Kiss kiss / bang bang.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 1: INTRODUCTION.

It was about seven o’clock in the morning when I left the house and the sun had failed in its attempts to penetrate though South East England’s backdrop of grey cloud. Wearing my black leather jacket, with open neck blue casual shirt, jeans, thick white socks and trainers, I was respectable in that I was washed, clean shaven and had not had a drink in twenty-four hours. It was everything that I felt, a millionaire politician with intentions of an inconspicious nature ought to be and I was calling on the man in Brixton who was blackmailing me.

At the station, I stood on the platform remote from the other commuters and thought back to that occasion of the then Prime Minister, standing in the drizzle outside No 10, addressing the television crews. He had been earnest and engaging, deceptive and remote and, looked even more like a life insurance salesman than usual. It made me think seriously about going into politics. I’ve never had much in the way of a social conscience, but I remember thinking as I looked at the PM that day: “Well, if that’s one of the bright particular stars of English public life, Nobby my boy, you ought to be at Westminster yourself.”

The train, when it came made good progress into London’s Kings Cross Station, and although I stood throughout the journey it did not trouble me. I made my way by tube to Brixton Station in the southern half of the capital and looked around. It was now about eleven o’clock and a transient pause in normal city life was apparent, especially away from the High Street. I walked without hurrying down the long quiet avenues of three storey Victorian houses.

Number 7 Blenheim Crescent was the address that I eventually arrived at. Steps at the side led down to a basement flat, crouched behind a sloping derelict garden and waste bins. In the front of the house, broad grey stone steps led up to an outside porch and a heavy framed entrance door. At the side, six bells, some with names, others seeking anonymity. Flat 3 on the first floor was one of the latter. I rang and a disinterred voice over the speaker said “Yes, come up.” Whoever it was must have seen me coming and the door lock buzzed briefly to grant access. The lobby inside was spacious, and a staircase ran up past the ground floor flat, from which came the soft noise of a radio and the smell of cooking with too much garlic.

He was there to meet me at Number 3, standing just to one side inside the half opened door. A short, thin man, sixty or a little past it. He was black, with remote blue eye that seemed at variance with his race, perhaps cosmetic contact lenses. His skin was smooth and bright and as he beckoned me in, he moved like a man with very sound muscles.

We sat in faded stiff backed armchairs opposite each other and he spoke:
“Let’s not waste time. You know what the business is, and that’s why you’re here. I’ve got something you want and you are rich enough to pay to get it back.”

This was all said with a lack of expression on the bland face. The daylight through the front window generated a glistening in the unnatural arctic blueness of his eyes.

I hit him first with two slightly curled fingers of my right hand, to just below the Adams apple of his throat. His breathing stopped and he struggled to inhale. Not a sound came, just visual shock on his face, the hands raised but useless to assist the trouble he was in. I moved quickly behind him, now standing up away from his chair, and grasped his neck in the crook of my arm, whilst pressing the forehead closely with the right hand, fingers splayed. I broke apart his upper spinal vertebrae with a loud crack and he slumped. Below one could just about discern the noise from the radio.

A set of photos I soon discovered in a side drawer, but no negatives. For the moment that was of no concern. They, (for I presumed that there was more than one person involved), had anticipated a long drawn out series of payments, but their bluff had been called swiftly and dramatically. Now let them consider if another excursion could be ventured upon.

I left the flat, closed the door gently behind me and proceeded at an unhurried pace back to Brixton Station. There had been no signs of other occupants at the flat and I was unsure as to when the body would be discovered.

The next day I stood in the House of Commons and the question directed to me was; “Can the Foreign Secretary assure the House that no innocent civilians will be harmed during RAF air strikes in the area of the Libyan conflict?”

I looked across at the supercilious clod that had mouthed these words, and leaning casually on the dispatch box replied “I would thank the honourable gentleman for his concern in such matters, and assure the honourable gentleman, and the House, that neither I nor Her Majesty’s armed forces will engage in any aggressive action that might cause harm to innocent civilians.”

With that I sat down and leaned back, crossing one leg over the other to shouts of “Hear, Hear!” from the benches behind.

A week later on a Sunday evening I was at home alone, engaged in cooking up some new recipe I’d come across, and the phone rang.

“Hello” I said.

“You’ve been a naughty boy Nobby.”

“Who is it?”

“It’s Claudine. We need to talk, but this time you’ve got to behave yourself and not be so rough.”

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 2: MI5.

There did not seem anything overtly special about the office of Dame Bullington Fuller. Functional with a clear desk and one phone, but then I suppose that was what you had to expect as appropriate for the head of MI5.

“Good morning Foreign Secretary and what can we do for you today?”

“I’ve been compromised,” I said."

“I see. And what has your honourable member been up to?”

“You’re aware of it?”

“We can guess. Your file is somewhat explicit regards your penchants.”

So I explained the recent phone call and the circumstances behind it at the recent NATO conference in Brussels.

“What do I do?”

“Nothing,” she said. “Attend whatever little rendezvous they arrange and we will be in the background, to tidy things up so to speak. You must have realised by now, that this is a bit bigger than the average attempt at blackmail considering your position?”

“Yes, that’s why I came.”

“Fine. We are now in the picture. By the way, if there is nothing else, you can’t help us by any chance can you, regards a recent case in Brixton where an individual we had on our radar for some time had his neck broken?”

“Sorry. Much too rough a part of London for me.”

She looked me in the eye, and it said it all.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 3: THE SAVOY TEAROOMS:

We’d had the “honey trap” in the Belgian capital and now it was to be the tea and scones “sting” at that epitome stage of respectable English indulgence, the Savoy Tearooms.

I guessed that whoever they were, sustained the belief that I would not be snapping any necks in such august surroundings.

The doorman in the thick bright green overcoat and top hat opened the door of the taxi and I alighted to a salute and the customary perfunctory welcome. I slipped him a fiver which disappeared at the speed of a Formula 1 on the straight and entered the hotel.

The Savoy is an establishment, which despite its location in central London, escaped any substantial damage from the ravages of the Blitz, and thus by the grace of Providence, retaining its initial Edwardian splendour and charm. The tea rooms were at the rear overlooking Green Park and the opulent atmosphere was already in full swing, as well groomed young waiters and waitresses plied the comfortable mixed cliental with the mysteries of the British afternoon tea ritual. Bone china to the fore combined effortlessly with substantial silverware of a superior quality, whilst adorned on each table the combined functional and decorative requisites of three layer cake stands; spotless white table cloths and starched, crisp napkins.

I was led to a table away from the windows and to one side. My contact rose to greet me. She was cool and tall with ash blond hair, Slavonic features and green eyes, dressed smart but not showy. “Russian,” screamed out at me. “So, that’s who we’re dealing with!”

Long fingers, cool to the touch were extended as a greeting, and we sat down.
“Thank you for coming,” she said, the English almost perfect. “Can I call you Nobby? I hope you don’t mind. I’m told that’s what your friends call you.”

“No not at all. Claudine, isn’t it? Is that what your associates call you? But let’s not be unpleasant with each other. You’ve obviously gone to a great deal of trouble to organise this, so at least lets indulge a bit before we get down to business.”

“I do so agree Nobby,” she said and smiled broadly. “I feel we can become friends in the time we are to work together. And I want you to like me. I don’t want any unpleasantness.”

I detected a hint of toughness in the last statement, and a small vein pulsed quietly on the pale skin just below her chin.

After a respectable period of about one hour, adequately replete with Earl Grey, scones and jam, I decided to proceed to the next step.

“Claudine, obviously we have a lot to discuss and this is not exactly the place to do it. My impression is that the blackmail attempt for money is but just a crude initial stage, and that we really are talking of something more long term. Am I correct in that assumption?”

She nodded coldly.

“Fine, then I took the liberty to book a room upstairs where it can be more private. Shall we go?”

She was hesitant. It was not in the script. She seemed to glance across the room to another table. Very likely she was wired.

“Yes, sure. That would perhaps be better.”

I was guessing her Control, seeing the prize in sight, was prepared for them to take the risk.

I paid the bill by credit card, the waiters slid back our chairs and we left through the double doors and out towards the lifts.

Behind in the tea room, a number of rather fit young waiters closed in quickly on the occupants of one table seating a man and a woman. Another man leaving was also quickly encompassed by two apparent hotel staff. Quickly hurried out via a side door, through the kitchens, hooded and bundled into a laundry van by the outside ramp, the sliding side door was closed and the personages apprehended driven away for processing.

[hillwalker]

Skullduggery in Whitehall - nice to see you on home soil for once, Man. And this has a style one associates with Fleming or le Carre.

A couple of things I'd have done away with though:

It was about seven o’clock in the morning when I left the house and the sun had failed in its attempts to penetrate though South East England’s backdrop of grey cloud. Wearing my black leather jacket, with open neck blue casual shirt, jeans, thick white socks and trainers, I was respectable in that I was washed, clean shaven and had not had a drink in twenty-four hours. It was everything that I felt, a millionaire politician with intentions of an inconspicious nature ought to be.....

I know certain conventions require the writer to set the scene right at the start of a story, but does it really matter how he was dressed - why not let the readers fill in some of the blanks?

This opening paragraph would have been much more powerful if you'd kicked off with something along the lines of 'The early morning sun had failed in its attempts to penetrate though South East England’s backdrop of grey cloud as I made my way to Brixton to call on the man who was blackmailing me.'

and this line of dialogue -

"...Your file is somewhat explicit regards your penchants.”

is rather awkward even for spookspeak.

Just a thought or two - but overall I enjoyed this immensely.

H

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 4: PERESTROIKA.

In the meantime Claudine and I had reached our room up on the tenth floor. Heavy red drapes were drawn back and early afternoon sunshine shone on those walking in the park below.

Before she became acquainted with her surroundings, I threw her face first onto the bed, stuffed a handkerchief in her mouth and tied her hands behind her, my knee holding her down as she kicked wildly. I turned her over and looked in her eyes. “My, she was one angry young lady!”

“Claudine, let’s just have a little chat, although I’m afraid I will be doing most of the talking. Unfortunately, you, and what I presume are your Moscow masters, were bad mannered enough to take pictures of me with two young ladies back in Brussels. I’m now going to return the compliment, and you and I are going to make a little video which will be posted back to the aforesaid bosses. You know my dear Claudine, despite all your training and spy craft; you seem to be unaware of one very ancient tradition invented by the British called “playing silly buggers.” I won’t go into the intricacies of it, but one important specialised offshoot of this tradition, entirely relevant to our current situation, is that just when you think you are screwing us, we are screwing you! I hope you understand and that this does not over duly embarrass your Kremlin masters or reduce your career prospects in that establishment, but there you go. Nothing personal you understand. Shall we begin?”

About a month later Nobby rose in the House to respond to a question from his own party.

“Can the Foreign Secretary assure the House of the cooperative nature of Anglo Russian relations at the current time and does the Honourable Gentleman have any intention soon of visiting that country?”

I responded, “I thank my Honourable Friend for his enquiry, and I can assure both him and the House, that a most cooperative and equitable relationship exists between Great Britain and Russia, based upon mutual respect and a deep understanding of each other’s national needs. It may also interest the House, that I have in fact been invited by my opposite number in Moscow to make a visit, and it will be my earnest desire to accept such a generous invitation.”

That evening he relaxed with a double Grey Goose vodka and tonic, and cooked a ham hock in cider with leeks in a white sauce. He took a second drink out on to the balcony, and sat and looked out across the view. All his senses told him, that he was into a good tough situation again, and he knew he was up for it.

Far across and beyond Europe to the east, in an isolated dacha, surrounded by stark pine trees outside of St Petersburg, Vladimir Putin’s cold protruding eyes watched yet again the video on his TV screen. As an ex-KGB colonel and recent President, let’s just say that Nobby’s remake of “From Russia with Love,” was not exactly his cup of tea.

[MANICHAEAN]

Hill bach
Long time no speak. You are, as usual so infuriatingly right and what you suggest for the first paragraph is much better. The extent of my grudging compliment might be appreciated more if you take out an old copy of Raymond Chandlers “The Big Sleep,” and read the beginning.
M.

[hillwalker]

Ah well, as a parody of Chandler that opening paragraph deserves more credit than I gave it...... if that was indeed your intention.

H

[MANICHAEAN]

On the contrary H.
I honestly thought your opener was better. More succinct.
Forgive me Marlow.
Best regards
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 5: THE RUSSIAN DOLL GAMBIT.

Putin felt the awe that dwells on the edge of fear, having lived through a period of Russian history where he had been obliged to grasp the realities of political life with both hands and to hold fast if one was to survive, or even, perchance advance.

Not for him the lush lowlands of bourgeoisie indulgence, nor the sensitivity and chasm of the Russian soul. He had long ago as a young career KGB officer subdued all emotions to his will, such that even his imagination was constrained.

He knew that he had been outwitted in this instance, but the instinct of anger was reined in hard. In the profession of bluff and counter bluff he knew how difficult it is to con a con man, and his opponent in Great Britain had already proved that he was alternately; devious, ruthless, well positioned and a consummate actor.

He knew that to win, let alone to even the score, that he was obliged to play his initial bait with an extreme lightness of touch and his revenge with the finality of total closure.

Thus dispassionately over the weeks that followed, he researched along with a select and diverse KGB team, for the weakness that lies in every man, or in this case, the current British Foreign Secretary.

At night Putin did not return to his dacha but to a small apartment in the precincts of Leningrad, his home life being such that it had failed long ago to expound an alternate side of his nature, and it had been many years since his wife had given him any physical joy, either out of bed or in it.

On about the third week, the Russian team reviewing the material obtained came to a consensus on a common thread that appeared to run through the life of their subject.

It was once reckoned that human beings tend to imitate the nick names given them in an idle moment. Call a man "Butch" and he will swagger; call him "Killer" and he will walk around with narrowed eyes and try to talk like The Godfather. Nigel Floyd was just eighteen years old when a boy at school who had seen him in the showers after PT laughingly called him “Nobby”, and after that he was doomed.

It was an attribute he realised both in early manhood and in his later political career that was appreciated, (though for different reasons) by the two mainstream genders and his success with the ladies at all levels of society was discreetly acknowledged. There was, it appeared, almost recklessness in the manner in which the females he was associated with at any one time were designed not for display or ostentation, but for usage.

To Putin therefore & his cohorts, this was the main weakness of the focus of their attention; Nobby’s love of women.

But as a strategy evolved, it was apparent from the very outset that a gaudy Russian fly, cast upon a hook appertaining in any manner to themselves would not attain the desired result. It had to come with a freshness and a simplicity, almost from an alternate source.

Much later that evening Putin put through a call to Peking. It was time to call in a few favours from the past, when hegemony between the two Communist super powers was on a more equitable basis.

Outside the snow fell on hard deserted Leningrad streets in a manner almost in union with what was being planned inside; light and delicate, cold and foreboding.

[Steven Hunley]

This was just great, especially:

It was once reckoned that human beings tend to imitate the nick names given them in an idle moment. Call a man "Butch" and he will swagger; call him "Killer" and he will walk around with narrowed eyes and try to talk like The Godfather. Nigel Floyd was just eighteen years old when a boy at school who had seen him in the showers after PT laughingly called him “Nobby”, and after that he was doomed.

I just love stuff about public figures. But beware! Putin might get offended and you end up in a hospital with a unknown malady because an agent of the KGB approached you with an umbrella!

Tiny microscopic hole in your leg and all. Poisoned over a paragraph!

[L€lä RËmØ MÅðçÂ]

I have done parts like this before. Instead of big parts, I have six lines per poetry piece.

[MANICHAEAN]

Steve
Am constantly looking over my shoulder now, and thus will move the story to a new venue.

LRM
I could not write poetry to save my life, but am comfortable with narrative.

Best regards to you both.
M.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 6: SAIGON.

Detective Inspector Gary Rossow flew into Ho Chi Min City and remembered back to when he was a British police liaison officer vis a vis his US military police counterparts. He was, despite his relative youth at the time judged by his superiors to be adept at dealing with the odd cases that came up involving British nationals caught up in the Vietnam War, whether reporters, journalists or other non combatants.

He reflected how the first time in June 1966 he had arrived in Saigon, (as it was then known), during an electrical storm, trying to feign nonchalance, even when the tail of the Caravelle was struck by lightning during its approach for landing.

He had been young and owl-eyed and through the wet, military and civilian airport, Tan Son Nhut, the capital appeared as a metallic jungle whose silhouetted peaks and slopes represented machines of a number and variety he had not imagined. Saigon had recently taken over from Chicago as the world’s busiest airport, apparent if only in the pitch and variation of the noise, the whining of fixed-wing aircraft and the thudding syncopation of helicopters.

Outside of the terminal building had waited fat Chevys and Fords, pick-ups and jeeps, their Vietnamese drivers barely visible. There always seemed then something menacing about Detroit cars and trucks in Saigon; they would plough imperiously through the bicycles and insect-Renaults, and if their foreign occupants were in a hurry or bored with the traffic, one of them would hold a flashing light on the roof and tell the Vietnamese driver to “gun it.”

Into such went men of build and swagger, heavy ponderous men who were contract workers and on US government business.

He remembered how, the “Green Machine” began at the United States Military Police Affairs Office, or USMPAO, with a smiling President Johnson framed above a bored marine at the door. Here he was fingerprinted, “accredited” and provided with a small laminated card. With this he could fly almost anywhere “in-country” on the world’s greatest airline, operated by the American military. He could present himself at departure lounges, where there were racks of war comics and Harold Robbins books, and Hawaii posters and Muzak, and soft drink and candy machines. With his boarding card and his Hershey bar, he might have been flying to Miami.

On one trip he had to go to a place called Can Tho, in the Mekong Delta. The soldier at the check-in desk even pointed out the arrival of his aircraft. It had taxied to a halt and a truck backed up to its open belly to receive cargo. The loadmaster emerged and shouted, “Where’s the man from the KIA Travel Bureau? I ain’t handling these dudes alone out here!”

A soldier came running with a clipboard and checked every item of cargo until the truck was full. “That’s it,” he had said, to which the loadmaster had replied, “Oh no you don’t; one more here, baby.” The item of cargo in question had split open and a corpse had slid down the loading tray.

The face had looked like one of those clean-living young Mormons who prowl the world’s suburbs. The loadmaster and the soldier from the KIA Travel Bureau had struggled to return the corpse to the body bag, their efforts accompanied by the Muzak, which was interrupted so that they could be told to have a nice flight.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 7: HOPE HOTEL & DREAMLAND.

In the late nineteenth century the French had laid out Saigon with tamarind and eucalyptus trees so that they might be reminded of Nice. They had built in the centre their colonial piles, the post office and the zoo and the Customs House, from which radiated streets of villas with verandas and pink ash on the stucco walls.

One of these at the time of the war had been gutted by fire and the skeleton had become the Hotel Hope, run by a family of Chinese who had accommodated on its four floors numerous transients, dope addicts and prostitutes.

It was here that Rossow, already familiar with the establishment from his early days, was to make contact with a Chinese woman, Liang tai Tai. His brief back in London was that she had been a nurse who had fled Red China with her British lover via the overland route to Vietnam and had made contact subsequently with the British Embassy. There was some farfetched story of how her lover had died on the journey but that she had through him, knowledge of a Red mole at a high level in the British Foreign Office.

Naturally, in return she required out of South East Asia and a British passport to lead a new life.

Thus it was that Gary Rossow, UK cop; familiar with the country, the culture and the dubious charms of the aforementioned establishment had come to be assigned this diversion from his normal mundane duties at New Scotland Yard. Not that he was ungrateful, for since the successful conclusion of the murder in Accra investigation, his life had lost a lot of its spark and zest.

He wondered if the Hope Hotel had changed much from when he knew it all those years ago. Back then his arrival as a genuine “guest” so bemused the “mama san” that she gathered from somewhere a group of young and old women, each with painted death masks, to view the new boy and to assess the degree to which his stay would support their debilitating industry.

He remembered how next to the Hope Hotel had been the Dreamland Bar, indivisible it had seemed, drawn together by an umbilical cord of corrugated iron. The Dreamland then had been no more than a shed lit by purple neon, although inside it might have been any bar on any truck route in the American Midwest: high swivel vinyl stools, jukebox, and temperature just above freezing.

This had been an American cocoon, one of many from which Saigon was viewed as fun city: a war, a screw, a joint, a suspended life. Here melancholy men would try to forget they were “in-country” and surrounded by “gooks, slopes and dinks.” They knew less than little about the Vietnamese and their Confucian society, about their past and the roots of the war. Some did not know quite where on the globe they were; and this ignorance, at once cheerful and invidious, remained a phenomenon of the American experience in Vietnam until the last hours of the last day.

He remembered the phrase, “I’m getting out of here as soon as I can,” from Randy, the Dreamland’s owner. Even at the time this had been a pretence, knowing that Vietnam gave him what he could never have back home: a bargain basement life, provided by a PX card, which was a season ticket to the military’s Post Exchange, an Ali Baba’s cave of tax-free everything.

Vietnam also had offered something more elusive than Budweiser on the cheap. Women. Beautiful, compliant refugee women were then readily available in Saigon, where a “round-eye was viewed as a strolling money tree, a means of support for a family of a dozen or more. And in return for this “security”, in times of constant insecurity, the “temporary wife”, the woman who went to live with an American for a price, provided a servitude which not even money could buy “back home in the world.”

Randy had been a former GI, a kindly and garrulous failure from Tucson, Arizona whose temporary wife was called “Suzy-boo.” She was Vietnamese, French and Thai, and she would see to it that the girls from the Hope massaged the huge backs of the “boys” at the bar while a blue movie flickered onto a stiffened towel above the bar. The girls, she would whisper, were “nice and clean”; a Listerine swill every Friday was mandatory (and useless).

Rossow's taxi pulled up outside, he paid the driver & he stretched as he viewed that part of his past, he had not expected to see again.

It had changed so little, like an image of the past that takes shape as one surveys the different parts of the whole. A bit of new paint here and there, the same chickens pecking in the dust of the yard to the side of the bar. The rice laid out on the pavement to dry in the sun.

He looked to the left where not far from the Hope & Dreamland was vacant land cluttered with stalls and debris. In the midst of this had been he remembered a “dinh”, a shrine. He had come upon this one day by accident, and had been intrigued by its attraction for people of all kinds: soldiers, bargirls, and old people. When he had enquired he had been was that a “xa”, a village, had stood there some years earlier, before Saigon had swollen with war refugees, and that families were buried there and their remains were “the source of life itself.” Enveloped in petrol fumes, sluiced by monsoonal mud, the shrine had and still did symbolise the coherence of a society that had enduring a cataclysm.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 8: THE DEFECTOR.

The taxi paid, he entered the narrow reception. Tepid air hung wearily and the sun filtered through dusty slats on the windows.

Credit cards were not an option and with brutal directness he was asked for US $’s.

Led to his room on the fourth floor overlooking the front street, he enquired of Liang tai Tai, who he said had been recommended to him by a friend. He was told, she would be with him shortly.

He had but half unpacked when there was a soft tap on the door. He opened & saw a Chinese woman struggling to attain a look of coyness. The eyes were hard & dark & the abundant black hair was formally fixed in a tight bun behind her head, skewered in place by two ivory sticks.

She wore a silk gown, full length complete with rampaging green dragons and seemed nervous.

Rossow stood to one side and she glided in.

Closing the door he turned to face her, and as he did so, she let the gown fall from her shoulders such that she stood there adorned in a pair of black high heel shoes, coral ear rings and a smile.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 9: THE DEBRIEF.

It is perhaps a contradiction in terms to debrief a woman when she is already debriefed! The incongruity of the situation somehow appealed to Rossow’s sense of humour and he could not but suppress a wide grin.

“Is it Miss Tai?” he enquired.

“It can be anything you want it to be,” she responded in her sing song voice.

“Miss Tai, this is really not necessary. I’m here in regards to your contact with the British Embassy.”

“Oh, I did not realise!” she said, suddenly catching her under lip between her teeth, and making a strange grimace, half sly smiling, half anguish.

She stooped in one fluid movement and retrieved her gown from the floor and covered her nakedness. There was something defenceless about her, which roused an unsatisfied flame of passion in his blood.

“Please sit down, my name is Gary Rossow and I need to ask you some questions.”

“Pleased to meet you Mr Rossow.” A watchful greeting.

In Gary’s experience with defectors, they were all unreliable in the first few weeks, those who had crossed the chasm, they were all unpredictable.

But they sat, Liang tai Tai on the side of the bed, leaning forward, knees together, whilst Gary sat on the hard chair asked the questions & made notes.

The story she told was wild. Of how, as a nurse in China she had been assigned to look after an English patient in conditions of state secrecy, how she had fallen in love with him and the incredible tale that he had related to her. He had said that he had been a British Ambassador assigned to Accra in Ghana, had been kidnapped, smuggled to China and that his place had been substituted by a twin look alike who had assumed his role in diplomatic circles.

If it had been anyone else than Rossow listening to this story, it would have been dismissed out of hand as too fantastic for words. But fate was such that Rossow had been one of the main investigators on this particular case, and although it had concluded successfully with the Ambassador apparently being released, there had been doubts even then, of aspects of the case that did not ring true.


Normally it is against all the precepts of a debrief that you hurry and thus he affected to be quite ordinary, perfectly commonplace. And he did it so well, taking the tone of his surroundings, adjusting himself quickly to his interlocutor and his circumstances, such that he achieved a verisimilitude of ordinary commonplaceness that usually disarmed the other party.

When the interview began, his presence was so quiet, almost like a vacancy.

He viewed her and there seemed the strange brightness of an essential flame that is caught, meshed and contravened. She was soft-skinned, soft-limbed and looked like one who is suddenly wakened. There was a living tender beauty, like a tender light of dawn shining from her face.

She responded to his questions in a manner that became intimate and gratified, looking at him slowly deferring in her certainty. She thought he seemed to acknowledge some kinship between her and him, a natural tacit understanding, a using of the same language.

When Gary pushed hard on certain details, she would reply “I don’t know,” balancing mildly, but with eyes broken in their expression.

They finished after two hours, both visibly tired and Gary rose to leave saying that he would call again. He gave her his mobile number and asked, “Is there anything else I can do? Do you have everything?”

Then she said with a curious stray calm, “I have nothing. No country, no man & I sell myself to survive.”

Rossow stood, the strange, guarded look, the unconscious glisten.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 10: THE FOREIGN OFFICE.

Nigel Floyd, alias “Nobby” and current British Foreign Secretary landed late that evening at Heathrow on the British Airways flight from Kingston. He had for five days liaised with his Jamaican opposite number regards concerns by both countries on drug smuggling & the adverse influence of yardie gangs in both domains.

At the end of it he’d managed the weekend off with an old girl friend up in the Blue Mountains to the east of the capital, and even now he could recollect how he had buried his face against her and felt her warmth and the gentle scent of her body. It was so sweet to have found himself between Miss Ottey’s thighs again.

Nobby held back on the plane as disembarkation commenced, knowing full well that Heathrow’s Customs and Excise staff reserved their closest scrutiny for travellers from Jamaica.

He lifted his briefcase onto his lap and then twisted it about so that the gold indented E II R insignia was hidden against his chest.

The stewardesses had their backs to the door as they sought to retrieve their coats from the lockers, prior to experiencing the cold night air, and so they did not see the entrance of the British Airways ground crew official into the cabin.

“It’s Mr Floyd, isn’t it?”

“That’s right.”

“There’s a car and driver waiting.”

“Thank you.”

They stepped onto the platform that had been manoeuvred to hug the aircraft fuselage, but avoided the tunnel stretching ahead and went through the open doorway and out into the night air and down the steps to the apron. A light wind blustered off the concrete and the engine sounds of taxiing aircraft bludgeoned their ears.

Nobby looked around him until he saw the maroon Rover parked in the dense evening shadow of a petrol tanker. A rear door was open, the engine was idling. Nobby slipped in and the car pulled away, skirting the Terminal buildings heading for the Underpass and the Staines Road.


The next morning he was back at work and he stood at the end of the mahogany table on the third floor room of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office that overlooked Horse Guards.

The Joint Intelligence Committee met every fortnight. The Deputy-Under-Secretary who headed the Service, the Major General who commanded the Directorate of Service Intelligence, the Permanent-Under-Secretary who chaired the Joint Intelligence Committee, and the Director of the Security Service who gazed out of the window.

Nobby reflected that nothing changes in the Civil Service. There are princes and there are the carriers of pitchers of water, and the exalted company would have deterred a less confident man.

After the initial preliminaries the topic commenced regards Rossow’s debrief of Liang tai Tai in Vietnam, and as was to be expected it was met by a variety of monosyllables, grunts and face pulling, all reflecting derision.

However the Director of Security Service was not exactly known as either a “light touch” or alternately for his sense of humour, and as he proceeded, the extent of the potential damage common to them all became increasingly apparent.

The Permanent-Under-Secretary piped in, “I think the PM should know. I think the PM should sanction what’s to be done. That’s my advice anyway.”

The Director of the Security Service shot back, “I’ll not lose this to a politician with a weak stomach and a short future.”

“That’s your decision then,” the Permanent-Under-Secretary being visibly upset by the brutality of the expression used by his colleague.

“So be it. If the PM knows, his clerical staff will know & God only knows what will happen if it gets leaked to the Press. Tell the Prime Mnister and you tell how many? Which aides see a memorandum, which personal secretaries? How many learn the contents of a file over cocktails and during weekends in the country.”

The Major General attempted to sooth the frayed nerves by diverting to another angle. “Anyone come up with a code name for this case yet?”

Nobby intervened for the first time.

“Not a bloody Greek god, please don’t give me one of them!”

The group laughed and the tension dissipated somewhat.

Nobby realised that the case, being so relevant to his department, it was in his interests to pick up the ball and run with it. Best foot forward. Career men don’t retreat, career men push ahead. Couldn’t have delegated this one, could he? Couldn’t have parcelled it off on a junior. This one was for Nobby and he had to a large extent go on his own and to stay on his own. Realise that and you can win, accept the isolation and you’ll be fine.

[jajdude]

Perhaps a bit of flattery but MAN you can write!

[MANICHAEAN]

Glad you liked it JJ. It was a lot tongue in cheek, but great fun to write!
M

[AuntShecky]

Well, as I mentioned to you before, I've got a lot of catching up to do re: your short stories


I read Part 1 soon after you first posted it. I was waiting until the entire work was complete, but in the long interval, others have replied, I guess I don't have to worry about ruining your continuity. Here's the comment on part 1 which I started writing the day after you first posted it.

The title is pretty good, but not original. I hasten to add that there is absolutely no law against using a pre-existing title Precedents for "Kiss title-- Pauline Kael and Roald Dahl

I realize that this piece has multiple parts; longer pieces, such as novellas and novels, are somewhat more free of the tightness and compression ("scrupulous meanness.") My initial impression is that even though your descriptive passages are straight-forward and not ostensibly what I'd call "padding," I wonder if they are absolutely necessary. For instance, does the reader need to know what your characters are wearing? Unless there is a specific reason for including a men's clothing catalogue or a highly specific travel route, such as foreshadowing a plot point, I'd keep the extraneous description to a minimum. (Same with the description of the table setting in a later section.)

Why scale back on description? The reason is that a story that appears to be a thriller depends on pacing. It might be effective to emulate the technique of quick scenes and jump cuts found in action movies and thrillers. I think that your story begins right here:

We sat in faded stiff backed armchairs opposite each other and he spoke:
“Let’s not waste time. You know what the business is, and that’s why you’re here. I’ve got something you want and you are rich enough to pay to get it back.”

That sets up your premise. The reader becomes curious-- what exactly is the business, why is he here, what is it that he wants, and how did he come to be rich?

Mind you, these are just suggestions.

[MANICHAEAN]

Dear Auntie

At last! I’ve been awaiting with bated breath your long promised critique.

First an apology. I never realised that the title had been used before. Either it was me thinking that I was original, or I’ve read it somewhere and it stuck in my subconscious.

Interesting main viewpoint on your part, but basically I disagree with you. In order to illustrate this, bear with me if I take refuge in the works of two thriller writers, whose company I do not compare with in terms of ability; Raymond Chandler & Ian Fleming.

After the last war I think that the true stature of Chandler’s work had already been appreciated by a discerning audience of English writers e.g. W. H. Auden, T. S. Eliot, J. B. Priestley and Graham Greene. Also among his fans was a young journalist called Ian Fleming, who as you know, won himself fame with the creation of his hero James Bond.

Chandler I think, taught his English disciple how to create a world unmistakably his own, not by means of plot device or story line, but by the build-up of atmosphere, and the attentive accumulation of local colour. Both writers seem to relegate their stories to a decidedly subordinate position in that what tells, is not curiosity about the plot, but the creation of a unique and autonomous domain.

Much more than Bond, Marlowe was the inhabitant of a particular world; the Southern Californian landscape and strangely enough, the house interiors, with their furniture and carpets and fittings. These were the scenes in which Chandler and his hero are at home, and his sense of place is a pleasure to read, whether the opulent mansions of Bel-Air, the grand ranch-type dwellings in the hills miles away from Hollywood, or the sleazy backstreets of 'Bay City'.

There is an almost sensuous charm in Chandler's still-life interiors, implying that he would have been the ideal editor and contributor to a sort of Californian version of “House & Garden!”

This is a world which is inescapably cosy even when it is at its most sinister. In one sense it is almost an elaborate transfiguration of that more simply and robustly cosy world in which Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson go about their familiar business, returning to 221b Baker Street for relaxation over a well-roasted partridge and a bottle of Burgundy.

This rhythmical alternation of comfort and cosiness with danger and thrills is the most effective feature. James Bond will return to his Chelsea flat where his veteran Scottish housekeeper will serve him boiled eggs done just as he likes them and of course the dry martini ritual. No detail of that sort is ever random or irrelevant. The detail is as meticulously pointed as it is unobtrusive.

Thus rests my case Auntie. In “Kiss Kiss / Bang Bang Mark II,” I’ve got Nobby into cooking and I go into some depth to set the various scenes, as in the Savoy Hotel tea rooms. I’m neither Chandler, nor Fleming, but they were mother’s milk to me. Hence the influence.

Mind you, I've been into Gibbon as well, hence the verbosity!

Very best wishes & thanks for your input. It’s always appreciated.

M.

[MANICHAEAN]

PART 11: LIANG TAI TAI

She sat in the shadows of her small room in the Hope Hotel. Outside, the Orient—struggling and suffering, spawning and dying. Liang tai Tai thought of her recent meeting that afternoon with Rossow, he of tomorrow, grafted with an alien energy, and how she had humiliated herself.

She recollected that although a large man, his hands were small and narrow, like the hands of a woman. Between them had burnt a cigarette poised with infinite daintiness, like a woman under the eyes of her lover. Skillful hands, capable of featherlike lines of ineffable suggestion. Delicately able to caress a quivering skin; softly to glide over a golden thigh.

“Tai tai, so they call your name here” she thought. “Your slim body, here in the hotel, moving brightly in and out. Green satin, and gleaming laughter, with two nodding earrings—these are Tai tai. And in the painted eyes cold steel, and on the lips a vulgar jest. Hands that fly ever to the coat lapels, and to the hair of men.”

“You too were stranded here, like these poor homesick boys, in this great catch-all where the white race seems to end, this grim city that like a sieve hangs over filth and loneliness. You were caught here like these, and who could live, young and so slender—in such a place. A world of pieties and shams, the dwelling place of the unquiet dead. Whatever life has need of, it is here. And it is for the dead.”

And, as she thought, behind her she felt the presence of a hovering host, the myriads of the immortal dead, the rulers of the spirit in the land. For in this kingdom of the dead, they who were living clung with fevered hands to the torn fringes of the mighty past. And if they failed a little, they compromised.

The dead perhaps would understand.

She sat like her own effigy - like an abandoned goddess, the veil that hides the awful face of deity from the too impetuous gaze of worshippers serving to hide from the ultimate priestess, the living face of man.

The Sacred Mountain of youthful memories in China faded in her mind.

In the town a child had laughed suddenly. “I will hold fast to beauty! Who am I, that I should die for these?” she thought.

“Space, and the twelve clean winds had been there; and with them had brooded eternity—a swift, white peace, a presence manifest. The rhythm ceased there and time had had no place.”

“But I am now down from that airy space of my childhood, the swift white peace; and time will close about me, and my soul will stir to the rhythm of the daily round. Yet, having known, life will not press so close, and always I shall feel time ravel thin about me; For once I stood in the white windy presence of eternity.”

When she was still, the dignity of the Orient was about her.

"The Chinese are cleverer by half” she thought.”

“They see where the other is blind. But the Chinese are bought, and she must not sell herself too cheap."

Silks of a gold-skinned courtesan, embroideries of a lost throne.
O golden night, the years have drunk you too.