The Red Carpet

[svetlanacat6]

 The young photographer sighed. There were hundreds of people cheering, clapping, swaying. Hundred of people waving cameras, flashes and perhaps, somewhere, evil birds plotting evil tricks. “Perhaps” was the problem. They were watching over the staircase to the Palais du Festival, in Cannes, jurors, actresses, actors, directors parading on the red carpet. “Perhaps”... He shrugged his shoulders. Wrong reports, mistakes.. red herring... They were wasting time and energy... Probably...

“Hey... Young man?”

A man in his fifties, thinning on the top, in a tuxedo was studying him with interest. “ I'm preparing a movie...” He tilted his head. “It's about POW planning to escape from a German camp, during World War II and there is a character...” He bit his lips and nodded, “a young English officer, blond, rather short in stature... You're... you're exactly him...”

But a wave of people was dragging him forward and he just held out a card to the young blond.

The reporter joined the photographer. His clenched jaws betrayed his annoyance. “Nothing. It was a wrong track!” He pointed his chin at the group on the red carpet; “Who was he?”

Illya Kuryakin peeped at the card. “A movie director... John Sturges...”

Napoleon Solo raised an interested eyebrow, “ Sturges? Oh, yes! You saw The Magnificent Seven, last year?”

“The remake of Kurosawa's Seven Samurai?, yes... not bad.”

Napoleon Solo knew this face. “And? What did he want?”

Illya Kuryakin smiled innocently. “Oh... he just wanted me to play a part in his next movie...”