by Mark A Biggs
Seeing despair ripple across her face, I smiled and said, ‘I knew you would come.
With tears in her eyes she reached towards us again now screaming out in anguish. ‘It’s all right Lucia,’ I said warmly. ‘You have to let us go. We will be okay because we are together.’
Still she hung there, looking down. ‘Go on,’ I encouraged, ‘it will be all right.’
‘Max,’ she cried, ‘a thing of beauty is a joy forever.’
I gazed back at my Lucia, smiled and said ‘Wordsworth?’ Reluctantly, she pulled her fingers away from mine, turned and hauled herself upright, putting both of her feet in the hook at the end of the cable. The water was now lapping just below our shoulders. It was probably survival instinct and a waste of time but we lifted our arms out of the water.
‘Go on,’ I called again, ‘climb!’
It just missed me; a life buoy and then another, both attached to rope, as they came falling from the sky above. Linda appeared at the top, lowering something else towards Claudia.
‘It’s a radio,’ I heard her call. ‘Attach the rope holding the life buoys to the hook, and I’ll operate the crane. We will bring them up, one at a time, if you radio me the instructions.’ Linda then vanished again, as quickly as she had appeared.
Claudia grabbed the rope attached to one of the buoys, securing it to the hook and yelled, ‘Put it on and I will help you climb out. One at a time as Linda said.’
‘Go on,’ I said to Olivia, ‘you go first.’
‘Max, my dear Max, it’s not because we are in a time of equality and it’s no longer women first. But if we are both to have a chance of living, you need to go. By the time Claudia comes back, climbing out is going to be harder. I might make it but you won’t, my love. Put the buoy on and go. I’ve got the life jacket, so I will be okay. Wait for me on top.’
I knew that she was right. Olivia was the stronger of the two of us. With Olivia’s help I slipped the life buoy over my head and under my arms. I felt a pulling on the rope. Claudia was climbing down it to join us in the water. Just before her feet reached my head I heard her say into the radio, ‘Okay Linda, bring us up slowly.’
With a jerk, the life buoy pulled tightly against me, as if it wanted to rip my arms and head off.
Claudia dropped down to my side.
‘Max, once we are clear of the water, Linda is going to move the crane and we will swing gently to the side. Together we are simply going to walk up the wall and out of the top. I’ll be with you all of the way. I promise, I won’t let anything happen to you.’
She wrapped one arm around the rope which hung above my head and placed her other arm around me. I could feel her immense strength, supporting and guiding me as we were dragged partially though the water and lifted skywards at the same time.
‘I knew that pole dancing you did would come in handy one day,’ I puffed, working with all my strength to help Claudia walk me out.
Each time I slipped, she held me as, one step after another, we inched slowly upwards. The yacht lurched again, tipping ever skywards, as if it was taking its last breath, before sinking forever below the sea.
‘Come on,’ I muttered to myself, ‘for Olivia’s sake; climb you old bugger, climb.’
Finally, we were free of the dining room and winched clean out of a massive hole in the window, a window that ran the whole width of the deck we were on.
The winching stopped.
‘Wait here,’ Claudia said, as she helped me out of the home-made sling to take it with her.
‘Lower away,’ she said into the radio and I watched as she vanished back inside the sinking boat.
It seemed to take an eternity before the cable stopped feeding out and I imagined that Claudia had reached Olivia. I waited as the boat sank farther into the ocean and sea started creeping towards me, engulfing the sides of the deck where Claudia and Olivia were locked inside. I imagined the sea was now gushing into the dining room from all sides, making it nearly impossible for them to escape. The cable remained stationary and I wondered if the power had given out, leaving Claudia and Olivia dangling helpless, waiting for their end.
‘It’s moving, it’s moving,’ I screamed aloud, as the cable began its arduous retraction.
Inch by inch it slowly came up, being matched second by second by the rising sea. Then I saw them, first Olivia and then Claudia, and they were both alive. The crane stopped and Claudia, as she had done for me, released Olivia from the harness.
‘Thank you,’ I said.
‘It’s Linda we should be thanking,’ Claudia said. ‘but let’s get off, before the Lelantos goes under.’
WOOP – WOOP – WOOP
From the port side, the sound of a ship’s horn startled us. Pulling alongside was a grey warship or maybe it was a coast guard vessel, I couldn’t tell, but, as long as it wasn’t the Russians, Olivia and I would be safe. But sadly, with what I now knew about Claudia and Linda, despite what they had just done to save our lives, they would spend years behind bars, if they weren’t terminated first by their own side.
People with proper harnesses and safety gear appeared and we were lifted from the sinking ship and onto the rescue vessel where Linda was waiting for us.
‘This way,’ said an officer with a Stars and Stripes badge emblazoned on his shoulders as we were led into a room.
‘Wait here,’ said the officer before leaving.
In front was a large desk with its papers neatly and meticulously sorted. A high-backed chair was facing away from us. Slowly it turned.
‘Hello Claudia and Linda. Welcome to MI6,’ said Stephen.
EPILOGUE
Max
Life is a relentless march of time. In its wake, everything is changed but still seems to remain the same. It feels like only yesterday—but also a lifetime ago—that I stood on the deck of a battleship in times of war, on the convoys to Russia, was married and raised a family. Each morning I would rise, full of anticipation, in search of adventure and excitement, but complain bitterly of having no time. As years came and went, life changed. I became a grandparent and then found retirement, or did retirement find me? Yet free time was still elusive. Finally, when the chaos slowed, old age and frailty had become my companion and time a burden.
I had taken again to checking the newspaper each morning; a ritual of my lifetime stopped only when Olivia, my wife of sixty-three years, and I, were first confined by our children to this nursing home. Was it a desire to be needed or a fantasy for a life now lost that caused me to peruse the paper in search of a secret message? Why, after all of this time would there be one? For a short period each morning, as I scanned the papers, I was transported back to those days of long ago. In that dream, my body no longer ached, my balance was steady and my mind was sharp. In that fantasy, I didn’t fear the prospect of dying the slow, cruel and painful death of old age—but saw instead the resurrection of a dormant soul.
So much had changed in a little over a month. We had thrown off the chains of a nursing home, travelled halfway across the world in Operation Underpants to save the United Kingdom from a devastating biological attack, then criss-crossed Europe, taking on the Russian Mafia. What were they going to do with us now? Olivia and I couldn’t and we wouldn’t go back to die a slow, dismal, agonising death in the Australian prison, the nursing home, from which we’d escaped. After the trail of destruction, we’d left in Britain, France, Italy and Greece, neither could we remain spies, or so those governments told us. This left them with a dilemma. What to do with the famous Olivia and Max—the heroes that nobody wanted?
* * *
The sinking of the Lelantos, the super yacht owned by billionaire Russian property tycoon Monya Mogilevick, made headlines around the world. The papers said the yacht was sunk when it struck a partially submerged shipping container which ripped a large hole in its hull and that it sank in a matter of minutes. The security agencies, MI6, CIA and even Mossad denied responsibility, instead, spreading the rumour that it was the work o
f one of the other Russian Brotherhood syndicates in a vicious power struggle. Despite the disastrous accident, according to the newspapers, only two people, Claudia, the Russian billionaire’s lover, and Linda Orr, had tragically lost their lives.
We knew this wasn’t true. Claudia reverted to her real name, Lucia, and, throwing off the shackles of the past went to work for the British Secret Service, along with Linda and Inspector Axel. Not long after their recruitment, one of the world’s biggest and most sophisticated cyber-crime networks was smashed. As to who really attached the explosives to the hull of the yacht, nobody knows or nobody is telling.
As for Inspector Axel’s daughter Kate and husband Edward, their bodies were not found in the burnt-out ruins of the house in Horton-cum-Studley. What happened to them and whether they are alive or dead is still a matter of speculation. Olivia and I think they must be involved in something and been given a new identity. If I were younger, I would have enjoyed finding out what.
* * *
The authorities were still left with the problem of what to do with us. It was Olivia who proposed a solution and, on reflection, I think the idea had its genesis because she secretly enjoyed playing the part of Lady Olivia Suzanne Elizabeth Huggins. We were granted, at the expense of Her Majesty’s Service, a permanent berth, luxury suite and stateroom of course, on the Queen Mary 2, sailing the seven seas. This became our new home and if we felt like it, we could leave the ship, staying in a country, until the Queen made her return to whisk us away on another grand adventure in a far-off country.
It was summer, more than a year after the sinking of the Lelantos, when we sailed into Dubrovnik. Perhaps rather naively, we had taken a taxi to Kupari. I had wanted to show Olivia the derelict resort, the place that had haunted and connected Claudia to her past. The old resort was as desolate and disturbing as I remembered and yet, like Claudia, I found it both moving and beautiful. Whatever development Monya’s company was planning, nothing had started.
As we walked among the ruins of the burned-out hotels, I told Olivia of the secret chambers that were built into the hillside behind. We had stopped and were examining a wall within the old Grand Hotel, wondering if we could find the hidden entrance to the tunnels, when Olivia gently touched my arm.
‘I think we’re being followed,’ she said.
THE END
Disclaimer
Claudia is a work of fiction and uses actual events to supplement its story. However, these occurrences are not intended to be historically or chronologically accurate.
Operation OBE
Over Bloody Eighty
Mark A. Biggs
mbkbooks
MBK CONSULTING
Dedication
To Aunty Edna.
97 years young at the time of first publication
2018
CHAPTER ONE
All roads lead to the Lelantos
Navy personnel, wearing search and rescue gear, harnesses, ropes and hard hats, appeared and lifted Olivia, Max, and Claudia free of the sinking Lelantos, taking them to an American warship stationed on the Port side. On board, wet and shaken from the ordeal, they were reunited with Linda. An American officer ordered that they follow him, with Claudia and Linda for assistance, Max and Olivia were taken to a briefing room. Inside, was a large desk with its contents neatly and meticulously sorted. Someone was seated in a high-backed chair, facing away from them. Slowly, the chair turned.
‘Hello, Claudia and Linda. Welcome to MI6,’ said Stephen Walls.
Stephen’s assertion was right. Claudia and Linda’s days with the Russian Mafia were over; saving Max and Olivia had seen to that. At that instant, Claudia realised that working for MI6 had been inevitable from the moment she recognised Max in Scotland, as the person who, 20 years earlier, had saved her, as 14-year-old Lucia, from child sex slavery. The decision to spare him and take him back with her to Russia had put in motion the events that sealed her fate.
In Scotland, Max hadn’t recognised Claudia because she’d changed so much from the 14-year-old girl he remembered. During the Balkan War, he and Olivia had lost contact with Lucia, her birth name, when she was reunited with her family living in the village of Kula Grad, near Zvornik in Bosnia Herzegovina. At the height of the War, the 17-year-old Lucia had run away to be with her boyfriend, Ratimir, a commander in the Yellow Wasps, one of General Ratko Mladic’s paramilitary groups. It was while she was there that she changed her name to Claudia and commenced military training, eventually steering her towards Monya and the Russian Mafia.
After helping Max and Olivia, Linda, like Claudia, couldn’t go back to the Mafia. Both women considered themselves pragmatic professionals and like in a time of war, when a soldier was on the losing side, once the conflict was over, your loyalty was to the new master – the one who paid the cheque. Smiling, Claudia thought that this was something the Americans forgot in the second Iraq War. Having overthrown Saddam Hussein, they sacked and disbanded the Iraqi forces, setting in play the fertile ground for the rise of Daesh/ISIS, the instability that would sweep across the Middle East and the terrorist attacks on the West.
‘Thank you,’ replied Claudia casually, as if defecting to MI6 was the most natural thing in the world. ‘But please, call me Lucia.’
‘Yes, Lucia, of course. You must excuse my manners. My name is Stephen Walls, the head of MI6. My colleague from the CIA was called to the bridge and will be joining us shortly.’ His attention was then drawn to Max and Olivia who were leaning heavily on Claudia and Linda for support.
‘You two look shocking,’ he said, trying to make light of their condition. ‘Help them sit down. Better?’ Olivia nodded. ‘I’ll call for a medical tea…’ Stephen was interrupted mid-sentence by the briefing room door being flung open. A stern-faced woman strode in, ignoring everybody in the room and moved purposefully towards Stephen. He stood as she acknowledged him with a nod of her head before taking Stephen’s position behind the desk. A pen was out of place. She studied it for a few seconds before returning it to its rightful position. It was then that she greeted the others in the room.
‘Welcome aboard, Max and Olivia,’ started the woman while giving them a disingenuous smile before moving her attention to Claudia and Linda. ‘My MI6 friend assures me,’ she said, glancing towards Stephen, ‘that you would agree to work for us.’ She didn’t wait for a response and continued, ‘Your first task as our new employees is to tell us where to find the Professor. We know that he was evacuated from the Lelantos… after its little mishap.’
Claudia was overcome with a desire to lash out. Little mishap…and who the hell are you, she wanted to say. Instead, she smiled and then curled her lips, pretending that she was thinking, contemplating the question. The woman waited patiently before raising one eyebrow and tilting her head slightly to the left, as if to say…well?
‘Sweetie, Linda and I will be your loyal servants and do whatever it is that you ask of us but the past is our secret, unless you intend extracting it from us by force. Torture has such a nasty way of spoiling friendships. If our secrets remain with us, we offer you the same guarantee. Nothing from our time with you will ever pass our lips.’
‘I see,’ said the woman quietly, torn, both impressed and annoyed. ‘I understand, but perhaps, given the circumstances, Claudia, or have you reverted back to your real name, Lucia?’ It wasn’t a question, more a statement to emphasize that the CIA knew all about her. ‘Let’s call it a sign of good will,’ she continued, giving another disingenuous smile. ‘I would encourage you to make an exception on this matter.’
‘Sweetie, it’s not our desire to play games with either the CIA or MI6. Like torture, I find it erodes confidence. If you are to trust us, we must keep our past secret. Perhaps, as you said, as a sign of good will.’ In keeping with her game, Lucia paused, as if considering the request carefully. ‘I am willing to tell you this, but no more. The Professor and his wife, along with four bodyguards left the Lelantos on a high-speed boat shortly before it
sunk.’ She paused while she looked at her watch. ‘Sweetie, I would say between one and a half and two hours ago. The Lelantos was heading to Turkey before its mishap, on route to Russia. Russia is still the destination, but how is now a matter for the commander and his team. They are all ex-Russian Special Forces, so you will find them worthy adversaries.’
‘Very well,’ said the woman coldly. ‘That will do, for now.’
Turning to Stephen, she said in a matter-of-fact voice. ‘I imagine that you would like a private conversation with your octogenarians. They look goddamn awful. Use my office as long as you need. In the meantime, I will show Lucia and Linda to their cabins. We’ll continue our conversation with them later today.’ She rose and, with a ‘follow me’ to Lucia and Linda, was gone as quickly as she’d entered.
‘Who was that?’ asked Olivia.
‘Bronwyn, my new counterpart in the CIA. I fear some women think the only way to break through the glass ceiling is with balls and she’s got one heck of a brass set. I doubt that she is taking Lucia and Linda to their cabins. I think the CIA is trying to gain an edge over me by talking to Lucia and Linda first.’
‘As you would, Stephen,’ said Olivia warmly. ‘As you would.’
‘True enough. Before we decide what to do with you two reprobates, what can you tell me about the Professor?’
‘Well, quite a lot,’ started Max. ‘He heads one of the Russian Brotherhood cybercrime units and, through it, provides a service to the Kremlin. According to what he told Claudia, Lucia now I suppose, that’s why the CIA is after him. While acting for the Kremlin he interfered in US politics, trying to manipulate their elections. The Professor bragged about phishing attacks and creating fake news on social media, painting people and political parties in a bad light. Fostering conspiracy theories is what I would call it. You know the kind of stuff; disinformation dressed as truth, the Russians have been masters at it for decades. What I think you’ll find interesting, Stephen, is that the Kremlin, with the Professor’s assistance, shut down the British Health System with that WannaCry virus.’