Ell woke up, and decided to call Lena to get started with the search for the place to dig. There was no answer in her room, so he showered, dressed, and put on the pith helmet he'd worn for various digs and treks ever since the Boer Wars when he had served in the British Regulars. The pitch helmet still looked great, a few stains, but not worn out. It's hard to ruin a good pitch helmet.
Then he went down to breakfast, but first stopped at the front desk of the hotel and rang the bell. A man in a manager's uniform appeared.
"May I help you?"
"Yes, I've been trying to reach Lena Berzanskis' room, but there seems to be no answer, Has she already come down to have breakfast?"
"No, she was in fact kidnapped last night by a group of men and shoved into a Mercedes-Benz," said the manager.
"What?" shouted Chefman. "This is terrible. Have you called the police?"
"No," said the manager.
"Well why the hell not," shouted Chefman. "A woman is kidnapped, dragged through the lobby of your hotel, shoved bodily into a car, and you don't call the police?"
"No," said the manager. "Nice pith helmet, sir. We don't see many of those any more."
"Why, thank you," said Chefman. "One always wants to be appropriately attired for a bit of the old exploration and hiking."
"It goes very well with the gig bag, backpack, and 1980s Banana Republic look you have going," replied the manager. "Have you spent any time in the tropics at all?"
"Yes, of course," came the reply. "I spent decades in the tropics serving with the...uh..well, serving in the military. And you?"
"Oh yes, I saw action in various revolutions we fomented all over Africa and South America when we were part of the USSR. In fact I had many diseases."
"Did you have...yellow fever?" asked Chefman.
"Yes, of course."
"Elephantiasis?"
"Most definitely."
"Yaws?"
"Yes."
"Tsetse flies?"
"Um hummm."
"Dengue fever?"
"Certainly."
"Malaria?"
"Yes."
"How about leprosy?"
"That, too."
"Quince?"
"Yes," came the reply.
"Ha! Gotcha!" said Chefman. "Quince, Cydonia oblonga, is a fruit! It is the sole member of the genus Cydonia in the family Rosaceae. It is native to rocky slopes and woodland margins in south west Asia, Turkey and Iran. It is NOT a disease! You, sir, are a fraud."
He pounded his fist on the front desk. The manager looked frightened, but pulled out a gun.
"Yes," he said. "And you, my pith-helmeted friend, are going with me now to Kiev to join your lady friend."
"Wait a minute," Chefman replied. "I'm entitled to a buffet breakfast, and I will not leave here without one."
"OK, then. We will have breakfast together. Remember that my gun will be on you the entire time."
"Do you think they'll have eggs and sausages?" said Ell.
"Yes, the sausages are excellent. Also take note of our delicious schnecken cakes. In fact, take a few extra for the journey. I can have the staff box some up for you."
"That's more than kind of you," said Chefman. "I'm sure we'll enjoy the trip." Chefman made his way to the scrambled eggs and sausages steaming in their respective silver plated bins. He grabbed a plate, and loaded it up. But his mind was racing.
He was already thinking ahead to how delicious the schnecken would be after breakfast.
"Do you have any bagels," he asked.
"No sir, I'm sorry, we're openly anti-Semitic here now. No bagels."
"That's kind of a shame, isn't it?" Chefman asked.
"There aren't many Zhids left around here anyway," the man added. "It's been hard to find a decent bagel in Minsk ever since 1941."
Chefman didn't say anything. He'd been a medic with the Wehrmacht in 1941, and came through Minsk with Army Group South, until he managed another one of his disappearances later in the war, and wound up in Sweden. It had been the second army he'd had the misfortune of invading Russia with.
