Baril de Singes [Barrel of Monkeys]

  ***

  The Beechcraft Twin Bonanza was an hour-plus into a low level flight over the Mediterranean with Karim helming it at a 200 mile per hour speed, barely concerned with clipping the odd shipping vessel occasionally appearing just feet beneath the fast cruising fuselage.

  "I am Lucky Lindy, old boy." He lit another cigarette and rapped a finger against one of the dashboard gauges. "Dials speak nothing. I fly only by this," he knocked on his own head, "just like Lucky Lindy."

  "I'm feeling a bit lucky, too," I said, tearing from me the remnants of the Saints gandora and wadding the shredded fabric into a tight ball while Karim watched me from the corner of his eye. Once compressed into a taut package, I withdrew the Tunis flash drive from the pocket of my shorts and shoved it deep into the center of the cloth, binding it firmly with a piece of loose twine found on the cockpit floor. Satisfied the flash drive would not slip from its resting place, I slid back the window and tossed the bundle into the Mediterranean below.

  "Horn, you silly man! What you do?"

  "Not to worry, Karim. I'm on the pig's back now. Let some archeologist find it in a thousand years, perhaps mingled with a long lost collection of sunken Roman amphorae. That would bring a new twist to recorded history, what say?"

  "As sure as Bob's your uncle, sport," Karim chuckled in agreement. "Augustus was no fan of the Saints."