I had once said that Grand Central Station, in New York, was large enough you could get lost in it. Especially if you were from out of town.
I know, I was from out of town, and though I didn’t quite get lost, back then I had to ask directions to go where I needed to.
It was also an awe-inspiring place, and whenever I had a spare moment, usually at lunchtime, I would go there and just soak in the atmosphere. It was large enough to make a list of places to visit, or find, or get a photograph from some of the more obscure places.
Today, I was just there to work off a temper. Things had gone badly at work, and even though I hadn’t done anything wrong, I still felt bad about it.
I came in the 42nd street entrance and went up to the balcony that overlooked the main concourse. A steady stream of people was coming and going, most purposefully, a few were loitering, and several police officers were attempting to move on a vagrant. It was not the first time.
But one person caught my eye, a young woman who had made a circuit of the hall, looked at nearly every destination board, and appeared to be confused. It was the same as I had felt when I first arrived.
Perhaps I could help.
The problem was, a man approaching a woman from out of left field would have a very creepy vibe to it, so it was probably best left alone.
Another half-hour of watching the world go by, I had finally got past the bad mood and headed back to work. I did a wide sweep of the main concourse, perhaps more for the exercise than anything else, and had reached the clock in the centre of the concourse when someone turned suddenly, and I crashed into them.
Not badly, like ending up on the floor, but enough for a minor jolt. Of course, it was my fault because I was in another world at that particular moment.
“Oh, I am sorry.” A woman’s voice, very apologetic.
I was momentarily annoyed, then, when I saw who it was, it passed. It was the lost woman I’d seen earlier.
“No. Not your fault, but mine entirely. I have a habit of wandering around with my mind elsewhere.”
Was it fate that we should meet like this?
I noticed she was looking around, much the same as she had before.
“Can I help you?”
“Perhaps you can. There’s supposed to be a bar that dates back to the prohibition era here somewhere. Campbell’s Apartment, or something like that. I was going to ask…”
“Sure. It’s not that hard to find if you know where it is. I’ll take you.”
It made for a good story, especially when I related it to the grandchildren, because the punch line was, “and that’s how I met your grandmother.”
It is hard sometimes to keep the lid on what might be called justification of your position in a company where there are many naysayers, and little support from those who are supposed to be working together towards a single conclusion.
Not work against you, or to have their own agenda, not only in furthering their career on the back of your mistakes but take the credit for all your hard work.
Every company has them.
I’ve worked in a few where this has happened, but the deciding factor of whether they’re successful or not is when they have to stand on their own two feet when the source of their reputed good work suddenly is unavailable, and the shit hits the proverbial fan.
What is it called? Art imitates life.
Benton is the proverbial leader who takes credit, but when it comes to the crunch, can’t pull the rabbit out of the hat.
I guess in writing this little piece, I was subconsciously getting back at someone from a real, but now distant, past.
Perhaps there might be a little more about one of the places I worked cropping up from time to time.
It’s not so much writing about what you know, but writing about what happened, and what you might have wanted to happen. Invariably it never did, because these credit takers are a cunning lot, and sometimes lay the foundations for getting out from under when there is a disaster.
Unfortunately, I’ve been there too.
It’s called cutting your nose off to spite your face.
Be that as it may, I let this little vent run and see where it goes.
It was my responsibility since I’d recommended it and then won the support of management over his objections, and following that it had become a point of continual contention, a petty war neither of us was going to win.
I tried to keep the joy out of my voice. He’d also vetoed my recommendation for a full-time network engineer as my alternative, making my job become single point sensitive. There was no one to replace me if anything went wrong.
“Sounds like you’re having fun.” I had to work hard to keep the amusement out of my tone.
“Fun nothing.” His tone was reaching that exasperation point. “There is no one else.”
“Why did you approve my holiday if I can’t have one?” I’d stretch his patience just a little more.
“You promised me the network was stable.”
“It is, and has been for the last six months. I’ve said so in my last six-monthly reports. You have been reading them, haven’t you?”
Silence. It said all I needed to know.
I had a choice sentence to deliver, but an ignominious thought popped into my head. He could probably use this against me, and would if I gave him the opportunity. Perhaps I should shelve my differences with him for this morning.
Aside from that, there was a shooting, and we didn’t get one of those every day. Not that it would probably amount to very much. During the previous week, the office grapevine had been working overtime on the rumor Richardson was having a relationship with one of the ladies in the Accounts department. It was just the sort of scandal the data entry staff thrived on.
A shooting and a network failure. I didn’t know which was worse. Perhaps if it was Benton they’d shot, there might be some justice…
I decided not to argue with him. “Give me an hour.”
“Half. Aitchison wants to see you.”
Werner Aitchison was head of Internal Security and a man who took his job seriously. Enough, that is, to annoy my staff, and me. He was ex-military intelligence, so ‘they’ said, but he appeared to me like a man out of his depth in this new age of communications. Computers had proliferated in our company over the last few years, and the technology to go with them spiraling out of control.
We dealt in billions via financial transactions processed on computers, computers which, we were told often enough, was insecure, and easily taken control of outside their environment. Aitchison was paranoid, and rightly so, but he had a strange way of going about his business. He and I had butted heads on many occasions, and we may have had our disagreements, but we were good friends and colleagues outside work.
Just in case Benton was accusing me, I said, as sincerely as I could, “I didn’t do it.”
“Of that, I have no doubt. He has requested a meeting with you at 10 am. You will be there.”
“I said I would come in to look at the problem. I didn’t say I was staying.”
“Let me know when you get in.” That was it. No ifs. No buts. Just a simple, ‘Let me know…’
I seriously considered ignoring him, but somewhere within me, there was that odd sense of loyalty. Not to Benton, not to the Company, but to someone else, the man who had given me the job in the first place, who had given me every opportunity.
We visited the falls in winter, just after Christmas when it was all but frozen.
The weather was freezing, it was snowing, and very icy to walk anywhere near the falls
Getting photos is a matter of how much you want to risk your safety.
I know I slipped and fell a number of times on the ice just below the snowy surface in pursuit of the perfect photograph. Alas, I don’t think I succeeded.
The mist was generated from both the waterfall and the low cloud. It was impossible not to get wet just watching the falls.
Of course, unlike the braver people, you could not get me into one of the boats that headed towards the falls. I suspect there might be icebergs and wasn’t going to tempt the fate of another Titanic, even on a lesser scale. The water would be freezing.
I’m back home and this story has been sitting on the 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 prioritizing.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
Chasing leads, maybe
“Silly question, what were you doing in the hotel with this ‘operative’?”
Yes, it sounded odd the moment I said it, and, if it was the other way around, I’d be thinking the same.
“We joined forces, thinking we were in danger, at the time, not knowing that she was working with Dobbin. I discovered that later, by chance. She doesn’t know I know.”
“And she’ll be waiting at the hotel?”
“Dobbin wants the USB. She believes we’re collaborating, after telling me she works for MI5, on a different mission involving O’Connell. She had apparently been undercover as a fellow resident at the block where O’Connell had a flat, and a cat. The cat, of course, had no idea his owner was a secret agent. The flat was sparsely furnished and didn’t look lived in, so it may have been a safe house.”
“Wheels within wheels.”
“That’s the nature of the job. Lies, lies, and more lies, nothing is as it seems, and trust no one.”
“Including you?”
“Including me, but keep an open mind, and try not to shoot me. I’m as all at sea as you are. And, just to be clear, I’m not sure I believe Quigley that the information is lost. People like him, and especially his contact, if he was a journalist, tend to have two copies, just in case. And the explosion might have killed the messenger, but not the information. Lesson number one, anything is possible, nothing is impossible, and the truth, it really is stranger than fiction.”
“Great.”
A half-hour later I’d parked the car in a parking lot near Charing Cross station. The plan, if it could be called that, was for me to go back to the room, and for Jennifer to remain in the foyer, and wait. If anything went wrong she was to leave and wait for a call. For all intents and purposes, no one knew of her, except perhaps for Severin and Maury, but I wasn’t expecting them to be lurking in the hotel foyer, waiting for me.
As for Dobbin, that was a different story. It would depend on how impatient he was in getting information on the whereabouts of the USB, and whether he trusted Jan to find out.
I’d soon find out.
The elevator had three others in it, all of who had disembarked floors below mine. As the last stepped out and the doors closed, it allayed fears of being attacked before I reached the room.
As the doors closed behind me, the silence of the hallway was working on my nerves, until a few steps towards my room I could hear the hissing of an air conditioning intake, and suddenly the starting up of a vacuum cleaner back in the direction I’d just come.
A cleaner or….
Remember the training for going into confined spaces…
The room was at the end of the passage, a corner room, with two exits after exiting the front door. I thought about knocking, but, it was my room too, so I used the key and went in.
Lying tied up on the bed was a very dead Maury, three shots to the heart.
And, over the sound of my heart beating very loudly, I could hear the sound of people out in the corridor, followed by pounding on the door.
Then, “Police.”
A second or two after that the door crashed open and six men came into the room, brandishing weapons and shouting for me to get on the floor and show my hands or I would be shot,”
How many of us have skeletons in the closet that we know nothing about? The skeletons we know about generally stay there, but those we do not, well, they have a habit of coming out of left field when we least expect it.
In this case, when you see your photo on a TV screen with the accompanying text that says you are wanted by every law enforcement agency in Europe, you’re in a state of shock, only to be compounded by those same police, armed and menacing, kicking the door down.
I’d been thinking about this premise for a while after I discovered my mother had a boyfriend before she married my father, a boyfriend who was, by all accounts, the man who was the love of her life.
Then, in terms of coming up with an idea for a story, what if she had a child by him that we didn’t know about, which might mean I had a half brother or sister I knew nothing about. It’s not an uncommon occurrence from what I’ve been researching.
There are many ways of putting a spin on this story.
Then, in the back of my mind, I remembered a story an acquaintance at work was once telling us over morning tea, that a friend of a friend had a mother who had a twin sister and that each of the sisters had a son by the same father, without each knowing of the father’s actions, both growing up without the other having any knowledge of their half brother, only to meet by accident on the other side of the world.
It was an encounter that in the scheme of things might never have happened, and each would have remained oblivious of the other.
For one sister, the relationship was over before she discovered she was pregnant, and therefore had not told the man he was a father. It was no surprise the relationship foundered when she discovered he was also having a relationship with her sister, a discovery that caused her to cut all ties with both of them and never speak to either from that day.
It’s a story with more twists and turns than a country lane!
Most children, when they turn 18, or 21, get a car as a present for their birthday. In fact, I had been hoping, in my case, they would buy me a Ferrari, or at the very least, an Alfa Romeo, blue to match my older sister’s red.
Hope is a horrible thing to hang on to.
Instead, I got a seat at the table.
Not an actual seat but joined the other 7 family members that comprised the management group for the family-run business. One would retire to make way for new blood, as they called it.
“This is how it works and has done for a hundred years. In your case, you will be replacing Grandma Gwen. You will be given an area to manage, and you will be expected to work hard, and set an example to your employees. There will be no partying, no staying home when you feel like it, and definitely no getting into trouble. And for the first three years, you will sit, be quiet, listen and learn. One day, down the track, you will become the CEO.”
“If we’re still in business.” It didn’t take much to see that the company was struggling, as indeed many others were in the same industry, cheap imports and changing tastes taking a huge toll.
But we had been making exclusive and distinctive furniture for a long, long time, and discerning people who wanted a reminder of an elegant past still bought it. Part of my training, before I got that seat, was to learn the trade, and like all members of my family, could build a chair from start to finish.
It was part of the mantra, lead by example.
…
On the second day in my new role as manager, I arrived at the office, grandma Gwen was throwing the last of 50 years’ worth of stuff into three large boxes.
It was no surprise that she was resentful at being ousted to make way for me, not that she needed the money, but because even approaching 90, the last thing she wanted to do was retire.
I got the cold stare when she saw me, and, on her way out, a parting shot, “Don’t get comfortable, sonny, they’ll be closing the doors in three months, even sooner. Your father hasn’t a clue how to run the place.”
Out on the factory floor, the eight specialist workers didn’t exactly give her the goodbye I expected, showing that she didn’t have their respect. The foreman, Gary, the man who had shown me the intricacies of the work, opened and closed the door for her, shrugged, and headed back to the office.
The others went back to work.
When he came into the office, his expression changed from disappointment to amusement. He had said, years ago when I was very young, I’d be sitting in that office one.
Now I was there, though the chair, plush and comfortable when new about 50 years ago, was now as old and tired as the office’s previous owner, was hardly a selling point for the job.
“Told you you’d be sitting in that chair one day. That day is here.”
“Maybe not for long, though.”
“Don’t pay no mind to Gwenny. She and your father never got along. She wanted to sell the business 20 years ago when it was worth something, but your Dad wanted to keep the worker’s jobs. It’ll be a different story in a few years, once we’ve all gone. No one wants to be an artisan anymore. And wires, it’s all about furniture in boxes, all veneer and plastic, and a two tear life.”
“Shouldn’t we get a slice of the veneer and plastic market?”
“Can’t beat the overseas factories at their own game. The trick is to diversify, but to do that we’d need to retool, and repurpose factory space and that costs money, big money.”
With all that stuff I learned at University, economics, management, and design, it might have been better to have taken the medical path, but I had been convinced to lay the groundwork to take over the company one day.
Back then, it wasn’t a possibility the company would not go on forever. It seemed odd to me that my father hadn’t said anything about the situation Gary knew so well. Did he not listen to those who knew most?
“So, what’s the solution?”
“That depends on you.”
This was not the job I signed up for.
What did I know about furniture?
It didn’t matter.
It was about manufacturing in a world economy, and the point was, that we could not compete. Like the car industry, there was nothing but foreign imports and rebadged imported items made overseas.
So what was my role?
I was sure that every conclusion I had come to, everyone else around the table was painfully aware of too. A short discussion with my elder sister confirmed it.
It was like being aboard the Titanic and watching it sink firsthand.
That seat at the table was in an ancient wood-paneled room with a huge table that seated 24, a table and matching chairs reputedly hand made by the first owner of the company, my so-many times great grandfather, Erich.
The room reeked of wood polish, the mustiness of age, and a deep vein of tradition. Paintings on the walls were of every CEO the company had, and the first time I was in that room was the unveiling of my father’s portrait.
It was like stepping into a time warp.
Alison, my father’s PA was just finishing up setting the table for the meeting that morning. She had Bern around for a long time, so long I could remember her when I was a child.
She looked over as I stepped into the room.
“You’re just a little early.”
“Just making sure I know where I’m going.”
“Are you nervous?”
“No. It won’t be much different from sitting down to a family dinner, only a few less than normal, and I suspect there won’t be too many anecdotes.”
“It can be quite serious, but your father prefers to keep it light, and short. Your grandfather on the other hand loved to torture the numbers with long-winded speeches and religious tracts.”
Small mercy then.
“Where do I sit?”
“Down the end in the listen and don’t speak seat. It’s where all new members sit for the first year.”
That was twice I’d been told.
There were eight family members, the seven others I knew well, some better than others. I’d seen arguments, words said that were better unsaid, accusations, and compliments. I’d seen them at their best and at their worst.
It would be interesting to see how they got along in this room.
It started with an introduction and mild applause at my anointment to the ‘board’.
Then the captain of the Titanic my father as the current CEO, read out the agenda.
No icebergs expected, just plain sailing.
I sat, and I listened. It was easy to see why it was plain sailing. The family had made its wealth generations ago when our products were in high demand, and we had been living off the wealth generated by astute investment managers.
But even so, the business could not keep going the way it was without being an ever-decreasing drain on resources.
We needed a plan for the future.
“Now, if there’s no more business…” My father looked around the table, his expression telling everyone there was no more business, and stopped at me.
Was that my cue?
“I’m sorry, but I can’t sit here and pretend this place isn’t going to hell in a handbasket.”
“It may or it may not be, but that is none of your concern.”
The tone more than suggested that I should stop, right now. Of course, if I had the sense expected of me I would have, but if I was going to make a contribution, I might as well start now.
“Do you have any idea what’s going on here? We need a plan for the future, we need to be doing something.”
All eyes were on me.
I’d never seen my father so angry. At that moment I thought I’d pushed it a little too hard. To be honest I don’t know what came over me.
He glared at me for a full minute. Then as if a thought came to me that moment, there was a slight change in expression.
“Then, I have a proposition for you. I want you to work on this plan you say we need to have, what you think will be best for the company, and the family, for everyone, for the future. I believe everyone here will agree on something, as you say, that needs to be done.”
There were nods all around the table.
Then, looking directly at me, he said, “if there is nothing else. Good. Our business is done.”
Investigation of crimes don’t always go according to plan, nor does the perpetrator get either found or punished.
That was particularly true in my case. The murderer was very careful in not leaving any evidence behind, to the extent that the police could not rules out whether it was a male or a female.
At one stage the police thought I had murdered my own wife though how I could be on a train at the time of the murder was beyond me. I had witnesses and a cast-iron alibi.
The officer in charge was Detective Inspector Gabrielle Walters. She came to me on the day after the murder seeking answers to the usual questions when was the last time you saw your wife, did you argue, the neighbors reckon there were heated discussions the day before.
Routine was the word she used.
Her Sargeant was a surly piece of work whose intention was to get answers or, more likely, a confession by any or all means possible. I could sense the raging violence within him. Fortunately, common sense prevailed.
Over the course of the next few weeks, once I’d been cleared of committing the crime, Gabrielle made a point of keeping me informed of the progress.
After three months the updates were more sporadic, and when, for lack of progress, it became a cold case, communication ceased.
But it was not the last I saw of Gabrielle.
The shock of finding Vanessa was more devastating than the fact she was now gone, and those images lived on in the same nightmare that came to visit me every night when I closed my eyes.
For months I was barely functioning, to the extent I had all but lost my job, and quite a few friends, particularly those who were more attached to Vanessa rather than me.
They didn’t understand how it could affect me so much, and since it had not happened to them, my tart replies of ‘you wouldn’t understand’ were met with equally short retorts. Some questioned my sanity, even, for a time, so did I.
No one, it seemed, could understand what it was like, no one except Gabrielle.
She was by her own admission, damaged goods, having been the victim of a similar incident, a boyfriend who turned out to be a very bad boy. Her story varied only in she had been made to witness his execution. Her nightmare, in reliving that moment in time, was how she was still alive and, to this day, had no idea why she’d been spared.
It was a story she told me one night, some months after the investigation had been scaled down. I was still looking for the bottom of a bottle and an emotional mess. Perhaps it struck a resonance with her; she’d been there and managed to come out the other side.
What happened become our secret, a once-only night together that meant a great deal to me, and by mutual agreement, it was not spoken of again. It was as if she knew exactly what was required to set me on the path to recovery.
And it had.
Since then we saw each about once a month in a cafe. I had been surprised to hear from her again shortly after that eventful night when she called to set it up, ostensibly for her to provide me with any updates on the case, but perhaps we had, after that unspoken night, formed a closer bond than either of us wanted to admit.
We generally talked for hours over wine, then dinner and coffee. It took a while for me to realize that all she had was her work, personal relationships were nigh on impossible in a job that left little or no spare time for anything else.
She’d always said that if I had any questions or problems about the case, or if there was anything that might come to me that might be relevant, even after all this time, all I had to do was call her.
I wondered if this text message was in that category. I was certain it would interest the police and I had no doubt they could trace the message’s origin, but there was that tiny degree of doubt, whether or not I could trust her to tell me what the message meant.
I reached for the phone then put it back down again. I’d think about it and decide tomorrow.
It’s been quite some years since we were in Vienna, and I remember it was a very pleasant experience, and the copious notes and photographs I took have aided in the writing of this chapter.
There is no doubting the zeal Worthington will put into the capture or assassination of Zoe, if and when she is discovered, and John would be horrified if he knew he was being used in such a manner.
At times it is going to be a bit like reading an Eric Ambler thriller, going to the hotel, getting information from concierges, and then tracking her movements. Money, as always, speaks one language, pay enough and you will find out what you want to know.
We know Zoe is languishing in a basement somewhere in Bratislava.
John is about to find out that is where she went, but searching for someone in Bratislava is going to be completely different from searching for someone in Austria.
The same rules don’t apply in Hungary.
…
As for our visit, we stayed in the Hilton Vienna Park, though the park had a different name then. It wax also when we have our first authentic Vienna Schnitzel and sampled Austrian cherries.
From there we took the train to Schonbrunn Palace, with its extensive gardens and maze, and the impressive architecture, old rooms and paintings, and at the end, so many sets of crockery.
There was also a kitchen nearby that made Apple Strudel, where we watched it being made and then had a slice to taste afterward.
We also went to a Wiener Palace which served a large and varied number of sausages.
Unfortunately, there were no music recitals or orchestral events at the time of our visit.
…
Today’s writing, sampling the best Vienna had to offer, 2,731 words, for a total of 28,973.
The novel ‘Echoes from the past’ started out as a short story I wrote about 30 years ago, titled ‘The birthday’.
My idea was to take a normal person out of their comfort zone and led on a short but very frightening journey to a place where a surprise birthday party had been arranged.
Thus the very large man with a scar and a red tie was created.
So was the friend with the limousine who worked as a pilot.
So were the two women, Wendy and Angelina, who were Flight Attendants that the pilot friend asked to join the conspiracy.
I was going to rework the short story, then about ten pages long, into something a little more.
And like all re-writes, especially those I have anything to do with, it turned into a novel.
There was motivation. I had told some colleagues at the place where I worked at the time that I liked writing, and they wanted a sample. I was going to give them the re-worked short story. Instead, I gave them ‘Echoes from the past’
Originally it was not set anywhere in particular.
But when considering a location, I had, at the time, recently been to New York in December, and visited Brooklyn and Queens, as well as a lot of New York itself. We were there for New Years, and it was an experience I’ll never forget.
One evening we were out late, and finished up in Brooklyn Heights, near the waterfront, and there was rain and snow, it was cold and wet, and there were apartment buildings shimmering in the street light, and I thought, this is the place where my main character will live.
It had a very spooky atmosphere, the sort where ghosts would not be unexpected. I felt more than one shiver go up and down my spine in the few minutes I was there.
I had taken notes, as I always do, of everywhere we went so I had a ready supply of locations I could use, changing the names in some cases.
Fifth Avenue near the Rockefeller center is amazing at first light, and late at night with the Seasonal decorations and lights.
The original main character was a shy and man of few friends, hence not expecting the surprise party. I enhanced that shyness into purposely lonely because of an issue from his past that leaves him always looking over his shoulder and ready to move on at the slightest hint of trouble. No friends, no relationships, just a very low profile.
Then I thought, what if he breaks the cardinal rule, and begins a relationship?
But it is also as much an exploration of a damaged soul, as it is the search for a normal life, without having any idea what normal was, and how the understanding of one person can sometimes make all the difference in what we may think or feel.
I’ve been reading the headlines and it seems that nothing else is going on except COVID 19, bar a plane crash, and residual fallout from the explosion in Beirut.
All bad news unfortunately, so I need to find something uplifting.
There’s nothing like a walk in the park on a bright sunny day.
There’s nothing like a walk in the park on a bright sunny day.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 