My Only Talent Ch. 37

You heard stories about wide hipped farm women of old who dropped a baby and kept working the harvest. I'm sure she could do that, but I just wanted to observe and adore her. She moved with grace and balance. I had to find a way to talk to this woman! She turned and noticed me, since I was plainly staring at her. Sparkling hazel green-brown smart girl eyes held my gaze. Light brown hair, and very fair and freckled skin. Was she offended? No! A mild Suzie signal sputtered, waned, and then came back. There was almost a sadness to it, but it was there! Make your move, Robbie!

I walked toward her. It was now or never.

"Can I ask your professional opinion about something?"

She looked bemused, but the Suzie signal steadied and a slight smile crossed her lips. Her face was symmetrical but plain. No makeup, seemingly all business and on the job during the workday. "With regard to?"

I gulped. "Getting the smell of old cigarette smoke out of an apartment."

She looked confused. "A flat?"

"Yes, I think they called it a housing block. I would call it an apartment. I guess most folks here would call it flat. But at any rate, the previous occupant must have been a devoted chain smoker. So, when I saw you, I figured a fire fighter would know something about how to get smoke smell out, plus I just wanted to think of something to talk to you about." Whoops.

She looked worried, then smiled again. Her Suzie signal increased just slightly. I was getting much more sensitive to subtle changes, as my Dad had predicted. Then she smirked. "A yank, are you?"

I was offended. "No, I am from Texas!"

She frowned. "Isn't Texas part of the United States?"

"Yes, but we were an independent country first!" I said emphatically. "Strictly speaking, Texas is now part of the USA, but I was never a Yankee!"

She giggled. I loved the sound of it. "Another cheeky yank who thinks to educate me, eh?" I wanted to educate her in several wonderful ways. "Another British babe who thinks she is too hot for me, eh?"

She looked stunned. Her Suzie burbled and grew. I guess she was not used to being considered too hot for anyone. I suspected that, like Peggy, she had taken some teasing about her ample ass, and maybe just for being the only female on the fire crew. She changed her stance a little.

"Well, strictly speaking, I am trained regarding smoke from burning building materials. Fags are different."

Now I looked stunned. Where the hell did that come from? Surely, she didn't think I was gay? I thought I was showing frank interest in her.

The she looked very uncomfortable and covered her mouth with her hand. "Oh, I think you misunderstood! I meant that tobacco smoke is different from the smoke from a structure fire."

I must of have looked relieved. She smiled again. "Well while we are speaking strictly, smoke from cigars is different than smoke from cigarettes, too. What have you done so far to get rid of it?"

I paused. "Opened the windows and wiped things down with Febreze."

She looked more comfortable, as if she were on familiar ground. "Keep the windows open and maybe even get a fan or two to speed up the turnover of the air inside the unit. Make up a dilute solution of vinegar and baking soda in water and sponge down the walls, floors, and all other surfaces. Then let the fan dry it completely. You may have to repeat that cycle. Is there carpet or upholstered furniture? "

"All wood floors and furniture."

"That's fortunate. You should be able to clear the air almost completely. If you are really a stickler, you should repaint."

I realized that the conversational ball was now in my court.

I fumbled. "Well, thanks. I'll give that all a try."

She looked at me, perhaps expecting me to say something else. I just looked at her. I really was off my game. Then the alarm bell on the station rang, and the speakers made some sort of distorted announcement about an "undergrowth fire." They all donned some khaki and yellow coats, jumped on the fire engine, and took off. I watched dumbfounded as they sped away.

I spent the next hour walking around and cursing what I didn't say, and rehearsing what I should have said. I didn't even get her name, much less her number. At least I knew where she worked.

I went back to my stinky apartment (now slightly less stinky, at least) and showered, put on my slacks and blazer outfit, and walked to the Dog restaurant I had seen on my way to Canterbury. It was nice, but given my per diem budget, if I ate here regularly, I could only eat every third day or so. I ordered the only thing on the menu with chorizo in it, and it was good, if bland. They seemed to be puzzled by my accent, as I was by theirs. But we communicated just fine.

I had some wild dreams anyway, as if I had eaten something very spicy. Those dreams featured a very spicy female firefighter, dressed in tight white and slightly damp tennis togs with her hair tied back in a ponytail, running around the tennis court on those powerful legs, digging and bending and ripping forehands and backhands across the net with aplomb. I realized she did look like a very fair skinned version of Serena Williams. I wanted to see what she looked like under those firefighter pants.

+++++++++++++++++++

Things moved fast once Dwight exited the aircraft at Biggin Hill. In a nondescript van, they drove north to 1 Millharbour, the building they had been studying, and took the elevator up to a very small studio apartment about halfway up the tower facing west. The RF environment was crazy - chock full of signals. One of the techs setup a spectrum analyzer and began building a signal list database that Dwight could refer to. Dwight started with the Wi-Fi bands that he could access from the wireless card on his laptop.

The other tech set up a directional antenna that could make it through the energy reflective film on the windows to access an open-air RF sniffer installation that had recently been dropped on the roof of the DoubleTree across the water. Once the spectrum analyzer was running, they turned their attention to the cellular phone networks.

+++++++++++++++++++

I showered and dressed in khakis and a cotton collared shirt, walked down to the farm store for an early breakfast, then walked back to the post office and caught the charter bus to Folkestone.

There was no one else waiting for the bus. Maybe I was the only one staying at Wingham. The Holiday Inn Express looked pretty much like all the others I had seen in Texas, and the morning orientation session was nothing remarkable. Some tired looking HR guy who had probably done this meeting a hundred times had us fill out forms, check some boxes, and sign off on a dozen policies to document that we had been advised of them. Then we queued up in front of a camera for ID cards, and were fingerprinted. We had a few minutes to wash our hands and go through a very sparse looking sandwich buffet, and then the afternoon session began.

This was a little more interesting -- a security briefing. The latest update was on a new alliance between Romanian gangs and the Sinaloa cartel designed to bring drugs from Central and South America into England. Apparently, the primary transport pathway was recruited 'mules' arriving via air, and the secondary was via the docks at Liverpool. But, police were anticipating the attempt to set up alternate routes through France and the Eurotunnel. This could entail bribery and attempts to plant gang people as employees. There were also gangs from Armenia, Turkey, and Serbia vying with the locals for control of the drug trade. The 'routine' stuff was the constant and increasingly aggressive attempts of migrants in France to somehow catch a ride, mostly on cargo lorries, through the tunnel and into the UK, with or without smuggled goods. I soon learned why my TA at ESU told me to stay away from Calais. This was followed by a very worrisome presentation on the tunnel as a tempting terror target.

I thought about the Rosetta Stone language learning course that Adnan had given me. I hadn't listened to it yet, but it was beginning to look like I was going to have a lot of time on my hands this summer. Would it be a net benefit if I learned enough Arabic to be able to listen and perhaps detect something before it become a problem, or would mere possession of the course make me a suspicious person? What about Farsi, Urdu, Armenian, and Serbo-Croatian? Our orientation group then took a quick trip over and back to France in a passenger train -- less than two hours, and then were released for the day.

Tomorrow, we would enjoy the freight route and train yards, and then explore the maintenance access tunnels where I would spend most of my time. Something to look forward to.

I caught the bus in front of the Holiday Inn, and we picked up quite a few riders from stops around the service road, then headed north. I was interested to see if anyone else got off at my stop when we got to Wingham. I used Google again to search for dinner, and found an Indian place not far from the bus drop-off point.

While I was perusing the menu, my phone rang, from a +44 number with a ring tone that told me I did not have it in my contacts.

"Hello?"

"Hello, Robbie, this is Tessa Formby, from the Tattler. Remember me?"

Of course, I did, but not with great fondness. As far as I knew, she was an unapologetic extortionist and gossip broker, plus she considered me too young and too white to be sexually attractive. On the other hand, she was connected to both Elizabeth Ashcroft Knowles and Ambassador Pliskin, plus she was damn good looking for forty-something, and a hell of dancer. I assumed she would be back in Austin for the GP race next November, too.

I was just a little slow to respond for a driven type A personality like hers. "I am not going to pump you for gossip, Robbie, so don't worry about that. In fact, I have some information for you, instead!"

I was interested. "About?" Now she was slow to respond. "Well, let's see. First, I know you are here in the south of England, where you are staying, and why. Second, I have lots of interesting stories about Belinda Hatch Peters, Abelard Peters, and Peggy Duchenne. Interested?"

She had me now, and she knew it. "Yes, Tessa."

"That's better. I assume that by now you have gotten the message about Abelard and Belinda suspending their tennis parties, but you likely don't know the whole story as to why. But to get that story, and others, you have to meet me for dinner."

"I thought I wasn't your type, Tessa."

She cackled. "Oh, you aren't. But it would be to my advantage to introduce you to certain people, and perhaps to your advantage also. I am mildly fond of you, you know, in a sort of big sister kind of way. You can certainly understand that I want to stay on Ambassador Pliskin's good side, too?

I could. Ten days ago, I was concerned he might have me killed for hurting his daughter. He probably didn't care that she was hurting me, though. The last thing I wanted to do was tell Tessa anything about Suzanne. What was she up too?

She continued. "How about tomorrow, Thursday, in Soho?"

I thought a minute, a map and an extended train schedule coming to mind. Soho in NYC was South of Houston Street, 'Soco' in Austin was South Congress, 'Sola' was South Lamar, but her Soho was in Westminster, just west of London proper, and the traffic would be heavy. 'I'm not sure what time I will finish work, nor how long it will take me to get there on the train."

"Don't worry, this crowd doesn't eat until late. I will have a car hire pick you up at your flat in lovely little Wingham at 8 PM GMT. That should give you plenty of time to get ready."

"What should I wear?"

She laughed again. "Ideally, that black leather mask and metal cock piece outfit from the Addicted to Austin party. You could make quite an entrance with that!"

I gulped. "Sorry, didn't bring it with me." It was still in the closet in Lara's apartment.

"I wouldn't think so! Dark slacks and a blazer should do. A coat is required, but not a tie. Do you have boots and a string tie?"

"Not with me. Didn't bring my new Stetson, either. Where are we going to dinner?"

"Just a little barbecue place -- it should be right up your alley, Texas. The driver will call your mobile when they arrive outside to pick you up. TTFN!" With that she rang off.

When the bus dropped me back at Wingham, alone, I went to the Indian place for dinner. It was good, but bland. They need more curry powder and more of those skinny peppers they use. Most customers got take out. They seemed surprised when I sat down at a table. I was getting bored. My plan was to go back to my stinky flat and listen to the language course until it put me to sleep. Forty-five minutes later, I was just about there.

+++++++++++++++++++

Dwight had the primary hack all worked out, but the misdirection, coverup, and secondary misdirection would have to be subtle, but ultimately discoverable. That meant getting data from the Russian Embassy, or at least, data that looked like it came from there. There was a lot of old style malware that had originated in Russia, some if it very clever.

One of his trainers said that the Russians had a whole generation of great theoretical mathematicians who had to grow up without the computers that those in the west had, and thus developed much better algebraic mental processes. They also had a whole first generation of programmers that had learned to squeeze lots of functionality into the very small memory spaces of early ICBM guidance systems, and younger generations that were trained by them. When the USSR went teats up, a lot of those guys needed jobs. Some came to the USA and programmed industrial control systems, cash registers and ATMs with small memory spaces, and some of them worked for criminals and developed malware. Unfortunately, a few had also found employment in the nuclear and missile trades in Pakistan, Iran, Iraq, and North Korea.

They turned those little terminate and stay resident programs into an elegant almost art form, and many of their original techniques had been incorporated in new generations of malware again and again. This resulted in systems that to the uninitiated appeared to have originated in Russia, but could have come from anywhere. Military hackers from almost every sovereign nation often included segments of that old code in their projects to mislead investigators about their origin. Usually, if you traced the execution with a debugger, you would find those segments were inactive, just included to be found, not functional. Dwight had to do better than that. The other techs had identified and compromised all the devices in the target apartment, including the cardiac pacemaker, and all the routers and cell sites that served them. The shooters had booked two hours tonight to rehearse Dwight on how things had to be done for the viewing public. They were almost ready.

+++++++++++++++++++

I'm not sure how long I slept, but a knock woke me up. Much to my delight, when I opened the door, it was my firefighter crush, in the very attractive flesh.

"Kent FRS, to inspect your flat for smoke damage, and attempt to mitigate it." She smiled, so nicely.

Damn, a great ass, a great chest and a good vocabulary, too! She had shed the firefighter uniform, and was wearing a nice floral print dress with dark blue side panels that somehow accented her figure perfectly, and a blue costume jewelry necklace. Her hair was up and she had applied just a touch of makeup and red lipstick, all very classy and understated. She looked incredible. I stared at her for a moment, then recovered. "Come in, please!" I tried to sweep my arm and offer the place to her.

She sniffed and her nose wrinkled. "They called him Mad Murray" she said.

I looked puzzled. She continued.

"The bloke that used to live here." She explained. "He was a bit of a hoarder and more than a bit weird. The FRS made several calls here to check on him."

So, his name was Murray. Must have been a chain smoker, too. Name? Oh, names!

"I'm Robbie Roberts. Very pleased to meet you!"

She smiled and sort of half curtsied. "Likewise. I am Summer, Summer Mawn."

Somehow that name seemed familiar. Rhetoric and Composition class, first semester. A great English novel, one that even qualified as that with the jaded Miss Wyricki. I smiled at the memory.

"Your middle name wouldn't be "Set" would it?

She looked pained, but laughed softly. "My father is a joker, but not that subtle. My first name is Somerset, but everyone calls me Summer. And my last name is spelled M-A-W-N."

The brain between my ears began to work again. "How did you find me?"

She smiled shyly. "This is a very small community, and a new fella with a strange accent gets noticed." Her Suzie suddenly sounded, growing louder.

Wonderful. I felt my confidence grow in concert. "I'm glad you noticed. I noticed you, too. I was about to ask you out when that alarm went off."

She smiled again, like she had a secret. "It's summer grass fire season. One of our busy times."

Tell her the truth, Robbie, and tell her what you want. "I'm here for the busy season, then, until late August, but I would like to spend time getting to know you until then." I wanted to get busy with her.

She smiled again, and made some very encouraging eye contact. "And then back to Texas? Bevo, KD, and Jordan Spieth, et al?"

I smiled again, my confidence growing by leaps and bounds. "May I call you Summer?"

She looked me right in the eye, her gaze unwavering and her Suzie accelerating. "What would you like to call me?"

I took her arm, and held it gently. Go for it, Roberts. "I would like to call you my pet."

I could feel a little shiver go through her arm and her Suzie. She stepped a half step closer, but I might have been dreaming that. "Then what shall I call you?"

I was feeling it. I hoped she was too. "You may call me Master."

Her eyes bounced and her Suzie wavered. She got the strangest look in her eyes. I somehow heard her say "if only you could really pull that off" skeptically, but her lips didn't move. Then she drew in a big breath and held it.

I put my thumb under her chin and lifted it up and kissed her very gently. She shivered. "Count on it, my pet!"

She smiled a funny little smile, eyes downcast. Yee haw!

I now regretted agreeing to go to dinner with Tessa Formby tomorrow night. "Can we get together Friday night?"

She looked mildly uncomfortable. "I have a side enterprise doing bespoke food for garden parties, and I have events both this Friday and Saturday evenings, I'm afraid."

She looked sad, and I'm sure I did too. Don't let this stop you, Robbie! "Could you use another hand?"

She looked shocked. "One of my regular helpers is out sick. Can you set up tables and bus afterward?"

Thanks to my mother's socialite leanings and unwavering insistence on teaching me proper behavior, I knew about ballroom dancing, cotillion etiquette, and proper place settings. I held up my hands, making the 'perfect circle' or 'A-Okay' sign with each. I suddenly remembered Suzanne teaching me that it could be considered offensive in Southern Europe, North Africa, and South America. I hoped it was not considered so here, and that my little wave of sadness upon thinking about Suzanne didn't show on my face. As my mother had taught me, I held my hands out as if they were over a table.

"Little letters b and d. Bread and drinks. BMW. Bread, meal, water. FORKS. Fork, circular plate, remaining utensils: Knife and Spoon. Dessert spoon on top."

She smiled broadly. "You're hired!"

I tried to look very sternly at her. "That's going to cost you, my pet!" She smiled one of those wonderful little smiles. "Perhaps you will make me pay."

England can be marvelous in the summer, don't you think?