally have my phone switched on. Did you find out anything about the shooting?”
“Not much. Two attackers were wounded and a few got away. No one at the villa was killed.”
“Check Twitter,” said His Majesty, finishing his banana. “Hashtag me.”
Anna Margaret was not sure George understood that language. He had always been a little weary of social media. She hardly understood it herself. “It says he’s dead.”
“I am, sort of. I’m going to retire.”
“I advise you not to tell anyone. Louis has a team of psychologists ready to fly over because you’ve been exhibiting signs of peculiarity.” She had an inkling that Louis would think plans to retire were the fruits of a mentally unstable mind.
“I do admit I toyed with the idea of sending him a very peculiar selfie, but I was afraid he’d send it to others. But why are you telling me this only now, about the psychologists?” He frowned in concern.
“I didn’t know how you would take it.”
He got up, set her suitcase on the floor, stuffed his clothes in it and wheeled it to the door. “But we should go before they’ve really tracked our phones. George, you don’t know where she went, should they ask. I’m kidnapping the lady. They always have female sidekicks in films, so I need one too.”
George looked about to have a seizure. Even Anna Margaret herself was a little lost. She picked up the plastic bag with the food.
“I’d go alone, but I don’t quite trust her not to ask Louis to send the men in white coats. I have to keep an eye on her.”
“This is not a film,” she said.
“I know. Bye, George.” He walked down the corridor. “What do I call you, by the way?”
“My name would be fine,” she replied tiredly. For some strange reason she was looking forward to sitting on a bus for hours. All this moving about was fatiguing. And they would not have to think, sitting on a bus.
“Mine too. Let me carry that bag. Those bottles are heavy.”
She wasted no time in giving him the bag. “I wonder why you’re suddenly much saner.”
“I am an extremely sane person essentially.”
This village boasted of a bus service to the nearest larger town. That did not take too long, but the bus north, going over the winding coastal road, took ages. It had grown grey and rainy, so there was not much to look at either. At first Anna Margaret had enjoyed sitting and doing nothing, but then doing nothing had begun to be boring. Her companion was not talking either. He was simply sitting there, looking out of the window, or at the people who got on at bus stops on the way.
“It didn’t take this long when we drove from the airport,” she sighed.
“You took the motorway, I suppose.” He leant against her and kept his voice down so the people behind them would not hear. “Will we get to the border before the night?”
“Definitely not,” she said pessimistically and got the notebook out of the plastic bag to write things down. “We have several options. First: the bus. Second: take the train to Turin and then into France. Third: take the train to France via the coast. Fourth: rent a car for a one-way trip. I can be at the office on Monday if we do that.”
“Do you
want to be at the office on Monday?” He seemed surprised that she was in a hurry and not enjoying this
freedom.
“The sooner I get this package delivered, the better.”
“I see your point. Will it have consequences for you?”
“Professionally?”
“There are personal consequences as well?”
She sighed. “You’ve only been thinking of the consequences for yourself so far, but yes, undoubtedly this will have both professional and personal consequences for me. I can’t tell you precisely what they’ll be. Otherwise I would have known better what choices to make.” She had tried to sound neutral, but perhaps it had come out a little more sharply than she had wanted.
“Sorry.” He took her hand and glanced out of the window again.
Anna Margaret wondered why he was holding her hand. It was strange rather than unpleasant. They could phone Louis from the bus station and pretend they had never travelled away from the villa. That was option five. “Why did I ever fly to Italy yesterday?” she muttered. She tried to think if she should have told someone before going. Would someone think they should have been informed?
“I was a little annoyed when you showed up,” he admitted. “But after I’ve resigned I’ll tell you something.”
There was no better way to make her curious. “Why after you’ve resigned?”
“Because then I can.”
“Why not now?”
“You can’t be distracted from your very serious duty of transporting this sensitive package back home. I can’t be distracted either. I’ll put it off.”