A Murder In Accra.

[MANICHAEAN]

The British Airways flight to Accra International was smooth & Rossow had been booked business class, in deference he thought to his long frame, or was the boss actually mellowing to him?

The plane came in on time in the middle of one of those rainy season downpours that gives you qualms that touchdown with a machine this size, at that speed will result in one God Almighty skid. But then; tyre contact was made, the weight of the moving plane gently lowered & the engines went into reverse to quickly bring the aircraft into a more sedate taxiing across the runway to the terminal.

Have you noticed how airports vary so much across the globe? Not so much in the architecture & layout as in the atmosphere they evoke as you enter their realms. In Frankfurt, passengers scurry like rodents from one side of the airport to another to get connecting flights. In Jamaica on the other hand you slow down immediately you leave the plane. No "yardie" is going to get hypertension for nobody. "Soon come" is the national standard.

But Mother Africa has an atmosphere of its own. And yet its hard to put your finger on it. Perhaps it's because you are suddenly the odd man out with the white skin, perhaps its the latent tension in the air almost as if you have arrived for the first time from another planet. Your senses sharpen up & you become so much more aware of that around you.

As Rossow was only carrying a holdall & briefcase he cleared Customs quickly, leaving in his wake the inevitable shake down of returning Ghanaians with multiple taped carton boxes & items that most Africans consider as hand luggage like; fold up prams, television sets & even a car windscreen if he was to believe his eyes.

Presenting his passport at the Immigration Desk there was too much eye contact & body language on their part.

"First time in Ghana Mr Rossow?"

"Yes, first time"

"Nature of your visit?"

"Business"

At that point he saw her.

Tall, dark, strong profile in the sharp crisp uniform of a Ghanaian woman police officer.

She stepped from wherever she had been standing behind the Immigration Desk & spoke gently into the official's ear, as if to say; "I'll take it from here"

The Immigration Officer nodded, gave Rossow another eye contact as if some clandestine pact had been acknowledged & stamped the passport.

Rossow stepped through to meet his benefactor.

"She was cool." That was the first thing he noted about her.

A little shorter than he was, with that striking calmness that some African women carry with such confidence.

"Good morning Detective Inspector Rossow. My name is Police Sergeant Emelia Banfo of the Ghanaian Police & I'm the liaison officer assigned to you."

Long slender fingers, cool to the touch were extended for a formal greeting.

"Please follow me. The car is outside."

Declining that she carried his holdall, he gave up his briefcase and followed her through the crowds, noting in transit the superb *** & long slender legs beneath the formal constabulary uniform.

[hillwalker]

Do continue.... this was an enthralling read.

[MANICHAEAN]

Thanks H. Really appreciate your comments.
Its one chapter of a novel I've been working on for about two years whenever I get a chance to write.
The problem is that I'm not sure how much I can post. There are bits that make even you look like Mother Theresa!

[hillwalker]

Mhmm - that's saying something given my track record on here.

It's good to provoke some reaction, but try not to frighten the horses.

[MANICHAEAN]

THE FIRST DAY

It was a full day,first checking into the Labadi Hotel & then through the turmoil of traffic to first meet Matthew Bennett, the touchstone of British Intelligence attached to the Embassy and loosely concealed behind some title of Research Officer or whatever. Then on to make contact with the senior Ghanaian police officer leading the investigation into the missing Ambassador and a local night club owner with dual Ghanian/British nationality.

Chief Inspector Kwesi Jay was a depressing prospect, the uniformed type so prevalent in some countries. Big office, upright stature, chest big enough to adorn with a box full of ribbons and the usual earnest platitudes as to what was being done to get things resolved in an expedient manner. London Head Office would have loved him! But you could sense he was not front line. In fact it reminded Rossow of a rerun of "Casablanca" and "Round up the usual suspects!"

Matthew Bennett was more useful if you adopted that peculiar British way of becoming attuned to what he did not say, as opposed to what he did say. Small and slightly chubby, he was not the type who would set the cosmos ablaze, but then after a very short time you sensed his sharpness, focus and the depth of his educational background.

"Strange bedfellows actually, Tan & Kretzler" he said.

"Night club owner & British Ambassador"

"Could never in reality see what they had in common. But they were in each other's company a lot"

"Did they mix socially?" Rossow asked.

"Depends what you mean by socially. Kretzler's wife could not abide Tan. He was not invited round for dinner with the Ambassador you understand. But then you can sympathise with her priorities. Tan with his business dealings and his ownership of a night club in Jamestown were not exactly on a par with drinks & nibbles at the Embassy do's. But then Tan had some sort of hold over him."

"What about Tan? Whats the story on him?" Rossow asked.

"You had to tread carefully" Bennett said.

"He was amiable enough, but you never really knew what his motives were. It was almost like some kind of game he was playing, one against the other. Not sure he understood it himself. He just played his funny little Chinese game as the cards were dealt. Pretend to be a friend, impart a confidence on someone you both knew & then absorb into his memory whatever response you came up with. Next thing you know, he is going through the same ritual with the same mutual friend you were talking about in the first place. Except this time you are on the agenda."

"Thanks Matthew" Rossow said.

"If you don't mind I'm not going to get bogged down in day to day enquiries. I would like to dig around the edges and see what I can uncover."

"Fine" said Bennett. "But if you are poking around locally, take Police Woman Banfo with you. In uniform or casual as suits your purpose."

[MANICHAEAN]

THE NIGHT CLUB.

He held a cigeratte between the precise fingers of one hand. He put the other hand flat on the white tablecloth, then he looked across the busy tables towards the heart-shaped space on the floor where the dancers prowled under shifting coloured lights.

The righteous loath these dives. They appear as if only existing after dark, like ghouls. The people seem dissipated without grace, sinful without irony.

Cigeratte & cigar smoke laced the air. A group of Ghanians smartly attired stood drinking- the women sipping cocktails, the men apparently on scotch. They were at one side of a curtained opening that led to the gambling rooms. Beyond the curtains, light blazed down on one end of a roulette table.

Twin negresses writhed their bodies on the aluminium central stage, the perceptable sweat from the spot lights highlighting the suppleness and flexability of their muscle tone. Pelvic contortions; slow, deliberate & mind controlling were executed, the male patrons being both focused & aroused by the performance.

No contrived smiles from either dancer. The bodies belied the faces. The mouths implied, "I won't give you a damm thing". The bodies with strong breasts and proud hips said " You can have anything you can take."

Rossow shot a look at Banfo to determine if she were shocked, but no, this cop making up the female Trinity was a trooper too. A look of mild amusement on her lips as she watched the billed Renee & Rosie arching their backs on the stage floor, the dark, almost purple sheen of their tight buttocks clenched together as they attained an inverted "U". Slim, dark and lovely. reeking with sex.

Utterly beyond the moral laws of this or any world Rossow could imagine.

[hillwalker]

The first 3 paragraphs of 'The First Day' put me in mind of Greene perhaps, and I was left wondering whether it would develop into something a shade more contemporary..... which it has. My interest is rekindled.

[MANICHAEAN]

H.
In all due humility, Greene was mothers milk to me!

It always amazed me how he would classify his work as either an "entertainment thriller" or a "literary work novel"

Don't you find the distinction problematic?

Presumably the former included: The Honorary Consul, Our Man In Havana, The Quiet American & The Comedians?

The latter:The Power & The Glory, The End of The Affair & The Heart of The Matter?

Thanks for your kind comments. No complaints about the "horses" yet!

[hillwalker]

The distinction implies he could not combine the two, when of course he managed to so quite well. I'll admit he's not my favourite writer, but a master in his genre without a doubt.

[MANICHAEAN]

At midnight Rossow & Banfo left for his hotel, suspicions unaroused by the Club's management & staff. Another white man with his attractive indigene girlfriend indulging a taste for late night drinking and amusement in seedy Jamestown environs.

Back at his suite Rossow discussed with Banfo on how to proceed. Some shake up was required to open windows in this enquiry.

One thing Ghana was not, thought Rossow, was Columbia, Mexico or any of the other kidnap capitals of the world. And then again, if it was a kidnapping, then going for the British Ambassador was top dollar, and what was this connection with Tan, the local business guy? Both according to reports had left Accra's Sagittarius Club in Tan's Mercedes on Wednesday morning around 1am two weeks ago and had not been seen since.

The file given him by London was sparse regards relevant detail and not much help either, except as background information. Ghana, as he knew, like so many African countries had its fair share of economic & social problems: poverty, corruption, decaying infrastructure, tribalism etc, but then kidnapping was not normally associated with it. Unlike Nigeria along the coast which had grasped the monetary potential of seizing foreigners. If Ghana had its own more home grown demons it comprised scam artists, child prostitution, a growing underground porn industry & the still prevailing belief in juju or witchcraft. Analytically most of its crimes were from pick-pockets, fraudsters & armed robbers. There was an overlay of crimes like the roadside magician tricksters and money doublers who were remotely influenced by juju-marabout mediums and other spiritualists. Rossow in fact remembered reading in one report where the Ghana Police Service had arrested a leading armed robber, Atta Ayi, in a suburb of Accra. Huge amulets and other paraphernalia, prepared for him by various juju-mediums, were concealed around his body.

The Ghana Police Service had no option but to confront these mediums, as they were highly feared in that society based on the belief that they could wage spiritual reprisals from their unknown and dark hideaways. These exotic, yet sinister individuals mostly worked for the politically corrupt elites, criminals and gangs. Thus by playing the powers-that-be, the juju man invariably escaped theresponsibility for causing social dysfunctions.

Rossow felt this was a potential aspect that was worth giving particular attention to, if only in terms of possible linkage.

But it was still confusing and whatever angle one took, it came back full circle. In Rossow's professional experience of police work, as original sin is the mother-fluid of historians, so is human malice the staple of crime. One can view it from an angle of calculation, or there are just people who commit crimes of passion or hatred. But then, once committed these characters just walk out, invariably not caring to cover their tracks.

This appeared not to be the case here.

"No quick fix" said Rossow.

"Last place that Tan & Kretzler were seen was the Club we just left."

"No option but to continue to visit, to mingle, to watch & see whats under any rocks we are obliged to lift and peer under."

[hillwalker]

A lot of background to assimilate in your latest posting, but as it's part of a novel rather than a short story it is acceptable to go to such lengths.

I just felt that last line of dialogue was a little awkward. I doubt that anyone would come out with such a long statement. It matches too much what has gone before - as if you are putting the writer's own words into the character's mouth (if that makes sense).

[MANICHAEAN]

Your right.
I was flagging at the end of this instalment.
But now having got a lot of the country/social/cultural background material out of the way, I hope to get more of a flow in future chapters & explore more the personal interelationships.
The problem is, if you dont lay those damm foundations, its too superficial once you start on the edifice. Unless of course you adopt the airy fairy floating on air mode, which I'm not overtly comfortable with.
Your pointers are a real boon by the way. Thanks.
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

THE NIGHT CLUB MANAGER.

Over the next few weeks, Rossow endeavoured to build up a close &, in the face of it, a surprisingly attainable relationship with the Club Manager, Obi Biston. The individual concerned was of a rotund & somewhat dubious disposition, as befits adequately the profession he had adopted. But he grew, apparently and genuinely, to enjoy the Englishman's company.

Rossow was a drinker. Likewise Biston, in spite of his weathered appearance, looked like and was a fellow traveller. He had the thickened and glossy skin, the too noticable facial veins, and the bright glitter in the eyes. There thus devoloped almost imperceptibily, a mutual male bonding affinity for the venial aspects of life whose foundations were securely laid in an appreciation of; good conversation, expensive alcohol & sassy looking women.

Let's just look for a moment at this aspect of Rossow's makeup. For some of the time he drank for the pure glow of it, at other times back in London with associates & bureaucrats, for more palpable results. Like few others, he was capable of staying canny while drinking, of keeping his head. Although- under the narrow interpretation of morality- this is never an excuse for carousing, it was in Rossow's nature to believe that you could drink with the devil and adjust the balance of evil over a snifter of cognac.It was not that he found more radical methods frightening. It was that they did not occur to him. He'd always been a man of transactions. The tried and tested mantra would always be to believe that the best way to untie any Gordian knot, short of bribery, was booze. As a sideline it also was a means of celebrating the general succulence of life.

In addition, almost as a bonus, Rossow had the characteristic salesman's gift of treating men he might have disliked as if they were spiritual brothers and it would decieve many so completely that they would always believe him a friend.

Obi Biston, apparently suitably decieved, found him refreshingly different from the standard sleazy underclass of night club patrons, in his lack of pretentiousness uncommen in a white man and his freewheeling, imaginative manner of conversation. As the relationship developed, the two invariably sat at the same table & exchanged confidences in whispered tones, from which Emelia, (playing the secondary role), was excluded.

"Next week I'm going up to my place in Kumasi for the week end" Biston informed.

"How about coming up as my guest? No need to bring Emelia" he suggested.

"A bit of variety will do you no harm. Rosee & Renee will be there" he murmered with a knowing look.

'Sounds good to me" Rossow replied.

"Look forward to seeing a bit more of the country."

Biston looked him in the eye again; nothing furtive about this drunk. But he had that empty feeling of having miscounted the trumps. No reason for it at all. Maybe it was the steely quality about the man. No whimper, no bluster, just the smile, the voice and the unforgetting eyes.

That evening at their customary debrief in the hotel, Emelia was apprehensive of his intentions.

"What if things go wrong, what backup?"

Rossow took her head in his hands and kissed her.

That night he worked her body with an intensity & an ardour that left them both with the physical & mental limpness of damp rags. She initially assumed the role of a compliant body offered up & her eyes remained closed. But as he worked away, she affected initially, reluctant small moans until the suppresion was too much & then she broke. The cries became screams as she lost control completely and collapsed on the bed face down, rivulets' of sweat lay like a channel on the indent of her spine & her body convulsed in a series of climaxes.

[MANICHAEAN]

KUMASI

The quartet of Biston, Rossow & the Twins arrived in the northern Ghana town of Kumasi on Friday evening, as the light crimson globe of the African sun disappeared with dying strength to somewhere below the skyline. As if the gods had thrown a switch, darkness followed hard on the heels of dusk, suitably accompanied by the insect night symphony.

Biston's SUV had been light and spacious as he had deftly guided it upcountry for the last three hours through chicken scratching villages with open sewers & non descript towns with even more non descript inhabitants. Rossow had sat insulated from this external reality, aimiably chatting with Biston in the front, while the fragrence of the two females behind had caressed their nostrils and their senses.

The house was on the outskirts of the gold mining hub of Kumasi central, situated behind high walls, the large iron gates guarded by a sinister Taurag from the north of Niger or Chad. Swathed in a long blue robe & a black head turban wrap, equipped with a crude sword & steel cable whip, he seemed to symbolize an earth bound angel of death.

The garden was rich in foliage and luxuriant in variety, obviously tendered on a regular basis. Once past the gate guard post, the main house structure came into view; spacious and two storeys with a balcony on the first floor and a tiled veranda on the ground. Burglar bars on every window.

Like most African households of any substance, it was organised. An elderly steward greeted them at the entrance and two muscular young boys were already emptying the SUV of luggage and carrying it to the rooms. No doubt in the background was a retinue of: cooks, house servants, gardeners and drivers somewhere around, all intent in making an impression on "Olga Obi" & his baturi guest.

Upstairs, Rossow was shown to his room. King sized bed in purple with crisp white sheets turned down, marble floor with beige rugs, soft bedside lamps & over adequate heavy drapes that led out onto the balcony & the Ghana night.

The dining room was substantial and impressive. There was a lot of teakwood and red lacquer. Gold frames glinted high up on the walls, and the ceiling was remote and vague, like the recent dusk of the hot day.

Over a traditional dish of egusi & pounded yam eaten by hand, Biston was noticeably more relaxed than normal. The outward facade of affability associated with running the night club were left three hours down the track in Accra. This is where he inhaled the provincial air, took the waters, did his thing & to Rossow, more importantly & with a bit of luck, let his guard down.

The girls looked great, spoke or murmured approvingly when appropriate by African standards to do so & added to that almost homely occasion an indespensible something that women of beauty have.

After dinner, the two men repaired on their own to the veranda where the steward brought two beers on a silver tray. Biston, ostensibly leaning to measure the coolness of the bottles with the rear of his hand, lowered his head towards Rossow conspiratorially.

"I'm glad you came up Gary. I like your company.
I would guess our tastes are very much the same."

Small red veins were visible on the periphery of his eyes.

"Thanks for inviting me Obi. It's always a pleasure to relax in good company" said Rossow with more than an element of conviction.

Biston leaned in even closer, almost as if the entire army of domestics were hidden in the bushes, metres from their feet, their ears attuned to the latest in gossip & intrigue that is the staple diet for those whose daily existence is lacking in excitement.

"Which of the girls would you like tonight?" Biston asked.

Rossow somewhat flippant, the result no doubt of the drink & a natural indolence replied; "If they are identical twins I really don't see the distinction!"

Biston gave a laugh deep in his leathery throat.

The drinks over, they rose like two soldiers embarking on a joint mission & warmly shook hands. They ascended the stairs to their respective bedrooms & shook hands again before parting, wishing each other good night.

[hillwalker]

I enjoyed this latest installment - particularly the way you decribe the African village (a touch of tropical exoticism always welcome in these parts this time of year).

I just might quibble over a couple of phrases that made me double-check :

the African sun disappeared with dying strength

I personally felt the word 'dying' didn't sit comfortably with 'strength', and

Biston's SUV had been light and spacious as he had deftly guided it upcountry

not sure the second 'had' is needed - and the entire description suggested to me that sometime later the SUV might no longer be 'light and spacious'

Me being Mr. Picky as usual. But an enjoyable read nontheless.

H

[MANICHAEAN]

Thanks H

A mental disconnect which I have and am aware of, is to use a word and then use it again shortly after. Its annoying & I have to constantly go back and recheck. My only excuse this time was that this episode was knocked out in my lunch break with my partner snoring in the other corner of the site office!

The sun set bit I struggled with as well. I was looking for something new as opposed to the usual "dying sun / setting sun / dipped / disappeared / horizon" narrative. There was a more original description in Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilamanjaro" that would have helped, but I could not recall the exact words.

Picky you are not. Its exactly the sort of advice I need. Thank God I do not write poetry & get caught up in the war on the other thread!

Regards
M.

[hillwalker]

What! And miss all the fun?

[Steven Hunley]

Such intersting stuff! Keep posting. Exotic locals are just my cup of tea. Thanks for the cup, don't know how I missed it before.

[MANICHAEAN]

Steve
Thanks for the encouragement.
Regards
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

ONE HALF OF THE TWINS.

The room was unoccupied when Rossow entered, his bags had already been emptied and the contents diligently laid out, or hung away in the spacious inbuilt mahogany receptacles. Sitting on and testing the bed, he removed his shoes & socks and arched his feet on the marble floor. Pulling off his shirt & slipping out of his slacks & pants he made for the shower.

Cold water stung his torso. Soaping himself down he washed away the almost imperceptible clinging body smell that one attains in hot humid climates, irrespective of the lack of any more serious physical exertion than sitting in an air conditioned car and relaxing over dinner. It was the primitive odour of man existing.

Emerging from the shower he had not heard her slip in. The two shaded side lamps were on and she lay on the bed facing him, slender dark hands cradling her chin & long straightened hair falling down across her shoulder blades, barely concealing the obtuse naked angle of her back & the firm globes of a compact backside. He moved forward, visibly aroused.

The night was one of raw sexual exhibitionism on the part of the twin. He in turn responded with a savagery and an intensity he did not know he possessed. With the sweat alternately dripping & mingling from one interchangeable body onto the next, as they respectively endeavoured to outmanoeuvre and gain dominance over the other, she finally climaxed, her limbs breaking into meridian shocks & waning aftershocks of muscle contractions and spasms.

She lay as if dead. Drained limp of all except the ability to maintain a song of soft breathing. The sweet clean smell of exhaustion. He lay awake in a twilight unrest and the moon; filtering its surreal presence through the gap in the drapes, outlined the blended curves & mounds of her body beside him.

[hillwalker]

Good stuff as ever - subtle yet still sensuous.

[MANICHAEAN]

Thanks H.
I'm really enjoying now the whole, for me, relatively new activity of writing. Filtering up old memories & feelings, observing more closely, reading wider, & I hope, more selectively. In the beginning of one of Greene's novels he has a quote, somewhere along the lines; "Take upon thyself as if you were God's spy."

[hillwalker]

Except, of course, that most writers actually get to play God himself.

[loki456]

this is excellent.
thanks for the read, must have missed this post... I will definitely keep in touch.
I do agree though, once you start writing, you tend to read around a lot more. Just to see what new and wonderful ways others portray life and its in/sensibilities.
enjoying this immensely.
thanks again

Loks

[MANICHAEAN]

Thanks Loki456 for your kind comments.

Although its only one aspect of this story, and since we no longer seem to write about the union with God, perhaps writing about the aspect of sex has become the ultimate test for the writer: to communicate the uncommunicable?

But please give me a kick in the butt when I drift into dark eddies and deeper waters.

Regards
M.

[loki456]

haha not at all. shocking the reader just because you can, is definitely a let down. but when you talk about something, that we all think, but dare do we say? I find it a breath of fresh air, even when it becomes a very 'taboo' type feel about it.
I was not lying when I say I'm truly enjoying this ongoing post. you definitely have a way of outlining some aspects of day to day life that we not want to think all too much about.
the sexual encounter you portray in that last post - was not at all graphic in nature - in actuality you said a lot without writing much... definitely the sign of a good piece of lit.

[MANICHAEAN]

THE JU JU MASK.

Rossow slipped noiselessly out of bed & gently lifting the large briefcase from beside the wardrobe he entered the bathroom. Once inside, he retrieved a small flat object, in its turn concealed in a coarse embroided cloth bag. Opening the bathroom door he surveyed the sleeping form on the bed. Slow, methodical breathing. The nadir of infinity. Not a muscle moved. With the grace & fluidity that big men are sometimes endowed, he put the briefcase back in its original place, slipped on his shorts & left the room.

Biston's suite was at the end of the passage. Rossow paused outside, stationary and to one side, lowered his head slightly and listened. Outside in the night the noise of the insects was still audible, a dog howled somewhere across Kumasi town triggering others off in successive canine wailing. Deep from downstairs in the kitchen, a fridge kicked & switched on, humming.

Rossow turned the handle gently, the touch applied by his grip as sensitive as his senses would permit. It swung open noiselessly two inches & on the bed he observed two dormant figures.

Biston lay on his back snoring through an open dry mouth, his arm across his midriff, the sheet up to his navel. One horny foot protruded from the bed edge. Adjacent, Renee (or was it Rosie?) was handcuffed to the head board face down. What appeared like welts on her buttocks were barely perceptable.

Rossow entered in slow movements from the side & drew from the bag an object which he laid beside Biston's face.

It had been drawn a week before from the Accra Police Depository by Emelia. As it lay there Rosso was struck once again by the revulsion it evoked. Composed of a stuffed fabric parody of a mans face, the entombed apertures of mouth, eyes & nostrils were all sealed up with heavy, distinctive black cord stitching. The unhealthy, greasy grey hue of the visage did not engender one to percieve an image of benevolence. That is, despite the cheeks having been splattered and enlivened with the blood of some ritualised, slaughtered cockeral.

Rossow turned to leave, but his eyes met those of the supposedly sleeping twin. He read pain, yet calm in them and she did not scream. He left the room.

[hillwalker]

This is the best bit so far of an enthralling story (and yes, I did enjoy the subtle eroticism of the preceding piece).

Here you have mastered the tension of the situation to perfection, and the story seems to be heading somewhere - not necessarily where the reader thought it was headed a few pages back.

H

[MANICHAEAN]

Don't tell anyone H, but I'm not really sure myself where its going!!!

But then, thats half the fun.

[hillwalker]

Don't tell anyone H, but I'm not really sure myself where its going!!!
But then, thats half the fun.

That's exactly the way I write my short stories. And they never fail to surprise me.

[loki456]

hmmm.... there you go, didn't think he would just leave like that. Touche my dear Manichean....
looking forward to the next page.

[MANICHAEAN]

THE TALK BEFORE DAWN.

Rossow slipped back into his room, too tense to sleep. He went out onto the balcony, ostensibly to think & reflect on what he had just seen.

The body on the bed, seen through the drapes, stirred and with casual abandon, threw an inner thigh and one long dark leg onto what she had anticipated would be the adjacent body of her recent lover.

Realising he was not there & awakened now by the breeze of colder air from the open balcony door, she sat up. Seeing him outside, she slid into a pair of green satin briefs & joined him.

She sat in a chair opposite.

"How now?" she whispered.

Gary smiled inwardly. How to ever understand a woman! An hour ago with total abandon she was unashamedly, even perversely naked. Now, almost as if formally appropriate for the occasion, she had clothed her lower half & yet still exhibited like a proud banner her unadorned breasts across from where he sat.

Gary asked; "What makes you tick Renee?"

"How do you mean?" she said.

"You and your sister act like upper class whores and yet there must be something more?"

"You do not understand whores batouri." she flashed back with anger.

"If so you would never have asked such a question!"

Renee leaned back contemptuously, stung by the suddeness of the earlier rebuke and a pulse beat in her throat, brown and supple in the moonlight. She was exquisite, she was dark, she was deadly. And nothing would ever touch her.

"You do not know much about whores, baturi." she repeated.

"They are always most respectable. Except of course the very cheap ones."

There was a refinement and a sharpness in her voice now and it intimated an impression of concealed intelligence that he had not percieved before. So effectively had she executed, with consummate felicity the role model of a compliant, almost submissive, African woman.

"I do not draw a sharp line between business and sex," she said evenly.

"And you cannot humiliate me. Sex is a net with which I catch fools. Some of these fools are useful and generous. Occasionally one is dangerous."

She paused thoughtfully, "I am beautiful and wicked - and lost."

"Sex is a wonderful thing," Gary responded. "When you don't want to answer questions."

She sighed loosely, slowly half hooded her eyes, then put her hand up almost as a casual dismissive wave.

She gave her head a toss and swung the soft, loose, jet black hair around her cheeks and watched him to see how hard it hit home.

All the dark sheen from her face had gone now. Her cheeks were a little flushed. But behind her eyes, something watched and waited.

She turned her head and looked at him squarely. She shook her head a little again. "Believe me baturi, I'm not worth it - even to sleep with."

"No matter how many lovers a woman may have," she said softly. "there is always one she cannot bear to lose to another woman. I had one once who was the one."

"I must have men, baturi. But the man I loved is dead. I killed him.That man I would not share."

"Obi saved me from being caught & therefore I owe him. And family being family, that includes my sister in his debt as well."

Gary looked at her.

Slim, dark, lovely and smiling now. Utterly beyond the moral laws of this or any world he could imagine.

And yet, the edifice had crumbled slightly. Like a muted whisper, or the subtle awareness of a light breeze on the cheek, there were bits of this jigsaw that were being coerced to assume their allotted positions and thus reveal to Rossow flickerings of the composition reality he was determined to view.

[hillwalker]

This continues to intrigue. Thanks for keeping our appetites sated.

One tiny detail that I did find frustrating as I read this.


"You do not understand whores batouri." she flashed back with anger.

"If so you would never have asked such a question!"

would be better formatted as

"You do not understand whores batouri." she flashed back with anger. "If so you would never have asked such a question!"

There is no need to begin a new paragraph for every line of dialogue, unless the speaker's identity changes. The convention is that all one speaker's dialogue can be contained within the one paragraph - which makes it easier for the reader to identify who the speaker is during a verbatim conversation.

It's a small point, but vital when the reader is trying to keep track of who said what to whom.

H

[MANICHAEAN]

Thanks H.
You are right.
As opposed to continuing to satiate you ravenous reading appetite, I may be obliged to request you to accept a dearth of material for the next few weeks as I will be going on home leave. My grandson pulling my beard & sticking his fingers in my eyes is not exactly conducive to creative writing!
Best regards
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

THE CHINESE MIRROR.

Sam Tan was the smoothest-looking Chinaman that you had ever seen. He talked in a disparaging way like an Englishman and was dressed in a white suit with a silk shirt and black tie. Ostensibly, he was the missing, kidnapped night club owner from Accra, but to anyone who may have been present that evening, he was far removed from that adverse set of circumstances.

He was in a basement room in Kumasi, the door was secured and there were two other persons present. One was an exhausted looking British Ambassador, who for the record was kidnapped. The other was a second Chinaman, except for the fact that he was a mirror image of the Ambassador. Plastic surgery had seen to that, and for now, the new Rob Kretzler was studying even closer, the original version to add further to his repertoire of acquired speech, gestures & mannerisms.

It was a forced dialogue that lay between them, like the breath of a jackel in the company of man. Sam Tan, who the Ambassador had thought was his friend, had betrayed him.

Sam himself, caring little for such sentiments endeavored to treat it all rather superficially.

“Rob, don’t be silly. Just see our point. We require your cooperation. Just talk to my colleague here”.

Betrayal is an ugly word. But then the Ambassador was pragmatic enough to realize that although you may not like evil, it should still be recognized. He was only too aware of his circumstances. He was a prisoner and a lot of work had been put into the unnerving caricature of himself that sat opposite, watching with an intense predatory focus his very being.

[hillwalker]

Slowly I'm guessing where the plot is heading. The story continues to intrigue.

That opening sentence had me scratching my grammatical head (the one I keep in a box under the bed) :

Sam Tan was the smoothest-looking Chinaman that you had ever seen

something tells me this should be 'you have ever seen.' because the reader is not in the same time frame as the characters or the story. Does that makes sense?

H

[MANICHAEAN]

H
I never realised how difficult it is to close the longer, miscellany type of story. The one page endeavours are so much easier to wrap up. You can in many cases almost leave it suspended & let the reader draw his/her own conclusions. I'm not sure whether to just bring this one to the conclusion that has become apparent, or to dip into it from time to time expanding on the different characters.

The jury is still out on the grammer. You are most probably right, as I picked up some bad habits in my earlier years. In fact its difficult in that particular sentence to determine if its in the past, the present, or some kind of neutral zone. Or perhaps its my jet lag kicking in!

[MANICHAEAN]

EAST MEETS WEST.

The real name of Samuel Tan’s colleague in that Kumasi basement, on that particular evening was Han Fei Tzu. Back in China he had occupied many positions ranging from a lecturer, to undertaking itinerant civil engineering work. What was not common knowledge was his graduation in this latter discipline from England quite a few years earlier.

“Yes,” he thought “Civil engineering. Considered mentally but not physically competent. I had to give up the work. Now, I'm an outward facade of all that is distasteful. But then I'm not noble, so my honourable ancestors will not turn over in their graves."

He had not liked the English, but was adept enough to conceal it. For he possessed those Chinese virtues of reserve and patience which sat well upon the immobility of his yellow countenance. Now he was obliged to employ these traits in dealing with the Ambassador seated in front of him. From time to time the latter uttered old-fashioned words which forced him to grope mentally, and of course he could feel the chilling contempt and insolence to his person.

“Ah these English” he thought. “They travelled all over, up and down the world, not to acquire information but rather to leave the impress of their superiority as a race. It was most amusing. They would suffer amazing hardships to hunt the snow-leopard; but in the Temple of Five Hundred Gods they would not take the trouble to ask the name of one!”

The Ambassador knew that his safety lay in pretense. That and the phase of mental activity that men called courage: to summon this energy which barred the ingress of the long cold fingers of fear? He possessed it and immeasurable was the calm evolved from this knowledge. After all public school had been much worse than this!

He knew also that he was getting under the skin of Han, for, unlike Tan, you could sense that he seemed more susceptible to slights, however tangentially they were delivered. Thus Kretzler made sure to play on that breach of Chinese etiquette to wear spectacles while speaking to an equal. The Chinese invariably remove their glasses when conversing. One thing is quite certain: they do not like being looked at through a medium of glass or crystal, and normally it would cost a foreigner nothing to fall in with this harmless prejudice.

Whereas Tan was but a caricature of a Chinaman, having wallowed so long in the lower pits of Western surroundings, Kretzler felt that this image of himself opposite, had been at some stage in his life one of the literati. That likely meant his mental makeup was based on the deathless philosophy of Confucius, which, summed up, signified that the end of all philosophy is nothing.

“It is strange,” he reflected “That men of education and apparent good birth will invariably fall the swiftest and the lowest.”

[MANICHAEAN]

THE CATALYST.

As Obi Biston emerged from his sleep on that bright African morning, he had at first a difficulty in comprehending that which lay before him on the pillow. Like a man who awakes in a strange bed, in a new country after a long flight, time was suspended. Then the senses are gradually marshaled into some semblance of order and mental coordination kicks in. The hideousness of the shock hit him at such a moment. He tried to mouth a sound, but nothing came. He threw himself backwards with all the uncoordinated force his body could muster, away from the mask. Backwards he jostled and heaved himself, over the obstacle of Rosie’s adjacent body. Falling off the opposite side of the bed, he hit his head on the floor and scrambling to his feet, threw open the bedroom door and ran screaming naked down the corridor.

Gary Rossow met him and restrained with some difficulty, his shaking torso. He perceived the frenzied eyes and the streams of sweat that ran down Obi’s face. Renee appeared from Rossow’s bedroom and also attempted to calm him. By now, the whole household was awake and came rushing up the stairs, an incoherent babbling mass of servants, directionless & unable to comprehend. Rossow quietly proceeded to Biston’s bedroom. Rosie still lay tied down, a knowing expression on her face. He untied her & gently drew a robe across her shoulders. She looked at the mask that lay on the bed and she understood perfectly what it was and who had put it there. But she was calm and self-contained. “A tough lady,” Gary thought. He took the mask and wrapping it in a towel took it back to his room. It had done its work & he was now ready to take any advantage of Obi’s shocked vulnerability, to uncover the information he had till now been striving to obtain.

A week later though, things had not transgressed quite as originally hoped. Despite the pot having been well and truly stirred, some strange developments and inter relationships had floated to the surface. Rosie, for a start, said not a word on the subject of that night, whilst at the same time growing closer to Rossow. A shared unbroken secret existed between them. She was, Rossow was soon to discover, a much softer version of her more world-wise cynical sister Renee. The servants, as was to be expected, discussed and speculated in hushed whispers, but the biggest change was in Obi himself. He withdrew to all extents and purposes from all that which was around him and he began to drink heavy. Rosie in the meantime moved out from his bed & joined that of her twin sister in Rossow’s. The latter of course was in no condition to complain about such an arrangement, but the morose silence of Obi whenever approached he found disconcerting. He had hoped to open him up, but the aspired effects of the mask catalyst were not materializing.

As the days progressed Rossow was able to perceive Obi’s remorseless decline as exhibited in the deadness of his face, the puffed eyelids and the bloodshot whites. He knew the significance: the red corpuscle was being burnt out by the fires of alcohol. Rossow was more or less familiar with alcoholic types. In the genuinely dissipated face there was always a suggestion of slyness in ambush, peeping out of the wrinkles around the eyes and the lips. Yet upon Obi’s face there were no wrinkles, only shadows, in the hollows of the cheeks and under his lower lids.

Rosie tried to approach him also, but with even less success. She was able to note the little beads of sweat under the cracked lower lip. He was in misery; he was paying each day for the preceding night's debauch. His clothes were still smartly pressed and his linen white. The servants saw to that. There was though something tragic in the grim silent manner of his drinking. Shot after shot went down his throat, but never an expression changed his face.

For Obi, the alcohol did not cheer, but then it was never meant to. Neither did it fortify him with false courage. It simply enveloped him in a mist of unreality. It offered relief and his brain, stupefied by the fumes, grew dull, and conscience lost its edge to bite. He thought back to his African roots, the primitive beliefs in the world of witchcraft that were in him since childhood in the little village he had grown up in. So different from that of his Chinese associate Samuel Tan with whom he had worked for so many years. He remembered Sam telling him once of dead animals left on the red tiled roofs of Canton in China. "Pigs and fish,” Sam had explained. “To fend off the visitations of the devil. After all,” he had continued, “We Chinese have the right idea. The devil is on top, not below. We aren't between him and heaven; he is between us and heaven!" Obi felt that it was so illustrative and characteristic of that race, who pay such unbounded reverence to the powerful dead who they felt, could harm them. He knew that in every Chinese house stand small wooden tablets, bearing the names of deceased parents, grandparents, and earlier ancestors. Plates of meat and cups of wine are on certain occasions set before these tablets, in the belief that the spirits of the dead occupy the tablets and enjoy the offerings. “But we Africans,” he thought “Are so similar in the journey we undertake. We all must, when dead, be buried in that compound in which we were born, alongside those who went before us.”

One evening towards the end of the week, Obi sat motionless in the chair by the window, whilst the others sat quietly at dinner. He wiped the sweat from his chin and forehead. His hand shook so violently that he dropped his handkerchief; and he let it lie on the floor because he dared not stoop. He rose to charge his glass from the sideboard, but there came a noise of crashing glass. He had knocked over the siphon and looking bewildered, steadied himself, then walked out of the dining room. Except for the dull eyes and the increasing pallor of his erstwhile dark face, there was nothing else to indicate that he was deep in liquor. He did not stagger in the least. And in this fact Rossow sensed, lay his danger. The man who staggers, whose face is flushed, whose attitude is either noisily friendly or truculent, has some chance; liquor bends him eventually. But men of the Obi type, who walk straight, they break swiftly and inexplicably.

Later that night he hung himself and in the morning Rossow cut him loose from the cord that was stretched across the room. His body suspended with the head tilted forward at a limp angle from the self applied worldly restraint. The eyes were infinity and the chair lay, like death's accessory sprawled across the floor.

Sometimes we feel we have destinies, when we have only destinations.

[MANICHAEAN]

NEW HORIZONS.

From then on the pace of events quickened. The twins & Rossow attended Obi’s funeral and a notebook was found in the deceased’s possessions containing addresses in and around Accra and Kumasi. Police Sergeant Emelia Banfo back in the capital was assigned a discreet investigative role back there, and Rossow on one pretext or another dug around locally. One entry that caught his eye was under the name of Tan, the missing night club owner & at the side, added at a later date in pencil & bracketed, the name of one Han Fei Tzu. This address was checked by the local Ghanaian CID and the property was found to be substantial yet empty. In fact abandoned would have been a better description as it had showed signs of recent occupation, inclusive a lockable basement with a slept in bed and other items indicating usage. At the same time Samuel Tan turned up, or more correctly, floated up to the surface at the port of Tema on the Gulf of Guinea. He had been strangled & the coroner put the time of his demise at a time when Emelia had noted that a Chinese tanker had set sail for Macau.

About six weeks later, the aforementioned tanker arrived in Macau and from there, heavily sedated, the British Ambassador was transported under great secrecy to the ancient Chinese quarter of Canton, or Guangdong as it is known in contempory parlance. In the daytime the streets of ancient Canton are filled with the original confusion of mortal existence—human beings in quest of food. There is; turmoil, shouts, jostling and milling congestions that suddenly break and flow in opposite directions. And as Kretzler became conscious, he perceived the ceaseless undercurrent of a more basic sound—the guttural Chinese tongue. That, and his new prison. He had been drugged for the whole of the voyage from Ghana and it was only now that he was coming to terms with his new surroundings.

Outside, the air in the narrow street, which was not eight feet wide, swarmed with smells impossible to define; but occasionally the pleasantly pungent odour of Chinese incense drifted in. Converging roofs shut out all but a hand's breadth of the sky for sunshine was rare at this location. If it came at all, it was fleeting. There were streets that boiled and eddied with yellow human beings, who worshipped strange gods, ate strange foods, and diffused strange suffocating smells. These were less like streets than labyrinths, hewn through an eternal twilight. It was only when one came into a square that daylight had a positive quality. To a stranger free to roam, interest would have stumbled rather than leaped from object to object. Rows of roasted duck, brilliantly varnished; strange vegetables; baskets of melon seed and water-chestnuts; men working in teak and black wood; fan makers, eggs preserved in what appeared to be petrified muck; bird's nests and shark fins. He would have glimpsed Chinese penury when he had entered a square given over to fishmongers. Carp, tench, and roach were so divided that even the fins, heads and fleshless spines were sold. There were doorways to peer into, dim cluttered holes with shadowy forms moving about, potters and rug-weavers. Pick up trucks weaved their way through with blocks of jade, on the way to the cutters —white jade, splashed and veined with translucent emerald green.

Through this crowd proceeded Ssu-ma Chien. He wore a long coat, and a hat with a turned up brim. Balanced on his nose were enormous tortoise-shell spectacles. A ragged gray moustache drooped from the corners of his mouth and a ragged wisp of whisker hung from his chin. He was that rare flower in Red China, an independent intellectual. At a time when others of his ilk were under house arrest or worse, he was valued in the State for his independent thinking. His voluntary defection many years ago from Chang Kai Sheik to Chairman Mao was a perceived testament to his loyalty. To the authorities, he served a singular purpose in the scheme of progress, that of a trusted elder. He was also assigned at this juncture to be the current minder and evaluator of the captive British Ambassador, a task which he looked forward to with interest and anticipation. It added a new dimension to his life, for until recently he had only indulged his whimsical fancies in being a lecturer at a university where sparks of free thinking were rarely encountered. Other times he posed as a Canton guide. If he took a fancy to you, he invited you to the house for tea, bitter and yellow and served in little cups without handles.

He was tall, slender, and suave. He spoke English with astonishing facility and with a purity which often embarrassed his tourists. He made his headquarters at the Victoria on the Sha-mien, and generally met the Hong-Kong packet in the morning. You left Hong-Kong at night, by way of the Pearl River, and arrived in Canton the next morning. Ssu-ma Chien presented his black-bordered card to such individuals as seemed likely to require his services. He was a philosopher. Usually his charges bored him with their interrogative chatter. And being a Chinaman in blood and instinct, he despised all spinster tourists; they were parasites. A woman was born to have children, particularly male children.

In the evening to reach the Sha-mien—and particularly the Hotel Victoria—one crossed a narrow canal, always choked with rocking sampans over and about which swarmed men and women and children. At sunset the swarming abruptly ceased; even the sampans appeared to draw closer together, with the quiet of water-fowl. There was everywhere at night in China the original fear of darkness.

But for the moment he was proceeding to meet his new charge, that is if the traffic would allow him. Ssu-ma Chien turned over in his head the options open to him in how to approach & handle the Englishman he was about to meet. He had been reported as being “difficult” in Ghana. It was reasonable to presume that by the position he had attained that he was educated and cultured and understood, albeit it through force of circumstances the norms of Chinese customs and acceptable behaviour. Thus Chien planned to treat him initially as a Chinese visitor. Being a prisoner he could not be received by definition at the front door, but he could be conducted as a gesture by his host to a reception-room, being careful to see that he was always slightly in advance. The act of sitting down would be simultaneous, so that neither party would be left standing whilst the other was seated. Likewise if he chose to be attentive, he might take a cup of tea from his servant's hands and himself arrange it for his guest. He would enquire of family, or more to the point children, for to Ssu-ma Chien women took no part in Chinese social entertainments. It was not even permissible to enquire after the wife of one's guest. Her very existence to be ignored. A man may talk with pleasure about his children, especially if his quiver was well stocked with boys.

Thus mentally prepared, the Chinaman made his way down the narrow street to address his task.

[loki456]

ahh dear friend... Hunley and you are by far my most treasured of story tellers on this forum. you are definitely favored gems I have been pleasantly surprised to come across.

This tale is unbelievable - the twists, the turns, you definitely always have me second guessing. your devotion to the ongoing of this thread is a testament to your skill as a writer and a pleasure to continually read.

I'm not a man of very many praises, so I hope you take this elation as a big warm pat on the back and a strong manly handshake.

[MANICHAEAN]

Thanks Loks. Your kind words are much appreciated.

I had in fact not touched this story for some time & then I came back to it, ostensibly to wrap it up. But I found in the process, that I had killed off one character and come up with more, along with an additional venue backdrop!

Who knows. The Chinaman who looks like the British Anbassador might be judged to have been too traumatised in Ghana & should get a new posting to Australia? Imagine the possibilities there!
Best wishes.
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

THE RELEASE.

The missing British Ambassador, Rob Kretzler turned up suitably bedraggled & confused on an Accra lay-by one early morning in June, at the same time that his erstwhile night club owner associate, Sam Tan floated up dead in a harbour further along the coast. After some initial confusion, in which a white man was observed by early morning commuters stumbling along the tarmac, the police were contacted. A squad car arrived & the driver concerned quickly recognized beneath the facial stubble & unkempt appearance, the features incorporated in the missing person’s picture that had adorned station walls throughout Ghana over the last two months.

Routine official procedures quickly kicked into gear, with the Ambassadour being taken to a private hospital under close guard to assess his medical condition, the Embassy was informed, London was informed, the papers had their headlines and eventually the individual concerned was returned to the more than adequate bosom of his wife.

This final event was of course, the crux & litmus test of the entire deception. Would those who knew him so intimately, recognize the man that had been withdrawn so abruptly from their lives and who now stood before them. Upon eventually arriving back at his official residence in the diplomatic sector of Accra, he dismissed his driver & aide & moved with purposeful strides towards the wife at the door whom he recognized somewhat perversely from a photograph previously given him by his Chinese masters in Kumasi. She rushed forward & threw herself at him, holding him close to her in that manner that loved ones use to express happiness & relief whilst gaining tactile reassurance in the reality of the person they hold.

As the weeks went by and the initial whirl of these dramatic events subsided, a more normal routine was established. The British after all do not like a fuss. The Chinaman, to all extents and purposes started to breathe more normally, having attained the impression that his impersonation of the role of Rob Kretzler, Her Majesty’s Ambassador to Ghana had been successfully executed.

But there were changes.

Not so much noticed among work staff at the Embassy, as he had cultivated a familiar tendency to alternate between a gruff, taciturn persona to that of a more relaxed bon homie style, dependent purely upon what the particular occasion required.

No, the main change was in his sex life, or to put it more correctly, in that of his wife’s. She was still considered in many circles to be a handsome and intelligent woman. Thus, when the returned Ambassador first surprised his wife in the shower one morning as she soaped herself down and took her from behind, this was completely out of character. Not that she minded. In fact she found it quite an exciting development. Their love life over the years had gone somewhat stale as the years of marriage had piled up & it had seemed at the time, that the Ambassador had indulged more his taste for brandy & his association with that dubious nightclub character Tan, than an appreciation of his wife’s physical talents. Before the kidnap, their stale liaisons in the bedroom had been a physical union of sorts. It was not so mundane a routine as keeping in time to the church bells on a Sunday afternoon after the roast, but then at the same time, it had never been something to be mentioned in dispatches either. Now however, Rob appeared to require a regular session every morning before dawn, and he was not adverse either to returning home unannounced at lunch time to put her through her paces again. She smiled inwardly at this attention, for she was in fact flattered at still being perceived desirable, and she put it down to the trauma he had suffered and his re-evaluation of what was now important in his life.

For Tzu, nothing could have been further from the truth. Back home in China he had looked with both fascination & distain upon those European women with their withdrawn reserve & haughty demeanors. Now, he was in a position to avail himself with selfish abandon of the previously unattainable, and the object of this attention had no option as a wife but to comply. The disconcerting thing was though, that even after the initial shock of sessions of an imaginative variety on his part, she did not resent his attentions, but participated with endeavors that were both commendable and which displayed a side of her nature which she had never previously explored.

[hillwalker]

I have kept track with this but refrained from commenting on the latest installments..... until now.

It's a tour de force - and I'm certain with some fleshing out you could craft a novel from it. Personally I found it increasingly difficult to follow as a short story, mainly because there are so many character portrayals and locality changes, but so little intervening action.

That's not to say it's not a clever story, nor badly written. There's just a lot of scope for expansion that would make this a more worthwhile read. I suppose the one thing it lacks is flow. It's like watching a DVD on fast-forward - you get the gist of the plot and the highlights but it leaves you feeling there could have been more to it.

H

[MANICHAEAN]

H.
I missed your input and critique. In fact I thought I might have offended you in some way. This whole thing started out under the guise of "Short Story Sharing" which it certainly is not. Neither is it my magnum opus, nor a light hearted miscelleny. The nearest parallel I can think of is that it is like "Topsy?" in "Alice in Wonderland?" It just grew!

I have not been taking it seriously enough, having never written a novel before and quite honestly I think I would find the prospect quite daunting. Its now reached the stage where I can either: wrap it up, having enjoyed the ride; continue in the same vein which its limitless due to the variables, characters & locations involved; or take early retirement & deal with it in a more mature manner. But I do take on board what you are telling me.
Best regards
M.

[hillwalker]

H.
I missed your input and critique. In fact I thought I might have offended you in some way.

Gosh - no! I've just been very busy with the real world during the last few weeks - you know what it's like.

As for writing a novel - well, I think you'd do a great job based on what you have shared with us on here. As you say, at present it's neither a thread of short stories nor a novel. But it's a good basis for a magnum opus.....

H

[MANICHAEAN]

DECEPTIVE APPEARANCES.

To all outward appearances the case was solved. Chief Inspector Kwesi Jay of the Ghanaian Police claimed credit for the rescue of the missing British Ambassador, even though the latter had more “turned up” than been retrieved from harm’s way. Tan’s murderer’s remained unknown and at large, but that seemed small beer in the scheme of things.

Rob Munster, Head of Scotland Yard was pleased in a good result for his statistics and even Obama mumbled a few sentences of benediction at a press conference. Mind you, at this stage of his presidency he needed all the friends he could get and thus, unconvincing ghosts of the “Special Relationship” crept tentatively back into diplomatic parlance.

Of the small-bit, front line players to the drama, Detective Inspector Rossow was not adverse to being recalled back to the UK. The reality of maintaining one African woman police sergeant and two ex night club strippers in his bed was proving untenable, if not dangerous for his career prospects. You can only take being a team player so far!

In the meantime, Han Fei Tzu, now to all appearances the released British Ambassador, continued to dig deep into the secrets open to him and to pass them back on a regular basis to his Chinese masters.

And then of course, the biggest deception and betrayal of them all was a man captive in Canton. Rob Kretzler had been admirably endowed for a diplomatic career because he had originally possessed extraordinary vitality which gave him the confidence to gamble well; common sense, an excellent brain and a permanent but controlled scepticism. These, coupled with a lack of morals, an ability to make people like him without ever liking or trusting them in return; and an incapacity for either remorse or pity, had carried him to where he was now.

And where he was now was lying in a pair of striped Chinese silk pyjamas that covered his shrunken old man’s chest, his bloated little belly, his now useless equipment that had once been his pride, and his small flabby legs, lying on a bed unable to sleep because he finally had remorse.

[hillwalker]

Finally all those loose ends are neatly tied up..... presumably.

I shall have to read it through again to reacquaint myself with the plot but no complaints.

H

[MANICHAEAN]

Ha Ha.

Just could not kill the beast!

Dipped into it again on my home leave.

M.

[MANICHAEAN]

FALLING ILL


Kretzler’s interrogations by Ssu-ma Chien had not got off to a good start. Both were of that stage in a maturity of education and experience that in other circumstances they might have been friends. But as it was, the attempt by the Chinaman to charm the British Ambassador was, upon reflection, facile in its intention and ineffective in its execution. Their talks now were more a convention of cordiality, and, short of a more brutal approach, Chien realised that little was to be gained by reasoning or inducements.

Then the British Ambassador fell ill.

A violent fever developed. Thanks to the generous assistance of the kidnap and its associated stresses, the malady progressed more rapidly than could have been expected, and when the local doctor arrived, he found, on feeling the sick man's pulse, that in his opinion there was nothing to be done except attend the patient and try to aid him in riding it through.

Did Kretzler hear these fatal words? We know not, for he continued in a delirious condition. Visions incessantly appeared to him, each stranger than the other. Now he saw Tan in the night club, and berated him for his treachery and ordered him to leave, but he seemed to him to be always under the bed with the parody that was his image; and he cried every moment to Chien and the doctor to pull one of them from under his quilt. Then he inquired why cheap flip flops lay on the floor when he had new Italian shoes?

Next he fancied that he was standing before the Foreign Secretary, listening to a thorough dressing-down and saying, "Forgive me, Sir" but at last he began to curse, uttering expletives of the most basic lineage and crudity, such that Chien was shocked, never in his life having heard such vehemence, and more so as these words followed directly after the words "Forgive me Foreign Secretary."

Later on he talked utter nonsense, of which nothing could be made, all that was evident being that these incoherent words and thoughts hovered forever about one thing, his betrayal by Tan.

For over a week he hovered in and out of delirium but he did not die.

Chien, on the orders of his masters had him transferred to a private room at the local hospital. His throat was swollen hard and seemed shut up hard so that he could not swallow, but not before he addressed Chien one day with the words; “A man alone has got no bloody f---ing chance.” He shut his eyes. It had taken him a long time to get it out and it had taken him all of his life to learn it.

He did survive. Exhausted, thinner and unshaven he emerged back into consciousness. Someone lifted his head and adjusted the pillow. Kretzler saw a Chinese nurse with a fresh complexion and a pair of dark eyes.

That moment decided his fate.

[MANICHAEAN]

HOSPITAL BED:

Her name was Liang Tai-tai and at first she had been perturbed at having to attend this “kwei lo“. His European features she disliked; the long nose, and the eyes blue, strange and hollow set in a florid face. It was alien to her discernment.

She was from the north of China and had lived in her early life in the Manchu family of Tang within the Tartar city of Nanking. Like so many, she had not so much embraced, as survived the revolution of Mao Tse Tung and all that it had embodied. She remembered well the privations of hunger and insecurity that those turbulent times had entailed. In addition there had been the drunken, brutal husband she had been forced to marry, the female child she had produced and the humiliations and desperations she had endured to bring her and the child through this, one of life’s trial’s, to the other side. The husband had long gone now and that was not to be regretted. But the child had become spoilt and difficult as her mother had studied to become a nurse and had pulled this small unit of a family up to the stage where at least there was a regular monthly income and a small flat subsidised by the hospital.

She observed this foreigner with the fever to whom she had been assigned. His frame was wasted from the illness and the almost prison pallor of his skin, lay well in accordance with the stubble of an unshaven chin and throat.

She had a certain sympathy with him despite his alienism, for she empathised with his suffering as she did with all persons in her care.

There are women that being quiet and withdrawn, lend an element of mysteriousness to their outward appearance and many in the hospital found this to be so in her case. That, and the fact that she came from a distinctly different part of China and was therefore regarded as provincial and not quite one of their own by the doctors and staff.
Not being part of any group consequently meant not being additionally influenced by persons indulging the ever present prejudices against those, like the English patient, who were so obviously not Chinese.

She was by instinct and necessity, a child of survival. Girls in China had little option. Not only had she fought for her girl child, she had, like so many disadvantaged grasped with desperation every opportunity of education and the prospects it had offered. After nursing school, she had realised the advantages of learning English, and this she had done. Hence her present assignment to the foreigner. But also, there had grown in her soul a love of all that had grace and beauty and truth. So, all pretensions of future relationships being put to one side, she read in the evenings of the Chinese poets and sages and it was as if like a reassuring fairy story to a child.

The memories of her times of affliction were put to one side as she lost herself in the generations of a language that suffused the warmth and beauty of a time when a China existed that was stable, and peace lay upon the soul of all from the lowest coolie to the Emperor himself.

When he opened his eyes that day and looked into hers, there was no hostility that passed between them. Both were curious, but not indifferent.

[MANICHAEAN]

THE SPECIAL RELATIONSHIP.


A slim black index finger lightly tapped the top of the Oval Office desk. The incumbent was uneasy. He had been briefed that morning on how the Chinese were developing a stealth aircraft, and indications were, that significant and highly secret elements of American technology had been incorporated in its design.

It was not in his nature to shrink from, or to rail at limitations in these “global” days of politics, economics, terrorism, and now, security concerns. He had read somewhere in one of those academic briefings that were deemed necessary to keep him abreast of contemporary thinking, that there exits a school of thought whose belief is that we are inextricably bound to a plot and God forces us, according to his intention, without free will, and whose only importance is that somewhere, at some time, we help to furnish the scene in which a living character lives and speaks.

Obama did not subscribe to that mantra. To many of his countrymen, as well as the world, he was still a mystery and that also encompassed whatever religious truths he might have adhered to. There was an arrogance in his nature that was perhaps a requisite to undertaking the responsibilities he had so eagerly sought.

To his mind, like that of his predecessor George Bush; there were, put simplistically, the good guys, the bad guys and those in the twilight zone. With regimes like North Korea and Iran, it was straightforward. They were in your face hostile and could be dealt with as such. China was more subtle. It was ambitious, deceptive, secretive & manipulative.

He pondered that recently, there had been a number of significant breaches in US security. Somehow they were getting their hands, not so much on the cookies, but were gorging without restraint and invitation into the meat and veg of classified material as well.

Which brought his thinking around to the “twilight zone” partners, mainly European. Of the main players; Berlusconi he regarded as a likeable fool more than a threat, Sarcozy was falling over himself to please and gain a place at the main table, and Germany was docile these days. Which left the British.

He had, early on in his presidency made overt moves to distance himself from the so called “special relationship”. Churchill’s bust in the White House had been returned to UK shores and PM Gordon Brown had not been invited over at the first opportunity for cosy chats and photo ops. Cameron, the latest Prime Minister was more to his taste, but he sensed a concealed touch of steel in his nature. Instinctively he was aware of an almost pagan undercurrent of superiority that these Brits adopted. They had ruled so much of the world prior to the rise of American material and strategic power that one almost sensed the serpentine awareness that they had of their perceived political and international maturity.

“If there was a serious leak and it looked increasingly likely there was, it could be from the British side” he thought.

But he had initial difficulty linking up a British/Chinese connection. True the British had vast knowledge of all of South East Asia from their colonial times, but where could be the weak link now? Perhaps an ex Hong Kong person now resident in the UK, perhaps in one of their embassies?

He realised that he was indulging in non conclusive speculation and taking his feet off the desk whilst adjusting his teleprompter slight of the head, he leaned forward.
He pushed the buzzer on the intercom.

“Yes Mr President”

“Ask Kevin Walsh to come and see me please, along with Peter Davies.”

“Yes Mr President, straight away.”

Walsh & Davis were respectively Head of the CIA and Mainland China Intelligence.

[everyadventure]

Wow. What a thread!

As always, you did a superb job of creating the setting, reading your work is like going on vacation.

There were a lot of characters, and I have to say I had a bit of trouble visualizing some of the men. The women, however... you are clearly appreciative of and attend to every detail when it comes to your female characters!

An enjoyable read; I'm glad I got to read it through from beginning to end without having to wait for you to write it like everyone else :)

[MANICHAEAN]

Dear Everyadventure
Thanks for your persistence in getting through what is becoming more of a tome and less of a short story every time I dip into it. Can never quite kill the beast! Might I prevail upon you to take your next holiday in "Redemption Song" which guarantees plenty of sunshine.
Best wishes
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

THE PRIME MINISTER:

"The European Community is being run in a thoroughly un-British way," exclaimed Prime Minister Cameroon to the Cabinet Permanent Under Secretary, Sir Charles Duff.

"I blame the French. What is it about those people that they are so intransigent in EU negotiations. Their values are all wrong. It's almost as if it is unthinkable for a Frenchman to arrive at middle age without having achieved a dose of syphilis and the Croix de le Légion d' honneur".

The PUS stood trimming and comporting himself before the PM with a solicitude, which was chiefly benevolent. Duff's advocacy was crucial. He was one of those good-looking, grand-mannered officials who could exercise great influence once he had gained trust, but was realistic enough to look upon a certain mass of disappointment as the natural preface to all political realisations.

"We must maintain an element of practicality in this PM. After all, if it is the agricultural policy that we are specifically referring to, we all know how the French farmers can bring down their government if they see their subsidies being encroached upon."

"Hurrmph," from the PM. "It's amazing Charles how the word practical is nearly always the last refuge for" ignore the problem," but let's move on. Whats this mornings status with the US?"

"Well PM, now President Obama is back in the hot seat, he's got his hands full as you are aware, with the Fiscal Cliff deadline of the 31st December. if criticism is to be made, the infighting in Washington with the Senate is just as acrimonious as what you have just experienced after returning from Brussels."

"Never criticize the Americans Charles. They have the best political taste that money can buy."

Both men smiled.

"What about the newly appointed Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party? Can never remember, nor pronounce his name."

"Xi Jinping is his name PM, pronounced phonetically I am told as "Shee."

"What's he like, character and all that? Any assessments yet?"

"I'm told PM, from diplomatic sources and from those that have met him, that he is a man of strong oriental traits of character with unshakable assurance and control whose
courtesy in no way hides from us an implacable ruthlessness. You should be able to hit it off with him no doubt".

The PM looked at Sir Charles Duff with a mild indication that he did not like his manners and the PUS reverted to being a mercer of politeness and superfluous aspirates; yet thinking inwardly that no matter how great ones triumphs or how tragic ones defeats, that approximately one billion Chinese people couldn't care less.

The PM comported himself more by pulling on his shirt sleeves.

"You know Charles, the Rubicon, was a very unimpressive stream to look at".

He said this strangely enough with an assurance of one intimately associated with the tributary in question.

"It's significance lies entirely in certain invisible conditions. I've a feeling with China that it's a metaphorical waterway crossing, that we as a nation, would do well to be prepared for. The Chinese are already flexing their muscles with our ally Japan and likewise being contenscious with the Philippine Government in the South China Seas. I think it prudent that the Home Secretary and the Security Services produce an update brief on the status quo."

The PUM having nodded and agreeing to have it executed, the daily briefing then broke up. No 10 Downing Street settled down to it's daily routine of; the ringing of telephones, subdued conversations and non-stop comings and goings, with doors throughout the building opening and shutting furtively as if in a bedroom farce.

Cameroon sat quietly pleased with his initiative regards the Chinese. It would no doubt earn him credit with Obama for pro-active thinking, and even miff French President Hollande along with that European lot. Where he had to be circumspect was in the security aspects, for intelligence was the last taboo of British politics. There was a bizarre requirement that it must never be mentioned officially, akin to the Victorian belief that civilised life might crumble if human procreation were mentioned in public.

In Britain the activities of the intelligence and security services had always been regarded in much the same light as intra-marital sex. Everyone knew that it went on and was quite content that it should, but to speak, write or ask questions about it was regarded as extremely bad form. So far as official government policy was concerned, the British security and intelligence services did not exist. Enemy agents were found under gooseberry bushes and intelligence was brought by the storks. If the PM was ever questioned in the House on security matters arising out of his position, his answers were invariably expected to be uniformly uninformative.

[MANICHAEAN]

THE PAYMASTER GENERAL:

The Home Secretary George St James was that day, smiling the smile he reserved for particularly tiresome people.

He remembered back to the formation of the present government. Via other sources he had at the time been informed, of how the Permanent Undersecretary at the Home Office, Sir Charles Cunningham had phoned the the Director General of MI5, Jonathan Evans to tell him that the new Home Secretary would be himself, but that the PM proposed to transfer responsibility for security to Albert Riggs as Paymaster General, (in effect minister without portfolio). Evans and Cunningham had apparently both seen "substantial objections to, (in other words, were appalled by) the PMs plan which would have thrown the whole Home Office Warrant system, on which the Security Service depended, into disarray.

The decision on this specific responsibility had however been subsequently reversed, but Riggs, a former colonel in the Colonial Service Education Corps in it's palmy days, had still maintained his position as an unofficial emissary of the PM, keeping him up to date with plotting within, and sometimes outside the party, as well as with sexual and other irregularities on the benches which might erupt into public scandals.

Rigg's passion was secrets and he was at his happiest in the twilight world of spies and
counter-spies and viewed his fellow MPs with the same ferocious suspicion as he would have lavished on an accredited agent of the KGB. He thrived in an over-imaginative world of malevolent spymasters, intricate trade craft and cold-eyed betrayal.

Today was one of those days when Riggs payed an occasional Home Office visit during which it was his practice to deliver cryptic messages. To the Home Secretary,the half-comic, half-sinister Albert Riggs, though nominally Paymaster-General, was in fact as a licensed scavenger in Whitehall dustbins and interferer in security matters. To St James, based on previous visits, the cryptic messages of Riggs increasingly came to refer back to previous ones which had passed over his head, and thus the crypticism had become compounded.

He felt that it was prudent to roll with whatever was said, particulary as nothing ever seemed to follow from it. But he could not refrain from disapproval in that the PMs eye of reason saw a probability of mental sustenance in the shape of this individuals gossip.

Riggs entered, was greeted and sat opposite St James.

"You know the matter I talked to you about last time," Riggs began.

"It hasn't moved much, but I'll keep watching it."

The Home Secretary nodded sagely, not having a clue regards the subject under discussion. He hoped that by appearing to concur, his visitor would go away satisfied and leave him in peace.

However Riggs, in presenting a fine range of conjecture and pathetic hopefulness, was not finished.

"Have you Home Secretary, read the novel "Ralph" by John Stonehouse?"

"No, I must confess that I am not acquainted with it," replied St James, "Why?"

"Well," commenced Riggs, " As you are no doubt aware, the only British politician (so far as is known) to have acted as a foreign agent while holding ministerial office was John Stonehouse, who served in the Wilson governments of 1964-70, without cabinet rank I might add. He was recruited by the StB after falling victim to a honey trap during a visit to Czechoslovakia in the late 1950s. He subsequently wrote what was presumably an autobiographic novel called "Ralph" . I've taken the liberty of bringing you a copy, but would caution that it be kept away from female eyes."

"Thank you so much Paymaster General, I'm much obliged for your kindness and will ensure it is locked away in my top drawer."

Riggs looked pleased.

"It's about a Senior British civil servant in the European Commission who is entrapped by a seductive Lotte of East German intelligence. Apparently, I'm reliably informed that she was one of their best operators, but what she did was strictly in the line of duty. Let me read you an extract that I've highlighted for you."

The Home Secretary groaned inwardly but was powerless to intervene.

Riggs leaned forward, the book opened on his knee, pursed his lips and began;

"I enjoyed my last evening with Lotte, in which, after initial foreplay she sent sensations of joy to every crevice of my brain. It was only after one last "magnificent thrust", that I noticed our reflections on a suspiciously positioned oval mirror on the ceiling".

"What do you think so far Home Secretary?"

"Fascinating," he replied, perhaps too glibly. "I think it has an exhilarating flavour and I trust that by incorporating it's scope into your enquiries, you convert it into a complete and finished work of art that we can all learn lessons from.

St James could not however help but speculate mentally, that the book would likely involve the constant "hitching up" of lower garments which, however popular in transpontine dramas, could not but be considered an extremely awkward habit. It would also, going on what he had heard so far, be a strong contender for the Literary Review's Bad Sex Award.

[MANICHAEAN]

CHINA MOLE:

The meeting, later that day in the same office, between the Home Secretary and MI5 was of an entirely different standard.

Jonathan Evans the Director General had joined the Service in 1980 immediately after graduating from Bristol University in classical studies, and with an oval face and balding dome, one could not but be somewhat unnerved by the fixity and intensity of his stare, combined with the relaxed demeanour in his body language. There was almost something of the Jesuit about him.

George St James had decided to approach the meeting in a tangential manner, and chose as a consequential prelude to discuss firstly; security threats in general, Soviet threats in particular and then move onto the Chinese brief required from him by the PM.

"Thank you for coming DG and how are things in the Service at the moment?"

It was almost as if the weather was about to be discussed, instead of national security.

Evans began cautiously.

"The success of a security service Home Secretary, is better judged by things that do not happen (which are necessarily unquantifiable) than by things that do. Unfortunately there is a passion these days by management consultants for performance indicators. The fact that we have not for some time now sustained significant terrorist attacks on mainland Britain is just such an example of how difficult it is to use these performance indicators, or "numerical measures of achievement" as they are currently termed to measure that success."

"Quite, quite," responded the Home Secretary, "So how about something similar regards
infiltration akin to the Cambridge Five as they were known?"

Again, Evans was cautious and circumspect, building up his response from the foundations.

"Much of what the Five achieved Home Secretary was in spite of, rather than because of, their handling by Moscow Centre.Of the traitors concerned, Blunt was almost everything the media then hoped for in a Soviet mole: a traitor from a good public school and Trinity College, Cambridge, with a record of sexual deviance (by the standards of the times) and connections with the Royal Family as the Surveyor of the Queen's pictures.

It was not until August 1982, that thanks to intelligence from the defector Oleg Gordievsky, that we finally identified John Cairncross as the Fifth Man in the Ring of Five. But in this case, far from increasing the furore in the media, it caused some disappointment, for though a Trinity graduate, his background as the son of a Scottish shopkeeper was modest and he contained no connection with the Royal Family.

Since then we have had many misinformed informants regards Soviet moles, but nothing on the same scale of significance or credibility. I think it's about as realistic as it can be, to say that regards Soviet activities we now have the ability to play it long because of our
penetrative coverage and we can be reasonably confident that we can control the risk."

"And the Chinese, how do they fit into the picture?" asked St James softly, homing in on his main target.

"Chinese espionage in Britain is more difficult to monitor than KGB operations," Evans replied.

"At around 600, the Chinese are by far the largest official community in London. There are over 2,700 students at some 300 establishments and colleges; and delegations visiting the UK run into thousands. The Chinese Intelligence Service have substantial resources who are both represented here with their officers and co-optees working within the diplomatic community and outside it. We cannot therefore pretend to anything like satisfactory coverage."

"According to Chinese defectors," he continued,"there is a dramatic increase in Beijing's scientific and technological intelligence-gathering.However, the Chinese Government is not hostile to the British Government or NATO in the way that the Soviet Government was.We should recognise the distinction between Soviet spying with the hostile intent of gaining an advantage over an enemy, and Chinese spying with the purely selfish intent of gaining a national advantage."

Evans then looked at the Home Secretary and said, almost as if an afterthought, "We did at one time have a rather intricate case concerning a murder in Accra, in which the British Ambassador was kidnapped but subsequently released. The Scotland Yard officer responsible for the case at the time was suspicious of it's linkage to a possible Chinese mole in the British Foreign Office. We were unable to find any evidence of this at the time, but it might pay to reopen the file".