The Secret Meaning of Blossom: a fast-moving spy thriller set in Japan

by T. M. Parris

  Grom pulled a regretful face. “Well, I suppose, if she had been a wife she could have considered it part of the divorce settlement. Actually, she stole it. Sloped off in the middle of the night. Took that and a few other things besides. As I said, she betrayed me.”

  It was so much the essence of the man. These prints were significant to him because they reminded him of a supposed betrayal. They stoked up a need for revenge that justified a pattern of behaviour that had caused the death of Fairchild’s parents and plenty of others, attempts on his own life and so much more. It was the way Grom was wired; resentment at how the world treated him was what fired him up.

  “My parents helped her get away from you, didn’t they?”

  “You’re making me sound like a monster again, John. We were good together. But other people got into her head, whispered things about me. The half-truths of lie-masters. You know them. You know how they befuddle you.”

  Fairchild steeled himself to say the next thing. “I do. I’ve had enough of it. I want the truth, all of it now. That’s why I’m here. You were right, what you said at Lake Baikal. This latest thing has made me realise I could spend my whole life guessing, turning up one fact after another, year after year. I just want to know.”

  Grom was watching him, evaluating him. He looked back at the man, mirroring his expression. The car continued through the streets of Tokyo.

  “This woman, Rose,” said Grom. “She’s important to you, isn’t she?”

  “Not as important as this.”

  He hated how those words sounded. They weren’t true, at least he didn’t think so. In any case, his decades-long quest for answers wasn’t why he was here right now; his motives were much more current. But Rose couldn’t know that he was doing this. She’d already suffered from Grom’s callous, playful ruthlessness through her association with Fairchild. The path Fairchild was taking was for him alone.

  He carried on. “I have no affinity with who she works for. Her values aren’t mine. Walter’s her boss and he’s been lying to me for decades. He’ll never tell me everything. You said you would. You said I could get the truth from you.”

  “Well, you can,” Grom said quietly.

  “And what do I have to do in return?”

  “Let’s talk about that.”

  The car kept moving.

  Chapter 45

  James sat at the bar in one of those pretend pubs they like to have at airports. He was tempted by a beer, but decided against it in the end. It would only be a disappointment. Better to wait for the real thing. He looked at his watch. Not too long now. It was all looking very Christmassy here at Narita: Santa on his sleigh, tinsel and gift-wrapped boxes, ginger and toffee specials at the coffee shops, jaunty red and green hats and scarves. It really was true that a life-or-death experience made you look at everything in a different light. Even just being able to sit here, warm enough, plenty of food inside, a Wi-Fi connection when he needed it, seemed like luxury aplenty. All he needed now was Fiona and the kids, and he’d be seeing them soon enough.

  A man came up to the bar and asked for a beer. A Brit, by the sound of it. Trim figure, blue eyes. He glanced across.

  “Not like the real thing, of course,” he said. Odd how people sometimes seemed to know what you were thinking. “Got a long wait?”

  “Not too bad, considering.”

  His beer arrived. “Mind if I join you?” He pulled up a stool. “Latest Test a bit of a disappointment. You’re a cricket man?”

  “I certainly am, though for how much longer on their current form, who knows?”

  They talked cricket for a few minutes, then the chap stuck out his hand.

  “Timothy.”

  He did the same. “James.”

  “James Clarke? I was wondering if you was you. Wasn’t sure, though. I’m Tim Gardner.”

  “Ah, right! Good! My sister mentioned the name.”

  “Did she now? Well, interesting time you’ve had of it over here. I expect you’re glad to be heading home.”

  “Actually, I’m not going home. I’m waiting here to meet Fiona and the kids in Arrivals. We decided to stay on here for a while. Things were getting a bit stale, to be honest. Too much in the groove. Nothing shakes things up like a change of scene. Turns out the kids were very taken with the place, despite the circumstances. My company has an office here so we’re going to give it a go. Not forever, I’m sure, but it’ll be an experience.”

  “Well, good for you! If you want any tips from a longstanding expat, you know where to come.”

  “Thanks, yes, I’m sure we will. Takao’s being pretty useful. Turning into something of a family friend. Maybe Mirai and Tomo could as well, although I’ll have to work on Fiona a bit.”

  “Good stuff. Well, let’s stay in touch.”

  “Oh, right. That’s how these things work, is it?”

  Gardner seemed befuddled by his question.

  “Sorry, I mean I really don’t know anything about these situations.”

  He still looked blank.

  “Well, I mean, you working with my sister and all?”

  “Rose and I are in the same line of business, if that’s what you mean. I don’t work with her directly. In fact I believe she’s already on her way back to London. Anyway, happy to exchange details if you’re hanging around in Tokyo for a while.” He put his business card down on the bar.

  “Yes, well, here’s the thing.” James felt slightly awkward. “I realised something, thinking about it all afterwards. I mean, in that cave – you heard about the cave, I take it?”

  “Oh yes, I heard.” He sipped his beer patiently.

  “Well, back then I’d have done anything for Fiona and the kids. Sold my soul to the devil, whatever.”

  “Perfectly understandable, James. I wouldn’t worry about it. I mean these people are all about coercion in the nastiest of ways.”

  “But I was wrong!”

  He looked startled.

  “Well, I was, wasn’t I? Rose was right. I’d have given them everything with no guarantee from their end that they would have kept their side of the bargain. I’d have been in their pockets for the foreseeable.”

  “Yes, but in the circumstances—”

  “Well, exactly. What else could I have done? They wouldn’t have brooked a refusal. Which just makes me realise what dreadful people they are. I mean, the way they treated those poor students. It was a real eye-opener, you know. I never thought I’d witness someone shooting someone else in cold blood like that. You can’t tolerate them or explain it away. There’s nothing someone like that wouldn’t do, is there? You know, I really didn’t think that people like that existed in the world. I’ve lived a very sheltered life, I expect you’ll say.”

  “Well, there certainly are some despicable people around. And plenty who won’t be shedding a tear now that our friend Milo is no more.”

  “But there’ll be others. That kind of game won’t just stop. I know enough about hackers myself, but I hadn’t seen the evil side of it. What you can do with those skills if you don’t have any humanity. It’s – well, it’s made me reconsider a few things.”

  “Yes, well, the depths of the human psyche certainly give one pause for thought.” Gardner looked philosophical as he reached for his beer. Goodness, was he doing this deliberately? These spies were supposed to be intelligent, weren’t they? Or maybe this was some kind of technique to get James to spill exactly why he’d reached out to Gardner in the first place. It was a big deal, actually, going behind Rose’s back and putting a call in to the British Embassy to try and speak to the fellow. Hopefully it wouldn’t be for nothing. It looked like James was going to have to be a bit more forthright.

  “I’ve worked out how to do it,” he said.

  “Do what, old chap?”

  “The back door. The cold wallet.”

  “Sorry?”

  “The thing that Milo wanted. I know how to encode the wallet’s encryption so that it can be accessed with a secret ke
y. A key only I know.”

  “And that means…”

  “Well, if the need arose, I’d be able to sneak a quick look into the account of anyone with one of those wallets. And keep a record of when and where they’ve gone online. It’s going to launch quite widely, this. The cutting edge of crypto security, you might say. People who value their privacy will be interested in this product, for sure.”

  Now the fellow looked interested. “Really? Well, I can see that might be useful.” His head started nodding. “Yes! But how would this work, exactly?”

  “Well, to clarify a few things. I would have the key. Only me. No one else. If you want something, you come to me. This is for looking only. Discreet observation. A quick peek. And only when there’s a damn good need. No arbitrary nosing about just to see what people have been up to. And I decide who and when.”

  “Right, right.” Gardner was deep in thought. “Well, of course, we’d be relying on you for the intel, so it’s your rules. I mean, from our side, we’re interested in the nefarious types who abuse these confidential networks to oil the wheels of terrorist groups, for example. Life and death, that’s what’s on the table as far as we’re concerned. So there’ll always be a damn good reason. That’s a useful offer, James. Though I have to say I’m surprised. I’d have thought after everything you’ve been through, something like this would be the last thing you’d want.”

  “But as I said, it’s taken this run-in with Fire Sappers to make me realise what’s at stake and who you folks are dealing with. So I’m yours, Timothy, if needed. That’s what I’m saying to you, if that all makes sense.”

  The man did at least look chuffed. That much was gratifying. “Absolutely. That’s very welcome news. Delighted to have you on the books, so to speak.”

  “Yes, well, one more thing, then. This is strictly confidential.”

  “Oh, of course! Goes without saying. You don’t have to worry on that front. We know what we’re doing there.”

  “No, I mean, strictly confidential. Not a word of this to my sister. Ever. She doesn’t need to know, so we don’t trouble her with it. I wouldn’t want her getting all protective on me. It’s my decision after all. You understand?”

  “Oh yes,” said Gardner. “Perfectly.”

  Chapter 46

  On the flight to London, Rose tried to think of some ways of making her time back in Britain bearable. Seeing more of James and the family would have been one idea, but now they’d made a snap decision to go and live in Tokyo for a while. It seemed like the last place they’d want to spend time, but clearly she didn’t know them as well as she thought. At least they were safe and out of the woods now, free to pursue normality again when it suited them.

  At Heathrow she switched on her phone and found a text from Walter: I’m at the airport. Her boss was coming to the airport to meet her? This was unheard of.

  He was waiting for her at the arrivals gate, a grim, pale figure among the Christmas decorations and hugs and kisses of holiday season reunions all around.

  “What’s up?” she asked, coming over.

  “I need you on something urgent. There’s a car waiting.” They started walking towards the exit. “Fire Sappers is becoming a problem. The risks to British security have been massively upscaled. Dark web monitoring shows them forging links with various fringe political groups that have issues with the west, and the UK in particular. They’re supporting groups that see Britain and British interests as terrorist targets.”

  “This is Grom,” said Rose. “You said he’d behave like this if he got the chance. He mobilises people to serve his own ends. He’s recruiting other causes to stir things up against us.”

  “Indeed, but it’s worse than we thought. He’s been joined by someone else, which compounds the problem.”

  “Who?”

  “Can’t you guess?”

  “No.” She really didn’t know what Walter was getting at.

  The man sighed. “When did you last see John Fairchild?”

  Fairchild? She’d been trying not to think about that. He hadn’t bothered getting in touch since walking out on her in the piano bar. She cringed inwardly at the thought of that evening, that she’d felt able to trust him with her feelings. If she ended up with a slap in the face it was what she deserved. But this?

  “A couple of nights ago. But you can’t think Fairchild has joined them, Walter. No way.”

  “An anonymous source from Fire Sappers sent a message to a disguised MI6 inbox. It was pretty clear. Someone who knows us wanted to tell us that Fairchild is working with Fire Sappers.”

  “And is it verified, this message? Confirmed via another source?”

  “Not so far. But it won’t be easy to verify. We need to assume for now that it’s true. What did you talk about when you met with Fairchild? What state was he in?”

  Rose’s heart sank. “He was angry. He’d found out that Grom used to serve in Japan. And that he had a wife.”

  “Ah. Oh dear.”

  “Why didn’t you tell him these things, Walter? This is why he’s so bitter. He goes to enormous lengths to uncover this information and then he finds out you already knew.”

  “I had my reasons, but I fear this may be what’s caused Fairchild to turn around. Regrettable.”

  “Regrettable? You trusted him. I trusted him. It was me who told him Grom was in Japan. And he was badgering Tim Gardner for information as well. Grom working with Fairchild against the British would be a disaster. I’m not sure I believe it, Walter.”

  “You need to factor in Grom’s ability to manipulate. Fairchild could have killed him in Russia, remember? He was pointing a gun at the man. But somehow Grom talked himself out of it. Did Fairchild ever tell you what he said?”

  “No.” Fairchild had deliberately avoided telling Rose what Grom had said to him that day. “I told him everything, Walter. We’d been working as a team.”

  “Well, I blame myself as well. Clearly I mishandled things. But this isn’t a time for beating ourselves up. The analyst role will have to wait. The FBI task force is enlarging and going international. It’ll pursue Fire Sappers wherever they are in the world. With your experience you need to be a part of this, Rose.”

  A slap in the face? This was so much more. But it was her own fault. She’d let her guard down. She thought she could reach out, somehow not be alone. Feeling sorry for herself, seeing James and Fiona and the kids and what they had, she thought she could have it all. But she’d made her choices years ago.

  Learn, Rose, learn. Make up for it. And don’t let it happen again.

  “When do we start?” she asked.

  “Right now.”

  The Clarke and Fairchild series

  Thank you for reading The Secret Meaning of Blossom! If you want to stay in touch and hear about new releases in the series before anyone else, please join my mailing list. Members of the Clarke and Fairchild Readers’ Club receive exclusive offers and updates. Claim a free copy of Trade Winds, a short story featuring John Fairchild and set in Manila. It takes place before the series starts, and before Fairchild and Clarke meet. Another short story, Crusaders, is set in Croatia and features Rose Clarke’s fall from grace from the British intelligence service. These stories are not available on Amazon but are free for members to download. You can unsubscribe from the list at any time.

  Visit www.tmparris.com to sign up, or click here!

  Reviews are very important to independent authors, and I’d really appreciate it if you could leave a review of this book on Amazon. It doesn’t have to be very long – just a sentence or two would be fine – but if you could, it would provide valuable feedback to me to and to potential readers.

  In Book Five, Clarke and Fairchild will meet in Hungary, where Rose has to come to terms with Fairchild’s betrayal and her true feelings for him, and Fairchild will unearth some startling revelations about his family. All of this takes place against a backdrop of some of the most explosive issues of identity and nationalism that
are current today.

  I hope you stay with us for the journey.

  Author Notes and Thanks:

  The Real Takao

  Takao is a name borrowed from a real person. I met Takao in Tokyo through some mutual friends, a couple of Australians. He was an investment banker, but clearly an unusual one. He’d lived in the UK and the USA and found the Japanese business environment constraining and frustrating. Several weeks after we first met, he got in touch and, astonishingly, offered me a job working for him. Confident that the sluggish Japanese stock market was on the verge of recovery, he wanted to set up an office in Tokyo so that he could provide advice and stock recommendations to European clients. He needed an administrator to keep everything together while he went and did his day job, so he offered me a post, along with an apartment. At that time, an offer of a free place to live in Tokyo was pretty incredible. A number of people did suggest he was trying to set me up as his mistress – not all that unusual, apparently – but I trusted my instincts and there was never any suggestion of that. It was the business that interested him.

  The job, or at least the job as Takao wanted to do it, also involved travelling around Japan in style visiting companies to assess their investment potential. This took us to numerous places, the most memorable of which to me were Hiroshima, with its sobering museum and epicentre memorial, and Hokkaido, the snow-clad island in the north hosting the fabulous ice festival. Of course these trips were fun and social – it wasn’t just about work – but it was never more than that, and gave me a great chance to go places I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford on a humble English teacher's salary. My ‘training’ also involved sending me off to Amsterdam for a week, and a few days in Hong Kong where, amongst other things, he’d just bought a yacht and roped me in to help launch it.

  In the end, Takao was wrong in his optimism about the Japanese stock market bounce. I don’t know what happened eventually, because after a few months I bowed out and went home. We ended up parting on bad terms. Though I remember Japan incredibly fondly, I didn’t find it an easy place to live and eventually felt alienated and became quite unhappy. I took it out on him and treated him very badly in the final couple of weeks. In the Japanese tradition, I’d like to apologise to him for how we parted ways, but his name is a very common one and I’ve never been able to find him on social media and have no other details for him.