02 When in Vatican City
At just gone 7am Princess Rosetta
requested Diana Prince to the hotel's aerobic gymnasium.
On her arrival, the princess was judo sparring with her lady-in-waiting.
Rosetta was a short, tanned, brunette
with high cheek bones and beaming blue eyes; she really was a
beautiful princess. However, it was Serena Rocca who caught Diana's
eye with her tall imposing physique, displaying bristling biceps in
her sleeveless vest. She had short dirty blonde hair that made her all the
more masculine; as did her the low Austrian tone.
The lady-in-waiting glanced across to
Diana standing in the doorway. Princess Rosetta swept her Lady's foot
away from beneath her, sending Serena, firmly, on the canvass.
Diana coughed, “You sent for me, Your
Highness?”
“I did, indeed, Miss Diana Prince of
the American IADC,” Rosetta freshly replied, “I'm looking for
somebody who can rival me at judo. Do you think you might be that
person?”
“Err... I shall give it a try,”
said Diana, gamely.
She slipped off her dark heels and
jacket. Serena handed over a judo blazer and belt. “Make sure you
lose,” she whispered in Diana's ear.
The two princesses squared up to one
another. Rosetta seemed thrilled at the prospect of sparring with
Diana.
“I want you to know, I hold no malice
towards you for trying to seduce my fiancé, yesterday,” she
stated.
With that Rosetta grabbed Diana's
collar and hulled her around her tiny waist. Diana went with the flow to
the floor.
The proud pint sized princess was
peering over her, “But take this as your formal warning. Any
further attempt to ingratiate yourself with my fiancé will be met
with the full force of my powers. Do I make myself clear?”
Unimpressed with the princess' warning,
Diana got to her feet with a stoic expression, “I have been
assigned to protect your fiancé. You can expect nothing but
professionalism from me, Your Highness.”
The two women locked horns, once again.
At the first opportunity Diana threw Rosetta over her right shoulder, landing her gently on the mat.
“Ouch!” the princess cried, “You
cheated! You used your specialist training against me!”
“That was called a tiatoshi,” Diana
insisted, “It's a basic Judo throw.”
“That's enough!” Serena intervened.
“You are dismissed for your insolence, Miss Prince. Go back to your
quarters until we leave for the Vatican.”
“With pleasure,” Diana smiled,
unrepentantly.
The royal convoy to the Vatican
consisted of a police motorbike up ahead, clearing the traffic; the
royal limousine was flanked front and back by police Lamborghini's. Diana
kept her black Corvette ZX1 well back in her unofficial, official
capacity.
The Corvette was equipped with some
sophisticated surveillance, such as the six exterior spy cameras that
could view any angle; although most impressive was the satellite
beaming panoramic views of the surrounding area from space. On the
monitor, inside her car, Diana could see over the great wall that divided
Vatican City from the rest of Rome. Beyond that, the distinctive
yellow and blue uniforms of the Swiss Guards, whom protect Vatican City,
had dispersed into the trees.
“They’re hunting an intruder,”
deduced Diana.
The security alert
at the checkpoint entry to the Vatican rushed the royal convoy
through. However, two vehicles were missing; each with more pressing
priorities.
The glistening
golden figure of Wonder Woman sparkled in sunshine, as she stood on
top of the Vatican's southern wall surveying the scene below. The
Amazon princess chose to enter such sacred grounds with caution; partly because
Christians have considered Wonder Woman as a mixed blessing since her
entry into World War II; she was also not keen to advertise Wonder Woman's whereabouts. She dropped down on to a thick tree branch
and peered through the woods where she heard whispering. Her
sensitive ears detected a low voice speaking through a cell phone.
“I'm sixty
seconds away. Commence now,” the voice instructed.
Machine gun fire
began immediately after from within the woods. Up on her high vantage point, Wonder
Woman could see the Swiss Guards retaliating with pistol fire as
they ran for the cover of their vehicles. At the same time, a fast
moving buggy scrambled off the road. It halted with a shudder at the edge of woods, and a familiar figure - this time in dressed
head-to-toe in white Lycra with red stripes down her sides and a
matching motorcycle crash helmet – stepped out.
“The Lost Siren
is found again,” Diana mused, “Somehow, I was expecting her
presence.”
However, a presence of
another kind alerted Wonder
Woman as she dropped effortlessly to the ground. She stood under the cover of the orchards
watching the gunman clearly visible in the stripy suns rays glaring
down between the cedar tree branches. She had cause to believe the
sound of the undergrowth being crushed underfoot, to her left, was
the Lost Siren: so who, then, was to her right?
Wonder Woman pulled
away a hanging branch to reveal a small clearing with a tomb built
against the city wall. There, a tall man, wearing the traditional
robes of a cardinal, leaned against one of the tomb's pillars, as if in
deep meditation.
“Excuse me,
cardinal, you need to leave here. You could be in danger.”
The cardinal looked
up. He had beady snake-like eyes and a large rodent's snout of a nose, but
spoke in the most elegant English tone: “Wonder Woman, I assume. I'm sure
nobody else would have the skill, or audacity, to illegally enter
Vatican City dressed in such questionable attire.”
Wonder Woman placed
her hands firmly on her shapely hips, almost defensively, “Yes, I'm
Wonder Woman and you are Cardinal who?”
“Mendo is the
name, Cardinal Mendo,” he answered.
They shook hands.
The cardinal's hand was lukewarm with bristly deformed bones,
indicative of somebody suffering from a rheumatic illness.
“Great to meet
you, Cardinal Mendo, now I really do think I should get you out of
harm's way,” urged Wonder Woman.
“You mean from
the gunman in the woods?” he asked, rhetorically.
“I doubt we're in
any real danger. Let the Swiss Guards see to him - they need the
practice.”
Diana sighed,
“Cardinal, I don't think we can be so blasé, he's heavily armed.”
Mendo sat down on
the steps of the tomb, “Yes, these peashooters have such little
imagination when it comes to murder - not like you at all, Wonder
Woman - you really know how to kill with panache.”
“You're badly
informed, Cardinal,” Diana retorted, sternly, “My mission has always been
to protect life.”
The cardinal looked
up at the powerful heroine stood before him, “Oh, come along, my
dear, you're too modest,” he said, “Karen Harris was a
masterpiece. Making her jump from the Eiffel Tower, and explode into
ashes on the way down, was inspired – almost as poetic as it was
subversive – a death and cremation in one fowl swoop. And don't
try to tell me all that carnage in London, last year, wasn't anything to do
with your activities there.”
If he hadn't been a man of the cloth, Diana could have
struck him there and then. The pain of losing Karen Harris (see
Wonder Woman in Paris) was still raw. How the cardinal knew about the
agent's death was puzzling. Something wasn't right, but Diana played
it cool.
“How did you know
about Karen Harris?” she asked, thoughtfully.
“Well, I get it
all from the newspapers. You're hardly discrete, are you? If I had
been in your position with such a violent blood thirst to quench, I'd go
undercover, not dress like an Amazon on a fashion parade. But I suppose
we all have our kinks, one way or another.”
“And is that what
you are doing here now, Mendo, working undercover?” Wonder Woman
asked, “I mean, you really are a cardinal?”
Just at that
moment, the sound of a woman shouting, "Don't shoot," could be heard from outisde the woods.
“I have to go,”
Wonder Woman said.
“I thought you
might, but don't worry I'm not going anyway,” replied Mendo.
Back on a high
tree branch, Wonder Woman could see the Lost Siren dragging a limp gunman
from the woods and surrender him to the Swiss Guards. There was nothing
more that could be done, so Diana returned to the clearing, only to find the
cardinal gone. She stood on the step of tomb and pondered the epitaph. It read: “HERE LIES THE PRINCE WITH MANY NAMES.”
For Part 3 Click Here
Hmm interesting twist ...
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