Over the past year or so I have been selecting photographs I’ve taken on many travels, and put a story to them.
When I reached a milestone of 50, I decided to make them into a book, and, in doing so, I have gone through each and revised them, making some longer, and almost a short story.
50 photographs, 50 stories. I’ve called it, “Inspiration, Maybe”
It will be available soon.
How thrilled Harry Walthenson, Private Detective, had been to see his name painted on the translucent glass window in the door to his office.
Located in Gramercy Park, in an old building full of atmosphere, he had a space renovated to resemble that of Spade and Archer in a scene right out of the Maltese Falcon.
His desk had an antique phone like those used in the 1930s, and a lamp that cast eerie shadows at night. Along one wall was a couch, his bed for more nights than he wanted to remember, and on the other a filing cabinet, waiting for the big case files.
Up till now it had been missing cats and dogs.
Then, everything changed…
Starts at episode 1 – The Wrong Place, The Wrong Time
Episode 95 – Felicity is worried
Enjoy
There is a saying ‘you don’t know what you’ve got till it’s gone’.
For a long time, in days before the current technological age, I didn’t really understand what that meant.
Until now.
How many times, in the last few days have I heard the question, “Where’s my mobile phone?”.
It seems we can lose almost anything else but, without the phone, we are completely lost.
The same now applies to all of our household appliances.
The other day I heard, “We aren’t able to do very much because the microwave oven is broken.”
How did we manage in the days before we had such devices?
I know my grandmother had a wood stove and cooked everything, bread, roasting meat, cooking fish, vegetables, cakes, puddings, even make a cup of tea. And the kitchen was always the cosiest part of the house in winter.
I don’t think I ever had a cup of coffee at her house, but I have a lot of memories of some amazing food. No such thing as electric kitchen appliances, or a microwave oven, not in that house.
We had the same experience ourselves when one of the fridge/freezer units broke down, and severely restricted as to what we could store. Why that should have affected what we ate is a little puzzling, but apparently, if it was not in the freezer, we didn’t have it.
Something else I didn’t realize was the fact no matter how full the freezer was, we always seemed to be buying more food, to the point where it wouldn’t fit, so we were eating newly bought food over what was being stored.
Perhaps, in having all these conveniences, and gadgets at hand, that’s the problem. We take so many things for granted and live a life that is centred around convenience.
What would happen if those conveniences were taken away?
Certainly, for me, I know, what it’s like to lose the use of a kitchen appliance and having to improvise, but I’m not sure how I would react if we had a real catastrophe.
I try not to think about what it would be like to lose electricity altogether, just a short blackout is enough to frighten us into almost panic because any lengthy outage is bound to affect food stored in those electric appliances.
But, I haven’t lost my phone yet. Come very close, and that was scary enough.
Let’s hope it never happens.
David is a man troubled by a past he is trying to forget.
Susan is rebelling against a life of privilege and an exasperated mother who holds a secret that will determine her daughter’s destiny.
They are two people brought together by chance. Or was it?
When Susan discovers her mother’s secret, she goes in search of the truth that has been hidden from her since the day she was born.
When David realizes her absence is more than the usual cooling off after another heated argument, he finds himself being slowly drawn back into his former world of deceit and lies.
Then, back with his former employers, David quickly discovers nothing is what it seems as he embarks on a dangerous mission to find Susan before he loses her forever.
Is love the metaphorical equivalent to ‘walking the plank’; a dive into uncharted waters?
For Henry the only romance he was interested in was a life at sea, and when away from it, he strived to find sanctuary from his family and perhaps life itself. It takes him to a small village by the sea, s place he never expected to find another just like him, Michelle, whom he soon discovers is as mysterious as she is beautiful.
Henry had long since given up the notion of finding romance, and Michelle couldn’t get involved for reasons she could never explain, but in the end both acknowledge that something happened the moment they first met.
Plans were made, plans were revised, and hopes were shattered.
A chance encounter causes Michelle’s past to catch up with her, and whatever hope she had of having a normal life with Henry, or anyone else, is gone. To keep him alive she has to destroy her blossoming relationship, an act that breaks her heart and shatters his.
But can love conquer all?
It takes a few words of encouragement from an unlikely source to send Henry and his friend Radly on an odyssey into the darkest corners of the red light district in a race against time to find and rescue the woman he finally realizes is the love of his life.
The cover, at the moment, looks like this:
We all know this to be an intersection of two lines like a crossroad is at a 90-degree angle
But…
It’s an angle bracket that keeps the shelf up, hopefully with books on it.
Did you know that it was something someone did in order to get something?
She began to angle for an invitation to a party that she would not normally be invited to, or he has angled his answers to the prospective employer in a bid to be more likely to be selected for the position.
It can also refer to a position, or judgement, so that someone might say, try and see it from my angle, or another angle.
Or that it refers to fishing, and the fisherman or woman is known as an angler.
It can be a position from which something is viewed, or in crime parlance, the CSI people will work out the angle of the bullet’s entry do they can locate the position of the shooter.
Angle can refer to people of Germanic origin, such as an Anglo Saxon
And, here’s something even I didn’t know, in Astrology, it is each of the four cardinal points of a chart, from which the first, fourth, seventh, and tenth houses extend anticlockwise respectively.
Our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.
The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in.
“So,” Lallo said, “you’re telling me you landed separately, Treen and his group advanced towards their position without waiting for your team, that shortly after landing you heard gunfire exchanged, that the members of your team broke ranks and went to help their comrades and that all of them, as far as you were aware at the time, had been killed or captured.”
“Yes.”
“And the two operatives you’d come to rescue?”
“At the time, I had no idea what their status was, but I did make a preliminary assumption that if our mission was blown, then they would hardly be left alive unless the enemy thought they had some strategic value.”
“Or intelligence?”
“It hadn’t occurred to me at the time because my job was to simply to aid the extraction team. To be honest, I had no idea who they were or what their value was.”
That was not exactly the truth because I could hardly say I hadn’t overheard a conversation between Treen, the briefing officers, and an unseen, unnamed officer discussing the two operatives, and the fact it was imperative we get them out at any cost. It wasn’t said why, but I could guess.
It didn’t take long to realize that if our arrival had been known, so would the location and worth of the two we were to rescue. I didn’t think they were killed out of hand, not until they’d told the enemy’s interrogators everything they knew.
And I got the impression they knew enough to cause our whole operation in that country ended up with a great deal of irreparable damage.
No wonder they wanted to sweep it under the carpet.
I watched Lallo scribble a long not over several pages. Was his conclusion the same as mine, but based on truth rather than hearsay?
Then, “Were you met by the person who has been referred to as the so-called source?”
“No.”
“Do you know if Treen’s group were met?”
“No. I was given to understand that source had gone quiet, I suppose another word for either captured or defected to the other side.”
“Apparently there was a report that the agent in situ was going to be at the landing site.”
“Well, there’s your explanation as to why the mission was blown from the start. Whoever it was, was either captured, or a double agent, and told the enemy of our plans.”
“A reasonable assumption in the circumstances, but not necessarily correct.”
“And you know this because…”
I was curious. The agent’s defection would explain everything.
“That agent resurfaced three days ago, again asking for repatriation, and is in the air to a secure site as we speak.”
He stood and took a moment to stow the pencil in the binding of the notebook before giving me his attention.
“We will also be in their air tomorrow, headed for the same secure location. I’m, sure you will be available for that interrogation, because I, too, have serious doubts about this agent’s shall we say, loyalties.”
That still didn’t mean I wasn’t going to finish up at a black site, or worse.
© Charles Heath 2019
There is always a feeling of relief when you finally finish the book, after all the editing (the latest book had been revised and edited 16 times – I know, I should stop fiddling), and accepting I’ve have done all I can.
It’s like watching another child leave the nest. There’s that hollow feeling inside.
Of course, the answer to getting over that feeling is to get on with the next book.
This time I finished another two books together, so it has been equally as exhausting as it was the last time, especially with the two sets of characters and storylines. I realize I should work on one, get that done, and then work on the other. Sorry, I can’t do that.
Actually, I was working on another story at the same time, what was supposed to be a short story that oddly found its way into being a full-length novel. More on that work later.
My editor, after being presented with, and finally reading through the so-called final draft, calls me in to discuss the works, simply closes her eyes and shakes her head, then tells me one character has crossed over to the other novel.
Perhaps working on two novels at the same time is not a good idea.
Both “Strangers We’ve Become” and “The Things we do for Love” are in the final stages of completion before being published on Amazon, and a third, “First Dig Two Graves”(second in the series of the ‘Zoe the Assassin’ series) is on its third revision.
The question is, now, what to do next?
Catch up on social media, which includes Twitter, where I do a little advertising, and Facebook, which I still don’t understand how it is going to work for me.
Perhaps not.
‘First Dig Two Graves’ is beckoning, and yes, that very loose statement, ‘only a few more modifications’ can be anything from a new chapter at the start or a whole rewrite.
Ah, the hectic life of a writer.
In between, there was a granddaughters 9th birthday, and an anniversary, so many now I’ve lost count. Then I finally reached an age I never thought I’d get to, 66, almost the devil’s number.
It seems there really is so little time, and so much more to do.
This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.
Coming soon!
I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.
The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritising.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
An interrogation continues
“So, take it from the top, give me a detailed rundown on the operation, from the briefing to coming here.”
That was an interesting request. My usual report would not go into so much detail, and I had been compiling it on the go because if left until the end, crucial details were always omitted.
And, with the explosion, a lot of details had been mislaid in my mind, with more important or over-arching problems, getting a more prominent place in my memory. It was a valuable lesson learned on reporting, we’d received from a man who most of my classmates thought odd, to the point of paranoid.
“I received the text message the night before to report to the midtown office for the briefing. The code word was Chancellor and it was recognised at the security station. If it was bogus I would not have made it in the building.”
“You go there for all your briefings?”
“Yes.”
“Same team?”
“For the previous five, yes. This last one, a different team. “One of us asked what happened to the previous team and we were told that it was none of our business. We were given orders and sent out into the field to do a job. That job, we were reminded, was not to ask irrelevant questions.”
“The leader told you that?”
“In no uncertain terms.”
“Go on.”
“We were given a photograph of the man that I have just given to you. No mention was made of what he had done to warrant surveillance, only that we were to not lose him and to note everything he did.
“We were told where he might be found at a particular time, and a particular place, information that was correct.”
“Your team members?”
“Fiona Davis, Jack Venables, Walter Arbon, and me.”
“I take it you had the target under surveillance, ready to hand off to the next team member?”
“Before the explosion, yes, it was my leg.”
“You’re referring to the explosion in Church Street?”
“Yes. I’d just past it when there was an explosion, and I was caught in the aftermath, and narrowly avoided the shrapnel raining down. Others were not so lucky.”
“That’s where you lost him?”
“He was in front of me, thus avoiding the fallout. It took a minute or so to get my bearings, and even then it was very hazy with the dust and carnage around me, but I did manage to see him in the distance heading towards the next person’s tag point.”
“You didn’t resume surveillance?”
“Couldn’t. Too disoriented. I put out an alert on the comms, but no one answered, not straight away.”
“You didn’t suspect anything?”
“Not then., I put it down to a malfunction from the blast.”
“You said ‘not straight away’?”
“About five minutes had passed when a voice came in my ear, asking for an update. I didn’t think much about it at the time, because of the temporary disorientation, but it was about the time for the next team to take over. There were two rolling teams of four.”
“Why did you think it odd?”
“Because they would know about the explosion. Everyone within a mile radius would. But at the time I simply said I was caught up in the aftermath and that the target was last seen heading towards the takeover point. Then I was told the target was sighted.”
“I assume you then considered your role had ended?”
“Yes. I’d been told to follow the advice of the medical staff on site.”
“Which was?”
“Go to the hospital for a check-up.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. I was heading away from the blast site when I saw the target again. I stopped, watched, got out of sight, and waited. He was coming back in my direction.”
“Was that an expected scenario, that he might backtrack?”
“No. In the briefing we were told it was possible he would be moving from the point where we found him, to another for a clandestine meeting, away from the blast site.”
What did you do then?”
“Checked the position of the next member of the surveillance team. C I found him, and he was dead. I made an assumption that the other two may have suffered a similar fate, and resumed surveillance on the target.”
“Did you report it?”
“Over the comms, yes.”
“What happened?”
“Nothing, no one answered.”
“Not even the director?”
“No.”
She made a note, crossed it out and wrote another with an underline. A thick black line repeatedly, expressing her anger.
“You maintained surveillance?”
“Yes.”
“Until?”
“I’d cornered him in an alley, near a railway station. I suspected he might head for it. He’s seen me, and nearly dispatched me in the same manner as the others. Luckily it was only a scratch.”
It was more than that and required 12 stitches but they didn’t need to know that.
“Then, Severin arrived, and out of nowhere, he was shot dead.”
“Did you speak to him?”
“Only to ask what he had done with the other members of my team. He never answered.”
“Did you report that you’d caught him?”
“No. Didn’t have to. Severin arrived just after I had.”
“And that’s all of it?”
“In my report. Yes. When I get to write it, but I’ll need my phone. It has the relevant details, except for the last part where I’d found him.”
“No name?”
“No.”
“You didn’t know he was one of ours?”
“No. That fact only came to my attention when he told me. When you’re given a target, you don’t ask what the relevance is, or what he’s done. I’m sure you’re fully aware of the current practices and procedures.”
That last sentence slipped out, and by the look on her face, wasn’t well received. I’d forgotten the golden rule. Stick to the facts. No embellishment, no emotion.
She made another note, closed the book, and got up. “I’d like you to stay, just for the time being while we sort through the details.”
Then she left.
© Charles Heath 2019
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 