Having discovered that the person who had ordered the contract on her head had a code name of Romanov, and was last known to be in Bratislava, Zoe heads off to track the person down. She suspects it is one of the groups she had trained with at one point, but it could be anyone.
Back home, John discovers who Sebastian’s boss is, having been whisked away by limousine to an undisclosed location, where he is told that Zoe/Natasha and a host of other identities is not the person he thinks she is, and is told that it would be in his best interests to tell them where she is.
John gets to read a very illuminating file on her, which in turn does not put the fear of God into him as was hoped, but makes him more determined than ever to find her.
Wilt the help of the new investigator friends Rupert and a reluctant Isobel.
This story is a tangled web of pursuers who all have different agendas, people who are highly skilled in tracking and killing.
John needs to find her more than ever because of whom he believes is the one who wants her dead.
Sebastian is about to be caught up in a situation he never envisaged, his desire to find and recruit her, to tell her to stay away from John, and ordered by his boss to capture her for interrogation.
…
Today’s writing, with John facing off against Sebastian’s boss, 4,192 words, for a total of 22,247.
“Sunday in New York” is ultimately a story about trust, and what happens when a marriage is stretched to its limits.
When Harry Steele attends a lunch with his manager, Barclay, to discuss a promotion that any junior executive would accept in a heartbeat, it is the fact his wife, Alison, who previously professed her reservations about Barclay, also agreed to attend, that casts a small element of doubt in his mind.
From that moment, his life, in the company, in deciding what to do, his marriage, his very life, spirals out of control.
There is no one big factor that can prove Harry’s worst fears, that his marriage is over, just a number of small, interconnecting events, when piled on top of each other, points to a cataclysmic end to everything he had believed in.
Trust is lost firstly in his best friend and mentor, Andy, who only hints of impending disaster, Sasha, a woman whom he saved, and who appears to have motives of her own, and then in his wife, Alison, as he discovered piece by piece damning evidence she is about to leave him for another man.
Can we trust what we see with our eyes or trust what we hear?
Haven’t we all jumped to conclusions at least once in our lives?
Can Alison, a woman whose self-belief and confidence is about to be put to the ultimate test, find a way of proving their relationship is as strong as it has ever been?
Here is another of those three letter words that can have so many meanings that it is nigh on impossible to pin it down.
You have to use it in a sentence which all but explains it.
For instance,
A pad might be a writing pad, or a note pad, something on which you can write, notes, stories, anything really, even doodles.
Cats, dogs, a lot of animals have padded feet. I’d say, for a cat, those pads would be like shock absorbers.
You can pad an expense account with false expenditure in an accounting sense, I’m sure a lot of people are tempted to do so.
I know places, where a single man might live, is called a bachelor pad. So many men like to think they may have one, but it takes money to buy the accouterments of seduction.
Then there’s a medical dressing, a square of gauze called a pad, usually absorbent and soaked in disinfectant to help protect and repair a wound.
Shoulder pads, for broader shoulders
KInee pads, for when crashing off a bike
Shin pads for soccer, and ice hockey players
A helipad which is for helicopter landings and takeoffs, much the same as a launch pad for rockets. Unfortunately, rockets do not generally have a tendency to land, not unless they are bombs, like the V1 and V2 rockets of WW2.
It could also be someone walking around a house in socks, the man stealthily approached the thief, padding silently in his socks so he wouldn’t be heard.
And lastly,
A place for frogs to hang out, ie, the flat leaves of a water Lilly.
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.
…
I was escorted to a small room that adjoined the interview room, and I was separated from the main event by a one-way mirror.
It was a cliché, but not surprising.
The interrogation room was much the same as an office, with a table, two chairs, and on the side, a cabinet, closed up, an interesting addition to what might be called a boring room.
It was currently empty, and I was the only one in this small room, sitting at a counter, looking in. In front of me was a stack of writing pads, pens and pencils. I wondered if I was the only party that was about to observe Lallo and the new arrival.
Five minutes passed before the door to the room next door opened and a hooded man was led in. His hands were cuffed, and his legs had chains, standard prisoner gear.
From the man’s manner and body language, it appeared to me as though he was surprised he was being treated so badly, and was not forcefully resistant, but wasn’t making it easy for his captors.
He was asked to sit, and when he didn’t he was forced to sit, with some force, and then his hands were locked onto the metal bar at the table. His legs were locked to a lower bar. A precaution in case he decided to attack his interrogator.
One thing I knew for sure, this man would not give up information willingly.
Once he was secured, one guard took up station inside the door, and the other left. That’s when Lallo made his appearance. He came in, put a file on the desk, nodded to the guard who remove3d the hood, and then he sat.
I’d expected to see Lallo in full uniform. He was not. He was, if anything, dressed casually. The man on the other side was in a cream suit, very crumpled and slightly stained as if he had not changed during the entire journey from capture to this room.
No doubt part of his conditioning.
“Mr Jacobi, that is your name isn’t it?”
The man stared at him sullenly. I got the impression he was usually the one asking the questions, not the other way around.
The man lifted his head and stared straight at Lallo. It was not a look I’d want to be on the end of, but Lallo, I suspect, had been on the end of a lot worse. And a closer inspection of his face, and features, I noticed that someone had already started the harsher form of interrogation.
“You know this already. I am an employee of the United States Government, your Government, and you will regret treating me like this.”
“That may be so, but you have failed to define what part of the Government it is you work for. Is it the CIA?”
Another withering stare, followed by, “You people are so incompetent, the left-hand does not know what the right hand is doing. I require a telephone so that I can contact my liaison, and this farce will stop, and you will be reprimanded very severely.”
“I seriously doubt anyone knows you are missing yet. Maybe after a week or so, but we know you keep to yourself, and very few people know your business, a situation, I assure you, benefits us more than it benefits you. So I will assume you are Jacobi.”
There was a knock on the door, and Monroe came in with a small box, handed it to Lallo, and then left again.
Lallo looked in the box, then pulled out a plastic evidence bag with a mobile phone in it, and put it on the table. “This is the phone you use to call General Bahti, your contact inside the current government. It seems it is not registered with a telephone network in your country, but another, shall we say neutral, country.
He reached into the box and pulled out another plastic evidence bag also with mobile phone in it. “This phone,” he held it up, “is the one you use to talk to the, shall we call them the local resistance. It’s so much nicer than calling them rebels.”
The man’s eyes followed each bag from the box to the table. He was almost expressionless.
Then Lallo pulled out another bag, with another phone, “This is the phone which you make and receive calls from your American contact. It is what we call a burner phone, and was given to you, we think, on a recent visit to this country, by that contact. I am assuming this is the person you wish to call and who will stop this farce.”
If Lallo was expecting the man to break down there and then, he was sadly mistaken. There was little if any movement in his expression, perhaps just enough for Lallo to assume he’d got the men behind the phones correct. That he was basically unmoved at Lallo’s revelations told me this man had a resolve Lallo was going to find hard to shake.
Lallo took the third phone out of the evidence bag and pushed it across the table towards the man. “You can call your contact now, and you can tell him I would like to speak to him.”
It started with a phone call, then a visit by two police officers. It was about my parents, but the news could not be imparted over the phone, only in person. That statement alone told me it was very bad news, so I assumed the worst.
The two police officers, standing at the front door, grim expressions on their faces, completed the picture. The news, my parents were dead, killed in a freak car accident.
At first, it didn’t sink in. They were on their way back from another of their extensive holidays, one of many since my father had retired. I’d seen them probably six months out of the last five years, and the only reason they were returning this time was that my mother needed an operation.
They hadn’t told me why, not that they ever told me very much any time since the day I’d been born, but that was who they were. I thought them eccentric, being older when I’d come along, and others thought them, well, eccentric.
And being an only child, they packed me off to boarding school, then university, and then found me a job in London, and set me up so that I would only see them weekends if they were home.
I had once wondered if they ever cared about me, keeping me at arm’s length, but my mother some time ago had taken me aside and explained why. It was my father’s family tradition. The only part I’d missed was a nanny.
It most likely explained why I didn’t feel their passing as much as I should.
A week later, after a strange funeral where a great many people I’d never met before, and oddly who knew about me, I found myself sitting in the sunroom, a glass of scotch in one hand, and an envelope with my name on it, in the other.
The solicitor, a man I’d never met before, had given it to me at the funeral. We had, as far as I knew an elderly fellow, one of my father’s old school friends, as the family solicitor, but he hadn’t shown at the funeral and wasn’t at home when I called in on my way home.
It was all very odd.
I refilled the glass and took another look at the envelope. It was not new, in fact, it had the yellow tinge of age, with discoloration where the flap was. The writing was almost a scrawl, but identifiable as my father’s handwriting, perhaps an early version as it was now definitely an illegible scrawl.
I’d compared it with the note he’d left me before they had embarked on their last adventure, everything I had to do while caretaking their house. The last paragraph was the most interesting, instructing me to be present when the cleaning lady came, he’d all but accused her of stealing the candlesticks.
To be honest, I hadn’t realized there were candlesticks to steal, but there they were, on the mantlepiece over the fire in the dining room. The whole house was almost like being in an adventure park, stairs going up to an array of rooms, mostly no longer used, and staircase to the attic, and then another going down to the cellar. The attic was locked and had been for as long as I could remember, and the cellar was dank and draughty.
Much like the whole house, but not surprising, it was over 200 years old.
And perhaps it was now mine. The solicitor, a man by the name of Sir Percival Algernon Bridgewater, had intimated that it might be the last will and testament and had asked me to tell him if it was. I was surprised that Sir Percival didn’t have the document in question.
And equally. so that the man I knew as his solicitor, Lawerence Wellingham, didn’t have a copy of my father’s last will and testament either.
I finished the drink, picked up the envelope, and opened it.
It contained two sheets of paper, the will, and a letter. A very short letter.
“If you are reading this I have died before my time. You will need to find Albert Stritching, and ask him to help you find the murderer.”
Even the tenor of that letter didn’t faze me as it should have, because at this point nothing would surprise me. In fact, as I unfolded the document that proclaimed it was the will, I was ready for it to say that whole of his estate and belongings were to be left to some charity, and I would get an annual stipend of a thousand pounds.
In fact, it didn’t. The whole of his estate was left to my mother should she outlive him, or in the event of her prior decease, to me.
I had to put all of those surprises on hold to answer a knock on the door.
Lawerence Wellingham.
I stood too e side, let him pass, closed the door, and followed him into the front room, the one my mother called the ‘drawing room’ though I never knew why.
He sat in one of the large, comfortable lounge chairs. I sat in the other.
I showed him the will. I kept the other back, not knowing what to make of it.
“No surprise there,” Wellingham said.
“Did you have any idea what my father used to do, beyond being, as he put it, a freelance diplomat?”
I thought it a rather odd description but it was better than one he once proffered, ‘I do odd jobs for the government’.
“I didn’t ask. Knowledge can be dangerous, particularly when associated with your father. Most of us preferred not to know, but one thing I can tell you. If anyone tries to tell you what happened to your parents was not an accident, ignore them. Go live your life, and keep those memories you have of them in the past, and don’t look back. They were good people, Ken, remember them as such.”
We reminisced for the next hour, making a dent in the scotch, one of my father’s favorite, and he left.
Alone again, the thoughts went back to the second note from my father. That’s when the house phone rang.
Before I could answer it, a voice said, “My name is Stritching. Your father might have mentioned me? We need to talk.”
We’ve been given the introduction to who Barry McDougall is, or the man otherwise known as ‘Brainless’, and after three days of trying to get it straight, this is the first rough draft of his start in the story.
Barry, whose daring selfless deeds earned him the nickname Brainless because that was the only way to describe the motivation behind them, was one of the regular soldiers, and, for a long time, had been my only true friend. His was a reputation both friends and foes alike considered awesome. He’d been in Vietnam, and later just turned up at Davenport’s camp, reporting for duty.
Davenport was more surprised than I was at his arrival, but obviously, after checking his credentials, he was impressed because he let him stay. And it would be true to say, if he had not, I would not be here now.
So Barry was just the sort of person I needed to help me.
That was the good news.
The bad news was Barry, at the best of times, either on one of his ‘benders’ using drugs or alcohol, whatever was easier to get at the time, lost to everyone, or locked up in a mental institution, having admitted himself. He had no interest in participating in life, hadn’t worked in years, and often said, in moments when he was at his lowest, that he did not care if he lived or died. It had not always been that way, but his demons had all but taken him over, and despite the help, I tried to give him, nothing could shake him out of this lethargy. He said once he envied me that I could not remember the dark days, and, now those memories had returned, I knew what he meant.
For a long time, I could not understand why he didn’t try harder to help himself, and I guess he humored me by accepting the jobs I’d found him, and the help I offered. I owed him a great deal, but that was probably the one honorable thing about him, he never expected, nor wanted, anything in return.
He tried to make a go of being a police officer and lasted several years before he resigned over an incident that didn’t reach the papers. There was, he said, no place for heroics in modern society. I hadn’t got to the bottom of it, but I heard he shot some thieves at a time when the police were trying to promote a pacifist image.
He tried a few other occupations with an equal lack of success, so now he survived on whatever money I gave him. He lived on the street, and when he was not there, I knew he could be found in a bar, in one of the more seedier parts of the city, a ubiquitous underground bar called Jackson’s, named after a man who had a salubrious reputation that hovered between load shark and saint, and who was reputed to be buried under the storeroom floor. The present owner, or what I assumed to be the owner, was a large, gruff, ex-prizefighter, who had the proverbial heart of gold, most of the time, and who took my money and looked after Barry without making it look like he was.
I’d called the bartender in advance, and he said he was in his usual spot, and that it was at the start of the next cycle, having just discharged himself from the hospital after a bout of pneumonia. It was, he said, getting worse, and taking longer to recover.
It was probably only a matter of time before it took him, so perhaps this time I would have to try harder to convince him to give up his nomadic lifestyle.
When I walked in, the aroma of spilled beer, stale sweat, and vomit, mingled with the industrial-strength carbolic cleaner almost took my breath away. In the corner, two construction workers were sitting, quietly smoking and drinking large glasses of beer. In the other, Barry was being held up by the table, an untouched double scotch sitting in front of him. Sitting at the bar was a woman of indeterminate age, badly made up, and thin to the point of emaciation. I was not sure what she was drinking, or what it was she was smoking, but I could smell it from the front doorway.
The bartender, Ogilvy, no first name given, was pretending to polish glasses, standing at the end of the bar, looking at the television, playing some daytime soap. He didn’t look over when I came in, but I knew he didn’t miss anything. I saw him flick a glance at Barry, and then shake his head. I think he cared as much about Barry as I did, but could recognize the sadness within him. As much as Ogilvy said, which wasn’t much, he too had seen service in Vietnam, and it had affected him too.
I ordered an orange juice, caught the glances from the construction workers, and a steely look from the woman then went over to Barry’s table and sat down. Despite the loud scraping noise when I moved the chair, or the creaking as I sat in it, Barry didn’t move.
Whilst the bar had that seedy aroma, Barry was showing the signs of having spent time on the street. It was one of the disadvantages of having no permanent residence and though there was a shower at the bar which Ogilvy let Barry use from time to time, he obviously hadn’t for a few days.
Getting all of this background in shape is hard work, and having toiled long and hard, tomorrow I’ll have a go at getting Barry back.
How many people do you know have their front door smashed in at the crack of dawn, followed by a swat team, armed to the teeth, swarming through the house ready to put down any resistance?
Just the suddenness of the cacophony of noise, the shouting, and the sheer threat of death, left me firstly shattered, and secondly, in fear of being accidentally killed, especially when there were six guns trained on me.
When the all-clear came, when no one else was discovered in the house, one of the suited men came back and motioned the six to take a step back and raise their weapons.
“Get up.”
If I was expected a ‘please’, or an apology, both would be a long time coming.
“Where is she?”
I barely had time to catch my breath and try to stop shaking. Six guns were still pointing in my direction, and those holding them no less wanted to shoot me for any reason whatsoever.
“Who?” There were two girls in this house.
“Don’t be obtuse, Mr. Jacobs. Obstruction will get you nothing but a stretch in prison with some very unsavoury characters. Where is she?”
The notion that they could be looking for Liz was as preposterous as the day was long. I had known her for five years, since we both left the same company, unhappy with the pay and conditions, and moved to a new company, deciding to stay together, first as a team, and then I was hoping would be something more intimate.
It had to be someone else, like the odd woman who had ingratiated herself with the group I was with, and ostensibly left the bar with me, but only as far as the car park. Perhaps, if we were being observed, it might have been construed as something else.
“Can you give me a name, at least?”
“Elizabeth Morgan.”
Liz? She designed computer games, and I helped with the programming. Other than that, she went to church every Sunday and visited her folks in the next county every second Saturday. I’d met them on numerous occasions, and they were just ordinary people.
“Why on earth would you be looking for her?”
“That’s classified, Mr. Jacobs. All you need to do is tell me where she is.”
“I don’t know. The last time we spoke, she was heading off to the market to get groceries.”
“Which was?”
“About an hour ago.”
A woman put her head in the door, and said, “she’s nowhere on the property, sir.”
I recognized her immediately as the woman in the bar, and suddenly realized she had been subtly interrogating me about Liz, trying to find out where she was, and why she wasn’t there with me.
She glared at me, then disappeared.
“Who are you?” I asked. “FBI, CIA, NSA?”
“Why would you assume that I’m from any of those agencies?”
“Your friend who put her head in the door. I might not have realized who she was last night, but I do now. You think Liz has committed some sort of cybercrime, don’t you?”
“So, you do know what she’s been up to?”
“No. But you just told me. And I suspect a man by the name of Champion has been feeding you scurrilous lies, but you don’t need to say anything more. You’re right, I do know what this is about, but I know whatever he said to you to get here isn’t true, but, then, he has more money or more low friends in even lower places than we have, so do your worst.”
Liz wasn’t a criminal, nor was she guilty of anything except claiming the rights to her property. Champion, though, always maintained that anything she created while working for him was his. True enough, we all signed the contract. But what she created was after she resigned and we were working on a new project together. Now, to get around that, he was claiming her work would be a violation of national security. It would, if it was in his hands, and that was never going to happen.
“It would be good for everyone if she just surrendered and pleaded her case if what you say is true.”
An interesting change in tactics.
I looked him up and down. Just the sort of man who would sell out to the highest bidder. Champion was good only at one thing, knowing how much a person would sell out his principles for, even his mother if it came down to it. Everyone had a price. Unfortunately for us, it would seem, he didn’t know ours.
He shrugged. “Perhaps so time in a dark hole might loosen your tongue.”
Dark hold indeed.
To be honest, I thought he was joking, but he was not.
I was put in a small room with no furniture or anything to sit or lie on. There was just a cold, damp and hard concrete floor, designed to make you so uncomfortable, you’d sell your soul just to get away from it.
There would be some hard choices to be made here. Would I sell out Liz, would I do everything I could to stop Champion who was intent, now that he had what he wanted, in getting rid of anyone who might have a claim.
She had said this was what would happen, and I didn’t believe her. No surprise then she was gone and didn’t tell me.
But if they were to ask me, and I was in that frame of mind to tell them everything I knew, there wasn’t much I could tell them. I think that’s what she had once told me was plausible deniability.
She had been trying to keep me safe, but didn’t realize that my captors didn’t really care whether I knew anything or nothing, they wouldn’t believe me and were going to extract the information they wanted by any and all means available.
Something I definitely wasn’t looking forward to.
It was impossible to stay awake. I was trying to, just in case they came and took me away while I was unconscious.
Despite the hard, uncomfortable floor, I fell into a fitful sleep, and it was appropriate that I would dream of Elizabeth.
I remembered the first time I met her, being introduced as an assistant programmer, the look of contempt she gave me, and the messenger. I’d never seen anyone that focussed on their work.
It took a month before she would let me look at the code, and then only small sections at a time. It was complex, and way beyond anything I had been involved with, which surprised me how it was I got the job.
She said, one morning, and I agreed, that a more experienced programmer was required.
Until I told her five lines of code needed a slight change otherwise there would be a rather interesting result. I was not only a programmer, I had once worked with a scientist whose field was space and time, not exactly time travel, but he theorized that we could move from one place to another through what were essentially wormholes.
I thought he was working on a script for a television show.
My job was to create a data warehouse, and while doing so, did some reading on the side.
I had also seen the coding behind a prototype machine that was supposed to create the wormhole, but it was too complex for me to understand.
But the code Elizabeth had was almost identical but mixed up. When I told her, she said I was an idiot who wouldn’t know what day it was, and demanded I leave.
Two days later she came to my apartment, apologized, asked me to return, and on the way asked a thousand questions.
At that time, I learned the scientist I worked for was her mentor, and that he was dead, ostensibly from a heart attack. She didn’t believe it, and that’s where I got my introduction to the arch-villain Champion.
From there it evolved into something more special, but the constraints of work and her idea of romance seemed to make it more like a rollercoaster ride and I didn’t press.
So, I was, for the time being, content with my dreams, one of which was playing in my head now.
She had appeared, coming through a sort of haze or distortion, and was standing above me, smiling.
It couldn’t be true, and yet it seemed so lifelike.
She knelt down and took my hand in hers, and whispered. “Wake up, sleepyhead, it’s time to go.”
I could smell the aroma of her perfume enveloping me.
When I went to open my eyes I found they were already open. I gently squeezed her hand, and it was real.
“Elizabeth?”
“Yes. Now. We really have to go.”
“Where?”
“Stand up, and I’ll show you.”
I let her pull me to my feet and she gave me a hug, and whispered in my ear, “I love you,”
Now I knew it was a dream. She had never intimated such feelings before.
I’d play along. “It’s impossible to escape this cell.”
“Is it?” She took a step towards the distortion, “Come.”
I followed. Then, the next moment, I was in the dining room of her apartment”
“What just happened?”
Before she could answer, I lost consciousness. Last thought, it was too good to be true.
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 gave one time or another.
For the the main characters Harry and Alison there is others 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 come 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.
It could have been anywhere in the world, she thought, but it wasn’t. It was in a city where if anything were to go wrong…
She sighed and came away from the window and looked around the room. It was quite large and expensively furnished. It was one of several she had been visiting in the last three months.
Quite elegant too, as the hotel had its origins dating back to before the revolution in 1917. At least, currently, there would not be a team of KGB agents somewhere in the basement monitoring everything that happened in the room.
There was no such thing as the KGB anymore, though there was an FSB, but such organisations were of no interest to her.
She was here to meet with Vladimir.
She smiled to herself when she thought of him, such an interesting man whose command of English was as good as her command of Russian, though she had not told him of that ability.
All her knew of her was that she was American, worked in the Embassy as a clerk, nothing important, who life both at work and at home was boring. Not that she had blurted that out the first tie she met, or even the second.
That first time, at a function in the Embassy, was a chance meeting, a catching of his eye as he looked around the room, looking, as he had told her later, for someone who might not be as boring as the function itself.
It was a celebration, honouring one of the Embassy officials on his service in Moscow, and the fact he was returning home after 10 years. She had been there one, and still hadn’t met all the staff.
They had talked, Vladimir knew a great deal about England, having been stationed there for a year or two, and had politely asked questions about where she lived, her family, and of course what her role was, all questions she fended off with an air of disinterested interest.
It fascinated him, as she knew it would, a sort of mental sparring as one would do with swords, if this was a fencing match.
They had said they might or might not meet again when the party was over, but she suspected there would be another opportunity. She knew the signs of a man who was interested in her, and Vladimir was interested.
The second time came in the form of an invitation to an art gallery, and a viewing of the works of a prominent Russian artist, an invitation she politely declined. After all, invitations issued to Embassy staff held all sorts of connotations, or so she was told by the Security officer when she told him.
Then, it went quiet for a month. There was a party at the American embassy and along with several other staff members, she was invited. She had not expected to meet Vladimir, but it was a pleasant surprise when she saw him, on the other side of the room, talking to several military men.
A pleasant afternoon ensued.
And it was no surprise that they kept running into each other at the various events on the diplomatic schedule.
By the fifth meeting, they were like old friends. She had broached the subject of being involved in a plutonic relationship with him with the head of security at the embassy. Normally for a member of her rank it would not be allowed, but in this instance it was.
She did not work in any sensitive areas, and, as the security officer had said, she might just happen upon something that might be useful. In that regard, she was to keep her eyes and ears open, and file a report each time she met him.
After that discussion she got the impression her superiors considered Vladimir more than just a casual visitor on the diplomatic circuit. She also formed the impression the he might consider her an ‘asset’, a word that had been used at the meeting with security and the ambassador.
It was where the word ‘spy’ popped into her head and sent a tingle down her spine. She was not a spy, but the thought of it, well, it would be fascinating to see what happened.
A Russian friend. That’s what she would call him.
And over time, that relationship blossomed, until, after a visit to the ballet, late and snowing, he invited her to his apartment not far from the ballet venue. It was like treading on thin ice, but after champagne and an introduction to caviar, she felt like a giddy schoolgirl.
Even so, she had made him promise that he remain on his best behaviour. It could have been very easy to fall under the spell of a perfect evening, but he promised, showed her to a separate bedroom, and after a brief kiss, their first, she did not see him until the next morning.
So, it began.
It was an interesting report she filed after that encounter, one where she had expected to be reprimanded.
She wasn’t.
It wasn’t until six weeks had passed when he asked her if she would like to take a trip to the country. It would involve staying in a hotel, that they would have separate rooms. When she reported the invitation, no objection was raised, only a caution; keep her wits about her.
Perhaps, she had thought, they were looking forward to a more extensive report. After all, her reports on the places, and the people, and the conversations she overheard, were no doubt entertaining reading for some.
But this visit was where the nature of the relationship changed, and it was one that she did not immediately report. She had realised at some point before the weekend away, that she had feelings for him, and it was not that he was pushing her in that direction or manipulating her in any way.
It was just one of those moments where, after a grand dinner, a lot of champagne, and delightful company, things happen. Standing at the door to her room, a lingering kiss, not intentional on her part, and it just happened.
And for not one moment did she believe she had been compromised, but for some reason she had not reported that subtle change in the relationship to the powers that be, and so far, no one had any inkling.
She took off her coat and placed it carefully of the back of one of the ornate chairs in the room. She stopped for a moment to look at a framed photograph on the wall, one representing Red Square.
Then, after a minute or two, she went to the mini bar and took out the bottle of champagne that had been left there for them, a treat arranged by Vladimir for each encounter.
There were two champagne flutes set aside on the bar, next to a bowl of fruit. She picked up the apple and thought how Eve must have felt in the garden of Eden, and the temptation.
Later perhaps, after…
She smiled at the thought and put the apple back.
A glance at her watch told her it was time for his arrival. It was if anything, the one trait she didn’t like, and that was his punctuality. A glance at the clock on the room wall was a minute slow.
The doorbell to the room rang, right on the appointed time.
She put the bottle down and walked over to the door.
It’s a recap of how John and Zoe survived the first year of their relationship. Zoe could take only so much downtime, so it was back to work – for different people, she just had to find them.
And, so far, those who are seeking her are still out there.
Fast forward three months: John is trying to figure out what he wants to do next because the easy life is getting to him too.
There’s the possibility of getting a job with Sebastian, after all, he didn’t do that badly the first time around.
There’s languishing with his grandmother, but two visits in a year were one too many.
And yes, he has a seminal moment!
Start a private investigation agency, with himself the first client – he is beginning to believe Zoe will not be coming back so he was going to find her and find out once and for all if they were over.
How hard could it be?
…
appropriateToday’s writing, with John searching the property market for approapriate offices, 1,666 words, for a total of 13,587.
