Charlotte was aware of his heavy hand resting on her thigh. The room was warm, and the sweat trickled down the small of her back and from the back of her knees as his body lay solid against hers. His strong perfume, which she had enjoyed last night at Crockfords, was now stifling. Though her neck ached and her legs itched from the trapped moisture, she kept dead still to avoid waking the sleeping Arab.
It felt like hours before the sun cut through the darkness of the room. With the first rays of dawn resting on her closed eyelids, Charlotte prised herself out of the sweaty entrapment and headed for the bathroom. Sultan groaned and brushing his thick black hair back from his face called out to her:
‘Sharly, for God’s sake it’s only six thirty.’
‘Some of us have to work for a living’, she quickly called back.
‘I’ll set you up baby, I’ve told you that before. You don’t have to keep running after that crappy little job you have, whatever it is that you do’, continued Sultan now sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘Sultan, I’ve never seen you pray, you’re supposed to be a Muslim; you should have been up before me, before dawn’, she added unable to hold back her irritation at his immaturity.
‘That’s for old men; what did you bring that up for?’ he grumbled puzzled by this assertion from the English woman in his bathroom.
Charlotte returned to the room hurriedly pulling on her clothes and throwing at him a pair of briefs which had laid half concealed beneath the bed; wishing instead it was a brick she was hurling.
‘Your cleaner is not doing her job properly’, she snapped well aware of the eastern European escorts he brought up to the apartment when she was not there. They entertained him graciously for the seemingly endless wads of petrodollars he was in the habit of flashing around.
‘What the hell’s got into to you this morning, you know my situation, you know they mean nothing, you have a mind Sharly that’s why I like you, your different’, he soothed as if she should feel flattered by his inference that somehow she was better than the rest.
‘I have to get moving Sultan, I’ll be late, I’ll bring you coffee’ came a mumbled excuse to escape the bedroom. As she entered the kitchen, she could hear him speaking in Arabic on the phone.
‘Damn, Damn’, Charlotte muttered under her breath, her knees threatened to buckle beneath her as she caught the words Sultan spoke to the person on the other side. Her hand now trembled as she spooned the sugar into the thick black coffee she was preparing for him.
Charlotte had become careless in her growing despondency with the job. Sultan spotted that his mobile phone had been cloned; she hadn’t closed the application after it completed. He didn’t think it was her; she got that, but he asked for his security man, Khalid to come up to the apartment. Charlotte had witnessed Khalid in action, Sultan was an arrogant man, but he was not violent. Khalid, on the other hand, was brutal and sadistic, and she had been uneasy in his company.
Charlotte continued with the coffee and tried hard to sound more friendly and upbeat but it wasn't easy. Walking tall and seeming confident, she placed the cup on the dressing table before leaning over and kissing Sultan’s head, intending to leave while he was still on the phone. Waving briefly, she turned out of the bedroom again into the hall then suddenly made a dash for the front door with jacket and bag in hand, while struggling into her shoes. Her heart thumped wildly beneath her ribs as she fumbled with the latch.
‘Sharly, wait’ called Sultan now striding down the hall after her.
The door was half open, and by this point, she had one foot outside the door.
‘Did you use my mobile last night?’ he questioned in a tone she had not heard from him before.
‘No’, she replied with a quizzical look, ‘Why would I, I have my own mobile?’ ‘Sultan I have to go, I’ll call you this evening’, she pleaded dashing toward the elevator door which to her relief opened the instant she pressed the button. Sultan, hair untidy and clad only in his bathrobe didn’t step beyond the threshold of the apartment but thumped his fist hard against the door frame in frustration.
Charlotte left the building almost sprinting, terrified that she would pass Khalid on her way out. On the corner of Prince Street, she hailed a taxi, surveying all sides to see if she was being followed. She travelled as far as Greet Street in the taxi, where she then got out and chose to walk the rest of the way through the Cut towards Vauxhall, dodging into Calders and browsing the shelves of books for several minutes watching faces through the window as they passed by on the street beyond the glass.
She walked out of Calders and directly into Dressed to Kill, the ladies apparel shop next door. There Charlotte paused to look at her watch; it was then she saw his face reflected in the glass frontage of the Young Vic Theatre across the road. She had not eaten since dinner the previous evening, and her head felt light, and a slight dizziness came over her; a combination of low sugar and the terror that now filled her. With a step backwards, Charlotte moved into the shop again, she then turned and headed for the first floor. Khalid by this point had crossed the busy road and entered the door behind her; she watched him as the escalator carried her slowly upwards. On the first floor she grabbed a blouse from the rail and headed for the changing room, plastic card, swipe, and into the enclosed space, she had no more than one minute.
She took out her mobile and called the code, Nigel’s familiar voice on the other end brought a sense of relief. Without wasting words, she blurted:
‘I need bringing in, get my coordinates, the targets on to me.’
‘You’ve been careless Charlotte this could end in a diplomatic disaster’, came the reply.
‘This is no time for evaluation Nigel just bring me in; you assigned me to spy on your allies for God’s sake .‘
‘Don’t you mean our allies?’
Charlotte’s eyes were glued to the seconds counting down on her watch. The bile from an empty stomach rose up her oesophagus, and the bitterness almost made her vomit.
‘What are you saying Nigel, just get me in’, she hissed. Then the phone went silent. No Nigel, no ring tone, no signal. Her fingers fumbled pointlessly with the on off button. She stuffed the mobile into her pocket stepped up onto the bench and hauled herself over the top of the changing room wall, a woman trying on a dress in the next cubicle stared at her too stunned for words. Charlotte pushed past the woman uttering a muffled apology, entered the shop floor again and headed straight for the green sign-posted fire exit.
She pulled the mobile out from her pocket and tried again without success. From the top of the fire exit, in her high heels, she sprang two steps at a time down the stairwell and out into a back alley. After running down and across Short Street, she was able to enter Pret a Manger from the trade entrance. She strode through the back kitchen so brusquely that no one had time to question her presence let alone apprehend this intruder. Charlotte, continuing on her way, pushed her way past the counter assistant, dodged between the crowded tables and through a fog of fresh pastry and coffee aromas.
Out on the street again, she walked straight into the humming traffic as if intending to cross to the other side of the road. In a flash she doubled back behind a parked bus, the caustic exhaust fumes coated the delicate tissue of her nostrils adding to her nausea. At the door, she swiftly boarded just as the bus pulled away from the kerb. Khalid stood in the middle of the road a meter or so in front of the bus twisting his head from left to right. When he turned in her direction, she bent her head low and made cooing noises to a toddler perched upon its mother’s knee.
When the bus had passed by Khalid, leaving him far behind, Charlotte moved up the aisle and sat down next to an elderly man. Fiddling with her mobile again, she told the fellow passenger that it appeared to be broken and asked him if she could borrow his to call her mother. He willingly obliged the young and lovely brunette sitting at his side; he recalled some distant pleasant memory from his youth as he did so.
Charlotte tapped in a number, and when the switchboard answered, she asked, omitting the usual courtesies, for Cousins. The operator asked for her identity, CB385, she whispered into the phone holding one hand to the side of her mouth. ‘I’m sorry madam you must have the wrong number’, came a cold response then the line went dead.
It began to sink in that she was ‘being wiped’; she’d heard about being wiped but never believed it to be true. Apparently, it happened when an agent became a liability. Charlotte handed the phone back to it’s owner, then rose, walked down the aisle and disembarked at the next stop. The man’s eyes followed longingly after her.
Charlotte kept on the move for over an hour; bus, metro, taxi, walking, bus, finally ending up after dusk in a coffee house in Peckham. Her flat would be under the surveillance of the Saudi’s, and she’d been dumped by the British. Inside the orange lit, clinking pot warmth, Charlotte, to avoid being seen from the window, seated herself in a corner behind a group of chattering couples. She ordered a toasted sandwich and a Cappuccino from the waitress without making eye contact with her. The toasted sandwich was not the best of choices; anxiety had made her mouth dry, and the half burnt bread went down like sandpaper. Since eating was a necessity now, she dipped the sandwich into her coffee until the bread became soggy enough to ease its passage.
Charlotte recalled the day she had graduated with first class honours as she fished out the bits of lettuce from the brown liquid with the teaspoon from the saucer. International relations with Arabic. She had been a bright young thing with ambition back then. Her friends had been envious of her passing the MI6 interview and assessment process. She had been so full of excitement and on the brink of a great adventure.
Charlotte had not imagined even for a moment that she would spend the next five years sleeping with the enemy – literally: and there were far too many of them. The purpose of the leaflet, exhorting regular health screening which was added to the manual six months into training, was clarified through on the job experience. Last night she was a beautiful, sophisticated, intelligent, confident woman serving her country. In less than twenty-four hours she’d become a nobody, dumped in the cold light of day. Dishevelled in the half light of evening, her life was in imminent danger, she was alone and felt used, and worse still there would be no pay cheques in the coming months and she had a mortgage to pay.
She never got to see the regret in Sultan’s eyes when he sensed that morning would be the last time he’d see Charlotte. He’d grown accustomed to her presence, and her character, he could even go as far as acknowledging that he’d begun to fall in love with he; in his own way of course.
Sultan released a long and heavy sigh before heading out for the evening with the beautiful tall blonde and exceptionally sophisticated Kveta. As wonderful an escort as she was, she was not his ‘Sharly’ for whom he now mourned. Khalid, he knew was supremely efficient, that’s why his family employed him.
With everything undoubtedly lost, Charlotte sat at the grubby table contemplating a new life as a novelist not knowing what might lay ahead.
It felt like hours before the sun cut through the darkness of the room. With the first rays of dawn resting on her closed eyelids, Charlotte prised herself out of the sweaty entrapment and headed for the bathroom. Sultan groaned and brushing his thick black hair back from his face called out to her:
‘Sharly, for God’s sake it’s only six thirty.’
‘Some of us have to work for a living’, she quickly called back.
‘I’ll set you up baby, I’ve told you that before. You don’t have to keep running after that crappy little job you have, whatever it is that you do’, continued Sultan now sitting on the edge of the bed.
‘Sultan, I’ve never seen you pray, you’re supposed to be a Muslim; you should have been up before me, before dawn’, she added unable to hold back her irritation at his immaturity.
‘That’s for old men; what did you bring that up for?’ he grumbled puzzled by this assertion from the English woman in his bathroom.
Charlotte returned to the room hurriedly pulling on her clothes and throwing at him a pair of briefs which had laid half concealed beneath the bed; wishing instead it was a brick she was hurling.
‘Your cleaner is not doing her job properly’, she snapped well aware of the eastern European escorts he brought up to the apartment when she was not there. They entertained him graciously for the seemingly endless wads of petrodollars he was in the habit of flashing around.
‘What the hell’s got into to you this morning, you know my situation, you know they mean nothing, you have a mind Sharly that’s why I like you, your different’, he soothed as if she should feel flattered by his inference that somehow she was better than the rest.
‘I have to get moving Sultan, I’ll be late, I’ll bring you coffee’ came a mumbled excuse to escape the bedroom. As she entered the kitchen, she could hear him speaking in Arabic on the phone.
‘Damn, Damn’, Charlotte muttered under her breath, her knees threatened to buckle beneath her as she caught the words Sultan spoke to the person on the other side. Her hand now trembled as she spooned the sugar into the thick black coffee she was preparing for him.
Charlotte had become careless in her growing despondency with the job. Sultan spotted that his mobile phone had been cloned; she hadn’t closed the application after it completed. He didn’t think it was her; she got that, but he asked for his security man, Khalid to come up to the apartment. Charlotte had witnessed Khalid in action, Sultan was an arrogant man, but he was not violent. Khalid, on the other hand, was brutal and sadistic, and she had been uneasy in his company.
Charlotte continued with the coffee and tried hard to sound more friendly and upbeat but it wasn't easy. Walking tall and seeming confident, she placed the cup on the dressing table before leaning over and kissing Sultan’s head, intending to leave while he was still on the phone. Waving briefly, she turned out of the bedroom again into the hall then suddenly made a dash for the front door with jacket and bag in hand, while struggling into her shoes. Her heart thumped wildly beneath her ribs as she fumbled with the latch.
‘Sharly, wait’ called Sultan now striding down the hall after her.
The door was half open, and by this point, she had one foot outside the door.
‘Did you use my mobile last night?’ he questioned in a tone she had not heard from him before.
‘No’, she replied with a quizzical look, ‘Why would I, I have my own mobile?’ ‘Sultan I have to go, I’ll call you this evening’, she pleaded dashing toward the elevator door which to her relief opened the instant she pressed the button. Sultan, hair untidy and clad only in his bathrobe didn’t step beyond the threshold of the apartment but thumped his fist hard against the door frame in frustration.
Charlotte left the building almost sprinting, terrified that she would pass Khalid on her way out. On the corner of Prince Street, she hailed a taxi, surveying all sides to see if she was being followed. She travelled as far as Greet Street in the taxi, where she then got out and chose to walk the rest of the way through the Cut towards Vauxhall, dodging into Calders and browsing the shelves of books for several minutes watching faces through the window as they passed by on the street beyond the glass.
She walked out of Calders and directly into Dressed to Kill, the ladies apparel shop next door. There Charlotte paused to look at her watch; it was then she saw his face reflected in the glass frontage of the Young Vic Theatre across the road. She had not eaten since dinner the previous evening, and her head felt light, and a slight dizziness came over her; a combination of low sugar and the terror that now filled her. With a step backwards, Charlotte moved into the shop again, she then turned and headed for the first floor. Khalid by this point had crossed the busy road and entered the door behind her; she watched him as the escalator carried her slowly upwards. On the first floor she grabbed a blouse from the rail and headed for the changing room, plastic card, swipe, and into the enclosed space, she had no more than one minute.
She took out her mobile and called the code, Nigel’s familiar voice on the other end brought a sense of relief. Without wasting words, she blurted:
‘I need bringing in, get my coordinates, the targets on to me.’
‘You’ve been careless Charlotte this could end in a diplomatic disaster’, came the reply.
‘This is no time for evaluation Nigel just bring me in; you assigned me to spy on your allies for God’s sake .‘
‘Don’t you mean our allies?’
Charlotte’s eyes were glued to the seconds counting down on her watch. The bile from an empty stomach rose up her oesophagus, and the bitterness almost made her vomit.
‘What are you saying Nigel, just get me in’, she hissed. Then the phone went silent. No Nigel, no ring tone, no signal. Her fingers fumbled pointlessly with the on off button. She stuffed the mobile into her pocket stepped up onto the bench and hauled herself over the top of the changing room wall, a woman trying on a dress in the next cubicle stared at her too stunned for words. Charlotte pushed past the woman uttering a muffled apology, entered the shop floor again and headed straight for the green sign-posted fire exit.
She pulled the mobile out from her pocket and tried again without success. From the top of the fire exit, in her high heels, she sprang two steps at a time down the stairwell and out into a back alley. After running down and across Short Street, she was able to enter Pret a Manger from the trade entrance. She strode through the back kitchen so brusquely that no one had time to question her presence let alone apprehend this intruder. Charlotte, continuing on her way, pushed her way past the counter assistant, dodged between the crowded tables and through a fog of fresh pastry and coffee aromas.
Out on the street again, she walked straight into the humming traffic as if intending to cross to the other side of the road. In a flash she doubled back behind a parked bus, the caustic exhaust fumes coated the delicate tissue of her nostrils adding to her nausea. At the door, she swiftly boarded just as the bus pulled away from the kerb. Khalid stood in the middle of the road a meter or so in front of the bus twisting his head from left to right. When he turned in her direction, she bent her head low and made cooing noises to a toddler perched upon its mother’s knee.
When the bus had passed by Khalid, leaving him far behind, Charlotte moved up the aisle and sat down next to an elderly man. Fiddling with her mobile again, she told the fellow passenger that it appeared to be broken and asked him if she could borrow his to call her mother. He willingly obliged the young and lovely brunette sitting at his side; he recalled some distant pleasant memory from his youth as he did so.
Charlotte tapped in a number, and when the switchboard answered, she asked, omitting the usual courtesies, for Cousins. The operator asked for her identity, CB385, she whispered into the phone holding one hand to the side of her mouth. ‘I’m sorry madam you must have the wrong number’, came a cold response then the line went dead.
It began to sink in that she was ‘being wiped’; she’d heard about being wiped but never believed it to be true. Apparently, it happened when an agent became a liability. Charlotte handed the phone back to it’s owner, then rose, walked down the aisle and disembarked at the next stop. The man’s eyes followed longingly after her.
Charlotte kept on the move for over an hour; bus, metro, taxi, walking, bus, finally ending up after dusk in a coffee house in Peckham. Her flat would be under the surveillance of the Saudi’s, and she’d been dumped by the British. Inside the orange lit, clinking pot warmth, Charlotte, to avoid being seen from the window, seated herself in a corner behind a group of chattering couples. She ordered a toasted sandwich and a Cappuccino from the waitress without making eye contact with her. The toasted sandwich was not the best of choices; anxiety had made her mouth dry, and the half burnt bread went down like sandpaper. Since eating was a necessity now, she dipped the sandwich into her coffee until the bread became soggy enough to ease its passage.
Charlotte recalled the day she had graduated with first class honours as she fished out the bits of lettuce from the brown liquid with the teaspoon from the saucer. International relations with Arabic. She had been a bright young thing with ambition back then. Her friends had been envious of her passing the MI6 interview and assessment process. She had been so full of excitement and on the brink of a great adventure.
Charlotte had not imagined even for a moment that she would spend the next five years sleeping with the enemy – literally: and there were far too many of them. The purpose of the leaflet, exhorting regular health screening which was added to the manual six months into training, was clarified through on the job experience. Last night she was a beautiful, sophisticated, intelligent, confident woman serving her country. In less than twenty-four hours she’d become a nobody, dumped in the cold light of day. Dishevelled in the half light of evening, her life was in imminent danger, she was alone and felt used, and worse still there would be no pay cheques in the coming months and she had a mortgage to pay.
She never got to see the regret in Sultan’s eyes when he sensed that morning would be the last time he’d see Charlotte. He’d grown accustomed to her presence, and her character, he could even go as far as acknowledging that he’d begun to fall in love with he; in his own way of course.
Sultan released a long and heavy sigh before heading out for the evening with the beautiful tall blonde and exceptionally sophisticated Kveta. As wonderful an escort as she was, she was not his ‘Sharly’ for whom he now mourned. Khalid, he knew was supremely efficient, that’s why his family employed him.
With everything undoubtedly lost, Charlotte sat at the grubby table contemplating a new life as a novelist not knowing what might lay ahead.