Days 3 and 4 – Writing exercise

…

There was a break in the proceedings, and I had just stepped out of the room to make a call.  I had excused myself for a few minutes, but for some reason, the atmosphere in the meeting room became oppressive.

Like someone had deliberately raised the temperature to just below comfortable.

The main doors opened out onto an elevator foyer, which was by a large glass observation deck that jutted out into space.  It was meant to be a feature where one could walk onto the glass floor and look down forty floors to the street below.

And if one looked out, almost the length of Central Park, and beyond.  I made the call, but there was no answer.  That was a surprise, because someone had always answered before.

Then, one moment I was looking down, all the way down to the sidewall, and the next moment, I was sitting in a chair by the double door entrance to the meeting room.

I had no idea how I got there.

It was like I had just woken from a long sleep, opened my eyes, and there I was.

But I didn’t know or couldn’t remember where that was, except I’d been there before.

“Sir?  Sir?”  A young lady in what looked like a military uniform was standing beside me, looking concerned.

I looked up, my eyes taking a moment to focus.

“Yes?”

“Are you alright?”

An odd question.  I felt alright; there didn’t seem to be anything wrong with me.

“Do you know where you are?”

Silly question.  I knew exactly where I was.

“Taking a break from the meeting.”

She looked perplexed.  “Sir, there is no meeting.  Not today.”

She addressed me as if she knew who I was.  I tried to stand, but I could not get out of the chair.  My whole body felt like a ton of weight.

I tried to think, and it was like walking under water against the tide.  I looked around me.  I know where this is, don’t I?

And yet nothing came into my mind.  Why was I here? Where exactly was here?

“I’m sorry.  It’s confusing.”

“Are you alright?”

All of a sudden if felt like the building was spinning, or perhaps I was, and the sensation was suddenly scaring me.

I closed my eyes and prayed it would stop.

It wouldn’t. 

But before I had time to ask for help, I lost consciousness.

…

I woke to the sound of Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony.  In fact, it had been in my subconscious before waking, and was probably what woke me.

It wasn’t loud, it wasn’t coming from a specific place, it just felt like I was right in the middle of an orchestra that was playing it.

Except when I surfaced, as if I had been underwater, it was simply there, in the air, all around me.

I was lying on the floor.

Odd, because in the back of my mind, my last thought was of being in the middle of a speech, though what it was about, for the moment, eluded me.

I looked around, but there was no one else.

The thought of looking out over Central Park returned, and I sat up.

Not in a room with windows.  Not with anything other than a camera with a red flashing light, near the roof.

I couldn’t see a door, but then, the lighting was subdued.

I stood, taking less effort than I thought it might and did a circuit of the walls.  It was too dark to see properly, but there would be a door.

Somewhere.

I tried to remember what happened, how I ended up in this room.  That would remain a mystery.  Before that, there was still that impression I had been in the middle of a speech.

About?

The interference and demands by the government in the execution of clandestine operations that are deemed secret, for obvious reasons.

I think I’d reached the point where I was looking around at the sea of expectant faces, of men and women who were waiting for the final argument.

I stopped on one particular face, a woman, about my age, who was relatively old, and a surprise in a room full of people who at best were in their late 30s.

Why was she there?

And why was she positioned so that it would be very difficult to see, much less identify her?

A fractional moment before moving on, fractional enough to lose track of where I was, and what I was about to say next.

What was I going to say next?

I leaned against the wall and closed my eyes.

…

Another room, very bright, with a table and two chairs.  I was sitting on one.  It was a cheap plastic single mold very uncomfortable.

The sort used as outdoor furniture is built to endure seasons of dramatic climactic changes.  I had some myself out on the deck, back at the cabin, a place I realised I should be rather than here.

Where was here, by the way?

The door opened, and an old woman came in.  She seemed familiar; I had seen her before.

Somewhere.

I never realised my memory was so bad.

She sat opposite, squirming to find a comfortable position, her expression telling me there wasn’t one.  Not for old folks.

“Emil?”

That was one of my names, but not today.

“Who?”

She smiled.  Damn, I know that face.

“Are we going to play games?”

Did we, once?  “Anastasia?  I think once I referred to you as the Tsar’s missing daughter.  You certainly looked like a Princess.”

“You remember?”

“Not exactly.  The face is familiar, and the name was dancing on the tip of my tongue.  If it is who I think you are, you look very good for a person whose been dead for twenty years.”

“You shot me.”

“In self-defence.  I still feel the aches and pains, and limp from that shot.  What did you expect?”

“I was trying to sound you so they wouldn’t capture you.”

“So, we both assumed the worst about each other.”

“You were never culturally attached.”

“You were never a maid.”

“A charming maid.”

“A very distracting maid.  Who was a spy?”

“Which made you what?”

“Still a cultural attache.  Who was asked by a weedy little man who smoked the most disgusting pipe tobacco, to find out if you were a maid.  I didn’t want to.”

“Except…”

“Weedy little men like him always have a backup plan that includes blackmail.”

“The photograph.”

Stormson, the head of the station in Moscow, believed no one, trusted no one, and treated everyone as if they were double agents.

It was not as if I didn’t know Anastasia was most likely a honey trap, and silly boys like me on first assignment overseas were the usual wide-eyed and naive fools.

“Old times.”

Except I didn’t think we were here for old times.

“I hear you retired?”  She squirmed again, and it seemed to favour her left side.  Old injury?

“A habit, in the mountains, away from prying eyes.  Peaceful, quiet.”

“Off the grid?”

“Way, way off the grid.  Why?”

“I need a favour.  You owe me.  I saved your life.”

“You tried to kill me.”

“If I had been, do you think we would be here now?”

Interesting point.  But, oddly, I knew in that moment that all of this was in my subconscious.  It wasn’t real. 

It had been triggered by seeing a face in the audience, at a briefing that had dragged me out of blissful retirement at the insistence of the man who had taken over my last job.

Ten years before.

…

Except that the only truthful part of what happened to me was that I was at a conference, delivering a pre-written speech.  My name may have added weight to the subject matter, but that was not why I was there.

The department had credible evidence that an old Russian master spy from the Cold War era had slipped into the country.  They had the blurry, almost indistinct photos to prove it.

I told them she was dead.  They told me she was not dead, and she was up to something.  They believed she wanted to see me.  That was why I was there.

And yes, I’d seen her, and yes, it had triggered an episode, and yes, now I was in hospital.  Waiting, it appeared, for her to arrive.

There was more to this than her wanting to see me.  We had a relatively minor encounter and my report back then was that I killed her.  I saw it happen.  It traumatised me for years afterwards.

It didn’t happen.  She didn’t come.  I thought she was just a ghost from my past.

A month later, they let me go home, back to the wilds of the forest, where my nearest neighbour was a mile away, where the security system I’d installed could pick up a mouse at a hundred years, a security system that had more backup systems in place than could be counted.

No one could penetrate the shield.

No one.

And yet when I got out of the car and closed the door, I could hear the strains of the Pastoral Symphony wafting down from the house. 

And by the time I made it to the veranda, she was leaning in the doorway, looking as devastatingly beautiful as always.

“Welcome home, Vasily.”

I smiled.  “Olga.  Any problems?”

“None that couldn’t be buried out back,” she waved her hand vaguely, “somewhere.  You?”

“Nobody cares about the dinosaurs anymore.  Except when they think an old adversary is back to wreak havoc.”

“I am like you, a dinosaur too.  We are dinosaurs together, yes?”

I had dreamed of this moment, and hadn’t thought the plane would work.  Not only did we have to fool my people, but she had to fool herself, a much more difficult proposition.

It only worked because of my successor.  Not a man who understood the intricate details of any case.  All results driven, at any cost, and the quicker the better.

She held out her hand.  “Come.  I have prepared a feast.”

No doubt, I thought as I closed the door, in more ways than one.

…

©  Charles Heath  2025