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.
Every time I close my eyes, I see something different.
I’d like to think the cinema of my dreams is playing a double feature but it’s a bit like a comedy cartoon night on Fox.
But these dreams are nothing to laugh about.
I never realized Boggs had this thing for treasure. Seems a long time ago one of his relatives was a diver, found a wreck, and with it gold bullion. He became rich, and the wealth in the family lasted till Boggs’ grandfather, who frittered away the last of the fortune on dodgy land schemes and supposed match tree forests in Ecuador.
It was up to him, Boggs told me, to restore the family fortune.
I couldn’t see how this was going to happen sitting in a bar that openly advertised treasure maps and an owner who was only too happy to tell the story of the Spaniard to anyone who’d listen.
The problem was, no two versions of the story were the same.
Whilst Boggs was taking in the fourth or fifth rendition of the story, I looked around at the clientele. They were certainly more interesting than the treasure.
Mostly here for the sun and surf, there were two notable exceptions, and if I was to guess, they looked Spanish.
Or was it my imagination working overtime.
They seemed very interested in Boggs, from time to time looking over at him, and then muttering to each other. Conveniently, they were along the path to the restroom, so I took a stroll, and lingering a moment near their table, I listened to the conversation.
In Spanish.
My Spanish was a little rusty but what I thought I heard, “Boy, map, find out what he knows, gold, and it’s in the hills somewhere.
The phrase, there’s gold in them thar hills came to mind.
But for the moment I think we had a problem.
When I came out of the restroom, the first thing I noticed was the two Spaniards had left. When I looked over towards the bar, where I left Boggs, I noticed he too, was missing.
All of a sudden I had a very bad feeling.
I ran outside, just in time to see the two men bundling Boggs into the back of a car, and drive off.
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 problem is, there are familiar faces and a question of who is a friend and who is foe made all the more difficult because of the enemy, if it was the enemy, simply because it didn’t look or sound or act like the enemy.
Now, it appears, his problems stem from another operation he participated in, and because of it, he has now been roped into what might be called a suicide mission.
I left the others out the front of the hut in Barnes charge, except for Williamson who stayed inside, feigning illness. If everything went according to plan, a sketchy plan at best, Monroe would slip the diamonds to Williamson, and then melt back into the bush, heading back towards the fork in the road heading to the airstrip. She would then report on what troops were between us and our objective.
I signaled for Davies to join me.
The commander and the man who’d reported to him earlier strode across the compound to a smaller building that might pass as a jail. There was a guard out the front who jumped up and snapped to attention when the commander came up the steps.
“Open the door.”
The guard fumbled with a ring of keys, found the one for the door, and unlocked it.
The commander looked at me. “You may speak to them for five minutes.”
“Alone. You have my word we’ll not try anything.”
He nodded at the guard. “Bottom of the steps. Don’t let them out of your sight.” To me, he pointed to another building about 50 yards away, “I’ll be there, don’t keep me waiting.”
We waited for him to come down the steps and start striding to his office, then went up the stairs, and I knocked on the door. “My name is James, and I’m here with Davies to take you home. We’re coming in.”
I opened the door slowly pulling it towards me, and the odor that came out of the room was that of people who had not been allowed to wash for several days, if not longer. Once the door was fully open and the interior lit, I could see two stretchers and two men sitting up, struggling with the light in their eyes.
At least they were able to sit up.
Our information was they had been captive now for about seven months, and, looking at them, they didn’t seem to appear to badly off. They showed signs of weight loss, and pallid skin, but not to the point of being maltreated or starved.
“Who did you say you were?” The man on the left was about 50ish, grey thinning hair, and I suspect once a lot bulkier than he was now. There was an air of brashness about him, but that would have been beaten out of him long ago. Now he was just a shell of his former self.
“Sgt James, and Lieutenant Davies. Part of the rescue team sent to bring you home. A Colonel Bamfield sent us.”
“You took your time.”
Th either man spoke. Younger, a military type, perhaps the other man’s bodyguard. He had a few scars, so I expect he had offered some resistance and paid for it with the butt of a gun or two.
“We tried once, but it failed. There were not the people who had been holding you at the time though, were they?”
“No. If that was an attempt, they were the people who came to ‘rescue’ us, only it was a means for them to use us for ransom. It’s taken them a while to find the right people. Bamfield you say? Who is he?”
“Runs the military’s operations that the military doesn’t want to acknowledge. We’re here, but we’re not here if you know what I mean.”
The older man shook his head. “It doesn’t matter. What happens now?”
“I go and have another chat with the commander. We exchange gifts, and we leave.”
“You do realize that’s not going to happen,” the military type said with a degree of despondency.
“How so?”
“There are about 50 men here, possibly more, all armed, and all waiting for you to arrive. I expect they’ll take the ransom and then kill all of us.”
“Yes, I had thought that might be the case. But, don’t worry. We have a few tricks up our sleeve. So, gather your belongings, if you have any, and wait for us to come back and get you.”
“Are you going to drive out of here?” The military man spoke again.
“A short distance, yes. There’s an airstrip not far from here, so all we have to do is get there, and we’re halfway home.”
“There’ll be government troops there. It’s used for people coming in to visit the national park and they provide local security. Boroko knows the Captain in charge there, and they have an arrangement. He’ll know what your options are, and you’ll just be walking into a trap.”
That had always been a possibility, but Bamfield wouldn’t send us there unless there was a chance we could use it for our escape. But, what the man was saying was just another wrinkle in a plan that had lots of wrinkles.
“Provided you get a mile from this place before being attacked.”
“All very interesting points,” I said. “But, like I said, pack your stuff and let me worry about the details. Feel free to take in some fresh air while we’re gone. It won’t be long.”
“I’ll stay,” Davies said.
“OK.”
I took a last look at the two, both now struggling to their feet. They might not be in as good a condition as the commander had said. As long as they could cover about half a mile at best, everything would be fine.
I walked slowly back to the hut where Williamson had just emerged, and I went over to him.
He handed me a package that hardly made a dent in my pocket. It was probably the reason why diamonds were used, small, and easily transportable. Gold bars would have been a different, and far more difficult, proposition.
From there, I walked more briskly to the commander’s hut and as I approached he came out.
“Everything in order?”
“It is.”
I pulled the package out of my pocket and handed it to him. “You can check the contents while I wait here.”
A smile, like a cat who swallowed the canary. A nod to a soldier standing behind me, I could hear the weapon being trained on me.
“I guess this is where…”
A second later the soldier crumpled to the ground, a bloody mess where his head had just been. A second raised his gun and suffered the same result.
“Call off your dogs’ commander. I’m sure we both don’t want to see people die needlessly.”
Two hands for a signal to lower weapons.
“Your missing people.”
“Out there, strategically placed. Excellent marksmen too. At the moment they’re showing restraint. It’s up to you how long that lasts.”
He motioned to the guard at the prisoner’s hut to take them to the cars, “Join them, Sargeant James, I’ll be along when I’ve checked the diamonds.”
By the time the two men had joined the rest of the team at the cars, the commander had come out of his office and was walking towards us.
“Three cars, we’ll keep the other. I assume you’re heading towards the airstrip.”
“It’s one of our options. I hear the government had a platoon of soldiers there under the command of a Captain. You might want to warn him we’re coming. You might also want to warn whoever you have in the field between here and there we’re coming.”
“I can’t guarantee your safety once you leave the compound. If there is anyone out there, it will not be my men. We have an agreement remember.”
“Good.”
While we were talking the others had got themselves into the cars and started the engines. Time was of the essence.
We walked down to the barrier, and once again he ordered his guards to remove it.
Once they had the cars drove past and then the last car stopped just the other side, waiting for me.
“I wish you good luck, Sargeant James.”
“Let’s hope the atmospherics don’t interfere with my call to my people. I’d hate to see this place destroyed because of a misunderstanding.”
I hadn’t seen Jacobi since just after we arrived, and he had headed straight to the commander’s hut. No doubt they had a lot to talk about.
I got in the car, and we drove off.
I was half expecting a hail of bullets, but all I could see was the two guards replacing the barrier and the commander standing behind it, arms crossed, still looking like the cat who swallowed the canary.
Self published authors are fully aware that perhaps the easiest part of the writing journey is the actual writing. Well, compared to the marketing aspect I believe it is.
I have read a lot of articles, suggestions and tips and tricks to market the book to the reading public. It is, to say the least, a lot harder to market eBooks than perhaps their hard or paper covered relatives. This is despite the millions of eReaders out there.
Then there is that other fickle part of the publishing cycle, the need for reviews. Good reviews of course. As we are learning, reviews can be bought. Currently Amazon is out there seeking out these reviews and reviewers and it will be interesting to see the result of their actions.
All the advice I have seen and read tells me that reviews should not be paid for, that reviews will come with sales. It might be a difficult cycle, more reviews means more sales, etc. And getting those first sales …
Therein lies the conundrum. It is a question of paying for advertising, or working it out for ourselves. I guess if I were to get more sales, I could afford the advertising … yes, back on the merry-go-round!
And yet, the harder the road, the more I enjoy what I do. It is exhilarating while writing, it is a joy to finish the first draft, it is accomplishment when it is published, but when you sell that first book, well, there is no other feeling like it.
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..
Thrills, Spills, and just a dash of Romance 