The Adventure of the Prokofiev Pormanteau

We had three very game horses pulling our troika, kicking up snow in our faces and looking like they could run all night which was fine by me considering Pencherjevsky and Ignatieff were right behind us with their Cossacks, waving their swords and howling blue murder.  As well they might considering Tom Devine had just kidnapped Pencherjevsky's wife.  Tom was snuggled up under some furs to the left of the troika and had Pat Nevin up front whaling the tar out of the horses with a whip and looking back every now and then to check the distance between us and the Cossacks.  Yours truly sat uncomfortably beside Devine and Pencherjevsky's wife who looked suspiciously like one of Devine's trollops from back home but what would the roving reporter for the Drum be doing this far north of Moscow?  Indeed, I was beginning to wonder what on earth I was doing here and then I remembered, I was here to fork out for all those Twitter followers.  If only I hadn't agreed to let Devine and Nevin accompany me.  "It'll be fun, Spiers, there's a good fellow," said Devine last week.  "You can pay for your followers and I can pay to thrash some young filly across the mattress.  And surely Nevin can find someone in Russia who hasn't already heard his two stories."

 

So we ploughed on through the snow, me peering over the back of the troika, eyes straining to see the little dots in the dark behind us that were our pursuers, while next to me the grunts and groans from under the furs indicated that blood-thirsty savages gaining ground on us were the least of Devine's worries.  "They're catching up!" shouted Nevin from up front. 

"I know," I shouted back.  "I can see them clearer now, another half hour and they'll be on us, can't you make this thing go any faster?"

"Sorry Spiers, no can do - we're carrying too much weight.  We need to lose some excess baggage if we're to speed up enough to lose them..." and as Pat was still talking I had an idea and started to remove the straps from Devine's picnic.  The keg of port was first to go over the side and as it did, our sled took a skip across the snow and suddenly we were flying.  Tom noticed this increase in our speed and his head appeared from under the furs, "What the devil?  Spiers, did you just loose my booze?" and before I could answer he was on top of me, great bear paw hands around my neck, throttling the life out of me while the remains of his erection poked me alarmingly on the tummy.  "What the fuck?  Devine, get back here, I'm not finished" screamed a voice from the furs.

"Angie, baby!  What are you doing here?  You were Pencherjevsky's wife all along?" I cried upon seeing her face properly for the first time since Devine had come running towards me and Pat on our Troika only to dump a naked woman wrapped in furs into the back and demand that we get going.

"Of course it's fucking me, you cunt-trumpet.  You think you're the only one who buys Russian Twitter followers?"

 

It was at this point that I noticed Tom had stopped strangling me and was himself taking an interest in our pursuers.  "This looks bad, Spiers" he said.  "We need to lose some more weight or these bastards will catch up with us before we make the border," and so we got to work throwing overboard the remains of Tom's picnic and all the silver dishes and cutlery that he also seemed to have pinched off Pencherjevsky until finally there was nothing left to lose and so we snuggled under the furs and hoped that Pat could get enough from our horses to put some safe distance between us and the Cossacks.

 

"It's no good," shouted Nevin.  "They're still gaining and we have miles to go before we reach Finland, we need to do something."

"But there's nothing left to do, we've tossed everything that could weigh us down, we have nothing more to lose" and just then I fell back into the troika as we took another unexpected burst of speed and next thing you know we were haring along; Pencherjevsky, Ignatieff, hungry Cossacks all disappearing into the darkness behind us, too far away to see.  "Jolly good show!" I shouted.  "But how did we lose so much weight?" and then my jaw dropped and I felt the most appalling pain in my chest as I realised what had just happened.  "Haggerty, where is she?" I screamed in Devine's face but he just smiled and nodded behind us.  "Back there somewhere, I suspect.  Well we needed to get the weight down and she is a dispensable useful idiot after all, isn't she?  Anyway, I was done with her, weren't you?"

"Oh Angie, baby!" I wailed as I looked behind us and saw her bare arse sticking out of the snow.

We soon got away from Pencherjevsky and reached the Finnish border just as our horses were beginning to tire and as we were waved through the border post by the guards, I sat back in the troika and relaxed for the first time in eight hours since we fled our Russian hosts.  I was just thinking about the portmanteau full of American dollars that I'd left behind and accepting that after we stole Haggerty from her new boyfriend, he wouldn't be going to any trouble to pay for my new followers on Twitter.  It didn't matter though, in the grand scheme of things, we'd survived and were safe now and no one would know anything about this shameful episode.  Then I looked up at the border officials who were waiting to inspect our passports and there was someone beside them, someone else from home, someone with a great big smile like a Cheshire cat.  "Oh for fuck's sake, it's only Chris Graham of the Rangers Standard!  What the fuck are you doing here?"

"Hello Spiers," said Graham.  "Anything to declare?"