Under very close surveillance

…

The girl was still waiting.  To me, it was risky to do so, but it depended on her peers, and if she had been told not to lose me, then I could understand.  Myself though, I would have kept an eye from the foyer or outside the building depending on where the exits were.

I sat next to her, which I could see was a little unsettling.

“Not finished yet?” She asked, trying to move a little bit further away from me.

“Yes, I am.  But I was wondering, Francesca, why have you taken an interest in me?”  I gave her a curious look and tried not to look threatening.

She seemed disconcerted that I knew her name, and was going to respond but instead said, “I think you have mistaken me for someone else.”

She stood.

“Perhaps I have, but if the names of Antonia and Giuseppe mean anything to you, I suggest we go have a cup of coffee, my treat, and talk about it.”

I saw the fear in her eyes, and I knew she knew I had leverage.  It was, for a field agent, which I didn’t think she was, the worst-case scenario.  The fact she wasn’t was underlined by the amount of information found.  Field agents, like myself, were ghosts.

She nodded.

Once we were seated, and coffee delivered, I said, “Whatever you might be thinking right now, I am not interested in causing anyone harm.  If what I suspect is the case, then you have nothing to worry about unless your employer expects you not to tell me or anyone anything, but we’re past that.  You are not a proper field agent, are you?”

“No.”

“Why then?”

“They were short two people and I had done the training, and they asked if I could fill in.”

“To do?”

“Surveillance.”

“You do realize surveillance is carried out from afar.”

“In London or New York maybe but here it is a little more difficult.”

“Did they ask you to get close?”

“Only if an opportunity presented itself.  I was to find out what you were doing, with whom, and why.”

“Are your employers looking for the countess?”

She looked at me sideways, summing up what she could and couldn’t get away with.  “Yes.  She has gone missing.  The team in London lost her at the hotel.  You were there, and with her at the opera, that’s how you became a person of interest.”

That told me she was not working with the kidnappers.  And quite possibly her employers were working for the Burkhardt’s.

“You usually work in the stolen art department, well, not so much stolen art as identifying fakes.  I noticed one case where the owners of several very expensive pieces had them copied, sold the originals to private collectors, and then tried to claim insurance when the copies were ‘stolen’.  Why would you want to go out into the murky world?”

“There aren’t any cases at the moment and a change was good.”

“You do realise that if I was not retired and only doing a favour for a friend, you’d be dead, or at the very least in hospital.  The world I lived in was very, very dangerous.  And information on you and your family is too easily accessible.  I suggest you address that when you go back to the office.  As it stands that might not be for a while.  You will tell your bosses I have taken a shine to you, and you will be coming with me to Sorrento.”

“Why would I do that?”

“Do you know what collateral damage is?”

She nodded.

“That can still happen.  I don’t need you running around in the shadows where I’ll trip over you.  I believe the countess had been kidnapped, and the fact we haven’t got a ransom means that we are dealing with some very nasty people.  At least that way you can keep your people updated.  It’ll be easy for you to say you overheard me reporting in.  It’s that or a dark hole somewhere for several days.  Your choice.”

I didn’t want to take her with me, but she was going to stay on my tail.  Better to know where she is rather than have her blunder her way into a possible tense situation.

Actually, she had no choice.

© Charles Heath 2023

A story called “Mistaken Identity”

…

How many of us have skeletons in the closet that we know nothing about? The skeletons we know about generally stay there, but those we do not, well, they have a habit of coming out of left field when we least expect it.

In this case, when you see your photo on a TV screen with the accompanying text that says you are wanted by every law enforcement agency in Europe, you’re in a state of shock, only to be compounded by those same police, armed and menacing, kicking the door down.

I’d been thinking about this premise for a while after I discovered my mother had a boyfriend before she married my father, a boyfriend who was, by all accounts, the man who was the love of her life.

Then, in terms of coming up with an idea for a story, what if she had a child by him that we didn’t know about, which might mean I had a half brother or sister I knew nothing about. It’s not an uncommon occurrence from what I’ve been researching.

There are many ways of putting a spin on this story.

Then, in the back of my mind, I remembered a story an acquaintance at work was once telling us over morning tea, that a friend of a friend had a mother who had a twin sister and that each of the sisters had a son by the same father, without each knowing of the father’s actions, both growing up without the other having any knowledge of their half brother, only to meet by accident on the other side of the world.

It was an encounter that in the scheme of things might never have happened, and each would have remained oblivious of the other.

For one sister, the relationship was over before she discovered she was pregnant, and therefore had not told the man he was a father. It was no surprise the relationship foundered when she discovered he was also having a relationship with her sister, a discovery that caused her to cut all ties with both of them and never speak to either from that day.

It’s a story with more twists and turns than a country lane!

And a great idea for a story.

That story is called ‘Mistaken Identity’.

Rodby comes clean

…

I was beginning to believe that it wasn’t half the story I knew, but about a quarter.  How did that little tidbit of information get left out of the official briefing, and accompanying documents.

I knew there was something he was not telling me.  And, worse, I realized now that this was a totally off-the-books operation, and the reason why it was both Cecelia and I, we were expendable if anything went wrong.

Surely Rodby hadn’t thought I wouldn’t find out.  It certainly explained why he was trying to keep it at arm’s length. And left it to Martha to ask me if I would talk to the countess about her problem.

Perhaps I should have told her back in London that the countess did not want me to intervene.  No, she probably wouldn’t listen.  She had to be the older sister, and that made sense the way the countess deferred to her in London.

And why hadn’t the countess told me of this connection?

Stepsisters.

Did Rodby know, or was he, like me, working under the assumption they were simply old friends.  Would she lie to her husband, knowing who he is?  It was another can of worms.

I heard a thump on the table and switched my attention back to Benito.  He was looking at me, with one hand on a rather large handgun. What looked like a relic from the last world war.

It looked like it could do some serious damage and he knew how to use it.

“Now, whoever you are, tell me where you’re from and who you work for.”

“Or you’ll shoot me?”

“It won’t be the first time this gun has gone off accidentally.”

I believed him.  I took a moment to assess my chances of making the distance from my chair to the gun and wrest it away from him.  They were not good.  There was a reason why I was sitting so far from his table.  This man had had to deal with unsavoury characters before.

“I am not your enemy.  As far as I am aware, I was asked to look for the countess, but a man named Rodby, a man I used to work for, and I last met him and his wife yesterday.  The day before that I met a woman who told me she was the countess, and who travelled here yesterday with my partner and two other women. Vittoria and her daughter Juliet.  Again, as far as I am aware, Juliet is the illegitimate daughter of the count and another possible heir to the Burkehardt estate.”

“You said, ‘a woman who told you she was the countess’.  What did you mean by that?”

“You, that gun, and a boss who doesn’t make sense.  I think you’re about to tell me the woman I met, and currently protecting, is not the countess?”

He had to make a decision whether to trust me or not.  And even if he did one wrong word and I would regret it.

“When we first met a month ago, the countess and I created a code that was to preface every communication.  It worked well for two weeks then the code disappeared.  I suspected she had been taken, and when a woman purporting to be the countess turned up in my office, I knew.  She has been kidnapped.  She had no idea of our previous conversations and took the documents I needed her to sign away with her.”

As good a sign that she knew where the real countess was.  Ui didn’t really know who the countess was, so anyone could have been presented to me and I’d believe them.

“If you are working for the kidnappers, I have nothing to tell you.  If you are not, I cannot tell you who has taken her or where she is, and quite frankly I don’t want to.  There is no ransom note, no communication at all.  If that girl out there is looking for the countess, then she must be working for the Burkehardt’s because it is in their best interests to meet with her before the due date to get her final decision.  Once again, are you a friend or foe?”

“Friend.  The first time I met the countess was in London a few days ago when I went to the opera with her.  After that, I was asked if I would help her with a problem, but before I could find out what it was, she disappeared.  Perhaps her pretence had been discovered.  Nothing is ever straightforward, not when it comes to Rodby.”

And if the Mrs Rodby I saw at the opera yesterday was not her, why did they get me to meet her?  I’d be the last person Rodby would want to put on her case because he’d know I wouldn’t accept what I’d been told.  The murky water just got more muddied.  Who would want to kidnap the countess and what did they want from her?  All I could think of was that someone knew she was inheriting, kidnapped her, and had inserted a fake countess to turn up to the ratifying of the will.  Would she become expendable, would they both become expendable after the transaction was complete?

Where did Vittoria and Juliet come in?  Did whoever had taken the countess even know about their interest in the estate?

“I suspect that Mrs Rodby isn’t Mrs Rodby either,” I said, “Which just adds another layer of mud.”  I shook my head.  “When I see Rodby again I’m going to strangle him with my bare hands.  Are you still going to Burkehardt’s solicitors to oversee the signing?  I think we =can assume the fake countess will be there.  I’m supposed to make sure she gets there.  That was one of my mission parameters.”

“I will be, with police officers, and will be exposing that woman as a fake.  Unless you find the real one, or the Burkehardt’s do, though I think it preferable if you or someone else did.  I have consistently advised her that it was not a good idea to marry into the family.  Either of the sisters.  When the Tolliver’s adopted Heidi, she was a troubled girl who had been flirting with the aristocracy and had settled on marrying one of them.  Of course, her parents had a title but not wealth and encouraged her to find such a man so they could all live off his family.  The count was a man who never wanted to be tied to one woman and had an infamous reputation with women, especially the servants, and when you mentioned Vittoria, there was a case in point.  But, the girl she says is her daughter, is not.  I know she has a birth certificate, but it is a very good forgery.  The count was going to marry Martha, there had been an arrangement between the Tolliver’s and the Burkehardt’s, which would have resolved the issues were having now, but Heidi professed that the count had made her pregnant, and the Tolliver’s were not people you just shrugged off, so Martha’s wedding was stopped, and Heidi took her place.  If you want another scenario, just as plausible as all the others, then look no further than Martha.  Everything would have been hers had her sister not interfered with a phantom pregnancy.  Knowing her as I do, and have done for many years, she is very capable of doing something like this.”

Why couldn’t this be just a simple kidnapping by some avaricious monster who wanted everything for him or herself, like a crazy business rival, or make just the mafia looking for a one hundred per cent share?  That would make sense.

“I should just go home and let them all kill each other and that would be an end to it.”

‘If only life was that simple.  I wish you all the luck in the world.  You’re going to need it.”

© Charles Heath 2023

Rodby Explains, at last

…

I was about to leave when my phone rang.  “Just a minute, I’d better check.”

I looked at the screen, and it was a private number.  Normally, I would ignore the call, but this time, I had a bad feeling.

“Yes.” 

“Don’t hang up. This is a recorded message. It’s the only way I can tell you what’s happening.”

Rodby, with a tremor.  This was entirely unexpected.

“Have you got a private space where I can listen to this?  It’s a message from my employer and may be relevant to the countess.”

“Of course.”  He got up and went to a door on the side and opened it.  “A conference room. Take as long as you need.”

I walked into the room, and he closed the door behind me.

Another message came in, and I looked at it.  A response from Anthony on the identity of the girl outside after I surreptitiously took her photo and sent it back.

The document had the name age all that personal stuff, where she lived, all her relatives, where she worked, indeed a pi company, and the fact she was an art historian working in the stolen paintings department.  It confirmed her real name was Francesca and not that she had given me earlier.  It was useful for later if she was still in the office.

Meanwhile, I replayed the message.

“As you may have guessed, you did not get the whole story.  Circumstances made it impossible for me to give the proper instructions to Anthony, so I had to work around the facts and add sufficient fiction to make it seem plausible, to Anthony anyway.  I know you can see the holes.

But, an explanation for all of this subterfuge…

Firstly, you are doing this job because you are not on the radar.  Nor is Cecelia, and I’ve kept it so that no one knows you are doing anything for us.  I fear not everyone in the office is rowing in the same direction.

Secondly, I’m under strict instructions at the peril of Martha’s life to do as I am told.  Both Martha and Heidi were kidnapped two weeks ago and were replaced by the two women you met at the opera.  They are very good impersonators and look almost exactly like them.  But they are short on essential details, and I believe you will discover this fact soon enough, if not already.

I don’t know where they are or who has taken them.  I cannot say for certain if Juliet or Vittoria or both are involved in their kidnapping and/or working in concert with the fake countess and whoever she is working for.  I suspect that it’s not the Burkehardt’s, and knowing you, you will have gone to the solicitor’s office and elicited a few facts that no one other than me, him, and three others knows about them.  I was in fact hoping that was going to be your next course of action.

Thirdly, I was asked to put my best person in ensuring the fake countess made it to the solicitor’s office for the sealing of the inheritance documents.  I used you because, out of everyone I knew, because you would be intrigued by the notion that Mrs Rodby would want to set up a date with you and Heidi, especially when you were not looking for one.  Ordinarily, Martha would not do such a thing, but I had to weave the tale so that the fake would agree to use you as her guardian angel.

I believe that by now, you will know that Martha and Heidi are sisters.  Heidi had come to London about a month ago just after the count died, terrified.  An attempt had been made on her life, and she had no idea who or why. She didn’t think it was the Burkhardt’s, but Alessandro was making ugly noises.

Two weeks later, no further advanced in our inquiries, they were taken, so I didn’t have much to work with.

Two important outcomes for this mission are, firstly, you must try and find the women.  It is imperative we get to them before the date of the meeting with the Burkehardt’s.  Secondly, the fake countess must not get to that solicitor’s office.  How you do that is up to you.”

There might have been more, but that’s where the message cut out.

It explained why I thought the woman at Trafalgar Square was different from what I remembered, and Rodby’s very strange behaviour.

I guess I’d be a little off my game if someone had kidnapped Violetta.  What I couldn’t understand was how he let it happen.  His personal security was very tight, and that extended to family members.

It also explained why the solicitor in the other room had not heard from his client, the woman pretending to be her was not her, and didn’t know about the coded communications.

I went back into the lawyer’s office where he was reading through a brief.  I had thought he might see the girl who came in with me.

He looked up.  “Any news.”

For a second, I was going to tell him, but a sixth sense told me not to trust anyone, no matter how sincere they sounded.  With the kind of money being thrown around as the value of this inheritance, strong-minded people could be turned.

It would not serve the real countess if they, whoever they were, knew we knew their secret.  That was the tangled web of lies and deceit this mission was descending into.

“Nothing definitive.  To be honest, this is not my area of expertise, and they’re sending out someone with more experience.  I told them to just leave well alone, but someone in London has a bee in their bonnet about the countess.”

He shrugged.  “She is English, it is understandable.  What are you going to do next?”

“Have a chat with the girl outside.  It won’t hurt to find out why she’s so interested in me.  If I wasn’t such a suspicious bugger, I’d be flattered.  Thank you for your time.”

© Charles Heath 2023