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In a word: Incline

When you first think of this word, it is with a slippery slope in mind.

I’ve been on a few of those in my time.

And while we’re on the subject, those inclines measured in degrees are very important if you want a train to get up and down the side of a mountain.

For the train, that’s an incline plane, the point where traction alone won’t get the iron horse up the hill.

Did I say ‘Iron Horse’?  Sorry, regressed there, back to the mid-1800s in the American West for a moment.

It’s not that important when it comes to trucks and cars, and less so if you like four-wheel driving; getting up near-vertical mountainsides often present a welcome challenge to the true enthusiast

But for the rest of us, not so much if you find yourself sliding in reverse uncontrollably into the bay.  I’m sure it’s happened more than once.

Then…

Are you inclined to go?

A very different sort of incline, ie to be disposed towards an attitude or desire.

An inclination, maybe, not to go four-wheel driving?

There is another, probably more obscure use of the word incline, and that relates to an elevated geological formation.  Not the sort of reference that crops up in everyday conversation at the coffee shop.

But, you never know.  Try it next time you have coffee and see what happens.

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Writing about writing a book – Day 2

Hang about.  Didn’t I read somewhere you need to plan your novel, create an outline setting the plot points, and flesh out the characters?

I’m sure it didn’t say, sit down and start writing!

Time to find a writing pad, and put my thinking cap on.

I make a list, what’s the story going to be about? Who’s going to be in it, at least at the start?

Like a newspaper story, I need a who, what, when, where, and how.

Right now.

 

I pick up the pen.

 

Character number one:

Computer nerd, ok, that’s a little close to the bone, a computer manager who is trying to be everything at once, and failing.  Still me, but with a twist.  Now, add a little mystery to him, and give him a secret, one that will only be revealed after a specific set of circumstance.  Yes, I like that.

We’ll call him Bill, ex-regular army, a badly injured and repatriated soldier who was sent to fight a war in Vietnam, the result of which had made him, at times, unfit to live with.

He had a wife, which brings us to,

Character number two:

Ellen, Bill’s ex-wife, an army brat and a General’s daughter, and the result of one of those romances that met disapproval for so many reasons.  It worked until Bill came back from the war, and from there it slowly disintegrated.  There are two daughters, both by the time the novel begins, old enough to understand the ramifications of a divorce.

Character number three:

The man who is Bill’s immediate superior, the Services Department manager, a rather officious man who blindly follows orders, a man who takes pleasure in making others feel small and insignificant, and worst of all, takes the credit where none is due.

Oops, too much, that is my old boss.  He’ll know immediately I’m parodying him.  Tone it down, just a little, but more or less that’s him.  Last name Benton.  He will play a small role in the story.

Character number four:

Jennifer, the IT Department’s assistant manager, a woman who arrives in a shroud of mystery, and then, in time, to provide Bill with a shoulder to cry on when he and Ellen finally split, and perhaps something else later on.

More on her later as the story unfolds.

So far so good.

What’s the plot?

Huge corporation plotting to take over the world using computers?  No, that’s been done to death.

Huge corporation, OK, let’s stop blaming the corporate world for everything wrong in the world.  Corporations are not bad people, people are the bad people.  That’s a rip off cliché, from guns don’t kill people, people kill people!  There will be guns, and there will be dead people.

There will be people hiding behind a huge corporation, using a part of their computer network to move billions of illegally gained money around.  That’s better.

Now, having got that, our ‘hero’ has to ‘discover’ this network, and the people behind it.

All we need now is to set the ball rolling, a single event that ‘throws a cat among the pigeons’.

Yes, Bill is on holidays, a welcome relief from the problems of work.  He dreams of what he’s going to do for the next two weeks.  The phone rings.  Benton calling, the world is coming to an end, the network is down.  He’s needed.  A few terse words, but he relents.

Pen in hand I begin to write.

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 15

It’s the obvious items in the photograph that you see first, or that your eyes go to first.

The ocean, the beach, the buildings. You can see a shopping mall with MacDonald’s sign above it.

Yes, it’s late afternoon, and you can see long shadows of the buildings.

So, if I asked you what did you see in this photo, what would your reply be?

From a thriller writer or murder mystery writer’s point of view, it’s what you don’t necessarily see.

So, for the purposes of the story, the opening line for the world-weary detective, handing the photo to his partner, “What’s is it you can’t see in this photo?”

A partner that hadn’t been on the job very long, in from the suburbs, and had seen little more than break and enters car theft, and school kids hi-jinks.

“What am I supposed to be looking for?”

“You want to be a detective, or be looking for old ladies cats?”

His partner takes the photo in hand and looks at it again.  There has to be a reason why the old man had given it to him, or perhaps there wasn’t and he was just playing with him again.

No, he thought, there has to be something…

And then he saw it, quite by accident.  A hand, a gun, and following the line of fire, at the end, what looked like someone in the bushes.

In a photo taken from a higher floor of the building over the road, looking down on what was supposed to be a rooftop recreational area.

Only there had been no report of a missing person or a gunshot wound in the last seven days.

“When was it taken?”

“Two days ago?”

“And no reports of a shooting, or a body?”

“No.  And yet the person who took this swears he saw a body, but by the time he came back, there was nothing.”

The detective handed his partner a second photo.  Time-stamped five minutes later.  With no gun and no body.

What will happen next?

What I learned about writing – Book covers are very important

And, of course, the description.

Probably one of the hardest things for a first-time author is not so much the writing but what is needed after the book is written.

You need a good description.  Short, sharp, incisive!

There’s a ream of advice out there, and I have read it all.

And, still, I got it wrong.

Then there is the cover.

I wanted simplistic, a short description to give the reader a taste of what’s in store, and let the story speak for itself.

No.

Apparently, a good cover will attract the reader to the book.

When I tendered my books on various sites to advertise them, sites such as Goodreads, and ThirdScribe, all was well with what I had done.

Then I submitted my books to a third site and they rejected the covers as too simplistic and the descriptions mundane, and wouldn’t post them.

Wow.

There’s a huge blow to the ego.  And just the sort of advice that would make a writer think twice about even bothering to continue.

But…

Perhaps the person who wrote that critique was being cruel to be kind.

At any rate, I am changing the covers, and rewording the descriptions.

Will it be a case of ‘what a difference a cover makes’?

365 Days of Writing, 2026 – 279

Day 279 – Writing Exercise

…

We’ve all been there.

When you’re sitting around the table with ops and the briefing teams, you trust that they have researched the subject and checked the details, so when you go in, nothing is left to chance.

Trust.

Except in my experience, you sit there listening to the plan and hearing the confidence they have and the level of detail, and you think, what could go wrong.

For the first few missions, I trusted nothing would go wrong, and it didn’t.  Not majorly anyway.

Then one did, but we were trained to deal with setbacks and disasters mostly from last-minute changes or a single missed detail.

Too many missions, too long in the field, too on edge, approaching burnout

Then the trust turns to hope.

But it’s not until there’s a problem you can’t solve – not immediately – and you get into a situation where the training is there, but it goes only so far.

For me, it was capture.

Berlin, three months ago, in the wrong place at the wrong time, there’s only so much you can do or say before the heavyweights come in.

A foreign agent in a place where he should not be, captured and unable to firmly convince the interrogators they’ve made a mistake, ends up in a dark, damp cell, at the end of a week’s conditioning.   Weeks of sensory deprivation and psychological torture.

Before the real interrogation starts.

My breaking point in training was thirty-six days.  We were at sixty.  My mind was swivelling from the overwhelming desire to give in, then to looking for a means of escape.

On the sixty-first day, I was being dragged from the cell to the interrogation room.  The guard team leader had used me as a punching bag before ordering his men to scrape me off the floor.

It was one hundred and thirty-three steps to the interrogation room.  We made one hundred and seven before a figure in black shot the three; then, as the interrogators came out to see what was happening, they were shot too.

Then a whispered in my ear, “Can you run?”

“Try to stop me.”  I didn’t think I could, but that’s what the person in black wanted to hear.

We ran.  Six more guards died.  I made it to a paddock where a helicopter was waiting.  I was literally thrown on board and took off whilst the person in black and the crew member were still climbing aboard.

That was all I could remember.

…

I woke up in the Department C training centre hospital, my handler, Dr Hawkins, sitting across the room doing what I thought was the Times cryptic crossword.

He had sent me into hell, and at least once during each of those sixty-one days in captivity I had devised a new way to mete out a long, slow, excruciating death to him and anyone else who created that fiasco.

The thing was, i knew sooner or later a mission would go south.  We all knew that our number could be up at any time.  After all, we were doing stuff that was technically illegal, and often impossible.

We would do the same to them, that they did to us.  It still didn’t make me feel any better.

He peered over the paper, then put it down.  “Ah, Vance, you’re awake.  Good.”

Like nothing had happened.  To him we were machines: come back damaged, we got sent to the repair shop, sent out for a test run and then back into service.

You didn’t quit and you didn’t retire.  I hadn’t yet discovered what happened to you if you could no longer work.

Right then, looking at his cold, expressionless face, I didn’t want to.

…

Debriefing, deprogramming, call it what you like, was as bad as what came before it.

I may have seemed normal the moment I woke up, but I’d been in captivity for sixty days, and he wanted to know what they had done.

I tried to help.  Unfortunately, all it did was make me cynical, hyper-vigilant, and desperate to prove that I wasn’t broken.

Three weeks, four, Hawkins drew a line under the mess he created and gave me a return-to-light-duty lies ticket.

I could go back to work, but nothing too complicated.  Those were the dream jobs: cushy surveillance, observe and record.

It didn’t require briefing teams, just ops one-on-one with a purple folder.

The brief:  stationed in a quiet, rain-swept Scottish seaside village.  The assignment was, if anything, laughably simple: to observe a low-level embassy clerk suspected of leaking minor logistical data decades ago.

It was purely meant to decompress me, and ease my way back in.  I read the file, threw what I would need in my backpack, along with a few dog-eared paperback spy novels and headed to Port Crudon, the village by the sea, to join the winter tourists.

Instead of a hotel room, I had a small cottage.  The day I arrived, the air had the mixed aromas of sea salt, damp wool and peat smoke.

Parked outside and sitting in the battered Volvo, the sort of car an absent-minded professor would own, I looked out through the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers at my new home.

My grip on the steering wheel was so tight my knuckles were white, and I was consciously flouncing my breaths, in four, hold four, out four, a CBT technique Hawkins had given me to combat sensory flashbacks.

That wasn’t the worst of it; I had acquired a hyper-awareness of everything around me: the number of fishing boats in the small harbour, seven, the precise angle of the rear-view mirror, the ticking of the analogue watch.  The silence that surrounded me felt heavier than the noise.

I hadn’t told him the true nature of what I was experiencing, or I’d still be back in the hospice.

It took five minutes to get out of the car.  Gull’s Rest was an apt name.  There was a dozen on the roof, watching him.  A small, whitewashed cottage with a slate roof, it overlooked the rocky shoreline.

Home away from home.  That’s how it was described to him.

He assumed the neighbour to the left was out, and the one on the right had a light on.  And was that a gentle brush of the curtain?

Before going in, I did a sweep of the perimeter, something that was instilled in us and automatically done without thinking.

Escape routes up and down the road, the houses nearby and who, if anyone, was in them, and how far to the village itself, and most importantly, a cafe where he could have breakfast, and a restaurant for dinner, a shop for supplies.

And the pub for a drink.

He grabbed his duffel bag, and after another intense stare up and down the road, he pushed open the squeaky gate, noting the picket fence was leaning in places and in need of repairs, and passed through.

The front door was solid and recently repaired.  The key was under the flowerpot, as advised, and the door opened silently.  It belied an external facade that looked neglected.

He shook his head.  There are no conspiracies.

Just the same, the scan of the cottage was instinctive and compulsive, checking the floorboards for weight traps, examining the door and window locks, possible entrances and exits, and sight measured the drop from the bedroom window to the ground.

I stopped when I realised I was checking behind a painting that hadn’t been moved for years, looking for a hidden microphone.  I forced a small laugh and said quietly to myself, “Relax, you’re just a tourist now.”

But was I?  I sat down and looked around.  Could I ever be just a tourist?  I swallowed and could still taste the copper and adrenaline left over from those sixty days of captivity.

A sharp, erratic knock at the door broke the silence and my thoughts with a jolt.  On my feet in a second, reaching for my gun and realising I didn’t have it, a momentary sense of utter shock was replaced with adopting a defensive stance.

A deep breath, exhale, then I opened the door.

It was an elderly woman huddled under a faded wool tartan shawl, holding a steaming ceramic bowl.  She shivered slightly, emphasising the cold air that rushed past her and inside when he opened the door.

“My name is Gable, Molly to friends.  I feel we will be,” she said in thick, warbling Scottish dialect.  “It’s cold, late, and you will be hungry.  I brought some hot cock-a-leekie soup to ward off the coastal chill.”

She ended it with a lopsided smile.

Habit taught you things you never stop doing, and as she spoke, I discovered a threat assessment.  He lopsided stance meant she’d been in an accident and possibly limped; she had thick cataract glasses that made her eyes impossibly large, and her hands had a slight tremor after she handed him the pot.

A harmless, eccentric local.

He smiled as he took the soup and thanked her.

“Come for the sea air?”

“Rest.”  He almost added recreation, making him sound like a soldier, or worse, a spy on sabbatical.

Gentle interrogation.

“We all need that every now and then.  You’ve come to the right place.  Perhaps we’ll run into each other.  Its a small village.  She smiled and left, definitely displaying a limp, slight but there.

He put the bowl on the table, quickly checking for foreign objects out of pure habit, and then had a small taste.  It tasted delicious, and best of all, hot.

It was a shame he didn’t have any bread to go with it.

…

The next morning, after a fitful night and a battle to light the fire in the bedroom, I got to work.  Dressing casually and looking touristy.

My cover story was that I’d been a manager in a large factory on stress leave after a breakdown.  It was almost true, the breakdown part anyway.

I walked to the village’s only pub, The Rope and Anchor, aptly named, as the inside was a collection of anchors and rope knots, and pictures of sailing ships adorning the walls.  Despite the hour, I ordered a pint.  I was not the only one and received a few dismissive looks.  I doubt I was the first southern stranger to wander in.

Mt Target, old Arthur Pindleton was already there, propping up the bar, hunched over his pint, and didn’t bother looking up when I stood beside him to order mine.

He looked like the frail, retired embassy clerk, a man who looked like he couldn’t copy a grocery list let alone state secrets.

Of course, I could be wrong, and appearances were deceptive.  And my mission was to watch him.

I went over to a corner by the windows that looked out over the street where I could see everyone coming, going, and padding by.

He sees a man with a plot and a bucket of tools walk over to the shop opposite.  A window cleaner.  He potters, then goes inside to fill the bucket, and a chat with the owner

Business is slow.

When he returns, he sees the man glance towards the pub, and I instinctively shrink back.  Moments later I could hear the squeak, squeak followed by the tap-tap of the squeegee.

I could feel a flash of fear running through me.  My mind instantly went back to the damp concrete floor in Verlin, the blinding overhead light, and the precise Morse code tapping on the pipes outside his cell, U-R-M-G.  Compromised

For a moment I couldn’t breathe, and panic was setting in.  My vision blurred.  Jesus.

I gripped the edge of the wooden table, glanced at the old frail clerk and then back at the harmless windows cleaner.  I shook my head and relaxed, quietly laughed to myself, just loud enough for the bartender to glance at me in concern.

I smiled in his direction, and he went back to polishing glasses.

I whispered to myself, “It’s just a squeegee, Alec.  You’re not losing your mind yet.”

Just the same, it was once said during training that sometimes it was the little things that could bring you down.

I looked at the barely touched pint, shrugged and took a dip.  It had to be residual effects from the last mission, and it was up to him to bury the past and believe not everything was part of a conspiracy.

…

That would have been the case if…

His mind had been finely tuned to trust no one or anything.  There were no such things as coincidences, and over the years he had proved that time and time again.

And if it just been the window cleaner, he would have eventually dismissed it.

Unfortunately, it was not.

On his third pint, noting that Prindleton only stirred to take a drink and spoke only when he needed a refill.  He spoke to no one else, and they didn’t speak to him.

An oddity in itself, unless being English made them all ostracise him.  For that matter, they didn’t approach me either, simply because I was new, and new in a place like this usually attracts attention.

That it didn’t, ran another red flag up the pole.

I looked out the window and saw a Royal Mail delivery van.  I looked at my watch, an old surveillance habit, and it was 11:14.  Then, as it approached the intersection to turn, the driver stepped on the brake three times.

Something in my mind clicked.  The three flashes were the Stasi-era emergency abort signal, the one he had recently used in Berlin.  And if that didn’t set his mind down a dark path, the 1114 was the exact registry number of the ambulance used by his captors to abduct him.

He laughed inwardly.  As if the postman was an ex-KGB operative.

I had to stop looking for ‘clues’.

It had to be that exact moment that the pub’s background music started up, filling the eerie silence with an odd assortment of atmospheric jazz, pleasant, drone-like, and utterly forgettable to the average patron.

An employee’s playlist, except…

His heart missed a beat.

The track that was playing right now included a subtle, low-frequency hum, the exact white noise frequency used in the sensory deprivation tank where I spent two gruelling weeks.  It was meant to trigger a mild panic attack.

What the hell is going on?

I went over to the bar and ordered another pint, desperately trying to not show how badly my hands were shaking.

I stayed until Prindleton went to the fish and chip shop and then went home.  I went to the bakery and bought a loaf of sourdough to have with what was left of the soup.  It was delicious.

When I got home and went to cut some slices, the flour dusted on the crust had been scored with a specific crosshatch pattern.

I shook my head, closed my eyes, then hoped I wasn’t seeing what I thought it was seeing: the story was a replica of the grid coordinates of the Berlin Safehouse where I was tortured.

I mean, seriously.  It was just bread.

He shoved it in the toaster.

…

Just as the sun set, I called it a day.  I wasn’t going to watch Prindleton 24 hours a day.  A man could not drink that much and then go out all night doing spy stuff.

If he was a spy, those days were over.

I just managed to get the fire on in the lounge room and think about what I was going to do for dinner.  Go out, perhaps the fish and chips shop.

That thought was arrested by a knock on the door.  When I opened it, it was the Gable woman, different oversized jumper, same glasses, same lopsided stance, and a grin, perhaps knowing she was irritating me.

“Mrs Gable.”  I thought I’d better address her properly.

She had another porcelain container.  “Lamb stew.  Went crazy making food.  There is enough for you, so I brought it over.”

“I can cook.”

She rolled her eyes, or her best attempt at it.  “Most, no, all of the men I know can’t, or do not want to.  I’m happy to cook for two again.”

“You’re not married?”

“Not anymore; the lying, cheating bastard took off with my younger sister.  She can have him.  It’s a lot quieter without him.”

I took the bowl.  “Thank you.  It’s greatly appreciated.”

She smiled.  “Storms are coming.  Keep an eye on the weather when you’re out.  It can get nasty very quickly.”

“I will.  Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome.”

…

After making more toast and dismissing the crosshatch grid as my imagination going wild, I turned in and started my surveillance early.

Something was not right about Prindleton.  Years of observing and reading body language told me Prindleton was not quite what was portrayed to be.

The fire kept the room warm, and as comfortable as the bed was, I didn’t sleep.  My mind was not going to let go of the coincidences.  One or two, maybe, but four.  That was stretching it.

Still half asleep, I heard the radio cut out, having left it on to use the classical music as an aid to sleep, followed by three short clicks, the old Soviet dead drop confirmation signal.  Faulty wiring?

I was up before the sun came up and left just as dawn was breaking.  No movement from one neighbour, but Mrs Gates, she was up, and I could swear her eyes were boring holes in my back.

Could she have been a spy back in her younger days?  There was something about her I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

The lights were on in his cottage, and there was movement behind the curtains.  A half hour in that early morning freeze had me so that I nearly missed him leaving, and that stride to the front gate was not that of a retired Embassy clerk.

He left the cottage at precisely 08:37 am, and if I thought about it, it was the same as my cell number when in captivity, but perhaps it was just a cruel mathematical coincidence.

Mental notes to store away.

I followed a fair distance from him so it would not look like I was following him.  I followed him to the cafe.  He ordered a coffee and a croissant and sat near the door.

After a few minutes, I followed him in and ordered a coffee but not a croissant.  I sat a few tables away.

I did my usual scan and noticed the man sitting at the corner table.  Nothing unusual about him, other than the usual office types: young, eager, new suit.

Keen to make his mark.

Except…

After he turned the pages, I could see a distinct hand-drawn symbol in the margins, the same duress cypher my captors used in Berlin to signal an impending execution.

I felt my heart go into overdrive.  I told myself it was my fractured mind connecting dots that weren’t there, that it was a textbook post-traumatic flashback.

The coffee had gone cold, but Prindleton was on the move.

Next stop the grocery store when something else caught his eye, the knots used to tie up the grocery crates were the same one his captors used to tie his wrists months ago.

If I wrote everything my mind was telling me was an omen, or that I was suddenly living in the middle of a living nightmare, Dr Harrison would have me thrown out in a heartbeat.

I could not tell anyone he was seeing ghosts, but there had to be a reason why I was seeing this stuff.  It had to be my mind playing tricks.

This went on for a week, in various locations, but each signifying an event that all led back to that period in captivity. It was almost a form of mental torture in itself.

By that time I was almost at the end of my tether and finally realised it was Mrs Gates keeping me from completely immersing myself in the conspiracy.  She brought hot food. And then during the day, she asked me over for a cup of tea and cake on the pretext that she hated dining alone.

She didn’t invite me to dinner, though.

At the end of that week, Mrs Gates did not turn up with food, and I missed her. I always felt better after she had gone.  My paranoia hit fever pitch, so I decided on a course of action.

I followed Prindleton to an alley behind the pub today’s; he had used it before, and it struck me that it was for clandestine movements that no one else knew about.

I was going to break protocol and confront Prindleton directly.  A street back from entering the alley, he went straight; I turned left.  And ran.

Three minutes later, it was standing in front of Prindleton.  Or whoever it was, because this was not an old man.

“What’s going on here?”

He looked startled when I stepped out from the corner and neatly barrelled into me.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“This is some sort of operation the department is running.”

“You’re mad.  I have no…”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the black car stop just back from the entrance to the alley.  I stepped forward, and suddenly the man fell backwards, blood staining his shirt, the result of a sniper shot.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

It was a set-up.

…

I disappeared up the alley, shouting and footsteps behind me.  I had five minutes before they reached the cottage.  I could get there in two.

One minute later, I found the digital recording device behind the bathroom window, a high-end, department-issue digital recording unit.

Then I found three others.

This wasn’t a mission; it was a stress test to test the first stress test.  And based on all my reactions, if I were calling the shots, I’d be put in an asylum.

Only with me it was a little more complicated than that.  I vaguely remembered Harrison telling me about stress triggers, and that I might experience some, all very explainable considering my last few months, and that he expected me to report them at the end of each week.

I didn’t, for obvious reasons.

Jesus.  I felt like a cornered rat, and for a second, I didn’t know what to do.  I was astonished that I had lasted this long.

The horrifying truth dawned on him in that moment: this was never a decompression assignment.  The entire village, the civilian anomalies – it was all a controlled environment constructed by his own department.  They weren’t trying to heal him; they were stress-testing him to see if his psychological breaking point in Berlin was permanent, using his own trauma triggers against him.

He slid down the wall, laughing almost hysterically at the absurdity of it, echoing through the cottage, so close to cracking.

Except…

The kitchen door swung open.  What he believed was one of the department’s sweep team operatives stepped in, uniform immaculate, weapon drawn.  But instead of shooting, the operative kicked the door, pulled off a highly realistic silicone throat piece, and spoke in a familiar voice.  “Keep laughing, Alec, make them think you’ve completely lost it.”

Maya.  Last he was told she had died in Berlin.  He hadn’t believed them; she was too good an operative.

“Haven’t got much time, but you’re not the only one in this chicken coop.  They’re stress testing all the top agents to see how much they can take before they break. They tried it on me.”  She smiled.  “You were saved by some deft cooking.  I’ll explain later.  We have to go.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere but here.”  She held out her hand.  “Come.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

Top 5 sights on the road less travelled – Paris

Escape the Crowds: Paris’s Top 5 Hidden Gems (That Deserve Your Visit)

Paris. The City of Lights, romance, and… endless queues? While the Eiffel Tower and the Louvre are undoubtedly must-sees, experiencing the best of Paris doesn’t have to mean battling shoulder-to-shoulder with thousands of fellow tourists.

If you’re looking to explore distinctive Parisian culture and history without the notorious bottlenecks, we’ve uncovered five incredible visitor attractions. These spots boast unique charm, fascinating features, and best of all: relative tranquility.

Pack your walking shoes, grab your camera, and prepare to discover a side of Paris few tourists ever see.

1. Musée Rodin (The Gardens)

While the Musée Rodin itself—home to iconic works like The Thinker and The Kiss—is popular, the vast, sculpted gardens surrounding the mansion are often overlooked as a place to linger, making them a true, peaceful escape.

Distinctive Features:

  • Sculpture Meets Serenity: The three-hectare garden is an open-air gallery, where Rodin’s profound bronze figures are set against lush lawns, rose bushes, and towering hedges. It creates one of the most sublime atmospheres in Paris.
  • The Reflection Pool: A large, tranquil pool reflects the 18th-century Hôtel Biron (the main museum building), providing stunning photographic opportunities and a space for quiet contemplation.
  • The Workshop: You can catch glimpses of the former studio spaces, helping you connect directly with the creative process of one of history’s greatest sculptors.

Why It’s Worth the Trip: You get world-class art without the crush of a major museum, allowing the beauty of the artwork and the landscape to truly sink in.

2. Butte-aux-Cailles

Forget the tourist trap boutiques of Montmartre; head instead to the Butte-aux-Cailles in the 13th arrondissement. This small, elevated neighborhood feels like a secret village preserved within the modern city, rarely appearing on mainstream tourist itineraries.

Distinctive Features:

  • Village Atmosphere: The area escaped the sweeping renovations of Baron Haussmann in the 19th century, leaving behind narrow, cobbled streets (like Rue des Cinq Diamants) lined with low, charming houses and hidden courtyards.
  • Art Nouveau Architecture: Look out for beautiful examples of brick and stone façades and original lampposts.
  • Street Art Hub: While peaceful, the Butte-aux-Cailles is also a discreet, vibrant center for Parisian street art, featuring colorful, high-quality murals and stencils often tucked away on small side streets.
  • The Artesian Wells: The area is famous for its natural hot springs, and you can still find the historic communal swimming pool—Piscine de la Butte-aux-Cailles—fed by underground water.

Why It’s Worth the Trip: It offers an authentic glimpse into local Parisian life, complete with wonderful traditional bistros and quiet cafés, far removed from the noise of the center.

3. Parc des Buttes-Chaumont

When most visitors think of Parisian parks, they picture the Tuileries or the Luxembourg Gardens. But for truly dramatic landscapes and peaceful seclusion, the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont in the 19th arrondissement is unbeatable.

Distinctive Features:

  • Dramatic Topography: Built on a former gypsum quarry and landfill, the park features steep cliffs, grottoes, artificial waterfalls, and a large central lake.
  • The Temple de la Sibylle: Perched atop a sheer, 50-meter-high cliff (known as the Belvédère Island) is a miniature Roman-style temple offering one of the most spectacular, yet uncrowded, panoramic views of Paris, including Sacré-Cœur in the distance.
  • Rustic Charm: Unlike the manicured symmetry of other parks, Buttes-Chaumont embraces a rugged, romantic English garden style, complete with a charming suspension bridge designed by Gustave Eiffel’s company.

Why It’s Worth the Trip: It is a breathtaking feat of landscape architecture, providing dramatic views and quiet walking paths that make you forget you are in a major European capital.

4. The Archives Nationales (Hôtel de Soubise)

Tucked away in the historic Marais district, the Archives Nationales houses France’s national historical archives. While the documents themselves are fascinating, the primary draw is the opportunity to wander through one of the most beautiful and best-preserved 18th-century aristocratic residences in Paris, the Hôtel de Soubise.

Distinctive Features:

  • Rococo Masterpieces: The most stunning features are the magnificent state rooms, particularly the oval salons, which are considered peerless examples of French Rococo interior design. The intricate gilded woodwork, ceiling frescoes, and elaborate ornamentation are breathtaking.
  • Courtyard Grandeur: The cour d’honneur (main courtyard) immediately transports you back to the age of Louis XV, showcasing the sheer scale and opulence of Parisian high society.
  • Historical Significance: Visitors can tour selected exhibits showcasing pivotal documents from French history, offering a deep dive into the nation’s past within a spectacular setting.

Why It’s Worth the Trip: You get to explore hidden architectural gems that rival the palace interiors of Versailles, but without the mandatory entry lines and huge tour groups.

5. Musée de la Vie Romantique (Museum of Romantic Life)

The name truly says it all. Located in the residential Nouvelle Athènes neighborhood (near Pigalle), this delightful museum occupies two charming small buildings and a lush garden courtyard that celebrate the artistic and literary life of the 19th-century Romantic era.

Distinctive Features:

  • Intimate Scale: Housed in the former home of painter Ary Scheffer, the museum is dedicated to the works of George Sand, Ernest Renan, and other Romantic figures. It feels more like visiting a well-preserved family home than a traditional museum.
  • Literary History: Artifacts include portraits, jewelry, and personal items associated with the writer George Sand, offering a deeply personal look at her life and times.
  • The Best Tearoom in Paris: The garden courtyard transforms into a glorious, ivy-covered tearoom (operated by Café Renoir) during the warmer months. It is hands-down one of the most idyllic spots in Paris for a restorative coffee or lunch.

Why It’s Worth the Trip: It offers a deeply atmospheric and gentle cultural experience. It is the perfect antidote to the high-intensity visit of a major museum, wrapped up in Parisian charm and elegance.

The magic of Paris extends far beyond the well-trodden paths. By seeking out these distinctive, less-crowded attractions, you can enjoy the city’s profound history, stunning architecture, and unparalleled beauty at your own pace. Happy exploring!

In a word: Deal

Deal or no deal.  That was a game show on TV once, involving briefcases.

Then, if you win…

It’s a big deal!

Or, of course, it is if you get in on the ground floor, which is to say, you’re one of the original investors, it becomes a great deal; it’s meaning, taking part in a financial transaction.

The word ‘deal’ along with big, great, tremendous, and once in a lifetime, feature prominently, but if you are like me by the time you invest the pyramid is about to collapse!

Then you’re in a great deal of trouble, meaning a lot of trouble — at the time, it feels catastrophic.

Or you’re working impossibly long hours to enrich the others above you, it a good deal of effort on your part for no reward.

Or deal with a problem, which is to say cope with or control, though if it’s a problem child, good luck with that.

But enough of the depressing descriptions,

When you play a card game, the first thing to happen is to deal the cards.

The second is to ask yourself if the dealer is dealing from the bottom of the deck, even if it looks like the top.

My father called these dealers ‘card sharps’.

Then there is a piece of wood commonly called deal, usually thin and square though not always so; it can also be a plank of pine or fir.

Inspiration, maybe – Volume 1

50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.

They all start with –

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

lookingdownfromcoronetpeak

And the story:

…

It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.

The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.

He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.

The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent.  We were following the car he was in, from a discreet distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.

There was nowhere for him to go.

The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road we were now on.  Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.

Where was he going?

“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter.  He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.

“What?”

“I think he’s made us.”

“How?”

“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing.  Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain.  He’s just sped up.”

“How far away?”

“A half-mile.  We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”

It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”

“Step on it.  Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”

Easy to say, not so easy to do.  The road was treacherous, and in places, just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three-thousand-foot fall down the mountainside.

Good thing then, I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.

Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster.  We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.

Or so we thought.

Coming quickly around another corner, we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.

“What the hell…” Aland muttered.

I was out of the car and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility.  The car was empty, and no indication of where he had gone.

Certainly not up the road.  It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit.  Up the mountainside from here, or down.

I looked up.  Nothing.

Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”

Then where did he go?

Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.

“Sorry,” he said quite calmly.  “Had to go if you know what I mean.”

I’d lost him.

It was as simple as that.

I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.

It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.

“Maybe next time,” Alan said.

“We’ll get him.  It’s just a matter of time.”

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2026

…

Find this and other stories in “Inspiration, maybe”, available soon.

InspirationMaybe1v1

Top 5 sights on the road less travelled – London

London’s Secret Charms: 5 Uncrowded Gems with Unforgettable Features

London. The very name conjures images of iconic landmarks, bustling streets, and a vibrant energy that pulses through its historic veins. But let’s be honest, that energy often translates into crowds – a beautiful, diverse, fascinating crowd, but a crowd nonetheless.

What if you yearn for a different rhythm? A London where you can connect with history, art, and nature without constantly jostling for a view? A London where distinctive features truly shine, allowing you to savour every unique detail?

Fear not, intrepid explorer! I’ve curated a list of five phenomenal London attractions that deliver on distinctive character without the typical tourist throngs. These are the places where you can breathe, ponder, and truly absorb the magic of this incredible city.

1. Sir John Soane’s Museum: A Collector’s Labyrinth of Wonders

What makes it distinctive? Imagine stepping into the mind of an eccentric 19th-century architect, where every surface, every nook, and every cranny is crammed with art, antiquities, and architectural fragments. Sir John Soane’s Museum is not a typical museum; it’s a meticulously preserved house that he designed to display his vast and eclectic collection exactly as he wanted it. Expect a fascinating, almost overwhelming, visual feast. Highlights include an Egyptian sarcophagus, a room of hidden paintings on hinged panels, and ceilings adorned with fragments of Roman sculpture.

Why it’s uncrowded: Its very nature – a house packed to the rafters – means visitor numbers are carefully controlled. It’s a small, intimate space, encouraging quiet contemplation rather than rapid sightseeing. You’ll often find yourself with plenty of room to explore.

Insider Tip: Look out for the “picture rooms” where walls literally open up to reveal more art behind them. It’s a delightful, theatrical surprise!

2. The Wallace Collection: Opulence and Masterpieces in a Grand Mansion

What makes it distinctive? Housed in Hertford House, a magnificent stately home in Marylebone, The Wallace Collection offers a truly unique experience: a peerless collection of 18th-century French art, furniture, porcelain, and old master paintings, all displayed in the sumptuous setting of a historic private residence. It feels less like a public gallery and more like you’ve been invited into a wealthy collector’s home. From rococo masterpieces like Fragonard’s “The Swing” to an impressive armoury, the sheer quality and variety are astonishing.

Why it’s uncrowded: While well-known, it often gets overlooked in favour of the larger, more public museums. Its location, slightly off the main tourist drag, also helps keep numbers manageable. Plus, it’s completely free to enter!

Insider Tip: Don’t miss the stunning central courtyard, which has been beautifully enclosed to create a light-filled restaurant – perfect for a refined coffee or lunch break.

3. Chelsea Physic Garden: London’s Oldest Botanic Oasis

What makes it distinctive? Tucked away behind high walls near the Thames, the Chelsea Physic Garden is a living museum of plants with a fascinating history. Established in 1673 by the Worshipful Society of Apothecaries, it was created specifically for the study of medicinal plants. Today, it’s a tranquil four-acre oasis showcasing around 5,000 different species, including the largest fruiting olive tree in Britain and the world’s most northerly grapefruit tree. It’s a place where history, science, and nature intertwine beautifully.

Why it’s uncrowded: It charges a modest entrance fee and isn’t on the primary tourist routes, ensuring a peaceful atmosphere. It’s a favourite among locals seeking serenity, rather than a must-see for first-time visitors ticking off landmarks.

Insider Tip: Check their website for workshops, talks, and guided tours which offer deeper insights into the garden’s extensive collections and history.

4. St. Dunstan in the East Church Garden: A Ruined Beauty Reclaimed by Nature

What makes it distinctive? This is perhaps one of London’s most visually stunning “hidden” gems. What once was a grand medieval church, later rebuilt by Sir Christopher Wren, was largely destroyed during the Blitz in 1941. Instead of rebuilding, the ruins were transformed into a public garden. Ivy-clad walls, elegant Gothic arches, and a Wren tower now frame a vibrant collection of trees and plants. It’s an ethereal, almost magical space that perfectly blends history with nature’s resilience.

Why it’s uncrowded: Despite its proximity to the Tower of London and Monument, it’s tucked away down a side street, making it easy to miss if you don’t know it’s there. It’s a favourite spot for city workers on their lunch break and photographers, but rarely overwhelmed by tourists.

Insider Tip: Visit on a sunny day when the light filters through the archways and foliage, creating a truly enchanting atmosphere. Find a bench and simply soak in the tranquility.

5. Leighton House: An Artist’s Victorian Fantasy

What makes it distinctive? Step into the fantastical home and studio of Victorian artist Frederic, Lord Leighton, and prepare to be mesmerised. The crowning glory is the “Arab Hall,” a breathtaking space inspired by Leighton’s travels to the Middle East. Adorned with over 1,000 iridescent Islamic tiles, a golden dome, and a tranquil fountain, it’s like stepping into a dream. Beyond this, the house offers beautiful period rooms, Leighton’s grand studio, and a collection of his and his contemporaries’ art. It’s a truly unique architectural and artistic vision.

Why it’s uncrowded: Located in Holland Park, West London, it’s a little further out than central attractions, which naturally reduces footfall. It also requires a timed ticket, ensuring a pleasant visitor experience.

Insider Tip: Look closely at the tiles in the Arab Hall – many are original 16th and 17th-century pieces, carefully acquired by Leighton himself.

So, the next time you find yourself in the magnificent city of London, consider taking a detour from the main thoroughfares. These five distinctive, uncrowded attractions offer a chance to connect with a different side of the capital – one that’s rich in history, beauty, and quiet wonder. Happy exploring!

Have you discovered any other uncrowded London treasures? Share them in the comments below!

First Dig Two Graves

A sequel to “The Devil You Don’t”

…

Revenge is a dish best served cold – or preferably so when everything goes right

Of course, it rarely does, as Alistair, Zoe’s handler, discovers to his peril. Enter a wildcard, John, and whatever Alistair’s plan for dealing with Zoe was dies with him.

It leaves Zoe in completely unfamiliar territory.

…

John’s idyllic romance with a woman who is utterly out of his comfort zone is on borrowed time. She is still trying to reconcile her ambivalence after being so indifferent for so long.

They agree to take a break, during which she disappears. John, thinking she has left without saying goodbye, refuses to accept the inevitable and calls on an old friend for help in finding her.

After the mayhem and being briefly reunited, she recognises an inevitable truth: there is a price to pay for taking out Alistair; she must leave and find them first, and he would be wise to keep a low profile.

But keeping a low profile just isn’t possible, and enlisting another friend, a private detective and his sister, a deft computer hacker, they track her to the border between Austria and Hungary.

What John doesn’t realise is that another enemy is tracking him to find her too. It could have been a grand tour of Europe. Instead, it becomes a race against time before enemies old and new converge for what will be an inevitable showdown.

365 Days of Writing, 2026 – 279

Day 279 – Writing Exercise

…

We’ve all been there.

When you’re sitting around the table with ops and the briefing teams, you trust that they have researched the subject and checked the details, so when you go in, nothing is left to chance.

Trust.

Except in my experience, you sit there listening to the plan and hearing the confidence they have and the level of detail, and you think, what could go wrong.

For the first few missions, I trusted nothing would go wrong, and it didn’t.  Not majorly anyway.

Then one did, but we were trained to deal with setbacks and disasters mostly from last-minute changes or a single missed detail.

Too many missions, too long in the field, too on edge, approaching burnout

Then the trust turns to hope.

But it’s not until there’s a problem you can’t solve – not immediately – and you get into a situation where the training is there, but it goes only so far.

For me, it was capture.

Berlin, three months ago, in the wrong place at the wrong time, there’s only so much you can do or say before the heavyweights come in.

A foreign agent in a place where he should not be, captured and unable to firmly convince the interrogators they’ve made a mistake, ends up in a dark, damp cell, at the end of a week’s conditioning.   Weeks of sensory deprivation and psychological torture.

Before the real interrogation starts.

My breaking point in training was thirty-six days.  We were at sixty.  My mind was swivelling from the overwhelming desire to give in, then to looking for a means of escape.

On the sixty-first day, I was being dragged from the cell to the interrogation room.  The guard team leader had used me as a punching bag before ordering his men to scrape me off the floor.

It was one hundred and thirty-three steps to the interrogation room.  We made one hundred and seven before a figure in black shot the three; then, as the interrogators came out to see what was happening, they were shot too.

Then a whispered in my ear, “Can you run?”

“Try to stop me.”  I didn’t think I could, but that’s what the person in black wanted to hear.

We ran.  Six more guards died.  I made it to a paddock where a helicopter was waiting.  I was literally thrown on board and took off whilst the person in black and the crew member were still climbing aboard.

That was all I could remember.

…

I woke up in the Department C training centre hospital, my handler, Dr Hawkins, sitting across the room doing what I thought was the Times cryptic crossword.

He had sent me into hell, and at least once during each of those sixty-one days in captivity I had devised a new way to mete out a long, slow, excruciating death to him and anyone else who created that fiasco.

The thing was, i knew sooner or later a mission would go south.  We all knew that our number could be up at any time.  After all, we were doing stuff that was technically illegal, and often impossible.

We would do the same to them, that they did to us.  It still didn’t make me feel any better.

He peered over the paper, then put it down.  “Ah, Vance, you’re awake.  Good.”

Like nothing had happened.  To him we were machines: come back damaged, we got sent to the repair shop, sent out for a test run and then back into service.

You didn’t quit and you didn’t retire.  I hadn’t yet discovered what happened to you if you could no longer work.

Right then, looking at his cold, expressionless face, I didn’t want to.

…

Debriefing, deprogramming, call it what you like, was as bad as what came before it.

I may have seemed normal the moment I woke up, but I’d been in captivity for sixty days, and he wanted to know what they had done.

I tried to help.  Unfortunately, all it did was make me cynical, hyper-vigilant, and desperate to prove that I wasn’t broken.

Three weeks, four, Hawkins drew a line under the mess he created and gave me a return-to-light-duty lies ticket.

I could go back to work, but nothing too complicated.  Those were the dream jobs: cushy surveillance, observe and record.

It didn’t require briefing teams, just ops one-on-one with a purple folder.

The brief:  stationed in a quiet, rain-swept Scottish seaside village.  The assignment was, if anything, laughably simple: to observe a low-level embassy clerk suspected of leaking minor logistical data decades ago.

It was purely meant to decompress me, and ease my way back in.  I read the file, threw what I would need in my backpack, along with a few dog-eared paperback spy novels and headed to Port Crudon, the village by the sea, to join the winter tourists.

Instead of a hotel room, I had a small cottage.  The day I arrived, the air had the mixed aromas of sea salt, damp wool and peat smoke.

Parked outside and sitting in the battered Volvo, the sort of car an absent-minded professor would own, I looked out through the rhythmic slap of the windshield wipers at my new home.

My grip on the steering wheel was so tight my knuckles were white, and I was consciously flouncing my breaths, in four, hold four, out four, a CBT technique Hawkins had given me to combat sensory flashbacks.

That wasn’t the worst of it; I had acquired a hyper-awareness of everything around me: the number of fishing boats in the small harbour, seven, the precise angle of the rear-view mirror, the ticking of the analogue watch.  The silence that surrounded me felt heavier than the noise.

I hadn’t told him the true nature of what I was experiencing, or I’d still be back in the hospice.

It took five minutes to get out of the car.  Gull’s Rest was an apt name.  There was a dozen on the roof, watching him.  A small, whitewashed cottage with a slate roof, it overlooked the rocky shoreline.

Home away from home.  That’s how it was described to him.

He assumed the neighbour to the left was out, and the one on the right had a light on.  And was that a gentle brush of the curtain?

Before going in, I did a sweep of the perimeter, something that was instilled in us and automatically done without thinking.

Escape routes up and down the road, the houses nearby and who, if anyone, was in them, and how far to the village itself, and most importantly, a cafe where he could have breakfast, and a restaurant for dinner, a shop for supplies.

And the pub for a drink.

He grabbed his duffel bag, and after another intense stare up and down the road, he pushed open the squeaky gate, noting the picket fence was leaning in places and in need of repairs, and passed through.

The front door was solid and recently repaired.  The key was under the flowerpot, as advised, and the door opened silently.  It belied an external facade that looked neglected.

He shook his head.  There are no conspiracies.

Just the same, the scan of the cottage was instinctive and compulsive, checking the floorboards for weight traps, examining the door and window locks, possible entrances and exits, and sight measured the drop from the bedroom window to the ground.

I stopped when I realised I was checking behind a painting that hadn’t been moved for years, looking for a hidden microphone.  I forced a small laugh and said quietly to myself, “Relax, you’re just a tourist now.”

But was I?  I sat down and looked around.  Could I ever be just a tourist?  I swallowed and could still taste the copper and adrenaline left over from those sixty days of captivity.

A sharp, erratic knock at the door broke the silence and my thoughts with a jolt.  On my feet in a second, reaching for my gun and realising I didn’t have it, a momentary sense of utter shock was replaced with adopting a defensive stance.

A deep breath, exhale, then I opened the door.

It was an elderly woman huddled under a faded wool tartan shawl, holding a steaming ceramic bowl.  She shivered slightly, emphasising the cold air that rushed past her and inside when he opened the door.

“My name is Gable, Molly to friends.  I feel we will be,” she said in thick, warbling Scottish dialect.  “It’s cold, late, and you will be hungry.  I brought some hot cock-a-leekie soup to ward off the coastal chill.”

She ended it with a lopsided smile.

Habit taught you things you never stop doing, and as she spoke, I discovered a threat assessment.  He lopsided stance meant she’d been in an accident and possibly limped; she had thick cataract glasses that made her eyes impossibly large, and her hands had a slight tremor after she handed him the pot.

A harmless, eccentric local.

He smiled as he took the soup and thanked her.

“Come for the sea air?”

“Rest.”  He almost added recreation, making him sound like a soldier, or worse, a spy on sabbatical.

Gentle interrogation.

“We all need that every now and then.  You’ve come to the right place.  Perhaps we’ll run into each other.  Its a small village.  She smiled and left, definitely displaying a limp, slight but there.

He put the bowl on the table, quickly checking for foreign objects out of pure habit, and then had a small taste.  It tasted delicious, and best of all, hot.

It was a shame he didn’t have any bread to go with it.

…

The next morning, after a fitful night and a battle to light the fire in the bedroom, I got to work.  Dressing casually and looking touristy.

My cover story was that I’d been a manager in a large factory on stress leave after a breakdown.  It was almost true, the breakdown part anyway.

I walked to the village’s only pub, The Rope and Anchor, aptly named, as the inside was a collection of anchors and rope knots, and pictures of sailing ships adorning the walls.  Despite the hour, I ordered a pint.  I was not the only one and received a few dismissive looks.  I doubt I was the first southern stranger to wander in.

Mt Target, old Arthur Pindleton was already there, propping up the bar, hunched over his pint, and didn’t bother looking up when I stood beside him to order mine.

He looked like the frail, retired embassy clerk, a man who looked like he couldn’t copy a grocery list let alone state secrets.

Of course, I could be wrong, and appearances were deceptive.  And my mission was to watch him.

I went over to a corner by the windows that looked out over the street where I could see everyone coming, going, and padding by.

He sees a man with a plot and a bucket of tools walk over to the shop opposite.  A window cleaner.  He potters, then goes inside to fill the bucket, and a chat with the owner

Business is slow.

When he returns, he sees the man glance towards the pub, and I instinctively shrink back.  Moments later I could hear the squeak, squeak followed by the tap-tap of the squeegee.

I could feel a flash of fear running through me.  My mind instantly went back to the damp concrete floor in Verlin, the blinding overhead light, and the precise Morse code tapping on the pipes outside his cell, U-R-M-G.  Compromised

For a moment I couldn’t breathe, and panic was setting in.  My vision blurred.  Jesus.

I gripped the edge of the wooden table, glanced at the old frail clerk and then back at the harmless windows cleaner.  I shook my head and relaxed, quietly laughed to myself, just loud enough for the bartender to glance at me in concern.

I smiled in his direction, and he went back to polishing glasses.

I whispered to myself, “It’s just a squeegee, Alec.  You’re not losing your mind yet.”

Just the same, it was once said during training that sometimes it was the little things that could bring you down.

I looked at the barely touched pint, shrugged and took a dip.  It had to be residual effects from the last mission, and it was up to him to bury the past and believe not everything was part of a conspiracy.

…

That would have been the case if…

His mind had been finely tuned to trust no one or anything.  There were no such things as coincidences, and over the years he had proved that time and time again.

And if it just been the window cleaner, he would have eventually dismissed it.

Unfortunately, it was not.

On his third pint, noting that Prindleton only stirred to take a drink and spoke only when he needed a refill.  He spoke to no one else, and they didn’t speak to him.

An oddity in itself, unless being English made them all ostracise him.  For that matter, they didn’t approach me either, simply because I was new, and new in a place like this usually attracts attention.

That it didn’t, ran another red flag up the pole.

I looked out the window and saw a Royal Mail delivery van.  I looked at my watch, an old surveillance habit, and it was 11:14.  Then, as it approached the intersection to turn, the driver stepped on the brake three times.

Something in my mind clicked.  The three flashes were the Stasi-era emergency abort signal, the one he had recently used in Berlin.  And if that didn’t set his mind down a dark path, the 1114 was the exact registry number of the ambulance used by his captors to abduct him.

He laughed inwardly.  As if the postman was an ex-KGB operative.

I had to stop looking for ‘clues’.

It had to be that exact moment that the pub’s background music started up, filling the eerie silence with an odd assortment of atmospheric jazz, pleasant, drone-like, and utterly forgettable to the average patron.

An employee’s playlist, except…

His heart missed a beat.

The track that was playing right now included a subtle, low-frequency hum, the exact white noise frequency used in the sensory deprivation tank where I spent two gruelling weeks.  It was meant to trigger a mild panic attack.

What the hell is going on?

I went over to the bar and ordered another pint, desperately trying to not show how badly my hands were shaking.

I stayed until Prindleton went to the fish and chip shop and then went home.  I went to the bakery and bought a loaf of sourdough to have with what was left of the soup.  It was delicious.

When I got home and went to cut some slices, the flour dusted on the crust had been scored with a specific crosshatch pattern.

I shook my head, closed my eyes, then hoped I wasn’t seeing what I thought it was seeing: the story was a replica of the grid coordinates of the Berlin Safehouse where I was tortured.

I mean, seriously.  It was just bread.

He shoved it in the toaster.

…

Just as the sun set, I called it a day.  I wasn’t going to watch Prindleton 24 hours a day.  A man could not drink that much and then go out all night doing spy stuff.

If he was a spy, those days were over.

I just managed to get the fire on in the lounge room and think about what I was going to do for dinner.  Go out, perhaps the fish and chips shop.

That thought was arrested by a knock on the door.  When I opened it, it was the Gable woman, different oversized jumper, same glasses, same lopsided stance, and a grin, perhaps knowing she was irritating me.

“Mrs Gable.”  I thought I’d better address her properly.

She had another porcelain container.  “Lamb stew.  Went crazy making food.  There is enough for you, so I brought it over.”

“I can cook.”

She rolled her eyes, or her best attempt at it.  “Most, no, all of the men I know can’t, or do not want to.  I’m happy to cook for two again.”

“You’re not married?”

“Not anymore; the lying, cheating bastard took off with my younger sister.  She can have him.  It’s a lot quieter without him.”

I took the bowl.  “Thank you.  It’s greatly appreciated.”

She smiled.  “Storms are coming.  Keep an eye on the weather when you’re out.  It can get nasty very quickly.”

“I will.  Thanks again.”

“You’re welcome.”

…

After making more toast and dismissing the crosshatch grid as my imagination going wild, I turned in and started my surveillance early.

Something was not right about Prindleton.  Years of observing and reading body language told me Prindleton was not quite what was portrayed to be.

The fire kept the room warm, and as comfortable as the bed was, I didn’t sleep.  My mind was not going to let go of the coincidences.  One or two, maybe, but four.  That was stretching it.

Still half asleep, I heard the radio cut out, having left it on to use the classical music as an aid to sleep, followed by three short clicks, the old Soviet dead drop confirmation signal.  Faulty wiring?

I was up before the sun came up and left just as dawn was breaking.  No movement from one neighbour, but Mrs Gates, she was up, and I could swear her eyes were boring holes in my back.

Could she have been a spy back in her younger days?  There was something about her I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

The lights were on in his cottage, and there was movement behind the curtains.  A half hour in that early morning freeze had me so that I nearly missed him leaving, and that stride to the front gate was not that of a retired Embassy clerk.

He left the cottage at precisely 08:37 am, and if I thought about it, it was the same as my cell number when in captivity, but perhaps it was just a cruel mathematical coincidence.

Mental notes to store away.

I followed a fair distance from him so it would not look like I was following him.  I followed him to the cafe.  He ordered a coffee and a croissant and sat near the door.

After a few minutes, I followed him in and ordered a coffee but not a croissant.  I sat a few tables away.

I did my usual scan and noticed the man sitting at the corner table.  Nothing unusual about him, other than the usual office types: young, eager, new suit.

Keen to make his mark.

Except…

After he turned the pages, I could see a distinct hand-drawn symbol in the margins, the same duress cypher my captors used in Berlin to signal an impending execution.

I felt my heart go into overdrive.  I told myself it was my fractured mind connecting dots that weren’t there, that it was a textbook post-traumatic flashback.

The coffee had gone cold, but Prindleton was on the move.

Next stop the grocery store when something else caught his eye, the knots used to tie up the grocery crates were the same one his captors used to tie his wrists months ago.

If I wrote everything my mind was telling me was an omen, or that I was suddenly living in the middle of a living nightmare, Dr Harrison would have me thrown out in a heartbeat.

I could not tell anyone he was seeing ghosts, but there had to be a reason why I was seeing this stuff.  It had to be my mind playing tricks.

This went on for a week, in various locations, but each signifying an event that all led back to that period in captivity. It was almost a form of mental torture in itself.

By that time I was almost at the end of my tether and finally realised it was Mrs Gates keeping me from completely immersing myself in the conspiracy.  She brought hot food. And then during the day, she asked me over for a cup of tea and cake on the pretext that she hated dining alone.

She didn’t invite me to dinner, though.

At the end of that week, Mrs Gates did not turn up with food, and I missed her. I always felt better after she had gone.  My paranoia hit fever pitch, so I decided on a course of action.

I followed Prindleton to an alley behind the pub today’s; he had used it before, and it struck me that it was for clandestine movements that no one else knew about.

I was going to break protocol and confront Prindleton directly.  A street back from entering the alley, he went straight; I turned left.  And ran.

Three minutes later, it was standing in front of Prindleton.  Or whoever it was, because this was not an old man.

“What’s going on here?”

He looked startled when I stepped out from the corner and neatly barrelled into me.

“Who are you? What do you want?”

“This is some sort of operation the department is running.”

“You’re mad.  I have no…”

Out of the corner of my eye, I saw the black car stop just back from the entrance to the alley.  I stepped forward, and suddenly the man fell backwards, blood staining his shirt, the result of a sniper shot.

He was dead before he hit the ground.

It was a set-up.

…

I disappeared up the alley, shouting and footsteps behind me.  I had five minutes before they reached the cottage.  I could get there in two.

One minute later, I found the digital recording device behind the bathroom window, a high-end, department-issue digital recording unit.

Then I found three others.

This wasn’t a mission; it was a stress test to test the first stress test.  And based on all my reactions, if I were calling the shots, I’d be put in an asylum.

Only with me it was a little more complicated than that.  I vaguely remembered Harrison telling me about stress triggers, and that I might experience some, all very explainable considering my last few months, and that he expected me to report them at the end of each week.

I didn’t, for obvious reasons.

Jesus.  I felt like a cornered rat, and for a second, I didn’t know what to do.  I was astonished that I had lasted this long.

The horrifying truth dawned on him in that moment: this was never a decompression assignment.  The entire village, the civilian anomalies – it was all a controlled environment constructed by his own department.  They weren’t trying to heal him; they were stress-testing him to see if his psychological breaking point in Berlin was permanent, using his own trauma triggers against him.

He slid down the wall, laughing almost hysterically at the absurdity of it, echoing through the cottage, so close to cracking.

Except…

The kitchen door swung open.  What he believed was one of the department’s sweep team operatives stepped in, uniform immaculate, weapon drawn.  But instead of shooting, the operative kicked the door, pulled off a highly realistic silicone throat piece, and spoke in a familiar voice.  “Keep laughing, Alec, make them think you’ve completely lost it.”

Maya.  Last he was told she had died in Berlin.  He hadn’t believed them; she was too good an operative.

“Haven’t got much time, but you’re not the only one in this chicken coop.  They’re stress testing all the top agents to see how much they can take before they break. They tried it on me.”  She smiled.  “You were saved by some deft cooking.  I’ll explain later.  We have to go.”

“Where?”

“Anywhere but here.”  She held out her hand.  “Come.”

…

©  Charles Heath  2026

An excerpt from “Strangers We’ve Become” – Coming Soon

I wandered back to my villa.

It was in darkness.  I was sure I had left several lights on, especially over the door, so I could see to unlock it.

I looked up and saw that the globe was broken.

Instant alert.

I went to the first hiding spot for the gun, and it wasn’t there.  I went to the backup, and it wasn’t there either.  Someone had found my carefully hidden stash of weapons and removed them.

Who?

There were four hiding spots, and all were empty.  Someone had removed the weapons.  That could only mean one possibility.

I had a visitor, not necessarily here for a social call.

But, of course, being the well-trained agent I’d once been and not one to be caught unawares, I crossed over to my neighbour and relieved him of a weapon that, if found, would require a lot of explaining.

Suitably armed, it was time to return the surprise.

There were three entrances to the villa: the front door, the back door, and a rather strange escape hatch.  One of the more interesting attractions of the villa I’d rented was its heritage.  It was built in the late 1700s by a man who was, by all accounts, a thief.  It had a hidden underground room, which had been in the past a vault but was now a wine cellar, and it had an escape hatch by which the man could come and go undetected, particularly if there was a mob outside the door baying for his blood.

It now gave me the means to enter the villa without my visitors being alerted, unless, of course, they were in the vicinity of the doorway inside the villa, but that possibility was unlikely.  It was not where anyone could anticipate or expect a doorway to be.

The secret entrance was at the rear of the villa, behind a large copse, two camouflaged wooden doors built into the ground.  I moved aside some of the branches that covered them and lifted one side.  After I’d discovered the doors and rusty hinges, I’d oiled and cleaned them, and cleared the passageway of cobwebs and fallen rocks.  It had a mildew smell, but nothing would get rid of that.  I’d left torches at either end so I could see.

I closed the door after me and went quietly down the steps, enveloped in darkness till I switched on the torch.  I traversed the short passage, which turned ninety degrees about halfway to the door at the other end.  I carried the key to this door on the keyring, found it and opened the door.  It too had been oiled and swung open soundlessly.

I stepped into the darkness and closed the door.

I was on the lower level under the kitchen, now the wine cellar, the ‘door’ doubling as a set of shelves which had very little on them, less to fall and alert anyone in the villa.

Silence, an eerie silence.

I took the steps up to the kitchen, stopping when my head was level with the floor, checking to see if anyone was waiting.  There wasn’t.  It seemed to me to be an unlikely spot for an ambush.

I’d already considered the possibility of someone coming after me, especially because it had been Bespalov I’d killed, and I was sure he had friends, all equally as mad as he was.  Equally, I’d also considered it nigh on impossible for anyone to find out it was me who killed him because the only people who knew that were Prendergast, Alisha, a few others in the Department, and Susan.

That raised the question of who told them where I was.

If I were the man I used to be, my first suspect would be Susan.  The departure this morning, and now this was too coincidental.  But I was not that man.

Or was I?

I reached the start of the passageway that led from the kitchen to the front door and peered into the semi-darkness.  My eyes had got used to the dark, and it was no longer an inky void.  Fragments of light leaked in around the door from outside and through the edge of the window curtains where they didn’t fit properly.  A bone of contention upstairs in the morning, when first light shone and invariably woke me up hours before I wanted to.

Still nothing.

I took a moment to consider how I would approach the visitor’s job.  I would get a plan of the villa in my head, all entrances, where a target could be led to or attacked, and where there would be no escape.

Coming in the front door.  If I were not expecting anything, I’d just open the door and walk in.  One shot would be all that was required.

Contract complete.

I sidled quietly up the passage, staying close to the wall, edging closer to the front door.  There was an alcove where the shooter could be waiting.  It was an ideal spot to wait.

Crunch.

I stepped on some nutshells.

Not my nutshells.

I felt it before I heard it.  The bullet with my name on it.

And how the shooter missed, from point-blank range, and hit me in the arm, I had no idea.  I fired off two shots before a second shot from the shooter went wide and hit the door with a loud thwack.

I saw a red dot wavering as it honed in on me, and I fell to the floor, stretching out, looking up where the origin of the light was coming and pulled the trigger three times, evenly spaced, and a second later I heard the sound of a body falling down the stairs and stopping at the bottom, not very far from me.

Two assassins.

I’d not expected that.

The assassin by the door was dead, a lucky shot on my part.  The second was still breathing.

I checked the body for any weapons and found a second gun and two knives.  Armed to the teeth!

I pulled off the balaclava; a man, early thirties, definitely Italian.  I was expecting a Russian.

I slapped his face, waking him up.  Blood was leaking from several slashes on his face when his head had hit the stairs on the way down.  The awkward angle of his arms and legs told me there were broken bones, probably a lot worse internally.  He was not long for this earth.

“Who employed you?”

He looked at me with dead eyes, a pursed mouth, perhaps a smile.  “Not today, my friend.  You have made a very bad enemy.”  He coughed, and blood poured out of his mouth.  “There will be more …”

Friends of Bespalov, no doubt.

I would have to leave.  Two unexplainable bodies, I’d have a hard time explaining my way out of this mess.  I dragged the two bodies into the lounge, clearing the passageway just in case someone had heard anything.

Just in case anyone was outside at the time, I sat in the dark, at the foot of the stairs, and tried to breathe normally.  I was trying not to connect the dots that led back to Susan, but the coincidence was worrying me.

A half-hour passed, and I hadn’t moved.  Deep in thought, I’d forgotten about being shot, unaware that blood was running down my arm and dripping onto the floor.

Until I heard a knock on my front door.

Two thoughts: it was either the police, alerted by the neighbours, or it was the second wave, though why would they be knocking on the door?

I stood and immediately felt a stabbing pain in my arm.  I took out a handkerchief and turned it into a makeshift tourniquet, then wrapped a kitchen towel around the wound.

If it were the police, this was going to be a difficult situation.  Holding the gun behind my back, I opened the door a fraction and looked out.

No police, just Maria.  I hoped she was not part of the next ‘wave’.

“You left your phone behind on the table.  I thought you might be looking for it.”  She held it out in front of her.

When I didn’t open the door any further, she looked at me quizzically and then asked, “Is anything wrong?”

I was going to thank her for returning the phone, but I heard her breathe in sharply and add, breathlessly, “You’re bleeding.”

I looked at my arm and realised it was visible through the door, and not only that, the towel was soaked in blood.

“You need to go away now.”

Should I tell her the truth?  It was probably too late, and if she were any sort of law-abiding citizen, she would go straight to the police.

She showed no signs of leaving, just an unnerving curiosity.  “What happened?”

I ran through several explanations, but none seemed plausible.  I went with the truth.  “My past caught up with me.”

“You need someone to fix that before you pass out from blood loss.  It doesn’t look good.”

“I can fix it.  You need to leave.  It is not safe to be here with me.”

The pain in my arm was not getting any better, and the blood was starting to run down my arm again as the tourniquet loosened.  She was right, I needed it fixed sooner rather than later.

I opened the door and let her in.  It was a mistake, a huge mistake, and I would have to deal with the consequences.  Once inside, she turned on the light and saw the pool of blood just inside the door and the trail leading to the lounge.  She followed the trail and turned into the lounge, turned on the light, and no doubt saw the two dead men.

I expected her to scream.  She didn’t.

She gave me a good, hard look, perhaps trying to see if I was dangerous.  Killing people wasn’t something you looked the other way about.  She would have to go to the police.

“What happened here?”

“I came home from the cafe and two men were waiting for me.  I used to work for the Government, but no longer.  I suspect these men were here to repay a debt.  I was lucky.”

“Not so much, looking at your arm.”

She came closer and inspected it.

“Sit down.”

She found another towel and wrapped it around the wound, retightening the tourniquet to stem the bleeding.

“Do you have medical supplies?”

I nodded.  “Upstairs.”  I had a medical kit, and on the road, I usually made my own running repairs.  Another old habit I hadn’t quite shaken off yet.

She went upstairs, rummaged, and then came back.  I wondered briefly what she would think of the unmade bed, though I was not sure why it might interest her.

She helped me remove my shirt and then cleaned the wound.  Fortunately, she didn’t have to remove a bullet.  It was a clean wound but it would require stitches.

When she’d finished, she said, “Your friend said one day this might happen.”

No prizes for guessing who that friend was, and it didn’t please me that she had involved Maria.

“Alisha?”

“She didn’t tell me her name, but I think she cares a lot about you.  She said trouble has a way of finding you, gave me a phone and said to call her if something like this happened.”

“That was wrong of her to do that.”

“Perhaps, perhaps not.  Will you call her?”

“Yes.  I can’t stay here now.  You should go now.  Hopefully, by the time I leave in the morning, no one will ever know what happened here, especially you.”

She smiled.  “As you say, I was never here.”

…

© Charles Heath 2018-2022

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