Month: January 2023

“What Sets Us Apart”, a mystery with a twist

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.

Find the kindle version on Amazon here:  http://amzn.to/2Eryfth

whatsetscover

In a word: Park

We mostly understand that a park is an area set aside for recreation, and can have trees, flowers, a lake, and vast lawns.  These parks are also sometimes called ‘gardens’.

A great example of a park is Central Park in New York.

Nearly every city has a park or some sort, some have more than one.

But the word park has a number of other uses.  For instance,

You can park a car, or bike, or yourself; in other words, it’s a place where you stop for a while.  For cars, it is a carpark.

You could say ‘it’s just a walk in the park’, which means that the job is going to be easy.  I never understood that analogy because quite a lot of parks have walks that are difficult, and not so much ‘a walk in the park’.

It is also used to describe a place where animals are kept, other than calling it a zoo, it can go by the name of a wildlife park.  Zoos though are more for cities.  Wildlife parks can be quite huge and many are found in Africa.

A park can also be used to describe a sporting arena or field.

You can park a bag in a locker.

You can park an idea in the back of your mind and come back to it later, or if you are like me, it disappears into the ether.

It can be an area of land around a manor house, but there are very few of those left now.  The most notable of these are in England, and were designed by a man called Capability Brown.

 

In a word: Joe

Aside from being the short form of the name Joseph, ie a man’s name, there is also a derivative for women, Jo.

The name Joe is said to be used from the mid-1800s.

My favourite Joe name is Joe Bloggs, and he features in some of my stories.

It’s anonymous enough for someone to use as a cover when booking into a sleazy motel and is a little more refined than Smith or Jones, names that more than likely already feature in the register.

Jo could be a short form for Josephine, a name I’m sure some women would prefer not to be called.

But…

Did you know it’s also a name given to a cup of coffee?

Well, that didn’t make much of a splash.  I don’t think anyone these days refers to coffee as Joe because there are so many different variations with names I couldn’t pronounce let alone spell, I think it’s been lost in the mists of time because there was only one type of coffee.

It was called coffee.  Funny about that.

However…

There is another definition, and that is for the ‘average Joe’, an ordinary fellow who works for a living.

Odd, because I thought that was what most of us did, but perhaps it refers to tradespeople, or blue collar workers, not the white collar brigade.

Hang on, isn’t there a GI Joe, a universal description of the average soldier?

Searching for locations: We’ve just arrived in Beijing International Airport, China

Instead of making a grand entrance, arriving in style and being greeted by important dignitaries, we are slinking in via an airplane, late at night. It’s hardly the entrance I’d envisaged. At 9:56 the plane touches down on the runway.  Outside the plane, it is dark and gloomy and from what I could see, it had been raining.  That could, of course, simply be condensation.

Once on the ground, everyone was frantically gathering together everything from seat pockets and sending pillows and blankets to the floor.  A few were turning their mobile phones back on, and checking for a signal, and, perhaps, looking for messages sent to them during the last 12 hours. Or perhaps they were just suffering from mobile phone deprivation.

It took 10 minutes for the plane to arrive at the gate. That’s when everyone moves into overdrive, unbuckling belts, some before the seatbelt sign goes off, and are first out of their seats and into the overhead lockers.  Most are not taking care that their luggage may have moved, but fortunately, no bags fall out onto someone’s head. The flight had been relatively turbulent free.

When as many people and bags have squeezed into that impossibly small aisle space, we wait for the door to open, and then the privileged few business and first-class passengers to depart before we can begin to leave. As we are somewhere near the middle of the plane, our wait will not be as long as it usually is.  This time we avoided being at the back of the plane.  Perhaps that privilege awaits us on the return trip.

Once off the plane, it is a matter of following the signs, some of which are not as clear as they could be.  It’s why it took another 30 odd minutes to get through immigration, but that was not necessarily without a few hiccups along the way. We got sidetracked at the fingerprint machines, which seemed to have a problem if your fingers were not straight, not in the center of the glass, and then if it was generally cranky, which ours were, continue to tell you to try again, and again, and again, and again…That took 10 to 15 minutes before we joined an incredibly long queue of other arrivals,

A glance at the time, and suddenly it’s nearly an hour from the moment we left the plane.

And…

That’s when we got to the immigration officer, and it became apparent we were going to have to do the fingerprints yet again.  Fortunately this time, it didn’t take as long.  Once that done, we collected our bags, cleared customs by putting our bags through a huge x-ray machine, and it was off to find our tour guide.


We found several tour guides with their trip-a-deal flags waiting for us to come out of the arrivals hall.  It wasn’t a difficult process in the end.  We were in the blue group.  Other people we had met on the plane were in the red group or the yellow group.  The tour guide found, or as it turned out she found us, it was simply a matter of waiting for the rest of the group, of which there were eventually 28.Gathered together we were told we would be taking the bags to one place and then ourselves to the bus in another.  A glance in the direction of the bus park, there were a lot of busses.

Here’s a thought, imagine being told your bus is the white one with blue writing on the side.

Yes, yours is, and 25 others because all of the tourist coaches are the same.  An early reminder, so that you do not get lost, or, God forbid, get on the wrong bus, for the three days in Beijing, is to get the last five numbers of the bus registration plate and commit them to memory.  It’s important.  Failing that, the guide’s name is in the front passenger window.

Also, don’t be alarmed if your baggage goes in one direction, and you go in another. In a rather peculiar set up the bags are taken to the hotel by what the guide called the baggage porter.  It is an opportunity to see how baggage handlers treat your luggage; much better than the airlines it appears.


That said, if you’re staying at the Beijing Friendship Hotel, be prepared for a long drive from the airport.  It took us nearly an hour, and bear in mind that it was very late on a Sunday night.

Climbing out of the bus after what seemed a convoluted drive through a park with buildings, we arrive at the building that will be our hotel for the next three days.  From the outside, it looks quite good, and once inside the foyer, that first impression is good.  Lots of space, marble, and glass.  If you are not already exhausted by the time you arrive, the next task is to get your room key, find your bags, get to your room, and try to get to be ready the next morning at a reasonable hour.

Sorry, that boat has sailed.

We were lucky, we were told, that our plane arrived on time, and we still arrived at the hotel at 12:52.  Imagine if the incoming plane is late.

This was taken the following morning.  It didn’t look half as bland late at night.

This is the back entrance to Building No 4 but is quite representative of the whole foyer, made completely of marble and glass.  It all looked very impressive under the artificial lights, but not so much in the cold hard light of early morning.

This the foyer of the floor our room was on.  Marble with interesting carpet designs.  Those first impressions of it being a plush hotel were slowly dissipating as we got nearer and nearer to the room.  From the elevator, it was a long, long walk.

So…Did I tell you about the bathroom in our room?

The shower and the toilet both share the same space with no divide and the shower curtain doesn’t reach to the floor.  Water pressure is phenomenal.  Having a shower floods the whole shower plus toilet area so when you go to the toilet you’re basically underwater.

Don’t leave your book or magazine on the floor or it will end up a watery mess.

And the water pressure is so hard that it could cut you in half.  Only a small turn of the tap is required to get that tingling sensation going.

It’s after 1:30 before we finally get to sleep.

As for the bed, well, that’s a whole other story.

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to write a war story – Episode 32

For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.

Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.

And, so, it continues…

It was about a mile by foot to the old church.  Carlo was waiting for us, and then led the way because I wasn’t sure where it was, even though I’d been there once, and hadn’t really been taking any notice.

It was enough time to ask Blinky a few questions about how things were going because he would have a better overall view of the war being involved in the operational side of things.  Thompson’s group of which I was a part, only had our part in a much larger war effort involving a number of covert operations.

It wasn’t going well, not that he put it in so many words, and it looked like it was going to drag on a while longer.  Beyond that, he was not saying anything more.  Perhaps he didn’t know, or perhaps he thought the trees had ears.

I know, loose lips sink ships.

Carlo was indifferent, though I could see he was not happy about Leonardo not turning up so we could kill him and his men.  For me, I had an awfully bad feeling we had missed something, and the end result of it was not going to be good.

And that feeling of foreboding only increased the closer we got to the church ruins.

Blinky was shocked to learn that the Germans would destroy a church and kill the priest.  I guess a lot of people would be if they knew.

When we were about 50 yards from the entrance, I saw one of Blinky’s men show his face, behind a gun raised just in case we were not friends.  When he saw Blinky with us, he lowered the gun and stepped out of the shadows so we could see him.

Closer again, I could see the soldier was looking quite distraught.

“What’s the matter?” Blinky asked him.  

“When we got here, we went inside the church.  God, it was awful.  There’s a woman in there, and…” 

A woman?

I almost ran, and at the end, lying on the ground was a woman, with the Sergeant trying to do what he could.

Carlo bustled past and was first to her side.

“Chiara,” he said hoarsely.

Chiara?  What was she doing here?  How did she get here?  What had happened?

I joined Carlo on the other side.  She was awake but in a terrible state.  Whoever inflicted punishment on her had been very brutal.  The sergeant had managed to cover her broken body with the remnants of her clothes and had tried to clean away some of the blood.

She had been beaten severely and she had the sort of wounds I’d seen before, a result of both fists and weapons.  Torture used to extract information, and, with a sinking feeling, I knew exactly what information Leonardo would be after.

And equally, I knew there would be no point getting to the underground hideout.  All I could hope for was that some, if not all who had been taken there for their safety, had escaped.  But, without forewarning…

She looked from Carlo to me.

“What happened,” I asked.

“Leonardo.  I went out to collect one of the family members and ran into Leonardo and his men.  

They brought me here, and…”  It was spoken haltingly, as each breath, each word, brought on new and sharp pain.  She was having trouble breathing, and the blood coming out her mouth told me it was possible she had broken ribs and a punctured lung.

I hoped not, but it was a forlorn hope.  There was little we would be able to do for her, and moving her, and finding proper medical help was going to be almost impossible.

At the end of that first speech, I saw her shudder, and then moan as waves of pain passed through her.

The Sargent had a field medical kit and had taken out a syringe which I assumed had morphine.  She was going to need it.

“This should take away the pain,” he said to no one in particular, then administered it.

For a moment I thought it had rendered her unconscious, but a minute or so later she opened her eyes again.  Glassy, but there was a shred of relief in them.

“You’re going to have to move her to somewhere better than this.  There’s a lot of damage, and it’s going to be difficult.”  The Sargent knew he was fighting a losing battle.

I got the impression it wasn’t the worst he’d seen.

I felt her hand touch mine, and she said, softly, “Tell Martina I’m sorry.”

“For what?”

“I’m not the brave person she thinks I am.  I couldn’t withstand the torture.  I tried, I tried very hard, but I couldn’t stop myself…”  Again, it was in dispersed with wheezing, breathlessness, and bouts of pain when she tried to breathe in.  I almost couldn’t quite understand her, because her English was not as good as Martina’s.

It confirmed my worst fear, that Leonardo knew where Martina and the others were hiding.

I jumped up.  “Blinky, stay here, do what you can for her.  Carlo…”

He was up and heading for the exit.  He heard, and he knew what it meant.

Blinky took my place, and said, “Go.  We’ll be here when you get back.”

For a big man, Carlo was fast, and it took until we’d almost reached the underground entrance before I caught up with him.

© Charles Heath 2020

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 47

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

When the room was empty and only Richards and I remained, he cut the ties that bound my hands and legs.

“Bad business,” he said.

I sat again, and flexed the muscles that had begun to stiffen up whilst tightly bound.

“I’m assuming you know a woman by the name of Jan?” I said. “She told me she was working for MI6 so I’m assuming you’re her handler.”

“When she chooses to be handled, yes.  Jan is just one of her names.  She’s currently missing, and I think we now know why?”

“Her work,” I nodded towards the body.

“God no.  She’s charged with chasing down leads and then calling the cavalry.  We had a tracker on this chap, found him, and had him in a safe facility awaiting interrogation, what we thought was safe at any rate, and Jan and another agent watching over him until the interrogation team arrived.  When the interrogation team got there everyone was gone, but with enough blood on the floor to paint a pretty clear picture.  Maury had been interrogated and killed there, dumped here, with no indication of the whereabouts of our agents.  She told me this guy and another trained you, and others, in rather strange circumstances.  A bogus operation. To what end?”

“From what I could tell, a single surveillance operation.  Me and a dozen others.  Cut loose after it failed, those of us that survived, that is.”

“A lot of effort to achieve nothing.”

“Pity we can’t ask him what it was about?”  I looked over at the body.  Maury was hardly recognizable.  Whoever carried out the interrogation had been either in a hurry or in a bad mood.

“Indeed.  She told me this chap called O’Connell was involved.  Now so?”

Another rule that popped into my head from the training: never share information with other agencies unless you absolutely had to.  I had no doubt if Dobbin was here, he would agree, but he wasn’t.

I wondered if I should tell him she had allegiance to another branch of the secret services, or mention Dobbin.

“He was the surveillance target.  We were charged with observing him, but not what he was suspected of.  I followed him as far as the exploding shop, got temporarily disorientated after the blast,, but managed to reacquire the target, following him to an alley where I spoke briefly to him before Maury and Severin arrived, and he was shot, apparently killed.”

“Either he was or he wasn’t.”

“The body disappeared.  My view is he is still alive, somewhere.”

“That explosion was supposed to be caused by a gas leak.”

“Standard operational doubletalk.  A journalist was killed, apparently in the shop waiting for the target.  It went up after the target passed, I’m assuming his tradecraft was to check first then go back.  Never got a chance.  I think now given the circumstances, the journalist was going to hand something off.  I’ve been asked a number of times by various people about a USB drive.  You know anything about it?”

“This is the first I’m hearing about anything about a USB drive.  You know what was on it?”

“Above my pay grade, I was told.”

“OK.  What about this Severin character?:

“All I have is a phone number, and that, I think we can both agree, will be a burner.”

“Agreed, but it might be useful.”

I gave it to him and he put it on his phone.

A new team of men in white suits arrived at the door, no doubt MI5 forensic specialists, and two more agents, bigger and tougher, what I would call the muscle.

“I’m afraid you’re going to have to come back to the office to answer a few more questions.  It’s not custody, but mandatory co-operation.”

“And if I refuse?”

“It might make their day if you know what I mean.”

I shrugged.  One I might be able to take, but not the both of them.  And they both looked like they would be happy to teach me the error of my ways if I tried to escape/

“That won’t be necessary.  I’m taking him with me.”

“Dobbin just came to the door, flashing an MI6 warrant card.

“I’ve been charged with cleaning this mess up.”

“And so you shall, but not including this agent.  Orders from above, reasons why, as they say, are above your pay grade.

I suspect the warrant card said Dobbin outranked him.  Did our people have fake MI6 IDs?

“This is highly irregular.”

“Call your boss, if you don’t like it.  I can wait.”

I could see the reluctance in his face.

He glared at me.  “Go, but don’t go too far.  I still might get clearance to have another chat.”

…

© Charles Heath 2020-2022

A photograph from the inspirational bin – 16

I thought since it is Winter here, we could do with a breath of fresh air and colour that comes with the change if season

Living in Queensland, Winter never quite seems to be as cold as it is in the southern states, which are closer to Antarctica.

We have had a relatively mild winter this year and I didn’t have to light the fire once, though we did use the reverse cycle sir conditioning.

But, from now the temperature will be rising as well as the humidity and will hang around until April next year.

Normally this would mean that a large proportion of the population would be planning their summer holidays, but with Covid restrictions, we may not be allowed to leave our state, or only visit states that have no or few cases like us, and definitely no overseas travel.

For people who like to travel, this is a bitter pill to swallow, and especially so for all those retirees who have worked all their lives, and decided to wait until retirement to see their own country and the world at large.

To me, the adage ‘don’t put off until tomorrow what you can do today’ seemed appropriate and we decided once the kids were old enough, we would travel far and wide while we could.  It was a wise decision because neither of us are as agile as we used to be.

Seems we were the lucky ones.

Now we are content to see our own country which no doubt will be able to manage Covid to the extent that life might return to a form if normal sooner rather that later.

And if it doesn’t, then I have enough to amuse myself at home. I’m sure we are all familiar with the expression ‘spring cleaning’. We have decided to clean house, and do some renovating.

And it’s a surprise when cleaning out those cupboards, drawers, and boxes, the stuff you’ve accumulated over many, many years. Last I heard, we were taking about getting a large skip, so I suspect this culling is going to be savage.

But, just to be clear, no books will be thrown out!

It’s cold out there

But…

It is, but it isn’t.  Oddly enough after two weeks in temperatures ranging from -21 to 7 degrees Fahrenheit, I think I’m finally used to it.

My early morning walk after leaving the hotel is both for exercise and exploring.

Looking for locations, observing people, watching and learning what it’s like to live, work, and hang out in a city like New York.

It’s so much more interesting than where I come from.  There it would be impossible to spin a story in such a small city.  You need to be able to hide in plain sight among millions of people over a very large area that encompasses Manhattan, Brooklyn, Queens, and everything else in-between and beyond.

I was looking at going to a Walmart in Secaucus, about three and a half miles from my hotel in Manhattan.  Three and a half miles.  In my city that’s way beyond the limits of the city and in the outer suburbs.

Here I can spin a tale that could live within the confines of 35th street, 85th street, 2nd Avenue and 10th Avenue, and have so much material, I could probably write a trilogy.

Pity is, I won’t be here long enough to gather enough background.

Still, it’s like being in literary seventh heaven.

I’ve written one book based in New York, I’m sure another is currently writing itself in my head and will be on paper over the next year.

Then, maybe I’ll be back.

The story behind the story – Echoes from the Past

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.

And, of course, I wanted a happy ending.

Except for the bad guys.

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And what was the inspiration behind the story “[Any title you’ve written]”

As accomplished as we can be at putting words on paper, what is it that makes it so difficult to sit in a chair with a camera on you, and saying words rather than writing them?

Er and um seem to crop up a lot in verbal speech.

OK, it was a simple question; “What motivates you to write?”

Damn.

My brain just turned to mush, and the words come out sounding like a drunken sailor after a night out on the town.

The written answer to the question is simple; “The idea that someone will read what I have written, and quite possibly enjoy it; that is motivation enough.”

It highlights the difficulties of the novice author.

Not only are there the constant demands of creating a ‘brand’ and building a ‘following’, there is also the need to market oneself, and the interview is one of the more effective ways of doing this.

If only I can settle the nerves.

I mean, really, it is only my granddaughter who is conducting the interview, and the questions are relatively simple.

The trouble is, I’ve never had to do it before, well, perhaps in an interview for a job, but that is less daunting.  That usually sticks to a predefined format.

Here the narrative can go in any direction.  There are set questions, but the interviewer, in her inimitable manner, can sometimes slide a question in out of left field.

For instance, “Your character Zoe the assassin, is she based on someone you know, or an amalgam of other characters you’ve read about or seen in movies?”

That was an interesting question, and one that has several answers, but the one most relevant was; “It was the secret alter ego of one of the women I used to work with.  I asked her one day if she wasn’t doing what she was, what she would like to do.  It fascinated me that other people had a desire to be something more exotic in an alter ego.”

Of course, the next question was about what I wanted to be in an alter ego.

Maybe I’ll tell you next time.