Unraveling Yarns, Part 1 of 5: A Good Trade at the Old Port

Edgard Neff is in an occupied city on the trail of a killer, a man who uses abominable means to control those around him. This man holds the key to breaking up a spy network supporting the Nazis and putting every undercover official in France in danger. Only the dead-eye sniper has the will and fortitude to see his mission through and get what he needs.

The five parts of Unraveled Yarns have been collected in The Secret Files of Lucky Ford: Operation Arm Breaker, which is now available as a Kindle ebook, in paperback, and as a DRM-free ebook.

A Good Trade at the Old Port is a standalone short story that features characters from Operation Arm Breaker and The Dragon, the Wolf, and the Maiden.

Content warnings: Minor swearing, death, violence, gun violence, animal violence, tobacco use.

MONDAY NIGHT, DECEMBER 2, 1941
WEST OF THE VIEUX PORT, BASTIA
CORSICA, VICHY FRANCE

//Translated from French.//

Edgard Neff could hear every door and window slamming shut and locking as he ran past. He shook his head. As if some wooden door could keep out a determined mannesser, much less six. The frenzied howls and snarls followed close on his heels.

“Closer,” he grunted. Cold air rasped at his lungs and his cheeks had gone numb. The signal locator was warm in his hand, and the third of its four green lights had just blinked on. He was nearly on top of the psychopath controlling these hellhounds.

He snorted and shook his head. Not hellhounds, simply dogs, large and angry to be sure, but also abused and manipulated. It was superstition that imbued them with any further power.

Neff skidded into an intersection and turned right. Claws scraped against stone behind him. The third light flickered and went out.

“Shit!” Neff put his head down and coerced another burst of speed from his weary body. He was short and sturdy, always had been. He was built to stand and fight, not to run. If he did not find the dogs' master soon, they would catch him. It was only minutes.

More locks and latches clattered shut around him as he took a hard left at the next street. The little light glowed back to life again. This avenue led directly east, to the sea. More importantly for Neff, it was slightly downhill.

A furious bark careened off the houses around him. Neff risked a look over his shoulder. The dogs had not lost his scent. All six of them swung around the corner like a fighter squadron in formation. These creatures were unlike other mannessers he had encountered. They were bulkier, built more like bears than greyhounds, which is what let Neff and his short legs survive this long. The moonlight caught brindled brown stripes in their black hides, and drool oozed from flapping thick jowls. Still, they shared the traditional mannesser's characteristics: cropped ears, surgical scars that carved roadmaps into their entire bodies, and wobbling whip antennas that connected the back of their skulls to the base of their spines.

Neff drew his MAB D pistol from its holster and fired. His hands were shaking and he could not feel his fingertips, but his shots flew true. Someone behind a nearby door screamed. The bullets struck the brake of a parked trailer. It rumbled out behind him, bouncing on cobblestones and ramming into the lead mannesser.

The huge dog yelped as the trailer pinned it against a wall. The next two mannessers climbed over the obstacle and bounded off it, still hot on Neff's trail, though a few steps further behind. The other simply plowed into it. The trailer skidded to the side and freed their packmate. All six howled in unison and continued their pursuit.

He had encountered the foul things before, but not this close, not alone, and not this many. He understood why the people of this city were terrified. Not why they hid, but why they were scared.

He had arrived to Bastia from the west after dark and not encountered a soul. They had locked themselves in. Curfew enforcement was not an issue there.

Neff made it another block and checked his palmful of lights. The fourth was blinking, struggling to come on. He was a hundred meters from the source, at most. He took a right, toward the sea, and came to a dead end.

“Damn it,” he whispered. He had slowed the dogs with the trailer, but not for long. He could see shadows moving behind shutters. He hissed at them: “Hello!”

No one dared reply. They were in there, on the other side of the windows, waiting and watching. They would stand there as the mannessers pulled him apart.

Luciani, the spy, had been right: the Vichies had not simply killed the leaders and malcontents of Bastia, they had killed its culture. Once, he had said, every door would be open and a stranger could enjoy a hot dinner and a glass of wine. It had only taken a few dogs to change them all.

Now, the people of Bastia would let a man die on their front steps.

“Cowards,” Neff hissed. The signal locator urged him onward. He hauled himself up the closest home's face, finding handholds in the brick and molding. He was one story up before the mannessers closed in. They leapt for his ankles, but he kept scaling the old building. Having spent so much time searching for sniper positions in all manner of environments, Neff had become a proficient climber.

The roof was flat, and Neff took a second to catch his breath. The mannessers stalked around it, trying to find some way to get to him. He could see the sea, it was not so far, and the tall wall the Vichies had constructed around the marina. He checked the signal locator again: the light was holding steady. There was no question that the transmissions directing the dogs' behavior were originating from the port.

He did not know what he would find when he got there. The people of Bastia had been stalked by unnatural black hounds for nearly a month now, creatures that would set upon anyone outside of their homes after dark. It reminded Neff of the stupid old stories from home, of the bone-gnawing Rongeur d'Ors and its dragging chains. Small children would quake at these tales, and only hiding beneath their mothers' stifling blankets would calm them.

That such tales were still told, and were being brought with Vichy occupation, was foolish at best, an act of terrorism at worst. Superstition was the weapon of the enemy. Department Three took old fears, pushed them into people, and twisted. These stories distracted, and when life and death balanced on a knife's edge, distraction killed. Luciani's brother had learned that the hard way.

The next roof over was past a narrow alley and a meter drop. Neff secured his pistol, his signal locator, and his other gear, then sprinted for the edge. The dogs followed him from below. He passed several meters above their heads, but they jumped and snapped at him nonetheless. He hit the opposite roof and rolled, recovered, and sprinted ahead.

He repeated the process four times more, hitting low roofs and rolling or grabbing on to window railings or balconies and dragging himself up to the high roofs. The buildings in this part of the city were old and similar, stuccoed with flat roofs and wide windows to suck down sea breezes. They might have been pleasant if not for the welcoming committee.

The cluster of homes ended abruptly at a circle with a small fountain in the middle. There was nowhere to jump to. The mannessers waited below, pacing. He had led them halfway across Bastia by then; they could wait a few more minutes.

Neff could see the wall around the marina in detail. It was cobbled together from wood, sheet metal, and concrete blocks, with a coil of wicked barbed wire crowning it. The Vichies had placed their storehouses and armories within, along the docks. It seemed to have only one entrance: a gate to the east just large enough for a transport truck.

“What to do about you?” Neff asked the dogs. One cocked its head at him as if it understood. He pondered on this for a moment as he lit a cigarette. He exhaled slowly, letting the smoke roil about him. He could shoot the dogs, he had certainly struck smaller moving targets at a greater distance before, but these were animals and he didn't have the bullets. It was their handler who deserved his lead, not them. There was another way.

He dug the radio transponder out of his back pocket. It was his lifeline to the Office: one press of its button would send a signal that they could track to his location. But if all they found was his teeth scattered in dog shit, it would not matter much.

Neff squatted and placed the signal locator in front of him so he could see the little green lights. He took his folding knife to the transponder, unscrewing its back plate to reveal its copper innards. Chief Woodruff would frown on this: the transponders cost more than the skin off his ass. Neff smirked.

'Whatever works,' the chief would also say. Neff found the calibration screw that set the frequency his comrades would follow and twisted it clockwise, then activated it. He needed to find the signal the Vichies were using. He got no response from his signal locator.

“Piece of... ” he muttered to himself. He twisted the screw again. Suddenly all five lights on the signal locator blinked. He twisted the screw back a little, dialing it in. The lights flared to life, so bright that they lit up the whole roof. Had the Vichies been relying on patrols and not a pack of radio-controlled dogs, he would have drawn the fire of the whole city onto himself. In the circle below, the dogs all stood still as statues, staring up at him. The waves his transponder was pumping out were the same as those shooting directly into their brains.

“Perfect,” he whispered. He took one last drag on his cigarette and ground it out on the roof. He put his knife away and stood. When he was ready, he reeled it back and threw the transponder as hard as he could at the cobblestoned circle below.

It shattered when it hit, and the the dogs all yelped in shock and pain. Each dashed away as fast as they could. It would have been like an electric jolt slashed into their gray matter, arcing across the wrinkles. Neff lifted his signal locator: the lights had died back down, now just tracking the original transmission.

He climbed down the building's face slowly, careful not to slip or abandon a handhold too early. His feet had just touched the ground when he heard the barks again. The mannessers had recovered from his little trick and they were furious.

Neff bolted, keeping the marina ahead, following the salt in the air.

The closest dog careened around a corner meters behind him. Its steel-capped teeth gnashed. The locator's fifth light flickered for an instant.

“Cani Neri!” someone shouted. More doors slammed. Neff ran as if there weren't people barring him from safety just meters away.

He saw an open door at the end of the street. Two silhouettes appeared, framed in yellow. A man and a woman. The man shoved the woman aside before Neff was ten meters away and slammed it shut. He could hear a bar dropping behind it. They were arguing inside so loud that he could hear them above the howls as he dashed past.

“He is either stupid or wanted!”

“They will kill him!”

“They would kill us, too! They are his problem!”

His problem.

Neff kept running. It had only been minutes, but it felt like hours. The pack had found him infiltrating the western reaches of the old city. The smell of salt on the air had almost made him miss the dark presence stalking him. The gentle scuff of a calloused paw on a wheel-worn stone set him off. When dealing with mannessers, one could not hesitate.

He had not made his flight a secret. His footfalls were loud, his wheezes and curses louder. Within minutes, the entire pack was trailing him.

If he had brought his rifle, he could have turned the closest beast inside-out in an instant and convinced its pack-mates that he was not worth the trouble, but he only had his little pistol. Against a three-hundred-kilo attack dog, feckless lead would simply incense it. With a second's respite, he could disable a mannesser, of course, for even they had weak points and he could practically sew with bullets.

The trouble was, he was a sharp shooter, not a speed shooter. As soon as he dropped one, the other five would be on him in an instant.

The fifth light stayed on, dim but growing in strength.

There was a hastily-constructed gatehouse blocking the entrance to the docks. The lights were on inside, and a long antenna wobbled on top, catching the ocean breezes.

“There you are,” Neff grunted. He leaned into his sprint. The mannessers howled. Being this close to the source of the electronic signals screeching through their brains must be excruciating.

As he neared, he could see that the gate itself, made from heavy wood and iron and topped with a snarl of barbed wire, was too tall to jump, too sharp to scale, and too strong to break.

“Hello!” Neff shouted frantically. Fog billowed out of his mouth. He raised his voice an octave and took on a Méridional accent. His jacket was down over the pistol in his waistband. He shouted again: “Help! S.O.L., help!”

Just meters from the gatehouse, the barking ceased. Neff spun and found the mannesser pack frozen, forming a tight perimeter around him as if they had encountered a wall he could not see. The brindled dogs snarled when he looked at them. They would not step another meter closer toward him or the tall antenna above.

He was in the right place.

“It is after curfew! Identify yourself!” a man barked from inside the gatehouse. Neff raised his hands slowly.

“Cohort Chief Lafitte!” Neff shouted, exaggerating his shivering while he made up something on the spot. “I am looking for a man called Saveriu.”

“No Saveriu here,” the voice called back. “Show me your badge.”

Neff smirked. The Office had forgers working around the clock making fake papers and badges for every organization an official might encounter, friendly or otherwise. He lowered one hand and flipped his jacket open. There, pinned right to his chest, he showed off his Service d'ordre légionnaire credentials, a golden dagger on a shield.

“I ran into these animals during my investigation,” Neff offered. He was sweating, and not just because of the run; the sweat steaming off of him was leaving him freezing cold. This fresh sweat was from the bead that the traitor inside that guardhouse no doubt had on him, not to mention that one press of a button could set off every one of the dogs. Mannessers were always one little remote-radio zap away from killing everyone in reach.

“You are not based here, are you chief?” the voice wondered.

“Toulon,” Neff wheezed. “I am in pursuit of a criminal, I have reason to believe he ran here.”

“What kind of criminal?”

“A murderer,” Neff said. A set of shutters creaked open on the guardhouse's second story, and a shirtless, bearded, jowly white man leaned on his elbows, out over the sill, like he was holding court over the little square before his gate. “I was told to speak of this matter to Captain Poirier, of the Sûreté.”

“The Sûreté,” the man chuckled. He wiped the sleep from his eyes, shaking his head.

“I nearly died getting here, I do not have time for jokes,” Neff snapped. The big man glared down at him.

“Do you think the Sûreté runs this city?” he snarled. “There are no murderers here because I do not allow criminals in Bastia.”

“I have heard the city is kept in order,” Neff said.

“I keep it in order,” the man snorted. “This city knows my law.”

“Admirable,” Neff said. He needed to get close. He was almost sure who this man was. It would only take a bullet to end this, but one press of a button, one wrong move would provoke the mannessers.

“Thank you,” the man said with a smile. He nodded at the circled dogs. “Do you know how they found you?”

He pushed himself up off his elbows and waved to the slavering hounds.

“Hello, babies!”

The mannessers snarled at him.

“They know the scent of these people, these Corsicans. They stink of old fear. The babies are used to it. You? You do not carry this stink. Not yet.”

“I would be afraid of these things, too,” Neff said.

“You would be afraid of me!” the man roared. He snatched up a metal box from inside the window and shook it at Neff. It was about thirty centimeters in length and was connected to something inside by a long, curling black cord. A handful of buttons glowed on its face and illuminated the man’s jowls. “I keep the Italians away, the Maquis, the Nazis, the criminals, the spies, and the only tools they gave me were these four buttons! I maintain order, not the impotent Sûreté!”

“Perhaps Captain Poirier is the wrong man to ask,” Neff considered. He knew the name of the man he was looking for. What he didn't need was some big-headed underling, claiming the atrocities of his commander. He just needed the name.

“Poirier is a drunk and a whore chaser, and that is all he needs to be,” the man shouted. He waved the mannessers' control box as he ranted: “I control this place! I set the curfews, and my dogs enforce them. I chase down the criminals, I force back the rioters, I execute the malcontents. I am Bastia!”

All around the small square, the closest homes had lights filtering out through the shutters, with silhouettes peeking through.

“And who are you?” Neff asked.

The man puffed up and roared:

“I am Faron - !”

Neff whipped his pistol up and fired once, drilling a bullet between Faron Hugo Martel's wide eyes. Confirmation was all he needed. His shooting hand stayed still. This was the Butcher of Bastia, the Dog Man, the Foxhunter.

Martel gasped once and lurched forward, falling out of the window. Neff dashed ahead, dodged the corpse and snatched up the mannesser control box before it could slam into the cobblestone.

The hounds were on his heels again, shocked and furious.

Neff slipped a backfire interruptor out of his pocket and snapped it onto the controller's curling wire. Its pins bit through its rubber skin and tapped into its copper veins. The little device blinked on, drawing electricity from the live wire like a parasite. Neff pressed one of the buttons on the controller, sending a signal to the antenna up top. The interruptor boosted that signal a hundred-fold, overwhelming Martel's transmitter and blowing it out in a shower of sparks.

The radio waves it pumped out in its death throes pulsed through the air, slamming into the charging mannessers' skulls like pneumatic hammers. Steam rose where the whip antennae plugged into their spines.

The twisted dogs yelped and bolted, scattering down the abandoned streets in frantic sprints. Their whines echoed behind them.

Neff watched them run through his pistol sights. Flames were crackling behind him, gnawing their way through the gatehouse.

When he was convinced that they were not coming back, he turned his attention back to the dead collaborator. The street would have finished Martel even if the bullet had not hollowed his head. Neff dug under the man's chins and pulled his dog tags free. He would need them for a trade: to Luciani, Martel's life was worth a list of active Parisian Carlingue informants. A list like that would save the lives of many officials, and seal the fates of many collaborators.

Luciani's brother had been one of Martel's 'criminals,' a curfew-breaker who’d died bloody and terrified as an example to others. It was only right that the Vichy died on those same cobblestones, and that his death would save actual spies.

Martel for the list.

It was a good trade.

“What are you doing?” someone shouted at Neff. He twisted around and saw a man standing in an open door. He was a civilian, dressed in a nightshirt and clutching a fire poker.

Neff grunted. Talking Martel's name out of him was more conversation than he preferred to have in a whole week. He stuffed the dog tags into his pocket.

“Where did they go?” a woman asked.

“They are still out there,” the man told her. “He destroyed the controls. They will be wild.”

“They will be dogs,” Neff snapped.

More people had appeared in open doors and windows. Those same people were perfectly content to hide and let him get run down and mauled in their streets.

“You are letting them go?” the man asked.

“I already did,” he answered.

“And you will not do anything?” another man demanded. Neff stood and holstered his pistol. For people who had let their city get taken over by a fat man and a bunch of dogs, they had certainly become bold. He shook his head and lit a cigarette, chuckling to himself.

“You are laughing?” a woman demanded. Others were speaking up, though he could only understand the few of them that spoke French. Neff stepped toward the growing crowd, which parted like a startled school of fish. They kept their distance as he ambled back up the street that the dogs had chased him down.

“Stop there!” a man shouted at his back. He sounded bold for someone who'd been forced to his knees by six dogs.

“Why?” he asked. His voice shocked them silent. The formerly bold man's wife spoke for him:

“They would kill us,” she sobbed.

Neff snorted. They were big, but they were dogs.

A good night out in force would round them up or drive them out. It might be what these cowards needed. Martel and the Vichies had controlled them through bullying and terror, not by strength. The people of Bastia needed something to wake them up; to do otherwise would get them steamrolled again. Mussolini was already clambering to get their little island. If they sat back and stayed scared by dogs, people would crush them into dust.

“Kill you?” Neff growled.

The woman sobbed and nodded. Neff shook his head and started off, dog tags jingling in his pocket. He blew smoke over his shoulder, saying:

“That is your problem.”

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Copyright © 2023 Daniel Baldwin. All rights reserved.

Written and edited by Daniel Baldwin. Art by Dudu Torres.