Lee got off light missing supper with Edith
last night. She’s pestering me about Paris now. Thinks I need a vacation. Wants me to go on a whirlwind tour and visit
the Louvre with her and view the Mona Lisa in particular. How can I tell her that as much as I’d like to see that pigmented
lady in her proper home, my personal experience with her tells me to stay the hell away from her. She’s just too much trouble.
It all began one night when Seaview was
hijacked. Lee later read me the riot act about our lack of security. But who would have guessed Mr. Logan had a man on the
inside who caused the paint shop fire, bogus fire trucks, and trained (and armed)
submariners with big guns.
His mission, to force the Lorraine, the
pride of the French Navy, to turn over the Mona Lisa, enroute to the World’s Fair, on pain of Seaview blowing her up.
And so she silently
in the Observation Nose, waiting for us to get command of our sub back. It was
an all hands operation, not that we had very many. Lee climbed through the ventilation shaft to cut our missile
control wires just in case the madman decided to fire on the Lorraine anyway. Which is exactly what he’d planned.
It was a little more difficult to get to
the auxiliary gyro controls to make Seaview lurch to throw our captors off balance. Our men, also incarcerated and roughed up, staged Ski’s sickness in their successful attempt to overtake their guards. We used the
vent shafts to pour tear gas into the boat, and the mini sub’s high tensile strength canopy as a bullet proof shield
to ward off some of the bullets.
But it was the lady herself who defeated
Logan. When Igor, his Captain didn’t mind shooting at us, risking the painting, Logan shot him and surrendered. He along with his crew are going to be incarcerated for a long long time.
But back to the present. While we awaited
Lorraine to retrieve the Mona Lisa, Lee seemed a bit maudlin, wondering, like most poets and philosophers, just what she was
smiling about.
It most assuredly wasn’t my upcoming trip to Paris with my sister.
