and after translating to the old man, he again gave me the thumbs up, and everybody at the table laughed. So, even though I wasn't hungry, I ate one of Gunéy's special Lahmacuns and proceeded to leave for home. Going out the door, I met Ishmael and he gave me a paper shopping bag before going in to his father.
Sitting on my balcony with a beer I had bought at the store on the first floor, along with enough lunch-meat for two, I first opened up a pack of premium salami and noticed that I had bought the wrong one. It was one of the hot black pepper sort, and to put it in the bowl would be the same as throwing it out the window, for Sabertooth wouldn't even touch something like that. So, he got a big piece of the ring bologna, in one chunk which I laid on the floor. Chasing that around the kitchen like Skippy the Kangaroo would keep him busy for quite a while! I took a slice of the salami, stuffed it in my mouth and made to open the package which was wrapped up in the paper bag. Then I had to spit the salami out and I took a good swig from my beer to cool down the taste buds. “Damn man!” I cried out loudly, which made the cat stop hopping around for a second. “Who eats that kind of salami? Italian Mexicans?” It took half of my beer to quench the fire and then I looked at the package on the table. `Why wrap something up and then put it in a paper bag?' I wondered. But I was as excited as a little child as he slowly unwrapped the package, and when the glasses were finally out of the package, it was clear as crystal glass why it was so well hidden. This was definitely not your run of the mill glasses with mini-camera, rather the highest quality one could never afford or, for that fact, unavailable for purchase by the general public! Top quality spy glasses courtesy of the old man. Putting them on, Sabertooth tried to bat them off of my face. So back into the box they went, lest they got damaged. Next was the envelope. I pulled out five pictures of various men and a note, again written in that beautiful curly handwriting. It simply said: `The Bad Friedrichshall salt mine is a wonderful tourist attraction.' Studying the pictures of the five men, I realized that Mali Aschwan was not one of them. On the back of the photos were their names and on each photo were numbers, from one to one to five. It sort of made me wonder if it was expected that I hunt them down in a specific order! From one to five, or the other way around? I had absolutely no idea what was with the number thing!
The next morning was sunny with not a single cloud anywhere, except the ever present steam coming from the cooling towers of the nuclear power plant! I had put another big chunk of bologna in his dish, but Sabertooth snatched it out and had to play with it first, before even taking a bite out of it. I left and walked through the park to get to the bridge, then decided to take the direct road to the station. I hopped on the train which was going to Heilbronn and hoped today would not end up as a days journey with the city bus system just to get to the Salt Mine. I never had a civilian driving license, because I was always in the military. That and I like to ride through the German countryside and simply take in all of the things going on as the train moves along. All those people working in their vineyards, or driving their tractors in the fields. Not to forget the millions of people walking their dogs along the roads next to the train tracks! Driving was always stressful and one has no opportunity to take in the landscape, therefore I like to ride the train. When one considers the cost of: the car, insurance, repairs, and the high price of fuel, taking the train really is dirt cheap! That is, as long as you're not in a hurry to reach your destination! So my train made its stops in all of the various small towns along the way. Just out of the small town of Besigheim there were letters set up in the vineyards to the left of the tracks. Resembling the letters on the hill over Hollywood, `Felsengarten' was simply a statement for the regional wine producer. Along the way I passed through the town of Lauffen and seen the old castle, and remembered hearing that they have a marina somewhere here on the river by the dam. Soon enough though, the train slowly pulled into the main train station in the city of Heilbronn.
Lady luck was walking next to me as I went to the bus station, for as I passed a group of Germans, my ears picked out the words Salt mine from their conversations. So I played stupid, and asked if they maybe knew how to get to the mine. In a matter of minutes, they invited me to ride with them on the bus for free. The tour guide led us to the correct bus departing for Bad Friedrichshall and commented that it was good thing that we got the first bus of the day heading to the salt mine!. `At 10 in the morning?' I thought. As I entered the bus, I walked to the back so as to have my peace and quiet. There were already people in the back of the bus, sitting in the last two rows. As I approached them, my stomach churned as I seen exactly who was sitting in the back of the bus. Four out of the five men whose pictures laid on my table at home. I wasn't sure at that moment if the knowledge of recognizing them was a good sign or bad, but I played innocuous and took a seat by the window. It hit me like a stone that the old man was most definitely not a joke, rather a very real ex-agent! And his Intel was a great help, for I never would have thought to come here on my own initiative! As the bus filled up an older lady sat next to me, and for the next twenty minutes gave me a rhetoric about something of which I had no idea. She spoke German, but with a horrible schwabian dialect the whole time!
Upon arriving at the Salt mine, the tour guide started out with his repertoire, pointing here and over there, all of which I pretended that I understood not a single word the guy said. I must have had a strange look on my face because he stopped and asked me in German if I was having problems understanding him. I answered; “ Oh I'm sorry, but I don't speak German, only American. But that's okay, I'll buy me a brochure in English and figure out what you're saying.” “What about you men? Can you hear me good enough back there?” He asked. I turned and simulated a very low IQ with the look on my face as I glanced at them. They simply waved their hands for him to go on with the tour.
So we descended down the freight elevator and when it stopped, we were deep down in the salt mine, and thankfully the halls and aisles were large enough that I didn't get a claustrophobic attack! I simply hated small cramped places, like the elevator in my apartment building. Which I rode only when I was moving the furniture into the apartment! As we walked along listening to how old the mine was, how long all the tunnels were if put on end, the amount of salt produced yearly, etc, etc, etc, I was starting to get bored with flipping through my tour brochure and the constant drone of the German tour guide. The four old ladies in front of me were talking about how a Refugee gets a brand new stove for cooking and baking, but the lady on the television program had cried and told the mayor of the town that it wasn't right! She was on welfare and had to save for one, from the measly amount she became from the government, and they got them for free! “Terrible, simply terrible.” Said one of the ladies. And me in my boredom was thinking about the theory of times passage, for at the dentist it goes too slow, just like this tour, but by sex, too fast! Then things started to get interesting when one of my four suspects, Mohammad Alackza, who was photo number three, decided that his shoe was not correctly tied. He said something to his comrades, and bent down for his shoe. I waited, and after enough time had passed that one could have completely re-threaded two shoes, I turned around just in time to see him disappearing down one of the side aisles. One look forward told me that his comrades were over confident, for they weren't watching behind their backs to keep an eye out for their friend. So I quietly took off to follow him into the side aisle.
It was strange that at that moment a Christmas carol came to mind, so I reworded it to: “Dr. Death is coming to town!” Here in this side aisle it wasn't so neat and orderly kept for the tourist, for there was a farraginous assortment of special machines laying around in no particular order. As if simply dropped onto the ground when quitting time had rolled around. I was trying to walk around the drills and stuff while at the same time looking for him, for it seemed that he had vanished into thin air. I proceeded as quietly as the salty floor, crunching underfoot, would allow for. That was when I heard a scraping of metal coming from a smal
l construction shed just to the right of me. I went around to the back of the shed and seen that part of the sheet metal from the other side was pulled far enough away to permit entry. There were metal support rods which were probably utilized for stabilizing the walls after a demolitions blast laying behind the shed, and from the look of them they were ready for the old metal bin, but for my purpose one of them would do just fine. Originally, I was planning to bean him one over the head when he tried to come out, but then a Kilogram package of C4 was tossed out of the opening, `Nice!' I thought. High quality Czechoslovakian stuff. A second Kilogram was tossed towards the first and then he started to wiggle his way out past the metal sheet, so I decided to wait. Alackza proceeded to put the metal sheet back into its place, and when he turned to pick up his goodies, I swung the bar around his neck and pulled him backwards. He reacted quickly for one expecting to be alone, for he immediately kicked his legs outward. The thrust slammed us backwards and I