The Secret of the Chamberpot

It was a courtyard on a bright spring day. Park benches stood watch over sweat bees flitting about in the clover. A man in a tracksuit sat down at the far end of a bench. At its other end sat a woman in gothic crushed velvet with a floppy-brim hat.
"Vera Huhn, do you know what you're doing?"
"Yes," she said with an air of boredom. "I allow myself to be captured. At midnight I escape by regurgitating the two lockpicks I'm uncomfortably holding down in the back of my throat. They're sharp enough to pierce a man's temple -- that's how I get past the guards. I shimmy up the medieval tapestry (La Huguen Buscallian, c. 1566) to the second balcony and vault into the duchy's chamber across the molten moat using whatever is handy, likely a lance from the unconscious Grande Palace Parade. I rig a device that will cause his dukeness's death upon the entry of his men-in-waiting into his chamber the following morning. Something ghastly, I know. Then I steal the forbidden jewels of Samaransk -- the chamberpot has a false bottom and they're tucked inside. I go out the window back into the castle and using my feminine wiles I lure the prefect to his doom, probably by tripping him off the precipice during the heat of passion. The stakes he used to display his rotting enemies will justly break his fall. At the top of the tower I steal the air force's only dogfighter, a hot air balloon, and sail the two days it will take to return here, where I hand over the jewels and collect the second half of my reward."
"Excuse me, what was that about the prefect? He's not part of the assignment."
Vera took the gun from her hip and cocked it. It glinted, reflecting the reliable bulb overhead. "I know. That part is personal. And free."
END