| General Fiction posted April 3, 2025 |
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I woke up this mornin' feelin' fine...
I'll Huff and I'll Puff
by Wayne Fowler
The author has placed a warning on this post for violence.
In the last chapter, Phil woke up as the Pope. Phil (Bill) and Tom (Bob) accepted their duty to keep the Pope, who was ill, from dying. The real Pope, in Phil’s body, traveled to Ottawa to speak with the Canadian Cardinal, convincing him to attend the next conclave, the one that would select the next Pope.
I’ll Huff and I’ll Puff
“Tom! I need you!”
“Yeah? Where… I mean who are you?” Tom answered.
“This is supposed to be a secure line, but… I need you to fly to Moscow… the Kremlin. Get here and report to the American embassy.” Phil hung up, hoping he’d not been overheard speaking English.
The next day at the U. S. Embassy, Tom was expected and was met at the airport, and then escorted to the embassy where he was interviewed by an attaché, presumably CIA. The CIA was totally flummoxed as to why a nobody with an I.D. and pristine background, good enough to be government issue, was invited to the Kremlin. Tom was given Russian currency and instructed to report back immediately following his visit to the Kremlin.
After offering his name and passport at a desk inside the Kremlin, he was left standing, unspoken to, his questions unanswered. Finally, he blurted out "wonderfine." He then completely understood why Phil had not said the codeword over the phone. After speaking the word, the person at the desk looked at the back of a business card. Noted on the back was the word wonderfine.
Tom was then escorted to an interview room.
“What do you want with the Premier?” a gentleman asked in perfect English. He might have learned from someone with a Jersey accent, though, since his want with bore a hint of wan wit.
“You tell me,” Tom replied, sensing that he’d aggravated his interviewer, probably enough that under different circumstances he would get a fingernail yanked off.
“As I’m sure you already know, I got a phone call. The voice sounded like Mr. Putin.”
“President Putin,” the Russian corrected.
“Sorry. President Putin.” Through an interpreter. “Don’t you have the tape?”
“What are you going to say to him?”
“I’ll answer his questions, is all.”
The interviewer belabored issue after issue, especially concerning where Tom worked, which was as a low-level manager at an automotive factory.
“Maybe you’ll teach President Putin how to build cars? How did you get selected?”
Shrugging his shoulders, Tom said, “Maybe one of your sleepers was my neighbor. No idea.”
Tom smiled. He followed with an interview ending, “Look, I’m sure your President knows what time my plane landed. He’ll ask what took so long to get there. Should I tell him that I had a nice lunch, or that you, Mr…? held me up with an extended inquisition?”
Tom was given a nice, though hastily put together, meal at the Kremlin dining room and then escorted through a maze to the President’s office. There, he was asked to sit until the President arrived. Instead, someone else entered the office and directed Tom to follow him. This roundabout trek led him to an underground bunker.
Phil, in Putin’s body, mimed the escort to leave himself and his visitor, Tom, alone.
“Should I assume this room is bugged?” Tom mouthed.
Phil offered a single, slight nod. Then he mouthed, “Teach me English – cover.”
Tom nodded.
After trying the door and finding it locked, Tom shouted, “Guard!” and pounded on it. The escort opened it, staring at Phil/Putin, who offered his patented smirk.
“Take us to his quarters. I’m going to teach President Putin English with total immersion. He won’t be speaking another word until he can speak in English.”
“Angleiskee,” Phil said.
The escort appeared as if it was all he could do to maintain a neutral face.
In a few moments and after a slow elevator ride, they were ensconced into Putin’s Kremlin suite of rooms.
“Tom,” Phil cried, “I’ve been dying. I can’t speak a word of Russian.”
“Borscht. That’s it,” Tom replied. “Maybe rubles.”
“I’m pretty sure borscht is Polish, maybe Ukraine, but they probably understand it here. Anyway. It’s been really tough. Any idea where Puttin might be? Somewhere abusing and polluting my body with little boys and vodka?”
“I don’t know. Where were you?” Tom asked.
“Springer Mountain in Georgia. I was about to start a two-week vacation hiking the Appalachian Trail.”
Tom nodded. “Putin stuck in the redneck mountains, no English, no passport, no car…”
“And not much money. All I had was a debit card, that he doesn’t know the PIN, and twenty bucks. Oh, and a bunch of trail food.”
“Well, maybe he won’t kill your body. At least we can hope. Any idea why you’re here?”
Phil replied quickly. “All I’ve been thinking about, only thing comes to mind, is to, as him not as me, jump out a window.”
Tom made a face of surprise. After a moment he replied. “Too bad we’re only on the fourth floor.”
“That would do it, though. I’ve even found my window. It was hard to open, but I got it.”
“You weren’t considering it, were you?”
Phil made a face that said maybe.
“Well, let’s go with that… until something better comes along,” Tom suggested.
“Throw me out the window?”
Tom smiled. “You remember how erratic you and Trump were about switching?”
“Never did get a routine identified.”
“What if we learned English during the day, and every night, I tied you up? The first morning you didn’t say wonderfine, you go flying.”
Phil nodded. “And what about you? It would take them about five seconds to realize you were up here with me, him. And then just a minute or so to get you.”
“So, we’ll hope Putin waits until we have that part figured out.”
“Hope?”
+++
The two agreed that Tom/Bob Thayer, should return to the U. S. Embassy to inform them of the plan to teach Putin English. Tom also feigned fright, asking the best way to escape the Kremlin for safety. They told him that Putin’s preferred method of surreptitious exit was to don a military uniform and just walk across the parade ground, the expanse where the military displayed their armament and troops. Once across, there was a tailor shop that would hide him until collected by an agent. The owner would be shown a picture of Tom that very day.
Tom returned with a Russian/English, English/Russian translation book, and a sack of American candy to convince the KGB, now known as the GRU, of the innocence of Tom’s visit. His return to the Kremlin was met with icy stares and little conversation. His translation book was laughed at. He did present a somewhat plausible explanation, though – President Putin wanted to meet with Trump. Trump, though, did not trust any interpreter, believing that the man would write down what he recalled. And since Trump could never, ever, learn Russian…
Never mind that Trump was no longer the American President, Tom didn’t have to explain what he claimed to be in Putin’s mind.
What Tom and Phil practiced, was pig-English , or Runglish, of a few words and phrases, teaching Phil to speak simple English with an extreme accent: an ‘s’ or a ‘z’ for th, ‘bet’, for bed or bad, an ‘f’ for a ‘v’, and a simple ‘eh’ sound for long ‘e’s or multiple letters life ea as in lef for ‘leave’. They worked on “Zer ees lef in zee yart.” “Zee stek ees toof.” And for fun, “Zee fell weel keel me.”
Anticipating the day of switching back, Phil/Putin ordered Tom a military uniform to wear as a disguise for his escape that had been delivered per Putin’s telephoned instructions: “I vant for size larrrge chirt, unt sirty-four unt sirty-four tousers oonifom for my fent. Tsay to me beck een Angleiskee.”
“You wish for a uniform for your friend – a large shirt and size thirty-four waist and thirty-four length. What rank and unit, Mr. President?”
“General,” Phil replied, using the hard ‘g’. “Unt atteelery. Vee weel go for valk soom time.”
When the uniform arrived, Tom tried it on, leaving it handy for this night’s activity. His footwear was brown Dodd ankle boots, but scorching over the stove sufficiently blackened them. They joked that Tom would make Phil replace them.
On a serious note, they practiced some sentences that Phil, as Putin, might say to his aides: “Lef oos a-lon,” and “Do nut deesturb.”
Once, a few days into Tom’s stay, a rather urgent appeal came through the closed door, shouted by a ranking authority. Phil opened the door, allowing the military official to stare back and forth from Tom to Phil. “Een Angleiskee,” Phil demanded.
It was a military setback to the Ukraine army in Kursk.
“Del wees eet!” Phil commanded, ushering the officer out.
Our fear was that some general might interpret that as permission to fire a tactical nuclear missile. As far as we knew, that did not happen.
After we grew sufficiently tired of our little game, we did nothing but read one evening. At a little after nine, Phil ate every piece of the American candy. Soon enough, the sugar high became a sugar low. Once again, Tom tied Phil with some silk scarves and then thoroughly tested them. Putin would not be able to escape, especially with Tom there to knock him out.
“Good morning,” Tom said to Phil the next morning after a particularly early awakening. It was just after four. Phil/Putin, had about seven hours of sleep – plenty.
The response was a fierce grunting and thrashing, convulsing of his body in efforts to get free. When he began screaming, was when Tom bopped him on his head hard enough to get his attention. “Phil! What’s our word? Give me the code?”
Phil’s response was more screaming. Not wonderfine.
Tom offered Phil one more chance, “Volodymyr!”
Then, immediately upon hearing his name pronounced in clear Russian, Putin quieted and craned his neck and head trying to see the person who’d called him. His effort was met with a crushing blow to his head. Fortunately, the skin did not break and there was no cleaning necessary.
Tom skipped over to open the window: four stories above a concrete walkway. There was no one in sight. He checked Putin for a pulse, and then put the skillet away. Since Putin was still alive, Tom left him tied while he changed into the uniform.
In his uniform, Tom again checked Putin’s pulse. Still beating, Tom only released the ties binding his feet and legs. The arms would remain bound until he was halfway out the window. Putin, once nicely headed for the concrete, Tom stashed the scarves in his shirt, only slightly fattening his gut. Taking the route the two had scouted on the first night together, Tom made it to the ground floor undetected. He had yet to hear an alarm of any sort, indicating that the body had yet to be discovered. Tom only grunted to the security guard manning the front door. All other entries were connected to alarms. Tom set a brisk but casual pace across the parade deck, aiming not directly to the tailor shop, but where a correcting angle could lead him there once out of sight of the guard.
The tailor shop was locked. Of course, Tom knew that it would be closed but assumed the door would be unlocked as long as he was in the Kremlin. The business was only one shop of many. The building front was over a block long in either direction. And he wasn’t sure which was the best route to the American embassy. The body would soon be found, and everyone in sight would surely be snagged and questioned.
Tom proceeded to quick-walk away, taking his best directional guess.
“Hey, you!”
Tom began to run. He barely heard the yelled whisper. “Come back. American.”
That was when Tom realized it had all been in English. Turning around, he saw that it was the tailor shop door, opened only slightly with a barely visible head partway in the opening.
“Come back,” the voice again whispered.
Tom did.
“It was the uniform,” the person said. “I was not told you would be a Russian soldier, a General!”
Three days later, in a new suit and comfortable street shoes, Tom was assisted back to the embassy and subsequently shuffled from Russia. Two days after that, he reunited with Phil at the nearest diner to the southern end of the Appalachian Trail.
“How do you feel?” Phil asked. “After, you know…”
“Murdering a man? Assassinating a world leader?”
Phil nodded.
“Put it this way – I hope our next operation is more like the one with the Pope.”
Phil nodded. “I’ve already called our contact. Probably the embassy did for you, too.”
Tom nodded. “Be getting new identities.”
Phil nodded, wondering who he wake up as next.
I totally accept that Putin probably speaks excellent English.
Angleiskee: Russian for English
Dodd ankle boots: popular menâÃÂÃÂs footwear
Wonderfine: Phil and Tom's code word meaning Phil was himself
The violence warning was just in case
Pays
one point
and 2 member cents. Angleiskee: Russian for English
Dodd ankle boots: popular menâÃÂÃÂs footwear
Wonderfine: Phil and Tom's code word meaning Phil was himself
The violence warning was just in case
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© Copyright 2025. Wayne Fowler All rights reserved.
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