Looking for something to suit my mood.
I’ve been reading the headlines and it seems that nothing else is going on except COVID 19, bar a plane crash, and residual fallout from the explosion in Beirut.
All bad news unfortunately, so I need to find something uplifting.
There’s nothing like a walk in the park on a bright sunny day.
Is there?
What could possible happen?
Tag: short story
The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 29
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.
I had to wonder if Lallo had already called the number on the phone he had handed Jacobi, and then considered, if that was the case, there would be no need for Jacobi to call anyone. Or Lallo had got an answer, just not the answer he was expecting.
Jacobi looked at the phone, and I got the impression he was weighing his options. The first was how long Lallo would hold him in custody. That I think we could both assumed to be forever if necessary. There was, no doubt, a cell at a black site with his name on it already. The second, if he did call his contact, would that contact co-operate, though it was hard what it was Lallo was expecting Jacobi’s co-operation for.
But there was no doubt Lallo had a plan.
Jacobi took a moment to consider any further options I hadn’t thought of, and then made the call. We were only going to get one side of the call.
A raised eyebrow indicated Jacobi had an answer on the other end.
“It’s me.”
Why did everyone say it’s me when asked to identify themselves, or as in the case announce themselves?
“No. An unfortunate set of circumstances, and a gross breach of our agreement. I am supposed to have autonomy of operations at home. These bumbling idiots may have blown my cover.”
Somehow, the fact he was sitting in a small room told me his cover was more than likely a myth. If this was our supposed point man in the failed operation I’d been on, then I could see why it cost a lot of good men their lives.
He had been playing both sides of the fence and sold us out.
“You would have to ask them.”
A moment later he handed the phone to Lallo. “Prepare to die,” was all Jacobi said.
It didn’t move Lallo in the slightest,
He took the phone and asked, “Whom am I speaking to?”
The expression change told me that it was most likely none of his business.
“This man is responsible for the deaths of a good many men.” A minute’s silence, then, “I doubt that would be the case considering the number of phones and their credentials. He had been playing you, and perhaps many others.”
The silence was a lot longer, but the expressions changing by the minute told me that Lallo was not going to get what he wanted.
“No, that is not going to happen, not in the circumstances you describe. I will be sending him back, yes, but for another mission. I think it’s time you realized he’s been feeding you false intel for some time.” Silence again, then, “By the time you do, he will no longer be here, there. I’m sorry.”
He disconnected the call and put the phone back in the plastic evidence bag.
Then he sat, and gave Jacobi a long, hard stare.
No effect.
“What is happening,” Jacobi finally asked.
“You’re going home.”
“Good. I expect once I get back there you will leave me alone.”
“On the contrary, Mr Jacobi, you will not be going back alone. In fact, I’m sending you back with my team, and we are going to extract the same people you were supposed to help us extract the last time.”
“I had nothing to do with that. It was simply your incompetence.”
“Be that as it may, you will do as I ask.”
“You are a fool. Why would I do anything for you, and especially since they are both probably dead now, or, if not, past the point of saving.”
“You will then want to hope that isn’t the case, simply because if they are, then three members of your family will be executed. You can say goodbye to them before you leave, or tell them you will see them again, it’s your choice.”
Lallo, it seems, was no fool, and had ensured he had the necessary leverage. There was no mistaking the shock on Jacobi’s face.
“You lie.”
Lallo got up from his seat and knocked on the door. It opened and two men brought in a large screen connected to a computer on a trolley. They moved it to the vacant wall and left. Lallo pressed several keys and a picture came up on the screen. A woman and two small children, and judging from the expression on Jacobi’s face, exactly who he was hoping he would not see.
There were two hooded soldiers either side with guns loosely pointing in their direction.
“One word from me, and they will be shot. Considering the treachery you have perpetrated, it’s taking a great deal of restraint for me not to give the order to kill them.”
He took a few seconds to regain his composure. “This serves no purpose,” Jacobi said in a rising pitch, “your people are most likely dead. It has been a long time.”
“I don’t think so. We have word from a different source, a more reliable source, that they are still alive. Barely, but alive, serving a life sentence for treason. And helping the General with information. All you need to do is get a small team of mine in and assist them to effect an escape. They come home alive and, well, your family lives. They don’t come back alive, well, I don’t think that’s an option, is it?”
Jacobi was in an invidious position of being damned if he did help us, or damned if he didn’t. Either way, it didn’t guarantee his co-operation or assistance. Painted into a corner, sometimes people like Jacobi chose the easy road, sacrificing everything to stay alive. No doubt, until this predicament, he was well in favour with Bahti, and from what I’d heard, Bahti was not a man to cross. There was a graveyard in the prison that was full of the remains of his enemies. And people who were once his friends.
I knew firsthand what it was like to be between the proverbial rock and a hard place, and unfortunately, there was no upside. No doubt the team leader of this new folly would have orders to shoot Jacobi once his work was done. Lallo would not be able to leave a man in his position alive because of what he knew.
And from my perspective, I felt sorry for the team Lallo had selected to go on what could quite possibly be another suicide mission.
© Charles Heath 2019
“The Price of Fame”, A Short Story
I looked at the invitation, a feeling of dread coming over me. It was not entirely unexpected but like a great many things that had suddenly come into my life, it caused equal measures of fear and excitement.
The gold edging and the perfect script displaying my name in the exact centre of the envelope made it almost unique. Very few people ever received such an invitation.
I held it in my hand for a longer than necessary, then put it down on the desk carefully, as if it would explode if I dropped it.
My first instinct, driven by fear, was not to accept.
But, fear or not, there was no question of me not attending. Circumstances had painted me into a corner; I’d agreed to go a long time ago when I thought there was no chance it would come to pass.
Way back then, I had been compared to the aspiring painter in an attic having to die before I made any sort of impression. In those days people thought it amusing. I thought it was amusing. Kirsty, in particular, had thought it was as impossible as I had.
Now it was not amusing. Not even remotely.
My life was once quiet, peaceful, sedate, even boring. That didn’t mean I lacked imagination, it was just not out on display for everyone to see. Inspired by reading endless books, I had the capacity to transport myself into another world, divorced from reality, where my boring existence became whatever I wanted it to be.
It was also instrumental in bringing Kirsty into my life. In reality, I thought she’d never take a second look at me, let alone a first. So I pretended to be someone else. Original, witty, charming, underneath more scared than I’d ever known.
And yet she knew, she’d always known and didn’t care.
As we spent more time together, she discovered I liked to write, not finish anything, just start, write a hundred pages, then lose interest. Like everything I did. Start, and never finish.
Why not? It would never be published. It would never succeed.
So she bribed me. If I didn’t finish my first book and send it away, I couldn’t marry her. It didn’t matter if it was rejected, all I had to do was finish a book, and send it.
The thought of marrying her had not entered my mind, because I hadn’t thought she would. Incentive enough, I picked out one of the unfinished manuscripts and humoured her. She read bits of it, not saying a word. Sometimes she’d put a note or two on the manuscript, her equivalent to sweet nothings, and with it I gained inner confidence in my own ability, not only to write but in many other aspects of my life.
When it was finished, it was Kirsty who sent it off. She read it, packaged it, addressed it, and sent it before I had a chance to change her mind. Once gone, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. It was done. That was, as far as I was concerned, the end of it.
It was not possible that one letter could change a person’s life so dramatically. I came home to the all-knowing smile, and mischievous whimsicality that had always suggested trouble.
Trouble indeed!
My book was accepted. With a cheque called an advance. For more money than I knew what to do with.
This was followed not long after by publication. And a dramatic change to my life, one I didn’t want. To become a public person, to face an enormous number of people, people I didn’t know.
I went back to being scared.
Kirsty smiled at me and told me how wonderful I looked in my monkey suit. Why couldn’t I go in jeans and a dress shirt? All the best actors in Hollywood did it.
“This is not Hollywood. You’re not an actor.” It was a simple, practical, answer.
The hell I wasn’t. I could act sick, dying, fake a heart attack, anything. “What am I going to say?”
“You could talk about books.” Quiet, efficient, oozing the confidence I didn’t feel.
She didn’t fuss. She took it in her stride. She dressed in her usual simple elegance, in a manner that made me love to be seen with her. I couldn’t tie my tie, so she did it for me. She straightened my jacket because I couldn’t do that either. Nerves. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Or was that a reference to wives, or mistresses, or something else?
The palms of my hands were sweating. Meatball hands, I thought, the sort of palms that betrayed the pretenders. Me, I was the pretender. My neck felt too large for the shirt. Beads of sweat formed on my brow. Where was a sponge when you needed one?
“I can’t do this.”
“You can.”
We hadn’t even left the hotel yet.
“How long before the execution.”
She looked at me with her whimsical smile. “Long enough for me to give you a hard time.”
I lost count of the number of times I had to go to the bathroom, for one thing, or another. Nerves I said. Perhaps a dozen Valium or something similar. Did I have any? Had she hidden them? Why did she keep smiling?
In the car, I looked at my watch at least a dozen times. I couldn’t breathe. It was too hot, too cold. She held my hand, and it served best to stop the trembling that had set in. Why did I agree to this? Why?
We were greeted by the Events Manager, who was polite and genuinely interested. He took us inside where he introduced the interviewer, another woman who oozed confidence and charm, who went over the format and generally tried to set me at ease.
I didn’t let Kirsty’s hand go. Not yet. She was my lifeline, the umbilical cord. When it was severed, I knew I was going to die.
Bathroom? Where was the bathroom? Hell, five minutes to go, and I felt like passing out. No, Kirsty couldn’t come in. Comb my hair. Straighten my tie, no it was straight. Maybe I could hide in here? I looked around. No, maybe not.
Time.
The cue man was standing beside me, hand gently on my back. He knew the score. He knew I would turn and run the first chance I got. Kirsty was on the other side, smiling. Did she know too?
Then the announcement, my cue to walk on.
The gentle shove, the bright lights, the deafening applause, the seemingly endless walk to the chair, dear God, would I make it without tripping over?
How many times had I made this trip? I stood, facing the audience, waved, then sat. It was the fifteenth. You’d think I’d learned by now.
There was nothing to it.
© Charles Heath 2016-2022
“The Price of Fame”, A Short Story
I looked at the invitation, a feeling of dread coming over me. It was not entirely unexpected but like a great many things that had suddenly come into my life, it caused equal measures of fear and excitement.
The gold edging and the perfect script displaying my name in the exact centre of the envelope made it almost unique. Very few people ever received such an invitation.
I held it in my hand for a longer than necessary, then put it down on the desk carefully, as if it would explode if I dropped it.
My first instinct, driven by fear, was not to accept.
But, fear or not, there was no question of me not attending. Circumstances had painted me into a corner; I’d agreed to go a long time ago when I thought there was no chance it would come to pass.
Way back then, I had been compared to the aspiring painter in an attic having to die before I made any sort of impression. In those days people thought it amusing. I thought it was amusing. Kirsty, in particular, had thought it was as impossible as I had.
Now it was not amusing. Not even remotely.
My life was once quiet, peaceful, sedate, even boring. That didn’t mean I lacked imagination, it was just not out on display for everyone to see. Inspired by reading endless books, I had the capacity to transport myself into another world, divorced from reality, where my boring existence became whatever I wanted it to be.
It was also instrumental in bringing Kirsty into my life. In reality, I thought she’d never take a second look at me, let alone a first. So I pretended to be someone else. Original, witty, charming, underneath more scared than I’d ever known.
And yet she knew, she’d always known and didn’t care.
As we spent more time together, she discovered I liked to write, not finish anything, just start, write a hundred pages, then lose interest. Like everything I did. Start, and never finish.
Why not? It would never be published. It would never succeed.
So she bribed me. If I didn’t finish my first book and send it away, I couldn’t marry her. It didn’t matter if it was rejected, all I had to do was finish a book, and send it.
The thought of marrying her had not entered my mind, because I hadn’t thought she would. Incentive enough, I picked out one of the unfinished manuscripts and humoured her. She read bits of it, not saying a word. Sometimes she’d put a note or two on the manuscript, her equivalent to sweet nothings, and with it I gained inner confidence in my own ability, not only to write but in many other aspects of my life.
When it was finished, it was Kirsty who sent it off. She read it, packaged it, addressed it, and sent it before I had a chance to change her mind. Once gone, I heaved a huge sigh of relief. It was done. That was, as far as I was concerned, the end of it.
It was not possible that one letter could change a person’s life so dramatically. I came home to the all-knowing smile, and mischievous whimsicality that had always suggested trouble.
Trouble indeed!
My book was accepted. With a cheque called an advance. For more money than I knew what to do with.
This was followed not long after by publication. And a dramatic change to my life, one I didn’t want. To become a public person, to face an enormous number of people, people I didn’t know.
I went back to being scared.
Kirsty smiled at me and told me how wonderful I looked in my monkey suit. Why couldn’t I go in jeans and a dress shirt? All the best actors in Hollywood did it.
“This is not Hollywood. You’re not an actor.” It was a simple, practical, answer.
The hell I wasn’t. I could act sick, dying, fake a heart attack, anything. “What am I going to say?”
“You could talk about books.” Quiet, efficient, oozing the confidence I didn’t feel.
She didn’t fuss. She took it in her stride. She dressed in her usual simple elegance, in a manner that made me love to be seen with her. I couldn’t tie my tie, so she did it for me. She straightened my jacket because I couldn’t do that either. Nerves. Can’t live with them, can’t live without them. Or was that a reference to wives, or mistresses, or something else?
The palms of my hands were sweating. Meatball hands, I thought, the sort of palms that betrayed the pretenders. Me, I was the pretender. My neck felt too large for the shirt. Beads of sweat formed on my brow. Where was a sponge when you needed one?
“I can’t do this.”
“You can.”
We hadn’t even left the hotel yet.
“How long before the execution.”
She looked at me with her whimsical smile. “Long enough for me to give you a hard time.”
I lost count of the number of times I had to go to the bathroom, for one thing, or another. Nerves I said. Perhaps a dozen Valium or something similar. Did I have any? Had she hidden them? Why did she keep smiling?
In the car, I looked at my watch at least a dozen times. I couldn’t breathe. It was too hot, too cold. She held my hand, and it served best to stop the trembling that had set in. Why did I agree to this? Why?
We were greeted by the Events Manager, who was polite and genuinely interested. He took us inside where he introduced the interviewer, another woman who oozed confidence and charm, who went over the format and generally tried to set me at ease.
I didn’t let Kirsty’s hand go. Not yet. She was my lifeline, the umbilical cord. When it was severed, I knew I was going to die.
Bathroom? Where was the bathroom? Hell, five minutes to go, and I felt like passing out. No, Kirsty couldn’t come in. Comb my hair. Straighten my tie, no it was straight. Maybe I could hide in here? I looked around. No, maybe not.
Time.
The cue man was standing beside me, hand gently on my back. He knew the score. He knew I would turn and run the first chance I got. Kirsty was on the other side, smiling. Did she know too?
Then the announcement, my cue to walk on.
The gentle shove, the bright lights, the deafening applause, the seemingly endless walk to the chair, dear God, would I make it without tripping over?
How many times had I made this trip? I stood, facing the audience, waved, then sat. It was the fifteenth. You’d think I’d learned by now.
There was nothing to it.
© Charles Heath 2016-2022
The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 15
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.
But, it seems our hero has ‘escaped’ and had found his way back home.
Except not quite how he expected it would be.
Rest was impossible while so many thoughts about my recent experiences were swirling around in the back of my head. Now, when thinking it through, it made sense that they make sure I was found alive, but in very bad shape.
Two reasons, one, to remind me that they could do whatever they liked to me, and the second, to appease Breeman, who, no doubt realizing a helicopter was missing, would send out search teams, a no-fly zone or not.
But it was a calculated risk assuming I would not tell Breeman, or someone else, about what had happened to me, whether they believed it or not.
That led to the next thought, why was I still alive. It would be just as easy to kill me and be discovered after dying from injuries received in the crash. Supposition, they still needed me, or, and this was a hail Mary at best, they needed access to the base, and Breeman.
Did that mean either of the two men I’d seen at the other camp would suddenly turn up? My money was on Colonel Bamfield. He was my first Commanding Officer, he had a keen interest in me from the get-go, and he was the one who facilitated my transfer to my current base before I knew he was working for ‘other interests’.
I still didn’t want to think it was the enemy.
Another question popped into my head, what was his, or their, interest in Breeman because the line of questioning centered on her.
My best guess was that it was no accident I was on that helicopter, that she had directed the pilot to make a flyover, and wasn’t expected that we would be shot down and that she had assumed there would be no repercussions on either myself or the pilot.
It was also clear that if she had to explain how I came to be where they found me, and the fact no one had launched a similar attack of the rescue team, that what happened was simply a breach of orders, and a court-martial offense.
It would solve Bamfield and his new friend’s problem. Whatever the outcome of the court-martial she would be sent home, relieved of her command.
It seemed the military, as always, had a mind of its own, and not always have the best interests of its personnel at heart.
I’d soon find out.
© Charles Heath 2019
The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 13
It’s still a battle of wits, but 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 the enemy if it is the enemy, doesn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
If at first, you don’t succeed, try a few threats, or leverage.
Or just get rid of the problem
Back in my cell, delivered more forcibly than when they escorted me to the interrogation room, I had time to consider his words.
A tactic, I told myself. Classic divide and conquer.
It was obvious that he wanted me to corroborate his suspicion that Breeman had sent the helicopter out to find his operation. Did it sound like something she would do or any other commanding officer whose jurisdiction this operation fell under?
Why hadn’t they told her? If t was military and being run by our side, why would they keep it secret from their own people, especially when something like what just happened, could happen?
It didn’t make sense.
Unless, of course, it was the CIA. They seemed to be a law unto themselves, except in this case they needed something to incriminate her with in order to have her removed, and replaced with a more sympathetic commanding officer.
It was all too much for a gunnery sergeant like me to understand.
At least I didn’t know anything so I couldn’t tell them anything. A little solace perhaps, but the trouble was, they’d never believe me.
I sighed. Perhaps some sleep before they returned for the next round.
They came in the middle of the night. Or day, I had no idea what it was outside because there were no windows in my cave cell.
They had no intention of being polite, I was dragged up by the scruff of the next and tossed in the direction of the door. When I stumbled, still half asleep and unable to see properly, one of the guards kicked me and said he would do it again if I didn’t get up.
He did anyway because I took too long.
My ribs were hurting when I breathed, as I staggered in front of them, one behind me giving me a shove every two or three steps, perhaps hoping I’d stumble again so he could kick me.
At the interrogation room, a different one this time, he shoved me in and shut the door. I didn’t hear a key in the lock, so perhaps they were hoping I’d try to escape.
There was only one chair in the room, and I sat in it. I couldn’t sit up straight because it hurt, so I had to slump over.
A half hour later a man and a woman, both with white coats like a doctor would wear, came in. Nothing was said. The man took up a position behind me, then held me so I couldn’t move.
The woman then joined him, produced as a syringe, and jabbed it in my neck.
The man let me go, and a few seconds later I fell off the chair onto the floor hitting my head in the process, and a few more after that, it was lights out.
At least there was no more pain.
© Charles Heath 2019
I’ve got words on paper, but
They’re not exactly Nobel prize-winning prose.
Well, not yet.
I guess the point is that I have at least crystallised my thoughts on paper so that I can do something with them. After all, anything is better than nothing, isn’t it?
Sometimes I wonder. I look back on a lot of the stuff I wrote forty or fifty years ago and it looks bad. The thing is, then, I thought it was great, and that I was destined to do great things with the written word.
Pity, all this time later, I’ve turned into a self-critical monster, where it seems nothing I write is any good.
So, does that mean we need to be less critical of our work? After all, through the years, when I’ve shared novels and short stories with others, they have all universally said they’re quite good.
So…
Ut’s time to go back to the previous day’s work and rework it. Yes, the idea that I wanted to write about is where I wanted the story to go, it’s just the execution.
The problem is, since then a few other ideas have been running around in the back of my head, and these could be added or used to further the current plotline.
The other problem is, it is one of the six stories that I’m writing by the seat of my pants, you know, the way some pilots like to fly a plane, without all that computer backup. Similarly, this is the way I sometimes like to write.
It’s as much a surprise to me is it is to the reader.
There’s good arguments for having planned the story from start to finish, but with these, I like to write it and see where it takes me. They’re episodic, so sometimes I get to write three of four episodes at a time, and these would most likely in a book become a chapter.
Last night I wrote two episodes, but it seems that it might need pointers back in previous episodes, because we all like to leave a trail of crumbs for the reader so when they get to the denouement, they remember, ah yes, back in chapter two such and such happened, but why am I only remembering it now?
Ok, enough convincing myself I’m a good writer, it’s time to get back to work…
The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 3
Dreaming I was in the desert…
But it was just another episode of the helicopter story, we’re back on the ground after that fateful jump, things are not going quite as planned.
Do they ever in life or death situations?
…
Yards were like miles, and I didn’t have the time to reach the weapon. I could see the pickup going around the burning wreck as he of the helicopter and approach me.
But, being the optimist I was I had to try.
And fail.
The pickup was on me before I’d made it halfway, stopping about a foot from me. Any further and it would have run me over.
I got to my knees and put my hands on my head not giving them any immediate reason to kill me. The man who had fired the rocket got out of the vehicle moments after it stopped.
A man in military garb, not very old. And not a foreigner. I was expecting South American, but not ostensibly one of us. A glance inside the vehicle showed the driver was a woman, in civilian clothes.
A surprise, yes.
“Mr. James I presume.” English, well spoken.
Another surprise or more than one, that he spoke English and knew who I was.
“We were expecting you but not be quite so dramatic entrance. Please stand.”
Kneeling had been difficult; I was not quite sure how standing was going to work. I was still recovered from the impromptu exit from the helicopter.
I tried and fell back on the ground. I looked up at him. “Sorry, the legs are still a little rubbery.”
He simply shook his head, leaned over and dragged me to my feet, then slung me over his shoulder, carried me to the rear of the pickup and tossed me in. I just managed to avoid hitting my head on the floor.
The man climbed in the back and then slapped the back of the cab.
Crunching gears, an over-revving engine, then a jerky start. It was not going to be a comfortable journey.
…
© Charles Heath 2019-2022
The cinema of my dreams – I never wanted to go to Africa – Episode 3
Dreaming I was in the desert…
But it was just another episode of the helicopter story, we’re back on the ground after that fateful jump, things are not going quite as planned.
Do they ever in life or death situations?
…
Yards were like miles, and I didn’t have the time to reach the weapon. I could see the pickup going around the burning wreck as he of the helicopter and approach me.
But, being the optimist I was I had to try.
And fail.
The pickup was on me before I’d made it halfway, stopping about a foot from me. Any further and it would have run me over.
I got to my knees and put my hands on my head not giving them any immediate reason to kill me. The man who had fired the rocket got out of the vehicle moments after it stopped.
A man in military garb, not very old. And not a foreigner. I was expecting South American, but not ostensibly one of us. A glance inside the vehicle showed the driver was a woman, in civilian clothes.
A surprise, yes.
“Mr. James I presume.” English, well spoken.
Another surprise or more than one, that he spoke English and knew who I was.
“We were expecting you but not be quite so dramatic entrance. Please stand.”
Kneeling had been difficult; I was not quite sure how standing was going to work. I was still recovered from the impromptu exit from the helicopter.
I tried and fell back on the ground. I looked up at him. “Sorry, the legs are still a little rubbery.”
He simply shook his head, leaned over and dragged me to my feet, then slung me over his shoulder, carried me to the rear of the pickup and tossed me in. I just managed to avoid hitting my head on the floor.
The man climbed in the back and then slapped the back of the cab.
Crunching gears, an over-revving engine, then a jerky start. It was not going to be a comfortable journey.
…
© Charles Heath 2019-2022
The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 31
I’m back home and this story has been sitting on a back burner for a few months, waiting for some more to be written.
The trouble is, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.
But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.
Chasing leads, maybe
Was it too late to admit that I was way in over my head?
Of course, it should not come as a surprise that Jan would know of his alter ego if she was the friend she said she was. Her name was on that scrap of paper with part of the address, and I should have guessed.
Again, my lack of knowledge and training was letting me down.
Now it seemed I had both Severin and Maury, Nobbin and Josephine, and Jan all working against me.
He had more enemies that I did, which begged the question, what the hell was he in to? What could he possibly have found that was so damaging?
Perhaps I’d find that out if or when I found the missing USB drive.
In the meantime, I had to get back to the hotel before Jan did and try and keep a straight face.
But just as I started to put the seat belt on, another figure was walking from the road towards the front door. A man, tall, with a purposeful stride.
The light was still on so I would get to see who it was once he reached the door. Then I saw the front door open, and Jan standing in it. A second later I saw the face, just as he passed through the doorway and the door shut.
Severin.
She had lied. So, why was it making me so angry?
I should have realized the whole Maury thing was a setup. She hadn’t called her office, she had called Severin, and he can’t have been far away to get there in the time he had.
So, why didn’t he drag me off?
Easy. So I would see the need to keep working with Jan, and in doing so, when I found the USB I’d tell her, and the next minute I’d get whacked over the head, and lose it.
Damn.
I was being played like a finely tuned fiddle.
But at least I knew about the car and had removed any evidence and the letters that were left on the ground inside the door. It was something, and she would not find anything to help her, even if she knew he had a car. It meant I was one step ahead of her.
After thanking a last look at the block, I left. Better to find somewhere else to stay, just for tonight, and then go back to the hotel in Charing Cross and see if she returned.
I found a small hotel just off Bromley Road, a short distance down Avondale Road. Out of the way and unassuming, with car parking that couldn’t be seen from the main road. The late hour raised an eyebrow, but I used the excuse of getting in late from the airport. After all, it was 02:30 in the morning and I was surprised there was anyone available on the front counter.
He gave me a room tucked away in a corner where there was only one entrance, and I could see anyone coming. I wasn’t expecting anything, but just in case I had checked the car for a tracker.
None that I could find.
I needed sleep, but lying there staring at the ceiling, I replayed the arrival of Jan at the flat, followed by Severin. It was a reminder that I should not believe or trust anyone.
It reminded me of the words of one of the instructors who said, one morning, quite abruptly, that we were about to become the loneliest people in the world. If we trusted anyone, even if they were from our own side, it could mean one thing and one thing only. Death.
We could not and should not trust anyone.
We should not believe a word of anything anyone tells us.
We should not recruit anyone from outside the service because unless they could be fully vetted, they could be your undoing.
We could not have friends, and certainly no romantic interests otherwise they would be used as leverage against us.
It was the worse hour lecture we’d been given, and the instructor had told us he had left the best till last. It was time to decide whether we wanted to go on or bail. Several had.
I didn’t think, then, it would be a problem.
Now, I was beginning to think otherwise.
© Charles Heath 2020
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 