There is more, and it has been forming in my mind overnight after I read, and re-read yesterday’s work.

This operation was led by two ex American army lieutenants who had served in the Vietnam war and afterward searching for lost comrades.  The Colonel told me they had spent a few years looking for lost POW’s held in camps just over the border in Cambodia or Laos and had a good track record in the jungle.  He trusted them and said I could too.

I thought it odd he felt the need to reassure me.

He said they’d had marginal success, but my own impression was that they were ex CIA, gone rogue, and were part of the burgeoning drug trade that had sprung up during and after the war had ended.   For all that, I had also begun to suspect the Colonel had sold out and we were more about protecting the criminals rather than trying to catch them, and for me, that unquestioning obedience he demanded was beginning to slip.

They also had the look of men who had spent their time sampling the product, and as such were treading a fine line between sanity and insanity.  Still, at first, they didn’t seem all that different to us.

Thoroughly soaked, we made the camp on schedule, planned the attack, and carried it out.  Only there was no one there, it was empty, and had been for some time.  I turned to question the two ‘experts’.

Pity then I hadn’t noticed his partner coming up from behind.  If I had, my situation may have been very, very, different.

When I woke up, it was not in a nice warm or comfortable bed.  It was a dirt floor.  I looked up and realized I was in a hut.  Daytime, very hot, with sharp, bright shards of light leaking through the cracks in the wall and around the doorway.

My head was hurting, as was just about every other part of me, but a cursory examination showed nothing was broken.  Yet.

It took only a moment for clarity to return, and the realization we were prisoners.  Survivors from the group, the only survivors.

The other occupant, a soldier whom I only knew by his first name, Barry, stirred, and then rolled over.

“Where are we?” he asked.

‘In a hut.”

“Where?”

“Your guess is as good as mine.”

He groaned, and then tried to sit up, only to slowly sink back down again.  Perhaps he had tried harder to escape and paid a heavier price.

“This is not looking good,” he said.

“No.”  An understatement, I thought, but to my knowledge, this was the first time I’d heard they took prisoners.  Usually, everyone was summarily executed, and the bodies set up as an example to others.

I heard the sound of boots on gravel coming towards the hut, then, in an instant, the harsh light coming in, temporarily blinding me as the door was yanked open.

When my eyes adjusted I saw two bulky men holding machine guns standing behind another, a short Chinese, with a very familiar face.

Where?  When?

Then I remembered.  A week ago, in Hong Kong, at a hastily arranged meeting between Davenport and the police who were supposed to be helping us with information on a smuggling group known to be operating in the Vietnam/Cambodia/Laos area.  He was the Chinese liaison, connected with the Government.

Apparently not.

This was bad.  Very, very bad.

“Mr. Chandler.  So nice of you to join us.  Colonel Davenport and I are so disappointed in you.”

…

© Charles Heath 2015-2023

I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.

The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

Chasing leads, maybe

She gave me a minute to think about the situation, and then said what I was thinking, “So he could be anywhere?”

“He was dead.  I felt for a pulse.  There wasn’t one.”

I could interpret that expression on her face, ‘you’re not a doctor’.

She turned another page, read a few lines, then made a note at the bottom.

It read, if my deciphering was up to scratch, ‘doesn’t know if subject dead or not’.

She looked up again.  “It appears these documents are out there,” she waved her hand in the air, “somewhere.  Fortunately, they have not turned up, not has someone tried to sell them back or to the newspapers, so we’re lucky.  So far.  That isn’t going to last for much longer.  Every extra day out there is another chance for the government to be embarrassed.”

“You know what the contents are?”

“Don’t be silly.  That’s above my pay grade, and besides, you and I are better off not knowing.  So, what you need to do is find O’Connell and/or find the documents on this USB drive.”

She slid a card across the table.  It had a name and a telephone number.  Monica Sherive.  A mobile number, a burner no doubt that couldn’t be traced back to her.

“You find either, you tell me first.”

“Nobbin?”

“Second, and when I tell you.”

“So you don’t trust him either?”

“At the moment, for both you and I have to be careful who we trust.”

I added her to the list of people I couldn’t trust, not that she had told me I could trust her.  Yet.

“And if I get contacted by Severin again?”

“Have you?”

I had thought about not telling her about that brief meeting where he told me about the USB drive, but it couldn’t do any harm.  At least she hadn’t asked me if I knew about the USB, which was something, I suppose.

“Yes.  Once.  Told me to keep my head down.  And asked me if O’Connell had time to talk to me.  It was the same answer I gave him back in the alley.  No.  I’d just managed to corner him when he was shot.”

“By Severin, or this other fellow,” she shuffled back several pages, then said, “Maury?”

“No.  That was what was odd about it.  The shot came from somewhere else.  A sniper I would have thought.”

And, my brain suddenly moving into overdrive, piecing together what might be a coincidence, but in our business, they were rarely coincidences.  A sniper shot him., say Nobbin or one of his people, he looks dead, waits for a call to the cleaners, intercepts it, and collects the so-called dead O’Connell.  It was a good conspiracy theory.

And as far-fetched as one.

Severin had to have the body somewhere, trying to figure out how to bring O’Connell back to life so he could torture the USB location out of him.

Hell, that was as twisted as the conspiracy theory.

Time to change the subject.  “Do you have any idea who Severin and Maury are?”

She went to the back of the file and pulled out some photographs, mug shots perhaps of staff members.  She put five faces in front of me and asked me if the two were there.

They were.  The first, with the name of David Westcott, and the fourth with the name of Bernie Salvin.

“Who are they?”

“They used to work in the training department for ten or so years ago.  Westcott was also a handler for several years.  They both requested a transfer to operations, and we give a mission.  Six agents were assigned, and all six were killed, an investigation after the fact found that their identities had been leaked to the enemy before they reached the target.”

“They gave them up?”

“Nobody knows for sure.  There were others in that group, but in the end, the department retired them all.  All their years in training served them well.  We found the place where you were trained.”

Another photograph of the main building.  I nodded.

“It was an old training facility closed down five years ago.  It was just sitting there waiting for an enterprising crew.  It won’t happen again.  Needless to say, we haven’t been able to find either of them, only the people they employed, who believed it was in good faith.  A mess in other words.  Now, go.  Find me answers.”

She stood.  The meeting was over.

© Charles Heath 2020

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

…

It’s time to go back to working on Bill’s backstory now that we’ve filled in some of the gaps.

Like some TV shows and books, some of the action sometimes takes the form of flashbacks.

In Starburst, Bill has a complete backstory, of a time that he had mainly forced into the deep dark part of his memory, waiting for something or someone to trigger it.

This whole back story, from the moment he entered the war zone, to the moment his war ended, and those that participated throughout that time, will be in the form of flashbacks, the first of which is triggered by the painkiller Bill is given after being shot in the Aitcheson incident.

These flashbacks will not necessarily be in any sort of order, but I have been thinking about this part of the story and produced an outline of the sequences I will require, give or take.  There may be more, or less, depending on how the story progresses.

…

Part 1 – From arrival in the war zone to being assigned to Davenport’s squad

Being sent to, and the first patrol in Vietnam

Death and mayhem some months after sent to Vietnam

First meeting Barry in army mobile hospital

R and R in Saigon, with the first of the Vietnamese girls

Psychiatric help, time in the stockade

No soldier who trains for war, nor can they have a real idea what war is like, and certainly a war in the jungle, on the enemy’s terms.  Bill is like any other soldier, happy to go into service, but soon the reality, and death becomes apparent.

Endless rain, endless heat, endless and sometimes needless death, and a deep mistrust of those whom you are supposed to protect, start to work on the mind of a person young enough not to understand what is going on.

Then, when trying to blot out the memories of death, enemy and friend alike, something has to give.  Of course, the last place you want to end up in the stockade.

…

Part 2 – A lifeline, and a pass into the so-called Davenport Operation

Training as a spy?

Colonel, calling Bill into a briefing on the Davenport operation

Talking to the Commanding officer in Stockade, as a preliminary to Davenport service

…

Was Bill sent to the stockade because he committed an act of folly, or his incarceration a part of a much larger plan, a plan to have an inside man to report on Davenport?

It’s not the first time someone higher up the chain of command has had ideas of trying to find out what Davenport is doing, and where only rumors abound of his ‘interests’.  Agents had been sent in before, and those agents had disappeared.

Was Bill about to be the next, or was he just in the wrong place at the wrong time?

There is more, but I’m still working on it.

…

© Charles Heath 2015-2023

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…

…

When Carlo stopped, I was out of breath and gasping.  We all were.  The smoke was getting more intense.  At times it had made navigation almost impossible.

In front of us were more trees, but these looked different to those we had passed through.  I watched Carlo walk back and forth a few yards each way, then disappear into the bushes.  A minute later he put his head out and said, “This way.”

We followed him.  It was a hidden entrance down to a drain that was quite deep and headed back towards the castle one way and into the forest the other.

If the fire kept up by tomorrow the cover would be gone.

It was still a hard walk through the bushes, but we made it to a wireframe and door with a lock on it.  It looked ancient as if it hadn’t been used in decades, even longer.

Carlo produced a rather odd looking key and unlocked it.  I would have thought it was rusted shut, but appearances were deceptive.  The lock was almost new.

But the gate had not been used for a long time and it took Carlo a few minutes to force it to open.  It had rusted shut.  When it did finally move, it was with a very loud screeching sound.

We filed in and he relocked it.  Anyone thinking they heard something and came to investigate; it would end up on the other side of the gate.

So far so good.

For a moment I was back in my element, the archaeologist exploring caves, a wooden fire torch lighting the way, dampness underfoot, and the trickling of water down the walls.  All around the dankness from continual dampness.

It was easy the pretend if only for a few minutes I had not been caught up in the war, that I was on a quest for lost treasure, hidden away at the end of a labyrinth.

The reality was we were quite literally in an ancient sewer and the original builders of the castle had used an underground waterway to tap into to remove waste.  It was far more effective than modern systems and used the earth’s own ecology.

Inside the castle, the places where the waste used to drop down into the waterway had been covered over by trapdoors that were still there, and that was how we were going to gain access, through rooms that were no longer used.

We were going in via four access points, two men at each door, and mine with one of Blinkys men would be going into the area where the soldiers were camping to mop up whatever the bombs left behind, before closing off an exit.

Carlo had reserved the last one for himself and the boy, where he hoped to find Wallace and the new German commander.

Our cue to move: the bombs going off.

We just had time to get to the point and lower the trapdoors. Then climb up onto the floor and wait by the door.  From the other side, Carlo said, anyone in the castle would only see a continuation of the wall panelling.

We made it with seconds to spare.

We were closest to the bombs and the percussive effect was disorientating for a few seconds before we pushed through the door and into the smoke and dust raised by the explosions.

As the dust settled, we could see dead soldiers, and mess everywhere.  If a soldier was still alive, we shot them, systematically picking our way through the debris.  I counted thirty-one dead by the time we reached the other side, the other exit from the space.

In the distance, we could hear sporadic gunfire coming from other parts of the castle, and then, after taking up our position, near the tank, we waited.

Three soldiers came bursting out of the exit and we shot them too..

Ten minutes later Carlo yelled out, “It’s me, don’t shoot.”  Then he stepped out the door.  “It is done.”

The castle was ours.

“You wish to speak to your old commander before I execute him?

“Wallace?”

He nodded.

“Sure”

I followed him into the castle and walked through familiar passageways and rooms, much had not changed in a long time.

Wallace and the new commander were tied up in the dining room.  The remnants of a meal and several empty bottles of wine were on the table.

Wallace watched me from the doorway until I stood before him.

“I knew it was a mistake letting you go.  Jackerby was convinced you were a stupid fool who would unwittingly lead us directly to the resistance.  I told him you were cleverer than you looked.”

“And yet…”

“Perhaps I was tired of people like you being killed needlessly.  What just happened, that was a waste of human life.”

“I didn’t start the war, and for the record, I didn’t want any part of it.  Unfortunately, higher authorities deemed otherwise, and here I am.  This is not a victory to savour.”

“A victory nonetheless.”

I shrugged.  “It didn’t have to be like this, but at least we’ve weeded out a few more traitors.”

“Then no point asking for mercy?”

“No.”

With that said Carlo executed both men.

…

© Charles Heath 2021-2023

I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.

The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

Chasing leads, maybe

Monica, from the last interrogation, had brought a file.  It looked the same as the last one she brought with her, the one with my name on it.

This time it was thicker.

Intelligence gathering at its finest.  There’d be stuff in there that even I didn’t know about me.

She didn’t open it, just looked at me.

“What have you been doing?”

“Working?”

“For whom?”

“Nobbin, of course.  I am now assigned to his section.  Did you do that?”

“He did.  He tells me you’re working on the O’Connell investigation.”

“Is that what it’s called.  He never told me that.  And I had to find out where I’d been assigned by logging onto a computer.  An email or letter would have made my life a little easier.”

“You’re just lucky you’re still working here.  Now, tell me more about this Severin character.”

“I told you everything I knew the last time you spoke to me.  Apparently, you seemed to know who it was.  Perhaps you might tell me, too.”

“It’s…”

“And,” I interrupted, “don’t tell me it’s above my pay grade.  I was potentially working for traitors and could have finished up in jail for treason.”

“You might still get there.”

Then why hadn’t she had me arrested and thrown in a dungeon the last time we met?  There was an easy answer to that question.  She needed me out in the field.  Nobbin needed me in the field.  They presumably needed me to remain available to Severin for whatever reason.

“What do you want?”

She opened the file, turned a few pages, and stopped at a yellow sheet of paper.  I wasn’t able to read it upside down, but it had very small spidery writing on it.

Then she looked at me again.

“Some secret documents appear to have gone missing.  We believe that is to say Director Dobbin thinks these may have been on a USB drive that was in the possession of O’Connell at the time of his death.  You were there at the time of his death.  You can see where this is going…”

No matter which answers I gave it was the wrong one, which led to do not pass go and do not collect two hundred dollars, or pounds as the case may be.

“I haven’t got it, and he didn’t tell me where it was, and I saw him die.”

“If you say so.”  She went back to the file and turned some more pagers.

“What do you mean?”

She looked up.  “So far, there’s no body been recovered, or any evidence there was a shooting where you said it was.”

“Are you trying to tell me he’s alive, because if you are, then I must be a very poor judge of people who have no pulse.  He was not about to get up and walk away.”

“Did you see the body removed?”

Now there’s an interesting point.  I had done as I was told and left when told to.  I assumed Severin would sort the problem out, in fact, hadn’t he called in the cleaners?  I saw a white van.

Actually, when I thought about it, I had no idea what happened after I left.  And, now that I remember, I didn’t see anyone get out of the white van.

Could bodies get up and walk?

I was beginning to think they could.

© Charles Heath 2020