Chapter 06 of Lay Me Odds - Book #2 of the Lady from L.U.S.T.

Genre: Vintage Sleaze / Lady Spies / Sexpionage

ASSIGNMENT: LOVE THE ENEMY TO DEATH

LAY ME ODDS — if you have the guts. My name is Eve Drum. I'm THE LADY FROM L.U.S.T. — the wildest, nuttiest secret agent who ever drove the Kremlin out of its vodka-guzzling skull. They aren't kidding when they call me the sexiest spy in the world. As Agent Double Oh Sex I take on the kind of assignments Jimmy Bond can't handle. All hell breaks loose when I go into action against the sinister forces of H.A.T.E. Don't tangle with me because I'll love you to death. I have a license to kill and I don't care whether I use my body — or a bullet. Sex is my deadliest weapon, but I'm just as good with a knife. Don't tell me about Judo or fast cars or brainwashing because I know it all. I'm good and you know it. Watch me use exotic Eastern sex techniques to turn H.A.T.E.'s villainous spy-masters into helpless blobs of desire. Swing along with me as I bump and grind through London strip clubs in pursuit of missing microfilm. Join the fun as I mix business with pleasure, martinis with molotov cocktails. With a Beretta in my bra I'm an updated Fanny Hill, a tastier brand of Candy, a lethal Lolita. My crazy life is just filled with bloodshed, bedrooms and belly laughs.

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CHAPTER SIX

The city of Hamburg is situated on the right bank of the river Elbe. At one time it was the third largest seaport in the world, and even today its great harbor shelters ships from all nations. Massive church towers stare down across more than six miles of riverfront docks. Known as the Venice of the North, the streets of the Old City are canals, and the great lake fashioned by the dams of the Alter river adds to the impression that much of the city floats on the bosom of the Elbe.

Ships bring sailors to a city, and this city which was long ago a fortress for Charlemagne, taking its name from the great forest which hemmed it in, is no exception. From the beginnings of the Crusades, Hamburg has been renowned for the volume of its business, and for the number of seamen who flock across its promenades and public gardens. In the Sankt Pauli section of the city, between Altona and the New City, lies a street with huge iron gates at either end. This is the Herberstrasse, more familiarly known as the Reeperbahn. It is a sex street, an avenue of Eros, where a man or woman may buy any pleasure they are seeking.

It is ten blocks of fun and games—or worse. Along the Reeperbahn proper there are plush beer gardens and posh night clubs. You can munch a hot dog and empty a stein of beer and watch the crowds go by, you can dance with a girl in a nite spot, you can feast on strudel, brockwurst and schnapps.

You can also visit the real Reeperbahn. The Reeperbahn which the sailors visit, the Reeperbahn of the cinema bleu, of the cubicles where the girls are waiting, each one a specialist in one form of sex or another. Here are the sin palaces, the vice dens, the Sophisticated sex parlors.

I wore a skirt, sweater and knee-length boots as I passed through the iron gates. One of the attendants did not want to let me enter but I assured him I was able to take care of myself, and a handful of marks convinced him maybe I could.

When a sailor got a little hand trouble and began rubbing up against me, I said, "Sorry, you louse. I'm gay." And when a hardened lesbo sought to interest me in coming home to her apartment in the Neustadt, I told her I was regular.

I walked straight ahead along the Herberstrasse. I only gave side glances toward the curtained rooms where the prostitutes showed off their wares; I was interested in a social but not a sexual sense. Before I reached the Pleasure Dome, it began to rain. There was nowhere to duck into the many rooms that lined the downstairs of these house brothels. And I didn't want to do that. Not yet, anyhow.

I moved off the main street, seeking a doorway. I found one in an alleyway not for from my destination. The rains came down but I was reasonably dry. After a while the sky turned blue, the air seemed a lot fresher, and there were puddles all over the streets.

Here and there I saw muddy patches, where grew tiny gardens. There were not many of these little spots where flowers grew, but you could glimpse one occasionally in the slum area behind the Herberstrasse.

I was thinking about the Pleasure Dome when I saw the footprints etched in mud. I came to a dead stop.

I had seen these same prints—a deeper indentation and a lesser one with a shallow trench behind it—in soft loam outside the patio of Eric Downes' manor house in England. The little hairs on the back of my neck stood up. Had these prints been made by a H.A.T.E. agent? And—was he here in the Pleasure Dome ahead of me? I wanted to run, but I did not dare betray myself.

The Pleasure Dome is a glorified fun house. It is oriental in nature—the Germans do a thriving trade with the Arab countries—with slender columns and much imitation filigree work done in cheap stone. Tiles on the floor and a fountain splashing colored waters, the sound of flutes and tambourines, piped in over a loudspeaker system, added to the esoteric touch.

The harem girl waitresses were all but naked in tiny boleros that failed to cover their bouncing breasts and transparent harem trousers—the kind which are known in the hot countries as chalwar—and wore slippers with upturned toes upon their bare feet. Maybe a hundred men were in the big dining and drinking area on the first floor, being waited upon by these modern-day Ouled Nails. One of the girls approached me, eyebrows arched. "May I help you?”

“I want to see Herr von Horstmann." I took out a folded ten-mark note and slipped it into her fingers. I said, when I saw the alarm in her face, “I am not the police. I am a friend. Tell him the baroness sent me.” The girl nodded and gestured me toward a small table. Another harem doll trotted over, so I ordered a Tanqueray martini.

Just opposite me was a curtained alcove. With a faint clatter of metal hangers, the curtains whooshed back and I found myself staring through a glass window at a naked woman on a big, low hassock. She held a lapdog in her arms and was amusing herself with it.

I stared in numb fascination. I had read about such things but I had not seen anything like the act the woman put on. I know that it was geared to raise the blood pressure and sex interests of the men and maybe even the women who were present. I felt the reaction myself, and crossed and uncrossed my legs a number of times.

Half the men rose to their feet at the end of the performance. Harem girls ran to guide them through a distant doorway and (I guess) upstairs to the tiny rooms where women waited to be enjoyed.

There were a dozen of these curtained, glassed-in windows. I wondered at what the other curtains would show when they slid back. I was almost tempted to stay and find out but my own Ouled Nail was back, telling me Herr von Horstmann would see me now.

I trotted after her shaking buttocks. She was very fleshy, she looked like the traditional harem beauty with overly large breasts and a full behind. I think she was Turkish. As she stepped aside for me to pass through an upstairs doorway and into an office, I gave her fanny a little pat. She giggled.

A lean man with a brush of iron-gray hair above a high, tanned forehead, rose to his feet as I entered the office. His blue eyes were highly intelligent, his pose was rigid, showing old military training. His rather thin lips curved into a faint smile at sight of me.

"My Pleasure Dome gets few such visitors as yourself, Fraulein Please be seated.” His hand gestured at an easy chair.

Instead, I chose a straight-back chair beside the desk. He shrugged and seated himself, folding his heavily tanned hands on a spotless desk blotter. The easy chair might have been booby-trapped.

"Now then, how may I help you? You mentioned the baroness. I trust she is well?”

“She was—very healthy-last time I saw her.” Von Horstmann laughed almost under his breath. "A woman pursued by phantoms, the baroness. Her flesh is her master. Still, none of us are perfect."

"She sends her regards.”

"She is a good-hearted woman. It was she who kept me from committing suicide, many years ago.” He paused and looked down at his folded fingers. “It was after the war, the Russians had overrun my ancestral home in Prussia. My wife, my children, were all killed at this time. I felt I had nothing left to live for. The baroness changed my mind.”

"She has a way with people."

"She taught me the dead must be forgotten, that the living must make a new life for themselves. She interested me in sex both for its own sake and as a business. I saved up all my money, bought into the Pleasure Dome and now I am sole owner."

He smiled at me, then frowned. “And you, young lady? Why are you here? A job? A position? I have many girls coming to me for work.”

"No, nothing like that. I'm interested in a microfilm—His finger shot up to his lips. He rose and went to a door, closing it. Then, touching a decoration on the ornate mantel, he came to stand before me.

"We must be very careful. There are spies everywhere. They come, they go, they cannot be denied the flesh pleasures. It is very easy for them, here in the Reeperbahn. Now then, you were saying about a microfilm?

I explained the death of Eric Downes and how I had been brought into the action when the microfilm I was supposed to have picked up was either gone or hidden so cleverly neither H.A.T.E. nor I could locate it. He watched me with a rather puzzled expression.

“You say you do not have this microfilm? That H.A.T.E. has been unable to find it? I find this almost incredible. I—ah—have some personal knowledge of how H.A.T.E. functions."

He walked up and down the thick carpet, turning every so often to study me. At last he sighed and spread his hands. "Obviously, you want something of me. I do not have the microfilm, I assure you."

"No, I didn't expect you did. I was hoping that you might put me in touch with the contact on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Perhaps he might be able to snag another copy for me.”

“Ah, yes. You do not know the name of this person?” I shook my head. "Don't you?” He smiled genially, rubbing his hands together. “Of course, of course. But—ah—I have to make certain arrangements so you can visit him. Visas and such, friends to be informed of your coming. Eh?”

His hand pressed a hidden button beneath the desk. "While I see to this matter of meeting your contact, eh?” His smile flashed again. "I will summon a guide—one of my handsome young men—who will show you around my entertainment emporium."

The handsome young man entered. He was a big blonde boy, tanned and muscular, very good looking. His blue eyes touched me, then moved on to Herr von Horstmann.

"Helmut, meet Miss Eve Drum. Miss Drum—Helmut Fleischel.”

Helmut clicked his heels and bowed. I gave him a cheery Smile and a wink. Helmut flushed.

"It will be my pleasure,” he said in precise English. I got to my feet, turning and looking at von Horstmann. "You will hurry it up? I really don't have all that time to enjoy myself. I'd like to be away within the hour.”

"But certainly, Miss Drum. I'll make the necessary arrangements at once," the older man smiled.

I hooked an arm with my big blonde escort. “Where away, skipper?" I asked. I heard von Horstmann chuckle behind me.

We went out into the hall. Helmut asked, “What is your pleasure, Miss Drum?"

"Call me Eve, first of all. Now then, what's on the menu? I mean, what’ve you got to offer?”

His hands spread apart. "Anything.”

"Gambling? A dice table, for instance?”

"Naturally.”

“And—sex?"

Helmut nodded, his blue eyes shining. “What about lady wrestlers in the mud pits?"

"Ja, those too.”

"All right, let's go have fun." His pale blonde brows lifted. “All of them?”

"As many as we can cover, honey." The gaming room was on the floor above the office. We took an elevator operated by a harem houri. As we stepped cut, I saw two muscle boys in tight-tight trunks walk past.

"How come you're not in uniform?" I wondered. Helmut informed me stiffly that he was on the executive staff. He was von Horstmann’s right-hand man. He was not there to pander to vices.

I giggled, at which he became all apologies, telling me he did not mean that by escorting me he was pandering to my sinful yearnings. This was in the nature of a tour, no more. "Tour or not, if I can win myself a few shekels, I intend to, Helmut honey.” I handed him a roll of bills. "Will you change this into chips?"

His heels clicked again as he bowed. The table was almost the exact twin of the one at the Bully Sawyer in London. There was a box-man and a stick-man, and five people grouped about the high-boarded sides. I took an empty space and watched the dice roll half a dozen times before I began putting my chips down.

I won, I lost. I was ahead about thirty American dollars when the box-man asked me if I cared to roll. I held out my hand and he dropped the dice into my palm.

Almost instantly, I knew there was something wrong with these galloping dominoes. My fingertips are very sensitive, due to the long hours I used to practice (and still do, when I get the opportunity) opening combination locks. I hefted the dice, I rattled them around.

There are many ways to hocuss dice. As I ran my fingertips over these, I was positive these dice had plastic strips along one edge, which would alter their normal balance. I thought of trying a pad roll on the first play, hitting them off the board down low so they would come off the board spinning and not rolling.

I pretended to rattle the dice in my cupped hands, but I was gripping them firmly between my forefinger and pinkie with a five and a deuce showing. I sent them outward in a flat throw.

The dice hit the board, spun back. They twirled a couple of times on the green field, and stopped with a five and a deuce showing. I had bet half chips on seven. I let my winnings ride.

I threw four more sevens before I decided to lose a throw. I did not want Helmut Fleischel or the box-man to get suspicious.

Then for the fun of it, I rolled a nine and after three deliberate misses, I threw another nine. Helmut was regarding me with round eyes.

He said, "I have never seen a woman throw the dice so well.”

Dice is an American pastime. American tourists used to rob the English blind at the dice tables until our cousins caught wise and hired Americans to run the crap boards. Herr von Horstmann got few Americans in his Reeperbahn gaming room. I guess they were more interested in girls than gambling, or he might have felt the same pinch the English did before they fought fire with fire.

"This is my lucky day,” I smiled at Helmut as he shoved my winnings into a bag for cashing. I tossed a couple of chips at the box-man “Mind if I take these dice along? They're like a lucky charm to me.”

The box-man glanced at Helmut, who shrugged. I am sure Von Horstmann had a big supply of crooked dice. One more pair meant little or nothing to him. I dropped the dice in my handbag.

From the gaming rooms we wandered into a black velvet and lounge-seated theater It was not a large theater, it held perhaps a hundred people. It was air-conditioned and soundproof.

“We have a new film from Argentina." Helmut told me. "Would you care to see it? It is far above the level of your so—called stag movie."

I shrugged. “Why not? It isn’t often I get to see movies like that.” As a matter of strict fact, I had only seen one dirty movie, ever before. It had been badly produced, badly filmed, badly done.

I settled myself to be thoroughly bored. The film was in color, good color. It was clear and sharp, The title was Date Night in the Suburbs. A good orchestra was playing soft music on the sound track.

Helmut whispered, "I have not seen this one myself.” The music flared as the camera panned in on a bathroom shower, where a woman was soaping herself very painstakingly. The bathroom was a handsome one, the impression being given that this was a well-to-do home where the lady of the house was readying herself for bed. One caught glimpses of a fleshy buttocks as she bent over, of legs that were extremely handsome, of a shower cap and a pale white back.

A voice called out in German, a girl's voice. "Her daughter is going out on a date.” Helmut translated.

The woman came out of the bath shower, wet and dripping. She was in her late thirties, maybe her early forties, but she was slim and quite obviously a Spanish type with black hair that tumbled down about her shoulders as she drew off her shower cap.

She began toweling herself. The door chimes jangled. The woman looked surprised and reached for a cotton robe. Her heavy breasts shook loosely as she thrust her arms into the sleeves. The thin cotton clung to her still-damp body, showing flesh tints. She pushed her feet into dainty bedroom slippers.

The robe was a size too small for her, and came open as she moved through her bedroom toward the stairs. The audience was able to see a broad panel of her body that included her inner thighs, the dark patch of womanhood, her navel and the full, jouncing breasts.

Holding the robe about her nudity, she opened the front door to a young man in his late teens. He was, as the German voices proclaimed and Helmut translated, a friend of her daughter. He had made a mistake in his dates, he had thought he had a date with the girl, which was for the next night.

The mother invited him in, she explained that her daughter was out but that she herself was lonely, she would be happy to entertain him. The young man was only too eager to come in. As the woman seated herself, he let his eyes rove over the robe where it clung wetly to her brown nipples. He studied her shapely white legs where they were crossed so that the robe fell away from her upper thigh. The young man began to move uncomfortably in the easy chair where he was sitting.

The woman smiled, she offered him drinks, she made them strong. The young man stared at the backs of her legs where the short robe revealed them up to the middle of her plump thighs as she bent over before the liquor cabinet.

They drank. She turned on the stereo set, and dance music came on the soundtrack. The woman asked him if he liked to dance. He took her into his arms, and they began to move about the room in a dreamy foxtrot.

She smiled up at him, saying, "You're a good dancer.”

"It is you who make me seem so,” he smiled back. The dance music changed to an American watusi. They drew away from each other and now the robe revealed itself as being far too small for the older woman. As she moved her body in the arms-jerking dance, the blue cotton opened so that the boy could see her naked breasts where they jiggled and shook.

Soon the robe was open all the way. The youth lunged for her, caught her in his arms. He pressed his lips clumsily to hers. The woman laughed softly, telling him not to be in such a rush. The camera dollied in on open lips and a kiss that must have shaken them to their toenails.

The woman laughed and began unbuttoning his shirt. She moved her big breasts against him when he was naked to his middle. She told him she was all alone, she was a widow and she liked young men.

She dropped the robe and began dancing stark naked. In a moment the young man was lowering his trousers and shorts to the floor. He was tremendously aroused. The woman feigned fear at sight of his manhood, she asked him if he had ever taken her daughter.

He claimed he was a virgin. The woman danced closer. Her hands went to his chest and down his front. The youth gasped and stopped dancing. He began to shake, he begged the woman to stop what she was doing.

"I adore young men,” she whispered, reaching to cup him while he groaned a very real groan. "They are always such bulls! My older men friends—pah All they think of is work and money."

She sank to her knees before him and lifted her breasts in her palms as she inched closer to his rigid manhood. The camera slid upward to the youthful face that was so grotesquely contorted. He was gasping, mouth wide open, eyes staring blindly.

There are many women who enjoy sex with men young enough to be their sons. Joseph and Potiphar’s wife, Oedipus and Jocasta, Queen Joanna of Naples, Catherine the Great and her virile young guardsmen; history is full to these case histories of mature women accepting youths as their lovers. Honore de Balzac has made the point in his Danger of Being Too Innocent, in which the older woman teaches the youthful bridegroom and the father instructs the bride.

Psychiatry might say that these women have the maternal instinct so developed that they must treat their lover as the son they never had, or having had, have failed him in some manner, leaving guilt associations. They seek to lose these guilts in pleasing their psychic sons by becoming as mistresses to him.

And the young men who enjoy the embraces of these older women? Are they guilty too, of an Oedipus complex? Not all, certainly; there is a socio-economic factor involved, for the older woman represents security and refuge to a youth at loggerheads with his world. Yet the hint of incest is present, many times, in an affair which becomes a wish fulfillment.

The older woman plays the role of teacher in these alliances. It is the woman with sexual experience who knows what to do, how to guide the young lover along those methods and mores at which an older man might balk. The young are always daring, filled with the lust for innovation and experiment; the old are set in their ways, wanting only what they know best.

Moreover, the youth has the traditional virility of the bull, the stallion. He is never content with one embrace. There must be many, as varied and as unusual as the woman can dream up.

The naked woman on her knees before her daughter's young friend was certainly filled with innovations. Her breasts and their activity were revealed for the viewer in perfect color, in perfect camera reproduction. None of your spotty movie work here; this was art of a high degree.

The camera slipped from the breasts to the red-nailed hands that went up the muscular hairy thighs to the straining buttocks, caressing, stroking. The gasps were louder, now. The male hips began to shove back and forth.

There was a giggle, a laugh, as the woman broke away,

rising to her feet, putting her white arms about his neck. The lens slid around behind the woman now, and the reader could interpret her actions from the manner in which her meaty thighs slid together, as her soft white buttocks shook to the rotary movements of her hips.

Slowly, hesitantly, the male hands moved across that fleshy white back to the pallid buttocks. They were fearful, those hands, but they gained more courage as the woman began to moan and cling the tighter. As was the youth, so were his hands. I thought it was artistry of a high order. The male fingers dug deep into soft female flesh.

“No more,” she whispered, pushing away. “Not yet, not here!"

She caught him by the hand and lead him into the hall and up the stairs to her bedroom, asking if he would do what she told him.

"Anything, anything,” he kept gasping. She enjoyed being kissed, she informed him. All over, everywhere. He watched as she sat down on the bed, and leaned back. He put a pillow on the carpet and knelt on it. He began kissing her soft thighs.

The world of “underground movies" is not the world of the movie we were watching. This was a far cry from the occasional bared breast, the male hand fondling the female buttock. It is realism carried to its nth degree, and made by men accomplished in their art.

There is always a market for erotica. It is as universal as a man and a woman, needing only money to come to life. The rajahs of India, the industrial barons of the Continent, the wealthy in Europe, Asia, Africa and the Americas can afford to indulge their peccadillos in such fashion. Commercial operations like the Pleasure Dome are steady customers for these blue movies.

With the lowering of certain former taboos, the intellectuals have become interested in the art. At the same time they have raised the level of the stag movie from something that was once shot in a garage to a production that, for camera techniques, might hold its own with films exhibited by the finest movie-makers in the world.

Japan has its eroductions, which have served to keep its movie industry in the black at a time when it is engaged in a life and death struggle with television. The movie-makers who do not produce these erotic cheapies are beginning to go under.

But even the eroduction could not be as explicit as the film I was staring at with wide eyes and pounding heart. At least, I don't think so. For the young man was crouched on hands and knees on the bed above the naked woman, kissing her white inner thighs, sliding his mouth and tongue upward. The woman was crying out, little gasps and sounds that served to intensify the dynamism of the picture itself. A kiss on her quivering belly, kisses and soft drawings upon her tumid brown nipples, lips that surrounded the maternal breast, that hid the nipples in a gentle suction. Slim white fingers caught his hair, directing his head. Hot whispers filled the soundtrack.

"Yes, darling—oh yes. Down a little—even farther, love. Wait, let me...."

The young man crouched between the wide-flung thighs in an attitude of worship. He was the neophyte before the goddess, the male adoring the female. He was eternal man bowed low before the femininity which wagged his little world, the acknowledgment of man that it is to the woman he owes so much. The Eternal Idol of Auguste Rodin in flesh and blood.

Shades of Thomas Edison, who invented the moving picture! Well, the master genius himself had filmed The Kiss back in 1895. This was an up-beat, modern generation version of that original flick, done in color and with sound added. It was artistic realism.

A hand touched his moving head. "Turn, darling. . . . The youth swung about, bent to his task. And now the woman became the priestess of Priapea, the celebrant of the phallic mysteries, the bacchante, the voyager to Phoenicia. The camera was there to record their body worship, their give and take.

“Soixante-neuf,” breath Helmut, as if I didn't know. The only sounds in our ears now were the sounds of lovemaking, intensified somewhat beyond the norm, but extremely effective. Sound and sight gathered you up and plunged you into erotica in one dimension.

Youth and matron moved and now the woman accepted the young man on her back, with widespread thighs. They moved, they kissed, they were not so much celluloid characters as a sex-starved matron and a male virgin. They did not draw the line where the skin-pix and the eroductions did. They went on and on, turning this way and that, letting the camera zoom-lens in for closeups. I risked a glance at Helmut, who was reacting in typical male fashion, though he strove not to show it.

The camera was panning past the two naked bodies at the door. The door opened slowly and a pretty girl thrust her face in. Her features registered shock for a moment, then amusement. Her tongue came out to lick her lips. She reached behind her and now a young man came to stand behind her. Obviously, this was daughter and her date.

The young man began to undress the daughter. His fingers worked at her blouse, opening it, sliding it down her arms so he might unhook the brassiere. Her firm young breasts stood out naked as he drew the bra away from them. The young woman was lifting her skirt up to bare shapely stockinged legs, pale thigh-flesh and

The screen went dead.

“Verdammt!” whispered Helmut.

Even though the little theater was soundproof, I could hear popping sounds from outside. Helmut glanced at me.

"Gunshots?" I breathed. He nodded and pushed past me, saying with a wry smile, “I am not quite—presentable. But under the circumstances. . . .”

His hand pushed open the theater door. I had my gun-bracelet—David had brought it with him to London, along with other assorted weapons like my dice earrings—but other than this single weapon, I was unarmed.

And I wanted very much to be armed. Because those loud popping sounds we had heard so indistinctly in the theater I could now identify as gunshots indeed. Men were yelling, screaming. Feet were pounding the hallways.

"It cannot be a Black Gang raid." Helmut muttered. “The Black Gang has been disbanded, its members put in jail by the police.”

I remembered the Black Gang and its alleged leader,

Paul Muller, that had terrorized the Herberstrasse for so long a time. These gangsters were tough and cruel, they insisted on a cut—the American percentage—of all the action in the Reeperbahn. They manhandled anyone and everyone who stood in their path, they were demigods in an Alsatian den.

Now they were gone. The Hamburg security police had done for them, and the vicious extortion schemes, the brutal beatings, were a thing of the past. Ah, but if the Black Gang members were in jail, who then was staging this attack on the Pleasure Dome? I thought I knew.

"H.A.T.E.," I whispered, tightening my grip on the gun-bracelet

Helmut sucked in his breath. His blue eyes were stabbing question marks. "You think so? Yes, it could be. They have been nosing around for the past month or two. I have felt it, I have seen one or two of them."

A man came running down the hall. He had a gun in his hand. The gun lifted. My gun-bracelet was up and aiming before he could trigger his weapon. I put a neat red hole in his shirtfront from which the blood was spreading pretty fast as he fell face down.

Helmut whispered a Teutonic oath. "Isn't there any way out of here without bumping into more of those goons?" I wondered out loud.

"Dumbkopf that I am. Of course. Follow, please!” He led me at a gallop down the hall, my mini-skirt up to my hips for freer action. The hell with the show I put on. Maybe the sight of my nylons and pale thigh-meat would distract a H.A.T.E. man long enough for me to use my gun-bracelet again.

In through a door and down some stairs. Out another door and along a hall. Footsteps thundered all around us, there were the sounds of shots. My heart was up in my mouth, nudging my tongue for room.

We slammed through another door into a big room that held a hundred or more tables and a big pit filled with oozing mud. So this was where the girl wrestlers put on their performances! Whenever I think of the Reeperbahn, I automatically think of semi-nude girls wrestling one another, all over greenish-mud

Helmut skidded. The door to one side of us was opening and half a dozen H.A.T.E. thugs came bully-roaring through. They roared at sight of us, I know that.

My dear little gun-bracelet came up. It spit twice. Two men went down. The four others came on. Three of them leaped at Helmut. The more fools, they.

I let my man begin his swing at my face. Then I lashed out with my left foot, catching him on the front of a knee, at the same moment grabbing for his swinging arm. I bent the arm, half turning, and chopped down with the edge of my hand. There was a loud snap.

The man screamed. Part of his humerus bone was sticking out of bleeding flesh. I whirled, forgetting him to fasten my hands on one of the three hoods beating up on Helmut. I wasted no time on niceties. I chopped his neck with a hand-edge, I turned him and drove two fingers at his eyes. He screamed shrilly, like a wounded horse.

I saw one man had his back turned to me. I Gogolaked my foot up between his thighs. He shuddered, he went rigid. And then he yelped once and fell own onto his knees and then his front, his body pumping crazily to the pain that ate in him.

Helmut was on his back and his last assailant was coming for me. I tried a floating loin throw, but he barreled into me, tearing loose my grips. He was a big, heavyset man. His weight caromed me backwards off my feet.

I landed on my spine in oozing mud. There was a splash, some of the mud splattered up from me and onto his face and chest. My back was wet but his face was wetter and half hidden under that greenish ooze which dripped from his nose, forehead and chin.

His eyes had shut automatically against the mud. I have been trained to react at lightning speed so I kicked at his inner thigh with my right foot, grabbed his coat-sleeve with my left arm and rammed my palm against the left side of his throat. He rolled over like a baby.

My knees rammed into his belly, my hands caught his coat and shirt and crossed in the Nami Juji Jime so that my wrists were pressing into his throat. The idea here is not to keep your opponent from breathing by cutting off his air supply, but to halt the flow of blood to the brain. I leaned my weight on his thick neck and pressed my crossed wrists into his throat.

He made gurgling, gasping sounds. His big hairy hands came up to clutch my wrists but all my weight was behind those crossed forearms. He tugged but he could do very little. His head went back, deeper into the mud.

The green ooze was up over his ears. It squished and gurgled, moving across his cheeks. His eyes were wide, staring up at me, and there was fear and horror deep inside them, I pushed down harder.

"No," he whimpered. “Herr Gott–nein!” The mud came up into his open mouth. He started choking. It slid into his eyes. He was making a gargling sound deep inside his throat. Under me he was flopping like a gaffed fish but my thighs had spread to cover his body as soon as I secured my crossed-wrists hold, and he could not dislodge me.

His head went deeper. Only his quivering nostrils showed, then they too disappeared. The green ooze bubbled a couple of times and was still. I was spread-eagled against a dead man.

I scrabbled to my feet, took a slippery step and almost went down again in the mud. I waved my arms to recover my balance and saw Helmut sitting there on the floor, staring at me with wide eyes.

"You killed them all,” he whispered. His blue eyes looked up at me worshipfully. I guess there is something in the Teuton soul that admires strength and courage. Maybe he was thinking I was Brunhilde come to life, or Penthasilea, who was queen of the Amazons.

"There may be more." I told him. He got to his feet like a trained athlete, catching my hand and drawing me with him. "There is a secret passage nearby—which we discovered when we widened these lower floors of the Pleasure Dome. This way, please.”

He was suddenly far more subservient than he had been. I guess he thought if he didn't behave himself I might use some of my judo on him. He ran toward what looked like a blank wall. His fingers pressed an invisible mark.

A section of the wall swung back. There was a narrow stone walkway before us, like a corridor with an arched roof. The air in here was damp, and when the wall swung shut behind us, it was black as the inside of a mole's belly.

The hand caught my fingers, drew me gently in its wake. “Where are we?" I whispered. "In the ruins of an old abbey. The picks of our workingmen dug into this tunnel when they were widening the mud pit room. Herr von Horstmann did some research and concluded this must be the underground cellars of what was once the abbey of Saint Ansgar, that was burned down in the ninth century along with the town itself.”

Helmut halted. "Wait, please. There are flashlight stored here.”

I waited in the blackness, listening to the sound of wood on wood, and then an electric lamp was making a brightness in the dark. I could see the dampness of the tunnel walls and the dry cobbles underfoot. Helmut handed me one of the flashlights.

“We have about half a mile to go. I do not think we shall be discovered but it is best to proceed cautiously.”

He went ahead swiftly, on silent feet. I came tiptoeing after him, shivering a little to the dampness and the cold. A little breeze flushed the tunnels; there must be a number of air-holes located here and there, I figured. The mud was still wet on me, I felt gooey and icky I would have given almost anything for a tub of hot water and some soap.

We had gone about three hundred yards when I heard a sound.

I reached out, caught Helmut by a shoulder. "Listen!" I whispered. We froze. I could feel his muscles tensing under my hand.

It came again, a low sound, vibrant with pain. A man was moaning, somewhere here in the dark. I must confess the hairs on the back of my neck stood up. I began to shake. It was like listening to the groanings of a ghost. The monk of the North, after whom this abbey had been named? I nudged my blonde companion.

"Let's go see who it is," I told him. His flashlight sent its beam here and there, until it discovered a narrow archway. We crept toward it like scared kids. I was ready to bolt and run for it and the hell with the noise, if the reality were anything like what my imagination was conjuring up.

The light splashed across damp walls, over rusting chains linked to rivets set into the stone. A man hung half-naked in manacles attached to those chains.

I gasped.

It was Herr von Horstmann!

Or—was it?

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