There’s something to be said for a story that starts like a James Bond movie, throwing you straight in the deep end, a perfect way of getting to know the main character, David, or is that Alistair?

A retired spy, well not so much a spy as a retired errand boy, David’s rather wry description of his talents, and a woman that most men would give their left arm for, not exactly the ideal couple, but there is a spark in a meeting that may or may not have been a setup.

But as the story progressed, the question I kept asking myself was why he’d bother.

And, page after unrelenting page, you find out.

Susan is exactly the sort of woman to pique his interest.  Then, inexplicably, she disappears.  That might have been the end to it, but Prendergast, that shadowy enigma, David’s ex-boss who loves playing games with real people, gives him an ultimatum, find her or come back to work.

Nothing like an offer that’s a double-edged sword!

A dragon for a mother, a sister he didn’t know about, Susan’s BFF who is not what she seems or a friend indeed, and Susan’s father who, up till David meets her, couldn’t be less interested, his nemesis proves to be the impossible dream, and he’s always just that one step behind.

When the rollercoaster finally came to a halt, and I could start breathing again, it was an ending that was completely unexpected.

I’ve been told there’s a sequel in the works.

Bring it on!

…

The book can be purchased here:  http://amzn.to/2Eryfth

…

There’s something on the long-range scanner

…

I didn’t make it back to the leafy suburban late-night stroll, as much as I wanted to have that relaxing moment, going back to the bridge.

It was quiet, if not a subdued atmosphere, in other words, normal for the hour.  It was a skeleton crew, mostly volunteers, those without partners or couldn’t sleep. 

Sleep was one of the first problems because there was no real differentiation between night and day, a sort of hangover from those who worked night shift back on earth, only it extended to everyone.  I’d long since given up the notion of getting a good night’s sleep.

“Where are we?”  I asked, after sitting in the chair and casting a glance over the bridge in semi-darkness, and the view of empty, inky black space outside the ship.

The answer to the question, I thought wryly, was ‘in space’, but I doubt any of those on duty would have the desire to use humour in such a situation.

“In direct line with Pluto’s orbit.”

Salaman, the navigating officer, was not a man with a sense of humour, a just the facts sort of person.

“Any chance if seeing the planet?”

“If we sit here for the next 68 years, maybe.”

OK, so Salaman did have some humour in him if a little dry.

“Engineering.”  The Chief Engineer’s voice came over the loudspeaker.

“Good news, I hope?”

“Problem sorted.  Another item to take up with the inspection crew when we get home.  You’re free to resume.”

“Thank you.”  Then to the helmsman, “Let’s take it slowly, quarter speed.”

“Quarter speed it is, sir.”

There was a barely noticeable movement, then it was as if nothing had happened.  That was the disconcerting part, the fact we had no discernible way of knowing we were moving.

“Quarter speed, sir, all systems nominal.”

“Give it five minutes, then move to half, and so on “

“Yes, sir.”

I leaned back in the chair and closed my eyes.  I often tried to remember what it was like back home, before the weather changed for the worse, before people changed, not necessarily for the worse, but not as friendly or happy we once were.

That was a long time ago, though, and I’d spent more of my life in space than on earth now and wasn’t sure how I was going to survive once I had to retire.  That was, hopefully, a long time away.

“Sir, we have a long-range contact, not sure yet if it’s a meteor or a ship.”  The navigator’s voice cut into my reverie.

Did she just add the ship to the report, hoping to make a boring night into something more interesting?

“Should we hold off going to full speed, Sir?”

Probably a good idea until we identified the problem.  “OK.”

I stood, walked over to the window, and looked out, symbolically looking for the object.  Long-range meant, beyond a million or so earth kilometres, barely discernible to the scanners let alone a human eye.

“It’s moving at about half light speed, coming towards us.”

That might be a stretch assuming that we could possibly be on an intercepting course.

“Change our heading five degrees and see if it changes too.”

There was a slight movement as we changed course.  I remained by the window, watching and waiting.  There were a few flecks in the blackness, and I wondered if this was the outer rim of a meteor shower.  Were they too small for the sensors to pick up, or was the navigator concentrating on the one large object?

Five minutes passed, then ten.

“Object still on a collision course, sir.”

Which missed stating the obvious, that whatever was out there had also changed course.  Whoever or whatever was out there wanted to meet us.

“Revert back to the original course.  When will we have a clearer picture of this object?”

“Fifteen minutes, sir.”

I had read the specifications of the long-range sensors and scanners, the former mostly do we could avoid space debris that could damage the hull, though that would take a relatively large chunk.

It was our speed, and that of incoming objects that were the problem, and that’s why we had sn autopilot to help avoid these issues.

The scanners could see objects, magnify them, from a reasonable distance, so we could identify them if we had previous knowledge of them.  Alien spaceships, if we were to encounter one, might make that identification difficult but not impossible.  But, on the other hand, the specifications of every ship in space, that we knew about, of course, was in the database.

Anything else, it could be added.

Nothing more to see, I sat down again.  We were still sitting at half speed, and from what I could see on my console, everything was fine.

Then the screen switched to the long-range scan of the object.

It was a ship.

The scanner was going through the known ships list, looking for a match, until it reached the end, bringing up “unknown”.

The navigator stated the obvious, “it’s a ship sir, but not one in our database.  Do you think it might be the prototype the Russians were talking about making a dozen or so years ago?”

Everyone knew about the famous, if you won’t share we’ll build our own, bigger and better ship when the space alliance at the time baulked at bully tactics the Russians tried to use to take over running the alliance.

They had backed down in the face of a world united against them, but had they really?

“We’ll soon find out.”

…

© Charles Heath 2021-2022

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!

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

50 photographs, 50 stories, of which there is one of the 50 below.

They all start with –

A picture paints … well, as many words as you like.  For instance:

And the story:

It was once said that a desperate man has everything to lose.

The man I was chasing was desperate, but I, on the other hand, was more desperate to catch him.

He’d left a trail of dead people from one end of the island to the other.

The team had put in a lot of effort to locate him, and now his capture was imminent.  We were following the car he was in, from a discrete distance, and, at the appropriate time, we would catch up, pull him over, and make the arrest.

There was nowhere for him to go.

The road led to a dead-end, and the only way off the mountain was back down the road were now on.  Which was why I was somewhat surprised when we discovered where he was.

Where was he going?

“Damn,” I heard Alan mutter.  He was driving, being careful not to get too close, but not far enough away to lose sight of him.

“What?”

“I think he’s made us.”

“How?”

“Dumb bad luck, I’m guessing.  Or he expected we’d follow him up the mountain.  He’s just sped up.”

“How far away?”

“A half-mile.  We should see him higher up when we turn the next corner.”

It took an eternity to get there, and when we did, Alan was right, only he was further on than we thought.”

“Step on it.  Let’s catch him up before he gets to the top.”

Easy to say, not so easy to do.  The road was treacherous, and in places just gravel, and there were no guard rails to stop a three thousand footfall down the mountainside.

Good thing then I had the foresight to have three agents on the hill for just such a scenario.

Ten minutes later, we were in sight of the car, still moving quickly, but we were going slightly faster.  We’d catch up just short of the summit car park.

Or so we thought.

Coming quickly around another corner we almost slammed into the car we’d been chasing.

“What the hell…” Aland muttered.

I was out of the car, and over to see if he was in it, but I knew that it was only a slender possibility.  The car was empty, and no indication where he went.

Certainly not up the road.  It was relatively straightforward for the next mile, at which we would have reached the summit.  Up the mountainside from here, or down.

I looked up.  Nothing.

Alan yelled out, “He’s not going down, not that I can see, but if he did, there’s hardly a foothold and that’s a long fall.”

Then where did he go?

Then a man looking very much like our quarry came out from behind a rock embedded just a short distance up the hill.

“Sorry,” he said quite calmly.  “Had to go if you know what I mean.”

I’d lost him.

It was as simple as that.

I had been led a merry chase up the hill, and all the time he was getting away in a different direction.

I’d fallen for the oldest trick in the book, letting my desperation blind me to the disguise that anyone else would see through in an instant.

It was a lonely sight, looking down that road, knowing that I had to go all that way down again, only this time, without having to throw caution to the wind.

“Maybe next time,” Alan said.

“We’ll get him.  It’s just a matter of time.”

© Charles Heath 2019-2021

Find this and other stories in “Inspiration, maybe”  available soon.

It was 2 am, the ideal time to assemble a team that would be clandestinely boarding a vessel.

Dark and moonless, it was fortuitous rather than planned, and, dressed in black from head to toe, it was hard to see the others in the inky darkness.  At least something was on our side.

Up until this point, we’d had nothing but bad luck, though I was more of the opinion we had a traitor in our midst because some of the events could not have any other explanation.

It had caused me to be far more selective in who I gave details of the mission to.

Each of the four team members had arrived and let themselves into the shed.  It was not far from the ocean, and a small pier where there was a landing craft waiting.  From there, it would be a half-hour trip out to the ship in question, where, if we got close enough, we would either have to go over the side and swim, or pull alongside, but either way we’d have to go up a rope.

A lot depended on the crew member we had recruited getting a rope overboard, and given the luck we had so far, if there was a flaw in the plan, that was it.

Aside from the four people sitting in front of me, there were only three others privy to what was about to happen.  Now, with recent events, it was hard to imagine that one of them could betray us. That’s why I hadn’t completely told them what they were about to do, just that they needed to be prepared to get wet.

“I’m sure, now we’re here, you can tell us what’s going on.”  Robert was the most trusted of my team and my best friend.

“And why all the hush-hush,”  Linda added.  She had been amused at the secrecy and my explanation.

I was never very good at spinning a story.  She knew that but had not questioned why.

“It’s been touch and go for the last week.  It’s why we’ve all been on standby, with this last-minute call out.  We’ve been waiting for a particular ship to leave port, and now it has.  So, without further ado, let’s get to it.  A boat ride, just enough time to gather the courage to the sticking point, and then with any luck we won’t have to go into the water and swim, but a short shimmy up a rope.  I hope you’ve all been working out.”

The boat ride was in silence.  I’d worked with this group before and they were not big on talking.  Aside from the fact that noise traveled over water, and since we had a specially silenced motor on the boat, there was not going to be any unnecessary conversation.

We could see the ship once we reached the headland, and aside from it’s running lights, there were lights where I presumed the bridge was, and several in the crew quarters.  Closer again, I got the impression it was not moving, or if it was, it was very slow.  It was hard to tell in the darkness.  That same darkness aided our approach.

When we were within several hundred yards I could see that the ship was not moving, and, in fact, had the anchor out.

That was not expected.  Were they waiting for us?  Had they discovered the cream member who was working with us?  We’d know soon enough if there was no rope in the designated point, not far forward of the stern, a spot where we could maneuver the boat under the hull curvature.

The driver piloted the boat slowly to the designated point and the rope was there.  He would stay with the boat and wait.  The four of us would go up and collect what we came for.

I watched the three go up the rope before me, waiting for the last to stop at the top and then go over the side onto the deck.  It took nearly a minute before I got the signal it was clear to follow.

It had been too easy.

I went up the rope slowly, slower than the others, something else other than the object of the exercise on my mind.  Not three days before I had a conversation with my boss, telling him that I’d been doing the job too long and that it was time to retire.  Approaching forty wasn’t exactly retirement age, but in this job, lasting that long was almost a miracle.  The places I’d been, the sights I’d seen, and the people I’d met.  And how many lives I’d used up.

It was a dangerous thing, thinking about anything other than the job when you’re on the job.

I reached the top and pulled myself over the railing and onto the deck.  A little off balance it took a moment to stand.  By then it was too late.

Two of the three other members of the team were sitting by the superstructure, heads on their heads, two members of the crew were watching them, guns at the ready, and Linda had one pointing at me.

“I can’t imagine how MacIntyre thought he was going to convince Petra to defect.  Or how this charade of a rescue attempt was ever going to work.”

I put my hands up.  Not entirely unexpected.  “It was not the mission objective.”

“What…”

I was surprised that she had made her move so early.  If it was my operation, I would wait until we were well into the superstructure, heading to the cabin where Petra would be waiting, and then make the move.

Three seconds, three shots, two guards taken out, and Linda incapacitated.  She would not be moving or fighting back any time soon.  The Petra came out of the shadows, and I collected Linda’s gun and stood near her, just in case Petra missed the target.

Petra cut the two other’s bindings, and said, “get to the side and jump now.”

Linda looked up at me.  “What now?”

I shrugged.  “Time for us to leave.”  I gave Petra a nod, and she went over to the side, took one look back at Linda, shook her head, then jumped.

“You’re just going to leave me here?”

“If it were up to me, I’d shoot you, but MacIntire is getting a little soft in his old age.  But yes, I’m leaving you here.  Now, I really must go.”

I took a last look at Linda, who realized that if she moved it would only worsen her injury, and jumped, not exactly my preferred way of leaving the ship.

The boat came up alongside me and two hands dragged me on board, at the same time we could hear the sound of the anchor chain being pulled up, and the propellers creating a wash as the ship started moving.

Job done, and not one that pleased me.  “Let’s go home,” I told the driver, “it’s past my bedtime.”

—-

© Charles Heath 2020-2021

A brief moment of respite

…

The simulation of nighttime on board the ship was as realistic as I remembered it when back on earth.

I was on my usual rounds after midnight, with the 2IC of security, Nancy Woolmer, who had been a NY detective until a better offer came along.

This ship.

Like me, she had little to keep her back home, her husband who had also been a detective, had been killed on the job, and that had been the straw that broke the camel’s back.

Not blessed, or as she put it, cursed, with children, her parents had passed on, and any family left were not enough to keep her home.  This ship, she had said, would be her savior.

But she had the look of a person running away, and that, one day, would come back to bite her.  In the meantime, if we ever needed a detective, she was it.

“They’ve really got this night thing going, haven’t they.  You could almost imagine you’re in a leafy suburb out for a walk at night.”

“I doubt the streets would be as safe.”

The world we had left behind was in crisis, where there were deep divides between those in work and those who were not, and those with wealth and those without, and a bigger fight between countries over the space program.  It had started out with good intentions, but people being people, it didn’t stay that way.  

We had an international crew, but there was always the lingering doubt of what some people’s intentions were.  Out in space where everyone depended on everyone else, a small problem could become a big one very quickly.

“No, perhaps not.  But it’s good to hear the breeze rustling in the trees.”

Though the simulation lacked real trees, the projection on the passage walls of what either side of a street. With pavements, trees and houses, and for the night, the eerie glow of street lamps, was close enough.

The once around the perimeter passage on each deck took about two hours at a leisurely pace, considering there were ten decks.

I could have passed the job onto one of the watch officers, but it was about the only time I got to see the crew, those that were basically out of sight, keeping the ship running.  

I had set the lofty goal of meeting every one of the over 2,000 crew members within the first year, but a few months in, that was looking unlikely.

There was a sudden vibration emanating from the deck, followed by the sort of movement I would have associated with the ship coming off speed, like the jerk in a car when taking the foot off the accelerator.  The dampeners were designed to handle that and make increases and decreases in speed unnoticeable, but there was still an indication it had happened.

Ten seconds later my communicator vibrated.  I didn’t like the ring tone built-in, but it was more likely because most calls were bad news.

“What happened,” I asked, knowing it would be the duty officer of the watch

“Engineering are reporting a glitch, sir.”

There’s a word I hadn’t heard for a long time.  My father used to refer to anything that went wrong around the house as a glitch.

“Serious?”

“Don’t know, but you’re within a stone’s throw, so I thought you might want to pay them a visit.”

He was right, I was on that deck, and not far from the central control room.  The bridge must be tracking me, even though I’d asked them not to.  Standing orders dictated all officers and important personnel whereabouts were known at all times, I’d been told.

“I will.”

To Nancy, “You might want to continue on without me, and I’ll try to catch up later.”

She smiled.  “Tell them they should have bought the premium quality rubber bands.”

Previous conversations had highlighted a certain cynicism towards the fixtures and fittings, some of which were quite shoddy, which was disappointing but there was no doubt corners were cut in order to get the ship into service.

We all just hoped that cost-cutting didn’t extend to the main items, and if there were, it had been picked up in the trials.

As I stepped into the control room, a brightly lit room with banks of control panels and engineers sitting at them, there were a number of people huddled around one in particular, including the chief engineer.

The conversation was quite lively, and one voice stood out above the others, “… and had the builders rep actually listen to someone who knows what they’re talking about, we wouldn’t be in this situation.”

It was the same voice I’d heard in the captain’s day room my first day aboard, pontificating, as the captain put it, over a list of problems he was having with the shipbuilders representative.

“We’re in this situation,” the Chief Engineer said, “because everything we have here is new, and some of it untried.  If you’re going to push boundaries, then sometimes there’s a problem.  Rather than complain, find a resolution.”

The group broke up, and the Chief saw me coming over.  He met me halfway.

“Half this new breed they’ve sent me and more teaches rather than hands-on, always on about the code or some such.  Good, maybe, for diagnostics, but not for problem-solving.  I suspect it’s tainted coolant, seems the original batch wasn’t cleaned out after the first run, and it’s overwhelmed the filters.  It’s down to the bowels I’m afraid, and we’ll be up and running before those nincompoops work out the real problem.”

“Good.  Just let the bridge know when you’re done.”

One last look at the nincompoops, and I headed back out to resume rounds.

…

© Charles Heath 2021