Tag: Reading

In a word: Tap

There is nothing worse than, when lying in bed unable to get to sleep, you hear every noise in the house and out, but none worse than a dripping tap.

Its often not because someone forgot to turn the tap off, but a washer is on its last legs.

There are taps for the fallen brave, but aside from the fact that is the name of a piece of music, I think it’s also the title of a film.  But taps itself is a bugle call at dusk, and also played at military funerals.

Then there’s that income stream that you can tap into, other than your next door neighbours power supply.

But what would be far more interesting than to tap into a phone line and listen in?  Despite the fact that eavesdroppers never hear anything good about themselves, you could learn something you didn’t want to know.

Then we can go back to the 1930s and a series of films that starred one of my favourite actors Fred Astaire, who was, of course, a tap dancer, along with Ginger Rogers.

In fact, my middle granddaughter is quite a good tap dancer.

And, lastly, was that a tap on the door, or a tap in the window?

What happens after the action-packed start – Part 18

Our hero knows he’s in serious trouble.

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.

 

The debriefing team were not quite what I expected, a man and a woman, one a Major, the other a Lieutenant, and it was apparent they had just met before coming into the room.

He was Major Lallo, Army intelligence, and the woman, Lieutenant Jill Monroe, a familiar name as I’m sure I’d heard it before.

Lallo was not a fighting soldier, he was a paperwork man.  I suspect he was more at home with an order book, and filing communications though that didn’t explain the rank, which he would have to have front line experience to attain.

Monroe looked to me to be the sort of woman soldier that had to prove she was better than any man and had the muscular form to go with it.  Not the sort of a woman to get into a fight over or against.

She stood at the end of the bed, and I suspect by her posture that she was there to make sure I didn’t run, which, by the way, was physically impossible.

Lallo sat in the chair beside the bed, tried to make himself comfortable.  He was going to ask the questions.  He had a small notebook he took out of his pocket with a list of questions.  The small pencil that slotted into the binding was there to write down the answers if any.  I was not sure I was up to answer any questions.

Settled, he started with, “You don’t have to answer, but I suggest you do.  I think by now you are starting to realise that, no matter how strong you think you might be, you’re not.  If you decided to be unforthcoming, then you can be assured that we will be interrogating you with a lot more, shall we say, enthusiasm than in the past.”

By the way he said it, I got the impression he would be the one.  His tone had changed suddenly, to a man who enjoyed others discomfort, and he was looking forward to breaking me if it came to that.

“And if I don’t have the answers to your questions, or should I say, not the answers you are expecting, what then?”

“One step at a time.  We’ll start with the easy questions first.”

I’m not quite sure what he classified as easy.  I didn’t think there were any.

“How long have you been at this base?”

Maybe I was wrong.  “Two months, three days.”

“How did your transfer to this specific base come about?”

“I don’t know.  I was at a training base in Ohio one day, then being presented with orders to get the next transport out the next.”

“Did you, or someone else you know, request your transfer to a new base?”

I didn’t think that was possible.  Someone of my rank went where they were told to go.

“No.  I’m a Sergeant, not a General.”

But was it possible Colonel Bamfield arranged for me to be transferred.  Given the fact he was here, now, it was not beyond the realms of possibility.  But if so, why?

“What was your function at your last base?”

What had this to do with my current situation or anything else for that matter?

“Instructor.”

“In what?”

“Infiltration, covert operations.”

“And I’m assuming then you been involved in these, shall we say, covert operations?”

No use denying it.  It was obvious he had seen my file, which all of a sudden had some very disturbing possibilities.  Just how much information though.

“Yes, but they’re classified and I can’t tell you anything and that.”

“Normally that would be the case, but…”  He left the sentence hanging there for a few seconds before adding, “There was a problem with your last operation, the reason, it appears, you were transferred to the training base in Ohio.  Is that correct?”

A mission that I had been told never to mention, speak of to anyone, no matter how high their rank in the military or government, or even think about again.

A mission I was told had been buried so deep it would never see the light of day.

Until now.

 

© Charles Heath 2019

“One Last Look”, nothing is what it seems

A single event can have enormous consequences.

A single event driven by fate, after Ben told his wife Charlotte he would be late home one night, he left early, and by chance discovers his wife having dinner in their favorite restaurant with another man.

A single event where it could be said Ben was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Who was this man?  Why was she having dinner with him?

A simple truth to explain the single event was all Ben required.  Instead, Charlotte told him a lie.

A single event that forces Ben to question everything he thought he knew about his wife, and the people who are around her.

After a near death experience and forced retirement into a world he is unfamiliar with, Ben finds himself once again drawn back into that life of lies, violence, and intrigue.

From London to a small village in Tuscany, little by little Ben discovers who the woman he married is, and the real reason why fate had brought them together.

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Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 2 – Revised

Back to the explosion at what was first thought to be at a takeaway.  Certainly, it had been levelled, but so had several other building in the near vicinity, but we haven’t got to that part yet.

The boredom of the flight is still giving me an opportunity to explore the opening sequence a little further, where we left our man on the scene under tight police guard.

 

In five minutes, perhaps less, the whole scene had turned into countless vehicles with red and blue flashing lights, screams from the victims, and yelling from the rescuers.

I was still under police guard, but coming from the other side of the scene, a rather battered and bleeding street policeman came running towards us, stopping short of the man standing back, the one I assumed was in charge.

“Tell me you’ve got them,” he gasped, then looking from the man in charge to me then back again, looking very concerned.

“We have.” He looked very calm and pleased with himself.

“What?  Him?” He nodded in my direction. “He was blown up in the blast and from what I saw was chasing the real culprits, two men covered in dust, one of whom was carrying a large duffel bag.”

“This guy was caught running from the scene.”

I decided to add my bit to the discussion.  “Your car drove straight past them.  I can’t see how you missed them.”

He was starting to look worried.  “We were given your exact description from an anonymous tip.”

The battered policeman bent over and the collapsed to the ground.  Two of my captors went towards him, but he motioned them away.  “Of course you did, by the two men escaping.  Get after them, before it’s too late.  And free this guy.  He’s got nothing to do with the blast.”

After removing the cuffs they jumped back in their car and headed back in the direction they came.  Too late now, the two men would be long gone.

I went over to the policeman on the ground just as another ambulance pulled up and as the paramedics got out, I motioned to them to come and attend him.

“What happened,” I asked him

“A bank robbery, the clowns used far too much explosive and almost brought the building down on them.  Not so lucky for the neighbours.”

He was looking around, then stopped, looking at the place where I’d just been held down. I followed his gaze and then saw what he saw.  The cuffs were still on the ground where the man who removed them had obviously dropped them.

His expression changed, and for a moment I thought he was going to explode.

“What’s wrong.”  Obviously, something was but I couldn’t see it.

“The cuffs.  We haven’t used those for years now.  They weren’t real police.”

My mind clicked into gear at the same time as he uttered the words.

They were there to help the others escape whilst holding us both up with a phony arrest.  I wonder what they would do if they hadn’t been sent after their fellow robbers.

The battered policeman just sighed and lay down on the pavement and let the paramedics work on him.

Only then did we notice he had a piece of an iron bar sticking out of his side.

Then, of course, people just\  don’t happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

Or do they?

 

© Charles Heath 2019

“Echoes From The Past”, buried, but not deep enough

What happens when your past finally catches up with you?

Christmas is just around the corner, a time to be with family. For Will Mason, an orphan since he was fourteen, it is a time for reflection on what his life could have been, and what it could be.

Until a chance encounter brings back to life the reasons for his twenty years of self-imposed exile from a life only normal people could have. From that moment Will’s life slowly starts to unravel and it’s obvious to him it’s time to move on.

This time, however, there is more at stake.

Will has broken his number one rule, don’t get involved.

With his nemesis, Eddie Jamieson, suddenly within reach, and a blossoming relationship with an office colleague, Maria, about to change everything, Will has to make a choice. Quietly leave, or finally, make a stand.

But as Will soon discovers, when other people are involved there is going to be terrible consequences no matter what choice he makes.

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Is it possible we can make a better world?

I’m not sure what started me off in pondering this almost imponderable question.

It was probably the endless bombardment of political advertising, leeching out of every form of media, and reaching saturation point.

Yes, down here in Australia, we have federal elections, where one of the two major parties are hoping to be in control, and all of the minor parties are hoping they will be in control.

You see, here, you don’t have to have a majority in the lower house, called the Representatives, you need to have the numbers in the upper house, called the Senate.

And the Senate is where the cunning voters make it so that no major party can go berserk and introduce a whole lot of policies that benefit one group or the other.  Sort of like sticking up for the rich, and keep the poor in their place, or sticking up for the poor and taxing the rich, who, apparently, don’t pay their fair share of tax.  That gem of information comes from one of the parties.  As if any of us didn’t know that to be the case anyway.

Only that doesn’t work out so well, because the leader of the splinter party gets a whole lot of stuff for his electorate, and we, the rest of the people, get shafted.

As for me, I’m sitting on the poverty line, neither rich nor poor enough for either party to help.  Me and about 65 per cent of the rest of the population.  We used to have a middle class, but tax and bad political management have slowly eroded the middle classes so that most are now living hand to mouth at best.

No one can afford to save, and when we do, the interest, what little of it there is, is taxed, so, no incentive to save.  Both parents have to work if they want to have any sort of life, and more so if they have children.  Childminding costs are horrendous, Medicare fees are equally so if you want to have adequate medical care, and the thought of owning one car, let alone two which is a necessity for families, costs a small fortune when you take into account buying the car, upkeep, petrol, and the governments grab for registration.  They say it’s for road maintenance, but let’s not talk about roads, but the maintenance of two Boeing 737’s just to ferry politicians around.

And instead of telling us what they intend to do to make our lives easier, the ads are about dredging up the opposite party’s previous mistakes.  We already know what they are, what we want to know is what they intend to do to fix all the problems.

Sorry, just being a grump.  I know my one person rant doesn’t matter one fig, but I had to get it out of my system.

I also know my one vote doesn’t really matter much in the greater scheme of things but if I could just influence another 500,000 to vote with me, wow, think of what we could do.

Maybe I should run for parliament, or not.  I don’t think I could survive the evenings in the parliamentary bar, the free lunches, or being chauffeur driven.   And flying first class everywhere, I just might get used to it, and the retirement fund, that’s just too much money to think about.

I’ll just stick to being the poor, cynical voter that I am.

 

 

In a word: Double

I was watching a TV program and the words ‘double standards’ kept being thrown about with little attention being paid to what it really means.

Like statistics, words can be used in any manner to support or debunk what someone else will call a fact.

Fact, of course, is another word that’s thrown around like a football.

But double standards, what does it really mean?

“a rule or principle which is unfairly applied in different ways to different people or groups”

Put simply, if you own a cat, and I hate cats, I’m likely to say to you I like cats because of who you are and what I might want from you.

It has far more reaching consequences in reality because some of us might profess they regard everyone as being equal ‘in the eyes of the Lord’ but have a very different private view.

Personally, I believe everyone should be treated equally.  The problem is, a great many people around me do not, and it seems that I am slowly becoming a minority in my own country.

How do we rectify this?

I don’t think we can.  Politicians are now running scared in their own constituencies because of the increasing multicultural population, and cannot be seen to favor one group or another.

Until lobby groups come into play, campaign funding to the politician is discussed, and very subtly, votes are bought.

Does your political representative work on the basis of double standards?

Maybe it’s time to find out before it’s too late, and you too will be living in shanty huts on a reservation.

“The Devil You Don’t”, be careful what you wish for

John Pennington’s life is in the doldrums.  Looking for new opportunities, 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 favor 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 ‘favor’ 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 follows.

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’.

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It’s all about how you are going to ‘sell’ your book

There’s the cover, and, of course, the description.

Probably one of the hardest things for a first-time author is not so much the writing but what is needed after the book is written.

You need a good description.  Short, sharp, incisive!

There’s a ream of advice out there, and I have read it all.

And, still, I got it wrong.

Then there is the cover.

I wanted simplistic, a short description to give the reader a taste of what’s in store, and let the story speak for itself.

No.

Apparently, a good cover will attract the reader to the book.

When I tendered my books on various sites to advertise them, sites such as Goodreads, and ThirdScribe, all was well with what I had done.

Then I submitted my books to a third site and they rejected the covers as too simplistic and the descriptions mundane, and wouldn’t post them.

Wow.

There’s a huge blow to the ego.  And just the sort of advice that would make a writer think twice about even bothering to continue.

But…

Perhaps the person who wrote that critique was being cruel to be kind.

At any rate, I am changing the covers, and rewording the descriptions.

Will it be a case of ‘what a difference a cover makes’?

A matter of life and … what’s worse than death? – Episode 6

This is a story inspired by a visit to an old castle in Italy. It was, of course, written while travelling on a plane, though I’m not sure if it was from Calgary to Toronto, or New York to Vancouver.

But, there’s more to come. Those were long flights…

And sadly when I read what I’d written, off the plane and in the cold hard light of dawn, there were problems, which now in the second draft, should provide the proper start.

 

On the way back I decided to call my enemies the holy trinity.  Jackerby, Johansson and Wallace.  It would be interesting to see who took the lead.

Back in the main hall, I was told to sit in one of the antique chairs.  No one bothered to tie me up.  No need.  Three of the guards were strategically placed so I couldn’t escape, or if I tried to attack any of my captors, I would be shot.

At first, it was Jackerby and three guards, men from the landing party looking no different than they would on any mission.  If they were English, which they were not.  No one spoke.  I guess there wasn’t much to talk about.  It is told me that Jackerby wasn’t the man in charge.

If there was a separate man in charge of the stormtroopers, he didn’t show himself.

By the time Johansson joined us, I’d deduced it was he who was in charge of this operation.  Wallace was referring to him and was not showing his face.  He was in situ, he had been left in charge of the castle, and in the ‘end of war’ scenario, using it as a staging point for filtering enemy scientists and experts who were leaving quickly before the war ended, making sure they found their way to the allied side.

Of course, since he had taken up residence, those people fleeing the war had dried up to a trickle, and it was now understandable why.  Now that it was clear to me he was working for the Germans, he just wasn’t letting them all go.  If they were going to lose the war, then the victors would only get some of the spoils.

The question was what was happening to everyone else who didn’t make it.

Back in London, someone realised something was going terribly wrong, and so they sent me.  Someone else had said there might be a nest of traitors; another described them as double agents, on both sides of the channel.

My job was to find out what was happening, and now I had.  The possibility that I might get killed in the process had been flagged as a risk, but that hadn’t been a deterrent.  I had visited the castle before the war as an archaeological exercise and had been keen to come back and take another look.

Unfortunately, I had not had time to file a report, but up till now it would not be much, and given my current circumstances, I might not be able to inform them, but at least I knew the investigators in London were right.

And it looked like it was true Johansson had friends in London because my arrival had been telegraphed.  One attempt to blow me up, and now, nothing less than a dozen enemy storm troopers to make sure I didn’t leave.

“London finally realise what’s going on here?”

“In a manner of speaking.  They weren’t sure, but I guess we now have proof.”

“You have circumstantial proof, but basically nothing actionable.  They really have nothing, and won’t until you return, or report, neither of which you are going to be able to do for a while.  Not until we finish here what we started.”

I was tempted to ask what that was but knew better.  Another day.

I glared at him.  “Why?”

“I assume you are referring to myself being a double agent?  I was caught up in London just as the war broke out.  There was no question what side I was going to be on, it just meant getting into a good position, and then using it for the good of my country.  There’s quite a few of us, actually.”

I didn’t doubt that.

“So you let quite a few through to set up your credentials, and now, in the dying stages of the battle, when the real experts are trying to leave, you’re preventing them.”

“Not the best solution to a problem.  I’m sure, if you were standing here and losing the war, you’d be doing the same.  You’d hardly want those secrets in enemy hands.”

“The war’s over.  It’s just a matter of time.”

“This one, maybe.  The next one we’ll win.”

I admired his confidence.  It also explained the syphoning of boffins.  They may have missed their opportunity in this war, but regroup somewhere and prepare, who knows what might happen in another ten years time.

No one in London had come up with this sort of doomsday scenario.  We knew what they were capable of, more sophisticated air force with jet fighters, far more deadly and wide sweeping bombs, by some sort of miracle we’d stopped them this time, but the next?

 “What happens now?”

“You behave, you’ll live to fight another day.  You make trouble, we’ll execute you.  To me, you’re just another prisoner of war, but I’m not sending you to Germany.”

Simple choice.

“Why should I believe you?”

“I am an officer of the army, who serves his country with pride and honour.  You have my word; that should be enough.”

Oddly enough, I believed him.

“I assume my accommodation awaits?”

A flick of his hand, and Jackerby and two guards, escorted me out of the room.

I had thought surrender was going to be a lot more difficult than that.

 

© Charles Heath 2019