Dead Men Stalking 6: The Art of Waiter-baiting
The Prussian hadn’t called out to alert his guards and it suddenly occurred to Stone that he was enjoying the chance to fight this masked intruder. He wanted to kill him all on his own.
Welcome to part six of my MI7 Assassin origins story! If you missed part one, read it here:
And if you’re new to MI7 Assassin, I’ve also written two earlier standalone stories:
My paying subs get the hot thrill of reading MI7 Assassin the Sunday before it goes out to everyone else on Wednesday, but whenever you get your hans on it, I would really appreciate your feedback on this story!
Eventually we’ll publish these origins stories as novellas and I want them to be as good as they possibly can be when we do! So if you have any suggestions, something you particularly like or don’t like, want to see more or less of, let me know in the comments below!
Dead Men Stalking 6: The Art of Waiter-baiting
Röpell’s gauntlet dagger was designed as a weapon of terror. At its business end it sported a four-inch blade, triangular in cross-section, that meant the gauntlet was banned in peacetime because it caused ‘undue and excessive damage’. In wartime, however, it was regarded as a legitimate weapon for trench raids, along with similar exotic mediaeval weapons such as picks, maces, hatchets, knuckle duster knives and clubs. Stone was familiar with them all.
A solid, inflexible sheath of sheet metal protected Röpell’s hand and forearm. Inside the hand cavity was a crossbar that he gripped as he lunged at Stone’s vulnerable bayonet hand. Stone knew that if Röpell succeeded in slashing his weapon hand, he would be finished. Any wound from that blade was unlikely to heal. The gauntlet dagger had its advantages, but it didn’t give Röpell the flexibility that Stone had with his customised bayonet.
He instinctively switched to a hammer grip on his blade and backed away. He had to stay out of range, blocking and feinting, to buy time for his eyes to adjust to the darkness of the room.
He focussed on the way the dark grunting bulk of the Prussian moved as he circled, and the arc of the gleaming blade as it slashed through the air. Where was his weak point? His limp was on the left. Maybe he could get Röpell off balance and find his opening. But another quiet voice in his head wondered about how Röpell had set him up. He had been standing in the dark, waiting for him. Had he spotted Stone scaling the façade? Or perhaps he was just naturally suspicious and always anticipated night-time raids on his hotel room.
Röpell lunged again and Stone blocked, stumbling against the side of the bed. Time for thinking later.
Stone had been trained in knife fighting as well as martial arts – and had used every brutal technique he knew in the melee of close combat in the trenches – but it was not enough for this encounter. He was fighting defensively. He needed to be fighting offensively in order to dispatch Röpell before the Frontiersmen realised he was being attacked and burst into the room.
The Prussian hadn’t called out to alert his guards and it suddenly occurred to Stone that he was enjoying the chance to fight this masked intruder. He wanted to kill him all on his own. Stuck behind a desk at Sektion 111b, maybe he was missing the action of the trenches.
Stone needed to wrap this up, fast. Offensive fighting was always a challenge on trench raids. It was widely recognized that raiders needed an edge. His comrades had solved it by taking Forced March tablets – cocaine and caffeine – recommended for soldiers ‘in need of a boost’, washing it down with the rum ration. Rum and coke. It turned them into ruthless and merciless killers.
But Stone had always preferred to stay in control, so he used a different method. He projected onto the enemy the character of some person he hated, and that gave him the necessary additional animus. This was what he did now. He saw the Prussian as his hated Oratory Father. In his mind, he saw his teacher’s ascetic, drawn face, with the tell-tale red blotches of the secret drinker, the pince-nez glasses perched on the end of his nose, and behind which gleaming eyes hinted at his fanaticism, depravity and sadistic violence. It worked. It gave him the necessary passion and fury that he needed to do the job. Hate was always superior to the chemical solution of Forced March and turned Stone temporarily into a maniac, settling old scores that were impossible when he was a boy. He’d always wanted to beat his teacher to a pulp and at last he could.
Röpell slashed in a vicious arc, aiming for Stone’s chest. In that split second as the Prussian’s weight was on his left foot, Stone switched the bayonet to his left hand and ducked and jabbed, aiming for the exposed ribcage and grabbing for Röpell’s weapon arm with his right hand. But the Prussian spun away to his left, inches out of reach.
Damn, he’s good. So much for that limp. Stone switched his blade to his right hand again, and pressed forward, blocking another swing with his left arm while thrusting the bayonet upwards towards Röpell’s gut. Röpell twisted away, and Stone was now on the offensive, driving the Prussian back.
Throughout the fight, Röpell had kept his distinctive bent-over posture, doubtless from a lifetime of stooping. At nearly six and a half feet tall, it made particular sense as he was a guest on the top floor of the hotel, with its low ceiling. As Stone pushed him back towards the door, he saw that the giant's head barely cleared a low support beam running the width of the ceiling. He lunged at Röpell’s belly and the Prussian jumped back, knocking into a side table by the door. The decorative lamp standing on it fell to the ground and the bulb shattered. There was a muffled inquiring call from outside in the corridor. The Frontiersmen had been alerted.
Stone jumped back. His frenzied attack had failed. He was running out of time. He had to finish Röpell right here, right now. There was a rapid knocking at the door. ‘Everything all right, sir?’ The voice was concerned but low, not wanting to draw attention from other guests.
He thought about the low beam. And he thought about waiter-baiting.
German waiters had been commonplace throughout Britain before the war, so the term ‘Waiter!’ was regularly used by Tommies to bait the enemy in the opposing trenches. It was usually combined with lewd suggestions about what they would do to the ‘waiters’ when they took the German trenches. ‘Waiter-baiting’ was guaranteed to elicit a furious response from the enemy. They reacted with Teutonic curses, rifle and machine-gun fire, much to the Tommies’ amusement. It never failed, and often provided a morning’s entertainment with bets being laid on the reaction-time. Now he would see how this imperious aristocrat would respond. He derisively called over to him, ‘Waiter! I say, waiter!’
Röpell stopped and stared in disbelief. Stone raised his arm and clicked his fingers, beckoning. 'Waiter!', he called again, in the manner of an imperious British toff.
Oblivious to his surroundings, and reacting instinctively, snarling ‘Du bastard!’, the furious Röpell hurled himself through the air at Stone and smashed his head on the beam.
‘Waiter-baiting’ had worked yet again.
Screaming in pain, Röpell fell back stunned onto the floor.
Outside, realising something was badly wrong, the guards hurled themselves at the door.
Stone grabbed a blanket from the bed and threw it over Röpell, like a gladiator using a net to entangle his opponent. The Prussian quickly regained his senses and began flailing around clumsily with his punch dagger, but the blanket impeded him. Stone straddled him, pinning his arms to his sides with his knees and stabbed down through the blanket at his heart. The body convulsed and lay still. He needed to be sure, so he stabbed him again. And again. Just to be sure.
The door smashed open and not two but three armed Frontiersmen burst in.
The first two were silhouettes, their faces in deep shadow beneath their trilbies. But the third man’s face was illuminated by the dim corridor light. It was Captain Hugh Pollard.