Category: blogging

NANOWRIMO – April 2025 – Day 19

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The Fourth Son

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There are still the endless questions on what actually happened from the moment the call came that there was a skier on the top of the mountain in distress.

And why the helicopter was called in, and everything that happened around that one decision.  It was, of course, the prerogative of the officer in charge of the ski patrol, at the time Edward.

The question was, was he supposed to be in charge when the two other brothers were out in the field?  That raised another question: Why were the two assigned together when the standing orders were only one could be in the field and the other on standby?

How did the Air Force send a newish pilot on a mission that hw had not flown before?  It was not good policy to not have an experienced pilot on hand

He was going to go up to the top of the mountain and see for himself, but on memory of the his years in the patrol, it was not that difficult to get to the spot where from the top ski lift, and if that was the case, then the avalanche was preventable.

It was going to be another interesting report when the final assessment was completed.  He would have to try and get the parliament to call for a royal commission.  Of course, raking over the coals might be the last thing needed, especially since the resort was closed while the slopes were regroomed.

The country needed a quick, blameless answer and reopened the resort for obvious financial reasons, aside from the employment and services it generated.

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.

Get it here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

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Searching for locations: The Bund, Shanghai, China

The Bund

The architecture along the Bund or Waitan is a living museum of the colonial history of the 1800s.  The area centers on a section of Zhongshan Road within the former Shanghai International Settlement.

The word bund means an embankment or an embanked quay.   It was initially a British settlement; later the British and American settlements were combined in the International Settlement.

The Bund is a mile-long stretch of waterfront promenade along the Huangpu River. There are 52 buildings of various architectural styles, including Gothic, baroque, and neoclassical styles. The area is often referred to as “the museum of buildings”.

Building styles include Romanesque Revival, Gothic Revival, Renaissance Revival, Baroque Revival, Neo-Classical or Beaux-Arts, as well as a number in Art Deco style.

Having seen these buildings initially the night before, mostly lit up, our viewing this morning was from the land side, and particularly interesting in that the colonial architecture was really fascinating considering their location, but not surprising given Shanghai’s history.  A lot of these buildings would be more at home in London, that out in the far east.

The Bund waterfront is about two kilometers long and impossible to cover in the time allowed for this part of the tour.

There was just enough time to get photos of the waterfront and the old buildings.

Some of these buildings had odd shapes, like one on the far right that looks like a bottle opener.

And, for some odd reason, a bull.

On the other side of the water, the sights that had been quite colorful the night before, were equally impressive though somewhat diminished by the haze.

The first case of PI Walthenson – “A Case of Working With the Jones Brothers”

This case has everything, red herrings, jealous brothers, femme fatales, and at the heart of it all, greed.

See below for an excerpt from the book…

Coming soon!

PIWalthJones1

An excerpt from the book:

When Harry took the time to consider his position, a rather uncomfortable position at that, he concluded that he was somehow involved in another case that meant very little to him.

Not that it wasn’t important in some way he was yet to determine, it was just that his curiosity had got the better of him, and it had led to this: sitting in a chair, securely bound, waiting for someone one of his captors had called Doug.

It was not the name that worried him so much, it was the evil laugh that had come after the name was spoken.

Doug what? Doug the ‘destroyer’, Doug the ‘dangerous’, Doug the ‘deadly’; there was any number of sinister connotations, and perhaps that was the point of the laugh, to make it more frightening than it was.

But there was no doubt about one thing in his mind right then: he’d made a mistake. A very big. and costly, mistake. Just how big the cost, no doubt he would soon find out.

His mother, and his grandmother, the wisest person he had ever known, had once told him never to eavesdrop.

At the time he couldn’t help himself and instead of minding his own business, listening to a one-sided conversation which ended with a time and a place. The very nature of the person receiving the call was, at the very least, sinister, and, because of the cryptic conversation, there appeared to be, or at least to Harry, criminal activity involved.

For several days he had wrestled with the thought of whether he should go. Stay on the fringe, keep out of sight, observe and report to the police if it was a crime. Instead, he had willingly gone down the rabbit hole.

Now, sitting in an uncomfortable chair, several heat lamps hanging over his head, he was perspiring, and if perspiration could be used as a measure of fear, then Harry’s fear was at the highest level.

Another runnel of sweat rolled into his left eye, and, having his hands tied, literally, it made it impossible to clear it. The burning sensation momentarily took his mind off his predicament. He cursed and then shook his head trying to prevent a re-occurrence. It was to no avail.

Let the stinging sensation be a reminder of what was right and what was wrong.

It was obvious that it was the right place and the right time, but in considering his current perilous situation, it definitely was the wrong place to be, at the worst possible time.

It was meant to be his escape, an escape from the generations of lawyers, what were to Harry, dry, dusty men who had been in business since George Washington said to the first Walthenson to step foot on American soil, ‘Why don’t you become a lawyer?” when asked what he could do for the great man.

Or so it was handed down as lore, though Harry didn’t think Washington meant it literally, the Walthenson’s, then as now, were not shy of taking advice.

Except, of course, when it came to Harry.

He was, Harry’s father was prone to saying, the exception to every rule. Harry guessed his father was referring to the fact his son wanted to be a Private Detective rather than a dry, dusty lawyer. Just the clothes were enough to turn Harry off the profession.

So, with a little of the money Harry inherited from one of his aunts, he leased an office in Gramercy Park and had it renovated to look like the Sam Spade detective agency, you know the one, Spade and Archer, and The Maltese Falcon.

There’s a movie and a book by Dashiell Hammett if you’re interested.

So, there it was, painted on the opaque glass inset of the front door, ‘Harold Walthenson, Private Detective’.

There was enough money to hire an assistant, and it took a week before the right person came along, or, more to the point, didn’t just see his business plan as something sinister. Ellen, a tall cool woman in a long black dress, or so the words of a song in his head told him, fitted in perfectly.

She’d seen the movie, but she said with a grin, Harry was no Humphrey Bogart.

Of course not, he said, he didn’t smoke.

Three months on the job, and it had been a few calls, no ‘real’ cases, nothing but missing animals, and other miscellaneous items. What he really wanted was a missing person. Or perhaps a beguiling, sophisticated woman who was as deadly as she was charming, looking for an errant husband, perhaps one that she had already ‘dispatched’.

Or for a tall, dark and handsome foreigner who spoke in riddles and in heavily accented English, a spy, or perhaps an assassin, in town to take out the mayor. The man was such an imbecile Harry had considered doing it himself.

Now, in a back room of a disused warehouse, that wishful thinking might be just about to come to a very abrupt end, with none of the romanticized trappings of the business befalling him. No beguiling women, no sinister criminals, no stupid policemen.

Just a nasty little man whose only concern was how quickly or how slowly Harry’s end was going to be.

…

© Charles Heath 2019-2024

Writing a book in 365 days – 93

Day 93

Did you always know you wanted to be a writer?

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Perhaps not in the beginning, but as time passed, yes.

In my younger years, as an awkward child who didn’t fare well in school, with the sort of boys who treated the weaker kids with aggression, and at home where we were victims of domestic violence, it became necessary to immerse myself in another world than the one that I lived in.

That’s when I began to invent different lives, mostly generated from reading books morning, noon and night and spending any spare time in the school library, anywhere other than in the schoolyard.

Those books fuelled my imagination. I could be anyone else other than who I was, go anywhere, and do anything. The Secret Seven, The Famous Five, Biggles, Billy Bunter, all those characters that today would never get a fair chance.

Soon, those imaginings became scribbles, and the first story I wrote was one of a spy landing on a distant beach in another country and executing a mission which, when I look back, was rather strange, but it kept me busy.

Then a thousand or so books later, fuelled by Alistair MacLean, Hammond Innes, James Patterson, Clive Cussler, Steve Berry, David Baldacci, and countless others, I improved my writing skills, the story became more focussed and less childish, and I decided thrillers were the go.

And when romance didn’t seem to work out all that well, I decided to write myself into one, imagining how it would be. For that, I devoured a few Mills and Boons, but when it came time to write a similar story, it got half way then veered into thriller territory.

I think, in that first effort, I was not the hero, but the forever tired, always battling to stay alive and discovering the love of his life, found ways they could not be together. A bit like real life at times.

My latest effort, I used to read stories for my grandchildren, and then foolishly one night told her I would write a better fair tale. After 11 years, much toiling and excuses for not having it done, I have finished it. 3 volumes, 1,000 plus pages, it is an epic.

Did I always want to be a writer?

Maybe I did and just didn’t realise it back when I was too young to know.

‘Sunday in New York’ – A beta reader’s view

I’m not a fan of romance novels but …

There was something about this one that resonated with me.

This is a novel about a world generally ruled by perception, and how people perceive what they see, what they are told, and what they want to believe.

I’ve been guilty of it myself as I’m sure we all have at one time or another.

For the main characters Harry and Alison there are other issues driving their relationship.

For Alison, it is a loss of self-worth through losing her job and from losing her mother and, in a sense, her sister.

For Harry, it is the fact he has a beautiful and desirable wife, and his belief she is the object of other men’s desires, and one in particular, his immediate superior.

Between observation, the less than honest motives of his friends, a lot of jumping to conclusions based on very little fact, and you have the basis of one very interesting story.

When it all comes to a head, Alison finds herself in a desperate situation, she realises only the truth will save their marriage.

But is it all the truth?

What would we do in similar circumstances?

Rarely does a book have me so enthralled that I could not put it down until I knew the result. They might be considered two people who should have known better, but as is often the case, they had to get past what they both thought was the truth.

And the moral of this story, if it could be said there is one, nothing is ever what it seems.

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Available on Amazon here: amzn.to/2H7ALs8

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In a word: Hail

Yes, you know what it is, and it can be very unpleasant when it hits – hail.

Hailstones as big as golf balls, hailstones that make small or large dents in your car, smash windows, wreck trees, and, sometimes, give the appearance that snow has just fallen.

And hail with snow equals sleet, and it’s not very pleasant to be caught in it.

Of course, there’s a different sort of hail, one that you might also not want to be subject to, that from someone across the street trying to get your attention.

Or a hail that you do want someone or something to stop; a taxi, or cab

Or a ship across the water… though I’m not sure why you, personally would want to hail a ship

Perhaps you could be praised in some way, like, he hailed from London – no, not yelled so loudly he could be heard in New York

And no, we do not go around saying, Hail Minister, or Hail Friend!  Not unless we’ve used a time machine and gone back to ancient Roman days

This is not to be confused with the word hale

Yes, it can be something you eat, and I hear it’s very good for you

Or that man is hale and hearty, which means in good health – and I have to say I’m envious because I’m anything but hale

 

An excerpt from “Echoes from the Past”

Available on Amazon Kindle here:  https://amzn.to/2CYKxu4

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With my attention elsewhere, I walked into a man who was hurrying in the opposite direction.  He was a big man with a scar running down the left side of his face from eye socket to mouth, and who was also wearing a black shirt with a red tie.

That was all I remembered as my heart almost stopped.

He apologized as he stepped to one side, the same way I stepped, as I also muttered an apology.

I kept my eyes down.  He was not the sort of man I wanted to recognize later in a lineup.  I stepped to the other side and so did he.  It was one of those situations.  Finally getting out of sync, he kept going in his direction, and I towards the bus, which was now pulling away from the curb.

Getting my breath back, I just stood riveted to the spot watching it join the traffic.  I looked back over my shoulder, but the man I’d run into had gone.  I shrugged and looked at my watch.  It would be a few minutes before the next bus arrived.

Wait, or walk?  I could also go by subway, but it was a long walk to the station.  What the hell, I needed the exercise.

At the first intersection, the ‘Walk’ sign had just flashed to ‘Don’t Walk’.  I thought I’d save a few minutes by not waiting for the next green light.  As I stepped onto the road, I heard the screeching of tires.

A yellow car stopped inches from me.

It was a high powered sports car, perhaps a Lamborghini.  I knew what they looked like because Marcus Bartleby owned one, as did every other junior executive in the city with a rich father.

Everyone stopped to look at me, then the car.  It was that sort of car.  I could see the driver through the windscreen shaking his fist, and I could see he was yelling too, but I couldn’t hear him.  I stepped back onto the sidewalk, and he drove on.  The moment had passed and everyone went back to their business.

My heart rate hadn’t come down from the last encounter.   Now it was approaching cardiac arrest, so I took a few minutes and several sets of lights to regain composure.

At the next intersection, I waited for the green light, and then a few seconds more, just to be sure.  I was no longer in a hurry.

At the next, I heard what sounded like a gunshot.  A few people looked around, worried expressions on their faces, but when it happened again, I saw it was an old car backfiring.  I also saw another yellow car, much the same as the one before, stopped on the side of the road.  I thought nothing of it, other than it was the second yellow car I’d seen.

At the next intersection, I realized I was subconsciously heading towards Harry’s new bar.   It was somewhere on 6th Avenue, so I continued walking in what I thought was the right direction.

I don’t know why I looked behind me at the next intersection, but I did.  There was another yellow car on the side of the road, not far from me.  It, too, looked the same as the original Lamborghini, and I was starting to think it was not a coincidence.

Moments after crossing the road, I heard the roar of a sports car engine and saw the yellow car accelerate past me.  As it passed by, I saw there were two people in it, and the blurry image of the passenger; a large man with a red tie.

Now my imagination was playing tricks.

It could not be the same man.  He was going in a different direction.

In the few minutes I’d been standing on the pavement, it had started to snow; early for this time of year, and marking the start of what could be a long cold winter.  I shuddered, and it was not necessarily because of the temperature.

I looked up and saw a neon light advertising a bar, coincidentally the one Harry had ‘found’ and, looking once in the direction of the departing yellow car, I decided to go in.  I would have a few drinks and then leave by the back door if it had one.

Just in case.

© Charles Heath 2015-2020

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The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 40

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, and because of it, he has now been roped into what might be called a suicide mission.

 

I left the others out the front of the hut in Barnes charge, except for Williamson who stayed inside, feigning illness.  If everything went according to plan, a sketchy plan at best, Monroe would slip the diamonds to Williamson, and then melt back into the bush, heading back towards the fork in the road heading to the airstrip.  She would then report on what troops were between us and our objective.

I signaled for Davies to join me.

The commander and the man who’d reported to him earlier strode across the compound to a smaller building that might pass as a jail.  There was a guard out the front who jumped up and snapped to attention when the commander came up the steps.

“Open the door.”

The guard fumbled with a ring of keys, found the one for the door, and unlocked it.

The commander looked at me.  “You may speak to them for five minutes.”

“Alone.  You have my word we’ll not try anything.”

He nodded at the guard.  “Bottom of the steps.  Don’t let them out of your sight.”  To me, he pointed to another building about 50 yards away, “I’ll be there, don’t keep me waiting.”

We waited for him to come down the steps and start striding to his office, then went up the stairs, and I knocked on the door.  “My name is James, and I’m here with Davies to take you home.  We’re coming in.”

I opened the door slowly pulling it towards me, and the odor that came out of the room was that of people who had not been allowed to wash for several days, if not longer.  Once the door was fully open and the interior lit, I could see two stretchers and two men sitting up, struggling with the light in their eyes.

At least they were able to sit up.

Our information was they had been captive now for about seven months, and, looking at them, they didn’t seem to appear to badly off.  They showed signs of weight loss, and pallid skin, but not to the point of being maltreated or starved.

“Who did you say you were?”  The man on the left was about 50ish, grey thinning hair, and I suspect once a lot bulkier than he was now.  There was an air of brashness about him, but that would have been beaten out of him long ago.  Now he was just a shell of his former self.

“Sgt James, and Lieutenant Davies.  Part of the rescue team sent to bring you home.  A Colonel Bamfield sent us.”

“You took your time.”

Th either man spoke.  Younger, a military type, perhaps the other man’s bodyguard.  He had a few scars, so I expect he had offered some resistance and paid for it with the butt of a gun or two.

“We tried once, but it failed.  There were not the people who had been holding you at the time though, were they?”

“No.  If that was an attempt, they were the people who came to ‘rescue’ us, only it was a means for them to use us for ransom.  It’s taken them a while to find the right people.  Bamfield you say?  Who is he?”

“Runs the military’s operations that the military doesn’t want to acknowledge.  We’re here, but we’re not here if you know what I mean.”

The older man shook his head.  “It doesn’t matter.  What happens now?”

“I go and have another chat with the commander.  We exchange gifts, and we leave.”

“You do realize that’s not going to happen,” the military type said with a degree of despondency.

“How so?”

“There are about 50 men here, possibly more, all armed, and all waiting for you to arrive.  I expect they’ll take the ransom and then kill all of us.”

“Yes, I had thought that might be the case.  But, don’t worry.  We have a few tricks up our sleeve.  So, gather your belongings, if you have any, and wait for us to come back and get you.”

“Are you going to drive out of here?”  The military man spoke again.

“A short distance, yes.  There’s an airstrip not far from here, so all we have to do is get there, and we’re halfway home.”

“There’ll be government troops there.  It’s used for people coming in to visit the national park and they provide local security.  Boroko knows the Captain in charge there, and they have an arrangement.  He’ll know what your options are, and you’ll just be walking into a trap.”

That had always been a possibility, but Bamfield wouldn’t send us there unless there was a chance we could use it for our escape.  But, what the man was saying was just another wrinkle in a plan that had lots of wrinkles.

“Provided you get a mile from this place before being attacked.”

“All very interesting points,” I said.  “But, like I said, pack your stuff and let me worry about the details.  Feel free to take in some fresh air while we’re gone.  It won’t be long.”

“I’ll stay,” Davies said.

“OK.”

I took a last look at the two, both now struggling to their feet.  They might not be in as good a condition as the commander had said.  As long as they could cover about half a mile at best, everything would be fine.

I walked slowly back to the hut where Williamson had just emerged, and I went over to him.

He handed me a package that hardly made a dent in my pocket.  It was probably the reason why diamonds were used, small, and easily transportable.  Gold bars would have been a different, and far more difficult, proposition.

From there, I walked more briskly to the commander’s hut and as I approached he came out.

“Everything in order?”

“It is.”

I pulled the package out of my pocket and handed it to him.  “You can check the contents while I wait here.”

A smile, like a cat who swallowed the canary.  A nod to a soldier standing behind me, I could hear the weapon being trained on me.

“I guess this is where…”

A second later the soldier crumpled to the ground, a bloody mess where his head had just been.  A second raised his gun and suffered the same result.

“Call off your dogs’ commander.  I’m sure we both don’t want to see people die needlessly.”

Two hands for a signal to lower weapons.

“Your missing people.”

“Out there, strategically placed.  Excellent marksmen too.  At the moment they’re showing restraint.  It’s up to you how long that lasts.”

He motioned to the guard at the prisoner’s hut to take them to the cars, “Join them, Sargeant James, I’ll be along when I’ve checked the diamonds.”

By the time the two men had joined the rest of the team at the cars, the commander had come out of his office and was walking towards us.

“Three cars, we’ll keep the other.  I assume you’re heading towards the airstrip.”

“It’s one of our options.  I hear the government had a platoon of soldiers there under the command of a Captain.  You might want to warn him we’re coming.  You might also want to warn whoever you have in the field between here and there we’re coming.”

“I can’t guarantee your safety once you leave the compound.  If there is anyone out there, it will not be my men.  We have an agreement remember.”

“Good.”  

While we were talking the others had got themselves into the cars and started the engines.  Time was of the essence.

We walked down to the barrier, and once again he ordered his guards to remove it.

Once they had the cars drove past and then the last car stopped just the other side, waiting for me.

“I wish you good luck, Sargeant James.”

“Let’s hope the atmospherics don’t interfere with my call to my people.  I’d hate to see this place destroyed because of a misunderstanding.”

I hadn’t seen Jacobi since just after we arrived, and he had headed straight to the commander’s hut.  No doubt they had a lot to talk about.

I got in the car, and we drove off.

I was half expecting a hail of bullets, but all I could see was the two guards replacing the barrier and the commander standing behind it, arms crossed, still looking like the cat who swallowed the canary.

 

© Charles Heath 2020

The cinema of my dreams – I always wanted to write a war story – Episode 40

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…

—

I had to almost restrain Carlo from going up to the castle and singlehandedly kill everyone in it.  I didn’t doubt he could do it, for a short time at least, until they realized what was going on.  There were too many of them to take on alone.

It would need a careful plan, and knowledge of the layout of the castle, and the likely spots where the soldiers were located.  It was a plan that had been slowly formulating in the back of my mind, especially after Carlo’s help with an internal map of the castle, some parts of which I hadn’t got to see in my brief stay.

I forgot that being built back in the middle ages, and the history of cities fighting against each other, there were ways in, out, and around, both inside and in the walls, so that soldiers could travel from one part of the castle to another without being seen, and not having to go inside the castle itself.

There were, also, tunnels, one of which I had inadvertently found, but there were more, and it seems only Carlo knew of those.  Some were useful, others would lead to an early confrontation, and give early notice of our intentions.  Those we would avoid, or use to escape.

We had set up a command center at the church ruins, having found several rooms off the cellar that had two exits.  I didn’t like the idea of being trapped, nor waiting in a location that Fernando was familiar with and was likely to return to.

Which, in a sense, I was hoping he would because we had set a trap and he and his men would be caught in the crossfire.  He was not going to get a chance to explain, nor would I ask any questions, or show him any mercy.

Especially when I found out what he had done to Martina.  If it was as bad as Chiara, he would be repaid in kind, if the opportunity arose.  I tentatively agreed to give Carlo five minutes in the room alone with him, but he knew that expediency might not give him that luxury.  Blinky was not happy about it, but he hadn’t been here long enough to know what the man or his people were like.

We’d also worked out the surveillance system so that we would know when anyone turned up in the village, particularly our prized defector Meyer, and whether anyone left the castle to come down to the village because it was possible there would be more defectors passing through, and they needed to be warned.

What was particularly useful was finding the radio that Martina had been using.  It was in the church grounds, which was not entirely unexpected, but one of Blink’s men had stumbled over it when looking to set up a latrine.

Blinky had brought a radioman, but his radio had been damaged in the parachute landing.  Now he had a new toy to tinker with, and got a connection back to Thompson, after some initial difficulty in translation.  That I could help him with, my Italian was marginally better than a schoolboy.

Thompson was relieved to hear from me, as I was to talk to him.

“It’s been difficult to get a clear picture with Martina, but I got the impression you had to be precise with your questions.”

“A case of getting lost in translation, perhaps.”  I had not had similar problems, but Thompson was from the aristocracy, and his version of English was sometimes quaint.

“The situation is bad, I understand.”

“It is.  The castle is over-run with British-German double agents.  The three you sent out, and reinforcements that followed.  I get the impression we have about 20 odd dead soldiers languishing in shallow graves somewhere on the Italian countryside.”

It hadn’t been hard to realize that while the officers were known British officers, the soldiers were substituted Germans whose English language and mannerisms were impeccable.  I had no doubt once they’d reeled in Meyer, they would move on, integrating into invasion forces and creating havoc from within, unless of course, we stopped them.

A sigh at the other end, perhaps a lamentation of such needless loss of life.  This war was getting tiresome for both of us.

“How close is Meyer?  We last heard he was in Gaole, waiting for a courier to take him to the village.  His arrival is anticipated to be any time from tomorrow onwards.”

“We’ve got men out keeping tabs on everyone.”

“Blinky arrive with his team?”

“All bar the radio, but as you can hear, we have access to one do it will not be a problem.  I think we might finish this and talk again tomorrow.  Don’t want the Germans tracking the radio waves.”

“Good.  Tomorrow, and hour before today.”

I’d almost forgotten that the Germans were good at tracking radio signals, especially when they thought the enemy was using them, as those at the castle would.  That radio unit could also be used to trace other radio signals, and no doubt they had picked up the signal.  Hopefully, we had not been on long enough for them to run the trace.

That was not going to be a problem.  One of Blinky’s soldiers on village reconnaissance was waiting for us as we approached the church ruins.”

“What is it, man?”

“There are four people at the village, looking for someone or something.”

“More defectors,” I said.  “We’d better get to them before Leonardo and his men get to them first.”

—

© Charles Heath 2020-2021