The cook curled his lip contemptuously, opened the door and turned on the light. The kitchen was empty.
He made a sign to follow him and headed towards the rear of the premises. In a niche near the fridge lurked a massive, old, padlocked freezer. A glimmering red light indicated that, in theory at least, it was still working. The cook unlocked the padlock and lifted the top. Fog poured out from its innards as the water vapour in the air started to condense and freeze.
“Go on!” he mumbled turning his head towards them.
His face froze. The bag was unzipped, and in the cavity a young woman’s face could be seen. The face was white and still as though made of wax. Dead.
“Allowing me to be presenting,” Batushka still spoke in his uniquely gloomy style, “Diana, Princess of Wales.”
Frightened, Kosta averted his face.
“Easy, man, don’t be afraid,” said Chavdar. “It’s only a corpse. A corpse that costs lots of money. And that money is ours for sure.”
“Wait a minute!” shouted Kosta in despair. “This isn’t what we agreed on!”
“What saying?” Batushka’s brows began to furrow.
“What the hell you are talking about?” Chavdar burst out.
“This is a corpse!” cried the horrified Kosta. “What are you going to do with it?”
“Nothing!” shouted Chavdar “They pay, then we give it back to them.”
“I’m going to be sick!” groaned the cook.
“Pull yourself together! You’re a cook, aren’t you?!” Chavdar chipped in at his most helpful.
“I don’t cook people, you imbecile!” Kosta exploded. “Listen, we didn’t agree on anything about corpses. You can’t leave it here!”
Batushka angrily zipped the bag closed. “Grabbing hold!” he said firmly.
Both men seized the bag from each side and dumped it into the freezer. Batushka quickly covered it with other bags full of ingredients. Then he slammed the top and patted it with his hand. Kosta looked on, effectively a helpless bystander.
“OK.” grinned Batushka, “Let’s scram off.”
Something rang in the brain of the cook and he tried to stop the two men bodily.
“The money? Where’s the money?”
“Aaa! Sorry, forgotting it.” Batushka raised his hands.
“What do you mean – forgotting?!” hissed the cook. “First you bring me a corpse and then you forget the money. I thought we agreed. 100 pounds, cash, up front.”
“Tomorning, Tomorning,” mumbled Batushka with some annoyance.
“Not tomorrow, now!” shouted Kosta.
“Easy, my man,” Chavdar decided to intervene. “The man says tomorning that means tomorrow. We’re doing business for millions here, we’re hardly going to cheat you for small change. Isn’t that right, Batushka?”
“Right, that’s exact right.”
“Why don’t you both go to hell and fuck yourselves,” stormed the cook and started opening the freezer. “Now, you can take her with you, come on!”
At that moment, an iron hand grabbed his neck. The other was pointing a very long, razor-sharp knife at his face. A poisonous, penetrative radiation was oozing from Batushka’s eyes. Very slowly and clearly he uttered some unintelligible phrases in his native language. The meaning of those words could not have been overly complicated and revealed itself spontaneously to the cook: She leaves the freezer, you enter the freezer – no empty freezer here!
Kosta woke with a plaintive groan. The wiry fingers of Batushka still fixed around his throat. His legs, stretched out on the little table in front of the television had pins and needles. His back was aching. He had fallen asleep in the chair. The duty room bell was buzzing insistently. The screens, monitoring the streets around the entrances to the Embassy were flickering with bluish light. The figure of Chavdar Tolomanov could be seen quite clearly on one of them, he was nervously stamping his feet in front of the back entrance of the Embassy. The cook got up, puffing, from the chair, dragged his body near to the button of the automatic door-release and pressed it.
Chavdar pushed the door and entered. He found himself in a small squalid corridor, leading to a second door. The automatic lock buzzed again and he walked through. Kosta greeted him, dopey and pale.
“Hey, Pastry, why didn’t you open the door?!” shouted Chavdar.
“I was asleep,” muttered the cook. “And as for you, why are you late?”
“Who’s late?” Chavdar practically rammed his watch into the cook’s nose. “Ten minutes I’ve been ringing!”
Kosta scratched behind his ear. “Well, I’ve been dreaming…” he started and stopped uncertainly.
“About girls, again?”
“She was a princess… Diana… Her corpse, to be precise…”
“No kidding! You pervert!”
“You had stolen it,” continued Kosta gloomily “and dragged it to the Embassy. Then hid it in the freezer. Just like Charlie Chaplin’s story…”
“I see,” the actor scratched his head. “The thought hadn’t occurred to me…Well, too late now! Let’s go and get the job done …because Batushka is going to lose his nerve.” He concluded.
“Okay then, wait for me around the back,” the cook moaned.
He came back to the room with the monitors: the street and the main entrance were clear. Only Chavdar’s figure appeared in one of them as he ran quickly towards a van, parked to one side of the Embassy. Then the van reversed and disappeared from the screen. The cook switched off the light, left the door slightly open and plunged into the depths of the Embassy. He got down into the basement, walked through a maze of old corridors, stuffed with old junk and then up some narrow metal stairs, twisting in the dark. He had to put some effort into opening the rusty lock. The small, heavy metal door opened finally and he entered into a spacious compartment filled with the pervasive, heavy smell of machine oils. The light switch clicked; light crawled across the surface of a long greasy puddle. The garage was empty with the sole exception of a pile of old scrap in one corner. Carefully, so as not to stumble into the inspection pit, Kosta stepped around the puddle and reached the door. Turning the switch off again, he unlocked the padlock and lifted the latch. The two sections of the door opened with a heart-stopping squeak.
The van’s brake-lights glowed eerily in the darkness. The van reversed, following Kosta’s instructions and slowly but surely disappeared down the black throat of the garage.
Batushka turned off the engine and pointed a powerful torch in Kosta’s face. The cook covered his eyes.
“Molodets!” the Tartar’s voice echoed.
Chavdar quickly opened the back door. Both of them set to, unloading some large nylon bags. Kosta watched them from one side with the unpleasant feeling that he had witnessed the scene before. The air in the garage stank of petrol and he felt sick. Batushka looked at him discontentedly, “What you being stare at?!” He thrust the torch at him and forced him to carry one of the bags.
They inched down the stairs and across the basement, then came out into the corridor, turned left and found themselves directly in front of the kitchen door. Here the cook stopped and started listening nervously.
“What’s wrong?” asked Chavdar anxiously.
“I thought I heard something inside,” Kosta whispered and continued to listen.