Will it ever end?

I’m late.

I’m not usually late.  One thing I always pride myself on is being on time.  If other people have the courtesy to turn up on time, I should too.  It’s one of those old-fashioned traits that was hammered into me when I was young.

I apologize.

It is the first time I have seen Marilyn for over a year, though we have exchanged a few phone calls.  It was much easier to talk to her from a distance, and over something as impersonal as a telephone.

Sitting opposite her was an entirely different proposition.

Like a giddy schoolboy on a first date, I was nervous.  It took me back about 40 years when I did go out with her, but it wasn’t a date.  She wanted to ask me about Hal, the man she eventually married, and the man who was once my best friend.

I was nervous then, but for different reasons, and then I was disappointed.  I guess I had a lot to learn then about life, and women.  I’m not so sure with the passing of time I had learned much at all.

I look at her now, forty years on, and I still see the same woman in front of me that was sitting practically in the same place.  It was the same café, she had selected the venue.  I thought it had burned down long ago and been replaced by a residential tower.

That was next door.

There was something to be said for nostalgia.  I think the furnishings and the building itself was the same as it was back then.

“I’ve been meaning to tell you, Hal and I got a divorce.  It seems your initial assessment of his character all those years ago was correct.”

It had been a passing comment.   He told me monogamy was for idiots, and there was a world of women out there just waiting for the right man.  Him apparently.  All I had said to her was that I didn’t think he was ready to settle down.

“I’m sorry to hear that.  I hope it wasn’t too painful.”

I had nothing to start with so my divorce was painless.  She took everything, not that it amounted to very much.

“The lawyers won, I guess they always win.”

Someone had an eloquent saying about lawyers, but I couldn’t remember who.  I’d have to remember not to quote literature to Marilyn.  She was not a ‘book’ person.

“How come you didn’t tell me?  I’m very good at holding hands.”

She smiles, perhaps remembering the one time we went for a stroll through a park near the university, a day she had come to tell me her problems with Hal.  I was a sympathetic listener, but I longed for more, for what I couldn’t have.

I could still feel the tugs at my heartstrings.

“You had your own problems to deal with.  Besides, I finally had to stand up for myself, after living in the shadows for so long.  You know how it is.”

Yes, I did.  Sacrifice, and not necessarily by the right partner in a marriage.  My ex-wife had told me enough times until I finally agreed with her.

“So now you’re free.”

“As a bird, as they say.  You hungry?” she asks.

“Not really.”

“Neither am I.”

 

© Charles Heath 2016-2019

Here’s the thing…

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.

Once again there’s a new instalment of an old feature, and we’re back on the treasure hunt.

 

Was she insinuating that Alex Benderby killed Jacob Stravinsky?

“Alex is a bully but he’s not a murderer,” I said, and wondering, at the same time, if he had finally graduated to a full-blown bad guy.

“He wouldn’t do it.  Like his old man, they get others to do their dirty work.  I’m sure the significance of Alex being out on his father’s boat was not lost on you.  You asked the questions, and now that I’ve thought about it, it’s possible those divers could have planted the body on Rico’s boat.”

It’s one thing to come up with theories, but it was entirely another to suddenly realize they might be true.  Until this point, I was happy to let Boggs have his dream that one day we might uncover a treasure trove, thinking that it was more fiction than the truth.  It made a good story, one of hope for a person who had had very little of it in the past.

Now, it was becoming horribly true.  What might amount to proof there might be treasure buried somewhere along this coast, an expert being interrogated and then killed, and a pair of what could only be described as gangsters about to start fighting over the spoils and not afraid of killing anyone who got in their way, these were omens, omens not to be ignored.

“Then don’t you think this is far too dangerous to get involved in?  Look what happened to Boggs and I.  We got off lightly if what you say is true.  I’m surprised if this Stravinsky is dead, then why isn’t Boggs?  He had the map, there’s no doubt Vice would assume he had made a copy.  What to stop him from doing the same to Boggs and Benderby did for Stravinsky?”

“Vince is not a clever as Alex.  Vince will never take over the Cossatino clan.  Alex, on the other hand, is the next generation of Benderby thugs.  But I suspect the older Benderby doesn’t know what’s going on.  Not yet anyway.”

My bottle of beer was empty.  Now I think I needed something stronger.  A lot stronger.

There was a knock on the door, which caught us both by surprise.

Are you expecting anyone?” I asked, and in the next second suspected it might be Vince, and I’d been led down the garden path to a place where I really didn’t want to be.

“No.”  She went over to the door and peered through the peephole.

“Damn,” she muttered.

Another, more demanding, knock.

She turned to look at me, “It’s Vince and my father.  I didn’t ask them to come here, and no, I didn’t tell them anything, whatever you might be thinking.”

All I was thinking right then was the coincidence of their arrival and being very afraid.

She opened the door.

Vince barged in almost pushing the door into his sister and stopped when he saw me.  At a more sedate speed, Giuliano Cossatino, Nadia’s father came into the room, and also stopped when he saw me.

There was no mistaking the malice on Vince’s face.   Nadia was right.  He was all muscle and no brain.

The older Cossatino spoke first.  “I see you have a new friend, though I would have thought you’d have better taste in men.”

“Your days of telling me what I can do and not do were over the moment you sent me away.”

“And yet you come back, slinking about like a thief in the night.  Your mother was most upset when you didn’t tell her.”

“The fact I have to, as you call it, slink back, should tell you a lot.”

“That you’re still the idiotic child you were before you went away.”

OK, now I was in the middle of a domestic family standoff.  I was waiting for the order for Vince to throw me out, quite possibly over the balcony for good measure.

“I should leave,” I said standing, “and let you two work it out.”

Vince took another step forward and was now only two paces away.  I’d have to go through him to leave.

“Stay,” Cossatino said.  “I have nothing against you.  Yet.”

“If you’re thinking this is anything but reminiscing about the old days, Mr Cossatino, then you’d be wrong.  There’s nothing between your daughter and I but air.  And,” mustering more bravado than I felt, “call your attack dog off.”

“Or what?”

“You don’t want to find out.”  Where was this coming from?  I was saying the words, but they were not my words.

“I hardly think…”

“That’s probably your biggest fault,” Nadia said, in a tone that suggested she was rapidly losing patience with her father.  

It was clear to me now, she had a hard time of it as a child, not unlike the rest of us, but for different reasons.  The bullying didn’t have to happen at school, but I could see why she had been like she was back then. 

“You never gave me any attention except to treat e like garbage, no, worse than garbage.  I can see nothing has changed.”  Then she switched her attention to Vince.  “And look at you, daddy’s little attack dog, as Sam says.  I’d start worrying Vince, because one day someone’s going to beat the crap out of you, and then you’ll be nothing, just like me.”

Vince only had one expression, so it was difficult to tell if he was worried or not.

Back to her father, “Why are you here?”

I doubt anyone had spoken to him like Nadia just did, and he looked angry.  If I hadn’t been there, I was not sure what would have happened to her.

“Your mother would like to see you.”

“You tell her to grow a backbone first, then when she does, I’ll think about it.  Now get out of my room, or I’ll call the sheriff.  At least he’s not in your back pocket.”

She picked up her phone and made ready to call.

A flick of his head got Vince to back up to the door and open it.

“You will regret this, young lady.”

“And don’t you forget I know where the skeletons are buried, so I’d leave now before some of them start rattling.”

A look of suffused anger flashed across his face, and he took a step forward.  I was not sure what to expect, but Nadia did take a step back.  She knew what he was capable of.

“We need to talk.  Don’t make me wait too long or there’ll be consequences.”

A glare at me, another for his daughter along with a shake of his head, then he left closing the door quietly after him.

I sat down before I fell down.  Nadia visibly wilted.

“I’m sorry about that.  You might have thought twice about threatening Vince.  You know he’ll come after you now.”

“Let him.  I always thought you were close to your father.”

“Daddy’s girl I was not.  Daddy’s biggest disappointment, maybe.”

“You didn’t ask him to come?”

“No.”

“But he didn’t come here to ask you to visit your mother.  It sounded like a last-minute invention.”

“It was.  My real mother is dead, and my stepmother was the reason why I was sent away.  Among other things.  No.  He was here to tell me to get closer to Alex.  It means only one thing.  This treasure hunt is about to get very, very ugly.”

 

 

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, and because of it, he has now been roped into what might be called a suicide mission.

 

Bamfield met me at the airport, before we took off.  Monroe had come over and told me there was a visitor in one of the rooms, the one with Operations crookedly glued to the door.  She opened the door, ushered me in, then stepped back out closing the door after her.

Mental note: the door to that room would not withstand a good kick.

There was a table, two chairs, and one of them had Bamfield sitting, looking up expectantly when I entered the room.  His eyes beckoned me to the other chair, so, after a look around the room, nothing else other than the table and chairs were in the room I casually made my way to the chair and sat.

We glared at each other over the tabletop.

”I’m guessing this is the last place you expected to be?”

“You have a funny way of issuing invitations?”

“Would you have come along if I asked you politely.”

“Probably not.”

Another minute’s silence while he looked for the words that would be anything other than an apology for coercing me into a corner.  I’d come to realise that Bamfield was far from the sort of officer I’d first thought him to be.

An excuse could be made that because he needed to find people to do particularly dangerous and covert operation, nothing was off the table, including blackmail, in order to get the job done.  How he was justifying it using armed services personnel was anyone’s guess, but it would have been kicked higher up the food chain before approval was given.

These operations weren’t conceived by military commanders, just the CIA on a good day, allowing the armed services to tag along.  But make no mistake, this would be a CIA operation, and the CIA to take the credit if it worked out, and the army would take a hit if it didn’t.  Either way, it would never reach the newspapers.

“You don’t need me to tell you how important this is, and that we’ve only got one shot at it.  If you get caught, any of you, we cannot acknowledge you, so you will be on your own. Your team will obey orders.  Monroe is there to maintain discipline if it’s needed.”

“So she’ll be shooting first and asking questions later?”

“Something like that.  She’s a tough officer, and worthy of your respect.”

“And the rest?”

“Good soldiers who just got into trouble.  They’re being given an opportunity for redemption, and this mission will count towards lessening their sentences.  At any rate, Monroe will have your back.”

Good to know.

“You’ll be going to a new destination, after stopping over in northern Uganda.  We’ve arranged for the plane to land at a disused airstrip, when you’ll be met by Colonel Chiswick ex British army, unofficially there to train the local troops.  He’ll be arranging you and your teams travel arrangements from there.  I can’t tell you any more at this time for security reasons.”

“You do realise that a group of people who look every bit like mercenaries are only going to get as far as the border crossing before they get arrested, or worse.  I’ve had time to think about it, and this is as ill-advised as you can get.”

He smiled, which worried me more than the idea of getting shot by Congo border guards.

“That’s what I was thinking too, so I told Lallo to devise a plausible cover story.”

Off the top of my head, one that would be ‘plausible’ didn’t come immediately to mind, and dropping it in Lallo’s lap, well, he didn’t strike me as being an ‘ideas man’.  We would look like a team of mercenaries looking for trouble, and hardly tourists taking in the African countryside, particularly where there were dangerous warlords and child soldiers roaming free.  It was going to be hard to disguise that.

“This should be interesting,” I muttered half under my breath.

“It is, in fact.  Lallo surprised me.  You will be going in as a documentary making team who, by the time you arrive at the border, should have the appropriate clearances.  It seems the place you’re now going is quite near the Garama National Park, where I’m told there are Elephants and Giraffes that are nearing extinction.  I suspect you might even run into one or two poachers.  Apparently, they come down from the Sudan.  Before you cross the border, being escorted by a platoon of Ugandan soldiers, you will be coming from the Murchison Falls National Park, and before that the Mathenik Game Reserve.  Your passports have all been stamped appropriately and Monroe has all the documentation.  She’s the Production Manager.  There’s two large crates with all of the photographic equipment you’ll be taking with you.”

“We can shoot, but I don’t think that includes cameras.”

“Then you have a long flight and a lot of time to study up.  I doubt it will come to that, but you must be ready if the Congo army decided to get nosey.  The equipment, I’m told, works, but it the greater scheme of things it doesn’t have to come back.  Monroe will work out who does what.  You’ll be in overall charge.”

“The Director?”

“Whatever.  Any questions?”

“I have only one question.”

“Only one?”

“There is another 999 but I figure none of those will get answered.  It was the same question I asked the last time, who are these people we’re supposed to be rescuing?”

A long and thoughtful look.  Could he trust me?

“Two CIA operatives posing as trade negotiators, looking to get a deal for some mineral that’s used in mobile phones.  I don’t know the details, but it’s apparently more lucrative than gold.  They managed to get caught in the middle of a three-way bidding contest but finished up in the middle of the war between government forces and rebels if you could call them that.  They’re mostly militia groups who have been attempting to take over the mines for themselves, resulting in the crossfire.  Apparently, they made promises they couldn’t keep, and now we have to bail them out.”

“Another stuff up then.”

“Everyone had good intentions, but in Africa, good intentions are often mistaken for something else entirely.  This is, however, one other possible problem you may have to deal with.”

Of course, there always was.  Nothing covert operations did, didn’t have a wrinkle or three.

“Good or bad?”

He shrugged.  “They might not want to go with you.  We now suspect they may have had something to do with the last fiasco, and it wasn’t entirely Jacobi’s fault, but that doesn’t necessarily mean he might not be working with them.  You’ll be travelling with a small fortune in diamonds as payment for their release, so it may not necessarily be what it seems.  Only you and Monroe know about them and they’re hidden in with the photographic equipment, so make sure you hang onto those crates until the exchange.  I tell you this, so you don’t get any surprises.”

“Good to know, but I suspect there’s more to the story that you’re not telling me, but I’m hoping Monroe will keep me in the loop.”

“Oh, and there’s one other little problem which we hope to have sorted out by the time you’re on the ground in Uganda.  We haven’t secured all the elements of the exit strategy yet, but I’m confident it’ll all come together.  One way or another.”

I stood.

Was I expecting a handshake or a ‘good luck’, maybe, but I don’t think that was his style?  He was probably used to sending men to senseless deaths, so another few would stir his conscience.  I shrugged, and walked out of the room, not looking back.

We flew out of an unnamed base in an unmarked aircraft, heading for Africa.  It would be my second visit.  The first didn’t quite go as expected, but there was a chance of redemption this time around.

I was the only one who had been there before, other than our two-faced guide, Jacobi, who by now would be working out how he could double-cross us and save his skin.  I had no illusions about a man who would turn in his own mother if he had to.

No doubt Monroe would have a suitable role in our documentary making crew, perhaps a guide.  I was looking forward to hearing what he thought of our cover story.

Even so, we were going to need a plan b and a plan c going in with him, because I had no doubt plan a had already been sent to the relevant people, who were awaiting our imminent arrival with bated breath.  Pity we would not be landing anywhere near that location.

In fact, none of us would know where we would be dropped, until a few hours before it happened.  Security, this time, was going to be formidable.  Lallo explained why it was a matter of need to know, and all I had to say was, I didn’t need to know beyond the fact it was somewhere in Uganda, and near the Uganda/Congo border.  I suspect Monroe knew, but she was the sort who could keep a secret.

As for the rest of the team, they were a motley crew, but within the group there was an odd sort of camaraderie between them.  Perhaps Lallo had told them that if they stepped out of line, Monroe would shoot them.

Aside from the passengers in the C130 transport, there was a pack for each of us, and enough weapons to start a war.  The so-called two large crates turned out to be four, no so large, but certainly I would be looking in them before we landed, just in case I had to know what was inside.  But, since we would not be calling at any recognisable airport, I doubted we would be having any customs or immigration problems.  No one was travelling with any proper identification papers, only the passports and visas required to enter the Congo. 

It was that sort of mission.

© Charles Heath 2019