The problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in, and because of it, he has now been roped into what might be called a suicide mission.
…
The folder had half a dozen single-page sheets with a photo attached to each with a standard-issue army paper clip. There was no top secret in pale red ink diagonally scribed across any of the pages which somehow diminished the exercise.
I guessed this was the hand-picked team selected for me to take on our suicide mission. It didn’t have the officer overseeing the mission, or the go-between Jacobi. Not exactly a useful man to have along in a firefight, because he would be too busy working out who would pay the most if or when he survived.
It still astonished me that we hired people like Jacobi, fully knowing that they would sell out their own mother if the price was right. I was going to reserve one bullet in my gun to execute him the moment he even looked the wrong way.
Trust him, I did not.
Nor any 0f the six members of that hand-picked team.
Sergeant Barnes. Tall, wide, deadly, that last attribute courtesy of a line in his resume that said he killed three soldiers of the army we were supposed to be training and supporting. No meaningful reason was given as to why he did, only that he’d just finished serving a five-year sentence, cut short by a month so he could join this force. Hand to hand combat, and a handy man to have if you’ve got a handheld rocket launcher handy.
Private Williamson. Had been a Corporal, but considered that too much of a burden, having men look up to him, and having to give orders. He decided to go AWOL instead. Used to be a butcher before signing on to see the world, and as described very handy with a knife. Refused to use a gun, and refused orders too, which was the reason why he was in the stockade, with his friend, the next man on the list.
Private Shurl. If we needed a man who excelled at sword fighting, he was our man. A very accomplished swordsman, but I doubt we were going to need a man of his talents because enemy swordsmen seemed only to exist in the old movies. I guess Lallo was expecting the three musketeers or something. Other than that, he was a useful radioman and would be handling the communications once we were on the ground in enemy territory.
Corporal Stark. His claim to fame was reading maps. He was also an expert on the ground in the country whose borders we were about to violate. He lived in the country for several years with his wife, who came from there, and who’d been killed by the dictator in a case of mistaken identity. Stark would have to be carefully managed.
Staff Sergeant Mobley. A man who had been up and down in ranks for a long time, suggesting a bad attitude, his latest bout leaving him fresh from a stint in the stockade. He had no valid reason to be in on this disaster and yet had volunteered. That took courage, to apply for a suicide mission with little hope of return. I suspect he had an agenda that no one else knew about.
And, lastly
Lieutenant Lesley Davies. A woman marine, no longer a lieutenant but just another soldier who obviously didn’t understand the concept of taking one step back when everyone else steps in another direction. It didn’t say what it was she did wrong, but my guess there were a few men out there frightened of meeting her on a dark night. Some women are dainty, some women are large, and then there’s Davies, a powerhouse that could be dangerous if out of control.
Out of all of that team, she was the one who interested me the most.
There was a knock on the door, interrupting my thoughts. I called out, “Enter”, surprised the person outside hadn’t just shoved their way into the room.
The door opened, Monroe walked in and closed the door behind her.
“Let me guess,” I said. “You’re running point.”
“And save your sorry ass from those recruits. Not a brain between the lot of them, and we need people who can think, given the nature of the forthcoming exercise. The brains trust has decided the rescue team reports to us. I didn’t ask for it by the way. This is one of Lallo’s sick jokes.”
Maybe he had a problem with her too and was hoping she wasn’t coming back.
“You and me both,” I said.
She threw another folder on the table. “Operational orders, wheels up at 0600 tomorrow. Make sure you get a hearty meal before we leave, it might be your last for a while.”
I shrugged.
“Suit yourself.” She went back to the door, gave me a curious look, and left.
I opened the file and looked at the one piece of paper in it. It was marked Top Secret in red diagonally across the page, probably specially done by Lallo to make me feel important. It had departure time, the weather, the flight time, how long the stopover would be before going on to the target.
Tightly planned, no room for missing connections, though this was the army, not an airline taking us, no room for errors. New intel said that we had five days before the prisoners were to be executed.
For a story that was conceived during those long boring hours flying in a steel cocoon, striving to keep away the thoughts that the plane and everyone in it could just simply disappear as planes have in the past, it has come a long way.
Whilst I have always had a fascination with what happened during the second world war, not the battles or fighting, but in the more obscure events that took place, I decided to pen my own little sidebar to what was a long and bitter war.
And, so, it continues…
I woke to the sound of a cracking sound behind me, and, when I rolled over, I found myself staring up the barrel of a gun.
The number one rule broken, don’t fall asleep in enemy territory.
But something else bothered me in those few seconds as I struggle to wake up and comprehend what was happening. Where was Jack? If he’d been here this would not have happened.
But still bleary-eyed from just waking up and in that initial confused state of not knowing where and when, all I could see was a uniformed shape holding the gun standing over me, and feel, in those few seconds that I was not going to survive this.
I braced myself for a bullet, wondering if death was going to be instantaneous. I had hoped I might die in a less inglorious manner.
“Sam? Is that you?”
It was a rather dumb question to be asking an enemy soldier because my mind hadn’t adjusted to the fact the soldier was not in a German uniform, nor in work clothes, but quite possibly the uniform of a soldier from the castle, and if it was, why be asking the question and not just shooting me?
Then, finally, my eyes focussed and I could see clearly who it was, and breathed a sigh of relief. Whoever it was, knew me but that wasn’t necessarily a good thing. But in the next second, I saw the gun retract and the man behind it come closer and crouch down beside me.
He was not a soldier from the castle, but a soldier in the familiar British uniform. From somewhere else entirely. An Army Captain if I was not mistaken, which, for another second, I also thought was odd.
And then recognition of a face I hadn’t seen in years.
“Blinky?”
OK, so it was a strange nickname, but it was apt, William O’Reilly blinked a lot, hence the nickname. And Will had been on the same training course as I had three years before, only he had ended up in administration. Bad eyesight.
“It is you, Sam.”
“What the hell are you doing here?”
I dragged myself up from the ground to sit up. I did a quick scan around me, but Jack was nowhere to be found. It was not like him to desert me when trouble arrived.
“Apparently rescuing your sorry ass. Now that I’m here, I can see why the Colonel said you needed help.” He held out his hand and pulled me up.
“Forster? You work for him?”
“No, but he asked for someone who knew you by sight, and I was the only one available. Besides, I was getting sick of sitting behind a desk while the rest of you were out in the field doing heroic shit.”
I brushed the undergrowth off my uniform and straightened my clothes. It didn’t make me feel any more comfortable.
“I don’t think falling asleep is very heroic. When did the orders come through?”
“Yesterday. A message was sent and received, a rendezvous at an old church. I came with three others, including a very serious sergeant major who had absolutely no sense of humor. I saw this farm; thought I’d check it out.”
“You’re lucky you didn’t get your head shot off.”
“By the man-mountain. Nearly, yes, until I told him who I was. Said you were up here. Waiting for something?”
“Then enemy. We were hoping they turn up so we could deal with them.”
“That would be the traitors up at the castle, or the turncoat resistance members working with them? Carlo, he told me his name, he reckons it’s not happening. Said once I found you to come down and we’ll catch up with the others at this church.”
I picked up the weapon and then we headed towards Carlo’s position.
I could see the Colonel’s reasoning. Send someone I knew who couldn’t be working for the other side. It worried me that the message from Thompson hadn’t been received, because if it had, Martina would have got someone to tell us.
H is for — Help is on the way. Only it isn’t; it’s a betrayal of trust
…
It comes down to who you trust.
Me, I didn’t trust anyone, and it served me well. Over the years, the very people you thought you could trust were mostly the people you couldn’t.
A brother who screwed me over with our inheritance.
A wife who cleaned out the bank accounts and left with my best friend.
Naturally, my best friend.
A business partner who spent all the working capital on business trips and women, sending the company broke and the blame for it on me.
It left me with nothing and more or less a hermit, living in a cabin in the middle of nowhere, reliant on np one else but myself.
But, like every idyllic haven and so-called peace of mind, it was never going to last.
I bought my little slice of heaven, about a hundred or so acres of forest, and built a log cabin in the middle of it. The conservationists would be proud of me. There was nothing detrimental to the environment in it.
It kept me busy, hunting, fishing, and surviving.
It’s why when someone turned up at my doorstep, they were either lost or found one of the tracks I’d made and followed, again because they were lost.
Or, it was someone looking for me, and there were a few. People people who didn’t realise it was not me who screwed them over but others I worked with. I’d been lucky so far, but that luck was always going to eventually run out.
My last visitors had been several hikers looking for the caves, about thirty miles to the west. I pointed them in the right direction and sent them on their way the next morning.
It’d been a month or two since then, and with the advent of summer, I was expecting more.
Or so the forest ranger had said last time he came. Apparently, the caves, thirty miles away, were supposed to have gold nuggets in the walls.
No sooner had he left, a pair of hikers, a man and a woman ,come out of the woods via the eastern trail. I was cutting wood when they appeared.
I waited until they’d crossed the clearing before letting them know I was there, just out of their sight.
My voice startled them, so I came out of the hollow, axe in hand, trying not to look threatening.
“We heard someone was hiding in the woods. That would be you?”
He had that smart Alec look about him, the sort who knew everything but knew nothing. A city boy dressed up to look like a country boy.
The girl looked like she would be more at home on a catwalk, with designer everything.
These two were no more hikers than the man in the moon was, if there was one.
“Not hiding, just keeping away from people. I don’t get along with people. What are you doing here?”
He stopped a short distance from me and put his pack down. It looked heavy. The girl did likewise and sat on hers. She said, to no one in particular, “I’ve done enough walking for today.”
I could see she was tired and angry. I had heard raised voices earlier and wondered if it was them.
The man, or boy, looked at me. “We’re heading towards the caves. I guess we still have a ways to go.”
I pointed with my hand, “Thirty miles that away.”
The girl groaned.
“Any chance we can stay for the night?”
“If you don’t mind the floor.”
“We have sleeping bags and food.”
I shrugged. “If you want. There’re no showers, but there is a river about half a mile away.”
“Fair enough.” He sat too, and I could see they both had equipment that was new, including the boots.
“Phones don’t work out here,” the girl said, holding up her cell phone and moving it around.
“No. Just satellite phones. It’s one of the reasons I’m off-grid. No longer attached to a phone or anything, really. I’ll finish cutting the wood, and I’ll be back.”
They didn’t look like they were going anywhere for a while.
When I came back with a bundle of wood, I let them into the cabin and showed them where they could stay.
At one end was my room; the rest of the cabin was given over to kichen, lounge and fireplace where I had the fire. It was down to embers waiting for my return with wood for tonight.
They put out their sleeping blankets and took off their boots, which may have been a mistake because I thought I saw blood on their socks while I stoked the fire into life. The girl made strange faces as she removed her boots.
There was a pot over the flames and they said they could use it to make their dinner.
While it was heating, I said, “I take it you don’t hike much.”
“It’s a recent thing,” the girl said. “Fresh air and countryside. A bit different to walking in the park.”
“Are you here just for the fresh air?”
The girl looked at the boy, and I could see a slight shake of the head.
He spoke, “Just taking a hike as far as the caves to check them out. You know them?”
“Never been there. The last people passing through were headed there, too. I don’t think they made it.”
Last I heard from the ranger, they’d rescued two people from the forest, one of whom had fallen down the side of the mountain and had been badly injured.
“I’m guessing the trail is difficult?”
“To an inexperienced hiker, yes, but you guys look like you’ve done this before.”
“A little. But what we lack in experience, we make up for with enthusiasm.” He looked at the girl. “Don’t we?”
Her look at him, then me, said anything but.
“Then you should be fine.”
I was up and about before they woke, making sure there was hot water for coffee.
They could also cook something if they wanted to, but after the evening effort, I got the impression they were yet to shake off the trappings of a fast food diet.
When I came back from the river with water, they were up and about, hardly enthusiastic, the toll of the previous day’s trek plain to see in their pained expressions.
“Good morning,” I greeted them cheerfully, hoping it would improve their demeanour.
Both muttered a greeting on return. The girl added, “Which way is the river?”
I pointed in the direction where the trail began at the tree line. “Ten minutes that way. The water is cold but refreshing. Stick to the pool. You’ll see it.”
“Thanks.”
I noticed that she started off by herself.
The man gathered his bathroom bag and started to follow her, then stopped.
“How long will it take to reach the caves?”
“Two days if you keep an even pace and head in the right direction, north west. I’m assuming you have a map?”
“Yes. I have a GPS that should help. But, we were wondering, have you been to the caves at all?”
Odd question to ask. “No. It’s a long way just to see some bat droppings. You’re not the first people to pass through and ask me the same question.”
“We were hoping you would guide us. I’m wise enough to know that we are too inexperienced to do it on our own. You can see how we ended up when we arrived.”
“Then you should go home. It’s not for the faint hearted.”
“Unfortunately, we can’t. I made a bet, and it’s not one I can afford to lose. I can pay you, if that will change your mind. Think about it.”
Just what I didn’t need. I came to this place to get away from people and responsibility. I shouldn’t really care what happened to fools, and this fellow was a prize fool.
I didn’t need money, but if he was willing to pay, I’d put a high price on it. After I let him stew for a few hours.
I had been taught to take people at face value, but there would always be people who would slip past the usual scrutiny.
People were good at pretending to be something else and telling you in the most sincere of tones everything you want to hear.
My record on judging people was not the best.
Still, as my mother always said, the majority of people will be fine, there’s only a few scumbags that ruin it for everyone else.
My two visitors and upcoming intrepid adventurers were too good to be true. And we all knew the saying, if it’s too good to be true, it generally is.
Call me cynical.
Years of being taken advantage of had forced me off the grid, and I had hoped that I’d got far enough away that only the forest ranger could find me.
It was good to learn that both rangers who worked this part of the forest were the same as me, escaping from a wretched life borne out of trusting all the wrong people.
Dave was the closest, and while down by the river and far enough away from my visitors, I called him. I had a satellite phone, not for general use, but to call the ranger station if there was a fire or other calamity. This was the second time I’d called.
“Ethan.”
“Dave.”
“How is it out there in Shangrila?”
“Almost perfect. I had two hikers turn up yesterday telling me they were heading towards the caves.”
“Gold miners?”
“They don’t look as if they have ever hiked anywhere in their lives. Everything they have is just off the shelf, minus the price tag.”
When I first arrived at the ranger station, there was a long discussion about setting up a camp and staying. Of course, it was not allowed unless I worked as a fire spotter. There was no pay and a good chance of being burned to death, but it offered the solitude I was looking for.
They said people had to report to the ranger station before venturing into the unknown, and if anyone was coming my way, they would tell me.
“They did not report to the office. We have only one registered group out there but in a different quadrant.”
“Is it possible they didn’t know about the regulations?”
“If they’re proper hikers, no. Have they told you why they’re out there?”
“Not in as many words. Is there something out here that I don’t know about?
“Only that some guy found a fifty-ounce nugget in one of the caves. Since then, it’s been proved that he had stolen it from a private collection, but news of that has been suppressed because of who it was stolen from. But to stop people from going there, a bulletin was released telling everyone the nugget didn’t come from the caves. We don’t want a mini gold rush sending thousands of people into impenetrable parts of the forest, getting lost, injured, or worse. Perhaps they didn’t get the memo.”
“Or they’re up to something else.”
“You going with them?”
“I wasn’t going to.”
“I can offer you a small guide’s fee, a couple of hundred dollars a day, because it will cost tens of thousands to get them out when, not if they get lost.”
“OK. You should be able to track us. If anything else is in play, I’ll call you.”
“No problems.”
I felt better knowing the forestry rangers were monitoring us. Just in case.
When I got back to the cabin, they were sitting outside, all packed up and ready to go. I thought it was a little strange that the girl looked more like a fashion model with perfect makeup; the last thing she needed in the forest.
There was also an air of tension between the two, the sort that was often said it was so think you could cut in with a knife. An argument?
The boy sounded happier than he looked. “Have you considered the offer?”
“How much are you willing to pay?”
“A round thousand, five hundred each way.” He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out the notes.” New, and crisp. “Half now, the rest when we get back.”
I came over and took the money. “I’ll be five minutes. Are you sure you want to do this?”
“Of course. And thank you.”
I looked at the girl and had a sudden flash of memory. I’d seen her before, somewhere, but where? It certainly wasn’t in hiking gear, and she certainly wasn’t as miserable as she looked then.
I shook my head. It would come back, only by then it would be the wrong time and definitely the wrong place.
The first mile was the hardest. Not necessarily in terms of terrain; it was nearly flat country before we started up the first mountain, the first of five or six.
Firstly, they had to get over the previous day, and after seeing their feet, the initial struggle just getting the boots back on would have been interesting.
Secondly, it was the time of the year for the first snow of the season, so it was cold. Very cold. Fortunately, they had dressed for the weather.
Thirdly, the animals were active, and both of them were easily startled. I wasn’t expecting to see any bears, but there might be one of two skulking. Generally, they left people alone.
We stopped twice in clearings for a break, and at first, I told them that at the rate we were going, it might take three or four days to get there.
Note: they were not in a hurry.
I tried to engage them in small talk, but I got the impression there was little to talk about. The girl wanted to, but a glance from the boy stopped her.
Note: They did not want me to know who they were. My guess is that the first names were not their real names.
By the time we had traversed the first mountain and had reached a tributary that ran into the main river, some distance away, we stopped for lunch.
They had wisely brought energy bars and drinks. I suspected the girl was a gym freak because she seemed more at home with the physical exercise. The boy wasn’t and was sweating profusely, the sort who avoided exercise and fitness. His definition of exercise would be running for the train to avoid being later than late.
I led, the girl followed, and the boy was the rearguard. More than once, I saw him looking around.
Note: Was he expecting someone, or did he believe someone was following us?
With the rustling sounds in the undergrowth, it wasn’t hard to be worried about what could suddenly appear. I had seen the odd wild pig and several bears over the last year.
By the time we made it over three of the five hills or mountains, we were making a good pace, and by the time light was fading, we had traversed about sixteen miles.
This was going to take two full days, perhaps a little longer. Darkness fell quickly, and rest beckoned. Out in the forest, the notion of sleep was a luxury. Although I didn’t tell them, I rarely slept when on a trek it was never that safe.
Something else I may have failed to mention is that sound travels on the cold night air. They had moved to a position at the bottom of a rocky escarpment, where they thought they were far enough away not to be heard.
“Tell me again why I let you talk me into this ridiculous odyssey?” The petulance and contempt were plain to hear in her tone.
“You wanted a life of luxury. It wasn’t my fault that your parents cut you off. I can’t see why they don’t like me, other than I’m not one of their self-entitled fools they were throwing at you.”
There was no mistaking the contempt in his tone either. It still didn’t identify who she was other than she was from a wealthy background. It explained the attitude and the equipment.
“You told me that money wasn’t an issue.”
“It isn’t. Once we find a chunk of gold, everything will be fine.”
” I hope you’re not expecting to find it just lying around waiting for you to simply pick it up. The guy who told you about it would have taken everything he could see.”
“He couldn’t carry it all.”
“So he chose you above everybody else he could tell where this El Derado is? If it was me, I wouldn’t tell a soul. Or I would tell people to go somewhere entirely different.”
She had made some very valid points, and if I had been the original discoverer, I would not tell anyone where the gold was. Not unless I was selling bogus treasure maps. And the caves were not exactly unknown. Intrepid hikers who wanted a challenge set it as the hardest trek that could be had in the area.
If there was gold in the caves, it would have long been discovered before this.
“Well, he didn’t. Just accept that I know what I’m doing.”
That next statement should have been, ‘You’ve been scammed’, but instead, she didn’t say another word. My only thought was that anything was possible, but I remembered the rangers saying that the geological structures were not conducive to finding any sort of mineral.
In the beginning, we tend to write ourselves into the stories we write, and also, the various other characters are a collection of traits of people we have known in the past and present.
The trick is with those other people not to make them too much like their real-life counterparts, or you may spend the rest of your life in litigation.
I know there are parts of me in my characters because people I know who have read my stories tell me how much they are like me. The problem with that is I didn’t realise I was doing it.
But, to emphasise, the story is not about you.
Unless it is an autobiography.
I have thought about it, writing the story of my life, but it’s so boring, the best use of my book would be to read it just before going to bed.
What is probably more interesting would be the story of my family, traced back to the mid-1700s, and they are a very interesting bunch. To me, it seems that people who lived a hundred years ago had far more interesting lives than we do these days.
All the while we are talking about the nuts and bolts of the story, words are being put on paper more or less at the rate of 1,666 a day.
Of course, chapters don’t magically write themselves into 1,666 words; I wish they did.
That means after 10 days, we should be a third of the way through the story, and we almost are.
I am having fun imagining what it would be like to live in a draughty and cold castle, not for the first time, I have been here before, and what it’s like for the prince who tried so hard to escape the inevitability of his life.
Perhaps a few banquets with dancing might make him see differently.
Maybe waiting for his mother to return to sanity after she couldn’t cope after losing her husband.
Or perhaps discover things about his mother that he would prefer not to know.
Perhaps discovering how far his older brother was going to throw his country under the bus because he didn’t care, might motivate him to institute a few changes.
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!
After another exhausting walk, by now the heat was beginning to take its toll on everyone, we arrived at the pagoda forest.
A little history first:
The pagoda forest is located west of the Shaolin Temple and the foot of a hill. As the largest pagoda forest in China, it covers approximately 20,000 square meters and has about 230 pagodas build from the Tang Dynasty (618-907) to the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).
Each pagoda is the tomb of an eminent monk from the Shaolin Temple. Graceful and exquisite, they belong to different eras and constructed in different styles. The first pagoda was thought to be built in 791.
It is now a world heritage site.
No, it’s not a forest with trees it’s a collection of over 200 pagodas, each a tribute to a head monk at the temple and it goes back a long time. The tribute can have one, three, five, or a maximum of seven layers. The ashes of the individual are buried under the base of the pagoda.
The size, height, and story of the pagoda indicate its accomplishments, prestige, merits, and virtues. Each pagoda was carved with the exact date of construction and brief inscriptions and has its own style with various shapes such as a polygonal, cylindrical, vase, conical and monolithic.
This is one of the more recently constructed pagodas
There are pagodas for eminent foreign monks also in the forest.
From there we get a ride back on the back of a large electric wagon
to the front entrance courtyard where drinks and ice creams can be bought, and a visit to the all-important happy place.
In the beginning, we tend to write ourselves into the stories we write, and also, the various other characters are a collection of traits of people we have known in the past and present.
The trick is with those other people not to make them too much like their real-life counterparts, or you may spend the rest of your life in litigation.
I know there are parts of me in my characters because people I know who have read my stories tell me how much they are like me. The problem with that is I didn’t realise I was doing it.
But, to emphasise, the story is not about you.
Unless it is an autobiography.
I have thought about it, writing the story of my life, but it’s so boring, the best use of my book would be to read it just before going to bed.
What is probably more interesting would be the story of my family, traced back to the mid-1700s, and they are a very interesting bunch. To me, it seems that people who lived a hundred years ago had far more interesting lives than we do these days.
John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums. Looking for new opportunities, and prevaricating about getting married, the only joy on the horizon was an upcoming visit to his grandmother in Sorrento, Italy.
Suddenly he is left at the check-in counter with a message on his phone telling him the marriage is off, and the relationship is over.
If only he hadn’t promised a friend he would do a favour for him in Rome.
At the first stop, Geneva, he has a chance encounter with Zoe, an intriguing woman who captures his imagination from the moment she boards the Savoire, and his life ventures into uncharted territory in more ways than one.
That ‘favour’ for his friend suddenly becomes a life-changing event, and when Zoe, the woman who he knows is too good to be true, reappears, danger and death follow.
Shot at, lied to, seduced, and drawn into a world where nothing is what it seems, John is dragged into an adrenaline-charged undertaking, where he may have been wiser to stay with the ‘devil you know’ rather than opt for the ‘devil you don’t’.
We all know what this means, without moisture, in other words not wet.
It could also mean dull factually, as in reading some non-fiction books, and quite often those prescribed as mandatory reading at school.
You could also have a dry sense of humour, where you have to be on your game to understand, or get, the humour.
It could also describe boredom by saying that it’s like watching paint dry.
For those who like a bit of a tipple, the last place you want to go is a dry bar, where no alcohol is served.
Perhaps this should be mandatory for weddings and funerals, places where feelings often run very high and do not need the stimulus of half a dozen double Scotches.
And speaking of alcohol and cider in particular, you can have it sweet, dry, or draft. Many people prefer dry, sometimes the drier the better, especially wine, and oddly martinis.
Aside from whether they are shaken or stirred.
But the most fascinating version of dry is dry cleaning. Just how can you ‘dry’ clean clothes?
