Phantasmagoria Blues (Chapter 1)
"Darling, there’s someone here who would like to meet you,” announced an unknown voice, somewhere close behind her right shoulder in the crowded room.
The music was pumping loudly and bodies were crushing and gyrating all around her. It was New Year's Eve and Club Babel was proving to be teeming with the crème de la crème of the literary world tonight. The place was positively throbbing with the heavy scent of expensive perfumes, imported Cuban Cigar smoke and opulent, competitive, joie de vivre. The waiters hovering around in crisp black trousers, the middle-press lines razor sharp, smart white cummerbunds with gold buttoned shirts and cheeky red bow-ties, sleek, slick- backed fragrant immaculately groomed hair coiffed to perfection with “Californian Poppy” hair tonic, leaning in with their silver trays of Dom Perignon champagne and Black Russian Beluga Caviar canapés, Melba Toast with Pecan Grand Marnier Fois de Gras and Devils on Horseback. Such a romp. The joint was abuzz. It was all so delicious the scene, the atmosphere, the raison d’être for being here. This was her moment. He tapped her gently, the prodding of the index finger on her shoulder, a lure to turn around and face the unknown, the temerity of this parvenu, this stranger’s fresh salutatory discourse. She breathed in a certain sense of success, of headiness. The game was afoot. Or so she thought.
“I said,” he leaned in close to her ear, to be heard over the loud crazy crowd, who all seemed to be shouting and yelling for their own urgent attention in this over-ripe elite soiree, this over-crowded room of jumbled words and meanings, all shouting their own story, but no one really being heard as they so desperately wanted to be heard, nor truly seen.
“I said,” this he impressed upon her again, moving even closer into her, she could feel his breath on her neck, his mouth ushering velvety words piping hot, like an oven door opening against her skin, “Darling, there’s someone here who would like to meet you”.
Rather presumptuous she thought, considering he was indeed a stranger, taking such familiarity with the use of such an intimate salutation, as if they had been on first name basis for quite some time, when in fact, she knew him not one jot.
Neither was he acquainted with her in the ‘biblical’ sense, however, his use of the word “Darling” seemed to indicate a penchant for taking liberties with the fairer sex. “There’s that confounded word again!” She thought to herself, dolefully rolling her eyes. She remonstrated herself to keep her mind on the job. She replaced said word, in her mind with “gender” and focused herself once more, “Keep your mind on the job dear girl! Nothing is to dissuade you this time!”.
Somewhat taken aback and slightly offended at such audacity from a stranger, probably some ginned-up-wolf-of-a-lecherous-lounge-lizard-on-the-prowl braggart and not-the-real-mark. She turned around and confronted the scoundrel, flashing her cool Bottom-of-the-Duck-Pond-Emerald-Green eyes at the stranger.
“Do I know you? I don’t seem to recall you. You obviously have taken great liberties without introduction to call my attention to yourself, or whoever you want to introduce me to, with the nefarious use of the word ‘Darling’.” This, she delivered rat-a-tat-tat, crisp, precise, with a softly spoken timbre to her voice and great haughtiness. She was Australian, no mistaking the accent.
She would give him this much, he was nearly one of the most handsome chaps she’d ever laid eyes on. Adonis in all proportions. Dazzling white teeth that sparkled like diamonds glinting in the light of the hotel’s ornate Swarovski Crystal chandeliers. But there was something amiss. Something just this side vacant of perfect. She couldn’t quite place what the imperfection was, no doubt she would, all within good time. His smile, aligned with the silk in his voice, was one that could only be described as well, simply put - predatory. As she looked into his piercing steel grey eyes, she felt him, in her mind, undressing her slowly, deliberately. She thought to herself with steadfast ambition, “Keep your mind on the job. All that glitters is not gold dear girl. Not this time Josephine!”. This wasn’t her name.
Her mind warned her, “DO NOT, under any circumstances Josephine!” Her mind warned her again with loud emphasis, “DO NOT (bold, underscore) - blow your cover. Do not blow anything, this time.”
She thought about the chase through the streets of Budapest in her sleek Shark Grey Aston Martin Vanquish, that night long ago and how the mission came to a screeching halt, when her wheels were shot out from underneath her by her nemesis’ machine gun fire. All this, the result of an idle moment of dalliance, when she had succumbed to his wily double-agent charms, rolling around and tangled up in pure white 100% clean-then-not-so-clean, Egyptian cotton sheets, during a torrid sweltering, sticky night in Venice, while through the open French doors of their hotel boudoir, feral cats outside, howled in heat and rutted in the pungent sewerage fumed streets like midnight dark wild things in the jungle, preaching their dark sermons under cardinal sin their canopy. While rats, as they do, lurked in dark corners, filming the entire scene with audio. Her nemesis had slipped just the right dose of Sodium Pentothal Thiopental into her violet scented Dom Perignon and in a moment of sheer weakness, she believed his double-agent romantic spiel and had gone onto share top secret information with the blighter. After the Budapest fiasco, she vowed she would be more aware and prepared to avoid a repeat blow-out and loss of any mission on her watch ever again. Never again would there be any thought and deed carried out, to entertaining unwise propositions of crossing-the-line, impulsive nubile follies with the enemy, known or unknown.
She was after all, at that very precise moment, actively on a covert special mission for Her Majesty’s Secret Service. Her instructions from M at HQ were very clear. Her instructions were “TOP SECRET”.
“Ah, the cat hasn’t got your tongue then. I bet ice-cream wouldn’t melt in your mouth. Don’t tell me you are afraid of a little bit of adventure, a walk on the wild side, so to speak. Take a risk.” He seemed to purr like a Panther, or a sensuously prowling Jaguar, or even a big pawed soft-footed Sabre-toothed Tiger, flashing his sparkling canines at her once more. Moving in much closer to her, she could feel the heat from his body and the fresh cut silver grass scent of his Verbena aftershave.
“Vetiver, Guerlain”, she adroitly surmised to herself. She had a nose for notes, musical and perfume and she certainly liked clean-shaven, smooth glowing skin on a man. ”Keep your mind alert!” she counselled herself. Inhaling deeply of his scent, she backed away slightly, thinking “Danger Will Robinson! Remember, mind on the mission dear girl!”
He moved in with animal like stealth, holding onto her arm tighter, she could feel his long fingers pressing into her bones. He pulled her in closer. She felt like a sacrificial Springbok caught unaware mid-flight on the wild African Veld. Her breathing had changed considerably and her pulse had gone up a notch. Slight anxiety. Strange, she was usually cool under fire. Maybe it was just the overwhelming giddiness of breathing in all that expensive perfume and Cuban Cigar smoke. She had made a point of steering clear of the violet scented Dom Perignon.
“All right, you have me front and centre”, such gall she thought. “Who is it you wish to introduce me to?”
His grip took on a slightly gentler pressure under her arm, and she could feel his fingers moving softly down her arm to encircle her wrist. His thumb gently massaged her wrist, sending heat up from somewhere in her body to the base of her throat. She noticed his large hands, all the while his eyes never leaving hers. He turned her wrist over and exclaimed, “They must certainly be paying you handsomely.”
For a moment she was quite alarmed. Had her cover been blown? Was he aware of her double life?
He grinned, “A gold and diamond Rolex no less. I dare say with the earnings from your last best seller, you could afford all sorts of extravagant luxuries. My my, what a life you must lead!”
She looked down at her Rolex Pearlmaster. Yes, it had cost a small fortune, but she had earnt it, well and truly. She refused to think of the sacrifice at this point. Of course, she had considered donating it to UNICEF. It would be of much better use to them than sitting uselessly on her wrist, weighing her down with the enormity of just how much it really had cost her. But for the time being it had a greater purpose. It was keeping more than just time.
She was rather flushed by the peculiar effect the stranger had immediately injected into her physicality and psyche. He simply towered over her. Alpha male, obviously. She liked a challenge, but this being said, she was intelligent enough to strategically place herself in a win-win situation. She was deft at survival. “Sometimes you can win when you lose”, she thought to herself. This, a trusted modus operandi, that had served her well on several past covert assignations.
The tall stranger responded to her original question, “I digress. As to your request to elaborate on my employer, who has sent me to elicit your acquaintance. He’s a rather shy and retiring type. Let us say, he is also not one to be kept waiting. He doesn’t have time for foolish time wasters and he has a gargantuan appetite for intelligent women, beauty is an added bonus, but really of little to no significance for what he has in mind. He’s waiting in a parked Silver Rolls Royce in the alley, out the back through the hotel’s kitchens. You’ll be treated with the greatest respect, I assure you. No need for unwarranted fears of any sort.”
“Look here dear chap! I find this all rather amusing, but I don’t just go off into stranger’s cars parked in dark back alleys in the middle of the night and on New Years Eve! This is all beginning to sound rather like an expedition into a deathly perilous situation with some Columbian Mafioso Drug Lord. I don’t know you, I don’t know who this stranger is. So would you kindly spare the cloak and dagger theatrics and cut to the chase. Would you mind elaborating for entrées, before I deliver myself as the main meal, so to speak, as to whom I am presently conversing with and as to whom, sitting in a Silver Rolls Royce parked out in the back alley through the kitchen doors of this hotel, now requests an audience with me?” She assaulted him with cool derision from her luscious cherry-stained lips and flashed daggers from her Bottom-of-the-Duckpond-Emerald-Green eyes. She was not to be toyed with, this she made very clear.
“You may have heard of him, he is well known in the trade, a publishing magnate, he has some sway in Washington. Lord Barnabas Woodshire, OBE? He is currently here in Washington lobbying with politicians on The Hill...and no, I will not divulge what he is lobbying for, as I know that will be your next pert and yet twee question. I’ve heard all about your research capabilities, which are rather phenomenal to say the least. Who has that kind of time?”
The last sentence he ushered with a look of sheer incredulity, as if she just sat around wasting her days and nights, with such an expensive commodity as time. He spoke to her, like she was some kind of spoilt ingénue.
In any event, it was clearly evident that her guise had worked. Her cover was successful. The mark had made himself known, albeit through “the hired help”.
She feigned shock. “But what would Lord Barnabas Woodshire, OBE want with me?”
“Ah well, you see, you have something of great value he desires”, replied the stranger.
“And what would that be?” She responded waspishly, knowing full well what Woodshire was indeed sniffing around for in this mission. The bait had been taken, like a rat to cheese. They should have given this mission the title, “Operation Tom Cat”, not “……...”, well this mission was TOP SECRET after all, so no divulging anywhere, code or not, the name of this top secret mission.
“Well, that’s for His Lordship to reveal and to discuss further with you at his personal leisure and discretion”. He positively purred, then smiled. Operation Tom Cat, indeed.
“This is all rather overwhelming to say the least. How do I know you are not some larrikin on a mission of chicanery and there is in fact, no Lord Barnabas Woodshire, OBE waiting for me in his Silver Rolls Royce, parked in the back alley through the hotel’s kitchens? That indeed, you and you alone sir, wish to make folly with me, or worse, there in that parked car, plots some fiend or fiends with evil dalliance in mind to do grievous harm to my personage. My life is valuable, as well as my time. What’s in this for me, besides losing my life for one?”
That set the tone, she thought. A ruse to deflect any hint that Her Majesty’s Secret Service had set the scene for entrapment of what Lord Barnabas Woodshire, OBE was truly about. Or so she thought.
“Trust me.” Mr Silver-tongue replied.
“Ah, famous last great words!” Her laugh floated through the air like a melody. She batted her long silky eyelashes at him. A seasoned, yet capricious flirt.
“He’s read your manuscript”, this he delivered to her curtly, as if it was secret code that only she would understand.
“How can that be? The completed draft is locked in a lead vaulted safe, in a formidable and highly respected bank in Lichtenstein. My publisher being Berlin based, well, the final draft is on the other side of the world. Any computer files containing any version of the draft are locked and passwords are required to unlock. Only my trusted editor, myself and my publisher have knowledge of this matter and have access to the bank safe and computer file passwords. Confidentiality Contracts have been signed. There are huge penalties for illegally releasing the contents of the Master Draft and for those gaining illegal access to the story”. She was astounded at this latest development, this new piece of information.
This was true, no one had access to her completed draft, not even those “most” close to her. She was puzzled at how anyone other than her publisher, editor and herself could be privy to this information, without her express knowledge or permission. They had the only authority to release the Draft Manuscript for final public scrutiny and consumption. There would also be no leaking of the draft manuscript whatsoever, as her publisher would never jeopardise the best timing for publicity, nor the sky-high-through-the-roof profit to be finally generated, the ridiculous amount of which, she had been assured, was ordained to reach the six figure mark once again, in American greenback; and of course, the final piece de resitance, there were obviously, the film rights to consider. Therefore, the Draft was locked in a very secure, dead-locked, thief-proof, lead vaulted safe in Lichtenstein, until ready for full final release to market.
He went onto further explain to her what he knew from the little information his employer had imparted to him,
“If I told you the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first chapter, then would you trust me? Even if I went onto say, that no harm will become of you – for without you, there is no final story and there is something within that story that my benefactor has, shall we say, an invested interest in. There is something in your story that is capable of opening something that he has lost, of which he has been ardently searching for quite a long time, for the majority of his life, in fact. When he finally finds this treasure, he will need what is in your story to unlock it. I know this sounds all rather mysterious, puzzling and more than likely frustratingly perplexing. But it would do you well to humour him. He believes you have hidden something in your story, that will open what he is seeking, that which is locked.”
She looked at him dumbfounded. This information, was certainly not in her mission’s dossier.
He looked at her directly and commented, “I have to admit, even I think it sounds preposterous. But I am being paid handsomely for this and I intend to deliver to him, what he wants. So Darling, be a good girl and come along for the ride.”
The tone of his request, not a request at all, more like a command to her, like she was some bumbling school girl, infuriated her. She simmered to herself, “Truly mister, you are insufferable and arrogant”. Then to the stranger she responded, “Rosebud? My story is no “Citizen Kane”, but I am intrigued”.
Certainly, confoundedly intrigued she was – this was not part of the mission’s dossier. She was becoming quite flustered. Why had M at HQ not filled her in on this idiosyncratic significant piece of information? Somehow, Lord Barnabus Woodshire, OBE, had access to her Draft Manuscript. This could only have occurred if M at HQ was not up to speed on the matter and had made a complete balls-up of facts during the initial reconnaissance and data gathering of this mission. That was the blunt answer to her current predicament. Obviously, this was a very important detail that had been sorely missed in her assignment’s fact-full dossier. Tardy to say the least. She reminded herself that if she survived this mission, she would have a few quick, sharp words with M relating to M’s tardiness.
“Very well, you have my attention. Tell me what the first sentence of the first paragraph of the first chapter is of my Draft Manuscript. If spot on, I may then consider following you into the depths of this current mystery with your Lord Barnabas Woodshire, OBE.” She humoured him.
“Last night I dreamt I went to Ascot Street”. He delivered the words hard and fast like bullets shot from the hip with an HK-UMP 9 automatic submachine gun. The words covered her slowly, like hot honey. She was stuck to the spot, although she felt like running.
Courage, she had oodles of it, not to mention recklessness (this for later inner-sanctum discussion over a big exquisite and expensive Quing Dynasty fine porcelain cup of piping hot Lapsang Souchong tea with a twist of lemon and then, later on, some soaking hot buttered crumpet snuggled up with her main squeeze, Mr Tickle-Whiskers. He preferred cream and anchovies, but not on toast. She reminded herself he needed de-fleeing). She reminded herself to keep her mind on the job.
“You have me, I’m afraid,” her in-the-now astute retort, ”...but before I venture forth into salubrious adventure with you, before I take a huge risk on my life, you must tell me your name first. Would you be so kind as to share your name with moi, S’il vous plait?”.
“Smith.” He said straight faced, eyes glinting, self-contained. Concealing, she knew not what. He did not seem to be amused.
“Oh come on! You cannot be serious...really that is your name? You strike me as being the Norman Bates type”. Delivered with great mock exasperation, she smiled her first smile, albeit wryly, she didn’t look coyly at the ground. She loved a good staring contest. She was remembering with great fondness her recent interlude with 007. She had to admit to herself, the stranger reminded her somewhat of 007, but far more intriguing, far more dangerous. Maybe not as good looking, but he had a certain je ne sais quoi about him. “Potential”, was the word that seemed to come to her mind at that moment.
Her virtue or failing, she could not ascertain the difference most of the time, was that she was a risk-taker. Strategic, but a risk taker. Logic had it’s place, although there was something holistic about going with the flow and sticking close to Chaos Theory sometimes, which in itself, had a certain sense of logic about it. The Law of the Universe etc.
“That’s all you need to know at this point. Shall we?” He motioned with a light nod of his head towards the exit sign near the hotel’s kitchen doors and ushered her out through the gyrating, pumping throng of party revellers, dodging the Dom Perignon champagne laden silver trays of the cummerbund-bound waiters.
“Now just one minute Smith! Hold it right there! I haven’t agreed to anything. You take a lot for granted and I find that incredibly ambitious of you old chap.”
They stood stock still, steely-eyed, measuring each other up.
She pulled herself up to full height, all 5’11” of her (add on a couple of more inches in height, taking into consideration the killer stilettos she strode confidently with ease in, which were fitted perfectly to her slim feet attached to a pair of ultra long shapely legs that rose all-the-way-up-to-nowhere, that was really somewhere, like some exotic long-legged Pink Flamingo). She slid her long slender fingers down the length of her svelte thighs, straining in her sheer, body-hugging, floor length gold sequinned 30’s vintage evening gown. She looked Amazonian, Garbo’esque. The knife was fitted in snug to the strap against the flesh of her inner upper thigh under her gown. One slip and she was a goner, so she moved with graceful agility and care, like every step was her last. The brooch pinned to the fabric over her breast had been on “Play Mode” for most of the night. Her opalescent pearl earrings had a bird’s eye view, including night vision. As her ears were pierced, there was no fear of pearls falling and HQ losing the tracking system and visuals, unless the blasted gems were ripped from her ears. She would avoid that at all costs. She felt confident in her killer strappy “Silver-Chord” Jimmy Choo Stilettos, which had been custom fit with razor blades to release on a deadly assailant, in just the right spot, if required. Glancing at Smith, she flicked her long glossy brunette locks behind her ears, a signal to M at HQ that she was on the go. Slyly without being observed by Smith, she twisted the little knob on her watch.
“Ah look at the time! The night is still but young, dear chap! The clock has not struck midnight yet. Shall we then?”, she acquiesced, nodding her head graciously towards the exit sign above the hotel kitchen’s doors, as if this had been her idea all the time, not his arrogant instruction.
Smith smiled wryly at her and kept his grasp on her waist as he led her through the hotel’s kitchens, through the “Out” door and into the darkness of the back alley, where light seemed to be swallowed into nothingness and where Lord Barnabas Woodshire, OBE, or whoever sat in the parked Silver Rolls Royce, awaited her imminent arrival.
As she moved forward deeper into the mission, a skulking soiled rat scampered across her path, dragging with it, a rotten half-eaten candy apple and stuck to it, between the vermin’s sharp yellow incisors, a torn piece of paper covered in melted red toffee, it would seem. Here and there through the transparency of the toffee, black print could be discerned. If she’d cared to use her night vision, and if she had been looking on the ground, at the steps she was taking, she would have seen this rodent with the candy apple and the piece of paper, her first clue. However, her eyes were too busy fixed off the ground and fervently remained on the Silver Rolls Royce, while she commandeered her over-inflated ego and Smith’s hold on her waist.
Somewhere in the background, as the “Outdoor” to the hotel’s kitchens slowly closed, the faint hint of Faith No More’s “King for a Day”, followed them. The lyrics seemed to ooze an ominous final warning over our lady of the perfect imperfections, our Very Special Agent on Her Majesty’s Secret Service, who was now actively engaged in her next covert assignment. Operation Code-Name, TOP SECRET, not to be divulged.
(c) Leanne Lovejoy-Burton, 2017
1. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zAUXPkx7gMI
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