Friday nights are a popular night in any town for the clubbing scene, but we don’t expect the venues of our entertainment to be a venue for Hussites, the pre-Protestant religious revolutionaries from the Holy Roman Empire. Following a leak late Thursday night, I hightailed it from my office in Dunelm House, Durham’s own Fleet Street, to investigate. Bohemia, according to our sources, has been harbouring a sinister secret for a very long time.
As I approached the popular nightclub, it was difficult not to notice the teams of naive students passing into the club. Ignorance is bliss, it seems, or at least very drunk. I ignored the queue and headed directly to the door, flashing my Bubble investigative journalism card to the bouncer. That was my first mistake. I’d let them know of my presence, a fatal misstep that would echo throughout the night. Clearly, the bouncers had been given distinct orders to turn away any prying eyes. A clue to the huge secret they must be hiding.
I attempted to negotiate with the bouncers, but they remained unphased. I flashed them 200 Czech Koruny (around £6.60) to try and grease the proverbial cogs, but was met with physical aggression and manhandling. They pushed me away and told me to “f*** off or we’ll call the police.”
It seems I couldn’t get through by conventional methods, and the bouncers of Bohemia weren’t playing ball. At times like this it’s easy to fall into despair, and I very almost did, as I had a little cry in the alleyway.
But this isn’t my first rodeo. I doffed my trench and trilby hat in favour of orange tracksuits, a bucket hat and a fake beard and entered the queue from the back. After 9 minutes had passed, I wondered if waiting for people to freeze half to death was part of their scheme too.
Standing in the queue I took notes on the building, it was nice, too nice. Overpriced drinks alone surely couldn’t afford this much exterior decor. There must be external funding for this kind of set-up.
Often businesses like this are just a front. They rake in cash from expensive tickets and drinks, launder the money, and send it back to fund their cause abroad – in this case, rebellion against the Pope and the Holy Roman Empire. I wouldn’t be surprised if they reserved space in the back for drug manufacturing too, acid, MDMA, these types make anything just to turn a profit for their handlers. Loud music is used by these sickos to cover up the sound of their drug labs, and the large electricity bills racked up from their lighting systems is an all too convenient cover.
Finally I got to the bouncers, they asked for ID, I showed them my driver’s license that I drew a beard on on the bus ride up (there was a lot of traffic), paid a ridiculous sum, and entered.
It was dark and there was loud music blaring. Once again, it seems I was proved right about the drug lab theory- but there was no time for that. I immediately noticed the lack of Bohemian insignia on the walls, a smart move from management. They clearly know what they’re doing, and when to cover their tracks. I knew I was up against professionals and this wasn’t going to be easy.
Candidly, I approached the bar and ordered a Harvey Wallbanger Screwdriver cocktail. I astutely noticed that they sold a lot of beer here, another clue.
“This is a lovely place.” I said to the girl working the other side.
She barely acknowledged my presence.
“I said, this is a lovely place”, I spoke louder, and her ears perked up towards me, “I bet it needed a lot of funding to set up.”
I am a master at getting information out of unsuspecting minimum wage staff.
“Yeah, I guess.”
Score. She didn’t even know what she was getting herself into.
“Probably from a really big organisation, like, for example, the Taborites, the radical proto-communistic religious movement active between the years 1420, and 1452 who took hold of the gold mines and rebelled against the Papacy…”
She turned away from me and grabbed her manager. Drat! I had said too much.
Her manager came to talk to me.
“Can I help you?” The manager’s put-on veneer of Geordie scarcely veiled her true Central European accent. She’d clearly learnt the dialect well, there were no “Ich”‘s, “Bin”‘s or “Eins”‘ in this establishment.
“No not really”, I responded coolly, the worst thing you can do at a time like this is panic. I was at a critical part of the investigation, and I almost had them.
“But when I was in the alleyway, I couldn’t help but notice a Škoda Octavia. That’s a Czech car, is it not?”
“Excuse me?”
“That’s your car right?”
“What are you a traffic warden? I paid my parking.”
“Hehe… No.” It was hard not to smirk. She had all but admitted guilt. “Škoda is headquartered in Mladá Boleslav, a town ‘formerly’” – I enacted air quotations – “allied with the Taborites in the Hussite wars, is it not?”
“Who even are you?” She looked baffled – clearly, she didn’t expect someone to have done their homework.
“Ha… just an inebriated reveller, like my fellow patrons of this joint”, it’s good to keep a strong alibi. You never know when things might go south, and the investigative journalist becomes investigated and journalled – i.e. hit by a big book.
For all they knew, I was Ezra “G Drilla” Michaels, a part-time dog walker from Brixton, tagline “part-time dog walker, full-time lover” as my website says.
“You’re not that investigative journalist weirdo that the bouncers turned away?” She retorted, “How did you even get in here?”
My earlier mistakes were becoming apparent. They were onto me. Word spreads fast in a place like this, it seems.
The game was up. Fine. But I still had one or two tricks up my sleeve.
“Do you, or do you not condemn Jan Žižka’s unprompted attack on Hungary?”
She opened her mouth in awe, presumably because of the inescapable catch-22 I had gotten her in – condemn the Hussites, or reveal her affiliation to the Bohemian Kingdom.
“I said, do you condemn Hussite Jan Žižka’s unprompted attack on Hungary?” I repeated the question.
She turned to the side, calling for the bouncers, but my eyes remained locked on her.
“I asked you a question Miss!”
I could tell my question was making her uncomfortable. Sadly, she’s just a casualty of war in the tumultuous world of investigative journalism. It had to be done.
She looked back at me, pained, and we locked eyes. Two burly hands clasped my arms as they began pulling me away. I never broke eye contact. Not once. I can only imagine it was chilling.
“Why won’t you answer the question Miss?”
As they dragged me away, I thought to myself, this is the price of truth, freedom and democracy. And as the fates have decreed, it is down to me and my colleagues at The Bubble Durham to pay it forwards.
Like Martin Luther King, I put up no struggle as they hauled me out of the doors, and chucked me on the wet pavement. But as the bouncers turned away, I noticed something. Something most journalists would miss. But I am not most journalists. And I do not miss a thing. What was this surreptitious something, this clandestine creation, you ask? It was a black eagle insignia tattooed on the bouncers arm… The road to truth, it appears, is not at an end yet…
It later resolved that, my $500 trench coat and industry standard trilby that I cached in the alleyway dumpster had been seized – no doubt by a high-level Czech agents. The conspiracy, it seems, is wide reaching. Then I missed my bus.
That’s all from me, Egon Manyac MacDonald Jr., for now – but I’m sure you’ll hear from me again soon… If the Hussite operatives don’t get me first.
Truth prevails… I guess.
Egon out.