Gynophagia Chronicles: Samantha
Thursday, August 20, 2218 7 AM Pacific DST
Pete’s Coffee, Shattuck and Emerson
Narrative Reconstructed by Peter Howard
Charlie sipped his Pete’s Coffee, black, no sugar, in the early morning chill with eyes fixed across the street. He’d managed to stay only an hour behind his quarry, having arrived here in Berkeley from New Orleans by way of San Jose International Airport… His quarry had managed to elude him by ducking onto a flight to Oakland Airport. Fortunately the Flight to Oakland had a short stopover in Reno, which allowed Charlie’s own flight to catch up. It was an easy thing to guess that his quarry wouldn’t get off in Reno, where a black man would stand out like a sore thumb. Not so in Oakland which had been predominantly black for over two hundred and fifty years. It was Charlie who would easily have been made there. Fortunately, Barak, the tall, handsome, older apparently South African National made a b-line to a motel in Berkeley here on Shattuck Avenue, across from the coffee shop where Charlie had been sitting the last few hours, surfing the net on his laptop and making his bladder sore with well over a gallon of coffee.
Here in Berkeley, neither Barak, nor Charlie would stand out. With the presence of the legendary U.C. Berkeley, Barak could be any University Professor or Visiting Speaker, and Charlie looked like the average pasty faced white graduate student. It was ideal for both of them, and it gave Charlie confidence that Barak had yet to make him. If he ever saw Charlie close enough, he would. While Barak’s face was new to Charlie, Charlie’s face was not new to Barak. That was part of the challenge.
In the Shattuck Motel, Barak had registered as Karl Mbuta at about 2 AM. It was now seven, and Charlie could see Barak through the window of his room on the second floor, looking straight at him. Charlie, watching through a pair of tear drop Ray Bans, abandoned his post at Pete’s, and slipped into the men’s room to help his aching bladder, hoping Barak wouldn’t use the opportunity to make his escape.
Once outside again, and through the big bay window, Charlie could see the tall South African, his skin so dark it was very nearly blue, and two stared at each other for a split second. That was all it took! Charlie had been made! Barak caught the bus just as Charlie made his way out of the Café.
It could only go one place, Ashby. Charlie ran behind the bus, keeping out of sight as much as possible. It was only three city blocks to Ashby Station, one of the two stops in Berkeley by the mediocre Bay Area Rapid Transit system. Sure enough, he saw Barak exit the bus there from a distance of about two hundred yards, and go down into the station.
Which way would he go? Charlie, again, had to guess. He might head south toward Fremont, or west, to San Francisco. He had no idea What Barak’s plan was, or what his objective was. For that matter, he had no idea what his own mission was other than to shadow Barak and figure out what Barak was doing.
Why, for instance, had Barak led Charlie from Vienna to Freeport to New Orleans to here? The man had met with nobody at all. He might have picked up any number of instructions. He had picked up no other tails, other than Charlie himself, and it was highly likely he knew he had a tail as far back as Vienna. Barak had been in the sleaziest bars and low rent rooms in each city.
His disguise, and Charlie knew it to be a disguise, was perfect. He looked like a very stately South African man of between forty and fifty years. But Barak, Charlie knew, was not a black man at all, nor was he South African at all. He was as Anglo-Saxon as they come, and a British National undercover, very likely establishing his own cover. MI6 said: tail this one, and Charlie followed orders. You do that in MI6. You follow orders, or you get terminated.
Barak switched trains twice, and Charlie managed to keep the tail apparently without Barak’s having noticed. Either that, or Barak was luring him in. Barak exited the Bart System at Embarcadero Station, went up to Market Street, and caught another bus. It was well past 9 AM.
Charlie caught one of the ubiquitous cabs, confident he was still undetected and said simply: “Follow that Bus!”
It was working. Past Market and 4th, however, Barak appeared in the rear window of the bus, flashing a middle finger.
“Bloody hell! Stop!” Charlie snorted at the driver. “Pull over!”
“Here?” asked the Pakistani woman in the driver’s seat.
“Yes, here,” Charlie tossed the woman a 20€ note for a 3€ fare and leapt out. “Dammit!” he said as he began heading north on whatever street it was. Divisidero? Okay, sure. Now What?
Charlie continued his slow brooding pace, looking for something which would allow him to re-enter the chase. In the tiny mirror on the right side of his glasses he could see Barak tailing him now. He stopped at a convenience store and picked up a local paper, looking at the events page to find anything local and soon that might help him. At 10 AM, Shakespeare in the Park was just what the doctor ordered. Charlie continued north, walking leisurely for another half hour till he made it to Haight Street, and turned left. If he could make it to the Park’s Pan handle and a lot of unbelievably inept Thespians butchering the bard’s poetry, he might be able to turn the tables there.
Barak was difficult to make as Charlie made his way toward the pan handle. He ducked into the Doe Store, a very famous old breakfast joint and had a nice egg and loin breakfast just to piss Barak off. It would, Charlie knew. Nobody likes to salivate while your quarry is enjoying a good meal.
“Excuse me,” Charlie said to the pretty waitress. “Do you see a black man pacing back and forth outside looking this way?”
“Yes,” she said. “He’s making us all really nervous.”
“Okay, can I ask you, those steps in back, to they lead up to the roof?”
“They do, sir…. But…”
“Don’t worry, he isn’t dangerous. We’re playing a sort of game, you see. Sort of a type of tag, you’re it. I just need to lure him up. May I ask you to do me a favour? There’s a payphone outside, can you pretend to make a phone call…”
For her trouble, Charlie handed the young woman three 20€ notes, which convinced her to do as he said, and headed up six stories to the roof, and waited by the door with it only slightly ajar, till he heard the tell-tale sound of hurried footfalls heading up.
Charlie smiled, this is it! It’s do or die, Barak, and it’s either you or me!
Charlie ran to his hiding place and as soon as Barak emerged, tackled the man bodily, but Barak was not nearly as surprised as Charlie would have liked. He received the tackle with an ease of motion that threw Charlie off, landing Charlie squarely on his back and knocking the wind out of him. Charlie took off running, knowing Barak was the superior combat specialist, one of two possible people were under that mask, and it would be a chore to figure out which one. There was one chance.
Charlie ran all out, fast as he possibly could, as Barak leapt over the vent Charlie had had to go around, slid over it in one graceful motion, slid on top of it, and tackled Charlie. The two were on the ground now, struggling to pin one another.
“I have you, Five!” Charlie said. “I have you!”
Barak stopped struggling, his black as night eyes looking straight at Charlie.
“Shit!” he spat. “Bloody hell!” The voice was unmistakable.
Charlie stood, and offered his hand to Barak, aka Five, aka: Lieutenant Iain Shelby.
“How’d you know?” Barak asked.
“It was either you or Number Two. Two never practised free running.”
Barak laughed. “Oh well… Congratulations, Mate. It was worthy of James Bond. You deserve it. I suppose I’ll be sent down to some desk job at MI5 or something…”
“When did you make me? Freeport?”
“I knew I had a tail, but I wasn’t able to confirm it till New Orleans. I never saw you till Berkeley. Damn, I hate washing out…”
“Actually,” Came a rather shaky, high pitched voice. “The both of you aught be proud. Neither of you washed out, although both of you very nearly did.”
“Speaking of Bond, here comes the classic Fleming Hook!” said Barak of the newcomer.
The man was a balding chap of about fifty years. Unmistakably a Middle Class-man from London’s East End, with a face for a Churchill Look Alike Contest.
“Allow me to introduce myself,” said the newcomer. “I am your new boss. You may call me Palm Beach. Number Five, I strongly suggest you re-acquaint yourself with that well groomed accent you’ve polished. You never know who might be listening.”
“Sorry, China,” said Barak. “Score a luz?”
“I don’t smoke,” said the older man. “And neither do you.”
“I can’t remember any South African who didn’t have a cigarette in his hand at some point,” said Barak. He produced a pack of Dunhill and lit one.
“Leftenant,” said the older man. “You truly are a credit to the corps. Now, let us get ourselves to the safe house. I hope you remember where it is. You have forty five minutes.”
Barak looked toward Charlie, then took a running leap over the edge of the building. What trick the man used to land safely, Charlie couldn't say, tough he was mildly interested... not really.
“Show off!” Charlie called.
“You'd better move, Twenty One. Tick Tock!”
Charlie nodded to Palm Beach and went down the way he came up, by the stairs. Of course, his name was not Charlie, and, like Barak, his face was not his own. Both faces were those of real people, of course. Dead people. People who assumed room temperature without anyone knowing they had.
Charles Edward Gordon has been such a man. He would have been thirty this year. He had been killed, his body left on the streets of Birmingham, by an Angolan Mobster named Mgordo. Gordo he was. Charlie's very first training assignment had been to plan an extermination of Mgordo's network. Charlie would never forget the look on Mgordo's face when Charlie strowed into the man's office.
“You're Dead!” The man screamed. “You're Dead!”
“Charlie is dead, you're right,” Charlie had said. Then he shot the man in cold blood between the eyes. It was the preferred method of termination when using a bullet. No other placement was so effective. Mgordo was Charlie's fifth kill. The first had taken place one hundred seventy five seconds before in the next apartment over, where Mgordo's muscle lived. It was last month. Every single one of the graduating class went through a similar exercise. It started with dossiers on the mark. Charlie was given his and told he was to plan the hit down to the second, and submit it. Corrections, advice.
His instructor circled a weak point in Charlie's plan. “Why won't this work?” Charlie had to come up with an answer and correct that weakness, or wash out. Then, one day, he was driven to Birmingham by his instructor who parked in front of the very building where Charlie had planned the attack. Charlie thought he about to go on a training exercise.
“It is a training exercise,” the instructor said. “If you live, you pass.”
Four of his classmates did not. Six others flubbed it so badly they were given new identities in some other country having washed out. Charlie's went like clockwork. It was a simple plan. The intelligence was easily followed. The adrenaline rush was like nothing else Charlie had ever experienced. Two minutes, fifty five seconds, five kills. In and out like clockwork.
With Mgordo gone, Charlie Edward Gordon became a nobody. A clean slate. No family and definitely no friends. Mgordo had been Charlie's only friend when the man was alive. What happened that Mgordo had to kill Charlie was unknown. The point was, that Charlie was something of a ghost. He had no criminal record and no work history. He was an average student in a Birmingham secondary school who's father was dead and who's mother would be culled as soon as he turned sixteen. His sisters were all converted and he was alone. He was a man who dealt in favours and cash. He did not like being tracked, and it worked very well. What it was he did for Mgordo was something of a mystery. All that was known for sure was that his Charlie Edward Gordon's was found in a basement seven years before. A year after that, the man who would become Charlie put on his face for the first time, and joined the Royal Army. He'd worn that face ever since for months at a time.
The safe house was an warehouse on Oakland’s East 14th Street filled with very fancy classic cars dating back as far as the early 21st Century. Charlie, as prescribed, entered through the small door in the alley between the warehouse and a spa that catered to the locals. Above the cars was an office accessible by a single, rickety steel staircase that rattled terribly as Charlie ascended. The boss and Barak were in that office with three others.
“Late!” the boss said as Charlie entered. “This is our local man.” He referred to another middle aged type with even less hair but thin and frail rather than portly.
“Heya,” said the man in a local accent as he stood to his height of 5’9” and offered his hand to Charlie. By the look of him he was very likely as much an East Ender as the boss.
“He is Andy Seine to you. If in Northern California, you are to contact him only in a pinch,” said the boss. A Pinch meant life or death, with an emphasis on death. Your code till the end of the year is Centre-Left. Use it in a political context and Mr. Seine will arrange a rescue. Carter and Smith, you already know. You can thank them later. Now, assignments…”
“Are we not going home for Debrief, sir?” asked Barak/Iain.
“Eventually, yes. You’ve got a lot of work to do, actually. You have a new cover to establish now that Barak is all but blown.”
“Pity,” Barak said. “I was getting quite fond of this face.”
“In the meantime,” Palm Beach shot Barak a dirty look. “I need you in Port Au Prince. Here’s your packet. It’s basically a business deal, you’ll be buying meat for use in Cuba. Charlie, on the other hand, has a lot more work to do, as a disaffected Limey looking for a new life in America.”
“America?” Charlie asked.
“Yes. In fact, you’ll be establishing my new codename, which is Palm Beach. You’re not going to Palm Beach, per se, but Singer Island. There, you’ll rent a room, throw money around, date at least two young débutantes and buy one of them a lovely British car… preferably an Aston Martin…”
“Any reason why?” Charlie asked.
“Yes,” said Palm Beach simply. “Make sure the girls you date have families that are connected. You’re a playboy, you must pretend to not have to work…”
“That won’t be hard…”
“Even so… American girls, especially of the upper crust, tend to be… demanding.”
“Of course, sir,” said Charlie. “I’ll do my best.”
“How long will the assignment be, sir?” asked Barak.
“At least a month,” said Palm Beach. “You won’t be seeing anyone for at least four weeks, assuming you managed to not flub such simple a task as you’ve been assigned. Now, you have your orders. I suggest you get out of my sight. I have business to attend to that is far more important than holding the hands of a pair of neophytes, so get out.”
“Do I get my double ‘0’…” asked Barak.
“GET OUT!” screamed the boss.