“Sunday in New York” is ultimately a story about trust, and what happens when a marriage is stretched to its limits.
When Harry Steele attends a lunch with his manager, Barclay, to discuss a promotion that any junior executive would accept in a heartbeat, it is the fact his wife, Alison, who previously professed her reservations about Barclay, also agreed to attend, that casts a small element of doubt in his mind.
From that moment, his life, in the company, in deciding what to do, his marriage, his very life, spirals out of control.
There is no one big factor that can prove Harry’s worst fears, that his marriage is over, just a number of small, interconnecting events, when piled on top of each other, points to a cataclysmic end to everything he had believed in.
Trust is lost firstly in his best friend and mentor, Andy, who only hints of impending disaster, Sasha, a woman whom he saved, and who appears to have motives of her own, and then in his wife, Alison, as he discovered piece by piece damning evidence she is about to leave him for another man.
Can we trust what we see with our eyes or trust what we hear?
Haven’t we all jumped to conclusions at least once in our lives?
Can Alison, a woman whose self-belief and confidence is about to be put to the ultimate test, find a way of proving their relationship is as strong as it has ever been?
John and Zoe are nowhere near Vienna, Zoe having gone to Bucharest and then Zurich on her way back to see John who was going to pick her up from the airport, then the both of them were going to Lucerne for a few days.
A reminiscing cruise on Lake Geneva had been on the cards, but there might not be time.
First, they had to do some work on charting who was trying to kill her, because she has finally come to the realization that there is more than one. Her visit to Bucharest yielded another name, quite possibly the person who was masquerading as Komarov.
Second, John was intending to introduce her to the new members of their team, the team he hasn’t quite got around to telling her about, who will be dedicated to research, investigation, and, via Isobel and the dark web, organizing the hits.
John had decided that she should not out there be distracted by finding work, just doing the work. He was going to take care of the rest.
Perhaps a good time would be over dinner?
Meanwhile, Sebastian and Rupert are on surveillance duties while Isobel is tracking down which hotel the lovebirds are staying in. As soon as she has the information, Rupert is on the job.
She then moved to track John, knowing Zoe will be with him because she has seen the passenger lists for flights from Bucharest to anywhere.
Both are thankful neither John nor Zoe was in Vienna, which then makes it a priority that neither Worthington of Arabella should leave, except to go back home. Although they hadn’t established it was the reason Worthington was in Vienna, it was too close to the bungled attempt on their lives for them not to draw the appropriate conclusion.
Sebastian has a plan B that no one was going to like, not even himself.
Plan A was yet to be formulated.
…
Today’s writing, with Zoe languishing in a dungeon waiting for a white knight, 1,566 words, for a total of 54,355.
This is rugged bushland not far from suburbia, though you wouldn’t know exactly where it is just by looking at the photograph
But, for the writer, this is an excellent setting.
For instance, once again we are out wandering in the bush, lost. It’s not hard to get lost, and stay lost if there are no recognizable landmarks, and given we all walk with a bias to one side or the other, and we have to avoid objects like trees, ravines, animals, and rocks, keeping a straight line is impossible.
But the question is, how did you get into the bush in the first place?
It’s not as if you would deliberately go there, just to if you can get lost.
No, my idea is that you have been kidnapped and drugged, then taken to a location either in the book of a car or just in the back seat with a hood, then dropped off and left to die
The criminals in this story are more efficient in getting rid of pesky witnesses.
Or maybe it’s something less sinister, like going out and counting the koalas in the bush, well, what’s left of the bush as the suburban spray takes more and more of the koala’s habitat.
And it could also be like the planet of the apes, the koalas start fighting back.
It could be said that of all the women one could meet, whether contrived or by sheer luck, what are the odds it would turn out to be the woman who was being paid a very large sum to kill you.
John Pennington is a man who may be lucky in business, but not so lucky in love. He has just broken up with Phillipa Sternhaven, the woman he thought was the one, but relatives and circumstances, and perhaps because she was a ‘princess’, may also have contributed to the end result.
So, what do you do when you are heartbroken?
That is a story that slowly unfolds, from the first meeting with his nemesis on Lake Geneva, all the way to a hotel room in Sorrento, where he learns the shattering truth.
What should have been a high turns out to be something else entirely, and from that point every thing goes to hell in a handbasket.
He suddenly realises his so-called friend Sebastian has not exactly told him the truth about a small job he asked him to do, the woman he is falling in love with is not quite who she says she is, and he is caught in the middle of a war between two men who consider people becoming collateral damage as part of their business.
The story paints the characters cleverly displaying all their flaws and weaknesses. The locations add to the story at times taking me back down memory lane, especially to Venice where in those back streets I confess it’s not all that hard to get lost.
All in all a thoroughly entertaining story with, for once, a satisfying end.
One of the recurring memories I have of my childhood was the annual pilgrimage to Grand Marais, Minnesota, located on the North Shore of Lake Superior.
It was the place where my father grew up, along with three brothers and a sister, and where his parents had been born, lived, and eventually died.
The other memory, that his parents never came to visit us, we always had to go to them. That, and the fact my mother hated them, that animosity borne out of an event at their wedding that no one ever spoke about.
Not until a long, long time later, after my father had passed away.
We stopped going when I turned eighteen, though I don’t think that was the reason. Mt grandparents hadn’t died or gone anywhere, it was just the week before our pilgrimage was to begin, my father announced there would be no more visits.
You could see the relief on our mother’s face, much less ours because they were, to put it mildly, quirky. Steven, the youngest brother put it more succinctly, weird and creepy.
Perhaps it had been the house, a large sprawling two-story mansion that had been added to over the years, and reputed to have thirteen bedrooms. Thirteen.
They had a butler, a housekeeper, a chauffeur, and several housemaids. Odd, because I got the impression my grandfather didn’t work, and yet they were, reputedly, very wealthy. Equally odd, then, that wealth didn’t extend to my father.
Which, in the final analysis, was probably the reason why we stopped going. He had been cut out of the will.
…
Of course, none of this would have reached my consciousness if I had not received an email from one of the sones of my fathers, brother, and uncle who had never visited us, I’d seen probably three times in my life, and who had lived with his parents in the mansion.
I’d not seen, or heard of any children of any of the other brothers, or sisters, so this was a first, and aroused my curiosity. I had thought that our part of the family had been exorcised from all their collective memories.
Apparently not.
And, that curiosity would soon go into overdrive because with the email came an invitation to come and stay, and meet the other members of the family.
I had a sister, Molly, and called her once I got the email, and she said she had one too.
Was she going? Hell yes. It, for her, was going to be the unearthing of all the secrets.
What secrets, I asked, knowing full well there had been a few, but she had simply said I’d have to wait and see.
…
The drive brought back a lot of memories, and unconsciously I found myself listening to the same songs we did when Dad droves us.
Molly had come to my place, and we drove there together. In itself, it was a good reason for us to reunite after so long being apart. It was even more profound considering we did not live all that far apart, it was just life and family that got in the way.
She, like myself, found herself reliving the annual pilgrimages, her memories being hazier than mine, but that was because she was a lot younger.
She had been the one to leave home first, finding our restrictive parents unbearable. My departure took longer because my mother had implored me to stay, and not leave her with ‘that unbearable man’.
That final few miles from the outskirts of town, past the waterline, then inland was hushed with anticipation. I last remembered the house, although forbidding, as impeccably maintained, with gardens, I was sure, that featured in ‘Architectural Digest’.
This vision as we approached was so different than the last, in the last vestiges of the evening, a dark forbidding place still, only a lot more sinister. The gardens had been abandoned long ago, and everything was overgrown.
The fountain out front, the centerpiece of the gardens, was buried and gone.
The house had also fallen into disrepair, and I was surprised the local authorities hadn’t condemned it.
I parked the car in the driveway, and we sat there, staring at it.
“That motel back down the road is looking good,” Molly said.
The invitation also included staying in one of the thirteen rooms.
“Depends on how many ghosts there are.”
“The motel or here?”
I shrugged. “I guess we’d better get to the front door before it’s dark, just in case.”
Closer to the stairs leading up to a veranda, I could see the different shades of timber when rotten planks had been replaced. We made it to the front door, Molly hanging on to me just in case.
I pulled a ring dangling from a chain and heard a gong go off inside the house. A minute passed, two, then the door creaked open, and an old man in a dinner suit was standing there. “Mr. Garry, and Miss Molly, I presume.
He stood to one side before we answered, and we went in.
The inside was utterly different from the outside, having been renovated recently, much brighter than I remembered from the endless wood paneling. The old man ushered us into a large lounge room, on one side a huge log fire was burning, and around the walls, where there wasn’t a bookshelf full of books were family paintings.
“It’s like a mausoleum,” Molly said.
I recognized a lot of those faces in the paintings, including one of our father and mother together, probably not long after they were married. The men of that family all looked the same, except when it came to me, I looked more like my mother.
“Much better than it used to be.”
“I don’t remember much.”
To one side there was a large staircase that you could go up one side and down the other, and as children, we used to run up and down, and generally be annoying. Sliding down the banister was strictly forbidden, until after everyone went to bed.
I was half expecting to see the old man come from the depths of the house, but instead, a man that I could easily mistake as my father came through from the rear, where, I remembered, there was a room before the kitchens.
“Garry, I presume. And Molly. My God, it’s been too long.”
A shake of the hand for me, and a hug for Molly.
“David, or Jerry?”
“David. You remember. We used to run amok in this place.” He grinned.
He was the wild one, and all I did was follow. There were about seven of us, in the end, before we stopped coming.
“The others will be here tomorrow, and they’re dying to meet you. My dad was the last man standing, and he left the place to me, not that it was much by that time. I’ve spent years doing it up, but there’s a long way to go before it returns to its former glory. By the way, there are no ghosts in the bedrooms, and they are modernized with their own bathroom. I saw you out in the car before, looking horrified. Just a word to the wise, that motel does have ghosts. The jury is out on whether grandfather still roams the hallways, but I guess that’s something you’ll find out tonight. He was a horrid man by all accounts. Sorry, my wife says I babble when I’m nervous.”
“He does.” A woman, a few years older than Molly came out from the back.”
“Angelina?”
“You remember me.” She smiled.
I remembered her, had for a long time because back then, she was the first girl I thought I was madly in love with. The fact she was a cousin didn’t seem to matter. She just ignored me anyway.
And her beauty had not diminished over the years. “How could anyone forget you?”
“Yes, I had that effect on boys, didn’t I? It’s good to see you again.”
We both scored a hug, and yes, being close to her again did increase my heart rate just a little.
“Come,” David said, “sit and we’ll have a drink. Have you eaten?”
“Not for a while.”
“Then we were about to have a bite, I’m sure there’s plenty for everyone. Sit, and we’ll be back in a few minutes.”
“No wife, husband?”
“Yes on both accounts, but we would never bring them here. This family is difficult enough for us let alone outsiders. The rest of the group, well, you’ll see, are just plain quirky relatives. If you ever saw the Addams Family, TV series or movies, well, they’d fit right in here. But you’ll see. More on that soon.”
He and Angelina disappeared outback and silence fell over the room.
“Why do I get the feeling we might be murdered in our beds tonight?”
It was beginning to look like that was a possibility.
…
When David returned with the old man, Angelina, and what looked to be a maid with food and drinks, we sat down again, turning our fears of being murdered into a severe frightening of ghosts.
The old man was enough to think ghosts were alive in the house. It couldn’t possibly be the butler from the last time I saw him because he would have to be about 120 years old.
When all of us were settled, David began.
“There is another reason why I asked both of you here, along with all the others, by the way, there are around ten of us. Your father never told you the truth, or perhaps anything, of the situation when he stopped coming to visit his parents, did he?”
“He just said it was a difference of opinion, that his father would never see reason, didn’t like my mother or her family and gave up trying to be civil.”
“It was worse than that, he told him that if he didn’t give up your mother, he would cut him off from the family fortune, which eventually he did. It’s probably why you found life a little tougher for a few years.”
That was one way of putting it, we were taken out of our private schools and had just about all our leisure activities curtailed, and the worst, no more holidays. Mother even had to get a job, which disappointed her family, but they were not as rich as my father’s family was, so couldn’t help us financially.
“It was difficult.”
“Well, the good news is, your grandmother, our grandmother, was not as quirky or pedantic as her husband and never forgot the service your father did for her when he could. In that regard, she has left a bequest to both you and your sister, Molly. It’s been a long, hard battle to get it through the system, but it’s finally sorted.”
“I liked grandmother more than grandfather,” Molly said.
“Most of us did. He was a rebel himself, going against his family, a very interesting bunch themselves. Our quirkiness probably came from them, the last of the relatively unknown banking and railroad tycoons more famous in the 19th century than today where we are relatively forgotten. It is of course a blessing in disguise. But you ask, what is that quirkiness worth?”
“Not much I would imagine, after all this time. Our father taught us the value of money, so it’ll be nice to have some extra.”
“Some extra.” He smiled. “It’s about 125 million dollars, each. Enough I would say that you can now afford some quirks of your own.”
There’s a certain air of inevitability in the air, that the bad buys are going to succeed in tracking down Zoe, using the very person who wants to keep her safe.
IT’s not exactly the result of a sneaky plan using lies and deception to get what Worthington wants, it’s more a fact that the woman he is about to use had already made a bed for herself that others would hardly want to lie in.
Arabella was not a woman who understood or practiced monogamy. She was always a rebel, always had more than one man on the go, and had only married for the convenience, and the money and lifestyle that went with it.
Having children had been a bore, and once they were delivered, they were someone else’s problem. She was then able to go back to her jet-set lifestyle, touring and cruising the world.
It was also a world that which Worthington and his brother had moved in, and Worthington had been and still was, one of her lovers. It was what made it so easy for him to enlist her, though she was not really interested in what her son John was up to. He was too much like his father, and she needed little reminder of him.
For Worthington, he could not believe his luck, for a second time. It was as if the Gods were lining up the ducks all in a row for him.
But she agreed to a weekend in the best hotel eating the best food and going to a very exclusive concert, where they would be mingling with ‘almost’ royalty. She loved to drop names.
However, the secret was not a secret the moment she was seen with Worthington by Sebastian, all be it by chance. Sebastian would have to find John and alert him to the dangers that were about to present themselves in the benign form of his mother.
Could things get any more complicated?
…
Today’s writing, with Zoe languishing in a dungeon waiting for a white knight, 1,650 words, for a total of 52,769.
The editor looked up from his seat at me, frowning.
“Who are you again?”
He was a busy man, he kept telling us all, and didn’t have time to remember everyone on staff, particularly the reporters whom, to him, seem to come and go as they please.
“Jenkins, sir. New last week.”
“And you’re here because?”
“You said to come and see you about an assignment, sir.”
“An assignment?”
“Yes, sir. An assignment, sir.”
He’d come past my desk and stopped, asking that same question, “Who are you again?” Before pretending to recognize the name and tell me to come to his office in an hour for an assignment.
“Jenkins, you say. Not related to Elmer Jenkins by any chance.”
“He was my father, sit.”
“Damned fine reporter. Assignment you say.” He shuffled through the pile of folders on his desk, then plucked one seeming at random, and handed it to me.
“Odd goings-on at St Peter’s cathedral. Go and see what it’s all about, will you?”
“Yes, sir. Thank you, sir.”
…
Perhaps the better story here was how come the church seemed to get the best real estate in every city, and the bigger the church, the better the spot.
St Peters was where I would have expected the city center to be, on a few acres of perfectly manicured gardens surrounding an exquisite cathedral built in the mid-1500s.
I was not a Catholic, so I had not ventured inside, not realizingthat it had always been open during the day, church services or not.
There was also a parish office, a school of sorts, and a priory for visiting priests, as well as those who worked around the cathedral, so it was not unusual to see one or more priests wandering about.
But the most interesting thing about this cathedral was the fact it had an exact replica if the statue of St Mary Magdalene by the Italian sculptor Donatello, considered to be an earlier attempt before creating the real one now housed in the Museo dell ‘opera del Duomo in Florence.
It was not an advertised tourist attraction, but it could be seen by special appointment only with very restrictive visiting hours because of its rarity and delicate condition.
But the report I’d been given was that a cleaner, working in the room where it was housed had seen something very odd involving the statue. It had what she had described as tears coming from the statue’s eyes.
Of course, the editorial staff had rung the church to ascertain whether the reports they have received were true, and were immediately and emphatically denied, thus putting it into the category of “thou protest too much”, indicating, meaning there had to be something going on.
A second report, which was interesting in itself, had said there was an increased flurry of activity in the church, with several notable arrivals, particularly of the bishop, and a Cardinal from the Vatican, who was by coincidence in the country.
To the inquisitive reporter, that was embers in the grate about to create a much bigger fire.
…
“You heard?” Jaimie was another of the ‘going to be famous one-day’ group, I was also a member of.
I arrived breathlessly at the entrance to the cathedral grounds, to find several other reporters already there, conversing.
They were my former classmates at university, working as junior reporters for various media outlets.
“The editor tossed me a sparse file with very little to go on.”
“They’re not taking it seriously, are they?” Joey, never the one to take his profession seriously, was here just to meet and greet.
The three of us were juniors. There was not any of the ‘serious’ reporting staff there, perhaps waiting to see what we came up with.
“No. I mean, a cleaning lady and a statue with tears. My guess, sap leaking out of the wood, though waiting four or five hundred years to do so is a bit farfetched.”
“Then it’s true that it might be a replica of the real thing.” Joey seemed surprised, and it was him, never studying up on background before turning up.
“I’ve seen the real one in Florence,” Jaimie said.
“You’ve been everywhere, done everything, and seen everything. Why am I not surprised?”
Joey never liked her because of her family’s wealth and privilege which granted her access to much more than either Joey or I ever had. Including traveling the world twice.
“Can’t help drawing the parents I got, but that’s beside the point. You should have done some research.”
Joey held up his cell phone. “All the research I need is right here. Where and when I need it?”
“Why are you waiting here?” I asked. I would have expected them to be chasing up the relevant parish office person, if not the bishop himself.
“The doors are closed, which is highly unusual for a church during the day, and the sigh refers everyone to the parish office, who are telling everyone, and reporters, in particular, there will be a statement soon. We have a line of sight to the office and one of the staff will call us. Why wait over there when this area is so much more peaceful “
“So, you’re just going to quit?” I asked.
“What else can we do?” Jaimie was not the adventurous sort.
Neither was I, but this story could be something more, and getting the scoop might improve my standing with the editor.
“Do a little investigating of our own.”
“We might miss the statement.”
“You know what it will say, you could probably write it yourself. Nothing to see here, move along. I’m going to see if there’s a back door.”
“Churches don’t have back doors, Colin.” Joey would not be coming, his preferred modus operandi was to do as little as possible.
“Then I’ll soon find out.” I looked at Jaimie. “Coming?”
She shook her head. She liked to play by the rules, but it is getting a good story, there were no rules.
“Then no doubt I’ll see you later.”
…
I walked slowly towards the main entrance, but my intention was to do a circuit of the cathedral and see how many entrances there were, and if I could gain entrance by one of them, acting like a routine might so as not to arouse suspicion.
After a few minutes, I realized just how large the cathedral was, having only been inside once; to attend the wedding ceremony for one of my uncles and then it had seemed small when compared to Westminster Abbey.
In the end, I found an unexpected obstruction, a fence between the walkway from the church, most likely the cloisters, to where the clergy lived, and the gardens alongside the cathedral.
There was a gate. I walked across the grass, and by the time I reached it, it swung open, and Jaimie popped her head out.
“Come on, before anyone sees you?”
“How did you get in there?”
“Simple. Did you try the front door?”
“I assumed it would be locked.”
“It wasn’t. Then I guessed you’d been right here, after watching you leave “
She closed the gate. “Quick, before someone comes.”
She walked quickly back to, and into the church through what might literally be the back door, but more likely how the priests came and went.
Once inside, she led the way through the back room where a variety of vestments were hanging, out into the church, across the front of the altar to the other side where there was an archway, and steps leading down to a lower level, presumably where the statue was located.
“And you know this is the way to the statue because…” The moment I asked, I knew the answer. It was a dumb question.
“My parents had a viewing and brought us, kids, along. At the time I thought it was a funny-looking wood statue.” She spoke quietly because the acoustics for sound at this end of the cathedral was amazing.
You could probably hear a pin drop on the other side.
Then, she added, “It’s down in the basement. They build a special room with all the environmental procedures built-in. Been here for a long time.”
I followed her down to the bottom of the stairs, considerably more steps than the usual floor to floor level in a modern building, and the moment we came through the arch, the temperature dropped ten or more degrees, and I shuddered.
I had a strange feeling of unease, that something bad had happened here.
The light was very poor, perhaps because of the environment, but across the room I could see a glass-fronted space with a statue in the middle on a base, with lights shining upwards, giving it a strange hue. To one side there seemed to be someone kneeling, as if in prayer.
Jaimie started walking towards the statue, slowly, as if she had been mesmerized by it.
I followed, but headed towards the kneeling figure, stopping just short.
Jaimie had stopped in front of the statue, staring at it.
The next second the kneeling figure jumped up and grabbed Jaimie and dragged her away, telling me, “get away from here, back to the stairs, and don’t look at the statue under any circumstances.”
By the time we reached the archway, he had sufficiently shaken Jaimie back to life, although she sounded confused, and dazed.
“What just happened?”
“You looked at the statue. How did you get down here, past the guards?”
“There are no guards upstairs,” I said. “Though we did come around the back way.”
“You two get out of here now, and I’ll overlook this transgression. Do not mention anything you’ve just seen or heard, or God will, quite literally, smite you down.”
“Through the statue?” I thought it a bit far-fetched.
“The cleaner prayed for a miracle. She got one. That statue now has some sort of power. Now, you never heard that, and you cannot use it in a story or it will create panic. I can tell you are reporters. Just stick to the official handout.”
“What about the cleaner, she’s already told a lot of people.”
“She’s dead. Her story has already been refuted. Go, now. I’m relying on your common sense.”
…
Outside back in the sunshine, we stopped before going back to Joey, who was still standing by the gate.
“What just happened?” Jaimie asked.
“What do you mean?”
“I mean why are we standing here. I don’t remember coming here.”
“We were in the church?”
“No. Who are you, by the way. I haven’t seen you before.”
I looked at the alternating blank, inquisitive face trying to see if she was playing a joke on me.
We’ve reached the point where it’s time to take Worthington’s desire for revenge and turn it into a homicidal obsession, particularly after the last ‘easy’ exercise of killing her at the railway station failed so spectacularly.
Worthington is about to become a ‘by any means necessary’ person who will use anyone or anything at his disposal, and is about to use the one person John will least expect to appear on his horizon, one who will make him think twice about keeping Zoe from him.
However, our intrepid trio of Sebastian, Isobel, and Rupert, is also on the trail, who when leaving the airport just happened to see Worthington with this particular person, and realize what is about to happen. Sebastian also discovers why he is being sidelined and is not determined to stop Worthington.
Oblivious to all of this is John who has hired a car and is heading to Lucern where he is going to rendezvous with Zoe and hopefully get a briefing on what she intends to do next.
Needless to say, no matter what she says, he will be ignoring all that good advice and do his usual arrival in a nick of time to rescue the damsel in distress.
Of course, there are only so many times he can do this before he is actually killed for real.
…
Today’s writing, with Zoe languishing in a dungeon waiting for a white knight, 1,208 words, for a total of 51,119..
For a long time, I had always been afraid of making a mistake, after I had done exactly that. They said our mistakes didn’t define us, but that one had. I had lost the trust of everyone, from my parents to friends.
It was only a small lie, or so I told myself, but it had far-reaching ramifications, and almost cost someone their life. But whilst I believed it was not all that bad, and the police had agreed that anyone who had been put in the same position would have done the same, there were those who didn’t agree.
It was a moment in time I often relived in my mind, over and over, and eventually led to several outcomes.
The first, I left home, the town where up till then I’d lived all of my life, walking away from family and those who used to be friends, knowing that what they said and what they felt were two entirely different things. For all concerned, it was better that I left, cutting all ties, and make a fresh start, away from those whom I knew would never forget, even though they forgave me.
The second, and most dire, I changed my name, and my history, even how I looked. Today, I was a very different person to that of thirty years ago.
The third, I moved to another country and vowed never to return, always looking constantly over my shoulder, expecting someone from the past to find me. I instinctively knew that I would never escape, that one day a stark reminder would come back and destroy everything.
I picked the one occupation that would keep me both occupied and invisible.
Journalist.
I had started at the bottom, literally writing death notices, and worked my way up to what is ubiquitously known as ‘foreign correspondent’, going to places where no one else would go, those hotbeds of unrest, and war zones, reporting from both sides.
Perhaps it could say I had a death wish, a statement my editor had once said when he came to see me in hospital back in London after I’d been caught up in a rocket attack and repatriated. He had come to offer me a job back home, to tell me my tour was over.
I declined the opportunity, and he left, shaking his head.
But that was not the only visitor that came to the hospital that day. The other visitor was an elderly man, immaculately dressed in a pinstripe suit and bowler hat. It screamed public servant, and the moment I saw him wandering up the passage, a chill ran down my spine.
Although he looked like he was looking for someone else, I knew he would eventually finish up in my doorway.
Five minutes after I first saw him.
When he appeared at the door, I thought about ignoring him, but realized that wasn’t going to change anything. Besides that, I guess I wanted to know why he would want to see me.
“James Wilson?”
“Would it make any difference if I said no?” Well, it didn’t mean I couldn’t spar with him, just a little. “Who are you.”
“Do you mind if I come in?”
I got the impression he would do it anyway, irrespective of what I said. I said no, and as I suspected he came in anyway, closing the door behind him, then took a minute or two to make himself comfortable in the visitor’s chair, which was an impossible task.
Then, settled, he said, “I understand you have just been repatriated from Syria.”
“I was in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
It wasn’t common knowledge where I’d come from, so this person knew something about me, which was immediate cause for concern.
“The bane of a reporter trying to cover a dangerous situation,” he said, with just the right amount of levity in his tone. “I get it, by the way. I once had that devil may care attitude you need to get the story. I was chasing a Pulitzer, believe it or not, and used a few of those nine lives in the process. Which one are you up to?”
I was going to say that awards didn’t matter but among those who made up the press pack in those God-forsaken places, there was an unwritten desire to be rewarded other than by pay. For me, though, it was not a defining factor.
“Lost count. But why would that interest you, or whoever it is you represent? By the way, just who do you represent?”
Second attempt at finding out who this man was. If he was dodging and weaving, it would suggest a clandestine organization.
“People who would like to use your unique talent in getting into trouble spots around the world. We’re not asking you to come work for us exclusively, rather piggyback on the job that you already do so well.”
An unnamed man from an unnamed organization. What he was offering wasn’t unheard of, and I had been warned, more than once, that jobs, like he was suggesting, were more often than not offered to people like me. With that came one line of advice, turn around and run like hell.
But, with nothing to amuse me in hospital, I was curious. “Doing what exactly?”
The fact his expression changed indicated my response had taken him by surprise. Perhaps he was used to being told where to go. Not yet. I had this fanciful notion in the back of my mind that what he might offer might get me closer to the story.
“Keeping your eyes and ears open. We’ll tell you what to look for, all you’ll be doing is looking for evidence. There will be no need to go looking for trouble, if there’s evidence we ask you to report it, if not, no harm done.”
Not so hard. If that was all it was. The trouble was, if something sounds simple, which that did, but inevitably, it was going to be anything but. I’d heard stories and the consequences.
“You’re presuming that my editor will send me back. He just offered me a job at home.”
“I think both of us know you’re not interested in domesticity. If he isn’t willing to adhere to your wishes, I’m sure we could find someone else who would be willing to take you on. You have had several offers recently, have you not?”
So, without a doubt, he knew a lot about me, especially if he asked around. I had had several offers, but I was happy where I was. I liked the no questions about your past that my current employer had promised.
Yes, looking at the determination on this man’s face, I had no doubt they or he could do what he said. No one comes to a meeting like this without holding all the cards. Also, not that I wanted it to be so, It told me that my agreement was not necessarily going to be optional.
But I was happy to dither and find out. “Since I’m not sure when the hospital is going to discharge me, and the fact I’m not exactly very mobile at the moment, can I consider the proposal. Right now, as you can imagine, getting back to work is not exactly a priority.”
“Of course.” He took a card out of his coat pocket and put it on the bedside table. “By all means. Call me on that number when you’ve decided.”
He stood. “It will be a great opportunity. Thank you for your time.”
Of course, the two impressions I was left with were, one, he had me mixed up with someone else, and two, that I would never see him again.
It was an impossible task, for me at least, because I did not have a poker face, and could barely carry a lie. I would be the last person they’d want for the job.
And thinking that, I rolled over, put it out of my mind, and went back to sleep.
This story is now on the list to be finished so over the new few weeks, expect a new episode every few days.
The reason why new episodes have been sporadic, 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.
Things are about to get complicated…
We took the elevator down to one of the basement levels, and then along a long poorly lit passageway which in my estimation had taken us to another building.
It would not have surprised me if it had been part of a large underground complex used in the second world war, safe from the overhead bombing raids. Certainly, a lot of the fittings and paintwork looked very, very old, and I could imagine armed soldiers stationed along the length of the corridor each in his own little cutaway.
At the end, the building was a lot more modern and bright.
There was a large open space, and we headed towards one of the corners where the walls had wallpaper scenic views that if you didn’t know it was a photograph, it could almost be mistaken for a view overlooking the Thames.
It made that corner space more liveable.
There were two desks, more computers, and another girl who appeared like she had been waiting for us.
“I was told you wanted to view CCTV for the day of the recent street bombing.”
If the girl knew what I was looking for, then Monica would already have seen it and most likely had it analyzed by a team of experts. If it wasn’t for the fact I wanted to see it myself, I might have just gone to her for the official report.
“Yes.”
I sat down beside her, and Joanne remained standing, behind us.
“OK. There are seven cameras in that location, five of which were working at the time. There is one across the road from the café, and it provided a good view of the actual explosion.”
She brought it up on the screen and ran it from shortly before O’Connell passed the front. Then he came into view, walking as though he was purposefully going from one place to the next, almost stopping to look sideways into the café. A prolonged moment looking through the window told me he had seen the reporter.
We could not see the reporter from our viewpoint.
But it was clear that O’Connell had seen something else because his pace quickened.
Then the explosion happened, and he was caught up in the aftermath, as was I as I had just entered the frame, following diligently. My effort to look nonchalant, and not following O’Connell was not very good. If this was a training tape on what not to do, that was me.
Watching it was horrifying, watching myself being blown a short distance across the pavement, followed by rubble. Watching a dozen other people suffering far worse injuries were far worse.
I saw myself getting gingerly up off the ground, then seeing two men running past in the opposite direction, one of whom was McConnell. I hadn’t realized at the time it was him. Then we disappeared out of frame.
“Is there a camera farther along?”
She checked the list, picked a site, and brought up the feed for that timeframe, and just in from on the left-hand side was me, pinned to the ground by two men, and a street policeman, covered in dust walking up to us.
A discussion ensued, then the two men got in the car and drove off.
McConnell then suddenly reappeared from the right-hand side of the frame, walking past me and the policeman now on the ground.
Where had he come from? How did he manage to get back to the bomb site, if that was where he had gone?
“Can we go back to the bomb site from where we left off before?”
A few seconds before the footage recommenced.
A minute, perhaps a little longer passed as those who had survived were trying to get up, McConnell reappeared from an alley two shops along from café, almost untouched by the blast, and crossed the road.
A few seconds later another person came out of the alley and followed him.
“Can you focus on that person who came out of the alley?”
She stopped the feed, zoomed in, and then cleaned up the blurry image until it showed a woman’s face.
“Who is she?”
She brought up the comments that went with the footage. It had been already reviewed previously, as part of the investigation into the bombing.
“They couldn’t formally identify her.”
“Anyone hazard a guess?”
“No. She’s still a person of interest though.”
I gave the girl a piece of paper with a list of seven of the scientists from the laboratory. “See if you can find wives of the male scientists.”
Joanne had been intrigued the whole time we had watched the event unfolding.
“That was you caught up in the explosion, wasn’t it?”
The pictures had been grainy and indistinct, so all I looked like was an anonymous blob. Monica had obviously not told her of my involvement.
“Yes. And McConnell. I suspect McConnell did get the hand-off, but not from the journalist. The journalist was in the café with the wife of the scientist who stole the information, though it would only be speculation to assume they were together, or whether she was there to sell the information, and give it to McConnell.”
“Anna Jacovich, wife of Erich Jacovich. Microbiologist,” the girl said.
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 