“The Enemy Within” – a thirty-day revision – Day 18

This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.

And so it begins…

Finally, there’s going to be a funeral

For Jack, it might also be a time to get some answers if the right people turn up to it.

And it’s in Scotland, so there would be time to get some Scotch Whiskey

It’s cold and snowing, a bleak setting for the last moments of his mentor’s stay above ground.

Very few attend the funeral, but there is one notable attendee, the countess. Jack does not get to see her at the funeral and will have to find where she is staying.

At the inn where he has a room, there’s a motley collection of individuals in the bar. Jack is checking for trouble, but it does not eventuate.

Not that night.

Then when it comes, he barely manages to get away, but that only lasts for a short time. Two assassins, he realizes he is a marked man.

Why?

They crash their car in the icy conditions and neither survives.

Talking to the countess, she gives him nothing to work with, only that she fears for her life and has two permanent bodyguards.

“The Enemy Within” – a thirty-day revision – Day 17

This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.

And so it begins…

Jack is in the deep end!

While Jack is juggling avoiding surveillance, visiting his mentor’s flat and trying to figure out his next move, the rewrite of Evelyn’s interrogation is taking shape.

She never expects it will get to the sub-basement where the real interrogations take place.

The place where the only furniture is a plastic chair over a drain and four seasons in one day happen alarmingly more often than not.

She reasons that it is conditioning.

She also has the memory of Jack having gone through an interrogation session that lasted two days and was as agonisingly painful as she was suffering.

She knows the end result is no matter what she tells them they will not believe her and it will only get worse.

Time then to start conditioning the mind to play with them.

This is from a researcher, they have no real idea why it’s going the way it is, which is nowhere, until certain drugs are employed, and she becomes a gibbering idiot.

If this is an unsanctioned interrogation, then the proverbial is about to hit the fan.

And then there’s that one other thing, what was sustaining her: the fact she was going to kill each and every one of them very, very horribly.

“The Enemy Within” – a thirty-day revision – Day 17

This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.

And so it begins…

Jack is in the deep end!

While Jack is juggling avoiding surveillance, visiting his mentor’s flat and trying to figure out his next move, the rewrite of Evelyn’s interrogation is taking shape.

She never expects it will get to the sub-basement where the real interrogations take place.

The place where the only furniture is a plastic chair over a drain and four seasons in one day happen alarmingly more often than not.

She reasons that it is conditioning.

She also has the memory of Jack having gone through an interrogation session that lasted two days and was as agonisingly painful as she was suffering.

She knows the end result is no matter what she tells them they will not believe her and it will only get worse.

Time then to start conditioning the mind to play with them.

This is from a researcher, they have no real idea why it’s going the way it is, which is nowhere, until certain drugs are employed, and she becomes a gibbering idiot.

If this is an unsanctioned interrogation, then the proverbial is about to hit the fan.

And then there’s that one other thing, what was sustaining her: the fact she was going to kill each and every one of them very, very horribly.

“The Enemy Within” – a thirty-day revision – Day 16

This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.

And so it begins…

Evelyn is just a researcher, or is she?

We know that Jack and Evelyn have a history. Their back story is an interesting one, because he met her quite by chance, or was it, before he became a field agent.

She could not tell him what she did, other than some bland research job for a government agency.

Jack couldn’t tell her what he did, even though his name was familiar to her, but exactly what he did was above her pay grade.

When they did find out, it was across the table at a briefing, and both had to keep poker faces.

Later, this relationship will have some significance, particularly when it’s decided she had to b e debriefed, and then interrogated.

But while she may not know as much as they think she does, they completely underestimate her resolve and resourcefulness.

The moral of the story is don’t judge a book by its cover.

Is that a pun??

“The Enemy Within” – a thirty-day revision – Day 16

This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.

And so it begins…

Evelyn is just a researcher, or is she?

We know that Jack and Evelyn have a history. Their back story is an interesting one, because he met her quite by chance, or was it, before he became a field agent.

She could not tell him what she did, other than some bland research job for a government agency.

Jack couldn’t tell her what he did, even though his name was familiar to her, but exactly what he did was above her pay grade.

When they did find out, it was across the table at a briefing, and both had to keep poker faces.

Later, this relationship will have some significance, particularly when it’s decided she had to b e debriefed, and then interrogated.

But while she may not know as much as they think she does, they completely underestimate her resolve and resourcefulness.

The moral of the story is don’t judge a book by its cover.

Is that a pun??

“The Enemy Within” – a thirty-day revision – Day 15

This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.

And so it begins…

Characters can take on a life of their own

The basic premise of the story is evolving faster than I can write the later chapters and it’s hard to keep up.

The post-it notes are getting used at an alarming rate, and the wall is beginning to look like a major crime investigation.

It wouldn’t be like this if I had planned it better the first time.

But, then, that’s the joy of writing, watching a basic premise turn into something far more sophisticated than you first imagined.

And that is down to charters taking on lives of their own

Like ordinary people, there is more than meets the eye, layers that we might never get to see unless the right buttons are pushed.

And I’m going to push those buttons and see what happens.

“The Enemy Within” – a thirty-day revision – Day 15

This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.

And so it begins…

Characters can take on a life of their own

The basic premise of the story is evolving faster than I can write the later chapters and it’s hard to keep up.

The post-it notes are getting used at an alarming rate, and the wall is beginning to look like a major crime investigation.

It wouldn’t be like this if I had planned it better the first time.

But, then, that’s the joy of writing, watching a basic premise turn into something far more sophisticated than you first imagined.

And that is down to charters taking on lives of their own

Like ordinary people, there is more than meets the eye, layers that we might never get to see unless the right buttons are pushed.

And I’m going to push those buttons and see what happens.

“The Enemy Within” – a thirty-day revision – Day 14

This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.

And so it begins…

Going back and forth, fixing the timeline

That’s what editing is all about.

Reading that first rough draft and deciding it’s all crap. Then, after a good night’s sleep, deciding that it’s not half bad, just need to weed out the crap.

I’ve decided to add some more after the agent and target are gunned down and our protagonist shoots the sniper. One of them at least. There’s another out there, waiting.

There’s more to the target’s story that wasn’t conveyed to the planners and comes to light in that apartment. There’s going to be a twist in that tale.

The funeral is interesting, not only for the aftermath, but who attends, and as it is for the mentor, our protagonist is there to see what shakes out of the trees.

Meanwhile, our planner is now being interrogated as if she were a foreign spy, the last thing she expected from her own organisation.

The cinema of my dreams – Was it just another surveillance job – Episode 62

This story is now on the list to be finished so over the new few weeks, expect a new episode every few days.

The reason why new episodes have been sporadic, there are also other stories to write, and I’m not very good at prioritizing.

But, here we are, a few minutes opened up and it didn’t take long to get back into the groove.

Things are about to get complicated…


I was straight back to the scenario where O’Connell was expendable after performing his role, and that Anna was cleaning up before leaving, or she had already gone.

O’Connell had no doubt told her about the Peasdale address, and the fact he’d told me, and she might have assumed that there would be a window of opportunity to get some belongings at her flat.

Would she be there?

I switched off the light, backtracked to the door, and then went back outside into the passage.  Jennifer appeared beside me.

“O’Connell’s in there, dead.  Shot in the head.”

“Your friend?”

I’m not sure how she came up with the designation, ‘Your Friend’, but after the shortened version of my time with Josephine, and the fact we had a hotel room together, could have inspired such a thought.

I went to her flat and listened at the door.

Nothing.  There was no light showing under the door, so this could be a fruitless exercise.  The same operation as before, Jennifer waited outside, and I would go in.  It didn’t take as long to pick her lock.  Practise.

I opened the door, the gun in hand, and went slowly into the room.

There was a glow from what might be a night light coming from the end of the passage where the bedroom was.

She was in, or she forgot to turn off the light.

It was also not so dark in this flat, with several pilot lights casting red, blue or green hues over the furniture and floor.  It took a few seconds for my eyes to adjust.

“Drop the gun, Sam.”

Josephine, now just discernible across the room, a gun of her own aimed at me.

I shot her.  Without hesitation.

She was taken utterly by surprise, dropping her own weapon and spinning sideways into the arm of the chair, lost balance and crashed down to the floor.

Jennifer was in the door and had it closed behind her, and switched on the light.  We were both blinded for a second, enough time for Josephine to reach for her weapon which hadn’t fallen very far from her and for Jennifer to shoot her gun hand.

I remembered in that instant, that Jennifer scored the highest in gun training.  She would be ‘deadly’ Maury had said.

“OK, enough, what the hell was that for?” Jo said, stretching out on the floor and holding the hand that Jennifer shot.

“You played me, Anna.”

“Operation necessity.  I had to know what you were up to.  O’Connell said you were going to be a problem.”

“Did you kill him?”

“Me?  No.  He was dead when I got here.  We were here just to get our away bags.  How did you guess?”

“Lucky.  I was going to the other flat, but I figured it was too new for O’Connell to probably tell you.  He may have been planning to double-cross you too.  It seems the way of things in this op.  Where are the USBs?”

“What makes you think I have them?”

“The fact you just said them, when all we knew for sure was there was only one. I assume you have one each for safety’s sake, and coming back here, one or other of you was going to pull a double cross.”

“Until someone else got another idea.  Right now, you have a window of opportunity, Sam.  A big payday, for the two of you.”

“Tempting, but no.  I’m not in this for the money.”

“Then you’re a fool.  No one does anything except line their own pockets.  If you give the USBs to your chief, what do you think they’re going to do?  O’Connell got five million, the person who gave him the money will get ten at the very least.  They’re not interested in saving the world, Sam.”

She was probably right.

I looked at Jennifer.  “Are you in this for the money, Jennifer?”

“I just want my old life back.”

“Then keep an eye on the door, we’ll be having visitors very soon.  Anyone who comes through it using a key, disarm them.  Don’t hesitate.”

Back to Anna.  “Where are they?  Bear in mind I have no qualms about shooting you until you do tell me, so make it easy on yourself, because the next thing I shoot at is your knees.”

A moment’s thought, and a shot into the wall that just missed her head, decided the matter.

“In the backpack pocket.”

She nodded her head in the direction of the backpack sitting on the kitchen bench.

I went over and in the third pocket I opened there were two USBs in a plastic bag.

“What are you going to do with them?”

“Destroy them.  The world doesn’t need any more pandemics any time soon.”  I went over to the microwave oven and put them in and set it running.

“You’re only delaying the inevitable.”

“We’ve got company,” Jennifer said.

“You know what to do.”

© Charles Heath 2020-2023

“The Enemy Within” – a thirty-day revision – Day 14

This book has also been written for some time, like The Document, and the manuscript was also sitting in a box with half a dozen others gathering dust and not quite as complete, so this month it is going to get the makeover, a first draft for the editor.

And so it begins…

Going back and forth, fixing the timeline

That’s what editing is all about.

Reading that first rough draft and deciding it’s all crap. Then, after a good night’s sleep, deciding that it’s not half bad, just need to weed out the crap.

I’ve decided to add some more after the agent and target are gunned down and our protagonist shoots the sniper. One of them at least. There’s another out there, waiting.

There’s more to the target’s story that wasn’t conveyed to the planners and comes to light in that apartment. There’s going to be a twist in that tale.

The funeral is interesting, not only for the aftermath, but who attends, and as it is for the mentor, our protagonist is there to see what shakes out of the trees.

Meanwhile, our planner is now being interrogated as if she were a foreign spy, the last thing she expected from her own organisation.