Posts Tagged ‘espionage’

Jazz with Ella

Posted: 27/12/2025 by vequinox in Literature
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“And Lona probably knows there’s something going on,” said David, “’cause she was up on deck this morning, too.”
“It doesn’t have to be a big cloak and dagger issue,” Paul said. “I’ll just announce to the authorities—maybe Ivan Nikolaevich or Natasha—that I want to defect to the Soviet Union. It happens. They’ll be delighted.” He rattled on, calmed by the acquiescence. “At first, they’ll think I’m a spy. I’ll have to prove I’m not. Then I figure we can get on with living.”
Jennifer felt a fresh wave of anger. “How naïve are you? Of course they’ll think you’re a spy, a plant. You’ll be interrogated, maybe sent away. You don’t get it. All this first class treatment we’ve been getting is for visitors, not for citizens. Listen”—he was waving her away—”in Leningrad I met a Cuban, a musician, who opted to move here. You think they gave him an award? Put him in an orchestra? No. He’s now living in a condemned slum with a 10-rouble-a- week job sweeping floors. That’s what will happen to you.”
Paul sat down on the bunk with a sudden thump, his knapsack at his feet. “No, they wouldn’t do that—they wouldn’t break us up. And they wouldn’t mistreat me. I’m still a Canadian citizen.”
“Like I said, how naïve are you? You could see the inside of a Soviet jail for a long time while they’re deciding what to do with you.”
Paul fidgeted nervously, the bravado gone from his face.
Jennifer went on, “Think about Vera. She’ll come under scrutiny, too…her family, her whole life will become uncomfortable.”
David cleared his throat. “I hate to say this, bucko, but she’s right. I remember when I was here in ‘68 one of the Italian exchange students—a real Romeo—fell for Masha, a mathematics student. Whoo, she was hot stuff, but none of us poor adolescents could get near her. Only her Romeo. Anyway, he opted to stay in the country and that’s the last we saw of him.”
Paul’s face had turned grey. “What do you mean?”
“He just quietly disappeared. When we asked the teachers about him, some of them actually pretended they didn’t know who we were talking about. My professor—he was a good guy—gave me a straight answer, or as close to a straight answer as you’ll get here. He said that Romeo was being re-settled. That was his word, ‘re-settled’. He didn’t look too happy when he said it.”
“So what does it mean?”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

Jazz with Ella

Posted: 21/12/2025 by vequinox in Literature
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Paul splashed his way to the hatch used by the crew. She resisted calling out to him but sprang up and entered the passenger staircase, ready to run downstairs and head him off before he reached his cabin. But rounding the corner on the stairs she smacked into Lona who was—even at this early hour—immaculately dressed in a pale blue silk blouse and white shorts.
“Good morning, Mrs. White,” Lona said eagerly with the ever-present smirk that so irritated Jennifer. “You’re up early.”
How does she look so damn good at 6 o’clock in the morning? Self-consciously, Jennifer pulled her nightgown around her. She couldn’t remember if she had combed her hair. She called a hurried good morning but even as she raced past she couldn’t help thinking, Lona and David and now Paul. Doesn’t anyone sleep in? She wondered how many others might have witnessed Paul’s arrival. Natasha? Hopefully not that ugly fellow with the carbuncle who, no doubt, rose at dawn to shoot rabbits for target practise.
Jennifer knocked on Paul’s door and it creaked open; Paul, now shirtless, wore a guilty expression and was still buttoning a pair of dry pants.
“So, what’s the scoop? You competing for the Soviet Union in long distance swimming?” she asked, sliding in the doorway and pushing the door shut. Then she remembered the microphones. “Or shouldn’t we talk about it here?” She pointed at the speaker over the berth.
“No, that’s okay. I stuffed it with a sock on the second day of the cruise. Personally, I think it’s just an intercom and not a bug at all, despite what David says.” He turned back to wringing out the river water from his dripping shirt and pants. “So you saw me?”
Jennifer nodded. “Come on. Explain. Sooner or later I would have heard about it—from Chopyk or Natasha.”
“We’re friends—aren’t we? I was going to tell you.” He gave a big sigh. “In fact, you are the only person I want to tell. Do you remember when we met that workers’ club from Toglyatti?
“How could I forget? You were very taken with that gorgeous woman. What was her name? Vera?”
“You noticed that? I didn’t think anybody saw us when we…when I met her.” Paul continued, rolling his shirt in a towel.
“When you what?” She was laughing now. His face reddened.
“When I left with her.”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

Jazz with Ella

Posted: 15/12/2025 by vequinox in Literature
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David Joiner was always out on deck early, stripped down in the fresh air and performing his 5BX exercises, the rigorous program designed by the Canadian Air Force. It was a pity to be doing them so early, he thought, when there was no one on deck to admire his prowess with the combination push-ups and hand claps. He particularly liked it when women appreciated his tight, firm figure. Sadly there were only two women among the American cultural tourists that he had met who seemed promising in a summer affair fashion—and they were both older than he was.
Lying flat on his back, David stretched and flexed. When he began to do sit-ups, he sighted along the trees at shore line, watching them rise and fall as he moved. But on one of the sit-ups, he glanced out to the river and saw an object in the water, moving intently toward the boat. Soon, the object resolved into a face, head held high above the current and body doing some kind of a breast stroke underneath. He abandoned his sit-ups and stared until he was sure that it was the face of a man.
He didn’t know what to make of this. The river was wide at this point and looked swift. A man would have to be desperate to attempt such a swim. But David had recently read The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, so he knew all about desperate men. One of ours, returning to his cover from some secret assignation? What would he find of importance in the Volga region countryside? Or one of theirs? Again, that made no sense. Why would one of their agents want to get on board a tour boat with a group of Russian language academics and a gaggle of culture-seeking tourists? And why in blazes would he swim? Surely the Kremlin could afford small boats.
David started to do some deep knee bends but didn’t finish. As the figure swam more into focus he could see clearly that the swimmer was Paul. He pulled on his track suit top and zipped it up. It was time for a quick rinse in the communal shower room, then some explanations.
★
Professor Walter Chopyk had also been up since first light but was oblivious to any activity on deck or in the river. He chose to spend these quiet morning hours seated at the tiny desk in his cabin, text books arranged neatly, writing in his journal.

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The Qliphoth

Posted: 11/12/2025 by vequinox in Literature
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a fatal error. Guys he knows are hitching round Hungary or driving down
Route 66. Why on earth has he made this West Country retreat? The whole
notion of being-in-time is deeply obscure. He’s been going in circles, but his
centre is nowhere. He tried to tell Katie this but she wouldn’t listen and
ditched him a month before the exams for a trainee accountant, which didn’t
help, he couldn’t/can’t focus on anything, but it’s no excuse. This tape looks
like another dud. Keep it rolling just a little bit longer.
There goes an hairy old rock band; and something about a drug trial. He
never knew his mother cared about such things, not these days. But there’s
layer after layer of items on the tape, the years keep cutting into each
other—he can’t place them all—and now some of them look like dubs of dubs,
the picture breaking up as it goes down the generations.
But here’s a BBC2 logo, and rolling titles. Hang in there, bump up the volume:
“. . . In tonight’s edition of The Lifeskills Show we look at the problems of
living with mental illness, taking a dark journey into the nightmare world of
manic depression. We ask—what can it do to a marriage . . .?”
Oh shit. Holy holy shit.
Long shot: an institutional garden, Victorian gothic buildings. Autumn
oaks, drained greenish skies, brown bushes where someone loiters. The camera
starts to zoom in, slowly but relentlessly. His scarecrow father, his actual
grey-faced father Nicholas Oscar Beardsley, stands under the big tree. He is
shuffling his feet through dead leaves. Then, perhaps dazed by the lens, the
sudden attention, he waves a hand feebly, in a purely gestural shielding of his
face, like a criminal celeb arriving at court. The shot slowly dissolves into a
montage of still snapshots, underscored by sixties fuzz/wah-wah rock.
Lucas can hardly believe this. There’s his handsome aquiline daddy, no
more than twenty-five with long curving locks, headband, beads, epaulettes,
saffron shirt; and Pauline, hardly seventeen, has her auburn hair cut like a warrior’s
helmet. She’s striking, almost pretty in her floating blue robe. His parents
are apparently immortal, smiling as they silk-screen posters together in a
white studio, ignoring naked flower people thronging the doorway. Perhaps
this is a Love Happening. Which fades into wedding pics, everybody grinning
in kaftans and flares outside the registry office.
The voice-over intrudes—male, charged with synthetic urgency and portent:
“Nick and Pauline were filled with the heady optimism and vibrant energy
of the sixties generation. After their marriage Pauline did her teacher training
and plunged into the hurly burly of inner-city schooling, while Nick, with his
art-school flair, entrepreneurial drive, and the help of a small legacy, started a
life-style shop—The Great British Time Machine . . .”

https://www.amazon.com/dp/0978186508

Jazz with Ella

Posted: 03/12/2025 by vequinox in Literature
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a ransom note. It began with a number code, then read, “Thank you. You give me hope.” It was signed Volodya. Chopyk sat like stone watching this interaction.
Jennifer was stunned—as much by the very public message already scrutinized by Natasha—and who else?—but also by the date. It had arrived two days ago while they were in Volgograd.
“Why didn’t I get this earlier?” she asked. The tour guide and the teacher were silent and glanced at one another.
Chopyk cleared his throat. “May I speak with you frankly, Mrs. White?”
“Please do,” she replied tartly.
“This man, this Volodya, you met in Leningrad. He’s not a good man.” He caught her horrified stare. “Oh, he’s not a criminal; Natasha has checked. You know—or maybe not—that every workplace keeps records of its employees. He’s lost many jobs and he’s just a—now don’t go flying off the handle—he’s probably looking for a wife from the west so he can leave the Soviet Union. Naturally, he could apply to the authorities for an exit visa in the appropriate fashion.” He glanced at Natasha, “But some people choose other, weaker ways.”
“Stop right there!” Jennifer could feel a surge of embarrassment and anger rush to her face. “Professor Chopyk, with greatest respect, you are not my father—and Natasha is not my boss. If a telegram comes for me in the future it should be passed on to me immediately. No background checks of my correspondents are necessary.”
Natasha turned her head away from this wanton display of western individualism. Chopyk sighed. “I’m sorry you feel that way, Mrs. White. All I was going to suggest was that you inform him that you’re already married—and he might stop his attentions.”
Truly angry now, and with a sense that she was burning her career bridge behind her, Jennifer stood, snatching the telegram. “I’ll conduct my own life, Professor Chopyk, and that will not interfere with my teaching job.” (She resisted the urge to add, “better than you accomplish yours.”) “This is nothing to do with you.” She pushed the chair aside and stomped away from the table.
“Wait, I .…” Chopyk seemed genuinely concerned at her anger. “There’s something else.” Despite herself, she turned back toward him.
“I’m sorry, Jennifer,” he continued more softly, “but we had to check. We weren’t sure that the telegram was for you… .”

https://draft2digital.com/book/3562892

https://www.amazon.com/dp/1926763246

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