Checkmated

The bus stop ground to a halt. This big hulking figure squeezed out from behind the signpost. Despair. He walked right up to me and looked me right in the eyes. I knew that look. "Colonel Chickenpox," I beamed, "do you have any news from the front?" He looked down with a sullen scowl. "No sir!" he barked. "No news is good news!" This wasn't the first time he reported back to me with nothing of strategic import. I've had it up to your face in false status reports. I'm trying to wage effective war here, and Colonel Chickenpox is still operating on a pre-Gist mindset. He doesn't understand that in the game of Chess, you can never let the enemy capture your pawns. Even the lowliest of pawns can one day grow up to be a rook. The rooks are the ones who really hold the power. The queens think they're great, because they can move in any direction, but at the end of the day, who can castle?! Bah! You might as well En Passant a bishop in the study with the candlestick. King me.

But I really have great respect for the Colonel. Back during the sixties, he was the one who flew gold in from the moon. Why do you think no nation has ever gone to the moon since the early seventies? The Colonel did such a good job covering his tracks, no one ever found out about the hidden gold deposits buried just beneath the moon's surface. Oh, over the years there's been speculation, but idle speculation that didn't amount to anything substantial. If it did, you think the Colonel would've let it go at that? Chickenpox is a man not to be messed with, not in the classical sense at least. You can't just look at him sideways and expect to not get a shot in the jaw with his hefty left hook. That was the first mistake I made when I met him. Thought was all razzle, no dazzle. I've never been so happy to be proven wrong.

His grandkids don't like it, though. They know all about his lunar exploits, and how he accrued tons of gold for the government. But are they going to go to the press, to tell the people that they've been lied to for decades? No. They're just in it for the gold, the little grubbers. They even put the Colonel in one of those homes that you see on the news, where the elderly are forced to fend for themselves against bands of rabid dogs and squirrels. That's why I hired him as a security consultant. I didn't really need another strongman, but I couldn't bear to see my old friend rotting away over at Mouldy Acres Retirement Home. Now he's on my payroll, and I let him chase off all the teenage delinquints that he can find. He does enjoy the wheezing sound they make as they run, as most teenagers are now obese. A prince of a man.